II

TRIPARTITE ANTHROPOLOGY

1 Saint Paul Body Soul Spirit

The distinction between a moral life and a properly spirituallife is frequently presented in the course of the Christiantradition in the form of a hierarchy It is apt to be based on atripartite anthropology recognizable across the diversity ofvocabularies and in very diverse cultural milieux Thistripartition is obviously not to be understood as implyingthree substances or even three ldquofacultiesrdquo in man it isdiscerned rather as a threefold zone of activity from theperiphery to the center or to use a traditional andirreplaceable word to the ldquoheartrdquo1 It is opposed to a morecurrent bipartite anthropology which seems to offer manythinkers many ldquosagesrdquo whether Christian or not asufficient framework or support It is opposed to that orrather as we shall see it completes it

In many authors in many periods this anthropology isconnected explicitly to several texts in Scripture Old andNew Testament and more particularly to a text from SaintPaul quoted with predilection When concluding his FirstLetter to the Thessalonians the Apostle addressed a wish tothem ldquoMay the God of peace make you perfect and holyand may your entire being spirit soul and body be keptsafe and blameless for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christrdquo(1 Th 523 Jerusalem Bible translation)2 This verse haspassed into certain liturgical texts thus in the Libermozarabicus sacramentorum (Feacuterotin no 18) and also in

the Roman liturgy of today (Lectio brevis of ThursdayCompline) Yet it seems to have embarrassed a number ofmodern commentators who take pains in various ways asif it were an obligation for them to take all significanceaway from it

For some it is only a formula that was currentcommonplace at that time and there would be no point inseeking a precise meaning for it or in taking it intoconsideration in the exposition of Pauline doctrine Such isthe case with Ferdinand Prat Martin Dibelius and GeorgeFindlay Others make the observation that ldquoit is the onlyplace in the Letters where these three elements figure sideby siderdquo such is the position of D Buzy and Dewailly-Rigaux3 Still others tell us we would be wrong to believeldquothat this text implies a tripartite division in the Paulineanthropologyrdquo so it is with W David Stacey who takes JohnA T Robinson as support for this observation Withprudence Robinson only disputed the fact that in 1Thessalonians 523 it is a matter of three ldquovery distinctrdquoelements Paulrsquos language he observed not without someplausibility ldquois much too fluid for thatrdquo4 Stacey concludesfrom this that in the Apostlersquos phrase one need only retainthe two words ὁ λοτελεῖ ς (per omnia) and ὁ λόϰληϱον(integer) these two words alone ldquoindicate the true sensePaul emphasizes the entirety of this preservationrdquo that hewishes for his correspondents ldquoIt is the whole man who isguarded and spirit soul and body simply underline thetotality of this conception Man under each of hisaspects man in his totality is to be guardedrdquo5 Stacey doesnot wonder (and it is the only thing that interests us here)why in view of expressing this totality of man Paul insistson enumerating three elements or three ldquoaspectsrdquo or ifyou like three terms rather than two or four

The note added to the text by the Jerusalem Bibleconstitutes a happy exception Without doubt it retains by

uniting them the last two of the three considerations thatwe have just pointed out ldquoThis is the only place where atripartite division of man is mentioned in Paul whomoreover has no systematic and perfectly coherentlsquoanthropologyrsquo rdquo6 which taken literally is incontestableOnly it does not stop there it adds rather judiciouslyldquoBesides the body and the soul we see appear here thespirit which can be either the divine principle of new life inChrist or rather the highest part of man which is itselfopen to the Spiritrdquo with a reference to Romans 55 and 19where the reader will be able to find a mass of referencesPauline and other whose eclecticism does not claim to takethe place of commentary Which shows at the very least thatthe wish of the Apostle for the Thessalonians in its literalsense was taken seriously which constitutes at least ahappy if not the only exception

A more recent author J W C Wand after having saidldquoThere can be no doubt that Paul speaks from time to timeof the body soul and spirit as if from his point of viewpsychology were based on a trichotomyrdquo observesimmediately that ldquoat other times however he speaks in amore popular way of the soul and the body in the way wedo todayrdquo7 A curious reflection for more than one reasonabout which (taken in its French translation) we will makeonly two remarks Paul does not have in mind as the authorseems at least to insinuate a ldquopsychologicalrdquo trichotomyand on the other hand contrary to what we read in PratDibelius and others here we see that it is no longer thetrichotomy of the Letter to the Thessalonians but the simplesoul-body dichotomy that is declared commonplace andldquopopularrdquo

Still more recently E Schweizer went back to the idea ofa popular and consequently uninteresting trichotomy ldquoInthe famous passage from 1 Thessalonians 523 it isappropriate to understand pneuma alongside psyche and

soma as an element of man above all in the sense ofpopular anthropology The benediction formula is traditionalperhaps liturgical and does not signify anything much aboutthe notion of man in Paul The combination may be chanceas in Deuteronomy 65rdquo8

Different exegeses which may contradict each other indetail but which nearly all tend in the same direction

It is not very difficult to detect the reasons for it For someinterpreters it is above all it seems the desire not to findSaint Paul in opposition to ldquoour classical doctrinerdquo as DBuzy (170) said a doctrine that counts only two elements inman matter and spirit Is this doctrine which is guaranteedby the threefold heritage of Scholasticism Cartesianismand for France the university spiritualism instituted byVictor Cousin not imposed on every well-made mind Butfor the most part another reason seems determinative It isa kind of phobia that is quite widespread today the phobiaof ldquoPlatonismrdquo Yetmdashand this is something that might seemstrangemdashif the Pauline text makes us think of Plato it is notalways because we read him in the Letter to theThessalonians it is in more than one case because we findhim quoted by Origen Which accounts for the reflex actionof distrust Does not Scripture in fact have for Origen ldquolikethe human composite a body a soul and a spiritrdquo And isthis distinction not ldquomanifestly inspired by the trichotomy ofPlatordquo9 It is in a similar way that an excellent historian ofmonastic life Dom Adalbert de Vogue on the subject ofOrigen evoked ldquothe old Platonic trichotomy at first assumedby Saint Paulrdquo10 The Alexandrian as everyone knows inadvance is a ldquoPlatonistrdquo but Saint Paul himself cannot beone If therefore as Father Ferdinand Prat said thisOrigenian trichotomy presupposes ldquoa false psychologysince the soul and spirit of man are not distinctprinciplesrdquo11 one can very well attribute this ldquofalsepsychologyrdquo to Origen but not ldquoaccuserdquo Saint Paul of it for

the aforesaid trichotomy truly constitutes an item ofindictment Has not Saint Justin too been ldquoaccusedrdquo ofdistinguishing three elements in man12 It is thereforenecessary that the same text the same words not have atall the same meaning in the Apostle as they have in theAlexandrian even if their primary source is common or atleast that under the pen of the first of the two they be onlyan ἅ παξ common and unimportant

The phobia of ldquoPlatonismrdquo in any case can be discoveredin several of our exegetes13 Hence the veritable acrobaticsin the TOB translation [Traduction Oecumenique de la Bible]of this Pauline verse and the explanations given in the endto justify it The translation ldquoMay the God of peace himselfmake you perfect and holy and may your spirit your souland your body be kept perfectly safe in order to beblameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christrdquo Theoriginality of this translation consists in the fact that theword ὁ λόϰληϱον which in Paul preceded the tripartiteenumeration is shifted so as to follow it and in additiontransformed into an adverb so that the two words thatcome next αμέμπτως τηϱηθείη (in the singular sincethe subject was ὁ λόϰληϱον ὑ μῶν) become (in the plural)ldquobe kept perfectly safe in order to be blamelessrdquo To tell thetruth that does not change much and cannot changemuch in the obvious meaning of the text The latter couldbe changed only by the obviously impossible suppressionof one of the three terms of the enumeration But this littleingenuity on the part of the translators allows them tointroduce in a note a contorted exegesis with an intendedgoal about which they make no secret

Some understand ldquoMay your entire being that is spirit soul and body rdquo This division of the human person into three elements would be that ofGreek philosophy It is not usual in Paul and this verse understood in thissense would be a completely isolated text in the New Testament In orderto avoid this difficulty others have understood the first term of theenumeration ldquoYour spiritrdquo to be the equivalent of ldquoyourselfrdquo they then

translate ldquomay your whole person soul and bodyrdquo thus recovering therepresentation that Judaism and Paul had of the human person We haverendered the sentence in a way that makes a simple enumeration of termsapparent each of which can designate for Paul the entire man whether itis a matter of pneuma psychegrave or soma There is no need at all then for anexplanation borrowed from a Greek anthropology in three componentswhich moreover are never expressed with these three terms14

One could not better display a stratagem One could not bemore subtle more sophisticated more inconsistent too butat the same time more honest in the end more clear and inthe final proposition more precise

But here is another strange thing This unfortunatetrichotomy so suspect because of the ldquoPlatonistrdquo Origenthis trichotomy that some would like to be able to forbid inreading Saint Paul for fear of having to admit that theApostle at least once ldquoPlatonizesrdquo this accursedtrichotomy that some strive for want of something betterto exorcise by making it commonplace which one finds inPaul or in Origen or in anyone else has nothing Platonicabout it

We can first of all take this on the word of some goodexegetes those at least who are not hypnotized by the FirstLetter of Paul to the Thessalonians Do we not recognize forexample the mark of Hellenic influence and more preciselyof Platonic opinion on the Book of Wisdom a little beforethe Christian era in the fact that certain passages of thisbook enunciate or presuppose a bipartite division of thehuman composite a division ldquomore conformed to Greekcustoms than to Semiticrdquo15 Do they not strive with reasonmoreover to show that the recognized use of ldquoPlatonicdoctrines about the distinction of body and soulrdquo and aboutthe immortality of the latter takes nothing away from thebiblical foundation of a thought that is not that of aphilosopher but that of a wise man of Israel ldquonourished bythe Old Testamentrdquo16

If it happens that one has not read much of Plato one canalso go back to some authorities on him what one finds inhis work is totally different from what one finds in Saint PaulThere is a certain psychological trichotomy in other wordsa tripartite division of the soul reasonable irascible andconcupiscible So it is in the Republic Phaedrus andTimaeus According to Phaedrus the θυμός and theἐπιθυμητιϰόν are the two horses of the chariot led by theνοῦς Origen who is familiar with this division is verycareful not to make it his own he observes on the contrarythat it ldquois not confirmed by the authority of Holy Scripturerdquoand for this reason on two occasions he rejects it17 Thetranslators of the TOB were very close to perceiving all thatsince at the end of their laborious explanations they finallytell us that Paul had undoubtedly borrowed nothing ldquofrom athree-part Greek anthropologyrdquo given the fact that thelatter is never expressed in Pauline terms But why then thisfear which has made them shrink from the simplesttranslation

It is not correct moreover to say that the text of 1Thessalonians is an isolated text in Scripture and in Paulhimself Undoubtedly it has been unduly compared to averse from Deuteronomy ldquoYou shall love Yahweh your Godwith all your heart with all your soul and with all yourstrengthrdquo to the sole end of insinuating that only thenumber three was here and there to be retained assignifying simply a totality18 it is enough to read these twotexts to see that they are not comparable But on thecontrary when the Letter to the Hebrews celebrates theWord of God who ldquopenetrates to the division of soul andspiritrdquo (Heb 412) it is inspired without any doubt by ananthropology similar to that of Paul And one can hardlymaintain that the formula of the latter is a mere pleonasmldquofor other passages show clearly that the Apostle despiteall the elasticity or lsquofluidityrsquo of his terminology distinguishes

clearly between the phenomena that indicate the body souland spiritrdquo19 He does so in the First Letter to theCorinthians when twice he contrasts the unspiritual ornatural [psychique] man and the spiritual man20 W DavidStacey has maintained that these latter texts cannotcorrespond to that of the Letter to the Thessalonians of thetwo conceptions in conflict it would be necessary on thebasis of all evidence to choose the one later in date asexpressing the mature thought of the Apostle21 theantagonism of natural and spiritual would be substituted forthe hierarchical union of soul and spirit But here again thedesire to eliminate or at least to neutralize a text deemedembarrassing seems to us to have led Dr Stacey astray It isvery evident that the text of 1 Thessalonians is far fromhaving the same significance as that of 1 Corinthians thatdoes not prevent the thought of Saint Paul from remainingcoherent from one letter to another The soul (the psyche) isnever for its part the object in itself of a pejorativeappreciation If in another context he is severe or not veryadmiring of the man he calls ldquonaturalrdquo it is insofar as thelatter is only natural insofar as he closes himselfmdashorremains still provisionally closed22mdashto the Spirit of God whowould (or will) make of him a ldquospiritualrdquo man conferring onhim thus his ldquofullnessrdquo as the Letter to the Ephesians willexpress it (518) The natural man of 1 Corinthians 2 canhave a certain ldquohuman wisdomrdquo that is not uniquely ldquocarnalwisdomrdquo (cf 2 Cor 112) which does not lack all value butunderstands nothing ldquoof the things of the Spirit of Godrdquo forhim they are ldquofollyrdquo To this ldquowise manrdquo to this ldquocultivatedmanrdquo to this ldquoman of reason here belowrdquo the Apostlecontrasts the ldquowisdom of Godrdquo manifested in Christ23

It would be no more appropriate to bring out here thePauline opposition in a still more radical sense between theflesh and the spirit The carnal man is not the one whowould stop so to speak at a first landing that of the flesh

which is to say in such a case at things of the body but theone who has fallen into evil Body and flesh (it is reallynecessary to repeat this since people still seem to bemistaken about this at times) are in no way synonymous oreven comparable and do not belong to categories of thesame order In the thinking of Saint Paul the ldquofleshrdquo has ldquoaclose solidarity with sinrdquo it is this congenital weakness thatmakes the human soul fall into the slavery of sin Theldquospiritrdquo its antagonist is ldquothe state of freedom in which itblossoms when it has been faithful to the Spirit of God whoattracts it and comes to dwell within itrdquo There is noquestion here of any gradation but of opposition pure andsimple Saint Paul does not speak there of any dualitywhatever in the structure of the human being he does notcorrect a tripartite anthropology by another bipartite oneFor him flesh and spirit never designate two components ofhuman naturemdashlike body and soul would bemdashbut alwaysstatesmdashcontrasted statesmdash of the whole man24

If one wants therefore to find a certain Greek antecedentof philosophical significance for the Pauline trichotomy itwould not be appropriate to look for it on Platorsquos side Itwould rather be in Aristotle The Stagirite in factacknowledges in man an animated body the presence of asuperior element the spirit (νοῦς) the principle ofintellectual life immortal and divine Nevertheless theparallel takes a sharp turn for there would be at least onemajor difference While Aristotle spoke of a νοῦς Paulspeaks of a πνεῦμα Now as we know the difference is notmerely one of terminology It is no longer a question of asimple nuance of thought The substitution of one term foranother was besides not made by Paul alone it hadalready been carried out a little earlier by Philo Friendlytoward Hellenism Philo ldquowas imbued with the doctrine ofthe contemplative nousrdquo25 nevertheless in the passageswhere he comments on the creation account he does not

speak of νοῦς but of πνεῦμα God he says breathes intoman a pneuma not content with making him simply alivecomposed of soul and body he gave him part of his spiritthis is what Moses teaches by saying that he made him inhis image This pneuma in man is the principle of a higherlife the place of communication with God26 Now such isalso one of the meanings of pneuma in Saint Paul It is not inGreece that we must search for its origin but in the Bible

Father Joseph Huby has said it in a few words which morerecent authors would benefit from rereading In the Paulineverse ldquofamous because of the trichotomy spirit soul bodyof the human composite some thought to see a borrowingfrom Plato or Aristotle Both do acknowledge in fact threeprinciples in man but if the latter two of those coincide withthose27 enumerated by Saint Paul the first is different InPlato it is the nous the intellectual soul consideredmoreover by Aristotle as separable Instead of νοῦς SaintPaul puts spirit or pneuma here with him as in Philo this isa Semitic term suggested by the account in Genesis (27)where it is said that God breathed into the nostrils of theman a breath of life rdquo28 The Pleiade Bible has taken thesame explanation which seems imperative to us ldquoSpiritsoul bodyrdquo recalls Michel Leturmy in a note to histranslation ldquosuch is with the Semites the most commondivision with respect to the human compositerdquo29 In a noteto the translation of Matthew 625 the same authorexplains that the Greek ψ υχή translates the Aramaeannaumlfshacirc breath of the throat animal life (the ldquosoulrdquo) throughopposition to πνεῦμα which translates the Aramaean roucirc hacircdivine respiration breath of the nostrils (the ldquospiritrdquo) seeGenesis 2730

We do not believe it would be enough however to tracethe words of the Pauline triad simply to those of the BibleThe Apostlersquos anthropology is also based in part on hisexperience acquired from life in the Spirit of God There are

numerous commentators who in consequence consider thePauline πνεῦμα to designate in reality not something of manthat would be higher than his soul but the human soulinsofar as it is informed by grace participating as theSecond Letter of Peter (14) says in an effective way in thedivine nature united to the very essence of God by thecoming of the divine Spirit into it31 The ψ υχή in this casewould be not only ldquosensible liferdquo but also the higher realityof man as man that is although Buzy translates it in anoverly intellectualist language ldquoreason without gracerdquo32

This would be ldquothe state of the specifically living beingwhich is inherent in man as suchrdquo33 So too schematicallyBonnetain ldquoThe three terms come back to the followinggrace soul and bodyrdquo34 Father Andreacute-Jean Festugiegravere isclearly opposed to this interpretation which also proceedsin some from the fear of attributing to the Apostle ananthropology judged to be ldquoPlatonicrdquo For him theanthropology of Saint Paul is undoubtedly trichotomic thepneuma in question in the wish addressed to theThessalonians as in the texts mentioned above from theFirst Letter to the Corinthiansmdashand as in addition the Letterto the Hebrews speaks of itmdashis not the Holy Spirit butactually a part of man ldquothe movement of the phrase thetwo ϰαί the insistence on saying that we must becompletely in our whole being under the divine safeguardrdquoare the proof of it35 Besides if this pneuma is not itself thedivine life realized in man it is indeed in him the center ofthe higher life moral religious mystical it is the ldquocenter ofthe Christian liferdquo which is not a matter of feelings but offaith36

Some hesitate to choose between these two contradictoryinterpretations even if it means apparently contradictingthemselves in their explanatory formulas They are of thefeeling that the thought of Paul is profound and complexthey would like to lose nothing of it but do not see well how

to explain it in our language in a coherent fashion Such isFather Joseph Huby following the passage we have quotedldquoFor Paul the pneuma is more precisely the spirit of maninsofar as influenced informed and heightened by divinegracerdquo it is the ldquoprinciple of thinking center of moral andreligious life and summit of the soul The original (biblical)concept of the pneuma the human soul breathes from Godis magnificently deepened the pneuma designates thereason informed by grace man insofar as he becomes spiritparticipating in the nature of God through the spirit theνοῦς becomes capable of conquering the flesh it isunited to the very essence of God through the coming of thedivine Spiritrdquo37 In this essay somewhat awkward in itsattempts at reconciliation in which a fourth term (νοῦς) isintroduced we see to which side the author is leaning Wewill say as much of Max Alain Chevallier who with respectto 1 Corinthians 1414-16 after having noted for us ldquothefreely equivocal use of the word pneuma by Paulrdquo seems torestrict immediately the significance of his observation bysaying that this word ldquodesignates without describing it theinner man filled with the presence of Godrdquo38 Karl Barth inhis Dogmatics escapes such oscillations only thanks to hisgeneral doctrine which prohibits him from ldquoreifyingrdquo in away from giving a proper consistency to the human spiritconsidered in its relation to God After having justlyobserved that the ruah of the Old Testament does notcorrespond to the πνεῦμα ἅ γιον of the New39 but insofar asa ldquoanthropological notionrdquo to the πνεῦμα of the address tothe Thessalonians Barth makes haste to add ldquoOn the otherhand one cannot assert without reservation that the OldTestament and the New refer to a trichotomy of the humanbeing For both the human being in himself is body andsoul earthly form and earthly life but the body possesses asoul and its earthly form is that of a living being in themeasure in which the human being receives the spirit and

safeguards itrdquo This spirit must however be conceived ldquonotas a property of man but as a gratuitous giftrdquo which atdeath must be returned to God and which persists ldquowhichGod withdraws from him or grants to himrdquo40 What must bemaintained above all according to Barth is that man ldquois inno way lsquorelated to Godrsquo (Gunkel) he has simply beenawakened to his proper existence by the breath that Godbreathes into him and which allows him to breathe himselfWhat is he and what does he possess that he has notreceived and that does not differentiate him from God sinceit is God who has created himrdquo41

The human pneuma of which Paul speaks would thus beboth an element so little constitutive of his being that Godcan take it back from him and a created element thatdifferentiates him from God Such is the Barthian paradoxWithout having to take him literally perhaps we would haveto unite ourselves with the ldquospiritrdquo of it Would it in fact benecessary to choose between two contradictoryinterpretations that confront each other or resign ourselvesto a [false] harmonization that itself does not avoidcontradiction An expression used by Saint Paul himself 1Corinthians 211 could suggest an intermediate solution tous ldquoWho therefore among men knows the secrets of a manif not the spirit of the man which is in him (τὸ πνεῦμα τοῦἀνθϱώ που τὸ ἐν αὐτῷ)rdquo This pneuma is certainly not theHoly Spirit since Paul adds ldquoSimilarly no one knows thesecrets of God except the Spirit of Godrdquo Yet it does notappear completely like a constituent part of man as suchlike the body or the soul after having said ldquothe spirit of themanrdquo Paul corrects himself in a way to say ldquothe spirit whois in himrdquo which marks a nuance of capital importanceThus what par excellence makes a man what constitutesman in his worth among the beings of this world muchmore what makes him a being superior to the world wouldbe an element that rather than being ldquoof manrdquo would be

ldquoin manrdquo There is it seems to us in this Pauline πνεῦμα thesame kind of ambiguity notional because real as in thedivine ldquoimagerdquo or divine ldquobreathrdquo of creation such asChristian tradition interprets them From one author toanother and sometimes in the same author the sameambiguity will give place to oscillations which will not gohowever to the point of compromising before a ratherrecent date the idea of a tripartite anthropology Weconclude with a recent interpreter that the Pauline conceptof πνεῦμα is a concept ldquoof which our modern anthropologiescan absolutely not take accountrdquo42

2 Patristic Tradition

I The First Two Centuries Irenaeus It is a fact that Christianantiquity did not judge insignificant the Pauline verse about

body soul and spirit Nevertheless from one author toanother the interpretations differ without always being in

contradictory opposition to each otherIn his letter to the Philadelphians Saint Ignatius of Antioch

simply makes the Apostlersquos enumeration his own in judgingthat his correspondents like the Ephesians and theSmyrnians ldquowill be honored by the Lord Jesus Christ inwhom they hope with flesh soul and spirit (σαϱϰί ψ υχῇ πνεύματι) in faith charity and concordrdquo1 Athenagoras alsodistinguishes between soul and spirit for him the soul isplaced between ldquothe spirit of matterrdquo which is to say ldquotheflesh and bloodrdquo and the ldquoheavenly spiritrdquo which is ldquopurespiritrdquo and it can according to its choice mix with one orbecome the other

The soul becomes passive when it receives the spirit of matter and ismixed with it by looking below toward earthly things and to speak in ageneral way when it becomes only flesh and blood and ceases to be apure spirit2We believe that we will live another life heavenly and no longer earthlyif at least close to God and with God we have steadfast souls masteringpassion and if we remain not like bodies but like a heavenly spirit 3

In Tatian also the distinction seems clear when he saysldquoWe have knowledge of two sorts of spirits one of them iscalled soul the other is greater than the soul it is the imageand resemblance of Godrdquo4 Only subsequently it isimpossible to discern clearly if the spirit he distinguishesthus from the soul and which he calls ldquodivinerdquo is not simplythe Spirit of God The soul he explains is not immortal in

and of itself so ldquoif it remains by itself it dies with the flesh But when it is united to the divine spirit (θεῖ ον) it doesnot lack for help and it rises to where the spirit leads it Forthe seat of the latter is above while its origin is below Nowin the beginning the spirit was the guide of the soul itabandoned it when it did not want to follow it Now theSpirit of God does not reside in all but in some who livejustly The souls who have obeyed wisdom have drawnthe Spirit who is closely related5 to them (συγγενές) rdquo

Saint Irenaeus then Origen should make us pause a littlelonger because of the abundance of texts their importanceand their difficulty6

It is in the fifth book of Adversus Haereses that Irenaeusgives us his views about anthropology But his goal was notto write a clear and didactic exposition for the use of thehistorians who would pore over his text later on it was torefute heretics who conceived of salvation for man only inldquorejection of the fleshrdquo7 On the other hand careful alwaysto stick very close to Scripture he lets himself be guidedsuccessively by the different texts he uses which leads himto change more or less his perspective and his terminologyin the course of his text8 Hence the difficulties forinterpreters

The first passage in which the distinction between the souland the spirit is affirmed is of little interest to us for it isthere a question of an exposition of heretical doctrine9 Inresponse chapter 6 no 1 is presented as an orthodoxcommentary on the Pauline texts

Through the hands of the Father which is to say by the Son and the Spiritit is man and not a part of man who becomes the image and theresemblance of God Now the soul and the spirit can be a part of man butin no way man the perfect man is a mixture and union of the soul who hasreceived the Spirit of the Father and who has been mixed with the fleshmodeled according to the image of God Under the name of ldquoperfectrdquo the Apostle designates those who havereceived the Spirit of God He also calls them ldquospiritualrdquo they arespiritual through a participation of the Spirit but not through a voiding and

a suppression of the flesh In fact if one dismisses the substance of theflesh that is of the modeled work in order to consider only what isproperly spirit such a thing is no longer the spiritual man but the Spirit ofthe man or the Spirit of God By contrast when this Spirit in mixing withthe soul is united to the modeled work thanks to this effusion of the Spiritthe spiritual and perfect man is achieved and it is he himself who has beenmade in the image and resemblance of God When on the contrary theSpirit is absent in the soul such a man remaining in all truth natural andcarnal will be imperfect possessing indeed the image of God in themodeled work but not having received the resemblance by means of theSpirit10

From all the evidence Irenaeus counts here three elementsin man But is it simply a matter of man or of the perfectman Or rather to speak without ambiguity is it simply aquestion of the ldquoperfectrdquo man which is to say complete inhis nature or man divinized through the participation of theSpirit of God Or indeed does Irenaeus mix the two thingsThe text that follows will perhaps enlighten us

Modeled flesh alone is not the perfect man it is only the body of man thusone part of man Neither is the soul alone man it is only the soul of manthus one part of man Nor is the Spirit man one gives it the name of Spiritnot that of man It is the mixture and union of all these things thatconstitute the perfect man And this is why the Apostle in explaininghimself has clearly defined the perfect and spiritual man beneficiary ofsalvation when he says in this First Letter to the Thessalonians ldquoMay theGod of peace make you perfect and holy so that you may be fullycomplete and so that your whole beingmdashto wit your Spirit your soul andyour bodymdashmay be preserved without reproach for the coming of the LordJesusrdquoWhat motive did he have in asking that these three things to wit the soulthe body and the Spirit be preserved whole for the coming of the Lord if hehad not known that all three were to be restored and reunited and thatthere is for them but one and the same salvation This is why he calls ldquofullycompleterdquo those who present these three things without reproach to theLord Thus those are perfect who all at once possess the Spirit of Godremaining always with them and maintain themselves without reproachwith respect to their souls and their bodies which is to say preserving faithtoward God and keeping justice toward their neighbor11

The hesitation remains On the one hand the Spiritconstitutes with the soul one part of man it is called theldquoSpirit of the manrdquo and seems to be distinguished from the

ldquoSpirit of Godrdquo it in itself does not constitute the man anymore than the body or the soul does but it is one of thethree elements that constitute him these three elementsare also enumerated according to Saint Paul who wishesthem all three to be without reproachmdasha wish that wouldbe irrelevant even impertinent in the case of the Spirit ofGod finally moreover Irenaeus himself considers that theyare all three to be ldquorestoredrdquo and to be presented to theLord But on the other hand the soul receives ldquothe Spirit ofthe Fatherrdquo the man is called ldquospiritualrdquo insofar as hereceives participation of the Spirit and this participationmakes him to be not only in the image but in theresemblance of God finally if this man is ldquoperfectrdquo it isbecause in addition to the soul and the body he ldquopossessesthe Spirit of Godrdquo12 And these two series of affirmations arenot found in different contexts they are closelyintermingled

Yet a little farther on several passages come to supportthe second series

Those who possess the deposit of the Spirit and who surrenderthemselves to the Spirit the Apostle rightly calls ldquospiritualrdquo since theSpirit of God dwells in them For spirits without bodies will never bespiritual men but it is our substancemdashthat is the composite of soul andfleshmdashthat in receiving the Spirit of God constitutes the spiritual man 13 The weakness of the flesh makes the power of the Spirit shine forth and it is of these two things that the living man is made living due to theparticipation of the Spirit man through the substance of the flesh mdashTherefore without the Spirit of God the flesh is dead 14The breath of life which makes the natural man is one thing and thevivifying Spirit which renders him spiritual is another The breath has beengiven indistinctly to all the people who inhabit the earth while the Spirithas been given exclusively to those who trample down earthly covetousdesires 15ldquoFor the Spirit will come out around me and it is I who made all breathrdquo (Is5716) He ranks in a way the Spirit in a sphere apart beside God who inthe last days spread it over mankind for adoption but he situates thebreath in the common sphere among creatures and he declares itsomething created Now what has been created is different from the onewho creates it The breath is thus a temporary thing while the Spirit is

eternal After having enveloped man from within and without heremains always with him and henceforth will never abandon him16

One will note however that in these texts the perspectiveis no longer that of an anthropological analysis and thatthey are condemned by other biblical passages than thepreceding Moreover as Irenaeusrsquo principal objective justnow was to claim for the body itself a salvation of which theheretics say it is incapable his objective here is to show thatthis salvation the definitive blossoming of the spiritual lifewhose seed is in each man is the work of the Spirit of Godin each man In no passage is Irenaeus concerned to give uswhat we would call a philosophical anthropology He doesnot go deeply intomdashto tell the truth he does not even havein mindmdashthe problem of the insertion of the Spirit of God inman Despite the several expressions we have brought outand several others as well we believe that the Spirit ofwhich he speaks is always the Spirit of God even when heconsiders it in man If for example it is said in 5 6 1 thatthe soul and the Spirit can be ldquoone part of manrdquo one canobserve with Dom Adelin Rousseau that ldquoparsrdquo is in thesingular ldquoThus although Irenaeus does not hesitate to seein the Spirit of God one of the three constitutive elements ofthe perfect man he refuses and for good reason to makethis Spirit a lsquopartrsquo of the perfect man rdquo A little farther onit is said that the Spirit like the soul and the body is to berestored and saved which seems strange if it is indeed aquestion of the Spirit of God but Dom Rousseau againcomments ldquowhat is to be saved is not the Spirit as such butthe Holy Spirit insofar as communicated to man for his fullachievement in other words the Spirit is less saved than itsaves rdquo These explanations are ingenious they canseem a little subtle they do not however in our opinionfalsify the general line of Irenaean thought Perhaps it isonly necessary to complete them by recognizing that thetexts that are to be thus explained give witness to a rather

clear tendency to conceive of man (even if it is a question ofthe ldquoperfect manrdquo) according to the anthropological schemesuggested by the Apostle17

If therefore the Spirit indeed designates for Irenaeus theSpirit of God his very manner of considering this Spirit ofGod in man and of seeing in it thus one of the threeelements that combine to constitute the perfect man posesan anthropological problem18 Just like the text of the FirstLetter to the Corinthians of which Irenaeus wants to give anaccount it invites a resolution of this problem in thedirection of a certain ldquotrichotomyrdquomdashwhich Origen more of aphilosopher will soon do ldquoThe hereticsrdquo we read again inthe fifth book of Adversus Haereses ldquo do not understandthat three things as we have shown constitute the perfectman the flesh the soul and the Spirit One of them savesand forms to wit the Spirit another is saved and formed towit the flesh another finally is between those two to witthe soul which now follows the Spirit and takes its flightthanks to him now lets itself be persuaded by the flesh andfalls into earthly desiresrdquo19

These explanations seem to us akin to those of FatherJean Meyen-dorff with respect to man ldquocomposed of fleshsoul and Holy Spiritrdquo ldquoThis viewrdquo he observes ldquowhichsounds strangely pantheistic if one judges it according tolater theological categories shows in fact a dynamicconcept of man that excludes the notion of lsquopure naturersquoMan is created so as to share the existence of God this iswhat distinguishes him from the animal and is expressed inthe biblical account of the creation of Adam lsquoin the image ofGodrsquo rdquo20 As Pierre Boyer-Maurel also says21 if for Irenaeusa certain dichotomy ldquoaccounts for man fashioned in theimage of Godrdquo it is nevertheless a trichotomy ldquoin which thebreath only precedes the Spiritrdquo who ldquoaccounts for thebecoming of man of that man who is created by lettinghimself be created throughout the divine Economyrdquo

II Origen Irenaeus spoke particularly of the Spirit of Godeven when that Spirit shared became by consent of thesoul the spirit of man Origen will speak more explicitly of

the spirit of man insofar as an opening to the Spirit of GodThese are two inverse perspectives much rather than two

adverse doctrines1One authority on Origen Gustave Bardy has however

written that the tripartite division ldquowhich is imposed onhim in a way by several Scripture passages plays no rolein his teachingrdquo2 Another historian of ancient Christiandoctrines Francois Bonifas had expressed a judgment inthe contrary direction but as little conformed to the realityafter having pointed out that ldquounsteadinessrdquo of the Paulineterminology ldquomakes it doubtful that the Apostle intended [in1 Thessalonians 523] to make a scientific distinctionrdquo hewent on thinking essentially of Origen ldquoYet the Fathers ofthe Church saw in the expressions of Saint Paul a rigorousdivision in which they found once again that of their oldmentor Platordquo3 Previously J Denis while not mixing Platoup in the affair had recognized in Origen the existence oftrichotomic texts but he saw in that only a foreign body inthe midst of Origenian doctrine ldquoGenerally speakingrdquo hesaid ldquothe soul and the spirit are but one for Origen and ifhe had not respected a division that came to him from SaintPaul and which appears to have been adopted generallyas much by the orthodox Fathers as by the heretic scholarshe would have suppressed one of the terms of this divisionand would thereby have been spared numerouscontradictionsrdquo4 The prejudice to which in each of thesethree last cases the historian is unconsciously giving way isnot difficult to perceive To overcome it would require an in-depth study After the work by G Verbeke on LrsquoEvolution dela doctrine du Pneuma du Stoiumlcisme agrave saint Augustin (1945)the works of Henri Crouzel and Jacques Dupuis have broughtus all desirable light on this point ldquoAt timesrdquo Father Crouzel

tells us ldquoOrigen is a dichotomist distinguishing the bodyand the soul following the Platonic custom5 But most of thetime he sees according to Scripture three elements inman spirit soul and body He has recourse to thistrichotomy when it is a matter of explaining his idea of manand he states it each time he encounters in the texts anexpression that suggests it and this is so throughout hisliterary careerrdquo6 But it is Father Jacques Dupuis who drawsthe matter into perfect clarity in his important monographon ldquoLrsquoEsprit de lrsquohommerdquo eacutetude sur Irsquoanthropologicreligieuse drsquoOrigegravene For him ldquoThere can be no doubt thatthe verse from Saint Paul is the immediate source of hisanthropological trichotomyrdquo (65) It is principally he that wewill follow here

ldquoWe often find it asserted in Scripturerdquo says Origen ldquothatman is spirit body and soul and we have ourselvesdeveloped the subject at lengthrdquo7 In that as in othersubjects it is in fact the sacred text most especially that ofSaint Paul that truly constitutes the framework for histhought8 And it is with reference to Scripture that he triesto define clearly the notion of the Pneuma For him thePneuma is first of all the Divine Life in principle but it is alsothe shared divine life the creature itself becomes pneumain the measure that it possesses this life Yet it is a first kindof participation in the divine Pneuma which does not yetallow it to be said that man has become pneuma aparticipation that without betraying Origen we can alreadycall natural because it consists in an element that is anintegral part of the nature of all men and that is preciselyhis pneuma ldquoThe Spirit of God even when it is present inus is one thing and the pneuma proper to every man thatwhich is in him is something else The Apostle clearlyaffirms that this spirit (this pneuma) is different from theSpirit of God even when the Holy Spirit is present in usover and above the spirit of man that is in himrdquo9 The

distinction could not be put more clearly Origen asks againin the same passage of the commentary on Saint MatthewldquoIs the spirit of Elias the same as the Spirit of God whodwells in Elias or indeed do we have two different thingsthererdquo And he replies ldquoThe Apostle shows clearly that theSpirit of God when he dwells in man is distinct from thespirit of the man lsquoThe Spirit itself testifies to our spirit thatwe are children of Godrsquo (Rom 816) and in another placelsquoNo man knows what is in a man if not the spirit of the manwho is in him likewise no one knows what is in God if notthe Spirit of Godrsquo (1 Cor 211)rdquo10

Origen indeed says like Paul pneuma and not nous It isbecause they did not sufficiently distinguish between thesetwo concepts that several have identified the pneuma of theanthropological trichotomy with the preexisting nous andhave made it the higher (intellectus) part of the soulmdashunless in order better to distinguish between pneuma andpsyche they reduced this latter to its sensible part Theythen spoke of Origenrsquos imprecisions his unstableterminology indeed of his inconsistency of thought and ofhis contradictions This was from not having read himclosely enough11 He distinguishes the spirit from the soul(and in this case he is not speaking of the nous) as clearlyas he does the soul from the body and he repeats atdifferent times that ldquowe are composed of a soul and aspiritrdquo this is the case it seems in the third book of Periarchocircn12 so too in the fourth book in the famoustheoretical parallel that he institutes between man andScripture13 In the Entretien avec Heacuteraclite for theinstruction of his august audience he insists ldquoThat man is acomposite being we know through Scripture The Apostle infact says lsquoMay God make you holy spirit soul and bodyrsquoand so forth This spirit is not the Holy Spirit but one part ofthe human composite (μέϱος τής τοῦ ἀνθϱώ πουσυστάσεως) as the same Apostle teaches when he says

lsquoThe Spirit gives witness to our spiritrsquo rdquo14 In thecommentary on the Letter to the Romans he will also quotein support a text from Daniel15 here he invokes as anexample what happened at the death of Christ havingwanted to save all men the Savior had taken body soul andspirit now ldquothese three elements during the Passion wereseparated at the time of the Resurrection they werereunited During the Passion they were separated How Thebody in the tomb the soul in hell the spirit he deposited itin the hands of the Father rdquo16

This spirit of man represented by the eagle in Ezekiel17 isplaced above the soul18 But never in the texts of thetrichotomic series does Origen call it νοῦςmdashso that thiscould be a criterion for discerning the origin of certainpassages given as Origenian but which are in reality fromEvagrius19

But how are we to understand this spirit which is ldquoin usrdquo20 What is its role If we follow again the indications givenby the Apostle we will compare it to the moral conscienceldquoOur gloryrdquo says Paul ldquois the testimony of our consciencerdquo(2 Cor 112) The conscience always rejoices in what good Ido on the other hand it can never be accused of doing evilbut on the contrary it remonstrates it accuses the soul towhich it is bound this is a sovereign freedom I thereforethink that it is this very spirit that the Apostle tells us is withthe soul being associated with it like a pedagogue and aguide to teach it good to chastise it and to reprimand itwhen it sins It is this spirit of which the Apostle again saysthat ldquono one knows what the man is if not the spirit of theman who is in himrdquo it is the spirit of the conscience alsoaccording to what Paul says ldquoThe spirit himself giveswitness to our spiritrdquo21

We should not however in exalting the pneumaexcessively reduce its reality if it is not a simple member ofthe human composite neither is it the simple voice of the

conscience Inaccessible to evil22 placed in a way as wehave said ldquoabove the soulrdquo (ἀνωτέϱω) as a ldquoguide tovirtuerdquo23 it is ldquomuch more divine than the soul and thebodyrdquo24 ldquobelonging truly to man it remains entirely in aparticipation of the Holy Spirit who gives himself to us it isthe point of contact between man and the divine Pneumawho inhabits himrdquo25 This is why it is always holy it is holyby essence not of course the ldquoHoly Spiritrdquo but throughparticipation a ldquoholy spiritrdquo26 ldquothe seal of the Holy Spiritmakes holy the spirit that is in usrdquo27 in each of us Hencethe paradox the pneuma in man is holy and it mustbecome so we must affirm at the same time the holiness ofthis pneuma and ldquothe fortuitous character of a holy liferdquo28 Ifwe seek to bring out the fundamental idea expressed (let usnot say sought for Origen seems very much the master ofhis thought) in these texts and other similar ones we couldwithout betraying it express it thus the pneuma that is ldquoinmanrdquo in every man assures a certain hiddentranscendence of the man over himself a certain opening acertain received continuity between man and God Not thatthere is the least identity of essence between the one andthe other (like Irenaeus like Clement Origen is animplacable adversary of this pantheism of the pseudo-Gnostics) but it is at the heart of man the privileged placealways intact of their encounter

Would man therefore be after all impeccable No But thecenter of moral freedom and choice is not the pneuma Thatis why we can say that for Origen the pneuma ldquodivine giftrdquois not properly speaking part of the personality29 Thecenter of choice is the soul in its higher part (νοῦς) Thelatter can be inclined as Saint Paul says on the side of thespirit or on the side of the ldquofleshrdquo (which does not mean thebody) which is to say that it is ldquocapable of virtue and ofvicerdquo30 When it is said that the flesh desires against thespirit and the spirit against the flesh without any doubt the

soul is posed between the two as being able to acquiesceto the desires of the spirit (si eum sequi velit)31 or let itselfbe led to carnal desires in this latter case it becomes withthe flesh a single body of covetousness and of carnalappetite in the former case on the contrary beingassociated with the spirit it becomes a single spirit withitrdquo32 The spiritual man is the one in whom the spiritprevails33 the carnal man he in whom the flesh prevailsThe spirit itself the pneuma always remains holy but ineach one it can have vitality or torpor flight or fall flame orsluggishness34 This is why paradoxically Origen can affirmboth as we have said that the pneuma is holy and that itmust become so35

Still following Paul Origen also speaks of the ldquonaturalmanrdquo who is again neither carnal nor spiritual and theexplanation he gives in his respect manifests once again aparadoxical character distinguished only with difficulty fromthat spirit (pneuma) that is in man without being uniquely ofman and that becomes fully himself and fully completesman only in his participation in the Spirit of God ldquoThenatural man does not understand what the law of God is itis madness to him but the spiritual judges all thingsrdquo (1 Cor214) We think that there is a reason why Paul omits theword ldquomanrdquo after ldquospiritualrdquo For ldquothe spiritualrdquo is more thana man he is superior to that humanity defined by the soulthe body or by the two together and not by the spirit whichis more divine than these two elements and whosesupernatural participation once achieved defines thespiritual When the soul rises follows the spirit andseparates itself from the body when it no longer evencontents itself with following the spirit but remains in it (asthis passage shows ldquoToward you have I raised my soulrdquo Ps251) how would it not lose so to speak its own nature andnot itself become spirit36

Toward the end of this text a trace of the speculations ofPeri archocircn on the subject of the soul will be noted buttoned down by ldquoso to speakrdquo It is necessary toacknowledge however that from one work to the otheracross the succession of dates and the varieties of subjectstreated and literary genres the points of view are so diversethat in the words if not in the thought the reader has somedifficulty finding a perfect coherence among all theOrigenian texts on the pneuma

At death all pneuma returns to God this is whatEcclesiastes says ldquoThus the pneuma of the just and that ofthe sinner have an identical destiny both end at theFatherrdquo37 But ldquoit does not follow that saint and sinner sharethe same destiny With the saint the whole man enters intoGod with the sinner the pneuma returns to the Lord thesoul and body perish in Gehenna hence the intrinsic tearingof the human beingrdquo38 Like the remark by Father CrouzelOrigen is akin here to the thought of Saint Irenaeus whosaid ldquoAll those who are destined to life will be raised up withtheir bodies their souls and their spirits those who havemerited punishment will surrender their souls and theirbodies to it for with them they have strayed from divinegracerdquo39

Later Christian tradition will not be as unfaithful to thisconception of the pneuma as one might believe It is foundagain in a series of intuitions ideas and opinions of variedexpression This is for example the idea dear toRuysbroek of a certain ldquodeiformityrdquo of the human being ofhis higher ldquosuperessentialrdquo life in God40 It is the obscurefeeling that there exists in each of us even the greatestsinner a hidden room where no one but God can enter inldquothat sacred point in us that says Pater no iterrdquo as PaulClaudel says magnificently in the famous ldquoCantique dePalmyrerdquo and that cannot hide from love41 It is the intuitionof a Georges Bernanos at the threshold of death noting in

his diary that ldquosin makes us live on the surface of ourselvesrdquoand that even when we offend God ldquowe never ceaseentirely to desire what He desires in the depths of thesanctuary of our soulrdquo42 There are similar traits in the workof Dostoyevsky although they too can be rather equivocal(a novelist does not express himself like a theologian) theydo not prevent him from glorifying personal freedom andproclaiming the necessity of uprooting evil in receiving ldquonewbirthrdquo The Origenian doctrine of the pneuma alsoreverberates throughout the Bonaventurian tradition In atotally different climate and without any need to search fora precise influence from one to the other the very doctrineof Saint Thomas Aquinas would not be completely foreign tohim It questions neither the singularity of each humanbeing nor the drama of existence nor the divinetranscendence43

NOTE

In his commentary on John 423-24 Origen defines ldquotrueadorersrdquo first by the spirit then in relation to the truth Hethus breaks down the dual Johannine formula and explains itterm by term drawing his inspiration again from Paul whoopposes spirit and flesh (Rom 89 Gal 56 2 Cor 103) It isinteresting to note that in evoking Romans 89 Origen addsa μήϰετι those who are no longer in the flesh but in theldquospiritrdquo He thereby stresses the impact of the coming ofChrist and of the gift of the Spiritmdashalready evoked by Paulmdashwhich divide history into a before and an after Origen doesnot work therefore only on words (flesh and spirit) but heis inspired by the Pauline thought in which these terms arenot only anthropological but in which they evoke the impactthat the history of salvation the Incarnation and the gift ofthe Spirit have on man It is the same with Galatians 516fIn verse 18 Paul in fact opposes the condition of man underthe Spirit to that of this same man under the Law As for thethird evocation it is a little different Paul speaks there of hisconduct because some accuse him of acting according tothe flesh that is of allowing himself to be guided bymotives that are too human (Jean-Michel Poffet OP ldquoLeMeacutethode exeacutegeacutetique drsquoHeacuteracleacuteon et drsquoOrigegravenecommentateurs de Jean 4rdquo Jeacutesus la Samaritaine et lesSamaritains [Fribourg Switzerland Eacuteditions Universitaires1985] 191) III From Origen to Augustine A few examplesshould be enough to show the continuity of this tripartiteanthropology across the patristic age

Cyril of Jerusalem addresses to the newly baptized thesame wish that Paul did to the Thessalonians1 Gregory ofNyssa in his treatise on the Creation of Man practices acertain eclecticism Following the perspective that isnaturally his own since he compares the nature of man to

that of the beings that surround him and particularly ofother living beings he begins by distinguishing a threefoldactivity merely vital (that of plants) sentient (that ofbeasts) rational these are like three souls or threesubstances all three of which are found in man alone Thevocabulary is that of the philosophical ϰοινή of that periodthe higher life of man is λογιϰή it is directed by the νοῦςhis nature is a νοεϱά ϕύσις But this can also be understoodsays Gregory according to the words that the Apostleaddressed to the Ephesians (sic) First of all through a boldconcordism he places the body in an equivalence with thenutritive life the soul with the sensate life the spirit(πνεῦμα) with the intellectual life (νοεϱόν) then withoutfurther hesitation and without seeming to perceive that heis changing the perspective he finds once again the truePauline thought or at least comes close to it bydistinguishing life according to the flesh (σαϱϰιϰή) from lifeaccording to the spirit (πνευματιϰή) and by showing thesoul in an intermediary situation having to choose betweenvice and virtue2 Farther on he will explain that only thesoul endowed with reason such as it is in man fully meritsthis name of soul in such a way that he would haverejected it seems any attempt at concordism between theνοῦς and the πνεῦμα3

It is not Hellenism but indeed the Bible that inspires thetrichotomy of the Syrian tradition such as we see it in thishymn of Saint Ephraim of Nisibis For the soul is still moreprecious than the bodyAnd the spirit is still more precious than the soul

And the Divinitymore hidden than the spiritThe body will be clothed with the beauty of the soul when

the end arrives

The soul will put onthe beauty of the spiritThe spirit will put on in its very image the (divine) MajestyThe body on equal footing with the soul will see itself

elevated The soul on equal footing with the spiritThe spirit at the height where the Majesty is 4

In another later Syrian text the awkwardness of an attemptat harmonization between the three elements of man andthe three Persons of the divine Trinity will be noted JacquesdrsquoEacutedesse (d 708) writes in his Explanation of the MassldquoSacred things are holy The soul the body and the reasonare sanctified by three sacred things by water blood andspirit and besides by the Father the Son and the Spirit andtruly man does resemble God in virtue of this trinity ofcomposition the soul corresponds to the Father the body tothe corporeality of the Son and the reason to the HolySpirit Thereby man thus resembles Godrdquo5 One cannevertheless wonder if the word translated by ldquoreasonrdquo isnot here the equivalent of nous rather than of pneuma andif the soul is not merely the sensate soul The same doubtcan be expressed with respect to a passage from theTestament in Galilee of Our Lord Jesus Christ of which wehave the text in Ethiopian ldquoShould the body be judged withthe soul and the spirit Will the body of every man berevived with his living soul and his spiritrdquo6 We will find asimilar hesitation in examining the Latin tradition andperhaps one must say in certain cases at least it cannot beresolved

Saint Ambrose writes on the one hand ldquoHomo ex animarationali constat et corporerdquo7 but also on the other handldquoPrimum unusquisque homo est corporalis secundoanimalis tertio spiritualisrdquo and the parallel he institutesbetween these three elements and the three heavens towhich Saint Paul alludes in the Second Letter to the

Corinthians does not enlighten us much about the meaningof this trichotomy8 Ambrose is not alone in any case inacknowledging it We read in Gregory of Elvira ldquoManifestumest enim tribus perfectum constare semimortalemhominem id est corpore et anima et spiriturdquo9 AndAugustine expresses himself in a similar way on severaloccasions10

In reality Augustinersquos vocabulary is rather evasive Theterm mens as we know holds a privileged place in his workIn De Trinitate he develops a distinction destinedsubsequently to become more rigid that between ratioinferior and ratio superior In commenting on Psalm 3 verse4 ldquoet exaltans caput meumrdquo he explains that this ldquocaputanimaerdquo is the ldquospiritusrdquo or the ldquomensrdquo and so on11

Certain texts which have the appearance of explicitdefinitions speak of two single elements as constitutive ofman ldquoHomo enim constat ex corpore et spiriturdquo12 ldquoNihil estin homine quod ad ejus substantiam pertineat atquenaturam praeter corpus et animam totus homo hoc estspiritus et carordquo13 Yet Augustine does not consider the twowords anima and spiritus to be simply synonyms althoughfor brevityrsquos sake he includes in only one of the two thecomplex meaning of both ldquoNomen animae spiritus est abeo quod spiritalis est animae nomen est ab eo quodcorpus animet hoc est vivificetrdquo14 From which we have acertain number of explicitly trichotomic texts which are ofgreat importance for a correct understanding of Augustiniananthropology for it is on this trichotomy that Augustinebases his doctrine of the memoria15 and he gives it asessential to the Catholic Faith ldquoSi quis tenuerit catholicamfidem ut totum hominem credat a Verbo Dei essesusceptum id est corpus animam spiritum rdquo16

In the same De fide et symbolo Augustine explainshimself at somewhat greater length ldquoEt quoniam tria suntquibus homo constat spiritus anima et corpusmdashquae

rursus duo sunt quia saepe anima simul cum spiritunominatur pars enim quaedam ejusdem rationalis quacarent bestiae spiritus diciturmdashprincipale nostrum spiritusest deinde vita qua conjungimur corpori anima diciturpostremo ipsum corpus quoniam visibile est ultimumnostrum est Anima vero cum carnalia bona appetit caronominatur rdquo17 we also quote several similar texts ldquoUttotus homo sit spiritus et anima et corpus sed aliquandoduo ista simul nomine animae nuncupari rdquo18 ldquoPropterspiritum et animam et corpus rdquo19 ldquoAd creaturaeintegritatem id est spiritum et animam et corpus et illudquo intelligimus et illud quo vivimus et illud quo visibiles etcontrectabiles sumusrdquo20

In De fide et symbolo at the same time as hedistinguishes anima from spiritus Augustine identifiesspiritus and mens21 Likewise too he distinguishes theldquopars rationalisrdquo of the soul (which is thus no longer only theanimator of the body as in animals) from the ldquopars quaeexcellit id est ipsa mensrdquo22 It is practically the lastdistinction expressed in De Trinitate by the seeminglyequivalent words ratio inferior and ratio superior23

In brief the anthropological analyses of Saint Augustineare varied H I Marrou has set up a table which does notintend to be exhaustive24 and it must be noted besides thatunder the same word under the same verbal distinction ithappens that Augustine places different realities On thewhole less dependent on a literal interpretation ofScripture and more particularly of Saint Paul than Origenwished to be25 more inclined to express himself in avocabulary borrowed in part from Neoplatonism Augustineplaces under the word spiritus a reality that sometimesmore closely resembles the nous of Greek philosophythan the pneuma of the sacred text Yet through the dualityhe recognizes within this spiritus (or this ratio or this mens)he remains a faithful witness of the Christian tradition

3 From Saint Augustine to Our Day

I Medieval Spiritual Masters In Augustine as in Origen (andas in the whole patristic tradition) the notions are fluid the

historian must strive to grasp the movement of theirthought rather than to classify their concepts Augustinianexplanations moreover do not correspond point by pointwith Origenian analyses The Christian spiritual masters ofthe Middle Ages will rather often be in this regard closer to

Origen than to Augustine In order not to interpret them in asimplistic way it is necessary constantly to bring analogy

into play Perhaps even the undertaking to reunite them in akind of continuous chain extending to our time is a little

too reminiscent of concordism Let us say finally thatspiritus is not only designated or understood in variousways with some it splits so that one has to deal rather

with a quadripartite anthropology one of the causes for thisis the desire to make a place for the Platonian tradition ofthe intelligence a tradition that is amalgamated somehowor other to the Pauline tradition It is having made these

remarks that we gather together the examples that follow

For John Scotus man is composed of three elements butthe third element called in turn animus intellectus or mensresembles the νοῦς more than the πνεῦμα We read in book5 of De divisione naturae ldquoTotam humanam naturamcorpus videlicet et animam et intellectumrdquo (PL 122 910-11)But another text in book 2 chapter 5 expresses aconception closer to the biblical conception ldquoAciem mentisqua ilium [Deum] intelligimus et in qua maxime imagocreatoris condita estrdquo (PL 122 531 c)1

The traditional trichotomy dominates the structure ofBernardrsquos Brevis Commentatio on the Song of Songs (n 1)In William of Saint Thierry the third term the ldquospiritrdquo splitseither in order to grant a certain place to the nous to theintellectus to rational understanding or rather in order todetail the principal stages of the spiritual life The Letter tothe Brethren at Mont Dieu that important text distinguishesa triplex status animalismdashrationalismdashspiritualis which is tosay ldquothose beginningrdquo ldquothose on the wayrdquo and ldquotheperfectrdquo The opposition between the flesh and the spirit isnot denied William will be able to remind those who havingbegun to taste the sweetness of contemplation might betempted to neglect the permanent necessity of spiritualcombat2 But rather than this dialectical opposition theobject of the Letter is to set forth a pedagogical ladderwhich is moreover nonetheless Pauline in its inspirationThe beginners are still guided by an animalis sensus (this isthe natural man of Saint Paul which is not the carnal man)those on the way acquire a rationalis scientia (we observehere the care to integrate into the formation of the monkthe whole cycle of human knowledge) and the perfect enjoyspiritualis sapientia3 In addition these are not threeairtight categories or perfectly distinct and successivestages just as there is passage from one to the other thereis immanence from one to the other William remains faithfulto the same schema in Miroir de la foi4 as well as in hiscommentaries on the Song of Songs ldquotres status esseorantium vel orationum animalem rationalemspiritualemrdquo5 In De contemplando Deo a subdivisionintervenes between the ratio the discursive faculty andthe intellectus which does not seem to be at this point theequivalent of the spiritus (1 4)

Isaac of Stella speaks in nearly the same way in alanguage however that has more of an intellectualist ringto it in distinguishing the understanding from the reason

which abstracts the forms of the sensate vis animae quaimmediate supponitur Deo6 We have the feeling that thissecond-generation Cistercian was familiar withScholasticism

Hugh of Saint Victor is closer than Isaac to Bernard andWilliam of Saint Thierry According to him the eye of theflesh (which is to say here the body) sees the world andwhat it contains the eye of the reason sees the soul andwhat it contains but the eye of contemplation penetrates tothe innermost depths of man and above man This eye ofcontemplation belongs to those who possess the spirit ofGod7 In Achard of Saint-Victor the order of the last twoelements or of the last two stages seems reversed hetreats de discretione animae spiritus et mentis mens wasas another author of the twelfth century says quasiquoddam divinitatis insigne8 (But this is hardly a questionof vocabulary alone) Whatever might be the distinctionsand subdistinctions orientations inflections and differencesin vocabulary it can be said of all these spiritual masters ofthe Middle Ages as well as of many of those who will followthat they took up the essential chorus of the Pauline andpatristic trichotomy and that most even attribute extremeimportance to it as Sandaeus a seventeenth-centuryauthority was to remark

Magni aestimant Mystici nonnulli et putant maxime necessariam ad suamTheologiam ac perfectionem divisionem inter spiritum et animam9

This is also true of Bonaventure ldquoHabet enim anima trespotentias animalem intellectualem divinam secundumtriplicem oculum carnis rationis contemplationisrdquo10 Werecognize the schema of William of Saint Thierry and Hughof Saint Victor11 For Thomas Gallus closer in this regard toIsaac of Stella ldquoreason feels the intelligence seesrdquo12

Johannes Tauler in several of his sermons teaches thatldquoman is so to speak composed of three menrdquo and that one

must distinguish in him first of all an ldquoexternal manrdquo orldquoanimal manrdquo then a ldquoreasonable manrdquo finally a ldquohigherman wholly inner and hiddenrdquo that ldquonoble and deiformrdquoman ldquomade in the image of Godrdquo13 The mystical theologyof Harphius (Henry Herp) also says that ldquothe soul isaccording to Scripture divided into three parts rdquo14 andthe appeal to Scripture despite the appearance is justifiedFor our authors in fact the adding of a supplementary termto the Pauline enumeration does not derive from the factthat they would abandon Paul in favor of Plato but from thefact that they are concerned besides about a theory ofknowledge which Paul did not at all have in view in hisaddress to the Thessalonians Yet La Perle eacutevangeacutelique leadsus to a tripartite schema the body being understood as inPaul but at base the difference from the medieval authorswe have just enumerated is hardly perceptible

Each man seems almost to represent three men according to the body heis bestial according to the soul he is reasonable and intellectual andaccording to the spirit or the naked essence of the soul where God dwellshe is deiform 15This very noble portion of the soul some call mens insofar as itcontinually breathes after God and is as it were a largely deiform or divinething and the image of God in man It is something divine in being as itwere flooded with God and united to him It is also called the point and thesummit of the spirit because God without intermission shines in the latterlike a mirror It is also according to what the good Father Ruysbroek saysthe highest part of the soul It is also called the sparkle of the soulbecause it is in God what the sparkle is in fire In the first [unity or union] we are superessential and deiform and in thesecond spiritual and internal and in the third active and moral 16

The foregoing is the text of a compiler from which one mustnot ask too great a coherence in terminology or too great aunity in point of view If we now appeal to a theologian whowas the adversary of the mystical school represented byTauler Harphius and La Perle eacutevangeacutelique and who refers tomore reliable authors such as Augustine ldquoBernardrdquo andHugh he will give us the same essential distinctions

Tres cognoscendi modi sunt quorum unus animalis dicitur utens maximeoculo carnis alius rationalis utens plus oculo rationis tertius spiritualisutens oculo contemplationis sicut distinxerunt divini homines tres oculoset tres vivendi modos17

Louis de Blois finally in the Institution spirituelleperseveres in bringing out this ldquodepth of the soulrdquo thatunder different names always corresponds to the ldquoPaulinepneumardquo and that will not find a place in the late Scholasticanthropologies or in most modern anthropologies

God who to tell the truth is everywhere dwells in the spirit of man and inthe simple depth or inner sanctuary of the soul in a particular manner Hedwells there in his own image and never absents himself18This depth naked and stripped of any image is raised above all creatures it transcends time and place and through a kind of perpetual adhesionremains united to God in his principle It is however in us by essence forthe abyss and depth of the soul are essence The soul possesses a certain supernatural unity of spirit in which itdwells as in its own habitation and it is carried away into the divineessence even to this supreme unity in which the Father Son and Holy Spiritare in the simplicity of the divine essence itself 19

Assuredly these speculations about the divine essencemdasheven if they maintain a trinitarian affirmationmdashand aboutthe essence of man presuppose a long evolution of thoughtthat in one sense distances us greatly from Saint Paul Butacross languages theories and as one never stops sayingtoday cultural contexts that differ greatly to be sure it ispossible to discern a fundamental continuity

This continuity will not be broken by the period called theRenaissance

II Saint Thomas Aquinas in Tradition1

I

In the spiritual history of mankind the three domainsconstituted by what one can designate under the threedenominations of religion morality and mysticism are oftenpresented as independent or even opposed to each otherThe alliance or the mutual penetration between mysticismand morality does not appear achieved in and of itself anymore than that between morality and religion Yet one couldnot conclude that such an alliance or such a mutualpenetration is an artificial and wholly contingentphenomenon In opposition to an empiricism thatdisintegrates everything without explaining anything wewill say rather that it responds if not to the demands atleast to the profound wish of nature But nature itself hastaken time in finding itself

In fact we note that it has not fully found itself outside theChristian revelation The union of the three aforementionedelements religion2 morality and mysticism does not reachits fullness it does not become harmonious and indissolublein principle except in the tradition coming from the GospelThere and most specifically in the Catholic form of thistradition it does not appear as a secondary fact obtainedby convergence subsequent to various gropings but as anoriginal and essential fact Religion morality and mysticismmanifest themselves there ldquoin a reciprocal envelopmentrdquoBetween these three both an attraction and a tension existthat could be the source of many vital problems but there isobjectively neither separation exclusion nor conflict forldquothe Deity while transcending being the true and the goodcontains them formallyrdquo3

This is why in particular in the Catholic traditionmdashlivedand reflectedmdashldquoreasonablerdquo life and ldquospiritualrdquo life or lifeldquoaccording to the spiritrdquo penetrate each other without beingidentified with each other4 and morality penetrates themystical life to the end Pseudo-Gnosticism relegated therewarding of good and punishing of evil those pillars of theldquoDemiurgerdquo to the lower level of ldquoexotericrdquo faith the greattradition on the contrary maintains this moral aspect ldquoatthe heart of the revelation of the Father through the uniqueSonrdquo5 ldquoIt is notrdquo says Saint Justin for example ldquobecause ofhis [natural] affinity with God or because he is spirit like himthat man sees God it is because he is virtuous and justrdquo6 Inhis Psychologie des mystiques Joseph Marechal noted thisessential characteristic Mystical ascent he explains doesnot erase ldquoany specific trait of the common Christian liferdquo7In other words the Christian virtues proposed for thepractice of all are not simply means of freeing oneself theirexercise is not simply something transitory in theirsubstance they are already something of the end itself Thisis what Saint Ambrose was able to explain wonderfully in abrief sentence in his commentary on Saint Luke withrespect to the Beatitudes ldquoSicut enim spei nostrae octavaperfectio est ita octava summa virtutum estrdquo8 And this iswhat Saint Augustine repeated in similar terms speaking ofadhesion to God the blessed life and eternal wisdom ldquoUnaibi virtus erit et idipsum erit virtus praemiumque virtutisrdquo9

In a remarkable thesis Pierre Nemeshegyi has posed thesame problem with respect to Origen ldquoTo place Being andmoral Goodness in equation to place this moral Goodnessin God formally and as characterizing the final ground of hisBeingmdashis this not to be condemned to enclosing all spirituallife in an anti-mystical moralism The Good is atranscendental But is it formally what we understand byldquomoral Goodrdquo Or is there not a deepening of this moralGoodness which would reestablish the possibility of an

innermost mystical depthrdquo And Nemeshegyi concludes ldquoInfact in Origenrsquos conception moralism and mysticism areone and the same thingrdquo10 Saint Gregory the Great oftenso close to Origen will unite good sense to spiritual fervor inorder to remind contemplatives that if they want to befaithful to the Gospels and to advance on the true way theymust take care to scorn the humble precepts of morality andto seek to understand them in a more sublime sense11

The medieval spiritual masters will take up again thesethoughts of Origen Ambrose Augustine and GregoryExpressing ourselves in the customary categories of theirexegesis which the Middle Ages systematized we will saythat for them ldquoanagogyrdquo achieves the final perfection bothof ldquoallegoryrdquo and of ldquotropologyrdquo (of dogma and ofmorality)12 Of all authentically Catholic mysticism onecould declare what one historian said of Saint Bernard byallusion to the traditional interpretation of the ldquoBooks ofSolomonrdquo for each of them as for him ldquothe moral school ofEcclesiasticus and Proverbs the necessary preliminary forthe mystical school of the Song of Songs is a school whosedoors are never closed behind usrdquo13

This ldquospiritualrdquo equilibrium has at times seemedthreatened in one direction or another Some spiritualscholars have seemed to want to transcend purely andsimply the sphere of morality and reason This is whatcauses Evagrius not without reason to be judged severelyat times it is what Ruysbroek reproaches in the falsemystics of his time it is one of the points that the bull Inagro of John XXII criticizes in Meister Eckhart Whatever mayhave been true in each of these cases the thing thatinterests us here is the norm that inspired such criticismsWhile following Saint Paul in distinguishing the ldquosoulrdquo fromthe ldquospiritrdquo (not moreover as two substances nor even astwo ldquofacultiesrdquo) one always refuses to separate them as ifthe penetration into the higher zone of the ldquospiritrdquo must

make us reject as no longer valid the operations of theinferior zone of the ldquosoulrdquo But the hierarchical distinction ismaintained which is to say that the mystical life is not forall that reduced to the plane of simple morality A text fromSaint Teresa is very enlightening here the saint observesthat the ldquocenter of the soulrdquo or the ldquospirit of the soulrdquo is aldquodifficult thing to express and even to believerdquo

Certain interior effects give the certitude that there is in certain respectsa very real difference between the soul and the spirit Although in realitythey are but one we sometimes perceive a division between them that isso delicate that it seems the one functions in one way and the other inanother There are so many things in our innermost depths and thingsso subtle that it would be boldness on my part to undertake to explainthem We will understand all that in the other life if God deigns toadmit us to the dwelling where we will have understanding of all thesesecrets14

Yet the equilibrium can be upset in the opposite directionfrom that for which Evagrius and Meister Eckhart werereproached This has been true periodically for anti-mysticalscholars or simply anti-mystics against whom periodicallytoo protests are raised With them it is not the ldquosoulrdquo thatis forgotten or scorned in the name of the superior ldquospiritrdquoit is the ldquospiritrdquo that is ignored misunderstood in the nameof a truncated moral wisdom But with any of the greatscholars of the Catholic tradition we do not have to registerany such misunderstanding This is what we would wish todemonstrate here with respect to Saint Thomas Aquinasand more particularly with respect to the Summatheologica

II

From first appearances one might be brought to believethat Saint Thomas in the Summa is one of those scholarswho upset the equilibrium in the second direction But in

reality he did nothing of the sort His doctrine in the Summatheologica contains in fact the equivalent of what othershave expressed through the distinction of soul and spiritunderstood as the distinction of a moral region and amystical region If one does not observe this right at thebeginning it is because Saint Thomas expresses himself indifferent words

It could be written that in his doctrine ldquoall the problemsthat the spiritual life and its evolution pose return in thisconsideratio moralis which has but one object man inprogress toward his blessed destinyrdquo15 The thing isincontestable Still it might be useful to specify how Nomore in Saint Thomas than in others is the union of the twomoral and spiritual (or ldquomysticalrdquo) elements a confusion or areduction pure and simple from the mystical to the moralThe synthesis is not a unification in the exclusive favor ofone of the two Of course one could judge that the Thomistanthropology by its Aristotelian roots favors the originalityof the mystical life less than others And like the virtue ofldquoreligionrdquo the theological virtues seem at first glance mixedin a long list of ldquovirtuesrdquo within the second part of theSumma It is appropriate nevertheless to remark beforeseeing things at closer range that only a later usage givesthis second part the name ldquomoralrdquo After having in the firstpart considered God as the universal cause Saint Thomasconsiders him now as end after the divine model he clingsto his image after the departure of God from all things heenvisages the return of all things to God Nowmdashthis is theimportant point for our subjectmdashthis itinerary of returncomprises several stages

It is true that the prologue to the Secunda secundaespeaks of scientia moralis of materia moralis and that allseems right at first to be reduced to the consideratiovirtutum But let us look a little closer In this sameprologue as in the articles that follow Saint Thomas

nonetheless distinguishes from the virtutes morales notonly the virtutes theologicae but also the virtutesintellectuales which are along with prudence wisdomunderstanding and knowledge closely connected to thegifts of the Holy Spirit of the same name Moreover afterhaving exhausted the plan he had outlined for ldquoomittingnothing of moral thingsrdquo by studying successively thevirtues and the vices that are opposed to them heconsiders in a kind of extension a series of new questionsrelated first of all to ldquoprophecyrdquo to ldquorapturerdquo and othergratuitous gifts then to the ldquocontemplative liferdquo a series heattaches a little artificially one must admit to the sectionon the different states of life

This artifice has sometimes embarrassed commentatorswho do not always understand the articulations that theplan of the Summa comprises here Thus we have Father MD Chenu who has the ldquotreatise on the states of liferdquo beginat question 183 starting from where ldquothe spiritual life islinked to social functionsrdquo16 The thing seems in fact ratherlogical Yet Saint Thomas himself said in his littleintroduction to question 171 ldquoDe prophetiardquo

Postquam dictum est de singulis virtutibus et vitiis quae pertinent adomnium hominum conditiones et status nunc considerandum est de hisquae specialiter ad aliquos homines pertinent

So Father Antoine Lemonnyer had adopted a differentsolution from that of Father Chenu He saw in questions 171to 198 concerning the gratuitous gifts a kind of parenthesisand made the final treatise of the Secunda secundae beginfrom question 179 which is to say from the ldquocontemplativeliferdquo he gave a certain unity to this final treatise thanks tothis single yet twofold title ldquoHuman Life Its Forms and ItsStatesrdquo17

The divisions adopted respectively by Father Chenu andFather Lemonnyer both have their probability and both can

be supported In fact however as Father Chenu remarkedSaint Thomas treats the states of life properly onlybeginning with question 183 entitled ldquoDe officiis et statibushominum in generalirdquo But already before that questions171 to 182 form a whole very distinct from the precedingquestions in which we have the equivalent of a littletreatise on mysticism

Even if he did not treat explicitly at that time the relationsbetween active life and contemplative life18 the placeaccorded by Saint Thomas to this latter in his general planwould thus authorize us to distinguish it from the domain ofmorality He himself besides tells us so in proper termsldquoThe moral virtues are not a constitutive element of thecontemplative liferdquo19 in fact ldquothey are ordained toactionrdquo20 Now action is inferior to contemplation The latteris ldquosimpliciter meliorrdquo21 Action prepares for contemplationby winning the soul through the external exercise of thevirtues the necessary ldquopreliminary dispositionsrdquo bydisciplining the passions and by submitting them to thereason22 Contemplation is the act of the ldquohigher reasonrdquowhich is to the inferior reason following an old biblical andPhilonic symbolism revived and slightly transformed23 asthe man is to the woman24 It is ordained to ldquoperfect loverdquoand as Saint Gregory taught while the active life issynonymous with service the contemplative life issynonymous with freedom25 As Aristotle had alreadyaffirmedmdashbut we know with what freedom Saint Thomaschanged and transformed the thought of the philosophereven while he invoked him as an authority26mdashit is a lifeabove the human condition27 and is made to last always28

No more than any other of the great witnesses of theChristian tradition did Saint Thomas reduce the spiritual lifeto the exercise of morality or spiritual understanding torationality Father Pierre Rousselot too neglected today (atleast in France) demonstrated this well by placing in

evidence the distinction between intellectus and ratio afundamental distinction with numerous consequences29mdashBut neither does he separate them on the one hand as anauthentic heir of the Fathers he integrates the virtuous lifeinto eternal life by saying ldquoUniuscujusque perfectio nihilaliud est quam participatio divinae similitudinisrdquo30 And onthe other hand he knows that in the earthly conditionexternal action which is first of all the virtuous life mustitself proceed from contemplation

The comparison with the Plotinian philosophy or with theldquoagnosticsrdquo can in this regard be very enlightening becauseof the apparent proximity of the doctrines

In a parallel way one would find in Christianity [says Jean Trouillard on thissubject] a going beyond ethics by the theological virtues and the gifts ofthe Holy Spirit The Christian life consists in divinization not in ascesis Yetthe role of the will seems much more considerable in Christians than in thePlotinians not only in charity but also in faith which is itself presented as aduty Theologians do not ordinarily situate the theological virtues on theother side of the decisions of the faculties or on this side of the constitutedvalues This is what must not be forgotten when faced with the use of theNeoplatonic doctrine of virtues attempted by Christian authors inparticular by Saint Thomas (1a 2ae q 61 a 5)31

And again Maurice de GandillacPlotinus harshly criticizes the Gnostics who believe that by ldquoraisingoneself near to God on wings of a dreamrdquo (2 9 9) one escapes the humancondition According to the fragments of Heracles (Legrand 315) Mosesthe author of the Law belongs to the ldquonaturalrdquo world Superior to purematter however he ignores the spirit By proscribing by judging bypunishing he fulfills an inferior ministry and the ldquoperfectrdquo are in no waysubject to his commandments Pure at the beginning they are savedwithout exercise as without repentance and without pardon Thispresumption will be the common gospel for all the sectarians who across the Middle Ages will preach a ldquogoing beyond the ethicalrdquo32

We should not let the differences in emphasis from oneauthor to another or from one school to another hide fromus therefore the consistent thought of the Christiantradition Already in someone like Origen the union is

achieved between ldquoa resolutely contemplative religiousideal and a passionately active liferdquo33 For Saint Gregory theGreat to whom Thomas Aquinas refers the whole spirituallife is subject to a rhythm and ldquotrue perfection begins tomature only in the difficulties and obstacles of the activeliferdquo34 Medieval monasticism did not scorn Martha in thename of Mary it maintained that action must be joined tocontemplation or the ldquopracticerdquo to the ldquotheoryrdquo a little likelove of neighbor to the love of God35 The two inseparableaspects of the Christian doctrine on this subject will onceagain be expressed very well in the reflections of John HenryNewman still an Anglican preaching on ldquoevangelicalsanctity the completion of natural virtuerdquo Newman in factshows in this sermon that there is ldquoan essentialresemblance between the spiritual man and the virtuousmanrdquo following the words of Saint Paul ldquoThe fruit of theSpirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truthrdquomdashwhiledrawing the attention of his listeners to ldquothe point ofdifference between them viz that the Christian graces arefar superior in rank and dignity to the moral virtuesrdquo36

Moral perfection and holiness virtuous life and mystical lifeare distinct they are hierarchical but at the same time theyare united in charity forma virtutum vinculum perfectionis

III Renaissance and Reformation Nicholas of Cusa takes upthe Pauline trichotomy again in the same terms as the

Apostle He places it in correspondence with on the onehand a cosmic trichotomy and on the other hand what isperhaps unexpected the three Persons of the Trinity He

uses Saint Augustine as his authority for both thesecorrespondences

We read in fact in one of his Sermons ldquoIn homine suntspiritus anima et corpus sicut in mundo elementalia vitaliaet intellectualiardquo1 and in his opuscule the Beryl he

distinguishes ldquothree modes of knowledge the sensate theintellectual and the intelligentialrdquo which he sayscorrespond according to Saint Augustine to the threeldquoheavensrdquo2 That was the cosmic analogy And for thetrinitarian analogy set forth in the work De Concordantiacatholica

Unde homo secundum Augustinum Super symbolo (40 193-94) ad instarTrinitatis imaginem gerens ex spiritu et anima et corpore constitutusexsistit Spiritus autem est superior nobilior et altior intellectualispersonae Patris figuram repraesentans et corpus personam Filii et animaquasi utriusque naturam participans ab utroque procedens personamSpiritus sancti3

Taking up his position like Nicholas of Cusa from the pointof view of knowledge Marsilio Ficino distinguishes thesensus the ratio and the intellectus We recognize in thatthe heritage of the great Scholasticism In a similar mannerin the prologue of his Heptaplus Giovanni Pico dellaMirandola distinguishes the vital instinct discursive andpractical knowledge and the contemplative faculty4 Moreimportant is the twofold witness here in agreement ofErasmus and Luther

In his famous Enchiridion militis christiani Erasmus whotakes his inspiration directly from Saint Paul ldquoends finally ina tripartite anthropology which finds its completion in thegift of the Spiritrdquo5 After having in chapters 4 and 5 spokenof man such as Plato describes him first according to theTimaeus then according to the Phaedo Phaedrus and theRepublic and recalled his distinction of the soul asreasonable irascible and concupiscible Erasmus describesin chapter 6 the Pauline opposition between the flesh andthe spirit then he comes in chapter 7 to the trichotomy of1 Thessalonians which he comments on with reference toOrigen ldquoHe does not hiderdquo observes Charles Beacuteneacute ldquohispleasure in setting forth this theory lsquoLibet et Origenicamhominis sectionem breviter referrersquo rdquo He sees it based as

well on Isaiah (299) and on Daniel (386) so he adopts it inorder to make it intervene ldquoas a definitive stage after theanalyses of pagan philosophersrdquo to serve ldquoas anintroduction to the great rules of Christianityrdquo6 With Origenhe sees in the soul this ldquomedian partrdquo of the human beingwhich can swing either to the side of the flesh or to the sideof the spirit7 In the Methodus or Ratio verae theologiae asimilar text recalls our trichotomy indirectly ldquoNec omnisaffectus hominis est caro sed est qui dicitur anima et quidicitur spiritus quo nitimur ad honestardquo8 But it isparticularly in the controversy with Luther about free willthat Erasmus opposes to the exclusivism of his adversaryhypnotized by the sole dialectic of the flesh and the spiritthe divine pedagogy explained by Origen according to thePauline schema

Luther himself paradoxically had provided a commentaryin his own manner with respect to the first words of theMagnificat (1520) on the text of 1 Thessalonians and hismanner did not differ perceptibly from so many of theothers we have seen

ldquoMy soul glorifies the Lordrdquo Scripture divides man into three partswhen Paul says at the end of 1 Thessalonians ldquoMay God make youholy through and through in such a way that all your spirit and your souland your body rdquo And each of these partsmdashlike the entire man mdashisequally divided in another way concerning not nature but quality In otherwords nature has three parts spirit soul and body all three of which canbe good or bad The first part the spirit is the highest the mostprofound the most noble part of man it is what makes him capable ofgrasping imperceptible invisible and eternal things In brief it is the housewhere faith and the word of God dwell The second part the soul isexactly the same spirit according to nature but accomplishes a differentfunction It is the spirit insofar as it animates the body and acts through it Its proper role consists in grasping the things that reason can knowand probe 9

As for the third term the body its function is to ldquoactrdquo and toldquoput into practice the knowledge of the soul and the faith of

the spiritrdquo As Maurice de Gandillac observes here the bodyhas nothing to do with ldquomirerdquo And by adopting such atripartition of the human being (which is not at all to beunderstood we repeat as a division of three ldquofacultiesrdquo)Luther envisages the human subject as Saint Paul and afterhim the whole of Christian tradition have done ldquoin aperspective that is more biblical than Greekrdquo10 The relativeassimilation that he works between the soul and the spirit isthe echo of a common Scholasticism and the fruit of aninflection toward the point of view of knowledge which wasnot that of Saint Paul in his address to the Thessalonians butin no way contradicts it Of these two characteristics thepreceding centuries have already brought us many anexample11

Like his predecessors Luther thus maintains the threefoldgradation which he also develops through a traditionalimage

We will give a simile for that drawn from Scripture Moses made atabernacle with three different edifices The first edifice was calledsanctum sanctorum it was the dwelling of God and there was no lightfrom within The other sanctum contained a chandelier with sevenbranches and lights The third was called atrium the parvis it was locatedin the open air in the light of the sun This figure depicts the Christian Hisspirit is sanctum sanctorum the dwelling of God in the night (stripped oflight) of faith for he believes what he neither sees nor senses norunderstands His soul is the sanctum there are found the seven lights towit all kinds of understanding discernment science and knowledge ofcorporal and visible things His body is atrium it is manifest for all in sucha way that one can see what he does and how he lives12

It is necessary however to recognize that this trichotomydid not have for Luther an importance comparable to hisdialectical opposition between the flesh and the spirit InSaint Paul from before the commentary on the Magnificathe had been selective the lessons on the Letter to theRomans (1515-1516) were already setting up an oppositionbetween the flesh and the spirit without anthropological

reference to any subject whatever13 and later in hiscontroversy with Erasmus he was to prove all the morehostile to the anthropology drawn from 1 Thessalonians 5 byhis adversary whom the latter guided by Origen used toweaken his dialectic He writes in De servo arbitrio

I am well aware of Origenrsquos fable about the threefold affection of man offlesh soul and spirit14 the soul holding the middle between the flesh andthe spirit and able to turn either toward the one or toward the other Butthis is dreaming he says them but does not prove them at all Saint Paulcalls flesh everything that is without spirit as we have demonstrated15

Luther does not formally contradict here what he had said inthe commentary on the Magnificat What he reproaches inOrigen as in Erasmus is believing in free will But thispreoccupation leads him to falsify their anthropology andthereby to forget or to misunderstand the Pauline verse thathe had first interpreted correctly To which in his enormoussecond Hyperaspistes Erasmus will reply several times overthat the tripartition of 1 Thessalonians 5 even ifcounterparts are found in the philosophers is proper toSaint Paul The philosophers in fact do not usually call thehighest part of the human being spiritus (pneuma) butmens or ratio and what Paul understands by spiritus is notany ratio whatever but the ratio already inspired by graceThat he concludes is what Luther does not want torecognize As often happens the discussion in whichErasmus finds himself involved leads him himself to apartially inaccurate interpretation of Saint Paulrsquos text bymaking him attribute to the ldquospiritrdquo what Paul says of ldquothespiritual manrdquo Yet it remains true that he had first analyzedperfectly the address of the Apostle to the Thessaloniansand Luther had at first done the same16

Lutheran mysticism at least in the rather unorthodoxSebastien Frank (1499-1542) nonetheless recognizes thethree elements of which man is composed body soul andspirit Frank sees in the soul the personal and free being

capable of orienting himself in one direction or in the otherhe sees in the spirit the inner Word or God present at theheart of every man enlightening him through his Word andinclining his will through his Spirit17

The same traditional distinctions originating in Saint Paulare found in the humanists of the sixteenth century ofmystical tendency For a Paracelsus (1493-1541) since manis a microcosm he must unite within himself the threeconstitutive parts or elements corresponding to the threestages of the universe material world astral worldDivinity18 (an idea of Nicholas of Cusa although distorted isrecognizable in this) Cornelius Agrippa in his De occultaphilosophia tried to unite the Platonic traditions to Mosesand to Saint Paul

Plotinus itaque et Platonici omnes post Trismegistum similiter tria ponunt inhomine quae vocant supremum infimum et medium Supremum est illuddivinum quam mentem sive portionem superiorem sive intellectumillustratum vocant Moses in Genesi vocat ipsum spiraculum vitarum a Deovid vel a Spiritu ejus in nos spiratum Infimum est sensitiva anima quametiam idolum dicunt Paulus Apostolus animalem hominem nuncupatMedium est spiritus rationalis utraque connectens extrema atque ligansvid animam animalem cum mente et utriusque sapiens naturamextremorum 19

Guillaume Postel as original as ever at least in expressiondistinguishes in man the anima the animus and the mens20

It was undoubtedly following him four years later thatCharles Toutain wrote in his tragedy Agamemnon Threenatures in us which all talk with each other Excite our lifeand keep it alive The Spirit the Soul and Animus And onebeing taken away Suddenly all life together would depart21

The Anglican Lancelot Andrewes (155 5-1626) expresseshimself in a similar way in his devotions Into Thy hands OLord I commend myself my spirit soul and body 22

IV The Modern Period Saint Francis de Sales will open thisperiod for us His Traiteacute de lrsquoamour de Dieu [Treatise on theLove of God] reproduces the Pauline doctrine to perfectionAfter having explained that ldquowe have three kinds of loving

actions spiritual reasonable and sensualrdquo Francis de Salesobserves that ldquothe powers of the sensory part which are ormust be the servants of the spirit ask seek and take what

has been rejected by the reason dishonoring thepurity of the intention of their master who is the spirit andin the measure that the soul is converted to such gross andsensate unions it is diverted from the delicate intellectual

and cordial unionrdquo Thus by the same movement as we findin Saint Paul the way is sketched to the opposition of the

flesh to the spirit Like many in the Middle Ages Francis deSales following Saint Augustine also distinguishes ldquotwoportions of the soul the inferior and the superiorrdquo theinferior being that which discourses on the basis of the

experience of the senses while the superior founded ldquoonthe discernment and judgment of the spirit is commonly

called the spirit and mental part of the soulrdquo in thisldquosuperior portionrdquo he also distinguishes ldquotwo kinds of lightrdquo

a natural one and a supernatural one and so forth Thiswhole apparatus of precisions which aims at integrating aswe have already seen in others the ldquodegrees of knowingrdquo

within the spiritual movement is not without interest but itis in some ways only a flowering from the basic trichotomy1

It is this same trichotomy that we find again as might beexpected in a philosopher attentive to the spiritual lifesuch as Maine de Biran We know the place that the doctrineof the ldquothree livesrdquo holds in Biran animal life human lifeand divine life particularly in the reflections of his Journalintime2 Jules Lachelier also adopts it but perhaps bydiminishing it in his desire to work a kind of synthesisbetween Maine de Biran and Kant when he explains thethree components of existence sensibility understanding

and reason3 We detect also an indication of the very strongmystical tendencies in Joseph de Maistre in this affirmationfrom the Eacuteclaircissements sur les sacrifices ldquoThe animal hasreceived only a soul to us were given a soul and a spiritrdquo4

One might be tempted to seek a distant analogy withSaint Paul in the Kierkegaardian theory of the three spheres(rather than stages) of existence aesthetic ethicalreligious If that analogy is an illusion other thoughts ofKierkegaard are right in finding their place here ldquoIt isimpossible to treat of sin in any of the sciences thatordinarily speak of it because all are occupied with what ispsychological in our nature while sin is a determination ofthe spiritrdquo and again ldquoThe spirit intervening psychology isimpotent So good as its name indicates is occupied withthe soul It sees everything from outside the spirit itself islived only from within Seen from outside an act isalways determined and for all that the object of psychologyBut rdquo5

One might also be tempted to evoke here the Blondeliandistinction between ldquonoeticrdquo and ldquopneumaticrdquo This wouldnot be completely wrong But Blondel places these twokinds of thought in correlation rather than inviting us to risefrom one to the other He does not thereby have in mind arelation of the psyche to the pneuma but rather a divisionof the function within the spirit Despite the word ldquonoeticrdquothis is not the nous but rather the logos which would beaccording to him the partner of the pneuma6 and thedialectic of the noetic and the pneumatic is in play at everystep so to speak of the development of thought and life inthis conception the first the concrete principle ofuniversality being the factor of objectivization and unifyingforce while conversely the second the concrete principleof singularity is the diversifying element and subjectivefunction7 Both at the same level are thus essentiallycomplementary Blondel held to his distinction he often took

up the study of it He wrote in 1907 in one of his personalnotebooks ldquoThink out the discovery of the two thoughtsrdquo8

Now in 1909 he wrote again ldquoThe two thoughts Ah howthey are always in me tending to supplant each other whileit is necessary to reconcile them hierarchize them makethem differently but equally serve the divine work of finaland total reintegrationrdquo9 This word ldquohierarchizerdquo must beunderstood as demanding a reciprocal hierarchization10 Itdoes not necessarily follow however that any analogy withthe Pauline trichotomy any echo of the ldquothree livesrdquo ofBiran are absent from the Blondelian work Blondel was toopenetrated with the thought of Saint Paul and Saint Bernardhe was too closely interested in mysticism he was toofamiliar with the spiritual authors of the Christian traditionto let us believe in such an absence without a fullerexamination But the fact that his dialectic of the noetic andthe pneumatic which is fundamental in his philosophy doesnot turn explicitly into a hierarchy of the soul and spirit or ofthe discursive reason and mystical intuition (although heobviously knew of this distinction as well as that betweenthe understanding and higher intelligence)11 is not anegligible indication Blondel maintained a prudent attitudein the face of natural mysticism just as on the other handhe remained prudent in the face of facile personalisms

In the Russian theologian Sergius Bulgakov the Paulinedistinction between the soul and the spirit is placed inpowerful relief It assumes a mystical aspect that is moreemphasized than in the Apostle or at least it proceeds froma base of natural mysticism that despite the reference tothe famous discourse at Athens does not seem tocorrespond perfectly to its more complex notion of thespirit

Although it is a creature a certain eternity of creation a certain non-creation are proper to the spirit Spiritual existence is rooted in the

eternity of God the created spirit itself is similarly eternal and uncreatedCf Acts 1728

It is true that Bulgakov can also invoke the authority of theGreek Fathers Had Saint Cyril of Alexandria not written thatldquothe image of the divine nature was imprinted in man by theinfusion of the Holy Spiritrdquo12 The importance of hisanthropological theory derives in any case from the fact thatit is from this that he explains the mystery of theIncarnation

The postulate of the divine Incarnation is a certain original identitybetween the divine I and the I of man an identity that does not abrogatetheir essential distinction The human hypostatic spirit draws itsdivine and uncreated origin from the ldquobreath of Godrdquo Through hisspirit man communicates with the divine substance and he is fit to beldquodivinizedrdquo Man is god-man by predestination potentially throughhis formal structure At the same time he is flesh through anldquoanimatedrdquo body he sums up the entire world Man is made of anuncreated divine spirit hypostasized by the I of the creature and of a souland of a body created from the psycho-somatic being13

Bulgakov insists The very idea of divinity by predestinationseems too weak to him He corrects himself almostimmediately ldquoNot only is man theanthropic bypredestination but also the Logos is the eternal God-Maninsofar as the first Image of the created man This is whythe hypostasis of the Logos the heavenly Man could itselfbecome the hypostasis of created man and make of thelatter the authentic God-man by achieving its eternaltheanthropyrdquo The conclusion is nonetheless fundamentallyin keeping with the spirit of Christian faith ldquoMan is alreadythe form ready for the authentic theanthropy that he is notcapable of achieving himself but in view of which he wascreated and called The divine Incarnation is not at all acatastrophe for the human essence or some violation onthe contrary it is an accomplishmentrdquo14

This leads us far from the narrow anthropological dualismthat triumphed in modern Scholasticism as well as in the

university philosophy springing from Cartesianism ldquoSaintPaulrdquo noted R M Albaregraves15 ldquohad distinguished threeorders the carnal the intellectual and the spiritual16 TheCartesian dualism had fused together the intellectual andthe spiritual and rationalism had gradually reduced thespirit thus created to being only an intellect withouttranscendence without dynamism or immortality destinedonly to understand and to organize the worldrdquo On the otherhand for all sorts of reasons that we do not at all have toseek here but in particular because of a certain poverty inits common philosophy Christian thought did not seem ableto fill the void thus created in man It must not thereforebe surprising that the inevitable reaction was produced inpara-Christian forms ldquoIf a scholarrdquo Andreacute Preacuteaux recentlywrote17 ldquoencounters the old doctrine that man is composedof a body a soul and a spirit he has scruples aboutconsidering it for what do lsquosoulrsquo and lsquospiritrsquo mean Unfortunately in a society where science is the supremeauthority this silence is equivalent to a negation Whatdissolves the errors and complexes what protects againstneuroses and fantasies is precisely that which is silentlyand discreetly dismissedrdquo

The same year as Andreacute Preacuteaux and reacting like himGabriel Germain took support from Saint Teresa to remindus of the unrecognized depths of the life of the spirit

Above the understanding below the ordinary conscience and what fills itexists a sheet of peace and light Whoever approaches it can have nomore doubt of it Anyone who has not sought it has no right to judge itSaint Teresa expresses the same reality in very different terms Now no onehad taught her this nor had anyone prepared her for such an experienceThis agreement over the centuries and doctrines reassures me more thananything She writes in the book of the Mansions (seventh Mansionchapter 1) ldquoInterior things are seen that show in a sure way that there isbeneath a certain relationship an obvious difference between the soul andthe spirit although they are but a single thing rdquo18

Likewise again situating his own thought in relation to theldquonoosphererdquo of Teilhard de Chardin and in relation to theldquocollective unconsciousrdquo of Jung

The noosphere in the philosophy of Teilhard de Chardin appears to be likea mental view a conclusion This is because its very name evokes anintellectual activity the subtlest but whether exploratory or constructivedirected according to logical norms19 What I could call (but I will keepmyself from doing so) pneumatosphere let us say the spiritual ocean isthe object of experience By other paths to other ends it is the samereality I suppose that Jung attained and which he called the collectiveunconscious But these two terms restrict the origin and meaning of it 20

With Jung in fact we penetrate but we remain within whatis psychological The life of the spirit in the Spirit is whollydifferent A certain Calvinist dryness a phobia aboutmysticism and all ldquointeriorityrdquo conspire at times along withrationalism and contemporary positivism of all forms tobrush this life in the Spirit aside But in a quite natural waythe Lutheran Paul Tillich who was interested in ontology inthe history of religions in mysticism as well as in biblicalhistory brings the Pauline tripartition up to date again

There is no religious statement on man and his destiny without a judgmenton the relation between different elements that are combined and opposedin the life of man These elements have been variously described as beinghis body his soul and his spirit 21

The exegetes in contemporary Catholicism seem no moredisposed than most of the theologians to return the Paulineverse to a place of honor and draw its consequences It istoward the writers that we must turn to perceive an echo ofit in free expression Although this expression is truly webelieve faithful to the doctrine of the Pneuma and to itsauthentic development it is not certain that Saint Paulwould have recognized his thought at first glance ldquoI havegood news to announce to yourdquo says Paul Claudel in theldquoCantique de Palmyrerdquo ldquomdashit is another within the depths of

you who has the word I have good news to announce toyou You need only close your eyes to find your treasurein the night There are many souls but there is not oneof them with whom I am not in communion through thissacred point in us that says Pater nosterrdquo22 And GeorgesBernanos in his diary ldquoHis will is ours and when we revoltagainst it it is only at the price of an uprooting of our wholeinner being Our will has been united to his since thebeginning of the world What sweetness to think thateven while offending him we never cease completely todesire what he desires at the depths of the Sanctuary of thesoulrdquo23 A wonderful conjunction of Claudel and Bernanos

The reader will have noted in Claudelrsquos text the wordldquosoulrdquo An inversion of vocabulary is in fact produced Theldquospiritrdquo having become in the modern leveling dichotomythe immediate correlative of the body it is the ldquosoulrdquo thathas taken its place in those who have not taken part in thisleveling We are familiar again in Claudel with the parabolaof animus and anima The word ldquosoulrdquo in the same sensecompels recognition with greater strength in order to escapethe scientistic totalitarianism that reigns abusively in thename of the ldquohuman sciencesrdquo ldquoIn the measure in whichthey are scientificrdquo wrote Henri Gouhier in 1973 ldquothesciences of man can consider man only by selecting pointsof view under which it is possible to treat him objectively Itis obviously not a question for the philosopher to ignore thevarious forms of sociology psychology ethnologyneurology and so forth he must simply wonder if thesciences of man added up constitute a science of manrdquo24

And man simply as such man who cannot renounce the callhe hears in the depths of himself refuses to let himselfsuffocate He rehabilitates the word ldquosoulrdquo as the mostfitting to express what philosophers and men of science aretoo often skilled at eliminating through preterition orthrough negation The soul then becomes almost the

synonym for the pneuma of Saint Paul and Origen Thepassage from Henri Gouhier that we have just quotedfigures in a preface to LrsquoAvegravenement de lrsquoacircme by Aime[Andre] Forest a work he says that ldquofinds its timeliness inits apparent obsolescencerdquo The author of the work and thatof its preface both evoke on this subject the ldquothree livesrdquo ofMaine de Biran Andre Forest also recalls these words ofHenri Bergson ldquoBy calling a certain assurance of facileintelligibility an idea and a certain uneasiness of life thesoul an invincible current brings modern philosophy toelevate the soul above the ideardquo Modern philosophy as awhole has not followed the path on which Bergson thoughthe saw it engaged Gabriel Marcel however among otherswanted to preserve this word ldquosoulrdquo and to keep ldquothefullness of its meaningrdquo Charles du Bos in search of tracesof God in us asked ldquoWho will leave us a journal of thedilation of the soulrdquo What Andre Forest wants is to help usdiscover or to rediscover a certain ldquoinner unityrdquo a certainldquopure sourcerdquo and each of the chapters of his work tracesan avenue toward an encounter with this ldquoThe discovery ofthe soulrdquo he tells us ldquois the development of a spiritualphilosophy The soul is the advent of presence and graceraised above the world of nature and objectivityrdquo25

The same fundamental reaction the same sudden startor if you wish the same awakening five years later in amuch younger author whose nostalgia if this is what it iscannot be that for the past but that which springs from anew reflection this time against the oppression of a thoughtreduced to its politico-social components the final end ofscientistic intelligence In his essay on Job ou lrsquoexcegraves dumal Philippe Nemo insists on this same word ldquosoulrdquo in orderto recall man to himself and to his essential problem 26

Across the numerous changes in vocabulary thecomplications introduced by theoreticians eager foranalysis across too the unceasing variations in points of

view the tripartite anthropology whose expression is foundin Saint Paul has consistently furnished in the tradition ofthe Church a basis for spiritual doctrine and life

4 The Spirit

I The Place of Mysticism As we have already been able toperceive these various distinctions are far from always

being covered perfectly either from one author to another oreven as in the case of Augustine in the work of the same

author C R Doddaursquos remark on the subject of the ancientGreeks applies here ldquoOne must undoubtedly agree that the

average man of the fifth century (and this is true in allperiods) possessed a very complicated psychological

vocabularyrdquo1

The Pauline tripartition has nonetheless remained theconstant basis serving to support the spiritual doctrines ofthe Christian tradition

Commenting on Pseudo-Dionysius Saint Maximus theConfessor defined man by this threefold pair of epithetsldquoSupermundialis et spiritualismdashcircummundialis animalismdashmundialis carnalisrdquo2 The author of the celebratedPhilokalia Saint Nikodemos of the Holy Mountain (748-809)will explain that the ldquoJesus Prayerrdquo brings into operation thethree powers of the soul the intellect (nous) the discursivereason (logos) the will or spirit (theacutelē sis pneuma) in theaction of the soul alone by which uniting in itself the soulis made fit to be united to God3 But perhaps that is amatter rather of a ldquohorizontalrdquo trichotomy of threefunctions or three activities proper to the higher part of thespirit

With more than one spiritual writer of the Latin MiddleAges one should speak of four elements rather than ofthree in their analysis of manmdasheven without consideringother complications many subtle subdivisions an echo ofScholasticism dear to a certain number subdivisions

destined either to establish agreement between authors orto detail the stages of spiritual itineraries As for examplethis schema traced by Isaac of Stella in his Epistola deanima ldquoAnimae in mundo sui corporis peregrinanti quinquesunt ad sapientiam progressus sensusmdashimaginatiomdashratiomdashintellectusmdashintelligentiardquo4 Two different modes will benoted both inspired by Saint Augustine in the expression oftripartism for some it is corpus anima spiritus5 forothers corpus ratio mens Hence to accord these twomodes the quadripartite division corpusmdashanimamdashratioinferiormdashratio superior sive mens We know the groundgained in the Middle Ages by that Augustinian subdivision ofthe ratio inferior and the ratio superior6 What willcorrespond to this in Saint Thomas Aquinas will beparticularly the distinction between the ratio and theintellectus recently brought out by Pierre Rousselot7 Thiswould also be the place to mention the Franciscan doctrineof the two faces of the soul which is of Neoplatonic origincoming through the twofold channel of Augustine and theArabs8mdashbut that like moreover the Thomist distinction ofthe intellectus and the ratio is an essentially ldquoscientificrdquo(philosophical) theory having little relation to the spirituallife The explanation of the latter is founded rather on thedoctrine of the twofold ratio lower and higher whichcorresponds to action and contemplation But then a newsubdivision is introduced the ratio superior the place ofcontemplation assimilated to the intellectus becomes thehigher part or function of the mens and receives namessuch as acies mentis oculus cordis and so forth

Whatever might be the various complications and thevarieties in the names ldquoall the great Christian mystics are inagreement in considering the human soul as a complexreality presenting regions and stages All are also inagreement in admitting that among these various regionsthere is a privileged one that where God dwells in a

particular manner rdquo9 ldquoThere is a spiritual life when arelationship with God existsrdquo10 and there is a secret point inman that is the permanent place of that relationship of thatpossible encounter because it is already and always hasbeen the place of the divine presence that pneuma of Paulcommented on by Origen that ldquosacred point in us that saysPater nosterrdquo of the ldquoCantique de Palmyrerdquo11

So we see that the philosophers and theologians moreconcerned about rationality than mysticism tend to reduce(even in their historical studies) the trichotomy to adichotomymdashwhile on the contrary the spiritual masterstend to bring out the trichotomy They readily glorify thespiritus not only above the anima but above the ratiowhether theoretical or practical It is instructive to comparein this regard the Abeacutelardian writing Ysagoge in theologiamwith the commentary on the Song of Songs by William ofSaint Thierry For the first ldquoDuo haec nomina sc spiritus etanima non magnam habent in significationediscrepantiamrdquo12 The second on the contrary stronglyemphasizes the hierarchical distinction of three ordersldquoanimalrdquo ldquorationalrdquo and ldquospiritualrdquo13

To keep to the general schema that results from the textof Saint Paulmdasha schema that itself in fact includes manynuances and as we have seen many interpretationsmdashmorality will therefore be the act of the soul mysticism theact of the spirit ldquoThe bodyrdquo says Evagrius Ponticus ldquohasbread for nourishment the soul has virtue theunderstanding has spiritual prayerrdquo14 Morality whoseobject is virtue is the πϱᾶ ξις and the life of the spirit iscontemplation the θεωϱία The first is ordained to thesecond as the soul is ordained to the spirit ldquoStriverdquo saysCassian reporting the statements of Abbot Nesteros ldquotoacquire in the first place a complete possession of moraldiscipline (πϱαϰτιϰή) for without that you cannot obtaincontemplative purity (θεωϱητιϰή)rdquo15 For Gregory of Nyssa

virtue is ldquothe forecourt of the Templerdquo16 Origen had saidbefore them ldquoAccording to the doctrine of the very wiseSolomon he who wishes to acquire wisdom must begin bystudying moralityrdquo it is in fact ldquogood conductrdquo that preparesone to receive the visits of the Logos and when one issolidly exercised in it then one will be able ldquoto pass frommoral things to mystical understandingrdquo17 In his treatiseaddressed ldquoTo the Brethren at Mont Dieurdquo which remainsone of the fundamental texts of Christian spiritualityWilliam of Saint Thierry traces a similar route for those whowant to give themselves over to the perfect life and for thefinal stage his program is even one of a boldness that somecould misunderstand (it is true that it is addressed to aCarthusian monastery) ldquoIt is for othersrdquo he tells them ldquotoserve God it is for you to cling to him It is for others tobelieve in God to know that he exists to love him andrevere him it is for you to taste him to understand him toknow him to enjoy himrdquo18 The same doctrine is set forthas it had been earlier with Origen in parallel with thedoctrine of the threefold biblical sense by another writer ofthe twelfth century Godefroi drsquoAdmont

Sicut triplex est visio corporis spiritus et mentis ita triplex etiam sensusest in scripturis Sanctis litteralis spiritalis intellectualis Litteralem atquespiritalem sensus egregius ipse Doctor gentium tunc transcenderat etusque ad tertium coelum intellectualem scilicet sensum glorioseconscenderat quando toto cordis intellectu ita coelestibus est conjunctusquod utrum in corpore an extra corpus esset se nescire asseruit19

The same fundamental schema is found again in the greatrepresentatives of what one often calls with a term that canlend to confusion ldquointellectualist mysticismrdquo which is tosay with the Rheno-Flemish mystics of the fourteenth andfifteenth centuries The same schema although withdifferences in terminology and in a sometimes differentclimate of thought particularly in Meister Eckhart

Ruysbroek ldquoassigns to the spirit a threefold role First of alla vital role in which it animates the body then anintellectual role that is manifested by thought finally a roleof higher spiritual activity in which it becomes the principleof unification of the whole inner life and in which it is mixedwith the very essence of the soulrdquo20 Hence for example inthe Livre des sept clotures the definition of the seventhenclosure ldquowhich surpasses all the othersrdquo ldquosimplebeatitude beyond all holy life and practice of the virtuesrdquo21

Likewise in the Miroir du salut eacuteternel in which the higherdegree is only divided after ldquothe virtuous life which dies tosin and grows in virtuesrdquo comes the state where ldquoallownership of the will diesrdquo then the spirit is made fully freethrough its union to the Spirit of God even to the point ofthe ldquoliving liferdquo (levende leven) that blossoms which is allldquohidden in God and in the substance of our soulrdquo22

Ruysbroek takes up again here an expression long sincecurrent which he could have read in Saint Bernard (vividavita et vitalis)23 William of Saint Thierry (vita vivens)24 orThomas de Froidmont (vita vitalis)25

The same gradation is found in Tauler based on the sametraditional ldquoternary schemardquo Tauler distinguishes in manldquothree things one clings to nature in flesh and blood theother is the reason the third is an essence of the pure souland without mixturerdquo This is what he expresses again ldquointhe symbolism of the three men which correspond to thesensate life the intellectual life and the spiritual life in thesense of union with Godrdquo26 This ldquothird manrdquo this ldquoessenceof the pure soulrdquo is what Tauler often calls the gemuete aword that Father Etienne Hugueny translates as ldquodeep-seated willrdquo and Louis Cognet prefers to call ldquodeep instinctrdquoit is the ldquodepthsrdquo of being to which says Tauler the ldquodivinegroundrdquo alone corresponds abyssus abyssum invocat itimprints on our nature ldquoan eternal and deep-seatedtendency to return to its originrdquo a tendency that ldquopersists

even in the damned because it is linked to the very essenceof the soulrdquo27 Taulerrsquos preaching rests on this structure Theabnegation to which he invites his listeners is not only theliberation from sensible appetites it goes beyond simplemorality it is a profound attitude that ldquoflows from thegrowing experience of Godrdquo mystical passivity succeedingthe activity of the virtuous life ldquoinner recollectionrdquo abovethe exercise of the virtues and reason as well as that of thesenses28 ldquoIt is necessary that after having overcome thesenses the reason be freed from itself renounce itself soas to be transformed into pure and simple spiritrdquo29 Then theKingdom of God is established And Tauler repeats so as tomake himself well understood ldquoThis Kingdom is establishedin its own manner in the innermost part of the spirit assoon as man through all his exercise has absorbed theexterior man in the inner and reasonable man and as soonas the man of sense and of reasonable power are entirelyabsorbed into the more interior man in the hidden groundof the spirit where the true image of God dwells and assoon as he flees into this divine ground into which manfrom all eternity is found in his uncreated staterdquo30

The relationship of Tauler to Eckhart is obvious In one asin the other the distinction of the soul and the spirit (of thepsyche and the πνεῦμα) colored by Platonic exemplarism isaffirmed everywhere Eckhart enunciates it with reference toSaint Augustine ldquoAccording to Augustinerdquo he says ldquoourintellectual element divides itself into two parts through theone we are oriented intellectually toward an intellectualgrasp of knowledge that our cognitive faculty receives fromoutside the other to use the very words of Augustinemanifests itself at the deepest center of our spirit (lsquoabditummentisrsquo)rdquo31 It is this center that particularly interested thatfascinated Eckhart this place ldquowhere no image enters orleaves but where there is only God himselfrdquo ldquoThe soulrdquo healso said ldquohas two eyes the inner one and the other outer

one the inner eye of the soul is that by which itcontemplates being and receives it directly from Godrdquo32

What differentiates him from Origen and Augustine Bernardand William of Saint Thierry is the ldquouncreatedrdquo characterthat he attributes to this ldquoinner eyerdquo or to this ldquoabditummentisrdquo The disquieting feature of his mysticism consists inthis a feature that will be less emphasized in Tauler andeven in Henry Suso although the latter speaks also of theground of the spirit as ldquoeternalrdquo33

Follower and compiler Harphius (Henry Herp) willsymbolize the ldquothree kinds of liferdquo emanating from the threeparts of man in the three biblical figures of Leah Rachel andMary Magdalen34 and he works at length to describe themens or the apex mentis the spiritus or the interior sinusmentis which is to say still that pneuma by which the zoneof rational and moral activity is transcended

Dicitur etiam [anima] quandoque mens quae sc ipsis viribus interior est etsupereminet quia vires in mente sicut in origine sua sunt counitae ex quasc effl uunt ut radii ex solari rota et in quam refluunt Et est illud centrumin anima in quo vera Trinitatis imago relucet et tarn nobile quod nullumibi nomen proprie convenit licet in multis nominibus circumlocutivemanifestatur Haec est igitur mens vel apex mentis aut centrum ipsiusanimae ut feliciter renovetur ipsae vires quae dicuntur spiritus adinteriorem sinum mentis sunt reflectendae et mens ipsa ad intimum suumregerenda sc in Deum ibidem suaviter recubantem 35

Warning us that this higher part of man cannot beappropriately designated by any name and multiplying theformulas himself by which one must indeed try even tospeak of it Harphius invites us not to stress whatever theinterest of the other part might be the variations invocabulary from one author to another or from one period toanother which could hide from us the continuity of atradition that in essentials is very firm

Saint Catherine of Genoa offers us a similar schema veryclassically she distinguishes body soul and spirit the latterbeing designated in itself by the word mente and when it is

animated by infused love by the word spirito in this lattercase the spirito is finally identified with infused Love whichis God Since the Saint is less concerned to give us atheoretical course in anthropology even spiritual than todescribe the spiritual life itself we can understand that fromher pen mente is rare and spirito frequent36 On the otherhand following the example of many other mystics sheloves to detail the stages of ascent ldquoWhen Godrdquo she saysldquoaddresses his first call to us he gives us at first the instinctfor virtues later he urges us to perfection then throughinfused grace he leads us to the annihilation of ourselvesfinally to true transformationrdquo37 Saint Teresa and Saint Johnof the Cross likewise know that there exists a life higherthan the exercise of the virtues when they celebrateldquofreedom of spiritrdquo38 ldquoholy freedom of spiritrdquo39 and SaintTeresa observes in her Interior Castle that ldquocertain interioreffects give certitude that there is in us in certain relationsa very real difference between the soul and the spiritrdquo40 Wealso quote as an example Fenelon who in commenting onCassian finds himself at the same time summing up thewhole mystical tradition ldquoAlthough we judge the othervirtues to be necessary and useful we believe however weshould place them only at the second degree because oneseeks them all only in view of this one thing of which JesusChrist says lsquoMartha Martha you trouble yourself aboutmany things there is only one thing necessaryrsquo He placedthe sovereign good not in work although laudable andabundant in fruit but in contemplation that is truly simpleand one He declares that little is necessary for this perfectbeatitude that contemplation isrdquo41 And a little farther on inthe same writing ldquoThere is thus a state where thisappropriation of virtues is no longer opportunerdquo42

The great Protestant spiritual master Gerhard Tersteegen(1697-1769) professes the same doctrine ldquoThere mustnecessarily be in us a capacity to recognize God and

spiritual things in an essential and present way And thatexists in the pure Reason [Vernunft] which has been givenus closed and unused until God gives us the understandingby which we know the very Truth so intimately andessentially that we are ourselves drawn into the trueGodrdquo43

If a certain number of authors in the course of this longtradition that we have just examined seem also todistinguish as it were two elements above the psychewhile Saint Paul saw only the pneuma above it this isusually as we could ascertain from some of the examplescited because they mean by psyche only the animal soulanimater of the body and seat of sensation or ratherbecause they want to assure a seat for ldquoobjectiverdquoknowledge and profane culture For Paul on the contraryand more explicitly for Origen the soul is the very seat ofthe personality the reasoning and self-willed being whichjudges and freely determines itself It is the place ofdecision According to the orientation taken by the soul thehuman being will become ldquocarnalrdquo or ldquospiritualrdquo(pneumatikos) As opposed as he might be to free willLuther himself saw very clearly that the Pauline psyche of 1Thessalonians 5 was much more than the principle ldquothatanimates the body and acts through itrdquo In an article in theRevue thomiste (1971) Father P R Reacutegamey OP isperfectly in keeping with the traditional line when hedistinguishes (497) these three degrees psychosomaticcomplexmdashrational function of abstraction and discoursemdashprimacy of spirit in its greatest purity And what in thetheoretical order is the ldquorational functionrdquo corresponds inthe practical order to what we could call in a ratherrestrictive sense the ldquomoral functionrdquo Saint Paul alsoinvites us not to confuse this moral function with theproperly spiritual life which raises man above himself whenhe places above the exercise of active benevolence and of

all virtue this reality of another order a gift of God which isCharity (1 Cor 133) Dietrich Bonhoeffer was also faithful tothe tradition that originated in the Apostle when heexhorted the Christians over whom he had responsibility notto confuse in their assemblies ldquospiritual community withmystical overheatingrdquo (cf A Dumas 64) ldquoThe great themeof community life is the revival of the very Paulinedistinction between the natural eager equivocal nostalgicdesiring in a word idealistic and the spiritual respectfulenlightened serving knowing in a word realistrdquo (ibid145) ldquoThe onerdquo Bonhoeffer also says ldquowho does not letChrist be a path toward the other falls into naturalchattering which kills the spiritual word Prayer is thesalutary limit to desires of immediate effusiveness Community life is communion through spiritual mediationand non-confusion in the natural immediacyrdquo (146-47)

II Morality Integrated into Mysticism In Christianity itself itis characteristic of the Catholic Church to assure theequilibrium between the three components (religion

morality and mysticism) an equilibrium necessary to theintegrity of the human being Faithful in everything to her

spirit of synthesis she maintains all three in solidaritywithout ever letting any one of the three be lacking or

eclipse the others or be devalued in the humblest forms ofspiritual life any more than in the highest To take a verysimple example when Fenelon exclaims in his Traiteacute de

lrsquoexistence et des attributs de Dieu ldquoMy length of life is buta perpetual extinctionrdquo1 these words to be well

understood must be taken at once morally religiously andmystically

The various Protestant confessions place more emphasison contrasts and clashes as has often been remarked J AMoehler wrote in the last century in his Symbolique withrespect to morality and religion ldquoIn the eyes of Catholics

religiosity and morality if we may be permitted to use thesetwo terms are united by their essence and are both eternalAccording to the Protestants on the other hand there is norelationship between these two things for one is of aneternal price and the other is of only passing value Lutherinsists in many places on this difference rdquo2 There wouldbe many nuances besides to note here but in this essay ontypology we must keep to the most general characteristics3In Calvinism mysticism is the object of mistrust or evenreprobation4 We also know the abyss in Luther thatseparates ethics and faith As a result of this there is atendency with Lutheran mysticsmdashto say nothing of Lutherhimself and of Lutheranism in generalmdashto depreciate allmoral activity as constituting on manrsquos part an affirmationof self that far from bringing him closer to God distanceshim and to recognize a value in religious life only in anabandonment close to quietism5 a depreciation of moralitythat goes hand in hand with that of reason and that offreedommdashwe recently read from a Protestant pen an articleon morality considered solely as ldquocultural realityrdquo Such anattitude to take it simply as such could also facilitateinvaluable analyses in many regards such as the analysis ofthe ldquolevels of liferdquo in Kierkegaard or that of the ldquosacredrdquo inRudolf Otto But these analyses do not always stop at posingformal distinctions Thus in order to bring out more clearlythe specificity of the category of the sacred or of thereligious Otto cuts the latter off from morality he is notcontent with showing that on the level of history orpsychology these two orders are often separated in fact heis well on his way to a separation by right6 As arepercussion when morality reclaims its place in otherauthors of Protestant inspiration it sometimes absorbsreligion and dries up mysticism by incarcerating all spirituallife ldquowithin the limits of reasonrdquo

In reality howevermdashthat is to say by right in the natureof thingsmdashon the one hand ldquothe sacred is not reabsorbedinto moral value the religious transcends the ethicalrdquo buton the other hand it does not merely accommodatemorality and mysticism it remolds them so to speak byinstalling them in its heart Religion morality and mysticismldquoappear in a reciprocal envelopmentrdquo there exists betweenthe three both an attraction and a tension which will be thesource of many vital problems but there is objectivelyneither separation nor exclusion nor conflict for ldquothe Deitywhile transcending being truth and the good contains themformallyrdquo7 This is why in particular in Catholicism just asthe reasonable life and life according to the spirit penetrateeach other8 morality impregnates the mystical life to theend ldquoThrough it the good rewarded and the bad punishedthese pillars of the revelation of the Demiurge degraded byGnosticism to a lower level than exoteric faith regain theirplace at the heart of the revelation of the Father through theonly Sonrdquo9 Hence Saint Justin in his Dialogue ldquoIt is notbecause of his affinity with God or because he is spirit likehim that man sees God it is because he is virtuous andjustrdquo10 And Father Jean Rigoleuc on spiritual persons ldquoAlltheir reason and the lights they receive by it are given tothem only so that they might be perfected in thesevirtuesrdquo11 ldquoThe mystical ascentrdquo does not efface ldquofromcommon Christian life any specific traitrdquo12 The Christianvirtues are not merely means of freeing oneself from theworld in their substance they are the end itself thepromised beatitude is not made of different material This iswhat Saint Ambrose expresses admirably in a brief sentencefrom his commentary on Saint Luke with respect to thebeatitudes ldquoSicut enim speri nostrae octava perfectio estita octava summa virtutum estrdquo13

Pierre Nemeshegyi poses the same problem with respectto Origen ldquoTo place Being and moral Goodness in equation

to place this moral Goodness in God formally and ascharacterizing the final ground of his Beingmdashis this not to becondemned to enclosing all spiritual life in an anti-mysticalmoralism The Good is a transcendental But is it formallywhat we understand by lsquomoral Goodrsquo Or is there not adeepening of this moral Goodness which would reestablishthe possibility of an innermost mystical depthrdquo14 Againwith respect to Origen W Voumllker remarks ldquoWe observe a hesitation very characteristic of Origenrsquos turn of spirit and which one finds again in a nearly identical way in Philoside by side and sometimes even the mutual penetrationof moralism and mysticismrdquo15 And Nemeshegyi concludesldquo lsquoMoralismrsquo and lsquomysticismrsquo are in fact one and the samething in Origenrsquos conceptionrdquo16 Origen himself specifies inhis argument against Celsus ldquoGod is not merely lsquothe Goodrsquoas all the Platonists say he is lsquothe Righteousrsquordquo17 SaintGregory the Great also reminds us with his usual goodsense always linked with spiritual fervor

Solent quidam scripta sacri eloquii legentes cum sublimiores sententiasejus penetrant minora mandata quae infirmioribus data sunt tumentisensu despicere et ea velle in alium intellectum permutare Qui si recte ineo alta intelligerent mandata quoque minima despectui non haberent quidivina praecepta sic in quibusdam loquuntur magnis ut tamen inquibusdam congruant parvulis qui per incrementa intelligentiae quasiquibusdam passibus mentis crescant atque ad majora intelligendaperveniant18

Saint Augustine had said the same in a very Origenianshortcut in speaking of eternal life ldquoUna ibi virtus erit etidipsum erit virtus praemiumque virtutisrdquo19 Picking upagain Saint Ambrosersquos turn of phrase Alexander Neckhamcosmologist of the twelfth century explains that the octaveof the beatitude brings the perfection of its consonance tothe septenary of the virtues as in our material universe theeighth sphere including the whole universe brings itsconclusion to the harmony of the heavens20 Let us say in

the categories of medieval exegesis that anagogy achievesperfection both of allegory and of tropology Thus oneshould say of all Catholic mysticism what one historian saysof Saint Bernard through allusion to the traditionalinterpretation of the ldquoBooks of Solomonrdquo and of theirprogressive sequence for each of them as for him ldquothemoral school of Ecclesiasticus and Proverbs a necessarypreliminary for the mystical school of the Song of Songs is aschool whose doors are never closed behind usrdquo21 Andreciprocally in fulfilling the precept of the Lord one meritsnot only the eternal dwelling one does not merely preparefor it one is already building Saint Hildegarde tells us thetower of the heavenly Jerusalem22

It would be good to return to the celebrated GoldenEpistle in which William of Saint Thierry the friend of SaintBernard condenses for the brothers of the Carthusianmonastery of Mont Dieu the essence of Christiananthropology and spirituality such as the most commonCatholic tradition understands them William puts first ofall the sublime ideal of the contemplative in abrupt termsand with an appearance of separation of completetranscendence from one degree to another which could besurprising

You have not only pledged complete holiness but the perfection of allholiness and the height of all perfection It is not your business to languishin the practice of ordinary precepts or to devote yourself only to thatwhich God commands but to aim at what he wishes in the search for hisgood agreeable and perfect will It is for others to serve God it is for youto cling to him Faith in God knowledge love and reverence are for othersFor you taste understanding knowledge enjoyment A high vocation anarduous task 23

Farther on William takes up again the distinction of thethree states or three degrees which is reminiscent of thefree fashion of the Pauline trichotomy

The state of beginners can be called ldquoanimalrdquo that of progressersldquorationalrdquo that of the perfect ldquospiritualrdquo The first state attends to thebody the second is busy with the reasoning soul the third finds its restonly in God 24

These kinds of schemas are several times accompanied byappeals to humility which should form the common andunalterable basis for all disciples of Christ at whateverdegree they find themselves in their spiritual ascent25

Several points of resemblance to Saint Paul are still to benoted the distinction between anima and animus whichcorresponds closely to that between the psyche and thepneuma26 the reference to the discourse at Athens27 (Acts1727-28) the definition of the spiritual man as the onewhose spirit is informed by the Spirit of love28 theindication of the end as being ldquothe unity of spiritrdquo with God

There is also another resemblance to God so particular that it is nolonger given the name of resemblance but that of unity of spirit It is whenman becomes a single thing a single spirit with God not only through theunity of a single will but also through some truer expression of a virtue thatis no longer capable of willing anything else Once conformed to wisdom the reason [= reasoning soul] puts[everything] to profit and hastens to spring toward freedom of spirittoward unity so well that the faithful man becomes as has often beenstated one single spirit with God29

Freedom of spirit unity with God we know the abuses thatsuch formulas have frequently covered throughout twentycenturies of history30 We know too how the fear of theseabuses have made a number of timorous souls avoid themhow still more the bourgeois individualist incomprehensionof the last century banished them and how they seemedsuspect to many who thought they were judging in thename of pure Catholic orthodoxy31 Within the context ofthat spiritual masterpiece the Letter to the Brothers of MontDieu these expressions can be accepted in all their powerin the same sense that they have in Scripture And thekeeping of a moral life integrated into a mystical life is also

explicitly recognized here besides the word ldquovirtuerdquo whichfigures in the same text we have just quoted on ldquothe unityof spiritrdquo with God other texts recall it with insistence Theyspeak ldquoin praise of virtue the daughter of reason but evenmore of gracerdquo32 they show it not surpassed by butassumed into spiritual perfection the latter is achievedldquowhen the soul encompasses all the virtues in itself not aselements borrowed from somewhere else but as quasi-natural products of its being according to that resemblanceto God by which it is the whole of what isrdquo Mystical unitywith God is wholly impregnated with morality because it isthe perfect adherence to Him who is not only the Righteousbut in the most concrete and singular sense the Good33

This Catholic equilibrium was undoubtedly alreadyjeopardized in a great spiritual master who is not at all to beconfused with the false spirituals to whom we have alludedEvagrius was considered a disciple of Origen but in this anunfaithful disciple Despite the appearances of severalexpressions the same criticism could not be made of aTauler or a Ruysbroek they condemn without equivocationthe mystical claims that think to hold themselves abovemorality and reason beyond affirmations of the faith Thecase of Meister Eckhart is perhaps more disputable but it isright to dissociate the profound intention of this greatthinker and this great mystic from some paradoxicalexpressions held to be condemnable by the bull In agro LaPerle eacutevangeacutelique following Eckhart and several othersseems to place ldquothe spiritrdquo in contact with the divine Unityldquoabove the multiplicity of the Personsrdquo34 a grave problemwhich we will not take up here but which for a Christiangoverns the judgment to be passed on mysticism in itsrelation to the primary mystery of his faith35 To stay withthe relation between mysticism and morality let us say thatone is happy to find a fine example of equilibrium in anauthor carried in other respects to many unilateral

excesses This refers to George Tyrrell who wrote in a finepassage from Christianity at the Cross-roads

[The apocalyptic Kingdom of heaven] is the fruit and reward of the morallife but is a supermoral lifemdashthe continuation of that divine and spirituallife which under present contingencies manifests itself principally bymorality and above all in religion and conscious union with God But[in the Kingdom] the contingencies that now call for the moral strugglewith all its pain and suffering shall be done away36

We will end by quoting a more authoritative witness thegreat Saint Teresa who unites the soul and spirit of whichSaint Paul spoke as much as she distinguishes them withhim by observing that ldquothe center of the soulrdquo or the ldquospiritof the soulrdquo is a difficult thing to express and even tobelieve

Certain interior effects give the certitude that there is under certainrelations a very real difference between the soul and the spirit Although inreality they are but one we sometimes perceive a division between themthat is so delicate that it seems that the one functions in one way and theother in another There are so many things in our innermost depthsand things so subtle that it would be boldness on my part to undertake toexplain them We will understand all that in the other life if God deignsto admit us to the dwelling where we will have understanding of all thesesecrets37

III Conclusions Optimi corruption pessima One should notat all conclude from this as some authors particularly in

Protestantism have done that mysticism should becondemned1 Nevertheless even without considering the

case of the aberrations we have just seen certainprecautions should be taken in order not to jeopardize the

spiritual equilibrium Just as it is necessary to reject ananthropology that refusing man any higher faculty stifles

the spirit in himmdashwhich is what all positivisms allrationalisms and all psychologisms domdashso it is necessary toguard against reducing theoretical or practical reason in itby failing to recognize its transcendence in relation to the

sensible order and its participation in the absolute ldquoThemindrdquo writes Hans Urs von Balthasar2 ldquodestroys itself andcrumbles if it splits into an inferior and a superior mind an

autonomously functioning reason (Verstand) and a ratio(Vernunft) that is reserved for special philosophical and

religious purposesrdquo Then the risk of a short-circuit appearsfrom ldquoinfantile naturalismrdquo to high spirituality from

alienating exteriority to ldquodivinerdquo magnetization from theldquocaves of the unconsciousrdquo to the ldquobirthrdquo from above from

the ldquopossessive Irdquo that is ldquoradical servituderdquo toldquodisinterestedrdquo love

Charles du Bos was not lacking in clearsightedness theday he noted in his Journal ldquothe necessity from an ethicalpoint of view of guarding oneself against mysticismrdquo3 In thesame sense he wrote one day to Father Auguste Valensin

Since the end of July 1927 God in his goodness has recalled me toHimself I have happened to suffer in the face of a certain unformulatedmdashand at times even formulatedmdashdisdain that believers who are advancedmoreover in spiritual ways and even mystics witness or at least seem towitness toward the moral order as such If one admits (and I admit it verystrongly) that ethics are only the narthex of religious truth neverthelessthere exist natures (to the number of which I belong) who venerate thenarthex all the more as it helps to introduce them into the sanctuary andthe more their religious life deepens the more faithful their gratitudebecomes 4

Du Bos had noted in his Journal on January 11 1925 ldquothenecessity of guarding against mysticismrdquo and on January18 1929 analyzing himself

Basically it is always a question with me of an offensive directed by themoral against the religious because as my Journal often notes the moralbeing is primary with me in the period when the plane of temperament istranscended the form that temptation then takes is a moral form summedup in the question of my right to religious life Yes that is indeed it and myeffort now must be not only to adhere to God but to consider that fromthe instant I do what I must on the plane of living I adhere to him de facto 5

Du Bosrsquo reflection as we see was not unilateral althoughhe emphasizes the moral which he judges to bedangerously disregarded (what would he not say thirty orforty years later) In return Emmanuel Mounier was no lessright to bring out the complementary truth in recalling thatldquomorality has no other end but the spirituality of which itkeeps houserdquo when one isolates it and clings to it heexplains one kills it it is replaced by moralism6 the enemyof mysticism as well as of religion History in fact shows thatthe abandonment of mysticism in the name of any formwhatever of moralism has never been at best anything buta stage in spiritual development in view of a less confusedmysticism ldquoAs it is nearly inevitable in philosophy to passthrough a phase of idealism so it is inevitable to passthrough a phase of intellectualism in morality inevitableand goodrdquo But on condition that one does not cling to it Adeeper understanding knows that it is not knowledge thatsaves man from sin and it will always ask ldquoWho forexample is the one more free of appearancesmdasha Spinozawho in observing actions or sentiments that the commonmen call sin explains them through a defect in knowledgemdashor a Surin who proclaims that to the degree that one doesnot see sins even in onersquos inadvertencies and firstmovements to that degree one will not weep over onersquosvanities as sacrileges one will lsquonever get to the rootrsquordquo7

Both have cut through appearances (not always the sameones) both in their order are right But basically howmuch more is this true of Surin And if the intellectualcriticism worked by a Spinozist is not coupled with aspiritual deepening how his clearsightedness ends inblaming it The world Bergson said very justly has much tolearn from the great mystics8

Likewise one is right not to consent to letting theunderstanding be classed among the provisional values tobe reduced to the rank of ldquonaturalismrdquo that is close to

animality Perhaps the word ldquosoulrdquo so far from beingunivocal9 used in the tripartite division of man is notwithout some danger in this regard But this is not asufficient motive for rejecting the very idea of this tripartitedivision such as some as we have seen above were led todo Even Sandaeus himself an apologist and theoretician ofmysticism while noting that a number of mystics judgerecourse to this division indispensable declared that therecould be room to debate this10 Sandaeus was therebyechoing a fear or a mistrust frequently shown in the mostbrutal fashion by Schoolmen in the face of all mysticalthought we know how sharp the dispute was even withinthe Catholic Church throughout the seventeenth century11

Since then through their efforts to minimize the text ofSaint Paul on which the distinction is based others witness adiscomfort if not a similar hostility The mystical tradition ofthe great Church however offers them desirableassurances thus with Tauler transforming the way oneviews the classical terms of the division He is thereby goingparallel to the doctrinal tradition such as it is expressed in aSaint Augustine for example or a Saint Thomas The ratherpusillanimous minds to which we are alluding do not giveenough consideration to the fact that in wanting to save theabsolute of morality and reason they risk failing torecognize the gifts of the Spirit and lowering the mysticallife Stifled unrecognized in its authentic forms the latterin despair is then in danger of developing on the margins ofall rational and moral norms A certain intellectualismmdashverypoorly namedmdashis a worthy counterpart of moralism and aspernicious

To return to this latter we can think that the general usein the ecclesiastical vocabulary of the modern ChristianWest of the term ldquodirector of consciencerdquo to the detrimentof the traditional terms ldquospiritual fatherrdquo or spiritusmoderator12 is the sign of an inflation of pure morality

tending to casuistry or lends itself to falling intopsychologism (while waiting for psychiatry) to thedetriment of the attention paid to things of the spirit whichis to say to the relation to God ldquoHave we not seen peoplerdquowrote Reneacute Gueacutenon ldquowho when it is a question of lsquospiritualmasterrsquo go so far as to translate it lsquodirector ofconsciencersquordquo13 It is possible to agree with his remarkwithout sharing the least part of his own notion of ldquospiritualmasterrdquo or more precisely his doctrine of the spirit Stillanother sign of the small esteem given to things of thespirit and first of all of an inadequate understanding ofthem is manifested in the designation ldquointellectualismrdquowhich is too easily attributed today to the whole doctrine ofcontemplation There is of course a philosophicalcontemplation There is a Greek intellectualism that isexpressed in an ideal of contemplation We discern sometraces of it in the history of Christian thought and life butthese are only tracesmdashand all are not moreoverblameworthy14 As it has done for many other conceptsChristianity has modified this at the same time as it took onits permanent values it profoundly transformed it How is itthat even Christian historians have perceived so little ofthis One can indeed if one wishes reject the word inseeking another that lends less to equivocation but itshould not be necessary at the same time to reject thedoctrine that the Christian centuries had included within itit should not be necessary to depreciate what is the verybasis of the best spiritual tradition at the heart ofChristianity This would be at the same stroke to depreciatethe order of the theological virtues in direct contradiction toScripture itself The supremely active Father Teilhard deChardin did not fall into such contempt he forcefullymaintained the primacy of contemplation in which he couldrecognize the superior form of action that which an activistwill never achieve15 The transformations and progress

achieved in the course of history the entrance into an agedominated by the technical the development of the ldquohumansciencesrdquo that tend to assimilate man to the object of thesciences of nature will change nothing not only the highmystical life but already the whole spiritual life while takingthe greatest consideration of morality and including morality(as well as of rational activity) comprises along with variednuances according to the case something beyond moralitytaken in the human sense of the word something beyond allthat we commonly call action because it always comprisessomething beyond man

That is what signifies the great traditional theme ofMartha and Mary based on the Gospel It will always remaintrue ldquoIn his duabus mulieribus duas istas esse figurataspraesentem et futuram latoriosam et quietam temporalemet aeternamrdquo16 And of these two realities the second isalready present as an active anticipation at the heart ofthe man en route toward his divine destiny

Finally the maintenance of the distinction between thezone of the natural [psychisme] and that of the spiritual is ofa major importance for maintaining in their just place withinthe limits of their competence all the kinds of psychology Itopposes ldquothe dissolving psychoanalytical confusion ofnatural and spiritualrdquo17 If stopping onersquos aim at theldquorationalrdquo and the ldquomoralrdquo was often the great temptationand if this temptation remains what is to be even moregreatly feared today is stopping at the ldquonatural[psychique]rdquo One of Teilhardrsquos weaknesses which wasbenign to tell the truth because he thought above all todissipate the illusion of a materialistic monism was acertain confusion of vocabulary between spiritual andnatural in the Pheacutenomegravene humain (which does not claim tobe a treatise on spirituality) he happens to speak at will ofldquospiritual energyrdquo or of ldquonatural energyrdquo mdashBut ldquothe spiritintervening psychology is powerless It sees everything

from outside although the spirit is lived only from withinrdquo itsees uniquely ldquothat part of the natural life that the spirit hasnot touched and which consequently unfolds in theunconsciousrdquo18

Without doubt it is only through our participation in themystery of the trinitarian Life that we are to become fullycapable of going beyond this psychological vision that canindeed scrutinize certain ldquodepthsrdquo but to which this otherdepth is not accessible this depth which is humantranscendence this otherwise mysterious zone where theimpulse toward God is situated the encounter with God

There is in us a certain root that plunges into the depths of the Trinity Weare these complex beings who exist on successive levels on an animal andbiological level on an intellectual and human level and on an ultimate levelin those very abysses that are those of the life of God and those of theTrinity This is why we have the right to say that Christianity is an integralhumanism which is to say which develops man on all the levels of hisexperience We must always be in defiance of all the attempts to reducethe space in which our existence moves We breathe fully in the measureto which we do not let ourselves be enclosed in the prison of the rationaland psychological world but to which a part of us emerges into these greatspaces that are those of the Trinity And this is what creates theincomparable joy of existence in Christianity19

Pertinent remarks of great importance in ecclesiology aswell as in the liturgy more timely today than ever Thedistinctions recalled by Dietrich Bonhoeffer and by Father PR Reacutegamey based like those of so many others on thePauline anthropology of the First Letter to the Thessaloniansare at once for every member of the Church an appeal tothe highest spiritual life and a warning against itscounterfeits

EPILOGUETO PART ONE

The Light of Christ ldquoIf you believerdquo we are told ldquoin thedivinity of the Christian religion it is because you are

ignorant about all the conditions that marked its beginningand growth The comparative history of religions has madeenough progress so that henceforth it is no longer possibleto speak of a lsquoChristian miraclersquo coming to break the thread

of human religious acts There is nothing in it that is notexplained in the way everything is explained Of course

some points still remain obscure certain influences remainunperceived The task of historians has not yet been

accomplished One can also recognize that several of themhave been a little too quick in thinking to detect here orthere analogies or relationships and their intemperance

was capable of provoking a prudent reaction in somescholars anxious for a more rigorous method But the

general orientation of science is nonetheless certain and itsresult is nonetheless assured Every day leads to a new

light uncovering some new connection and here and nowwe see clearly enough to be able to affirm that Christianityis a human phenomenon very human deeply rooted in the

earth of history where it has drawn all the essence fromwhich its marvelous vigor is nourishedrdquo

An objection that insinuates itself under a thousand formswith respect to a thousand problems A stronger objectionin many eyes than all those of dialectics because withoutfighting it claims to explain Believers are upset by it Menof good will whom Christianity attracts and who alreadybelieve they see Godrsquos work in it find themselves stoppedin their tracks by it they fear to commit themselves

thoroughly to what is perhaps only the work of man If itwere a question only of a milieu providentially prepared tofavor the birth and rise of the religion of ChristmdashJewishMessianism Stoic universalism the organization of theDiaspora the Roman peace mdashthis ensemble of fortuitousconditions could indeed account for its concrete possibilitybut it would definitely not for all that cancel out the miracleof its existence A favorable atmosphere has never sufficedto explain the fact of a birth One would have to becompletely incapable of perceiving religious values to betempted to explain the apparition and success ofChristianity solely by a series of external circumstances asimportant and as favorable as one supposes them to beBetter known the information that history brings in thisorder can therefore only add to the admiration that alreadyseized the Fathers such as Saint Leo exclaiming before hisRoman listeners ldquoNumerous States have been united into asingle Empire so that the ways necessary for the preachingof the Gospel might be readyrdquo1 Admiration that was alsoPascalrsquos ldquoHow beautiful it is to see through the eyes of faithDarius and Cyrus Alexander the Romans Pompey Herodact without knowing it for the triumph of the Gospelrdquo andwho a short time earlier had had this sung to Peacuteguy ldquoThesteps of the legions had marched for Him rdquo2

But history seems to show us much more today Muchmore even than a subjective preparation of soulssuffocating in paganism thirsty for salvation One by oneall the elements of which Christianity is made theconceptions it presupposes the notions it sets in motion itsworship practices the forms of its institutions theprescriptions of its morality all are identified classifiedranked in their place along continuous series Not a dogmanot a feature of discipline or of liturgy that does not have itshistorymdasha history that always includes a first pre-Christianperiod All that had been amalgamated in it is returned to its

origin and soon it seems that nothing of its own remainsHow dare we still in the face of these facts a great numberof which at least are solidly established speak of a religiongiven from heaven of divine revelation How consequentlydare we speak of ldquotranscendencerdquo of supernaturalabsolute definitive truth Everything that is born and growsaccording to the common law is transformed and alsoperishes according to the common law As imposing as itseems Christianity will not escape it Even more perhapsthan the defeats to which it has submitted in the course ofthese recent centuries the history of its origins warns us ofits inevitable decline It is no longer for us the uniqueexception the extraordinary thing that it seemed to be forso long a time It can no longer be loyally preserved fromuniversal evolution Whether the brilliant flash projected byreligion ever since humanity existed is a false flash or anauthentic light is of little importance here in the case ofChristianity one thought to see a unique star appearabruptly in the heaven of religions and miraculously hangthere but a more experienced look discerns that it too wasonly for a moment welded to the others passing like theothers in this long luminous trail

Yet the illusion if such it be has existed It still persists withmany who are not at all ignorant people This too is a factthat must be taken into consideration One should not replywithout further examination that the same is true for allreligion Contrary to almost all the others without exceptingeven Judaism Christianity appeared in the middle of ahistoric period Its legend if there is a legend iscontemporaneous with its existence What a differencethere is in this regard for example with its great rivalBuddhism3 Why then contrary to so many humanphenomena is it presented in so tenacious a way as beingabsolutely exceptional Is ignorance about its true originsenough to explain this illusion in its regard or might it not

be rather the very true perception of its transcendencethat veiled by its brilliant flash certain features of its humanhistory The hypothesis at least deserves consideration It isnot without analogies Many men think themselves free inactions where without doubt they are not at all or with afreedom that is not at all real Is this illusion completelyexplained by a myopia that prevents them from perceivingthe bonds of determinism or does it too not come from anobscure but truthful perception Rather than a total illusionis it not a simple error of localization An error attesting toan awkwardness in analysis a scientific inferiority butwithout any damage to the essential truth

Now it happens too that one badly localizes thetranscendence that one recognizes in Christianity setting itup in positions from which the experienced historian willhave no trouble dislodging it This is why in a more or lessexplicit way one conceives of it then above all as a solutionof continuity To suppose such a transcendence possible atranscendence whose true name would be ldquoexteriorityrdquo isnot the act of Christianity What would remain for exampleof the thought of Saint Paulmdashwho nevertheless sodominated the thoughts of his centurymdashif one cut it fromthe thousand roots that in fact attached it to the earth ofTarsus and Jerusalem How can a single one of its essentialpoints be analyzed without constant reference not only tothe history of the Hebrew people but also to Greekcivilization to Eastern mysticism to the Roman EmpireThis would be an imaginary transcendence pure chimeralinked to a no less chimerical ideal of revelation The realitythat it would effect if this were possible would not besuperhuman but inhuman Far from being sublimated by itit would only be impoverished dried up

It would find the path neither of our spirit nor of our heartArtificial superficial and not at all supernatural Such asthose devout people of whom Peacuteguy speaks who becausethey do not have the strength to be of nature imagine that

they are of grace in reality dried fruits But there is anothertranscendence a true transcendence of which the first wasonly at best the naiumlve transcription An intrinsictranscendence in virtue of which a given reality consideredas synthesis in what comprises its own being surpassesessentially the realities of the same kind that surround itwhatever might be the community of elements that itinforms along with theirs whatever might be too the tiesof origin that render these different elements solidary Anytrue synthesis is always more than synthesis A certainrecasting that is much more than a new combination acertain ldquorevival from withinrdquo transforms everything It is in aphenomenal continuity the passage to a new higherincomparable order4

Now for anyone who can seemdashbut which of us can natterhimself that he always can once and for allmdashthe intrinsictranscendence of Christianity is obvious It alone countsand a direct look well aimed is enough to establish it Theunbeliever does not have to overcome historicalcontinuities nor does the believer have to refuse to seethem A priori they must be Scholars dedicated todiscovering these continuities are not at all devotingthemselves to a vain task They can indeed often bemistaken (certainly they do not fail to be so) or give in tothe temptation of confused conjectures the hypothesis thatguides them is nonetheless sound The fragility of certainconstructions does not at all prevent the firmness of theirfoundations Besides in research that some would hold tobe sacrilege science is after all only exploiting the Paulineidea of the ldquofullness of timerdquo It is uniting in a way with thethought of the Fathers of the Church so anxious to bring outthe ldquoevangelical preparationsrdquo in order to spare Christianitythe appearance of a ldquosudden improvisationrdquo ldquoNihil putem aDeo subitum quia nihil a Deo non dispositumrdquo5 It agreeswith the reflection of the philosopher who considering the

Christian event refuses by very reason of its unparalleledproportions to attribute an accidental character to it6

But in what touches the very basis of religion thesecontinuities are only appearance Yes in one senseChristianity is human completely human We can we mustspeak of its birth If the words it uses are necessarilyborrowed then it is unavoidable that the concepts are tooAnd how would man tell himself the truth even divinelyrevealed truth except by using concepts There is norevelation except supernatural ldquoin the pure staterdquo Howwould God give himself to man if he remained a stranger tohim And how would his Word penetrate him if it were notalso to become a human word The messages of Saint Paulor Saint John are already ldquotheologiesrdquo and the veryconsciousness of Christ is the consciousness of the Wordmade flesh But a less rudimentary psychology has shownus that the concepts themselves are in their multiplicity farfrom expressing the whole of a doctrine for they are withinthe spirit the part closest to matter With how much greaterreason if it is a question of an object that is not onlydoctrine but first of all reality By what makes it itself by itsoriginal essence which consists neither in words nor inconcepts and which the whole sum of words and concepts isnever capable of translating adequately Christianity isdivine completely divine Through the close texture ofrelationships of ideas and beliefs without break withouttear a new spiritmdashthe Spirit himselfmdashhas passed He hasstolen in with gentleness and he has burst in with powerHe has penetrated human history and all has beentransformed The face of the earth has been renewed by itThis was a new Fiat a true creation ldquoEmitte Spiritum tuumet creabuntur et renovabis faciem terraerdquo7 The Spirit ofChrist has founded a wholly new thing the religion of Christand this religion of Christ for which all human history hadprepared for which all human thought had slowly woven the

fabric suddenly rises up in the midst of men ldquosine patresine matre sine genealogiardquo Pure creation pure miracleThere we have this ldquonewrdquo idea which Jules Lachelier saidldquois born from nothing like a worldrdquo

What new ideas though that do not come from usourselves The inventions of man enrich humanitydiscovering in the soul some nuance unperceived until thenbut always leaving it to its essential finitudemdashto itsincurable decay Once past the first amazement the ironicand despairing refrain of Ecclesiastes is heard again Thecircle enlarged or shifted closes again On the contrarywith a leap the Christian Idea transports us beyond ourlimits It breaks this circle within which all our progress hadbeen condemned in advance to fit Such was the thought atits appearance breaking the circle of animaltransformations It is born in its own time it has its markedplace within the progress of life and nevertheless what itbrings is much more than progress From the time itemerges a new kingdom has begun the human kingdomSo the preaching of Jesus marks the advent of the Kingdomof God8 For how many of the sentences of the Sermon onthe Mount would we not find analogies in the Jewish Bible orin the teaching of the rabbis The One who pronounces itspeaks nonetheless as man had never spokenmdashas manwould never speak9 The Gospel inaugurates the time ofgrace It is a wholly new order that begins ldquoa new order oflove in the universerdquo10 A dike has been broken which letsthe flow of Love pass through Now it would be as vain todream of a reality more divine than Love than to imagine areality more spiritual than Thought The transcendence ofChristianity is thus not only relative to such and such anearlier achievement It is not only something originalsomething superior a provisional novelty clearing the wayfor some ulterior invention destined to go beyond it It is anabsolute transcendence ldquoOmnem novitatem attulitrdquo11

Peacuteguy has also sung it He was going to inherit a worldalready made And yet he was going to remake it entirely

Of course the order of charity is not revealed any morethan is the order of the spirit in all its fullness or in all itsdepth to that observation from outside that constitutes thework of the pure historian But if their inner essence stillescapes observation would the simple sight of their effectnot already arouse the sense of their incomparablegreatness We know the repercussions observable to thenaturalist not blinded by an overly narrow concept ofscience produced in the universe by the apparition ofthought the paradoxical properties of the ldquohumanphenomenonrdquo its extraordinary power for expansion andconcentration out of proportion with the weakmorphological originality of man presuppose a presence ofwhich the naturalist can only catch a glimpse but they sethim on the way that must normally lead him to go beyondhis science to discover in truth the human kingdom12 Therepercussions produced in humanity by the advent ofChristianity are no less prodigious the human spiritimmeasurably increased an unparalleled moral fruitfulnessa society tirelessly at work for an ideal of justice and unityand so forth These features are accessible to the historianwho knows how to step back a pace Nevertheless let usrecognize just as reflection alone properly speaking canreveal thought to itself so too only a process of a religiousorder can disclose the absolute superioritymdashwhich is to sayproperly the transcendencemdashof Christianity Like thedivinity of Christ itself the definitive newness of theChristian principle can be perceived only by the eyes offaith It is here that the advantage of the simple believerover the man of science and of life over technique shinesforth For the anthropologist who systematically denieshimself any inner reflection on the lived thought as well as

the historian of religions who does not consent to regardChristianity from within and to begin to live it at leastthrough a basic attitude of real sympathy will neverunderstand anything about the true object of their learnedstudies If their science itself does not lead them to the finalaffirmations it must at least set them on the path But ifthey wish to trust solely in it to the end surrendering theirconscience as men into the hands of their intelligence asspecialists the greater the latter will be and the more it willrisk misleading them

ldquoThe history of the formation of ideasrdquo said Amiel ldquoiswhat makes the spirit freerdquo13 Beneath the ideas that itorganizes and transforms let us know how to discern theChristian Idea This Idea has no history this is what mustmake the spirit submit to it

A great Deed was done for the world twenty centuries agothe Deed of Charity14 Right at first menrsquos habits of thoughtwere not any more overturned by it than were empires Wasan obscure variety of Jewish ldquoMessianistsrdquo worth even aglance The grain of wheat sown by Christ remained buriedin little upper rooms that counted for nothing in the historyof the world Christianity itself would wait five hundred yearsto found retrospectively the ldquoChristian erardquo and it wouldtake another five hundred years for full Christian practice tobecome widespread15 The first disciples of Jesus stilldreamed of the Kingdom of David their father they went upto the Temple as was their custom with a fervor that wasonly increased Having contemplated the Deed that hadbeen done before them they must nevertheless have hadthe feeling of an unparalleled newness The testimony of itappears everywhere in their rare writings ldquoNew teachingnew covenant new commandment new name new songnew man new life second genesis of the worldrdquo16 Such afeeling did not mislead them They were not in danger

those who had seen who had heard those who hadtouched of taking the Christian Mystery to be a more or lessspontaneous mixture of the Jewish Messianism exalted byJesus and cult forms then in vogue in the Hellenized Eastmdashany more than Christian dogma was in danger of appearingto their successors of the great patristic period as a learnedproduct of the Bible and Greek philosophy This chemistry ofimpotent historians could not have been created by themThey knew from an immediate source that they weredealing with something very different They sensed theunity of what myopic analysts think to understand bydecomposing it This is because the principle of synthesiswas in them living and active It is because living thisdogma themselves before drawing up the inventory of itadoring this mystery before translating it they penetratedits spiritual meaning

In addition their testimony is for us more than aguarantee It constitutes a call If that call is at firstnecessary for us we do not have to hold to it ldquoNowrdquo saidthe inhabitants of Sichar to the woman who had led them toChrist ldquoit is no longer because of what you have said to usthat we believe for we have heard him himself and weknow that he is truly the Savior of the worldrdquo17 For twentycenturies the witness of the first generation of believers ispreserved intact because it always remains a living witnessabyssus abyssum invocat [deep calls to deep] Why shouldwe be riveted to history The Spirit still gives witness to ourspirit18 The Kingdom of God is still in the midst of us ldquoTheGospel of Jesus Christ Son of Godrdquo which was heard for thefirst time in Galilee under Herod during the fifteenth yearof Tiberius Caesar at the time of the High Priests Annas andCaiaphas still resounds today and if the forms of itspreaching are different it is the same Voice that proclaimsit Like the creative Deed which does not cease to maintainbeing and life everywhere the Deed of Charity is pursued

over the world The second Genesis henceforth aspermanent as the first and like it infinitely fruitful TheChurch Bride of Christ continues the work of herBridegroom We have only to contemplate hermdashnot fromoutside in her sole visible organization with its humancharacteristics which are often too human perhaps with itsdefects not even in the works of its scholars alwaysunequal to their task and whose insufficiency can be sopainful19mdashespecially when they themselves do not seem tofeel itmdashbut in her inner life in her ideal in her belief in hersecret fidelity in the purity of her zeal in the marvelousfruits of holy joy that she makes ripen in the depths ofhuman hearts In all that the ldquoworldrdquo does not perceiveThen the light shines then the Truth bears witness to itselfveritas index sui No need for laborious comparisons or of anerudite return to the past The clearsightedness of a limpidlook is preferable here to all the sharp perspicacities ofcriticism This is because the miracle is endlessly producedbefore our eyes Today as formerly by virtue of Christianityldquoall things are becoming newrdquo EvenmdashSaint Augustine hadalready noted itmdashthe more time advances the moreprivileged is our situation as witness The mystical Christ inthe measure he increases better reveals his power To thesigns of it that already multiply still others will be addedwhen his message has truly reached the most distantpeoples Today we only begin to see all the fullness of theDeed that renewed the world The sudden clarity of the firstdays has become a great luminous path which grows withthe centuries

This great Deed of Love Jesus it is You Yourself Perceptible to manhumble dying in a corner of Judea oh yes You are man Flower of JesseYou are indeed the fruit of our earth Born of a woman truly formed fromher substance You are not some sort of phantom come down from theclouds of heaven You are deeply rooted in our earth20 But in You Jesus asin no other child of our race God showed himself You were not merely Hismessenger You are His living and substantial appearance Through You He

has not only spoken Or rather His language is an action His word is adeed it is You Yourself Splendor Verbum et imago Patris You Jesus onyour Cross the act uniting earth to heaven21

In You God still shows Himself and in your holy Church Inyour best disciples He still shines so well that one cannotmistake it For it is You who live in them Have we not allknown someone in whom a divine flame burned which theyhad lit at your hearth alone Their silent testimony is all themore persuasive Non eloquimur magna sed vivimus22 ldquoAsfor merdquo said Gerbet ldquoI lend an ear to the sounds that holysouls make with greater respect than to the voice ofgeniusrdquo23 What a great wise man concludes after longstudies and profound meditations in favor of your divinitythat encourages me but scarcely moves me forward Butthat a Francis of Assisi that being so obviously predestinedto make a ray of eternity shine over our earth makeshimself your absolute disciple that he loves You adoresYou annihilating himself before You that he is ambitiousonly to place his steps in your steps and to live from You byreproducing each of your features that he wants always tobe only your humble repetitor24 that not for a moment doeshe entertain the idea of engaging in a personal way oftrying another experience of adding at least something toyour message this humble and total will to imitatemdashChristototus concrucifixus et configuratusmdashin the face of yoursovereign independence such literalness in such an effusionof the Spirit such contrast in a similar holiness Themore I reflect on it the stronger the argument seems tome25

After that what do the difficulties matter in which myreason gets tangled Or rather how could it be that so loftyan object would not put it to flight If You have come tounveil a new kingdom and a new existence to me howshould I not consent to letting myself be removed from myusual surroundings Is it not normal that I have to abandon

my usual modes of thought26 Your word upsets myinstinctive logic it overturns all my arrangements of ideasit shatters my concepts This is the price for the liberation ofmy understanding Yet little by little in mystery a newequilibrium is established Under the secret action of yourSpirit faith is able to find its exact expressions whichprotect it against the ever-reborn assaults of a reason toolittle converted This was not without a long and arduouswork To define your twofold nature as for all that is worththe effort of our understanding it takes time reflectiongroping disputes materials from all sources A long andperilous journey A complicated winding history strewnwith a thousand contingencies An often tragic historymdashawonderful history27 It was through the adventurousconcepts of thinkers that Catholic Christology ended inrejoining the first intuition of faith

More than any other because it is at the center of all thedefinition in which the result of this labor is found today isimperfect An inevitable and blessed imperfection Notaccidental but essential necessary so that humbleastonishment before the mystery may subsist in theprecision of belief and in the firmness of adherence Butalready Jesus your very first disciples when they loved Youabove all and when they left all to follow You when theygave You all without thinking thereby to take anything fromGod when they contemplated You seated at the right handof the Father when they called You the one Lordproclaiming that all had been renewed by You and that allknees must bend before You your disciples believed in YouExtraordinary impossible faithmdashand yet authenticatedbeyond doubt A scandal as grave for the historian as thedogma itself for the thinker For though not beingabsolutely the same as ours the difficulties for a Saint Peteror a Saint Paul in believing were no less strong Nor werethose of their successors the Origens and the Cyrils the

Ambroses and the Augustines Modern man flatters himselfwhen he judges that the Copernican revolution or theKantian revolution dug out a new hiatus between histhought and the thought of the Ancients It was as hard tobelieve then as it is today It was hard for a JewishmonotheistmdashldquoListen Israel Your God is onerdquomdashto believe inthe divinity of a man28 It was hard to believe in thecrucifixion of the Son of God29 It was hard for a reasonableman who had been able to see up close the Son of Man inhis humiliation to believe in the resurrected Christ and inall these histories ldquothat do not allow themselves to beallegorized rdquo30

ldquoA scandal for the Greeks and folly for the Jewsrdquo OurFathers passed beyond their faith conquered all theobstacles What they were capable of we ourselves will becapable of and if we do not make ourselves unworthy ofthem the reasons that quickened them will not be lessstrong for us Their attitude will thus be ours We could nottranscend it but neither could we restrict it without denyingyour message at the same stroke Jesus For it is no morepossible to abstract You from this message than it ispossible to abstract God from Yourself On what would webase the demands of your Law if we began by failing torecognize the Demand of your Person Who wouldguarantee us the hope of the Kingdom if we were not torecognize the King of it Does everything in You not tell usthat You are Yourself the Kingdom as You are the Truth andthe Life31 So from the beginning the religion of Jesuswhich is the ideal of love was indivisibly the religion ofChrist that is the cult of incarnate Love It is folly to want todissociate them and to believe that the first would survivethe ruin of the second The religion of which Jesus is thesubject and norm is gradually achieved in us only throughthe religion of which Christ is the object Moreover it isblindness not to recognize their identity it is to tear the

seamless robe that the Gospel presents to us and it is notto see the metaphysical significance of Love

Evangelium ChristimdashEvangelium de Christo a modernscarcely more subtle form of the old antithesis betweenpractice and dogma32 But in maintaining contrary to thosewho set them in opposition that there is an essentialrelation between them we do not mean simply that onemust observe dogma as a means for assuring practice Theirties are intrinsic33 and the necessity of their agreement isonly one consequence On the one hand ldquopracticerdquo can becorrectly defined only by dogma from it alone does itreceive its meaning and spirit and on the other hand inone sense it already contains everything in itself for it issummed up in charity which is the spiritual being in act

God is Love and in a great feat of Love he came to takeup man sinner and miserable Man and God embraced eachother in Christ The unique intellectual fecundity of thisDeed it is specifically pregnant with all Christian dogmaticsso that the latter must be called strictly revealed No morein fact than one could dissociate the revealed truths fromthe very Person of the Revealer could one conceive a justand complete idea of the transcendent newness ofChristianity if one did not see that in this Person of Christsuch as the Apostles already show him to us and such asthe Church never ceases to contemplate and reproduce himthe reality of Charity and the truth of Dogma areindissolubly united Charity constituting the reality of thisDogma as this Dogma itself constitutes the truth of thisCharity34

As for the intellectual elaboration from which the dogmain its second state results which is to say in that abstractand learned formulation that multiplies it in distinctenunciations wholly guided by the Spirit of Truth as it is itnevertheless remains a human operation The materials it

employs just like those that entered into the firstspontaneous expression of faith are human materials Theycan thus serve them too in the real (though alwaysinadequate) transmission of divine truth only in the measureto which they are related to the Whole of Dogma35 In themeasure to which on the contrary they are consideredeach in isolation the formulas cease to bear witness to thedivinity of their origin they lose the best of their meaningceasing to have relation to divine charity such as itappeared to us in Christ For our faith is one and it is whollysummed up in You O Jesus36 You are the center and thebond of all its ldquoarticlesrdquo All its expressions all itsdevelopments are only so many means of understandingYou better and of situating ourselves better before You Thisis why the historians who instead of considering Christianityin its living unitymdashwhich one can do fully only if one lives itoneselfmdashalways scrutinize its elements only by taking themone after the other as a series of detached pieces resistany possibility of understanding it The essence escapesthem They do not find the soul at the end of their scalpelIn Christianity they find nothing divine not seeing Christ init

How true it is therefore to say that if dogma is necessaryfor the maintenance of practice the role of practice isnonetheless essential for maintaining the reality of dogmaintact We now discover the whole meaning of such anaxiom Without the truth of dogmamdashalthough there may besome good ldquounfaithfulrdquomdashone will only have an apparentpractice but on the other hand without the reality ofpracticemdashalthough there may be some bad Christiansmdashonewill no longer have anything but an apparent dogma On theone hand a charity that is less than genuine on the other asuperstitious belief or a verbal orthodoxy an ldquoorthologyrdquowithout any real content This is because if the articles offaith are numbered the Object of Faith is marvelously one If

the former are formed of abstract propositions the Latter ismarvelously Living And just as according to the oldScholastic theory all physico-chemical bodies onceassimilated by the human organism are directly informedby the soul so that there is no longer either carbon oroxygen and so forth but only human matter so with all theelements religious or profane in origin that enter into theChristian synthesis Constructed completely in one sensewith human materials the dogmatic formulas neverthelessexpress divine truth Elaborated by men they channel apart of divine revelation But this is on condition onceagain that one always relates them to that same revelationto the living Center to the divine Center from which allradiates and to which all must lead us to Jesus Christ JesusChrist the personal manifestation of Charity Jesus Christ inwhom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledgebecause in him dwells the fullness of the Divinity JesusChrist Word of the Father who speaks him and gives himentirely There is no absolute newness no revelationproperly speaking no true transcendence outside of theunique reality of his Person We must always return to thewords of Saint Irenaeus ldquoOmnem novitatem attulitsemetipsum afferensrdquo37

Jesus I believe in You I confess that You are God You are forus the whole Mystery of God38 What other definition of Godwould we seek than that given by your Apostle And was itnot in contemplating You that he found it God is Love Thissingle word contains an unfathomable mystery which Iadore But through You this mystery illumines our nightalready For Love has done a great deed and this Deed ofLove the Love made visible to our eyes perceptible tohearts of flesh effective and saving Love is You Yourself Itis God made man it is the Incarnation of God

We stammer as we can Our formulas are insufficientNecessary to shield the treasure of our faith their form

nevertheless troubles us But your true adorers O Jesushavenrsquot You Yourself said are not those who put their trustin frail words they are those who understand your feat andwho sustained by Youmdashfor that costs more than bloodmdashstrive to reproduce it

An absolute feat nothing has any value except throughcharity Charity demands all assumes all Charity judges all

An efficacious feat through this ldquodivine strengthrdquo alreadyrecognized by the Apostle Paul39 he uproots us from ouregotism he opens us takes us raises us makes us capableof adopting the contours of it in our turn He eradicates theold man and implants the new man Operatorius sermoChristi40

A finally definitive feat Whatever might be the futureprogress of our race whatever the enlargement of itsknowledge or the refinement of its ideal we will not betaken unawares The coming of Christ has marked thefullness of time No fullness no depth will ever exhaust theDeed of Calvary41

That is why peaceful about the past we also look to thefuture without fear ldquoQuid amplius reservandum cumamplius nihil sit plenitudine perfectionisrdquo42 Sure that ourfaith will never mislead us we go ahead of the excavationsof history and the research of science Ahead too of humanprogressmdashand we know too well that all progress of theworld will not obtain the least beginning of salvation Aheadof the new values to which history gives birth through itscrises Man can vary and perfect his culture without end Hecan discover and exploit new potentialities in it The veryUniverse can grow immeasurably and distant stars can oneday reveal a humanity more numerous more civilizedmdashmore miserablemdashthan our own the Deed of Christ wouldstill take it in It embraces all worlds just as it shines abovetime For all equally for each one of us and at all times for

those who believe in man and for those who despair of himits rays are those of Eternal Life

ldquoHe has come the Christ of God the Leader of thePromises And without any doubt he has been he alone tothe exclusion of all those who preceded himmdashand I have theaudacity to say he is to the exclusion of all those who followhimmdashthe one awaited by the Nationsrdquo43

the Roman liturgy of today (Lectio brevis of ThursdayCompline) Yet it seems to have embarrassed a number ofmodern commentators who take pains in various ways asif it were an obligation for them to take all significanceaway from it

For some it is only a formula that was currentcommonplace at that time and there would be no point inseeking a precise meaning for it or in taking it intoconsideration in the exposition of Pauline doctrine Such isthe case with Ferdinand Prat Martin Dibelius and GeorgeFindlay Others make the observation that ldquoit is the onlyplace in the Letters where these three elements figure sideby siderdquo such is the position of D Buzy and Dewailly-Rigaux3 Still others tell us we would be wrong to believeldquothat this text implies a tripartite division in the Paulineanthropologyrdquo so it is with W David Stacey who takes JohnA T Robinson as support for this observation Withprudence Robinson only disputed the fact that in 1Thessalonians 523 it is a matter of three ldquovery distinctrdquoelements Paulrsquos language he observed not without someplausibility ldquois much too fluid for thatrdquo4 Stacey concludesfrom this that in the Apostlersquos phrase one need only retainthe two words ὁ λοτελεῖ ς (per omnia) and ὁ λόϰληϱον(integer) these two words alone ldquoindicate the true sensePaul emphasizes the entirety of this preservationrdquo that hewishes for his correspondents ldquoIt is the whole man who isguarded and spirit soul and body simply underline thetotality of this conception Man under each of hisaspects man in his totality is to be guardedrdquo5 Stacey doesnot wonder (and it is the only thing that interests us here)why in view of expressing this totality of man Paul insistson enumerating three elements or three ldquoaspectsrdquo or ifyou like three terms rather than two or four

The note added to the text by the Jerusalem Bibleconstitutes a happy exception Without doubt it retains by

uniting them the last two of the three considerations thatwe have just pointed out ldquoThis is the only place where atripartite division of man is mentioned in Paul whomoreover has no systematic and perfectly coherentlsquoanthropologyrsquo rdquo6 which taken literally is incontestableOnly it does not stop there it adds rather judiciouslyldquoBesides the body and the soul we see appear here thespirit which can be either the divine principle of new life inChrist or rather the highest part of man which is itselfopen to the Spiritrdquo with a reference to Romans 55 and 19where the reader will be able to find a mass of referencesPauline and other whose eclecticism does not claim to takethe place of commentary Which shows at the very least thatthe wish of the Apostle for the Thessalonians in its literalsense was taken seriously which constitutes at least ahappy if not the only exception

A more recent author J W C Wand after having saidldquoThere can be no doubt that Paul speaks from time to timeof the body soul and spirit as if from his point of viewpsychology were based on a trichotomyrdquo observesimmediately that ldquoat other times however he speaks in amore popular way of the soul and the body in the way wedo todayrdquo7 A curious reflection for more than one reasonabout which (taken in its French translation) we will makeonly two remarks Paul does not have in mind as the authorseems at least to insinuate a ldquopsychologicalrdquo trichotomyand on the other hand contrary to what we read in PratDibelius and others here we see that it is no longer thetrichotomy of the Letter to the Thessalonians but the simplesoul-body dichotomy that is declared commonplace andldquopopularrdquo

Still more recently E Schweizer went back to the idea ofa popular and consequently uninteresting trichotomy ldquoInthe famous passage from 1 Thessalonians 523 it isappropriate to understand pneuma alongside psyche and

soma as an element of man above all in the sense ofpopular anthropology The benediction formula is traditionalperhaps liturgical and does not signify anything much aboutthe notion of man in Paul The combination may be chanceas in Deuteronomy 65rdquo8

Different exegeses which may contradict each other indetail but which nearly all tend in the same direction

It is not very difficult to detect the reasons for it For someinterpreters it is above all it seems the desire not to findSaint Paul in opposition to ldquoour classical doctrinerdquo as DBuzy (170) said a doctrine that counts only two elements inman matter and spirit Is this doctrine which is guaranteedby the threefold heritage of Scholasticism Cartesianismand for France the university spiritualism instituted byVictor Cousin not imposed on every well-made mind Butfor the most part another reason seems determinative It isa kind of phobia that is quite widespread today the phobiaof ldquoPlatonismrdquo Yetmdashand this is something that might seemstrangemdashif the Pauline text makes us think of Plato it is notalways because we read him in the Letter to theThessalonians it is in more than one case because we findhim quoted by Origen Which accounts for the reflex actionof distrust Does not Scripture in fact have for Origen ldquolikethe human composite a body a soul and a spiritrdquo And isthis distinction not ldquomanifestly inspired by the trichotomy ofPlatordquo9 It is in a similar way that an excellent historian ofmonastic life Dom Adalbert de Vogue on the subject ofOrigen evoked ldquothe old Platonic trichotomy at first assumedby Saint Paulrdquo10 The Alexandrian as everyone knows inadvance is a ldquoPlatonistrdquo but Saint Paul himself cannot beone If therefore as Father Ferdinand Prat said thisOrigenian trichotomy presupposes ldquoa false psychologysince the soul and spirit of man are not distinctprinciplesrdquo11 one can very well attribute this ldquofalsepsychologyrdquo to Origen but not ldquoaccuserdquo Saint Paul of it for

the aforesaid trichotomy truly constitutes an item ofindictment Has not Saint Justin too been ldquoaccusedrdquo ofdistinguishing three elements in man12 It is thereforenecessary that the same text the same words not have atall the same meaning in the Apostle as they have in theAlexandrian even if their primary source is common or atleast that under the pen of the first of the two they be onlyan ἅ παξ common and unimportant

The phobia of ldquoPlatonismrdquo in any case can be discoveredin several of our exegetes13 Hence the veritable acrobaticsin the TOB translation [Traduction Oecumenique de la Bible]of this Pauline verse and the explanations given in the endto justify it The translation ldquoMay the God of peace himselfmake you perfect and holy and may your spirit your souland your body be kept perfectly safe in order to beblameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christrdquo Theoriginality of this translation consists in the fact that theword ὁ λόϰληϱον which in Paul preceded the tripartiteenumeration is shifted so as to follow it and in additiontransformed into an adverb so that the two words thatcome next αμέμπτως τηϱηθείη (in the singular sincethe subject was ὁ λόϰληϱον ὑ μῶν) become (in the plural)ldquobe kept perfectly safe in order to be blamelessrdquo To tell thetruth that does not change much and cannot changemuch in the obvious meaning of the text The latter couldbe changed only by the obviously impossible suppressionof one of the three terms of the enumeration But this littleingenuity on the part of the translators allows them tointroduce in a note a contorted exegesis with an intendedgoal about which they make no secret

Some understand ldquoMay your entire being that is spirit soul and body rdquo This division of the human person into three elements would be that ofGreek philosophy It is not usual in Paul and this verse understood in thissense would be a completely isolated text in the New Testament In orderto avoid this difficulty others have understood the first term of theenumeration ldquoYour spiritrdquo to be the equivalent of ldquoyourselfrdquo they then

translate ldquomay your whole person soul and bodyrdquo thus recovering therepresentation that Judaism and Paul had of the human person We haverendered the sentence in a way that makes a simple enumeration of termsapparent each of which can designate for Paul the entire man whether itis a matter of pneuma psychegrave or soma There is no need at all then for anexplanation borrowed from a Greek anthropology in three componentswhich moreover are never expressed with these three terms14

One could not better display a stratagem One could not bemore subtle more sophisticated more inconsistent too butat the same time more honest in the end more clear and inthe final proposition more precise

But here is another strange thing This unfortunatetrichotomy so suspect because of the ldquoPlatonistrdquo Origenthis trichotomy that some would like to be able to forbid inreading Saint Paul for fear of having to admit that theApostle at least once ldquoPlatonizesrdquo this accursedtrichotomy that some strive for want of something betterto exorcise by making it commonplace which one finds inPaul or in Origen or in anyone else has nothing Platonicabout it

We can first of all take this on the word of some goodexegetes those at least who are not hypnotized by the FirstLetter of Paul to the Thessalonians Do we not recognize forexample the mark of Hellenic influence and more preciselyof Platonic opinion on the Book of Wisdom a little beforethe Christian era in the fact that certain passages of thisbook enunciate or presuppose a bipartite division of thehuman composite a division ldquomore conformed to Greekcustoms than to Semiticrdquo15 Do they not strive with reasonmoreover to show that the recognized use of ldquoPlatonicdoctrines about the distinction of body and soulrdquo and aboutthe immortality of the latter takes nothing away from thebiblical foundation of a thought that is not that of aphilosopher but that of a wise man of Israel ldquonourished bythe Old Testamentrdquo16

If it happens that one has not read much of Plato one canalso go back to some authorities on him what one finds inhis work is totally different from what one finds in Saint PaulThere is a certain psychological trichotomy in other wordsa tripartite division of the soul reasonable irascible andconcupiscible So it is in the Republic Phaedrus andTimaeus According to Phaedrus the θυμός and theἐπιθυμητιϰόν are the two horses of the chariot led by theνοῦς Origen who is familiar with this division is verycareful not to make it his own he observes on the contrarythat it ldquois not confirmed by the authority of Holy Scripturerdquoand for this reason on two occasions he rejects it17 Thetranslators of the TOB were very close to perceiving all thatsince at the end of their laborious explanations they finallytell us that Paul had undoubtedly borrowed nothing ldquofrom athree-part Greek anthropologyrdquo given the fact that thelatter is never expressed in Pauline terms But why then thisfear which has made them shrink from the simplesttranslation

It is not correct moreover to say that the text of 1Thessalonians is an isolated text in Scripture and in Paulhimself Undoubtedly it has been unduly compared to averse from Deuteronomy ldquoYou shall love Yahweh your Godwith all your heart with all your soul and with all yourstrengthrdquo to the sole end of insinuating that only thenumber three was here and there to be retained assignifying simply a totality18 it is enough to read these twotexts to see that they are not comparable But on thecontrary when the Letter to the Hebrews celebrates theWord of God who ldquopenetrates to the division of soul andspiritrdquo (Heb 412) it is inspired without any doubt by ananthropology similar to that of Paul And one can hardlymaintain that the formula of the latter is a mere pleonasmldquofor other passages show clearly that the Apostle despiteall the elasticity or lsquofluidityrsquo of his terminology distinguishes

clearly between the phenomena that indicate the body souland spiritrdquo19 He does so in the First Letter to theCorinthians when twice he contrasts the unspiritual ornatural [psychique] man and the spiritual man20 W DavidStacey has maintained that these latter texts cannotcorrespond to that of the Letter to the Thessalonians of thetwo conceptions in conflict it would be necessary on thebasis of all evidence to choose the one later in date asexpressing the mature thought of the Apostle21 theantagonism of natural and spiritual would be substituted forthe hierarchical union of soul and spirit But here again thedesire to eliminate or at least to neutralize a text deemedembarrassing seems to us to have led Dr Stacey astray It isvery evident that the text of 1 Thessalonians is far fromhaving the same significance as that of 1 Corinthians thatdoes not prevent the thought of Saint Paul from remainingcoherent from one letter to another The soul (the psyche) isnever for its part the object in itself of a pejorativeappreciation If in another context he is severe or not veryadmiring of the man he calls ldquonaturalrdquo it is insofar as thelatter is only natural insofar as he closes himselfmdashorremains still provisionally closed22mdashto the Spirit of God whowould (or will) make of him a ldquospiritualrdquo man conferring onhim thus his ldquofullnessrdquo as the Letter to the Ephesians willexpress it (518) The natural man of 1 Corinthians 2 canhave a certain ldquohuman wisdomrdquo that is not uniquely ldquocarnalwisdomrdquo (cf 2 Cor 112) which does not lack all value butunderstands nothing ldquoof the things of the Spirit of Godrdquo forhim they are ldquofollyrdquo To this ldquowise manrdquo to this ldquocultivatedmanrdquo to this ldquoman of reason here belowrdquo the Apostlecontrasts the ldquowisdom of Godrdquo manifested in Christ23

It would be no more appropriate to bring out here thePauline opposition in a still more radical sense between theflesh and the spirit The carnal man is not the one whowould stop so to speak at a first landing that of the flesh

which is to say in such a case at things of the body but theone who has fallen into evil Body and flesh (it is reallynecessary to repeat this since people still seem to bemistaken about this at times) are in no way synonymous oreven comparable and do not belong to categories of thesame order In the thinking of Saint Paul the ldquofleshrdquo has ldquoaclose solidarity with sinrdquo it is this congenital weakness thatmakes the human soul fall into the slavery of sin Theldquospiritrdquo its antagonist is ldquothe state of freedom in which itblossoms when it has been faithful to the Spirit of God whoattracts it and comes to dwell within itrdquo There is noquestion here of any gradation but of opposition pure andsimple Saint Paul does not speak there of any dualitywhatever in the structure of the human being he does notcorrect a tripartite anthropology by another bipartite oneFor him flesh and spirit never designate two components ofhuman naturemdashlike body and soul would bemdashbut alwaysstatesmdashcontrasted statesmdash of the whole man24

If one wants therefore to find a certain Greek antecedentof philosophical significance for the Pauline trichotomy itwould not be appropriate to look for it on Platorsquos side Itwould rather be in Aristotle The Stagirite in factacknowledges in man an animated body the presence of asuperior element the spirit (νοῦς) the principle ofintellectual life immortal and divine Nevertheless theparallel takes a sharp turn for there would be at least onemajor difference While Aristotle spoke of a νοῦς Paulspeaks of a πνεῦμα Now as we know the difference is notmerely one of terminology It is no longer a question of asimple nuance of thought The substitution of one term foranother was besides not made by Paul alone it hadalready been carried out a little earlier by Philo Friendlytoward Hellenism Philo ldquowas imbued with the doctrine ofthe contemplative nousrdquo25 nevertheless in the passageswhere he comments on the creation account he does not

speak of νοῦς but of πνεῦμα God he says breathes intoman a pneuma not content with making him simply alivecomposed of soul and body he gave him part of his spiritthis is what Moses teaches by saying that he made him inhis image This pneuma in man is the principle of a higherlife the place of communication with God26 Now such isalso one of the meanings of pneuma in Saint Paul It is not inGreece that we must search for its origin but in the Bible

Father Joseph Huby has said it in a few words which morerecent authors would benefit from rereading In the Paulineverse ldquofamous because of the trichotomy spirit soul bodyof the human composite some thought to see a borrowingfrom Plato or Aristotle Both do acknowledge in fact threeprinciples in man but if the latter two of those coincide withthose27 enumerated by Saint Paul the first is different InPlato it is the nous the intellectual soul consideredmoreover by Aristotle as separable Instead of νοῦς SaintPaul puts spirit or pneuma here with him as in Philo this isa Semitic term suggested by the account in Genesis (27)where it is said that God breathed into the nostrils of theman a breath of life rdquo28 The Pleiade Bible has taken thesame explanation which seems imperative to us ldquoSpiritsoul bodyrdquo recalls Michel Leturmy in a note to histranslation ldquosuch is with the Semites the most commondivision with respect to the human compositerdquo29 In a noteto the translation of Matthew 625 the same authorexplains that the Greek ψ υχή translates the Aramaeannaumlfshacirc breath of the throat animal life (the ldquosoulrdquo) throughopposition to πνεῦμα which translates the Aramaean roucirc hacircdivine respiration breath of the nostrils (the ldquospiritrdquo) seeGenesis 2730

We do not believe it would be enough however to tracethe words of the Pauline triad simply to those of the BibleThe Apostlersquos anthropology is also based in part on hisexperience acquired from life in the Spirit of God There are

numerous commentators who in consequence consider thePauline πνεῦμα to designate in reality not something of manthat would be higher than his soul but the human soulinsofar as it is informed by grace participating as theSecond Letter of Peter (14) says in an effective way in thedivine nature united to the very essence of God by thecoming of the divine Spirit into it31 The ψ υχή in this casewould be not only ldquosensible liferdquo but also the higher realityof man as man that is although Buzy translates it in anoverly intellectualist language ldquoreason without gracerdquo32

This would be ldquothe state of the specifically living beingwhich is inherent in man as suchrdquo33 So too schematicallyBonnetain ldquoThe three terms come back to the followinggrace soul and bodyrdquo34 Father Andreacute-Jean Festugiegravere isclearly opposed to this interpretation which also proceedsin some from the fear of attributing to the Apostle ananthropology judged to be ldquoPlatonicrdquo For him theanthropology of Saint Paul is undoubtedly trichotomic thepneuma in question in the wish addressed to theThessalonians as in the texts mentioned above from theFirst Letter to the Corinthiansmdashand as in addition the Letterto the Hebrews speaks of itmdashis not the Holy Spirit butactually a part of man ldquothe movement of the phrase thetwo ϰαί the insistence on saying that we must becompletely in our whole being under the divine safeguardrdquoare the proof of it35 Besides if this pneuma is not itself thedivine life realized in man it is indeed in him the center ofthe higher life moral religious mystical it is the ldquocenter ofthe Christian liferdquo which is not a matter of feelings but offaith36

Some hesitate to choose between these two contradictoryinterpretations even if it means apparently contradictingthemselves in their explanatory formulas They are of thefeeling that the thought of Paul is profound and complexthey would like to lose nothing of it but do not see well how

to explain it in our language in a coherent fashion Such isFather Joseph Huby following the passage we have quotedldquoFor Paul the pneuma is more precisely the spirit of maninsofar as influenced informed and heightened by divinegracerdquo it is the ldquoprinciple of thinking center of moral andreligious life and summit of the soul The original (biblical)concept of the pneuma the human soul breathes from Godis magnificently deepened the pneuma designates thereason informed by grace man insofar as he becomes spiritparticipating in the nature of God through the spirit theνοῦς becomes capable of conquering the flesh it isunited to the very essence of God through the coming of thedivine Spiritrdquo37 In this essay somewhat awkward in itsattempts at reconciliation in which a fourth term (νοῦς) isintroduced we see to which side the author is leaning Wewill say as much of Max Alain Chevallier who with respectto 1 Corinthians 1414-16 after having noted for us ldquothefreely equivocal use of the word pneuma by Paulrdquo seems torestrict immediately the significance of his observation bysaying that this word ldquodesignates without describing it theinner man filled with the presence of Godrdquo38 Karl Barth inhis Dogmatics escapes such oscillations only thanks to hisgeneral doctrine which prohibits him from ldquoreifyingrdquo in away from giving a proper consistency to the human spiritconsidered in its relation to God After having justlyobserved that the ruah of the Old Testament does notcorrespond to the πνεῦμα ἅ γιον of the New39 but insofar asa ldquoanthropological notionrdquo to the πνεῦμα of the address tothe Thessalonians Barth makes haste to add ldquoOn the otherhand one cannot assert without reservation that the OldTestament and the New refer to a trichotomy of the humanbeing For both the human being in himself is body andsoul earthly form and earthly life but the body possesses asoul and its earthly form is that of a living being in themeasure in which the human being receives the spirit and

safeguards itrdquo This spirit must however be conceived ldquonotas a property of man but as a gratuitous giftrdquo which atdeath must be returned to God and which persists ldquowhichGod withdraws from him or grants to himrdquo40 What must bemaintained above all according to Barth is that man ldquois inno way lsquorelated to Godrsquo (Gunkel) he has simply beenawakened to his proper existence by the breath that Godbreathes into him and which allows him to breathe himselfWhat is he and what does he possess that he has notreceived and that does not differentiate him from God sinceit is God who has created himrdquo41

The human pneuma of which Paul speaks would thus beboth an element so little constitutive of his being that Godcan take it back from him and a created element thatdifferentiates him from God Such is the Barthian paradoxWithout having to take him literally perhaps we would haveto unite ourselves with the ldquospiritrdquo of it Would it in fact benecessary to choose between two contradictoryinterpretations that confront each other or resign ourselvesto a [false] harmonization that itself does not avoidcontradiction An expression used by Saint Paul himself 1Corinthians 211 could suggest an intermediate solution tous ldquoWho therefore among men knows the secrets of a manif not the spirit of the man which is in him (τὸ πνεῦμα τοῦἀνθϱώ που τὸ ἐν αὐτῷ)rdquo This pneuma is certainly not theHoly Spirit since Paul adds ldquoSimilarly no one knows thesecrets of God except the Spirit of Godrdquo Yet it does notappear completely like a constituent part of man as suchlike the body or the soul after having said ldquothe spirit of themanrdquo Paul corrects himself in a way to say ldquothe spirit whois in himrdquo which marks a nuance of capital importanceThus what par excellence makes a man what constitutesman in his worth among the beings of this world muchmore what makes him a being superior to the world wouldbe an element that rather than being ldquoof manrdquo would be

ldquoin manrdquo There is it seems to us in this Pauline πνεῦμα thesame kind of ambiguity notional because real as in thedivine ldquoimagerdquo or divine ldquobreathrdquo of creation such asChristian tradition interprets them From one author toanother and sometimes in the same author the sameambiguity will give place to oscillations which will not gohowever to the point of compromising before a ratherrecent date the idea of a tripartite anthropology Weconclude with a recent interpreter that the Pauline conceptof πνεῦμα is a concept ldquoof which our modern anthropologiescan absolutely not take accountrdquo42

2 Patristic Tradition

I The First Two Centuries Irenaeus It is a fact that Christianantiquity did not judge insignificant the Pauline verse about

body soul and spirit Nevertheless from one author toanother the interpretations differ without always being in

contradictory opposition to each otherIn his letter to the Philadelphians Saint Ignatius of Antioch

simply makes the Apostlersquos enumeration his own in judgingthat his correspondents like the Ephesians and theSmyrnians ldquowill be honored by the Lord Jesus Christ inwhom they hope with flesh soul and spirit (σαϱϰί ψ υχῇ πνεύματι) in faith charity and concordrdquo1 Athenagoras alsodistinguishes between soul and spirit for him the soul isplaced between ldquothe spirit of matterrdquo which is to say ldquotheflesh and bloodrdquo and the ldquoheavenly spiritrdquo which is ldquopurespiritrdquo and it can according to its choice mix with one orbecome the other

The soul becomes passive when it receives the spirit of matter and ismixed with it by looking below toward earthly things and to speak in ageneral way when it becomes only flesh and blood and ceases to be apure spirit2We believe that we will live another life heavenly and no longer earthlyif at least close to God and with God we have steadfast souls masteringpassion and if we remain not like bodies but like a heavenly spirit 3

In Tatian also the distinction seems clear when he saysldquoWe have knowledge of two sorts of spirits one of them iscalled soul the other is greater than the soul it is the imageand resemblance of Godrdquo4 Only subsequently it isimpossible to discern clearly if the spirit he distinguishesthus from the soul and which he calls ldquodivinerdquo is not simplythe Spirit of God The soul he explains is not immortal in

and of itself so ldquoif it remains by itself it dies with the flesh But when it is united to the divine spirit (θεῖ ον) it doesnot lack for help and it rises to where the spirit leads it Forthe seat of the latter is above while its origin is below Nowin the beginning the spirit was the guide of the soul itabandoned it when it did not want to follow it Now theSpirit of God does not reside in all but in some who livejustly The souls who have obeyed wisdom have drawnthe Spirit who is closely related5 to them (συγγενές) rdquo

Saint Irenaeus then Origen should make us pause a littlelonger because of the abundance of texts their importanceand their difficulty6

It is in the fifth book of Adversus Haereses that Irenaeusgives us his views about anthropology But his goal was notto write a clear and didactic exposition for the use of thehistorians who would pore over his text later on it was torefute heretics who conceived of salvation for man only inldquorejection of the fleshrdquo7 On the other hand careful alwaysto stick very close to Scripture he lets himself be guidedsuccessively by the different texts he uses which leads himto change more or less his perspective and his terminologyin the course of his text8 Hence the difficulties forinterpreters

The first passage in which the distinction between the souland the spirit is affirmed is of little interest to us for it isthere a question of an exposition of heretical doctrine9 Inresponse chapter 6 no 1 is presented as an orthodoxcommentary on the Pauline texts

Through the hands of the Father which is to say by the Son and the Spiritit is man and not a part of man who becomes the image and theresemblance of God Now the soul and the spirit can be a part of man butin no way man the perfect man is a mixture and union of the soul who hasreceived the Spirit of the Father and who has been mixed with the fleshmodeled according to the image of God Under the name of ldquoperfectrdquo the Apostle designates those who havereceived the Spirit of God He also calls them ldquospiritualrdquo they arespiritual through a participation of the Spirit but not through a voiding and

a suppression of the flesh In fact if one dismisses the substance of theflesh that is of the modeled work in order to consider only what isproperly spirit such a thing is no longer the spiritual man but the Spirit ofthe man or the Spirit of God By contrast when this Spirit in mixing withthe soul is united to the modeled work thanks to this effusion of the Spiritthe spiritual and perfect man is achieved and it is he himself who has beenmade in the image and resemblance of God When on the contrary theSpirit is absent in the soul such a man remaining in all truth natural andcarnal will be imperfect possessing indeed the image of God in themodeled work but not having received the resemblance by means of theSpirit10

From all the evidence Irenaeus counts here three elementsin man But is it simply a matter of man or of the perfectman Or rather to speak without ambiguity is it simply aquestion of the ldquoperfectrdquo man which is to say complete inhis nature or man divinized through the participation of theSpirit of God Or indeed does Irenaeus mix the two thingsThe text that follows will perhaps enlighten us

Modeled flesh alone is not the perfect man it is only the body of man thusone part of man Neither is the soul alone man it is only the soul of manthus one part of man Nor is the Spirit man one gives it the name of Spiritnot that of man It is the mixture and union of all these things thatconstitute the perfect man And this is why the Apostle in explaininghimself has clearly defined the perfect and spiritual man beneficiary ofsalvation when he says in this First Letter to the Thessalonians ldquoMay theGod of peace make you perfect and holy so that you may be fullycomplete and so that your whole beingmdashto wit your Spirit your soul andyour bodymdashmay be preserved without reproach for the coming of the LordJesusrdquoWhat motive did he have in asking that these three things to wit the soulthe body and the Spirit be preserved whole for the coming of the Lord if hehad not known that all three were to be restored and reunited and thatthere is for them but one and the same salvation This is why he calls ldquofullycompleterdquo those who present these three things without reproach to theLord Thus those are perfect who all at once possess the Spirit of Godremaining always with them and maintain themselves without reproachwith respect to their souls and their bodies which is to say preserving faithtoward God and keeping justice toward their neighbor11

The hesitation remains On the one hand the Spiritconstitutes with the soul one part of man it is called theldquoSpirit of the manrdquo and seems to be distinguished from the

ldquoSpirit of Godrdquo it in itself does not constitute the man anymore than the body or the soul does but it is one of thethree elements that constitute him these three elementsare also enumerated according to Saint Paul who wishesthem all three to be without reproachmdasha wish that wouldbe irrelevant even impertinent in the case of the Spirit ofGod finally moreover Irenaeus himself considers that theyare all three to be ldquorestoredrdquo and to be presented to theLord But on the other hand the soul receives ldquothe Spirit ofthe Fatherrdquo the man is called ldquospiritualrdquo insofar as hereceives participation of the Spirit and this participationmakes him to be not only in the image but in theresemblance of God finally if this man is ldquoperfectrdquo it isbecause in addition to the soul and the body he ldquopossessesthe Spirit of Godrdquo12 And these two series of affirmations arenot found in different contexts they are closelyintermingled

Yet a little farther on several passages come to supportthe second series

Those who possess the deposit of the Spirit and who surrenderthemselves to the Spirit the Apostle rightly calls ldquospiritualrdquo since theSpirit of God dwells in them For spirits without bodies will never bespiritual men but it is our substancemdashthat is the composite of soul andfleshmdashthat in receiving the Spirit of God constitutes the spiritual man 13 The weakness of the flesh makes the power of the Spirit shine forth and it is of these two things that the living man is made living due to theparticipation of the Spirit man through the substance of the flesh mdashTherefore without the Spirit of God the flesh is dead 14The breath of life which makes the natural man is one thing and thevivifying Spirit which renders him spiritual is another The breath has beengiven indistinctly to all the people who inhabit the earth while the Spirithas been given exclusively to those who trample down earthly covetousdesires 15ldquoFor the Spirit will come out around me and it is I who made all breathrdquo (Is5716) He ranks in a way the Spirit in a sphere apart beside God who inthe last days spread it over mankind for adoption but he situates thebreath in the common sphere among creatures and he declares itsomething created Now what has been created is different from the onewho creates it The breath is thus a temporary thing while the Spirit is

eternal After having enveloped man from within and without heremains always with him and henceforth will never abandon him16

One will note however that in these texts the perspectiveis no longer that of an anthropological analysis and thatthey are condemned by other biblical passages than thepreceding Moreover as Irenaeusrsquo principal objective justnow was to claim for the body itself a salvation of which theheretics say it is incapable his objective here is to show thatthis salvation the definitive blossoming of the spiritual lifewhose seed is in each man is the work of the Spirit of Godin each man In no passage is Irenaeus concerned to give uswhat we would call a philosophical anthropology He doesnot go deeply intomdashto tell the truth he does not even havein mindmdashthe problem of the insertion of the Spirit of God inman Despite the several expressions we have brought outand several others as well we believe that the Spirit ofwhich he speaks is always the Spirit of God even when heconsiders it in man If for example it is said in 5 6 1 thatthe soul and the Spirit can be ldquoone part of manrdquo one canobserve with Dom Adelin Rousseau that ldquoparsrdquo is in thesingular ldquoThus although Irenaeus does not hesitate to seein the Spirit of God one of the three constitutive elements ofthe perfect man he refuses and for good reason to makethis Spirit a lsquopartrsquo of the perfect man rdquo A little farther onit is said that the Spirit like the soul and the body is to berestored and saved which seems strange if it is indeed aquestion of the Spirit of God but Dom Rousseau againcomments ldquowhat is to be saved is not the Spirit as such butthe Holy Spirit insofar as communicated to man for his fullachievement in other words the Spirit is less saved than itsaves rdquo These explanations are ingenious they canseem a little subtle they do not however in our opinionfalsify the general line of Irenaean thought Perhaps it isonly necessary to complete them by recognizing that thetexts that are to be thus explained give witness to a rather

clear tendency to conceive of man (even if it is a question ofthe ldquoperfect manrdquo) according to the anthropological schemesuggested by the Apostle17

If therefore the Spirit indeed designates for Irenaeus theSpirit of God his very manner of considering this Spirit ofGod in man and of seeing in it thus one of the threeelements that combine to constitute the perfect man posesan anthropological problem18 Just like the text of the FirstLetter to the Corinthians of which Irenaeus wants to give anaccount it invites a resolution of this problem in thedirection of a certain ldquotrichotomyrdquomdashwhich Origen more of aphilosopher will soon do ldquoThe hereticsrdquo we read again inthe fifth book of Adversus Haereses ldquo do not understandthat three things as we have shown constitute the perfectman the flesh the soul and the Spirit One of them savesand forms to wit the Spirit another is saved and formed towit the flesh another finally is between those two to witthe soul which now follows the Spirit and takes its flightthanks to him now lets itself be persuaded by the flesh andfalls into earthly desiresrdquo19

These explanations seem to us akin to those of FatherJean Meyen-dorff with respect to man ldquocomposed of fleshsoul and Holy Spiritrdquo ldquoThis viewrdquo he observes ldquowhichsounds strangely pantheistic if one judges it according tolater theological categories shows in fact a dynamicconcept of man that excludes the notion of lsquopure naturersquoMan is created so as to share the existence of God this iswhat distinguishes him from the animal and is expressed inthe biblical account of the creation of Adam lsquoin the image ofGodrsquo rdquo20 As Pierre Boyer-Maurel also says21 if for Irenaeusa certain dichotomy ldquoaccounts for man fashioned in theimage of Godrdquo it is nevertheless a trichotomy ldquoin which thebreath only precedes the Spiritrdquo who ldquoaccounts for thebecoming of man of that man who is created by lettinghimself be created throughout the divine Economyrdquo

II Origen Irenaeus spoke particularly of the Spirit of Godeven when that Spirit shared became by consent of thesoul the spirit of man Origen will speak more explicitly of

the spirit of man insofar as an opening to the Spirit of GodThese are two inverse perspectives much rather than two

adverse doctrines1One authority on Origen Gustave Bardy has however

written that the tripartite division ldquowhich is imposed onhim in a way by several Scripture passages plays no rolein his teachingrdquo2 Another historian of ancient Christiandoctrines Francois Bonifas had expressed a judgment inthe contrary direction but as little conformed to the realityafter having pointed out that ldquounsteadinessrdquo of the Paulineterminology ldquomakes it doubtful that the Apostle intended [in1 Thessalonians 523] to make a scientific distinctionrdquo hewent on thinking essentially of Origen ldquoYet the Fathers ofthe Church saw in the expressions of Saint Paul a rigorousdivision in which they found once again that of their oldmentor Platordquo3 Previously J Denis while not mixing Platoup in the affair had recognized in Origen the existence oftrichotomic texts but he saw in that only a foreign body inthe midst of Origenian doctrine ldquoGenerally speakingrdquo hesaid ldquothe soul and the spirit are but one for Origen and ifhe had not respected a division that came to him from SaintPaul and which appears to have been adopted generallyas much by the orthodox Fathers as by the heretic scholarshe would have suppressed one of the terms of this divisionand would thereby have been spared numerouscontradictionsrdquo4 The prejudice to which in each of thesethree last cases the historian is unconsciously giving way isnot difficult to perceive To overcome it would require an in-depth study After the work by G Verbeke on LrsquoEvolution dela doctrine du Pneuma du Stoiumlcisme agrave saint Augustin (1945)the works of Henri Crouzel and Jacques Dupuis have broughtus all desirable light on this point ldquoAt timesrdquo Father Crouzel

tells us ldquoOrigen is a dichotomist distinguishing the bodyand the soul following the Platonic custom5 But most of thetime he sees according to Scripture three elements inman spirit soul and body He has recourse to thistrichotomy when it is a matter of explaining his idea of manand he states it each time he encounters in the texts anexpression that suggests it and this is so throughout hisliterary careerrdquo6 But it is Father Jacques Dupuis who drawsthe matter into perfect clarity in his important monographon ldquoLrsquoEsprit de lrsquohommerdquo eacutetude sur Irsquoanthropologicreligieuse drsquoOrigegravene For him ldquoThere can be no doubt thatthe verse from Saint Paul is the immediate source of hisanthropological trichotomyrdquo (65) It is principally he that wewill follow here

ldquoWe often find it asserted in Scripturerdquo says Origen ldquothatman is spirit body and soul and we have ourselvesdeveloped the subject at lengthrdquo7 In that as in othersubjects it is in fact the sacred text most especially that ofSaint Paul that truly constitutes the framework for histhought8 And it is with reference to Scripture that he triesto define clearly the notion of the Pneuma For him thePneuma is first of all the Divine Life in principle but it is alsothe shared divine life the creature itself becomes pneumain the measure that it possesses this life Yet it is a first kindof participation in the divine Pneuma which does not yetallow it to be said that man has become pneuma aparticipation that without betraying Origen we can alreadycall natural because it consists in an element that is anintegral part of the nature of all men and that is preciselyhis pneuma ldquoThe Spirit of God even when it is present inus is one thing and the pneuma proper to every man thatwhich is in him is something else The Apostle clearlyaffirms that this spirit (this pneuma) is different from theSpirit of God even when the Holy Spirit is present in usover and above the spirit of man that is in himrdquo9 The

distinction could not be put more clearly Origen asks againin the same passage of the commentary on Saint MatthewldquoIs the spirit of Elias the same as the Spirit of God whodwells in Elias or indeed do we have two different thingsthererdquo And he replies ldquoThe Apostle shows clearly that theSpirit of God when he dwells in man is distinct from thespirit of the man lsquoThe Spirit itself testifies to our spirit thatwe are children of Godrsquo (Rom 816) and in another placelsquoNo man knows what is in a man if not the spirit of the manwho is in him likewise no one knows what is in God if notthe Spirit of Godrsquo (1 Cor 211)rdquo10

Origen indeed says like Paul pneuma and not nous It isbecause they did not sufficiently distinguish between thesetwo concepts that several have identified the pneuma of theanthropological trichotomy with the preexisting nous andhave made it the higher (intellectus) part of the soulmdashunless in order better to distinguish between pneuma andpsyche they reduced this latter to its sensible part Theythen spoke of Origenrsquos imprecisions his unstableterminology indeed of his inconsistency of thought and ofhis contradictions This was from not having read himclosely enough11 He distinguishes the spirit from the soul(and in this case he is not speaking of the nous) as clearlyas he does the soul from the body and he repeats atdifferent times that ldquowe are composed of a soul and aspiritrdquo this is the case it seems in the third book of Periarchocircn12 so too in the fourth book in the famoustheoretical parallel that he institutes between man andScripture13 In the Entretien avec Heacuteraclite for theinstruction of his august audience he insists ldquoThat man is acomposite being we know through Scripture The Apostle infact says lsquoMay God make you holy spirit soul and bodyrsquoand so forth This spirit is not the Holy Spirit but one part ofthe human composite (μέϱος τής τοῦ ἀνθϱώ πουσυστάσεως) as the same Apostle teaches when he says

lsquoThe Spirit gives witness to our spiritrsquo rdquo14 In thecommentary on the Letter to the Romans he will also quotein support a text from Daniel15 here he invokes as anexample what happened at the death of Christ havingwanted to save all men the Savior had taken body soul andspirit now ldquothese three elements during the Passion wereseparated at the time of the Resurrection they werereunited During the Passion they were separated How Thebody in the tomb the soul in hell the spirit he deposited itin the hands of the Father rdquo16

This spirit of man represented by the eagle in Ezekiel17 isplaced above the soul18 But never in the texts of thetrichotomic series does Origen call it νοῦςmdashso that thiscould be a criterion for discerning the origin of certainpassages given as Origenian but which are in reality fromEvagrius19

But how are we to understand this spirit which is ldquoin usrdquo20 What is its role If we follow again the indications givenby the Apostle we will compare it to the moral conscienceldquoOur gloryrdquo says Paul ldquois the testimony of our consciencerdquo(2 Cor 112) The conscience always rejoices in what good Ido on the other hand it can never be accused of doing evilbut on the contrary it remonstrates it accuses the soul towhich it is bound this is a sovereign freedom I thereforethink that it is this very spirit that the Apostle tells us is withthe soul being associated with it like a pedagogue and aguide to teach it good to chastise it and to reprimand itwhen it sins It is this spirit of which the Apostle again saysthat ldquono one knows what the man is if not the spirit of theman who is in himrdquo it is the spirit of the conscience alsoaccording to what Paul says ldquoThe spirit himself giveswitness to our spiritrdquo21

We should not however in exalting the pneumaexcessively reduce its reality if it is not a simple member ofthe human composite neither is it the simple voice of the

conscience Inaccessible to evil22 placed in a way as wehave said ldquoabove the soulrdquo (ἀνωτέϱω) as a ldquoguide tovirtuerdquo23 it is ldquomuch more divine than the soul and thebodyrdquo24 ldquobelonging truly to man it remains entirely in aparticipation of the Holy Spirit who gives himself to us it isthe point of contact between man and the divine Pneumawho inhabits himrdquo25 This is why it is always holy it is holyby essence not of course the ldquoHoly Spiritrdquo but throughparticipation a ldquoholy spiritrdquo26 ldquothe seal of the Holy Spiritmakes holy the spirit that is in usrdquo27 in each of us Hencethe paradox the pneuma in man is holy and it mustbecome so we must affirm at the same time the holiness ofthis pneuma and ldquothe fortuitous character of a holy liferdquo28 Ifwe seek to bring out the fundamental idea expressed (let usnot say sought for Origen seems very much the master ofhis thought) in these texts and other similar ones we couldwithout betraying it express it thus the pneuma that is ldquoinmanrdquo in every man assures a certain hiddentranscendence of the man over himself a certain opening acertain received continuity between man and God Not thatthere is the least identity of essence between the one andthe other (like Irenaeus like Clement Origen is animplacable adversary of this pantheism of the pseudo-Gnostics) but it is at the heart of man the privileged placealways intact of their encounter

Would man therefore be after all impeccable No But thecenter of moral freedom and choice is not the pneuma Thatis why we can say that for Origen the pneuma ldquodivine giftrdquois not properly speaking part of the personality29 Thecenter of choice is the soul in its higher part (νοῦς) Thelatter can be inclined as Saint Paul says on the side of thespirit or on the side of the ldquofleshrdquo (which does not mean thebody) which is to say that it is ldquocapable of virtue and ofvicerdquo30 When it is said that the flesh desires against thespirit and the spirit against the flesh without any doubt the

soul is posed between the two as being able to acquiesceto the desires of the spirit (si eum sequi velit)31 or let itselfbe led to carnal desires in this latter case it becomes withthe flesh a single body of covetousness and of carnalappetite in the former case on the contrary beingassociated with the spirit it becomes a single spirit withitrdquo32 The spiritual man is the one in whom the spiritprevails33 the carnal man he in whom the flesh prevailsThe spirit itself the pneuma always remains holy but ineach one it can have vitality or torpor flight or fall flame orsluggishness34 This is why paradoxically Origen can affirmboth as we have said that the pneuma is holy and that itmust become so35

Still following Paul Origen also speaks of the ldquonaturalmanrdquo who is again neither carnal nor spiritual and theexplanation he gives in his respect manifests once again aparadoxical character distinguished only with difficulty fromthat spirit (pneuma) that is in man without being uniquely ofman and that becomes fully himself and fully completesman only in his participation in the Spirit of God ldquoThenatural man does not understand what the law of God is itis madness to him but the spiritual judges all thingsrdquo (1 Cor214) We think that there is a reason why Paul omits theword ldquomanrdquo after ldquospiritualrdquo For ldquothe spiritualrdquo is more thana man he is superior to that humanity defined by the soulthe body or by the two together and not by the spirit whichis more divine than these two elements and whosesupernatural participation once achieved defines thespiritual When the soul rises follows the spirit andseparates itself from the body when it no longer evencontents itself with following the spirit but remains in it (asthis passage shows ldquoToward you have I raised my soulrdquo Ps251) how would it not lose so to speak its own nature andnot itself become spirit36

Toward the end of this text a trace of the speculations ofPeri archocircn on the subject of the soul will be noted buttoned down by ldquoso to speakrdquo It is necessary toacknowledge however that from one work to the otheracross the succession of dates and the varieties of subjectstreated and literary genres the points of view are so diversethat in the words if not in the thought the reader has somedifficulty finding a perfect coherence among all theOrigenian texts on the pneuma

At death all pneuma returns to God this is whatEcclesiastes says ldquoThus the pneuma of the just and that ofthe sinner have an identical destiny both end at theFatherrdquo37 But ldquoit does not follow that saint and sinner sharethe same destiny With the saint the whole man enters intoGod with the sinner the pneuma returns to the Lord thesoul and body perish in Gehenna hence the intrinsic tearingof the human beingrdquo38 Like the remark by Father CrouzelOrigen is akin here to the thought of Saint Irenaeus whosaid ldquoAll those who are destined to life will be raised up withtheir bodies their souls and their spirits those who havemerited punishment will surrender their souls and theirbodies to it for with them they have strayed from divinegracerdquo39

Later Christian tradition will not be as unfaithful to thisconception of the pneuma as one might believe It is foundagain in a series of intuitions ideas and opinions of variedexpression This is for example the idea dear toRuysbroek of a certain ldquodeiformityrdquo of the human being ofhis higher ldquosuperessentialrdquo life in God40 It is the obscurefeeling that there exists in each of us even the greatestsinner a hidden room where no one but God can enter inldquothat sacred point in us that says Pater no iterrdquo as PaulClaudel says magnificently in the famous ldquoCantique dePalmyrerdquo and that cannot hide from love41 It is the intuitionof a Georges Bernanos at the threshold of death noting in

his diary that ldquosin makes us live on the surface of ourselvesrdquoand that even when we offend God ldquowe never ceaseentirely to desire what He desires in the depths of thesanctuary of our soulrdquo42 There are similar traits in the workof Dostoyevsky although they too can be rather equivocal(a novelist does not express himself like a theologian) theydo not prevent him from glorifying personal freedom andproclaiming the necessity of uprooting evil in receiving ldquonewbirthrdquo The Origenian doctrine of the pneuma alsoreverberates throughout the Bonaventurian tradition In atotally different climate and without any need to search fora precise influence from one to the other the very doctrineof Saint Thomas Aquinas would not be completely foreign tohim It questions neither the singularity of each humanbeing nor the drama of existence nor the divinetranscendence43

NOTE

In his commentary on John 423-24 Origen defines ldquotrueadorersrdquo first by the spirit then in relation to the truth Hethus breaks down the dual Johannine formula and explains itterm by term drawing his inspiration again from Paul whoopposes spirit and flesh (Rom 89 Gal 56 2 Cor 103) It isinteresting to note that in evoking Romans 89 Origen addsa μήϰετι those who are no longer in the flesh but in theldquospiritrdquo He thereby stresses the impact of the coming ofChrist and of the gift of the Spiritmdashalready evoked by Paulmdashwhich divide history into a before and an after Origen doesnot work therefore only on words (flesh and spirit) but heis inspired by the Pauline thought in which these terms arenot only anthropological but in which they evoke the impactthat the history of salvation the Incarnation and the gift ofthe Spirit have on man It is the same with Galatians 516fIn verse 18 Paul in fact opposes the condition of man underthe Spirit to that of this same man under the Law As for thethird evocation it is a little different Paul speaks there of hisconduct because some accuse him of acting according tothe flesh that is of allowing himself to be guided bymotives that are too human (Jean-Michel Poffet OP ldquoLeMeacutethode exeacutegeacutetique drsquoHeacuteracleacuteon et drsquoOrigegravenecommentateurs de Jean 4rdquo Jeacutesus la Samaritaine et lesSamaritains [Fribourg Switzerland Eacuteditions Universitaires1985] 191) III From Origen to Augustine A few examplesshould be enough to show the continuity of this tripartiteanthropology across the patristic age

Cyril of Jerusalem addresses to the newly baptized thesame wish that Paul did to the Thessalonians1 Gregory ofNyssa in his treatise on the Creation of Man practices acertain eclecticism Following the perspective that isnaturally his own since he compares the nature of man to

that of the beings that surround him and particularly ofother living beings he begins by distinguishing a threefoldactivity merely vital (that of plants) sentient (that ofbeasts) rational these are like three souls or threesubstances all three of which are found in man alone Thevocabulary is that of the philosophical ϰοινή of that periodthe higher life of man is λογιϰή it is directed by the νοῦςhis nature is a νοεϱά ϕύσις But this can also be understoodsays Gregory according to the words that the Apostleaddressed to the Ephesians (sic) First of all through a boldconcordism he places the body in an equivalence with thenutritive life the soul with the sensate life the spirit(πνεῦμα) with the intellectual life (νοεϱόν) then withoutfurther hesitation and without seeming to perceive that heis changing the perspective he finds once again the truePauline thought or at least comes close to it bydistinguishing life according to the flesh (σαϱϰιϰή) from lifeaccording to the spirit (πνευματιϰή) and by showing thesoul in an intermediary situation having to choose betweenvice and virtue2 Farther on he will explain that only thesoul endowed with reason such as it is in man fully meritsthis name of soul in such a way that he would haverejected it seems any attempt at concordism between theνοῦς and the πνεῦμα3

It is not Hellenism but indeed the Bible that inspires thetrichotomy of the Syrian tradition such as we see it in thishymn of Saint Ephraim of Nisibis For the soul is still moreprecious than the bodyAnd the spirit is still more precious than the soul

And the Divinitymore hidden than the spiritThe body will be clothed with the beauty of the soul when

the end arrives

The soul will put onthe beauty of the spiritThe spirit will put on in its very image the (divine) MajestyThe body on equal footing with the soul will see itself

elevated The soul on equal footing with the spiritThe spirit at the height where the Majesty is 4

In another later Syrian text the awkwardness of an attemptat harmonization between the three elements of man andthe three Persons of the divine Trinity will be noted JacquesdrsquoEacutedesse (d 708) writes in his Explanation of the MassldquoSacred things are holy The soul the body and the reasonare sanctified by three sacred things by water blood andspirit and besides by the Father the Son and the Spirit andtruly man does resemble God in virtue of this trinity ofcomposition the soul corresponds to the Father the body tothe corporeality of the Son and the reason to the HolySpirit Thereby man thus resembles Godrdquo5 One cannevertheless wonder if the word translated by ldquoreasonrdquo isnot here the equivalent of nous rather than of pneuma andif the soul is not merely the sensate soul The same doubtcan be expressed with respect to a passage from theTestament in Galilee of Our Lord Jesus Christ of which wehave the text in Ethiopian ldquoShould the body be judged withthe soul and the spirit Will the body of every man berevived with his living soul and his spiritrdquo6 We will find asimilar hesitation in examining the Latin tradition andperhaps one must say in certain cases at least it cannot beresolved

Saint Ambrose writes on the one hand ldquoHomo ex animarationali constat et corporerdquo7 but also on the other handldquoPrimum unusquisque homo est corporalis secundoanimalis tertio spiritualisrdquo and the parallel he institutesbetween these three elements and the three heavens towhich Saint Paul alludes in the Second Letter to the

Corinthians does not enlighten us much about the meaningof this trichotomy8 Ambrose is not alone in any case inacknowledging it We read in Gregory of Elvira ldquoManifestumest enim tribus perfectum constare semimortalemhominem id est corpore et anima et spiriturdquo9 AndAugustine expresses himself in a similar way on severaloccasions10

In reality Augustinersquos vocabulary is rather evasive Theterm mens as we know holds a privileged place in his workIn De Trinitate he develops a distinction destinedsubsequently to become more rigid that between ratioinferior and ratio superior In commenting on Psalm 3 verse4 ldquoet exaltans caput meumrdquo he explains that this ldquocaputanimaerdquo is the ldquospiritusrdquo or the ldquomensrdquo and so on11

Certain texts which have the appearance of explicitdefinitions speak of two single elements as constitutive ofman ldquoHomo enim constat ex corpore et spiriturdquo12 ldquoNihil estin homine quod ad ejus substantiam pertineat atquenaturam praeter corpus et animam totus homo hoc estspiritus et carordquo13 Yet Augustine does not consider the twowords anima and spiritus to be simply synonyms althoughfor brevityrsquos sake he includes in only one of the two thecomplex meaning of both ldquoNomen animae spiritus est abeo quod spiritalis est animae nomen est ab eo quodcorpus animet hoc est vivificetrdquo14 From which we have acertain number of explicitly trichotomic texts which are ofgreat importance for a correct understanding of Augustiniananthropology for it is on this trichotomy that Augustinebases his doctrine of the memoria15 and he gives it asessential to the Catholic Faith ldquoSi quis tenuerit catholicamfidem ut totum hominem credat a Verbo Dei essesusceptum id est corpus animam spiritum rdquo16

In the same De fide et symbolo Augustine explainshimself at somewhat greater length ldquoEt quoniam tria suntquibus homo constat spiritus anima et corpusmdashquae

rursus duo sunt quia saepe anima simul cum spiritunominatur pars enim quaedam ejusdem rationalis quacarent bestiae spiritus diciturmdashprincipale nostrum spiritusest deinde vita qua conjungimur corpori anima diciturpostremo ipsum corpus quoniam visibile est ultimumnostrum est Anima vero cum carnalia bona appetit caronominatur rdquo17 we also quote several similar texts ldquoUttotus homo sit spiritus et anima et corpus sed aliquandoduo ista simul nomine animae nuncupari rdquo18 ldquoPropterspiritum et animam et corpus rdquo19 ldquoAd creaturaeintegritatem id est spiritum et animam et corpus et illudquo intelligimus et illud quo vivimus et illud quo visibiles etcontrectabiles sumusrdquo20

In De fide et symbolo at the same time as hedistinguishes anima from spiritus Augustine identifiesspiritus and mens21 Likewise too he distinguishes theldquopars rationalisrdquo of the soul (which is thus no longer only theanimator of the body as in animals) from the ldquopars quaeexcellit id est ipsa mensrdquo22 It is practically the lastdistinction expressed in De Trinitate by the seeminglyequivalent words ratio inferior and ratio superior23

In brief the anthropological analyses of Saint Augustineare varied H I Marrou has set up a table which does notintend to be exhaustive24 and it must be noted besides thatunder the same word under the same verbal distinction ithappens that Augustine places different realities On thewhole less dependent on a literal interpretation ofScripture and more particularly of Saint Paul than Origenwished to be25 more inclined to express himself in avocabulary borrowed in part from Neoplatonism Augustineplaces under the word spiritus a reality that sometimesmore closely resembles the nous of Greek philosophythan the pneuma of the sacred text Yet through the dualityhe recognizes within this spiritus (or this ratio or this mens)he remains a faithful witness of the Christian tradition

3 From Saint Augustine to Our Day

I Medieval Spiritual Masters In Augustine as in Origen (andas in the whole patristic tradition) the notions are fluid the

historian must strive to grasp the movement of theirthought rather than to classify their concepts Augustinianexplanations moreover do not correspond point by pointwith Origenian analyses The Christian spiritual masters ofthe Middle Ages will rather often be in this regard closer to

Origen than to Augustine In order not to interpret them in asimplistic way it is necessary constantly to bring analogy

into play Perhaps even the undertaking to reunite them in akind of continuous chain extending to our time is a little

too reminiscent of concordism Let us say finally thatspiritus is not only designated or understood in variousways with some it splits so that one has to deal rather

with a quadripartite anthropology one of the causes for thisis the desire to make a place for the Platonian tradition ofthe intelligence a tradition that is amalgamated somehowor other to the Pauline tradition It is having made these

remarks that we gather together the examples that follow

For John Scotus man is composed of three elements butthe third element called in turn animus intellectus or mensresembles the νοῦς more than the πνεῦμα We read in book5 of De divisione naturae ldquoTotam humanam naturamcorpus videlicet et animam et intellectumrdquo (PL 122 910-11)But another text in book 2 chapter 5 expresses aconception closer to the biblical conception ldquoAciem mentisqua ilium [Deum] intelligimus et in qua maxime imagocreatoris condita estrdquo (PL 122 531 c)1

The traditional trichotomy dominates the structure ofBernardrsquos Brevis Commentatio on the Song of Songs (n 1)In William of Saint Thierry the third term the ldquospiritrdquo splitseither in order to grant a certain place to the nous to theintellectus to rational understanding or rather in order todetail the principal stages of the spiritual life The Letter tothe Brethren at Mont Dieu that important text distinguishesa triplex status animalismdashrationalismdashspiritualis which is tosay ldquothose beginningrdquo ldquothose on the wayrdquo and ldquotheperfectrdquo The opposition between the flesh and the spirit isnot denied William will be able to remind those who havingbegun to taste the sweetness of contemplation might betempted to neglect the permanent necessity of spiritualcombat2 But rather than this dialectical opposition theobject of the Letter is to set forth a pedagogical ladderwhich is moreover nonetheless Pauline in its inspirationThe beginners are still guided by an animalis sensus (this isthe natural man of Saint Paul which is not the carnal man)those on the way acquire a rationalis scientia (we observehere the care to integrate into the formation of the monkthe whole cycle of human knowledge) and the perfect enjoyspiritualis sapientia3 In addition these are not threeairtight categories or perfectly distinct and successivestages just as there is passage from one to the other thereis immanence from one to the other William remains faithfulto the same schema in Miroir de la foi4 as well as in hiscommentaries on the Song of Songs ldquotres status esseorantium vel orationum animalem rationalemspiritualemrdquo5 In De contemplando Deo a subdivisionintervenes between the ratio the discursive faculty andthe intellectus which does not seem to be at this point theequivalent of the spiritus (1 4)

Isaac of Stella speaks in nearly the same way in alanguage however that has more of an intellectualist ringto it in distinguishing the understanding from the reason

which abstracts the forms of the sensate vis animae quaimmediate supponitur Deo6 We have the feeling that thissecond-generation Cistercian was familiar withScholasticism

Hugh of Saint Victor is closer than Isaac to Bernard andWilliam of Saint Thierry According to him the eye of theflesh (which is to say here the body) sees the world andwhat it contains the eye of the reason sees the soul andwhat it contains but the eye of contemplation penetrates tothe innermost depths of man and above man This eye ofcontemplation belongs to those who possess the spirit ofGod7 In Achard of Saint-Victor the order of the last twoelements or of the last two stages seems reversed hetreats de discretione animae spiritus et mentis mens wasas another author of the twelfth century says quasiquoddam divinitatis insigne8 (But this is hardly a questionof vocabulary alone) Whatever might be the distinctionsand subdistinctions orientations inflections and differencesin vocabulary it can be said of all these spiritual masters ofthe Middle Ages as well as of many of those who will followthat they took up the essential chorus of the Pauline andpatristic trichotomy and that most even attribute extremeimportance to it as Sandaeus a seventeenth-centuryauthority was to remark

Magni aestimant Mystici nonnulli et putant maxime necessariam ad suamTheologiam ac perfectionem divisionem inter spiritum et animam9

This is also true of Bonaventure ldquoHabet enim anima trespotentias animalem intellectualem divinam secundumtriplicem oculum carnis rationis contemplationisrdquo10 Werecognize the schema of William of Saint Thierry and Hughof Saint Victor11 For Thomas Gallus closer in this regard toIsaac of Stella ldquoreason feels the intelligence seesrdquo12

Johannes Tauler in several of his sermons teaches thatldquoman is so to speak composed of three menrdquo and that one

must distinguish in him first of all an ldquoexternal manrdquo orldquoanimal manrdquo then a ldquoreasonable manrdquo finally a ldquohigherman wholly inner and hiddenrdquo that ldquonoble and deiformrdquoman ldquomade in the image of Godrdquo13 The mystical theologyof Harphius (Henry Herp) also says that ldquothe soul isaccording to Scripture divided into three parts rdquo14 andthe appeal to Scripture despite the appearance is justifiedFor our authors in fact the adding of a supplementary termto the Pauline enumeration does not derive from the factthat they would abandon Paul in favor of Plato but from thefact that they are concerned besides about a theory ofknowledge which Paul did not at all have in view in hisaddress to the Thessalonians Yet La Perle eacutevangeacutelique leadsus to a tripartite schema the body being understood as inPaul but at base the difference from the medieval authorswe have just enumerated is hardly perceptible

Each man seems almost to represent three men according to the body heis bestial according to the soul he is reasonable and intellectual andaccording to the spirit or the naked essence of the soul where God dwellshe is deiform 15This very noble portion of the soul some call mens insofar as itcontinually breathes after God and is as it were a largely deiform or divinething and the image of God in man It is something divine in being as itwere flooded with God and united to him It is also called the point and thesummit of the spirit because God without intermission shines in the latterlike a mirror It is also according to what the good Father Ruysbroek saysthe highest part of the soul It is also called the sparkle of the soulbecause it is in God what the sparkle is in fire In the first [unity or union] we are superessential and deiform and in thesecond spiritual and internal and in the third active and moral 16

The foregoing is the text of a compiler from which one mustnot ask too great a coherence in terminology or too great aunity in point of view If we now appeal to a theologian whowas the adversary of the mystical school represented byTauler Harphius and La Perle eacutevangeacutelique and who refers tomore reliable authors such as Augustine ldquoBernardrdquo andHugh he will give us the same essential distinctions

Tres cognoscendi modi sunt quorum unus animalis dicitur utens maximeoculo carnis alius rationalis utens plus oculo rationis tertius spiritualisutens oculo contemplationis sicut distinxerunt divini homines tres oculoset tres vivendi modos17

Louis de Blois finally in the Institution spirituelleperseveres in bringing out this ldquodepth of the soulrdquo thatunder different names always corresponds to the ldquoPaulinepneumardquo and that will not find a place in the late Scholasticanthropologies or in most modern anthropologies

God who to tell the truth is everywhere dwells in the spirit of man and inthe simple depth or inner sanctuary of the soul in a particular manner Hedwells there in his own image and never absents himself18This depth naked and stripped of any image is raised above all creatures it transcends time and place and through a kind of perpetual adhesionremains united to God in his principle It is however in us by essence forthe abyss and depth of the soul are essence The soul possesses a certain supernatural unity of spirit in which itdwells as in its own habitation and it is carried away into the divineessence even to this supreme unity in which the Father Son and Holy Spiritare in the simplicity of the divine essence itself 19

Assuredly these speculations about the divine essencemdasheven if they maintain a trinitarian affirmationmdashand aboutthe essence of man presuppose a long evolution of thoughtthat in one sense distances us greatly from Saint Paul Butacross languages theories and as one never stops sayingtoday cultural contexts that differ greatly to be sure it ispossible to discern a fundamental continuity

This continuity will not be broken by the period called theRenaissance

II Saint Thomas Aquinas in Tradition1

I

In the spiritual history of mankind the three domainsconstituted by what one can designate under the threedenominations of religion morality and mysticism are oftenpresented as independent or even opposed to each otherThe alliance or the mutual penetration between mysticismand morality does not appear achieved in and of itself anymore than that between morality and religion Yet one couldnot conclude that such an alliance or such a mutualpenetration is an artificial and wholly contingentphenomenon In opposition to an empiricism thatdisintegrates everything without explaining anything wewill say rather that it responds if not to the demands atleast to the profound wish of nature But nature itself hastaken time in finding itself

In fact we note that it has not fully found itself outside theChristian revelation The union of the three aforementionedelements religion2 morality and mysticism does not reachits fullness it does not become harmonious and indissolublein principle except in the tradition coming from the GospelThere and most specifically in the Catholic form of thistradition it does not appear as a secondary fact obtainedby convergence subsequent to various gropings but as anoriginal and essential fact Religion morality and mysticismmanifest themselves there ldquoin a reciprocal envelopmentrdquoBetween these three both an attraction and a tension existthat could be the source of many vital problems but there isobjectively neither separation exclusion nor conflict forldquothe Deity while transcending being the true and the goodcontains them formallyrdquo3

This is why in particular in the Catholic traditionmdashlivedand reflectedmdashldquoreasonablerdquo life and ldquospiritualrdquo life or lifeldquoaccording to the spiritrdquo penetrate each other without beingidentified with each other4 and morality penetrates themystical life to the end Pseudo-Gnosticism relegated therewarding of good and punishing of evil those pillars of theldquoDemiurgerdquo to the lower level of ldquoexotericrdquo faith the greattradition on the contrary maintains this moral aspect ldquoatthe heart of the revelation of the Father through the uniqueSonrdquo5 ldquoIt is notrdquo says Saint Justin for example ldquobecause ofhis [natural] affinity with God or because he is spirit like himthat man sees God it is because he is virtuous and justrdquo6 Inhis Psychologie des mystiques Joseph Marechal noted thisessential characteristic Mystical ascent he explains doesnot erase ldquoany specific trait of the common Christian liferdquo7In other words the Christian virtues proposed for thepractice of all are not simply means of freeing oneself theirexercise is not simply something transitory in theirsubstance they are already something of the end itself Thisis what Saint Ambrose was able to explain wonderfully in abrief sentence in his commentary on Saint Luke withrespect to the Beatitudes ldquoSicut enim spei nostrae octavaperfectio est ita octava summa virtutum estrdquo8 And this iswhat Saint Augustine repeated in similar terms speaking ofadhesion to God the blessed life and eternal wisdom ldquoUnaibi virtus erit et idipsum erit virtus praemiumque virtutisrdquo9

In a remarkable thesis Pierre Nemeshegyi has posed thesame problem with respect to Origen ldquoTo place Being andmoral Goodness in equation to place this moral Goodnessin God formally and as characterizing the final ground of hisBeingmdashis this not to be condemned to enclosing all spirituallife in an anti-mystical moralism The Good is atranscendental But is it formally what we understand byldquomoral Goodrdquo Or is there not a deepening of this moralGoodness which would reestablish the possibility of an

innermost mystical depthrdquo And Nemeshegyi concludes ldquoInfact in Origenrsquos conception moralism and mysticism areone and the same thingrdquo10 Saint Gregory the Great oftenso close to Origen will unite good sense to spiritual fervor inorder to remind contemplatives that if they want to befaithful to the Gospels and to advance on the true way theymust take care to scorn the humble precepts of morality andto seek to understand them in a more sublime sense11

The medieval spiritual masters will take up again thesethoughts of Origen Ambrose Augustine and GregoryExpressing ourselves in the customary categories of theirexegesis which the Middle Ages systematized we will saythat for them ldquoanagogyrdquo achieves the final perfection bothof ldquoallegoryrdquo and of ldquotropologyrdquo (of dogma and ofmorality)12 Of all authentically Catholic mysticism onecould declare what one historian said of Saint Bernard byallusion to the traditional interpretation of the ldquoBooks ofSolomonrdquo for each of them as for him ldquothe moral school ofEcclesiasticus and Proverbs the necessary preliminary forthe mystical school of the Song of Songs is a school whosedoors are never closed behind usrdquo13

This ldquospiritualrdquo equilibrium has at times seemedthreatened in one direction or another Some spiritualscholars have seemed to want to transcend purely andsimply the sphere of morality and reason This is whatcauses Evagrius not without reason to be judged severelyat times it is what Ruysbroek reproaches in the falsemystics of his time it is one of the points that the bull Inagro of John XXII criticizes in Meister Eckhart Whatever mayhave been true in each of these cases the thing thatinterests us here is the norm that inspired such criticismsWhile following Saint Paul in distinguishing the ldquosoulrdquo fromthe ldquospiritrdquo (not moreover as two substances nor even astwo ldquofacultiesrdquo) one always refuses to separate them as ifthe penetration into the higher zone of the ldquospiritrdquo must

make us reject as no longer valid the operations of theinferior zone of the ldquosoulrdquo But the hierarchical distinction ismaintained which is to say that the mystical life is not forall that reduced to the plane of simple morality A text fromSaint Teresa is very enlightening here the saint observesthat the ldquocenter of the soulrdquo or the ldquospirit of the soulrdquo is aldquodifficult thing to express and even to believerdquo

Certain interior effects give the certitude that there is in certain respectsa very real difference between the soul and the spirit Although in realitythey are but one we sometimes perceive a division between them that isso delicate that it seems the one functions in one way and the other inanother There are so many things in our innermost depths and thingsso subtle that it would be boldness on my part to undertake to explainthem We will understand all that in the other life if God deigns toadmit us to the dwelling where we will have understanding of all thesesecrets14

Yet the equilibrium can be upset in the opposite directionfrom that for which Evagrius and Meister Eckhart werereproached This has been true periodically for anti-mysticalscholars or simply anti-mystics against whom periodicallytoo protests are raised With them it is not the ldquosoulrdquo thatis forgotten or scorned in the name of the superior ldquospiritrdquoit is the ldquospiritrdquo that is ignored misunderstood in the nameof a truncated moral wisdom But with any of the greatscholars of the Catholic tradition we do not have to registerany such misunderstanding This is what we would wish todemonstrate here with respect to Saint Thomas Aquinasand more particularly with respect to the Summatheologica

II

From first appearances one might be brought to believethat Saint Thomas in the Summa is one of those scholarswho upset the equilibrium in the second direction But in

reality he did nothing of the sort His doctrine in the Summatheologica contains in fact the equivalent of what othershave expressed through the distinction of soul and spiritunderstood as the distinction of a moral region and amystical region If one does not observe this right at thebeginning it is because Saint Thomas expresses himself indifferent words

It could be written that in his doctrine ldquoall the problemsthat the spiritual life and its evolution pose return in thisconsideratio moralis which has but one object man inprogress toward his blessed destinyrdquo15 The thing isincontestable Still it might be useful to specify how Nomore in Saint Thomas than in others is the union of the twomoral and spiritual (or ldquomysticalrdquo) elements a confusion or areduction pure and simple from the mystical to the moralThe synthesis is not a unification in the exclusive favor ofone of the two Of course one could judge that the Thomistanthropology by its Aristotelian roots favors the originalityof the mystical life less than others And like the virtue ofldquoreligionrdquo the theological virtues seem at first glance mixedin a long list of ldquovirtuesrdquo within the second part of theSumma It is appropriate nevertheless to remark beforeseeing things at closer range that only a later usage givesthis second part the name ldquomoralrdquo After having in the firstpart considered God as the universal cause Saint Thomasconsiders him now as end after the divine model he clingsto his image after the departure of God from all things heenvisages the return of all things to God Nowmdashthis is theimportant point for our subjectmdashthis itinerary of returncomprises several stages

It is true that the prologue to the Secunda secundaespeaks of scientia moralis of materia moralis and that allseems right at first to be reduced to the consideratiovirtutum But let us look a little closer In this sameprologue as in the articles that follow Saint Thomas

nonetheless distinguishes from the virtutes morales notonly the virtutes theologicae but also the virtutesintellectuales which are along with prudence wisdomunderstanding and knowledge closely connected to thegifts of the Holy Spirit of the same name Moreover afterhaving exhausted the plan he had outlined for ldquoomittingnothing of moral thingsrdquo by studying successively thevirtues and the vices that are opposed to them heconsiders in a kind of extension a series of new questionsrelated first of all to ldquoprophecyrdquo to ldquorapturerdquo and othergratuitous gifts then to the ldquocontemplative liferdquo a series heattaches a little artificially one must admit to the sectionon the different states of life

This artifice has sometimes embarrassed commentatorswho do not always understand the articulations that theplan of the Summa comprises here Thus we have Father MD Chenu who has the ldquotreatise on the states of liferdquo beginat question 183 starting from where ldquothe spiritual life islinked to social functionsrdquo16 The thing seems in fact ratherlogical Yet Saint Thomas himself said in his littleintroduction to question 171 ldquoDe prophetiardquo

Postquam dictum est de singulis virtutibus et vitiis quae pertinent adomnium hominum conditiones et status nunc considerandum est de hisquae specialiter ad aliquos homines pertinent

So Father Antoine Lemonnyer had adopted a differentsolution from that of Father Chenu He saw in questions 171to 198 concerning the gratuitous gifts a kind of parenthesisand made the final treatise of the Secunda secundae beginfrom question 179 which is to say from the ldquocontemplativeliferdquo he gave a certain unity to this final treatise thanks tothis single yet twofold title ldquoHuman Life Its Forms and ItsStatesrdquo17

The divisions adopted respectively by Father Chenu andFather Lemonnyer both have their probability and both can

be supported In fact however as Father Chenu remarkedSaint Thomas treats the states of life properly onlybeginning with question 183 entitled ldquoDe officiis et statibushominum in generalirdquo But already before that questions171 to 182 form a whole very distinct from the precedingquestions in which we have the equivalent of a littletreatise on mysticism

Even if he did not treat explicitly at that time the relationsbetween active life and contemplative life18 the placeaccorded by Saint Thomas to this latter in his general planwould thus authorize us to distinguish it from the domain ofmorality He himself besides tells us so in proper termsldquoThe moral virtues are not a constitutive element of thecontemplative liferdquo19 in fact ldquothey are ordained toactionrdquo20 Now action is inferior to contemplation The latteris ldquosimpliciter meliorrdquo21 Action prepares for contemplationby winning the soul through the external exercise of thevirtues the necessary ldquopreliminary dispositionsrdquo bydisciplining the passions and by submitting them to thereason22 Contemplation is the act of the ldquohigher reasonrdquowhich is to the inferior reason following an old biblical andPhilonic symbolism revived and slightly transformed23 asthe man is to the woman24 It is ordained to ldquoperfect loverdquoand as Saint Gregory taught while the active life issynonymous with service the contemplative life issynonymous with freedom25 As Aristotle had alreadyaffirmedmdashbut we know with what freedom Saint Thomaschanged and transformed the thought of the philosophereven while he invoked him as an authority26mdashit is a lifeabove the human condition27 and is made to last always28

No more than any other of the great witnesses of theChristian tradition did Saint Thomas reduce the spiritual lifeto the exercise of morality or spiritual understanding torationality Father Pierre Rousselot too neglected today (atleast in France) demonstrated this well by placing in

evidence the distinction between intellectus and ratio afundamental distinction with numerous consequences29mdashBut neither does he separate them on the one hand as anauthentic heir of the Fathers he integrates the virtuous lifeinto eternal life by saying ldquoUniuscujusque perfectio nihilaliud est quam participatio divinae similitudinisrdquo30 And onthe other hand he knows that in the earthly conditionexternal action which is first of all the virtuous life mustitself proceed from contemplation

The comparison with the Plotinian philosophy or with theldquoagnosticsrdquo can in this regard be very enlightening becauseof the apparent proximity of the doctrines

In a parallel way one would find in Christianity [says Jean Trouillard on thissubject] a going beyond ethics by the theological virtues and the gifts ofthe Holy Spirit The Christian life consists in divinization not in ascesis Yetthe role of the will seems much more considerable in Christians than in thePlotinians not only in charity but also in faith which is itself presented as aduty Theologians do not ordinarily situate the theological virtues on theother side of the decisions of the faculties or on this side of the constitutedvalues This is what must not be forgotten when faced with the use of theNeoplatonic doctrine of virtues attempted by Christian authors inparticular by Saint Thomas (1a 2ae q 61 a 5)31

And again Maurice de GandillacPlotinus harshly criticizes the Gnostics who believe that by ldquoraisingoneself near to God on wings of a dreamrdquo (2 9 9) one escapes the humancondition According to the fragments of Heracles (Legrand 315) Mosesthe author of the Law belongs to the ldquonaturalrdquo world Superior to purematter however he ignores the spirit By proscribing by judging bypunishing he fulfills an inferior ministry and the ldquoperfectrdquo are in no waysubject to his commandments Pure at the beginning they are savedwithout exercise as without repentance and without pardon Thispresumption will be the common gospel for all the sectarians who across the Middle Ages will preach a ldquogoing beyond the ethicalrdquo32

We should not let the differences in emphasis from oneauthor to another or from one school to another hide fromus therefore the consistent thought of the Christiantradition Already in someone like Origen the union is

achieved between ldquoa resolutely contemplative religiousideal and a passionately active liferdquo33 For Saint Gregory theGreat to whom Thomas Aquinas refers the whole spirituallife is subject to a rhythm and ldquotrue perfection begins tomature only in the difficulties and obstacles of the activeliferdquo34 Medieval monasticism did not scorn Martha in thename of Mary it maintained that action must be joined tocontemplation or the ldquopracticerdquo to the ldquotheoryrdquo a little likelove of neighbor to the love of God35 The two inseparableaspects of the Christian doctrine on this subject will onceagain be expressed very well in the reflections of John HenryNewman still an Anglican preaching on ldquoevangelicalsanctity the completion of natural virtuerdquo Newman in factshows in this sermon that there is ldquoan essentialresemblance between the spiritual man and the virtuousmanrdquo following the words of Saint Paul ldquoThe fruit of theSpirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truthrdquomdashwhiledrawing the attention of his listeners to ldquothe point ofdifference between them viz that the Christian graces arefar superior in rank and dignity to the moral virtuesrdquo36

Moral perfection and holiness virtuous life and mystical lifeare distinct they are hierarchical but at the same time theyare united in charity forma virtutum vinculum perfectionis

III Renaissance and Reformation Nicholas of Cusa takes upthe Pauline trichotomy again in the same terms as the

Apostle He places it in correspondence with on the onehand a cosmic trichotomy and on the other hand what isperhaps unexpected the three Persons of the Trinity He

uses Saint Augustine as his authority for both thesecorrespondences

We read in fact in one of his Sermons ldquoIn homine suntspiritus anima et corpus sicut in mundo elementalia vitaliaet intellectualiardquo1 and in his opuscule the Beryl he

distinguishes ldquothree modes of knowledge the sensate theintellectual and the intelligentialrdquo which he sayscorrespond according to Saint Augustine to the threeldquoheavensrdquo2 That was the cosmic analogy And for thetrinitarian analogy set forth in the work De Concordantiacatholica

Unde homo secundum Augustinum Super symbolo (40 193-94) ad instarTrinitatis imaginem gerens ex spiritu et anima et corpore constitutusexsistit Spiritus autem est superior nobilior et altior intellectualispersonae Patris figuram repraesentans et corpus personam Filii et animaquasi utriusque naturam participans ab utroque procedens personamSpiritus sancti3

Taking up his position like Nicholas of Cusa from the pointof view of knowledge Marsilio Ficino distinguishes thesensus the ratio and the intellectus We recognize in thatthe heritage of the great Scholasticism In a similar mannerin the prologue of his Heptaplus Giovanni Pico dellaMirandola distinguishes the vital instinct discursive andpractical knowledge and the contemplative faculty4 Moreimportant is the twofold witness here in agreement ofErasmus and Luther

In his famous Enchiridion militis christiani Erasmus whotakes his inspiration directly from Saint Paul ldquoends finally ina tripartite anthropology which finds its completion in thegift of the Spiritrdquo5 After having in chapters 4 and 5 spokenof man such as Plato describes him first according to theTimaeus then according to the Phaedo Phaedrus and theRepublic and recalled his distinction of the soul asreasonable irascible and concupiscible Erasmus describesin chapter 6 the Pauline opposition between the flesh andthe spirit then he comes in chapter 7 to the trichotomy of1 Thessalonians which he comments on with reference toOrigen ldquoHe does not hiderdquo observes Charles Beacuteneacute ldquohispleasure in setting forth this theory lsquoLibet et Origenicamhominis sectionem breviter referrersquo rdquo He sees it based as

well on Isaiah (299) and on Daniel (386) so he adopts it inorder to make it intervene ldquoas a definitive stage after theanalyses of pagan philosophersrdquo to serve ldquoas anintroduction to the great rules of Christianityrdquo6 With Origenhe sees in the soul this ldquomedian partrdquo of the human beingwhich can swing either to the side of the flesh or to the sideof the spirit7 In the Methodus or Ratio verae theologiae asimilar text recalls our trichotomy indirectly ldquoNec omnisaffectus hominis est caro sed est qui dicitur anima et quidicitur spiritus quo nitimur ad honestardquo8 But it isparticularly in the controversy with Luther about free willthat Erasmus opposes to the exclusivism of his adversaryhypnotized by the sole dialectic of the flesh and the spiritthe divine pedagogy explained by Origen according to thePauline schema

Luther himself paradoxically had provided a commentaryin his own manner with respect to the first words of theMagnificat (1520) on the text of 1 Thessalonians and hismanner did not differ perceptibly from so many of theothers we have seen

ldquoMy soul glorifies the Lordrdquo Scripture divides man into three partswhen Paul says at the end of 1 Thessalonians ldquoMay God make youholy through and through in such a way that all your spirit and your souland your body rdquo And each of these partsmdashlike the entire man mdashisequally divided in another way concerning not nature but quality In otherwords nature has three parts spirit soul and body all three of which canbe good or bad The first part the spirit is the highest the mostprofound the most noble part of man it is what makes him capable ofgrasping imperceptible invisible and eternal things In brief it is the housewhere faith and the word of God dwell The second part the soul isexactly the same spirit according to nature but accomplishes a differentfunction It is the spirit insofar as it animates the body and acts through it Its proper role consists in grasping the things that reason can knowand probe 9

As for the third term the body its function is to ldquoactrdquo and toldquoput into practice the knowledge of the soul and the faith of

the spiritrdquo As Maurice de Gandillac observes here the bodyhas nothing to do with ldquomirerdquo And by adopting such atripartition of the human being (which is not at all to beunderstood we repeat as a division of three ldquofacultiesrdquo)Luther envisages the human subject as Saint Paul and afterhim the whole of Christian tradition have done ldquoin aperspective that is more biblical than Greekrdquo10 The relativeassimilation that he works between the soul and the spirit isthe echo of a common Scholasticism and the fruit of aninflection toward the point of view of knowledge which wasnot that of Saint Paul in his address to the Thessalonians butin no way contradicts it Of these two characteristics thepreceding centuries have already brought us many anexample11

Like his predecessors Luther thus maintains the threefoldgradation which he also develops through a traditionalimage

We will give a simile for that drawn from Scripture Moses made atabernacle with three different edifices The first edifice was calledsanctum sanctorum it was the dwelling of God and there was no lightfrom within The other sanctum contained a chandelier with sevenbranches and lights The third was called atrium the parvis it was locatedin the open air in the light of the sun This figure depicts the Christian Hisspirit is sanctum sanctorum the dwelling of God in the night (stripped oflight) of faith for he believes what he neither sees nor senses norunderstands His soul is the sanctum there are found the seven lights towit all kinds of understanding discernment science and knowledge ofcorporal and visible things His body is atrium it is manifest for all in sucha way that one can see what he does and how he lives12

It is necessary however to recognize that this trichotomydid not have for Luther an importance comparable to hisdialectical opposition between the flesh and the spirit InSaint Paul from before the commentary on the Magnificathe had been selective the lessons on the Letter to theRomans (1515-1516) were already setting up an oppositionbetween the flesh and the spirit without anthropological

reference to any subject whatever13 and later in hiscontroversy with Erasmus he was to prove all the morehostile to the anthropology drawn from 1 Thessalonians 5 byhis adversary whom the latter guided by Origen used toweaken his dialectic He writes in De servo arbitrio

I am well aware of Origenrsquos fable about the threefold affection of man offlesh soul and spirit14 the soul holding the middle between the flesh andthe spirit and able to turn either toward the one or toward the other Butthis is dreaming he says them but does not prove them at all Saint Paulcalls flesh everything that is without spirit as we have demonstrated15

Luther does not formally contradict here what he had said inthe commentary on the Magnificat What he reproaches inOrigen as in Erasmus is believing in free will But thispreoccupation leads him to falsify their anthropology andthereby to forget or to misunderstand the Pauline verse thathe had first interpreted correctly To which in his enormoussecond Hyperaspistes Erasmus will reply several times overthat the tripartition of 1 Thessalonians 5 even ifcounterparts are found in the philosophers is proper toSaint Paul The philosophers in fact do not usually call thehighest part of the human being spiritus (pneuma) butmens or ratio and what Paul understands by spiritus is notany ratio whatever but the ratio already inspired by graceThat he concludes is what Luther does not want torecognize As often happens the discussion in whichErasmus finds himself involved leads him himself to apartially inaccurate interpretation of Saint Paulrsquos text bymaking him attribute to the ldquospiritrdquo what Paul says of ldquothespiritual manrdquo Yet it remains true that he had first analyzedperfectly the address of the Apostle to the Thessaloniansand Luther had at first done the same16

Lutheran mysticism at least in the rather unorthodoxSebastien Frank (1499-1542) nonetheless recognizes thethree elements of which man is composed body soul andspirit Frank sees in the soul the personal and free being

capable of orienting himself in one direction or in the otherhe sees in the spirit the inner Word or God present at theheart of every man enlightening him through his Word andinclining his will through his Spirit17

The same traditional distinctions originating in Saint Paulare found in the humanists of the sixteenth century ofmystical tendency For a Paracelsus (1493-1541) since manis a microcosm he must unite within himself the threeconstitutive parts or elements corresponding to the threestages of the universe material world astral worldDivinity18 (an idea of Nicholas of Cusa although distorted isrecognizable in this) Cornelius Agrippa in his De occultaphilosophia tried to unite the Platonic traditions to Mosesand to Saint Paul

Plotinus itaque et Platonici omnes post Trismegistum similiter tria ponunt inhomine quae vocant supremum infimum et medium Supremum est illuddivinum quam mentem sive portionem superiorem sive intellectumillustratum vocant Moses in Genesi vocat ipsum spiraculum vitarum a Deovid vel a Spiritu ejus in nos spiratum Infimum est sensitiva anima quametiam idolum dicunt Paulus Apostolus animalem hominem nuncupatMedium est spiritus rationalis utraque connectens extrema atque ligansvid animam animalem cum mente et utriusque sapiens naturamextremorum 19

Guillaume Postel as original as ever at least in expressiondistinguishes in man the anima the animus and the mens20

It was undoubtedly following him four years later thatCharles Toutain wrote in his tragedy Agamemnon Threenatures in us which all talk with each other Excite our lifeand keep it alive The Spirit the Soul and Animus And onebeing taken away Suddenly all life together would depart21

The Anglican Lancelot Andrewes (155 5-1626) expresseshimself in a similar way in his devotions Into Thy hands OLord I commend myself my spirit soul and body 22

IV The Modern Period Saint Francis de Sales will open thisperiod for us His Traiteacute de lrsquoamour de Dieu [Treatise on theLove of God] reproduces the Pauline doctrine to perfectionAfter having explained that ldquowe have three kinds of loving

actions spiritual reasonable and sensualrdquo Francis de Salesobserves that ldquothe powers of the sensory part which are ormust be the servants of the spirit ask seek and take what

has been rejected by the reason dishonoring thepurity of the intention of their master who is the spirit andin the measure that the soul is converted to such gross andsensate unions it is diverted from the delicate intellectual

and cordial unionrdquo Thus by the same movement as we findin Saint Paul the way is sketched to the opposition of the

flesh to the spirit Like many in the Middle Ages Francis deSales following Saint Augustine also distinguishes ldquotwoportions of the soul the inferior and the superiorrdquo theinferior being that which discourses on the basis of the

experience of the senses while the superior founded ldquoonthe discernment and judgment of the spirit is commonly

called the spirit and mental part of the soulrdquo in thisldquosuperior portionrdquo he also distinguishes ldquotwo kinds of lightrdquo

a natural one and a supernatural one and so forth Thiswhole apparatus of precisions which aims at integrating aswe have already seen in others the ldquodegrees of knowingrdquo

within the spiritual movement is not without interest but itis in some ways only a flowering from the basic trichotomy1

It is this same trichotomy that we find again as might beexpected in a philosopher attentive to the spiritual lifesuch as Maine de Biran We know the place that the doctrineof the ldquothree livesrdquo holds in Biran animal life human lifeand divine life particularly in the reflections of his Journalintime2 Jules Lachelier also adopts it but perhaps bydiminishing it in his desire to work a kind of synthesisbetween Maine de Biran and Kant when he explains thethree components of existence sensibility understanding

and reason3 We detect also an indication of the very strongmystical tendencies in Joseph de Maistre in this affirmationfrom the Eacuteclaircissements sur les sacrifices ldquoThe animal hasreceived only a soul to us were given a soul and a spiritrdquo4

One might be tempted to seek a distant analogy withSaint Paul in the Kierkegaardian theory of the three spheres(rather than stages) of existence aesthetic ethicalreligious If that analogy is an illusion other thoughts ofKierkegaard are right in finding their place here ldquoIt isimpossible to treat of sin in any of the sciences thatordinarily speak of it because all are occupied with what ispsychological in our nature while sin is a determination ofthe spiritrdquo and again ldquoThe spirit intervening psychology isimpotent So good as its name indicates is occupied withthe soul It sees everything from outside the spirit itself islived only from within Seen from outside an act isalways determined and for all that the object of psychologyBut rdquo5

One might also be tempted to evoke here the Blondeliandistinction between ldquonoeticrdquo and ldquopneumaticrdquo This wouldnot be completely wrong But Blondel places these twokinds of thought in correlation rather than inviting us to risefrom one to the other He does not thereby have in mind arelation of the psyche to the pneuma but rather a divisionof the function within the spirit Despite the word ldquonoeticrdquothis is not the nous but rather the logos which would beaccording to him the partner of the pneuma6 and thedialectic of the noetic and the pneumatic is in play at everystep so to speak of the development of thought and life inthis conception the first the concrete principle ofuniversality being the factor of objectivization and unifyingforce while conversely the second the concrete principleof singularity is the diversifying element and subjectivefunction7 Both at the same level are thus essentiallycomplementary Blondel held to his distinction he often took

up the study of it He wrote in 1907 in one of his personalnotebooks ldquoThink out the discovery of the two thoughtsrdquo8

Now in 1909 he wrote again ldquoThe two thoughts Ah howthey are always in me tending to supplant each other whileit is necessary to reconcile them hierarchize them makethem differently but equally serve the divine work of finaland total reintegrationrdquo9 This word ldquohierarchizerdquo must beunderstood as demanding a reciprocal hierarchization10 Itdoes not necessarily follow however that any analogy withthe Pauline trichotomy any echo of the ldquothree livesrdquo ofBiran are absent from the Blondelian work Blondel was toopenetrated with the thought of Saint Paul and Saint Bernardhe was too closely interested in mysticism he was toofamiliar with the spiritual authors of the Christian traditionto let us believe in such an absence without a fullerexamination But the fact that his dialectic of the noetic andthe pneumatic which is fundamental in his philosophy doesnot turn explicitly into a hierarchy of the soul and spirit or ofthe discursive reason and mystical intuition (although heobviously knew of this distinction as well as that betweenthe understanding and higher intelligence)11 is not anegligible indication Blondel maintained a prudent attitudein the face of natural mysticism just as on the other handhe remained prudent in the face of facile personalisms

In the Russian theologian Sergius Bulgakov the Paulinedistinction between the soul and the spirit is placed inpowerful relief It assumes a mystical aspect that is moreemphasized than in the Apostle or at least it proceeds froma base of natural mysticism that despite the reference tothe famous discourse at Athens does not seem tocorrespond perfectly to its more complex notion of thespirit

Although it is a creature a certain eternity of creation a certain non-creation are proper to the spirit Spiritual existence is rooted in the

eternity of God the created spirit itself is similarly eternal and uncreatedCf Acts 1728

It is true that Bulgakov can also invoke the authority of theGreek Fathers Had Saint Cyril of Alexandria not written thatldquothe image of the divine nature was imprinted in man by theinfusion of the Holy Spiritrdquo12 The importance of hisanthropological theory derives in any case from the fact thatit is from this that he explains the mystery of theIncarnation

The postulate of the divine Incarnation is a certain original identitybetween the divine I and the I of man an identity that does not abrogatetheir essential distinction The human hypostatic spirit draws itsdivine and uncreated origin from the ldquobreath of Godrdquo Through hisspirit man communicates with the divine substance and he is fit to beldquodivinizedrdquo Man is god-man by predestination potentially throughhis formal structure At the same time he is flesh through anldquoanimatedrdquo body he sums up the entire world Man is made of anuncreated divine spirit hypostasized by the I of the creature and of a souland of a body created from the psycho-somatic being13

Bulgakov insists The very idea of divinity by predestinationseems too weak to him He corrects himself almostimmediately ldquoNot only is man theanthropic bypredestination but also the Logos is the eternal God-Maninsofar as the first Image of the created man This is whythe hypostasis of the Logos the heavenly Man could itselfbecome the hypostasis of created man and make of thelatter the authentic God-man by achieving its eternaltheanthropyrdquo The conclusion is nonetheless fundamentallyin keeping with the spirit of Christian faith ldquoMan is alreadythe form ready for the authentic theanthropy that he is notcapable of achieving himself but in view of which he wascreated and called The divine Incarnation is not at all acatastrophe for the human essence or some violation onthe contrary it is an accomplishmentrdquo14

This leads us far from the narrow anthropological dualismthat triumphed in modern Scholasticism as well as in the

university philosophy springing from Cartesianism ldquoSaintPaulrdquo noted R M Albaregraves15 ldquohad distinguished threeorders the carnal the intellectual and the spiritual16 TheCartesian dualism had fused together the intellectual andthe spiritual and rationalism had gradually reduced thespirit thus created to being only an intellect withouttranscendence without dynamism or immortality destinedonly to understand and to organize the worldrdquo On the otherhand for all sorts of reasons that we do not at all have toseek here but in particular because of a certain poverty inits common philosophy Christian thought did not seem ableto fill the void thus created in man It must not thereforebe surprising that the inevitable reaction was produced inpara-Christian forms ldquoIf a scholarrdquo Andreacute Preacuteaux recentlywrote17 ldquoencounters the old doctrine that man is composedof a body a soul and a spirit he has scruples aboutconsidering it for what do lsquosoulrsquo and lsquospiritrsquo mean Unfortunately in a society where science is the supremeauthority this silence is equivalent to a negation Whatdissolves the errors and complexes what protects againstneuroses and fantasies is precisely that which is silentlyand discreetly dismissedrdquo

The same year as Andreacute Preacuteaux and reacting like himGabriel Germain took support from Saint Teresa to remindus of the unrecognized depths of the life of the spirit

Above the understanding below the ordinary conscience and what fills itexists a sheet of peace and light Whoever approaches it can have nomore doubt of it Anyone who has not sought it has no right to judge itSaint Teresa expresses the same reality in very different terms Now no onehad taught her this nor had anyone prepared her for such an experienceThis agreement over the centuries and doctrines reassures me more thananything She writes in the book of the Mansions (seventh Mansionchapter 1) ldquoInterior things are seen that show in a sure way that there isbeneath a certain relationship an obvious difference between the soul andthe spirit although they are but a single thing rdquo18

Likewise again situating his own thought in relation to theldquonoosphererdquo of Teilhard de Chardin and in relation to theldquocollective unconsciousrdquo of Jung

The noosphere in the philosophy of Teilhard de Chardin appears to be likea mental view a conclusion This is because its very name evokes anintellectual activity the subtlest but whether exploratory or constructivedirected according to logical norms19 What I could call (but I will keepmyself from doing so) pneumatosphere let us say the spiritual ocean isthe object of experience By other paths to other ends it is the samereality I suppose that Jung attained and which he called the collectiveunconscious But these two terms restrict the origin and meaning of it 20

With Jung in fact we penetrate but we remain within whatis psychological The life of the spirit in the Spirit is whollydifferent A certain Calvinist dryness a phobia aboutmysticism and all ldquointeriorityrdquo conspire at times along withrationalism and contemporary positivism of all forms tobrush this life in the Spirit aside But in a quite natural waythe Lutheran Paul Tillich who was interested in ontology inthe history of religions in mysticism as well as in biblicalhistory brings the Pauline tripartition up to date again

There is no religious statement on man and his destiny without a judgmenton the relation between different elements that are combined and opposedin the life of man These elements have been variously described as beinghis body his soul and his spirit 21

The exegetes in contemporary Catholicism seem no moredisposed than most of the theologians to return the Paulineverse to a place of honor and draw its consequences It istoward the writers that we must turn to perceive an echo ofit in free expression Although this expression is truly webelieve faithful to the doctrine of the Pneuma and to itsauthentic development it is not certain that Saint Paulwould have recognized his thought at first glance ldquoI havegood news to announce to yourdquo says Paul Claudel in theldquoCantique de Palmyrerdquo ldquomdashit is another within the depths of

you who has the word I have good news to announce toyou You need only close your eyes to find your treasurein the night There are many souls but there is not oneof them with whom I am not in communion through thissacred point in us that says Pater nosterrdquo22 And GeorgesBernanos in his diary ldquoHis will is ours and when we revoltagainst it it is only at the price of an uprooting of our wholeinner being Our will has been united to his since thebeginning of the world What sweetness to think thateven while offending him we never cease completely todesire what he desires at the depths of the Sanctuary of thesoulrdquo23 A wonderful conjunction of Claudel and Bernanos

The reader will have noted in Claudelrsquos text the wordldquosoulrdquo An inversion of vocabulary is in fact produced Theldquospiritrdquo having become in the modern leveling dichotomythe immediate correlative of the body it is the ldquosoulrdquo thathas taken its place in those who have not taken part in thisleveling We are familiar again in Claudel with the parabolaof animus and anima The word ldquosoulrdquo in the same sensecompels recognition with greater strength in order to escapethe scientistic totalitarianism that reigns abusively in thename of the ldquohuman sciencesrdquo ldquoIn the measure in whichthey are scientificrdquo wrote Henri Gouhier in 1973 ldquothesciences of man can consider man only by selecting pointsof view under which it is possible to treat him objectively Itis obviously not a question for the philosopher to ignore thevarious forms of sociology psychology ethnologyneurology and so forth he must simply wonder if thesciences of man added up constitute a science of manrdquo24

And man simply as such man who cannot renounce the callhe hears in the depths of himself refuses to let himselfsuffocate He rehabilitates the word ldquosoulrdquo as the mostfitting to express what philosophers and men of science aretoo often skilled at eliminating through preterition orthrough negation The soul then becomes almost the

synonym for the pneuma of Saint Paul and Origen Thepassage from Henri Gouhier that we have just quotedfigures in a preface to LrsquoAvegravenement de lrsquoacircme by Aime[Andre] Forest a work he says that ldquofinds its timeliness inits apparent obsolescencerdquo The author of the work and thatof its preface both evoke on this subject the ldquothree livesrdquo ofMaine de Biran Andre Forest also recalls these words ofHenri Bergson ldquoBy calling a certain assurance of facileintelligibility an idea and a certain uneasiness of life thesoul an invincible current brings modern philosophy toelevate the soul above the ideardquo Modern philosophy as awhole has not followed the path on which Bergson thoughthe saw it engaged Gabriel Marcel however among otherswanted to preserve this word ldquosoulrdquo and to keep ldquothefullness of its meaningrdquo Charles du Bos in search of tracesof God in us asked ldquoWho will leave us a journal of thedilation of the soulrdquo What Andre Forest wants is to help usdiscover or to rediscover a certain ldquoinner unityrdquo a certainldquopure sourcerdquo and each of the chapters of his work tracesan avenue toward an encounter with this ldquoThe discovery ofthe soulrdquo he tells us ldquois the development of a spiritualphilosophy The soul is the advent of presence and graceraised above the world of nature and objectivityrdquo25

The same fundamental reaction the same sudden startor if you wish the same awakening five years later in amuch younger author whose nostalgia if this is what it iscannot be that for the past but that which springs from anew reflection this time against the oppression of a thoughtreduced to its politico-social components the final end ofscientistic intelligence In his essay on Job ou lrsquoexcegraves dumal Philippe Nemo insists on this same word ldquosoulrdquo in orderto recall man to himself and to his essential problem 26

Across the numerous changes in vocabulary thecomplications introduced by theoreticians eager foranalysis across too the unceasing variations in points of

view the tripartite anthropology whose expression is foundin Saint Paul has consistently furnished in the tradition ofthe Church a basis for spiritual doctrine and life

4 The Spirit

I The Place of Mysticism As we have already been able toperceive these various distinctions are far from always

being covered perfectly either from one author to another oreven as in the case of Augustine in the work of the same

author C R Doddaursquos remark on the subject of the ancientGreeks applies here ldquoOne must undoubtedly agree that the

average man of the fifth century (and this is true in allperiods) possessed a very complicated psychological

vocabularyrdquo1

The Pauline tripartition has nonetheless remained theconstant basis serving to support the spiritual doctrines ofthe Christian tradition

Commenting on Pseudo-Dionysius Saint Maximus theConfessor defined man by this threefold pair of epithetsldquoSupermundialis et spiritualismdashcircummundialis animalismdashmundialis carnalisrdquo2 The author of the celebratedPhilokalia Saint Nikodemos of the Holy Mountain (748-809)will explain that the ldquoJesus Prayerrdquo brings into operation thethree powers of the soul the intellect (nous) the discursivereason (logos) the will or spirit (theacutelē sis pneuma) in theaction of the soul alone by which uniting in itself the soulis made fit to be united to God3 But perhaps that is amatter rather of a ldquohorizontalrdquo trichotomy of threefunctions or three activities proper to the higher part of thespirit

With more than one spiritual writer of the Latin MiddleAges one should speak of four elements rather than ofthree in their analysis of manmdasheven without consideringother complications many subtle subdivisions an echo ofScholasticism dear to a certain number subdivisions

destined either to establish agreement between authors orto detail the stages of spiritual itineraries As for examplethis schema traced by Isaac of Stella in his Epistola deanima ldquoAnimae in mundo sui corporis peregrinanti quinquesunt ad sapientiam progressus sensusmdashimaginatiomdashratiomdashintellectusmdashintelligentiardquo4 Two different modes will benoted both inspired by Saint Augustine in the expression oftripartism for some it is corpus anima spiritus5 forothers corpus ratio mens Hence to accord these twomodes the quadripartite division corpusmdashanimamdashratioinferiormdashratio superior sive mens We know the groundgained in the Middle Ages by that Augustinian subdivision ofthe ratio inferior and the ratio superior6 What willcorrespond to this in Saint Thomas Aquinas will beparticularly the distinction between the ratio and theintellectus recently brought out by Pierre Rousselot7 Thiswould also be the place to mention the Franciscan doctrineof the two faces of the soul which is of Neoplatonic origincoming through the twofold channel of Augustine and theArabs8mdashbut that like moreover the Thomist distinction ofthe intellectus and the ratio is an essentially ldquoscientificrdquo(philosophical) theory having little relation to the spirituallife The explanation of the latter is founded rather on thedoctrine of the twofold ratio lower and higher whichcorresponds to action and contemplation But then a newsubdivision is introduced the ratio superior the place ofcontemplation assimilated to the intellectus becomes thehigher part or function of the mens and receives namessuch as acies mentis oculus cordis and so forth

Whatever might be the various complications and thevarieties in the names ldquoall the great Christian mystics are inagreement in considering the human soul as a complexreality presenting regions and stages All are also inagreement in admitting that among these various regionsthere is a privileged one that where God dwells in a

particular manner rdquo9 ldquoThere is a spiritual life when arelationship with God existsrdquo10 and there is a secret point inman that is the permanent place of that relationship of thatpossible encounter because it is already and always hasbeen the place of the divine presence that pneuma of Paulcommented on by Origen that ldquosacred point in us that saysPater nosterrdquo of the ldquoCantique de Palmyrerdquo11

So we see that the philosophers and theologians moreconcerned about rationality than mysticism tend to reduce(even in their historical studies) the trichotomy to adichotomymdashwhile on the contrary the spiritual masterstend to bring out the trichotomy They readily glorify thespiritus not only above the anima but above the ratiowhether theoretical or practical It is instructive to comparein this regard the Abeacutelardian writing Ysagoge in theologiamwith the commentary on the Song of Songs by William ofSaint Thierry For the first ldquoDuo haec nomina sc spiritus etanima non magnam habent in significationediscrepantiamrdquo12 The second on the contrary stronglyemphasizes the hierarchical distinction of three ordersldquoanimalrdquo ldquorationalrdquo and ldquospiritualrdquo13

To keep to the general schema that results from the textof Saint Paulmdasha schema that itself in fact includes manynuances and as we have seen many interpretationsmdashmorality will therefore be the act of the soul mysticism theact of the spirit ldquoThe bodyrdquo says Evagrius Ponticus ldquohasbread for nourishment the soul has virtue theunderstanding has spiritual prayerrdquo14 Morality whoseobject is virtue is the πϱᾶ ξις and the life of the spirit iscontemplation the θεωϱία The first is ordained to thesecond as the soul is ordained to the spirit ldquoStriverdquo saysCassian reporting the statements of Abbot Nesteros ldquotoacquire in the first place a complete possession of moraldiscipline (πϱαϰτιϰή) for without that you cannot obtaincontemplative purity (θεωϱητιϰή)rdquo15 For Gregory of Nyssa

virtue is ldquothe forecourt of the Templerdquo16 Origen had saidbefore them ldquoAccording to the doctrine of the very wiseSolomon he who wishes to acquire wisdom must begin bystudying moralityrdquo it is in fact ldquogood conductrdquo that preparesone to receive the visits of the Logos and when one issolidly exercised in it then one will be able ldquoto pass frommoral things to mystical understandingrdquo17 In his treatiseaddressed ldquoTo the Brethren at Mont Dieurdquo which remainsone of the fundamental texts of Christian spiritualityWilliam of Saint Thierry traces a similar route for those whowant to give themselves over to the perfect life and for thefinal stage his program is even one of a boldness that somecould misunderstand (it is true that it is addressed to aCarthusian monastery) ldquoIt is for othersrdquo he tells them ldquotoserve God it is for you to cling to him It is for others tobelieve in God to know that he exists to love him andrevere him it is for you to taste him to understand him toknow him to enjoy himrdquo18 The same doctrine is set forthas it had been earlier with Origen in parallel with thedoctrine of the threefold biblical sense by another writer ofthe twelfth century Godefroi drsquoAdmont

Sicut triplex est visio corporis spiritus et mentis ita triplex etiam sensusest in scripturis Sanctis litteralis spiritalis intellectualis Litteralem atquespiritalem sensus egregius ipse Doctor gentium tunc transcenderat etusque ad tertium coelum intellectualem scilicet sensum glorioseconscenderat quando toto cordis intellectu ita coelestibus est conjunctusquod utrum in corpore an extra corpus esset se nescire asseruit19

The same fundamental schema is found again in the greatrepresentatives of what one often calls with a term that canlend to confusion ldquointellectualist mysticismrdquo which is tosay with the Rheno-Flemish mystics of the fourteenth andfifteenth centuries The same schema although withdifferences in terminology and in a sometimes differentclimate of thought particularly in Meister Eckhart

Ruysbroek ldquoassigns to the spirit a threefold role First of alla vital role in which it animates the body then anintellectual role that is manifested by thought finally a roleof higher spiritual activity in which it becomes the principleof unification of the whole inner life and in which it is mixedwith the very essence of the soulrdquo20 Hence for example inthe Livre des sept clotures the definition of the seventhenclosure ldquowhich surpasses all the othersrdquo ldquosimplebeatitude beyond all holy life and practice of the virtuesrdquo21

Likewise in the Miroir du salut eacuteternel in which the higherdegree is only divided after ldquothe virtuous life which dies tosin and grows in virtuesrdquo comes the state where ldquoallownership of the will diesrdquo then the spirit is made fully freethrough its union to the Spirit of God even to the point ofthe ldquoliving liferdquo (levende leven) that blossoms which is allldquohidden in God and in the substance of our soulrdquo22

Ruysbroek takes up again here an expression long sincecurrent which he could have read in Saint Bernard (vividavita et vitalis)23 William of Saint Thierry (vita vivens)24 orThomas de Froidmont (vita vitalis)25

The same gradation is found in Tauler based on the sametraditional ldquoternary schemardquo Tauler distinguishes in manldquothree things one clings to nature in flesh and blood theother is the reason the third is an essence of the pure souland without mixturerdquo This is what he expresses again ldquointhe symbolism of the three men which correspond to thesensate life the intellectual life and the spiritual life in thesense of union with Godrdquo26 This ldquothird manrdquo this ldquoessenceof the pure soulrdquo is what Tauler often calls the gemuete aword that Father Etienne Hugueny translates as ldquodeep-seated willrdquo and Louis Cognet prefers to call ldquodeep instinctrdquoit is the ldquodepthsrdquo of being to which says Tauler the ldquodivinegroundrdquo alone corresponds abyssus abyssum invocat itimprints on our nature ldquoan eternal and deep-seatedtendency to return to its originrdquo a tendency that ldquopersists

even in the damned because it is linked to the very essenceof the soulrdquo27 Taulerrsquos preaching rests on this structure Theabnegation to which he invites his listeners is not only theliberation from sensible appetites it goes beyond simplemorality it is a profound attitude that ldquoflows from thegrowing experience of Godrdquo mystical passivity succeedingthe activity of the virtuous life ldquoinner recollectionrdquo abovethe exercise of the virtues and reason as well as that of thesenses28 ldquoIt is necessary that after having overcome thesenses the reason be freed from itself renounce itself soas to be transformed into pure and simple spiritrdquo29 Then theKingdom of God is established And Tauler repeats so as tomake himself well understood ldquoThis Kingdom is establishedin its own manner in the innermost part of the spirit assoon as man through all his exercise has absorbed theexterior man in the inner and reasonable man and as soonas the man of sense and of reasonable power are entirelyabsorbed into the more interior man in the hidden groundof the spirit where the true image of God dwells and assoon as he flees into this divine ground into which manfrom all eternity is found in his uncreated staterdquo30

The relationship of Tauler to Eckhart is obvious In one asin the other the distinction of the soul and the spirit (of thepsyche and the πνεῦμα) colored by Platonic exemplarism isaffirmed everywhere Eckhart enunciates it with reference toSaint Augustine ldquoAccording to Augustinerdquo he says ldquoourintellectual element divides itself into two parts through theone we are oriented intellectually toward an intellectualgrasp of knowledge that our cognitive faculty receives fromoutside the other to use the very words of Augustinemanifests itself at the deepest center of our spirit (lsquoabditummentisrsquo)rdquo31 It is this center that particularly interested thatfascinated Eckhart this place ldquowhere no image enters orleaves but where there is only God himselfrdquo ldquoThe soulrdquo healso said ldquohas two eyes the inner one and the other outer

one the inner eye of the soul is that by which itcontemplates being and receives it directly from Godrdquo32

What differentiates him from Origen and Augustine Bernardand William of Saint Thierry is the ldquouncreatedrdquo characterthat he attributes to this ldquoinner eyerdquo or to this ldquoabditummentisrdquo The disquieting feature of his mysticism consists inthis a feature that will be less emphasized in Tauler andeven in Henry Suso although the latter speaks also of theground of the spirit as ldquoeternalrdquo33

Follower and compiler Harphius (Henry Herp) willsymbolize the ldquothree kinds of liferdquo emanating from the threeparts of man in the three biblical figures of Leah Rachel andMary Magdalen34 and he works at length to describe themens or the apex mentis the spiritus or the interior sinusmentis which is to say still that pneuma by which the zoneof rational and moral activity is transcended

Dicitur etiam [anima] quandoque mens quae sc ipsis viribus interior est etsupereminet quia vires in mente sicut in origine sua sunt counitae ex quasc effl uunt ut radii ex solari rota et in quam refluunt Et est illud centrumin anima in quo vera Trinitatis imago relucet et tarn nobile quod nullumibi nomen proprie convenit licet in multis nominibus circumlocutivemanifestatur Haec est igitur mens vel apex mentis aut centrum ipsiusanimae ut feliciter renovetur ipsae vires quae dicuntur spiritus adinteriorem sinum mentis sunt reflectendae et mens ipsa ad intimum suumregerenda sc in Deum ibidem suaviter recubantem 35

Warning us that this higher part of man cannot beappropriately designated by any name and multiplying theformulas himself by which one must indeed try even tospeak of it Harphius invites us not to stress whatever theinterest of the other part might be the variations invocabulary from one author to another or from one period toanother which could hide from us the continuity of atradition that in essentials is very firm

Saint Catherine of Genoa offers us a similar schema veryclassically she distinguishes body soul and spirit the latterbeing designated in itself by the word mente and when it is

animated by infused love by the word spirito in this lattercase the spirito is finally identified with infused Love whichis God Since the Saint is less concerned to give us atheoretical course in anthropology even spiritual than todescribe the spiritual life itself we can understand that fromher pen mente is rare and spirito frequent36 On the otherhand following the example of many other mystics sheloves to detail the stages of ascent ldquoWhen Godrdquo she saysldquoaddresses his first call to us he gives us at first the instinctfor virtues later he urges us to perfection then throughinfused grace he leads us to the annihilation of ourselvesfinally to true transformationrdquo37 Saint Teresa and Saint Johnof the Cross likewise know that there exists a life higherthan the exercise of the virtues when they celebrateldquofreedom of spiritrdquo38 ldquoholy freedom of spiritrdquo39 and SaintTeresa observes in her Interior Castle that ldquocertain interioreffects give certitude that there is in us in certain relationsa very real difference between the soul and the spiritrdquo40 Wealso quote as an example Fenelon who in commenting onCassian finds himself at the same time summing up thewhole mystical tradition ldquoAlthough we judge the othervirtues to be necessary and useful we believe however weshould place them only at the second degree because oneseeks them all only in view of this one thing of which JesusChrist says lsquoMartha Martha you trouble yourself aboutmany things there is only one thing necessaryrsquo He placedthe sovereign good not in work although laudable andabundant in fruit but in contemplation that is truly simpleand one He declares that little is necessary for this perfectbeatitude that contemplation isrdquo41 And a little farther on inthe same writing ldquoThere is thus a state where thisappropriation of virtues is no longer opportunerdquo42

The great Protestant spiritual master Gerhard Tersteegen(1697-1769) professes the same doctrine ldquoThere mustnecessarily be in us a capacity to recognize God and

spiritual things in an essential and present way And thatexists in the pure Reason [Vernunft] which has been givenus closed and unused until God gives us the understandingby which we know the very Truth so intimately andessentially that we are ourselves drawn into the trueGodrdquo43

If a certain number of authors in the course of this longtradition that we have just examined seem also todistinguish as it were two elements above the psychewhile Saint Paul saw only the pneuma above it this isusually as we could ascertain from some of the examplescited because they mean by psyche only the animal soulanimater of the body and seat of sensation or ratherbecause they want to assure a seat for ldquoobjectiverdquoknowledge and profane culture For Paul on the contraryand more explicitly for Origen the soul is the very seat ofthe personality the reasoning and self-willed being whichjudges and freely determines itself It is the place ofdecision According to the orientation taken by the soul thehuman being will become ldquocarnalrdquo or ldquospiritualrdquo(pneumatikos) As opposed as he might be to free willLuther himself saw very clearly that the Pauline psyche of 1Thessalonians 5 was much more than the principle ldquothatanimates the body and acts through itrdquo In an article in theRevue thomiste (1971) Father P R Reacutegamey OP isperfectly in keeping with the traditional line when hedistinguishes (497) these three degrees psychosomaticcomplexmdashrational function of abstraction and discoursemdashprimacy of spirit in its greatest purity And what in thetheoretical order is the ldquorational functionrdquo corresponds inthe practical order to what we could call in a ratherrestrictive sense the ldquomoral functionrdquo Saint Paul alsoinvites us not to confuse this moral function with theproperly spiritual life which raises man above himself whenhe places above the exercise of active benevolence and of

all virtue this reality of another order a gift of God which isCharity (1 Cor 133) Dietrich Bonhoeffer was also faithful tothe tradition that originated in the Apostle when heexhorted the Christians over whom he had responsibility notto confuse in their assemblies ldquospiritual community withmystical overheatingrdquo (cf A Dumas 64) ldquoThe great themeof community life is the revival of the very Paulinedistinction between the natural eager equivocal nostalgicdesiring in a word idealistic and the spiritual respectfulenlightened serving knowing in a word realistrdquo (ibid145) ldquoThe onerdquo Bonhoeffer also says ldquowho does not letChrist be a path toward the other falls into naturalchattering which kills the spiritual word Prayer is thesalutary limit to desires of immediate effusiveness Community life is communion through spiritual mediationand non-confusion in the natural immediacyrdquo (146-47)

II Morality Integrated into Mysticism In Christianity itself itis characteristic of the Catholic Church to assure theequilibrium between the three components (religion

morality and mysticism) an equilibrium necessary to theintegrity of the human being Faithful in everything to her

spirit of synthesis she maintains all three in solidaritywithout ever letting any one of the three be lacking or

eclipse the others or be devalued in the humblest forms ofspiritual life any more than in the highest To take a verysimple example when Fenelon exclaims in his Traiteacute de

lrsquoexistence et des attributs de Dieu ldquoMy length of life is buta perpetual extinctionrdquo1 these words to be well

understood must be taken at once morally religiously andmystically

The various Protestant confessions place more emphasison contrasts and clashes as has often been remarked J AMoehler wrote in the last century in his Symbolique withrespect to morality and religion ldquoIn the eyes of Catholics

religiosity and morality if we may be permitted to use thesetwo terms are united by their essence and are both eternalAccording to the Protestants on the other hand there is norelationship between these two things for one is of aneternal price and the other is of only passing value Lutherinsists in many places on this difference rdquo2 There wouldbe many nuances besides to note here but in this essay ontypology we must keep to the most general characteristics3In Calvinism mysticism is the object of mistrust or evenreprobation4 We also know the abyss in Luther thatseparates ethics and faith As a result of this there is atendency with Lutheran mysticsmdashto say nothing of Lutherhimself and of Lutheranism in generalmdashto depreciate allmoral activity as constituting on manrsquos part an affirmationof self that far from bringing him closer to God distanceshim and to recognize a value in religious life only in anabandonment close to quietism5 a depreciation of moralitythat goes hand in hand with that of reason and that offreedommdashwe recently read from a Protestant pen an articleon morality considered solely as ldquocultural realityrdquo Such anattitude to take it simply as such could also facilitateinvaluable analyses in many regards such as the analysis ofthe ldquolevels of liferdquo in Kierkegaard or that of the ldquosacredrdquo inRudolf Otto But these analyses do not always stop at posingformal distinctions Thus in order to bring out more clearlythe specificity of the category of the sacred or of thereligious Otto cuts the latter off from morality he is notcontent with showing that on the level of history orpsychology these two orders are often separated in fact heis well on his way to a separation by right6 As arepercussion when morality reclaims its place in otherauthors of Protestant inspiration it sometimes absorbsreligion and dries up mysticism by incarcerating all spirituallife ldquowithin the limits of reasonrdquo

In reality howevermdashthat is to say by right in the natureof thingsmdashon the one hand ldquothe sacred is not reabsorbedinto moral value the religious transcends the ethicalrdquo buton the other hand it does not merely accommodatemorality and mysticism it remolds them so to speak byinstalling them in its heart Religion morality and mysticismldquoappear in a reciprocal envelopmentrdquo there exists betweenthe three both an attraction and a tension which will be thesource of many vital problems but there is objectivelyneither separation nor exclusion nor conflict for ldquothe Deitywhile transcending being truth and the good contains themformallyrdquo7 This is why in particular in Catholicism just asthe reasonable life and life according to the spirit penetrateeach other8 morality impregnates the mystical life to theend ldquoThrough it the good rewarded and the bad punishedthese pillars of the revelation of the Demiurge degraded byGnosticism to a lower level than exoteric faith regain theirplace at the heart of the revelation of the Father through theonly Sonrdquo9 Hence Saint Justin in his Dialogue ldquoIt is notbecause of his affinity with God or because he is spirit likehim that man sees God it is because he is virtuous andjustrdquo10 And Father Jean Rigoleuc on spiritual persons ldquoAlltheir reason and the lights they receive by it are given tothem only so that they might be perfected in thesevirtuesrdquo11 ldquoThe mystical ascentrdquo does not efface ldquofromcommon Christian life any specific traitrdquo12 The Christianvirtues are not merely means of freeing oneself from theworld in their substance they are the end itself thepromised beatitude is not made of different material This iswhat Saint Ambrose expresses admirably in a brief sentencefrom his commentary on Saint Luke with respect to thebeatitudes ldquoSicut enim speri nostrae octava perfectio estita octava summa virtutum estrdquo13

Pierre Nemeshegyi poses the same problem with respectto Origen ldquoTo place Being and moral Goodness in equation

to place this moral Goodness in God formally and ascharacterizing the final ground of his Beingmdashis this not to becondemned to enclosing all spiritual life in an anti-mysticalmoralism The Good is a transcendental But is it formallywhat we understand by lsquomoral Goodrsquo Or is there not adeepening of this moral Goodness which would reestablishthe possibility of an innermost mystical depthrdquo14 Againwith respect to Origen W Voumllker remarks ldquoWe observe a hesitation very characteristic of Origenrsquos turn of spirit and which one finds again in a nearly identical way in Philoside by side and sometimes even the mutual penetrationof moralism and mysticismrdquo15 And Nemeshegyi concludesldquo lsquoMoralismrsquo and lsquomysticismrsquo are in fact one and the samething in Origenrsquos conceptionrdquo16 Origen himself specifies inhis argument against Celsus ldquoGod is not merely lsquothe Goodrsquoas all the Platonists say he is lsquothe Righteousrsquordquo17 SaintGregory the Great also reminds us with his usual goodsense always linked with spiritual fervor

Solent quidam scripta sacri eloquii legentes cum sublimiores sententiasejus penetrant minora mandata quae infirmioribus data sunt tumentisensu despicere et ea velle in alium intellectum permutare Qui si recte ineo alta intelligerent mandata quoque minima despectui non haberent quidivina praecepta sic in quibusdam loquuntur magnis ut tamen inquibusdam congruant parvulis qui per incrementa intelligentiae quasiquibusdam passibus mentis crescant atque ad majora intelligendaperveniant18

Saint Augustine had said the same in a very Origenianshortcut in speaking of eternal life ldquoUna ibi virtus erit etidipsum erit virtus praemiumque virtutisrdquo19 Picking upagain Saint Ambrosersquos turn of phrase Alexander Neckhamcosmologist of the twelfth century explains that the octaveof the beatitude brings the perfection of its consonance tothe septenary of the virtues as in our material universe theeighth sphere including the whole universe brings itsconclusion to the harmony of the heavens20 Let us say in

the categories of medieval exegesis that anagogy achievesperfection both of allegory and of tropology Thus oneshould say of all Catholic mysticism what one historian saysof Saint Bernard through allusion to the traditionalinterpretation of the ldquoBooks of Solomonrdquo and of theirprogressive sequence for each of them as for him ldquothemoral school of Ecclesiasticus and Proverbs a necessarypreliminary for the mystical school of the Song of Songs is aschool whose doors are never closed behind usrdquo21 Andreciprocally in fulfilling the precept of the Lord one meritsnot only the eternal dwelling one does not merely preparefor it one is already building Saint Hildegarde tells us thetower of the heavenly Jerusalem22

It would be good to return to the celebrated GoldenEpistle in which William of Saint Thierry the friend of SaintBernard condenses for the brothers of the Carthusianmonastery of Mont Dieu the essence of Christiananthropology and spirituality such as the most commonCatholic tradition understands them William puts first ofall the sublime ideal of the contemplative in abrupt termsand with an appearance of separation of completetranscendence from one degree to another which could besurprising

You have not only pledged complete holiness but the perfection of allholiness and the height of all perfection It is not your business to languishin the practice of ordinary precepts or to devote yourself only to thatwhich God commands but to aim at what he wishes in the search for hisgood agreeable and perfect will It is for others to serve God it is for youto cling to him Faith in God knowledge love and reverence are for othersFor you taste understanding knowledge enjoyment A high vocation anarduous task 23

Farther on William takes up again the distinction of thethree states or three degrees which is reminiscent of thefree fashion of the Pauline trichotomy

The state of beginners can be called ldquoanimalrdquo that of progressersldquorationalrdquo that of the perfect ldquospiritualrdquo The first state attends to thebody the second is busy with the reasoning soul the third finds its restonly in God 24

These kinds of schemas are several times accompanied byappeals to humility which should form the common andunalterable basis for all disciples of Christ at whateverdegree they find themselves in their spiritual ascent25

Several points of resemblance to Saint Paul are still to benoted the distinction between anima and animus whichcorresponds closely to that between the psyche and thepneuma26 the reference to the discourse at Athens27 (Acts1727-28) the definition of the spiritual man as the onewhose spirit is informed by the Spirit of love28 theindication of the end as being ldquothe unity of spiritrdquo with God

There is also another resemblance to God so particular that it is nolonger given the name of resemblance but that of unity of spirit It is whenman becomes a single thing a single spirit with God not only through theunity of a single will but also through some truer expression of a virtue thatis no longer capable of willing anything else Once conformed to wisdom the reason [= reasoning soul] puts[everything] to profit and hastens to spring toward freedom of spirittoward unity so well that the faithful man becomes as has often beenstated one single spirit with God29

Freedom of spirit unity with God we know the abuses thatsuch formulas have frequently covered throughout twentycenturies of history30 We know too how the fear of theseabuses have made a number of timorous souls avoid themhow still more the bourgeois individualist incomprehensionof the last century banished them and how they seemedsuspect to many who thought they were judging in thename of pure Catholic orthodoxy31 Within the context ofthat spiritual masterpiece the Letter to the Brothers of MontDieu these expressions can be accepted in all their powerin the same sense that they have in Scripture And thekeeping of a moral life integrated into a mystical life is also

explicitly recognized here besides the word ldquovirtuerdquo whichfigures in the same text we have just quoted on ldquothe unityof spiritrdquo with God other texts recall it with insistence Theyspeak ldquoin praise of virtue the daughter of reason but evenmore of gracerdquo32 they show it not surpassed by butassumed into spiritual perfection the latter is achievedldquowhen the soul encompasses all the virtues in itself not aselements borrowed from somewhere else but as quasi-natural products of its being according to that resemblanceto God by which it is the whole of what isrdquo Mystical unitywith God is wholly impregnated with morality because it isthe perfect adherence to Him who is not only the Righteousbut in the most concrete and singular sense the Good33

This Catholic equilibrium was undoubtedly alreadyjeopardized in a great spiritual master who is not at all to beconfused with the false spirituals to whom we have alludedEvagrius was considered a disciple of Origen but in this anunfaithful disciple Despite the appearances of severalexpressions the same criticism could not be made of aTauler or a Ruysbroek they condemn without equivocationthe mystical claims that think to hold themselves abovemorality and reason beyond affirmations of the faith Thecase of Meister Eckhart is perhaps more disputable but it isright to dissociate the profound intention of this greatthinker and this great mystic from some paradoxicalexpressions held to be condemnable by the bull In agro LaPerle eacutevangeacutelique following Eckhart and several othersseems to place ldquothe spiritrdquo in contact with the divine Unityldquoabove the multiplicity of the Personsrdquo34 a grave problemwhich we will not take up here but which for a Christiangoverns the judgment to be passed on mysticism in itsrelation to the primary mystery of his faith35 To stay withthe relation between mysticism and morality let us say thatone is happy to find a fine example of equilibrium in anauthor carried in other respects to many unilateral

excesses This refers to George Tyrrell who wrote in a finepassage from Christianity at the Cross-roads

[The apocalyptic Kingdom of heaven] is the fruit and reward of the morallife but is a supermoral lifemdashthe continuation of that divine and spirituallife which under present contingencies manifests itself principally bymorality and above all in religion and conscious union with God But[in the Kingdom] the contingencies that now call for the moral strugglewith all its pain and suffering shall be done away36

We will end by quoting a more authoritative witness thegreat Saint Teresa who unites the soul and spirit of whichSaint Paul spoke as much as she distinguishes them withhim by observing that ldquothe center of the soulrdquo or the ldquospiritof the soulrdquo is a difficult thing to express and even tobelieve

Certain interior effects give the certitude that there is under certainrelations a very real difference between the soul and the spirit Although inreality they are but one we sometimes perceive a division between themthat is so delicate that it seems that the one functions in one way and theother in another There are so many things in our innermost depthsand things so subtle that it would be boldness on my part to undertake toexplain them We will understand all that in the other life if God deignsto admit us to the dwelling where we will have understanding of all thesesecrets37

III Conclusions Optimi corruption pessima One should notat all conclude from this as some authors particularly in

Protestantism have done that mysticism should becondemned1 Nevertheless even without considering the

case of the aberrations we have just seen certainprecautions should be taken in order not to jeopardize the

spiritual equilibrium Just as it is necessary to reject ananthropology that refusing man any higher faculty stifles

the spirit in himmdashwhich is what all positivisms allrationalisms and all psychologisms domdashso it is necessary toguard against reducing theoretical or practical reason in itby failing to recognize its transcendence in relation to the

sensible order and its participation in the absolute ldquoThemindrdquo writes Hans Urs von Balthasar2 ldquodestroys itself andcrumbles if it splits into an inferior and a superior mind an

autonomously functioning reason (Verstand) and a ratio(Vernunft) that is reserved for special philosophical and

religious purposesrdquo Then the risk of a short-circuit appearsfrom ldquoinfantile naturalismrdquo to high spirituality from

alienating exteriority to ldquodivinerdquo magnetization from theldquocaves of the unconsciousrdquo to the ldquobirthrdquo from above from

the ldquopossessive Irdquo that is ldquoradical servituderdquo toldquodisinterestedrdquo love

Charles du Bos was not lacking in clearsightedness theday he noted in his Journal ldquothe necessity from an ethicalpoint of view of guarding oneself against mysticismrdquo3 In thesame sense he wrote one day to Father Auguste Valensin

Since the end of July 1927 God in his goodness has recalled me toHimself I have happened to suffer in the face of a certain unformulatedmdashand at times even formulatedmdashdisdain that believers who are advancedmoreover in spiritual ways and even mystics witness or at least seem towitness toward the moral order as such If one admits (and I admit it verystrongly) that ethics are only the narthex of religious truth neverthelessthere exist natures (to the number of which I belong) who venerate thenarthex all the more as it helps to introduce them into the sanctuary andthe more their religious life deepens the more faithful their gratitudebecomes 4

Du Bos had noted in his Journal on January 11 1925 ldquothenecessity of guarding against mysticismrdquo and on January18 1929 analyzing himself

Basically it is always a question with me of an offensive directed by themoral against the religious because as my Journal often notes the moralbeing is primary with me in the period when the plane of temperament istranscended the form that temptation then takes is a moral form summedup in the question of my right to religious life Yes that is indeed it and myeffort now must be not only to adhere to God but to consider that fromthe instant I do what I must on the plane of living I adhere to him de facto 5

Du Bosrsquo reflection as we see was not unilateral althoughhe emphasizes the moral which he judges to bedangerously disregarded (what would he not say thirty orforty years later) In return Emmanuel Mounier was no lessright to bring out the complementary truth in recalling thatldquomorality has no other end but the spirituality of which itkeeps houserdquo when one isolates it and clings to it heexplains one kills it it is replaced by moralism6 the enemyof mysticism as well as of religion History in fact shows thatthe abandonment of mysticism in the name of any formwhatever of moralism has never been at best anything buta stage in spiritual development in view of a less confusedmysticism ldquoAs it is nearly inevitable in philosophy to passthrough a phase of idealism so it is inevitable to passthrough a phase of intellectualism in morality inevitableand goodrdquo But on condition that one does not cling to it Adeeper understanding knows that it is not knowledge thatsaves man from sin and it will always ask ldquoWho forexample is the one more free of appearancesmdasha Spinozawho in observing actions or sentiments that the commonmen call sin explains them through a defect in knowledgemdashor a Surin who proclaims that to the degree that one doesnot see sins even in onersquos inadvertencies and firstmovements to that degree one will not weep over onersquosvanities as sacrileges one will lsquonever get to the rootrsquordquo7

Both have cut through appearances (not always the sameones) both in their order are right But basically howmuch more is this true of Surin And if the intellectualcriticism worked by a Spinozist is not coupled with aspiritual deepening how his clearsightedness ends inblaming it The world Bergson said very justly has much tolearn from the great mystics8

Likewise one is right not to consent to letting theunderstanding be classed among the provisional values tobe reduced to the rank of ldquonaturalismrdquo that is close to

animality Perhaps the word ldquosoulrdquo so far from beingunivocal9 used in the tripartite division of man is notwithout some danger in this regard But this is not asufficient motive for rejecting the very idea of this tripartitedivision such as some as we have seen above were led todo Even Sandaeus himself an apologist and theoretician ofmysticism while noting that a number of mystics judgerecourse to this division indispensable declared that therecould be room to debate this10 Sandaeus was therebyechoing a fear or a mistrust frequently shown in the mostbrutal fashion by Schoolmen in the face of all mysticalthought we know how sharp the dispute was even withinthe Catholic Church throughout the seventeenth century11

Since then through their efforts to minimize the text ofSaint Paul on which the distinction is based others witness adiscomfort if not a similar hostility The mystical tradition ofthe great Church however offers them desirableassurances thus with Tauler transforming the way oneviews the classical terms of the division He is thereby goingparallel to the doctrinal tradition such as it is expressed in aSaint Augustine for example or a Saint Thomas The ratherpusillanimous minds to which we are alluding do not giveenough consideration to the fact that in wanting to save theabsolute of morality and reason they risk failing torecognize the gifts of the Spirit and lowering the mysticallife Stifled unrecognized in its authentic forms the latterin despair is then in danger of developing on the margins ofall rational and moral norms A certain intellectualismmdashverypoorly namedmdashis a worthy counterpart of moralism and aspernicious

To return to this latter we can think that the general usein the ecclesiastical vocabulary of the modern ChristianWest of the term ldquodirector of consciencerdquo to the detrimentof the traditional terms ldquospiritual fatherrdquo or spiritusmoderator12 is the sign of an inflation of pure morality

tending to casuistry or lends itself to falling intopsychologism (while waiting for psychiatry) to thedetriment of the attention paid to things of the spirit whichis to say to the relation to God ldquoHave we not seen peoplerdquowrote Reneacute Gueacutenon ldquowho when it is a question of lsquospiritualmasterrsquo go so far as to translate it lsquodirector ofconsciencersquordquo13 It is possible to agree with his remarkwithout sharing the least part of his own notion of ldquospiritualmasterrdquo or more precisely his doctrine of the spirit Stillanother sign of the small esteem given to things of thespirit and first of all of an inadequate understanding ofthem is manifested in the designation ldquointellectualismrdquowhich is too easily attributed today to the whole doctrine ofcontemplation There is of course a philosophicalcontemplation There is a Greek intellectualism that isexpressed in an ideal of contemplation We discern sometraces of it in the history of Christian thought and life butthese are only tracesmdashand all are not moreoverblameworthy14 As it has done for many other conceptsChristianity has modified this at the same time as it took onits permanent values it profoundly transformed it How is itthat even Christian historians have perceived so little ofthis One can indeed if one wishes reject the word inseeking another that lends less to equivocation but itshould not be necessary at the same time to reject thedoctrine that the Christian centuries had included within itit should not be necessary to depreciate what is the verybasis of the best spiritual tradition at the heart ofChristianity This would be at the same stroke to depreciatethe order of the theological virtues in direct contradiction toScripture itself The supremely active Father Teilhard deChardin did not fall into such contempt he forcefullymaintained the primacy of contemplation in which he couldrecognize the superior form of action that which an activistwill never achieve15 The transformations and progress

achieved in the course of history the entrance into an agedominated by the technical the development of the ldquohumansciencesrdquo that tend to assimilate man to the object of thesciences of nature will change nothing not only the highmystical life but already the whole spiritual life while takingthe greatest consideration of morality and including morality(as well as of rational activity) comprises along with variednuances according to the case something beyond moralitytaken in the human sense of the word something beyond allthat we commonly call action because it always comprisessomething beyond man

That is what signifies the great traditional theme ofMartha and Mary based on the Gospel It will always remaintrue ldquoIn his duabus mulieribus duas istas esse figurataspraesentem et futuram latoriosam et quietam temporalemet aeternamrdquo16 And of these two realities the second isalready present as an active anticipation at the heart ofthe man en route toward his divine destiny

Finally the maintenance of the distinction between thezone of the natural [psychisme] and that of the spiritual is ofa major importance for maintaining in their just place withinthe limits of their competence all the kinds of psychology Itopposes ldquothe dissolving psychoanalytical confusion ofnatural and spiritualrdquo17 If stopping onersquos aim at theldquorationalrdquo and the ldquomoralrdquo was often the great temptationand if this temptation remains what is to be even moregreatly feared today is stopping at the ldquonatural[psychique]rdquo One of Teilhardrsquos weaknesses which wasbenign to tell the truth because he thought above all todissipate the illusion of a materialistic monism was acertain confusion of vocabulary between spiritual andnatural in the Pheacutenomegravene humain (which does not claim tobe a treatise on spirituality) he happens to speak at will ofldquospiritual energyrdquo or of ldquonatural energyrdquo mdashBut ldquothe spiritintervening psychology is powerless It sees everything

from outside although the spirit is lived only from withinrdquo itsees uniquely ldquothat part of the natural life that the spirit hasnot touched and which consequently unfolds in theunconsciousrdquo18

Without doubt it is only through our participation in themystery of the trinitarian Life that we are to become fullycapable of going beyond this psychological vision that canindeed scrutinize certain ldquodepthsrdquo but to which this otherdepth is not accessible this depth which is humantranscendence this otherwise mysterious zone where theimpulse toward God is situated the encounter with God

There is in us a certain root that plunges into the depths of the Trinity Weare these complex beings who exist on successive levels on an animal andbiological level on an intellectual and human level and on an ultimate levelin those very abysses that are those of the life of God and those of theTrinity This is why we have the right to say that Christianity is an integralhumanism which is to say which develops man on all the levels of hisexperience We must always be in defiance of all the attempts to reducethe space in which our existence moves We breathe fully in the measureto which we do not let ourselves be enclosed in the prison of the rationaland psychological world but to which a part of us emerges into these greatspaces that are those of the Trinity And this is what creates theincomparable joy of existence in Christianity19

Pertinent remarks of great importance in ecclesiology aswell as in the liturgy more timely today than ever Thedistinctions recalled by Dietrich Bonhoeffer and by Father PR Reacutegamey based like those of so many others on thePauline anthropology of the First Letter to the Thessaloniansare at once for every member of the Church an appeal tothe highest spiritual life and a warning against itscounterfeits

EPILOGUETO PART ONE

The Light of Christ ldquoIf you believerdquo we are told ldquoin thedivinity of the Christian religion it is because you are

ignorant about all the conditions that marked its beginningand growth The comparative history of religions has madeenough progress so that henceforth it is no longer possibleto speak of a lsquoChristian miraclersquo coming to break the thread

of human religious acts There is nothing in it that is notexplained in the way everything is explained Of course

some points still remain obscure certain influences remainunperceived The task of historians has not yet been

accomplished One can also recognize that several of themhave been a little too quick in thinking to detect here orthere analogies or relationships and their intemperance

was capable of provoking a prudent reaction in somescholars anxious for a more rigorous method But the

general orientation of science is nonetheless certain and itsresult is nonetheless assured Every day leads to a new

light uncovering some new connection and here and nowwe see clearly enough to be able to affirm that Christianityis a human phenomenon very human deeply rooted in the

earth of history where it has drawn all the essence fromwhich its marvelous vigor is nourishedrdquo

An objection that insinuates itself under a thousand formswith respect to a thousand problems A stronger objectionin many eyes than all those of dialectics because withoutfighting it claims to explain Believers are upset by it Menof good will whom Christianity attracts and who alreadybelieve they see Godrsquos work in it find themselves stoppedin their tracks by it they fear to commit themselves

thoroughly to what is perhaps only the work of man If itwere a question only of a milieu providentially prepared tofavor the birth and rise of the religion of ChristmdashJewishMessianism Stoic universalism the organization of theDiaspora the Roman peace mdashthis ensemble of fortuitousconditions could indeed account for its concrete possibilitybut it would definitely not for all that cancel out the miracleof its existence A favorable atmosphere has never sufficedto explain the fact of a birth One would have to becompletely incapable of perceiving religious values to betempted to explain the apparition and success ofChristianity solely by a series of external circumstances asimportant and as favorable as one supposes them to beBetter known the information that history brings in thisorder can therefore only add to the admiration that alreadyseized the Fathers such as Saint Leo exclaiming before hisRoman listeners ldquoNumerous States have been united into asingle Empire so that the ways necessary for the preachingof the Gospel might be readyrdquo1 Admiration that was alsoPascalrsquos ldquoHow beautiful it is to see through the eyes of faithDarius and Cyrus Alexander the Romans Pompey Herodact without knowing it for the triumph of the Gospelrdquo andwho a short time earlier had had this sung to Peacuteguy ldquoThesteps of the legions had marched for Him rdquo2

But history seems to show us much more today Muchmore even than a subjective preparation of soulssuffocating in paganism thirsty for salvation One by oneall the elements of which Christianity is made theconceptions it presupposes the notions it sets in motion itsworship practices the forms of its institutions theprescriptions of its morality all are identified classifiedranked in their place along continuous series Not a dogmanot a feature of discipline or of liturgy that does not have itshistorymdasha history that always includes a first pre-Christianperiod All that had been amalgamated in it is returned to its

origin and soon it seems that nothing of its own remainsHow dare we still in the face of these facts a great numberof which at least are solidly established speak of a religiongiven from heaven of divine revelation How consequentlydare we speak of ldquotranscendencerdquo of supernaturalabsolute definitive truth Everything that is born and growsaccording to the common law is transformed and alsoperishes according to the common law As imposing as itseems Christianity will not escape it Even more perhapsthan the defeats to which it has submitted in the course ofthese recent centuries the history of its origins warns us ofits inevitable decline It is no longer for us the uniqueexception the extraordinary thing that it seemed to be forso long a time It can no longer be loyally preserved fromuniversal evolution Whether the brilliant flash projected byreligion ever since humanity existed is a false flash or anauthentic light is of little importance here in the case ofChristianity one thought to see a unique star appearabruptly in the heaven of religions and miraculously hangthere but a more experienced look discerns that it too wasonly for a moment welded to the others passing like theothers in this long luminous trail

Yet the illusion if such it be has existed It still persists withmany who are not at all ignorant people This too is a factthat must be taken into consideration One should not replywithout further examination that the same is true for allreligion Contrary to almost all the others without exceptingeven Judaism Christianity appeared in the middle of ahistoric period Its legend if there is a legend iscontemporaneous with its existence What a differencethere is in this regard for example with its great rivalBuddhism3 Why then contrary to so many humanphenomena is it presented in so tenacious a way as beingabsolutely exceptional Is ignorance about its true originsenough to explain this illusion in its regard or might it not

be rather the very true perception of its transcendencethat veiled by its brilliant flash certain features of its humanhistory The hypothesis at least deserves consideration It isnot without analogies Many men think themselves free inactions where without doubt they are not at all or with afreedom that is not at all real Is this illusion completelyexplained by a myopia that prevents them from perceivingthe bonds of determinism or does it too not come from anobscure but truthful perception Rather than a total illusionis it not a simple error of localization An error attesting toan awkwardness in analysis a scientific inferiority butwithout any damage to the essential truth

Now it happens too that one badly localizes thetranscendence that one recognizes in Christianity setting itup in positions from which the experienced historian willhave no trouble dislodging it This is why in a more or lessexplicit way one conceives of it then above all as a solutionof continuity To suppose such a transcendence possible atranscendence whose true name would be ldquoexteriorityrdquo isnot the act of Christianity What would remain for exampleof the thought of Saint Paulmdashwho nevertheless sodominated the thoughts of his centurymdashif one cut it fromthe thousand roots that in fact attached it to the earth ofTarsus and Jerusalem How can a single one of its essentialpoints be analyzed without constant reference not only tothe history of the Hebrew people but also to Greekcivilization to Eastern mysticism to the Roman EmpireThis would be an imaginary transcendence pure chimeralinked to a no less chimerical ideal of revelation The realitythat it would effect if this were possible would not besuperhuman but inhuman Far from being sublimated by itit would only be impoverished dried up

It would find the path neither of our spirit nor of our heartArtificial superficial and not at all supernatural Such asthose devout people of whom Peacuteguy speaks who becausethey do not have the strength to be of nature imagine that

they are of grace in reality dried fruits But there is anothertranscendence a true transcendence of which the first wasonly at best the naiumlve transcription An intrinsictranscendence in virtue of which a given reality consideredas synthesis in what comprises its own being surpassesessentially the realities of the same kind that surround itwhatever might be the community of elements that itinforms along with theirs whatever might be too the tiesof origin that render these different elements solidary Anytrue synthesis is always more than synthesis A certainrecasting that is much more than a new combination acertain ldquorevival from withinrdquo transforms everything It is in aphenomenal continuity the passage to a new higherincomparable order4

Now for anyone who can seemdashbut which of us can natterhimself that he always can once and for allmdashthe intrinsictranscendence of Christianity is obvious It alone countsand a direct look well aimed is enough to establish it Theunbeliever does not have to overcome historicalcontinuities nor does the believer have to refuse to seethem A priori they must be Scholars dedicated todiscovering these continuities are not at all devotingthemselves to a vain task They can indeed often bemistaken (certainly they do not fail to be so) or give in tothe temptation of confused conjectures the hypothesis thatguides them is nonetheless sound The fragility of certainconstructions does not at all prevent the firmness of theirfoundations Besides in research that some would hold tobe sacrilege science is after all only exploiting the Paulineidea of the ldquofullness of timerdquo It is uniting in a way with thethought of the Fathers of the Church so anxious to bring outthe ldquoevangelical preparationsrdquo in order to spare Christianitythe appearance of a ldquosudden improvisationrdquo ldquoNihil putem aDeo subitum quia nihil a Deo non dispositumrdquo5 It agreeswith the reflection of the philosopher who considering the

Christian event refuses by very reason of its unparalleledproportions to attribute an accidental character to it6

But in what touches the very basis of religion thesecontinuities are only appearance Yes in one senseChristianity is human completely human We can we mustspeak of its birth If the words it uses are necessarilyborrowed then it is unavoidable that the concepts are tooAnd how would man tell himself the truth even divinelyrevealed truth except by using concepts There is norevelation except supernatural ldquoin the pure staterdquo Howwould God give himself to man if he remained a stranger tohim And how would his Word penetrate him if it were notalso to become a human word The messages of Saint Paulor Saint John are already ldquotheologiesrdquo and the veryconsciousness of Christ is the consciousness of the Wordmade flesh But a less rudimentary psychology has shownus that the concepts themselves are in their multiplicity farfrom expressing the whole of a doctrine for they are withinthe spirit the part closest to matter With how much greaterreason if it is a question of an object that is not onlydoctrine but first of all reality By what makes it itself by itsoriginal essence which consists neither in words nor inconcepts and which the whole sum of words and concepts isnever capable of translating adequately Christianity isdivine completely divine Through the close texture ofrelationships of ideas and beliefs without break withouttear a new spiritmdashthe Spirit himselfmdashhas passed He hasstolen in with gentleness and he has burst in with powerHe has penetrated human history and all has beentransformed The face of the earth has been renewed by itThis was a new Fiat a true creation ldquoEmitte Spiritum tuumet creabuntur et renovabis faciem terraerdquo7 The Spirit ofChrist has founded a wholly new thing the religion of Christand this religion of Christ for which all human history hadprepared for which all human thought had slowly woven the

fabric suddenly rises up in the midst of men ldquosine patresine matre sine genealogiardquo Pure creation pure miracleThere we have this ldquonewrdquo idea which Jules Lachelier saidldquois born from nothing like a worldrdquo

What new ideas though that do not come from usourselves The inventions of man enrich humanitydiscovering in the soul some nuance unperceived until thenbut always leaving it to its essential finitudemdashto itsincurable decay Once past the first amazement the ironicand despairing refrain of Ecclesiastes is heard again Thecircle enlarged or shifted closes again On the contrarywith a leap the Christian Idea transports us beyond ourlimits It breaks this circle within which all our progress hadbeen condemned in advance to fit Such was the thought atits appearance breaking the circle of animaltransformations It is born in its own time it has its markedplace within the progress of life and nevertheless what itbrings is much more than progress From the time itemerges a new kingdom has begun the human kingdomSo the preaching of Jesus marks the advent of the Kingdomof God8 For how many of the sentences of the Sermon onthe Mount would we not find analogies in the Jewish Bible orin the teaching of the rabbis The One who pronounces itspeaks nonetheless as man had never spokenmdashas manwould never speak9 The Gospel inaugurates the time ofgrace It is a wholly new order that begins ldquoa new order oflove in the universerdquo10 A dike has been broken which letsthe flow of Love pass through Now it would be as vain todream of a reality more divine than Love than to imagine areality more spiritual than Thought The transcendence ofChristianity is thus not only relative to such and such anearlier achievement It is not only something originalsomething superior a provisional novelty clearing the wayfor some ulterior invention destined to go beyond it It is anabsolute transcendence ldquoOmnem novitatem attulitrdquo11

Peacuteguy has also sung it He was going to inherit a worldalready made And yet he was going to remake it entirely

Of course the order of charity is not revealed any morethan is the order of the spirit in all its fullness or in all itsdepth to that observation from outside that constitutes thework of the pure historian But if their inner essence stillescapes observation would the simple sight of their effectnot already arouse the sense of their incomparablegreatness We know the repercussions observable to thenaturalist not blinded by an overly narrow concept ofscience produced in the universe by the apparition ofthought the paradoxical properties of the ldquohumanphenomenonrdquo its extraordinary power for expansion andconcentration out of proportion with the weakmorphological originality of man presuppose a presence ofwhich the naturalist can only catch a glimpse but they sethim on the way that must normally lead him to go beyondhis science to discover in truth the human kingdom12 Therepercussions produced in humanity by the advent ofChristianity are no less prodigious the human spiritimmeasurably increased an unparalleled moral fruitfulnessa society tirelessly at work for an ideal of justice and unityand so forth These features are accessible to the historianwho knows how to step back a pace Nevertheless let usrecognize just as reflection alone properly speaking canreveal thought to itself so too only a process of a religiousorder can disclose the absolute superioritymdashwhich is to sayproperly the transcendencemdashof Christianity Like thedivinity of Christ itself the definitive newness of theChristian principle can be perceived only by the eyes offaith It is here that the advantage of the simple believerover the man of science and of life over technique shinesforth For the anthropologist who systematically denieshimself any inner reflection on the lived thought as well as

the historian of religions who does not consent to regardChristianity from within and to begin to live it at leastthrough a basic attitude of real sympathy will neverunderstand anything about the true object of their learnedstudies If their science itself does not lead them to the finalaffirmations it must at least set them on the path But ifthey wish to trust solely in it to the end surrendering theirconscience as men into the hands of their intelligence asspecialists the greater the latter will be and the more it willrisk misleading them

ldquoThe history of the formation of ideasrdquo said Amiel ldquoiswhat makes the spirit freerdquo13 Beneath the ideas that itorganizes and transforms let us know how to discern theChristian Idea This Idea has no history this is what mustmake the spirit submit to it

A great Deed was done for the world twenty centuries agothe Deed of Charity14 Right at first menrsquos habits of thoughtwere not any more overturned by it than were empires Wasan obscure variety of Jewish ldquoMessianistsrdquo worth even aglance The grain of wheat sown by Christ remained buriedin little upper rooms that counted for nothing in the historyof the world Christianity itself would wait five hundred yearsto found retrospectively the ldquoChristian erardquo and it wouldtake another five hundred years for full Christian practice tobecome widespread15 The first disciples of Jesus stilldreamed of the Kingdom of David their father they went upto the Temple as was their custom with a fervor that wasonly increased Having contemplated the Deed that hadbeen done before them they must nevertheless have hadthe feeling of an unparalleled newness The testimony of itappears everywhere in their rare writings ldquoNew teachingnew covenant new commandment new name new songnew man new life second genesis of the worldrdquo16 Such afeeling did not mislead them They were not in danger

those who had seen who had heard those who hadtouched of taking the Christian Mystery to be a more or lessspontaneous mixture of the Jewish Messianism exalted byJesus and cult forms then in vogue in the Hellenized Eastmdashany more than Christian dogma was in danger of appearingto their successors of the great patristic period as a learnedproduct of the Bible and Greek philosophy This chemistry ofimpotent historians could not have been created by themThey knew from an immediate source that they weredealing with something very different They sensed theunity of what myopic analysts think to understand bydecomposing it This is because the principle of synthesiswas in them living and active It is because living thisdogma themselves before drawing up the inventory of itadoring this mystery before translating it they penetratedits spiritual meaning

In addition their testimony is for us more than aguarantee It constitutes a call If that call is at firstnecessary for us we do not have to hold to it ldquoNowrdquo saidthe inhabitants of Sichar to the woman who had led them toChrist ldquoit is no longer because of what you have said to usthat we believe for we have heard him himself and weknow that he is truly the Savior of the worldrdquo17 For twentycenturies the witness of the first generation of believers ispreserved intact because it always remains a living witnessabyssus abyssum invocat [deep calls to deep] Why shouldwe be riveted to history The Spirit still gives witness to ourspirit18 The Kingdom of God is still in the midst of us ldquoTheGospel of Jesus Christ Son of Godrdquo which was heard for thefirst time in Galilee under Herod during the fifteenth yearof Tiberius Caesar at the time of the High Priests Annas andCaiaphas still resounds today and if the forms of itspreaching are different it is the same Voice that proclaimsit Like the creative Deed which does not cease to maintainbeing and life everywhere the Deed of Charity is pursued

over the world The second Genesis henceforth aspermanent as the first and like it infinitely fruitful TheChurch Bride of Christ continues the work of herBridegroom We have only to contemplate hermdashnot fromoutside in her sole visible organization with its humancharacteristics which are often too human perhaps with itsdefects not even in the works of its scholars alwaysunequal to their task and whose insufficiency can be sopainful19mdashespecially when they themselves do not seem tofeel itmdashbut in her inner life in her ideal in her belief in hersecret fidelity in the purity of her zeal in the marvelousfruits of holy joy that she makes ripen in the depths ofhuman hearts In all that the ldquoworldrdquo does not perceiveThen the light shines then the Truth bears witness to itselfveritas index sui No need for laborious comparisons or of anerudite return to the past The clearsightedness of a limpidlook is preferable here to all the sharp perspicacities ofcriticism This is because the miracle is endlessly producedbefore our eyes Today as formerly by virtue of Christianityldquoall things are becoming newrdquo EvenmdashSaint Augustine hadalready noted itmdashthe more time advances the moreprivileged is our situation as witness The mystical Christ inthe measure he increases better reveals his power To thesigns of it that already multiply still others will be addedwhen his message has truly reached the most distantpeoples Today we only begin to see all the fullness of theDeed that renewed the world The sudden clarity of the firstdays has become a great luminous path which grows withthe centuries

This great Deed of Love Jesus it is You Yourself Perceptible to manhumble dying in a corner of Judea oh yes You are man Flower of JesseYou are indeed the fruit of our earth Born of a woman truly formed fromher substance You are not some sort of phantom come down from theclouds of heaven You are deeply rooted in our earth20 But in You Jesus asin no other child of our race God showed himself You were not merely Hismessenger You are His living and substantial appearance Through You He

has not only spoken Or rather His language is an action His word is adeed it is You Yourself Splendor Verbum et imago Patris You Jesus onyour Cross the act uniting earth to heaven21

In You God still shows Himself and in your holy Church Inyour best disciples He still shines so well that one cannotmistake it For it is You who live in them Have we not allknown someone in whom a divine flame burned which theyhad lit at your hearth alone Their silent testimony is all themore persuasive Non eloquimur magna sed vivimus22 ldquoAsfor merdquo said Gerbet ldquoI lend an ear to the sounds that holysouls make with greater respect than to the voice ofgeniusrdquo23 What a great wise man concludes after longstudies and profound meditations in favor of your divinitythat encourages me but scarcely moves me forward Butthat a Francis of Assisi that being so obviously predestinedto make a ray of eternity shine over our earth makeshimself your absolute disciple that he loves You adoresYou annihilating himself before You that he is ambitiousonly to place his steps in your steps and to live from You byreproducing each of your features that he wants always tobe only your humble repetitor24 that not for a moment doeshe entertain the idea of engaging in a personal way oftrying another experience of adding at least something toyour message this humble and total will to imitatemdashChristototus concrucifixus et configuratusmdashin the face of yoursovereign independence such literalness in such an effusionof the Spirit such contrast in a similar holiness Themore I reflect on it the stronger the argument seems tome25

After that what do the difficulties matter in which myreason gets tangled Or rather how could it be that so loftyan object would not put it to flight If You have come tounveil a new kingdom and a new existence to me howshould I not consent to letting myself be removed from myusual surroundings Is it not normal that I have to abandon

my usual modes of thought26 Your word upsets myinstinctive logic it overturns all my arrangements of ideasit shatters my concepts This is the price for the liberation ofmy understanding Yet little by little in mystery a newequilibrium is established Under the secret action of yourSpirit faith is able to find its exact expressions whichprotect it against the ever-reborn assaults of a reason toolittle converted This was not without a long and arduouswork To define your twofold nature as for all that is worththe effort of our understanding it takes time reflectiongroping disputes materials from all sources A long andperilous journey A complicated winding history strewnwith a thousand contingencies An often tragic historymdashawonderful history27 It was through the adventurousconcepts of thinkers that Catholic Christology ended inrejoining the first intuition of faith

More than any other because it is at the center of all thedefinition in which the result of this labor is found today isimperfect An inevitable and blessed imperfection Notaccidental but essential necessary so that humbleastonishment before the mystery may subsist in theprecision of belief and in the firmness of adherence Butalready Jesus your very first disciples when they loved Youabove all and when they left all to follow You when theygave You all without thinking thereby to take anything fromGod when they contemplated You seated at the right handof the Father when they called You the one Lordproclaiming that all had been renewed by You and that allknees must bend before You your disciples believed in YouExtraordinary impossible faithmdashand yet authenticatedbeyond doubt A scandal as grave for the historian as thedogma itself for the thinker For though not beingabsolutely the same as ours the difficulties for a Saint Peteror a Saint Paul in believing were no less strong Nor werethose of their successors the Origens and the Cyrils the

Ambroses and the Augustines Modern man flatters himselfwhen he judges that the Copernican revolution or theKantian revolution dug out a new hiatus between histhought and the thought of the Ancients It was as hard tobelieve then as it is today It was hard for a JewishmonotheistmdashldquoListen Israel Your God is onerdquomdashto believe inthe divinity of a man28 It was hard to believe in thecrucifixion of the Son of God29 It was hard for a reasonableman who had been able to see up close the Son of Man inhis humiliation to believe in the resurrected Christ and inall these histories ldquothat do not allow themselves to beallegorized rdquo30

ldquoA scandal for the Greeks and folly for the Jewsrdquo OurFathers passed beyond their faith conquered all theobstacles What they were capable of we ourselves will becapable of and if we do not make ourselves unworthy ofthem the reasons that quickened them will not be lessstrong for us Their attitude will thus be ours We could nottranscend it but neither could we restrict it without denyingyour message at the same stroke Jesus For it is no morepossible to abstract You from this message than it ispossible to abstract God from Yourself On what would webase the demands of your Law if we began by failing torecognize the Demand of your Person Who wouldguarantee us the hope of the Kingdom if we were not torecognize the King of it Does everything in You not tell usthat You are Yourself the Kingdom as You are the Truth andthe Life31 So from the beginning the religion of Jesuswhich is the ideal of love was indivisibly the religion ofChrist that is the cult of incarnate Love It is folly to want todissociate them and to believe that the first would survivethe ruin of the second The religion of which Jesus is thesubject and norm is gradually achieved in us only throughthe religion of which Christ is the object Moreover it isblindness not to recognize their identity it is to tear the

seamless robe that the Gospel presents to us and it is notto see the metaphysical significance of Love

Evangelium ChristimdashEvangelium de Christo a modernscarcely more subtle form of the old antithesis betweenpractice and dogma32 But in maintaining contrary to thosewho set them in opposition that there is an essentialrelation between them we do not mean simply that onemust observe dogma as a means for assuring practice Theirties are intrinsic33 and the necessity of their agreement isonly one consequence On the one hand ldquopracticerdquo can becorrectly defined only by dogma from it alone does itreceive its meaning and spirit and on the other hand inone sense it already contains everything in itself for it issummed up in charity which is the spiritual being in act

God is Love and in a great feat of Love he came to takeup man sinner and miserable Man and God embraced eachother in Christ The unique intellectual fecundity of thisDeed it is specifically pregnant with all Christian dogmaticsso that the latter must be called strictly revealed No morein fact than one could dissociate the revealed truths fromthe very Person of the Revealer could one conceive a justand complete idea of the transcendent newness ofChristianity if one did not see that in this Person of Christsuch as the Apostles already show him to us and such asthe Church never ceases to contemplate and reproduce himthe reality of Charity and the truth of Dogma areindissolubly united Charity constituting the reality of thisDogma as this Dogma itself constitutes the truth of thisCharity34

As for the intellectual elaboration from which the dogmain its second state results which is to say in that abstractand learned formulation that multiplies it in distinctenunciations wholly guided by the Spirit of Truth as it is itnevertheless remains a human operation The materials it

employs just like those that entered into the firstspontaneous expression of faith are human materials Theycan thus serve them too in the real (though alwaysinadequate) transmission of divine truth only in the measureto which they are related to the Whole of Dogma35 In themeasure to which on the contrary they are consideredeach in isolation the formulas cease to bear witness to thedivinity of their origin they lose the best of their meaningceasing to have relation to divine charity such as itappeared to us in Christ For our faith is one and it is whollysummed up in You O Jesus36 You are the center and thebond of all its ldquoarticlesrdquo All its expressions all itsdevelopments are only so many means of understandingYou better and of situating ourselves better before You Thisis why the historians who instead of considering Christianityin its living unitymdashwhich one can do fully only if one lives itoneselfmdashalways scrutinize its elements only by taking themone after the other as a series of detached pieces resistany possibility of understanding it The essence escapesthem They do not find the soul at the end of their scalpelIn Christianity they find nothing divine not seeing Christ init

How true it is therefore to say that if dogma is necessaryfor the maintenance of practice the role of practice isnonetheless essential for maintaining the reality of dogmaintact We now discover the whole meaning of such anaxiom Without the truth of dogmamdashalthough there may besome good ldquounfaithfulrdquomdashone will only have an apparentpractice but on the other hand without the reality ofpracticemdashalthough there may be some bad Christiansmdashonewill no longer have anything but an apparent dogma On theone hand a charity that is less than genuine on the other asuperstitious belief or a verbal orthodoxy an ldquoorthologyrdquowithout any real content This is because if the articles offaith are numbered the Object of Faith is marvelously one If

the former are formed of abstract propositions the Latter ismarvelously Living And just as according to the oldScholastic theory all physico-chemical bodies onceassimilated by the human organism are directly informedby the soul so that there is no longer either carbon oroxygen and so forth but only human matter so with all theelements religious or profane in origin that enter into theChristian synthesis Constructed completely in one sensewith human materials the dogmatic formulas neverthelessexpress divine truth Elaborated by men they channel apart of divine revelation But this is on condition onceagain that one always relates them to that same revelationto the living Center to the divine Center from which allradiates and to which all must lead us to Jesus Christ JesusChrist the personal manifestation of Charity Jesus Christ inwhom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledgebecause in him dwells the fullness of the Divinity JesusChrist Word of the Father who speaks him and gives himentirely There is no absolute newness no revelationproperly speaking no true transcendence outside of theunique reality of his Person We must always return to thewords of Saint Irenaeus ldquoOmnem novitatem attulitsemetipsum afferensrdquo37

Jesus I believe in You I confess that You are God You are forus the whole Mystery of God38 What other definition of Godwould we seek than that given by your Apostle And was itnot in contemplating You that he found it God is Love Thissingle word contains an unfathomable mystery which Iadore But through You this mystery illumines our nightalready For Love has done a great deed and this Deed ofLove the Love made visible to our eyes perceptible tohearts of flesh effective and saving Love is You Yourself Itis God made man it is the Incarnation of God

We stammer as we can Our formulas are insufficientNecessary to shield the treasure of our faith their form

nevertheless troubles us But your true adorers O Jesushavenrsquot You Yourself said are not those who put their trustin frail words they are those who understand your feat andwho sustained by Youmdashfor that costs more than bloodmdashstrive to reproduce it

An absolute feat nothing has any value except throughcharity Charity demands all assumes all Charity judges all

An efficacious feat through this ldquodivine strengthrdquo alreadyrecognized by the Apostle Paul39 he uproots us from ouregotism he opens us takes us raises us makes us capableof adopting the contours of it in our turn He eradicates theold man and implants the new man Operatorius sermoChristi40

A finally definitive feat Whatever might be the futureprogress of our race whatever the enlargement of itsknowledge or the refinement of its ideal we will not betaken unawares The coming of Christ has marked thefullness of time No fullness no depth will ever exhaust theDeed of Calvary41

That is why peaceful about the past we also look to thefuture without fear ldquoQuid amplius reservandum cumamplius nihil sit plenitudine perfectionisrdquo42 Sure that ourfaith will never mislead us we go ahead of the excavationsof history and the research of science Ahead too of humanprogressmdashand we know too well that all progress of theworld will not obtain the least beginning of salvation Aheadof the new values to which history gives birth through itscrises Man can vary and perfect his culture without end Hecan discover and exploit new potentialities in it The veryUniverse can grow immeasurably and distant stars can oneday reveal a humanity more numerous more civilizedmdashmore miserablemdashthan our own the Deed of Christ wouldstill take it in It embraces all worlds just as it shines abovetime For all equally for each one of us and at all times for

those who believe in man and for those who despair of himits rays are those of Eternal Life

ldquoHe has come the Christ of God the Leader of thePromises And without any doubt he has been he alone tothe exclusion of all those who preceded himmdashand I have theaudacity to say he is to the exclusion of all those who followhimmdashthe one awaited by the Nationsrdquo43

uniting them the last two of the three considerations thatwe have just pointed out ldquoThis is the only place where atripartite division of man is mentioned in Paul whomoreover has no systematic and perfectly coherentlsquoanthropologyrsquo rdquo6 which taken literally is incontestableOnly it does not stop there it adds rather judiciouslyldquoBesides the body and the soul we see appear here thespirit which can be either the divine principle of new life inChrist or rather the highest part of man which is itselfopen to the Spiritrdquo with a reference to Romans 55 and 19where the reader will be able to find a mass of referencesPauline and other whose eclecticism does not claim to takethe place of commentary Which shows at the very least thatthe wish of the Apostle for the Thessalonians in its literalsense was taken seriously which constitutes at least ahappy if not the only exception

A more recent author J W C Wand after having saidldquoThere can be no doubt that Paul speaks from time to timeof the body soul and spirit as if from his point of viewpsychology were based on a trichotomyrdquo observesimmediately that ldquoat other times however he speaks in amore popular way of the soul and the body in the way wedo todayrdquo7 A curious reflection for more than one reasonabout which (taken in its French translation) we will makeonly two remarks Paul does not have in mind as the authorseems at least to insinuate a ldquopsychologicalrdquo trichotomyand on the other hand contrary to what we read in PratDibelius and others here we see that it is no longer thetrichotomy of the Letter to the Thessalonians but the simplesoul-body dichotomy that is declared commonplace andldquopopularrdquo

Still more recently E Schweizer went back to the idea ofa popular and consequently uninteresting trichotomy ldquoInthe famous passage from 1 Thessalonians 523 it isappropriate to understand pneuma alongside psyche and

soma as an element of man above all in the sense ofpopular anthropology The benediction formula is traditionalperhaps liturgical and does not signify anything much aboutthe notion of man in Paul The combination may be chanceas in Deuteronomy 65rdquo8

Different exegeses which may contradict each other indetail but which nearly all tend in the same direction

It is not very difficult to detect the reasons for it For someinterpreters it is above all it seems the desire not to findSaint Paul in opposition to ldquoour classical doctrinerdquo as DBuzy (170) said a doctrine that counts only two elements inman matter and spirit Is this doctrine which is guaranteedby the threefold heritage of Scholasticism Cartesianismand for France the university spiritualism instituted byVictor Cousin not imposed on every well-made mind Butfor the most part another reason seems determinative It isa kind of phobia that is quite widespread today the phobiaof ldquoPlatonismrdquo Yetmdashand this is something that might seemstrangemdashif the Pauline text makes us think of Plato it is notalways because we read him in the Letter to theThessalonians it is in more than one case because we findhim quoted by Origen Which accounts for the reflex actionof distrust Does not Scripture in fact have for Origen ldquolikethe human composite a body a soul and a spiritrdquo And isthis distinction not ldquomanifestly inspired by the trichotomy ofPlatordquo9 It is in a similar way that an excellent historian ofmonastic life Dom Adalbert de Vogue on the subject ofOrigen evoked ldquothe old Platonic trichotomy at first assumedby Saint Paulrdquo10 The Alexandrian as everyone knows inadvance is a ldquoPlatonistrdquo but Saint Paul himself cannot beone If therefore as Father Ferdinand Prat said thisOrigenian trichotomy presupposes ldquoa false psychologysince the soul and spirit of man are not distinctprinciplesrdquo11 one can very well attribute this ldquofalsepsychologyrdquo to Origen but not ldquoaccuserdquo Saint Paul of it for

the aforesaid trichotomy truly constitutes an item ofindictment Has not Saint Justin too been ldquoaccusedrdquo ofdistinguishing three elements in man12 It is thereforenecessary that the same text the same words not have atall the same meaning in the Apostle as they have in theAlexandrian even if their primary source is common or atleast that under the pen of the first of the two they be onlyan ἅ παξ common and unimportant

The phobia of ldquoPlatonismrdquo in any case can be discoveredin several of our exegetes13 Hence the veritable acrobaticsin the TOB translation [Traduction Oecumenique de la Bible]of this Pauline verse and the explanations given in the endto justify it The translation ldquoMay the God of peace himselfmake you perfect and holy and may your spirit your souland your body be kept perfectly safe in order to beblameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christrdquo Theoriginality of this translation consists in the fact that theword ὁ λόϰληϱον which in Paul preceded the tripartiteenumeration is shifted so as to follow it and in additiontransformed into an adverb so that the two words thatcome next αμέμπτως τηϱηθείη (in the singular sincethe subject was ὁ λόϰληϱον ὑ μῶν) become (in the plural)ldquobe kept perfectly safe in order to be blamelessrdquo To tell thetruth that does not change much and cannot changemuch in the obvious meaning of the text The latter couldbe changed only by the obviously impossible suppressionof one of the three terms of the enumeration But this littleingenuity on the part of the translators allows them tointroduce in a note a contorted exegesis with an intendedgoal about which they make no secret

Some understand ldquoMay your entire being that is spirit soul and body rdquo This division of the human person into three elements would be that ofGreek philosophy It is not usual in Paul and this verse understood in thissense would be a completely isolated text in the New Testament In orderto avoid this difficulty others have understood the first term of theenumeration ldquoYour spiritrdquo to be the equivalent of ldquoyourselfrdquo they then

translate ldquomay your whole person soul and bodyrdquo thus recovering therepresentation that Judaism and Paul had of the human person We haverendered the sentence in a way that makes a simple enumeration of termsapparent each of which can designate for Paul the entire man whether itis a matter of pneuma psychegrave or soma There is no need at all then for anexplanation borrowed from a Greek anthropology in three componentswhich moreover are never expressed with these three terms14

One could not better display a stratagem One could not bemore subtle more sophisticated more inconsistent too butat the same time more honest in the end more clear and inthe final proposition more precise

But here is another strange thing This unfortunatetrichotomy so suspect because of the ldquoPlatonistrdquo Origenthis trichotomy that some would like to be able to forbid inreading Saint Paul for fear of having to admit that theApostle at least once ldquoPlatonizesrdquo this accursedtrichotomy that some strive for want of something betterto exorcise by making it commonplace which one finds inPaul or in Origen or in anyone else has nothing Platonicabout it

We can first of all take this on the word of some goodexegetes those at least who are not hypnotized by the FirstLetter of Paul to the Thessalonians Do we not recognize forexample the mark of Hellenic influence and more preciselyof Platonic opinion on the Book of Wisdom a little beforethe Christian era in the fact that certain passages of thisbook enunciate or presuppose a bipartite division of thehuman composite a division ldquomore conformed to Greekcustoms than to Semiticrdquo15 Do they not strive with reasonmoreover to show that the recognized use of ldquoPlatonicdoctrines about the distinction of body and soulrdquo and aboutthe immortality of the latter takes nothing away from thebiblical foundation of a thought that is not that of aphilosopher but that of a wise man of Israel ldquonourished bythe Old Testamentrdquo16

If it happens that one has not read much of Plato one canalso go back to some authorities on him what one finds inhis work is totally different from what one finds in Saint PaulThere is a certain psychological trichotomy in other wordsa tripartite division of the soul reasonable irascible andconcupiscible So it is in the Republic Phaedrus andTimaeus According to Phaedrus the θυμός and theἐπιθυμητιϰόν are the two horses of the chariot led by theνοῦς Origen who is familiar with this division is verycareful not to make it his own he observes on the contrarythat it ldquois not confirmed by the authority of Holy Scripturerdquoand for this reason on two occasions he rejects it17 Thetranslators of the TOB were very close to perceiving all thatsince at the end of their laborious explanations they finallytell us that Paul had undoubtedly borrowed nothing ldquofrom athree-part Greek anthropologyrdquo given the fact that thelatter is never expressed in Pauline terms But why then thisfear which has made them shrink from the simplesttranslation

It is not correct moreover to say that the text of 1Thessalonians is an isolated text in Scripture and in Paulhimself Undoubtedly it has been unduly compared to averse from Deuteronomy ldquoYou shall love Yahweh your Godwith all your heart with all your soul and with all yourstrengthrdquo to the sole end of insinuating that only thenumber three was here and there to be retained assignifying simply a totality18 it is enough to read these twotexts to see that they are not comparable But on thecontrary when the Letter to the Hebrews celebrates theWord of God who ldquopenetrates to the division of soul andspiritrdquo (Heb 412) it is inspired without any doubt by ananthropology similar to that of Paul And one can hardlymaintain that the formula of the latter is a mere pleonasmldquofor other passages show clearly that the Apostle despiteall the elasticity or lsquofluidityrsquo of his terminology distinguishes

clearly between the phenomena that indicate the body souland spiritrdquo19 He does so in the First Letter to theCorinthians when twice he contrasts the unspiritual ornatural [psychique] man and the spiritual man20 W DavidStacey has maintained that these latter texts cannotcorrespond to that of the Letter to the Thessalonians of thetwo conceptions in conflict it would be necessary on thebasis of all evidence to choose the one later in date asexpressing the mature thought of the Apostle21 theantagonism of natural and spiritual would be substituted forthe hierarchical union of soul and spirit But here again thedesire to eliminate or at least to neutralize a text deemedembarrassing seems to us to have led Dr Stacey astray It isvery evident that the text of 1 Thessalonians is far fromhaving the same significance as that of 1 Corinthians thatdoes not prevent the thought of Saint Paul from remainingcoherent from one letter to another The soul (the psyche) isnever for its part the object in itself of a pejorativeappreciation If in another context he is severe or not veryadmiring of the man he calls ldquonaturalrdquo it is insofar as thelatter is only natural insofar as he closes himselfmdashorremains still provisionally closed22mdashto the Spirit of God whowould (or will) make of him a ldquospiritualrdquo man conferring onhim thus his ldquofullnessrdquo as the Letter to the Ephesians willexpress it (518) The natural man of 1 Corinthians 2 canhave a certain ldquohuman wisdomrdquo that is not uniquely ldquocarnalwisdomrdquo (cf 2 Cor 112) which does not lack all value butunderstands nothing ldquoof the things of the Spirit of Godrdquo forhim they are ldquofollyrdquo To this ldquowise manrdquo to this ldquocultivatedmanrdquo to this ldquoman of reason here belowrdquo the Apostlecontrasts the ldquowisdom of Godrdquo manifested in Christ23

It would be no more appropriate to bring out here thePauline opposition in a still more radical sense between theflesh and the spirit The carnal man is not the one whowould stop so to speak at a first landing that of the flesh

which is to say in such a case at things of the body but theone who has fallen into evil Body and flesh (it is reallynecessary to repeat this since people still seem to bemistaken about this at times) are in no way synonymous oreven comparable and do not belong to categories of thesame order In the thinking of Saint Paul the ldquofleshrdquo has ldquoaclose solidarity with sinrdquo it is this congenital weakness thatmakes the human soul fall into the slavery of sin Theldquospiritrdquo its antagonist is ldquothe state of freedom in which itblossoms when it has been faithful to the Spirit of God whoattracts it and comes to dwell within itrdquo There is noquestion here of any gradation but of opposition pure andsimple Saint Paul does not speak there of any dualitywhatever in the structure of the human being he does notcorrect a tripartite anthropology by another bipartite oneFor him flesh and spirit never designate two components ofhuman naturemdashlike body and soul would bemdashbut alwaysstatesmdashcontrasted statesmdash of the whole man24

If one wants therefore to find a certain Greek antecedentof philosophical significance for the Pauline trichotomy itwould not be appropriate to look for it on Platorsquos side Itwould rather be in Aristotle The Stagirite in factacknowledges in man an animated body the presence of asuperior element the spirit (νοῦς) the principle ofintellectual life immortal and divine Nevertheless theparallel takes a sharp turn for there would be at least onemajor difference While Aristotle spoke of a νοῦς Paulspeaks of a πνεῦμα Now as we know the difference is notmerely one of terminology It is no longer a question of asimple nuance of thought The substitution of one term foranother was besides not made by Paul alone it hadalready been carried out a little earlier by Philo Friendlytoward Hellenism Philo ldquowas imbued with the doctrine ofthe contemplative nousrdquo25 nevertheless in the passageswhere he comments on the creation account he does not

speak of νοῦς but of πνεῦμα God he says breathes intoman a pneuma not content with making him simply alivecomposed of soul and body he gave him part of his spiritthis is what Moses teaches by saying that he made him inhis image This pneuma in man is the principle of a higherlife the place of communication with God26 Now such isalso one of the meanings of pneuma in Saint Paul It is not inGreece that we must search for its origin but in the Bible

Father Joseph Huby has said it in a few words which morerecent authors would benefit from rereading In the Paulineverse ldquofamous because of the trichotomy spirit soul bodyof the human composite some thought to see a borrowingfrom Plato or Aristotle Both do acknowledge in fact threeprinciples in man but if the latter two of those coincide withthose27 enumerated by Saint Paul the first is different InPlato it is the nous the intellectual soul consideredmoreover by Aristotle as separable Instead of νοῦς SaintPaul puts spirit or pneuma here with him as in Philo this isa Semitic term suggested by the account in Genesis (27)where it is said that God breathed into the nostrils of theman a breath of life rdquo28 The Pleiade Bible has taken thesame explanation which seems imperative to us ldquoSpiritsoul bodyrdquo recalls Michel Leturmy in a note to histranslation ldquosuch is with the Semites the most commondivision with respect to the human compositerdquo29 In a noteto the translation of Matthew 625 the same authorexplains that the Greek ψ υχή translates the Aramaeannaumlfshacirc breath of the throat animal life (the ldquosoulrdquo) throughopposition to πνεῦμα which translates the Aramaean roucirc hacircdivine respiration breath of the nostrils (the ldquospiritrdquo) seeGenesis 2730

We do not believe it would be enough however to tracethe words of the Pauline triad simply to those of the BibleThe Apostlersquos anthropology is also based in part on hisexperience acquired from life in the Spirit of God There are

numerous commentators who in consequence consider thePauline πνεῦμα to designate in reality not something of manthat would be higher than his soul but the human soulinsofar as it is informed by grace participating as theSecond Letter of Peter (14) says in an effective way in thedivine nature united to the very essence of God by thecoming of the divine Spirit into it31 The ψ υχή in this casewould be not only ldquosensible liferdquo but also the higher realityof man as man that is although Buzy translates it in anoverly intellectualist language ldquoreason without gracerdquo32

This would be ldquothe state of the specifically living beingwhich is inherent in man as suchrdquo33 So too schematicallyBonnetain ldquoThe three terms come back to the followinggrace soul and bodyrdquo34 Father Andreacute-Jean Festugiegravere isclearly opposed to this interpretation which also proceedsin some from the fear of attributing to the Apostle ananthropology judged to be ldquoPlatonicrdquo For him theanthropology of Saint Paul is undoubtedly trichotomic thepneuma in question in the wish addressed to theThessalonians as in the texts mentioned above from theFirst Letter to the Corinthiansmdashand as in addition the Letterto the Hebrews speaks of itmdashis not the Holy Spirit butactually a part of man ldquothe movement of the phrase thetwo ϰαί the insistence on saying that we must becompletely in our whole being under the divine safeguardrdquoare the proof of it35 Besides if this pneuma is not itself thedivine life realized in man it is indeed in him the center ofthe higher life moral religious mystical it is the ldquocenter ofthe Christian liferdquo which is not a matter of feelings but offaith36

Some hesitate to choose between these two contradictoryinterpretations even if it means apparently contradictingthemselves in their explanatory formulas They are of thefeeling that the thought of Paul is profound and complexthey would like to lose nothing of it but do not see well how

to explain it in our language in a coherent fashion Such isFather Joseph Huby following the passage we have quotedldquoFor Paul the pneuma is more precisely the spirit of maninsofar as influenced informed and heightened by divinegracerdquo it is the ldquoprinciple of thinking center of moral andreligious life and summit of the soul The original (biblical)concept of the pneuma the human soul breathes from Godis magnificently deepened the pneuma designates thereason informed by grace man insofar as he becomes spiritparticipating in the nature of God through the spirit theνοῦς becomes capable of conquering the flesh it isunited to the very essence of God through the coming of thedivine Spiritrdquo37 In this essay somewhat awkward in itsattempts at reconciliation in which a fourth term (νοῦς) isintroduced we see to which side the author is leaning Wewill say as much of Max Alain Chevallier who with respectto 1 Corinthians 1414-16 after having noted for us ldquothefreely equivocal use of the word pneuma by Paulrdquo seems torestrict immediately the significance of his observation bysaying that this word ldquodesignates without describing it theinner man filled with the presence of Godrdquo38 Karl Barth inhis Dogmatics escapes such oscillations only thanks to hisgeneral doctrine which prohibits him from ldquoreifyingrdquo in away from giving a proper consistency to the human spiritconsidered in its relation to God After having justlyobserved that the ruah of the Old Testament does notcorrespond to the πνεῦμα ἅ γιον of the New39 but insofar asa ldquoanthropological notionrdquo to the πνεῦμα of the address tothe Thessalonians Barth makes haste to add ldquoOn the otherhand one cannot assert without reservation that the OldTestament and the New refer to a trichotomy of the humanbeing For both the human being in himself is body andsoul earthly form and earthly life but the body possesses asoul and its earthly form is that of a living being in themeasure in which the human being receives the spirit and

safeguards itrdquo This spirit must however be conceived ldquonotas a property of man but as a gratuitous giftrdquo which atdeath must be returned to God and which persists ldquowhichGod withdraws from him or grants to himrdquo40 What must bemaintained above all according to Barth is that man ldquois inno way lsquorelated to Godrsquo (Gunkel) he has simply beenawakened to his proper existence by the breath that Godbreathes into him and which allows him to breathe himselfWhat is he and what does he possess that he has notreceived and that does not differentiate him from God sinceit is God who has created himrdquo41

The human pneuma of which Paul speaks would thus beboth an element so little constitutive of his being that Godcan take it back from him and a created element thatdifferentiates him from God Such is the Barthian paradoxWithout having to take him literally perhaps we would haveto unite ourselves with the ldquospiritrdquo of it Would it in fact benecessary to choose between two contradictoryinterpretations that confront each other or resign ourselvesto a [false] harmonization that itself does not avoidcontradiction An expression used by Saint Paul himself 1Corinthians 211 could suggest an intermediate solution tous ldquoWho therefore among men knows the secrets of a manif not the spirit of the man which is in him (τὸ πνεῦμα τοῦἀνθϱώ που τὸ ἐν αὐτῷ)rdquo This pneuma is certainly not theHoly Spirit since Paul adds ldquoSimilarly no one knows thesecrets of God except the Spirit of Godrdquo Yet it does notappear completely like a constituent part of man as suchlike the body or the soul after having said ldquothe spirit of themanrdquo Paul corrects himself in a way to say ldquothe spirit whois in himrdquo which marks a nuance of capital importanceThus what par excellence makes a man what constitutesman in his worth among the beings of this world muchmore what makes him a being superior to the world wouldbe an element that rather than being ldquoof manrdquo would be

ldquoin manrdquo There is it seems to us in this Pauline πνεῦμα thesame kind of ambiguity notional because real as in thedivine ldquoimagerdquo or divine ldquobreathrdquo of creation such asChristian tradition interprets them From one author toanother and sometimes in the same author the sameambiguity will give place to oscillations which will not gohowever to the point of compromising before a ratherrecent date the idea of a tripartite anthropology Weconclude with a recent interpreter that the Pauline conceptof πνεῦμα is a concept ldquoof which our modern anthropologiescan absolutely not take accountrdquo42

2 Patristic Tradition

I The First Two Centuries Irenaeus It is a fact that Christianantiquity did not judge insignificant the Pauline verse about

body soul and spirit Nevertheless from one author toanother the interpretations differ without always being in

contradictory opposition to each otherIn his letter to the Philadelphians Saint Ignatius of Antioch

simply makes the Apostlersquos enumeration his own in judgingthat his correspondents like the Ephesians and theSmyrnians ldquowill be honored by the Lord Jesus Christ inwhom they hope with flesh soul and spirit (σαϱϰί ψ υχῇ πνεύματι) in faith charity and concordrdquo1 Athenagoras alsodistinguishes between soul and spirit for him the soul isplaced between ldquothe spirit of matterrdquo which is to say ldquotheflesh and bloodrdquo and the ldquoheavenly spiritrdquo which is ldquopurespiritrdquo and it can according to its choice mix with one orbecome the other

The soul becomes passive when it receives the spirit of matter and ismixed with it by looking below toward earthly things and to speak in ageneral way when it becomes only flesh and blood and ceases to be apure spirit2We believe that we will live another life heavenly and no longer earthlyif at least close to God and with God we have steadfast souls masteringpassion and if we remain not like bodies but like a heavenly spirit 3

In Tatian also the distinction seems clear when he saysldquoWe have knowledge of two sorts of spirits one of them iscalled soul the other is greater than the soul it is the imageand resemblance of Godrdquo4 Only subsequently it isimpossible to discern clearly if the spirit he distinguishesthus from the soul and which he calls ldquodivinerdquo is not simplythe Spirit of God The soul he explains is not immortal in

and of itself so ldquoif it remains by itself it dies with the flesh But when it is united to the divine spirit (θεῖ ον) it doesnot lack for help and it rises to where the spirit leads it Forthe seat of the latter is above while its origin is below Nowin the beginning the spirit was the guide of the soul itabandoned it when it did not want to follow it Now theSpirit of God does not reside in all but in some who livejustly The souls who have obeyed wisdom have drawnthe Spirit who is closely related5 to them (συγγενές) rdquo

Saint Irenaeus then Origen should make us pause a littlelonger because of the abundance of texts their importanceand their difficulty6

It is in the fifth book of Adversus Haereses that Irenaeusgives us his views about anthropology But his goal was notto write a clear and didactic exposition for the use of thehistorians who would pore over his text later on it was torefute heretics who conceived of salvation for man only inldquorejection of the fleshrdquo7 On the other hand careful alwaysto stick very close to Scripture he lets himself be guidedsuccessively by the different texts he uses which leads himto change more or less his perspective and his terminologyin the course of his text8 Hence the difficulties forinterpreters

The first passage in which the distinction between the souland the spirit is affirmed is of little interest to us for it isthere a question of an exposition of heretical doctrine9 Inresponse chapter 6 no 1 is presented as an orthodoxcommentary on the Pauline texts

Through the hands of the Father which is to say by the Son and the Spiritit is man and not a part of man who becomes the image and theresemblance of God Now the soul and the spirit can be a part of man butin no way man the perfect man is a mixture and union of the soul who hasreceived the Spirit of the Father and who has been mixed with the fleshmodeled according to the image of God Under the name of ldquoperfectrdquo the Apostle designates those who havereceived the Spirit of God He also calls them ldquospiritualrdquo they arespiritual through a participation of the Spirit but not through a voiding and

a suppression of the flesh In fact if one dismisses the substance of theflesh that is of the modeled work in order to consider only what isproperly spirit such a thing is no longer the spiritual man but the Spirit ofthe man or the Spirit of God By contrast when this Spirit in mixing withthe soul is united to the modeled work thanks to this effusion of the Spiritthe spiritual and perfect man is achieved and it is he himself who has beenmade in the image and resemblance of God When on the contrary theSpirit is absent in the soul such a man remaining in all truth natural andcarnal will be imperfect possessing indeed the image of God in themodeled work but not having received the resemblance by means of theSpirit10

From all the evidence Irenaeus counts here three elementsin man But is it simply a matter of man or of the perfectman Or rather to speak without ambiguity is it simply aquestion of the ldquoperfectrdquo man which is to say complete inhis nature or man divinized through the participation of theSpirit of God Or indeed does Irenaeus mix the two thingsThe text that follows will perhaps enlighten us

Modeled flesh alone is not the perfect man it is only the body of man thusone part of man Neither is the soul alone man it is only the soul of manthus one part of man Nor is the Spirit man one gives it the name of Spiritnot that of man It is the mixture and union of all these things thatconstitute the perfect man And this is why the Apostle in explaininghimself has clearly defined the perfect and spiritual man beneficiary ofsalvation when he says in this First Letter to the Thessalonians ldquoMay theGod of peace make you perfect and holy so that you may be fullycomplete and so that your whole beingmdashto wit your Spirit your soul andyour bodymdashmay be preserved without reproach for the coming of the LordJesusrdquoWhat motive did he have in asking that these three things to wit the soulthe body and the Spirit be preserved whole for the coming of the Lord if hehad not known that all three were to be restored and reunited and thatthere is for them but one and the same salvation This is why he calls ldquofullycompleterdquo those who present these three things without reproach to theLord Thus those are perfect who all at once possess the Spirit of Godremaining always with them and maintain themselves without reproachwith respect to their souls and their bodies which is to say preserving faithtoward God and keeping justice toward their neighbor11

The hesitation remains On the one hand the Spiritconstitutes with the soul one part of man it is called theldquoSpirit of the manrdquo and seems to be distinguished from the

ldquoSpirit of Godrdquo it in itself does not constitute the man anymore than the body or the soul does but it is one of thethree elements that constitute him these three elementsare also enumerated according to Saint Paul who wishesthem all three to be without reproachmdasha wish that wouldbe irrelevant even impertinent in the case of the Spirit ofGod finally moreover Irenaeus himself considers that theyare all three to be ldquorestoredrdquo and to be presented to theLord But on the other hand the soul receives ldquothe Spirit ofthe Fatherrdquo the man is called ldquospiritualrdquo insofar as hereceives participation of the Spirit and this participationmakes him to be not only in the image but in theresemblance of God finally if this man is ldquoperfectrdquo it isbecause in addition to the soul and the body he ldquopossessesthe Spirit of Godrdquo12 And these two series of affirmations arenot found in different contexts they are closelyintermingled

Yet a little farther on several passages come to supportthe second series

Those who possess the deposit of the Spirit and who surrenderthemselves to the Spirit the Apostle rightly calls ldquospiritualrdquo since theSpirit of God dwells in them For spirits without bodies will never bespiritual men but it is our substancemdashthat is the composite of soul andfleshmdashthat in receiving the Spirit of God constitutes the spiritual man 13 The weakness of the flesh makes the power of the Spirit shine forth and it is of these two things that the living man is made living due to theparticipation of the Spirit man through the substance of the flesh mdashTherefore without the Spirit of God the flesh is dead 14The breath of life which makes the natural man is one thing and thevivifying Spirit which renders him spiritual is another The breath has beengiven indistinctly to all the people who inhabit the earth while the Spirithas been given exclusively to those who trample down earthly covetousdesires 15ldquoFor the Spirit will come out around me and it is I who made all breathrdquo (Is5716) He ranks in a way the Spirit in a sphere apart beside God who inthe last days spread it over mankind for adoption but he situates thebreath in the common sphere among creatures and he declares itsomething created Now what has been created is different from the onewho creates it The breath is thus a temporary thing while the Spirit is

eternal After having enveloped man from within and without heremains always with him and henceforth will never abandon him16

One will note however that in these texts the perspectiveis no longer that of an anthropological analysis and thatthey are condemned by other biblical passages than thepreceding Moreover as Irenaeusrsquo principal objective justnow was to claim for the body itself a salvation of which theheretics say it is incapable his objective here is to show thatthis salvation the definitive blossoming of the spiritual lifewhose seed is in each man is the work of the Spirit of Godin each man In no passage is Irenaeus concerned to give uswhat we would call a philosophical anthropology He doesnot go deeply intomdashto tell the truth he does not even havein mindmdashthe problem of the insertion of the Spirit of God inman Despite the several expressions we have brought outand several others as well we believe that the Spirit ofwhich he speaks is always the Spirit of God even when heconsiders it in man If for example it is said in 5 6 1 thatthe soul and the Spirit can be ldquoone part of manrdquo one canobserve with Dom Adelin Rousseau that ldquoparsrdquo is in thesingular ldquoThus although Irenaeus does not hesitate to seein the Spirit of God one of the three constitutive elements ofthe perfect man he refuses and for good reason to makethis Spirit a lsquopartrsquo of the perfect man rdquo A little farther onit is said that the Spirit like the soul and the body is to berestored and saved which seems strange if it is indeed aquestion of the Spirit of God but Dom Rousseau againcomments ldquowhat is to be saved is not the Spirit as such butthe Holy Spirit insofar as communicated to man for his fullachievement in other words the Spirit is less saved than itsaves rdquo These explanations are ingenious they canseem a little subtle they do not however in our opinionfalsify the general line of Irenaean thought Perhaps it isonly necessary to complete them by recognizing that thetexts that are to be thus explained give witness to a rather

clear tendency to conceive of man (even if it is a question ofthe ldquoperfect manrdquo) according to the anthropological schemesuggested by the Apostle17

If therefore the Spirit indeed designates for Irenaeus theSpirit of God his very manner of considering this Spirit ofGod in man and of seeing in it thus one of the threeelements that combine to constitute the perfect man posesan anthropological problem18 Just like the text of the FirstLetter to the Corinthians of which Irenaeus wants to give anaccount it invites a resolution of this problem in thedirection of a certain ldquotrichotomyrdquomdashwhich Origen more of aphilosopher will soon do ldquoThe hereticsrdquo we read again inthe fifth book of Adversus Haereses ldquo do not understandthat three things as we have shown constitute the perfectman the flesh the soul and the Spirit One of them savesand forms to wit the Spirit another is saved and formed towit the flesh another finally is between those two to witthe soul which now follows the Spirit and takes its flightthanks to him now lets itself be persuaded by the flesh andfalls into earthly desiresrdquo19

These explanations seem to us akin to those of FatherJean Meyen-dorff with respect to man ldquocomposed of fleshsoul and Holy Spiritrdquo ldquoThis viewrdquo he observes ldquowhichsounds strangely pantheistic if one judges it according tolater theological categories shows in fact a dynamicconcept of man that excludes the notion of lsquopure naturersquoMan is created so as to share the existence of God this iswhat distinguishes him from the animal and is expressed inthe biblical account of the creation of Adam lsquoin the image ofGodrsquo rdquo20 As Pierre Boyer-Maurel also says21 if for Irenaeusa certain dichotomy ldquoaccounts for man fashioned in theimage of Godrdquo it is nevertheless a trichotomy ldquoin which thebreath only precedes the Spiritrdquo who ldquoaccounts for thebecoming of man of that man who is created by lettinghimself be created throughout the divine Economyrdquo

II Origen Irenaeus spoke particularly of the Spirit of Godeven when that Spirit shared became by consent of thesoul the spirit of man Origen will speak more explicitly of

the spirit of man insofar as an opening to the Spirit of GodThese are two inverse perspectives much rather than two

adverse doctrines1One authority on Origen Gustave Bardy has however

written that the tripartite division ldquowhich is imposed onhim in a way by several Scripture passages plays no rolein his teachingrdquo2 Another historian of ancient Christiandoctrines Francois Bonifas had expressed a judgment inthe contrary direction but as little conformed to the realityafter having pointed out that ldquounsteadinessrdquo of the Paulineterminology ldquomakes it doubtful that the Apostle intended [in1 Thessalonians 523] to make a scientific distinctionrdquo hewent on thinking essentially of Origen ldquoYet the Fathers ofthe Church saw in the expressions of Saint Paul a rigorousdivision in which they found once again that of their oldmentor Platordquo3 Previously J Denis while not mixing Platoup in the affair had recognized in Origen the existence oftrichotomic texts but he saw in that only a foreign body inthe midst of Origenian doctrine ldquoGenerally speakingrdquo hesaid ldquothe soul and the spirit are but one for Origen and ifhe had not respected a division that came to him from SaintPaul and which appears to have been adopted generallyas much by the orthodox Fathers as by the heretic scholarshe would have suppressed one of the terms of this divisionand would thereby have been spared numerouscontradictionsrdquo4 The prejudice to which in each of thesethree last cases the historian is unconsciously giving way isnot difficult to perceive To overcome it would require an in-depth study After the work by G Verbeke on LrsquoEvolution dela doctrine du Pneuma du Stoiumlcisme agrave saint Augustin (1945)the works of Henri Crouzel and Jacques Dupuis have broughtus all desirable light on this point ldquoAt timesrdquo Father Crouzel

tells us ldquoOrigen is a dichotomist distinguishing the bodyand the soul following the Platonic custom5 But most of thetime he sees according to Scripture three elements inman spirit soul and body He has recourse to thistrichotomy when it is a matter of explaining his idea of manand he states it each time he encounters in the texts anexpression that suggests it and this is so throughout hisliterary careerrdquo6 But it is Father Jacques Dupuis who drawsthe matter into perfect clarity in his important monographon ldquoLrsquoEsprit de lrsquohommerdquo eacutetude sur Irsquoanthropologicreligieuse drsquoOrigegravene For him ldquoThere can be no doubt thatthe verse from Saint Paul is the immediate source of hisanthropological trichotomyrdquo (65) It is principally he that wewill follow here

ldquoWe often find it asserted in Scripturerdquo says Origen ldquothatman is spirit body and soul and we have ourselvesdeveloped the subject at lengthrdquo7 In that as in othersubjects it is in fact the sacred text most especially that ofSaint Paul that truly constitutes the framework for histhought8 And it is with reference to Scripture that he triesto define clearly the notion of the Pneuma For him thePneuma is first of all the Divine Life in principle but it is alsothe shared divine life the creature itself becomes pneumain the measure that it possesses this life Yet it is a first kindof participation in the divine Pneuma which does not yetallow it to be said that man has become pneuma aparticipation that without betraying Origen we can alreadycall natural because it consists in an element that is anintegral part of the nature of all men and that is preciselyhis pneuma ldquoThe Spirit of God even when it is present inus is one thing and the pneuma proper to every man thatwhich is in him is something else The Apostle clearlyaffirms that this spirit (this pneuma) is different from theSpirit of God even when the Holy Spirit is present in usover and above the spirit of man that is in himrdquo9 The

distinction could not be put more clearly Origen asks againin the same passage of the commentary on Saint MatthewldquoIs the spirit of Elias the same as the Spirit of God whodwells in Elias or indeed do we have two different thingsthererdquo And he replies ldquoThe Apostle shows clearly that theSpirit of God when he dwells in man is distinct from thespirit of the man lsquoThe Spirit itself testifies to our spirit thatwe are children of Godrsquo (Rom 816) and in another placelsquoNo man knows what is in a man if not the spirit of the manwho is in him likewise no one knows what is in God if notthe Spirit of Godrsquo (1 Cor 211)rdquo10

Origen indeed says like Paul pneuma and not nous It isbecause they did not sufficiently distinguish between thesetwo concepts that several have identified the pneuma of theanthropological trichotomy with the preexisting nous andhave made it the higher (intellectus) part of the soulmdashunless in order better to distinguish between pneuma andpsyche they reduced this latter to its sensible part Theythen spoke of Origenrsquos imprecisions his unstableterminology indeed of his inconsistency of thought and ofhis contradictions This was from not having read himclosely enough11 He distinguishes the spirit from the soul(and in this case he is not speaking of the nous) as clearlyas he does the soul from the body and he repeats atdifferent times that ldquowe are composed of a soul and aspiritrdquo this is the case it seems in the third book of Periarchocircn12 so too in the fourth book in the famoustheoretical parallel that he institutes between man andScripture13 In the Entretien avec Heacuteraclite for theinstruction of his august audience he insists ldquoThat man is acomposite being we know through Scripture The Apostle infact says lsquoMay God make you holy spirit soul and bodyrsquoand so forth This spirit is not the Holy Spirit but one part ofthe human composite (μέϱος τής τοῦ ἀνθϱώ πουσυστάσεως) as the same Apostle teaches when he says

lsquoThe Spirit gives witness to our spiritrsquo rdquo14 In thecommentary on the Letter to the Romans he will also quotein support a text from Daniel15 here he invokes as anexample what happened at the death of Christ havingwanted to save all men the Savior had taken body soul andspirit now ldquothese three elements during the Passion wereseparated at the time of the Resurrection they werereunited During the Passion they were separated How Thebody in the tomb the soul in hell the spirit he deposited itin the hands of the Father rdquo16

This spirit of man represented by the eagle in Ezekiel17 isplaced above the soul18 But never in the texts of thetrichotomic series does Origen call it νοῦςmdashso that thiscould be a criterion for discerning the origin of certainpassages given as Origenian but which are in reality fromEvagrius19

But how are we to understand this spirit which is ldquoin usrdquo20 What is its role If we follow again the indications givenby the Apostle we will compare it to the moral conscienceldquoOur gloryrdquo says Paul ldquois the testimony of our consciencerdquo(2 Cor 112) The conscience always rejoices in what good Ido on the other hand it can never be accused of doing evilbut on the contrary it remonstrates it accuses the soul towhich it is bound this is a sovereign freedom I thereforethink that it is this very spirit that the Apostle tells us is withthe soul being associated with it like a pedagogue and aguide to teach it good to chastise it and to reprimand itwhen it sins It is this spirit of which the Apostle again saysthat ldquono one knows what the man is if not the spirit of theman who is in himrdquo it is the spirit of the conscience alsoaccording to what Paul says ldquoThe spirit himself giveswitness to our spiritrdquo21

We should not however in exalting the pneumaexcessively reduce its reality if it is not a simple member ofthe human composite neither is it the simple voice of the

conscience Inaccessible to evil22 placed in a way as wehave said ldquoabove the soulrdquo (ἀνωτέϱω) as a ldquoguide tovirtuerdquo23 it is ldquomuch more divine than the soul and thebodyrdquo24 ldquobelonging truly to man it remains entirely in aparticipation of the Holy Spirit who gives himself to us it isthe point of contact between man and the divine Pneumawho inhabits himrdquo25 This is why it is always holy it is holyby essence not of course the ldquoHoly Spiritrdquo but throughparticipation a ldquoholy spiritrdquo26 ldquothe seal of the Holy Spiritmakes holy the spirit that is in usrdquo27 in each of us Hencethe paradox the pneuma in man is holy and it mustbecome so we must affirm at the same time the holiness ofthis pneuma and ldquothe fortuitous character of a holy liferdquo28 Ifwe seek to bring out the fundamental idea expressed (let usnot say sought for Origen seems very much the master ofhis thought) in these texts and other similar ones we couldwithout betraying it express it thus the pneuma that is ldquoinmanrdquo in every man assures a certain hiddentranscendence of the man over himself a certain opening acertain received continuity between man and God Not thatthere is the least identity of essence between the one andthe other (like Irenaeus like Clement Origen is animplacable adversary of this pantheism of the pseudo-Gnostics) but it is at the heart of man the privileged placealways intact of their encounter

Would man therefore be after all impeccable No But thecenter of moral freedom and choice is not the pneuma Thatis why we can say that for Origen the pneuma ldquodivine giftrdquois not properly speaking part of the personality29 Thecenter of choice is the soul in its higher part (νοῦς) Thelatter can be inclined as Saint Paul says on the side of thespirit or on the side of the ldquofleshrdquo (which does not mean thebody) which is to say that it is ldquocapable of virtue and ofvicerdquo30 When it is said that the flesh desires against thespirit and the spirit against the flesh without any doubt the

soul is posed between the two as being able to acquiesceto the desires of the spirit (si eum sequi velit)31 or let itselfbe led to carnal desires in this latter case it becomes withthe flesh a single body of covetousness and of carnalappetite in the former case on the contrary beingassociated with the spirit it becomes a single spirit withitrdquo32 The spiritual man is the one in whom the spiritprevails33 the carnal man he in whom the flesh prevailsThe spirit itself the pneuma always remains holy but ineach one it can have vitality or torpor flight or fall flame orsluggishness34 This is why paradoxically Origen can affirmboth as we have said that the pneuma is holy and that itmust become so35

Still following Paul Origen also speaks of the ldquonaturalmanrdquo who is again neither carnal nor spiritual and theexplanation he gives in his respect manifests once again aparadoxical character distinguished only with difficulty fromthat spirit (pneuma) that is in man without being uniquely ofman and that becomes fully himself and fully completesman only in his participation in the Spirit of God ldquoThenatural man does not understand what the law of God is itis madness to him but the spiritual judges all thingsrdquo (1 Cor214) We think that there is a reason why Paul omits theword ldquomanrdquo after ldquospiritualrdquo For ldquothe spiritualrdquo is more thana man he is superior to that humanity defined by the soulthe body or by the two together and not by the spirit whichis more divine than these two elements and whosesupernatural participation once achieved defines thespiritual When the soul rises follows the spirit andseparates itself from the body when it no longer evencontents itself with following the spirit but remains in it (asthis passage shows ldquoToward you have I raised my soulrdquo Ps251) how would it not lose so to speak its own nature andnot itself become spirit36

Toward the end of this text a trace of the speculations ofPeri archocircn on the subject of the soul will be noted buttoned down by ldquoso to speakrdquo It is necessary toacknowledge however that from one work to the otheracross the succession of dates and the varieties of subjectstreated and literary genres the points of view are so diversethat in the words if not in the thought the reader has somedifficulty finding a perfect coherence among all theOrigenian texts on the pneuma

At death all pneuma returns to God this is whatEcclesiastes says ldquoThus the pneuma of the just and that ofthe sinner have an identical destiny both end at theFatherrdquo37 But ldquoit does not follow that saint and sinner sharethe same destiny With the saint the whole man enters intoGod with the sinner the pneuma returns to the Lord thesoul and body perish in Gehenna hence the intrinsic tearingof the human beingrdquo38 Like the remark by Father CrouzelOrigen is akin here to the thought of Saint Irenaeus whosaid ldquoAll those who are destined to life will be raised up withtheir bodies their souls and their spirits those who havemerited punishment will surrender their souls and theirbodies to it for with them they have strayed from divinegracerdquo39

Later Christian tradition will not be as unfaithful to thisconception of the pneuma as one might believe It is foundagain in a series of intuitions ideas and opinions of variedexpression This is for example the idea dear toRuysbroek of a certain ldquodeiformityrdquo of the human being ofhis higher ldquosuperessentialrdquo life in God40 It is the obscurefeeling that there exists in each of us even the greatestsinner a hidden room where no one but God can enter inldquothat sacred point in us that says Pater no iterrdquo as PaulClaudel says magnificently in the famous ldquoCantique dePalmyrerdquo and that cannot hide from love41 It is the intuitionof a Georges Bernanos at the threshold of death noting in

his diary that ldquosin makes us live on the surface of ourselvesrdquoand that even when we offend God ldquowe never ceaseentirely to desire what He desires in the depths of thesanctuary of our soulrdquo42 There are similar traits in the workof Dostoyevsky although they too can be rather equivocal(a novelist does not express himself like a theologian) theydo not prevent him from glorifying personal freedom andproclaiming the necessity of uprooting evil in receiving ldquonewbirthrdquo The Origenian doctrine of the pneuma alsoreverberates throughout the Bonaventurian tradition In atotally different climate and without any need to search fora precise influence from one to the other the very doctrineof Saint Thomas Aquinas would not be completely foreign tohim It questions neither the singularity of each humanbeing nor the drama of existence nor the divinetranscendence43

NOTE

In his commentary on John 423-24 Origen defines ldquotrueadorersrdquo first by the spirit then in relation to the truth Hethus breaks down the dual Johannine formula and explains itterm by term drawing his inspiration again from Paul whoopposes spirit and flesh (Rom 89 Gal 56 2 Cor 103) It isinteresting to note that in evoking Romans 89 Origen addsa μήϰετι those who are no longer in the flesh but in theldquospiritrdquo He thereby stresses the impact of the coming ofChrist and of the gift of the Spiritmdashalready evoked by Paulmdashwhich divide history into a before and an after Origen doesnot work therefore only on words (flesh and spirit) but heis inspired by the Pauline thought in which these terms arenot only anthropological but in which they evoke the impactthat the history of salvation the Incarnation and the gift ofthe Spirit have on man It is the same with Galatians 516fIn verse 18 Paul in fact opposes the condition of man underthe Spirit to that of this same man under the Law As for thethird evocation it is a little different Paul speaks there of hisconduct because some accuse him of acting according tothe flesh that is of allowing himself to be guided bymotives that are too human (Jean-Michel Poffet OP ldquoLeMeacutethode exeacutegeacutetique drsquoHeacuteracleacuteon et drsquoOrigegravenecommentateurs de Jean 4rdquo Jeacutesus la Samaritaine et lesSamaritains [Fribourg Switzerland Eacuteditions Universitaires1985] 191) III From Origen to Augustine A few examplesshould be enough to show the continuity of this tripartiteanthropology across the patristic age

Cyril of Jerusalem addresses to the newly baptized thesame wish that Paul did to the Thessalonians1 Gregory ofNyssa in his treatise on the Creation of Man practices acertain eclecticism Following the perspective that isnaturally his own since he compares the nature of man to

that of the beings that surround him and particularly ofother living beings he begins by distinguishing a threefoldactivity merely vital (that of plants) sentient (that ofbeasts) rational these are like three souls or threesubstances all three of which are found in man alone Thevocabulary is that of the philosophical ϰοινή of that periodthe higher life of man is λογιϰή it is directed by the νοῦςhis nature is a νοεϱά ϕύσις But this can also be understoodsays Gregory according to the words that the Apostleaddressed to the Ephesians (sic) First of all through a boldconcordism he places the body in an equivalence with thenutritive life the soul with the sensate life the spirit(πνεῦμα) with the intellectual life (νοεϱόν) then withoutfurther hesitation and without seeming to perceive that heis changing the perspective he finds once again the truePauline thought or at least comes close to it bydistinguishing life according to the flesh (σαϱϰιϰή) from lifeaccording to the spirit (πνευματιϰή) and by showing thesoul in an intermediary situation having to choose betweenvice and virtue2 Farther on he will explain that only thesoul endowed with reason such as it is in man fully meritsthis name of soul in such a way that he would haverejected it seems any attempt at concordism between theνοῦς and the πνεῦμα3

It is not Hellenism but indeed the Bible that inspires thetrichotomy of the Syrian tradition such as we see it in thishymn of Saint Ephraim of Nisibis For the soul is still moreprecious than the bodyAnd the spirit is still more precious than the soul

And the Divinitymore hidden than the spiritThe body will be clothed with the beauty of the soul when

the end arrives

The soul will put onthe beauty of the spiritThe spirit will put on in its very image the (divine) MajestyThe body on equal footing with the soul will see itself

elevated The soul on equal footing with the spiritThe spirit at the height where the Majesty is 4

In another later Syrian text the awkwardness of an attemptat harmonization between the three elements of man andthe three Persons of the divine Trinity will be noted JacquesdrsquoEacutedesse (d 708) writes in his Explanation of the MassldquoSacred things are holy The soul the body and the reasonare sanctified by three sacred things by water blood andspirit and besides by the Father the Son and the Spirit andtruly man does resemble God in virtue of this trinity ofcomposition the soul corresponds to the Father the body tothe corporeality of the Son and the reason to the HolySpirit Thereby man thus resembles Godrdquo5 One cannevertheless wonder if the word translated by ldquoreasonrdquo isnot here the equivalent of nous rather than of pneuma andif the soul is not merely the sensate soul The same doubtcan be expressed with respect to a passage from theTestament in Galilee of Our Lord Jesus Christ of which wehave the text in Ethiopian ldquoShould the body be judged withthe soul and the spirit Will the body of every man berevived with his living soul and his spiritrdquo6 We will find asimilar hesitation in examining the Latin tradition andperhaps one must say in certain cases at least it cannot beresolved

Saint Ambrose writes on the one hand ldquoHomo ex animarationali constat et corporerdquo7 but also on the other handldquoPrimum unusquisque homo est corporalis secundoanimalis tertio spiritualisrdquo and the parallel he institutesbetween these three elements and the three heavens towhich Saint Paul alludes in the Second Letter to the

Corinthians does not enlighten us much about the meaningof this trichotomy8 Ambrose is not alone in any case inacknowledging it We read in Gregory of Elvira ldquoManifestumest enim tribus perfectum constare semimortalemhominem id est corpore et anima et spiriturdquo9 AndAugustine expresses himself in a similar way on severaloccasions10

In reality Augustinersquos vocabulary is rather evasive Theterm mens as we know holds a privileged place in his workIn De Trinitate he develops a distinction destinedsubsequently to become more rigid that between ratioinferior and ratio superior In commenting on Psalm 3 verse4 ldquoet exaltans caput meumrdquo he explains that this ldquocaputanimaerdquo is the ldquospiritusrdquo or the ldquomensrdquo and so on11

Certain texts which have the appearance of explicitdefinitions speak of two single elements as constitutive ofman ldquoHomo enim constat ex corpore et spiriturdquo12 ldquoNihil estin homine quod ad ejus substantiam pertineat atquenaturam praeter corpus et animam totus homo hoc estspiritus et carordquo13 Yet Augustine does not consider the twowords anima and spiritus to be simply synonyms althoughfor brevityrsquos sake he includes in only one of the two thecomplex meaning of both ldquoNomen animae spiritus est abeo quod spiritalis est animae nomen est ab eo quodcorpus animet hoc est vivificetrdquo14 From which we have acertain number of explicitly trichotomic texts which are ofgreat importance for a correct understanding of Augustiniananthropology for it is on this trichotomy that Augustinebases his doctrine of the memoria15 and he gives it asessential to the Catholic Faith ldquoSi quis tenuerit catholicamfidem ut totum hominem credat a Verbo Dei essesusceptum id est corpus animam spiritum rdquo16

In the same De fide et symbolo Augustine explainshimself at somewhat greater length ldquoEt quoniam tria suntquibus homo constat spiritus anima et corpusmdashquae

rursus duo sunt quia saepe anima simul cum spiritunominatur pars enim quaedam ejusdem rationalis quacarent bestiae spiritus diciturmdashprincipale nostrum spiritusest deinde vita qua conjungimur corpori anima diciturpostremo ipsum corpus quoniam visibile est ultimumnostrum est Anima vero cum carnalia bona appetit caronominatur rdquo17 we also quote several similar texts ldquoUttotus homo sit spiritus et anima et corpus sed aliquandoduo ista simul nomine animae nuncupari rdquo18 ldquoPropterspiritum et animam et corpus rdquo19 ldquoAd creaturaeintegritatem id est spiritum et animam et corpus et illudquo intelligimus et illud quo vivimus et illud quo visibiles etcontrectabiles sumusrdquo20

In De fide et symbolo at the same time as hedistinguishes anima from spiritus Augustine identifiesspiritus and mens21 Likewise too he distinguishes theldquopars rationalisrdquo of the soul (which is thus no longer only theanimator of the body as in animals) from the ldquopars quaeexcellit id est ipsa mensrdquo22 It is practically the lastdistinction expressed in De Trinitate by the seeminglyequivalent words ratio inferior and ratio superior23

In brief the anthropological analyses of Saint Augustineare varied H I Marrou has set up a table which does notintend to be exhaustive24 and it must be noted besides thatunder the same word under the same verbal distinction ithappens that Augustine places different realities On thewhole less dependent on a literal interpretation ofScripture and more particularly of Saint Paul than Origenwished to be25 more inclined to express himself in avocabulary borrowed in part from Neoplatonism Augustineplaces under the word spiritus a reality that sometimesmore closely resembles the nous of Greek philosophythan the pneuma of the sacred text Yet through the dualityhe recognizes within this spiritus (or this ratio or this mens)he remains a faithful witness of the Christian tradition

3 From Saint Augustine to Our Day

I Medieval Spiritual Masters In Augustine as in Origen (andas in the whole patristic tradition) the notions are fluid the

historian must strive to grasp the movement of theirthought rather than to classify their concepts Augustinianexplanations moreover do not correspond point by pointwith Origenian analyses The Christian spiritual masters ofthe Middle Ages will rather often be in this regard closer to

Origen than to Augustine In order not to interpret them in asimplistic way it is necessary constantly to bring analogy

into play Perhaps even the undertaking to reunite them in akind of continuous chain extending to our time is a little

too reminiscent of concordism Let us say finally thatspiritus is not only designated or understood in variousways with some it splits so that one has to deal rather

with a quadripartite anthropology one of the causes for thisis the desire to make a place for the Platonian tradition ofthe intelligence a tradition that is amalgamated somehowor other to the Pauline tradition It is having made these

remarks that we gather together the examples that follow

For John Scotus man is composed of three elements butthe third element called in turn animus intellectus or mensresembles the νοῦς more than the πνεῦμα We read in book5 of De divisione naturae ldquoTotam humanam naturamcorpus videlicet et animam et intellectumrdquo (PL 122 910-11)But another text in book 2 chapter 5 expresses aconception closer to the biblical conception ldquoAciem mentisqua ilium [Deum] intelligimus et in qua maxime imagocreatoris condita estrdquo (PL 122 531 c)1

The traditional trichotomy dominates the structure ofBernardrsquos Brevis Commentatio on the Song of Songs (n 1)In William of Saint Thierry the third term the ldquospiritrdquo splitseither in order to grant a certain place to the nous to theintellectus to rational understanding or rather in order todetail the principal stages of the spiritual life The Letter tothe Brethren at Mont Dieu that important text distinguishesa triplex status animalismdashrationalismdashspiritualis which is tosay ldquothose beginningrdquo ldquothose on the wayrdquo and ldquotheperfectrdquo The opposition between the flesh and the spirit isnot denied William will be able to remind those who havingbegun to taste the sweetness of contemplation might betempted to neglect the permanent necessity of spiritualcombat2 But rather than this dialectical opposition theobject of the Letter is to set forth a pedagogical ladderwhich is moreover nonetheless Pauline in its inspirationThe beginners are still guided by an animalis sensus (this isthe natural man of Saint Paul which is not the carnal man)those on the way acquire a rationalis scientia (we observehere the care to integrate into the formation of the monkthe whole cycle of human knowledge) and the perfect enjoyspiritualis sapientia3 In addition these are not threeairtight categories or perfectly distinct and successivestages just as there is passage from one to the other thereis immanence from one to the other William remains faithfulto the same schema in Miroir de la foi4 as well as in hiscommentaries on the Song of Songs ldquotres status esseorantium vel orationum animalem rationalemspiritualemrdquo5 In De contemplando Deo a subdivisionintervenes between the ratio the discursive faculty andthe intellectus which does not seem to be at this point theequivalent of the spiritus (1 4)

Isaac of Stella speaks in nearly the same way in alanguage however that has more of an intellectualist ringto it in distinguishing the understanding from the reason

which abstracts the forms of the sensate vis animae quaimmediate supponitur Deo6 We have the feeling that thissecond-generation Cistercian was familiar withScholasticism

Hugh of Saint Victor is closer than Isaac to Bernard andWilliam of Saint Thierry According to him the eye of theflesh (which is to say here the body) sees the world andwhat it contains the eye of the reason sees the soul andwhat it contains but the eye of contemplation penetrates tothe innermost depths of man and above man This eye ofcontemplation belongs to those who possess the spirit ofGod7 In Achard of Saint-Victor the order of the last twoelements or of the last two stages seems reversed hetreats de discretione animae spiritus et mentis mens wasas another author of the twelfth century says quasiquoddam divinitatis insigne8 (But this is hardly a questionof vocabulary alone) Whatever might be the distinctionsand subdistinctions orientations inflections and differencesin vocabulary it can be said of all these spiritual masters ofthe Middle Ages as well as of many of those who will followthat they took up the essential chorus of the Pauline andpatristic trichotomy and that most even attribute extremeimportance to it as Sandaeus a seventeenth-centuryauthority was to remark

Magni aestimant Mystici nonnulli et putant maxime necessariam ad suamTheologiam ac perfectionem divisionem inter spiritum et animam9

This is also true of Bonaventure ldquoHabet enim anima trespotentias animalem intellectualem divinam secundumtriplicem oculum carnis rationis contemplationisrdquo10 Werecognize the schema of William of Saint Thierry and Hughof Saint Victor11 For Thomas Gallus closer in this regard toIsaac of Stella ldquoreason feels the intelligence seesrdquo12

Johannes Tauler in several of his sermons teaches thatldquoman is so to speak composed of three menrdquo and that one

must distinguish in him first of all an ldquoexternal manrdquo orldquoanimal manrdquo then a ldquoreasonable manrdquo finally a ldquohigherman wholly inner and hiddenrdquo that ldquonoble and deiformrdquoman ldquomade in the image of Godrdquo13 The mystical theologyof Harphius (Henry Herp) also says that ldquothe soul isaccording to Scripture divided into three parts rdquo14 andthe appeal to Scripture despite the appearance is justifiedFor our authors in fact the adding of a supplementary termto the Pauline enumeration does not derive from the factthat they would abandon Paul in favor of Plato but from thefact that they are concerned besides about a theory ofknowledge which Paul did not at all have in view in hisaddress to the Thessalonians Yet La Perle eacutevangeacutelique leadsus to a tripartite schema the body being understood as inPaul but at base the difference from the medieval authorswe have just enumerated is hardly perceptible

Each man seems almost to represent three men according to the body heis bestial according to the soul he is reasonable and intellectual andaccording to the spirit or the naked essence of the soul where God dwellshe is deiform 15This very noble portion of the soul some call mens insofar as itcontinually breathes after God and is as it were a largely deiform or divinething and the image of God in man It is something divine in being as itwere flooded with God and united to him It is also called the point and thesummit of the spirit because God without intermission shines in the latterlike a mirror It is also according to what the good Father Ruysbroek saysthe highest part of the soul It is also called the sparkle of the soulbecause it is in God what the sparkle is in fire In the first [unity or union] we are superessential and deiform and in thesecond spiritual and internal and in the third active and moral 16

The foregoing is the text of a compiler from which one mustnot ask too great a coherence in terminology or too great aunity in point of view If we now appeal to a theologian whowas the adversary of the mystical school represented byTauler Harphius and La Perle eacutevangeacutelique and who refers tomore reliable authors such as Augustine ldquoBernardrdquo andHugh he will give us the same essential distinctions

Tres cognoscendi modi sunt quorum unus animalis dicitur utens maximeoculo carnis alius rationalis utens plus oculo rationis tertius spiritualisutens oculo contemplationis sicut distinxerunt divini homines tres oculoset tres vivendi modos17

Louis de Blois finally in the Institution spirituelleperseveres in bringing out this ldquodepth of the soulrdquo thatunder different names always corresponds to the ldquoPaulinepneumardquo and that will not find a place in the late Scholasticanthropologies or in most modern anthropologies

God who to tell the truth is everywhere dwells in the spirit of man and inthe simple depth or inner sanctuary of the soul in a particular manner Hedwells there in his own image and never absents himself18This depth naked and stripped of any image is raised above all creatures it transcends time and place and through a kind of perpetual adhesionremains united to God in his principle It is however in us by essence forthe abyss and depth of the soul are essence The soul possesses a certain supernatural unity of spirit in which itdwells as in its own habitation and it is carried away into the divineessence even to this supreme unity in which the Father Son and Holy Spiritare in the simplicity of the divine essence itself 19

Assuredly these speculations about the divine essencemdasheven if they maintain a trinitarian affirmationmdashand aboutthe essence of man presuppose a long evolution of thoughtthat in one sense distances us greatly from Saint Paul Butacross languages theories and as one never stops sayingtoday cultural contexts that differ greatly to be sure it ispossible to discern a fundamental continuity

This continuity will not be broken by the period called theRenaissance

II Saint Thomas Aquinas in Tradition1

I

In the spiritual history of mankind the three domainsconstituted by what one can designate under the threedenominations of religion morality and mysticism are oftenpresented as independent or even opposed to each otherThe alliance or the mutual penetration between mysticismand morality does not appear achieved in and of itself anymore than that between morality and religion Yet one couldnot conclude that such an alliance or such a mutualpenetration is an artificial and wholly contingentphenomenon In opposition to an empiricism thatdisintegrates everything without explaining anything wewill say rather that it responds if not to the demands atleast to the profound wish of nature But nature itself hastaken time in finding itself

In fact we note that it has not fully found itself outside theChristian revelation The union of the three aforementionedelements religion2 morality and mysticism does not reachits fullness it does not become harmonious and indissolublein principle except in the tradition coming from the GospelThere and most specifically in the Catholic form of thistradition it does not appear as a secondary fact obtainedby convergence subsequent to various gropings but as anoriginal and essential fact Religion morality and mysticismmanifest themselves there ldquoin a reciprocal envelopmentrdquoBetween these three both an attraction and a tension existthat could be the source of many vital problems but there isobjectively neither separation exclusion nor conflict forldquothe Deity while transcending being the true and the goodcontains them formallyrdquo3

This is why in particular in the Catholic traditionmdashlivedand reflectedmdashldquoreasonablerdquo life and ldquospiritualrdquo life or lifeldquoaccording to the spiritrdquo penetrate each other without beingidentified with each other4 and morality penetrates themystical life to the end Pseudo-Gnosticism relegated therewarding of good and punishing of evil those pillars of theldquoDemiurgerdquo to the lower level of ldquoexotericrdquo faith the greattradition on the contrary maintains this moral aspect ldquoatthe heart of the revelation of the Father through the uniqueSonrdquo5 ldquoIt is notrdquo says Saint Justin for example ldquobecause ofhis [natural] affinity with God or because he is spirit like himthat man sees God it is because he is virtuous and justrdquo6 Inhis Psychologie des mystiques Joseph Marechal noted thisessential characteristic Mystical ascent he explains doesnot erase ldquoany specific trait of the common Christian liferdquo7In other words the Christian virtues proposed for thepractice of all are not simply means of freeing oneself theirexercise is not simply something transitory in theirsubstance they are already something of the end itself Thisis what Saint Ambrose was able to explain wonderfully in abrief sentence in his commentary on Saint Luke withrespect to the Beatitudes ldquoSicut enim spei nostrae octavaperfectio est ita octava summa virtutum estrdquo8 And this iswhat Saint Augustine repeated in similar terms speaking ofadhesion to God the blessed life and eternal wisdom ldquoUnaibi virtus erit et idipsum erit virtus praemiumque virtutisrdquo9

In a remarkable thesis Pierre Nemeshegyi has posed thesame problem with respect to Origen ldquoTo place Being andmoral Goodness in equation to place this moral Goodnessin God formally and as characterizing the final ground of hisBeingmdashis this not to be condemned to enclosing all spirituallife in an anti-mystical moralism The Good is atranscendental But is it formally what we understand byldquomoral Goodrdquo Or is there not a deepening of this moralGoodness which would reestablish the possibility of an

innermost mystical depthrdquo And Nemeshegyi concludes ldquoInfact in Origenrsquos conception moralism and mysticism areone and the same thingrdquo10 Saint Gregory the Great oftenso close to Origen will unite good sense to spiritual fervor inorder to remind contemplatives that if they want to befaithful to the Gospels and to advance on the true way theymust take care to scorn the humble precepts of morality andto seek to understand them in a more sublime sense11

The medieval spiritual masters will take up again thesethoughts of Origen Ambrose Augustine and GregoryExpressing ourselves in the customary categories of theirexegesis which the Middle Ages systematized we will saythat for them ldquoanagogyrdquo achieves the final perfection bothof ldquoallegoryrdquo and of ldquotropologyrdquo (of dogma and ofmorality)12 Of all authentically Catholic mysticism onecould declare what one historian said of Saint Bernard byallusion to the traditional interpretation of the ldquoBooks ofSolomonrdquo for each of them as for him ldquothe moral school ofEcclesiasticus and Proverbs the necessary preliminary forthe mystical school of the Song of Songs is a school whosedoors are never closed behind usrdquo13

This ldquospiritualrdquo equilibrium has at times seemedthreatened in one direction or another Some spiritualscholars have seemed to want to transcend purely andsimply the sphere of morality and reason This is whatcauses Evagrius not without reason to be judged severelyat times it is what Ruysbroek reproaches in the falsemystics of his time it is one of the points that the bull Inagro of John XXII criticizes in Meister Eckhart Whatever mayhave been true in each of these cases the thing thatinterests us here is the norm that inspired such criticismsWhile following Saint Paul in distinguishing the ldquosoulrdquo fromthe ldquospiritrdquo (not moreover as two substances nor even astwo ldquofacultiesrdquo) one always refuses to separate them as ifthe penetration into the higher zone of the ldquospiritrdquo must

make us reject as no longer valid the operations of theinferior zone of the ldquosoulrdquo But the hierarchical distinction ismaintained which is to say that the mystical life is not forall that reduced to the plane of simple morality A text fromSaint Teresa is very enlightening here the saint observesthat the ldquocenter of the soulrdquo or the ldquospirit of the soulrdquo is aldquodifficult thing to express and even to believerdquo

Certain interior effects give the certitude that there is in certain respectsa very real difference between the soul and the spirit Although in realitythey are but one we sometimes perceive a division between them that isso delicate that it seems the one functions in one way and the other inanother There are so many things in our innermost depths and thingsso subtle that it would be boldness on my part to undertake to explainthem We will understand all that in the other life if God deigns toadmit us to the dwelling where we will have understanding of all thesesecrets14

Yet the equilibrium can be upset in the opposite directionfrom that for which Evagrius and Meister Eckhart werereproached This has been true periodically for anti-mysticalscholars or simply anti-mystics against whom periodicallytoo protests are raised With them it is not the ldquosoulrdquo thatis forgotten or scorned in the name of the superior ldquospiritrdquoit is the ldquospiritrdquo that is ignored misunderstood in the nameof a truncated moral wisdom But with any of the greatscholars of the Catholic tradition we do not have to registerany such misunderstanding This is what we would wish todemonstrate here with respect to Saint Thomas Aquinasand more particularly with respect to the Summatheologica

II

From first appearances one might be brought to believethat Saint Thomas in the Summa is one of those scholarswho upset the equilibrium in the second direction But in

reality he did nothing of the sort His doctrine in the Summatheologica contains in fact the equivalent of what othershave expressed through the distinction of soul and spiritunderstood as the distinction of a moral region and amystical region If one does not observe this right at thebeginning it is because Saint Thomas expresses himself indifferent words

It could be written that in his doctrine ldquoall the problemsthat the spiritual life and its evolution pose return in thisconsideratio moralis which has but one object man inprogress toward his blessed destinyrdquo15 The thing isincontestable Still it might be useful to specify how Nomore in Saint Thomas than in others is the union of the twomoral and spiritual (or ldquomysticalrdquo) elements a confusion or areduction pure and simple from the mystical to the moralThe synthesis is not a unification in the exclusive favor ofone of the two Of course one could judge that the Thomistanthropology by its Aristotelian roots favors the originalityof the mystical life less than others And like the virtue ofldquoreligionrdquo the theological virtues seem at first glance mixedin a long list of ldquovirtuesrdquo within the second part of theSumma It is appropriate nevertheless to remark beforeseeing things at closer range that only a later usage givesthis second part the name ldquomoralrdquo After having in the firstpart considered God as the universal cause Saint Thomasconsiders him now as end after the divine model he clingsto his image after the departure of God from all things heenvisages the return of all things to God Nowmdashthis is theimportant point for our subjectmdashthis itinerary of returncomprises several stages

It is true that the prologue to the Secunda secundaespeaks of scientia moralis of materia moralis and that allseems right at first to be reduced to the consideratiovirtutum But let us look a little closer In this sameprologue as in the articles that follow Saint Thomas

nonetheless distinguishes from the virtutes morales notonly the virtutes theologicae but also the virtutesintellectuales which are along with prudence wisdomunderstanding and knowledge closely connected to thegifts of the Holy Spirit of the same name Moreover afterhaving exhausted the plan he had outlined for ldquoomittingnothing of moral thingsrdquo by studying successively thevirtues and the vices that are opposed to them heconsiders in a kind of extension a series of new questionsrelated first of all to ldquoprophecyrdquo to ldquorapturerdquo and othergratuitous gifts then to the ldquocontemplative liferdquo a series heattaches a little artificially one must admit to the sectionon the different states of life

This artifice has sometimes embarrassed commentatorswho do not always understand the articulations that theplan of the Summa comprises here Thus we have Father MD Chenu who has the ldquotreatise on the states of liferdquo beginat question 183 starting from where ldquothe spiritual life islinked to social functionsrdquo16 The thing seems in fact ratherlogical Yet Saint Thomas himself said in his littleintroduction to question 171 ldquoDe prophetiardquo

Postquam dictum est de singulis virtutibus et vitiis quae pertinent adomnium hominum conditiones et status nunc considerandum est de hisquae specialiter ad aliquos homines pertinent

So Father Antoine Lemonnyer had adopted a differentsolution from that of Father Chenu He saw in questions 171to 198 concerning the gratuitous gifts a kind of parenthesisand made the final treatise of the Secunda secundae beginfrom question 179 which is to say from the ldquocontemplativeliferdquo he gave a certain unity to this final treatise thanks tothis single yet twofold title ldquoHuman Life Its Forms and ItsStatesrdquo17

The divisions adopted respectively by Father Chenu andFather Lemonnyer both have their probability and both can

be supported In fact however as Father Chenu remarkedSaint Thomas treats the states of life properly onlybeginning with question 183 entitled ldquoDe officiis et statibushominum in generalirdquo But already before that questions171 to 182 form a whole very distinct from the precedingquestions in which we have the equivalent of a littletreatise on mysticism

Even if he did not treat explicitly at that time the relationsbetween active life and contemplative life18 the placeaccorded by Saint Thomas to this latter in his general planwould thus authorize us to distinguish it from the domain ofmorality He himself besides tells us so in proper termsldquoThe moral virtues are not a constitutive element of thecontemplative liferdquo19 in fact ldquothey are ordained toactionrdquo20 Now action is inferior to contemplation The latteris ldquosimpliciter meliorrdquo21 Action prepares for contemplationby winning the soul through the external exercise of thevirtues the necessary ldquopreliminary dispositionsrdquo bydisciplining the passions and by submitting them to thereason22 Contemplation is the act of the ldquohigher reasonrdquowhich is to the inferior reason following an old biblical andPhilonic symbolism revived and slightly transformed23 asthe man is to the woman24 It is ordained to ldquoperfect loverdquoand as Saint Gregory taught while the active life issynonymous with service the contemplative life issynonymous with freedom25 As Aristotle had alreadyaffirmedmdashbut we know with what freedom Saint Thomaschanged and transformed the thought of the philosophereven while he invoked him as an authority26mdashit is a lifeabove the human condition27 and is made to last always28

No more than any other of the great witnesses of theChristian tradition did Saint Thomas reduce the spiritual lifeto the exercise of morality or spiritual understanding torationality Father Pierre Rousselot too neglected today (atleast in France) demonstrated this well by placing in

evidence the distinction between intellectus and ratio afundamental distinction with numerous consequences29mdashBut neither does he separate them on the one hand as anauthentic heir of the Fathers he integrates the virtuous lifeinto eternal life by saying ldquoUniuscujusque perfectio nihilaliud est quam participatio divinae similitudinisrdquo30 And onthe other hand he knows that in the earthly conditionexternal action which is first of all the virtuous life mustitself proceed from contemplation

The comparison with the Plotinian philosophy or with theldquoagnosticsrdquo can in this regard be very enlightening becauseof the apparent proximity of the doctrines

In a parallel way one would find in Christianity [says Jean Trouillard on thissubject] a going beyond ethics by the theological virtues and the gifts ofthe Holy Spirit The Christian life consists in divinization not in ascesis Yetthe role of the will seems much more considerable in Christians than in thePlotinians not only in charity but also in faith which is itself presented as aduty Theologians do not ordinarily situate the theological virtues on theother side of the decisions of the faculties or on this side of the constitutedvalues This is what must not be forgotten when faced with the use of theNeoplatonic doctrine of virtues attempted by Christian authors inparticular by Saint Thomas (1a 2ae q 61 a 5)31

And again Maurice de GandillacPlotinus harshly criticizes the Gnostics who believe that by ldquoraisingoneself near to God on wings of a dreamrdquo (2 9 9) one escapes the humancondition According to the fragments of Heracles (Legrand 315) Mosesthe author of the Law belongs to the ldquonaturalrdquo world Superior to purematter however he ignores the spirit By proscribing by judging bypunishing he fulfills an inferior ministry and the ldquoperfectrdquo are in no waysubject to his commandments Pure at the beginning they are savedwithout exercise as without repentance and without pardon Thispresumption will be the common gospel for all the sectarians who across the Middle Ages will preach a ldquogoing beyond the ethicalrdquo32

We should not let the differences in emphasis from oneauthor to another or from one school to another hide fromus therefore the consistent thought of the Christiantradition Already in someone like Origen the union is

achieved between ldquoa resolutely contemplative religiousideal and a passionately active liferdquo33 For Saint Gregory theGreat to whom Thomas Aquinas refers the whole spirituallife is subject to a rhythm and ldquotrue perfection begins tomature only in the difficulties and obstacles of the activeliferdquo34 Medieval monasticism did not scorn Martha in thename of Mary it maintained that action must be joined tocontemplation or the ldquopracticerdquo to the ldquotheoryrdquo a little likelove of neighbor to the love of God35 The two inseparableaspects of the Christian doctrine on this subject will onceagain be expressed very well in the reflections of John HenryNewman still an Anglican preaching on ldquoevangelicalsanctity the completion of natural virtuerdquo Newman in factshows in this sermon that there is ldquoan essentialresemblance between the spiritual man and the virtuousmanrdquo following the words of Saint Paul ldquoThe fruit of theSpirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truthrdquomdashwhiledrawing the attention of his listeners to ldquothe point ofdifference between them viz that the Christian graces arefar superior in rank and dignity to the moral virtuesrdquo36

Moral perfection and holiness virtuous life and mystical lifeare distinct they are hierarchical but at the same time theyare united in charity forma virtutum vinculum perfectionis

III Renaissance and Reformation Nicholas of Cusa takes upthe Pauline trichotomy again in the same terms as the

Apostle He places it in correspondence with on the onehand a cosmic trichotomy and on the other hand what isperhaps unexpected the three Persons of the Trinity He

uses Saint Augustine as his authority for both thesecorrespondences

We read in fact in one of his Sermons ldquoIn homine suntspiritus anima et corpus sicut in mundo elementalia vitaliaet intellectualiardquo1 and in his opuscule the Beryl he

distinguishes ldquothree modes of knowledge the sensate theintellectual and the intelligentialrdquo which he sayscorrespond according to Saint Augustine to the threeldquoheavensrdquo2 That was the cosmic analogy And for thetrinitarian analogy set forth in the work De Concordantiacatholica

Unde homo secundum Augustinum Super symbolo (40 193-94) ad instarTrinitatis imaginem gerens ex spiritu et anima et corpore constitutusexsistit Spiritus autem est superior nobilior et altior intellectualispersonae Patris figuram repraesentans et corpus personam Filii et animaquasi utriusque naturam participans ab utroque procedens personamSpiritus sancti3

Taking up his position like Nicholas of Cusa from the pointof view of knowledge Marsilio Ficino distinguishes thesensus the ratio and the intellectus We recognize in thatthe heritage of the great Scholasticism In a similar mannerin the prologue of his Heptaplus Giovanni Pico dellaMirandola distinguishes the vital instinct discursive andpractical knowledge and the contemplative faculty4 Moreimportant is the twofold witness here in agreement ofErasmus and Luther

In his famous Enchiridion militis christiani Erasmus whotakes his inspiration directly from Saint Paul ldquoends finally ina tripartite anthropology which finds its completion in thegift of the Spiritrdquo5 After having in chapters 4 and 5 spokenof man such as Plato describes him first according to theTimaeus then according to the Phaedo Phaedrus and theRepublic and recalled his distinction of the soul asreasonable irascible and concupiscible Erasmus describesin chapter 6 the Pauline opposition between the flesh andthe spirit then he comes in chapter 7 to the trichotomy of1 Thessalonians which he comments on with reference toOrigen ldquoHe does not hiderdquo observes Charles Beacuteneacute ldquohispleasure in setting forth this theory lsquoLibet et Origenicamhominis sectionem breviter referrersquo rdquo He sees it based as

well on Isaiah (299) and on Daniel (386) so he adopts it inorder to make it intervene ldquoas a definitive stage after theanalyses of pagan philosophersrdquo to serve ldquoas anintroduction to the great rules of Christianityrdquo6 With Origenhe sees in the soul this ldquomedian partrdquo of the human beingwhich can swing either to the side of the flesh or to the sideof the spirit7 In the Methodus or Ratio verae theologiae asimilar text recalls our trichotomy indirectly ldquoNec omnisaffectus hominis est caro sed est qui dicitur anima et quidicitur spiritus quo nitimur ad honestardquo8 But it isparticularly in the controversy with Luther about free willthat Erasmus opposes to the exclusivism of his adversaryhypnotized by the sole dialectic of the flesh and the spiritthe divine pedagogy explained by Origen according to thePauline schema

Luther himself paradoxically had provided a commentaryin his own manner with respect to the first words of theMagnificat (1520) on the text of 1 Thessalonians and hismanner did not differ perceptibly from so many of theothers we have seen

ldquoMy soul glorifies the Lordrdquo Scripture divides man into three partswhen Paul says at the end of 1 Thessalonians ldquoMay God make youholy through and through in such a way that all your spirit and your souland your body rdquo And each of these partsmdashlike the entire man mdashisequally divided in another way concerning not nature but quality In otherwords nature has three parts spirit soul and body all three of which canbe good or bad The first part the spirit is the highest the mostprofound the most noble part of man it is what makes him capable ofgrasping imperceptible invisible and eternal things In brief it is the housewhere faith and the word of God dwell The second part the soul isexactly the same spirit according to nature but accomplishes a differentfunction It is the spirit insofar as it animates the body and acts through it Its proper role consists in grasping the things that reason can knowand probe 9

As for the third term the body its function is to ldquoactrdquo and toldquoput into practice the knowledge of the soul and the faith of

the spiritrdquo As Maurice de Gandillac observes here the bodyhas nothing to do with ldquomirerdquo And by adopting such atripartition of the human being (which is not at all to beunderstood we repeat as a division of three ldquofacultiesrdquo)Luther envisages the human subject as Saint Paul and afterhim the whole of Christian tradition have done ldquoin aperspective that is more biblical than Greekrdquo10 The relativeassimilation that he works between the soul and the spirit isthe echo of a common Scholasticism and the fruit of aninflection toward the point of view of knowledge which wasnot that of Saint Paul in his address to the Thessalonians butin no way contradicts it Of these two characteristics thepreceding centuries have already brought us many anexample11

Like his predecessors Luther thus maintains the threefoldgradation which he also develops through a traditionalimage

We will give a simile for that drawn from Scripture Moses made atabernacle with three different edifices The first edifice was calledsanctum sanctorum it was the dwelling of God and there was no lightfrom within The other sanctum contained a chandelier with sevenbranches and lights The third was called atrium the parvis it was locatedin the open air in the light of the sun This figure depicts the Christian Hisspirit is sanctum sanctorum the dwelling of God in the night (stripped oflight) of faith for he believes what he neither sees nor senses norunderstands His soul is the sanctum there are found the seven lights towit all kinds of understanding discernment science and knowledge ofcorporal and visible things His body is atrium it is manifest for all in sucha way that one can see what he does and how he lives12

It is necessary however to recognize that this trichotomydid not have for Luther an importance comparable to hisdialectical opposition between the flesh and the spirit InSaint Paul from before the commentary on the Magnificathe had been selective the lessons on the Letter to theRomans (1515-1516) were already setting up an oppositionbetween the flesh and the spirit without anthropological

reference to any subject whatever13 and later in hiscontroversy with Erasmus he was to prove all the morehostile to the anthropology drawn from 1 Thessalonians 5 byhis adversary whom the latter guided by Origen used toweaken his dialectic He writes in De servo arbitrio

I am well aware of Origenrsquos fable about the threefold affection of man offlesh soul and spirit14 the soul holding the middle between the flesh andthe spirit and able to turn either toward the one or toward the other Butthis is dreaming he says them but does not prove them at all Saint Paulcalls flesh everything that is without spirit as we have demonstrated15

Luther does not formally contradict here what he had said inthe commentary on the Magnificat What he reproaches inOrigen as in Erasmus is believing in free will But thispreoccupation leads him to falsify their anthropology andthereby to forget or to misunderstand the Pauline verse thathe had first interpreted correctly To which in his enormoussecond Hyperaspistes Erasmus will reply several times overthat the tripartition of 1 Thessalonians 5 even ifcounterparts are found in the philosophers is proper toSaint Paul The philosophers in fact do not usually call thehighest part of the human being spiritus (pneuma) butmens or ratio and what Paul understands by spiritus is notany ratio whatever but the ratio already inspired by graceThat he concludes is what Luther does not want torecognize As often happens the discussion in whichErasmus finds himself involved leads him himself to apartially inaccurate interpretation of Saint Paulrsquos text bymaking him attribute to the ldquospiritrdquo what Paul says of ldquothespiritual manrdquo Yet it remains true that he had first analyzedperfectly the address of the Apostle to the Thessaloniansand Luther had at first done the same16

Lutheran mysticism at least in the rather unorthodoxSebastien Frank (1499-1542) nonetheless recognizes thethree elements of which man is composed body soul andspirit Frank sees in the soul the personal and free being

capable of orienting himself in one direction or in the otherhe sees in the spirit the inner Word or God present at theheart of every man enlightening him through his Word andinclining his will through his Spirit17

The same traditional distinctions originating in Saint Paulare found in the humanists of the sixteenth century ofmystical tendency For a Paracelsus (1493-1541) since manis a microcosm he must unite within himself the threeconstitutive parts or elements corresponding to the threestages of the universe material world astral worldDivinity18 (an idea of Nicholas of Cusa although distorted isrecognizable in this) Cornelius Agrippa in his De occultaphilosophia tried to unite the Platonic traditions to Mosesand to Saint Paul

Plotinus itaque et Platonici omnes post Trismegistum similiter tria ponunt inhomine quae vocant supremum infimum et medium Supremum est illuddivinum quam mentem sive portionem superiorem sive intellectumillustratum vocant Moses in Genesi vocat ipsum spiraculum vitarum a Deovid vel a Spiritu ejus in nos spiratum Infimum est sensitiva anima quametiam idolum dicunt Paulus Apostolus animalem hominem nuncupatMedium est spiritus rationalis utraque connectens extrema atque ligansvid animam animalem cum mente et utriusque sapiens naturamextremorum 19

Guillaume Postel as original as ever at least in expressiondistinguishes in man the anima the animus and the mens20

It was undoubtedly following him four years later thatCharles Toutain wrote in his tragedy Agamemnon Threenatures in us which all talk with each other Excite our lifeand keep it alive The Spirit the Soul and Animus And onebeing taken away Suddenly all life together would depart21

The Anglican Lancelot Andrewes (155 5-1626) expresseshimself in a similar way in his devotions Into Thy hands OLord I commend myself my spirit soul and body 22

IV The Modern Period Saint Francis de Sales will open thisperiod for us His Traiteacute de lrsquoamour de Dieu [Treatise on theLove of God] reproduces the Pauline doctrine to perfectionAfter having explained that ldquowe have three kinds of loving

actions spiritual reasonable and sensualrdquo Francis de Salesobserves that ldquothe powers of the sensory part which are ormust be the servants of the spirit ask seek and take what

has been rejected by the reason dishonoring thepurity of the intention of their master who is the spirit andin the measure that the soul is converted to such gross andsensate unions it is diverted from the delicate intellectual

and cordial unionrdquo Thus by the same movement as we findin Saint Paul the way is sketched to the opposition of the

flesh to the spirit Like many in the Middle Ages Francis deSales following Saint Augustine also distinguishes ldquotwoportions of the soul the inferior and the superiorrdquo theinferior being that which discourses on the basis of the

experience of the senses while the superior founded ldquoonthe discernment and judgment of the spirit is commonly

called the spirit and mental part of the soulrdquo in thisldquosuperior portionrdquo he also distinguishes ldquotwo kinds of lightrdquo

a natural one and a supernatural one and so forth Thiswhole apparatus of precisions which aims at integrating aswe have already seen in others the ldquodegrees of knowingrdquo

within the spiritual movement is not without interest but itis in some ways only a flowering from the basic trichotomy1

It is this same trichotomy that we find again as might beexpected in a philosopher attentive to the spiritual lifesuch as Maine de Biran We know the place that the doctrineof the ldquothree livesrdquo holds in Biran animal life human lifeand divine life particularly in the reflections of his Journalintime2 Jules Lachelier also adopts it but perhaps bydiminishing it in his desire to work a kind of synthesisbetween Maine de Biran and Kant when he explains thethree components of existence sensibility understanding

and reason3 We detect also an indication of the very strongmystical tendencies in Joseph de Maistre in this affirmationfrom the Eacuteclaircissements sur les sacrifices ldquoThe animal hasreceived only a soul to us were given a soul and a spiritrdquo4

One might be tempted to seek a distant analogy withSaint Paul in the Kierkegaardian theory of the three spheres(rather than stages) of existence aesthetic ethicalreligious If that analogy is an illusion other thoughts ofKierkegaard are right in finding their place here ldquoIt isimpossible to treat of sin in any of the sciences thatordinarily speak of it because all are occupied with what ispsychological in our nature while sin is a determination ofthe spiritrdquo and again ldquoThe spirit intervening psychology isimpotent So good as its name indicates is occupied withthe soul It sees everything from outside the spirit itself islived only from within Seen from outside an act isalways determined and for all that the object of psychologyBut rdquo5

One might also be tempted to evoke here the Blondeliandistinction between ldquonoeticrdquo and ldquopneumaticrdquo This wouldnot be completely wrong But Blondel places these twokinds of thought in correlation rather than inviting us to risefrom one to the other He does not thereby have in mind arelation of the psyche to the pneuma but rather a divisionof the function within the spirit Despite the word ldquonoeticrdquothis is not the nous but rather the logos which would beaccording to him the partner of the pneuma6 and thedialectic of the noetic and the pneumatic is in play at everystep so to speak of the development of thought and life inthis conception the first the concrete principle ofuniversality being the factor of objectivization and unifyingforce while conversely the second the concrete principleof singularity is the diversifying element and subjectivefunction7 Both at the same level are thus essentiallycomplementary Blondel held to his distinction he often took

up the study of it He wrote in 1907 in one of his personalnotebooks ldquoThink out the discovery of the two thoughtsrdquo8

Now in 1909 he wrote again ldquoThe two thoughts Ah howthey are always in me tending to supplant each other whileit is necessary to reconcile them hierarchize them makethem differently but equally serve the divine work of finaland total reintegrationrdquo9 This word ldquohierarchizerdquo must beunderstood as demanding a reciprocal hierarchization10 Itdoes not necessarily follow however that any analogy withthe Pauline trichotomy any echo of the ldquothree livesrdquo ofBiran are absent from the Blondelian work Blondel was toopenetrated with the thought of Saint Paul and Saint Bernardhe was too closely interested in mysticism he was toofamiliar with the spiritual authors of the Christian traditionto let us believe in such an absence without a fullerexamination But the fact that his dialectic of the noetic andthe pneumatic which is fundamental in his philosophy doesnot turn explicitly into a hierarchy of the soul and spirit or ofthe discursive reason and mystical intuition (although heobviously knew of this distinction as well as that betweenthe understanding and higher intelligence)11 is not anegligible indication Blondel maintained a prudent attitudein the face of natural mysticism just as on the other handhe remained prudent in the face of facile personalisms

In the Russian theologian Sergius Bulgakov the Paulinedistinction between the soul and the spirit is placed inpowerful relief It assumes a mystical aspect that is moreemphasized than in the Apostle or at least it proceeds froma base of natural mysticism that despite the reference tothe famous discourse at Athens does not seem tocorrespond perfectly to its more complex notion of thespirit

Although it is a creature a certain eternity of creation a certain non-creation are proper to the spirit Spiritual existence is rooted in the

eternity of God the created spirit itself is similarly eternal and uncreatedCf Acts 1728

It is true that Bulgakov can also invoke the authority of theGreek Fathers Had Saint Cyril of Alexandria not written thatldquothe image of the divine nature was imprinted in man by theinfusion of the Holy Spiritrdquo12 The importance of hisanthropological theory derives in any case from the fact thatit is from this that he explains the mystery of theIncarnation

The postulate of the divine Incarnation is a certain original identitybetween the divine I and the I of man an identity that does not abrogatetheir essential distinction The human hypostatic spirit draws itsdivine and uncreated origin from the ldquobreath of Godrdquo Through hisspirit man communicates with the divine substance and he is fit to beldquodivinizedrdquo Man is god-man by predestination potentially throughhis formal structure At the same time he is flesh through anldquoanimatedrdquo body he sums up the entire world Man is made of anuncreated divine spirit hypostasized by the I of the creature and of a souland of a body created from the psycho-somatic being13

Bulgakov insists The very idea of divinity by predestinationseems too weak to him He corrects himself almostimmediately ldquoNot only is man theanthropic bypredestination but also the Logos is the eternal God-Maninsofar as the first Image of the created man This is whythe hypostasis of the Logos the heavenly Man could itselfbecome the hypostasis of created man and make of thelatter the authentic God-man by achieving its eternaltheanthropyrdquo The conclusion is nonetheless fundamentallyin keeping with the spirit of Christian faith ldquoMan is alreadythe form ready for the authentic theanthropy that he is notcapable of achieving himself but in view of which he wascreated and called The divine Incarnation is not at all acatastrophe for the human essence or some violation onthe contrary it is an accomplishmentrdquo14

This leads us far from the narrow anthropological dualismthat triumphed in modern Scholasticism as well as in the

university philosophy springing from Cartesianism ldquoSaintPaulrdquo noted R M Albaregraves15 ldquohad distinguished threeorders the carnal the intellectual and the spiritual16 TheCartesian dualism had fused together the intellectual andthe spiritual and rationalism had gradually reduced thespirit thus created to being only an intellect withouttranscendence without dynamism or immortality destinedonly to understand and to organize the worldrdquo On the otherhand for all sorts of reasons that we do not at all have toseek here but in particular because of a certain poverty inits common philosophy Christian thought did not seem ableto fill the void thus created in man It must not thereforebe surprising that the inevitable reaction was produced inpara-Christian forms ldquoIf a scholarrdquo Andreacute Preacuteaux recentlywrote17 ldquoencounters the old doctrine that man is composedof a body a soul and a spirit he has scruples aboutconsidering it for what do lsquosoulrsquo and lsquospiritrsquo mean Unfortunately in a society where science is the supremeauthority this silence is equivalent to a negation Whatdissolves the errors and complexes what protects againstneuroses and fantasies is precisely that which is silentlyand discreetly dismissedrdquo

The same year as Andreacute Preacuteaux and reacting like himGabriel Germain took support from Saint Teresa to remindus of the unrecognized depths of the life of the spirit

Above the understanding below the ordinary conscience and what fills itexists a sheet of peace and light Whoever approaches it can have nomore doubt of it Anyone who has not sought it has no right to judge itSaint Teresa expresses the same reality in very different terms Now no onehad taught her this nor had anyone prepared her for such an experienceThis agreement over the centuries and doctrines reassures me more thananything She writes in the book of the Mansions (seventh Mansionchapter 1) ldquoInterior things are seen that show in a sure way that there isbeneath a certain relationship an obvious difference between the soul andthe spirit although they are but a single thing rdquo18

Likewise again situating his own thought in relation to theldquonoosphererdquo of Teilhard de Chardin and in relation to theldquocollective unconsciousrdquo of Jung

The noosphere in the philosophy of Teilhard de Chardin appears to be likea mental view a conclusion This is because its very name evokes anintellectual activity the subtlest but whether exploratory or constructivedirected according to logical norms19 What I could call (but I will keepmyself from doing so) pneumatosphere let us say the spiritual ocean isthe object of experience By other paths to other ends it is the samereality I suppose that Jung attained and which he called the collectiveunconscious But these two terms restrict the origin and meaning of it 20

With Jung in fact we penetrate but we remain within whatis psychological The life of the spirit in the Spirit is whollydifferent A certain Calvinist dryness a phobia aboutmysticism and all ldquointeriorityrdquo conspire at times along withrationalism and contemporary positivism of all forms tobrush this life in the Spirit aside But in a quite natural waythe Lutheran Paul Tillich who was interested in ontology inthe history of religions in mysticism as well as in biblicalhistory brings the Pauline tripartition up to date again

There is no religious statement on man and his destiny without a judgmenton the relation between different elements that are combined and opposedin the life of man These elements have been variously described as beinghis body his soul and his spirit 21

The exegetes in contemporary Catholicism seem no moredisposed than most of the theologians to return the Paulineverse to a place of honor and draw its consequences It istoward the writers that we must turn to perceive an echo ofit in free expression Although this expression is truly webelieve faithful to the doctrine of the Pneuma and to itsauthentic development it is not certain that Saint Paulwould have recognized his thought at first glance ldquoI havegood news to announce to yourdquo says Paul Claudel in theldquoCantique de Palmyrerdquo ldquomdashit is another within the depths of

you who has the word I have good news to announce toyou You need only close your eyes to find your treasurein the night There are many souls but there is not oneof them with whom I am not in communion through thissacred point in us that says Pater nosterrdquo22 And GeorgesBernanos in his diary ldquoHis will is ours and when we revoltagainst it it is only at the price of an uprooting of our wholeinner being Our will has been united to his since thebeginning of the world What sweetness to think thateven while offending him we never cease completely todesire what he desires at the depths of the Sanctuary of thesoulrdquo23 A wonderful conjunction of Claudel and Bernanos

The reader will have noted in Claudelrsquos text the wordldquosoulrdquo An inversion of vocabulary is in fact produced Theldquospiritrdquo having become in the modern leveling dichotomythe immediate correlative of the body it is the ldquosoulrdquo thathas taken its place in those who have not taken part in thisleveling We are familiar again in Claudel with the parabolaof animus and anima The word ldquosoulrdquo in the same sensecompels recognition with greater strength in order to escapethe scientistic totalitarianism that reigns abusively in thename of the ldquohuman sciencesrdquo ldquoIn the measure in whichthey are scientificrdquo wrote Henri Gouhier in 1973 ldquothesciences of man can consider man only by selecting pointsof view under which it is possible to treat him objectively Itis obviously not a question for the philosopher to ignore thevarious forms of sociology psychology ethnologyneurology and so forth he must simply wonder if thesciences of man added up constitute a science of manrdquo24

And man simply as such man who cannot renounce the callhe hears in the depths of himself refuses to let himselfsuffocate He rehabilitates the word ldquosoulrdquo as the mostfitting to express what philosophers and men of science aretoo often skilled at eliminating through preterition orthrough negation The soul then becomes almost the

synonym for the pneuma of Saint Paul and Origen Thepassage from Henri Gouhier that we have just quotedfigures in a preface to LrsquoAvegravenement de lrsquoacircme by Aime[Andre] Forest a work he says that ldquofinds its timeliness inits apparent obsolescencerdquo The author of the work and thatof its preface both evoke on this subject the ldquothree livesrdquo ofMaine de Biran Andre Forest also recalls these words ofHenri Bergson ldquoBy calling a certain assurance of facileintelligibility an idea and a certain uneasiness of life thesoul an invincible current brings modern philosophy toelevate the soul above the ideardquo Modern philosophy as awhole has not followed the path on which Bergson thoughthe saw it engaged Gabriel Marcel however among otherswanted to preserve this word ldquosoulrdquo and to keep ldquothefullness of its meaningrdquo Charles du Bos in search of tracesof God in us asked ldquoWho will leave us a journal of thedilation of the soulrdquo What Andre Forest wants is to help usdiscover or to rediscover a certain ldquoinner unityrdquo a certainldquopure sourcerdquo and each of the chapters of his work tracesan avenue toward an encounter with this ldquoThe discovery ofthe soulrdquo he tells us ldquois the development of a spiritualphilosophy The soul is the advent of presence and graceraised above the world of nature and objectivityrdquo25

The same fundamental reaction the same sudden startor if you wish the same awakening five years later in amuch younger author whose nostalgia if this is what it iscannot be that for the past but that which springs from anew reflection this time against the oppression of a thoughtreduced to its politico-social components the final end ofscientistic intelligence In his essay on Job ou lrsquoexcegraves dumal Philippe Nemo insists on this same word ldquosoulrdquo in orderto recall man to himself and to his essential problem 26

Across the numerous changes in vocabulary thecomplications introduced by theoreticians eager foranalysis across too the unceasing variations in points of

view the tripartite anthropology whose expression is foundin Saint Paul has consistently furnished in the tradition ofthe Church a basis for spiritual doctrine and life

4 The Spirit

I The Place of Mysticism As we have already been able toperceive these various distinctions are far from always

being covered perfectly either from one author to another oreven as in the case of Augustine in the work of the same

author C R Doddaursquos remark on the subject of the ancientGreeks applies here ldquoOne must undoubtedly agree that the

average man of the fifth century (and this is true in allperiods) possessed a very complicated psychological

vocabularyrdquo1

The Pauline tripartition has nonetheless remained theconstant basis serving to support the spiritual doctrines ofthe Christian tradition

Commenting on Pseudo-Dionysius Saint Maximus theConfessor defined man by this threefold pair of epithetsldquoSupermundialis et spiritualismdashcircummundialis animalismdashmundialis carnalisrdquo2 The author of the celebratedPhilokalia Saint Nikodemos of the Holy Mountain (748-809)will explain that the ldquoJesus Prayerrdquo brings into operation thethree powers of the soul the intellect (nous) the discursivereason (logos) the will or spirit (theacutelē sis pneuma) in theaction of the soul alone by which uniting in itself the soulis made fit to be united to God3 But perhaps that is amatter rather of a ldquohorizontalrdquo trichotomy of threefunctions or three activities proper to the higher part of thespirit

With more than one spiritual writer of the Latin MiddleAges one should speak of four elements rather than ofthree in their analysis of manmdasheven without consideringother complications many subtle subdivisions an echo ofScholasticism dear to a certain number subdivisions

destined either to establish agreement between authors orto detail the stages of spiritual itineraries As for examplethis schema traced by Isaac of Stella in his Epistola deanima ldquoAnimae in mundo sui corporis peregrinanti quinquesunt ad sapientiam progressus sensusmdashimaginatiomdashratiomdashintellectusmdashintelligentiardquo4 Two different modes will benoted both inspired by Saint Augustine in the expression oftripartism for some it is corpus anima spiritus5 forothers corpus ratio mens Hence to accord these twomodes the quadripartite division corpusmdashanimamdashratioinferiormdashratio superior sive mens We know the groundgained in the Middle Ages by that Augustinian subdivision ofthe ratio inferior and the ratio superior6 What willcorrespond to this in Saint Thomas Aquinas will beparticularly the distinction between the ratio and theintellectus recently brought out by Pierre Rousselot7 Thiswould also be the place to mention the Franciscan doctrineof the two faces of the soul which is of Neoplatonic origincoming through the twofold channel of Augustine and theArabs8mdashbut that like moreover the Thomist distinction ofthe intellectus and the ratio is an essentially ldquoscientificrdquo(philosophical) theory having little relation to the spirituallife The explanation of the latter is founded rather on thedoctrine of the twofold ratio lower and higher whichcorresponds to action and contemplation But then a newsubdivision is introduced the ratio superior the place ofcontemplation assimilated to the intellectus becomes thehigher part or function of the mens and receives namessuch as acies mentis oculus cordis and so forth

Whatever might be the various complications and thevarieties in the names ldquoall the great Christian mystics are inagreement in considering the human soul as a complexreality presenting regions and stages All are also inagreement in admitting that among these various regionsthere is a privileged one that where God dwells in a

particular manner rdquo9 ldquoThere is a spiritual life when arelationship with God existsrdquo10 and there is a secret point inman that is the permanent place of that relationship of thatpossible encounter because it is already and always hasbeen the place of the divine presence that pneuma of Paulcommented on by Origen that ldquosacred point in us that saysPater nosterrdquo of the ldquoCantique de Palmyrerdquo11

So we see that the philosophers and theologians moreconcerned about rationality than mysticism tend to reduce(even in their historical studies) the trichotomy to adichotomymdashwhile on the contrary the spiritual masterstend to bring out the trichotomy They readily glorify thespiritus not only above the anima but above the ratiowhether theoretical or practical It is instructive to comparein this regard the Abeacutelardian writing Ysagoge in theologiamwith the commentary on the Song of Songs by William ofSaint Thierry For the first ldquoDuo haec nomina sc spiritus etanima non magnam habent in significationediscrepantiamrdquo12 The second on the contrary stronglyemphasizes the hierarchical distinction of three ordersldquoanimalrdquo ldquorationalrdquo and ldquospiritualrdquo13

To keep to the general schema that results from the textof Saint Paulmdasha schema that itself in fact includes manynuances and as we have seen many interpretationsmdashmorality will therefore be the act of the soul mysticism theact of the spirit ldquoThe bodyrdquo says Evagrius Ponticus ldquohasbread for nourishment the soul has virtue theunderstanding has spiritual prayerrdquo14 Morality whoseobject is virtue is the πϱᾶ ξις and the life of the spirit iscontemplation the θεωϱία The first is ordained to thesecond as the soul is ordained to the spirit ldquoStriverdquo saysCassian reporting the statements of Abbot Nesteros ldquotoacquire in the first place a complete possession of moraldiscipline (πϱαϰτιϰή) for without that you cannot obtaincontemplative purity (θεωϱητιϰή)rdquo15 For Gregory of Nyssa

virtue is ldquothe forecourt of the Templerdquo16 Origen had saidbefore them ldquoAccording to the doctrine of the very wiseSolomon he who wishes to acquire wisdom must begin bystudying moralityrdquo it is in fact ldquogood conductrdquo that preparesone to receive the visits of the Logos and when one issolidly exercised in it then one will be able ldquoto pass frommoral things to mystical understandingrdquo17 In his treatiseaddressed ldquoTo the Brethren at Mont Dieurdquo which remainsone of the fundamental texts of Christian spiritualityWilliam of Saint Thierry traces a similar route for those whowant to give themselves over to the perfect life and for thefinal stage his program is even one of a boldness that somecould misunderstand (it is true that it is addressed to aCarthusian monastery) ldquoIt is for othersrdquo he tells them ldquotoserve God it is for you to cling to him It is for others tobelieve in God to know that he exists to love him andrevere him it is for you to taste him to understand him toknow him to enjoy himrdquo18 The same doctrine is set forthas it had been earlier with Origen in parallel with thedoctrine of the threefold biblical sense by another writer ofthe twelfth century Godefroi drsquoAdmont

Sicut triplex est visio corporis spiritus et mentis ita triplex etiam sensusest in scripturis Sanctis litteralis spiritalis intellectualis Litteralem atquespiritalem sensus egregius ipse Doctor gentium tunc transcenderat etusque ad tertium coelum intellectualem scilicet sensum glorioseconscenderat quando toto cordis intellectu ita coelestibus est conjunctusquod utrum in corpore an extra corpus esset se nescire asseruit19

The same fundamental schema is found again in the greatrepresentatives of what one often calls with a term that canlend to confusion ldquointellectualist mysticismrdquo which is tosay with the Rheno-Flemish mystics of the fourteenth andfifteenth centuries The same schema although withdifferences in terminology and in a sometimes differentclimate of thought particularly in Meister Eckhart

Ruysbroek ldquoassigns to the spirit a threefold role First of alla vital role in which it animates the body then anintellectual role that is manifested by thought finally a roleof higher spiritual activity in which it becomes the principleof unification of the whole inner life and in which it is mixedwith the very essence of the soulrdquo20 Hence for example inthe Livre des sept clotures the definition of the seventhenclosure ldquowhich surpasses all the othersrdquo ldquosimplebeatitude beyond all holy life and practice of the virtuesrdquo21

Likewise in the Miroir du salut eacuteternel in which the higherdegree is only divided after ldquothe virtuous life which dies tosin and grows in virtuesrdquo comes the state where ldquoallownership of the will diesrdquo then the spirit is made fully freethrough its union to the Spirit of God even to the point ofthe ldquoliving liferdquo (levende leven) that blossoms which is allldquohidden in God and in the substance of our soulrdquo22

Ruysbroek takes up again here an expression long sincecurrent which he could have read in Saint Bernard (vividavita et vitalis)23 William of Saint Thierry (vita vivens)24 orThomas de Froidmont (vita vitalis)25

The same gradation is found in Tauler based on the sametraditional ldquoternary schemardquo Tauler distinguishes in manldquothree things one clings to nature in flesh and blood theother is the reason the third is an essence of the pure souland without mixturerdquo This is what he expresses again ldquointhe symbolism of the three men which correspond to thesensate life the intellectual life and the spiritual life in thesense of union with Godrdquo26 This ldquothird manrdquo this ldquoessenceof the pure soulrdquo is what Tauler often calls the gemuete aword that Father Etienne Hugueny translates as ldquodeep-seated willrdquo and Louis Cognet prefers to call ldquodeep instinctrdquoit is the ldquodepthsrdquo of being to which says Tauler the ldquodivinegroundrdquo alone corresponds abyssus abyssum invocat itimprints on our nature ldquoan eternal and deep-seatedtendency to return to its originrdquo a tendency that ldquopersists

even in the damned because it is linked to the very essenceof the soulrdquo27 Taulerrsquos preaching rests on this structure Theabnegation to which he invites his listeners is not only theliberation from sensible appetites it goes beyond simplemorality it is a profound attitude that ldquoflows from thegrowing experience of Godrdquo mystical passivity succeedingthe activity of the virtuous life ldquoinner recollectionrdquo abovethe exercise of the virtues and reason as well as that of thesenses28 ldquoIt is necessary that after having overcome thesenses the reason be freed from itself renounce itself soas to be transformed into pure and simple spiritrdquo29 Then theKingdom of God is established And Tauler repeats so as tomake himself well understood ldquoThis Kingdom is establishedin its own manner in the innermost part of the spirit assoon as man through all his exercise has absorbed theexterior man in the inner and reasonable man and as soonas the man of sense and of reasonable power are entirelyabsorbed into the more interior man in the hidden groundof the spirit where the true image of God dwells and assoon as he flees into this divine ground into which manfrom all eternity is found in his uncreated staterdquo30

The relationship of Tauler to Eckhart is obvious In one asin the other the distinction of the soul and the spirit (of thepsyche and the πνεῦμα) colored by Platonic exemplarism isaffirmed everywhere Eckhart enunciates it with reference toSaint Augustine ldquoAccording to Augustinerdquo he says ldquoourintellectual element divides itself into two parts through theone we are oriented intellectually toward an intellectualgrasp of knowledge that our cognitive faculty receives fromoutside the other to use the very words of Augustinemanifests itself at the deepest center of our spirit (lsquoabditummentisrsquo)rdquo31 It is this center that particularly interested thatfascinated Eckhart this place ldquowhere no image enters orleaves but where there is only God himselfrdquo ldquoThe soulrdquo healso said ldquohas two eyes the inner one and the other outer

one the inner eye of the soul is that by which itcontemplates being and receives it directly from Godrdquo32

What differentiates him from Origen and Augustine Bernardand William of Saint Thierry is the ldquouncreatedrdquo characterthat he attributes to this ldquoinner eyerdquo or to this ldquoabditummentisrdquo The disquieting feature of his mysticism consists inthis a feature that will be less emphasized in Tauler andeven in Henry Suso although the latter speaks also of theground of the spirit as ldquoeternalrdquo33

Follower and compiler Harphius (Henry Herp) willsymbolize the ldquothree kinds of liferdquo emanating from the threeparts of man in the three biblical figures of Leah Rachel andMary Magdalen34 and he works at length to describe themens or the apex mentis the spiritus or the interior sinusmentis which is to say still that pneuma by which the zoneof rational and moral activity is transcended

Dicitur etiam [anima] quandoque mens quae sc ipsis viribus interior est etsupereminet quia vires in mente sicut in origine sua sunt counitae ex quasc effl uunt ut radii ex solari rota et in quam refluunt Et est illud centrumin anima in quo vera Trinitatis imago relucet et tarn nobile quod nullumibi nomen proprie convenit licet in multis nominibus circumlocutivemanifestatur Haec est igitur mens vel apex mentis aut centrum ipsiusanimae ut feliciter renovetur ipsae vires quae dicuntur spiritus adinteriorem sinum mentis sunt reflectendae et mens ipsa ad intimum suumregerenda sc in Deum ibidem suaviter recubantem 35

Warning us that this higher part of man cannot beappropriately designated by any name and multiplying theformulas himself by which one must indeed try even tospeak of it Harphius invites us not to stress whatever theinterest of the other part might be the variations invocabulary from one author to another or from one period toanother which could hide from us the continuity of atradition that in essentials is very firm

Saint Catherine of Genoa offers us a similar schema veryclassically she distinguishes body soul and spirit the latterbeing designated in itself by the word mente and when it is

animated by infused love by the word spirito in this lattercase the spirito is finally identified with infused Love whichis God Since the Saint is less concerned to give us atheoretical course in anthropology even spiritual than todescribe the spiritual life itself we can understand that fromher pen mente is rare and spirito frequent36 On the otherhand following the example of many other mystics sheloves to detail the stages of ascent ldquoWhen Godrdquo she saysldquoaddresses his first call to us he gives us at first the instinctfor virtues later he urges us to perfection then throughinfused grace he leads us to the annihilation of ourselvesfinally to true transformationrdquo37 Saint Teresa and Saint Johnof the Cross likewise know that there exists a life higherthan the exercise of the virtues when they celebrateldquofreedom of spiritrdquo38 ldquoholy freedom of spiritrdquo39 and SaintTeresa observes in her Interior Castle that ldquocertain interioreffects give certitude that there is in us in certain relationsa very real difference between the soul and the spiritrdquo40 Wealso quote as an example Fenelon who in commenting onCassian finds himself at the same time summing up thewhole mystical tradition ldquoAlthough we judge the othervirtues to be necessary and useful we believe however weshould place them only at the second degree because oneseeks them all only in view of this one thing of which JesusChrist says lsquoMartha Martha you trouble yourself aboutmany things there is only one thing necessaryrsquo He placedthe sovereign good not in work although laudable andabundant in fruit but in contemplation that is truly simpleand one He declares that little is necessary for this perfectbeatitude that contemplation isrdquo41 And a little farther on inthe same writing ldquoThere is thus a state where thisappropriation of virtues is no longer opportunerdquo42

The great Protestant spiritual master Gerhard Tersteegen(1697-1769) professes the same doctrine ldquoThere mustnecessarily be in us a capacity to recognize God and

spiritual things in an essential and present way And thatexists in the pure Reason [Vernunft] which has been givenus closed and unused until God gives us the understandingby which we know the very Truth so intimately andessentially that we are ourselves drawn into the trueGodrdquo43

If a certain number of authors in the course of this longtradition that we have just examined seem also todistinguish as it were two elements above the psychewhile Saint Paul saw only the pneuma above it this isusually as we could ascertain from some of the examplescited because they mean by psyche only the animal soulanimater of the body and seat of sensation or ratherbecause they want to assure a seat for ldquoobjectiverdquoknowledge and profane culture For Paul on the contraryand more explicitly for Origen the soul is the very seat ofthe personality the reasoning and self-willed being whichjudges and freely determines itself It is the place ofdecision According to the orientation taken by the soul thehuman being will become ldquocarnalrdquo or ldquospiritualrdquo(pneumatikos) As opposed as he might be to free willLuther himself saw very clearly that the Pauline psyche of 1Thessalonians 5 was much more than the principle ldquothatanimates the body and acts through itrdquo In an article in theRevue thomiste (1971) Father P R Reacutegamey OP isperfectly in keeping with the traditional line when hedistinguishes (497) these three degrees psychosomaticcomplexmdashrational function of abstraction and discoursemdashprimacy of spirit in its greatest purity And what in thetheoretical order is the ldquorational functionrdquo corresponds inthe practical order to what we could call in a ratherrestrictive sense the ldquomoral functionrdquo Saint Paul alsoinvites us not to confuse this moral function with theproperly spiritual life which raises man above himself whenhe places above the exercise of active benevolence and of

all virtue this reality of another order a gift of God which isCharity (1 Cor 133) Dietrich Bonhoeffer was also faithful tothe tradition that originated in the Apostle when heexhorted the Christians over whom he had responsibility notto confuse in their assemblies ldquospiritual community withmystical overheatingrdquo (cf A Dumas 64) ldquoThe great themeof community life is the revival of the very Paulinedistinction between the natural eager equivocal nostalgicdesiring in a word idealistic and the spiritual respectfulenlightened serving knowing in a word realistrdquo (ibid145) ldquoThe onerdquo Bonhoeffer also says ldquowho does not letChrist be a path toward the other falls into naturalchattering which kills the spiritual word Prayer is thesalutary limit to desires of immediate effusiveness Community life is communion through spiritual mediationand non-confusion in the natural immediacyrdquo (146-47)

II Morality Integrated into Mysticism In Christianity itself itis characteristic of the Catholic Church to assure theequilibrium between the three components (religion

morality and mysticism) an equilibrium necessary to theintegrity of the human being Faithful in everything to her

spirit of synthesis she maintains all three in solidaritywithout ever letting any one of the three be lacking or

eclipse the others or be devalued in the humblest forms ofspiritual life any more than in the highest To take a verysimple example when Fenelon exclaims in his Traiteacute de

lrsquoexistence et des attributs de Dieu ldquoMy length of life is buta perpetual extinctionrdquo1 these words to be well

understood must be taken at once morally religiously andmystically

The various Protestant confessions place more emphasison contrasts and clashes as has often been remarked J AMoehler wrote in the last century in his Symbolique withrespect to morality and religion ldquoIn the eyes of Catholics

religiosity and morality if we may be permitted to use thesetwo terms are united by their essence and are both eternalAccording to the Protestants on the other hand there is norelationship between these two things for one is of aneternal price and the other is of only passing value Lutherinsists in many places on this difference rdquo2 There wouldbe many nuances besides to note here but in this essay ontypology we must keep to the most general characteristics3In Calvinism mysticism is the object of mistrust or evenreprobation4 We also know the abyss in Luther thatseparates ethics and faith As a result of this there is atendency with Lutheran mysticsmdashto say nothing of Lutherhimself and of Lutheranism in generalmdashto depreciate allmoral activity as constituting on manrsquos part an affirmationof self that far from bringing him closer to God distanceshim and to recognize a value in religious life only in anabandonment close to quietism5 a depreciation of moralitythat goes hand in hand with that of reason and that offreedommdashwe recently read from a Protestant pen an articleon morality considered solely as ldquocultural realityrdquo Such anattitude to take it simply as such could also facilitateinvaluable analyses in many regards such as the analysis ofthe ldquolevels of liferdquo in Kierkegaard or that of the ldquosacredrdquo inRudolf Otto But these analyses do not always stop at posingformal distinctions Thus in order to bring out more clearlythe specificity of the category of the sacred or of thereligious Otto cuts the latter off from morality he is notcontent with showing that on the level of history orpsychology these two orders are often separated in fact heis well on his way to a separation by right6 As arepercussion when morality reclaims its place in otherauthors of Protestant inspiration it sometimes absorbsreligion and dries up mysticism by incarcerating all spirituallife ldquowithin the limits of reasonrdquo

In reality howevermdashthat is to say by right in the natureof thingsmdashon the one hand ldquothe sacred is not reabsorbedinto moral value the religious transcends the ethicalrdquo buton the other hand it does not merely accommodatemorality and mysticism it remolds them so to speak byinstalling them in its heart Religion morality and mysticismldquoappear in a reciprocal envelopmentrdquo there exists betweenthe three both an attraction and a tension which will be thesource of many vital problems but there is objectivelyneither separation nor exclusion nor conflict for ldquothe Deitywhile transcending being truth and the good contains themformallyrdquo7 This is why in particular in Catholicism just asthe reasonable life and life according to the spirit penetrateeach other8 morality impregnates the mystical life to theend ldquoThrough it the good rewarded and the bad punishedthese pillars of the revelation of the Demiurge degraded byGnosticism to a lower level than exoteric faith regain theirplace at the heart of the revelation of the Father through theonly Sonrdquo9 Hence Saint Justin in his Dialogue ldquoIt is notbecause of his affinity with God or because he is spirit likehim that man sees God it is because he is virtuous andjustrdquo10 And Father Jean Rigoleuc on spiritual persons ldquoAlltheir reason and the lights they receive by it are given tothem only so that they might be perfected in thesevirtuesrdquo11 ldquoThe mystical ascentrdquo does not efface ldquofromcommon Christian life any specific traitrdquo12 The Christianvirtues are not merely means of freeing oneself from theworld in their substance they are the end itself thepromised beatitude is not made of different material This iswhat Saint Ambrose expresses admirably in a brief sentencefrom his commentary on Saint Luke with respect to thebeatitudes ldquoSicut enim speri nostrae octava perfectio estita octava summa virtutum estrdquo13

Pierre Nemeshegyi poses the same problem with respectto Origen ldquoTo place Being and moral Goodness in equation

to place this moral Goodness in God formally and ascharacterizing the final ground of his Beingmdashis this not to becondemned to enclosing all spiritual life in an anti-mysticalmoralism The Good is a transcendental But is it formallywhat we understand by lsquomoral Goodrsquo Or is there not adeepening of this moral Goodness which would reestablishthe possibility of an innermost mystical depthrdquo14 Againwith respect to Origen W Voumllker remarks ldquoWe observe a hesitation very characteristic of Origenrsquos turn of spirit and which one finds again in a nearly identical way in Philoside by side and sometimes even the mutual penetrationof moralism and mysticismrdquo15 And Nemeshegyi concludesldquo lsquoMoralismrsquo and lsquomysticismrsquo are in fact one and the samething in Origenrsquos conceptionrdquo16 Origen himself specifies inhis argument against Celsus ldquoGod is not merely lsquothe Goodrsquoas all the Platonists say he is lsquothe Righteousrsquordquo17 SaintGregory the Great also reminds us with his usual goodsense always linked with spiritual fervor

Solent quidam scripta sacri eloquii legentes cum sublimiores sententiasejus penetrant minora mandata quae infirmioribus data sunt tumentisensu despicere et ea velle in alium intellectum permutare Qui si recte ineo alta intelligerent mandata quoque minima despectui non haberent quidivina praecepta sic in quibusdam loquuntur magnis ut tamen inquibusdam congruant parvulis qui per incrementa intelligentiae quasiquibusdam passibus mentis crescant atque ad majora intelligendaperveniant18

Saint Augustine had said the same in a very Origenianshortcut in speaking of eternal life ldquoUna ibi virtus erit etidipsum erit virtus praemiumque virtutisrdquo19 Picking upagain Saint Ambrosersquos turn of phrase Alexander Neckhamcosmologist of the twelfth century explains that the octaveof the beatitude brings the perfection of its consonance tothe septenary of the virtues as in our material universe theeighth sphere including the whole universe brings itsconclusion to the harmony of the heavens20 Let us say in

the categories of medieval exegesis that anagogy achievesperfection both of allegory and of tropology Thus oneshould say of all Catholic mysticism what one historian saysof Saint Bernard through allusion to the traditionalinterpretation of the ldquoBooks of Solomonrdquo and of theirprogressive sequence for each of them as for him ldquothemoral school of Ecclesiasticus and Proverbs a necessarypreliminary for the mystical school of the Song of Songs is aschool whose doors are never closed behind usrdquo21 Andreciprocally in fulfilling the precept of the Lord one meritsnot only the eternal dwelling one does not merely preparefor it one is already building Saint Hildegarde tells us thetower of the heavenly Jerusalem22

It would be good to return to the celebrated GoldenEpistle in which William of Saint Thierry the friend of SaintBernard condenses for the brothers of the Carthusianmonastery of Mont Dieu the essence of Christiananthropology and spirituality such as the most commonCatholic tradition understands them William puts first ofall the sublime ideal of the contemplative in abrupt termsand with an appearance of separation of completetranscendence from one degree to another which could besurprising

You have not only pledged complete holiness but the perfection of allholiness and the height of all perfection It is not your business to languishin the practice of ordinary precepts or to devote yourself only to thatwhich God commands but to aim at what he wishes in the search for hisgood agreeable and perfect will It is for others to serve God it is for youto cling to him Faith in God knowledge love and reverence are for othersFor you taste understanding knowledge enjoyment A high vocation anarduous task 23

Farther on William takes up again the distinction of thethree states or three degrees which is reminiscent of thefree fashion of the Pauline trichotomy

The state of beginners can be called ldquoanimalrdquo that of progressersldquorationalrdquo that of the perfect ldquospiritualrdquo The first state attends to thebody the second is busy with the reasoning soul the third finds its restonly in God 24

These kinds of schemas are several times accompanied byappeals to humility which should form the common andunalterable basis for all disciples of Christ at whateverdegree they find themselves in their spiritual ascent25

Several points of resemblance to Saint Paul are still to benoted the distinction between anima and animus whichcorresponds closely to that between the psyche and thepneuma26 the reference to the discourse at Athens27 (Acts1727-28) the definition of the spiritual man as the onewhose spirit is informed by the Spirit of love28 theindication of the end as being ldquothe unity of spiritrdquo with God

There is also another resemblance to God so particular that it is nolonger given the name of resemblance but that of unity of spirit It is whenman becomes a single thing a single spirit with God not only through theunity of a single will but also through some truer expression of a virtue thatis no longer capable of willing anything else Once conformed to wisdom the reason [= reasoning soul] puts[everything] to profit and hastens to spring toward freedom of spirittoward unity so well that the faithful man becomes as has often beenstated one single spirit with God29

Freedom of spirit unity with God we know the abuses thatsuch formulas have frequently covered throughout twentycenturies of history30 We know too how the fear of theseabuses have made a number of timorous souls avoid themhow still more the bourgeois individualist incomprehensionof the last century banished them and how they seemedsuspect to many who thought they were judging in thename of pure Catholic orthodoxy31 Within the context ofthat spiritual masterpiece the Letter to the Brothers of MontDieu these expressions can be accepted in all their powerin the same sense that they have in Scripture And thekeeping of a moral life integrated into a mystical life is also

explicitly recognized here besides the word ldquovirtuerdquo whichfigures in the same text we have just quoted on ldquothe unityof spiritrdquo with God other texts recall it with insistence Theyspeak ldquoin praise of virtue the daughter of reason but evenmore of gracerdquo32 they show it not surpassed by butassumed into spiritual perfection the latter is achievedldquowhen the soul encompasses all the virtues in itself not aselements borrowed from somewhere else but as quasi-natural products of its being according to that resemblanceto God by which it is the whole of what isrdquo Mystical unitywith God is wholly impregnated with morality because it isthe perfect adherence to Him who is not only the Righteousbut in the most concrete and singular sense the Good33

This Catholic equilibrium was undoubtedly alreadyjeopardized in a great spiritual master who is not at all to beconfused with the false spirituals to whom we have alludedEvagrius was considered a disciple of Origen but in this anunfaithful disciple Despite the appearances of severalexpressions the same criticism could not be made of aTauler or a Ruysbroek they condemn without equivocationthe mystical claims that think to hold themselves abovemorality and reason beyond affirmations of the faith Thecase of Meister Eckhart is perhaps more disputable but it isright to dissociate the profound intention of this greatthinker and this great mystic from some paradoxicalexpressions held to be condemnable by the bull In agro LaPerle eacutevangeacutelique following Eckhart and several othersseems to place ldquothe spiritrdquo in contact with the divine Unityldquoabove the multiplicity of the Personsrdquo34 a grave problemwhich we will not take up here but which for a Christiangoverns the judgment to be passed on mysticism in itsrelation to the primary mystery of his faith35 To stay withthe relation between mysticism and morality let us say thatone is happy to find a fine example of equilibrium in anauthor carried in other respects to many unilateral

excesses This refers to George Tyrrell who wrote in a finepassage from Christianity at the Cross-roads

[The apocalyptic Kingdom of heaven] is the fruit and reward of the morallife but is a supermoral lifemdashthe continuation of that divine and spirituallife which under present contingencies manifests itself principally bymorality and above all in religion and conscious union with God But[in the Kingdom] the contingencies that now call for the moral strugglewith all its pain and suffering shall be done away36

We will end by quoting a more authoritative witness thegreat Saint Teresa who unites the soul and spirit of whichSaint Paul spoke as much as she distinguishes them withhim by observing that ldquothe center of the soulrdquo or the ldquospiritof the soulrdquo is a difficult thing to express and even tobelieve

Certain interior effects give the certitude that there is under certainrelations a very real difference between the soul and the spirit Although inreality they are but one we sometimes perceive a division between themthat is so delicate that it seems that the one functions in one way and theother in another There are so many things in our innermost depthsand things so subtle that it would be boldness on my part to undertake toexplain them We will understand all that in the other life if God deignsto admit us to the dwelling where we will have understanding of all thesesecrets37

III Conclusions Optimi corruption pessima One should notat all conclude from this as some authors particularly in

Protestantism have done that mysticism should becondemned1 Nevertheless even without considering the

case of the aberrations we have just seen certainprecautions should be taken in order not to jeopardize the

spiritual equilibrium Just as it is necessary to reject ananthropology that refusing man any higher faculty stifles

the spirit in himmdashwhich is what all positivisms allrationalisms and all psychologisms domdashso it is necessary toguard against reducing theoretical or practical reason in itby failing to recognize its transcendence in relation to the

sensible order and its participation in the absolute ldquoThemindrdquo writes Hans Urs von Balthasar2 ldquodestroys itself andcrumbles if it splits into an inferior and a superior mind an

autonomously functioning reason (Verstand) and a ratio(Vernunft) that is reserved for special philosophical and

religious purposesrdquo Then the risk of a short-circuit appearsfrom ldquoinfantile naturalismrdquo to high spirituality from

alienating exteriority to ldquodivinerdquo magnetization from theldquocaves of the unconsciousrdquo to the ldquobirthrdquo from above from

the ldquopossessive Irdquo that is ldquoradical servituderdquo toldquodisinterestedrdquo love

Charles du Bos was not lacking in clearsightedness theday he noted in his Journal ldquothe necessity from an ethicalpoint of view of guarding oneself against mysticismrdquo3 In thesame sense he wrote one day to Father Auguste Valensin

Since the end of July 1927 God in his goodness has recalled me toHimself I have happened to suffer in the face of a certain unformulatedmdashand at times even formulatedmdashdisdain that believers who are advancedmoreover in spiritual ways and even mystics witness or at least seem towitness toward the moral order as such If one admits (and I admit it verystrongly) that ethics are only the narthex of religious truth neverthelessthere exist natures (to the number of which I belong) who venerate thenarthex all the more as it helps to introduce them into the sanctuary andthe more their religious life deepens the more faithful their gratitudebecomes 4

Du Bos had noted in his Journal on January 11 1925 ldquothenecessity of guarding against mysticismrdquo and on January18 1929 analyzing himself

Basically it is always a question with me of an offensive directed by themoral against the religious because as my Journal often notes the moralbeing is primary with me in the period when the plane of temperament istranscended the form that temptation then takes is a moral form summedup in the question of my right to religious life Yes that is indeed it and myeffort now must be not only to adhere to God but to consider that fromthe instant I do what I must on the plane of living I adhere to him de facto 5

Du Bosrsquo reflection as we see was not unilateral althoughhe emphasizes the moral which he judges to bedangerously disregarded (what would he not say thirty orforty years later) In return Emmanuel Mounier was no lessright to bring out the complementary truth in recalling thatldquomorality has no other end but the spirituality of which itkeeps houserdquo when one isolates it and clings to it heexplains one kills it it is replaced by moralism6 the enemyof mysticism as well as of religion History in fact shows thatthe abandonment of mysticism in the name of any formwhatever of moralism has never been at best anything buta stage in spiritual development in view of a less confusedmysticism ldquoAs it is nearly inevitable in philosophy to passthrough a phase of idealism so it is inevitable to passthrough a phase of intellectualism in morality inevitableand goodrdquo But on condition that one does not cling to it Adeeper understanding knows that it is not knowledge thatsaves man from sin and it will always ask ldquoWho forexample is the one more free of appearancesmdasha Spinozawho in observing actions or sentiments that the commonmen call sin explains them through a defect in knowledgemdashor a Surin who proclaims that to the degree that one doesnot see sins even in onersquos inadvertencies and firstmovements to that degree one will not weep over onersquosvanities as sacrileges one will lsquonever get to the rootrsquordquo7

Both have cut through appearances (not always the sameones) both in their order are right But basically howmuch more is this true of Surin And if the intellectualcriticism worked by a Spinozist is not coupled with aspiritual deepening how his clearsightedness ends inblaming it The world Bergson said very justly has much tolearn from the great mystics8

Likewise one is right not to consent to letting theunderstanding be classed among the provisional values tobe reduced to the rank of ldquonaturalismrdquo that is close to

animality Perhaps the word ldquosoulrdquo so far from beingunivocal9 used in the tripartite division of man is notwithout some danger in this regard But this is not asufficient motive for rejecting the very idea of this tripartitedivision such as some as we have seen above were led todo Even Sandaeus himself an apologist and theoretician ofmysticism while noting that a number of mystics judgerecourse to this division indispensable declared that therecould be room to debate this10 Sandaeus was therebyechoing a fear or a mistrust frequently shown in the mostbrutal fashion by Schoolmen in the face of all mysticalthought we know how sharp the dispute was even withinthe Catholic Church throughout the seventeenth century11

Since then through their efforts to minimize the text ofSaint Paul on which the distinction is based others witness adiscomfort if not a similar hostility The mystical tradition ofthe great Church however offers them desirableassurances thus with Tauler transforming the way oneviews the classical terms of the division He is thereby goingparallel to the doctrinal tradition such as it is expressed in aSaint Augustine for example or a Saint Thomas The ratherpusillanimous minds to which we are alluding do not giveenough consideration to the fact that in wanting to save theabsolute of morality and reason they risk failing torecognize the gifts of the Spirit and lowering the mysticallife Stifled unrecognized in its authentic forms the latterin despair is then in danger of developing on the margins ofall rational and moral norms A certain intellectualismmdashverypoorly namedmdashis a worthy counterpart of moralism and aspernicious

To return to this latter we can think that the general usein the ecclesiastical vocabulary of the modern ChristianWest of the term ldquodirector of consciencerdquo to the detrimentof the traditional terms ldquospiritual fatherrdquo or spiritusmoderator12 is the sign of an inflation of pure morality

tending to casuistry or lends itself to falling intopsychologism (while waiting for psychiatry) to thedetriment of the attention paid to things of the spirit whichis to say to the relation to God ldquoHave we not seen peoplerdquowrote Reneacute Gueacutenon ldquowho when it is a question of lsquospiritualmasterrsquo go so far as to translate it lsquodirector ofconsciencersquordquo13 It is possible to agree with his remarkwithout sharing the least part of his own notion of ldquospiritualmasterrdquo or more precisely his doctrine of the spirit Stillanother sign of the small esteem given to things of thespirit and first of all of an inadequate understanding ofthem is manifested in the designation ldquointellectualismrdquowhich is too easily attributed today to the whole doctrine ofcontemplation There is of course a philosophicalcontemplation There is a Greek intellectualism that isexpressed in an ideal of contemplation We discern sometraces of it in the history of Christian thought and life butthese are only tracesmdashand all are not moreoverblameworthy14 As it has done for many other conceptsChristianity has modified this at the same time as it took onits permanent values it profoundly transformed it How is itthat even Christian historians have perceived so little ofthis One can indeed if one wishes reject the word inseeking another that lends less to equivocation but itshould not be necessary at the same time to reject thedoctrine that the Christian centuries had included within itit should not be necessary to depreciate what is the verybasis of the best spiritual tradition at the heart ofChristianity This would be at the same stroke to depreciatethe order of the theological virtues in direct contradiction toScripture itself The supremely active Father Teilhard deChardin did not fall into such contempt he forcefullymaintained the primacy of contemplation in which he couldrecognize the superior form of action that which an activistwill never achieve15 The transformations and progress

achieved in the course of history the entrance into an agedominated by the technical the development of the ldquohumansciencesrdquo that tend to assimilate man to the object of thesciences of nature will change nothing not only the highmystical life but already the whole spiritual life while takingthe greatest consideration of morality and including morality(as well as of rational activity) comprises along with variednuances according to the case something beyond moralitytaken in the human sense of the word something beyond allthat we commonly call action because it always comprisessomething beyond man

That is what signifies the great traditional theme ofMartha and Mary based on the Gospel It will always remaintrue ldquoIn his duabus mulieribus duas istas esse figurataspraesentem et futuram latoriosam et quietam temporalemet aeternamrdquo16 And of these two realities the second isalready present as an active anticipation at the heart ofthe man en route toward his divine destiny

Finally the maintenance of the distinction between thezone of the natural [psychisme] and that of the spiritual is ofa major importance for maintaining in their just place withinthe limits of their competence all the kinds of psychology Itopposes ldquothe dissolving psychoanalytical confusion ofnatural and spiritualrdquo17 If stopping onersquos aim at theldquorationalrdquo and the ldquomoralrdquo was often the great temptationand if this temptation remains what is to be even moregreatly feared today is stopping at the ldquonatural[psychique]rdquo One of Teilhardrsquos weaknesses which wasbenign to tell the truth because he thought above all todissipate the illusion of a materialistic monism was acertain confusion of vocabulary between spiritual andnatural in the Pheacutenomegravene humain (which does not claim tobe a treatise on spirituality) he happens to speak at will ofldquospiritual energyrdquo or of ldquonatural energyrdquo mdashBut ldquothe spiritintervening psychology is powerless It sees everything

from outside although the spirit is lived only from withinrdquo itsees uniquely ldquothat part of the natural life that the spirit hasnot touched and which consequently unfolds in theunconsciousrdquo18

Without doubt it is only through our participation in themystery of the trinitarian Life that we are to become fullycapable of going beyond this psychological vision that canindeed scrutinize certain ldquodepthsrdquo but to which this otherdepth is not accessible this depth which is humantranscendence this otherwise mysterious zone where theimpulse toward God is situated the encounter with God

There is in us a certain root that plunges into the depths of the Trinity Weare these complex beings who exist on successive levels on an animal andbiological level on an intellectual and human level and on an ultimate levelin those very abysses that are those of the life of God and those of theTrinity This is why we have the right to say that Christianity is an integralhumanism which is to say which develops man on all the levels of hisexperience We must always be in defiance of all the attempts to reducethe space in which our existence moves We breathe fully in the measureto which we do not let ourselves be enclosed in the prison of the rationaland psychological world but to which a part of us emerges into these greatspaces that are those of the Trinity And this is what creates theincomparable joy of existence in Christianity19

Pertinent remarks of great importance in ecclesiology aswell as in the liturgy more timely today than ever Thedistinctions recalled by Dietrich Bonhoeffer and by Father PR Reacutegamey based like those of so many others on thePauline anthropology of the First Letter to the Thessaloniansare at once for every member of the Church an appeal tothe highest spiritual life and a warning against itscounterfeits

EPILOGUETO PART ONE

The Light of Christ ldquoIf you believerdquo we are told ldquoin thedivinity of the Christian religion it is because you are

ignorant about all the conditions that marked its beginningand growth The comparative history of religions has madeenough progress so that henceforth it is no longer possibleto speak of a lsquoChristian miraclersquo coming to break the thread

of human religious acts There is nothing in it that is notexplained in the way everything is explained Of course

some points still remain obscure certain influences remainunperceived The task of historians has not yet been

accomplished One can also recognize that several of themhave been a little too quick in thinking to detect here orthere analogies or relationships and their intemperance

was capable of provoking a prudent reaction in somescholars anxious for a more rigorous method But the

general orientation of science is nonetheless certain and itsresult is nonetheless assured Every day leads to a new

light uncovering some new connection and here and nowwe see clearly enough to be able to affirm that Christianityis a human phenomenon very human deeply rooted in the

earth of history where it has drawn all the essence fromwhich its marvelous vigor is nourishedrdquo

An objection that insinuates itself under a thousand formswith respect to a thousand problems A stronger objectionin many eyes than all those of dialectics because withoutfighting it claims to explain Believers are upset by it Menof good will whom Christianity attracts and who alreadybelieve they see Godrsquos work in it find themselves stoppedin their tracks by it they fear to commit themselves

thoroughly to what is perhaps only the work of man If itwere a question only of a milieu providentially prepared tofavor the birth and rise of the religion of ChristmdashJewishMessianism Stoic universalism the organization of theDiaspora the Roman peace mdashthis ensemble of fortuitousconditions could indeed account for its concrete possibilitybut it would definitely not for all that cancel out the miracleof its existence A favorable atmosphere has never sufficedto explain the fact of a birth One would have to becompletely incapable of perceiving religious values to betempted to explain the apparition and success ofChristianity solely by a series of external circumstances asimportant and as favorable as one supposes them to beBetter known the information that history brings in thisorder can therefore only add to the admiration that alreadyseized the Fathers such as Saint Leo exclaiming before hisRoman listeners ldquoNumerous States have been united into asingle Empire so that the ways necessary for the preachingof the Gospel might be readyrdquo1 Admiration that was alsoPascalrsquos ldquoHow beautiful it is to see through the eyes of faithDarius and Cyrus Alexander the Romans Pompey Herodact without knowing it for the triumph of the Gospelrdquo andwho a short time earlier had had this sung to Peacuteguy ldquoThesteps of the legions had marched for Him rdquo2

But history seems to show us much more today Muchmore even than a subjective preparation of soulssuffocating in paganism thirsty for salvation One by oneall the elements of which Christianity is made theconceptions it presupposes the notions it sets in motion itsworship practices the forms of its institutions theprescriptions of its morality all are identified classifiedranked in their place along continuous series Not a dogmanot a feature of discipline or of liturgy that does not have itshistorymdasha history that always includes a first pre-Christianperiod All that had been amalgamated in it is returned to its

origin and soon it seems that nothing of its own remainsHow dare we still in the face of these facts a great numberof which at least are solidly established speak of a religiongiven from heaven of divine revelation How consequentlydare we speak of ldquotranscendencerdquo of supernaturalabsolute definitive truth Everything that is born and growsaccording to the common law is transformed and alsoperishes according to the common law As imposing as itseems Christianity will not escape it Even more perhapsthan the defeats to which it has submitted in the course ofthese recent centuries the history of its origins warns us ofits inevitable decline It is no longer for us the uniqueexception the extraordinary thing that it seemed to be forso long a time It can no longer be loyally preserved fromuniversal evolution Whether the brilliant flash projected byreligion ever since humanity existed is a false flash or anauthentic light is of little importance here in the case ofChristianity one thought to see a unique star appearabruptly in the heaven of religions and miraculously hangthere but a more experienced look discerns that it too wasonly for a moment welded to the others passing like theothers in this long luminous trail

Yet the illusion if such it be has existed It still persists withmany who are not at all ignorant people This too is a factthat must be taken into consideration One should not replywithout further examination that the same is true for allreligion Contrary to almost all the others without exceptingeven Judaism Christianity appeared in the middle of ahistoric period Its legend if there is a legend iscontemporaneous with its existence What a differencethere is in this regard for example with its great rivalBuddhism3 Why then contrary to so many humanphenomena is it presented in so tenacious a way as beingabsolutely exceptional Is ignorance about its true originsenough to explain this illusion in its regard or might it not

be rather the very true perception of its transcendencethat veiled by its brilliant flash certain features of its humanhistory The hypothesis at least deserves consideration It isnot without analogies Many men think themselves free inactions where without doubt they are not at all or with afreedom that is not at all real Is this illusion completelyexplained by a myopia that prevents them from perceivingthe bonds of determinism or does it too not come from anobscure but truthful perception Rather than a total illusionis it not a simple error of localization An error attesting toan awkwardness in analysis a scientific inferiority butwithout any damage to the essential truth

Now it happens too that one badly localizes thetranscendence that one recognizes in Christianity setting itup in positions from which the experienced historian willhave no trouble dislodging it This is why in a more or lessexplicit way one conceives of it then above all as a solutionof continuity To suppose such a transcendence possible atranscendence whose true name would be ldquoexteriorityrdquo isnot the act of Christianity What would remain for exampleof the thought of Saint Paulmdashwho nevertheless sodominated the thoughts of his centurymdashif one cut it fromthe thousand roots that in fact attached it to the earth ofTarsus and Jerusalem How can a single one of its essentialpoints be analyzed without constant reference not only tothe history of the Hebrew people but also to Greekcivilization to Eastern mysticism to the Roman EmpireThis would be an imaginary transcendence pure chimeralinked to a no less chimerical ideal of revelation The realitythat it would effect if this were possible would not besuperhuman but inhuman Far from being sublimated by itit would only be impoverished dried up

It would find the path neither of our spirit nor of our heartArtificial superficial and not at all supernatural Such asthose devout people of whom Peacuteguy speaks who becausethey do not have the strength to be of nature imagine that

they are of grace in reality dried fruits But there is anothertranscendence a true transcendence of which the first wasonly at best the naiumlve transcription An intrinsictranscendence in virtue of which a given reality consideredas synthesis in what comprises its own being surpassesessentially the realities of the same kind that surround itwhatever might be the community of elements that itinforms along with theirs whatever might be too the tiesof origin that render these different elements solidary Anytrue synthesis is always more than synthesis A certainrecasting that is much more than a new combination acertain ldquorevival from withinrdquo transforms everything It is in aphenomenal continuity the passage to a new higherincomparable order4

Now for anyone who can seemdashbut which of us can natterhimself that he always can once and for allmdashthe intrinsictranscendence of Christianity is obvious It alone countsand a direct look well aimed is enough to establish it Theunbeliever does not have to overcome historicalcontinuities nor does the believer have to refuse to seethem A priori they must be Scholars dedicated todiscovering these continuities are not at all devotingthemselves to a vain task They can indeed often bemistaken (certainly they do not fail to be so) or give in tothe temptation of confused conjectures the hypothesis thatguides them is nonetheless sound The fragility of certainconstructions does not at all prevent the firmness of theirfoundations Besides in research that some would hold tobe sacrilege science is after all only exploiting the Paulineidea of the ldquofullness of timerdquo It is uniting in a way with thethought of the Fathers of the Church so anxious to bring outthe ldquoevangelical preparationsrdquo in order to spare Christianitythe appearance of a ldquosudden improvisationrdquo ldquoNihil putem aDeo subitum quia nihil a Deo non dispositumrdquo5 It agreeswith the reflection of the philosopher who considering the

Christian event refuses by very reason of its unparalleledproportions to attribute an accidental character to it6

But in what touches the very basis of religion thesecontinuities are only appearance Yes in one senseChristianity is human completely human We can we mustspeak of its birth If the words it uses are necessarilyborrowed then it is unavoidable that the concepts are tooAnd how would man tell himself the truth even divinelyrevealed truth except by using concepts There is norevelation except supernatural ldquoin the pure staterdquo Howwould God give himself to man if he remained a stranger tohim And how would his Word penetrate him if it were notalso to become a human word The messages of Saint Paulor Saint John are already ldquotheologiesrdquo and the veryconsciousness of Christ is the consciousness of the Wordmade flesh But a less rudimentary psychology has shownus that the concepts themselves are in their multiplicity farfrom expressing the whole of a doctrine for they are withinthe spirit the part closest to matter With how much greaterreason if it is a question of an object that is not onlydoctrine but first of all reality By what makes it itself by itsoriginal essence which consists neither in words nor inconcepts and which the whole sum of words and concepts isnever capable of translating adequately Christianity isdivine completely divine Through the close texture ofrelationships of ideas and beliefs without break withouttear a new spiritmdashthe Spirit himselfmdashhas passed He hasstolen in with gentleness and he has burst in with powerHe has penetrated human history and all has beentransformed The face of the earth has been renewed by itThis was a new Fiat a true creation ldquoEmitte Spiritum tuumet creabuntur et renovabis faciem terraerdquo7 The Spirit ofChrist has founded a wholly new thing the religion of Christand this religion of Christ for which all human history hadprepared for which all human thought had slowly woven the

fabric suddenly rises up in the midst of men ldquosine patresine matre sine genealogiardquo Pure creation pure miracleThere we have this ldquonewrdquo idea which Jules Lachelier saidldquois born from nothing like a worldrdquo

What new ideas though that do not come from usourselves The inventions of man enrich humanitydiscovering in the soul some nuance unperceived until thenbut always leaving it to its essential finitudemdashto itsincurable decay Once past the first amazement the ironicand despairing refrain of Ecclesiastes is heard again Thecircle enlarged or shifted closes again On the contrarywith a leap the Christian Idea transports us beyond ourlimits It breaks this circle within which all our progress hadbeen condemned in advance to fit Such was the thought atits appearance breaking the circle of animaltransformations It is born in its own time it has its markedplace within the progress of life and nevertheless what itbrings is much more than progress From the time itemerges a new kingdom has begun the human kingdomSo the preaching of Jesus marks the advent of the Kingdomof God8 For how many of the sentences of the Sermon onthe Mount would we not find analogies in the Jewish Bible orin the teaching of the rabbis The One who pronounces itspeaks nonetheless as man had never spokenmdashas manwould never speak9 The Gospel inaugurates the time ofgrace It is a wholly new order that begins ldquoa new order oflove in the universerdquo10 A dike has been broken which letsthe flow of Love pass through Now it would be as vain todream of a reality more divine than Love than to imagine areality more spiritual than Thought The transcendence ofChristianity is thus not only relative to such and such anearlier achievement It is not only something originalsomething superior a provisional novelty clearing the wayfor some ulterior invention destined to go beyond it It is anabsolute transcendence ldquoOmnem novitatem attulitrdquo11

Peacuteguy has also sung it He was going to inherit a worldalready made And yet he was going to remake it entirely

Of course the order of charity is not revealed any morethan is the order of the spirit in all its fullness or in all itsdepth to that observation from outside that constitutes thework of the pure historian But if their inner essence stillescapes observation would the simple sight of their effectnot already arouse the sense of their incomparablegreatness We know the repercussions observable to thenaturalist not blinded by an overly narrow concept ofscience produced in the universe by the apparition ofthought the paradoxical properties of the ldquohumanphenomenonrdquo its extraordinary power for expansion andconcentration out of proportion with the weakmorphological originality of man presuppose a presence ofwhich the naturalist can only catch a glimpse but they sethim on the way that must normally lead him to go beyondhis science to discover in truth the human kingdom12 Therepercussions produced in humanity by the advent ofChristianity are no less prodigious the human spiritimmeasurably increased an unparalleled moral fruitfulnessa society tirelessly at work for an ideal of justice and unityand so forth These features are accessible to the historianwho knows how to step back a pace Nevertheless let usrecognize just as reflection alone properly speaking canreveal thought to itself so too only a process of a religiousorder can disclose the absolute superioritymdashwhich is to sayproperly the transcendencemdashof Christianity Like thedivinity of Christ itself the definitive newness of theChristian principle can be perceived only by the eyes offaith It is here that the advantage of the simple believerover the man of science and of life over technique shinesforth For the anthropologist who systematically denieshimself any inner reflection on the lived thought as well as

the historian of religions who does not consent to regardChristianity from within and to begin to live it at leastthrough a basic attitude of real sympathy will neverunderstand anything about the true object of their learnedstudies If their science itself does not lead them to the finalaffirmations it must at least set them on the path But ifthey wish to trust solely in it to the end surrendering theirconscience as men into the hands of their intelligence asspecialists the greater the latter will be and the more it willrisk misleading them

ldquoThe history of the formation of ideasrdquo said Amiel ldquoiswhat makes the spirit freerdquo13 Beneath the ideas that itorganizes and transforms let us know how to discern theChristian Idea This Idea has no history this is what mustmake the spirit submit to it

A great Deed was done for the world twenty centuries agothe Deed of Charity14 Right at first menrsquos habits of thoughtwere not any more overturned by it than were empires Wasan obscure variety of Jewish ldquoMessianistsrdquo worth even aglance The grain of wheat sown by Christ remained buriedin little upper rooms that counted for nothing in the historyof the world Christianity itself would wait five hundred yearsto found retrospectively the ldquoChristian erardquo and it wouldtake another five hundred years for full Christian practice tobecome widespread15 The first disciples of Jesus stilldreamed of the Kingdom of David their father they went upto the Temple as was their custom with a fervor that wasonly increased Having contemplated the Deed that hadbeen done before them they must nevertheless have hadthe feeling of an unparalleled newness The testimony of itappears everywhere in their rare writings ldquoNew teachingnew covenant new commandment new name new songnew man new life second genesis of the worldrdquo16 Such afeeling did not mislead them They were not in danger

those who had seen who had heard those who hadtouched of taking the Christian Mystery to be a more or lessspontaneous mixture of the Jewish Messianism exalted byJesus and cult forms then in vogue in the Hellenized Eastmdashany more than Christian dogma was in danger of appearingto their successors of the great patristic period as a learnedproduct of the Bible and Greek philosophy This chemistry ofimpotent historians could not have been created by themThey knew from an immediate source that they weredealing with something very different They sensed theunity of what myopic analysts think to understand bydecomposing it This is because the principle of synthesiswas in them living and active It is because living thisdogma themselves before drawing up the inventory of itadoring this mystery before translating it they penetratedits spiritual meaning

In addition their testimony is for us more than aguarantee It constitutes a call If that call is at firstnecessary for us we do not have to hold to it ldquoNowrdquo saidthe inhabitants of Sichar to the woman who had led them toChrist ldquoit is no longer because of what you have said to usthat we believe for we have heard him himself and weknow that he is truly the Savior of the worldrdquo17 For twentycenturies the witness of the first generation of believers ispreserved intact because it always remains a living witnessabyssus abyssum invocat [deep calls to deep] Why shouldwe be riveted to history The Spirit still gives witness to ourspirit18 The Kingdom of God is still in the midst of us ldquoTheGospel of Jesus Christ Son of Godrdquo which was heard for thefirst time in Galilee under Herod during the fifteenth yearof Tiberius Caesar at the time of the High Priests Annas andCaiaphas still resounds today and if the forms of itspreaching are different it is the same Voice that proclaimsit Like the creative Deed which does not cease to maintainbeing and life everywhere the Deed of Charity is pursued

over the world The second Genesis henceforth aspermanent as the first and like it infinitely fruitful TheChurch Bride of Christ continues the work of herBridegroom We have only to contemplate hermdashnot fromoutside in her sole visible organization with its humancharacteristics which are often too human perhaps with itsdefects not even in the works of its scholars alwaysunequal to their task and whose insufficiency can be sopainful19mdashespecially when they themselves do not seem tofeel itmdashbut in her inner life in her ideal in her belief in hersecret fidelity in the purity of her zeal in the marvelousfruits of holy joy that she makes ripen in the depths ofhuman hearts In all that the ldquoworldrdquo does not perceiveThen the light shines then the Truth bears witness to itselfveritas index sui No need for laborious comparisons or of anerudite return to the past The clearsightedness of a limpidlook is preferable here to all the sharp perspicacities ofcriticism This is because the miracle is endlessly producedbefore our eyes Today as formerly by virtue of Christianityldquoall things are becoming newrdquo EvenmdashSaint Augustine hadalready noted itmdashthe more time advances the moreprivileged is our situation as witness The mystical Christ inthe measure he increases better reveals his power To thesigns of it that already multiply still others will be addedwhen his message has truly reached the most distantpeoples Today we only begin to see all the fullness of theDeed that renewed the world The sudden clarity of the firstdays has become a great luminous path which grows withthe centuries

This great Deed of Love Jesus it is You Yourself Perceptible to manhumble dying in a corner of Judea oh yes You are man Flower of JesseYou are indeed the fruit of our earth Born of a woman truly formed fromher substance You are not some sort of phantom come down from theclouds of heaven You are deeply rooted in our earth20 But in You Jesus asin no other child of our race God showed himself You were not merely Hismessenger You are His living and substantial appearance Through You He

has not only spoken Or rather His language is an action His word is adeed it is You Yourself Splendor Verbum et imago Patris You Jesus onyour Cross the act uniting earth to heaven21

In You God still shows Himself and in your holy Church Inyour best disciples He still shines so well that one cannotmistake it For it is You who live in them Have we not allknown someone in whom a divine flame burned which theyhad lit at your hearth alone Their silent testimony is all themore persuasive Non eloquimur magna sed vivimus22 ldquoAsfor merdquo said Gerbet ldquoI lend an ear to the sounds that holysouls make with greater respect than to the voice ofgeniusrdquo23 What a great wise man concludes after longstudies and profound meditations in favor of your divinitythat encourages me but scarcely moves me forward Butthat a Francis of Assisi that being so obviously predestinedto make a ray of eternity shine over our earth makeshimself your absolute disciple that he loves You adoresYou annihilating himself before You that he is ambitiousonly to place his steps in your steps and to live from You byreproducing each of your features that he wants always tobe only your humble repetitor24 that not for a moment doeshe entertain the idea of engaging in a personal way oftrying another experience of adding at least something toyour message this humble and total will to imitatemdashChristototus concrucifixus et configuratusmdashin the face of yoursovereign independence such literalness in such an effusionof the Spirit such contrast in a similar holiness Themore I reflect on it the stronger the argument seems tome25

After that what do the difficulties matter in which myreason gets tangled Or rather how could it be that so loftyan object would not put it to flight If You have come tounveil a new kingdom and a new existence to me howshould I not consent to letting myself be removed from myusual surroundings Is it not normal that I have to abandon

my usual modes of thought26 Your word upsets myinstinctive logic it overturns all my arrangements of ideasit shatters my concepts This is the price for the liberation ofmy understanding Yet little by little in mystery a newequilibrium is established Under the secret action of yourSpirit faith is able to find its exact expressions whichprotect it against the ever-reborn assaults of a reason toolittle converted This was not without a long and arduouswork To define your twofold nature as for all that is worththe effort of our understanding it takes time reflectiongroping disputes materials from all sources A long andperilous journey A complicated winding history strewnwith a thousand contingencies An often tragic historymdashawonderful history27 It was through the adventurousconcepts of thinkers that Catholic Christology ended inrejoining the first intuition of faith

More than any other because it is at the center of all thedefinition in which the result of this labor is found today isimperfect An inevitable and blessed imperfection Notaccidental but essential necessary so that humbleastonishment before the mystery may subsist in theprecision of belief and in the firmness of adherence Butalready Jesus your very first disciples when they loved Youabove all and when they left all to follow You when theygave You all without thinking thereby to take anything fromGod when they contemplated You seated at the right handof the Father when they called You the one Lordproclaiming that all had been renewed by You and that allknees must bend before You your disciples believed in YouExtraordinary impossible faithmdashand yet authenticatedbeyond doubt A scandal as grave for the historian as thedogma itself for the thinker For though not beingabsolutely the same as ours the difficulties for a Saint Peteror a Saint Paul in believing were no less strong Nor werethose of their successors the Origens and the Cyrils the

Ambroses and the Augustines Modern man flatters himselfwhen he judges that the Copernican revolution or theKantian revolution dug out a new hiatus between histhought and the thought of the Ancients It was as hard tobelieve then as it is today It was hard for a JewishmonotheistmdashldquoListen Israel Your God is onerdquomdashto believe inthe divinity of a man28 It was hard to believe in thecrucifixion of the Son of God29 It was hard for a reasonableman who had been able to see up close the Son of Man inhis humiliation to believe in the resurrected Christ and inall these histories ldquothat do not allow themselves to beallegorized rdquo30

ldquoA scandal for the Greeks and folly for the Jewsrdquo OurFathers passed beyond their faith conquered all theobstacles What they were capable of we ourselves will becapable of and if we do not make ourselves unworthy ofthem the reasons that quickened them will not be lessstrong for us Their attitude will thus be ours We could nottranscend it but neither could we restrict it without denyingyour message at the same stroke Jesus For it is no morepossible to abstract You from this message than it ispossible to abstract God from Yourself On what would webase the demands of your Law if we began by failing torecognize the Demand of your Person Who wouldguarantee us the hope of the Kingdom if we were not torecognize the King of it Does everything in You not tell usthat You are Yourself the Kingdom as You are the Truth andthe Life31 So from the beginning the religion of Jesuswhich is the ideal of love was indivisibly the religion ofChrist that is the cult of incarnate Love It is folly to want todissociate them and to believe that the first would survivethe ruin of the second The religion of which Jesus is thesubject and norm is gradually achieved in us only throughthe religion of which Christ is the object Moreover it isblindness not to recognize their identity it is to tear the

seamless robe that the Gospel presents to us and it is notto see the metaphysical significance of Love

Evangelium ChristimdashEvangelium de Christo a modernscarcely more subtle form of the old antithesis betweenpractice and dogma32 But in maintaining contrary to thosewho set them in opposition that there is an essentialrelation between them we do not mean simply that onemust observe dogma as a means for assuring practice Theirties are intrinsic33 and the necessity of their agreement isonly one consequence On the one hand ldquopracticerdquo can becorrectly defined only by dogma from it alone does itreceive its meaning and spirit and on the other hand inone sense it already contains everything in itself for it issummed up in charity which is the spiritual being in act

God is Love and in a great feat of Love he came to takeup man sinner and miserable Man and God embraced eachother in Christ The unique intellectual fecundity of thisDeed it is specifically pregnant with all Christian dogmaticsso that the latter must be called strictly revealed No morein fact than one could dissociate the revealed truths fromthe very Person of the Revealer could one conceive a justand complete idea of the transcendent newness ofChristianity if one did not see that in this Person of Christsuch as the Apostles already show him to us and such asthe Church never ceases to contemplate and reproduce himthe reality of Charity and the truth of Dogma areindissolubly united Charity constituting the reality of thisDogma as this Dogma itself constitutes the truth of thisCharity34

As for the intellectual elaboration from which the dogmain its second state results which is to say in that abstractand learned formulation that multiplies it in distinctenunciations wholly guided by the Spirit of Truth as it is itnevertheless remains a human operation The materials it

employs just like those that entered into the firstspontaneous expression of faith are human materials Theycan thus serve them too in the real (though alwaysinadequate) transmission of divine truth only in the measureto which they are related to the Whole of Dogma35 In themeasure to which on the contrary they are consideredeach in isolation the formulas cease to bear witness to thedivinity of their origin they lose the best of their meaningceasing to have relation to divine charity such as itappeared to us in Christ For our faith is one and it is whollysummed up in You O Jesus36 You are the center and thebond of all its ldquoarticlesrdquo All its expressions all itsdevelopments are only so many means of understandingYou better and of situating ourselves better before You Thisis why the historians who instead of considering Christianityin its living unitymdashwhich one can do fully only if one lives itoneselfmdashalways scrutinize its elements only by taking themone after the other as a series of detached pieces resistany possibility of understanding it The essence escapesthem They do not find the soul at the end of their scalpelIn Christianity they find nothing divine not seeing Christ init

How true it is therefore to say that if dogma is necessaryfor the maintenance of practice the role of practice isnonetheless essential for maintaining the reality of dogmaintact We now discover the whole meaning of such anaxiom Without the truth of dogmamdashalthough there may besome good ldquounfaithfulrdquomdashone will only have an apparentpractice but on the other hand without the reality ofpracticemdashalthough there may be some bad Christiansmdashonewill no longer have anything but an apparent dogma On theone hand a charity that is less than genuine on the other asuperstitious belief or a verbal orthodoxy an ldquoorthologyrdquowithout any real content This is because if the articles offaith are numbered the Object of Faith is marvelously one If

the former are formed of abstract propositions the Latter ismarvelously Living And just as according to the oldScholastic theory all physico-chemical bodies onceassimilated by the human organism are directly informedby the soul so that there is no longer either carbon oroxygen and so forth but only human matter so with all theelements religious or profane in origin that enter into theChristian synthesis Constructed completely in one sensewith human materials the dogmatic formulas neverthelessexpress divine truth Elaborated by men they channel apart of divine revelation But this is on condition onceagain that one always relates them to that same revelationto the living Center to the divine Center from which allradiates and to which all must lead us to Jesus Christ JesusChrist the personal manifestation of Charity Jesus Christ inwhom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledgebecause in him dwells the fullness of the Divinity JesusChrist Word of the Father who speaks him and gives himentirely There is no absolute newness no revelationproperly speaking no true transcendence outside of theunique reality of his Person We must always return to thewords of Saint Irenaeus ldquoOmnem novitatem attulitsemetipsum afferensrdquo37

Jesus I believe in You I confess that You are God You are forus the whole Mystery of God38 What other definition of Godwould we seek than that given by your Apostle And was itnot in contemplating You that he found it God is Love Thissingle word contains an unfathomable mystery which Iadore But through You this mystery illumines our nightalready For Love has done a great deed and this Deed ofLove the Love made visible to our eyes perceptible tohearts of flesh effective and saving Love is You Yourself Itis God made man it is the Incarnation of God

We stammer as we can Our formulas are insufficientNecessary to shield the treasure of our faith their form

nevertheless troubles us But your true adorers O Jesushavenrsquot You Yourself said are not those who put their trustin frail words they are those who understand your feat andwho sustained by Youmdashfor that costs more than bloodmdashstrive to reproduce it

An absolute feat nothing has any value except throughcharity Charity demands all assumes all Charity judges all

An efficacious feat through this ldquodivine strengthrdquo alreadyrecognized by the Apostle Paul39 he uproots us from ouregotism he opens us takes us raises us makes us capableof adopting the contours of it in our turn He eradicates theold man and implants the new man Operatorius sermoChristi40

A finally definitive feat Whatever might be the futureprogress of our race whatever the enlargement of itsknowledge or the refinement of its ideal we will not betaken unawares The coming of Christ has marked thefullness of time No fullness no depth will ever exhaust theDeed of Calvary41

That is why peaceful about the past we also look to thefuture without fear ldquoQuid amplius reservandum cumamplius nihil sit plenitudine perfectionisrdquo42 Sure that ourfaith will never mislead us we go ahead of the excavationsof history and the research of science Ahead too of humanprogressmdashand we know too well that all progress of theworld will not obtain the least beginning of salvation Aheadof the new values to which history gives birth through itscrises Man can vary and perfect his culture without end Hecan discover and exploit new potentialities in it The veryUniverse can grow immeasurably and distant stars can oneday reveal a humanity more numerous more civilizedmdashmore miserablemdashthan our own the Deed of Christ wouldstill take it in It embraces all worlds just as it shines abovetime For all equally for each one of us and at all times for

those who believe in man and for those who despair of himits rays are those of Eternal Life

ldquoHe has come the Christ of God the Leader of thePromises And without any doubt he has been he alone tothe exclusion of all those who preceded himmdashand I have theaudacity to say he is to the exclusion of all those who followhimmdashthe one awaited by the Nationsrdquo43

soma as an element of man above all in the sense ofpopular anthropology The benediction formula is traditionalperhaps liturgical and does not signify anything much aboutthe notion of man in Paul The combination may be chanceas in Deuteronomy 65rdquo8

Different exegeses which may contradict each other indetail but which nearly all tend in the same direction

It is not very difficult to detect the reasons for it For someinterpreters it is above all it seems the desire not to findSaint Paul in opposition to ldquoour classical doctrinerdquo as DBuzy (170) said a doctrine that counts only two elements inman matter and spirit Is this doctrine which is guaranteedby the threefold heritage of Scholasticism Cartesianismand for France the university spiritualism instituted byVictor Cousin not imposed on every well-made mind Butfor the most part another reason seems determinative It isa kind of phobia that is quite widespread today the phobiaof ldquoPlatonismrdquo Yetmdashand this is something that might seemstrangemdashif the Pauline text makes us think of Plato it is notalways because we read him in the Letter to theThessalonians it is in more than one case because we findhim quoted by Origen Which accounts for the reflex actionof distrust Does not Scripture in fact have for Origen ldquolikethe human composite a body a soul and a spiritrdquo And isthis distinction not ldquomanifestly inspired by the trichotomy ofPlatordquo9 It is in a similar way that an excellent historian ofmonastic life Dom Adalbert de Vogue on the subject ofOrigen evoked ldquothe old Platonic trichotomy at first assumedby Saint Paulrdquo10 The Alexandrian as everyone knows inadvance is a ldquoPlatonistrdquo but Saint Paul himself cannot beone If therefore as Father Ferdinand Prat said thisOrigenian trichotomy presupposes ldquoa false psychologysince the soul and spirit of man are not distinctprinciplesrdquo11 one can very well attribute this ldquofalsepsychologyrdquo to Origen but not ldquoaccuserdquo Saint Paul of it for

the aforesaid trichotomy truly constitutes an item ofindictment Has not Saint Justin too been ldquoaccusedrdquo ofdistinguishing three elements in man12 It is thereforenecessary that the same text the same words not have atall the same meaning in the Apostle as they have in theAlexandrian even if their primary source is common or atleast that under the pen of the first of the two they be onlyan ἅ παξ common and unimportant

The phobia of ldquoPlatonismrdquo in any case can be discoveredin several of our exegetes13 Hence the veritable acrobaticsin the TOB translation [Traduction Oecumenique de la Bible]of this Pauline verse and the explanations given in the endto justify it The translation ldquoMay the God of peace himselfmake you perfect and holy and may your spirit your souland your body be kept perfectly safe in order to beblameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christrdquo Theoriginality of this translation consists in the fact that theword ὁ λόϰληϱον which in Paul preceded the tripartiteenumeration is shifted so as to follow it and in additiontransformed into an adverb so that the two words thatcome next αμέμπτως τηϱηθείη (in the singular sincethe subject was ὁ λόϰληϱον ὑ μῶν) become (in the plural)ldquobe kept perfectly safe in order to be blamelessrdquo To tell thetruth that does not change much and cannot changemuch in the obvious meaning of the text The latter couldbe changed only by the obviously impossible suppressionof one of the three terms of the enumeration But this littleingenuity on the part of the translators allows them tointroduce in a note a contorted exegesis with an intendedgoal about which they make no secret

Some understand ldquoMay your entire being that is spirit soul and body rdquo This division of the human person into three elements would be that ofGreek philosophy It is not usual in Paul and this verse understood in thissense would be a completely isolated text in the New Testament In orderto avoid this difficulty others have understood the first term of theenumeration ldquoYour spiritrdquo to be the equivalent of ldquoyourselfrdquo they then

translate ldquomay your whole person soul and bodyrdquo thus recovering therepresentation that Judaism and Paul had of the human person We haverendered the sentence in a way that makes a simple enumeration of termsapparent each of which can designate for Paul the entire man whether itis a matter of pneuma psychegrave or soma There is no need at all then for anexplanation borrowed from a Greek anthropology in three componentswhich moreover are never expressed with these three terms14

One could not better display a stratagem One could not bemore subtle more sophisticated more inconsistent too butat the same time more honest in the end more clear and inthe final proposition more precise

But here is another strange thing This unfortunatetrichotomy so suspect because of the ldquoPlatonistrdquo Origenthis trichotomy that some would like to be able to forbid inreading Saint Paul for fear of having to admit that theApostle at least once ldquoPlatonizesrdquo this accursedtrichotomy that some strive for want of something betterto exorcise by making it commonplace which one finds inPaul or in Origen or in anyone else has nothing Platonicabout it

We can first of all take this on the word of some goodexegetes those at least who are not hypnotized by the FirstLetter of Paul to the Thessalonians Do we not recognize forexample the mark of Hellenic influence and more preciselyof Platonic opinion on the Book of Wisdom a little beforethe Christian era in the fact that certain passages of thisbook enunciate or presuppose a bipartite division of thehuman composite a division ldquomore conformed to Greekcustoms than to Semiticrdquo15 Do they not strive with reasonmoreover to show that the recognized use of ldquoPlatonicdoctrines about the distinction of body and soulrdquo and aboutthe immortality of the latter takes nothing away from thebiblical foundation of a thought that is not that of aphilosopher but that of a wise man of Israel ldquonourished bythe Old Testamentrdquo16

If it happens that one has not read much of Plato one canalso go back to some authorities on him what one finds inhis work is totally different from what one finds in Saint PaulThere is a certain psychological trichotomy in other wordsa tripartite division of the soul reasonable irascible andconcupiscible So it is in the Republic Phaedrus andTimaeus According to Phaedrus the θυμός and theἐπιθυμητιϰόν are the two horses of the chariot led by theνοῦς Origen who is familiar with this division is verycareful not to make it his own he observes on the contrarythat it ldquois not confirmed by the authority of Holy Scripturerdquoand for this reason on two occasions he rejects it17 Thetranslators of the TOB were very close to perceiving all thatsince at the end of their laborious explanations they finallytell us that Paul had undoubtedly borrowed nothing ldquofrom athree-part Greek anthropologyrdquo given the fact that thelatter is never expressed in Pauline terms But why then thisfear which has made them shrink from the simplesttranslation

It is not correct moreover to say that the text of 1Thessalonians is an isolated text in Scripture and in Paulhimself Undoubtedly it has been unduly compared to averse from Deuteronomy ldquoYou shall love Yahweh your Godwith all your heart with all your soul and with all yourstrengthrdquo to the sole end of insinuating that only thenumber three was here and there to be retained assignifying simply a totality18 it is enough to read these twotexts to see that they are not comparable But on thecontrary when the Letter to the Hebrews celebrates theWord of God who ldquopenetrates to the division of soul andspiritrdquo (Heb 412) it is inspired without any doubt by ananthropology similar to that of Paul And one can hardlymaintain that the formula of the latter is a mere pleonasmldquofor other passages show clearly that the Apostle despiteall the elasticity or lsquofluidityrsquo of his terminology distinguishes

clearly between the phenomena that indicate the body souland spiritrdquo19 He does so in the First Letter to theCorinthians when twice he contrasts the unspiritual ornatural [psychique] man and the spiritual man20 W DavidStacey has maintained that these latter texts cannotcorrespond to that of the Letter to the Thessalonians of thetwo conceptions in conflict it would be necessary on thebasis of all evidence to choose the one later in date asexpressing the mature thought of the Apostle21 theantagonism of natural and spiritual would be substituted forthe hierarchical union of soul and spirit But here again thedesire to eliminate or at least to neutralize a text deemedembarrassing seems to us to have led Dr Stacey astray It isvery evident that the text of 1 Thessalonians is far fromhaving the same significance as that of 1 Corinthians thatdoes not prevent the thought of Saint Paul from remainingcoherent from one letter to another The soul (the psyche) isnever for its part the object in itself of a pejorativeappreciation If in another context he is severe or not veryadmiring of the man he calls ldquonaturalrdquo it is insofar as thelatter is only natural insofar as he closes himselfmdashorremains still provisionally closed22mdashto the Spirit of God whowould (or will) make of him a ldquospiritualrdquo man conferring onhim thus his ldquofullnessrdquo as the Letter to the Ephesians willexpress it (518) The natural man of 1 Corinthians 2 canhave a certain ldquohuman wisdomrdquo that is not uniquely ldquocarnalwisdomrdquo (cf 2 Cor 112) which does not lack all value butunderstands nothing ldquoof the things of the Spirit of Godrdquo forhim they are ldquofollyrdquo To this ldquowise manrdquo to this ldquocultivatedmanrdquo to this ldquoman of reason here belowrdquo the Apostlecontrasts the ldquowisdom of Godrdquo manifested in Christ23

It would be no more appropriate to bring out here thePauline opposition in a still more radical sense between theflesh and the spirit The carnal man is not the one whowould stop so to speak at a first landing that of the flesh

which is to say in such a case at things of the body but theone who has fallen into evil Body and flesh (it is reallynecessary to repeat this since people still seem to bemistaken about this at times) are in no way synonymous oreven comparable and do not belong to categories of thesame order In the thinking of Saint Paul the ldquofleshrdquo has ldquoaclose solidarity with sinrdquo it is this congenital weakness thatmakes the human soul fall into the slavery of sin Theldquospiritrdquo its antagonist is ldquothe state of freedom in which itblossoms when it has been faithful to the Spirit of God whoattracts it and comes to dwell within itrdquo There is noquestion here of any gradation but of opposition pure andsimple Saint Paul does not speak there of any dualitywhatever in the structure of the human being he does notcorrect a tripartite anthropology by another bipartite oneFor him flesh and spirit never designate two components ofhuman naturemdashlike body and soul would bemdashbut alwaysstatesmdashcontrasted statesmdash of the whole man24

If one wants therefore to find a certain Greek antecedentof philosophical significance for the Pauline trichotomy itwould not be appropriate to look for it on Platorsquos side Itwould rather be in Aristotle The Stagirite in factacknowledges in man an animated body the presence of asuperior element the spirit (νοῦς) the principle ofintellectual life immortal and divine Nevertheless theparallel takes a sharp turn for there would be at least onemajor difference While Aristotle spoke of a νοῦς Paulspeaks of a πνεῦμα Now as we know the difference is notmerely one of terminology It is no longer a question of asimple nuance of thought The substitution of one term foranother was besides not made by Paul alone it hadalready been carried out a little earlier by Philo Friendlytoward Hellenism Philo ldquowas imbued with the doctrine ofthe contemplative nousrdquo25 nevertheless in the passageswhere he comments on the creation account he does not

speak of νοῦς but of πνεῦμα God he says breathes intoman a pneuma not content with making him simply alivecomposed of soul and body he gave him part of his spiritthis is what Moses teaches by saying that he made him inhis image This pneuma in man is the principle of a higherlife the place of communication with God26 Now such isalso one of the meanings of pneuma in Saint Paul It is not inGreece that we must search for its origin but in the Bible

Father Joseph Huby has said it in a few words which morerecent authors would benefit from rereading In the Paulineverse ldquofamous because of the trichotomy spirit soul bodyof the human composite some thought to see a borrowingfrom Plato or Aristotle Both do acknowledge in fact threeprinciples in man but if the latter two of those coincide withthose27 enumerated by Saint Paul the first is different InPlato it is the nous the intellectual soul consideredmoreover by Aristotle as separable Instead of νοῦς SaintPaul puts spirit or pneuma here with him as in Philo this isa Semitic term suggested by the account in Genesis (27)where it is said that God breathed into the nostrils of theman a breath of life rdquo28 The Pleiade Bible has taken thesame explanation which seems imperative to us ldquoSpiritsoul bodyrdquo recalls Michel Leturmy in a note to histranslation ldquosuch is with the Semites the most commondivision with respect to the human compositerdquo29 In a noteto the translation of Matthew 625 the same authorexplains that the Greek ψ υχή translates the Aramaeannaumlfshacirc breath of the throat animal life (the ldquosoulrdquo) throughopposition to πνεῦμα which translates the Aramaean roucirc hacircdivine respiration breath of the nostrils (the ldquospiritrdquo) seeGenesis 2730

We do not believe it would be enough however to tracethe words of the Pauline triad simply to those of the BibleThe Apostlersquos anthropology is also based in part on hisexperience acquired from life in the Spirit of God There are

numerous commentators who in consequence consider thePauline πνεῦμα to designate in reality not something of manthat would be higher than his soul but the human soulinsofar as it is informed by grace participating as theSecond Letter of Peter (14) says in an effective way in thedivine nature united to the very essence of God by thecoming of the divine Spirit into it31 The ψ υχή in this casewould be not only ldquosensible liferdquo but also the higher realityof man as man that is although Buzy translates it in anoverly intellectualist language ldquoreason without gracerdquo32

This would be ldquothe state of the specifically living beingwhich is inherent in man as suchrdquo33 So too schematicallyBonnetain ldquoThe three terms come back to the followinggrace soul and bodyrdquo34 Father Andreacute-Jean Festugiegravere isclearly opposed to this interpretation which also proceedsin some from the fear of attributing to the Apostle ananthropology judged to be ldquoPlatonicrdquo For him theanthropology of Saint Paul is undoubtedly trichotomic thepneuma in question in the wish addressed to theThessalonians as in the texts mentioned above from theFirst Letter to the Corinthiansmdashand as in addition the Letterto the Hebrews speaks of itmdashis not the Holy Spirit butactually a part of man ldquothe movement of the phrase thetwo ϰαί the insistence on saying that we must becompletely in our whole being under the divine safeguardrdquoare the proof of it35 Besides if this pneuma is not itself thedivine life realized in man it is indeed in him the center ofthe higher life moral religious mystical it is the ldquocenter ofthe Christian liferdquo which is not a matter of feelings but offaith36

Some hesitate to choose between these two contradictoryinterpretations even if it means apparently contradictingthemselves in their explanatory formulas They are of thefeeling that the thought of Paul is profound and complexthey would like to lose nothing of it but do not see well how

to explain it in our language in a coherent fashion Such isFather Joseph Huby following the passage we have quotedldquoFor Paul the pneuma is more precisely the spirit of maninsofar as influenced informed and heightened by divinegracerdquo it is the ldquoprinciple of thinking center of moral andreligious life and summit of the soul The original (biblical)concept of the pneuma the human soul breathes from Godis magnificently deepened the pneuma designates thereason informed by grace man insofar as he becomes spiritparticipating in the nature of God through the spirit theνοῦς becomes capable of conquering the flesh it isunited to the very essence of God through the coming of thedivine Spiritrdquo37 In this essay somewhat awkward in itsattempts at reconciliation in which a fourth term (νοῦς) isintroduced we see to which side the author is leaning Wewill say as much of Max Alain Chevallier who with respectto 1 Corinthians 1414-16 after having noted for us ldquothefreely equivocal use of the word pneuma by Paulrdquo seems torestrict immediately the significance of his observation bysaying that this word ldquodesignates without describing it theinner man filled with the presence of Godrdquo38 Karl Barth inhis Dogmatics escapes such oscillations only thanks to hisgeneral doctrine which prohibits him from ldquoreifyingrdquo in away from giving a proper consistency to the human spiritconsidered in its relation to God After having justlyobserved that the ruah of the Old Testament does notcorrespond to the πνεῦμα ἅ γιον of the New39 but insofar asa ldquoanthropological notionrdquo to the πνεῦμα of the address tothe Thessalonians Barth makes haste to add ldquoOn the otherhand one cannot assert without reservation that the OldTestament and the New refer to a trichotomy of the humanbeing For both the human being in himself is body andsoul earthly form and earthly life but the body possesses asoul and its earthly form is that of a living being in themeasure in which the human being receives the spirit and

safeguards itrdquo This spirit must however be conceived ldquonotas a property of man but as a gratuitous giftrdquo which atdeath must be returned to God and which persists ldquowhichGod withdraws from him or grants to himrdquo40 What must bemaintained above all according to Barth is that man ldquois inno way lsquorelated to Godrsquo (Gunkel) he has simply beenawakened to his proper existence by the breath that Godbreathes into him and which allows him to breathe himselfWhat is he and what does he possess that he has notreceived and that does not differentiate him from God sinceit is God who has created himrdquo41

The human pneuma of which Paul speaks would thus beboth an element so little constitutive of his being that Godcan take it back from him and a created element thatdifferentiates him from God Such is the Barthian paradoxWithout having to take him literally perhaps we would haveto unite ourselves with the ldquospiritrdquo of it Would it in fact benecessary to choose between two contradictoryinterpretations that confront each other or resign ourselvesto a [false] harmonization that itself does not avoidcontradiction An expression used by Saint Paul himself 1Corinthians 211 could suggest an intermediate solution tous ldquoWho therefore among men knows the secrets of a manif not the spirit of the man which is in him (τὸ πνεῦμα τοῦἀνθϱώ που τὸ ἐν αὐτῷ)rdquo This pneuma is certainly not theHoly Spirit since Paul adds ldquoSimilarly no one knows thesecrets of God except the Spirit of Godrdquo Yet it does notappear completely like a constituent part of man as suchlike the body or the soul after having said ldquothe spirit of themanrdquo Paul corrects himself in a way to say ldquothe spirit whois in himrdquo which marks a nuance of capital importanceThus what par excellence makes a man what constitutesman in his worth among the beings of this world muchmore what makes him a being superior to the world wouldbe an element that rather than being ldquoof manrdquo would be

ldquoin manrdquo There is it seems to us in this Pauline πνεῦμα thesame kind of ambiguity notional because real as in thedivine ldquoimagerdquo or divine ldquobreathrdquo of creation such asChristian tradition interprets them From one author toanother and sometimes in the same author the sameambiguity will give place to oscillations which will not gohowever to the point of compromising before a ratherrecent date the idea of a tripartite anthropology Weconclude with a recent interpreter that the Pauline conceptof πνεῦμα is a concept ldquoof which our modern anthropologiescan absolutely not take accountrdquo42

2 Patristic Tradition

I The First Two Centuries Irenaeus It is a fact that Christianantiquity did not judge insignificant the Pauline verse about

body soul and spirit Nevertheless from one author toanother the interpretations differ without always being in

contradictory opposition to each otherIn his letter to the Philadelphians Saint Ignatius of Antioch

simply makes the Apostlersquos enumeration his own in judgingthat his correspondents like the Ephesians and theSmyrnians ldquowill be honored by the Lord Jesus Christ inwhom they hope with flesh soul and spirit (σαϱϰί ψ υχῇ πνεύματι) in faith charity and concordrdquo1 Athenagoras alsodistinguishes between soul and spirit for him the soul isplaced between ldquothe spirit of matterrdquo which is to say ldquotheflesh and bloodrdquo and the ldquoheavenly spiritrdquo which is ldquopurespiritrdquo and it can according to its choice mix with one orbecome the other

The soul becomes passive when it receives the spirit of matter and ismixed with it by looking below toward earthly things and to speak in ageneral way when it becomes only flesh and blood and ceases to be apure spirit2We believe that we will live another life heavenly and no longer earthlyif at least close to God and with God we have steadfast souls masteringpassion and if we remain not like bodies but like a heavenly spirit 3

In Tatian also the distinction seems clear when he saysldquoWe have knowledge of two sorts of spirits one of them iscalled soul the other is greater than the soul it is the imageand resemblance of Godrdquo4 Only subsequently it isimpossible to discern clearly if the spirit he distinguishesthus from the soul and which he calls ldquodivinerdquo is not simplythe Spirit of God The soul he explains is not immortal in

and of itself so ldquoif it remains by itself it dies with the flesh But when it is united to the divine spirit (θεῖ ον) it doesnot lack for help and it rises to where the spirit leads it Forthe seat of the latter is above while its origin is below Nowin the beginning the spirit was the guide of the soul itabandoned it when it did not want to follow it Now theSpirit of God does not reside in all but in some who livejustly The souls who have obeyed wisdom have drawnthe Spirit who is closely related5 to them (συγγενές) rdquo

Saint Irenaeus then Origen should make us pause a littlelonger because of the abundance of texts their importanceand their difficulty6

It is in the fifth book of Adversus Haereses that Irenaeusgives us his views about anthropology But his goal was notto write a clear and didactic exposition for the use of thehistorians who would pore over his text later on it was torefute heretics who conceived of salvation for man only inldquorejection of the fleshrdquo7 On the other hand careful alwaysto stick very close to Scripture he lets himself be guidedsuccessively by the different texts he uses which leads himto change more or less his perspective and his terminologyin the course of his text8 Hence the difficulties forinterpreters

The first passage in which the distinction between the souland the spirit is affirmed is of little interest to us for it isthere a question of an exposition of heretical doctrine9 Inresponse chapter 6 no 1 is presented as an orthodoxcommentary on the Pauline texts

Through the hands of the Father which is to say by the Son and the Spiritit is man and not a part of man who becomes the image and theresemblance of God Now the soul and the spirit can be a part of man butin no way man the perfect man is a mixture and union of the soul who hasreceived the Spirit of the Father and who has been mixed with the fleshmodeled according to the image of God Under the name of ldquoperfectrdquo the Apostle designates those who havereceived the Spirit of God He also calls them ldquospiritualrdquo they arespiritual through a participation of the Spirit but not through a voiding and

a suppression of the flesh In fact if one dismisses the substance of theflesh that is of the modeled work in order to consider only what isproperly spirit such a thing is no longer the spiritual man but the Spirit ofthe man or the Spirit of God By contrast when this Spirit in mixing withthe soul is united to the modeled work thanks to this effusion of the Spiritthe spiritual and perfect man is achieved and it is he himself who has beenmade in the image and resemblance of God When on the contrary theSpirit is absent in the soul such a man remaining in all truth natural andcarnal will be imperfect possessing indeed the image of God in themodeled work but not having received the resemblance by means of theSpirit10

From all the evidence Irenaeus counts here three elementsin man But is it simply a matter of man or of the perfectman Or rather to speak without ambiguity is it simply aquestion of the ldquoperfectrdquo man which is to say complete inhis nature or man divinized through the participation of theSpirit of God Or indeed does Irenaeus mix the two thingsThe text that follows will perhaps enlighten us

Modeled flesh alone is not the perfect man it is only the body of man thusone part of man Neither is the soul alone man it is only the soul of manthus one part of man Nor is the Spirit man one gives it the name of Spiritnot that of man It is the mixture and union of all these things thatconstitute the perfect man And this is why the Apostle in explaininghimself has clearly defined the perfect and spiritual man beneficiary ofsalvation when he says in this First Letter to the Thessalonians ldquoMay theGod of peace make you perfect and holy so that you may be fullycomplete and so that your whole beingmdashto wit your Spirit your soul andyour bodymdashmay be preserved without reproach for the coming of the LordJesusrdquoWhat motive did he have in asking that these three things to wit the soulthe body and the Spirit be preserved whole for the coming of the Lord if hehad not known that all three were to be restored and reunited and thatthere is for them but one and the same salvation This is why he calls ldquofullycompleterdquo those who present these three things without reproach to theLord Thus those are perfect who all at once possess the Spirit of Godremaining always with them and maintain themselves without reproachwith respect to their souls and their bodies which is to say preserving faithtoward God and keeping justice toward their neighbor11

The hesitation remains On the one hand the Spiritconstitutes with the soul one part of man it is called theldquoSpirit of the manrdquo and seems to be distinguished from the

ldquoSpirit of Godrdquo it in itself does not constitute the man anymore than the body or the soul does but it is one of thethree elements that constitute him these three elementsare also enumerated according to Saint Paul who wishesthem all three to be without reproachmdasha wish that wouldbe irrelevant even impertinent in the case of the Spirit ofGod finally moreover Irenaeus himself considers that theyare all three to be ldquorestoredrdquo and to be presented to theLord But on the other hand the soul receives ldquothe Spirit ofthe Fatherrdquo the man is called ldquospiritualrdquo insofar as hereceives participation of the Spirit and this participationmakes him to be not only in the image but in theresemblance of God finally if this man is ldquoperfectrdquo it isbecause in addition to the soul and the body he ldquopossessesthe Spirit of Godrdquo12 And these two series of affirmations arenot found in different contexts they are closelyintermingled

Yet a little farther on several passages come to supportthe second series

Those who possess the deposit of the Spirit and who surrenderthemselves to the Spirit the Apostle rightly calls ldquospiritualrdquo since theSpirit of God dwells in them For spirits without bodies will never bespiritual men but it is our substancemdashthat is the composite of soul andfleshmdashthat in receiving the Spirit of God constitutes the spiritual man 13 The weakness of the flesh makes the power of the Spirit shine forth and it is of these two things that the living man is made living due to theparticipation of the Spirit man through the substance of the flesh mdashTherefore without the Spirit of God the flesh is dead 14The breath of life which makes the natural man is one thing and thevivifying Spirit which renders him spiritual is another The breath has beengiven indistinctly to all the people who inhabit the earth while the Spirithas been given exclusively to those who trample down earthly covetousdesires 15ldquoFor the Spirit will come out around me and it is I who made all breathrdquo (Is5716) He ranks in a way the Spirit in a sphere apart beside God who inthe last days spread it over mankind for adoption but he situates thebreath in the common sphere among creatures and he declares itsomething created Now what has been created is different from the onewho creates it The breath is thus a temporary thing while the Spirit is

eternal After having enveloped man from within and without heremains always with him and henceforth will never abandon him16

One will note however that in these texts the perspectiveis no longer that of an anthropological analysis and thatthey are condemned by other biblical passages than thepreceding Moreover as Irenaeusrsquo principal objective justnow was to claim for the body itself a salvation of which theheretics say it is incapable his objective here is to show thatthis salvation the definitive blossoming of the spiritual lifewhose seed is in each man is the work of the Spirit of Godin each man In no passage is Irenaeus concerned to give uswhat we would call a philosophical anthropology He doesnot go deeply intomdashto tell the truth he does not even havein mindmdashthe problem of the insertion of the Spirit of God inman Despite the several expressions we have brought outand several others as well we believe that the Spirit ofwhich he speaks is always the Spirit of God even when heconsiders it in man If for example it is said in 5 6 1 thatthe soul and the Spirit can be ldquoone part of manrdquo one canobserve with Dom Adelin Rousseau that ldquoparsrdquo is in thesingular ldquoThus although Irenaeus does not hesitate to seein the Spirit of God one of the three constitutive elements ofthe perfect man he refuses and for good reason to makethis Spirit a lsquopartrsquo of the perfect man rdquo A little farther onit is said that the Spirit like the soul and the body is to berestored and saved which seems strange if it is indeed aquestion of the Spirit of God but Dom Rousseau againcomments ldquowhat is to be saved is not the Spirit as such butthe Holy Spirit insofar as communicated to man for his fullachievement in other words the Spirit is less saved than itsaves rdquo These explanations are ingenious they canseem a little subtle they do not however in our opinionfalsify the general line of Irenaean thought Perhaps it isonly necessary to complete them by recognizing that thetexts that are to be thus explained give witness to a rather

clear tendency to conceive of man (even if it is a question ofthe ldquoperfect manrdquo) according to the anthropological schemesuggested by the Apostle17

If therefore the Spirit indeed designates for Irenaeus theSpirit of God his very manner of considering this Spirit ofGod in man and of seeing in it thus one of the threeelements that combine to constitute the perfect man posesan anthropological problem18 Just like the text of the FirstLetter to the Corinthians of which Irenaeus wants to give anaccount it invites a resolution of this problem in thedirection of a certain ldquotrichotomyrdquomdashwhich Origen more of aphilosopher will soon do ldquoThe hereticsrdquo we read again inthe fifth book of Adversus Haereses ldquo do not understandthat three things as we have shown constitute the perfectman the flesh the soul and the Spirit One of them savesand forms to wit the Spirit another is saved and formed towit the flesh another finally is between those two to witthe soul which now follows the Spirit and takes its flightthanks to him now lets itself be persuaded by the flesh andfalls into earthly desiresrdquo19

These explanations seem to us akin to those of FatherJean Meyen-dorff with respect to man ldquocomposed of fleshsoul and Holy Spiritrdquo ldquoThis viewrdquo he observes ldquowhichsounds strangely pantheistic if one judges it according tolater theological categories shows in fact a dynamicconcept of man that excludes the notion of lsquopure naturersquoMan is created so as to share the existence of God this iswhat distinguishes him from the animal and is expressed inthe biblical account of the creation of Adam lsquoin the image ofGodrsquo rdquo20 As Pierre Boyer-Maurel also says21 if for Irenaeusa certain dichotomy ldquoaccounts for man fashioned in theimage of Godrdquo it is nevertheless a trichotomy ldquoin which thebreath only precedes the Spiritrdquo who ldquoaccounts for thebecoming of man of that man who is created by lettinghimself be created throughout the divine Economyrdquo

II Origen Irenaeus spoke particularly of the Spirit of Godeven when that Spirit shared became by consent of thesoul the spirit of man Origen will speak more explicitly of

the spirit of man insofar as an opening to the Spirit of GodThese are two inverse perspectives much rather than two

adverse doctrines1One authority on Origen Gustave Bardy has however

written that the tripartite division ldquowhich is imposed onhim in a way by several Scripture passages plays no rolein his teachingrdquo2 Another historian of ancient Christiandoctrines Francois Bonifas had expressed a judgment inthe contrary direction but as little conformed to the realityafter having pointed out that ldquounsteadinessrdquo of the Paulineterminology ldquomakes it doubtful that the Apostle intended [in1 Thessalonians 523] to make a scientific distinctionrdquo hewent on thinking essentially of Origen ldquoYet the Fathers ofthe Church saw in the expressions of Saint Paul a rigorousdivision in which they found once again that of their oldmentor Platordquo3 Previously J Denis while not mixing Platoup in the affair had recognized in Origen the existence oftrichotomic texts but he saw in that only a foreign body inthe midst of Origenian doctrine ldquoGenerally speakingrdquo hesaid ldquothe soul and the spirit are but one for Origen and ifhe had not respected a division that came to him from SaintPaul and which appears to have been adopted generallyas much by the orthodox Fathers as by the heretic scholarshe would have suppressed one of the terms of this divisionand would thereby have been spared numerouscontradictionsrdquo4 The prejudice to which in each of thesethree last cases the historian is unconsciously giving way isnot difficult to perceive To overcome it would require an in-depth study After the work by G Verbeke on LrsquoEvolution dela doctrine du Pneuma du Stoiumlcisme agrave saint Augustin (1945)the works of Henri Crouzel and Jacques Dupuis have broughtus all desirable light on this point ldquoAt timesrdquo Father Crouzel

tells us ldquoOrigen is a dichotomist distinguishing the bodyand the soul following the Platonic custom5 But most of thetime he sees according to Scripture three elements inman spirit soul and body He has recourse to thistrichotomy when it is a matter of explaining his idea of manand he states it each time he encounters in the texts anexpression that suggests it and this is so throughout hisliterary careerrdquo6 But it is Father Jacques Dupuis who drawsthe matter into perfect clarity in his important monographon ldquoLrsquoEsprit de lrsquohommerdquo eacutetude sur Irsquoanthropologicreligieuse drsquoOrigegravene For him ldquoThere can be no doubt thatthe verse from Saint Paul is the immediate source of hisanthropological trichotomyrdquo (65) It is principally he that wewill follow here

ldquoWe often find it asserted in Scripturerdquo says Origen ldquothatman is spirit body and soul and we have ourselvesdeveloped the subject at lengthrdquo7 In that as in othersubjects it is in fact the sacred text most especially that ofSaint Paul that truly constitutes the framework for histhought8 And it is with reference to Scripture that he triesto define clearly the notion of the Pneuma For him thePneuma is first of all the Divine Life in principle but it is alsothe shared divine life the creature itself becomes pneumain the measure that it possesses this life Yet it is a first kindof participation in the divine Pneuma which does not yetallow it to be said that man has become pneuma aparticipation that without betraying Origen we can alreadycall natural because it consists in an element that is anintegral part of the nature of all men and that is preciselyhis pneuma ldquoThe Spirit of God even when it is present inus is one thing and the pneuma proper to every man thatwhich is in him is something else The Apostle clearlyaffirms that this spirit (this pneuma) is different from theSpirit of God even when the Holy Spirit is present in usover and above the spirit of man that is in himrdquo9 The

distinction could not be put more clearly Origen asks againin the same passage of the commentary on Saint MatthewldquoIs the spirit of Elias the same as the Spirit of God whodwells in Elias or indeed do we have two different thingsthererdquo And he replies ldquoThe Apostle shows clearly that theSpirit of God when he dwells in man is distinct from thespirit of the man lsquoThe Spirit itself testifies to our spirit thatwe are children of Godrsquo (Rom 816) and in another placelsquoNo man knows what is in a man if not the spirit of the manwho is in him likewise no one knows what is in God if notthe Spirit of Godrsquo (1 Cor 211)rdquo10

Origen indeed says like Paul pneuma and not nous It isbecause they did not sufficiently distinguish between thesetwo concepts that several have identified the pneuma of theanthropological trichotomy with the preexisting nous andhave made it the higher (intellectus) part of the soulmdashunless in order better to distinguish between pneuma andpsyche they reduced this latter to its sensible part Theythen spoke of Origenrsquos imprecisions his unstableterminology indeed of his inconsistency of thought and ofhis contradictions This was from not having read himclosely enough11 He distinguishes the spirit from the soul(and in this case he is not speaking of the nous) as clearlyas he does the soul from the body and he repeats atdifferent times that ldquowe are composed of a soul and aspiritrdquo this is the case it seems in the third book of Periarchocircn12 so too in the fourth book in the famoustheoretical parallel that he institutes between man andScripture13 In the Entretien avec Heacuteraclite for theinstruction of his august audience he insists ldquoThat man is acomposite being we know through Scripture The Apostle infact says lsquoMay God make you holy spirit soul and bodyrsquoand so forth This spirit is not the Holy Spirit but one part ofthe human composite (μέϱος τής τοῦ ἀνθϱώ πουσυστάσεως) as the same Apostle teaches when he says

lsquoThe Spirit gives witness to our spiritrsquo rdquo14 In thecommentary on the Letter to the Romans he will also quotein support a text from Daniel15 here he invokes as anexample what happened at the death of Christ havingwanted to save all men the Savior had taken body soul andspirit now ldquothese three elements during the Passion wereseparated at the time of the Resurrection they werereunited During the Passion they were separated How Thebody in the tomb the soul in hell the spirit he deposited itin the hands of the Father rdquo16

This spirit of man represented by the eagle in Ezekiel17 isplaced above the soul18 But never in the texts of thetrichotomic series does Origen call it νοῦςmdashso that thiscould be a criterion for discerning the origin of certainpassages given as Origenian but which are in reality fromEvagrius19

But how are we to understand this spirit which is ldquoin usrdquo20 What is its role If we follow again the indications givenby the Apostle we will compare it to the moral conscienceldquoOur gloryrdquo says Paul ldquois the testimony of our consciencerdquo(2 Cor 112) The conscience always rejoices in what good Ido on the other hand it can never be accused of doing evilbut on the contrary it remonstrates it accuses the soul towhich it is bound this is a sovereign freedom I thereforethink that it is this very spirit that the Apostle tells us is withthe soul being associated with it like a pedagogue and aguide to teach it good to chastise it and to reprimand itwhen it sins It is this spirit of which the Apostle again saysthat ldquono one knows what the man is if not the spirit of theman who is in himrdquo it is the spirit of the conscience alsoaccording to what Paul says ldquoThe spirit himself giveswitness to our spiritrdquo21

We should not however in exalting the pneumaexcessively reduce its reality if it is not a simple member ofthe human composite neither is it the simple voice of the

conscience Inaccessible to evil22 placed in a way as wehave said ldquoabove the soulrdquo (ἀνωτέϱω) as a ldquoguide tovirtuerdquo23 it is ldquomuch more divine than the soul and thebodyrdquo24 ldquobelonging truly to man it remains entirely in aparticipation of the Holy Spirit who gives himself to us it isthe point of contact between man and the divine Pneumawho inhabits himrdquo25 This is why it is always holy it is holyby essence not of course the ldquoHoly Spiritrdquo but throughparticipation a ldquoholy spiritrdquo26 ldquothe seal of the Holy Spiritmakes holy the spirit that is in usrdquo27 in each of us Hencethe paradox the pneuma in man is holy and it mustbecome so we must affirm at the same time the holiness ofthis pneuma and ldquothe fortuitous character of a holy liferdquo28 Ifwe seek to bring out the fundamental idea expressed (let usnot say sought for Origen seems very much the master ofhis thought) in these texts and other similar ones we couldwithout betraying it express it thus the pneuma that is ldquoinmanrdquo in every man assures a certain hiddentranscendence of the man over himself a certain opening acertain received continuity between man and God Not thatthere is the least identity of essence between the one andthe other (like Irenaeus like Clement Origen is animplacable adversary of this pantheism of the pseudo-Gnostics) but it is at the heart of man the privileged placealways intact of their encounter

Would man therefore be after all impeccable No But thecenter of moral freedom and choice is not the pneuma Thatis why we can say that for Origen the pneuma ldquodivine giftrdquois not properly speaking part of the personality29 Thecenter of choice is the soul in its higher part (νοῦς) Thelatter can be inclined as Saint Paul says on the side of thespirit or on the side of the ldquofleshrdquo (which does not mean thebody) which is to say that it is ldquocapable of virtue and ofvicerdquo30 When it is said that the flesh desires against thespirit and the spirit against the flesh without any doubt the

soul is posed between the two as being able to acquiesceto the desires of the spirit (si eum sequi velit)31 or let itselfbe led to carnal desires in this latter case it becomes withthe flesh a single body of covetousness and of carnalappetite in the former case on the contrary beingassociated with the spirit it becomes a single spirit withitrdquo32 The spiritual man is the one in whom the spiritprevails33 the carnal man he in whom the flesh prevailsThe spirit itself the pneuma always remains holy but ineach one it can have vitality or torpor flight or fall flame orsluggishness34 This is why paradoxically Origen can affirmboth as we have said that the pneuma is holy and that itmust become so35

Still following Paul Origen also speaks of the ldquonaturalmanrdquo who is again neither carnal nor spiritual and theexplanation he gives in his respect manifests once again aparadoxical character distinguished only with difficulty fromthat spirit (pneuma) that is in man without being uniquely ofman and that becomes fully himself and fully completesman only in his participation in the Spirit of God ldquoThenatural man does not understand what the law of God is itis madness to him but the spiritual judges all thingsrdquo (1 Cor214) We think that there is a reason why Paul omits theword ldquomanrdquo after ldquospiritualrdquo For ldquothe spiritualrdquo is more thana man he is superior to that humanity defined by the soulthe body or by the two together and not by the spirit whichis more divine than these two elements and whosesupernatural participation once achieved defines thespiritual When the soul rises follows the spirit andseparates itself from the body when it no longer evencontents itself with following the spirit but remains in it (asthis passage shows ldquoToward you have I raised my soulrdquo Ps251) how would it not lose so to speak its own nature andnot itself become spirit36

Toward the end of this text a trace of the speculations ofPeri archocircn on the subject of the soul will be noted buttoned down by ldquoso to speakrdquo It is necessary toacknowledge however that from one work to the otheracross the succession of dates and the varieties of subjectstreated and literary genres the points of view are so diversethat in the words if not in the thought the reader has somedifficulty finding a perfect coherence among all theOrigenian texts on the pneuma

At death all pneuma returns to God this is whatEcclesiastes says ldquoThus the pneuma of the just and that ofthe sinner have an identical destiny both end at theFatherrdquo37 But ldquoit does not follow that saint and sinner sharethe same destiny With the saint the whole man enters intoGod with the sinner the pneuma returns to the Lord thesoul and body perish in Gehenna hence the intrinsic tearingof the human beingrdquo38 Like the remark by Father CrouzelOrigen is akin here to the thought of Saint Irenaeus whosaid ldquoAll those who are destined to life will be raised up withtheir bodies their souls and their spirits those who havemerited punishment will surrender their souls and theirbodies to it for with them they have strayed from divinegracerdquo39

Later Christian tradition will not be as unfaithful to thisconception of the pneuma as one might believe It is foundagain in a series of intuitions ideas and opinions of variedexpression This is for example the idea dear toRuysbroek of a certain ldquodeiformityrdquo of the human being ofhis higher ldquosuperessentialrdquo life in God40 It is the obscurefeeling that there exists in each of us even the greatestsinner a hidden room where no one but God can enter inldquothat sacred point in us that says Pater no iterrdquo as PaulClaudel says magnificently in the famous ldquoCantique dePalmyrerdquo and that cannot hide from love41 It is the intuitionof a Georges Bernanos at the threshold of death noting in

his diary that ldquosin makes us live on the surface of ourselvesrdquoand that even when we offend God ldquowe never ceaseentirely to desire what He desires in the depths of thesanctuary of our soulrdquo42 There are similar traits in the workof Dostoyevsky although they too can be rather equivocal(a novelist does not express himself like a theologian) theydo not prevent him from glorifying personal freedom andproclaiming the necessity of uprooting evil in receiving ldquonewbirthrdquo The Origenian doctrine of the pneuma alsoreverberates throughout the Bonaventurian tradition In atotally different climate and without any need to search fora precise influence from one to the other the very doctrineof Saint Thomas Aquinas would not be completely foreign tohim It questions neither the singularity of each humanbeing nor the drama of existence nor the divinetranscendence43

NOTE

In his commentary on John 423-24 Origen defines ldquotrueadorersrdquo first by the spirit then in relation to the truth Hethus breaks down the dual Johannine formula and explains itterm by term drawing his inspiration again from Paul whoopposes spirit and flesh (Rom 89 Gal 56 2 Cor 103) It isinteresting to note that in evoking Romans 89 Origen addsa μήϰετι those who are no longer in the flesh but in theldquospiritrdquo He thereby stresses the impact of the coming ofChrist and of the gift of the Spiritmdashalready evoked by Paulmdashwhich divide history into a before and an after Origen doesnot work therefore only on words (flesh and spirit) but heis inspired by the Pauline thought in which these terms arenot only anthropological but in which they evoke the impactthat the history of salvation the Incarnation and the gift ofthe Spirit have on man It is the same with Galatians 516fIn verse 18 Paul in fact opposes the condition of man underthe Spirit to that of this same man under the Law As for thethird evocation it is a little different Paul speaks there of hisconduct because some accuse him of acting according tothe flesh that is of allowing himself to be guided bymotives that are too human (Jean-Michel Poffet OP ldquoLeMeacutethode exeacutegeacutetique drsquoHeacuteracleacuteon et drsquoOrigegravenecommentateurs de Jean 4rdquo Jeacutesus la Samaritaine et lesSamaritains [Fribourg Switzerland Eacuteditions Universitaires1985] 191) III From Origen to Augustine A few examplesshould be enough to show the continuity of this tripartiteanthropology across the patristic age

Cyril of Jerusalem addresses to the newly baptized thesame wish that Paul did to the Thessalonians1 Gregory ofNyssa in his treatise on the Creation of Man practices acertain eclecticism Following the perspective that isnaturally his own since he compares the nature of man to

that of the beings that surround him and particularly ofother living beings he begins by distinguishing a threefoldactivity merely vital (that of plants) sentient (that ofbeasts) rational these are like three souls or threesubstances all three of which are found in man alone Thevocabulary is that of the philosophical ϰοινή of that periodthe higher life of man is λογιϰή it is directed by the νοῦςhis nature is a νοεϱά ϕύσις But this can also be understoodsays Gregory according to the words that the Apostleaddressed to the Ephesians (sic) First of all through a boldconcordism he places the body in an equivalence with thenutritive life the soul with the sensate life the spirit(πνεῦμα) with the intellectual life (νοεϱόν) then withoutfurther hesitation and without seeming to perceive that heis changing the perspective he finds once again the truePauline thought or at least comes close to it bydistinguishing life according to the flesh (σαϱϰιϰή) from lifeaccording to the spirit (πνευματιϰή) and by showing thesoul in an intermediary situation having to choose betweenvice and virtue2 Farther on he will explain that only thesoul endowed with reason such as it is in man fully meritsthis name of soul in such a way that he would haverejected it seems any attempt at concordism between theνοῦς and the πνεῦμα3

It is not Hellenism but indeed the Bible that inspires thetrichotomy of the Syrian tradition such as we see it in thishymn of Saint Ephraim of Nisibis For the soul is still moreprecious than the bodyAnd the spirit is still more precious than the soul

And the Divinitymore hidden than the spiritThe body will be clothed with the beauty of the soul when

the end arrives

The soul will put onthe beauty of the spiritThe spirit will put on in its very image the (divine) MajestyThe body on equal footing with the soul will see itself

elevated The soul on equal footing with the spiritThe spirit at the height where the Majesty is 4

In another later Syrian text the awkwardness of an attemptat harmonization between the three elements of man andthe three Persons of the divine Trinity will be noted JacquesdrsquoEacutedesse (d 708) writes in his Explanation of the MassldquoSacred things are holy The soul the body and the reasonare sanctified by three sacred things by water blood andspirit and besides by the Father the Son and the Spirit andtruly man does resemble God in virtue of this trinity ofcomposition the soul corresponds to the Father the body tothe corporeality of the Son and the reason to the HolySpirit Thereby man thus resembles Godrdquo5 One cannevertheless wonder if the word translated by ldquoreasonrdquo isnot here the equivalent of nous rather than of pneuma andif the soul is not merely the sensate soul The same doubtcan be expressed with respect to a passage from theTestament in Galilee of Our Lord Jesus Christ of which wehave the text in Ethiopian ldquoShould the body be judged withthe soul and the spirit Will the body of every man berevived with his living soul and his spiritrdquo6 We will find asimilar hesitation in examining the Latin tradition andperhaps one must say in certain cases at least it cannot beresolved

Saint Ambrose writes on the one hand ldquoHomo ex animarationali constat et corporerdquo7 but also on the other handldquoPrimum unusquisque homo est corporalis secundoanimalis tertio spiritualisrdquo and the parallel he institutesbetween these three elements and the three heavens towhich Saint Paul alludes in the Second Letter to the

Corinthians does not enlighten us much about the meaningof this trichotomy8 Ambrose is not alone in any case inacknowledging it We read in Gregory of Elvira ldquoManifestumest enim tribus perfectum constare semimortalemhominem id est corpore et anima et spiriturdquo9 AndAugustine expresses himself in a similar way on severaloccasions10

In reality Augustinersquos vocabulary is rather evasive Theterm mens as we know holds a privileged place in his workIn De Trinitate he develops a distinction destinedsubsequently to become more rigid that between ratioinferior and ratio superior In commenting on Psalm 3 verse4 ldquoet exaltans caput meumrdquo he explains that this ldquocaputanimaerdquo is the ldquospiritusrdquo or the ldquomensrdquo and so on11

Certain texts which have the appearance of explicitdefinitions speak of two single elements as constitutive ofman ldquoHomo enim constat ex corpore et spiriturdquo12 ldquoNihil estin homine quod ad ejus substantiam pertineat atquenaturam praeter corpus et animam totus homo hoc estspiritus et carordquo13 Yet Augustine does not consider the twowords anima and spiritus to be simply synonyms althoughfor brevityrsquos sake he includes in only one of the two thecomplex meaning of both ldquoNomen animae spiritus est abeo quod spiritalis est animae nomen est ab eo quodcorpus animet hoc est vivificetrdquo14 From which we have acertain number of explicitly trichotomic texts which are ofgreat importance for a correct understanding of Augustiniananthropology for it is on this trichotomy that Augustinebases his doctrine of the memoria15 and he gives it asessential to the Catholic Faith ldquoSi quis tenuerit catholicamfidem ut totum hominem credat a Verbo Dei essesusceptum id est corpus animam spiritum rdquo16

In the same De fide et symbolo Augustine explainshimself at somewhat greater length ldquoEt quoniam tria suntquibus homo constat spiritus anima et corpusmdashquae

rursus duo sunt quia saepe anima simul cum spiritunominatur pars enim quaedam ejusdem rationalis quacarent bestiae spiritus diciturmdashprincipale nostrum spiritusest deinde vita qua conjungimur corpori anima diciturpostremo ipsum corpus quoniam visibile est ultimumnostrum est Anima vero cum carnalia bona appetit caronominatur rdquo17 we also quote several similar texts ldquoUttotus homo sit spiritus et anima et corpus sed aliquandoduo ista simul nomine animae nuncupari rdquo18 ldquoPropterspiritum et animam et corpus rdquo19 ldquoAd creaturaeintegritatem id est spiritum et animam et corpus et illudquo intelligimus et illud quo vivimus et illud quo visibiles etcontrectabiles sumusrdquo20

In De fide et symbolo at the same time as hedistinguishes anima from spiritus Augustine identifiesspiritus and mens21 Likewise too he distinguishes theldquopars rationalisrdquo of the soul (which is thus no longer only theanimator of the body as in animals) from the ldquopars quaeexcellit id est ipsa mensrdquo22 It is practically the lastdistinction expressed in De Trinitate by the seeminglyequivalent words ratio inferior and ratio superior23

In brief the anthropological analyses of Saint Augustineare varied H I Marrou has set up a table which does notintend to be exhaustive24 and it must be noted besides thatunder the same word under the same verbal distinction ithappens that Augustine places different realities On thewhole less dependent on a literal interpretation ofScripture and more particularly of Saint Paul than Origenwished to be25 more inclined to express himself in avocabulary borrowed in part from Neoplatonism Augustineplaces under the word spiritus a reality that sometimesmore closely resembles the nous of Greek philosophythan the pneuma of the sacred text Yet through the dualityhe recognizes within this spiritus (or this ratio or this mens)he remains a faithful witness of the Christian tradition

3 From Saint Augustine to Our Day

I Medieval Spiritual Masters In Augustine as in Origen (andas in the whole patristic tradition) the notions are fluid the

historian must strive to grasp the movement of theirthought rather than to classify their concepts Augustinianexplanations moreover do not correspond point by pointwith Origenian analyses The Christian spiritual masters ofthe Middle Ages will rather often be in this regard closer to

Origen than to Augustine In order not to interpret them in asimplistic way it is necessary constantly to bring analogy

into play Perhaps even the undertaking to reunite them in akind of continuous chain extending to our time is a little

too reminiscent of concordism Let us say finally thatspiritus is not only designated or understood in variousways with some it splits so that one has to deal rather

with a quadripartite anthropology one of the causes for thisis the desire to make a place for the Platonian tradition ofthe intelligence a tradition that is amalgamated somehowor other to the Pauline tradition It is having made these

remarks that we gather together the examples that follow

For John Scotus man is composed of three elements butthe third element called in turn animus intellectus or mensresembles the νοῦς more than the πνεῦμα We read in book5 of De divisione naturae ldquoTotam humanam naturamcorpus videlicet et animam et intellectumrdquo (PL 122 910-11)But another text in book 2 chapter 5 expresses aconception closer to the biblical conception ldquoAciem mentisqua ilium [Deum] intelligimus et in qua maxime imagocreatoris condita estrdquo (PL 122 531 c)1

The traditional trichotomy dominates the structure ofBernardrsquos Brevis Commentatio on the Song of Songs (n 1)In William of Saint Thierry the third term the ldquospiritrdquo splitseither in order to grant a certain place to the nous to theintellectus to rational understanding or rather in order todetail the principal stages of the spiritual life The Letter tothe Brethren at Mont Dieu that important text distinguishesa triplex status animalismdashrationalismdashspiritualis which is tosay ldquothose beginningrdquo ldquothose on the wayrdquo and ldquotheperfectrdquo The opposition between the flesh and the spirit isnot denied William will be able to remind those who havingbegun to taste the sweetness of contemplation might betempted to neglect the permanent necessity of spiritualcombat2 But rather than this dialectical opposition theobject of the Letter is to set forth a pedagogical ladderwhich is moreover nonetheless Pauline in its inspirationThe beginners are still guided by an animalis sensus (this isthe natural man of Saint Paul which is not the carnal man)those on the way acquire a rationalis scientia (we observehere the care to integrate into the formation of the monkthe whole cycle of human knowledge) and the perfect enjoyspiritualis sapientia3 In addition these are not threeairtight categories or perfectly distinct and successivestages just as there is passage from one to the other thereis immanence from one to the other William remains faithfulto the same schema in Miroir de la foi4 as well as in hiscommentaries on the Song of Songs ldquotres status esseorantium vel orationum animalem rationalemspiritualemrdquo5 In De contemplando Deo a subdivisionintervenes between the ratio the discursive faculty andthe intellectus which does not seem to be at this point theequivalent of the spiritus (1 4)

Isaac of Stella speaks in nearly the same way in alanguage however that has more of an intellectualist ringto it in distinguishing the understanding from the reason

which abstracts the forms of the sensate vis animae quaimmediate supponitur Deo6 We have the feeling that thissecond-generation Cistercian was familiar withScholasticism

Hugh of Saint Victor is closer than Isaac to Bernard andWilliam of Saint Thierry According to him the eye of theflesh (which is to say here the body) sees the world andwhat it contains the eye of the reason sees the soul andwhat it contains but the eye of contemplation penetrates tothe innermost depths of man and above man This eye ofcontemplation belongs to those who possess the spirit ofGod7 In Achard of Saint-Victor the order of the last twoelements or of the last two stages seems reversed hetreats de discretione animae spiritus et mentis mens wasas another author of the twelfth century says quasiquoddam divinitatis insigne8 (But this is hardly a questionof vocabulary alone) Whatever might be the distinctionsand subdistinctions orientations inflections and differencesin vocabulary it can be said of all these spiritual masters ofthe Middle Ages as well as of many of those who will followthat they took up the essential chorus of the Pauline andpatristic trichotomy and that most even attribute extremeimportance to it as Sandaeus a seventeenth-centuryauthority was to remark

Magni aestimant Mystici nonnulli et putant maxime necessariam ad suamTheologiam ac perfectionem divisionem inter spiritum et animam9

This is also true of Bonaventure ldquoHabet enim anima trespotentias animalem intellectualem divinam secundumtriplicem oculum carnis rationis contemplationisrdquo10 Werecognize the schema of William of Saint Thierry and Hughof Saint Victor11 For Thomas Gallus closer in this regard toIsaac of Stella ldquoreason feels the intelligence seesrdquo12

Johannes Tauler in several of his sermons teaches thatldquoman is so to speak composed of three menrdquo and that one

must distinguish in him first of all an ldquoexternal manrdquo orldquoanimal manrdquo then a ldquoreasonable manrdquo finally a ldquohigherman wholly inner and hiddenrdquo that ldquonoble and deiformrdquoman ldquomade in the image of Godrdquo13 The mystical theologyof Harphius (Henry Herp) also says that ldquothe soul isaccording to Scripture divided into three parts rdquo14 andthe appeal to Scripture despite the appearance is justifiedFor our authors in fact the adding of a supplementary termto the Pauline enumeration does not derive from the factthat they would abandon Paul in favor of Plato but from thefact that they are concerned besides about a theory ofknowledge which Paul did not at all have in view in hisaddress to the Thessalonians Yet La Perle eacutevangeacutelique leadsus to a tripartite schema the body being understood as inPaul but at base the difference from the medieval authorswe have just enumerated is hardly perceptible

Each man seems almost to represent three men according to the body heis bestial according to the soul he is reasonable and intellectual andaccording to the spirit or the naked essence of the soul where God dwellshe is deiform 15This very noble portion of the soul some call mens insofar as itcontinually breathes after God and is as it were a largely deiform or divinething and the image of God in man It is something divine in being as itwere flooded with God and united to him It is also called the point and thesummit of the spirit because God without intermission shines in the latterlike a mirror It is also according to what the good Father Ruysbroek saysthe highest part of the soul It is also called the sparkle of the soulbecause it is in God what the sparkle is in fire In the first [unity or union] we are superessential and deiform and in thesecond spiritual and internal and in the third active and moral 16

The foregoing is the text of a compiler from which one mustnot ask too great a coherence in terminology or too great aunity in point of view If we now appeal to a theologian whowas the adversary of the mystical school represented byTauler Harphius and La Perle eacutevangeacutelique and who refers tomore reliable authors such as Augustine ldquoBernardrdquo andHugh he will give us the same essential distinctions

Tres cognoscendi modi sunt quorum unus animalis dicitur utens maximeoculo carnis alius rationalis utens plus oculo rationis tertius spiritualisutens oculo contemplationis sicut distinxerunt divini homines tres oculoset tres vivendi modos17

Louis de Blois finally in the Institution spirituelleperseveres in bringing out this ldquodepth of the soulrdquo thatunder different names always corresponds to the ldquoPaulinepneumardquo and that will not find a place in the late Scholasticanthropologies or in most modern anthropologies

God who to tell the truth is everywhere dwells in the spirit of man and inthe simple depth or inner sanctuary of the soul in a particular manner Hedwells there in his own image and never absents himself18This depth naked and stripped of any image is raised above all creatures it transcends time and place and through a kind of perpetual adhesionremains united to God in his principle It is however in us by essence forthe abyss and depth of the soul are essence The soul possesses a certain supernatural unity of spirit in which itdwells as in its own habitation and it is carried away into the divineessence even to this supreme unity in which the Father Son and Holy Spiritare in the simplicity of the divine essence itself 19

Assuredly these speculations about the divine essencemdasheven if they maintain a trinitarian affirmationmdashand aboutthe essence of man presuppose a long evolution of thoughtthat in one sense distances us greatly from Saint Paul Butacross languages theories and as one never stops sayingtoday cultural contexts that differ greatly to be sure it ispossible to discern a fundamental continuity

This continuity will not be broken by the period called theRenaissance

II Saint Thomas Aquinas in Tradition1

I

In the spiritual history of mankind the three domainsconstituted by what one can designate under the threedenominations of religion morality and mysticism are oftenpresented as independent or even opposed to each otherThe alliance or the mutual penetration between mysticismand morality does not appear achieved in and of itself anymore than that between morality and religion Yet one couldnot conclude that such an alliance or such a mutualpenetration is an artificial and wholly contingentphenomenon In opposition to an empiricism thatdisintegrates everything without explaining anything wewill say rather that it responds if not to the demands atleast to the profound wish of nature But nature itself hastaken time in finding itself

In fact we note that it has not fully found itself outside theChristian revelation The union of the three aforementionedelements religion2 morality and mysticism does not reachits fullness it does not become harmonious and indissolublein principle except in the tradition coming from the GospelThere and most specifically in the Catholic form of thistradition it does not appear as a secondary fact obtainedby convergence subsequent to various gropings but as anoriginal and essential fact Religion morality and mysticismmanifest themselves there ldquoin a reciprocal envelopmentrdquoBetween these three both an attraction and a tension existthat could be the source of many vital problems but there isobjectively neither separation exclusion nor conflict forldquothe Deity while transcending being the true and the goodcontains them formallyrdquo3

This is why in particular in the Catholic traditionmdashlivedand reflectedmdashldquoreasonablerdquo life and ldquospiritualrdquo life or lifeldquoaccording to the spiritrdquo penetrate each other without beingidentified with each other4 and morality penetrates themystical life to the end Pseudo-Gnosticism relegated therewarding of good and punishing of evil those pillars of theldquoDemiurgerdquo to the lower level of ldquoexotericrdquo faith the greattradition on the contrary maintains this moral aspect ldquoatthe heart of the revelation of the Father through the uniqueSonrdquo5 ldquoIt is notrdquo says Saint Justin for example ldquobecause ofhis [natural] affinity with God or because he is spirit like himthat man sees God it is because he is virtuous and justrdquo6 Inhis Psychologie des mystiques Joseph Marechal noted thisessential characteristic Mystical ascent he explains doesnot erase ldquoany specific trait of the common Christian liferdquo7In other words the Christian virtues proposed for thepractice of all are not simply means of freeing oneself theirexercise is not simply something transitory in theirsubstance they are already something of the end itself Thisis what Saint Ambrose was able to explain wonderfully in abrief sentence in his commentary on Saint Luke withrespect to the Beatitudes ldquoSicut enim spei nostrae octavaperfectio est ita octava summa virtutum estrdquo8 And this iswhat Saint Augustine repeated in similar terms speaking ofadhesion to God the blessed life and eternal wisdom ldquoUnaibi virtus erit et idipsum erit virtus praemiumque virtutisrdquo9

In a remarkable thesis Pierre Nemeshegyi has posed thesame problem with respect to Origen ldquoTo place Being andmoral Goodness in equation to place this moral Goodnessin God formally and as characterizing the final ground of hisBeingmdashis this not to be condemned to enclosing all spirituallife in an anti-mystical moralism The Good is atranscendental But is it formally what we understand byldquomoral Goodrdquo Or is there not a deepening of this moralGoodness which would reestablish the possibility of an

innermost mystical depthrdquo And Nemeshegyi concludes ldquoInfact in Origenrsquos conception moralism and mysticism areone and the same thingrdquo10 Saint Gregory the Great oftenso close to Origen will unite good sense to spiritual fervor inorder to remind contemplatives that if they want to befaithful to the Gospels and to advance on the true way theymust take care to scorn the humble precepts of morality andto seek to understand them in a more sublime sense11

The medieval spiritual masters will take up again thesethoughts of Origen Ambrose Augustine and GregoryExpressing ourselves in the customary categories of theirexegesis which the Middle Ages systematized we will saythat for them ldquoanagogyrdquo achieves the final perfection bothof ldquoallegoryrdquo and of ldquotropologyrdquo (of dogma and ofmorality)12 Of all authentically Catholic mysticism onecould declare what one historian said of Saint Bernard byallusion to the traditional interpretation of the ldquoBooks ofSolomonrdquo for each of them as for him ldquothe moral school ofEcclesiasticus and Proverbs the necessary preliminary forthe mystical school of the Song of Songs is a school whosedoors are never closed behind usrdquo13

This ldquospiritualrdquo equilibrium has at times seemedthreatened in one direction or another Some spiritualscholars have seemed to want to transcend purely andsimply the sphere of morality and reason This is whatcauses Evagrius not without reason to be judged severelyat times it is what Ruysbroek reproaches in the falsemystics of his time it is one of the points that the bull Inagro of John XXII criticizes in Meister Eckhart Whatever mayhave been true in each of these cases the thing thatinterests us here is the norm that inspired such criticismsWhile following Saint Paul in distinguishing the ldquosoulrdquo fromthe ldquospiritrdquo (not moreover as two substances nor even astwo ldquofacultiesrdquo) one always refuses to separate them as ifthe penetration into the higher zone of the ldquospiritrdquo must

make us reject as no longer valid the operations of theinferior zone of the ldquosoulrdquo But the hierarchical distinction ismaintained which is to say that the mystical life is not forall that reduced to the plane of simple morality A text fromSaint Teresa is very enlightening here the saint observesthat the ldquocenter of the soulrdquo or the ldquospirit of the soulrdquo is aldquodifficult thing to express and even to believerdquo

Certain interior effects give the certitude that there is in certain respectsa very real difference between the soul and the spirit Although in realitythey are but one we sometimes perceive a division between them that isso delicate that it seems the one functions in one way and the other inanother There are so many things in our innermost depths and thingsso subtle that it would be boldness on my part to undertake to explainthem We will understand all that in the other life if God deigns toadmit us to the dwelling where we will have understanding of all thesesecrets14

Yet the equilibrium can be upset in the opposite directionfrom that for which Evagrius and Meister Eckhart werereproached This has been true periodically for anti-mysticalscholars or simply anti-mystics against whom periodicallytoo protests are raised With them it is not the ldquosoulrdquo thatis forgotten or scorned in the name of the superior ldquospiritrdquoit is the ldquospiritrdquo that is ignored misunderstood in the nameof a truncated moral wisdom But with any of the greatscholars of the Catholic tradition we do not have to registerany such misunderstanding This is what we would wish todemonstrate here with respect to Saint Thomas Aquinasand more particularly with respect to the Summatheologica

II

From first appearances one might be brought to believethat Saint Thomas in the Summa is one of those scholarswho upset the equilibrium in the second direction But in

reality he did nothing of the sort His doctrine in the Summatheologica contains in fact the equivalent of what othershave expressed through the distinction of soul and spiritunderstood as the distinction of a moral region and amystical region If one does not observe this right at thebeginning it is because Saint Thomas expresses himself indifferent words

It could be written that in his doctrine ldquoall the problemsthat the spiritual life and its evolution pose return in thisconsideratio moralis which has but one object man inprogress toward his blessed destinyrdquo15 The thing isincontestable Still it might be useful to specify how Nomore in Saint Thomas than in others is the union of the twomoral and spiritual (or ldquomysticalrdquo) elements a confusion or areduction pure and simple from the mystical to the moralThe synthesis is not a unification in the exclusive favor ofone of the two Of course one could judge that the Thomistanthropology by its Aristotelian roots favors the originalityof the mystical life less than others And like the virtue ofldquoreligionrdquo the theological virtues seem at first glance mixedin a long list of ldquovirtuesrdquo within the second part of theSumma It is appropriate nevertheless to remark beforeseeing things at closer range that only a later usage givesthis second part the name ldquomoralrdquo After having in the firstpart considered God as the universal cause Saint Thomasconsiders him now as end after the divine model he clingsto his image after the departure of God from all things heenvisages the return of all things to God Nowmdashthis is theimportant point for our subjectmdashthis itinerary of returncomprises several stages

It is true that the prologue to the Secunda secundaespeaks of scientia moralis of materia moralis and that allseems right at first to be reduced to the consideratiovirtutum But let us look a little closer In this sameprologue as in the articles that follow Saint Thomas

nonetheless distinguishes from the virtutes morales notonly the virtutes theologicae but also the virtutesintellectuales which are along with prudence wisdomunderstanding and knowledge closely connected to thegifts of the Holy Spirit of the same name Moreover afterhaving exhausted the plan he had outlined for ldquoomittingnothing of moral thingsrdquo by studying successively thevirtues and the vices that are opposed to them heconsiders in a kind of extension a series of new questionsrelated first of all to ldquoprophecyrdquo to ldquorapturerdquo and othergratuitous gifts then to the ldquocontemplative liferdquo a series heattaches a little artificially one must admit to the sectionon the different states of life

This artifice has sometimes embarrassed commentatorswho do not always understand the articulations that theplan of the Summa comprises here Thus we have Father MD Chenu who has the ldquotreatise on the states of liferdquo beginat question 183 starting from where ldquothe spiritual life islinked to social functionsrdquo16 The thing seems in fact ratherlogical Yet Saint Thomas himself said in his littleintroduction to question 171 ldquoDe prophetiardquo

Postquam dictum est de singulis virtutibus et vitiis quae pertinent adomnium hominum conditiones et status nunc considerandum est de hisquae specialiter ad aliquos homines pertinent

So Father Antoine Lemonnyer had adopted a differentsolution from that of Father Chenu He saw in questions 171to 198 concerning the gratuitous gifts a kind of parenthesisand made the final treatise of the Secunda secundae beginfrom question 179 which is to say from the ldquocontemplativeliferdquo he gave a certain unity to this final treatise thanks tothis single yet twofold title ldquoHuman Life Its Forms and ItsStatesrdquo17

The divisions adopted respectively by Father Chenu andFather Lemonnyer both have their probability and both can

be supported In fact however as Father Chenu remarkedSaint Thomas treats the states of life properly onlybeginning with question 183 entitled ldquoDe officiis et statibushominum in generalirdquo But already before that questions171 to 182 form a whole very distinct from the precedingquestions in which we have the equivalent of a littletreatise on mysticism

Even if he did not treat explicitly at that time the relationsbetween active life and contemplative life18 the placeaccorded by Saint Thomas to this latter in his general planwould thus authorize us to distinguish it from the domain ofmorality He himself besides tells us so in proper termsldquoThe moral virtues are not a constitutive element of thecontemplative liferdquo19 in fact ldquothey are ordained toactionrdquo20 Now action is inferior to contemplation The latteris ldquosimpliciter meliorrdquo21 Action prepares for contemplationby winning the soul through the external exercise of thevirtues the necessary ldquopreliminary dispositionsrdquo bydisciplining the passions and by submitting them to thereason22 Contemplation is the act of the ldquohigher reasonrdquowhich is to the inferior reason following an old biblical andPhilonic symbolism revived and slightly transformed23 asthe man is to the woman24 It is ordained to ldquoperfect loverdquoand as Saint Gregory taught while the active life issynonymous with service the contemplative life issynonymous with freedom25 As Aristotle had alreadyaffirmedmdashbut we know with what freedom Saint Thomaschanged and transformed the thought of the philosophereven while he invoked him as an authority26mdashit is a lifeabove the human condition27 and is made to last always28

No more than any other of the great witnesses of theChristian tradition did Saint Thomas reduce the spiritual lifeto the exercise of morality or spiritual understanding torationality Father Pierre Rousselot too neglected today (atleast in France) demonstrated this well by placing in

evidence the distinction between intellectus and ratio afundamental distinction with numerous consequences29mdashBut neither does he separate them on the one hand as anauthentic heir of the Fathers he integrates the virtuous lifeinto eternal life by saying ldquoUniuscujusque perfectio nihilaliud est quam participatio divinae similitudinisrdquo30 And onthe other hand he knows that in the earthly conditionexternal action which is first of all the virtuous life mustitself proceed from contemplation

The comparison with the Plotinian philosophy or with theldquoagnosticsrdquo can in this regard be very enlightening becauseof the apparent proximity of the doctrines

In a parallel way one would find in Christianity [says Jean Trouillard on thissubject] a going beyond ethics by the theological virtues and the gifts ofthe Holy Spirit The Christian life consists in divinization not in ascesis Yetthe role of the will seems much more considerable in Christians than in thePlotinians not only in charity but also in faith which is itself presented as aduty Theologians do not ordinarily situate the theological virtues on theother side of the decisions of the faculties or on this side of the constitutedvalues This is what must not be forgotten when faced with the use of theNeoplatonic doctrine of virtues attempted by Christian authors inparticular by Saint Thomas (1a 2ae q 61 a 5)31

And again Maurice de GandillacPlotinus harshly criticizes the Gnostics who believe that by ldquoraisingoneself near to God on wings of a dreamrdquo (2 9 9) one escapes the humancondition According to the fragments of Heracles (Legrand 315) Mosesthe author of the Law belongs to the ldquonaturalrdquo world Superior to purematter however he ignores the spirit By proscribing by judging bypunishing he fulfills an inferior ministry and the ldquoperfectrdquo are in no waysubject to his commandments Pure at the beginning they are savedwithout exercise as without repentance and without pardon Thispresumption will be the common gospel for all the sectarians who across the Middle Ages will preach a ldquogoing beyond the ethicalrdquo32

We should not let the differences in emphasis from oneauthor to another or from one school to another hide fromus therefore the consistent thought of the Christiantradition Already in someone like Origen the union is

achieved between ldquoa resolutely contemplative religiousideal and a passionately active liferdquo33 For Saint Gregory theGreat to whom Thomas Aquinas refers the whole spirituallife is subject to a rhythm and ldquotrue perfection begins tomature only in the difficulties and obstacles of the activeliferdquo34 Medieval monasticism did not scorn Martha in thename of Mary it maintained that action must be joined tocontemplation or the ldquopracticerdquo to the ldquotheoryrdquo a little likelove of neighbor to the love of God35 The two inseparableaspects of the Christian doctrine on this subject will onceagain be expressed very well in the reflections of John HenryNewman still an Anglican preaching on ldquoevangelicalsanctity the completion of natural virtuerdquo Newman in factshows in this sermon that there is ldquoan essentialresemblance between the spiritual man and the virtuousmanrdquo following the words of Saint Paul ldquoThe fruit of theSpirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truthrdquomdashwhiledrawing the attention of his listeners to ldquothe point ofdifference between them viz that the Christian graces arefar superior in rank and dignity to the moral virtuesrdquo36

Moral perfection and holiness virtuous life and mystical lifeare distinct they are hierarchical but at the same time theyare united in charity forma virtutum vinculum perfectionis

III Renaissance and Reformation Nicholas of Cusa takes upthe Pauline trichotomy again in the same terms as the

Apostle He places it in correspondence with on the onehand a cosmic trichotomy and on the other hand what isperhaps unexpected the three Persons of the Trinity He

uses Saint Augustine as his authority for both thesecorrespondences

We read in fact in one of his Sermons ldquoIn homine suntspiritus anima et corpus sicut in mundo elementalia vitaliaet intellectualiardquo1 and in his opuscule the Beryl he

distinguishes ldquothree modes of knowledge the sensate theintellectual and the intelligentialrdquo which he sayscorrespond according to Saint Augustine to the threeldquoheavensrdquo2 That was the cosmic analogy And for thetrinitarian analogy set forth in the work De Concordantiacatholica

Unde homo secundum Augustinum Super symbolo (40 193-94) ad instarTrinitatis imaginem gerens ex spiritu et anima et corpore constitutusexsistit Spiritus autem est superior nobilior et altior intellectualispersonae Patris figuram repraesentans et corpus personam Filii et animaquasi utriusque naturam participans ab utroque procedens personamSpiritus sancti3

Taking up his position like Nicholas of Cusa from the pointof view of knowledge Marsilio Ficino distinguishes thesensus the ratio and the intellectus We recognize in thatthe heritage of the great Scholasticism In a similar mannerin the prologue of his Heptaplus Giovanni Pico dellaMirandola distinguishes the vital instinct discursive andpractical knowledge and the contemplative faculty4 Moreimportant is the twofold witness here in agreement ofErasmus and Luther

In his famous Enchiridion militis christiani Erasmus whotakes his inspiration directly from Saint Paul ldquoends finally ina tripartite anthropology which finds its completion in thegift of the Spiritrdquo5 After having in chapters 4 and 5 spokenof man such as Plato describes him first according to theTimaeus then according to the Phaedo Phaedrus and theRepublic and recalled his distinction of the soul asreasonable irascible and concupiscible Erasmus describesin chapter 6 the Pauline opposition between the flesh andthe spirit then he comes in chapter 7 to the trichotomy of1 Thessalonians which he comments on with reference toOrigen ldquoHe does not hiderdquo observes Charles Beacuteneacute ldquohispleasure in setting forth this theory lsquoLibet et Origenicamhominis sectionem breviter referrersquo rdquo He sees it based as

well on Isaiah (299) and on Daniel (386) so he adopts it inorder to make it intervene ldquoas a definitive stage after theanalyses of pagan philosophersrdquo to serve ldquoas anintroduction to the great rules of Christianityrdquo6 With Origenhe sees in the soul this ldquomedian partrdquo of the human beingwhich can swing either to the side of the flesh or to the sideof the spirit7 In the Methodus or Ratio verae theologiae asimilar text recalls our trichotomy indirectly ldquoNec omnisaffectus hominis est caro sed est qui dicitur anima et quidicitur spiritus quo nitimur ad honestardquo8 But it isparticularly in the controversy with Luther about free willthat Erasmus opposes to the exclusivism of his adversaryhypnotized by the sole dialectic of the flesh and the spiritthe divine pedagogy explained by Origen according to thePauline schema

Luther himself paradoxically had provided a commentaryin his own manner with respect to the first words of theMagnificat (1520) on the text of 1 Thessalonians and hismanner did not differ perceptibly from so many of theothers we have seen

ldquoMy soul glorifies the Lordrdquo Scripture divides man into three partswhen Paul says at the end of 1 Thessalonians ldquoMay God make youholy through and through in such a way that all your spirit and your souland your body rdquo And each of these partsmdashlike the entire man mdashisequally divided in another way concerning not nature but quality In otherwords nature has three parts spirit soul and body all three of which canbe good or bad The first part the spirit is the highest the mostprofound the most noble part of man it is what makes him capable ofgrasping imperceptible invisible and eternal things In brief it is the housewhere faith and the word of God dwell The second part the soul isexactly the same spirit according to nature but accomplishes a differentfunction It is the spirit insofar as it animates the body and acts through it Its proper role consists in grasping the things that reason can knowand probe 9

As for the third term the body its function is to ldquoactrdquo and toldquoput into practice the knowledge of the soul and the faith of

the spiritrdquo As Maurice de Gandillac observes here the bodyhas nothing to do with ldquomirerdquo And by adopting such atripartition of the human being (which is not at all to beunderstood we repeat as a division of three ldquofacultiesrdquo)Luther envisages the human subject as Saint Paul and afterhim the whole of Christian tradition have done ldquoin aperspective that is more biblical than Greekrdquo10 The relativeassimilation that he works between the soul and the spirit isthe echo of a common Scholasticism and the fruit of aninflection toward the point of view of knowledge which wasnot that of Saint Paul in his address to the Thessalonians butin no way contradicts it Of these two characteristics thepreceding centuries have already brought us many anexample11

Like his predecessors Luther thus maintains the threefoldgradation which he also develops through a traditionalimage

We will give a simile for that drawn from Scripture Moses made atabernacle with three different edifices The first edifice was calledsanctum sanctorum it was the dwelling of God and there was no lightfrom within The other sanctum contained a chandelier with sevenbranches and lights The third was called atrium the parvis it was locatedin the open air in the light of the sun This figure depicts the Christian Hisspirit is sanctum sanctorum the dwelling of God in the night (stripped oflight) of faith for he believes what he neither sees nor senses norunderstands His soul is the sanctum there are found the seven lights towit all kinds of understanding discernment science and knowledge ofcorporal and visible things His body is atrium it is manifest for all in sucha way that one can see what he does and how he lives12

It is necessary however to recognize that this trichotomydid not have for Luther an importance comparable to hisdialectical opposition between the flesh and the spirit InSaint Paul from before the commentary on the Magnificathe had been selective the lessons on the Letter to theRomans (1515-1516) were already setting up an oppositionbetween the flesh and the spirit without anthropological

reference to any subject whatever13 and later in hiscontroversy with Erasmus he was to prove all the morehostile to the anthropology drawn from 1 Thessalonians 5 byhis adversary whom the latter guided by Origen used toweaken his dialectic He writes in De servo arbitrio

I am well aware of Origenrsquos fable about the threefold affection of man offlesh soul and spirit14 the soul holding the middle between the flesh andthe spirit and able to turn either toward the one or toward the other Butthis is dreaming he says them but does not prove them at all Saint Paulcalls flesh everything that is without spirit as we have demonstrated15

Luther does not formally contradict here what he had said inthe commentary on the Magnificat What he reproaches inOrigen as in Erasmus is believing in free will But thispreoccupation leads him to falsify their anthropology andthereby to forget or to misunderstand the Pauline verse thathe had first interpreted correctly To which in his enormoussecond Hyperaspistes Erasmus will reply several times overthat the tripartition of 1 Thessalonians 5 even ifcounterparts are found in the philosophers is proper toSaint Paul The philosophers in fact do not usually call thehighest part of the human being spiritus (pneuma) butmens or ratio and what Paul understands by spiritus is notany ratio whatever but the ratio already inspired by graceThat he concludes is what Luther does not want torecognize As often happens the discussion in whichErasmus finds himself involved leads him himself to apartially inaccurate interpretation of Saint Paulrsquos text bymaking him attribute to the ldquospiritrdquo what Paul says of ldquothespiritual manrdquo Yet it remains true that he had first analyzedperfectly the address of the Apostle to the Thessaloniansand Luther had at first done the same16

Lutheran mysticism at least in the rather unorthodoxSebastien Frank (1499-1542) nonetheless recognizes thethree elements of which man is composed body soul andspirit Frank sees in the soul the personal and free being

capable of orienting himself in one direction or in the otherhe sees in the spirit the inner Word or God present at theheart of every man enlightening him through his Word andinclining his will through his Spirit17

The same traditional distinctions originating in Saint Paulare found in the humanists of the sixteenth century ofmystical tendency For a Paracelsus (1493-1541) since manis a microcosm he must unite within himself the threeconstitutive parts or elements corresponding to the threestages of the universe material world astral worldDivinity18 (an idea of Nicholas of Cusa although distorted isrecognizable in this) Cornelius Agrippa in his De occultaphilosophia tried to unite the Platonic traditions to Mosesand to Saint Paul

Plotinus itaque et Platonici omnes post Trismegistum similiter tria ponunt inhomine quae vocant supremum infimum et medium Supremum est illuddivinum quam mentem sive portionem superiorem sive intellectumillustratum vocant Moses in Genesi vocat ipsum spiraculum vitarum a Deovid vel a Spiritu ejus in nos spiratum Infimum est sensitiva anima quametiam idolum dicunt Paulus Apostolus animalem hominem nuncupatMedium est spiritus rationalis utraque connectens extrema atque ligansvid animam animalem cum mente et utriusque sapiens naturamextremorum 19

Guillaume Postel as original as ever at least in expressiondistinguishes in man the anima the animus and the mens20

It was undoubtedly following him four years later thatCharles Toutain wrote in his tragedy Agamemnon Threenatures in us which all talk with each other Excite our lifeand keep it alive The Spirit the Soul and Animus And onebeing taken away Suddenly all life together would depart21

The Anglican Lancelot Andrewes (155 5-1626) expresseshimself in a similar way in his devotions Into Thy hands OLord I commend myself my spirit soul and body 22

IV The Modern Period Saint Francis de Sales will open thisperiod for us His Traiteacute de lrsquoamour de Dieu [Treatise on theLove of God] reproduces the Pauline doctrine to perfectionAfter having explained that ldquowe have three kinds of loving

actions spiritual reasonable and sensualrdquo Francis de Salesobserves that ldquothe powers of the sensory part which are ormust be the servants of the spirit ask seek and take what

has been rejected by the reason dishonoring thepurity of the intention of their master who is the spirit andin the measure that the soul is converted to such gross andsensate unions it is diverted from the delicate intellectual

and cordial unionrdquo Thus by the same movement as we findin Saint Paul the way is sketched to the opposition of the

flesh to the spirit Like many in the Middle Ages Francis deSales following Saint Augustine also distinguishes ldquotwoportions of the soul the inferior and the superiorrdquo theinferior being that which discourses on the basis of the

experience of the senses while the superior founded ldquoonthe discernment and judgment of the spirit is commonly

called the spirit and mental part of the soulrdquo in thisldquosuperior portionrdquo he also distinguishes ldquotwo kinds of lightrdquo

a natural one and a supernatural one and so forth Thiswhole apparatus of precisions which aims at integrating aswe have already seen in others the ldquodegrees of knowingrdquo

within the spiritual movement is not without interest but itis in some ways only a flowering from the basic trichotomy1

It is this same trichotomy that we find again as might beexpected in a philosopher attentive to the spiritual lifesuch as Maine de Biran We know the place that the doctrineof the ldquothree livesrdquo holds in Biran animal life human lifeand divine life particularly in the reflections of his Journalintime2 Jules Lachelier also adopts it but perhaps bydiminishing it in his desire to work a kind of synthesisbetween Maine de Biran and Kant when he explains thethree components of existence sensibility understanding

and reason3 We detect also an indication of the very strongmystical tendencies in Joseph de Maistre in this affirmationfrom the Eacuteclaircissements sur les sacrifices ldquoThe animal hasreceived only a soul to us were given a soul and a spiritrdquo4

One might be tempted to seek a distant analogy withSaint Paul in the Kierkegaardian theory of the three spheres(rather than stages) of existence aesthetic ethicalreligious If that analogy is an illusion other thoughts ofKierkegaard are right in finding their place here ldquoIt isimpossible to treat of sin in any of the sciences thatordinarily speak of it because all are occupied with what ispsychological in our nature while sin is a determination ofthe spiritrdquo and again ldquoThe spirit intervening psychology isimpotent So good as its name indicates is occupied withthe soul It sees everything from outside the spirit itself islived only from within Seen from outside an act isalways determined and for all that the object of psychologyBut rdquo5

One might also be tempted to evoke here the Blondeliandistinction between ldquonoeticrdquo and ldquopneumaticrdquo This wouldnot be completely wrong But Blondel places these twokinds of thought in correlation rather than inviting us to risefrom one to the other He does not thereby have in mind arelation of the psyche to the pneuma but rather a divisionof the function within the spirit Despite the word ldquonoeticrdquothis is not the nous but rather the logos which would beaccording to him the partner of the pneuma6 and thedialectic of the noetic and the pneumatic is in play at everystep so to speak of the development of thought and life inthis conception the first the concrete principle ofuniversality being the factor of objectivization and unifyingforce while conversely the second the concrete principleof singularity is the diversifying element and subjectivefunction7 Both at the same level are thus essentiallycomplementary Blondel held to his distinction he often took

up the study of it He wrote in 1907 in one of his personalnotebooks ldquoThink out the discovery of the two thoughtsrdquo8

Now in 1909 he wrote again ldquoThe two thoughts Ah howthey are always in me tending to supplant each other whileit is necessary to reconcile them hierarchize them makethem differently but equally serve the divine work of finaland total reintegrationrdquo9 This word ldquohierarchizerdquo must beunderstood as demanding a reciprocal hierarchization10 Itdoes not necessarily follow however that any analogy withthe Pauline trichotomy any echo of the ldquothree livesrdquo ofBiran are absent from the Blondelian work Blondel was toopenetrated with the thought of Saint Paul and Saint Bernardhe was too closely interested in mysticism he was toofamiliar with the spiritual authors of the Christian traditionto let us believe in such an absence without a fullerexamination But the fact that his dialectic of the noetic andthe pneumatic which is fundamental in his philosophy doesnot turn explicitly into a hierarchy of the soul and spirit or ofthe discursive reason and mystical intuition (although heobviously knew of this distinction as well as that betweenthe understanding and higher intelligence)11 is not anegligible indication Blondel maintained a prudent attitudein the face of natural mysticism just as on the other handhe remained prudent in the face of facile personalisms

In the Russian theologian Sergius Bulgakov the Paulinedistinction between the soul and the spirit is placed inpowerful relief It assumes a mystical aspect that is moreemphasized than in the Apostle or at least it proceeds froma base of natural mysticism that despite the reference tothe famous discourse at Athens does not seem tocorrespond perfectly to its more complex notion of thespirit

Although it is a creature a certain eternity of creation a certain non-creation are proper to the spirit Spiritual existence is rooted in the

eternity of God the created spirit itself is similarly eternal and uncreatedCf Acts 1728

It is true that Bulgakov can also invoke the authority of theGreek Fathers Had Saint Cyril of Alexandria not written thatldquothe image of the divine nature was imprinted in man by theinfusion of the Holy Spiritrdquo12 The importance of hisanthropological theory derives in any case from the fact thatit is from this that he explains the mystery of theIncarnation

The postulate of the divine Incarnation is a certain original identitybetween the divine I and the I of man an identity that does not abrogatetheir essential distinction The human hypostatic spirit draws itsdivine and uncreated origin from the ldquobreath of Godrdquo Through hisspirit man communicates with the divine substance and he is fit to beldquodivinizedrdquo Man is god-man by predestination potentially throughhis formal structure At the same time he is flesh through anldquoanimatedrdquo body he sums up the entire world Man is made of anuncreated divine spirit hypostasized by the I of the creature and of a souland of a body created from the psycho-somatic being13

Bulgakov insists The very idea of divinity by predestinationseems too weak to him He corrects himself almostimmediately ldquoNot only is man theanthropic bypredestination but also the Logos is the eternal God-Maninsofar as the first Image of the created man This is whythe hypostasis of the Logos the heavenly Man could itselfbecome the hypostasis of created man and make of thelatter the authentic God-man by achieving its eternaltheanthropyrdquo The conclusion is nonetheless fundamentallyin keeping with the spirit of Christian faith ldquoMan is alreadythe form ready for the authentic theanthropy that he is notcapable of achieving himself but in view of which he wascreated and called The divine Incarnation is not at all acatastrophe for the human essence or some violation onthe contrary it is an accomplishmentrdquo14

This leads us far from the narrow anthropological dualismthat triumphed in modern Scholasticism as well as in the

university philosophy springing from Cartesianism ldquoSaintPaulrdquo noted R M Albaregraves15 ldquohad distinguished threeorders the carnal the intellectual and the spiritual16 TheCartesian dualism had fused together the intellectual andthe spiritual and rationalism had gradually reduced thespirit thus created to being only an intellect withouttranscendence without dynamism or immortality destinedonly to understand and to organize the worldrdquo On the otherhand for all sorts of reasons that we do not at all have toseek here but in particular because of a certain poverty inits common philosophy Christian thought did not seem ableto fill the void thus created in man It must not thereforebe surprising that the inevitable reaction was produced inpara-Christian forms ldquoIf a scholarrdquo Andreacute Preacuteaux recentlywrote17 ldquoencounters the old doctrine that man is composedof a body a soul and a spirit he has scruples aboutconsidering it for what do lsquosoulrsquo and lsquospiritrsquo mean Unfortunately in a society where science is the supremeauthority this silence is equivalent to a negation Whatdissolves the errors and complexes what protects againstneuroses and fantasies is precisely that which is silentlyand discreetly dismissedrdquo

The same year as Andreacute Preacuteaux and reacting like himGabriel Germain took support from Saint Teresa to remindus of the unrecognized depths of the life of the spirit

Above the understanding below the ordinary conscience and what fills itexists a sheet of peace and light Whoever approaches it can have nomore doubt of it Anyone who has not sought it has no right to judge itSaint Teresa expresses the same reality in very different terms Now no onehad taught her this nor had anyone prepared her for such an experienceThis agreement over the centuries and doctrines reassures me more thananything She writes in the book of the Mansions (seventh Mansionchapter 1) ldquoInterior things are seen that show in a sure way that there isbeneath a certain relationship an obvious difference between the soul andthe spirit although they are but a single thing rdquo18

Likewise again situating his own thought in relation to theldquonoosphererdquo of Teilhard de Chardin and in relation to theldquocollective unconsciousrdquo of Jung

The noosphere in the philosophy of Teilhard de Chardin appears to be likea mental view a conclusion This is because its very name evokes anintellectual activity the subtlest but whether exploratory or constructivedirected according to logical norms19 What I could call (but I will keepmyself from doing so) pneumatosphere let us say the spiritual ocean isthe object of experience By other paths to other ends it is the samereality I suppose that Jung attained and which he called the collectiveunconscious But these two terms restrict the origin and meaning of it 20

With Jung in fact we penetrate but we remain within whatis psychological The life of the spirit in the Spirit is whollydifferent A certain Calvinist dryness a phobia aboutmysticism and all ldquointeriorityrdquo conspire at times along withrationalism and contemporary positivism of all forms tobrush this life in the Spirit aside But in a quite natural waythe Lutheran Paul Tillich who was interested in ontology inthe history of religions in mysticism as well as in biblicalhistory brings the Pauline tripartition up to date again

There is no religious statement on man and his destiny without a judgmenton the relation between different elements that are combined and opposedin the life of man These elements have been variously described as beinghis body his soul and his spirit 21

The exegetes in contemporary Catholicism seem no moredisposed than most of the theologians to return the Paulineverse to a place of honor and draw its consequences It istoward the writers that we must turn to perceive an echo ofit in free expression Although this expression is truly webelieve faithful to the doctrine of the Pneuma and to itsauthentic development it is not certain that Saint Paulwould have recognized his thought at first glance ldquoI havegood news to announce to yourdquo says Paul Claudel in theldquoCantique de Palmyrerdquo ldquomdashit is another within the depths of

you who has the word I have good news to announce toyou You need only close your eyes to find your treasurein the night There are many souls but there is not oneof them with whom I am not in communion through thissacred point in us that says Pater nosterrdquo22 And GeorgesBernanos in his diary ldquoHis will is ours and when we revoltagainst it it is only at the price of an uprooting of our wholeinner being Our will has been united to his since thebeginning of the world What sweetness to think thateven while offending him we never cease completely todesire what he desires at the depths of the Sanctuary of thesoulrdquo23 A wonderful conjunction of Claudel and Bernanos

The reader will have noted in Claudelrsquos text the wordldquosoulrdquo An inversion of vocabulary is in fact produced Theldquospiritrdquo having become in the modern leveling dichotomythe immediate correlative of the body it is the ldquosoulrdquo thathas taken its place in those who have not taken part in thisleveling We are familiar again in Claudel with the parabolaof animus and anima The word ldquosoulrdquo in the same sensecompels recognition with greater strength in order to escapethe scientistic totalitarianism that reigns abusively in thename of the ldquohuman sciencesrdquo ldquoIn the measure in whichthey are scientificrdquo wrote Henri Gouhier in 1973 ldquothesciences of man can consider man only by selecting pointsof view under which it is possible to treat him objectively Itis obviously not a question for the philosopher to ignore thevarious forms of sociology psychology ethnologyneurology and so forth he must simply wonder if thesciences of man added up constitute a science of manrdquo24

And man simply as such man who cannot renounce the callhe hears in the depths of himself refuses to let himselfsuffocate He rehabilitates the word ldquosoulrdquo as the mostfitting to express what philosophers and men of science aretoo often skilled at eliminating through preterition orthrough negation The soul then becomes almost the

synonym for the pneuma of Saint Paul and Origen Thepassage from Henri Gouhier that we have just quotedfigures in a preface to LrsquoAvegravenement de lrsquoacircme by Aime[Andre] Forest a work he says that ldquofinds its timeliness inits apparent obsolescencerdquo The author of the work and thatof its preface both evoke on this subject the ldquothree livesrdquo ofMaine de Biran Andre Forest also recalls these words ofHenri Bergson ldquoBy calling a certain assurance of facileintelligibility an idea and a certain uneasiness of life thesoul an invincible current brings modern philosophy toelevate the soul above the ideardquo Modern philosophy as awhole has not followed the path on which Bergson thoughthe saw it engaged Gabriel Marcel however among otherswanted to preserve this word ldquosoulrdquo and to keep ldquothefullness of its meaningrdquo Charles du Bos in search of tracesof God in us asked ldquoWho will leave us a journal of thedilation of the soulrdquo What Andre Forest wants is to help usdiscover or to rediscover a certain ldquoinner unityrdquo a certainldquopure sourcerdquo and each of the chapters of his work tracesan avenue toward an encounter with this ldquoThe discovery ofthe soulrdquo he tells us ldquois the development of a spiritualphilosophy The soul is the advent of presence and graceraised above the world of nature and objectivityrdquo25

The same fundamental reaction the same sudden startor if you wish the same awakening five years later in amuch younger author whose nostalgia if this is what it iscannot be that for the past but that which springs from anew reflection this time against the oppression of a thoughtreduced to its politico-social components the final end ofscientistic intelligence In his essay on Job ou lrsquoexcegraves dumal Philippe Nemo insists on this same word ldquosoulrdquo in orderto recall man to himself and to his essential problem 26

Across the numerous changes in vocabulary thecomplications introduced by theoreticians eager foranalysis across too the unceasing variations in points of

view the tripartite anthropology whose expression is foundin Saint Paul has consistently furnished in the tradition ofthe Church a basis for spiritual doctrine and life

4 The Spirit

I The Place of Mysticism As we have already been able toperceive these various distinctions are far from always

being covered perfectly either from one author to another oreven as in the case of Augustine in the work of the same

author C R Doddaursquos remark on the subject of the ancientGreeks applies here ldquoOne must undoubtedly agree that the

average man of the fifth century (and this is true in allperiods) possessed a very complicated psychological

vocabularyrdquo1

The Pauline tripartition has nonetheless remained theconstant basis serving to support the spiritual doctrines ofthe Christian tradition

Commenting on Pseudo-Dionysius Saint Maximus theConfessor defined man by this threefold pair of epithetsldquoSupermundialis et spiritualismdashcircummundialis animalismdashmundialis carnalisrdquo2 The author of the celebratedPhilokalia Saint Nikodemos of the Holy Mountain (748-809)will explain that the ldquoJesus Prayerrdquo brings into operation thethree powers of the soul the intellect (nous) the discursivereason (logos) the will or spirit (theacutelē sis pneuma) in theaction of the soul alone by which uniting in itself the soulis made fit to be united to God3 But perhaps that is amatter rather of a ldquohorizontalrdquo trichotomy of threefunctions or three activities proper to the higher part of thespirit

With more than one spiritual writer of the Latin MiddleAges one should speak of four elements rather than ofthree in their analysis of manmdasheven without consideringother complications many subtle subdivisions an echo ofScholasticism dear to a certain number subdivisions

destined either to establish agreement between authors orto detail the stages of spiritual itineraries As for examplethis schema traced by Isaac of Stella in his Epistola deanima ldquoAnimae in mundo sui corporis peregrinanti quinquesunt ad sapientiam progressus sensusmdashimaginatiomdashratiomdashintellectusmdashintelligentiardquo4 Two different modes will benoted both inspired by Saint Augustine in the expression oftripartism for some it is corpus anima spiritus5 forothers corpus ratio mens Hence to accord these twomodes the quadripartite division corpusmdashanimamdashratioinferiormdashratio superior sive mens We know the groundgained in the Middle Ages by that Augustinian subdivision ofthe ratio inferior and the ratio superior6 What willcorrespond to this in Saint Thomas Aquinas will beparticularly the distinction between the ratio and theintellectus recently brought out by Pierre Rousselot7 Thiswould also be the place to mention the Franciscan doctrineof the two faces of the soul which is of Neoplatonic origincoming through the twofold channel of Augustine and theArabs8mdashbut that like moreover the Thomist distinction ofthe intellectus and the ratio is an essentially ldquoscientificrdquo(philosophical) theory having little relation to the spirituallife The explanation of the latter is founded rather on thedoctrine of the twofold ratio lower and higher whichcorresponds to action and contemplation But then a newsubdivision is introduced the ratio superior the place ofcontemplation assimilated to the intellectus becomes thehigher part or function of the mens and receives namessuch as acies mentis oculus cordis and so forth

Whatever might be the various complications and thevarieties in the names ldquoall the great Christian mystics are inagreement in considering the human soul as a complexreality presenting regions and stages All are also inagreement in admitting that among these various regionsthere is a privileged one that where God dwells in a

particular manner rdquo9 ldquoThere is a spiritual life when arelationship with God existsrdquo10 and there is a secret point inman that is the permanent place of that relationship of thatpossible encounter because it is already and always hasbeen the place of the divine presence that pneuma of Paulcommented on by Origen that ldquosacred point in us that saysPater nosterrdquo of the ldquoCantique de Palmyrerdquo11

So we see that the philosophers and theologians moreconcerned about rationality than mysticism tend to reduce(even in their historical studies) the trichotomy to adichotomymdashwhile on the contrary the spiritual masterstend to bring out the trichotomy They readily glorify thespiritus not only above the anima but above the ratiowhether theoretical or practical It is instructive to comparein this regard the Abeacutelardian writing Ysagoge in theologiamwith the commentary on the Song of Songs by William ofSaint Thierry For the first ldquoDuo haec nomina sc spiritus etanima non magnam habent in significationediscrepantiamrdquo12 The second on the contrary stronglyemphasizes the hierarchical distinction of three ordersldquoanimalrdquo ldquorationalrdquo and ldquospiritualrdquo13

To keep to the general schema that results from the textof Saint Paulmdasha schema that itself in fact includes manynuances and as we have seen many interpretationsmdashmorality will therefore be the act of the soul mysticism theact of the spirit ldquoThe bodyrdquo says Evagrius Ponticus ldquohasbread for nourishment the soul has virtue theunderstanding has spiritual prayerrdquo14 Morality whoseobject is virtue is the πϱᾶ ξις and the life of the spirit iscontemplation the θεωϱία The first is ordained to thesecond as the soul is ordained to the spirit ldquoStriverdquo saysCassian reporting the statements of Abbot Nesteros ldquotoacquire in the first place a complete possession of moraldiscipline (πϱαϰτιϰή) for without that you cannot obtaincontemplative purity (θεωϱητιϰή)rdquo15 For Gregory of Nyssa

virtue is ldquothe forecourt of the Templerdquo16 Origen had saidbefore them ldquoAccording to the doctrine of the very wiseSolomon he who wishes to acquire wisdom must begin bystudying moralityrdquo it is in fact ldquogood conductrdquo that preparesone to receive the visits of the Logos and when one issolidly exercised in it then one will be able ldquoto pass frommoral things to mystical understandingrdquo17 In his treatiseaddressed ldquoTo the Brethren at Mont Dieurdquo which remainsone of the fundamental texts of Christian spiritualityWilliam of Saint Thierry traces a similar route for those whowant to give themselves over to the perfect life and for thefinal stage his program is even one of a boldness that somecould misunderstand (it is true that it is addressed to aCarthusian monastery) ldquoIt is for othersrdquo he tells them ldquotoserve God it is for you to cling to him It is for others tobelieve in God to know that he exists to love him andrevere him it is for you to taste him to understand him toknow him to enjoy himrdquo18 The same doctrine is set forthas it had been earlier with Origen in parallel with thedoctrine of the threefold biblical sense by another writer ofthe twelfth century Godefroi drsquoAdmont

Sicut triplex est visio corporis spiritus et mentis ita triplex etiam sensusest in scripturis Sanctis litteralis spiritalis intellectualis Litteralem atquespiritalem sensus egregius ipse Doctor gentium tunc transcenderat etusque ad tertium coelum intellectualem scilicet sensum glorioseconscenderat quando toto cordis intellectu ita coelestibus est conjunctusquod utrum in corpore an extra corpus esset se nescire asseruit19

The same fundamental schema is found again in the greatrepresentatives of what one often calls with a term that canlend to confusion ldquointellectualist mysticismrdquo which is tosay with the Rheno-Flemish mystics of the fourteenth andfifteenth centuries The same schema although withdifferences in terminology and in a sometimes differentclimate of thought particularly in Meister Eckhart

Ruysbroek ldquoassigns to the spirit a threefold role First of alla vital role in which it animates the body then anintellectual role that is manifested by thought finally a roleof higher spiritual activity in which it becomes the principleof unification of the whole inner life and in which it is mixedwith the very essence of the soulrdquo20 Hence for example inthe Livre des sept clotures the definition of the seventhenclosure ldquowhich surpasses all the othersrdquo ldquosimplebeatitude beyond all holy life and practice of the virtuesrdquo21

Likewise in the Miroir du salut eacuteternel in which the higherdegree is only divided after ldquothe virtuous life which dies tosin and grows in virtuesrdquo comes the state where ldquoallownership of the will diesrdquo then the spirit is made fully freethrough its union to the Spirit of God even to the point ofthe ldquoliving liferdquo (levende leven) that blossoms which is allldquohidden in God and in the substance of our soulrdquo22

Ruysbroek takes up again here an expression long sincecurrent which he could have read in Saint Bernard (vividavita et vitalis)23 William of Saint Thierry (vita vivens)24 orThomas de Froidmont (vita vitalis)25

The same gradation is found in Tauler based on the sametraditional ldquoternary schemardquo Tauler distinguishes in manldquothree things one clings to nature in flesh and blood theother is the reason the third is an essence of the pure souland without mixturerdquo This is what he expresses again ldquointhe symbolism of the three men which correspond to thesensate life the intellectual life and the spiritual life in thesense of union with Godrdquo26 This ldquothird manrdquo this ldquoessenceof the pure soulrdquo is what Tauler often calls the gemuete aword that Father Etienne Hugueny translates as ldquodeep-seated willrdquo and Louis Cognet prefers to call ldquodeep instinctrdquoit is the ldquodepthsrdquo of being to which says Tauler the ldquodivinegroundrdquo alone corresponds abyssus abyssum invocat itimprints on our nature ldquoan eternal and deep-seatedtendency to return to its originrdquo a tendency that ldquopersists

even in the damned because it is linked to the very essenceof the soulrdquo27 Taulerrsquos preaching rests on this structure Theabnegation to which he invites his listeners is not only theliberation from sensible appetites it goes beyond simplemorality it is a profound attitude that ldquoflows from thegrowing experience of Godrdquo mystical passivity succeedingthe activity of the virtuous life ldquoinner recollectionrdquo abovethe exercise of the virtues and reason as well as that of thesenses28 ldquoIt is necessary that after having overcome thesenses the reason be freed from itself renounce itself soas to be transformed into pure and simple spiritrdquo29 Then theKingdom of God is established And Tauler repeats so as tomake himself well understood ldquoThis Kingdom is establishedin its own manner in the innermost part of the spirit assoon as man through all his exercise has absorbed theexterior man in the inner and reasonable man and as soonas the man of sense and of reasonable power are entirelyabsorbed into the more interior man in the hidden groundof the spirit where the true image of God dwells and assoon as he flees into this divine ground into which manfrom all eternity is found in his uncreated staterdquo30

The relationship of Tauler to Eckhart is obvious In one asin the other the distinction of the soul and the spirit (of thepsyche and the πνεῦμα) colored by Platonic exemplarism isaffirmed everywhere Eckhart enunciates it with reference toSaint Augustine ldquoAccording to Augustinerdquo he says ldquoourintellectual element divides itself into two parts through theone we are oriented intellectually toward an intellectualgrasp of knowledge that our cognitive faculty receives fromoutside the other to use the very words of Augustinemanifests itself at the deepest center of our spirit (lsquoabditummentisrsquo)rdquo31 It is this center that particularly interested thatfascinated Eckhart this place ldquowhere no image enters orleaves but where there is only God himselfrdquo ldquoThe soulrdquo healso said ldquohas two eyes the inner one and the other outer

one the inner eye of the soul is that by which itcontemplates being and receives it directly from Godrdquo32

What differentiates him from Origen and Augustine Bernardand William of Saint Thierry is the ldquouncreatedrdquo characterthat he attributes to this ldquoinner eyerdquo or to this ldquoabditummentisrdquo The disquieting feature of his mysticism consists inthis a feature that will be less emphasized in Tauler andeven in Henry Suso although the latter speaks also of theground of the spirit as ldquoeternalrdquo33

Follower and compiler Harphius (Henry Herp) willsymbolize the ldquothree kinds of liferdquo emanating from the threeparts of man in the three biblical figures of Leah Rachel andMary Magdalen34 and he works at length to describe themens or the apex mentis the spiritus or the interior sinusmentis which is to say still that pneuma by which the zoneof rational and moral activity is transcended

Dicitur etiam [anima] quandoque mens quae sc ipsis viribus interior est etsupereminet quia vires in mente sicut in origine sua sunt counitae ex quasc effl uunt ut radii ex solari rota et in quam refluunt Et est illud centrumin anima in quo vera Trinitatis imago relucet et tarn nobile quod nullumibi nomen proprie convenit licet in multis nominibus circumlocutivemanifestatur Haec est igitur mens vel apex mentis aut centrum ipsiusanimae ut feliciter renovetur ipsae vires quae dicuntur spiritus adinteriorem sinum mentis sunt reflectendae et mens ipsa ad intimum suumregerenda sc in Deum ibidem suaviter recubantem 35

Warning us that this higher part of man cannot beappropriately designated by any name and multiplying theformulas himself by which one must indeed try even tospeak of it Harphius invites us not to stress whatever theinterest of the other part might be the variations invocabulary from one author to another or from one period toanother which could hide from us the continuity of atradition that in essentials is very firm

Saint Catherine of Genoa offers us a similar schema veryclassically she distinguishes body soul and spirit the latterbeing designated in itself by the word mente and when it is

animated by infused love by the word spirito in this lattercase the spirito is finally identified with infused Love whichis God Since the Saint is less concerned to give us atheoretical course in anthropology even spiritual than todescribe the spiritual life itself we can understand that fromher pen mente is rare and spirito frequent36 On the otherhand following the example of many other mystics sheloves to detail the stages of ascent ldquoWhen Godrdquo she saysldquoaddresses his first call to us he gives us at first the instinctfor virtues later he urges us to perfection then throughinfused grace he leads us to the annihilation of ourselvesfinally to true transformationrdquo37 Saint Teresa and Saint Johnof the Cross likewise know that there exists a life higherthan the exercise of the virtues when they celebrateldquofreedom of spiritrdquo38 ldquoholy freedom of spiritrdquo39 and SaintTeresa observes in her Interior Castle that ldquocertain interioreffects give certitude that there is in us in certain relationsa very real difference between the soul and the spiritrdquo40 Wealso quote as an example Fenelon who in commenting onCassian finds himself at the same time summing up thewhole mystical tradition ldquoAlthough we judge the othervirtues to be necessary and useful we believe however weshould place them only at the second degree because oneseeks them all only in view of this one thing of which JesusChrist says lsquoMartha Martha you trouble yourself aboutmany things there is only one thing necessaryrsquo He placedthe sovereign good not in work although laudable andabundant in fruit but in contemplation that is truly simpleand one He declares that little is necessary for this perfectbeatitude that contemplation isrdquo41 And a little farther on inthe same writing ldquoThere is thus a state where thisappropriation of virtues is no longer opportunerdquo42

The great Protestant spiritual master Gerhard Tersteegen(1697-1769) professes the same doctrine ldquoThere mustnecessarily be in us a capacity to recognize God and

spiritual things in an essential and present way And thatexists in the pure Reason [Vernunft] which has been givenus closed and unused until God gives us the understandingby which we know the very Truth so intimately andessentially that we are ourselves drawn into the trueGodrdquo43

If a certain number of authors in the course of this longtradition that we have just examined seem also todistinguish as it were two elements above the psychewhile Saint Paul saw only the pneuma above it this isusually as we could ascertain from some of the examplescited because they mean by psyche only the animal soulanimater of the body and seat of sensation or ratherbecause they want to assure a seat for ldquoobjectiverdquoknowledge and profane culture For Paul on the contraryand more explicitly for Origen the soul is the very seat ofthe personality the reasoning and self-willed being whichjudges and freely determines itself It is the place ofdecision According to the orientation taken by the soul thehuman being will become ldquocarnalrdquo or ldquospiritualrdquo(pneumatikos) As opposed as he might be to free willLuther himself saw very clearly that the Pauline psyche of 1Thessalonians 5 was much more than the principle ldquothatanimates the body and acts through itrdquo In an article in theRevue thomiste (1971) Father P R Reacutegamey OP isperfectly in keeping with the traditional line when hedistinguishes (497) these three degrees psychosomaticcomplexmdashrational function of abstraction and discoursemdashprimacy of spirit in its greatest purity And what in thetheoretical order is the ldquorational functionrdquo corresponds inthe practical order to what we could call in a ratherrestrictive sense the ldquomoral functionrdquo Saint Paul alsoinvites us not to confuse this moral function with theproperly spiritual life which raises man above himself whenhe places above the exercise of active benevolence and of

all virtue this reality of another order a gift of God which isCharity (1 Cor 133) Dietrich Bonhoeffer was also faithful tothe tradition that originated in the Apostle when heexhorted the Christians over whom he had responsibility notto confuse in their assemblies ldquospiritual community withmystical overheatingrdquo (cf A Dumas 64) ldquoThe great themeof community life is the revival of the very Paulinedistinction between the natural eager equivocal nostalgicdesiring in a word idealistic and the spiritual respectfulenlightened serving knowing in a word realistrdquo (ibid145) ldquoThe onerdquo Bonhoeffer also says ldquowho does not letChrist be a path toward the other falls into naturalchattering which kills the spiritual word Prayer is thesalutary limit to desires of immediate effusiveness Community life is communion through spiritual mediationand non-confusion in the natural immediacyrdquo (146-47)

II Morality Integrated into Mysticism In Christianity itself itis characteristic of the Catholic Church to assure theequilibrium between the three components (religion

morality and mysticism) an equilibrium necessary to theintegrity of the human being Faithful in everything to her

spirit of synthesis she maintains all three in solidaritywithout ever letting any one of the three be lacking or

eclipse the others or be devalued in the humblest forms ofspiritual life any more than in the highest To take a verysimple example when Fenelon exclaims in his Traiteacute de

lrsquoexistence et des attributs de Dieu ldquoMy length of life is buta perpetual extinctionrdquo1 these words to be well

understood must be taken at once morally religiously andmystically

The various Protestant confessions place more emphasison contrasts and clashes as has often been remarked J AMoehler wrote in the last century in his Symbolique withrespect to morality and religion ldquoIn the eyes of Catholics

religiosity and morality if we may be permitted to use thesetwo terms are united by their essence and are both eternalAccording to the Protestants on the other hand there is norelationship between these two things for one is of aneternal price and the other is of only passing value Lutherinsists in many places on this difference rdquo2 There wouldbe many nuances besides to note here but in this essay ontypology we must keep to the most general characteristics3In Calvinism mysticism is the object of mistrust or evenreprobation4 We also know the abyss in Luther thatseparates ethics and faith As a result of this there is atendency with Lutheran mysticsmdashto say nothing of Lutherhimself and of Lutheranism in generalmdashto depreciate allmoral activity as constituting on manrsquos part an affirmationof self that far from bringing him closer to God distanceshim and to recognize a value in religious life only in anabandonment close to quietism5 a depreciation of moralitythat goes hand in hand with that of reason and that offreedommdashwe recently read from a Protestant pen an articleon morality considered solely as ldquocultural realityrdquo Such anattitude to take it simply as such could also facilitateinvaluable analyses in many regards such as the analysis ofthe ldquolevels of liferdquo in Kierkegaard or that of the ldquosacredrdquo inRudolf Otto But these analyses do not always stop at posingformal distinctions Thus in order to bring out more clearlythe specificity of the category of the sacred or of thereligious Otto cuts the latter off from morality he is notcontent with showing that on the level of history orpsychology these two orders are often separated in fact heis well on his way to a separation by right6 As arepercussion when morality reclaims its place in otherauthors of Protestant inspiration it sometimes absorbsreligion and dries up mysticism by incarcerating all spirituallife ldquowithin the limits of reasonrdquo

In reality howevermdashthat is to say by right in the natureof thingsmdashon the one hand ldquothe sacred is not reabsorbedinto moral value the religious transcends the ethicalrdquo buton the other hand it does not merely accommodatemorality and mysticism it remolds them so to speak byinstalling them in its heart Religion morality and mysticismldquoappear in a reciprocal envelopmentrdquo there exists betweenthe three both an attraction and a tension which will be thesource of many vital problems but there is objectivelyneither separation nor exclusion nor conflict for ldquothe Deitywhile transcending being truth and the good contains themformallyrdquo7 This is why in particular in Catholicism just asthe reasonable life and life according to the spirit penetrateeach other8 morality impregnates the mystical life to theend ldquoThrough it the good rewarded and the bad punishedthese pillars of the revelation of the Demiurge degraded byGnosticism to a lower level than exoteric faith regain theirplace at the heart of the revelation of the Father through theonly Sonrdquo9 Hence Saint Justin in his Dialogue ldquoIt is notbecause of his affinity with God or because he is spirit likehim that man sees God it is because he is virtuous andjustrdquo10 And Father Jean Rigoleuc on spiritual persons ldquoAlltheir reason and the lights they receive by it are given tothem only so that they might be perfected in thesevirtuesrdquo11 ldquoThe mystical ascentrdquo does not efface ldquofromcommon Christian life any specific traitrdquo12 The Christianvirtues are not merely means of freeing oneself from theworld in their substance they are the end itself thepromised beatitude is not made of different material This iswhat Saint Ambrose expresses admirably in a brief sentencefrom his commentary on Saint Luke with respect to thebeatitudes ldquoSicut enim speri nostrae octava perfectio estita octava summa virtutum estrdquo13

Pierre Nemeshegyi poses the same problem with respectto Origen ldquoTo place Being and moral Goodness in equation

to place this moral Goodness in God formally and ascharacterizing the final ground of his Beingmdashis this not to becondemned to enclosing all spiritual life in an anti-mysticalmoralism The Good is a transcendental But is it formallywhat we understand by lsquomoral Goodrsquo Or is there not adeepening of this moral Goodness which would reestablishthe possibility of an innermost mystical depthrdquo14 Againwith respect to Origen W Voumllker remarks ldquoWe observe a hesitation very characteristic of Origenrsquos turn of spirit and which one finds again in a nearly identical way in Philoside by side and sometimes even the mutual penetrationof moralism and mysticismrdquo15 And Nemeshegyi concludesldquo lsquoMoralismrsquo and lsquomysticismrsquo are in fact one and the samething in Origenrsquos conceptionrdquo16 Origen himself specifies inhis argument against Celsus ldquoGod is not merely lsquothe Goodrsquoas all the Platonists say he is lsquothe Righteousrsquordquo17 SaintGregory the Great also reminds us with his usual goodsense always linked with spiritual fervor

Solent quidam scripta sacri eloquii legentes cum sublimiores sententiasejus penetrant minora mandata quae infirmioribus data sunt tumentisensu despicere et ea velle in alium intellectum permutare Qui si recte ineo alta intelligerent mandata quoque minima despectui non haberent quidivina praecepta sic in quibusdam loquuntur magnis ut tamen inquibusdam congruant parvulis qui per incrementa intelligentiae quasiquibusdam passibus mentis crescant atque ad majora intelligendaperveniant18

Saint Augustine had said the same in a very Origenianshortcut in speaking of eternal life ldquoUna ibi virtus erit etidipsum erit virtus praemiumque virtutisrdquo19 Picking upagain Saint Ambrosersquos turn of phrase Alexander Neckhamcosmologist of the twelfth century explains that the octaveof the beatitude brings the perfection of its consonance tothe septenary of the virtues as in our material universe theeighth sphere including the whole universe brings itsconclusion to the harmony of the heavens20 Let us say in

the categories of medieval exegesis that anagogy achievesperfection both of allegory and of tropology Thus oneshould say of all Catholic mysticism what one historian saysof Saint Bernard through allusion to the traditionalinterpretation of the ldquoBooks of Solomonrdquo and of theirprogressive sequence for each of them as for him ldquothemoral school of Ecclesiasticus and Proverbs a necessarypreliminary for the mystical school of the Song of Songs is aschool whose doors are never closed behind usrdquo21 Andreciprocally in fulfilling the precept of the Lord one meritsnot only the eternal dwelling one does not merely preparefor it one is already building Saint Hildegarde tells us thetower of the heavenly Jerusalem22

It would be good to return to the celebrated GoldenEpistle in which William of Saint Thierry the friend of SaintBernard condenses for the brothers of the Carthusianmonastery of Mont Dieu the essence of Christiananthropology and spirituality such as the most commonCatholic tradition understands them William puts first ofall the sublime ideal of the contemplative in abrupt termsand with an appearance of separation of completetranscendence from one degree to another which could besurprising

You have not only pledged complete holiness but the perfection of allholiness and the height of all perfection It is not your business to languishin the practice of ordinary precepts or to devote yourself only to thatwhich God commands but to aim at what he wishes in the search for hisgood agreeable and perfect will It is for others to serve God it is for youto cling to him Faith in God knowledge love and reverence are for othersFor you taste understanding knowledge enjoyment A high vocation anarduous task 23

Farther on William takes up again the distinction of thethree states or three degrees which is reminiscent of thefree fashion of the Pauline trichotomy

The state of beginners can be called ldquoanimalrdquo that of progressersldquorationalrdquo that of the perfect ldquospiritualrdquo The first state attends to thebody the second is busy with the reasoning soul the third finds its restonly in God 24

These kinds of schemas are several times accompanied byappeals to humility which should form the common andunalterable basis for all disciples of Christ at whateverdegree they find themselves in their spiritual ascent25

Several points of resemblance to Saint Paul are still to benoted the distinction between anima and animus whichcorresponds closely to that between the psyche and thepneuma26 the reference to the discourse at Athens27 (Acts1727-28) the definition of the spiritual man as the onewhose spirit is informed by the Spirit of love28 theindication of the end as being ldquothe unity of spiritrdquo with God

There is also another resemblance to God so particular that it is nolonger given the name of resemblance but that of unity of spirit It is whenman becomes a single thing a single spirit with God not only through theunity of a single will but also through some truer expression of a virtue thatis no longer capable of willing anything else Once conformed to wisdom the reason [= reasoning soul] puts[everything] to profit and hastens to spring toward freedom of spirittoward unity so well that the faithful man becomes as has often beenstated one single spirit with God29

Freedom of spirit unity with God we know the abuses thatsuch formulas have frequently covered throughout twentycenturies of history30 We know too how the fear of theseabuses have made a number of timorous souls avoid themhow still more the bourgeois individualist incomprehensionof the last century banished them and how they seemedsuspect to many who thought they were judging in thename of pure Catholic orthodoxy31 Within the context ofthat spiritual masterpiece the Letter to the Brothers of MontDieu these expressions can be accepted in all their powerin the same sense that they have in Scripture And thekeeping of a moral life integrated into a mystical life is also

explicitly recognized here besides the word ldquovirtuerdquo whichfigures in the same text we have just quoted on ldquothe unityof spiritrdquo with God other texts recall it with insistence Theyspeak ldquoin praise of virtue the daughter of reason but evenmore of gracerdquo32 they show it not surpassed by butassumed into spiritual perfection the latter is achievedldquowhen the soul encompasses all the virtues in itself not aselements borrowed from somewhere else but as quasi-natural products of its being according to that resemblanceto God by which it is the whole of what isrdquo Mystical unitywith God is wholly impregnated with morality because it isthe perfect adherence to Him who is not only the Righteousbut in the most concrete and singular sense the Good33

This Catholic equilibrium was undoubtedly alreadyjeopardized in a great spiritual master who is not at all to beconfused with the false spirituals to whom we have alludedEvagrius was considered a disciple of Origen but in this anunfaithful disciple Despite the appearances of severalexpressions the same criticism could not be made of aTauler or a Ruysbroek they condemn without equivocationthe mystical claims that think to hold themselves abovemorality and reason beyond affirmations of the faith Thecase of Meister Eckhart is perhaps more disputable but it isright to dissociate the profound intention of this greatthinker and this great mystic from some paradoxicalexpressions held to be condemnable by the bull In agro LaPerle eacutevangeacutelique following Eckhart and several othersseems to place ldquothe spiritrdquo in contact with the divine Unityldquoabove the multiplicity of the Personsrdquo34 a grave problemwhich we will not take up here but which for a Christiangoverns the judgment to be passed on mysticism in itsrelation to the primary mystery of his faith35 To stay withthe relation between mysticism and morality let us say thatone is happy to find a fine example of equilibrium in anauthor carried in other respects to many unilateral

excesses This refers to George Tyrrell who wrote in a finepassage from Christianity at the Cross-roads

[The apocalyptic Kingdom of heaven] is the fruit and reward of the morallife but is a supermoral lifemdashthe continuation of that divine and spirituallife which under present contingencies manifests itself principally bymorality and above all in religion and conscious union with God But[in the Kingdom] the contingencies that now call for the moral strugglewith all its pain and suffering shall be done away36

We will end by quoting a more authoritative witness thegreat Saint Teresa who unites the soul and spirit of whichSaint Paul spoke as much as she distinguishes them withhim by observing that ldquothe center of the soulrdquo or the ldquospiritof the soulrdquo is a difficult thing to express and even tobelieve

Certain interior effects give the certitude that there is under certainrelations a very real difference between the soul and the spirit Although inreality they are but one we sometimes perceive a division between themthat is so delicate that it seems that the one functions in one way and theother in another There are so many things in our innermost depthsand things so subtle that it would be boldness on my part to undertake toexplain them We will understand all that in the other life if God deignsto admit us to the dwelling where we will have understanding of all thesesecrets37

III Conclusions Optimi corruption pessima One should notat all conclude from this as some authors particularly in

Protestantism have done that mysticism should becondemned1 Nevertheless even without considering the

case of the aberrations we have just seen certainprecautions should be taken in order not to jeopardize the

spiritual equilibrium Just as it is necessary to reject ananthropology that refusing man any higher faculty stifles

the spirit in himmdashwhich is what all positivisms allrationalisms and all psychologisms domdashso it is necessary toguard against reducing theoretical or practical reason in itby failing to recognize its transcendence in relation to the

sensible order and its participation in the absolute ldquoThemindrdquo writes Hans Urs von Balthasar2 ldquodestroys itself andcrumbles if it splits into an inferior and a superior mind an

autonomously functioning reason (Verstand) and a ratio(Vernunft) that is reserved for special philosophical and

religious purposesrdquo Then the risk of a short-circuit appearsfrom ldquoinfantile naturalismrdquo to high spirituality from

alienating exteriority to ldquodivinerdquo magnetization from theldquocaves of the unconsciousrdquo to the ldquobirthrdquo from above from

the ldquopossessive Irdquo that is ldquoradical servituderdquo toldquodisinterestedrdquo love

Charles du Bos was not lacking in clearsightedness theday he noted in his Journal ldquothe necessity from an ethicalpoint of view of guarding oneself against mysticismrdquo3 In thesame sense he wrote one day to Father Auguste Valensin

Since the end of July 1927 God in his goodness has recalled me toHimself I have happened to suffer in the face of a certain unformulatedmdashand at times even formulatedmdashdisdain that believers who are advancedmoreover in spiritual ways and even mystics witness or at least seem towitness toward the moral order as such If one admits (and I admit it verystrongly) that ethics are only the narthex of religious truth neverthelessthere exist natures (to the number of which I belong) who venerate thenarthex all the more as it helps to introduce them into the sanctuary andthe more their religious life deepens the more faithful their gratitudebecomes 4

Du Bos had noted in his Journal on January 11 1925 ldquothenecessity of guarding against mysticismrdquo and on January18 1929 analyzing himself

Basically it is always a question with me of an offensive directed by themoral against the religious because as my Journal often notes the moralbeing is primary with me in the period when the plane of temperament istranscended the form that temptation then takes is a moral form summedup in the question of my right to religious life Yes that is indeed it and myeffort now must be not only to adhere to God but to consider that fromthe instant I do what I must on the plane of living I adhere to him de facto 5

Du Bosrsquo reflection as we see was not unilateral althoughhe emphasizes the moral which he judges to bedangerously disregarded (what would he not say thirty orforty years later) In return Emmanuel Mounier was no lessright to bring out the complementary truth in recalling thatldquomorality has no other end but the spirituality of which itkeeps houserdquo when one isolates it and clings to it heexplains one kills it it is replaced by moralism6 the enemyof mysticism as well as of religion History in fact shows thatthe abandonment of mysticism in the name of any formwhatever of moralism has never been at best anything buta stage in spiritual development in view of a less confusedmysticism ldquoAs it is nearly inevitable in philosophy to passthrough a phase of idealism so it is inevitable to passthrough a phase of intellectualism in morality inevitableand goodrdquo But on condition that one does not cling to it Adeeper understanding knows that it is not knowledge thatsaves man from sin and it will always ask ldquoWho forexample is the one more free of appearancesmdasha Spinozawho in observing actions or sentiments that the commonmen call sin explains them through a defect in knowledgemdashor a Surin who proclaims that to the degree that one doesnot see sins even in onersquos inadvertencies and firstmovements to that degree one will not weep over onersquosvanities as sacrileges one will lsquonever get to the rootrsquordquo7

Both have cut through appearances (not always the sameones) both in their order are right But basically howmuch more is this true of Surin And if the intellectualcriticism worked by a Spinozist is not coupled with aspiritual deepening how his clearsightedness ends inblaming it The world Bergson said very justly has much tolearn from the great mystics8

Likewise one is right not to consent to letting theunderstanding be classed among the provisional values tobe reduced to the rank of ldquonaturalismrdquo that is close to

animality Perhaps the word ldquosoulrdquo so far from beingunivocal9 used in the tripartite division of man is notwithout some danger in this regard But this is not asufficient motive for rejecting the very idea of this tripartitedivision such as some as we have seen above were led todo Even Sandaeus himself an apologist and theoretician ofmysticism while noting that a number of mystics judgerecourse to this division indispensable declared that therecould be room to debate this10 Sandaeus was therebyechoing a fear or a mistrust frequently shown in the mostbrutal fashion by Schoolmen in the face of all mysticalthought we know how sharp the dispute was even withinthe Catholic Church throughout the seventeenth century11

Since then through their efforts to minimize the text ofSaint Paul on which the distinction is based others witness adiscomfort if not a similar hostility The mystical tradition ofthe great Church however offers them desirableassurances thus with Tauler transforming the way oneviews the classical terms of the division He is thereby goingparallel to the doctrinal tradition such as it is expressed in aSaint Augustine for example or a Saint Thomas The ratherpusillanimous minds to which we are alluding do not giveenough consideration to the fact that in wanting to save theabsolute of morality and reason they risk failing torecognize the gifts of the Spirit and lowering the mysticallife Stifled unrecognized in its authentic forms the latterin despair is then in danger of developing on the margins ofall rational and moral norms A certain intellectualismmdashverypoorly namedmdashis a worthy counterpart of moralism and aspernicious

To return to this latter we can think that the general usein the ecclesiastical vocabulary of the modern ChristianWest of the term ldquodirector of consciencerdquo to the detrimentof the traditional terms ldquospiritual fatherrdquo or spiritusmoderator12 is the sign of an inflation of pure morality

tending to casuistry or lends itself to falling intopsychologism (while waiting for psychiatry) to thedetriment of the attention paid to things of the spirit whichis to say to the relation to God ldquoHave we not seen peoplerdquowrote Reneacute Gueacutenon ldquowho when it is a question of lsquospiritualmasterrsquo go so far as to translate it lsquodirector ofconsciencersquordquo13 It is possible to agree with his remarkwithout sharing the least part of his own notion of ldquospiritualmasterrdquo or more precisely his doctrine of the spirit Stillanother sign of the small esteem given to things of thespirit and first of all of an inadequate understanding ofthem is manifested in the designation ldquointellectualismrdquowhich is too easily attributed today to the whole doctrine ofcontemplation There is of course a philosophicalcontemplation There is a Greek intellectualism that isexpressed in an ideal of contemplation We discern sometraces of it in the history of Christian thought and life butthese are only tracesmdashand all are not moreoverblameworthy14 As it has done for many other conceptsChristianity has modified this at the same time as it took onits permanent values it profoundly transformed it How is itthat even Christian historians have perceived so little ofthis One can indeed if one wishes reject the word inseeking another that lends less to equivocation but itshould not be necessary at the same time to reject thedoctrine that the Christian centuries had included within itit should not be necessary to depreciate what is the verybasis of the best spiritual tradition at the heart ofChristianity This would be at the same stroke to depreciatethe order of the theological virtues in direct contradiction toScripture itself The supremely active Father Teilhard deChardin did not fall into such contempt he forcefullymaintained the primacy of contemplation in which he couldrecognize the superior form of action that which an activistwill never achieve15 The transformations and progress

achieved in the course of history the entrance into an agedominated by the technical the development of the ldquohumansciencesrdquo that tend to assimilate man to the object of thesciences of nature will change nothing not only the highmystical life but already the whole spiritual life while takingthe greatest consideration of morality and including morality(as well as of rational activity) comprises along with variednuances according to the case something beyond moralitytaken in the human sense of the word something beyond allthat we commonly call action because it always comprisessomething beyond man

That is what signifies the great traditional theme ofMartha and Mary based on the Gospel It will always remaintrue ldquoIn his duabus mulieribus duas istas esse figurataspraesentem et futuram latoriosam et quietam temporalemet aeternamrdquo16 And of these two realities the second isalready present as an active anticipation at the heart ofthe man en route toward his divine destiny

Finally the maintenance of the distinction between thezone of the natural [psychisme] and that of the spiritual is ofa major importance for maintaining in their just place withinthe limits of their competence all the kinds of psychology Itopposes ldquothe dissolving psychoanalytical confusion ofnatural and spiritualrdquo17 If stopping onersquos aim at theldquorationalrdquo and the ldquomoralrdquo was often the great temptationand if this temptation remains what is to be even moregreatly feared today is stopping at the ldquonatural[psychique]rdquo One of Teilhardrsquos weaknesses which wasbenign to tell the truth because he thought above all todissipate the illusion of a materialistic monism was acertain confusion of vocabulary between spiritual andnatural in the Pheacutenomegravene humain (which does not claim tobe a treatise on spirituality) he happens to speak at will ofldquospiritual energyrdquo or of ldquonatural energyrdquo mdashBut ldquothe spiritintervening psychology is powerless It sees everything

from outside although the spirit is lived only from withinrdquo itsees uniquely ldquothat part of the natural life that the spirit hasnot touched and which consequently unfolds in theunconsciousrdquo18

Without doubt it is only through our participation in themystery of the trinitarian Life that we are to become fullycapable of going beyond this psychological vision that canindeed scrutinize certain ldquodepthsrdquo but to which this otherdepth is not accessible this depth which is humantranscendence this otherwise mysterious zone where theimpulse toward God is situated the encounter with God

There is in us a certain root that plunges into the depths of the Trinity Weare these complex beings who exist on successive levels on an animal andbiological level on an intellectual and human level and on an ultimate levelin those very abysses that are those of the life of God and those of theTrinity This is why we have the right to say that Christianity is an integralhumanism which is to say which develops man on all the levels of hisexperience We must always be in defiance of all the attempts to reducethe space in which our existence moves We breathe fully in the measureto which we do not let ourselves be enclosed in the prison of the rationaland psychological world but to which a part of us emerges into these greatspaces that are those of the Trinity And this is what creates theincomparable joy of existence in Christianity19

Pertinent remarks of great importance in ecclesiology aswell as in the liturgy more timely today than ever Thedistinctions recalled by Dietrich Bonhoeffer and by Father PR Reacutegamey based like those of so many others on thePauline anthropology of the First Letter to the Thessaloniansare at once for every member of the Church an appeal tothe highest spiritual life and a warning against itscounterfeits

EPILOGUETO PART ONE

The Light of Christ ldquoIf you believerdquo we are told ldquoin thedivinity of the Christian religion it is because you are

ignorant about all the conditions that marked its beginningand growth The comparative history of religions has madeenough progress so that henceforth it is no longer possibleto speak of a lsquoChristian miraclersquo coming to break the thread

of human religious acts There is nothing in it that is notexplained in the way everything is explained Of course

some points still remain obscure certain influences remainunperceived The task of historians has not yet been

accomplished One can also recognize that several of themhave been a little too quick in thinking to detect here orthere analogies or relationships and their intemperance

was capable of provoking a prudent reaction in somescholars anxious for a more rigorous method But the

general orientation of science is nonetheless certain and itsresult is nonetheless assured Every day leads to a new

light uncovering some new connection and here and nowwe see clearly enough to be able to affirm that Christianityis a human phenomenon very human deeply rooted in the

earth of history where it has drawn all the essence fromwhich its marvelous vigor is nourishedrdquo

An objection that insinuates itself under a thousand formswith respect to a thousand problems A stronger objectionin many eyes than all those of dialectics because withoutfighting it claims to explain Believers are upset by it Menof good will whom Christianity attracts and who alreadybelieve they see Godrsquos work in it find themselves stoppedin their tracks by it they fear to commit themselves

thoroughly to what is perhaps only the work of man If itwere a question only of a milieu providentially prepared tofavor the birth and rise of the religion of ChristmdashJewishMessianism Stoic universalism the organization of theDiaspora the Roman peace mdashthis ensemble of fortuitousconditions could indeed account for its concrete possibilitybut it would definitely not for all that cancel out the miracleof its existence A favorable atmosphere has never sufficedto explain the fact of a birth One would have to becompletely incapable of perceiving religious values to betempted to explain the apparition and success ofChristianity solely by a series of external circumstances asimportant and as favorable as one supposes them to beBetter known the information that history brings in thisorder can therefore only add to the admiration that alreadyseized the Fathers such as Saint Leo exclaiming before hisRoman listeners ldquoNumerous States have been united into asingle Empire so that the ways necessary for the preachingof the Gospel might be readyrdquo1 Admiration that was alsoPascalrsquos ldquoHow beautiful it is to see through the eyes of faithDarius and Cyrus Alexander the Romans Pompey Herodact without knowing it for the triumph of the Gospelrdquo andwho a short time earlier had had this sung to Peacuteguy ldquoThesteps of the legions had marched for Him rdquo2

But history seems to show us much more today Muchmore even than a subjective preparation of soulssuffocating in paganism thirsty for salvation One by oneall the elements of which Christianity is made theconceptions it presupposes the notions it sets in motion itsworship practices the forms of its institutions theprescriptions of its morality all are identified classifiedranked in their place along continuous series Not a dogmanot a feature of discipline or of liturgy that does not have itshistorymdasha history that always includes a first pre-Christianperiod All that had been amalgamated in it is returned to its

origin and soon it seems that nothing of its own remainsHow dare we still in the face of these facts a great numberof which at least are solidly established speak of a religiongiven from heaven of divine revelation How consequentlydare we speak of ldquotranscendencerdquo of supernaturalabsolute definitive truth Everything that is born and growsaccording to the common law is transformed and alsoperishes according to the common law As imposing as itseems Christianity will not escape it Even more perhapsthan the defeats to which it has submitted in the course ofthese recent centuries the history of its origins warns us ofits inevitable decline It is no longer for us the uniqueexception the extraordinary thing that it seemed to be forso long a time It can no longer be loyally preserved fromuniversal evolution Whether the brilliant flash projected byreligion ever since humanity existed is a false flash or anauthentic light is of little importance here in the case ofChristianity one thought to see a unique star appearabruptly in the heaven of religions and miraculously hangthere but a more experienced look discerns that it too wasonly for a moment welded to the others passing like theothers in this long luminous trail

Yet the illusion if such it be has existed It still persists withmany who are not at all ignorant people This too is a factthat must be taken into consideration One should not replywithout further examination that the same is true for allreligion Contrary to almost all the others without exceptingeven Judaism Christianity appeared in the middle of ahistoric period Its legend if there is a legend iscontemporaneous with its existence What a differencethere is in this regard for example with its great rivalBuddhism3 Why then contrary to so many humanphenomena is it presented in so tenacious a way as beingabsolutely exceptional Is ignorance about its true originsenough to explain this illusion in its regard or might it not

be rather the very true perception of its transcendencethat veiled by its brilliant flash certain features of its humanhistory The hypothesis at least deserves consideration It isnot without analogies Many men think themselves free inactions where without doubt they are not at all or with afreedom that is not at all real Is this illusion completelyexplained by a myopia that prevents them from perceivingthe bonds of determinism or does it too not come from anobscure but truthful perception Rather than a total illusionis it not a simple error of localization An error attesting toan awkwardness in analysis a scientific inferiority butwithout any damage to the essential truth

Now it happens too that one badly localizes thetranscendence that one recognizes in Christianity setting itup in positions from which the experienced historian willhave no trouble dislodging it This is why in a more or lessexplicit way one conceives of it then above all as a solutionof continuity To suppose such a transcendence possible atranscendence whose true name would be ldquoexteriorityrdquo isnot the act of Christianity What would remain for exampleof the thought of Saint Paulmdashwho nevertheless sodominated the thoughts of his centurymdashif one cut it fromthe thousand roots that in fact attached it to the earth ofTarsus and Jerusalem How can a single one of its essentialpoints be analyzed without constant reference not only tothe history of the Hebrew people but also to Greekcivilization to Eastern mysticism to the Roman EmpireThis would be an imaginary transcendence pure chimeralinked to a no less chimerical ideal of revelation The realitythat it would effect if this were possible would not besuperhuman but inhuman Far from being sublimated by itit would only be impoverished dried up

It would find the path neither of our spirit nor of our heartArtificial superficial and not at all supernatural Such asthose devout people of whom Peacuteguy speaks who becausethey do not have the strength to be of nature imagine that

they are of grace in reality dried fruits But there is anothertranscendence a true transcendence of which the first wasonly at best the naiumlve transcription An intrinsictranscendence in virtue of which a given reality consideredas synthesis in what comprises its own being surpassesessentially the realities of the same kind that surround itwhatever might be the community of elements that itinforms along with theirs whatever might be too the tiesof origin that render these different elements solidary Anytrue synthesis is always more than synthesis A certainrecasting that is much more than a new combination acertain ldquorevival from withinrdquo transforms everything It is in aphenomenal continuity the passage to a new higherincomparable order4

Now for anyone who can seemdashbut which of us can natterhimself that he always can once and for allmdashthe intrinsictranscendence of Christianity is obvious It alone countsand a direct look well aimed is enough to establish it Theunbeliever does not have to overcome historicalcontinuities nor does the believer have to refuse to seethem A priori they must be Scholars dedicated todiscovering these continuities are not at all devotingthemselves to a vain task They can indeed often bemistaken (certainly they do not fail to be so) or give in tothe temptation of confused conjectures the hypothesis thatguides them is nonetheless sound The fragility of certainconstructions does not at all prevent the firmness of theirfoundations Besides in research that some would hold tobe sacrilege science is after all only exploiting the Paulineidea of the ldquofullness of timerdquo It is uniting in a way with thethought of the Fathers of the Church so anxious to bring outthe ldquoevangelical preparationsrdquo in order to spare Christianitythe appearance of a ldquosudden improvisationrdquo ldquoNihil putem aDeo subitum quia nihil a Deo non dispositumrdquo5 It agreeswith the reflection of the philosopher who considering the

Christian event refuses by very reason of its unparalleledproportions to attribute an accidental character to it6

But in what touches the very basis of religion thesecontinuities are only appearance Yes in one senseChristianity is human completely human We can we mustspeak of its birth If the words it uses are necessarilyborrowed then it is unavoidable that the concepts are tooAnd how would man tell himself the truth even divinelyrevealed truth except by using concepts There is norevelation except supernatural ldquoin the pure staterdquo Howwould God give himself to man if he remained a stranger tohim And how would his Word penetrate him if it were notalso to become a human word The messages of Saint Paulor Saint John are already ldquotheologiesrdquo and the veryconsciousness of Christ is the consciousness of the Wordmade flesh But a less rudimentary psychology has shownus that the concepts themselves are in their multiplicity farfrom expressing the whole of a doctrine for they are withinthe spirit the part closest to matter With how much greaterreason if it is a question of an object that is not onlydoctrine but first of all reality By what makes it itself by itsoriginal essence which consists neither in words nor inconcepts and which the whole sum of words and concepts isnever capable of translating adequately Christianity isdivine completely divine Through the close texture ofrelationships of ideas and beliefs without break withouttear a new spiritmdashthe Spirit himselfmdashhas passed He hasstolen in with gentleness and he has burst in with powerHe has penetrated human history and all has beentransformed The face of the earth has been renewed by itThis was a new Fiat a true creation ldquoEmitte Spiritum tuumet creabuntur et renovabis faciem terraerdquo7 The Spirit ofChrist has founded a wholly new thing the religion of Christand this religion of Christ for which all human history hadprepared for which all human thought had slowly woven the

fabric suddenly rises up in the midst of men ldquosine patresine matre sine genealogiardquo Pure creation pure miracleThere we have this ldquonewrdquo idea which Jules Lachelier saidldquois born from nothing like a worldrdquo

What new ideas though that do not come from usourselves The inventions of man enrich humanitydiscovering in the soul some nuance unperceived until thenbut always leaving it to its essential finitudemdashto itsincurable decay Once past the first amazement the ironicand despairing refrain of Ecclesiastes is heard again Thecircle enlarged or shifted closes again On the contrarywith a leap the Christian Idea transports us beyond ourlimits It breaks this circle within which all our progress hadbeen condemned in advance to fit Such was the thought atits appearance breaking the circle of animaltransformations It is born in its own time it has its markedplace within the progress of life and nevertheless what itbrings is much more than progress From the time itemerges a new kingdom has begun the human kingdomSo the preaching of Jesus marks the advent of the Kingdomof God8 For how many of the sentences of the Sermon onthe Mount would we not find analogies in the Jewish Bible orin the teaching of the rabbis The One who pronounces itspeaks nonetheless as man had never spokenmdashas manwould never speak9 The Gospel inaugurates the time ofgrace It is a wholly new order that begins ldquoa new order oflove in the universerdquo10 A dike has been broken which letsthe flow of Love pass through Now it would be as vain todream of a reality more divine than Love than to imagine areality more spiritual than Thought The transcendence ofChristianity is thus not only relative to such and such anearlier achievement It is not only something originalsomething superior a provisional novelty clearing the wayfor some ulterior invention destined to go beyond it It is anabsolute transcendence ldquoOmnem novitatem attulitrdquo11

Peacuteguy has also sung it He was going to inherit a worldalready made And yet he was going to remake it entirely

Of course the order of charity is not revealed any morethan is the order of the spirit in all its fullness or in all itsdepth to that observation from outside that constitutes thework of the pure historian But if their inner essence stillescapes observation would the simple sight of their effectnot already arouse the sense of their incomparablegreatness We know the repercussions observable to thenaturalist not blinded by an overly narrow concept ofscience produced in the universe by the apparition ofthought the paradoxical properties of the ldquohumanphenomenonrdquo its extraordinary power for expansion andconcentration out of proportion with the weakmorphological originality of man presuppose a presence ofwhich the naturalist can only catch a glimpse but they sethim on the way that must normally lead him to go beyondhis science to discover in truth the human kingdom12 Therepercussions produced in humanity by the advent ofChristianity are no less prodigious the human spiritimmeasurably increased an unparalleled moral fruitfulnessa society tirelessly at work for an ideal of justice and unityand so forth These features are accessible to the historianwho knows how to step back a pace Nevertheless let usrecognize just as reflection alone properly speaking canreveal thought to itself so too only a process of a religiousorder can disclose the absolute superioritymdashwhich is to sayproperly the transcendencemdashof Christianity Like thedivinity of Christ itself the definitive newness of theChristian principle can be perceived only by the eyes offaith It is here that the advantage of the simple believerover the man of science and of life over technique shinesforth For the anthropologist who systematically denieshimself any inner reflection on the lived thought as well as

the historian of religions who does not consent to regardChristianity from within and to begin to live it at leastthrough a basic attitude of real sympathy will neverunderstand anything about the true object of their learnedstudies If their science itself does not lead them to the finalaffirmations it must at least set them on the path But ifthey wish to trust solely in it to the end surrendering theirconscience as men into the hands of their intelligence asspecialists the greater the latter will be and the more it willrisk misleading them

ldquoThe history of the formation of ideasrdquo said Amiel ldquoiswhat makes the spirit freerdquo13 Beneath the ideas that itorganizes and transforms let us know how to discern theChristian Idea This Idea has no history this is what mustmake the spirit submit to it

A great Deed was done for the world twenty centuries agothe Deed of Charity14 Right at first menrsquos habits of thoughtwere not any more overturned by it than were empires Wasan obscure variety of Jewish ldquoMessianistsrdquo worth even aglance The grain of wheat sown by Christ remained buriedin little upper rooms that counted for nothing in the historyof the world Christianity itself would wait five hundred yearsto found retrospectively the ldquoChristian erardquo and it wouldtake another five hundred years for full Christian practice tobecome widespread15 The first disciples of Jesus stilldreamed of the Kingdom of David their father they went upto the Temple as was their custom with a fervor that wasonly increased Having contemplated the Deed that hadbeen done before them they must nevertheless have hadthe feeling of an unparalleled newness The testimony of itappears everywhere in their rare writings ldquoNew teachingnew covenant new commandment new name new songnew man new life second genesis of the worldrdquo16 Such afeeling did not mislead them They were not in danger

those who had seen who had heard those who hadtouched of taking the Christian Mystery to be a more or lessspontaneous mixture of the Jewish Messianism exalted byJesus and cult forms then in vogue in the Hellenized Eastmdashany more than Christian dogma was in danger of appearingto their successors of the great patristic period as a learnedproduct of the Bible and Greek philosophy This chemistry ofimpotent historians could not have been created by themThey knew from an immediate source that they weredealing with something very different They sensed theunity of what myopic analysts think to understand bydecomposing it This is because the principle of synthesiswas in them living and active It is because living thisdogma themselves before drawing up the inventory of itadoring this mystery before translating it they penetratedits spiritual meaning

In addition their testimony is for us more than aguarantee It constitutes a call If that call is at firstnecessary for us we do not have to hold to it ldquoNowrdquo saidthe inhabitants of Sichar to the woman who had led them toChrist ldquoit is no longer because of what you have said to usthat we believe for we have heard him himself and weknow that he is truly the Savior of the worldrdquo17 For twentycenturies the witness of the first generation of believers ispreserved intact because it always remains a living witnessabyssus abyssum invocat [deep calls to deep] Why shouldwe be riveted to history The Spirit still gives witness to ourspirit18 The Kingdom of God is still in the midst of us ldquoTheGospel of Jesus Christ Son of Godrdquo which was heard for thefirst time in Galilee under Herod during the fifteenth yearof Tiberius Caesar at the time of the High Priests Annas andCaiaphas still resounds today and if the forms of itspreaching are different it is the same Voice that proclaimsit Like the creative Deed which does not cease to maintainbeing and life everywhere the Deed of Charity is pursued

over the world The second Genesis henceforth aspermanent as the first and like it infinitely fruitful TheChurch Bride of Christ continues the work of herBridegroom We have only to contemplate hermdashnot fromoutside in her sole visible organization with its humancharacteristics which are often too human perhaps with itsdefects not even in the works of its scholars alwaysunequal to their task and whose insufficiency can be sopainful19mdashespecially when they themselves do not seem tofeel itmdashbut in her inner life in her ideal in her belief in hersecret fidelity in the purity of her zeal in the marvelousfruits of holy joy that she makes ripen in the depths ofhuman hearts In all that the ldquoworldrdquo does not perceiveThen the light shines then the Truth bears witness to itselfveritas index sui No need for laborious comparisons or of anerudite return to the past The clearsightedness of a limpidlook is preferable here to all the sharp perspicacities ofcriticism This is because the miracle is endlessly producedbefore our eyes Today as formerly by virtue of Christianityldquoall things are becoming newrdquo EvenmdashSaint Augustine hadalready noted itmdashthe more time advances the moreprivileged is our situation as witness The mystical Christ inthe measure he increases better reveals his power To thesigns of it that already multiply still others will be addedwhen his message has truly reached the most distantpeoples Today we only begin to see all the fullness of theDeed that renewed the world The sudden clarity of the firstdays has become a great luminous path which grows withthe centuries

This great Deed of Love Jesus it is You Yourself Perceptible to manhumble dying in a corner of Judea oh yes You are man Flower of JesseYou are indeed the fruit of our earth Born of a woman truly formed fromher substance You are not some sort of phantom come down from theclouds of heaven You are deeply rooted in our earth20 But in You Jesus asin no other child of our race God showed himself You were not merely Hismessenger You are His living and substantial appearance Through You He

has not only spoken Or rather His language is an action His word is adeed it is You Yourself Splendor Verbum et imago Patris You Jesus onyour Cross the act uniting earth to heaven21

In You God still shows Himself and in your holy Church Inyour best disciples He still shines so well that one cannotmistake it For it is You who live in them Have we not allknown someone in whom a divine flame burned which theyhad lit at your hearth alone Their silent testimony is all themore persuasive Non eloquimur magna sed vivimus22 ldquoAsfor merdquo said Gerbet ldquoI lend an ear to the sounds that holysouls make with greater respect than to the voice ofgeniusrdquo23 What a great wise man concludes after longstudies and profound meditations in favor of your divinitythat encourages me but scarcely moves me forward Butthat a Francis of Assisi that being so obviously predestinedto make a ray of eternity shine over our earth makeshimself your absolute disciple that he loves You adoresYou annihilating himself before You that he is ambitiousonly to place his steps in your steps and to live from You byreproducing each of your features that he wants always tobe only your humble repetitor24 that not for a moment doeshe entertain the idea of engaging in a personal way oftrying another experience of adding at least something toyour message this humble and total will to imitatemdashChristototus concrucifixus et configuratusmdashin the face of yoursovereign independence such literalness in such an effusionof the Spirit such contrast in a similar holiness Themore I reflect on it the stronger the argument seems tome25

After that what do the difficulties matter in which myreason gets tangled Or rather how could it be that so loftyan object would not put it to flight If You have come tounveil a new kingdom and a new existence to me howshould I not consent to letting myself be removed from myusual surroundings Is it not normal that I have to abandon

my usual modes of thought26 Your word upsets myinstinctive logic it overturns all my arrangements of ideasit shatters my concepts This is the price for the liberation ofmy understanding Yet little by little in mystery a newequilibrium is established Under the secret action of yourSpirit faith is able to find its exact expressions whichprotect it against the ever-reborn assaults of a reason toolittle converted This was not without a long and arduouswork To define your twofold nature as for all that is worththe effort of our understanding it takes time reflectiongroping disputes materials from all sources A long andperilous journey A complicated winding history strewnwith a thousand contingencies An often tragic historymdashawonderful history27 It was through the adventurousconcepts of thinkers that Catholic Christology ended inrejoining the first intuition of faith

More than any other because it is at the center of all thedefinition in which the result of this labor is found today isimperfect An inevitable and blessed imperfection Notaccidental but essential necessary so that humbleastonishment before the mystery may subsist in theprecision of belief and in the firmness of adherence Butalready Jesus your very first disciples when they loved Youabove all and when they left all to follow You when theygave You all without thinking thereby to take anything fromGod when they contemplated You seated at the right handof the Father when they called You the one Lordproclaiming that all had been renewed by You and that allknees must bend before You your disciples believed in YouExtraordinary impossible faithmdashand yet authenticatedbeyond doubt A scandal as grave for the historian as thedogma itself for the thinker For though not beingabsolutely the same as ours the difficulties for a Saint Peteror a Saint Paul in believing were no less strong Nor werethose of their successors the Origens and the Cyrils the

Ambroses and the Augustines Modern man flatters himselfwhen he judges that the Copernican revolution or theKantian revolution dug out a new hiatus between histhought and the thought of the Ancients It was as hard tobelieve then as it is today It was hard for a JewishmonotheistmdashldquoListen Israel Your God is onerdquomdashto believe inthe divinity of a man28 It was hard to believe in thecrucifixion of the Son of God29 It was hard for a reasonableman who had been able to see up close the Son of Man inhis humiliation to believe in the resurrected Christ and inall these histories ldquothat do not allow themselves to beallegorized rdquo30

ldquoA scandal for the Greeks and folly for the Jewsrdquo OurFathers passed beyond their faith conquered all theobstacles What they were capable of we ourselves will becapable of and if we do not make ourselves unworthy ofthem the reasons that quickened them will not be lessstrong for us Their attitude will thus be ours We could nottranscend it but neither could we restrict it without denyingyour message at the same stroke Jesus For it is no morepossible to abstract You from this message than it ispossible to abstract God from Yourself On what would webase the demands of your Law if we began by failing torecognize the Demand of your Person Who wouldguarantee us the hope of the Kingdom if we were not torecognize the King of it Does everything in You not tell usthat You are Yourself the Kingdom as You are the Truth andthe Life31 So from the beginning the religion of Jesuswhich is the ideal of love was indivisibly the religion ofChrist that is the cult of incarnate Love It is folly to want todissociate them and to believe that the first would survivethe ruin of the second The religion of which Jesus is thesubject and norm is gradually achieved in us only throughthe religion of which Christ is the object Moreover it isblindness not to recognize their identity it is to tear the

seamless robe that the Gospel presents to us and it is notto see the metaphysical significance of Love

Evangelium ChristimdashEvangelium de Christo a modernscarcely more subtle form of the old antithesis betweenpractice and dogma32 But in maintaining contrary to thosewho set them in opposition that there is an essentialrelation between them we do not mean simply that onemust observe dogma as a means for assuring practice Theirties are intrinsic33 and the necessity of their agreement isonly one consequence On the one hand ldquopracticerdquo can becorrectly defined only by dogma from it alone does itreceive its meaning and spirit and on the other hand inone sense it already contains everything in itself for it issummed up in charity which is the spiritual being in act

God is Love and in a great feat of Love he came to takeup man sinner and miserable Man and God embraced eachother in Christ The unique intellectual fecundity of thisDeed it is specifically pregnant with all Christian dogmaticsso that the latter must be called strictly revealed No morein fact than one could dissociate the revealed truths fromthe very Person of the Revealer could one conceive a justand complete idea of the transcendent newness ofChristianity if one did not see that in this Person of Christsuch as the Apostles already show him to us and such asthe Church never ceases to contemplate and reproduce himthe reality of Charity and the truth of Dogma areindissolubly united Charity constituting the reality of thisDogma as this Dogma itself constitutes the truth of thisCharity34

As for the intellectual elaboration from which the dogmain its second state results which is to say in that abstractand learned formulation that multiplies it in distinctenunciations wholly guided by the Spirit of Truth as it is itnevertheless remains a human operation The materials it

employs just like those that entered into the firstspontaneous expression of faith are human materials Theycan thus serve them too in the real (though alwaysinadequate) transmission of divine truth only in the measureto which they are related to the Whole of Dogma35 In themeasure to which on the contrary they are consideredeach in isolation the formulas cease to bear witness to thedivinity of their origin they lose the best of their meaningceasing to have relation to divine charity such as itappeared to us in Christ For our faith is one and it is whollysummed up in You O Jesus36 You are the center and thebond of all its ldquoarticlesrdquo All its expressions all itsdevelopments are only so many means of understandingYou better and of situating ourselves better before You Thisis why the historians who instead of considering Christianityin its living unitymdashwhich one can do fully only if one lives itoneselfmdashalways scrutinize its elements only by taking themone after the other as a series of detached pieces resistany possibility of understanding it The essence escapesthem They do not find the soul at the end of their scalpelIn Christianity they find nothing divine not seeing Christ init

How true it is therefore to say that if dogma is necessaryfor the maintenance of practice the role of practice isnonetheless essential for maintaining the reality of dogmaintact We now discover the whole meaning of such anaxiom Without the truth of dogmamdashalthough there may besome good ldquounfaithfulrdquomdashone will only have an apparentpractice but on the other hand without the reality ofpracticemdashalthough there may be some bad Christiansmdashonewill no longer have anything but an apparent dogma On theone hand a charity that is less than genuine on the other asuperstitious belief or a verbal orthodoxy an ldquoorthologyrdquowithout any real content This is because if the articles offaith are numbered the Object of Faith is marvelously one If

the former are formed of abstract propositions the Latter ismarvelously Living And just as according to the oldScholastic theory all physico-chemical bodies onceassimilated by the human organism are directly informedby the soul so that there is no longer either carbon oroxygen and so forth but only human matter so with all theelements religious or profane in origin that enter into theChristian synthesis Constructed completely in one sensewith human materials the dogmatic formulas neverthelessexpress divine truth Elaborated by men they channel apart of divine revelation But this is on condition onceagain that one always relates them to that same revelationto the living Center to the divine Center from which allradiates and to which all must lead us to Jesus Christ JesusChrist the personal manifestation of Charity Jesus Christ inwhom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledgebecause in him dwells the fullness of the Divinity JesusChrist Word of the Father who speaks him and gives himentirely There is no absolute newness no revelationproperly speaking no true transcendence outside of theunique reality of his Person We must always return to thewords of Saint Irenaeus ldquoOmnem novitatem attulitsemetipsum afferensrdquo37

Jesus I believe in You I confess that You are God You are forus the whole Mystery of God38 What other definition of Godwould we seek than that given by your Apostle And was itnot in contemplating You that he found it God is Love Thissingle word contains an unfathomable mystery which Iadore But through You this mystery illumines our nightalready For Love has done a great deed and this Deed ofLove the Love made visible to our eyes perceptible tohearts of flesh effective and saving Love is You Yourself Itis God made man it is the Incarnation of God

We stammer as we can Our formulas are insufficientNecessary to shield the treasure of our faith their form

nevertheless troubles us But your true adorers O Jesushavenrsquot You Yourself said are not those who put their trustin frail words they are those who understand your feat andwho sustained by Youmdashfor that costs more than bloodmdashstrive to reproduce it

An absolute feat nothing has any value except throughcharity Charity demands all assumes all Charity judges all

An efficacious feat through this ldquodivine strengthrdquo alreadyrecognized by the Apostle Paul39 he uproots us from ouregotism he opens us takes us raises us makes us capableof adopting the contours of it in our turn He eradicates theold man and implants the new man Operatorius sermoChristi40

A finally definitive feat Whatever might be the futureprogress of our race whatever the enlargement of itsknowledge or the refinement of its ideal we will not betaken unawares The coming of Christ has marked thefullness of time No fullness no depth will ever exhaust theDeed of Calvary41

That is why peaceful about the past we also look to thefuture without fear ldquoQuid amplius reservandum cumamplius nihil sit plenitudine perfectionisrdquo42 Sure that ourfaith will never mislead us we go ahead of the excavationsof history and the research of science Ahead too of humanprogressmdashand we know too well that all progress of theworld will not obtain the least beginning of salvation Aheadof the new values to which history gives birth through itscrises Man can vary and perfect his culture without end Hecan discover and exploit new potentialities in it The veryUniverse can grow immeasurably and distant stars can oneday reveal a humanity more numerous more civilizedmdashmore miserablemdashthan our own the Deed of Christ wouldstill take it in It embraces all worlds just as it shines abovetime For all equally for each one of us and at all times for

those who believe in man and for those who despair of himits rays are those of Eternal Life

ldquoHe has come the Christ of God the Leader of thePromises And without any doubt he has been he alone tothe exclusion of all those who preceded himmdashand I have theaudacity to say he is to the exclusion of all those who followhimmdashthe one awaited by the Nationsrdquo43

the aforesaid trichotomy truly constitutes an item ofindictment Has not Saint Justin too been ldquoaccusedrdquo ofdistinguishing three elements in man12 It is thereforenecessary that the same text the same words not have atall the same meaning in the Apostle as they have in theAlexandrian even if their primary source is common or atleast that under the pen of the first of the two they be onlyan ἅ παξ common and unimportant

The phobia of ldquoPlatonismrdquo in any case can be discoveredin several of our exegetes13 Hence the veritable acrobaticsin the TOB translation [Traduction Oecumenique de la Bible]of this Pauline verse and the explanations given in the endto justify it The translation ldquoMay the God of peace himselfmake you perfect and holy and may your spirit your souland your body be kept perfectly safe in order to beblameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christrdquo Theoriginality of this translation consists in the fact that theword ὁ λόϰληϱον which in Paul preceded the tripartiteenumeration is shifted so as to follow it and in additiontransformed into an adverb so that the two words thatcome next αμέμπτως τηϱηθείη (in the singular sincethe subject was ὁ λόϰληϱον ὑ μῶν) become (in the plural)ldquobe kept perfectly safe in order to be blamelessrdquo To tell thetruth that does not change much and cannot changemuch in the obvious meaning of the text The latter couldbe changed only by the obviously impossible suppressionof one of the three terms of the enumeration But this littleingenuity on the part of the translators allows them tointroduce in a note a contorted exegesis with an intendedgoal about which they make no secret

Some understand ldquoMay your entire being that is spirit soul and body rdquo This division of the human person into three elements would be that ofGreek philosophy It is not usual in Paul and this verse understood in thissense would be a completely isolated text in the New Testament In orderto avoid this difficulty others have understood the first term of theenumeration ldquoYour spiritrdquo to be the equivalent of ldquoyourselfrdquo they then

translate ldquomay your whole person soul and bodyrdquo thus recovering therepresentation that Judaism and Paul had of the human person We haverendered the sentence in a way that makes a simple enumeration of termsapparent each of which can designate for Paul the entire man whether itis a matter of pneuma psychegrave or soma There is no need at all then for anexplanation borrowed from a Greek anthropology in three componentswhich moreover are never expressed with these three terms14

One could not better display a stratagem One could not bemore subtle more sophisticated more inconsistent too butat the same time more honest in the end more clear and inthe final proposition more precise

But here is another strange thing This unfortunatetrichotomy so suspect because of the ldquoPlatonistrdquo Origenthis trichotomy that some would like to be able to forbid inreading Saint Paul for fear of having to admit that theApostle at least once ldquoPlatonizesrdquo this accursedtrichotomy that some strive for want of something betterto exorcise by making it commonplace which one finds inPaul or in Origen or in anyone else has nothing Platonicabout it

We can first of all take this on the word of some goodexegetes those at least who are not hypnotized by the FirstLetter of Paul to the Thessalonians Do we not recognize forexample the mark of Hellenic influence and more preciselyof Platonic opinion on the Book of Wisdom a little beforethe Christian era in the fact that certain passages of thisbook enunciate or presuppose a bipartite division of thehuman composite a division ldquomore conformed to Greekcustoms than to Semiticrdquo15 Do they not strive with reasonmoreover to show that the recognized use of ldquoPlatonicdoctrines about the distinction of body and soulrdquo and aboutthe immortality of the latter takes nothing away from thebiblical foundation of a thought that is not that of aphilosopher but that of a wise man of Israel ldquonourished bythe Old Testamentrdquo16

If it happens that one has not read much of Plato one canalso go back to some authorities on him what one finds inhis work is totally different from what one finds in Saint PaulThere is a certain psychological trichotomy in other wordsa tripartite division of the soul reasonable irascible andconcupiscible So it is in the Republic Phaedrus andTimaeus According to Phaedrus the θυμός and theἐπιθυμητιϰόν are the two horses of the chariot led by theνοῦς Origen who is familiar with this division is verycareful not to make it his own he observes on the contrarythat it ldquois not confirmed by the authority of Holy Scripturerdquoand for this reason on two occasions he rejects it17 Thetranslators of the TOB were very close to perceiving all thatsince at the end of their laborious explanations they finallytell us that Paul had undoubtedly borrowed nothing ldquofrom athree-part Greek anthropologyrdquo given the fact that thelatter is never expressed in Pauline terms But why then thisfear which has made them shrink from the simplesttranslation

It is not correct moreover to say that the text of 1Thessalonians is an isolated text in Scripture and in Paulhimself Undoubtedly it has been unduly compared to averse from Deuteronomy ldquoYou shall love Yahweh your Godwith all your heart with all your soul and with all yourstrengthrdquo to the sole end of insinuating that only thenumber three was here and there to be retained assignifying simply a totality18 it is enough to read these twotexts to see that they are not comparable But on thecontrary when the Letter to the Hebrews celebrates theWord of God who ldquopenetrates to the division of soul andspiritrdquo (Heb 412) it is inspired without any doubt by ananthropology similar to that of Paul And one can hardlymaintain that the formula of the latter is a mere pleonasmldquofor other passages show clearly that the Apostle despiteall the elasticity or lsquofluidityrsquo of his terminology distinguishes

clearly between the phenomena that indicate the body souland spiritrdquo19 He does so in the First Letter to theCorinthians when twice he contrasts the unspiritual ornatural [psychique] man and the spiritual man20 W DavidStacey has maintained that these latter texts cannotcorrespond to that of the Letter to the Thessalonians of thetwo conceptions in conflict it would be necessary on thebasis of all evidence to choose the one later in date asexpressing the mature thought of the Apostle21 theantagonism of natural and spiritual would be substituted forthe hierarchical union of soul and spirit But here again thedesire to eliminate or at least to neutralize a text deemedembarrassing seems to us to have led Dr Stacey astray It isvery evident that the text of 1 Thessalonians is far fromhaving the same significance as that of 1 Corinthians thatdoes not prevent the thought of Saint Paul from remainingcoherent from one letter to another The soul (the psyche) isnever for its part the object in itself of a pejorativeappreciation If in another context he is severe or not veryadmiring of the man he calls ldquonaturalrdquo it is insofar as thelatter is only natural insofar as he closes himselfmdashorremains still provisionally closed22mdashto the Spirit of God whowould (or will) make of him a ldquospiritualrdquo man conferring onhim thus his ldquofullnessrdquo as the Letter to the Ephesians willexpress it (518) The natural man of 1 Corinthians 2 canhave a certain ldquohuman wisdomrdquo that is not uniquely ldquocarnalwisdomrdquo (cf 2 Cor 112) which does not lack all value butunderstands nothing ldquoof the things of the Spirit of Godrdquo forhim they are ldquofollyrdquo To this ldquowise manrdquo to this ldquocultivatedmanrdquo to this ldquoman of reason here belowrdquo the Apostlecontrasts the ldquowisdom of Godrdquo manifested in Christ23

It would be no more appropriate to bring out here thePauline opposition in a still more radical sense between theflesh and the spirit The carnal man is not the one whowould stop so to speak at a first landing that of the flesh

which is to say in such a case at things of the body but theone who has fallen into evil Body and flesh (it is reallynecessary to repeat this since people still seem to bemistaken about this at times) are in no way synonymous oreven comparable and do not belong to categories of thesame order In the thinking of Saint Paul the ldquofleshrdquo has ldquoaclose solidarity with sinrdquo it is this congenital weakness thatmakes the human soul fall into the slavery of sin Theldquospiritrdquo its antagonist is ldquothe state of freedom in which itblossoms when it has been faithful to the Spirit of God whoattracts it and comes to dwell within itrdquo There is noquestion here of any gradation but of opposition pure andsimple Saint Paul does not speak there of any dualitywhatever in the structure of the human being he does notcorrect a tripartite anthropology by another bipartite oneFor him flesh and spirit never designate two components ofhuman naturemdashlike body and soul would bemdashbut alwaysstatesmdashcontrasted statesmdash of the whole man24

If one wants therefore to find a certain Greek antecedentof philosophical significance for the Pauline trichotomy itwould not be appropriate to look for it on Platorsquos side Itwould rather be in Aristotle The Stagirite in factacknowledges in man an animated body the presence of asuperior element the spirit (νοῦς) the principle ofintellectual life immortal and divine Nevertheless theparallel takes a sharp turn for there would be at least onemajor difference While Aristotle spoke of a νοῦς Paulspeaks of a πνεῦμα Now as we know the difference is notmerely one of terminology It is no longer a question of asimple nuance of thought The substitution of one term foranother was besides not made by Paul alone it hadalready been carried out a little earlier by Philo Friendlytoward Hellenism Philo ldquowas imbued with the doctrine ofthe contemplative nousrdquo25 nevertheless in the passageswhere he comments on the creation account he does not

speak of νοῦς but of πνεῦμα God he says breathes intoman a pneuma not content with making him simply alivecomposed of soul and body he gave him part of his spiritthis is what Moses teaches by saying that he made him inhis image This pneuma in man is the principle of a higherlife the place of communication with God26 Now such isalso one of the meanings of pneuma in Saint Paul It is not inGreece that we must search for its origin but in the Bible

Father Joseph Huby has said it in a few words which morerecent authors would benefit from rereading In the Paulineverse ldquofamous because of the trichotomy spirit soul bodyof the human composite some thought to see a borrowingfrom Plato or Aristotle Both do acknowledge in fact threeprinciples in man but if the latter two of those coincide withthose27 enumerated by Saint Paul the first is different InPlato it is the nous the intellectual soul consideredmoreover by Aristotle as separable Instead of νοῦς SaintPaul puts spirit or pneuma here with him as in Philo this isa Semitic term suggested by the account in Genesis (27)where it is said that God breathed into the nostrils of theman a breath of life rdquo28 The Pleiade Bible has taken thesame explanation which seems imperative to us ldquoSpiritsoul bodyrdquo recalls Michel Leturmy in a note to histranslation ldquosuch is with the Semites the most commondivision with respect to the human compositerdquo29 In a noteto the translation of Matthew 625 the same authorexplains that the Greek ψ υχή translates the Aramaeannaumlfshacirc breath of the throat animal life (the ldquosoulrdquo) throughopposition to πνεῦμα which translates the Aramaean roucirc hacircdivine respiration breath of the nostrils (the ldquospiritrdquo) seeGenesis 2730

We do not believe it would be enough however to tracethe words of the Pauline triad simply to those of the BibleThe Apostlersquos anthropology is also based in part on hisexperience acquired from life in the Spirit of God There are

numerous commentators who in consequence consider thePauline πνεῦμα to designate in reality not something of manthat would be higher than his soul but the human soulinsofar as it is informed by grace participating as theSecond Letter of Peter (14) says in an effective way in thedivine nature united to the very essence of God by thecoming of the divine Spirit into it31 The ψ υχή in this casewould be not only ldquosensible liferdquo but also the higher realityof man as man that is although Buzy translates it in anoverly intellectualist language ldquoreason without gracerdquo32

This would be ldquothe state of the specifically living beingwhich is inherent in man as suchrdquo33 So too schematicallyBonnetain ldquoThe three terms come back to the followinggrace soul and bodyrdquo34 Father Andreacute-Jean Festugiegravere isclearly opposed to this interpretation which also proceedsin some from the fear of attributing to the Apostle ananthropology judged to be ldquoPlatonicrdquo For him theanthropology of Saint Paul is undoubtedly trichotomic thepneuma in question in the wish addressed to theThessalonians as in the texts mentioned above from theFirst Letter to the Corinthiansmdashand as in addition the Letterto the Hebrews speaks of itmdashis not the Holy Spirit butactually a part of man ldquothe movement of the phrase thetwo ϰαί the insistence on saying that we must becompletely in our whole being under the divine safeguardrdquoare the proof of it35 Besides if this pneuma is not itself thedivine life realized in man it is indeed in him the center ofthe higher life moral religious mystical it is the ldquocenter ofthe Christian liferdquo which is not a matter of feelings but offaith36

Some hesitate to choose between these two contradictoryinterpretations even if it means apparently contradictingthemselves in their explanatory formulas They are of thefeeling that the thought of Paul is profound and complexthey would like to lose nothing of it but do not see well how

to explain it in our language in a coherent fashion Such isFather Joseph Huby following the passage we have quotedldquoFor Paul the pneuma is more precisely the spirit of maninsofar as influenced informed and heightened by divinegracerdquo it is the ldquoprinciple of thinking center of moral andreligious life and summit of the soul The original (biblical)concept of the pneuma the human soul breathes from Godis magnificently deepened the pneuma designates thereason informed by grace man insofar as he becomes spiritparticipating in the nature of God through the spirit theνοῦς becomes capable of conquering the flesh it isunited to the very essence of God through the coming of thedivine Spiritrdquo37 In this essay somewhat awkward in itsattempts at reconciliation in which a fourth term (νοῦς) isintroduced we see to which side the author is leaning Wewill say as much of Max Alain Chevallier who with respectto 1 Corinthians 1414-16 after having noted for us ldquothefreely equivocal use of the word pneuma by Paulrdquo seems torestrict immediately the significance of his observation bysaying that this word ldquodesignates without describing it theinner man filled with the presence of Godrdquo38 Karl Barth inhis Dogmatics escapes such oscillations only thanks to hisgeneral doctrine which prohibits him from ldquoreifyingrdquo in away from giving a proper consistency to the human spiritconsidered in its relation to God After having justlyobserved that the ruah of the Old Testament does notcorrespond to the πνεῦμα ἅ γιον of the New39 but insofar asa ldquoanthropological notionrdquo to the πνεῦμα of the address tothe Thessalonians Barth makes haste to add ldquoOn the otherhand one cannot assert without reservation that the OldTestament and the New refer to a trichotomy of the humanbeing For both the human being in himself is body andsoul earthly form and earthly life but the body possesses asoul and its earthly form is that of a living being in themeasure in which the human being receives the spirit and

safeguards itrdquo This spirit must however be conceived ldquonotas a property of man but as a gratuitous giftrdquo which atdeath must be returned to God and which persists ldquowhichGod withdraws from him or grants to himrdquo40 What must bemaintained above all according to Barth is that man ldquois inno way lsquorelated to Godrsquo (Gunkel) he has simply beenawakened to his proper existence by the breath that Godbreathes into him and which allows him to breathe himselfWhat is he and what does he possess that he has notreceived and that does not differentiate him from God sinceit is God who has created himrdquo41

The human pneuma of which Paul speaks would thus beboth an element so little constitutive of his being that Godcan take it back from him and a created element thatdifferentiates him from God Such is the Barthian paradoxWithout having to take him literally perhaps we would haveto unite ourselves with the ldquospiritrdquo of it Would it in fact benecessary to choose between two contradictoryinterpretations that confront each other or resign ourselvesto a [false] harmonization that itself does not avoidcontradiction An expression used by Saint Paul himself 1Corinthians 211 could suggest an intermediate solution tous ldquoWho therefore among men knows the secrets of a manif not the spirit of the man which is in him (τὸ πνεῦμα τοῦἀνθϱώ που τὸ ἐν αὐτῷ)rdquo This pneuma is certainly not theHoly Spirit since Paul adds ldquoSimilarly no one knows thesecrets of God except the Spirit of Godrdquo Yet it does notappear completely like a constituent part of man as suchlike the body or the soul after having said ldquothe spirit of themanrdquo Paul corrects himself in a way to say ldquothe spirit whois in himrdquo which marks a nuance of capital importanceThus what par excellence makes a man what constitutesman in his worth among the beings of this world muchmore what makes him a being superior to the world wouldbe an element that rather than being ldquoof manrdquo would be

ldquoin manrdquo There is it seems to us in this Pauline πνεῦμα thesame kind of ambiguity notional because real as in thedivine ldquoimagerdquo or divine ldquobreathrdquo of creation such asChristian tradition interprets them From one author toanother and sometimes in the same author the sameambiguity will give place to oscillations which will not gohowever to the point of compromising before a ratherrecent date the idea of a tripartite anthropology Weconclude with a recent interpreter that the Pauline conceptof πνεῦμα is a concept ldquoof which our modern anthropologiescan absolutely not take accountrdquo42

2 Patristic Tradition

I The First Two Centuries Irenaeus It is a fact that Christianantiquity did not judge insignificant the Pauline verse about

body soul and spirit Nevertheless from one author toanother the interpretations differ without always being in

contradictory opposition to each otherIn his letter to the Philadelphians Saint Ignatius of Antioch

simply makes the Apostlersquos enumeration his own in judgingthat his correspondents like the Ephesians and theSmyrnians ldquowill be honored by the Lord Jesus Christ inwhom they hope with flesh soul and spirit (σαϱϰί ψ υχῇ πνεύματι) in faith charity and concordrdquo1 Athenagoras alsodistinguishes between soul and spirit for him the soul isplaced between ldquothe spirit of matterrdquo which is to say ldquotheflesh and bloodrdquo and the ldquoheavenly spiritrdquo which is ldquopurespiritrdquo and it can according to its choice mix with one orbecome the other

The soul becomes passive when it receives the spirit of matter and ismixed with it by looking below toward earthly things and to speak in ageneral way when it becomes only flesh and blood and ceases to be apure spirit2We believe that we will live another life heavenly and no longer earthlyif at least close to God and with God we have steadfast souls masteringpassion and if we remain not like bodies but like a heavenly spirit 3

In Tatian also the distinction seems clear when he saysldquoWe have knowledge of two sorts of spirits one of them iscalled soul the other is greater than the soul it is the imageand resemblance of Godrdquo4 Only subsequently it isimpossible to discern clearly if the spirit he distinguishesthus from the soul and which he calls ldquodivinerdquo is not simplythe Spirit of God The soul he explains is not immortal in

and of itself so ldquoif it remains by itself it dies with the flesh But when it is united to the divine spirit (θεῖ ον) it doesnot lack for help and it rises to where the spirit leads it Forthe seat of the latter is above while its origin is below Nowin the beginning the spirit was the guide of the soul itabandoned it when it did not want to follow it Now theSpirit of God does not reside in all but in some who livejustly The souls who have obeyed wisdom have drawnthe Spirit who is closely related5 to them (συγγενές) rdquo

Saint Irenaeus then Origen should make us pause a littlelonger because of the abundance of texts their importanceand their difficulty6

It is in the fifth book of Adversus Haereses that Irenaeusgives us his views about anthropology But his goal was notto write a clear and didactic exposition for the use of thehistorians who would pore over his text later on it was torefute heretics who conceived of salvation for man only inldquorejection of the fleshrdquo7 On the other hand careful alwaysto stick very close to Scripture he lets himself be guidedsuccessively by the different texts he uses which leads himto change more or less his perspective and his terminologyin the course of his text8 Hence the difficulties forinterpreters

The first passage in which the distinction between the souland the spirit is affirmed is of little interest to us for it isthere a question of an exposition of heretical doctrine9 Inresponse chapter 6 no 1 is presented as an orthodoxcommentary on the Pauline texts

Through the hands of the Father which is to say by the Son and the Spiritit is man and not a part of man who becomes the image and theresemblance of God Now the soul and the spirit can be a part of man butin no way man the perfect man is a mixture and union of the soul who hasreceived the Spirit of the Father and who has been mixed with the fleshmodeled according to the image of God Under the name of ldquoperfectrdquo the Apostle designates those who havereceived the Spirit of God He also calls them ldquospiritualrdquo they arespiritual through a participation of the Spirit but not through a voiding and

a suppression of the flesh In fact if one dismisses the substance of theflesh that is of the modeled work in order to consider only what isproperly spirit such a thing is no longer the spiritual man but the Spirit ofthe man or the Spirit of God By contrast when this Spirit in mixing withthe soul is united to the modeled work thanks to this effusion of the Spiritthe spiritual and perfect man is achieved and it is he himself who has beenmade in the image and resemblance of God When on the contrary theSpirit is absent in the soul such a man remaining in all truth natural andcarnal will be imperfect possessing indeed the image of God in themodeled work but not having received the resemblance by means of theSpirit10

From all the evidence Irenaeus counts here three elementsin man But is it simply a matter of man or of the perfectman Or rather to speak without ambiguity is it simply aquestion of the ldquoperfectrdquo man which is to say complete inhis nature or man divinized through the participation of theSpirit of God Or indeed does Irenaeus mix the two thingsThe text that follows will perhaps enlighten us

Modeled flesh alone is not the perfect man it is only the body of man thusone part of man Neither is the soul alone man it is only the soul of manthus one part of man Nor is the Spirit man one gives it the name of Spiritnot that of man It is the mixture and union of all these things thatconstitute the perfect man And this is why the Apostle in explaininghimself has clearly defined the perfect and spiritual man beneficiary ofsalvation when he says in this First Letter to the Thessalonians ldquoMay theGod of peace make you perfect and holy so that you may be fullycomplete and so that your whole beingmdashto wit your Spirit your soul andyour bodymdashmay be preserved without reproach for the coming of the LordJesusrdquoWhat motive did he have in asking that these three things to wit the soulthe body and the Spirit be preserved whole for the coming of the Lord if hehad not known that all three were to be restored and reunited and thatthere is for them but one and the same salvation This is why he calls ldquofullycompleterdquo those who present these three things without reproach to theLord Thus those are perfect who all at once possess the Spirit of Godremaining always with them and maintain themselves without reproachwith respect to their souls and their bodies which is to say preserving faithtoward God and keeping justice toward their neighbor11

The hesitation remains On the one hand the Spiritconstitutes with the soul one part of man it is called theldquoSpirit of the manrdquo and seems to be distinguished from the

ldquoSpirit of Godrdquo it in itself does not constitute the man anymore than the body or the soul does but it is one of thethree elements that constitute him these three elementsare also enumerated according to Saint Paul who wishesthem all three to be without reproachmdasha wish that wouldbe irrelevant even impertinent in the case of the Spirit ofGod finally moreover Irenaeus himself considers that theyare all three to be ldquorestoredrdquo and to be presented to theLord But on the other hand the soul receives ldquothe Spirit ofthe Fatherrdquo the man is called ldquospiritualrdquo insofar as hereceives participation of the Spirit and this participationmakes him to be not only in the image but in theresemblance of God finally if this man is ldquoperfectrdquo it isbecause in addition to the soul and the body he ldquopossessesthe Spirit of Godrdquo12 And these two series of affirmations arenot found in different contexts they are closelyintermingled

Yet a little farther on several passages come to supportthe second series

Those who possess the deposit of the Spirit and who surrenderthemselves to the Spirit the Apostle rightly calls ldquospiritualrdquo since theSpirit of God dwells in them For spirits without bodies will never bespiritual men but it is our substancemdashthat is the composite of soul andfleshmdashthat in receiving the Spirit of God constitutes the spiritual man 13 The weakness of the flesh makes the power of the Spirit shine forth and it is of these two things that the living man is made living due to theparticipation of the Spirit man through the substance of the flesh mdashTherefore without the Spirit of God the flesh is dead 14The breath of life which makes the natural man is one thing and thevivifying Spirit which renders him spiritual is another The breath has beengiven indistinctly to all the people who inhabit the earth while the Spirithas been given exclusively to those who trample down earthly covetousdesires 15ldquoFor the Spirit will come out around me and it is I who made all breathrdquo (Is5716) He ranks in a way the Spirit in a sphere apart beside God who inthe last days spread it over mankind for adoption but he situates thebreath in the common sphere among creatures and he declares itsomething created Now what has been created is different from the onewho creates it The breath is thus a temporary thing while the Spirit is

eternal After having enveloped man from within and without heremains always with him and henceforth will never abandon him16

One will note however that in these texts the perspectiveis no longer that of an anthropological analysis and thatthey are condemned by other biblical passages than thepreceding Moreover as Irenaeusrsquo principal objective justnow was to claim for the body itself a salvation of which theheretics say it is incapable his objective here is to show thatthis salvation the definitive blossoming of the spiritual lifewhose seed is in each man is the work of the Spirit of Godin each man In no passage is Irenaeus concerned to give uswhat we would call a philosophical anthropology He doesnot go deeply intomdashto tell the truth he does not even havein mindmdashthe problem of the insertion of the Spirit of God inman Despite the several expressions we have brought outand several others as well we believe that the Spirit ofwhich he speaks is always the Spirit of God even when heconsiders it in man If for example it is said in 5 6 1 thatthe soul and the Spirit can be ldquoone part of manrdquo one canobserve with Dom Adelin Rousseau that ldquoparsrdquo is in thesingular ldquoThus although Irenaeus does not hesitate to seein the Spirit of God one of the three constitutive elements ofthe perfect man he refuses and for good reason to makethis Spirit a lsquopartrsquo of the perfect man rdquo A little farther onit is said that the Spirit like the soul and the body is to berestored and saved which seems strange if it is indeed aquestion of the Spirit of God but Dom Rousseau againcomments ldquowhat is to be saved is not the Spirit as such butthe Holy Spirit insofar as communicated to man for his fullachievement in other words the Spirit is less saved than itsaves rdquo These explanations are ingenious they canseem a little subtle they do not however in our opinionfalsify the general line of Irenaean thought Perhaps it isonly necessary to complete them by recognizing that thetexts that are to be thus explained give witness to a rather

clear tendency to conceive of man (even if it is a question ofthe ldquoperfect manrdquo) according to the anthropological schemesuggested by the Apostle17

If therefore the Spirit indeed designates for Irenaeus theSpirit of God his very manner of considering this Spirit ofGod in man and of seeing in it thus one of the threeelements that combine to constitute the perfect man posesan anthropological problem18 Just like the text of the FirstLetter to the Corinthians of which Irenaeus wants to give anaccount it invites a resolution of this problem in thedirection of a certain ldquotrichotomyrdquomdashwhich Origen more of aphilosopher will soon do ldquoThe hereticsrdquo we read again inthe fifth book of Adversus Haereses ldquo do not understandthat three things as we have shown constitute the perfectman the flesh the soul and the Spirit One of them savesand forms to wit the Spirit another is saved and formed towit the flesh another finally is between those two to witthe soul which now follows the Spirit and takes its flightthanks to him now lets itself be persuaded by the flesh andfalls into earthly desiresrdquo19

These explanations seem to us akin to those of FatherJean Meyen-dorff with respect to man ldquocomposed of fleshsoul and Holy Spiritrdquo ldquoThis viewrdquo he observes ldquowhichsounds strangely pantheistic if one judges it according tolater theological categories shows in fact a dynamicconcept of man that excludes the notion of lsquopure naturersquoMan is created so as to share the existence of God this iswhat distinguishes him from the animal and is expressed inthe biblical account of the creation of Adam lsquoin the image ofGodrsquo rdquo20 As Pierre Boyer-Maurel also says21 if for Irenaeusa certain dichotomy ldquoaccounts for man fashioned in theimage of Godrdquo it is nevertheless a trichotomy ldquoin which thebreath only precedes the Spiritrdquo who ldquoaccounts for thebecoming of man of that man who is created by lettinghimself be created throughout the divine Economyrdquo

II Origen Irenaeus spoke particularly of the Spirit of Godeven when that Spirit shared became by consent of thesoul the spirit of man Origen will speak more explicitly of

the spirit of man insofar as an opening to the Spirit of GodThese are two inverse perspectives much rather than two

adverse doctrines1One authority on Origen Gustave Bardy has however

written that the tripartite division ldquowhich is imposed onhim in a way by several Scripture passages plays no rolein his teachingrdquo2 Another historian of ancient Christiandoctrines Francois Bonifas had expressed a judgment inthe contrary direction but as little conformed to the realityafter having pointed out that ldquounsteadinessrdquo of the Paulineterminology ldquomakes it doubtful that the Apostle intended [in1 Thessalonians 523] to make a scientific distinctionrdquo hewent on thinking essentially of Origen ldquoYet the Fathers ofthe Church saw in the expressions of Saint Paul a rigorousdivision in which they found once again that of their oldmentor Platordquo3 Previously J Denis while not mixing Platoup in the affair had recognized in Origen the existence oftrichotomic texts but he saw in that only a foreign body inthe midst of Origenian doctrine ldquoGenerally speakingrdquo hesaid ldquothe soul and the spirit are but one for Origen and ifhe had not respected a division that came to him from SaintPaul and which appears to have been adopted generallyas much by the orthodox Fathers as by the heretic scholarshe would have suppressed one of the terms of this divisionand would thereby have been spared numerouscontradictionsrdquo4 The prejudice to which in each of thesethree last cases the historian is unconsciously giving way isnot difficult to perceive To overcome it would require an in-depth study After the work by G Verbeke on LrsquoEvolution dela doctrine du Pneuma du Stoiumlcisme agrave saint Augustin (1945)the works of Henri Crouzel and Jacques Dupuis have broughtus all desirable light on this point ldquoAt timesrdquo Father Crouzel

tells us ldquoOrigen is a dichotomist distinguishing the bodyand the soul following the Platonic custom5 But most of thetime he sees according to Scripture three elements inman spirit soul and body He has recourse to thistrichotomy when it is a matter of explaining his idea of manand he states it each time he encounters in the texts anexpression that suggests it and this is so throughout hisliterary careerrdquo6 But it is Father Jacques Dupuis who drawsthe matter into perfect clarity in his important monographon ldquoLrsquoEsprit de lrsquohommerdquo eacutetude sur Irsquoanthropologicreligieuse drsquoOrigegravene For him ldquoThere can be no doubt thatthe verse from Saint Paul is the immediate source of hisanthropological trichotomyrdquo (65) It is principally he that wewill follow here

ldquoWe often find it asserted in Scripturerdquo says Origen ldquothatman is spirit body and soul and we have ourselvesdeveloped the subject at lengthrdquo7 In that as in othersubjects it is in fact the sacred text most especially that ofSaint Paul that truly constitutes the framework for histhought8 And it is with reference to Scripture that he triesto define clearly the notion of the Pneuma For him thePneuma is first of all the Divine Life in principle but it is alsothe shared divine life the creature itself becomes pneumain the measure that it possesses this life Yet it is a first kindof participation in the divine Pneuma which does not yetallow it to be said that man has become pneuma aparticipation that without betraying Origen we can alreadycall natural because it consists in an element that is anintegral part of the nature of all men and that is preciselyhis pneuma ldquoThe Spirit of God even when it is present inus is one thing and the pneuma proper to every man thatwhich is in him is something else The Apostle clearlyaffirms that this spirit (this pneuma) is different from theSpirit of God even when the Holy Spirit is present in usover and above the spirit of man that is in himrdquo9 The

distinction could not be put more clearly Origen asks againin the same passage of the commentary on Saint MatthewldquoIs the spirit of Elias the same as the Spirit of God whodwells in Elias or indeed do we have two different thingsthererdquo And he replies ldquoThe Apostle shows clearly that theSpirit of God when he dwells in man is distinct from thespirit of the man lsquoThe Spirit itself testifies to our spirit thatwe are children of Godrsquo (Rom 816) and in another placelsquoNo man knows what is in a man if not the spirit of the manwho is in him likewise no one knows what is in God if notthe Spirit of Godrsquo (1 Cor 211)rdquo10

Origen indeed says like Paul pneuma and not nous It isbecause they did not sufficiently distinguish between thesetwo concepts that several have identified the pneuma of theanthropological trichotomy with the preexisting nous andhave made it the higher (intellectus) part of the soulmdashunless in order better to distinguish between pneuma andpsyche they reduced this latter to its sensible part Theythen spoke of Origenrsquos imprecisions his unstableterminology indeed of his inconsistency of thought and ofhis contradictions This was from not having read himclosely enough11 He distinguishes the spirit from the soul(and in this case he is not speaking of the nous) as clearlyas he does the soul from the body and he repeats atdifferent times that ldquowe are composed of a soul and aspiritrdquo this is the case it seems in the third book of Periarchocircn12 so too in the fourth book in the famoustheoretical parallel that he institutes between man andScripture13 In the Entretien avec Heacuteraclite for theinstruction of his august audience he insists ldquoThat man is acomposite being we know through Scripture The Apostle infact says lsquoMay God make you holy spirit soul and bodyrsquoand so forth This spirit is not the Holy Spirit but one part ofthe human composite (μέϱος τής τοῦ ἀνθϱώ πουσυστάσεως) as the same Apostle teaches when he says

lsquoThe Spirit gives witness to our spiritrsquo rdquo14 In thecommentary on the Letter to the Romans he will also quotein support a text from Daniel15 here he invokes as anexample what happened at the death of Christ havingwanted to save all men the Savior had taken body soul andspirit now ldquothese three elements during the Passion wereseparated at the time of the Resurrection they werereunited During the Passion they were separated How Thebody in the tomb the soul in hell the spirit he deposited itin the hands of the Father rdquo16

This spirit of man represented by the eagle in Ezekiel17 isplaced above the soul18 But never in the texts of thetrichotomic series does Origen call it νοῦςmdashso that thiscould be a criterion for discerning the origin of certainpassages given as Origenian but which are in reality fromEvagrius19

But how are we to understand this spirit which is ldquoin usrdquo20 What is its role If we follow again the indications givenby the Apostle we will compare it to the moral conscienceldquoOur gloryrdquo says Paul ldquois the testimony of our consciencerdquo(2 Cor 112) The conscience always rejoices in what good Ido on the other hand it can never be accused of doing evilbut on the contrary it remonstrates it accuses the soul towhich it is bound this is a sovereign freedom I thereforethink that it is this very spirit that the Apostle tells us is withthe soul being associated with it like a pedagogue and aguide to teach it good to chastise it and to reprimand itwhen it sins It is this spirit of which the Apostle again saysthat ldquono one knows what the man is if not the spirit of theman who is in himrdquo it is the spirit of the conscience alsoaccording to what Paul says ldquoThe spirit himself giveswitness to our spiritrdquo21

We should not however in exalting the pneumaexcessively reduce its reality if it is not a simple member ofthe human composite neither is it the simple voice of the

conscience Inaccessible to evil22 placed in a way as wehave said ldquoabove the soulrdquo (ἀνωτέϱω) as a ldquoguide tovirtuerdquo23 it is ldquomuch more divine than the soul and thebodyrdquo24 ldquobelonging truly to man it remains entirely in aparticipation of the Holy Spirit who gives himself to us it isthe point of contact between man and the divine Pneumawho inhabits himrdquo25 This is why it is always holy it is holyby essence not of course the ldquoHoly Spiritrdquo but throughparticipation a ldquoholy spiritrdquo26 ldquothe seal of the Holy Spiritmakes holy the spirit that is in usrdquo27 in each of us Hencethe paradox the pneuma in man is holy and it mustbecome so we must affirm at the same time the holiness ofthis pneuma and ldquothe fortuitous character of a holy liferdquo28 Ifwe seek to bring out the fundamental idea expressed (let usnot say sought for Origen seems very much the master ofhis thought) in these texts and other similar ones we couldwithout betraying it express it thus the pneuma that is ldquoinmanrdquo in every man assures a certain hiddentranscendence of the man over himself a certain opening acertain received continuity between man and God Not thatthere is the least identity of essence between the one andthe other (like Irenaeus like Clement Origen is animplacable adversary of this pantheism of the pseudo-Gnostics) but it is at the heart of man the privileged placealways intact of their encounter

Would man therefore be after all impeccable No But thecenter of moral freedom and choice is not the pneuma Thatis why we can say that for Origen the pneuma ldquodivine giftrdquois not properly speaking part of the personality29 Thecenter of choice is the soul in its higher part (νοῦς) Thelatter can be inclined as Saint Paul says on the side of thespirit or on the side of the ldquofleshrdquo (which does not mean thebody) which is to say that it is ldquocapable of virtue and ofvicerdquo30 When it is said that the flesh desires against thespirit and the spirit against the flesh without any doubt the

soul is posed between the two as being able to acquiesceto the desires of the spirit (si eum sequi velit)31 or let itselfbe led to carnal desires in this latter case it becomes withthe flesh a single body of covetousness and of carnalappetite in the former case on the contrary beingassociated with the spirit it becomes a single spirit withitrdquo32 The spiritual man is the one in whom the spiritprevails33 the carnal man he in whom the flesh prevailsThe spirit itself the pneuma always remains holy but ineach one it can have vitality or torpor flight or fall flame orsluggishness34 This is why paradoxically Origen can affirmboth as we have said that the pneuma is holy and that itmust become so35

Still following Paul Origen also speaks of the ldquonaturalmanrdquo who is again neither carnal nor spiritual and theexplanation he gives in his respect manifests once again aparadoxical character distinguished only with difficulty fromthat spirit (pneuma) that is in man without being uniquely ofman and that becomes fully himself and fully completesman only in his participation in the Spirit of God ldquoThenatural man does not understand what the law of God is itis madness to him but the spiritual judges all thingsrdquo (1 Cor214) We think that there is a reason why Paul omits theword ldquomanrdquo after ldquospiritualrdquo For ldquothe spiritualrdquo is more thana man he is superior to that humanity defined by the soulthe body or by the two together and not by the spirit whichis more divine than these two elements and whosesupernatural participation once achieved defines thespiritual When the soul rises follows the spirit andseparates itself from the body when it no longer evencontents itself with following the spirit but remains in it (asthis passage shows ldquoToward you have I raised my soulrdquo Ps251) how would it not lose so to speak its own nature andnot itself become spirit36

Toward the end of this text a trace of the speculations ofPeri archocircn on the subject of the soul will be noted buttoned down by ldquoso to speakrdquo It is necessary toacknowledge however that from one work to the otheracross the succession of dates and the varieties of subjectstreated and literary genres the points of view are so diversethat in the words if not in the thought the reader has somedifficulty finding a perfect coherence among all theOrigenian texts on the pneuma

At death all pneuma returns to God this is whatEcclesiastes says ldquoThus the pneuma of the just and that ofthe sinner have an identical destiny both end at theFatherrdquo37 But ldquoit does not follow that saint and sinner sharethe same destiny With the saint the whole man enters intoGod with the sinner the pneuma returns to the Lord thesoul and body perish in Gehenna hence the intrinsic tearingof the human beingrdquo38 Like the remark by Father CrouzelOrigen is akin here to the thought of Saint Irenaeus whosaid ldquoAll those who are destined to life will be raised up withtheir bodies their souls and their spirits those who havemerited punishment will surrender their souls and theirbodies to it for with them they have strayed from divinegracerdquo39

Later Christian tradition will not be as unfaithful to thisconception of the pneuma as one might believe It is foundagain in a series of intuitions ideas and opinions of variedexpression This is for example the idea dear toRuysbroek of a certain ldquodeiformityrdquo of the human being ofhis higher ldquosuperessentialrdquo life in God40 It is the obscurefeeling that there exists in each of us even the greatestsinner a hidden room where no one but God can enter inldquothat sacred point in us that says Pater no iterrdquo as PaulClaudel says magnificently in the famous ldquoCantique dePalmyrerdquo and that cannot hide from love41 It is the intuitionof a Georges Bernanos at the threshold of death noting in

his diary that ldquosin makes us live on the surface of ourselvesrdquoand that even when we offend God ldquowe never ceaseentirely to desire what He desires in the depths of thesanctuary of our soulrdquo42 There are similar traits in the workof Dostoyevsky although they too can be rather equivocal(a novelist does not express himself like a theologian) theydo not prevent him from glorifying personal freedom andproclaiming the necessity of uprooting evil in receiving ldquonewbirthrdquo The Origenian doctrine of the pneuma alsoreverberates throughout the Bonaventurian tradition In atotally different climate and without any need to search fora precise influence from one to the other the very doctrineof Saint Thomas Aquinas would not be completely foreign tohim It questions neither the singularity of each humanbeing nor the drama of existence nor the divinetranscendence43

NOTE

In his commentary on John 423-24 Origen defines ldquotrueadorersrdquo first by the spirit then in relation to the truth Hethus breaks down the dual Johannine formula and explains itterm by term drawing his inspiration again from Paul whoopposes spirit and flesh (Rom 89 Gal 56 2 Cor 103) It isinteresting to note that in evoking Romans 89 Origen addsa μήϰετι those who are no longer in the flesh but in theldquospiritrdquo He thereby stresses the impact of the coming ofChrist and of the gift of the Spiritmdashalready evoked by Paulmdashwhich divide history into a before and an after Origen doesnot work therefore only on words (flesh and spirit) but heis inspired by the Pauline thought in which these terms arenot only anthropological but in which they evoke the impactthat the history of salvation the Incarnation and the gift ofthe Spirit have on man It is the same with Galatians 516fIn verse 18 Paul in fact opposes the condition of man underthe Spirit to that of this same man under the Law As for thethird evocation it is a little different Paul speaks there of hisconduct because some accuse him of acting according tothe flesh that is of allowing himself to be guided bymotives that are too human (Jean-Michel Poffet OP ldquoLeMeacutethode exeacutegeacutetique drsquoHeacuteracleacuteon et drsquoOrigegravenecommentateurs de Jean 4rdquo Jeacutesus la Samaritaine et lesSamaritains [Fribourg Switzerland Eacuteditions Universitaires1985] 191) III From Origen to Augustine A few examplesshould be enough to show the continuity of this tripartiteanthropology across the patristic age

Cyril of Jerusalem addresses to the newly baptized thesame wish that Paul did to the Thessalonians1 Gregory ofNyssa in his treatise on the Creation of Man practices acertain eclecticism Following the perspective that isnaturally his own since he compares the nature of man to

that of the beings that surround him and particularly ofother living beings he begins by distinguishing a threefoldactivity merely vital (that of plants) sentient (that ofbeasts) rational these are like three souls or threesubstances all three of which are found in man alone Thevocabulary is that of the philosophical ϰοινή of that periodthe higher life of man is λογιϰή it is directed by the νοῦςhis nature is a νοεϱά ϕύσις But this can also be understoodsays Gregory according to the words that the Apostleaddressed to the Ephesians (sic) First of all through a boldconcordism he places the body in an equivalence with thenutritive life the soul with the sensate life the spirit(πνεῦμα) with the intellectual life (νοεϱόν) then withoutfurther hesitation and without seeming to perceive that heis changing the perspective he finds once again the truePauline thought or at least comes close to it bydistinguishing life according to the flesh (σαϱϰιϰή) from lifeaccording to the spirit (πνευματιϰή) and by showing thesoul in an intermediary situation having to choose betweenvice and virtue2 Farther on he will explain that only thesoul endowed with reason such as it is in man fully meritsthis name of soul in such a way that he would haverejected it seems any attempt at concordism between theνοῦς and the πνεῦμα3

It is not Hellenism but indeed the Bible that inspires thetrichotomy of the Syrian tradition such as we see it in thishymn of Saint Ephraim of Nisibis For the soul is still moreprecious than the bodyAnd the spirit is still more precious than the soul

And the Divinitymore hidden than the spiritThe body will be clothed with the beauty of the soul when

the end arrives

The soul will put onthe beauty of the spiritThe spirit will put on in its very image the (divine) MajestyThe body on equal footing with the soul will see itself

elevated The soul on equal footing with the spiritThe spirit at the height where the Majesty is 4

In another later Syrian text the awkwardness of an attemptat harmonization between the three elements of man andthe three Persons of the divine Trinity will be noted JacquesdrsquoEacutedesse (d 708) writes in his Explanation of the MassldquoSacred things are holy The soul the body and the reasonare sanctified by three sacred things by water blood andspirit and besides by the Father the Son and the Spirit andtruly man does resemble God in virtue of this trinity ofcomposition the soul corresponds to the Father the body tothe corporeality of the Son and the reason to the HolySpirit Thereby man thus resembles Godrdquo5 One cannevertheless wonder if the word translated by ldquoreasonrdquo isnot here the equivalent of nous rather than of pneuma andif the soul is not merely the sensate soul The same doubtcan be expressed with respect to a passage from theTestament in Galilee of Our Lord Jesus Christ of which wehave the text in Ethiopian ldquoShould the body be judged withthe soul and the spirit Will the body of every man berevived with his living soul and his spiritrdquo6 We will find asimilar hesitation in examining the Latin tradition andperhaps one must say in certain cases at least it cannot beresolved

Saint Ambrose writes on the one hand ldquoHomo ex animarationali constat et corporerdquo7 but also on the other handldquoPrimum unusquisque homo est corporalis secundoanimalis tertio spiritualisrdquo and the parallel he institutesbetween these three elements and the three heavens towhich Saint Paul alludes in the Second Letter to the

Corinthians does not enlighten us much about the meaningof this trichotomy8 Ambrose is not alone in any case inacknowledging it We read in Gregory of Elvira ldquoManifestumest enim tribus perfectum constare semimortalemhominem id est corpore et anima et spiriturdquo9 AndAugustine expresses himself in a similar way on severaloccasions10

In reality Augustinersquos vocabulary is rather evasive Theterm mens as we know holds a privileged place in his workIn De Trinitate he develops a distinction destinedsubsequently to become more rigid that between ratioinferior and ratio superior In commenting on Psalm 3 verse4 ldquoet exaltans caput meumrdquo he explains that this ldquocaputanimaerdquo is the ldquospiritusrdquo or the ldquomensrdquo and so on11

Certain texts which have the appearance of explicitdefinitions speak of two single elements as constitutive ofman ldquoHomo enim constat ex corpore et spiriturdquo12 ldquoNihil estin homine quod ad ejus substantiam pertineat atquenaturam praeter corpus et animam totus homo hoc estspiritus et carordquo13 Yet Augustine does not consider the twowords anima and spiritus to be simply synonyms althoughfor brevityrsquos sake he includes in only one of the two thecomplex meaning of both ldquoNomen animae spiritus est abeo quod spiritalis est animae nomen est ab eo quodcorpus animet hoc est vivificetrdquo14 From which we have acertain number of explicitly trichotomic texts which are ofgreat importance for a correct understanding of Augustiniananthropology for it is on this trichotomy that Augustinebases his doctrine of the memoria15 and he gives it asessential to the Catholic Faith ldquoSi quis tenuerit catholicamfidem ut totum hominem credat a Verbo Dei essesusceptum id est corpus animam spiritum rdquo16

In the same De fide et symbolo Augustine explainshimself at somewhat greater length ldquoEt quoniam tria suntquibus homo constat spiritus anima et corpusmdashquae

rursus duo sunt quia saepe anima simul cum spiritunominatur pars enim quaedam ejusdem rationalis quacarent bestiae spiritus diciturmdashprincipale nostrum spiritusest deinde vita qua conjungimur corpori anima diciturpostremo ipsum corpus quoniam visibile est ultimumnostrum est Anima vero cum carnalia bona appetit caronominatur rdquo17 we also quote several similar texts ldquoUttotus homo sit spiritus et anima et corpus sed aliquandoduo ista simul nomine animae nuncupari rdquo18 ldquoPropterspiritum et animam et corpus rdquo19 ldquoAd creaturaeintegritatem id est spiritum et animam et corpus et illudquo intelligimus et illud quo vivimus et illud quo visibiles etcontrectabiles sumusrdquo20

In De fide et symbolo at the same time as hedistinguishes anima from spiritus Augustine identifiesspiritus and mens21 Likewise too he distinguishes theldquopars rationalisrdquo of the soul (which is thus no longer only theanimator of the body as in animals) from the ldquopars quaeexcellit id est ipsa mensrdquo22 It is practically the lastdistinction expressed in De Trinitate by the seeminglyequivalent words ratio inferior and ratio superior23

In brief the anthropological analyses of Saint Augustineare varied H I Marrou has set up a table which does notintend to be exhaustive24 and it must be noted besides thatunder the same word under the same verbal distinction ithappens that Augustine places different realities On thewhole less dependent on a literal interpretation ofScripture and more particularly of Saint Paul than Origenwished to be25 more inclined to express himself in avocabulary borrowed in part from Neoplatonism Augustineplaces under the word spiritus a reality that sometimesmore closely resembles the nous of Greek philosophythan the pneuma of the sacred text Yet through the dualityhe recognizes within this spiritus (or this ratio or this mens)he remains a faithful witness of the Christian tradition

3 From Saint Augustine to Our Day

I Medieval Spiritual Masters In Augustine as in Origen (andas in the whole patristic tradition) the notions are fluid the

historian must strive to grasp the movement of theirthought rather than to classify their concepts Augustinianexplanations moreover do not correspond point by pointwith Origenian analyses The Christian spiritual masters ofthe Middle Ages will rather often be in this regard closer to

Origen than to Augustine In order not to interpret them in asimplistic way it is necessary constantly to bring analogy

into play Perhaps even the undertaking to reunite them in akind of continuous chain extending to our time is a little

too reminiscent of concordism Let us say finally thatspiritus is not only designated or understood in variousways with some it splits so that one has to deal rather

with a quadripartite anthropology one of the causes for thisis the desire to make a place for the Platonian tradition ofthe intelligence a tradition that is amalgamated somehowor other to the Pauline tradition It is having made these

remarks that we gather together the examples that follow

For John Scotus man is composed of three elements butthe third element called in turn animus intellectus or mensresembles the νοῦς more than the πνεῦμα We read in book5 of De divisione naturae ldquoTotam humanam naturamcorpus videlicet et animam et intellectumrdquo (PL 122 910-11)But another text in book 2 chapter 5 expresses aconception closer to the biblical conception ldquoAciem mentisqua ilium [Deum] intelligimus et in qua maxime imagocreatoris condita estrdquo (PL 122 531 c)1

The traditional trichotomy dominates the structure ofBernardrsquos Brevis Commentatio on the Song of Songs (n 1)In William of Saint Thierry the third term the ldquospiritrdquo splitseither in order to grant a certain place to the nous to theintellectus to rational understanding or rather in order todetail the principal stages of the spiritual life The Letter tothe Brethren at Mont Dieu that important text distinguishesa triplex status animalismdashrationalismdashspiritualis which is tosay ldquothose beginningrdquo ldquothose on the wayrdquo and ldquotheperfectrdquo The opposition between the flesh and the spirit isnot denied William will be able to remind those who havingbegun to taste the sweetness of contemplation might betempted to neglect the permanent necessity of spiritualcombat2 But rather than this dialectical opposition theobject of the Letter is to set forth a pedagogical ladderwhich is moreover nonetheless Pauline in its inspirationThe beginners are still guided by an animalis sensus (this isthe natural man of Saint Paul which is not the carnal man)those on the way acquire a rationalis scientia (we observehere the care to integrate into the formation of the monkthe whole cycle of human knowledge) and the perfect enjoyspiritualis sapientia3 In addition these are not threeairtight categories or perfectly distinct and successivestages just as there is passage from one to the other thereis immanence from one to the other William remains faithfulto the same schema in Miroir de la foi4 as well as in hiscommentaries on the Song of Songs ldquotres status esseorantium vel orationum animalem rationalemspiritualemrdquo5 In De contemplando Deo a subdivisionintervenes between the ratio the discursive faculty andthe intellectus which does not seem to be at this point theequivalent of the spiritus (1 4)

Isaac of Stella speaks in nearly the same way in alanguage however that has more of an intellectualist ringto it in distinguishing the understanding from the reason

which abstracts the forms of the sensate vis animae quaimmediate supponitur Deo6 We have the feeling that thissecond-generation Cistercian was familiar withScholasticism

Hugh of Saint Victor is closer than Isaac to Bernard andWilliam of Saint Thierry According to him the eye of theflesh (which is to say here the body) sees the world andwhat it contains the eye of the reason sees the soul andwhat it contains but the eye of contemplation penetrates tothe innermost depths of man and above man This eye ofcontemplation belongs to those who possess the spirit ofGod7 In Achard of Saint-Victor the order of the last twoelements or of the last two stages seems reversed hetreats de discretione animae spiritus et mentis mens wasas another author of the twelfth century says quasiquoddam divinitatis insigne8 (But this is hardly a questionof vocabulary alone) Whatever might be the distinctionsand subdistinctions orientations inflections and differencesin vocabulary it can be said of all these spiritual masters ofthe Middle Ages as well as of many of those who will followthat they took up the essential chorus of the Pauline andpatristic trichotomy and that most even attribute extremeimportance to it as Sandaeus a seventeenth-centuryauthority was to remark

Magni aestimant Mystici nonnulli et putant maxime necessariam ad suamTheologiam ac perfectionem divisionem inter spiritum et animam9

This is also true of Bonaventure ldquoHabet enim anima trespotentias animalem intellectualem divinam secundumtriplicem oculum carnis rationis contemplationisrdquo10 Werecognize the schema of William of Saint Thierry and Hughof Saint Victor11 For Thomas Gallus closer in this regard toIsaac of Stella ldquoreason feels the intelligence seesrdquo12

Johannes Tauler in several of his sermons teaches thatldquoman is so to speak composed of three menrdquo and that one

must distinguish in him first of all an ldquoexternal manrdquo orldquoanimal manrdquo then a ldquoreasonable manrdquo finally a ldquohigherman wholly inner and hiddenrdquo that ldquonoble and deiformrdquoman ldquomade in the image of Godrdquo13 The mystical theologyof Harphius (Henry Herp) also says that ldquothe soul isaccording to Scripture divided into three parts rdquo14 andthe appeal to Scripture despite the appearance is justifiedFor our authors in fact the adding of a supplementary termto the Pauline enumeration does not derive from the factthat they would abandon Paul in favor of Plato but from thefact that they are concerned besides about a theory ofknowledge which Paul did not at all have in view in hisaddress to the Thessalonians Yet La Perle eacutevangeacutelique leadsus to a tripartite schema the body being understood as inPaul but at base the difference from the medieval authorswe have just enumerated is hardly perceptible

Each man seems almost to represent three men according to the body heis bestial according to the soul he is reasonable and intellectual andaccording to the spirit or the naked essence of the soul where God dwellshe is deiform 15This very noble portion of the soul some call mens insofar as itcontinually breathes after God and is as it were a largely deiform or divinething and the image of God in man It is something divine in being as itwere flooded with God and united to him It is also called the point and thesummit of the spirit because God without intermission shines in the latterlike a mirror It is also according to what the good Father Ruysbroek saysthe highest part of the soul It is also called the sparkle of the soulbecause it is in God what the sparkle is in fire In the first [unity or union] we are superessential and deiform and in thesecond spiritual and internal and in the third active and moral 16

The foregoing is the text of a compiler from which one mustnot ask too great a coherence in terminology or too great aunity in point of view If we now appeal to a theologian whowas the adversary of the mystical school represented byTauler Harphius and La Perle eacutevangeacutelique and who refers tomore reliable authors such as Augustine ldquoBernardrdquo andHugh he will give us the same essential distinctions

Tres cognoscendi modi sunt quorum unus animalis dicitur utens maximeoculo carnis alius rationalis utens plus oculo rationis tertius spiritualisutens oculo contemplationis sicut distinxerunt divini homines tres oculoset tres vivendi modos17

Louis de Blois finally in the Institution spirituelleperseveres in bringing out this ldquodepth of the soulrdquo thatunder different names always corresponds to the ldquoPaulinepneumardquo and that will not find a place in the late Scholasticanthropologies or in most modern anthropologies

God who to tell the truth is everywhere dwells in the spirit of man and inthe simple depth or inner sanctuary of the soul in a particular manner Hedwells there in his own image and never absents himself18This depth naked and stripped of any image is raised above all creatures it transcends time and place and through a kind of perpetual adhesionremains united to God in his principle It is however in us by essence forthe abyss and depth of the soul are essence The soul possesses a certain supernatural unity of spirit in which itdwells as in its own habitation and it is carried away into the divineessence even to this supreme unity in which the Father Son and Holy Spiritare in the simplicity of the divine essence itself 19

Assuredly these speculations about the divine essencemdasheven if they maintain a trinitarian affirmationmdashand aboutthe essence of man presuppose a long evolution of thoughtthat in one sense distances us greatly from Saint Paul Butacross languages theories and as one never stops sayingtoday cultural contexts that differ greatly to be sure it ispossible to discern a fundamental continuity

This continuity will not be broken by the period called theRenaissance

II Saint Thomas Aquinas in Tradition1

I

In the spiritual history of mankind the three domainsconstituted by what one can designate under the threedenominations of religion morality and mysticism are oftenpresented as independent or even opposed to each otherThe alliance or the mutual penetration between mysticismand morality does not appear achieved in and of itself anymore than that between morality and religion Yet one couldnot conclude that such an alliance or such a mutualpenetration is an artificial and wholly contingentphenomenon In opposition to an empiricism thatdisintegrates everything without explaining anything wewill say rather that it responds if not to the demands atleast to the profound wish of nature But nature itself hastaken time in finding itself

In fact we note that it has not fully found itself outside theChristian revelation The union of the three aforementionedelements religion2 morality and mysticism does not reachits fullness it does not become harmonious and indissolublein principle except in the tradition coming from the GospelThere and most specifically in the Catholic form of thistradition it does not appear as a secondary fact obtainedby convergence subsequent to various gropings but as anoriginal and essential fact Religion morality and mysticismmanifest themselves there ldquoin a reciprocal envelopmentrdquoBetween these three both an attraction and a tension existthat could be the source of many vital problems but there isobjectively neither separation exclusion nor conflict forldquothe Deity while transcending being the true and the goodcontains them formallyrdquo3

This is why in particular in the Catholic traditionmdashlivedand reflectedmdashldquoreasonablerdquo life and ldquospiritualrdquo life or lifeldquoaccording to the spiritrdquo penetrate each other without beingidentified with each other4 and morality penetrates themystical life to the end Pseudo-Gnosticism relegated therewarding of good and punishing of evil those pillars of theldquoDemiurgerdquo to the lower level of ldquoexotericrdquo faith the greattradition on the contrary maintains this moral aspect ldquoatthe heart of the revelation of the Father through the uniqueSonrdquo5 ldquoIt is notrdquo says Saint Justin for example ldquobecause ofhis [natural] affinity with God or because he is spirit like himthat man sees God it is because he is virtuous and justrdquo6 Inhis Psychologie des mystiques Joseph Marechal noted thisessential characteristic Mystical ascent he explains doesnot erase ldquoany specific trait of the common Christian liferdquo7In other words the Christian virtues proposed for thepractice of all are not simply means of freeing oneself theirexercise is not simply something transitory in theirsubstance they are already something of the end itself Thisis what Saint Ambrose was able to explain wonderfully in abrief sentence in his commentary on Saint Luke withrespect to the Beatitudes ldquoSicut enim spei nostrae octavaperfectio est ita octava summa virtutum estrdquo8 And this iswhat Saint Augustine repeated in similar terms speaking ofadhesion to God the blessed life and eternal wisdom ldquoUnaibi virtus erit et idipsum erit virtus praemiumque virtutisrdquo9

In a remarkable thesis Pierre Nemeshegyi has posed thesame problem with respect to Origen ldquoTo place Being andmoral Goodness in equation to place this moral Goodnessin God formally and as characterizing the final ground of hisBeingmdashis this not to be condemned to enclosing all spirituallife in an anti-mystical moralism The Good is atranscendental But is it formally what we understand byldquomoral Goodrdquo Or is there not a deepening of this moralGoodness which would reestablish the possibility of an

innermost mystical depthrdquo And Nemeshegyi concludes ldquoInfact in Origenrsquos conception moralism and mysticism areone and the same thingrdquo10 Saint Gregory the Great oftenso close to Origen will unite good sense to spiritual fervor inorder to remind contemplatives that if they want to befaithful to the Gospels and to advance on the true way theymust take care to scorn the humble precepts of morality andto seek to understand them in a more sublime sense11

The medieval spiritual masters will take up again thesethoughts of Origen Ambrose Augustine and GregoryExpressing ourselves in the customary categories of theirexegesis which the Middle Ages systematized we will saythat for them ldquoanagogyrdquo achieves the final perfection bothof ldquoallegoryrdquo and of ldquotropologyrdquo (of dogma and ofmorality)12 Of all authentically Catholic mysticism onecould declare what one historian said of Saint Bernard byallusion to the traditional interpretation of the ldquoBooks ofSolomonrdquo for each of them as for him ldquothe moral school ofEcclesiasticus and Proverbs the necessary preliminary forthe mystical school of the Song of Songs is a school whosedoors are never closed behind usrdquo13

This ldquospiritualrdquo equilibrium has at times seemedthreatened in one direction or another Some spiritualscholars have seemed to want to transcend purely andsimply the sphere of morality and reason This is whatcauses Evagrius not without reason to be judged severelyat times it is what Ruysbroek reproaches in the falsemystics of his time it is one of the points that the bull Inagro of John XXII criticizes in Meister Eckhart Whatever mayhave been true in each of these cases the thing thatinterests us here is the norm that inspired such criticismsWhile following Saint Paul in distinguishing the ldquosoulrdquo fromthe ldquospiritrdquo (not moreover as two substances nor even astwo ldquofacultiesrdquo) one always refuses to separate them as ifthe penetration into the higher zone of the ldquospiritrdquo must

make us reject as no longer valid the operations of theinferior zone of the ldquosoulrdquo But the hierarchical distinction ismaintained which is to say that the mystical life is not forall that reduced to the plane of simple morality A text fromSaint Teresa is very enlightening here the saint observesthat the ldquocenter of the soulrdquo or the ldquospirit of the soulrdquo is aldquodifficult thing to express and even to believerdquo

Certain interior effects give the certitude that there is in certain respectsa very real difference between the soul and the spirit Although in realitythey are but one we sometimes perceive a division between them that isso delicate that it seems the one functions in one way and the other inanother There are so many things in our innermost depths and thingsso subtle that it would be boldness on my part to undertake to explainthem We will understand all that in the other life if God deigns toadmit us to the dwelling where we will have understanding of all thesesecrets14

Yet the equilibrium can be upset in the opposite directionfrom that for which Evagrius and Meister Eckhart werereproached This has been true periodically for anti-mysticalscholars or simply anti-mystics against whom periodicallytoo protests are raised With them it is not the ldquosoulrdquo thatis forgotten or scorned in the name of the superior ldquospiritrdquoit is the ldquospiritrdquo that is ignored misunderstood in the nameof a truncated moral wisdom But with any of the greatscholars of the Catholic tradition we do not have to registerany such misunderstanding This is what we would wish todemonstrate here with respect to Saint Thomas Aquinasand more particularly with respect to the Summatheologica

II

From first appearances one might be brought to believethat Saint Thomas in the Summa is one of those scholarswho upset the equilibrium in the second direction But in

reality he did nothing of the sort His doctrine in the Summatheologica contains in fact the equivalent of what othershave expressed through the distinction of soul and spiritunderstood as the distinction of a moral region and amystical region If one does not observe this right at thebeginning it is because Saint Thomas expresses himself indifferent words

It could be written that in his doctrine ldquoall the problemsthat the spiritual life and its evolution pose return in thisconsideratio moralis which has but one object man inprogress toward his blessed destinyrdquo15 The thing isincontestable Still it might be useful to specify how Nomore in Saint Thomas than in others is the union of the twomoral and spiritual (or ldquomysticalrdquo) elements a confusion or areduction pure and simple from the mystical to the moralThe synthesis is not a unification in the exclusive favor ofone of the two Of course one could judge that the Thomistanthropology by its Aristotelian roots favors the originalityof the mystical life less than others And like the virtue ofldquoreligionrdquo the theological virtues seem at first glance mixedin a long list of ldquovirtuesrdquo within the second part of theSumma It is appropriate nevertheless to remark beforeseeing things at closer range that only a later usage givesthis second part the name ldquomoralrdquo After having in the firstpart considered God as the universal cause Saint Thomasconsiders him now as end after the divine model he clingsto his image after the departure of God from all things heenvisages the return of all things to God Nowmdashthis is theimportant point for our subjectmdashthis itinerary of returncomprises several stages

It is true that the prologue to the Secunda secundaespeaks of scientia moralis of materia moralis and that allseems right at first to be reduced to the consideratiovirtutum But let us look a little closer In this sameprologue as in the articles that follow Saint Thomas

nonetheless distinguishes from the virtutes morales notonly the virtutes theologicae but also the virtutesintellectuales which are along with prudence wisdomunderstanding and knowledge closely connected to thegifts of the Holy Spirit of the same name Moreover afterhaving exhausted the plan he had outlined for ldquoomittingnothing of moral thingsrdquo by studying successively thevirtues and the vices that are opposed to them heconsiders in a kind of extension a series of new questionsrelated first of all to ldquoprophecyrdquo to ldquorapturerdquo and othergratuitous gifts then to the ldquocontemplative liferdquo a series heattaches a little artificially one must admit to the sectionon the different states of life

This artifice has sometimes embarrassed commentatorswho do not always understand the articulations that theplan of the Summa comprises here Thus we have Father MD Chenu who has the ldquotreatise on the states of liferdquo beginat question 183 starting from where ldquothe spiritual life islinked to social functionsrdquo16 The thing seems in fact ratherlogical Yet Saint Thomas himself said in his littleintroduction to question 171 ldquoDe prophetiardquo

Postquam dictum est de singulis virtutibus et vitiis quae pertinent adomnium hominum conditiones et status nunc considerandum est de hisquae specialiter ad aliquos homines pertinent

So Father Antoine Lemonnyer had adopted a differentsolution from that of Father Chenu He saw in questions 171to 198 concerning the gratuitous gifts a kind of parenthesisand made the final treatise of the Secunda secundae beginfrom question 179 which is to say from the ldquocontemplativeliferdquo he gave a certain unity to this final treatise thanks tothis single yet twofold title ldquoHuman Life Its Forms and ItsStatesrdquo17

The divisions adopted respectively by Father Chenu andFather Lemonnyer both have their probability and both can

be supported In fact however as Father Chenu remarkedSaint Thomas treats the states of life properly onlybeginning with question 183 entitled ldquoDe officiis et statibushominum in generalirdquo But already before that questions171 to 182 form a whole very distinct from the precedingquestions in which we have the equivalent of a littletreatise on mysticism

Even if he did not treat explicitly at that time the relationsbetween active life and contemplative life18 the placeaccorded by Saint Thomas to this latter in his general planwould thus authorize us to distinguish it from the domain ofmorality He himself besides tells us so in proper termsldquoThe moral virtues are not a constitutive element of thecontemplative liferdquo19 in fact ldquothey are ordained toactionrdquo20 Now action is inferior to contemplation The latteris ldquosimpliciter meliorrdquo21 Action prepares for contemplationby winning the soul through the external exercise of thevirtues the necessary ldquopreliminary dispositionsrdquo bydisciplining the passions and by submitting them to thereason22 Contemplation is the act of the ldquohigher reasonrdquowhich is to the inferior reason following an old biblical andPhilonic symbolism revived and slightly transformed23 asthe man is to the woman24 It is ordained to ldquoperfect loverdquoand as Saint Gregory taught while the active life issynonymous with service the contemplative life issynonymous with freedom25 As Aristotle had alreadyaffirmedmdashbut we know with what freedom Saint Thomaschanged and transformed the thought of the philosophereven while he invoked him as an authority26mdashit is a lifeabove the human condition27 and is made to last always28

No more than any other of the great witnesses of theChristian tradition did Saint Thomas reduce the spiritual lifeto the exercise of morality or spiritual understanding torationality Father Pierre Rousselot too neglected today (atleast in France) demonstrated this well by placing in

evidence the distinction between intellectus and ratio afundamental distinction with numerous consequences29mdashBut neither does he separate them on the one hand as anauthentic heir of the Fathers he integrates the virtuous lifeinto eternal life by saying ldquoUniuscujusque perfectio nihilaliud est quam participatio divinae similitudinisrdquo30 And onthe other hand he knows that in the earthly conditionexternal action which is first of all the virtuous life mustitself proceed from contemplation

The comparison with the Plotinian philosophy or with theldquoagnosticsrdquo can in this regard be very enlightening becauseof the apparent proximity of the doctrines

In a parallel way one would find in Christianity [says Jean Trouillard on thissubject] a going beyond ethics by the theological virtues and the gifts ofthe Holy Spirit The Christian life consists in divinization not in ascesis Yetthe role of the will seems much more considerable in Christians than in thePlotinians not only in charity but also in faith which is itself presented as aduty Theologians do not ordinarily situate the theological virtues on theother side of the decisions of the faculties or on this side of the constitutedvalues This is what must not be forgotten when faced with the use of theNeoplatonic doctrine of virtues attempted by Christian authors inparticular by Saint Thomas (1a 2ae q 61 a 5)31

And again Maurice de GandillacPlotinus harshly criticizes the Gnostics who believe that by ldquoraisingoneself near to God on wings of a dreamrdquo (2 9 9) one escapes the humancondition According to the fragments of Heracles (Legrand 315) Mosesthe author of the Law belongs to the ldquonaturalrdquo world Superior to purematter however he ignores the spirit By proscribing by judging bypunishing he fulfills an inferior ministry and the ldquoperfectrdquo are in no waysubject to his commandments Pure at the beginning they are savedwithout exercise as without repentance and without pardon Thispresumption will be the common gospel for all the sectarians who across the Middle Ages will preach a ldquogoing beyond the ethicalrdquo32

We should not let the differences in emphasis from oneauthor to another or from one school to another hide fromus therefore the consistent thought of the Christiantradition Already in someone like Origen the union is

achieved between ldquoa resolutely contemplative religiousideal and a passionately active liferdquo33 For Saint Gregory theGreat to whom Thomas Aquinas refers the whole spirituallife is subject to a rhythm and ldquotrue perfection begins tomature only in the difficulties and obstacles of the activeliferdquo34 Medieval monasticism did not scorn Martha in thename of Mary it maintained that action must be joined tocontemplation or the ldquopracticerdquo to the ldquotheoryrdquo a little likelove of neighbor to the love of God35 The two inseparableaspects of the Christian doctrine on this subject will onceagain be expressed very well in the reflections of John HenryNewman still an Anglican preaching on ldquoevangelicalsanctity the completion of natural virtuerdquo Newman in factshows in this sermon that there is ldquoan essentialresemblance between the spiritual man and the virtuousmanrdquo following the words of Saint Paul ldquoThe fruit of theSpirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truthrdquomdashwhiledrawing the attention of his listeners to ldquothe point ofdifference between them viz that the Christian graces arefar superior in rank and dignity to the moral virtuesrdquo36

Moral perfection and holiness virtuous life and mystical lifeare distinct they are hierarchical but at the same time theyare united in charity forma virtutum vinculum perfectionis

III Renaissance and Reformation Nicholas of Cusa takes upthe Pauline trichotomy again in the same terms as the

Apostle He places it in correspondence with on the onehand a cosmic trichotomy and on the other hand what isperhaps unexpected the three Persons of the Trinity He

uses Saint Augustine as his authority for both thesecorrespondences

We read in fact in one of his Sermons ldquoIn homine suntspiritus anima et corpus sicut in mundo elementalia vitaliaet intellectualiardquo1 and in his opuscule the Beryl he

distinguishes ldquothree modes of knowledge the sensate theintellectual and the intelligentialrdquo which he sayscorrespond according to Saint Augustine to the threeldquoheavensrdquo2 That was the cosmic analogy And for thetrinitarian analogy set forth in the work De Concordantiacatholica

Unde homo secundum Augustinum Super symbolo (40 193-94) ad instarTrinitatis imaginem gerens ex spiritu et anima et corpore constitutusexsistit Spiritus autem est superior nobilior et altior intellectualispersonae Patris figuram repraesentans et corpus personam Filii et animaquasi utriusque naturam participans ab utroque procedens personamSpiritus sancti3

Taking up his position like Nicholas of Cusa from the pointof view of knowledge Marsilio Ficino distinguishes thesensus the ratio and the intellectus We recognize in thatthe heritage of the great Scholasticism In a similar mannerin the prologue of his Heptaplus Giovanni Pico dellaMirandola distinguishes the vital instinct discursive andpractical knowledge and the contemplative faculty4 Moreimportant is the twofold witness here in agreement ofErasmus and Luther

In his famous Enchiridion militis christiani Erasmus whotakes his inspiration directly from Saint Paul ldquoends finally ina tripartite anthropology which finds its completion in thegift of the Spiritrdquo5 After having in chapters 4 and 5 spokenof man such as Plato describes him first according to theTimaeus then according to the Phaedo Phaedrus and theRepublic and recalled his distinction of the soul asreasonable irascible and concupiscible Erasmus describesin chapter 6 the Pauline opposition between the flesh andthe spirit then he comes in chapter 7 to the trichotomy of1 Thessalonians which he comments on with reference toOrigen ldquoHe does not hiderdquo observes Charles Beacuteneacute ldquohispleasure in setting forth this theory lsquoLibet et Origenicamhominis sectionem breviter referrersquo rdquo He sees it based as

well on Isaiah (299) and on Daniel (386) so he adopts it inorder to make it intervene ldquoas a definitive stage after theanalyses of pagan philosophersrdquo to serve ldquoas anintroduction to the great rules of Christianityrdquo6 With Origenhe sees in the soul this ldquomedian partrdquo of the human beingwhich can swing either to the side of the flesh or to the sideof the spirit7 In the Methodus or Ratio verae theologiae asimilar text recalls our trichotomy indirectly ldquoNec omnisaffectus hominis est caro sed est qui dicitur anima et quidicitur spiritus quo nitimur ad honestardquo8 But it isparticularly in the controversy with Luther about free willthat Erasmus opposes to the exclusivism of his adversaryhypnotized by the sole dialectic of the flesh and the spiritthe divine pedagogy explained by Origen according to thePauline schema

Luther himself paradoxically had provided a commentaryin his own manner with respect to the first words of theMagnificat (1520) on the text of 1 Thessalonians and hismanner did not differ perceptibly from so many of theothers we have seen

ldquoMy soul glorifies the Lordrdquo Scripture divides man into three partswhen Paul says at the end of 1 Thessalonians ldquoMay God make youholy through and through in such a way that all your spirit and your souland your body rdquo And each of these partsmdashlike the entire man mdashisequally divided in another way concerning not nature but quality In otherwords nature has three parts spirit soul and body all three of which canbe good or bad The first part the spirit is the highest the mostprofound the most noble part of man it is what makes him capable ofgrasping imperceptible invisible and eternal things In brief it is the housewhere faith and the word of God dwell The second part the soul isexactly the same spirit according to nature but accomplishes a differentfunction It is the spirit insofar as it animates the body and acts through it Its proper role consists in grasping the things that reason can knowand probe 9

As for the third term the body its function is to ldquoactrdquo and toldquoput into practice the knowledge of the soul and the faith of

the spiritrdquo As Maurice de Gandillac observes here the bodyhas nothing to do with ldquomirerdquo And by adopting such atripartition of the human being (which is not at all to beunderstood we repeat as a division of three ldquofacultiesrdquo)Luther envisages the human subject as Saint Paul and afterhim the whole of Christian tradition have done ldquoin aperspective that is more biblical than Greekrdquo10 The relativeassimilation that he works between the soul and the spirit isthe echo of a common Scholasticism and the fruit of aninflection toward the point of view of knowledge which wasnot that of Saint Paul in his address to the Thessalonians butin no way contradicts it Of these two characteristics thepreceding centuries have already brought us many anexample11

Like his predecessors Luther thus maintains the threefoldgradation which he also develops through a traditionalimage

We will give a simile for that drawn from Scripture Moses made atabernacle with three different edifices The first edifice was calledsanctum sanctorum it was the dwelling of God and there was no lightfrom within The other sanctum contained a chandelier with sevenbranches and lights The third was called atrium the parvis it was locatedin the open air in the light of the sun This figure depicts the Christian Hisspirit is sanctum sanctorum the dwelling of God in the night (stripped oflight) of faith for he believes what he neither sees nor senses norunderstands His soul is the sanctum there are found the seven lights towit all kinds of understanding discernment science and knowledge ofcorporal and visible things His body is atrium it is manifest for all in sucha way that one can see what he does and how he lives12

It is necessary however to recognize that this trichotomydid not have for Luther an importance comparable to hisdialectical opposition between the flesh and the spirit InSaint Paul from before the commentary on the Magnificathe had been selective the lessons on the Letter to theRomans (1515-1516) were already setting up an oppositionbetween the flesh and the spirit without anthropological

reference to any subject whatever13 and later in hiscontroversy with Erasmus he was to prove all the morehostile to the anthropology drawn from 1 Thessalonians 5 byhis adversary whom the latter guided by Origen used toweaken his dialectic He writes in De servo arbitrio

I am well aware of Origenrsquos fable about the threefold affection of man offlesh soul and spirit14 the soul holding the middle between the flesh andthe spirit and able to turn either toward the one or toward the other Butthis is dreaming he says them but does not prove them at all Saint Paulcalls flesh everything that is without spirit as we have demonstrated15

Luther does not formally contradict here what he had said inthe commentary on the Magnificat What he reproaches inOrigen as in Erasmus is believing in free will But thispreoccupation leads him to falsify their anthropology andthereby to forget or to misunderstand the Pauline verse thathe had first interpreted correctly To which in his enormoussecond Hyperaspistes Erasmus will reply several times overthat the tripartition of 1 Thessalonians 5 even ifcounterparts are found in the philosophers is proper toSaint Paul The philosophers in fact do not usually call thehighest part of the human being spiritus (pneuma) butmens or ratio and what Paul understands by spiritus is notany ratio whatever but the ratio already inspired by graceThat he concludes is what Luther does not want torecognize As often happens the discussion in whichErasmus finds himself involved leads him himself to apartially inaccurate interpretation of Saint Paulrsquos text bymaking him attribute to the ldquospiritrdquo what Paul says of ldquothespiritual manrdquo Yet it remains true that he had first analyzedperfectly the address of the Apostle to the Thessaloniansand Luther had at first done the same16

Lutheran mysticism at least in the rather unorthodoxSebastien Frank (1499-1542) nonetheless recognizes thethree elements of which man is composed body soul andspirit Frank sees in the soul the personal and free being

capable of orienting himself in one direction or in the otherhe sees in the spirit the inner Word or God present at theheart of every man enlightening him through his Word andinclining his will through his Spirit17

The same traditional distinctions originating in Saint Paulare found in the humanists of the sixteenth century ofmystical tendency For a Paracelsus (1493-1541) since manis a microcosm he must unite within himself the threeconstitutive parts or elements corresponding to the threestages of the universe material world astral worldDivinity18 (an idea of Nicholas of Cusa although distorted isrecognizable in this) Cornelius Agrippa in his De occultaphilosophia tried to unite the Platonic traditions to Mosesand to Saint Paul

Plotinus itaque et Platonici omnes post Trismegistum similiter tria ponunt inhomine quae vocant supremum infimum et medium Supremum est illuddivinum quam mentem sive portionem superiorem sive intellectumillustratum vocant Moses in Genesi vocat ipsum spiraculum vitarum a Deovid vel a Spiritu ejus in nos spiratum Infimum est sensitiva anima quametiam idolum dicunt Paulus Apostolus animalem hominem nuncupatMedium est spiritus rationalis utraque connectens extrema atque ligansvid animam animalem cum mente et utriusque sapiens naturamextremorum 19

Guillaume Postel as original as ever at least in expressiondistinguishes in man the anima the animus and the mens20

It was undoubtedly following him four years later thatCharles Toutain wrote in his tragedy Agamemnon Threenatures in us which all talk with each other Excite our lifeand keep it alive The Spirit the Soul and Animus And onebeing taken away Suddenly all life together would depart21

The Anglican Lancelot Andrewes (155 5-1626) expresseshimself in a similar way in his devotions Into Thy hands OLord I commend myself my spirit soul and body 22

IV The Modern Period Saint Francis de Sales will open thisperiod for us His Traiteacute de lrsquoamour de Dieu [Treatise on theLove of God] reproduces the Pauline doctrine to perfectionAfter having explained that ldquowe have three kinds of loving

actions spiritual reasonable and sensualrdquo Francis de Salesobserves that ldquothe powers of the sensory part which are ormust be the servants of the spirit ask seek and take what

has been rejected by the reason dishonoring thepurity of the intention of their master who is the spirit andin the measure that the soul is converted to such gross andsensate unions it is diverted from the delicate intellectual

and cordial unionrdquo Thus by the same movement as we findin Saint Paul the way is sketched to the opposition of the

flesh to the spirit Like many in the Middle Ages Francis deSales following Saint Augustine also distinguishes ldquotwoportions of the soul the inferior and the superiorrdquo theinferior being that which discourses on the basis of the

experience of the senses while the superior founded ldquoonthe discernment and judgment of the spirit is commonly

called the spirit and mental part of the soulrdquo in thisldquosuperior portionrdquo he also distinguishes ldquotwo kinds of lightrdquo

a natural one and a supernatural one and so forth Thiswhole apparatus of precisions which aims at integrating aswe have already seen in others the ldquodegrees of knowingrdquo

within the spiritual movement is not without interest but itis in some ways only a flowering from the basic trichotomy1

It is this same trichotomy that we find again as might beexpected in a philosopher attentive to the spiritual lifesuch as Maine de Biran We know the place that the doctrineof the ldquothree livesrdquo holds in Biran animal life human lifeand divine life particularly in the reflections of his Journalintime2 Jules Lachelier also adopts it but perhaps bydiminishing it in his desire to work a kind of synthesisbetween Maine de Biran and Kant when he explains thethree components of existence sensibility understanding

and reason3 We detect also an indication of the very strongmystical tendencies in Joseph de Maistre in this affirmationfrom the Eacuteclaircissements sur les sacrifices ldquoThe animal hasreceived only a soul to us were given a soul and a spiritrdquo4

One might be tempted to seek a distant analogy withSaint Paul in the Kierkegaardian theory of the three spheres(rather than stages) of existence aesthetic ethicalreligious If that analogy is an illusion other thoughts ofKierkegaard are right in finding their place here ldquoIt isimpossible to treat of sin in any of the sciences thatordinarily speak of it because all are occupied with what ispsychological in our nature while sin is a determination ofthe spiritrdquo and again ldquoThe spirit intervening psychology isimpotent So good as its name indicates is occupied withthe soul It sees everything from outside the spirit itself islived only from within Seen from outside an act isalways determined and for all that the object of psychologyBut rdquo5

One might also be tempted to evoke here the Blondeliandistinction between ldquonoeticrdquo and ldquopneumaticrdquo This wouldnot be completely wrong But Blondel places these twokinds of thought in correlation rather than inviting us to risefrom one to the other He does not thereby have in mind arelation of the psyche to the pneuma but rather a divisionof the function within the spirit Despite the word ldquonoeticrdquothis is not the nous but rather the logos which would beaccording to him the partner of the pneuma6 and thedialectic of the noetic and the pneumatic is in play at everystep so to speak of the development of thought and life inthis conception the first the concrete principle ofuniversality being the factor of objectivization and unifyingforce while conversely the second the concrete principleof singularity is the diversifying element and subjectivefunction7 Both at the same level are thus essentiallycomplementary Blondel held to his distinction he often took

up the study of it He wrote in 1907 in one of his personalnotebooks ldquoThink out the discovery of the two thoughtsrdquo8

Now in 1909 he wrote again ldquoThe two thoughts Ah howthey are always in me tending to supplant each other whileit is necessary to reconcile them hierarchize them makethem differently but equally serve the divine work of finaland total reintegrationrdquo9 This word ldquohierarchizerdquo must beunderstood as demanding a reciprocal hierarchization10 Itdoes not necessarily follow however that any analogy withthe Pauline trichotomy any echo of the ldquothree livesrdquo ofBiran are absent from the Blondelian work Blondel was toopenetrated with the thought of Saint Paul and Saint Bernardhe was too closely interested in mysticism he was toofamiliar with the spiritual authors of the Christian traditionto let us believe in such an absence without a fullerexamination But the fact that his dialectic of the noetic andthe pneumatic which is fundamental in his philosophy doesnot turn explicitly into a hierarchy of the soul and spirit or ofthe discursive reason and mystical intuition (although heobviously knew of this distinction as well as that betweenthe understanding and higher intelligence)11 is not anegligible indication Blondel maintained a prudent attitudein the face of natural mysticism just as on the other handhe remained prudent in the face of facile personalisms

In the Russian theologian Sergius Bulgakov the Paulinedistinction between the soul and the spirit is placed inpowerful relief It assumes a mystical aspect that is moreemphasized than in the Apostle or at least it proceeds froma base of natural mysticism that despite the reference tothe famous discourse at Athens does not seem tocorrespond perfectly to its more complex notion of thespirit

Although it is a creature a certain eternity of creation a certain non-creation are proper to the spirit Spiritual existence is rooted in the

eternity of God the created spirit itself is similarly eternal and uncreatedCf Acts 1728

It is true that Bulgakov can also invoke the authority of theGreek Fathers Had Saint Cyril of Alexandria not written thatldquothe image of the divine nature was imprinted in man by theinfusion of the Holy Spiritrdquo12 The importance of hisanthropological theory derives in any case from the fact thatit is from this that he explains the mystery of theIncarnation

The postulate of the divine Incarnation is a certain original identitybetween the divine I and the I of man an identity that does not abrogatetheir essential distinction The human hypostatic spirit draws itsdivine and uncreated origin from the ldquobreath of Godrdquo Through hisspirit man communicates with the divine substance and he is fit to beldquodivinizedrdquo Man is god-man by predestination potentially throughhis formal structure At the same time he is flesh through anldquoanimatedrdquo body he sums up the entire world Man is made of anuncreated divine spirit hypostasized by the I of the creature and of a souland of a body created from the psycho-somatic being13

Bulgakov insists The very idea of divinity by predestinationseems too weak to him He corrects himself almostimmediately ldquoNot only is man theanthropic bypredestination but also the Logos is the eternal God-Maninsofar as the first Image of the created man This is whythe hypostasis of the Logos the heavenly Man could itselfbecome the hypostasis of created man and make of thelatter the authentic God-man by achieving its eternaltheanthropyrdquo The conclusion is nonetheless fundamentallyin keeping with the spirit of Christian faith ldquoMan is alreadythe form ready for the authentic theanthropy that he is notcapable of achieving himself but in view of which he wascreated and called The divine Incarnation is not at all acatastrophe for the human essence or some violation onthe contrary it is an accomplishmentrdquo14

This leads us far from the narrow anthropological dualismthat triumphed in modern Scholasticism as well as in the

university philosophy springing from Cartesianism ldquoSaintPaulrdquo noted R M Albaregraves15 ldquohad distinguished threeorders the carnal the intellectual and the spiritual16 TheCartesian dualism had fused together the intellectual andthe spiritual and rationalism had gradually reduced thespirit thus created to being only an intellect withouttranscendence without dynamism or immortality destinedonly to understand and to organize the worldrdquo On the otherhand for all sorts of reasons that we do not at all have toseek here but in particular because of a certain poverty inits common philosophy Christian thought did not seem ableto fill the void thus created in man It must not thereforebe surprising that the inevitable reaction was produced inpara-Christian forms ldquoIf a scholarrdquo Andreacute Preacuteaux recentlywrote17 ldquoencounters the old doctrine that man is composedof a body a soul and a spirit he has scruples aboutconsidering it for what do lsquosoulrsquo and lsquospiritrsquo mean Unfortunately in a society where science is the supremeauthority this silence is equivalent to a negation Whatdissolves the errors and complexes what protects againstneuroses and fantasies is precisely that which is silentlyand discreetly dismissedrdquo

The same year as Andreacute Preacuteaux and reacting like himGabriel Germain took support from Saint Teresa to remindus of the unrecognized depths of the life of the spirit

Above the understanding below the ordinary conscience and what fills itexists a sheet of peace and light Whoever approaches it can have nomore doubt of it Anyone who has not sought it has no right to judge itSaint Teresa expresses the same reality in very different terms Now no onehad taught her this nor had anyone prepared her for such an experienceThis agreement over the centuries and doctrines reassures me more thananything She writes in the book of the Mansions (seventh Mansionchapter 1) ldquoInterior things are seen that show in a sure way that there isbeneath a certain relationship an obvious difference between the soul andthe spirit although they are but a single thing rdquo18

Likewise again situating his own thought in relation to theldquonoosphererdquo of Teilhard de Chardin and in relation to theldquocollective unconsciousrdquo of Jung

The noosphere in the philosophy of Teilhard de Chardin appears to be likea mental view a conclusion This is because its very name evokes anintellectual activity the subtlest but whether exploratory or constructivedirected according to logical norms19 What I could call (but I will keepmyself from doing so) pneumatosphere let us say the spiritual ocean isthe object of experience By other paths to other ends it is the samereality I suppose that Jung attained and which he called the collectiveunconscious But these two terms restrict the origin and meaning of it 20

With Jung in fact we penetrate but we remain within whatis psychological The life of the spirit in the Spirit is whollydifferent A certain Calvinist dryness a phobia aboutmysticism and all ldquointeriorityrdquo conspire at times along withrationalism and contemporary positivism of all forms tobrush this life in the Spirit aside But in a quite natural waythe Lutheran Paul Tillich who was interested in ontology inthe history of religions in mysticism as well as in biblicalhistory brings the Pauline tripartition up to date again

There is no religious statement on man and his destiny without a judgmenton the relation between different elements that are combined and opposedin the life of man These elements have been variously described as beinghis body his soul and his spirit 21

The exegetes in contemporary Catholicism seem no moredisposed than most of the theologians to return the Paulineverse to a place of honor and draw its consequences It istoward the writers that we must turn to perceive an echo ofit in free expression Although this expression is truly webelieve faithful to the doctrine of the Pneuma and to itsauthentic development it is not certain that Saint Paulwould have recognized his thought at first glance ldquoI havegood news to announce to yourdquo says Paul Claudel in theldquoCantique de Palmyrerdquo ldquomdashit is another within the depths of

you who has the word I have good news to announce toyou You need only close your eyes to find your treasurein the night There are many souls but there is not oneof them with whom I am not in communion through thissacred point in us that says Pater nosterrdquo22 And GeorgesBernanos in his diary ldquoHis will is ours and when we revoltagainst it it is only at the price of an uprooting of our wholeinner being Our will has been united to his since thebeginning of the world What sweetness to think thateven while offending him we never cease completely todesire what he desires at the depths of the Sanctuary of thesoulrdquo23 A wonderful conjunction of Claudel and Bernanos

The reader will have noted in Claudelrsquos text the wordldquosoulrdquo An inversion of vocabulary is in fact produced Theldquospiritrdquo having become in the modern leveling dichotomythe immediate correlative of the body it is the ldquosoulrdquo thathas taken its place in those who have not taken part in thisleveling We are familiar again in Claudel with the parabolaof animus and anima The word ldquosoulrdquo in the same sensecompels recognition with greater strength in order to escapethe scientistic totalitarianism that reigns abusively in thename of the ldquohuman sciencesrdquo ldquoIn the measure in whichthey are scientificrdquo wrote Henri Gouhier in 1973 ldquothesciences of man can consider man only by selecting pointsof view under which it is possible to treat him objectively Itis obviously not a question for the philosopher to ignore thevarious forms of sociology psychology ethnologyneurology and so forth he must simply wonder if thesciences of man added up constitute a science of manrdquo24

And man simply as such man who cannot renounce the callhe hears in the depths of himself refuses to let himselfsuffocate He rehabilitates the word ldquosoulrdquo as the mostfitting to express what philosophers and men of science aretoo often skilled at eliminating through preterition orthrough negation The soul then becomes almost the

synonym for the pneuma of Saint Paul and Origen Thepassage from Henri Gouhier that we have just quotedfigures in a preface to LrsquoAvegravenement de lrsquoacircme by Aime[Andre] Forest a work he says that ldquofinds its timeliness inits apparent obsolescencerdquo The author of the work and thatof its preface both evoke on this subject the ldquothree livesrdquo ofMaine de Biran Andre Forest also recalls these words ofHenri Bergson ldquoBy calling a certain assurance of facileintelligibility an idea and a certain uneasiness of life thesoul an invincible current brings modern philosophy toelevate the soul above the ideardquo Modern philosophy as awhole has not followed the path on which Bergson thoughthe saw it engaged Gabriel Marcel however among otherswanted to preserve this word ldquosoulrdquo and to keep ldquothefullness of its meaningrdquo Charles du Bos in search of tracesof God in us asked ldquoWho will leave us a journal of thedilation of the soulrdquo What Andre Forest wants is to help usdiscover or to rediscover a certain ldquoinner unityrdquo a certainldquopure sourcerdquo and each of the chapters of his work tracesan avenue toward an encounter with this ldquoThe discovery ofthe soulrdquo he tells us ldquois the development of a spiritualphilosophy The soul is the advent of presence and graceraised above the world of nature and objectivityrdquo25

The same fundamental reaction the same sudden startor if you wish the same awakening five years later in amuch younger author whose nostalgia if this is what it iscannot be that for the past but that which springs from anew reflection this time against the oppression of a thoughtreduced to its politico-social components the final end ofscientistic intelligence In his essay on Job ou lrsquoexcegraves dumal Philippe Nemo insists on this same word ldquosoulrdquo in orderto recall man to himself and to his essential problem 26

Across the numerous changes in vocabulary thecomplications introduced by theoreticians eager foranalysis across too the unceasing variations in points of

view the tripartite anthropology whose expression is foundin Saint Paul has consistently furnished in the tradition ofthe Church a basis for spiritual doctrine and life

4 The Spirit

I The Place of Mysticism As we have already been able toperceive these various distinctions are far from always

being covered perfectly either from one author to another oreven as in the case of Augustine in the work of the same

author C R Doddaursquos remark on the subject of the ancientGreeks applies here ldquoOne must undoubtedly agree that the

average man of the fifth century (and this is true in allperiods) possessed a very complicated psychological

vocabularyrdquo1

The Pauline tripartition has nonetheless remained theconstant basis serving to support the spiritual doctrines ofthe Christian tradition

Commenting on Pseudo-Dionysius Saint Maximus theConfessor defined man by this threefold pair of epithetsldquoSupermundialis et spiritualismdashcircummundialis animalismdashmundialis carnalisrdquo2 The author of the celebratedPhilokalia Saint Nikodemos of the Holy Mountain (748-809)will explain that the ldquoJesus Prayerrdquo brings into operation thethree powers of the soul the intellect (nous) the discursivereason (logos) the will or spirit (theacutelē sis pneuma) in theaction of the soul alone by which uniting in itself the soulis made fit to be united to God3 But perhaps that is amatter rather of a ldquohorizontalrdquo trichotomy of threefunctions or three activities proper to the higher part of thespirit

With more than one spiritual writer of the Latin MiddleAges one should speak of four elements rather than ofthree in their analysis of manmdasheven without consideringother complications many subtle subdivisions an echo ofScholasticism dear to a certain number subdivisions

destined either to establish agreement between authors orto detail the stages of spiritual itineraries As for examplethis schema traced by Isaac of Stella in his Epistola deanima ldquoAnimae in mundo sui corporis peregrinanti quinquesunt ad sapientiam progressus sensusmdashimaginatiomdashratiomdashintellectusmdashintelligentiardquo4 Two different modes will benoted both inspired by Saint Augustine in the expression oftripartism for some it is corpus anima spiritus5 forothers corpus ratio mens Hence to accord these twomodes the quadripartite division corpusmdashanimamdashratioinferiormdashratio superior sive mens We know the groundgained in the Middle Ages by that Augustinian subdivision ofthe ratio inferior and the ratio superior6 What willcorrespond to this in Saint Thomas Aquinas will beparticularly the distinction between the ratio and theintellectus recently brought out by Pierre Rousselot7 Thiswould also be the place to mention the Franciscan doctrineof the two faces of the soul which is of Neoplatonic origincoming through the twofold channel of Augustine and theArabs8mdashbut that like moreover the Thomist distinction ofthe intellectus and the ratio is an essentially ldquoscientificrdquo(philosophical) theory having little relation to the spirituallife The explanation of the latter is founded rather on thedoctrine of the twofold ratio lower and higher whichcorresponds to action and contemplation But then a newsubdivision is introduced the ratio superior the place ofcontemplation assimilated to the intellectus becomes thehigher part or function of the mens and receives namessuch as acies mentis oculus cordis and so forth

Whatever might be the various complications and thevarieties in the names ldquoall the great Christian mystics are inagreement in considering the human soul as a complexreality presenting regions and stages All are also inagreement in admitting that among these various regionsthere is a privileged one that where God dwells in a

particular manner rdquo9 ldquoThere is a spiritual life when arelationship with God existsrdquo10 and there is a secret point inman that is the permanent place of that relationship of thatpossible encounter because it is already and always hasbeen the place of the divine presence that pneuma of Paulcommented on by Origen that ldquosacred point in us that saysPater nosterrdquo of the ldquoCantique de Palmyrerdquo11

So we see that the philosophers and theologians moreconcerned about rationality than mysticism tend to reduce(even in their historical studies) the trichotomy to adichotomymdashwhile on the contrary the spiritual masterstend to bring out the trichotomy They readily glorify thespiritus not only above the anima but above the ratiowhether theoretical or practical It is instructive to comparein this regard the Abeacutelardian writing Ysagoge in theologiamwith the commentary on the Song of Songs by William ofSaint Thierry For the first ldquoDuo haec nomina sc spiritus etanima non magnam habent in significationediscrepantiamrdquo12 The second on the contrary stronglyemphasizes the hierarchical distinction of three ordersldquoanimalrdquo ldquorationalrdquo and ldquospiritualrdquo13

To keep to the general schema that results from the textof Saint Paulmdasha schema that itself in fact includes manynuances and as we have seen many interpretationsmdashmorality will therefore be the act of the soul mysticism theact of the spirit ldquoThe bodyrdquo says Evagrius Ponticus ldquohasbread for nourishment the soul has virtue theunderstanding has spiritual prayerrdquo14 Morality whoseobject is virtue is the πϱᾶ ξις and the life of the spirit iscontemplation the θεωϱία The first is ordained to thesecond as the soul is ordained to the spirit ldquoStriverdquo saysCassian reporting the statements of Abbot Nesteros ldquotoacquire in the first place a complete possession of moraldiscipline (πϱαϰτιϰή) for without that you cannot obtaincontemplative purity (θεωϱητιϰή)rdquo15 For Gregory of Nyssa

virtue is ldquothe forecourt of the Templerdquo16 Origen had saidbefore them ldquoAccording to the doctrine of the very wiseSolomon he who wishes to acquire wisdom must begin bystudying moralityrdquo it is in fact ldquogood conductrdquo that preparesone to receive the visits of the Logos and when one issolidly exercised in it then one will be able ldquoto pass frommoral things to mystical understandingrdquo17 In his treatiseaddressed ldquoTo the Brethren at Mont Dieurdquo which remainsone of the fundamental texts of Christian spiritualityWilliam of Saint Thierry traces a similar route for those whowant to give themselves over to the perfect life and for thefinal stage his program is even one of a boldness that somecould misunderstand (it is true that it is addressed to aCarthusian monastery) ldquoIt is for othersrdquo he tells them ldquotoserve God it is for you to cling to him It is for others tobelieve in God to know that he exists to love him andrevere him it is for you to taste him to understand him toknow him to enjoy himrdquo18 The same doctrine is set forthas it had been earlier with Origen in parallel with thedoctrine of the threefold biblical sense by another writer ofthe twelfth century Godefroi drsquoAdmont

Sicut triplex est visio corporis spiritus et mentis ita triplex etiam sensusest in scripturis Sanctis litteralis spiritalis intellectualis Litteralem atquespiritalem sensus egregius ipse Doctor gentium tunc transcenderat etusque ad tertium coelum intellectualem scilicet sensum glorioseconscenderat quando toto cordis intellectu ita coelestibus est conjunctusquod utrum in corpore an extra corpus esset se nescire asseruit19

The same fundamental schema is found again in the greatrepresentatives of what one often calls with a term that canlend to confusion ldquointellectualist mysticismrdquo which is tosay with the Rheno-Flemish mystics of the fourteenth andfifteenth centuries The same schema although withdifferences in terminology and in a sometimes differentclimate of thought particularly in Meister Eckhart

Ruysbroek ldquoassigns to the spirit a threefold role First of alla vital role in which it animates the body then anintellectual role that is manifested by thought finally a roleof higher spiritual activity in which it becomes the principleof unification of the whole inner life and in which it is mixedwith the very essence of the soulrdquo20 Hence for example inthe Livre des sept clotures the definition of the seventhenclosure ldquowhich surpasses all the othersrdquo ldquosimplebeatitude beyond all holy life and practice of the virtuesrdquo21

Likewise in the Miroir du salut eacuteternel in which the higherdegree is only divided after ldquothe virtuous life which dies tosin and grows in virtuesrdquo comes the state where ldquoallownership of the will diesrdquo then the spirit is made fully freethrough its union to the Spirit of God even to the point ofthe ldquoliving liferdquo (levende leven) that blossoms which is allldquohidden in God and in the substance of our soulrdquo22

Ruysbroek takes up again here an expression long sincecurrent which he could have read in Saint Bernard (vividavita et vitalis)23 William of Saint Thierry (vita vivens)24 orThomas de Froidmont (vita vitalis)25

The same gradation is found in Tauler based on the sametraditional ldquoternary schemardquo Tauler distinguishes in manldquothree things one clings to nature in flesh and blood theother is the reason the third is an essence of the pure souland without mixturerdquo This is what he expresses again ldquointhe symbolism of the three men which correspond to thesensate life the intellectual life and the spiritual life in thesense of union with Godrdquo26 This ldquothird manrdquo this ldquoessenceof the pure soulrdquo is what Tauler often calls the gemuete aword that Father Etienne Hugueny translates as ldquodeep-seated willrdquo and Louis Cognet prefers to call ldquodeep instinctrdquoit is the ldquodepthsrdquo of being to which says Tauler the ldquodivinegroundrdquo alone corresponds abyssus abyssum invocat itimprints on our nature ldquoan eternal and deep-seatedtendency to return to its originrdquo a tendency that ldquopersists

even in the damned because it is linked to the very essenceof the soulrdquo27 Taulerrsquos preaching rests on this structure Theabnegation to which he invites his listeners is not only theliberation from sensible appetites it goes beyond simplemorality it is a profound attitude that ldquoflows from thegrowing experience of Godrdquo mystical passivity succeedingthe activity of the virtuous life ldquoinner recollectionrdquo abovethe exercise of the virtues and reason as well as that of thesenses28 ldquoIt is necessary that after having overcome thesenses the reason be freed from itself renounce itself soas to be transformed into pure and simple spiritrdquo29 Then theKingdom of God is established And Tauler repeats so as tomake himself well understood ldquoThis Kingdom is establishedin its own manner in the innermost part of the spirit assoon as man through all his exercise has absorbed theexterior man in the inner and reasonable man and as soonas the man of sense and of reasonable power are entirelyabsorbed into the more interior man in the hidden groundof the spirit where the true image of God dwells and assoon as he flees into this divine ground into which manfrom all eternity is found in his uncreated staterdquo30

The relationship of Tauler to Eckhart is obvious In one asin the other the distinction of the soul and the spirit (of thepsyche and the πνεῦμα) colored by Platonic exemplarism isaffirmed everywhere Eckhart enunciates it with reference toSaint Augustine ldquoAccording to Augustinerdquo he says ldquoourintellectual element divides itself into two parts through theone we are oriented intellectually toward an intellectualgrasp of knowledge that our cognitive faculty receives fromoutside the other to use the very words of Augustinemanifests itself at the deepest center of our spirit (lsquoabditummentisrsquo)rdquo31 It is this center that particularly interested thatfascinated Eckhart this place ldquowhere no image enters orleaves but where there is only God himselfrdquo ldquoThe soulrdquo healso said ldquohas two eyes the inner one and the other outer

one the inner eye of the soul is that by which itcontemplates being and receives it directly from Godrdquo32

What differentiates him from Origen and Augustine Bernardand William of Saint Thierry is the ldquouncreatedrdquo characterthat he attributes to this ldquoinner eyerdquo or to this ldquoabditummentisrdquo The disquieting feature of his mysticism consists inthis a feature that will be less emphasized in Tauler andeven in Henry Suso although the latter speaks also of theground of the spirit as ldquoeternalrdquo33

Follower and compiler Harphius (Henry Herp) willsymbolize the ldquothree kinds of liferdquo emanating from the threeparts of man in the three biblical figures of Leah Rachel andMary Magdalen34 and he works at length to describe themens or the apex mentis the spiritus or the interior sinusmentis which is to say still that pneuma by which the zoneof rational and moral activity is transcended

Dicitur etiam [anima] quandoque mens quae sc ipsis viribus interior est etsupereminet quia vires in mente sicut in origine sua sunt counitae ex quasc effl uunt ut radii ex solari rota et in quam refluunt Et est illud centrumin anima in quo vera Trinitatis imago relucet et tarn nobile quod nullumibi nomen proprie convenit licet in multis nominibus circumlocutivemanifestatur Haec est igitur mens vel apex mentis aut centrum ipsiusanimae ut feliciter renovetur ipsae vires quae dicuntur spiritus adinteriorem sinum mentis sunt reflectendae et mens ipsa ad intimum suumregerenda sc in Deum ibidem suaviter recubantem 35

Warning us that this higher part of man cannot beappropriately designated by any name and multiplying theformulas himself by which one must indeed try even tospeak of it Harphius invites us not to stress whatever theinterest of the other part might be the variations invocabulary from one author to another or from one period toanother which could hide from us the continuity of atradition that in essentials is very firm

Saint Catherine of Genoa offers us a similar schema veryclassically she distinguishes body soul and spirit the latterbeing designated in itself by the word mente and when it is

animated by infused love by the word spirito in this lattercase the spirito is finally identified with infused Love whichis God Since the Saint is less concerned to give us atheoretical course in anthropology even spiritual than todescribe the spiritual life itself we can understand that fromher pen mente is rare and spirito frequent36 On the otherhand following the example of many other mystics sheloves to detail the stages of ascent ldquoWhen Godrdquo she saysldquoaddresses his first call to us he gives us at first the instinctfor virtues later he urges us to perfection then throughinfused grace he leads us to the annihilation of ourselvesfinally to true transformationrdquo37 Saint Teresa and Saint Johnof the Cross likewise know that there exists a life higherthan the exercise of the virtues when they celebrateldquofreedom of spiritrdquo38 ldquoholy freedom of spiritrdquo39 and SaintTeresa observes in her Interior Castle that ldquocertain interioreffects give certitude that there is in us in certain relationsa very real difference between the soul and the spiritrdquo40 Wealso quote as an example Fenelon who in commenting onCassian finds himself at the same time summing up thewhole mystical tradition ldquoAlthough we judge the othervirtues to be necessary and useful we believe however weshould place them only at the second degree because oneseeks them all only in view of this one thing of which JesusChrist says lsquoMartha Martha you trouble yourself aboutmany things there is only one thing necessaryrsquo He placedthe sovereign good not in work although laudable andabundant in fruit but in contemplation that is truly simpleand one He declares that little is necessary for this perfectbeatitude that contemplation isrdquo41 And a little farther on inthe same writing ldquoThere is thus a state where thisappropriation of virtues is no longer opportunerdquo42

The great Protestant spiritual master Gerhard Tersteegen(1697-1769) professes the same doctrine ldquoThere mustnecessarily be in us a capacity to recognize God and

spiritual things in an essential and present way And thatexists in the pure Reason [Vernunft] which has been givenus closed and unused until God gives us the understandingby which we know the very Truth so intimately andessentially that we are ourselves drawn into the trueGodrdquo43

If a certain number of authors in the course of this longtradition that we have just examined seem also todistinguish as it were two elements above the psychewhile Saint Paul saw only the pneuma above it this isusually as we could ascertain from some of the examplescited because they mean by psyche only the animal soulanimater of the body and seat of sensation or ratherbecause they want to assure a seat for ldquoobjectiverdquoknowledge and profane culture For Paul on the contraryand more explicitly for Origen the soul is the very seat ofthe personality the reasoning and self-willed being whichjudges and freely determines itself It is the place ofdecision According to the orientation taken by the soul thehuman being will become ldquocarnalrdquo or ldquospiritualrdquo(pneumatikos) As opposed as he might be to free willLuther himself saw very clearly that the Pauline psyche of 1Thessalonians 5 was much more than the principle ldquothatanimates the body and acts through itrdquo In an article in theRevue thomiste (1971) Father P R Reacutegamey OP isperfectly in keeping with the traditional line when hedistinguishes (497) these three degrees psychosomaticcomplexmdashrational function of abstraction and discoursemdashprimacy of spirit in its greatest purity And what in thetheoretical order is the ldquorational functionrdquo corresponds inthe practical order to what we could call in a ratherrestrictive sense the ldquomoral functionrdquo Saint Paul alsoinvites us not to confuse this moral function with theproperly spiritual life which raises man above himself whenhe places above the exercise of active benevolence and of

all virtue this reality of another order a gift of God which isCharity (1 Cor 133) Dietrich Bonhoeffer was also faithful tothe tradition that originated in the Apostle when heexhorted the Christians over whom he had responsibility notto confuse in their assemblies ldquospiritual community withmystical overheatingrdquo (cf A Dumas 64) ldquoThe great themeof community life is the revival of the very Paulinedistinction between the natural eager equivocal nostalgicdesiring in a word idealistic and the spiritual respectfulenlightened serving knowing in a word realistrdquo (ibid145) ldquoThe onerdquo Bonhoeffer also says ldquowho does not letChrist be a path toward the other falls into naturalchattering which kills the spiritual word Prayer is thesalutary limit to desires of immediate effusiveness Community life is communion through spiritual mediationand non-confusion in the natural immediacyrdquo (146-47)

II Morality Integrated into Mysticism In Christianity itself itis characteristic of the Catholic Church to assure theequilibrium between the three components (religion

morality and mysticism) an equilibrium necessary to theintegrity of the human being Faithful in everything to her

spirit of synthesis she maintains all three in solidaritywithout ever letting any one of the three be lacking or

eclipse the others or be devalued in the humblest forms ofspiritual life any more than in the highest To take a verysimple example when Fenelon exclaims in his Traiteacute de

lrsquoexistence et des attributs de Dieu ldquoMy length of life is buta perpetual extinctionrdquo1 these words to be well

understood must be taken at once morally religiously andmystically

The various Protestant confessions place more emphasison contrasts and clashes as has often been remarked J AMoehler wrote in the last century in his Symbolique withrespect to morality and religion ldquoIn the eyes of Catholics

religiosity and morality if we may be permitted to use thesetwo terms are united by their essence and are both eternalAccording to the Protestants on the other hand there is norelationship between these two things for one is of aneternal price and the other is of only passing value Lutherinsists in many places on this difference rdquo2 There wouldbe many nuances besides to note here but in this essay ontypology we must keep to the most general characteristics3In Calvinism mysticism is the object of mistrust or evenreprobation4 We also know the abyss in Luther thatseparates ethics and faith As a result of this there is atendency with Lutheran mysticsmdashto say nothing of Lutherhimself and of Lutheranism in generalmdashto depreciate allmoral activity as constituting on manrsquos part an affirmationof self that far from bringing him closer to God distanceshim and to recognize a value in religious life only in anabandonment close to quietism5 a depreciation of moralitythat goes hand in hand with that of reason and that offreedommdashwe recently read from a Protestant pen an articleon morality considered solely as ldquocultural realityrdquo Such anattitude to take it simply as such could also facilitateinvaluable analyses in many regards such as the analysis ofthe ldquolevels of liferdquo in Kierkegaard or that of the ldquosacredrdquo inRudolf Otto But these analyses do not always stop at posingformal distinctions Thus in order to bring out more clearlythe specificity of the category of the sacred or of thereligious Otto cuts the latter off from morality he is notcontent with showing that on the level of history orpsychology these two orders are often separated in fact heis well on his way to a separation by right6 As arepercussion when morality reclaims its place in otherauthors of Protestant inspiration it sometimes absorbsreligion and dries up mysticism by incarcerating all spirituallife ldquowithin the limits of reasonrdquo

In reality howevermdashthat is to say by right in the natureof thingsmdashon the one hand ldquothe sacred is not reabsorbedinto moral value the religious transcends the ethicalrdquo buton the other hand it does not merely accommodatemorality and mysticism it remolds them so to speak byinstalling them in its heart Religion morality and mysticismldquoappear in a reciprocal envelopmentrdquo there exists betweenthe three both an attraction and a tension which will be thesource of many vital problems but there is objectivelyneither separation nor exclusion nor conflict for ldquothe Deitywhile transcending being truth and the good contains themformallyrdquo7 This is why in particular in Catholicism just asthe reasonable life and life according to the spirit penetrateeach other8 morality impregnates the mystical life to theend ldquoThrough it the good rewarded and the bad punishedthese pillars of the revelation of the Demiurge degraded byGnosticism to a lower level than exoteric faith regain theirplace at the heart of the revelation of the Father through theonly Sonrdquo9 Hence Saint Justin in his Dialogue ldquoIt is notbecause of his affinity with God or because he is spirit likehim that man sees God it is because he is virtuous andjustrdquo10 And Father Jean Rigoleuc on spiritual persons ldquoAlltheir reason and the lights they receive by it are given tothem only so that they might be perfected in thesevirtuesrdquo11 ldquoThe mystical ascentrdquo does not efface ldquofromcommon Christian life any specific traitrdquo12 The Christianvirtues are not merely means of freeing oneself from theworld in their substance they are the end itself thepromised beatitude is not made of different material This iswhat Saint Ambrose expresses admirably in a brief sentencefrom his commentary on Saint Luke with respect to thebeatitudes ldquoSicut enim speri nostrae octava perfectio estita octava summa virtutum estrdquo13

Pierre Nemeshegyi poses the same problem with respectto Origen ldquoTo place Being and moral Goodness in equation

to place this moral Goodness in God formally and ascharacterizing the final ground of his Beingmdashis this not to becondemned to enclosing all spiritual life in an anti-mysticalmoralism The Good is a transcendental But is it formallywhat we understand by lsquomoral Goodrsquo Or is there not adeepening of this moral Goodness which would reestablishthe possibility of an innermost mystical depthrdquo14 Againwith respect to Origen W Voumllker remarks ldquoWe observe a hesitation very characteristic of Origenrsquos turn of spirit and which one finds again in a nearly identical way in Philoside by side and sometimes even the mutual penetrationof moralism and mysticismrdquo15 And Nemeshegyi concludesldquo lsquoMoralismrsquo and lsquomysticismrsquo are in fact one and the samething in Origenrsquos conceptionrdquo16 Origen himself specifies inhis argument against Celsus ldquoGod is not merely lsquothe Goodrsquoas all the Platonists say he is lsquothe Righteousrsquordquo17 SaintGregory the Great also reminds us with his usual goodsense always linked with spiritual fervor

Solent quidam scripta sacri eloquii legentes cum sublimiores sententiasejus penetrant minora mandata quae infirmioribus data sunt tumentisensu despicere et ea velle in alium intellectum permutare Qui si recte ineo alta intelligerent mandata quoque minima despectui non haberent quidivina praecepta sic in quibusdam loquuntur magnis ut tamen inquibusdam congruant parvulis qui per incrementa intelligentiae quasiquibusdam passibus mentis crescant atque ad majora intelligendaperveniant18

Saint Augustine had said the same in a very Origenianshortcut in speaking of eternal life ldquoUna ibi virtus erit etidipsum erit virtus praemiumque virtutisrdquo19 Picking upagain Saint Ambrosersquos turn of phrase Alexander Neckhamcosmologist of the twelfth century explains that the octaveof the beatitude brings the perfection of its consonance tothe septenary of the virtues as in our material universe theeighth sphere including the whole universe brings itsconclusion to the harmony of the heavens20 Let us say in

the categories of medieval exegesis that anagogy achievesperfection both of allegory and of tropology Thus oneshould say of all Catholic mysticism what one historian saysof Saint Bernard through allusion to the traditionalinterpretation of the ldquoBooks of Solomonrdquo and of theirprogressive sequence for each of them as for him ldquothemoral school of Ecclesiasticus and Proverbs a necessarypreliminary for the mystical school of the Song of Songs is aschool whose doors are never closed behind usrdquo21 Andreciprocally in fulfilling the precept of the Lord one meritsnot only the eternal dwelling one does not merely preparefor it one is already building Saint Hildegarde tells us thetower of the heavenly Jerusalem22

It would be good to return to the celebrated GoldenEpistle in which William of Saint Thierry the friend of SaintBernard condenses for the brothers of the Carthusianmonastery of Mont Dieu the essence of Christiananthropology and spirituality such as the most commonCatholic tradition understands them William puts first ofall the sublime ideal of the contemplative in abrupt termsand with an appearance of separation of completetranscendence from one degree to another which could besurprising

You have not only pledged complete holiness but the perfection of allholiness and the height of all perfection It is not your business to languishin the practice of ordinary precepts or to devote yourself only to thatwhich God commands but to aim at what he wishes in the search for hisgood agreeable and perfect will It is for others to serve God it is for youto cling to him Faith in God knowledge love and reverence are for othersFor you taste understanding knowledge enjoyment A high vocation anarduous task 23

Farther on William takes up again the distinction of thethree states or three degrees which is reminiscent of thefree fashion of the Pauline trichotomy

The state of beginners can be called ldquoanimalrdquo that of progressersldquorationalrdquo that of the perfect ldquospiritualrdquo The first state attends to thebody the second is busy with the reasoning soul the third finds its restonly in God 24

These kinds of schemas are several times accompanied byappeals to humility which should form the common andunalterable basis for all disciples of Christ at whateverdegree they find themselves in their spiritual ascent25

Several points of resemblance to Saint Paul are still to benoted the distinction between anima and animus whichcorresponds closely to that between the psyche and thepneuma26 the reference to the discourse at Athens27 (Acts1727-28) the definition of the spiritual man as the onewhose spirit is informed by the Spirit of love28 theindication of the end as being ldquothe unity of spiritrdquo with God

There is also another resemblance to God so particular that it is nolonger given the name of resemblance but that of unity of spirit It is whenman becomes a single thing a single spirit with God not only through theunity of a single will but also through some truer expression of a virtue thatis no longer capable of willing anything else Once conformed to wisdom the reason [= reasoning soul] puts[everything] to profit and hastens to spring toward freedom of spirittoward unity so well that the faithful man becomes as has often beenstated one single spirit with God29

Freedom of spirit unity with God we know the abuses thatsuch formulas have frequently covered throughout twentycenturies of history30 We know too how the fear of theseabuses have made a number of timorous souls avoid themhow still more the bourgeois individualist incomprehensionof the last century banished them and how they seemedsuspect to many who thought they were judging in thename of pure Catholic orthodoxy31 Within the context ofthat spiritual masterpiece the Letter to the Brothers of MontDieu these expressions can be accepted in all their powerin the same sense that they have in Scripture And thekeeping of a moral life integrated into a mystical life is also

explicitly recognized here besides the word ldquovirtuerdquo whichfigures in the same text we have just quoted on ldquothe unityof spiritrdquo with God other texts recall it with insistence Theyspeak ldquoin praise of virtue the daughter of reason but evenmore of gracerdquo32 they show it not surpassed by butassumed into spiritual perfection the latter is achievedldquowhen the soul encompasses all the virtues in itself not aselements borrowed from somewhere else but as quasi-natural products of its being according to that resemblanceto God by which it is the whole of what isrdquo Mystical unitywith God is wholly impregnated with morality because it isthe perfect adherence to Him who is not only the Righteousbut in the most concrete and singular sense the Good33

This Catholic equilibrium was undoubtedly alreadyjeopardized in a great spiritual master who is not at all to beconfused with the false spirituals to whom we have alludedEvagrius was considered a disciple of Origen but in this anunfaithful disciple Despite the appearances of severalexpressions the same criticism could not be made of aTauler or a Ruysbroek they condemn without equivocationthe mystical claims that think to hold themselves abovemorality and reason beyond affirmations of the faith Thecase of Meister Eckhart is perhaps more disputable but it isright to dissociate the profound intention of this greatthinker and this great mystic from some paradoxicalexpressions held to be condemnable by the bull In agro LaPerle eacutevangeacutelique following Eckhart and several othersseems to place ldquothe spiritrdquo in contact with the divine Unityldquoabove the multiplicity of the Personsrdquo34 a grave problemwhich we will not take up here but which for a Christiangoverns the judgment to be passed on mysticism in itsrelation to the primary mystery of his faith35 To stay withthe relation between mysticism and morality let us say thatone is happy to find a fine example of equilibrium in anauthor carried in other respects to many unilateral

excesses This refers to George Tyrrell who wrote in a finepassage from Christianity at the Cross-roads

[The apocalyptic Kingdom of heaven] is the fruit and reward of the morallife but is a supermoral lifemdashthe continuation of that divine and spirituallife which under present contingencies manifests itself principally bymorality and above all in religion and conscious union with God But[in the Kingdom] the contingencies that now call for the moral strugglewith all its pain and suffering shall be done away36

We will end by quoting a more authoritative witness thegreat Saint Teresa who unites the soul and spirit of whichSaint Paul spoke as much as she distinguishes them withhim by observing that ldquothe center of the soulrdquo or the ldquospiritof the soulrdquo is a difficult thing to express and even tobelieve

Certain interior effects give the certitude that there is under certainrelations a very real difference between the soul and the spirit Although inreality they are but one we sometimes perceive a division between themthat is so delicate that it seems that the one functions in one way and theother in another There are so many things in our innermost depthsand things so subtle that it would be boldness on my part to undertake toexplain them We will understand all that in the other life if God deignsto admit us to the dwelling where we will have understanding of all thesesecrets37

III Conclusions Optimi corruption pessima One should notat all conclude from this as some authors particularly in

Protestantism have done that mysticism should becondemned1 Nevertheless even without considering the

case of the aberrations we have just seen certainprecautions should be taken in order not to jeopardize the

spiritual equilibrium Just as it is necessary to reject ananthropology that refusing man any higher faculty stifles

the spirit in himmdashwhich is what all positivisms allrationalisms and all psychologisms domdashso it is necessary toguard against reducing theoretical or practical reason in itby failing to recognize its transcendence in relation to the

sensible order and its participation in the absolute ldquoThemindrdquo writes Hans Urs von Balthasar2 ldquodestroys itself andcrumbles if it splits into an inferior and a superior mind an

autonomously functioning reason (Verstand) and a ratio(Vernunft) that is reserved for special philosophical and

religious purposesrdquo Then the risk of a short-circuit appearsfrom ldquoinfantile naturalismrdquo to high spirituality from

alienating exteriority to ldquodivinerdquo magnetization from theldquocaves of the unconsciousrdquo to the ldquobirthrdquo from above from

the ldquopossessive Irdquo that is ldquoradical servituderdquo toldquodisinterestedrdquo love

Charles du Bos was not lacking in clearsightedness theday he noted in his Journal ldquothe necessity from an ethicalpoint of view of guarding oneself against mysticismrdquo3 In thesame sense he wrote one day to Father Auguste Valensin

Since the end of July 1927 God in his goodness has recalled me toHimself I have happened to suffer in the face of a certain unformulatedmdashand at times even formulatedmdashdisdain that believers who are advancedmoreover in spiritual ways and even mystics witness or at least seem towitness toward the moral order as such If one admits (and I admit it verystrongly) that ethics are only the narthex of religious truth neverthelessthere exist natures (to the number of which I belong) who venerate thenarthex all the more as it helps to introduce them into the sanctuary andthe more their religious life deepens the more faithful their gratitudebecomes 4

Du Bos had noted in his Journal on January 11 1925 ldquothenecessity of guarding against mysticismrdquo and on January18 1929 analyzing himself

Basically it is always a question with me of an offensive directed by themoral against the religious because as my Journal often notes the moralbeing is primary with me in the period when the plane of temperament istranscended the form that temptation then takes is a moral form summedup in the question of my right to religious life Yes that is indeed it and myeffort now must be not only to adhere to God but to consider that fromthe instant I do what I must on the plane of living I adhere to him de facto 5

Du Bosrsquo reflection as we see was not unilateral althoughhe emphasizes the moral which he judges to bedangerously disregarded (what would he not say thirty orforty years later) In return Emmanuel Mounier was no lessright to bring out the complementary truth in recalling thatldquomorality has no other end but the spirituality of which itkeeps houserdquo when one isolates it and clings to it heexplains one kills it it is replaced by moralism6 the enemyof mysticism as well as of religion History in fact shows thatthe abandonment of mysticism in the name of any formwhatever of moralism has never been at best anything buta stage in spiritual development in view of a less confusedmysticism ldquoAs it is nearly inevitable in philosophy to passthrough a phase of idealism so it is inevitable to passthrough a phase of intellectualism in morality inevitableand goodrdquo But on condition that one does not cling to it Adeeper understanding knows that it is not knowledge thatsaves man from sin and it will always ask ldquoWho forexample is the one more free of appearancesmdasha Spinozawho in observing actions or sentiments that the commonmen call sin explains them through a defect in knowledgemdashor a Surin who proclaims that to the degree that one doesnot see sins even in onersquos inadvertencies and firstmovements to that degree one will not weep over onersquosvanities as sacrileges one will lsquonever get to the rootrsquordquo7

Both have cut through appearances (not always the sameones) both in their order are right But basically howmuch more is this true of Surin And if the intellectualcriticism worked by a Spinozist is not coupled with aspiritual deepening how his clearsightedness ends inblaming it The world Bergson said very justly has much tolearn from the great mystics8

Likewise one is right not to consent to letting theunderstanding be classed among the provisional values tobe reduced to the rank of ldquonaturalismrdquo that is close to

animality Perhaps the word ldquosoulrdquo so far from beingunivocal9 used in the tripartite division of man is notwithout some danger in this regard But this is not asufficient motive for rejecting the very idea of this tripartitedivision such as some as we have seen above were led todo Even Sandaeus himself an apologist and theoretician ofmysticism while noting that a number of mystics judgerecourse to this division indispensable declared that therecould be room to debate this10 Sandaeus was therebyechoing a fear or a mistrust frequently shown in the mostbrutal fashion by Schoolmen in the face of all mysticalthought we know how sharp the dispute was even withinthe Catholic Church throughout the seventeenth century11

Since then through their efforts to minimize the text ofSaint Paul on which the distinction is based others witness adiscomfort if not a similar hostility The mystical tradition ofthe great Church however offers them desirableassurances thus with Tauler transforming the way oneviews the classical terms of the division He is thereby goingparallel to the doctrinal tradition such as it is expressed in aSaint Augustine for example or a Saint Thomas The ratherpusillanimous minds to which we are alluding do not giveenough consideration to the fact that in wanting to save theabsolute of morality and reason they risk failing torecognize the gifts of the Spirit and lowering the mysticallife Stifled unrecognized in its authentic forms the latterin despair is then in danger of developing on the margins ofall rational and moral norms A certain intellectualismmdashverypoorly namedmdashis a worthy counterpart of moralism and aspernicious

To return to this latter we can think that the general usein the ecclesiastical vocabulary of the modern ChristianWest of the term ldquodirector of consciencerdquo to the detrimentof the traditional terms ldquospiritual fatherrdquo or spiritusmoderator12 is the sign of an inflation of pure morality

tending to casuistry or lends itself to falling intopsychologism (while waiting for psychiatry) to thedetriment of the attention paid to things of the spirit whichis to say to the relation to God ldquoHave we not seen peoplerdquowrote Reneacute Gueacutenon ldquowho when it is a question of lsquospiritualmasterrsquo go so far as to translate it lsquodirector ofconsciencersquordquo13 It is possible to agree with his remarkwithout sharing the least part of his own notion of ldquospiritualmasterrdquo or more precisely his doctrine of the spirit Stillanother sign of the small esteem given to things of thespirit and first of all of an inadequate understanding ofthem is manifested in the designation ldquointellectualismrdquowhich is too easily attributed today to the whole doctrine ofcontemplation There is of course a philosophicalcontemplation There is a Greek intellectualism that isexpressed in an ideal of contemplation We discern sometraces of it in the history of Christian thought and life butthese are only tracesmdashand all are not moreoverblameworthy14 As it has done for many other conceptsChristianity has modified this at the same time as it took onits permanent values it profoundly transformed it How is itthat even Christian historians have perceived so little ofthis One can indeed if one wishes reject the word inseeking another that lends less to equivocation but itshould not be necessary at the same time to reject thedoctrine that the Christian centuries had included within itit should not be necessary to depreciate what is the verybasis of the best spiritual tradition at the heart ofChristianity This would be at the same stroke to depreciatethe order of the theological virtues in direct contradiction toScripture itself The supremely active Father Teilhard deChardin did not fall into such contempt he forcefullymaintained the primacy of contemplation in which he couldrecognize the superior form of action that which an activistwill never achieve15 The transformations and progress

achieved in the course of history the entrance into an agedominated by the technical the development of the ldquohumansciencesrdquo that tend to assimilate man to the object of thesciences of nature will change nothing not only the highmystical life but already the whole spiritual life while takingthe greatest consideration of morality and including morality(as well as of rational activity) comprises along with variednuances according to the case something beyond moralitytaken in the human sense of the word something beyond allthat we commonly call action because it always comprisessomething beyond man

That is what signifies the great traditional theme ofMartha and Mary based on the Gospel It will always remaintrue ldquoIn his duabus mulieribus duas istas esse figurataspraesentem et futuram latoriosam et quietam temporalemet aeternamrdquo16 And of these two realities the second isalready present as an active anticipation at the heart ofthe man en route toward his divine destiny

Finally the maintenance of the distinction between thezone of the natural [psychisme] and that of the spiritual is ofa major importance for maintaining in their just place withinthe limits of their competence all the kinds of psychology Itopposes ldquothe dissolving psychoanalytical confusion ofnatural and spiritualrdquo17 If stopping onersquos aim at theldquorationalrdquo and the ldquomoralrdquo was often the great temptationand if this temptation remains what is to be even moregreatly feared today is stopping at the ldquonatural[psychique]rdquo One of Teilhardrsquos weaknesses which wasbenign to tell the truth because he thought above all todissipate the illusion of a materialistic monism was acertain confusion of vocabulary between spiritual andnatural in the Pheacutenomegravene humain (which does not claim tobe a treatise on spirituality) he happens to speak at will ofldquospiritual energyrdquo or of ldquonatural energyrdquo mdashBut ldquothe spiritintervening psychology is powerless It sees everything

from outside although the spirit is lived only from withinrdquo itsees uniquely ldquothat part of the natural life that the spirit hasnot touched and which consequently unfolds in theunconsciousrdquo18

Without doubt it is only through our participation in themystery of the trinitarian Life that we are to become fullycapable of going beyond this psychological vision that canindeed scrutinize certain ldquodepthsrdquo but to which this otherdepth is not accessible this depth which is humantranscendence this otherwise mysterious zone where theimpulse toward God is situated the encounter with God

There is in us a certain root that plunges into the depths of the Trinity Weare these complex beings who exist on successive levels on an animal andbiological level on an intellectual and human level and on an ultimate levelin those very abysses that are those of the life of God and those of theTrinity This is why we have the right to say that Christianity is an integralhumanism which is to say which develops man on all the levels of hisexperience We must always be in defiance of all the attempts to reducethe space in which our existence moves We breathe fully in the measureto which we do not let ourselves be enclosed in the prison of the rationaland psychological world but to which a part of us emerges into these greatspaces that are those of the Trinity And this is what creates theincomparable joy of existence in Christianity19

Pertinent remarks of great importance in ecclesiology aswell as in the liturgy more timely today than ever Thedistinctions recalled by Dietrich Bonhoeffer and by Father PR Reacutegamey based like those of so many others on thePauline anthropology of the First Letter to the Thessaloniansare at once for every member of the Church an appeal tothe highest spiritual life and a warning against itscounterfeits

EPILOGUETO PART ONE

The Light of Christ ldquoIf you believerdquo we are told ldquoin thedivinity of the Christian religion it is because you are

ignorant about all the conditions that marked its beginningand growth The comparative history of religions has madeenough progress so that henceforth it is no longer possibleto speak of a lsquoChristian miraclersquo coming to break the thread

of human religious acts There is nothing in it that is notexplained in the way everything is explained Of course

some points still remain obscure certain influences remainunperceived The task of historians has not yet been

accomplished One can also recognize that several of themhave been a little too quick in thinking to detect here orthere analogies or relationships and their intemperance

was capable of provoking a prudent reaction in somescholars anxious for a more rigorous method But the

general orientation of science is nonetheless certain and itsresult is nonetheless assured Every day leads to a new

light uncovering some new connection and here and nowwe see clearly enough to be able to affirm that Christianityis a human phenomenon very human deeply rooted in the

earth of history where it has drawn all the essence fromwhich its marvelous vigor is nourishedrdquo

An objection that insinuates itself under a thousand formswith respect to a thousand problems A stronger objectionin many eyes than all those of dialectics because withoutfighting it claims to explain Believers are upset by it Menof good will whom Christianity attracts and who alreadybelieve they see Godrsquos work in it find themselves stoppedin their tracks by it they fear to commit themselves

thoroughly to what is perhaps only the work of man If itwere a question only of a milieu providentially prepared tofavor the birth and rise of the religion of ChristmdashJewishMessianism Stoic universalism the organization of theDiaspora the Roman peace mdashthis ensemble of fortuitousconditions could indeed account for its concrete possibilitybut it would definitely not for all that cancel out the miracleof its existence A favorable atmosphere has never sufficedto explain the fact of a birth One would have to becompletely incapable of perceiving religious values to betempted to explain the apparition and success ofChristianity solely by a series of external circumstances asimportant and as favorable as one supposes them to beBetter known the information that history brings in thisorder can therefore only add to the admiration that alreadyseized the Fathers such as Saint Leo exclaiming before hisRoman listeners ldquoNumerous States have been united into asingle Empire so that the ways necessary for the preachingof the Gospel might be readyrdquo1 Admiration that was alsoPascalrsquos ldquoHow beautiful it is to see through the eyes of faithDarius and Cyrus Alexander the Romans Pompey Herodact without knowing it for the triumph of the Gospelrdquo andwho a short time earlier had had this sung to Peacuteguy ldquoThesteps of the legions had marched for Him rdquo2

But history seems to show us much more today Muchmore even than a subjective preparation of soulssuffocating in paganism thirsty for salvation One by oneall the elements of which Christianity is made theconceptions it presupposes the notions it sets in motion itsworship practices the forms of its institutions theprescriptions of its morality all are identified classifiedranked in their place along continuous series Not a dogmanot a feature of discipline or of liturgy that does not have itshistorymdasha history that always includes a first pre-Christianperiod All that had been amalgamated in it is returned to its

origin and soon it seems that nothing of its own remainsHow dare we still in the face of these facts a great numberof which at least are solidly established speak of a religiongiven from heaven of divine revelation How consequentlydare we speak of ldquotranscendencerdquo of supernaturalabsolute definitive truth Everything that is born and growsaccording to the common law is transformed and alsoperishes according to the common law As imposing as itseems Christianity will not escape it Even more perhapsthan the defeats to which it has submitted in the course ofthese recent centuries the history of its origins warns us ofits inevitable decline It is no longer for us the uniqueexception the extraordinary thing that it seemed to be forso long a time It can no longer be loyally preserved fromuniversal evolution Whether the brilliant flash projected byreligion ever since humanity existed is a false flash or anauthentic light is of little importance here in the case ofChristianity one thought to see a unique star appearabruptly in the heaven of religions and miraculously hangthere but a more experienced look discerns that it too wasonly for a moment welded to the others passing like theothers in this long luminous trail

Yet the illusion if such it be has existed It still persists withmany who are not at all ignorant people This too is a factthat must be taken into consideration One should not replywithout further examination that the same is true for allreligion Contrary to almost all the others without exceptingeven Judaism Christianity appeared in the middle of ahistoric period Its legend if there is a legend iscontemporaneous with its existence What a differencethere is in this regard for example with its great rivalBuddhism3 Why then contrary to so many humanphenomena is it presented in so tenacious a way as beingabsolutely exceptional Is ignorance about its true originsenough to explain this illusion in its regard or might it not

be rather the very true perception of its transcendencethat veiled by its brilliant flash certain features of its humanhistory The hypothesis at least deserves consideration It isnot without analogies Many men think themselves free inactions where without doubt they are not at all or with afreedom that is not at all real Is this illusion completelyexplained by a myopia that prevents them from perceivingthe bonds of determinism or does it too not come from anobscure but truthful perception Rather than a total illusionis it not a simple error of localization An error attesting toan awkwardness in analysis a scientific inferiority butwithout any damage to the essential truth

Now it happens too that one badly localizes thetranscendence that one recognizes in Christianity setting itup in positions from which the experienced historian willhave no trouble dislodging it This is why in a more or lessexplicit way one conceives of it then above all as a solutionof continuity To suppose such a transcendence possible atranscendence whose true name would be ldquoexteriorityrdquo isnot the act of Christianity What would remain for exampleof the thought of Saint Paulmdashwho nevertheless sodominated the thoughts of his centurymdashif one cut it fromthe thousand roots that in fact attached it to the earth ofTarsus and Jerusalem How can a single one of its essentialpoints be analyzed without constant reference not only tothe history of the Hebrew people but also to Greekcivilization to Eastern mysticism to the Roman EmpireThis would be an imaginary transcendence pure chimeralinked to a no less chimerical ideal of revelation The realitythat it would effect if this were possible would not besuperhuman but inhuman Far from being sublimated by itit would only be impoverished dried up

It would find the path neither of our spirit nor of our heartArtificial superficial and not at all supernatural Such asthose devout people of whom Peacuteguy speaks who becausethey do not have the strength to be of nature imagine that

they are of grace in reality dried fruits But there is anothertranscendence a true transcendence of which the first wasonly at best the naiumlve transcription An intrinsictranscendence in virtue of which a given reality consideredas synthesis in what comprises its own being surpassesessentially the realities of the same kind that surround itwhatever might be the community of elements that itinforms along with theirs whatever might be too the tiesof origin that render these different elements solidary Anytrue synthesis is always more than synthesis A certainrecasting that is much more than a new combination acertain ldquorevival from withinrdquo transforms everything It is in aphenomenal continuity the passage to a new higherincomparable order4

Now for anyone who can seemdashbut which of us can natterhimself that he always can once and for allmdashthe intrinsictranscendence of Christianity is obvious It alone countsand a direct look well aimed is enough to establish it Theunbeliever does not have to overcome historicalcontinuities nor does the believer have to refuse to seethem A priori they must be Scholars dedicated todiscovering these continuities are not at all devotingthemselves to a vain task They can indeed often bemistaken (certainly they do not fail to be so) or give in tothe temptation of confused conjectures the hypothesis thatguides them is nonetheless sound The fragility of certainconstructions does not at all prevent the firmness of theirfoundations Besides in research that some would hold tobe sacrilege science is after all only exploiting the Paulineidea of the ldquofullness of timerdquo It is uniting in a way with thethought of the Fathers of the Church so anxious to bring outthe ldquoevangelical preparationsrdquo in order to spare Christianitythe appearance of a ldquosudden improvisationrdquo ldquoNihil putem aDeo subitum quia nihil a Deo non dispositumrdquo5 It agreeswith the reflection of the philosopher who considering the

Christian event refuses by very reason of its unparalleledproportions to attribute an accidental character to it6

But in what touches the very basis of religion thesecontinuities are only appearance Yes in one senseChristianity is human completely human We can we mustspeak of its birth If the words it uses are necessarilyborrowed then it is unavoidable that the concepts are tooAnd how would man tell himself the truth even divinelyrevealed truth except by using concepts There is norevelation except supernatural ldquoin the pure staterdquo Howwould God give himself to man if he remained a stranger tohim And how would his Word penetrate him if it were notalso to become a human word The messages of Saint Paulor Saint John are already ldquotheologiesrdquo and the veryconsciousness of Christ is the consciousness of the Wordmade flesh But a less rudimentary psychology has shownus that the concepts themselves are in their multiplicity farfrom expressing the whole of a doctrine for they are withinthe spirit the part closest to matter With how much greaterreason if it is a question of an object that is not onlydoctrine but first of all reality By what makes it itself by itsoriginal essence which consists neither in words nor inconcepts and which the whole sum of words and concepts isnever capable of translating adequately Christianity isdivine completely divine Through the close texture ofrelationships of ideas and beliefs without break withouttear a new spiritmdashthe Spirit himselfmdashhas passed He hasstolen in with gentleness and he has burst in with powerHe has penetrated human history and all has beentransformed The face of the earth has been renewed by itThis was a new Fiat a true creation ldquoEmitte Spiritum tuumet creabuntur et renovabis faciem terraerdquo7 The Spirit ofChrist has founded a wholly new thing the religion of Christand this religion of Christ for which all human history hadprepared for which all human thought had slowly woven the

fabric suddenly rises up in the midst of men ldquosine patresine matre sine genealogiardquo Pure creation pure miracleThere we have this ldquonewrdquo idea which Jules Lachelier saidldquois born from nothing like a worldrdquo

What new ideas though that do not come from usourselves The inventions of man enrich humanitydiscovering in the soul some nuance unperceived until thenbut always leaving it to its essential finitudemdashto itsincurable decay Once past the first amazement the ironicand despairing refrain of Ecclesiastes is heard again Thecircle enlarged or shifted closes again On the contrarywith a leap the Christian Idea transports us beyond ourlimits It breaks this circle within which all our progress hadbeen condemned in advance to fit Such was the thought atits appearance breaking the circle of animaltransformations It is born in its own time it has its markedplace within the progress of life and nevertheless what itbrings is much more than progress From the time itemerges a new kingdom has begun the human kingdomSo the preaching of Jesus marks the advent of the Kingdomof God8 For how many of the sentences of the Sermon onthe Mount would we not find analogies in the Jewish Bible orin the teaching of the rabbis The One who pronounces itspeaks nonetheless as man had never spokenmdashas manwould never speak9 The Gospel inaugurates the time ofgrace It is a wholly new order that begins ldquoa new order oflove in the universerdquo10 A dike has been broken which letsthe flow of Love pass through Now it would be as vain todream of a reality more divine than Love than to imagine areality more spiritual than Thought The transcendence ofChristianity is thus not only relative to such and such anearlier achievement It is not only something originalsomething superior a provisional novelty clearing the wayfor some ulterior invention destined to go beyond it It is anabsolute transcendence ldquoOmnem novitatem attulitrdquo11

Peacuteguy has also sung it He was going to inherit a worldalready made And yet he was going to remake it entirely

Of course the order of charity is not revealed any morethan is the order of the spirit in all its fullness or in all itsdepth to that observation from outside that constitutes thework of the pure historian But if their inner essence stillescapes observation would the simple sight of their effectnot already arouse the sense of their incomparablegreatness We know the repercussions observable to thenaturalist not blinded by an overly narrow concept ofscience produced in the universe by the apparition ofthought the paradoxical properties of the ldquohumanphenomenonrdquo its extraordinary power for expansion andconcentration out of proportion with the weakmorphological originality of man presuppose a presence ofwhich the naturalist can only catch a glimpse but they sethim on the way that must normally lead him to go beyondhis science to discover in truth the human kingdom12 Therepercussions produced in humanity by the advent ofChristianity are no less prodigious the human spiritimmeasurably increased an unparalleled moral fruitfulnessa society tirelessly at work for an ideal of justice and unityand so forth These features are accessible to the historianwho knows how to step back a pace Nevertheless let usrecognize just as reflection alone properly speaking canreveal thought to itself so too only a process of a religiousorder can disclose the absolute superioritymdashwhich is to sayproperly the transcendencemdashof Christianity Like thedivinity of Christ itself the definitive newness of theChristian principle can be perceived only by the eyes offaith It is here that the advantage of the simple believerover the man of science and of life over technique shinesforth For the anthropologist who systematically denieshimself any inner reflection on the lived thought as well as

the historian of religions who does not consent to regardChristianity from within and to begin to live it at leastthrough a basic attitude of real sympathy will neverunderstand anything about the true object of their learnedstudies If their science itself does not lead them to the finalaffirmations it must at least set them on the path But ifthey wish to trust solely in it to the end surrendering theirconscience as men into the hands of their intelligence asspecialists the greater the latter will be and the more it willrisk misleading them

ldquoThe history of the formation of ideasrdquo said Amiel ldquoiswhat makes the spirit freerdquo13 Beneath the ideas that itorganizes and transforms let us know how to discern theChristian Idea This Idea has no history this is what mustmake the spirit submit to it

A great Deed was done for the world twenty centuries agothe Deed of Charity14 Right at first menrsquos habits of thoughtwere not any more overturned by it than were empires Wasan obscure variety of Jewish ldquoMessianistsrdquo worth even aglance The grain of wheat sown by Christ remained buriedin little upper rooms that counted for nothing in the historyof the world Christianity itself would wait five hundred yearsto found retrospectively the ldquoChristian erardquo and it wouldtake another five hundred years for full Christian practice tobecome widespread15 The first disciples of Jesus stilldreamed of the Kingdom of David their father they went upto the Temple as was their custom with a fervor that wasonly increased Having contemplated the Deed that hadbeen done before them they must nevertheless have hadthe feeling of an unparalleled newness The testimony of itappears everywhere in their rare writings ldquoNew teachingnew covenant new commandment new name new songnew man new life second genesis of the worldrdquo16 Such afeeling did not mislead them They were not in danger

those who had seen who had heard those who hadtouched of taking the Christian Mystery to be a more or lessspontaneous mixture of the Jewish Messianism exalted byJesus and cult forms then in vogue in the Hellenized Eastmdashany more than Christian dogma was in danger of appearingto their successors of the great patristic period as a learnedproduct of the Bible and Greek philosophy This chemistry ofimpotent historians could not have been created by themThey knew from an immediate source that they weredealing with something very different They sensed theunity of what myopic analysts think to understand bydecomposing it This is because the principle of synthesiswas in them living and active It is because living thisdogma themselves before drawing up the inventory of itadoring this mystery before translating it they penetratedits spiritual meaning

In addition their testimony is for us more than aguarantee It constitutes a call If that call is at firstnecessary for us we do not have to hold to it ldquoNowrdquo saidthe inhabitants of Sichar to the woman who had led them toChrist ldquoit is no longer because of what you have said to usthat we believe for we have heard him himself and weknow that he is truly the Savior of the worldrdquo17 For twentycenturies the witness of the first generation of believers ispreserved intact because it always remains a living witnessabyssus abyssum invocat [deep calls to deep] Why shouldwe be riveted to history The Spirit still gives witness to ourspirit18 The Kingdom of God is still in the midst of us ldquoTheGospel of Jesus Christ Son of Godrdquo which was heard for thefirst time in Galilee under Herod during the fifteenth yearof Tiberius Caesar at the time of the High Priests Annas andCaiaphas still resounds today and if the forms of itspreaching are different it is the same Voice that proclaimsit Like the creative Deed which does not cease to maintainbeing and life everywhere the Deed of Charity is pursued

over the world The second Genesis henceforth aspermanent as the first and like it infinitely fruitful TheChurch Bride of Christ continues the work of herBridegroom We have only to contemplate hermdashnot fromoutside in her sole visible organization with its humancharacteristics which are often too human perhaps with itsdefects not even in the works of its scholars alwaysunequal to their task and whose insufficiency can be sopainful19mdashespecially when they themselves do not seem tofeel itmdashbut in her inner life in her ideal in her belief in hersecret fidelity in the purity of her zeal in the marvelousfruits of holy joy that she makes ripen in the depths ofhuman hearts In all that the ldquoworldrdquo does not perceiveThen the light shines then the Truth bears witness to itselfveritas index sui No need for laborious comparisons or of anerudite return to the past The clearsightedness of a limpidlook is preferable here to all the sharp perspicacities ofcriticism This is because the miracle is endlessly producedbefore our eyes Today as formerly by virtue of Christianityldquoall things are becoming newrdquo EvenmdashSaint Augustine hadalready noted itmdashthe more time advances the moreprivileged is our situation as witness The mystical Christ inthe measure he increases better reveals his power To thesigns of it that already multiply still others will be addedwhen his message has truly reached the most distantpeoples Today we only begin to see all the fullness of theDeed that renewed the world The sudden clarity of the firstdays has become a great luminous path which grows withthe centuries

This great Deed of Love Jesus it is You Yourself Perceptible to manhumble dying in a corner of Judea oh yes You are man Flower of JesseYou are indeed the fruit of our earth Born of a woman truly formed fromher substance You are not some sort of phantom come down from theclouds of heaven You are deeply rooted in our earth20 But in You Jesus asin no other child of our race God showed himself You were not merely Hismessenger You are His living and substantial appearance Through You He

has not only spoken Or rather His language is an action His word is adeed it is You Yourself Splendor Verbum et imago Patris You Jesus onyour Cross the act uniting earth to heaven21

In You God still shows Himself and in your holy Church Inyour best disciples He still shines so well that one cannotmistake it For it is You who live in them Have we not allknown someone in whom a divine flame burned which theyhad lit at your hearth alone Their silent testimony is all themore persuasive Non eloquimur magna sed vivimus22 ldquoAsfor merdquo said Gerbet ldquoI lend an ear to the sounds that holysouls make with greater respect than to the voice ofgeniusrdquo23 What a great wise man concludes after longstudies and profound meditations in favor of your divinitythat encourages me but scarcely moves me forward Butthat a Francis of Assisi that being so obviously predestinedto make a ray of eternity shine over our earth makeshimself your absolute disciple that he loves You adoresYou annihilating himself before You that he is ambitiousonly to place his steps in your steps and to live from You byreproducing each of your features that he wants always tobe only your humble repetitor24 that not for a moment doeshe entertain the idea of engaging in a personal way oftrying another experience of adding at least something toyour message this humble and total will to imitatemdashChristototus concrucifixus et configuratusmdashin the face of yoursovereign independence such literalness in such an effusionof the Spirit such contrast in a similar holiness Themore I reflect on it the stronger the argument seems tome25

After that what do the difficulties matter in which myreason gets tangled Or rather how could it be that so loftyan object would not put it to flight If You have come tounveil a new kingdom and a new existence to me howshould I not consent to letting myself be removed from myusual surroundings Is it not normal that I have to abandon

my usual modes of thought26 Your word upsets myinstinctive logic it overturns all my arrangements of ideasit shatters my concepts This is the price for the liberation ofmy understanding Yet little by little in mystery a newequilibrium is established Under the secret action of yourSpirit faith is able to find its exact expressions whichprotect it against the ever-reborn assaults of a reason toolittle converted This was not without a long and arduouswork To define your twofold nature as for all that is worththe effort of our understanding it takes time reflectiongroping disputes materials from all sources A long andperilous journey A complicated winding history strewnwith a thousand contingencies An often tragic historymdashawonderful history27 It was through the adventurousconcepts of thinkers that Catholic Christology ended inrejoining the first intuition of faith

More than any other because it is at the center of all thedefinition in which the result of this labor is found today isimperfect An inevitable and blessed imperfection Notaccidental but essential necessary so that humbleastonishment before the mystery may subsist in theprecision of belief and in the firmness of adherence Butalready Jesus your very first disciples when they loved Youabove all and when they left all to follow You when theygave You all without thinking thereby to take anything fromGod when they contemplated You seated at the right handof the Father when they called You the one Lordproclaiming that all had been renewed by You and that allknees must bend before You your disciples believed in YouExtraordinary impossible faithmdashand yet authenticatedbeyond doubt A scandal as grave for the historian as thedogma itself for the thinker For though not beingabsolutely the same as ours the difficulties for a Saint Peteror a Saint Paul in believing were no less strong Nor werethose of their successors the Origens and the Cyrils the

Ambroses and the Augustines Modern man flatters himselfwhen he judges that the Copernican revolution or theKantian revolution dug out a new hiatus between histhought and the thought of the Ancients It was as hard tobelieve then as it is today It was hard for a JewishmonotheistmdashldquoListen Israel Your God is onerdquomdashto believe inthe divinity of a man28 It was hard to believe in thecrucifixion of the Son of God29 It was hard for a reasonableman who had been able to see up close the Son of Man inhis humiliation to believe in the resurrected Christ and inall these histories ldquothat do not allow themselves to beallegorized rdquo30

ldquoA scandal for the Greeks and folly for the Jewsrdquo OurFathers passed beyond their faith conquered all theobstacles What they were capable of we ourselves will becapable of and if we do not make ourselves unworthy ofthem the reasons that quickened them will not be lessstrong for us Their attitude will thus be ours We could nottranscend it but neither could we restrict it without denyingyour message at the same stroke Jesus For it is no morepossible to abstract You from this message than it ispossible to abstract God from Yourself On what would webase the demands of your Law if we began by failing torecognize the Demand of your Person Who wouldguarantee us the hope of the Kingdom if we were not torecognize the King of it Does everything in You not tell usthat You are Yourself the Kingdom as You are the Truth andthe Life31 So from the beginning the religion of Jesuswhich is the ideal of love was indivisibly the religion ofChrist that is the cult of incarnate Love It is folly to want todissociate them and to believe that the first would survivethe ruin of the second The religion of which Jesus is thesubject and norm is gradually achieved in us only throughthe religion of which Christ is the object Moreover it isblindness not to recognize their identity it is to tear the

seamless robe that the Gospel presents to us and it is notto see the metaphysical significance of Love

Evangelium ChristimdashEvangelium de Christo a modernscarcely more subtle form of the old antithesis betweenpractice and dogma32 But in maintaining contrary to thosewho set them in opposition that there is an essentialrelation between them we do not mean simply that onemust observe dogma as a means for assuring practice Theirties are intrinsic33 and the necessity of their agreement isonly one consequence On the one hand ldquopracticerdquo can becorrectly defined only by dogma from it alone does itreceive its meaning and spirit and on the other hand inone sense it already contains everything in itself for it issummed up in charity which is the spiritual being in act

God is Love and in a great feat of Love he came to takeup man sinner and miserable Man and God embraced eachother in Christ The unique intellectual fecundity of thisDeed it is specifically pregnant with all Christian dogmaticsso that the latter must be called strictly revealed No morein fact than one could dissociate the revealed truths fromthe very Person of the Revealer could one conceive a justand complete idea of the transcendent newness ofChristianity if one did not see that in this Person of Christsuch as the Apostles already show him to us and such asthe Church never ceases to contemplate and reproduce himthe reality of Charity and the truth of Dogma areindissolubly united Charity constituting the reality of thisDogma as this Dogma itself constitutes the truth of thisCharity34

As for the intellectual elaboration from which the dogmain its second state results which is to say in that abstractand learned formulation that multiplies it in distinctenunciations wholly guided by the Spirit of Truth as it is itnevertheless remains a human operation The materials it

employs just like those that entered into the firstspontaneous expression of faith are human materials Theycan thus serve them too in the real (though alwaysinadequate) transmission of divine truth only in the measureto which they are related to the Whole of Dogma35 In themeasure to which on the contrary they are consideredeach in isolation the formulas cease to bear witness to thedivinity of their origin they lose the best of their meaningceasing to have relation to divine charity such as itappeared to us in Christ For our faith is one and it is whollysummed up in You O Jesus36 You are the center and thebond of all its ldquoarticlesrdquo All its expressions all itsdevelopments are only so many means of understandingYou better and of situating ourselves better before You Thisis why the historians who instead of considering Christianityin its living unitymdashwhich one can do fully only if one lives itoneselfmdashalways scrutinize its elements only by taking themone after the other as a series of detached pieces resistany possibility of understanding it The essence escapesthem They do not find the soul at the end of their scalpelIn Christianity they find nothing divine not seeing Christ init

How true it is therefore to say that if dogma is necessaryfor the maintenance of practice the role of practice isnonetheless essential for maintaining the reality of dogmaintact We now discover the whole meaning of such anaxiom Without the truth of dogmamdashalthough there may besome good ldquounfaithfulrdquomdashone will only have an apparentpractice but on the other hand without the reality ofpracticemdashalthough there may be some bad Christiansmdashonewill no longer have anything but an apparent dogma On theone hand a charity that is less than genuine on the other asuperstitious belief or a verbal orthodoxy an ldquoorthologyrdquowithout any real content This is because if the articles offaith are numbered the Object of Faith is marvelously one If

the former are formed of abstract propositions the Latter ismarvelously Living And just as according to the oldScholastic theory all physico-chemical bodies onceassimilated by the human organism are directly informedby the soul so that there is no longer either carbon oroxygen and so forth but only human matter so with all theelements religious or profane in origin that enter into theChristian synthesis Constructed completely in one sensewith human materials the dogmatic formulas neverthelessexpress divine truth Elaborated by men they channel apart of divine revelation But this is on condition onceagain that one always relates them to that same revelationto the living Center to the divine Center from which allradiates and to which all must lead us to Jesus Christ JesusChrist the personal manifestation of Charity Jesus Christ inwhom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledgebecause in him dwells the fullness of the Divinity JesusChrist Word of the Father who speaks him and gives himentirely There is no absolute newness no revelationproperly speaking no true transcendence outside of theunique reality of his Person We must always return to thewords of Saint Irenaeus ldquoOmnem novitatem attulitsemetipsum afferensrdquo37

Jesus I believe in You I confess that You are God You are forus the whole Mystery of God38 What other definition of Godwould we seek than that given by your Apostle And was itnot in contemplating You that he found it God is Love Thissingle word contains an unfathomable mystery which Iadore But through You this mystery illumines our nightalready For Love has done a great deed and this Deed ofLove the Love made visible to our eyes perceptible tohearts of flesh effective and saving Love is You Yourself Itis God made man it is the Incarnation of God

We stammer as we can Our formulas are insufficientNecessary to shield the treasure of our faith their form

nevertheless troubles us But your true adorers O Jesushavenrsquot You Yourself said are not those who put their trustin frail words they are those who understand your feat andwho sustained by Youmdashfor that costs more than bloodmdashstrive to reproduce it

An absolute feat nothing has any value except throughcharity Charity demands all assumes all Charity judges all

An efficacious feat through this ldquodivine strengthrdquo alreadyrecognized by the Apostle Paul39 he uproots us from ouregotism he opens us takes us raises us makes us capableof adopting the contours of it in our turn He eradicates theold man and implants the new man Operatorius sermoChristi40

A finally definitive feat Whatever might be the futureprogress of our race whatever the enlargement of itsknowledge or the refinement of its ideal we will not betaken unawares The coming of Christ has marked thefullness of time No fullness no depth will ever exhaust theDeed of Calvary41

That is why peaceful about the past we also look to thefuture without fear ldquoQuid amplius reservandum cumamplius nihil sit plenitudine perfectionisrdquo42 Sure that ourfaith will never mislead us we go ahead of the excavationsof history and the research of science Ahead too of humanprogressmdashand we know too well that all progress of theworld will not obtain the least beginning of salvation Aheadof the new values to which history gives birth through itscrises Man can vary and perfect his culture without end Hecan discover and exploit new potentialities in it The veryUniverse can grow immeasurably and distant stars can oneday reveal a humanity more numerous more civilizedmdashmore miserablemdashthan our own the Deed of Christ wouldstill take it in It embraces all worlds just as it shines abovetime For all equally for each one of us and at all times for

those who believe in man and for those who despair of himits rays are those of Eternal Life

ldquoHe has come the Christ of God the Leader of thePromises And without any doubt he has been he alone tothe exclusion of all those who preceded himmdashand I have theaudacity to say he is to the exclusion of all those who followhimmdashthe one awaited by the Nationsrdquo43

translate ldquomay your whole person soul and bodyrdquo thus recovering therepresentation that Judaism and Paul had of the human person We haverendered the sentence in a way that makes a simple enumeration of termsapparent each of which can designate for Paul the entire man whether itis a matter of pneuma psychegrave or soma There is no need at all then for anexplanation borrowed from a Greek anthropology in three componentswhich moreover are never expressed with these three terms14

One could not better display a stratagem One could not bemore subtle more sophisticated more inconsistent too butat the same time more honest in the end more clear and inthe final proposition more precise

But here is another strange thing This unfortunatetrichotomy so suspect because of the ldquoPlatonistrdquo Origenthis trichotomy that some would like to be able to forbid inreading Saint Paul for fear of having to admit that theApostle at least once ldquoPlatonizesrdquo this accursedtrichotomy that some strive for want of something betterto exorcise by making it commonplace which one finds inPaul or in Origen or in anyone else has nothing Platonicabout it

We can first of all take this on the word of some goodexegetes those at least who are not hypnotized by the FirstLetter of Paul to the Thessalonians Do we not recognize forexample the mark of Hellenic influence and more preciselyof Platonic opinion on the Book of Wisdom a little beforethe Christian era in the fact that certain passages of thisbook enunciate or presuppose a bipartite division of thehuman composite a division ldquomore conformed to Greekcustoms than to Semiticrdquo15 Do they not strive with reasonmoreover to show that the recognized use of ldquoPlatonicdoctrines about the distinction of body and soulrdquo and aboutthe immortality of the latter takes nothing away from thebiblical foundation of a thought that is not that of aphilosopher but that of a wise man of Israel ldquonourished bythe Old Testamentrdquo16

If it happens that one has not read much of Plato one canalso go back to some authorities on him what one finds inhis work is totally different from what one finds in Saint PaulThere is a certain psychological trichotomy in other wordsa tripartite division of the soul reasonable irascible andconcupiscible So it is in the Republic Phaedrus andTimaeus According to Phaedrus the θυμός and theἐπιθυμητιϰόν are the two horses of the chariot led by theνοῦς Origen who is familiar with this division is verycareful not to make it his own he observes on the contrarythat it ldquois not confirmed by the authority of Holy Scripturerdquoand for this reason on two occasions he rejects it17 Thetranslators of the TOB were very close to perceiving all thatsince at the end of their laborious explanations they finallytell us that Paul had undoubtedly borrowed nothing ldquofrom athree-part Greek anthropologyrdquo given the fact that thelatter is never expressed in Pauline terms But why then thisfear which has made them shrink from the simplesttranslation

It is not correct moreover to say that the text of 1Thessalonians is an isolated text in Scripture and in Paulhimself Undoubtedly it has been unduly compared to averse from Deuteronomy ldquoYou shall love Yahweh your Godwith all your heart with all your soul and with all yourstrengthrdquo to the sole end of insinuating that only thenumber three was here and there to be retained assignifying simply a totality18 it is enough to read these twotexts to see that they are not comparable But on thecontrary when the Letter to the Hebrews celebrates theWord of God who ldquopenetrates to the division of soul andspiritrdquo (Heb 412) it is inspired without any doubt by ananthropology similar to that of Paul And one can hardlymaintain that the formula of the latter is a mere pleonasmldquofor other passages show clearly that the Apostle despiteall the elasticity or lsquofluidityrsquo of his terminology distinguishes

clearly between the phenomena that indicate the body souland spiritrdquo19 He does so in the First Letter to theCorinthians when twice he contrasts the unspiritual ornatural [psychique] man and the spiritual man20 W DavidStacey has maintained that these latter texts cannotcorrespond to that of the Letter to the Thessalonians of thetwo conceptions in conflict it would be necessary on thebasis of all evidence to choose the one later in date asexpressing the mature thought of the Apostle21 theantagonism of natural and spiritual would be substituted forthe hierarchical union of soul and spirit But here again thedesire to eliminate or at least to neutralize a text deemedembarrassing seems to us to have led Dr Stacey astray It isvery evident that the text of 1 Thessalonians is far fromhaving the same significance as that of 1 Corinthians thatdoes not prevent the thought of Saint Paul from remainingcoherent from one letter to another The soul (the psyche) isnever for its part the object in itself of a pejorativeappreciation If in another context he is severe or not veryadmiring of the man he calls ldquonaturalrdquo it is insofar as thelatter is only natural insofar as he closes himselfmdashorremains still provisionally closed22mdashto the Spirit of God whowould (or will) make of him a ldquospiritualrdquo man conferring onhim thus his ldquofullnessrdquo as the Letter to the Ephesians willexpress it (518) The natural man of 1 Corinthians 2 canhave a certain ldquohuman wisdomrdquo that is not uniquely ldquocarnalwisdomrdquo (cf 2 Cor 112) which does not lack all value butunderstands nothing ldquoof the things of the Spirit of Godrdquo forhim they are ldquofollyrdquo To this ldquowise manrdquo to this ldquocultivatedmanrdquo to this ldquoman of reason here belowrdquo the Apostlecontrasts the ldquowisdom of Godrdquo manifested in Christ23

It would be no more appropriate to bring out here thePauline opposition in a still more radical sense between theflesh and the spirit The carnal man is not the one whowould stop so to speak at a first landing that of the flesh

which is to say in such a case at things of the body but theone who has fallen into evil Body and flesh (it is reallynecessary to repeat this since people still seem to bemistaken about this at times) are in no way synonymous oreven comparable and do not belong to categories of thesame order In the thinking of Saint Paul the ldquofleshrdquo has ldquoaclose solidarity with sinrdquo it is this congenital weakness thatmakes the human soul fall into the slavery of sin Theldquospiritrdquo its antagonist is ldquothe state of freedom in which itblossoms when it has been faithful to the Spirit of God whoattracts it and comes to dwell within itrdquo There is noquestion here of any gradation but of opposition pure andsimple Saint Paul does not speak there of any dualitywhatever in the structure of the human being he does notcorrect a tripartite anthropology by another bipartite oneFor him flesh and spirit never designate two components ofhuman naturemdashlike body and soul would bemdashbut alwaysstatesmdashcontrasted statesmdash of the whole man24

If one wants therefore to find a certain Greek antecedentof philosophical significance for the Pauline trichotomy itwould not be appropriate to look for it on Platorsquos side Itwould rather be in Aristotle The Stagirite in factacknowledges in man an animated body the presence of asuperior element the spirit (νοῦς) the principle ofintellectual life immortal and divine Nevertheless theparallel takes a sharp turn for there would be at least onemajor difference While Aristotle spoke of a νοῦς Paulspeaks of a πνεῦμα Now as we know the difference is notmerely one of terminology It is no longer a question of asimple nuance of thought The substitution of one term foranother was besides not made by Paul alone it hadalready been carried out a little earlier by Philo Friendlytoward Hellenism Philo ldquowas imbued with the doctrine ofthe contemplative nousrdquo25 nevertheless in the passageswhere he comments on the creation account he does not

speak of νοῦς but of πνεῦμα God he says breathes intoman a pneuma not content with making him simply alivecomposed of soul and body he gave him part of his spiritthis is what Moses teaches by saying that he made him inhis image This pneuma in man is the principle of a higherlife the place of communication with God26 Now such isalso one of the meanings of pneuma in Saint Paul It is not inGreece that we must search for its origin but in the Bible

Father Joseph Huby has said it in a few words which morerecent authors would benefit from rereading In the Paulineverse ldquofamous because of the trichotomy spirit soul bodyof the human composite some thought to see a borrowingfrom Plato or Aristotle Both do acknowledge in fact threeprinciples in man but if the latter two of those coincide withthose27 enumerated by Saint Paul the first is different InPlato it is the nous the intellectual soul consideredmoreover by Aristotle as separable Instead of νοῦς SaintPaul puts spirit or pneuma here with him as in Philo this isa Semitic term suggested by the account in Genesis (27)where it is said that God breathed into the nostrils of theman a breath of life rdquo28 The Pleiade Bible has taken thesame explanation which seems imperative to us ldquoSpiritsoul bodyrdquo recalls Michel Leturmy in a note to histranslation ldquosuch is with the Semites the most commondivision with respect to the human compositerdquo29 In a noteto the translation of Matthew 625 the same authorexplains that the Greek ψ υχή translates the Aramaeannaumlfshacirc breath of the throat animal life (the ldquosoulrdquo) throughopposition to πνεῦμα which translates the Aramaean roucirc hacircdivine respiration breath of the nostrils (the ldquospiritrdquo) seeGenesis 2730

We do not believe it would be enough however to tracethe words of the Pauline triad simply to those of the BibleThe Apostlersquos anthropology is also based in part on hisexperience acquired from life in the Spirit of God There are

numerous commentators who in consequence consider thePauline πνεῦμα to designate in reality not something of manthat would be higher than his soul but the human soulinsofar as it is informed by grace participating as theSecond Letter of Peter (14) says in an effective way in thedivine nature united to the very essence of God by thecoming of the divine Spirit into it31 The ψ υχή in this casewould be not only ldquosensible liferdquo but also the higher realityof man as man that is although Buzy translates it in anoverly intellectualist language ldquoreason without gracerdquo32

This would be ldquothe state of the specifically living beingwhich is inherent in man as suchrdquo33 So too schematicallyBonnetain ldquoThe three terms come back to the followinggrace soul and bodyrdquo34 Father Andreacute-Jean Festugiegravere isclearly opposed to this interpretation which also proceedsin some from the fear of attributing to the Apostle ananthropology judged to be ldquoPlatonicrdquo For him theanthropology of Saint Paul is undoubtedly trichotomic thepneuma in question in the wish addressed to theThessalonians as in the texts mentioned above from theFirst Letter to the Corinthiansmdashand as in addition the Letterto the Hebrews speaks of itmdashis not the Holy Spirit butactually a part of man ldquothe movement of the phrase thetwo ϰαί the insistence on saying that we must becompletely in our whole being under the divine safeguardrdquoare the proof of it35 Besides if this pneuma is not itself thedivine life realized in man it is indeed in him the center ofthe higher life moral religious mystical it is the ldquocenter ofthe Christian liferdquo which is not a matter of feelings but offaith36

Some hesitate to choose between these two contradictoryinterpretations even if it means apparently contradictingthemselves in their explanatory formulas They are of thefeeling that the thought of Paul is profound and complexthey would like to lose nothing of it but do not see well how

to explain it in our language in a coherent fashion Such isFather Joseph Huby following the passage we have quotedldquoFor Paul the pneuma is more precisely the spirit of maninsofar as influenced informed and heightened by divinegracerdquo it is the ldquoprinciple of thinking center of moral andreligious life and summit of the soul The original (biblical)concept of the pneuma the human soul breathes from Godis magnificently deepened the pneuma designates thereason informed by grace man insofar as he becomes spiritparticipating in the nature of God through the spirit theνοῦς becomes capable of conquering the flesh it isunited to the very essence of God through the coming of thedivine Spiritrdquo37 In this essay somewhat awkward in itsattempts at reconciliation in which a fourth term (νοῦς) isintroduced we see to which side the author is leaning Wewill say as much of Max Alain Chevallier who with respectto 1 Corinthians 1414-16 after having noted for us ldquothefreely equivocal use of the word pneuma by Paulrdquo seems torestrict immediately the significance of his observation bysaying that this word ldquodesignates without describing it theinner man filled with the presence of Godrdquo38 Karl Barth inhis Dogmatics escapes such oscillations only thanks to hisgeneral doctrine which prohibits him from ldquoreifyingrdquo in away from giving a proper consistency to the human spiritconsidered in its relation to God After having justlyobserved that the ruah of the Old Testament does notcorrespond to the πνεῦμα ἅ γιον of the New39 but insofar asa ldquoanthropological notionrdquo to the πνεῦμα of the address tothe Thessalonians Barth makes haste to add ldquoOn the otherhand one cannot assert without reservation that the OldTestament and the New refer to a trichotomy of the humanbeing For both the human being in himself is body andsoul earthly form and earthly life but the body possesses asoul and its earthly form is that of a living being in themeasure in which the human being receives the spirit and

safeguards itrdquo This spirit must however be conceived ldquonotas a property of man but as a gratuitous giftrdquo which atdeath must be returned to God and which persists ldquowhichGod withdraws from him or grants to himrdquo40 What must bemaintained above all according to Barth is that man ldquois inno way lsquorelated to Godrsquo (Gunkel) he has simply beenawakened to his proper existence by the breath that Godbreathes into him and which allows him to breathe himselfWhat is he and what does he possess that he has notreceived and that does not differentiate him from God sinceit is God who has created himrdquo41

The human pneuma of which Paul speaks would thus beboth an element so little constitutive of his being that Godcan take it back from him and a created element thatdifferentiates him from God Such is the Barthian paradoxWithout having to take him literally perhaps we would haveto unite ourselves with the ldquospiritrdquo of it Would it in fact benecessary to choose between two contradictoryinterpretations that confront each other or resign ourselvesto a [false] harmonization that itself does not avoidcontradiction An expression used by Saint Paul himself 1Corinthians 211 could suggest an intermediate solution tous ldquoWho therefore among men knows the secrets of a manif not the spirit of the man which is in him (τὸ πνεῦμα τοῦἀνθϱώ που τὸ ἐν αὐτῷ)rdquo This pneuma is certainly not theHoly Spirit since Paul adds ldquoSimilarly no one knows thesecrets of God except the Spirit of Godrdquo Yet it does notappear completely like a constituent part of man as suchlike the body or the soul after having said ldquothe spirit of themanrdquo Paul corrects himself in a way to say ldquothe spirit whois in himrdquo which marks a nuance of capital importanceThus what par excellence makes a man what constitutesman in his worth among the beings of this world muchmore what makes him a being superior to the world wouldbe an element that rather than being ldquoof manrdquo would be

ldquoin manrdquo There is it seems to us in this Pauline πνεῦμα thesame kind of ambiguity notional because real as in thedivine ldquoimagerdquo or divine ldquobreathrdquo of creation such asChristian tradition interprets them From one author toanother and sometimes in the same author the sameambiguity will give place to oscillations which will not gohowever to the point of compromising before a ratherrecent date the idea of a tripartite anthropology Weconclude with a recent interpreter that the Pauline conceptof πνεῦμα is a concept ldquoof which our modern anthropologiescan absolutely not take accountrdquo42

2 Patristic Tradition

I The First Two Centuries Irenaeus It is a fact that Christianantiquity did not judge insignificant the Pauline verse about

body soul and spirit Nevertheless from one author toanother the interpretations differ without always being in

contradictory opposition to each otherIn his letter to the Philadelphians Saint Ignatius of Antioch

simply makes the Apostlersquos enumeration his own in judgingthat his correspondents like the Ephesians and theSmyrnians ldquowill be honored by the Lord Jesus Christ inwhom they hope with flesh soul and spirit (σαϱϰί ψ υχῇ πνεύματι) in faith charity and concordrdquo1 Athenagoras alsodistinguishes between soul and spirit for him the soul isplaced between ldquothe spirit of matterrdquo which is to say ldquotheflesh and bloodrdquo and the ldquoheavenly spiritrdquo which is ldquopurespiritrdquo and it can according to its choice mix with one orbecome the other

The soul becomes passive when it receives the spirit of matter and ismixed with it by looking below toward earthly things and to speak in ageneral way when it becomes only flesh and blood and ceases to be apure spirit2We believe that we will live another life heavenly and no longer earthlyif at least close to God and with God we have steadfast souls masteringpassion and if we remain not like bodies but like a heavenly spirit 3

In Tatian also the distinction seems clear when he saysldquoWe have knowledge of two sorts of spirits one of them iscalled soul the other is greater than the soul it is the imageand resemblance of Godrdquo4 Only subsequently it isimpossible to discern clearly if the spirit he distinguishesthus from the soul and which he calls ldquodivinerdquo is not simplythe Spirit of God The soul he explains is not immortal in

and of itself so ldquoif it remains by itself it dies with the flesh But when it is united to the divine spirit (θεῖ ον) it doesnot lack for help and it rises to where the spirit leads it Forthe seat of the latter is above while its origin is below Nowin the beginning the spirit was the guide of the soul itabandoned it when it did not want to follow it Now theSpirit of God does not reside in all but in some who livejustly The souls who have obeyed wisdom have drawnthe Spirit who is closely related5 to them (συγγενές) rdquo

Saint Irenaeus then Origen should make us pause a littlelonger because of the abundance of texts their importanceand their difficulty6

It is in the fifth book of Adversus Haereses that Irenaeusgives us his views about anthropology But his goal was notto write a clear and didactic exposition for the use of thehistorians who would pore over his text later on it was torefute heretics who conceived of salvation for man only inldquorejection of the fleshrdquo7 On the other hand careful alwaysto stick very close to Scripture he lets himself be guidedsuccessively by the different texts he uses which leads himto change more or less his perspective and his terminologyin the course of his text8 Hence the difficulties forinterpreters

The first passage in which the distinction between the souland the spirit is affirmed is of little interest to us for it isthere a question of an exposition of heretical doctrine9 Inresponse chapter 6 no 1 is presented as an orthodoxcommentary on the Pauline texts

Through the hands of the Father which is to say by the Son and the Spiritit is man and not a part of man who becomes the image and theresemblance of God Now the soul and the spirit can be a part of man butin no way man the perfect man is a mixture and union of the soul who hasreceived the Spirit of the Father and who has been mixed with the fleshmodeled according to the image of God Under the name of ldquoperfectrdquo the Apostle designates those who havereceived the Spirit of God He also calls them ldquospiritualrdquo they arespiritual through a participation of the Spirit but not through a voiding and

a suppression of the flesh In fact if one dismisses the substance of theflesh that is of the modeled work in order to consider only what isproperly spirit such a thing is no longer the spiritual man but the Spirit ofthe man or the Spirit of God By contrast when this Spirit in mixing withthe soul is united to the modeled work thanks to this effusion of the Spiritthe spiritual and perfect man is achieved and it is he himself who has beenmade in the image and resemblance of God When on the contrary theSpirit is absent in the soul such a man remaining in all truth natural andcarnal will be imperfect possessing indeed the image of God in themodeled work but not having received the resemblance by means of theSpirit10

From all the evidence Irenaeus counts here three elementsin man But is it simply a matter of man or of the perfectman Or rather to speak without ambiguity is it simply aquestion of the ldquoperfectrdquo man which is to say complete inhis nature or man divinized through the participation of theSpirit of God Or indeed does Irenaeus mix the two thingsThe text that follows will perhaps enlighten us

Modeled flesh alone is not the perfect man it is only the body of man thusone part of man Neither is the soul alone man it is only the soul of manthus one part of man Nor is the Spirit man one gives it the name of Spiritnot that of man It is the mixture and union of all these things thatconstitute the perfect man And this is why the Apostle in explaininghimself has clearly defined the perfect and spiritual man beneficiary ofsalvation when he says in this First Letter to the Thessalonians ldquoMay theGod of peace make you perfect and holy so that you may be fullycomplete and so that your whole beingmdashto wit your Spirit your soul andyour bodymdashmay be preserved without reproach for the coming of the LordJesusrdquoWhat motive did he have in asking that these three things to wit the soulthe body and the Spirit be preserved whole for the coming of the Lord if hehad not known that all three were to be restored and reunited and thatthere is for them but one and the same salvation This is why he calls ldquofullycompleterdquo those who present these three things without reproach to theLord Thus those are perfect who all at once possess the Spirit of Godremaining always with them and maintain themselves without reproachwith respect to their souls and their bodies which is to say preserving faithtoward God and keeping justice toward their neighbor11

The hesitation remains On the one hand the Spiritconstitutes with the soul one part of man it is called theldquoSpirit of the manrdquo and seems to be distinguished from the

ldquoSpirit of Godrdquo it in itself does not constitute the man anymore than the body or the soul does but it is one of thethree elements that constitute him these three elementsare also enumerated according to Saint Paul who wishesthem all three to be without reproachmdasha wish that wouldbe irrelevant even impertinent in the case of the Spirit ofGod finally moreover Irenaeus himself considers that theyare all three to be ldquorestoredrdquo and to be presented to theLord But on the other hand the soul receives ldquothe Spirit ofthe Fatherrdquo the man is called ldquospiritualrdquo insofar as hereceives participation of the Spirit and this participationmakes him to be not only in the image but in theresemblance of God finally if this man is ldquoperfectrdquo it isbecause in addition to the soul and the body he ldquopossessesthe Spirit of Godrdquo12 And these two series of affirmations arenot found in different contexts they are closelyintermingled

Yet a little farther on several passages come to supportthe second series

Those who possess the deposit of the Spirit and who surrenderthemselves to the Spirit the Apostle rightly calls ldquospiritualrdquo since theSpirit of God dwells in them For spirits without bodies will never bespiritual men but it is our substancemdashthat is the composite of soul andfleshmdashthat in receiving the Spirit of God constitutes the spiritual man 13 The weakness of the flesh makes the power of the Spirit shine forth and it is of these two things that the living man is made living due to theparticipation of the Spirit man through the substance of the flesh mdashTherefore without the Spirit of God the flesh is dead 14The breath of life which makes the natural man is one thing and thevivifying Spirit which renders him spiritual is another The breath has beengiven indistinctly to all the people who inhabit the earth while the Spirithas been given exclusively to those who trample down earthly covetousdesires 15ldquoFor the Spirit will come out around me and it is I who made all breathrdquo (Is5716) He ranks in a way the Spirit in a sphere apart beside God who inthe last days spread it over mankind for adoption but he situates thebreath in the common sphere among creatures and he declares itsomething created Now what has been created is different from the onewho creates it The breath is thus a temporary thing while the Spirit is

eternal After having enveloped man from within and without heremains always with him and henceforth will never abandon him16

One will note however that in these texts the perspectiveis no longer that of an anthropological analysis and thatthey are condemned by other biblical passages than thepreceding Moreover as Irenaeusrsquo principal objective justnow was to claim for the body itself a salvation of which theheretics say it is incapable his objective here is to show thatthis salvation the definitive blossoming of the spiritual lifewhose seed is in each man is the work of the Spirit of Godin each man In no passage is Irenaeus concerned to give uswhat we would call a philosophical anthropology He doesnot go deeply intomdashto tell the truth he does not even havein mindmdashthe problem of the insertion of the Spirit of God inman Despite the several expressions we have brought outand several others as well we believe that the Spirit ofwhich he speaks is always the Spirit of God even when heconsiders it in man If for example it is said in 5 6 1 thatthe soul and the Spirit can be ldquoone part of manrdquo one canobserve with Dom Adelin Rousseau that ldquoparsrdquo is in thesingular ldquoThus although Irenaeus does not hesitate to seein the Spirit of God one of the three constitutive elements ofthe perfect man he refuses and for good reason to makethis Spirit a lsquopartrsquo of the perfect man rdquo A little farther onit is said that the Spirit like the soul and the body is to berestored and saved which seems strange if it is indeed aquestion of the Spirit of God but Dom Rousseau againcomments ldquowhat is to be saved is not the Spirit as such butthe Holy Spirit insofar as communicated to man for his fullachievement in other words the Spirit is less saved than itsaves rdquo These explanations are ingenious they canseem a little subtle they do not however in our opinionfalsify the general line of Irenaean thought Perhaps it isonly necessary to complete them by recognizing that thetexts that are to be thus explained give witness to a rather

clear tendency to conceive of man (even if it is a question ofthe ldquoperfect manrdquo) according to the anthropological schemesuggested by the Apostle17

If therefore the Spirit indeed designates for Irenaeus theSpirit of God his very manner of considering this Spirit ofGod in man and of seeing in it thus one of the threeelements that combine to constitute the perfect man posesan anthropological problem18 Just like the text of the FirstLetter to the Corinthians of which Irenaeus wants to give anaccount it invites a resolution of this problem in thedirection of a certain ldquotrichotomyrdquomdashwhich Origen more of aphilosopher will soon do ldquoThe hereticsrdquo we read again inthe fifth book of Adversus Haereses ldquo do not understandthat three things as we have shown constitute the perfectman the flesh the soul and the Spirit One of them savesand forms to wit the Spirit another is saved and formed towit the flesh another finally is between those two to witthe soul which now follows the Spirit and takes its flightthanks to him now lets itself be persuaded by the flesh andfalls into earthly desiresrdquo19

These explanations seem to us akin to those of FatherJean Meyen-dorff with respect to man ldquocomposed of fleshsoul and Holy Spiritrdquo ldquoThis viewrdquo he observes ldquowhichsounds strangely pantheistic if one judges it according tolater theological categories shows in fact a dynamicconcept of man that excludes the notion of lsquopure naturersquoMan is created so as to share the existence of God this iswhat distinguishes him from the animal and is expressed inthe biblical account of the creation of Adam lsquoin the image ofGodrsquo rdquo20 As Pierre Boyer-Maurel also says21 if for Irenaeusa certain dichotomy ldquoaccounts for man fashioned in theimage of Godrdquo it is nevertheless a trichotomy ldquoin which thebreath only precedes the Spiritrdquo who ldquoaccounts for thebecoming of man of that man who is created by lettinghimself be created throughout the divine Economyrdquo

II Origen Irenaeus spoke particularly of the Spirit of Godeven when that Spirit shared became by consent of thesoul the spirit of man Origen will speak more explicitly of

the spirit of man insofar as an opening to the Spirit of GodThese are two inverse perspectives much rather than two

adverse doctrines1One authority on Origen Gustave Bardy has however

written that the tripartite division ldquowhich is imposed onhim in a way by several Scripture passages plays no rolein his teachingrdquo2 Another historian of ancient Christiandoctrines Francois Bonifas had expressed a judgment inthe contrary direction but as little conformed to the realityafter having pointed out that ldquounsteadinessrdquo of the Paulineterminology ldquomakes it doubtful that the Apostle intended [in1 Thessalonians 523] to make a scientific distinctionrdquo hewent on thinking essentially of Origen ldquoYet the Fathers ofthe Church saw in the expressions of Saint Paul a rigorousdivision in which they found once again that of their oldmentor Platordquo3 Previously J Denis while not mixing Platoup in the affair had recognized in Origen the existence oftrichotomic texts but he saw in that only a foreign body inthe midst of Origenian doctrine ldquoGenerally speakingrdquo hesaid ldquothe soul and the spirit are but one for Origen and ifhe had not respected a division that came to him from SaintPaul and which appears to have been adopted generallyas much by the orthodox Fathers as by the heretic scholarshe would have suppressed one of the terms of this divisionand would thereby have been spared numerouscontradictionsrdquo4 The prejudice to which in each of thesethree last cases the historian is unconsciously giving way isnot difficult to perceive To overcome it would require an in-depth study After the work by G Verbeke on LrsquoEvolution dela doctrine du Pneuma du Stoiumlcisme agrave saint Augustin (1945)the works of Henri Crouzel and Jacques Dupuis have broughtus all desirable light on this point ldquoAt timesrdquo Father Crouzel

tells us ldquoOrigen is a dichotomist distinguishing the bodyand the soul following the Platonic custom5 But most of thetime he sees according to Scripture three elements inman spirit soul and body He has recourse to thistrichotomy when it is a matter of explaining his idea of manand he states it each time he encounters in the texts anexpression that suggests it and this is so throughout hisliterary careerrdquo6 But it is Father Jacques Dupuis who drawsthe matter into perfect clarity in his important monographon ldquoLrsquoEsprit de lrsquohommerdquo eacutetude sur Irsquoanthropologicreligieuse drsquoOrigegravene For him ldquoThere can be no doubt thatthe verse from Saint Paul is the immediate source of hisanthropological trichotomyrdquo (65) It is principally he that wewill follow here

ldquoWe often find it asserted in Scripturerdquo says Origen ldquothatman is spirit body and soul and we have ourselvesdeveloped the subject at lengthrdquo7 In that as in othersubjects it is in fact the sacred text most especially that ofSaint Paul that truly constitutes the framework for histhought8 And it is with reference to Scripture that he triesto define clearly the notion of the Pneuma For him thePneuma is first of all the Divine Life in principle but it is alsothe shared divine life the creature itself becomes pneumain the measure that it possesses this life Yet it is a first kindof participation in the divine Pneuma which does not yetallow it to be said that man has become pneuma aparticipation that without betraying Origen we can alreadycall natural because it consists in an element that is anintegral part of the nature of all men and that is preciselyhis pneuma ldquoThe Spirit of God even when it is present inus is one thing and the pneuma proper to every man thatwhich is in him is something else The Apostle clearlyaffirms that this spirit (this pneuma) is different from theSpirit of God even when the Holy Spirit is present in usover and above the spirit of man that is in himrdquo9 The

distinction could not be put more clearly Origen asks againin the same passage of the commentary on Saint MatthewldquoIs the spirit of Elias the same as the Spirit of God whodwells in Elias or indeed do we have two different thingsthererdquo And he replies ldquoThe Apostle shows clearly that theSpirit of God when he dwells in man is distinct from thespirit of the man lsquoThe Spirit itself testifies to our spirit thatwe are children of Godrsquo (Rom 816) and in another placelsquoNo man knows what is in a man if not the spirit of the manwho is in him likewise no one knows what is in God if notthe Spirit of Godrsquo (1 Cor 211)rdquo10

Origen indeed says like Paul pneuma and not nous It isbecause they did not sufficiently distinguish between thesetwo concepts that several have identified the pneuma of theanthropological trichotomy with the preexisting nous andhave made it the higher (intellectus) part of the soulmdashunless in order better to distinguish between pneuma andpsyche they reduced this latter to its sensible part Theythen spoke of Origenrsquos imprecisions his unstableterminology indeed of his inconsistency of thought and ofhis contradictions This was from not having read himclosely enough11 He distinguishes the spirit from the soul(and in this case he is not speaking of the nous) as clearlyas he does the soul from the body and he repeats atdifferent times that ldquowe are composed of a soul and aspiritrdquo this is the case it seems in the third book of Periarchocircn12 so too in the fourth book in the famoustheoretical parallel that he institutes between man andScripture13 In the Entretien avec Heacuteraclite for theinstruction of his august audience he insists ldquoThat man is acomposite being we know through Scripture The Apostle infact says lsquoMay God make you holy spirit soul and bodyrsquoand so forth This spirit is not the Holy Spirit but one part ofthe human composite (μέϱος τής τοῦ ἀνθϱώ πουσυστάσεως) as the same Apostle teaches when he says

lsquoThe Spirit gives witness to our spiritrsquo rdquo14 In thecommentary on the Letter to the Romans he will also quotein support a text from Daniel15 here he invokes as anexample what happened at the death of Christ havingwanted to save all men the Savior had taken body soul andspirit now ldquothese three elements during the Passion wereseparated at the time of the Resurrection they werereunited During the Passion they were separated How Thebody in the tomb the soul in hell the spirit he deposited itin the hands of the Father rdquo16

This spirit of man represented by the eagle in Ezekiel17 isplaced above the soul18 But never in the texts of thetrichotomic series does Origen call it νοῦςmdashso that thiscould be a criterion for discerning the origin of certainpassages given as Origenian but which are in reality fromEvagrius19

But how are we to understand this spirit which is ldquoin usrdquo20 What is its role If we follow again the indications givenby the Apostle we will compare it to the moral conscienceldquoOur gloryrdquo says Paul ldquois the testimony of our consciencerdquo(2 Cor 112) The conscience always rejoices in what good Ido on the other hand it can never be accused of doing evilbut on the contrary it remonstrates it accuses the soul towhich it is bound this is a sovereign freedom I thereforethink that it is this very spirit that the Apostle tells us is withthe soul being associated with it like a pedagogue and aguide to teach it good to chastise it and to reprimand itwhen it sins It is this spirit of which the Apostle again saysthat ldquono one knows what the man is if not the spirit of theman who is in himrdquo it is the spirit of the conscience alsoaccording to what Paul says ldquoThe spirit himself giveswitness to our spiritrdquo21

We should not however in exalting the pneumaexcessively reduce its reality if it is not a simple member ofthe human composite neither is it the simple voice of the

conscience Inaccessible to evil22 placed in a way as wehave said ldquoabove the soulrdquo (ἀνωτέϱω) as a ldquoguide tovirtuerdquo23 it is ldquomuch more divine than the soul and thebodyrdquo24 ldquobelonging truly to man it remains entirely in aparticipation of the Holy Spirit who gives himself to us it isthe point of contact between man and the divine Pneumawho inhabits himrdquo25 This is why it is always holy it is holyby essence not of course the ldquoHoly Spiritrdquo but throughparticipation a ldquoholy spiritrdquo26 ldquothe seal of the Holy Spiritmakes holy the spirit that is in usrdquo27 in each of us Hencethe paradox the pneuma in man is holy and it mustbecome so we must affirm at the same time the holiness ofthis pneuma and ldquothe fortuitous character of a holy liferdquo28 Ifwe seek to bring out the fundamental idea expressed (let usnot say sought for Origen seems very much the master ofhis thought) in these texts and other similar ones we couldwithout betraying it express it thus the pneuma that is ldquoinmanrdquo in every man assures a certain hiddentranscendence of the man over himself a certain opening acertain received continuity between man and God Not thatthere is the least identity of essence between the one andthe other (like Irenaeus like Clement Origen is animplacable adversary of this pantheism of the pseudo-Gnostics) but it is at the heart of man the privileged placealways intact of their encounter

Would man therefore be after all impeccable No But thecenter of moral freedom and choice is not the pneuma Thatis why we can say that for Origen the pneuma ldquodivine giftrdquois not properly speaking part of the personality29 Thecenter of choice is the soul in its higher part (νοῦς) Thelatter can be inclined as Saint Paul says on the side of thespirit or on the side of the ldquofleshrdquo (which does not mean thebody) which is to say that it is ldquocapable of virtue and ofvicerdquo30 When it is said that the flesh desires against thespirit and the spirit against the flesh without any doubt the

soul is posed between the two as being able to acquiesceto the desires of the spirit (si eum sequi velit)31 or let itselfbe led to carnal desires in this latter case it becomes withthe flesh a single body of covetousness and of carnalappetite in the former case on the contrary beingassociated with the spirit it becomes a single spirit withitrdquo32 The spiritual man is the one in whom the spiritprevails33 the carnal man he in whom the flesh prevailsThe spirit itself the pneuma always remains holy but ineach one it can have vitality or torpor flight or fall flame orsluggishness34 This is why paradoxically Origen can affirmboth as we have said that the pneuma is holy and that itmust become so35

Still following Paul Origen also speaks of the ldquonaturalmanrdquo who is again neither carnal nor spiritual and theexplanation he gives in his respect manifests once again aparadoxical character distinguished only with difficulty fromthat spirit (pneuma) that is in man without being uniquely ofman and that becomes fully himself and fully completesman only in his participation in the Spirit of God ldquoThenatural man does not understand what the law of God is itis madness to him but the spiritual judges all thingsrdquo (1 Cor214) We think that there is a reason why Paul omits theword ldquomanrdquo after ldquospiritualrdquo For ldquothe spiritualrdquo is more thana man he is superior to that humanity defined by the soulthe body or by the two together and not by the spirit whichis more divine than these two elements and whosesupernatural participation once achieved defines thespiritual When the soul rises follows the spirit andseparates itself from the body when it no longer evencontents itself with following the spirit but remains in it (asthis passage shows ldquoToward you have I raised my soulrdquo Ps251) how would it not lose so to speak its own nature andnot itself become spirit36

Toward the end of this text a trace of the speculations ofPeri archocircn on the subject of the soul will be noted buttoned down by ldquoso to speakrdquo It is necessary toacknowledge however that from one work to the otheracross the succession of dates and the varieties of subjectstreated and literary genres the points of view are so diversethat in the words if not in the thought the reader has somedifficulty finding a perfect coherence among all theOrigenian texts on the pneuma

At death all pneuma returns to God this is whatEcclesiastes says ldquoThus the pneuma of the just and that ofthe sinner have an identical destiny both end at theFatherrdquo37 But ldquoit does not follow that saint and sinner sharethe same destiny With the saint the whole man enters intoGod with the sinner the pneuma returns to the Lord thesoul and body perish in Gehenna hence the intrinsic tearingof the human beingrdquo38 Like the remark by Father CrouzelOrigen is akin here to the thought of Saint Irenaeus whosaid ldquoAll those who are destined to life will be raised up withtheir bodies their souls and their spirits those who havemerited punishment will surrender their souls and theirbodies to it for with them they have strayed from divinegracerdquo39

Later Christian tradition will not be as unfaithful to thisconception of the pneuma as one might believe It is foundagain in a series of intuitions ideas and opinions of variedexpression This is for example the idea dear toRuysbroek of a certain ldquodeiformityrdquo of the human being ofhis higher ldquosuperessentialrdquo life in God40 It is the obscurefeeling that there exists in each of us even the greatestsinner a hidden room where no one but God can enter inldquothat sacred point in us that says Pater no iterrdquo as PaulClaudel says magnificently in the famous ldquoCantique dePalmyrerdquo and that cannot hide from love41 It is the intuitionof a Georges Bernanos at the threshold of death noting in

his diary that ldquosin makes us live on the surface of ourselvesrdquoand that even when we offend God ldquowe never ceaseentirely to desire what He desires in the depths of thesanctuary of our soulrdquo42 There are similar traits in the workof Dostoyevsky although they too can be rather equivocal(a novelist does not express himself like a theologian) theydo not prevent him from glorifying personal freedom andproclaiming the necessity of uprooting evil in receiving ldquonewbirthrdquo The Origenian doctrine of the pneuma alsoreverberates throughout the Bonaventurian tradition In atotally different climate and without any need to search fora precise influence from one to the other the very doctrineof Saint Thomas Aquinas would not be completely foreign tohim It questions neither the singularity of each humanbeing nor the drama of existence nor the divinetranscendence43

NOTE

In his commentary on John 423-24 Origen defines ldquotrueadorersrdquo first by the spirit then in relation to the truth Hethus breaks down the dual Johannine formula and explains itterm by term drawing his inspiration again from Paul whoopposes spirit and flesh (Rom 89 Gal 56 2 Cor 103) It isinteresting to note that in evoking Romans 89 Origen addsa μήϰετι those who are no longer in the flesh but in theldquospiritrdquo He thereby stresses the impact of the coming ofChrist and of the gift of the Spiritmdashalready evoked by Paulmdashwhich divide history into a before and an after Origen doesnot work therefore only on words (flesh and spirit) but heis inspired by the Pauline thought in which these terms arenot only anthropological but in which they evoke the impactthat the history of salvation the Incarnation and the gift ofthe Spirit have on man It is the same with Galatians 516fIn verse 18 Paul in fact opposes the condition of man underthe Spirit to that of this same man under the Law As for thethird evocation it is a little different Paul speaks there of hisconduct because some accuse him of acting according tothe flesh that is of allowing himself to be guided bymotives that are too human (Jean-Michel Poffet OP ldquoLeMeacutethode exeacutegeacutetique drsquoHeacuteracleacuteon et drsquoOrigegravenecommentateurs de Jean 4rdquo Jeacutesus la Samaritaine et lesSamaritains [Fribourg Switzerland Eacuteditions Universitaires1985] 191) III From Origen to Augustine A few examplesshould be enough to show the continuity of this tripartiteanthropology across the patristic age

Cyril of Jerusalem addresses to the newly baptized thesame wish that Paul did to the Thessalonians1 Gregory ofNyssa in his treatise on the Creation of Man practices acertain eclecticism Following the perspective that isnaturally his own since he compares the nature of man to

that of the beings that surround him and particularly ofother living beings he begins by distinguishing a threefoldactivity merely vital (that of plants) sentient (that ofbeasts) rational these are like three souls or threesubstances all three of which are found in man alone Thevocabulary is that of the philosophical ϰοινή of that periodthe higher life of man is λογιϰή it is directed by the νοῦςhis nature is a νοεϱά ϕύσις But this can also be understoodsays Gregory according to the words that the Apostleaddressed to the Ephesians (sic) First of all through a boldconcordism he places the body in an equivalence with thenutritive life the soul with the sensate life the spirit(πνεῦμα) with the intellectual life (νοεϱόν) then withoutfurther hesitation and without seeming to perceive that heis changing the perspective he finds once again the truePauline thought or at least comes close to it bydistinguishing life according to the flesh (σαϱϰιϰή) from lifeaccording to the spirit (πνευματιϰή) and by showing thesoul in an intermediary situation having to choose betweenvice and virtue2 Farther on he will explain that only thesoul endowed with reason such as it is in man fully meritsthis name of soul in such a way that he would haverejected it seems any attempt at concordism between theνοῦς and the πνεῦμα3

It is not Hellenism but indeed the Bible that inspires thetrichotomy of the Syrian tradition such as we see it in thishymn of Saint Ephraim of Nisibis For the soul is still moreprecious than the bodyAnd the spirit is still more precious than the soul

And the Divinitymore hidden than the spiritThe body will be clothed with the beauty of the soul when

the end arrives

The soul will put onthe beauty of the spiritThe spirit will put on in its very image the (divine) MajestyThe body on equal footing with the soul will see itself

elevated The soul on equal footing with the spiritThe spirit at the height where the Majesty is 4

In another later Syrian text the awkwardness of an attemptat harmonization between the three elements of man andthe three Persons of the divine Trinity will be noted JacquesdrsquoEacutedesse (d 708) writes in his Explanation of the MassldquoSacred things are holy The soul the body and the reasonare sanctified by three sacred things by water blood andspirit and besides by the Father the Son and the Spirit andtruly man does resemble God in virtue of this trinity ofcomposition the soul corresponds to the Father the body tothe corporeality of the Son and the reason to the HolySpirit Thereby man thus resembles Godrdquo5 One cannevertheless wonder if the word translated by ldquoreasonrdquo isnot here the equivalent of nous rather than of pneuma andif the soul is not merely the sensate soul The same doubtcan be expressed with respect to a passage from theTestament in Galilee of Our Lord Jesus Christ of which wehave the text in Ethiopian ldquoShould the body be judged withthe soul and the spirit Will the body of every man berevived with his living soul and his spiritrdquo6 We will find asimilar hesitation in examining the Latin tradition andperhaps one must say in certain cases at least it cannot beresolved

Saint Ambrose writes on the one hand ldquoHomo ex animarationali constat et corporerdquo7 but also on the other handldquoPrimum unusquisque homo est corporalis secundoanimalis tertio spiritualisrdquo and the parallel he institutesbetween these three elements and the three heavens towhich Saint Paul alludes in the Second Letter to the

Corinthians does not enlighten us much about the meaningof this trichotomy8 Ambrose is not alone in any case inacknowledging it We read in Gregory of Elvira ldquoManifestumest enim tribus perfectum constare semimortalemhominem id est corpore et anima et spiriturdquo9 AndAugustine expresses himself in a similar way on severaloccasions10

In reality Augustinersquos vocabulary is rather evasive Theterm mens as we know holds a privileged place in his workIn De Trinitate he develops a distinction destinedsubsequently to become more rigid that between ratioinferior and ratio superior In commenting on Psalm 3 verse4 ldquoet exaltans caput meumrdquo he explains that this ldquocaputanimaerdquo is the ldquospiritusrdquo or the ldquomensrdquo and so on11

Certain texts which have the appearance of explicitdefinitions speak of two single elements as constitutive ofman ldquoHomo enim constat ex corpore et spiriturdquo12 ldquoNihil estin homine quod ad ejus substantiam pertineat atquenaturam praeter corpus et animam totus homo hoc estspiritus et carordquo13 Yet Augustine does not consider the twowords anima and spiritus to be simply synonyms althoughfor brevityrsquos sake he includes in only one of the two thecomplex meaning of both ldquoNomen animae spiritus est abeo quod spiritalis est animae nomen est ab eo quodcorpus animet hoc est vivificetrdquo14 From which we have acertain number of explicitly trichotomic texts which are ofgreat importance for a correct understanding of Augustiniananthropology for it is on this trichotomy that Augustinebases his doctrine of the memoria15 and he gives it asessential to the Catholic Faith ldquoSi quis tenuerit catholicamfidem ut totum hominem credat a Verbo Dei essesusceptum id est corpus animam spiritum rdquo16

In the same De fide et symbolo Augustine explainshimself at somewhat greater length ldquoEt quoniam tria suntquibus homo constat spiritus anima et corpusmdashquae

rursus duo sunt quia saepe anima simul cum spiritunominatur pars enim quaedam ejusdem rationalis quacarent bestiae spiritus diciturmdashprincipale nostrum spiritusest deinde vita qua conjungimur corpori anima diciturpostremo ipsum corpus quoniam visibile est ultimumnostrum est Anima vero cum carnalia bona appetit caronominatur rdquo17 we also quote several similar texts ldquoUttotus homo sit spiritus et anima et corpus sed aliquandoduo ista simul nomine animae nuncupari rdquo18 ldquoPropterspiritum et animam et corpus rdquo19 ldquoAd creaturaeintegritatem id est spiritum et animam et corpus et illudquo intelligimus et illud quo vivimus et illud quo visibiles etcontrectabiles sumusrdquo20

In De fide et symbolo at the same time as hedistinguishes anima from spiritus Augustine identifiesspiritus and mens21 Likewise too he distinguishes theldquopars rationalisrdquo of the soul (which is thus no longer only theanimator of the body as in animals) from the ldquopars quaeexcellit id est ipsa mensrdquo22 It is practically the lastdistinction expressed in De Trinitate by the seeminglyequivalent words ratio inferior and ratio superior23

In brief the anthropological analyses of Saint Augustineare varied H I Marrou has set up a table which does notintend to be exhaustive24 and it must be noted besides thatunder the same word under the same verbal distinction ithappens that Augustine places different realities On thewhole less dependent on a literal interpretation ofScripture and more particularly of Saint Paul than Origenwished to be25 more inclined to express himself in avocabulary borrowed in part from Neoplatonism Augustineplaces under the word spiritus a reality that sometimesmore closely resembles the nous of Greek philosophythan the pneuma of the sacred text Yet through the dualityhe recognizes within this spiritus (or this ratio or this mens)he remains a faithful witness of the Christian tradition

3 From Saint Augustine to Our Day

I Medieval Spiritual Masters In Augustine as in Origen (andas in the whole patristic tradition) the notions are fluid the

historian must strive to grasp the movement of theirthought rather than to classify their concepts Augustinianexplanations moreover do not correspond point by pointwith Origenian analyses The Christian spiritual masters ofthe Middle Ages will rather often be in this regard closer to

Origen than to Augustine In order not to interpret them in asimplistic way it is necessary constantly to bring analogy

into play Perhaps even the undertaking to reunite them in akind of continuous chain extending to our time is a little

too reminiscent of concordism Let us say finally thatspiritus is not only designated or understood in variousways with some it splits so that one has to deal rather

with a quadripartite anthropology one of the causes for thisis the desire to make a place for the Platonian tradition ofthe intelligence a tradition that is amalgamated somehowor other to the Pauline tradition It is having made these

remarks that we gather together the examples that follow

For John Scotus man is composed of three elements butthe third element called in turn animus intellectus or mensresembles the νοῦς more than the πνεῦμα We read in book5 of De divisione naturae ldquoTotam humanam naturamcorpus videlicet et animam et intellectumrdquo (PL 122 910-11)But another text in book 2 chapter 5 expresses aconception closer to the biblical conception ldquoAciem mentisqua ilium [Deum] intelligimus et in qua maxime imagocreatoris condita estrdquo (PL 122 531 c)1

The traditional trichotomy dominates the structure ofBernardrsquos Brevis Commentatio on the Song of Songs (n 1)In William of Saint Thierry the third term the ldquospiritrdquo splitseither in order to grant a certain place to the nous to theintellectus to rational understanding or rather in order todetail the principal stages of the spiritual life The Letter tothe Brethren at Mont Dieu that important text distinguishesa triplex status animalismdashrationalismdashspiritualis which is tosay ldquothose beginningrdquo ldquothose on the wayrdquo and ldquotheperfectrdquo The opposition between the flesh and the spirit isnot denied William will be able to remind those who havingbegun to taste the sweetness of contemplation might betempted to neglect the permanent necessity of spiritualcombat2 But rather than this dialectical opposition theobject of the Letter is to set forth a pedagogical ladderwhich is moreover nonetheless Pauline in its inspirationThe beginners are still guided by an animalis sensus (this isthe natural man of Saint Paul which is not the carnal man)those on the way acquire a rationalis scientia (we observehere the care to integrate into the formation of the monkthe whole cycle of human knowledge) and the perfect enjoyspiritualis sapientia3 In addition these are not threeairtight categories or perfectly distinct and successivestages just as there is passage from one to the other thereis immanence from one to the other William remains faithfulto the same schema in Miroir de la foi4 as well as in hiscommentaries on the Song of Songs ldquotres status esseorantium vel orationum animalem rationalemspiritualemrdquo5 In De contemplando Deo a subdivisionintervenes between the ratio the discursive faculty andthe intellectus which does not seem to be at this point theequivalent of the spiritus (1 4)

Isaac of Stella speaks in nearly the same way in alanguage however that has more of an intellectualist ringto it in distinguishing the understanding from the reason

which abstracts the forms of the sensate vis animae quaimmediate supponitur Deo6 We have the feeling that thissecond-generation Cistercian was familiar withScholasticism

Hugh of Saint Victor is closer than Isaac to Bernard andWilliam of Saint Thierry According to him the eye of theflesh (which is to say here the body) sees the world andwhat it contains the eye of the reason sees the soul andwhat it contains but the eye of contemplation penetrates tothe innermost depths of man and above man This eye ofcontemplation belongs to those who possess the spirit ofGod7 In Achard of Saint-Victor the order of the last twoelements or of the last two stages seems reversed hetreats de discretione animae spiritus et mentis mens wasas another author of the twelfth century says quasiquoddam divinitatis insigne8 (But this is hardly a questionof vocabulary alone) Whatever might be the distinctionsand subdistinctions orientations inflections and differencesin vocabulary it can be said of all these spiritual masters ofthe Middle Ages as well as of many of those who will followthat they took up the essential chorus of the Pauline andpatristic trichotomy and that most even attribute extremeimportance to it as Sandaeus a seventeenth-centuryauthority was to remark

Magni aestimant Mystici nonnulli et putant maxime necessariam ad suamTheologiam ac perfectionem divisionem inter spiritum et animam9

This is also true of Bonaventure ldquoHabet enim anima trespotentias animalem intellectualem divinam secundumtriplicem oculum carnis rationis contemplationisrdquo10 Werecognize the schema of William of Saint Thierry and Hughof Saint Victor11 For Thomas Gallus closer in this regard toIsaac of Stella ldquoreason feels the intelligence seesrdquo12

Johannes Tauler in several of his sermons teaches thatldquoman is so to speak composed of three menrdquo and that one

must distinguish in him first of all an ldquoexternal manrdquo orldquoanimal manrdquo then a ldquoreasonable manrdquo finally a ldquohigherman wholly inner and hiddenrdquo that ldquonoble and deiformrdquoman ldquomade in the image of Godrdquo13 The mystical theologyof Harphius (Henry Herp) also says that ldquothe soul isaccording to Scripture divided into three parts rdquo14 andthe appeal to Scripture despite the appearance is justifiedFor our authors in fact the adding of a supplementary termto the Pauline enumeration does not derive from the factthat they would abandon Paul in favor of Plato but from thefact that they are concerned besides about a theory ofknowledge which Paul did not at all have in view in hisaddress to the Thessalonians Yet La Perle eacutevangeacutelique leadsus to a tripartite schema the body being understood as inPaul but at base the difference from the medieval authorswe have just enumerated is hardly perceptible

Each man seems almost to represent three men according to the body heis bestial according to the soul he is reasonable and intellectual andaccording to the spirit or the naked essence of the soul where God dwellshe is deiform 15This very noble portion of the soul some call mens insofar as itcontinually breathes after God and is as it were a largely deiform or divinething and the image of God in man It is something divine in being as itwere flooded with God and united to him It is also called the point and thesummit of the spirit because God without intermission shines in the latterlike a mirror It is also according to what the good Father Ruysbroek saysthe highest part of the soul It is also called the sparkle of the soulbecause it is in God what the sparkle is in fire In the first [unity or union] we are superessential and deiform and in thesecond spiritual and internal and in the third active and moral 16

The foregoing is the text of a compiler from which one mustnot ask too great a coherence in terminology or too great aunity in point of view If we now appeal to a theologian whowas the adversary of the mystical school represented byTauler Harphius and La Perle eacutevangeacutelique and who refers tomore reliable authors such as Augustine ldquoBernardrdquo andHugh he will give us the same essential distinctions

Tres cognoscendi modi sunt quorum unus animalis dicitur utens maximeoculo carnis alius rationalis utens plus oculo rationis tertius spiritualisutens oculo contemplationis sicut distinxerunt divini homines tres oculoset tres vivendi modos17

Louis de Blois finally in the Institution spirituelleperseveres in bringing out this ldquodepth of the soulrdquo thatunder different names always corresponds to the ldquoPaulinepneumardquo and that will not find a place in the late Scholasticanthropologies or in most modern anthropologies

God who to tell the truth is everywhere dwells in the spirit of man and inthe simple depth or inner sanctuary of the soul in a particular manner Hedwells there in his own image and never absents himself18This depth naked and stripped of any image is raised above all creatures it transcends time and place and through a kind of perpetual adhesionremains united to God in his principle It is however in us by essence forthe abyss and depth of the soul are essence The soul possesses a certain supernatural unity of spirit in which itdwells as in its own habitation and it is carried away into the divineessence even to this supreme unity in which the Father Son and Holy Spiritare in the simplicity of the divine essence itself 19

Assuredly these speculations about the divine essencemdasheven if they maintain a trinitarian affirmationmdashand aboutthe essence of man presuppose a long evolution of thoughtthat in one sense distances us greatly from Saint Paul Butacross languages theories and as one never stops sayingtoday cultural contexts that differ greatly to be sure it ispossible to discern a fundamental continuity

This continuity will not be broken by the period called theRenaissance

II Saint Thomas Aquinas in Tradition1

I

In the spiritual history of mankind the three domainsconstituted by what one can designate under the threedenominations of religion morality and mysticism are oftenpresented as independent or even opposed to each otherThe alliance or the mutual penetration between mysticismand morality does not appear achieved in and of itself anymore than that between morality and religion Yet one couldnot conclude that such an alliance or such a mutualpenetration is an artificial and wholly contingentphenomenon In opposition to an empiricism thatdisintegrates everything without explaining anything wewill say rather that it responds if not to the demands atleast to the profound wish of nature But nature itself hastaken time in finding itself

In fact we note that it has not fully found itself outside theChristian revelation The union of the three aforementionedelements religion2 morality and mysticism does not reachits fullness it does not become harmonious and indissolublein principle except in the tradition coming from the GospelThere and most specifically in the Catholic form of thistradition it does not appear as a secondary fact obtainedby convergence subsequent to various gropings but as anoriginal and essential fact Religion morality and mysticismmanifest themselves there ldquoin a reciprocal envelopmentrdquoBetween these three both an attraction and a tension existthat could be the source of many vital problems but there isobjectively neither separation exclusion nor conflict forldquothe Deity while transcending being the true and the goodcontains them formallyrdquo3

This is why in particular in the Catholic traditionmdashlivedand reflectedmdashldquoreasonablerdquo life and ldquospiritualrdquo life or lifeldquoaccording to the spiritrdquo penetrate each other without beingidentified with each other4 and morality penetrates themystical life to the end Pseudo-Gnosticism relegated therewarding of good and punishing of evil those pillars of theldquoDemiurgerdquo to the lower level of ldquoexotericrdquo faith the greattradition on the contrary maintains this moral aspect ldquoatthe heart of the revelation of the Father through the uniqueSonrdquo5 ldquoIt is notrdquo says Saint Justin for example ldquobecause ofhis [natural] affinity with God or because he is spirit like himthat man sees God it is because he is virtuous and justrdquo6 Inhis Psychologie des mystiques Joseph Marechal noted thisessential characteristic Mystical ascent he explains doesnot erase ldquoany specific trait of the common Christian liferdquo7In other words the Christian virtues proposed for thepractice of all are not simply means of freeing oneself theirexercise is not simply something transitory in theirsubstance they are already something of the end itself Thisis what Saint Ambrose was able to explain wonderfully in abrief sentence in his commentary on Saint Luke withrespect to the Beatitudes ldquoSicut enim spei nostrae octavaperfectio est ita octava summa virtutum estrdquo8 And this iswhat Saint Augustine repeated in similar terms speaking ofadhesion to God the blessed life and eternal wisdom ldquoUnaibi virtus erit et idipsum erit virtus praemiumque virtutisrdquo9

In a remarkable thesis Pierre Nemeshegyi has posed thesame problem with respect to Origen ldquoTo place Being andmoral Goodness in equation to place this moral Goodnessin God formally and as characterizing the final ground of hisBeingmdashis this not to be condemned to enclosing all spirituallife in an anti-mystical moralism The Good is atranscendental But is it formally what we understand byldquomoral Goodrdquo Or is there not a deepening of this moralGoodness which would reestablish the possibility of an

innermost mystical depthrdquo And Nemeshegyi concludes ldquoInfact in Origenrsquos conception moralism and mysticism areone and the same thingrdquo10 Saint Gregory the Great oftenso close to Origen will unite good sense to spiritual fervor inorder to remind contemplatives that if they want to befaithful to the Gospels and to advance on the true way theymust take care to scorn the humble precepts of morality andto seek to understand them in a more sublime sense11

The medieval spiritual masters will take up again thesethoughts of Origen Ambrose Augustine and GregoryExpressing ourselves in the customary categories of theirexegesis which the Middle Ages systematized we will saythat for them ldquoanagogyrdquo achieves the final perfection bothof ldquoallegoryrdquo and of ldquotropologyrdquo (of dogma and ofmorality)12 Of all authentically Catholic mysticism onecould declare what one historian said of Saint Bernard byallusion to the traditional interpretation of the ldquoBooks ofSolomonrdquo for each of them as for him ldquothe moral school ofEcclesiasticus and Proverbs the necessary preliminary forthe mystical school of the Song of Songs is a school whosedoors are never closed behind usrdquo13

This ldquospiritualrdquo equilibrium has at times seemedthreatened in one direction or another Some spiritualscholars have seemed to want to transcend purely andsimply the sphere of morality and reason This is whatcauses Evagrius not without reason to be judged severelyat times it is what Ruysbroek reproaches in the falsemystics of his time it is one of the points that the bull Inagro of John XXII criticizes in Meister Eckhart Whatever mayhave been true in each of these cases the thing thatinterests us here is the norm that inspired such criticismsWhile following Saint Paul in distinguishing the ldquosoulrdquo fromthe ldquospiritrdquo (not moreover as two substances nor even astwo ldquofacultiesrdquo) one always refuses to separate them as ifthe penetration into the higher zone of the ldquospiritrdquo must

make us reject as no longer valid the operations of theinferior zone of the ldquosoulrdquo But the hierarchical distinction ismaintained which is to say that the mystical life is not forall that reduced to the plane of simple morality A text fromSaint Teresa is very enlightening here the saint observesthat the ldquocenter of the soulrdquo or the ldquospirit of the soulrdquo is aldquodifficult thing to express and even to believerdquo

Certain interior effects give the certitude that there is in certain respectsa very real difference between the soul and the spirit Although in realitythey are but one we sometimes perceive a division between them that isso delicate that it seems the one functions in one way and the other inanother There are so many things in our innermost depths and thingsso subtle that it would be boldness on my part to undertake to explainthem We will understand all that in the other life if God deigns toadmit us to the dwelling where we will have understanding of all thesesecrets14

Yet the equilibrium can be upset in the opposite directionfrom that for which Evagrius and Meister Eckhart werereproached This has been true periodically for anti-mysticalscholars or simply anti-mystics against whom periodicallytoo protests are raised With them it is not the ldquosoulrdquo thatis forgotten or scorned in the name of the superior ldquospiritrdquoit is the ldquospiritrdquo that is ignored misunderstood in the nameof a truncated moral wisdom But with any of the greatscholars of the Catholic tradition we do not have to registerany such misunderstanding This is what we would wish todemonstrate here with respect to Saint Thomas Aquinasand more particularly with respect to the Summatheologica

II

From first appearances one might be brought to believethat Saint Thomas in the Summa is one of those scholarswho upset the equilibrium in the second direction But in

reality he did nothing of the sort His doctrine in the Summatheologica contains in fact the equivalent of what othershave expressed through the distinction of soul and spiritunderstood as the distinction of a moral region and amystical region If one does not observe this right at thebeginning it is because Saint Thomas expresses himself indifferent words

It could be written that in his doctrine ldquoall the problemsthat the spiritual life and its evolution pose return in thisconsideratio moralis which has but one object man inprogress toward his blessed destinyrdquo15 The thing isincontestable Still it might be useful to specify how Nomore in Saint Thomas than in others is the union of the twomoral and spiritual (or ldquomysticalrdquo) elements a confusion or areduction pure and simple from the mystical to the moralThe synthesis is not a unification in the exclusive favor ofone of the two Of course one could judge that the Thomistanthropology by its Aristotelian roots favors the originalityof the mystical life less than others And like the virtue ofldquoreligionrdquo the theological virtues seem at first glance mixedin a long list of ldquovirtuesrdquo within the second part of theSumma It is appropriate nevertheless to remark beforeseeing things at closer range that only a later usage givesthis second part the name ldquomoralrdquo After having in the firstpart considered God as the universal cause Saint Thomasconsiders him now as end after the divine model he clingsto his image after the departure of God from all things heenvisages the return of all things to God Nowmdashthis is theimportant point for our subjectmdashthis itinerary of returncomprises several stages

It is true that the prologue to the Secunda secundaespeaks of scientia moralis of materia moralis and that allseems right at first to be reduced to the consideratiovirtutum But let us look a little closer In this sameprologue as in the articles that follow Saint Thomas

nonetheless distinguishes from the virtutes morales notonly the virtutes theologicae but also the virtutesintellectuales which are along with prudence wisdomunderstanding and knowledge closely connected to thegifts of the Holy Spirit of the same name Moreover afterhaving exhausted the plan he had outlined for ldquoomittingnothing of moral thingsrdquo by studying successively thevirtues and the vices that are opposed to them heconsiders in a kind of extension a series of new questionsrelated first of all to ldquoprophecyrdquo to ldquorapturerdquo and othergratuitous gifts then to the ldquocontemplative liferdquo a series heattaches a little artificially one must admit to the sectionon the different states of life

This artifice has sometimes embarrassed commentatorswho do not always understand the articulations that theplan of the Summa comprises here Thus we have Father MD Chenu who has the ldquotreatise on the states of liferdquo beginat question 183 starting from where ldquothe spiritual life islinked to social functionsrdquo16 The thing seems in fact ratherlogical Yet Saint Thomas himself said in his littleintroduction to question 171 ldquoDe prophetiardquo

Postquam dictum est de singulis virtutibus et vitiis quae pertinent adomnium hominum conditiones et status nunc considerandum est de hisquae specialiter ad aliquos homines pertinent

So Father Antoine Lemonnyer had adopted a differentsolution from that of Father Chenu He saw in questions 171to 198 concerning the gratuitous gifts a kind of parenthesisand made the final treatise of the Secunda secundae beginfrom question 179 which is to say from the ldquocontemplativeliferdquo he gave a certain unity to this final treatise thanks tothis single yet twofold title ldquoHuman Life Its Forms and ItsStatesrdquo17

The divisions adopted respectively by Father Chenu andFather Lemonnyer both have their probability and both can

be supported In fact however as Father Chenu remarkedSaint Thomas treats the states of life properly onlybeginning with question 183 entitled ldquoDe officiis et statibushominum in generalirdquo But already before that questions171 to 182 form a whole very distinct from the precedingquestions in which we have the equivalent of a littletreatise on mysticism

Even if he did not treat explicitly at that time the relationsbetween active life and contemplative life18 the placeaccorded by Saint Thomas to this latter in his general planwould thus authorize us to distinguish it from the domain ofmorality He himself besides tells us so in proper termsldquoThe moral virtues are not a constitutive element of thecontemplative liferdquo19 in fact ldquothey are ordained toactionrdquo20 Now action is inferior to contemplation The latteris ldquosimpliciter meliorrdquo21 Action prepares for contemplationby winning the soul through the external exercise of thevirtues the necessary ldquopreliminary dispositionsrdquo bydisciplining the passions and by submitting them to thereason22 Contemplation is the act of the ldquohigher reasonrdquowhich is to the inferior reason following an old biblical andPhilonic symbolism revived and slightly transformed23 asthe man is to the woman24 It is ordained to ldquoperfect loverdquoand as Saint Gregory taught while the active life issynonymous with service the contemplative life issynonymous with freedom25 As Aristotle had alreadyaffirmedmdashbut we know with what freedom Saint Thomaschanged and transformed the thought of the philosophereven while he invoked him as an authority26mdashit is a lifeabove the human condition27 and is made to last always28

No more than any other of the great witnesses of theChristian tradition did Saint Thomas reduce the spiritual lifeto the exercise of morality or spiritual understanding torationality Father Pierre Rousselot too neglected today (atleast in France) demonstrated this well by placing in

evidence the distinction between intellectus and ratio afundamental distinction with numerous consequences29mdashBut neither does he separate them on the one hand as anauthentic heir of the Fathers he integrates the virtuous lifeinto eternal life by saying ldquoUniuscujusque perfectio nihilaliud est quam participatio divinae similitudinisrdquo30 And onthe other hand he knows that in the earthly conditionexternal action which is first of all the virtuous life mustitself proceed from contemplation

The comparison with the Plotinian philosophy or with theldquoagnosticsrdquo can in this regard be very enlightening becauseof the apparent proximity of the doctrines

In a parallel way one would find in Christianity [says Jean Trouillard on thissubject] a going beyond ethics by the theological virtues and the gifts ofthe Holy Spirit The Christian life consists in divinization not in ascesis Yetthe role of the will seems much more considerable in Christians than in thePlotinians not only in charity but also in faith which is itself presented as aduty Theologians do not ordinarily situate the theological virtues on theother side of the decisions of the faculties or on this side of the constitutedvalues This is what must not be forgotten when faced with the use of theNeoplatonic doctrine of virtues attempted by Christian authors inparticular by Saint Thomas (1a 2ae q 61 a 5)31

And again Maurice de GandillacPlotinus harshly criticizes the Gnostics who believe that by ldquoraisingoneself near to God on wings of a dreamrdquo (2 9 9) one escapes the humancondition According to the fragments of Heracles (Legrand 315) Mosesthe author of the Law belongs to the ldquonaturalrdquo world Superior to purematter however he ignores the spirit By proscribing by judging bypunishing he fulfills an inferior ministry and the ldquoperfectrdquo are in no waysubject to his commandments Pure at the beginning they are savedwithout exercise as without repentance and without pardon Thispresumption will be the common gospel for all the sectarians who across the Middle Ages will preach a ldquogoing beyond the ethicalrdquo32

We should not let the differences in emphasis from oneauthor to another or from one school to another hide fromus therefore the consistent thought of the Christiantradition Already in someone like Origen the union is

achieved between ldquoa resolutely contemplative religiousideal and a passionately active liferdquo33 For Saint Gregory theGreat to whom Thomas Aquinas refers the whole spirituallife is subject to a rhythm and ldquotrue perfection begins tomature only in the difficulties and obstacles of the activeliferdquo34 Medieval monasticism did not scorn Martha in thename of Mary it maintained that action must be joined tocontemplation or the ldquopracticerdquo to the ldquotheoryrdquo a little likelove of neighbor to the love of God35 The two inseparableaspects of the Christian doctrine on this subject will onceagain be expressed very well in the reflections of John HenryNewman still an Anglican preaching on ldquoevangelicalsanctity the completion of natural virtuerdquo Newman in factshows in this sermon that there is ldquoan essentialresemblance between the spiritual man and the virtuousmanrdquo following the words of Saint Paul ldquoThe fruit of theSpirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truthrdquomdashwhiledrawing the attention of his listeners to ldquothe point ofdifference between them viz that the Christian graces arefar superior in rank and dignity to the moral virtuesrdquo36

Moral perfection and holiness virtuous life and mystical lifeare distinct they are hierarchical but at the same time theyare united in charity forma virtutum vinculum perfectionis

III Renaissance and Reformation Nicholas of Cusa takes upthe Pauline trichotomy again in the same terms as the

Apostle He places it in correspondence with on the onehand a cosmic trichotomy and on the other hand what isperhaps unexpected the three Persons of the Trinity He

uses Saint Augustine as his authority for both thesecorrespondences

We read in fact in one of his Sermons ldquoIn homine suntspiritus anima et corpus sicut in mundo elementalia vitaliaet intellectualiardquo1 and in his opuscule the Beryl he

distinguishes ldquothree modes of knowledge the sensate theintellectual and the intelligentialrdquo which he sayscorrespond according to Saint Augustine to the threeldquoheavensrdquo2 That was the cosmic analogy And for thetrinitarian analogy set forth in the work De Concordantiacatholica

Unde homo secundum Augustinum Super symbolo (40 193-94) ad instarTrinitatis imaginem gerens ex spiritu et anima et corpore constitutusexsistit Spiritus autem est superior nobilior et altior intellectualispersonae Patris figuram repraesentans et corpus personam Filii et animaquasi utriusque naturam participans ab utroque procedens personamSpiritus sancti3

Taking up his position like Nicholas of Cusa from the pointof view of knowledge Marsilio Ficino distinguishes thesensus the ratio and the intellectus We recognize in thatthe heritage of the great Scholasticism In a similar mannerin the prologue of his Heptaplus Giovanni Pico dellaMirandola distinguishes the vital instinct discursive andpractical knowledge and the contemplative faculty4 Moreimportant is the twofold witness here in agreement ofErasmus and Luther

In his famous Enchiridion militis christiani Erasmus whotakes his inspiration directly from Saint Paul ldquoends finally ina tripartite anthropology which finds its completion in thegift of the Spiritrdquo5 After having in chapters 4 and 5 spokenof man such as Plato describes him first according to theTimaeus then according to the Phaedo Phaedrus and theRepublic and recalled his distinction of the soul asreasonable irascible and concupiscible Erasmus describesin chapter 6 the Pauline opposition between the flesh andthe spirit then he comes in chapter 7 to the trichotomy of1 Thessalonians which he comments on with reference toOrigen ldquoHe does not hiderdquo observes Charles Beacuteneacute ldquohispleasure in setting forth this theory lsquoLibet et Origenicamhominis sectionem breviter referrersquo rdquo He sees it based as

well on Isaiah (299) and on Daniel (386) so he adopts it inorder to make it intervene ldquoas a definitive stage after theanalyses of pagan philosophersrdquo to serve ldquoas anintroduction to the great rules of Christianityrdquo6 With Origenhe sees in the soul this ldquomedian partrdquo of the human beingwhich can swing either to the side of the flesh or to the sideof the spirit7 In the Methodus or Ratio verae theologiae asimilar text recalls our trichotomy indirectly ldquoNec omnisaffectus hominis est caro sed est qui dicitur anima et quidicitur spiritus quo nitimur ad honestardquo8 But it isparticularly in the controversy with Luther about free willthat Erasmus opposes to the exclusivism of his adversaryhypnotized by the sole dialectic of the flesh and the spiritthe divine pedagogy explained by Origen according to thePauline schema

Luther himself paradoxically had provided a commentaryin his own manner with respect to the first words of theMagnificat (1520) on the text of 1 Thessalonians and hismanner did not differ perceptibly from so many of theothers we have seen

ldquoMy soul glorifies the Lordrdquo Scripture divides man into three partswhen Paul says at the end of 1 Thessalonians ldquoMay God make youholy through and through in such a way that all your spirit and your souland your body rdquo And each of these partsmdashlike the entire man mdashisequally divided in another way concerning not nature but quality In otherwords nature has three parts spirit soul and body all three of which canbe good or bad The first part the spirit is the highest the mostprofound the most noble part of man it is what makes him capable ofgrasping imperceptible invisible and eternal things In brief it is the housewhere faith and the word of God dwell The second part the soul isexactly the same spirit according to nature but accomplishes a differentfunction It is the spirit insofar as it animates the body and acts through it Its proper role consists in grasping the things that reason can knowand probe 9

As for the third term the body its function is to ldquoactrdquo and toldquoput into practice the knowledge of the soul and the faith of

the spiritrdquo As Maurice de Gandillac observes here the bodyhas nothing to do with ldquomirerdquo And by adopting such atripartition of the human being (which is not at all to beunderstood we repeat as a division of three ldquofacultiesrdquo)Luther envisages the human subject as Saint Paul and afterhim the whole of Christian tradition have done ldquoin aperspective that is more biblical than Greekrdquo10 The relativeassimilation that he works between the soul and the spirit isthe echo of a common Scholasticism and the fruit of aninflection toward the point of view of knowledge which wasnot that of Saint Paul in his address to the Thessalonians butin no way contradicts it Of these two characteristics thepreceding centuries have already brought us many anexample11

Like his predecessors Luther thus maintains the threefoldgradation which he also develops through a traditionalimage

We will give a simile for that drawn from Scripture Moses made atabernacle with three different edifices The first edifice was calledsanctum sanctorum it was the dwelling of God and there was no lightfrom within The other sanctum contained a chandelier with sevenbranches and lights The third was called atrium the parvis it was locatedin the open air in the light of the sun This figure depicts the Christian Hisspirit is sanctum sanctorum the dwelling of God in the night (stripped oflight) of faith for he believes what he neither sees nor senses norunderstands His soul is the sanctum there are found the seven lights towit all kinds of understanding discernment science and knowledge ofcorporal and visible things His body is atrium it is manifest for all in sucha way that one can see what he does and how he lives12

It is necessary however to recognize that this trichotomydid not have for Luther an importance comparable to hisdialectical opposition between the flesh and the spirit InSaint Paul from before the commentary on the Magnificathe had been selective the lessons on the Letter to theRomans (1515-1516) were already setting up an oppositionbetween the flesh and the spirit without anthropological

reference to any subject whatever13 and later in hiscontroversy with Erasmus he was to prove all the morehostile to the anthropology drawn from 1 Thessalonians 5 byhis adversary whom the latter guided by Origen used toweaken his dialectic He writes in De servo arbitrio

I am well aware of Origenrsquos fable about the threefold affection of man offlesh soul and spirit14 the soul holding the middle between the flesh andthe spirit and able to turn either toward the one or toward the other Butthis is dreaming he says them but does not prove them at all Saint Paulcalls flesh everything that is without spirit as we have demonstrated15

Luther does not formally contradict here what he had said inthe commentary on the Magnificat What he reproaches inOrigen as in Erasmus is believing in free will But thispreoccupation leads him to falsify their anthropology andthereby to forget or to misunderstand the Pauline verse thathe had first interpreted correctly To which in his enormoussecond Hyperaspistes Erasmus will reply several times overthat the tripartition of 1 Thessalonians 5 even ifcounterparts are found in the philosophers is proper toSaint Paul The philosophers in fact do not usually call thehighest part of the human being spiritus (pneuma) butmens or ratio and what Paul understands by spiritus is notany ratio whatever but the ratio already inspired by graceThat he concludes is what Luther does not want torecognize As often happens the discussion in whichErasmus finds himself involved leads him himself to apartially inaccurate interpretation of Saint Paulrsquos text bymaking him attribute to the ldquospiritrdquo what Paul says of ldquothespiritual manrdquo Yet it remains true that he had first analyzedperfectly the address of the Apostle to the Thessaloniansand Luther had at first done the same16

Lutheran mysticism at least in the rather unorthodoxSebastien Frank (1499-1542) nonetheless recognizes thethree elements of which man is composed body soul andspirit Frank sees in the soul the personal and free being

capable of orienting himself in one direction or in the otherhe sees in the spirit the inner Word or God present at theheart of every man enlightening him through his Word andinclining his will through his Spirit17

The same traditional distinctions originating in Saint Paulare found in the humanists of the sixteenth century ofmystical tendency For a Paracelsus (1493-1541) since manis a microcosm he must unite within himself the threeconstitutive parts or elements corresponding to the threestages of the universe material world astral worldDivinity18 (an idea of Nicholas of Cusa although distorted isrecognizable in this) Cornelius Agrippa in his De occultaphilosophia tried to unite the Platonic traditions to Mosesand to Saint Paul

Plotinus itaque et Platonici omnes post Trismegistum similiter tria ponunt inhomine quae vocant supremum infimum et medium Supremum est illuddivinum quam mentem sive portionem superiorem sive intellectumillustratum vocant Moses in Genesi vocat ipsum spiraculum vitarum a Deovid vel a Spiritu ejus in nos spiratum Infimum est sensitiva anima quametiam idolum dicunt Paulus Apostolus animalem hominem nuncupatMedium est spiritus rationalis utraque connectens extrema atque ligansvid animam animalem cum mente et utriusque sapiens naturamextremorum 19

Guillaume Postel as original as ever at least in expressiondistinguishes in man the anima the animus and the mens20

It was undoubtedly following him four years later thatCharles Toutain wrote in his tragedy Agamemnon Threenatures in us which all talk with each other Excite our lifeand keep it alive The Spirit the Soul and Animus And onebeing taken away Suddenly all life together would depart21

The Anglican Lancelot Andrewes (155 5-1626) expresseshimself in a similar way in his devotions Into Thy hands OLord I commend myself my spirit soul and body 22

IV The Modern Period Saint Francis de Sales will open thisperiod for us His Traiteacute de lrsquoamour de Dieu [Treatise on theLove of God] reproduces the Pauline doctrine to perfectionAfter having explained that ldquowe have three kinds of loving

actions spiritual reasonable and sensualrdquo Francis de Salesobserves that ldquothe powers of the sensory part which are ormust be the servants of the spirit ask seek and take what

has been rejected by the reason dishonoring thepurity of the intention of their master who is the spirit andin the measure that the soul is converted to such gross andsensate unions it is diverted from the delicate intellectual

and cordial unionrdquo Thus by the same movement as we findin Saint Paul the way is sketched to the opposition of the

flesh to the spirit Like many in the Middle Ages Francis deSales following Saint Augustine also distinguishes ldquotwoportions of the soul the inferior and the superiorrdquo theinferior being that which discourses on the basis of the

experience of the senses while the superior founded ldquoonthe discernment and judgment of the spirit is commonly

called the spirit and mental part of the soulrdquo in thisldquosuperior portionrdquo he also distinguishes ldquotwo kinds of lightrdquo

a natural one and a supernatural one and so forth Thiswhole apparatus of precisions which aims at integrating aswe have already seen in others the ldquodegrees of knowingrdquo

within the spiritual movement is not without interest but itis in some ways only a flowering from the basic trichotomy1

It is this same trichotomy that we find again as might beexpected in a philosopher attentive to the spiritual lifesuch as Maine de Biran We know the place that the doctrineof the ldquothree livesrdquo holds in Biran animal life human lifeand divine life particularly in the reflections of his Journalintime2 Jules Lachelier also adopts it but perhaps bydiminishing it in his desire to work a kind of synthesisbetween Maine de Biran and Kant when he explains thethree components of existence sensibility understanding

and reason3 We detect also an indication of the very strongmystical tendencies in Joseph de Maistre in this affirmationfrom the Eacuteclaircissements sur les sacrifices ldquoThe animal hasreceived only a soul to us were given a soul and a spiritrdquo4

One might be tempted to seek a distant analogy withSaint Paul in the Kierkegaardian theory of the three spheres(rather than stages) of existence aesthetic ethicalreligious If that analogy is an illusion other thoughts ofKierkegaard are right in finding their place here ldquoIt isimpossible to treat of sin in any of the sciences thatordinarily speak of it because all are occupied with what ispsychological in our nature while sin is a determination ofthe spiritrdquo and again ldquoThe spirit intervening psychology isimpotent So good as its name indicates is occupied withthe soul It sees everything from outside the spirit itself islived only from within Seen from outside an act isalways determined and for all that the object of psychologyBut rdquo5

One might also be tempted to evoke here the Blondeliandistinction between ldquonoeticrdquo and ldquopneumaticrdquo This wouldnot be completely wrong But Blondel places these twokinds of thought in correlation rather than inviting us to risefrom one to the other He does not thereby have in mind arelation of the psyche to the pneuma but rather a divisionof the function within the spirit Despite the word ldquonoeticrdquothis is not the nous but rather the logos which would beaccording to him the partner of the pneuma6 and thedialectic of the noetic and the pneumatic is in play at everystep so to speak of the development of thought and life inthis conception the first the concrete principle ofuniversality being the factor of objectivization and unifyingforce while conversely the second the concrete principleof singularity is the diversifying element and subjectivefunction7 Both at the same level are thus essentiallycomplementary Blondel held to his distinction he often took

up the study of it He wrote in 1907 in one of his personalnotebooks ldquoThink out the discovery of the two thoughtsrdquo8

Now in 1909 he wrote again ldquoThe two thoughts Ah howthey are always in me tending to supplant each other whileit is necessary to reconcile them hierarchize them makethem differently but equally serve the divine work of finaland total reintegrationrdquo9 This word ldquohierarchizerdquo must beunderstood as demanding a reciprocal hierarchization10 Itdoes not necessarily follow however that any analogy withthe Pauline trichotomy any echo of the ldquothree livesrdquo ofBiran are absent from the Blondelian work Blondel was toopenetrated with the thought of Saint Paul and Saint Bernardhe was too closely interested in mysticism he was toofamiliar with the spiritual authors of the Christian traditionto let us believe in such an absence without a fullerexamination But the fact that his dialectic of the noetic andthe pneumatic which is fundamental in his philosophy doesnot turn explicitly into a hierarchy of the soul and spirit or ofthe discursive reason and mystical intuition (although heobviously knew of this distinction as well as that betweenthe understanding and higher intelligence)11 is not anegligible indication Blondel maintained a prudent attitudein the face of natural mysticism just as on the other handhe remained prudent in the face of facile personalisms

In the Russian theologian Sergius Bulgakov the Paulinedistinction between the soul and the spirit is placed inpowerful relief It assumes a mystical aspect that is moreemphasized than in the Apostle or at least it proceeds froma base of natural mysticism that despite the reference tothe famous discourse at Athens does not seem tocorrespond perfectly to its more complex notion of thespirit

Although it is a creature a certain eternity of creation a certain non-creation are proper to the spirit Spiritual existence is rooted in the

eternity of God the created spirit itself is similarly eternal and uncreatedCf Acts 1728

It is true that Bulgakov can also invoke the authority of theGreek Fathers Had Saint Cyril of Alexandria not written thatldquothe image of the divine nature was imprinted in man by theinfusion of the Holy Spiritrdquo12 The importance of hisanthropological theory derives in any case from the fact thatit is from this that he explains the mystery of theIncarnation

The postulate of the divine Incarnation is a certain original identitybetween the divine I and the I of man an identity that does not abrogatetheir essential distinction The human hypostatic spirit draws itsdivine and uncreated origin from the ldquobreath of Godrdquo Through hisspirit man communicates with the divine substance and he is fit to beldquodivinizedrdquo Man is god-man by predestination potentially throughhis formal structure At the same time he is flesh through anldquoanimatedrdquo body he sums up the entire world Man is made of anuncreated divine spirit hypostasized by the I of the creature and of a souland of a body created from the psycho-somatic being13

Bulgakov insists The very idea of divinity by predestinationseems too weak to him He corrects himself almostimmediately ldquoNot only is man theanthropic bypredestination but also the Logos is the eternal God-Maninsofar as the first Image of the created man This is whythe hypostasis of the Logos the heavenly Man could itselfbecome the hypostasis of created man and make of thelatter the authentic God-man by achieving its eternaltheanthropyrdquo The conclusion is nonetheless fundamentallyin keeping with the spirit of Christian faith ldquoMan is alreadythe form ready for the authentic theanthropy that he is notcapable of achieving himself but in view of which he wascreated and called The divine Incarnation is not at all acatastrophe for the human essence or some violation onthe contrary it is an accomplishmentrdquo14

This leads us far from the narrow anthropological dualismthat triumphed in modern Scholasticism as well as in the

university philosophy springing from Cartesianism ldquoSaintPaulrdquo noted R M Albaregraves15 ldquohad distinguished threeorders the carnal the intellectual and the spiritual16 TheCartesian dualism had fused together the intellectual andthe spiritual and rationalism had gradually reduced thespirit thus created to being only an intellect withouttranscendence without dynamism or immortality destinedonly to understand and to organize the worldrdquo On the otherhand for all sorts of reasons that we do not at all have toseek here but in particular because of a certain poverty inits common philosophy Christian thought did not seem ableto fill the void thus created in man It must not thereforebe surprising that the inevitable reaction was produced inpara-Christian forms ldquoIf a scholarrdquo Andreacute Preacuteaux recentlywrote17 ldquoencounters the old doctrine that man is composedof a body a soul and a spirit he has scruples aboutconsidering it for what do lsquosoulrsquo and lsquospiritrsquo mean Unfortunately in a society where science is the supremeauthority this silence is equivalent to a negation Whatdissolves the errors and complexes what protects againstneuroses and fantasies is precisely that which is silentlyand discreetly dismissedrdquo

The same year as Andreacute Preacuteaux and reacting like himGabriel Germain took support from Saint Teresa to remindus of the unrecognized depths of the life of the spirit

Above the understanding below the ordinary conscience and what fills itexists a sheet of peace and light Whoever approaches it can have nomore doubt of it Anyone who has not sought it has no right to judge itSaint Teresa expresses the same reality in very different terms Now no onehad taught her this nor had anyone prepared her for such an experienceThis agreement over the centuries and doctrines reassures me more thananything She writes in the book of the Mansions (seventh Mansionchapter 1) ldquoInterior things are seen that show in a sure way that there isbeneath a certain relationship an obvious difference between the soul andthe spirit although they are but a single thing rdquo18

Likewise again situating his own thought in relation to theldquonoosphererdquo of Teilhard de Chardin and in relation to theldquocollective unconsciousrdquo of Jung

The noosphere in the philosophy of Teilhard de Chardin appears to be likea mental view a conclusion This is because its very name evokes anintellectual activity the subtlest but whether exploratory or constructivedirected according to logical norms19 What I could call (but I will keepmyself from doing so) pneumatosphere let us say the spiritual ocean isthe object of experience By other paths to other ends it is the samereality I suppose that Jung attained and which he called the collectiveunconscious But these two terms restrict the origin and meaning of it 20

With Jung in fact we penetrate but we remain within whatis psychological The life of the spirit in the Spirit is whollydifferent A certain Calvinist dryness a phobia aboutmysticism and all ldquointeriorityrdquo conspire at times along withrationalism and contemporary positivism of all forms tobrush this life in the Spirit aside But in a quite natural waythe Lutheran Paul Tillich who was interested in ontology inthe history of religions in mysticism as well as in biblicalhistory brings the Pauline tripartition up to date again

There is no religious statement on man and his destiny without a judgmenton the relation between different elements that are combined and opposedin the life of man These elements have been variously described as beinghis body his soul and his spirit 21

The exegetes in contemporary Catholicism seem no moredisposed than most of the theologians to return the Paulineverse to a place of honor and draw its consequences It istoward the writers that we must turn to perceive an echo ofit in free expression Although this expression is truly webelieve faithful to the doctrine of the Pneuma and to itsauthentic development it is not certain that Saint Paulwould have recognized his thought at first glance ldquoI havegood news to announce to yourdquo says Paul Claudel in theldquoCantique de Palmyrerdquo ldquomdashit is another within the depths of

you who has the word I have good news to announce toyou You need only close your eyes to find your treasurein the night There are many souls but there is not oneof them with whom I am not in communion through thissacred point in us that says Pater nosterrdquo22 And GeorgesBernanos in his diary ldquoHis will is ours and when we revoltagainst it it is only at the price of an uprooting of our wholeinner being Our will has been united to his since thebeginning of the world What sweetness to think thateven while offending him we never cease completely todesire what he desires at the depths of the Sanctuary of thesoulrdquo23 A wonderful conjunction of Claudel and Bernanos

The reader will have noted in Claudelrsquos text the wordldquosoulrdquo An inversion of vocabulary is in fact produced Theldquospiritrdquo having become in the modern leveling dichotomythe immediate correlative of the body it is the ldquosoulrdquo thathas taken its place in those who have not taken part in thisleveling We are familiar again in Claudel with the parabolaof animus and anima The word ldquosoulrdquo in the same sensecompels recognition with greater strength in order to escapethe scientistic totalitarianism that reigns abusively in thename of the ldquohuman sciencesrdquo ldquoIn the measure in whichthey are scientificrdquo wrote Henri Gouhier in 1973 ldquothesciences of man can consider man only by selecting pointsof view under which it is possible to treat him objectively Itis obviously not a question for the philosopher to ignore thevarious forms of sociology psychology ethnologyneurology and so forth he must simply wonder if thesciences of man added up constitute a science of manrdquo24

And man simply as such man who cannot renounce the callhe hears in the depths of himself refuses to let himselfsuffocate He rehabilitates the word ldquosoulrdquo as the mostfitting to express what philosophers and men of science aretoo often skilled at eliminating through preterition orthrough negation The soul then becomes almost the

synonym for the pneuma of Saint Paul and Origen Thepassage from Henri Gouhier that we have just quotedfigures in a preface to LrsquoAvegravenement de lrsquoacircme by Aime[Andre] Forest a work he says that ldquofinds its timeliness inits apparent obsolescencerdquo The author of the work and thatof its preface both evoke on this subject the ldquothree livesrdquo ofMaine de Biran Andre Forest also recalls these words ofHenri Bergson ldquoBy calling a certain assurance of facileintelligibility an idea and a certain uneasiness of life thesoul an invincible current brings modern philosophy toelevate the soul above the ideardquo Modern philosophy as awhole has not followed the path on which Bergson thoughthe saw it engaged Gabriel Marcel however among otherswanted to preserve this word ldquosoulrdquo and to keep ldquothefullness of its meaningrdquo Charles du Bos in search of tracesof God in us asked ldquoWho will leave us a journal of thedilation of the soulrdquo What Andre Forest wants is to help usdiscover or to rediscover a certain ldquoinner unityrdquo a certainldquopure sourcerdquo and each of the chapters of his work tracesan avenue toward an encounter with this ldquoThe discovery ofthe soulrdquo he tells us ldquois the development of a spiritualphilosophy The soul is the advent of presence and graceraised above the world of nature and objectivityrdquo25

The same fundamental reaction the same sudden startor if you wish the same awakening five years later in amuch younger author whose nostalgia if this is what it iscannot be that for the past but that which springs from anew reflection this time against the oppression of a thoughtreduced to its politico-social components the final end ofscientistic intelligence In his essay on Job ou lrsquoexcegraves dumal Philippe Nemo insists on this same word ldquosoulrdquo in orderto recall man to himself and to his essential problem 26

Across the numerous changes in vocabulary thecomplications introduced by theoreticians eager foranalysis across too the unceasing variations in points of

view the tripartite anthropology whose expression is foundin Saint Paul has consistently furnished in the tradition ofthe Church a basis for spiritual doctrine and life

4 The Spirit

I The Place of Mysticism As we have already been able toperceive these various distinctions are far from always

being covered perfectly either from one author to another oreven as in the case of Augustine in the work of the same

author C R Doddaursquos remark on the subject of the ancientGreeks applies here ldquoOne must undoubtedly agree that the

average man of the fifth century (and this is true in allperiods) possessed a very complicated psychological

vocabularyrdquo1

The Pauline tripartition has nonetheless remained theconstant basis serving to support the spiritual doctrines ofthe Christian tradition

Commenting on Pseudo-Dionysius Saint Maximus theConfessor defined man by this threefold pair of epithetsldquoSupermundialis et spiritualismdashcircummundialis animalismdashmundialis carnalisrdquo2 The author of the celebratedPhilokalia Saint Nikodemos of the Holy Mountain (748-809)will explain that the ldquoJesus Prayerrdquo brings into operation thethree powers of the soul the intellect (nous) the discursivereason (logos) the will or spirit (theacutelē sis pneuma) in theaction of the soul alone by which uniting in itself the soulis made fit to be united to God3 But perhaps that is amatter rather of a ldquohorizontalrdquo trichotomy of threefunctions or three activities proper to the higher part of thespirit

With more than one spiritual writer of the Latin MiddleAges one should speak of four elements rather than ofthree in their analysis of manmdasheven without consideringother complications many subtle subdivisions an echo ofScholasticism dear to a certain number subdivisions

destined either to establish agreement between authors orto detail the stages of spiritual itineraries As for examplethis schema traced by Isaac of Stella in his Epistola deanima ldquoAnimae in mundo sui corporis peregrinanti quinquesunt ad sapientiam progressus sensusmdashimaginatiomdashratiomdashintellectusmdashintelligentiardquo4 Two different modes will benoted both inspired by Saint Augustine in the expression oftripartism for some it is corpus anima spiritus5 forothers corpus ratio mens Hence to accord these twomodes the quadripartite division corpusmdashanimamdashratioinferiormdashratio superior sive mens We know the groundgained in the Middle Ages by that Augustinian subdivision ofthe ratio inferior and the ratio superior6 What willcorrespond to this in Saint Thomas Aquinas will beparticularly the distinction between the ratio and theintellectus recently brought out by Pierre Rousselot7 Thiswould also be the place to mention the Franciscan doctrineof the two faces of the soul which is of Neoplatonic origincoming through the twofold channel of Augustine and theArabs8mdashbut that like moreover the Thomist distinction ofthe intellectus and the ratio is an essentially ldquoscientificrdquo(philosophical) theory having little relation to the spirituallife The explanation of the latter is founded rather on thedoctrine of the twofold ratio lower and higher whichcorresponds to action and contemplation But then a newsubdivision is introduced the ratio superior the place ofcontemplation assimilated to the intellectus becomes thehigher part or function of the mens and receives namessuch as acies mentis oculus cordis and so forth

Whatever might be the various complications and thevarieties in the names ldquoall the great Christian mystics are inagreement in considering the human soul as a complexreality presenting regions and stages All are also inagreement in admitting that among these various regionsthere is a privileged one that where God dwells in a

particular manner rdquo9 ldquoThere is a spiritual life when arelationship with God existsrdquo10 and there is a secret point inman that is the permanent place of that relationship of thatpossible encounter because it is already and always hasbeen the place of the divine presence that pneuma of Paulcommented on by Origen that ldquosacred point in us that saysPater nosterrdquo of the ldquoCantique de Palmyrerdquo11

So we see that the philosophers and theologians moreconcerned about rationality than mysticism tend to reduce(even in their historical studies) the trichotomy to adichotomymdashwhile on the contrary the spiritual masterstend to bring out the trichotomy They readily glorify thespiritus not only above the anima but above the ratiowhether theoretical or practical It is instructive to comparein this regard the Abeacutelardian writing Ysagoge in theologiamwith the commentary on the Song of Songs by William ofSaint Thierry For the first ldquoDuo haec nomina sc spiritus etanima non magnam habent in significationediscrepantiamrdquo12 The second on the contrary stronglyemphasizes the hierarchical distinction of three ordersldquoanimalrdquo ldquorationalrdquo and ldquospiritualrdquo13

To keep to the general schema that results from the textof Saint Paulmdasha schema that itself in fact includes manynuances and as we have seen many interpretationsmdashmorality will therefore be the act of the soul mysticism theact of the spirit ldquoThe bodyrdquo says Evagrius Ponticus ldquohasbread for nourishment the soul has virtue theunderstanding has spiritual prayerrdquo14 Morality whoseobject is virtue is the πϱᾶ ξις and the life of the spirit iscontemplation the θεωϱία The first is ordained to thesecond as the soul is ordained to the spirit ldquoStriverdquo saysCassian reporting the statements of Abbot Nesteros ldquotoacquire in the first place a complete possession of moraldiscipline (πϱαϰτιϰή) for without that you cannot obtaincontemplative purity (θεωϱητιϰή)rdquo15 For Gregory of Nyssa

virtue is ldquothe forecourt of the Templerdquo16 Origen had saidbefore them ldquoAccording to the doctrine of the very wiseSolomon he who wishes to acquire wisdom must begin bystudying moralityrdquo it is in fact ldquogood conductrdquo that preparesone to receive the visits of the Logos and when one issolidly exercised in it then one will be able ldquoto pass frommoral things to mystical understandingrdquo17 In his treatiseaddressed ldquoTo the Brethren at Mont Dieurdquo which remainsone of the fundamental texts of Christian spiritualityWilliam of Saint Thierry traces a similar route for those whowant to give themselves over to the perfect life and for thefinal stage his program is even one of a boldness that somecould misunderstand (it is true that it is addressed to aCarthusian monastery) ldquoIt is for othersrdquo he tells them ldquotoserve God it is for you to cling to him It is for others tobelieve in God to know that he exists to love him andrevere him it is for you to taste him to understand him toknow him to enjoy himrdquo18 The same doctrine is set forthas it had been earlier with Origen in parallel with thedoctrine of the threefold biblical sense by another writer ofthe twelfth century Godefroi drsquoAdmont

Sicut triplex est visio corporis spiritus et mentis ita triplex etiam sensusest in scripturis Sanctis litteralis spiritalis intellectualis Litteralem atquespiritalem sensus egregius ipse Doctor gentium tunc transcenderat etusque ad tertium coelum intellectualem scilicet sensum glorioseconscenderat quando toto cordis intellectu ita coelestibus est conjunctusquod utrum in corpore an extra corpus esset se nescire asseruit19

The same fundamental schema is found again in the greatrepresentatives of what one often calls with a term that canlend to confusion ldquointellectualist mysticismrdquo which is tosay with the Rheno-Flemish mystics of the fourteenth andfifteenth centuries The same schema although withdifferences in terminology and in a sometimes differentclimate of thought particularly in Meister Eckhart

Ruysbroek ldquoassigns to the spirit a threefold role First of alla vital role in which it animates the body then anintellectual role that is manifested by thought finally a roleof higher spiritual activity in which it becomes the principleof unification of the whole inner life and in which it is mixedwith the very essence of the soulrdquo20 Hence for example inthe Livre des sept clotures the definition of the seventhenclosure ldquowhich surpasses all the othersrdquo ldquosimplebeatitude beyond all holy life and practice of the virtuesrdquo21

Likewise in the Miroir du salut eacuteternel in which the higherdegree is only divided after ldquothe virtuous life which dies tosin and grows in virtuesrdquo comes the state where ldquoallownership of the will diesrdquo then the spirit is made fully freethrough its union to the Spirit of God even to the point ofthe ldquoliving liferdquo (levende leven) that blossoms which is allldquohidden in God and in the substance of our soulrdquo22

Ruysbroek takes up again here an expression long sincecurrent which he could have read in Saint Bernard (vividavita et vitalis)23 William of Saint Thierry (vita vivens)24 orThomas de Froidmont (vita vitalis)25

The same gradation is found in Tauler based on the sametraditional ldquoternary schemardquo Tauler distinguishes in manldquothree things one clings to nature in flesh and blood theother is the reason the third is an essence of the pure souland without mixturerdquo This is what he expresses again ldquointhe symbolism of the three men which correspond to thesensate life the intellectual life and the spiritual life in thesense of union with Godrdquo26 This ldquothird manrdquo this ldquoessenceof the pure soulrdquo is what Tauler often calls the gemuete aword that Father Etienne Hugueny translates as ldquodeep-seated willrdquo and Louis Cognet prefers to call ldquodeep instinctrdquoit is the ldquodepthsrdquo of being to which says Tauler the ldquodivinegroundrdquo alone corresponds abyssus abyssum invocat itimprints on our nature ldquoan eternal and deep-seatedtendency to return to its originrdquo a tendency that ldquopersists

even in the damned because it is linked to the very essenceof the soulrdquo27 Taulerrsquos preaching rests on this structure Theabnegation to which he invites his listeners is not only theliberation from sensible appetites it goes beyond simplemorality it is a profound attitude that ldquoflows from thegrowing experience of Godrdquo mystical passivity succeedingthe activity of the virtuous life ldquoinner recollectionrdquo abovethe exercise of the virtues and reason as well as that of thesenses28 ldquoIt is necessary that after having overcome thesenses the reason be freed from itself renounce itself soas to be transformed into pure and simple spiritrdquo29 Then theKingdom of God is established And Tauler repeats so as tomake himself well understood ldquoThis Kingdom is establishedin its own manner in the innermost part of the spirit assoon as man through all his exercise has absorbed theexterior man in the inner and reasonable man and as soonas the man of sense and of reasonable power are entirelyabsorbed into the more interior man in the hidden groundof the spirit where the true image of God dwells and assoon as he flees into this divine ground into which manfrom all eternity is found in his uncreated staterdquo30

The relationship of Tauler to Eckhart is obvious In one asin the other the distinction of the soul and the spirit (of thepsyche and the πνεῦμα) colored by Platonic exemplarism isaffirmed everywhere Eckhart enunciates it with reference toSaint Augustine ldquoAccording to Augustinerdquo he says ldquoourintellectual element divides itself into two parts through theone we are oriented intellectually toward an intellectualgrasp of knowledge that our cognitive faculty receives fromoutside the other to use the very words of Augustinemanifests itself at the deepest center of our spirit (lsquoabditummentisrsquo)rdquo31 It is this center that particularly interested thatfascinated Eckhart this place ldquowhere no image enters orleaves but where there is only God himselfrdquo ldquoThe soulrdquo healso said ldquohas two eyes the inner one and the other outer

one the inner eye of the soul is that by which itcontemplates being and receives it directly from Godrdquo32

What differentiates him from Origen and Augustine Bernardand William of Saint Thierry is the ldquouncreatedrdquo characterthat he attributes to this ldquoinner eyerdquo or to this ldquoabditummentisrdquo The disquieting feature of his mysticism consists inthis a feature that will be less emphasized in Tauler andeven in Henry Suso although the latter speaks also of theground of the spirit as ldquoeternalrdquo33

Follower and compiler Harphius (Henry Herp) willsymbolize the ldquothree kinds of liferdquo emanating from the threeparts of man in the three biblical figures of Leah Rachel andMary Magdalen34 and he works at length to describe themens or the apex mentis the spiritus or the interior sinusmentis which is to say still that pneuma by which the zoneof rational and moral activity is transcended

Dicitur etiam [anima] quandoque mens quae sc ipsis viribus interior est etsupereminet quia vires in mente sicut in origine sua sunt counitae ex quasc effl uunt ut radii ex solari rota et in quam refluunt Et est illud centrumin anima in quo vera Trinitatis imago relucet et tarn nobile quod nullumibi nomen proprie convenit licet in multis nominibus circumlocutivemanifestatur Haec est igitur mens vel apex mentis aut centrum ipsiusanimae ut feliciter renovetur ipsae vires quae dicuntur spiritus adinteriorem sinum mentis sunt reflectendae et mens ipsa ad intimum suumregerenda sc in Deum ibidem suaviter recubantem 35

Warning us that this higher part of man cannot beappropriately designated by any name and multiplying theformulas himself by which one must indeed try even tospeak of it Harphius invites us not to stress whatever theinterest of the other part might be the variations invocabulary from one author to another or from one period toanother which could hide from us the continuity of atradition that in essentials is very firm

Saint Catherine of Genoa offers us a similar schema veryclassically she distinguishes body soul and spirit the latterbeing designated in itself by the word mente and when it is

animated by infused love by the word spirito in this lattercase the spirito is finally identified with infused Love whichis God Since the Saint is less concerned to give us atheoretical course in anthropology even spiritual than todescribe the spiritual life itself we can understand that fromher pen mente is rare and spirito frequent36 On the otherhand following the example of many other mystics sheloves to detail the stages of ascent ldquoWhen Godrdquo she saysldquoaddresses his first call to us he gives us at first the instinctfor virtues later he urges us to perfection then throughinfused grace he leads us to the annihilation of ourselvesfinally to true transformationrdquo37 Saint Teresa and Saint Johnof the Cross likewise know that there exists a life higherthan the exercise of the virtues when they celebrateldquofreedom of spiritrdquo38 ldquoholy freedom of spiritrdquo39 and SaintTeresa observes in her Interior Castle that ldquocertain interioreffects give certitude that there is in us in certain relationsa very real difference between the soul and the spiritrdquo40 Wealso quote as an example Fenelon who in commenting onCassian finds himself at the same time summing up thewhole mystical tradition ldquoAlthough we judge the othervirtues to be necessary and useful we believe however weshould place them only at the second degree because oneseeks them all only in view of this one thing of which JesusChrist says lsquoMartha Martha you trouble yourself aboutmany things there is only one thing necessaryrsquo He placedthe sovereign good not in work although laudable andabundant in fruit but in contemplation that is truly simpleand one He declares that little is necessary for this perfectbeatitude that contemplation isrdquo41 And a little farther on inthe same writing ldquoThere is thus a state where thisappropriation of virtues is no longer opportunerdquo42

The great Protestant spiritual master Gerhard Tersteegen(1697-1769) professes the same doctrine ldquoThere mustnecessarily be in us a capacity to recognize God and

spiritual things in an essential and present way And thatexists in the pure Reason [Vernunft] which has been givenus closed and unused until God gives us the understandingby which we know the very Truth so intimately andessentially that we are ourselves drawn into the trueGodrdquo43

If a certain number of authors in the course of this longtradition that we have just examined seem also todistinguish as it were two elements above the psychewhile Saint Paul saw only the pneuma above it this isusually as we could ascertain from some of the examplescited because they mean by psyche only the animal soulanimater of the body and seat of sensation or ratherbecause they want to assure a seat for ldquoobjectiverdquoknowledge and profane culture For Paul on the contraryand more explicitly for Origen the soul is the very seat ofthe personality the reasoning and self-willed being whichjudges and freely determines itself It is the place ofdecision According to the orientation taken by the soul thehuman being will become ldquocarnalrdquo or ldquospiritualrdquo(pneumatikos) As opposed as he might be to free willLuther himself saw very clearly that the Pauline psyche of 1Thessalonians 5 was much more than the principle ldquothatanimates the body and acts through itrdquo In an article in theRevue thomiste (1971) Father P R Reacutegamey OP isperfectly in keeping with the traditional line when hedistinguishes (497) these three degrees psychosomaticcomplexmdashrational function of abstraction and discoursemdashprimacy of spirit in its greatest purity And what in thetheoretical order is the ldquorational functionrdquo corresponds inthe practical order to what we could call in a ratherrestrictive sense the ldquomoral functionrdquo Saint Paul alsoinvites us not to confuse this moral function with theproperly spiritual life which raises man above himself whenhe places above the exercise of active benevolence and of

all virtue this reality of another order a gift of God which isCharity (1 Cor 133) Dietrich Bonhoeffer was also faithful tothe tradition that originated in the Apostle when heexhorted the Christians over whom he had responsibility notto confuse in their assemblies ldquospiritual community withmystical overheatingrdquo (cf A Dumas 64) ldquoThe great themeof community life is the revival of the very Paulinedistinction between the natural eager equivocal nostalgicdesiring in a word idealistic and the spiritual respectfulenlightened serving knowing in a word realistrdquo (ibid145) ldquoThe onerdquo Bonhoeffer also says ldquowho does not letChrist be a path toward the other falls into naturalchattering which kills the spiritual word Prayer is thesalutary limit to desires of immediate effusiveness Community life is communion through spiritual mediationand non-confusion in the natural immediacyrdquo (146-47)

II Morality Integrated into Mysticism In Christianity itself itis characteristic of the Catholic Church to assure theequilibrium between the three components (religion

morality and mysticism) an equilibrium necessary to theintegrity of the human being Faithful in everything to her

spirit of synthesis she maintains all three in solidaritywithout ever letting any one of the three be lacking or

eclipse the others or be devalued in the humblest forms ofspiritual life any more than in the highest To take a verysimple example when Fenelon exclaims in his Traiteacute de

lrsquoexistence et des attributs de Dieu ldquoMy length of life is buta perpetual extinctionrdquo1 these words to be well

understood must be taken at once morally religiously andmystically

The various Protestant confessions place more emphasison contrasts and clashes as has often been remarked J AMoehler wrote in the last century in his Symbolique withrespect to morality and religion ldquoIn the eyes of Catholics

religiosity and morality if we may be permitted to use thesetwo terms are united by their essence and are both eternalAccording to the Protestants on the other hand there is norelationship between these two things for one is of aneternal price and the other is of only passing value Lutherinsists in many places on this difference rdquo2 There wouldbe many nuances besides to note here but in this essay ontypology we must keep to the most general characteristics3In Calvinism mysticism is the object of mistrust or evenreprobation4 We also know the abyss in Luther thatseparates ethics and faith As a result of this there is atendency with Lutheran mysticsmdashto say nothing of Lutherhimself and of Lutheranism in generalmdashto depreciate allmoral activity as constituting on manrsquos part an affirmationof self that far from bringing him closer to God distanceshim and to recognize a value in religious life only in anabandonment close to quietism5 a depreciation of moralitythat goes hand in hand with that of reason and that offreedommdashwe recently read from a Protestant pen an articleon morality considered solely as ldquocultural realityrdquo Such anattitude to take it simply as such could also facilitateinvaluable analyses in many regards such as the analysis ofthe ldquolevels of liferdquo in Kierkegaard or that of the ldquosacredrdquo inRudolf Otto But these analyses do not always stop at posingformal distinctions Thus in order to bring out more clearlythe specificity of the category of the sacred or of thereligious Otto cuts the latter off from morality he is notcontent with showing that on the level of history orpsychology these two orders are often separated in fact heis well on his way to a separation by right6 As arepercussion when morality reclaims its place in otherauthors of Protestant inspiration it sometimes absorbsreligion and dries up mysticism by incarcerating all spirituallife ldquowithin the limits of reasonrdquo

In reality howevermdashthat is to say by right in the natureof thingsmdashon the one hand ldquothe sacred is not reabsorbedinto moral value the religious transcends the ethicalrdquo buton the other hand it does not merely accommodatemorality and mysticism it remolds them so to speak byinstalling them in its heart Religion morality and mysticismldquoappear in a reciprocal envelopmentrdquo there exists betweenthe three both an attraction and a tension which will be thesource of many vital problems but there is objectivelyneither separation nor exclusion nor conflict for ldquothe Deitywhile transcending being truth and the good contains themformallyrdquo7 This is why in particular in Catholicism just asthe reasonable life and life according to the spirit penetrateeach other8 morality impregnates the mystical life to theend ldquoThrough it the good rewarded and the bad punishedthese pillars of the revelation of the Demiurge degraded byGnosticism to a lower level than exoteric faith regain theirplace at the heart of the revelation of the Father through theonly Sonrdquo9 Hence Saint Justin in his Dialogue ldquoIt is notbecause of his affinity with God or because he is spirit likehim that man sees God it is because he is virtuous andjustrdquo10 And Father Jean Rigoleuc on spiritual persons ldquoAlltheir reason and the lights they receive by it are given tothem only so that they might be perfected in thesevirtuesrdquo11 ldquoThe mystical ascentrdquo does not efface ldquofromcommon Christian life any specific traitrdquo12 The Christianvirtues are not merely means of freeing oneself from theworld in their substance they are the end itself thepromised beatitude is not made of different material This iswhat Saint Ambrose expresses admirably in a brief sentencefrom his commentary on Saint Luke with respect to thebeatitudes ldquoSicut enim speri nostrae octava perfectio estita octava summa virtutum estrdquo13

Pierre Nemeshegyi poses the same problem with respectto Origen ldquoTo place Being and moral Goodness in equation

to place this moral Goodness in God formally and ascharacterizing the final ground of his Beingmdashis this not to becondemned to enclosing all spiritual life in an anti-mysticalmoralism The Good is a transcendental But is it formallywhat we understand by lsquomoral Goodrsquo Or is there not adeepening of this moral Goodness which would reestablishthe possibility of an innermost mystical depthrdquo14 Againwith respect to Origen W Voumllker remarks ldquoWe observe a hesitation very characteristic of Origenrsquos turn of spirit and which one finds again in a nearly identical way in Philoside by side and sometimes even the mutual penetrationof moralism and mysticismrdquo15 And Nemeshegyi concludesldquo lsquoMoralismrsquo and lsquomysticismrsquo are in fact one and the samething in Origenrsquos conceptionrdquo16 Origen himself specifies inhis argument against Celsus ldquoGod is not merely lsquothe Goodrsquoas all the Platonists say he is lsquothe Righteousrsquordquo17 SaintGregory the Great also reminds us with his usual goodsense always linked with spiritual fervor

Solent quidam scripta sacri eloquii legentes cum sublimiores sententiasejus penetrant minora mandata quae infirmioribus data sunt tumentisensu despicere et ea velle in alium intellectum permutare Qui si recte ineo alta intelligerent mandata quoque minima despectui non haberent quidivina praecepta sic in quibusdam loquuntur magnis ut tamen inquibusdam congruant parvulis qui per incrementa intelligentiae quasiquibusdam passibus mentis crescant atque ad majora intelligendaperveniant18

Saint Augustine had said the same in a very Origenianshortcut in speaking of eternal life ldquoUna ibi virtus erit etidipsum erit virtus praemiumque virtutisrdquo19 Picking upagain Saint Ambrosersquos turn of phrase Alexander Neckhamcosmologist of the twelfth century explains that the octaveof the beatitude brings the perfection of its consonance tothe septenary of the virtues as in our material universe theeighth sphere including the whole universe brings itsconclusion to the harmony of the heavens20 Let us say in

the categories of medieval exegesis that anagogy achievesperfection both of allegory and of tropology Thus oneshould say of all Catholic mysticism what one historian saysof Saint Bernard through allusion to the traditionalinterpretation of the ldquoBooks of Solomonrdquo and of theirprogressive sequence for each of them as for him ldquothemoral school of Ecclesiasticus and Proverbs a necessarypreliminary for the mystical school of the Song of Songs is aschool whose doors are never closed behind usrdquo21 Andreciprocally in fulfilling the precept of the Lord one meritsnot only the eternal dwelling one does not merely preparefor it one is already building Saint Hildegarde tells us thetower of the heavenly Jerusalem22

It would be good to return to the celebrated GoldenEpistle in which William of Saint Thierry the friend of SaintBernard condenses for the brothers of the Carthusianmonastery of Mont Dieu the essence of Christiananthropology and spirituality such as the most commonCatholic tradition understands them William puts first ofall the sublime ideal of the contemplative in abrupt termsand with an appearance of separation of completetranscendence from one degree to another which could besurprising

You have not only pledged complete holiness but the perfection of allholiness and the height of all perfection It is not your business to languishin the practice of ordinary precepts or to devote yourself only to thatwhich God commands but to aim at what he wishes in the search for hisgood agreeable and perfect will It is for others to serve God it is for youto cling to him Faith in God knowledge love and reverence are for othersFor you taste understanding knowledge enjoyment A high vocation anarduous task 23

Farther on William takes up again the distinction of thethree states or three degrees which is reminiscent of thefree fashion of the Pauline trichotomy

The state of beginners can be called ldquoanimalrdquo that of progressersldquorationalrdquo that of the perfect ldquospiritualrdquo The first state attends to thebody the second is busy with the reasoning soul the third finds its restonly in God 24

These kinds of schemas are several times accompanied byappeals to humility which should form the common andunalterable basis for all disciples of Christ at whateverdegree they find themselves in their spiritual ascent25

Several points of resemblance to Saint Paul are still to benoted the distinction between anima and animus whichcorresponds closely to that between the psyche and thepneuma26 the reference to the discourse at Athens27 (Acts1727-28) the definition of the spiritual man as the onewhose spirit is informed by the Spirit of love28 theindication of the end as being ldquothe unity of spiritrdquo with God

There is also another resemblance to God so particular that it is nolonger given the name of resemblance but that of unity of spirit It is whenman becomes a single thing a single spirit with God not only through theunity of a single will but also through some truer expression of a virtue thatis no longer capable of willing anything else Once conformed to wisdom the reason [= reasoning soul] puts[everything] to profit and hastens to spring toward freedom of spirittoward unity so well that the faithful man becomes as has often beenstated one single spirit with God29

Freedom of spirit unity with God we know the abuses thatsuch formulas have frequently covered throughout twentycenturies of history30 We know too how the fear of theseabuses have made a number of timorous souls avoid themhow still more the bourgeois individualist incomprehensionof the last century banished them and how they seemedsuspect to many who thought they were judging in thename of pure Catholic orthodoxy31 Within the context ofthat spiritual masterpiece the Letter to the Brothers of MontDieu these expressions can be accepted in all their powerin the same sense that they have in Scripture And thekeeping of a moral life integrated into a mystical life is also

explicitly recognized here besides the word ldquovirtuerdquo whichfigures in the same text we have just quoted on ldquothe unityof spiritrdquo with God other texts recall it with insistence Theyspeak ldquoin praise of virtue the daughter of reason but evenmore of gracerdquo32 they show it not surpassed by butassumed into spiritual perfection the latter is achievedldquowhen the soul encompasses all the virtues in itself not aselements borrowed from somewhere else but as quasi-natural products of its being according to that resemblanceto God by which it is the whole of what isrdquo Mystical unitywith God is wholly impregnated with morality because it isthe perfect adherence to Him who is not only the Righteousbut in the most concrete and singular sense the Good33

This Catholic equilibrium was undoubtedly alreadyjeopardized in a great spiritual master who is not at all to beconfused with the false spirituals to whom we have alludedEvagrius was considered a disciple of Origen but in this anunfaithful disciple Despite the appearances of severalexpressions the same criticism could not be made of aTauler or a Ruysbroek they condemn without equivocationthe mystical claims that think to hold themselves abovemorality and reason beyond affirmations of the faith Thecase of Meister Eckhart is perhaps more disputable but it isright to dissociate the profound intention of this greatthinker and this great mystic from some paradoxicalexpressions held to be condemnable by the bull In agro LaPerle eacutevangeacutelique following Eckhart and several othersseems to place ldquothe spiritrdquo in contact with the divine Unityldquoabove the multiplicity of the Personsrdquo34 a grave problemwhich we will not take up here but which for a Christiangoverns the judgment to be passed on mysticism in itsrelation to the primary mystery of his faith35 To stay withthe relation between mysticism and morality let us say thatone is happy to find a fine example of equilibrium in anauthor carried in other respects to many unilateral

excesses This refers to George Tyrrell who wrote in a finepassage from Christianity at the Cross-roads

[The apocalyptic Kingdom of heaven] is the fruit and reward of the morallife but is a supermoral lifemdashthe continuation of that divine and spirituallife which under present contingencies manifests itself principally bymorality and above all in religion and conscious union with God But[in the Kingdom] the contingencies that now call for the moral strugglewith all its pain and suffering shall be done away36

We will end by quoting a more authoritative witness thegreat Saint Teresa who unites the soul and spirit of whichSaint Paul spoke as much as she distinguishes them withhim by observing that ldquothe center of the soulrdquo or the ldquospiritof the soulrdquo is a difficult thing to express and even tobelieve

Certain interior effects give the certitude that there is under certainrelations a very real difference between the soul and the spirit Although inreality they are but one we sometimes perceive a division between themthat is so delicate that it seems that the one functions in one way and theother in another There are so many things in our innermost depthsand things so subtle that it would be boldness on my part to undertake toexplain them We will understand all that in the other life if God deignsto admit us to the dwelling where we will have understanding of all thesesecrets37

III Conclusions Optimi corruption pessima One should notat all conclude from this as some authors particularly in

Protestantism have done that mysticism should becondemned1 Nevertheless even without considering the

case of the aberrations we have just seen certainprecautions should be taken in order not to jeopardize the

spiritual equilibrium Just as it is necessary to reject ananthropology that refusing man any higher faculty stifles

the spirit in himmdashwhich is what all positivisms allrationalisms and all psychologisms domdashso it is necessary toguard against reducing theoretical or practical reason in itby failing to recognize its transcendence in relation to the

sensible order and its participation in the absolute ldquoThemindrdquo writes Hans Urs von Balthasar2 ldquodestroys itself andcrumbles if it splits into an inferior and a superior mind an

autonomously functioning reason (Verstand) and a ratio(Vernunft) that is reserved for special philosophical and

religious purposesrdquo Then the risk of a short-circuit appearsfrom ldquoinfantile naturalismrdquo to high spirituality from

alienating exteriority to ldquodivinerdquo magnetization from theldquocaves of the unconsciousrdquo to the ldquobirthrdquo from above from

the ldquopossessive Irdquo that is ldquoradical servituderdquo toldquodisinterestedrdquo love

Charles du Bos was not lacking in clearsightedness theday he noted in his Journal ldquothe necessity from an ethicalpoint of view of guarding oneself against mysticismrdquo3 In thesame sense he wrote one day to Father Auguste Valensin

Since the end of July 1927 God in his goodness has recalled me toHimself I have happened to suffer in the face of a certain unformulatedmdashand at times even formulatedmdashdisdain that believers who are advancedmoreover in spiritual ways and even mystics witness or at least seem towitness toward the moral order as such If one admits (and I admit it verystrongly) that ethics are only the narthex of religious truth neverthelessthere exist natures (to the number of which I belong) who venerate thenarthex all the more as it helps to introduce them into the sanctuary andthe more their religious life deepens the more faithful their gratitudebecomes 4

Du Bos had noted in his Journal on January 11 1925 ldquothenecessity of guarding against mysticismrdquo and on January18 1929 analyzing himself

Basically it is always a question with me of an offensive directed by themoral against the religious because as my Journal often notes the moralbeing is primary with me in the period when the plane of temperament istranscended the form that temptation then takes is a moral form summedup in the question of my right to religious life Yes that is indeed it and myeffort now must be not only to adhere to God but to consider that fromthe instant I do what I must on the plane of living I adhere to him de facto 5

Du Bosrsquo reflection as we see was not unilateral althoughhe emphasizes the moral which he judges to bedangerously disregarded (what would he not say thirty orforty years later) In return Emmanuel Mounier was no lessright to bring out the complementary truth in recalling thatldquomorality has no other end but the spirituality of which itkeeps houserdquo when one isolates it and clings to it heexplains one kills it it is replaced by moralism6 the enemyof mysticism as well as of religion History in fact shows thatthe abandonment of mysticism in the name of any formwhatever of moralism has never been at best anything buta stage in spiritual development in view of a less confusedmysticism ldquoAs it is nearly inevitable in philosophy to passthrough a phase of idealism so it is inevitable to passthrough a phase of intellectualism in morality inevitableand goodrdquo But on condition that one does not cling to it Adeeper understanding knows that it is not knowledge thatsaves man from sin and it will always ask ldquoWho forexample is the one more free of appearancesmdasha Spinozawho in observing actions or sentiments that the commonmen call sin explains them through a defect in knowledgemdashor a Surin who proclaims that to the degree that one doesnot see sins even in onersquos inadvertencies and firstmovements to that degree one will not weep over onersquosvanities as sacrileges one will lsquonever get to the rootrsquordquo7

Both have cut through appearances (not always the sameones) both in their order are right But basically howmuch more is this true of Surin And if the intellectualcriticism worked by a Spinozist is not coupled with aspiritual deepening how his clearsightedness ends inblaming it The world Bergson said very justly has much tolearn from the great mystics8

Likewise one is right not to consent to letting theunderstanding be classed among the provisional values tobe reduced to the rank of ldquonaturalismrdquo that is close to

animality Perhaps the word ldquosoulrdquo so far from beingunivocal9 used in the tripartite division of man is notwithout some danger in this regard But this is not asufficient motive for rejecting the very idea of this tripartitedivision such as some as we have seen above were led todo Even Sandaeus himself an apologist and theoretician ofmysticism while noting that a number of mystics judgerecourse to this division indispensable declared that therecould be room to debate this10 Sandaeus was therebyechoing a fear or a mistrust frequently shown in the mostbrutal fashion by Schoolmen in the face of all mysticalthought we know how sharp the dispute was even withinthe Catholic Church throughout the seventeenth century11

Since then through their efforts to minimize the text ofSaint Paul on which the distinction is based others witness adiscomfort if not a similar hostility The mystical tradition ofthe great Church however offers them desirableassurances thus with Tauler transforming the way oneviews the classical terms of the division He is thereby goingparallel to the doctrinal tradition such as it is expressed in aSaint Augustine for example or a Saint Thomas The ratherpusillanimous minds to which we are alluding do not giveenough consideration to the fact that in wanting to save theabsolute of morality and reason they risk failing torecognize the gifts of the Spirit and lowering the mysticallife Stifled unrecognized in its authentic forms the latterin despair is then in danger of developing on the margins ofall rational and moral norms A certain intellectualismmdashverypoorly namedmdashis a worthy counterpart of moralism and aspernicious

To return to this latter we can think that the general usein the ecclesiastical vocabulary of the modern ChristianWest of the term ldquodirector of consciencerdquo to the detrimentof the traditional terms ldquospiritual fatherrdquo or spiritusmoderator12 is the sign of an inflation of pure morality

tending to casuistry or lends itself to falling intopsychologism (while waiting for psychiatry) to thedetriment of the attention paid to things of the spirit whichis to say to the relation to God ldquoHave we not seen peoplerdquowrote Reneacute Gueacutenon ldquowho when it is a question of lsquospiritualmasterrsquo go so far as to translate it lsquodirector ofconsciencersquordquo13 It is possible to agree with his remarkwithout sharing the least part of his own notion of ldquospiritualmasterrdquo or more precisely his doctrine of the spirit Stillanother sign of the small esteem given to things of thespirit and first of all of an inadequate understanding ofthem is manifested in the designation ldquointellectualismrdquowhich is too easily attributed today to the whole doctrine ofcontemplation There is of course a philosophicalcontemplation There is a Greek intellectualism that isexpressed in an ideal of contemplation We discern sometraces of it in the history of Christian thought and life butthese are only tracesmdashand all are not moreoverblameworthy14 As it has done for many other conceptsChristianity has modified this at the same time as it took onits permanent values it profoundly transformed it How is itthat even Christian historians have perceived so little ofthis One can indeed if one wishes reject the word inseeking another that lends less to equivocation but itshould not be necessary at the same time to reject thedoctrine that the Christian centuries had included within itit should not be necessary to depreciate what is the verybasis of the best spiritual tradition at the heart ofChristianity This would be at the same stroke to depreciatethe order of the theological virtues in direct contradiction toScripture itself The supremely active Father Teilhard deChardin did not fall into such contempt he forcefullymaintained the primacy of contemplation in which he couldrecognize the superior form of action that which an activistwill never achieve15 The transformations and progress

achieved in the course of history the entrance into an agedominated by the technical the development of the ldquohumansciencesrdquo that tend to assimilate man to the object of thesciences of nature will change nothing not only the highmystical life but already the whole spiritual life while takingthe greatest consideration of morality and including morality(as well as of rational activity) comprises along with variednuances according to the case something beyond moralitytaken in the human sense of the word something beyond allthat we commonly call action because it always comprisessomething beyond man

That is what signifies the great traditional theme ofMartha and Mary based on the Gospel It will always remaintrue ldquoIn his duabus mulieribus duas istas esse figurataspraesentem et futuram latoriosam et quietam temporalemet aeternamrdquo16 And of these two realities the second isalready present as an active anticipation at the heart ofthe man en route toward his divine destiny

Finally the maintenance of the distinction between thezone of the natural [psychisme] and that of the spiritual is ofa major importance for maintaining in their just place withinthe limits of their competence all the kinds of psychology Itopposes ldquothe dissolving psychoanalytical confusion ofnatural and spiritualrdquo17 If stopping onersquos aim at theldquorationalrdquo and the ldquomoralrdquo was often the great temptationand if this temptation remains what is to be even moregreatly feared today is stopping at the ldquonatural[psychique]rdquo One of Teilhardrsquos weaknesses which wasbenign to tell the truth because he thought above all todissipate the illusion of a materialistic monism was acertain confusion of vocabulary between spiritual andnatural in the Pheacutenomegravene humain (which does not claim tobe a treatise on spirituality) he happens to speak at will ofldquospiritual energyrdquo or of ldquonatural energyrdquo mdashBut ldquothe spiritintervening psychology is powerless It sees everything

from outside although the spirit is lived only from withinrdquo itsees uniquely ldquothat part of the natural life that the spirit hasnot touched and which consequently unfolds in theunconsciousrdquo18

Without doubt it is only through our participation in themystery of the trinitarian Life that we are to become fullycapable of going beyond this psychological vision that canindeed scrutinize certain ldquodepthsrdquo but to which this otherdepth is not accessible this depth which is humantranscendence this otherwise mysterious zone where theimpulse toward God is situated the encounter with God

There is in us a certain root that plunges into the depths of the Trinity Weare these complex beings who exist on successive levels on an animal andbiological level on an intellectual and human level and on an ultimate levelin those very abysses that are those of the life of God and those of theTrinity This is why we have the right to say that Christianity is an integralhumanism which is to say which develops man on all the levels of hisexperience We must always be in defiance of all the attempts to reducethe space in which our existence moves We breathe fully in the measureto which we do not let ourselves be enclosed in the prison of the rationaland psychological world but to which a part of us emerges into these greatspaces that are those of the Trinity And this is what creates theincomparable joy of existence in Christianity19

Pertinent remarks of great importance in ecclesiology aswell as in the liturgy more timely today than ever Thedistinctions recalled by Dietrich Bonhoeffer and by Father PR Reacutegamey based like those of so many others on thePauline anthropology of the First Letter to the Thessaloniansare at once for every member of the Church an appeal tothe highest spiritual life and a warning against itscounterfeits

EPILOGUETO PART ONE

The Light of Christ ldquoIf you believerdquo we are told ldquoin thedivinity of the Christian religion it is because you are

ignorant about all the conditions that marked its beginningand growth The comparative history of religions has madeenough progress so that henceforth it is no longer possibleto speak of a lsquoChristian miraclersquo coming to break the thread

of human religious acts There is nothing in it that is notexplained in the way everything is explained Of course

some points still remain obscure certain influences remainunperceived The task of historians has not yet been

accomplished One can also recognize that several of themhave been a little too quick in thinking to detect here orthere analogies or relationships and their intemperance

was capable of provoking a prudent reaction in somescholars anxious for a more rigorous method But the

general orientation of science is nonetheless certain and itsresult is nonetheless assured Every day leads to a new

light uncovering some new connection and here and nowwe see clearly enough to be able to affirm that Christianityis a human phenomenon very human deeply rooted in the

earth of history where it has drawn all the essence fromwhich its marvelous vigor is nourishedrdquo

An objection that insinuates itself under a thousand formswith respect to a thousand problems A stronger objectionin many eyes than all those of dialectics because withoutfighting it claims to explain Believers are upset by it Menof good will whom Christianity attracts and who alreadybelieve they see Godrsquos work in it find themselves stoppedin their tracks by it they fear to commit themselves

thoroughly to what is perhaps only the work of man If itwere a question only of a milieu providentially prepared tofavor the birth and rise of the religion of ChristmdashJewishMessianism Stoic universalism the organization of theDiaspora the Roman peace mdashthis ensemble of fortuitousconditions could indeed account for its concrete possibilitybut it would definitely not for all that cancel out the miracleof its existence A favorable atmosphere has never sufficedto explain the fact of a birth One would have to becompletely incapable of perceiving religious values to betempted to explain the apparition and success ofChristianity solely by a series of external circumstances asimportant and as favorable as one supposes them to beBetter known the information that history brings in thisorder can therefore only add to the admiration that alreadyseized the Fathers such as Saint Leo exclaiming before hisRoman listeners ldquoNumerous States have been united into asingle Empire so that the ways necessary for the preachingof the Gospel might be readyrdquo1 Admiration that was alsoPascalrsquos ldquoHow beautiful it is to see through the eyes of faithDarius and Cyrus Alexander the Romans Pompey Herodact without knowing it for the triumph of the Gospelrdquo andwho a short time earlier had had this sung to Peacuteguy ldquoThesteps of the legions had marched for Him rdquo2

But history seems to show us much more today Muchmore even than a subjective preparation of soulssuffocating in paganism thirsty for salvation One by oneall the elements of which Christianity is made theconceptions it presupposes the notions it sets in motion itsworship practices the forms of its institutions theprescriptions of its morality all are identified classifiedranked in their place along continuous series Not a dogmanot a feature of discipline or of liturgy that does not have itshistorymdasha history that always includes a first pre-Christianperiod All that had been amalgamated in it is returned to its

origin and soon it seems that nothing of its own remainsHow dare we still in the face of these facts a great numberof which at least are solidly established speak of a religiongiven from heaven of divine revelation How consequentlydare we speak of ldquotranscendencerdquo of supernaturalabsolute definitive truth Everything that is born and growsaccording to the common law is transformed and alsoperishes according to the common law As imposing as itseems Christianity will not escape it Even more perhapsthan the defeats to which it has submitted in the course ofthese recent centuries the history of its origins warns us ofits inevitable decline It is no longer for us the uniqueexception the extraordinary thing that it seemed to be forso long a time It can no longer be loyally preserved fromuniversal evolution Whether the brilliant flash projected byreligion ever since humanity existed is a false flash or anauthentic light is of little importance here in the case ofChristianity one thought to see a unique star appearabruptly in the heaven of religions and miraculously hangthere but a more experienced look discerns that it too wasonly for a moment welded to the others passing like theothers in this long luminous trail

Yet the illusion if such it be has existed It still persists withmany who are not at all ignorant people This too is a factthat must be taken into consideration One should not replywithout further examination that the same is true for allreligion Contrary to almost all the others without exceptingeven Judaism Christianity appeared in the middle of ahistoric period Its legend if there is a legend iscontemporaneous with its existence What a differencethere is in this regard for example with its great rivalBuddhism3 Why then contrary to so many humanphenomena is it presented in so tenacious a way as beingabsolutely exceptional Is ignorance about its true originsenough to explain this illusion in its regard or might it not

be rather the very true perception of its transcendencethat veiled by its brilliant flash certain features of its humanhistory The hypothesis at least deserves consideration It isnot without analogies Many men think themselves free inactions where without doubt they are not at all or with afreedom that is not at all real Is this illusion completelyexplained by a myopia that prevents them from perceivingthe bonds of determinism or does it too not come from anobscure but truthful perception Rather than a total illusionis it not a simple error of localization An error attesting toan awkwardness in analysis a scientific inferiority butwithout any damage to the essential truth

Now it happens too that one badly localizes thetranscendence that one recognizes in Christianity setting itup in positions from which the experienced historian willhave no trouble dislodging it This is why in a more or lessexplicit way one conceives of it then above all as a solutionof continuity To suppose such a transcendence possible atranscendence whose true name would be ldquoexteriorityrdquo isnot the act of Christianity What would remain for exampleof the thought of Saint Paulmdashwho nevertheless sodominated the thoughts of his centurymdashif one cut it fromthe thousand roots that in fact attached it to the earth ofTarsus and Jerusalem How can a single one of its essentialpoints be analyzed without constant reference not only tothe history of the Hebrew people but also to Greekcivilization to Eastern mysticism to the Roman EmpireThis would be an imaginary transcendence pure chimeralinked to a no less chimerical ideal of revelation The realitythat it would effect if this were possible would not besuperhuman but inhuman Far from being sublimated by itit would only be impoverished dried up

It would find the path neither of our spirit nor of our heartArtificial superficial and not at all supernatural Such asthose devout people of whom Peacuteguy speaks who becausethey do not have the strength to be of nature imagine that

they are of grace in reality dried fruits But there is anothertranscendence a true transcendence of which the first wasonly at best the naiumlve transcription An intrinsictranscendence in virtue of which a given reality consideredas synthesis in what comprises its own being surpassesessentially the realities of the same kind that surround itwhatever might be the community of elements that itinforms along with theirs whatever might be too the tiesof origin that render these different elements solidary Anytrue synthesis is always more than synthesis A certainrecasting that is much more than a new combination acertain ldquorevival from withinrdquo transforms everything It is in aphenomenal continuity the passage to a new higherincomparable order4

Now for anyone who can seemdashbut which of us can natterhimself that he always can once and for allmdashthe intrinsictranscendence of Christianity is obvious It alone countsand a direct look well aimed is enough to establish it Theunbeliever does not have to overcome historicalcontinuities nor does the believer have to refuse to seethem A priori they must be Scholars dedicated todiscovering these continuities are not at all devotingthemselves to a vain task They can indeed often bemistaken (certainly they do not fail to be so) or give in tothe temptation of confused conjectures the hypothesis thatguides them is nonetheless sound The fragility of certainconstructions does not at all prevent the firmness of theirfoundations Besides in research that some would hold tobe sacrilege science is after all only exploiting the Paulineidea of the ldquofullness of timerdquo It is uniting in a way with thethought of the Fathers of the Church so anxious to bring outthe ldquoevangelical preparationsrdquo in order to spare Christianitythe appearance of a ldquosudden improvisationrdquo ldquoNihil putem aDeo subitum quia nihil a Deo non dispositumrdquo5 It agreeswith the reflection of the philosopher who considering the

Christian event refuses by very reason of its unparalleledproportions to attribute an accidental character to it6

But in what touches the very basis of religion thesecontinuities are only appearance Yes in one senseChristianity is human completely human We can we mustspeak of its birth If the words it uses are necessarilyborrowed then it is unavoidable that the concepts are tooAnd how would man tell himself the truth even divinelyrevealed truth except by using concepts There is norevelation except supernatural ldquoin the pure staterdquo Howwould God give himself to man if he remained a stranger tohim And how would his Word penetrate him if it were notalso to become a human word The messages of Saint Paulor Saint John are already ldquotheologiesrdquo and the veryconsciousness of Christ is the consciousness of the Wordmade flesh But a less rudimentary psychology has shownus that the concepts themselves are in their multiplicity farfrom expressing the whole of a doctrine for they are withinthe spirit the part closest to matter With how much greaterreason if it is a question of an object that is not onlydoctrine but first of all reality By what makes it itself by itsoriginal essence which consists neither in words nor inconcepts and which the whole sum of words and concepts isnever capable of translating adequately Christianity isdivine completely divine Through the close texture ofrelationships of ideas and beliefs without break withouttear a new spiritmdashthe Spirit himselfmdashhas passed He hasstolen in with gentleness and he has burst in with powerHe has penetrated human history and all has beentransformed The face of the earth has been renewed by itThis was a new Fiat a true creation ldquoEmitte Spiritum tuumet creabuntur et renovabis faciem terraerdquo7 The Spirit ofChrist has founded a wholly new thing the religion of Christand this religion of Christ for which all human history hadprepared for which all human thought had slowly woven the

fabric suddenly rises up in the midst of men ldquosine patresine matre sine genealogiardquo Pure creation pure miracleThere we have this ldquonewrdquo idea which Jules Lachelier saidldquois born from nothing like a worldrdquo

What new ideas though that do not come from usourselves The inventions of man enrich humanitydiscovering in the soul some nuance unperceived until thenbut always leaving it to its essential finitudemdashto itsincurable decay Once past the first amazement the ironicand despairing refrain of Ecclesiastes is heard again Thecircle enlarged or shifted closes again On the contrarywith a leap the Christian Idea transports us beyond ourlimits It breaks this circle within which all our progress hadbeen condemned in advance to fit Such was the thought atits appearance breaking the circle of animaltransformations It is born in its own time it has its markedplace within the progress of life and nevertheless what itbrings is much more than progress From the time itemerges a new kingdom has begun the human kingdomSo the preaching of Jesus marks the advent of the Kingdomof God8 For how many of the sentences of the Sermon onthe Mount would we not find analogies in the Jewish Bible orin the teaching of the rabbis The One who pronounces itspeaks nonetheless as man had never spokenmdashas manwould never speak9 The Gospel inaugurates the time ofgrace It is a wholly new order that begins ldquoa new order oflove in the universerdquo10 A dike has been broken which letsthe flow of Love pass through Now it would be as vain todream of a reality more divine than Love than to imagine areality more spiritual than Thought The transcendence ofChristianity is thus not only relative to such and such anearlier achievement It is not only something originalsomething superior a provisional novelty clearing the wayfor some ulterior invention destined to go beyond it It is anabsolute transcendence ldquoOmnem novitatem attulitrdquo11

Peacuteguy has also sung it He was going to inherit a worldalready made And yet he was going to remake it entirely

Of course the order of charity is not revealed any morethan is the order of the spirit in all its fullness or in all itsdepth to that observation from outside that constitutes thework of the pure historian But if their inner essence stillescapes observation would the simple sight of their effectnot already arouse the sense of their incomparablegreatness We know the repercussions observable to thenaturalist not blinded by an overly narrow concept ofscience produced in the universe by the apparition ofthought the paradoxical properties of the ldquohumanphenomenonrdquo its extraordinary power for expansion andconcentration out of proportion with the weakmorphological originality of man presuppose a presence ofwhich the naturalist can only catch a glimpse but they sethim on the way that must normally lead him to go beyondhis science to discover in truth the human kingdom12 Therepercussions produced in humanity by the advent ofChristianity are no less prodigious the human spiritimmeasurably increased an unparalleled moral fruitfulnessa society tirelessly at work for an ideal of justice and unityand so forth These features are accessible to the historianwho knows how to step back a pace Nevertheless let usrecognize just as reflection alone properly speaking canreveal thought to itself so too only a process of a religiousorder can disclose the absolute superioritymdashwhich is to sayproperly the transcendencemdashof Christianity Like thedivinity of Christ itself the definitive newness of theChristian principle can be perceived only by the eyes offaith It is here that the advantage of the simple believerover the man of science and of life over technique shinesforth For the anthropologist who systematically denieshimself any inner reflection on the lived thought as well as

the historian of religions who does not consent to regardChristianity from within and to begin to live it at leastthrough a basic attitude of real sympathy will neverunderstand anything about the true object of their learnedstudies If their science itself does not lead them to the finalaffirmations it must at least set them on the path But ifthey wish to trust solely in it to the end surrendering theirconscience as men into the hands of their intelligence asspecialists the greater the latter will be and the more it willrisk misleading them

ldquoThe history of the formation of ideasrdquo said Amiel ldquoiswhat makes the spirit freerdquo13 Beneath the ideas that itorganizes and transforms let us know how to discern theChristian Idea This Idea has no history this is what mustmake the spirit submit to it

A great Deed was done for the world twenty centuries agothe Deed of Charity14 Right at first menrsquos habits of thoughtwere not any more overturned by it than were empires Wasan obscure variety of Jewish ldquoMessianistsrdquo worth even aglance The grain of wheat sown by Christ remained buriedin little upper rooms that counted for nothing in the historyof the world Christianity itself would wait five hundred yearsto found retrospectively the ldquoChristian erardquo and it wouldtake another five hundred years for full Christian practice tobecome widespread15 The first disciples of Jesus stilldreamed of the Kingdom of David their father they went upto the Temple as was their custom with a fervor that wasonly increased Having contemplated the Deed that hadbeen done before them they must nevertheless have hadthe feeling of an unparalleled newness The testimony of itappears everywhere in their rare writings ldquoNew teachingnew covenant new commandment new name new songnew man new life second genesis of the worldrdquo16 Such afeeling did not mislead them They were not in danger

those who had seen who had heard those who hadtouched of taking the Christian Mystery to be a more or lessspontaneous mixture of the Jewish Messianism exalted byJesus and cult forms then in vogue in the Hellenized Eastmdashany more than Christian dogma was in danger of appearingto their successors of the great patristic period as a learnedproduct of the Bible and Greek philosophy This chemistry ofimpotent historians could not have been created by themThey knew from an immediate source that they weredealing with something very different They sensed theunity of what myopic analysts think to understand bydecomposing it This is because the principle of synthesiswas in them living and active It is because living thisdogma themselves before drawing up the inventory of itadoring this mystery before translating it they penetratedits spiritual meaning

In addition their testimony is for us more than aguarantee It constitutes a call If that call is at firstnecessary for us we do not have to hold to it ldquoNowrdquo saidthe inhabitants of Sichar to the woman who had led them toChrist ldquoit is no longer because of what you have said to usthat we believe for we have heard him himself and weknow that he is truly the Savior of the worldrdquo17 For twentycenturies the witness of the first generation of believers ispreserved intact because it always remains a living witnessabyssus abyssum invocat [deep calls to deep] Why shouldwe be riveted to history The Spirit still gives witness to ourspirit18 The Kingdom of God is still in the midst of us ldquoTheGospel of Jesus Christ Son of Godrdquo which was heard for thefirst time in Galilee under Herod during the fifteenth yearof Tiberius Caesar at the time of the High Priests Annas andCaiaphas still resounds today and if the forms of itspreaching are different it is the same Voice that proclaimsit Like the creative Deed which does not cease to maintainbeing and life everywhere the Deed of Charity is pursued

over the world The second Genesis henceforth aspermanent as the first and like it infinitely fruitful TheChurch Bride of Christ continues the work of herBridegroom We have only to contemplate hermdashnot fromoutside in her sole visible organization with its humancharacteristics which are often too human perhaps with itsdefects not even in the works of its scholars alwaysunequal to their task and whose insufficiency can be sopainful19mdashespecially when they themselves do not seem tofeel itmdashbut in her inner life in her ideal in her belief in hersecret fidelity in the purity of her zeal in the marvelousfruits of holy joy that she makes ripen in the depths ofhuman hearts In all that the ldquoworldrdquo does not perceiveThen the light shines then the Truth bears witness to itselfveritas index sui No need for laborious comparisons or of anerudite return to the past The clearsightedness of a limpidlook is preferable here to all the sharp perspicacities ofcriticism This is because the miracle is endlessly producedbefore our eyes Today as formerly by virtue of Christianityldquoall things are becoming newrdquo EvenmdashSaint Augustine hadalready noted itmdashthe more time advances the moreprivileged is our situation as witness The mystical Christ inthe measure he increases better reveals his power To thesigns of it that already multiply still others will be addedwhen his message has truly reached the most distantpeoples Today we only begin to see all the fullness of theDeed that renewed the world The sudden clarity of the firstdays has become a great luminous path which grows withthe centuries

This great Deed of Love Jesus it is You Yourself Perceptible to manhumble dying in a corner of Judea oh yes You are man Flower of JesseYou are indeed the fruit of our earth Born of a woman truly formed fromher substance You are not some sort of phantom come down from theclouds of heaven You are deeply rooted in our earth20 But in You Jesus asin no other child of our race God showed himself You were not merely Hismessenger You are His living and substantial appearance Through You He

has not only spoken Or rather His language is an action His word is adeed it is You Yourself Splendor Verbum et imago Patris You Jesus onyour Cross the act uniting earth to heaven21

In You God still shows Himself and in your holy Church Inyour best disciples He still shines so well that one cannotmistake it For it is You who live in them Have we not allknown someone in whom a divine flame burned which theyhad lit at your hearth alone Their silent testimony is all themore persuasive Non eloquimur magna sed vivimus22 ldquoAsfor merdquo said Gerbet ldquoI lend an ear to the sounds that holysouls make with greater respect than to the voice ofgeniusrdquo23 What a great wise man concludes after longstudies and profound meditations in favor of your divinitythat encourages me but scarcely moves me forward Butthat a Francis of Assisi that being so obviously predestinedto make a ray of eternity shine over our earth makeshimself your absolute disciple that he loves You adoresYou annihilating himself before You that he is ambitiousonly to place his steps in your steps and to live from You byreproducing each of your features that he wants always tobe only your humble repetitor24 that not for a moment doeshe entertain the idea of engaging in a personal way oftrying another experience of adding at least something toyour message this humble and total will to imitatemdashChristototus concrucifixus et configuratusmdashin the face of yoursovereign independence such literalness in such an effusionof the Spirit such contrast in a similar holiness Themore I reflect on it the stronger the argument seems tome25

After that what do the difficulties matter in which myreason gets tangled Or rather how could it be that so loftyan object would not put it to flight If You have come tounveil a new kingdom and a new existence to me howshould I not consent to letting myself be removed from myusual surroundings Is it not normal that I have to abandon

my usual modes of thought26 Your word upsets myinstinctive logic it overturns all my arrangements of ideasit shatters my concepts This is the price for the liberation ofmy understanding Yet little by little in mystery a newequilibrium is established Under the secret action of yourSpirit faith is able to find its exact expressions whichprotect it against the ever-reborn assaults of a reason toolittle converted This was not without a long and arduouswork To define your twofold nature as for all that is worththe effort of our understanding it takes time reflectiongroping disputes materials from all sources A long andperilous journey A complicated winding history strewnwith a thousand contingencies An often tragic historymdashawonderful history27 It was through the adventurousconcepts of thinkers that Catholic Christology ended inrejoining the first intuition of faith

More than any other because it is at the center of all thedefinition in which the result of this labor is found today isimperfect An inevitable and blessed imperfection Notaccidental but essential necessary so that humbleastonishment before the mystery may subsist in theprecision of belief and in the firmness of adherence Butalready Jesus your very first disciples when they loved Youabove all and when they left all to follow You when theygave You all without thinking thereby to take anything fromGod when they contemplated You seated at the right handof the Father when they called You the one Lordproclaiming that all had been renewed by You and that allknees must bend before You your disciples believed in YouExtraordinary impossible faithmdashand yet authenticatedbeyond doubt A scandal as grave for the historian as thedogma itself for the thinker For though not beingabsolutely the same as ours the difficulties for a Saint Peteror a Saint Paul in believing were no less strong Nor werethose of their successors the Origens and the Cyrils the

Ambroses and the Augustines Modern man flatters himselfwhen he judges that the Copernican revolution or theKantian revolution dug out a new hiatus between histhought and the thought of the Ancients It was as hard tobelieve then as it is today It was hard for a JewishmonotheistmdashldquoListen Israel Your God is onerdquomdashto believe inthe divinity of a man28 It was hard to believe in thecrucifixion of the Son of God29 It was hard for a reasonableman who had been able to see up close the Son of Man inhis humiliation to believe in the resurrected Christ and inall these histories ldquothat do not allow themselves to beallegorized rdquo30

ldquoA scandal for the Greeks and folly for the Jewsrdquo OurFathers passed beyond their faith conquered all theobstacles What they were capable of we ourselves will becapable of and if we do not make ourselves unworthy ofthem the reasons that quickened them will not be lessstrong for us Their attitude will thus be ours We could nottranscend it but neither could we restrict it without denyingyour message at the same stroke Jesus For it is no morepossible to abstract You from this message than it ispossible to abstract God from Yourself On what would webase the demands of your Law if we began by failing torecognize the Demand of your Person Who wouldguarantee us the hope of the Kingdom if we were not torecognize the King of it Does everything in You not tell usthat You are Yourself the Kingdom as You are the Truth andthe Life31 So from the beginning the religion of Jesuswhich is the ideal of love was indivisibly the religion ofChrist that is the cult of incarnate Love It is folly to want todissociate them and to believe that the first would survivethe ruin of the second The religion of which Jesus is thesubject and norm is gradually achieved in us only throughthe religion of which Christ is the object Moreover it isblindness not to recognize their identity it is to tear the

seamless robe that the Gospel presents to us and it is notto see the metaphysical significance of Love

Evangelium ChristimdashEvangelium de Christo a modernscarcely more subtle form of the old antithesis betweenpractice and dogma32 But in maintaining contrary to thosewho set them in opposition that there is an essentialrelation between them we do not mean simply that onemust observe dogma as a means for assuring practice Theirties are intrinsic33 and the necessity of their agreement isonly one consequence On the one hand ldquopracticerdquo can becorrectly defined only by dogma from it alone does itreceive its meaning and spirit and on the other hand inone sense it already contains everything in itself for it issummed up in charity which is the spiritual being in act

God is Love and in a great feat of Love he came to takeup man sinner and miserable Man and God embraced eachother in Christ The unique intellectual fecundity of thisDeed it is specifically pregnant with all Christian dogmaticsso that the latter must be called strictly revealed No morein fact than one could dissociate the revealed truths fromthe very Person of the Revealer could one conceive a justand complete idea of the transcendent newness ofChristianity if one did not see that in this Person of Christsuch as the Apostles already show him to us and such asthe Church never ceases to contemplate and reproduce himthe reality of Charity and the truth of Dogma areindissolubly united Charity constituting the reality of thisDogma as this Dogma itself constitutes the truth of thisCharity34

As for the intellectual elaboration from which the dogmain its second state results which is to say in that abstractand learned formulation that multiplies it in distinctenunciations wholly guided by the Spirit of Truth as it is itnevertheless remains a human operation The materials it

employs just like those that entered into the firstspontaneous expression of faith are human materials Theycan thus serve them too in the real (though alwaysinadequate) transmission of divine truth only in the measureto which they are related to the Whole of Dogma35 In themeasure to which on the contrary they are consideredeach in isolation the formulas cease to bear witness to thedivinity of their origin they lose the best of their meaningceasing to have relation to divine charity such as itappeared to us in Christ For our faith is one and it is whollysummed up in You O Jesus36 You are the center and thebond of all its ldquoarticlesrdquo All its expressions all itsdevelopments are only so many means of understandingYou better and of situating ourselves better before You Thisis why the historians who instead of considering Christianityin its living unitymdashwhich one can do fully only if one lives itoneselfmdashalways scrutinize its elements only by taking themone after the other as a series of detached pieces resistany possibility of understanding it The essence escapesthem They do not find the soul at the end of their scalpelIn Christianity they find nothing divine not seeing Christ init

How true it is therefore to say that if dogma is necessaryfor the maintenance of practice the role of practice isnonetheless essential for maintaining the reality of dogmaintact We now discover the whole meaning of such anaxiom Without the truth of dogmamdashalthough there may besome good ldquounfaithfulrdquomdashone will only have an apparentpractice but on the other hand without the reality ofpracticemdashalthough there may be some bad Christiansmdashonewill no longer have anything but an apparent dogma On theone hand a charity that is less than genuine on the other asuperstitious belief or a verbal orthodoxy an ldquoorthologyrdquowithout any real content This is because if the articles offaith are numbered the Object of Faith is marvelously one If

the former are formed of abstract propositions the Latter ismarvelously Living And just as according to the oldScholastic theory all physico-chemical bodies onceassimilated by the human organism are directly informedby the soul so that there is no longer either carbon oroxygen and so forth but only human matter so with all theelements religious or profane in origin that enter into theChristian synthesis Constructed completely in one sensewith human materials the dogmatic formulas neverthelessexpress divine truth Elaborated by men they channel apart of divine revelation But this is on condition onceagain that one always relates them to that same revelationto the living Center to the divine Center from which allradiates and to which all must lead us to Jesus Christ JesusChrist the personal manifestation of Charity Jesus Christ inwhom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledgebecause in him dwells the fullness of the Divinity JesusChrist Word of the Father who speaks him and gives himentirely There is no absolute newness no revelationproperly speaking no true transcendence outside of theunique reality of his Person We must always return to thewords of Saint Irenaeus ldquoOmnem novitatem attulitsemetipsum afferensrdquo37

Jesus I believe in You I confess that You are God You are forus the whole Mystery of God38 What other definition of Godwould we seek than that given by your Apostle And was itnot in contemplating You that he found it God is Love Thissingle word contains an unfathomable mystery which Iadore But through You this mystery illumines our nightalready For Love has done a great deed and this Deed ofLove the Love made visible to our eyes perceptible tohearts of flesh effective and saving Love is You Yourself Itis God made man it is the Incarnation of God

We stammer as we can Our formulas are insufficientNecessary to shield the treasure of our faith their form

nevertheless troubles us But your true adorers O Jesushavenrsquot You Yourself said are not those who put their trustin frail words they are those who understand your feat andwho sustained by Youmdashfor that costs more than bloodmdashstrive to reproduce it

An absolute feat nothing has any value except throughcharity Charity demands all assumes all Charity judges all

An efficacious feat through this ldquodivine strengthrdquo alreadyrecognized by the Apostle Paul39 he uproots us from ouregotism he opens us takes us raises us makes us capableof adopting the contours of it in our turn He eradicates theold man and implants the new man Operatorius sermoChristi40

A finally definitive feat Whatever might be the futureprogress of our race whatever the enlargement of itsknowledge or the refinement of its ideal we will not betaken unawares The coming of Christ has marked thefullness of time No fullness no depth will ever exhaust theDeed of Calvary41

That is why peaceful about the past we also look to thefuture without fear ldquoQuid amplius reservandum cumamplius nihil sit plenitudine perfectionisrdquo42 Sure that ourfaith will never mislead us we go ahead of the excavationsof history and the research of science Ahead too of humanprogressmdashand we know too well that all progress of theworld will not obtain the least beginning of salvation Aheadof the new values to which history gives birth through itscrises Man can vary and perfect his culture without end Hecan discover and exploit new potentialities in it The veryUniverse can grow immeasurably and distant stars can oneday reveal a humanity more numerous more civilizedmdashmore miserablemdashthan our own the Deed of Christ wouldstill take it in It embraces all worlds just as it shines abovetime For all equally for each one of us and at all times for

those who believe in man and for those who despair of himits rays are those of Eternal Life

ldquoHe has come the Christ of God the Leader of thePromises And without any doubt he has been he alone tothe exclusion of all those who preceded himmdashand I have theaudacity to say he is to the exclusion of all those who followhimmdashthe one awaited by the Nationsrdquo43

If it happens that one has not read much of Plato one canalso go back to some authorities on him what one finds inhis work is totally different from what one finds in Saint PaulThere is a certain psychological trichotomy in other wordsa tripartite division of the soul reasonable irascible andconcupiscible So it is in the Republic Phaedrus andTimaeus According to Phaedrus the θυμός and theἐπιθυμητιϰόν are the two horses of the chariot led by theνοῦς Origen who is familiar with this division is verycareful not to make it his own he observes on the contrarythat it ldquois not confirmed by the authority of Holy Scripturerdquoand for this reason on two occasions he rejects it17 Thetranslators of the TOB were very close to perceiving all thatsince at the end of their laborious explanations they finallytell us that Paul had undoubtedly borrowed nothing ldquofrom athree-part Greek anthropologyrdquo given the fact that thelatter is never expressed in Pauline terms But why then thisfear which has made them shrink from the simplesttranslation

It is not correct moreover to say that the text of 1Thessalonians is an isolated text in Scripture and in Paulhimself Undoubtedly it has been unduly compared to averse from Deuteronomy ldquoYou shall love Yahweh your Godwith all your heart with all your soul and with all yourstrengthrdquo to the sole end of insinuating that only thenumber three was here and there to be retained assignifying simply a totality18 it is enough to read these twotexts to see that they are not comparable But on thecontrary when the Letter to the Hebrews celebrates theWord of God who ldquopenetrates to the division of soul andspiritrdquo (Heb 412) it is inspired without any doubt by ananthropology similar to that of Paul And one can hardlymaintain that the formula of the latter is a mere pleonasmldquofor other passages show clearly that the Apostle despiteall the elasticity or lsquofluidityrsquo of his terminology distinguishes

clearly between the phenomena that indicate the body souland spiritrdquo19 He does so in the First Letter to theCorinthians when twice he contrasts the unspiritual ornatural [psychique] man and the spiritual man20 W DavidStacey has maintained that these latter texts cannotcorrespond to that of the Letter to the Thessalonians of thetwo conceptions in conflict it would be necessary on thebasis of all evidence to choose the one later in date asexpressing the mature thought of the Apostle21 theantagonism of natural and spiritual would be substituted forthe hierarchical union of soul and spirit But here again thedesire to eliminate or at least to neutralize a text deemedembarrassing seems to us to have led Dr Stacey astray It isvery evident that the text of 1 Thessalonians is far fromhaving the same significance as that of 1 Corinthians thatdoes not prevent the thought of Saint Paul from remainingcoherent from one letter to another The soul (the psyche) isnever for its part the object in itself of a pejorativeappreciation If in another context he is severe or not veryadmiring of the man he calls ldquonaturalrdquo it is insofar as thelatter is only natural insofar as he closes himselfmdashorremains still provisionally closed22mdashto the Spirit of God whowould (or will) make of him a ldquospiritualrdquo man conferring onhim thus his ldquofullnessrdquo as the Letter to the Ephesians willexpress it (518) The natural man of 1 Corinthians 2 canhave a certain ldquohuman wisdomrdquo that is not uniquely ldquocarnalwisdomrdquo (cf 2 Cor 112) which does not lack all value butunderstands nothing ldquoof the things of the Spirit of Godrdquo forhim they are ldquofollyrdquo To this ldquowise manrdquo to this ldquocultivatedmanrdquo to this ldquoman of reason here belowrdquo the Apostlecontrasts the ldquowisdom of Godrdquo manifested in Christ23

It would be no more appropriate to bring out here thePauline opposition in a still more radical sense between theflesh and the spirit The carnal man is not the one whowould stop so to speak at a first landing that of the flesh

which is to say in such a case at things of the body but theone who has fallen into evil Body and flesh (it is reallynecessary to repeat this since people still seem to bemistaken about this at times) are in no way synonymous oreven comparable and do not belong to categories of thesame order In the thinking of Saint Paul the ldquofleshrdquo has ldquoaclose solidarity with sinrdquo it is this congenital weakness thatmakes the human soul fall into the slavery of sin Theldquospiritrdquo its antagonist is ldquothe state of freedom in which itblossoms when it has been faithful to the Spirit of God whoattracts it and comes to dwell within itrdquo There is noquestion here of any gradation but of opposition pure andsimple Saint Paul does not speak there of any dualitywhatever in the structure of the human being he does notcorrect a tripartite anthropology by another bipartite oneFor him flesh and spirit never designate two components ofhuman naturemdashlike body and soul would bemdashbut alwaysstatesmdashcontrasted statesmdash of the whole man24

If one wants therefore to find a certain Greek antecedentof philosophical significance for the Pauline trichotomy itwould not be appropriate to look for it on Platorsquos side Itwould rather be in Aristotle The Stagirite in factacknowledges in man an animated body the presence of asuperior element the spirit (νοῦς) the principle ofintellectual life immortal and divine Nevertheless theparallel takes a sharp turn for there would be at least onemajor difference While Aristotle spoke of a νοῦς Paulspeaks of a πνεῦμα Now as we know the difference is notmerely one of terminology It is no longer a question of asimple nuance of thought The substitution of one term foranother was besides not made by Paul alone it hadalready been carried out a little earlier by Philo Friendlytoward Hellenism Philo ldquowas imbued with the doctrine ofthe contemplative nousrdquo25 nevertheless in the passageswhere he comments on the creation account he does not

speak of νοῦς but of πνεῦμα God he says breathes intoman a pneuma not content with making him simply alivecomposed of soul and body he gave him part of his spiritthis is what Moses teaches by saying that he made him inhis image This pneuma in man is the principle of a higherlife the place of communication with God26 Now such isalso one of the meanings of pneuma in Saint Paul It is not inGreece that we must search for its origin but in the Bible

Father Joseph Huby has said it in a few words which morerecent authors would benefit from rereading In the Paulineverse ldquofamous because of the trichotomy spirit soul bodyof the human composite some thought to see a borrowingfrom Plato or Aristotle Both do acknowledge in fact threeprinciples in man but if the latter two of those coincide withthose27 enumerated by Saint Paul the first is different InPlato it is the nous the intellectual soul consideredmoreover by Aristotle as separable Instead of νοῦς SaintPaul puts spirit or pneuma here with him as in Philo this isa Semitic term suggested by the account in Genesis (27)where it is said that God breathed into the nostrils of theman a breath of life rdquo28 The Pleiade Bible has taken thesame explanation which seems imperative to us ldquoSpiritsoul bodyrdquo recalls Michel Leturmy in a note to histranslation ldquosuch is with the Semites the most commondivision with respect to the human compositerdquo29 In a noteto the translation of Matthew 625 the same authorexplains that the Greek ψ υχή translates the Aramaeannaumlfshacirc breath of the throat animal life (the ldquosoulrdquo) throughopposition to πνεῦμα which translates the Aramaean roucirc hacircdivine respiration breath of the nostrils (the ldquospiritrdquo) seeGenesis 2730

We do not believe it would be enough however to tracethe words of the Pauline triad simply to those of the BibleThe Apostlersquos anthropology is also based in part on hisexperience acquired from life in the Spirit of God There are

numerous commentators who in consequence consider thePauline πνεῦμα to designate in reality not something of manthat would be higher than his soul but the human soulinsofar as it is informed by grace participating as theSecond Letter of Peter (14) says in an effective way in thedivine nature united to the very essence of God by thecoming of the divine Spirit into it31 The ψ υχή in this casewould be not only ldquosensible liferdquo but also the higher realityof man as man that is although Buzy translates it in anoverly intellectualist language ldquoreason without gracerdquo32

This would be ldquothe state of the specifically living beingwhich is inherent in man as suchrdquo33 So too schematicallyBonnetain ldquoThe three terms come back to the followinggrace soul and bodyrdquo34 Father Andreacute-Jean Festugiegravere isclearly opposed to this interpretation which also proceedsin some from the fear of attributing to the Apostle ananthropology judged to be ldquoPlatonicrdquo For him theanthropology of Saint Paul is undoubtedly trichotomic thepneuma in question in the wish addressed to theThessalonians as in the texts mentioned above from theFirst Letter to the Corinthiansmdashand as in addition the Letterto the Hebrews speaks of itmdashis not the Holy Spirit butactually a part of man ldquothe movement of the phrase thetwo ϰαί the insistence on saying that we must becompletely in our whole being under the divine safeguardrdquoare the proof of it35 Besides if this pneuma is not itself thedivine life realized in man it is indeed in him the center ofthe higher life moral religious mystical it is the ldquocenter ofthe Christian liferdquo which is not a matter of feelings but offaith36

Some hesitate to choose between these two contradictoryinterpretations even if it means apparently contradictingthemselves in their explanatory formulas They are of thefeeling that the thought of Paul is profound and complexthey would like to lose nothing of it but do not see well how

to explain it in our language in a coherent fashion Such isFather Joseph Huby following the passage we have quotedldquoFor Paul the pneuma is more precisely the spirit of maninsofar as influenced informed and heightened by divinegracerdquo it is the ldquoprinciple of thinking center of moral andreligious life and summit of the soul The original (biblical)concept of the pneuma the human soul breathes from Godis magnificently deepened the pneuma designates thereason informed by grace man insofar as he becomes spiritparticipating in the nature of God through the spirit theνοῦς becomes capable of conquering the flesh it isunited to the very essence of God through the coming of thedivine Spiritrdquo37 In this essay somewhat awkward in itsattempts at reconciliation in which a fourth term (νοῦς) isintroduced we see to which side the author is leaning Wewill say as much of Max Alain Chevallier who with respectto 1 Corinthians 1414-16 after having noted for us ldquothefreely equivocal use of the word pneuma by Paulrdquo seems torestrict immediately the significance of his observation bysaying that this word ldquodesignates without describing it theinner man filled with the presence of Godrdquo38 Karl Barth inhis Dogmatics escapes such oscillations only thanks to hisgeneral doctrine which prohibits him from ldquoreifyingrdquo in away from giving a proper consistency to the human spiritconsidered in its relation to God After having justlyobserved that the ruah of the Old Testament does notcorrespond to the πνεῦμα ἅ γιον of the New39 but insofar asa ldquoanthropological notionrdquo to the πνεῦμα of the address tothe Thessalonians Barth makes haste to add ldquoOn the otherhand one cannot assert without reservation that the OldTestament and the New refer to a trichotomy of the humanbeing For both the human being in himself is body andsoul earthly form and earthly life but the body possesses asoul and its earthly form is that of a living being in themeasure in which the human being receives the spirit and

safeguards itrdquo This spirit must however be conceived ldquonotas a property of man but as a gratuitous giftrdquo which atdeath must be returned to God and which persists ldquowhichGod withdraws from him or grants to himrdquo40 What must bemaintained above all according to Barth is that man ldquois inno way lsquorelated to Godrsquo (Gunkel) he has simply beenawakened to his proper existence by the breath that Godbreathes into him and which allows him to breathe himselfWhat is he and what does he possess that he has notreceived and that does not differentiate him from God sinceit is God who has created himrdquo41

The human pneuma of which Paul speaks would thus beboth an element so little constitutive of his being that Godcan take it back from him and a created element thatdifferentiates him from God Such is the Barthian paradoxWithout having to take him literally perhaps we would haveto unite ourselves with the ldquospiritrdquo of it Would it in fact benecessary to choose between two contradictoryinterpretations that confront each other or resign ourselvesto a [false] harmonization that itself does not avoidcontradiction An expression used by Saint Paul himself 1Corinthians 211 could suggest an intermediate solution tous ldquoWho therefore among men knows the secrets of a manif not the spirit of the man which is in him (τὸ πνεῦμα τοῦἀνθϱώ που τὸ ἐν αὐτῷ)rdquo This pneuma is certainly not theHoly Spirit since Paul adds ldquoSimilarly no one knows thesecrets of God except the Spirit of Godrdquo Yet it does notappear completely like a constituent part of man as suchlike the body or the soul after having said ldquothe spirit of themanrdquo Paul corrects himself in a way to say ldquothe spirit whois in himrdquo which marks a nuance of capital importanceThus what par excellence makes a man what constitutesman in his worth among the beings of this world muchmore what makes him a being superior to the world wouldbe an element that rather than being ldquoof manrdquo would be

ldquoin manrdquo There is it seems to us in this Pauline πνεῦμα thesame kind of ambiguity notional because real as in thedivine ldquoimagerdquo or divine ldquobreathrdquo of creation such asChristian tradition interprets them From one author toanother and sometimes in the same author the sameambiguity will give place to oscillations which will not gohowever to the point of compromising before a ratherrecent date the idea of a tripartite anthropology Weconclude with a recent interpreter that the Pauline conceptof πνεῦμα is a concept ldquoof which our modern anthropologiescan absolutely not take accountrdquo42

2 Patristic Tradition

I The First Two Centuries Irenaeus It is a fact that Christianantiquity did not judge insignificant the Pauline verse about

body soul and spirit Nevertheless from one author toanother the interpretations differ without always being in

contradictory opposition to each otherIn his letter to the Philadelphians Saint Ignatius of Antioch

simply makes the Apostlersquos enumeration his own in judgingthat his correspondents like the Ephesians and theSmyrnians ldquowill be honored by the Lord Jesus Christ inwhom they hope with flesh soul and spirit (σαϱϰί ψ υχῇ πνεύματι) in faith charity and concordrdquo1 Athenagoras alsodistinguishes between soul and spirit for him the soul isplaced between ldquothe spirit of matterrdquo which is to say ldquotheflesh and bloodrdquo and the ldquoheavenly spiritrdquo which is ldquopurespiritrdquo and it can according to its choice mix with one orbecome the other

The soul becomes passive when it receives the spirit of matter and ismixed with it by looking below toward earthly things and to speak in ageneral way when it becomes only flesh and blood and ceases to be apure spirit2We believe that we will live another life heavenly and no longer earthlyif at least close to God and with God we have steadfast souls masteringpassion and if we remain not like bodies but like a heavenly spirit 3

In Tatian also the distinction seems clear when he saysldquoWe have knowledge of two sorts of spirits one of them iscalled soul the other is greater than the soul it is the imageand resemblance of Godrdquo4 Only subsequently it isimpossible to discern clearly if the spirit he distinguishesthus from the soul and which he calls ldquodivinerdquo is not simplythe Spirit of God The soul he explains is not immortal in

and of itself so ldquoif it remains by itself it dies with the flesh But when it is united to the divine spirit (θεῖ ον) it doesnot lack for help and it rises to where the spirit leads it Forthe seat of the latter is above while its origin is below Nowin the beginning the spirit was the guide of the soul itabandoned it when it did not want to follow it Now theSpirit of God does not reside in all but in some who livejustly The souls who have obeyed wisdom have drawnthe Spirit who is closely related5 to them (συγγενές) rdquo

Saint Irenaeus then Origen should make us pause a littlelonger because of the abundance of texts their importanceand their difficulty6

It is in the fifth book of Adversus Haereses that Irenaeusgives us his views about anthropology But his goal was notto write a clear and didactic exposition for the use of thehistorians who would pore over his text later on it was torefute heretics who conceived of salvation for man only inldquorejection of the fleshrdquo7 On the other hand careful alwaysto stick very close to Scripture he lets himself be guidedsuccessively by the different texts he uses which leads himto change more or less his perspective and his terminologyin the course of his text8 Hence the difficulties forinterpreters

The first passage in which the distinction between the souland the spirit is affirmed is of little interest to us for it isthere a question of an exposition of heretical doctrine9 Inresponse chapter 6 no 1 is presented as an orthodoxcommentary on the Pauline texts

Through the hands of the Father which is to say by the Son and the Spiritit is man and not a part of man who becomes the image and theresemblance of God Now the soul and the spirit can be a part of man butin no way man the perfect man is a mixture and union of the soul who hasreceived the Spirit of the Father and who has been mixed with the fleshmodeled according to the image of God Under the name of ldquoperfectrdquo the Apostle designates those who havereceived the Spirit of God He also calls them ldquospiritualrdquo they arespiritual through a participation of the Spirit but not through a voiding and

a suppression of the flesh In fact if one dismisses the substance of theflesh that is of the modeled work in order to consider only what isproperly spirit such a thing is no longer the spiritual man but the Spirit ofthe man or the Spirit of God By contrast when this Spirit in mixing withthe soul is united to the modeled work thanks to this effusion of the Spiritthe spiritual and perfect man is achieved and it is he himself who has beenmade in the image and resemblance of God When on the contrary theSpirit is absent in the soul such a man remaining in all truth natural andcarnal will be imperfect possessing indeed the image of God in themodeled work but not having received the resemblance by means of theSpirit10

From all the evidence Irenaeus counts here three elementsin man But is it simply a matter of man or of the perfectman Or rather to speak without ambiguity is it simply aquestion of the ldquoperfectrdquo man which is to say complete inhis nature or man divinized through the participation of theSpirit of God Or indeed does Irenaeus mix the two thingsThe text that follows will perhaps enlighten us

Modeled flesh alone is not the perfect man it is only the body of man thusone part of man Neither is the soul alone man it is only the soul of manthus one part of man Nor is the Spirit man one gives it the name of Spiritnot that of man It is the mixture and union of all these things thatconstitute the perfect man And this is why the Apostle in explaininghimself has clearly defined the perfect and spiritual man beneficiary ofsalvation when he says in this First Letter to the Thessalonians ldquoMay theGod of peace make you perfect and holy so that you may be fullycomplete and so that your whole beingmdashto wit your Spirit your soul andyour bodymdashmay be preserved without reproach for the coming of the LordJesusrdquoWhat motive did he have in asking that these three things to wit the soulthe body and the Spirit be preserved whole for the coming of the Lord if hehad not known that all three were to be restored and reunited and thatthere is for them but one and the same salvation This is why he calls ldquofullycompleterdquo those who present these three things without reproach to theLord Thus those are perfect who all at once possess the Spirit of Godremaining always with them and maintain themselves without reproachwith respect to their souls and their bodies which is to say preserving faithtoward God and keeping justice toward their neighbor11

The hesitation remains On the one hand the Spiritconstitutes with the soul one part of man it is called theldquoSpirit of the manrdquo and seems to be distinguished from the

ldquoSpirit of Godrdquo it in itself does not constitute the man anymore than the body or the soul does but it is one of thethree elements that constitute him these three elementsare also enumerated according to Saint Paul who wishesthem all three to be without reproachmdasha wish that wouldbe irrelevant even impertinent in the case of the Spirit ofGod finally moreover Irenaeus himself considers that theyare all three to be ldquorestoredrdquo and to be presented to theLord But on the other hand the soul receives ldquothe Spirit ofthe Fatherrdquo the man is called ldquospiritualrdquo insofar as hereceives participation of the Spirit and this participationmakes him to be not only in the image but in theresemblance of God finally if this man is ldquoperfectrdquo it isbecause in addition to the soul and the body he ldquopossessesthe Spirit of Godrdquo12 And these two series of affirmations arenot found in different contexts they are closelyintermingled

Yet a little farther on several passages come to supportthe second series

Those who possess the deposit of the Spirit and who surrenderthemselves to the Spirit the Apostle rightly calls ldquospiritualrdquo since theSpirit of God dwells in them For spirits without bodies will never bespiritual men but it is our substancemdashthat is the composite of soul andfleshmdashthat in receiving the Spirit of God constitutes the spiritual man 13 The weakness of the flesh makes the power of the Spirit shine forth and it is of these two things that the living man is made living due to theparticipation of the Spirit man through the substance of the flesh mdashTherefore without the Spirit of God the flesh is dead 14The breath of life which makes the natural man is one thing and thevivifying Spirit which renders him spiritual is another The breath has beengiven indistinctly to all the people who inhabit the earth while the Spirithas been given exclusively to those who trample down earthly covetousdesires 15ldquoFor the Spirit will come out around me and it is I who made all breathrdquo (Is5716) He ranks in a way the Spirit in a sphere apart beside God who inthe last days spread it over mankind for adoption but he situates thebreath in the common sphere among creatures and he declares itsomething created Now what has been created is different from the onewho creates it The breath is thus a temporary thing while the Spirit is

eternal After having enveloped man from within and without heremains always with him and henceforth will never abandon him16

One will note however that in these texts the perspectiveis no longer that of an anthropological analysis and thatthey are condemned by other biblical passages than thepreceding Moreover as Irenaeusrsquo principal objective justnow was to claim for the body itself a salvation of which theheretics say it is incapable his objective here is to show thatthis salvation the definitive blossoming of the spiritual lifewhose seed is in each man is the work of the Spirit of Godin each man In no passage is Irenaeus concerned to give uswhat we would call a philosophical anthropology He doesnot go deeply intomdashto tell the truth he does not even havein mindmdashthe problem of the insertion of the Spirit of God inman Despite the several expressions we have brought outand several others as well we believe that the Spirit ofwhich he speaks is always the Spirit of God even when heconsiders it in man If for example it is said in 5 6 1 thatthe soul and the Spirit can be ldquoone part of manrdquo one canobserve with Dom Adelin Rousseau that ldquoparsrdquo is in thesingular ldquoThus although Irenaeus does not hesitate to seein the Spirit of God one of the three constitutive elements ofthe perfect man he refuses and for good reason to makethis Spirit a lsquopartrsquo of the perfect man rdquo A little farther onit is said that the Spirit like the soul and the body is to berestored and saved which seems strange if it is indeed aquestion of the Spirit of God but Dom Rousseau againcomments ldquowhat is to be saved is not the Spirit as such butthe Holy Spirit insofar as communicated to man for his fullachievement in other words the Spirit is less saved than itsaves rdquo These explanations are ingenious they canseem a little subtle they do not however in our opinionfalsify the general line of Irenaean thought Perhaps it isonly necessary to complete them by recognizing that thetexts that are to be thus explained give witness to a rather

clear tendency to conceive of man (even if it is a question ofthe ldquoperfect manrdquo) according to the anthropological schemesuggested by the Apostle17

If therefore the Spirit indeed designates for Irenaeus theSpirit of God his very manner of considering this Spirit ofGod in man and of seeing in it thus one of the threeelements that combine to constitute the perfect man posesan anthropological problem18 Just like the text of the FirstLetter to the Corinthians of which Irenaeus wants to give anaccount it invites a resolution of this problem in thedirection of a certain ldquotrichotomyrdquomdashwhich Origen more of aphilosopher will soon do ldquoThe hereticsrdquo we read again inthe fifth book of Adversus Haereses ldquo do not understandthat three things as we have shown constitute the perfectman the flesh the soul and the Spirit One of them savesand forms to wit the Spirit another is saved and formed towit the flesh another finally is between those two to witthe soul which now follows the Spirit and takes its flightthanks to him now lets itself be persuaded by the flesh andfalls into earthly desiresrdquo19

These explanations seem to us akin to those of FatherJean Meyen-dorff with respect to man ldquocomposed of fleshsoul and Holy Spiritrdquo ldquoThis viewrdquo he observes ldquowhichsounds strangely pantheistic if one judges it according tolater theological categories shows in fact a dynamicconcept of man that excludes the notion of lsquopure naturersquoMan is created so as to share the existence of God this iswhat distinguishes him from the animal and is expressed inthe biblical account of the creation of Adam lsquoin the image ofGodrsquo rdquo20 As Pierre Boyer-Maurel also says21 if for Irenaeusa certain dichotomy ldquoaccounts for man fashioned in theimage of Godrdquo it is nevertheless a trichotomy ldquoin which thebreath only precedes the Spiritrdquo who ldquoaccounts for thebecoming of man of that man who is created by lettinghimself be created throughout the divine Economyrdquo

II Origen Irenaeus spoke particularly of the Spirit of Godeven when that Spirit shared became by consent of thesoul the spirit of man Origen will speak more explicitly of

the spirit of man insofar as an opening to the Spirit of GodThese are two inverse perspectives much rather than two

adverse doctrines1One authority on Origen Gustave Bardy has however

written that the tripartite division ldquowhich is imposed onhim in a way by several Scripture passages plays no rolein his teachingrdquo2 Another historian of ancient Christiandoctrines Francois Bonifas had expressed a judgment inthe contrary direction but as little conformed to the realityafter having pointed out that ldquounsteadinessrdquo of the Paulineterminology ldquomakes it doubtful that the Apostle intended [in1 Thessalonians 523] to make a scientific distinctionrdquo hewent on thinking essentially of Origen ldquoYet the Fathers ofthe Church saw in the expressions of Saint Paul a rigorousdivision in which they found once again that of their oldmentor Platordquo3 Previously J Denis while not mixing Platoup in the affair had recognized in Origen the existence oftrichotomic texts but he saw in that only a foreign body inthe midst of Origenian doctrine ldquoGenerally speakingrdquo hesaid ldquothe soul and the spirit are but one for Origen and ifhe had not respected a division that came to him from SaintPaul and which appears to have been adopted generallyas much by the orthodox Fathers as by the heretic scholarshe would have suppressed one of the terms of this divisionand would thereby have been spared numerouscontradictionsrdquo4 The prejudice to which in each of thesethree last cases the historian is unconsciously giving way isnot difficult to perceive To overcome it would require an in-depth study After the work by G Verbeke on LrsquoEvolution dela doctrine du Pneuma du Stoiumlcisme agrave saint Augustin (1945)the works of Henri Crouzel and Jacques Dupuis have broughtus all desirable light on this point ldquoAt timesrdquo Father Crouzel

tells us ldquoOrigen is a dichotomist distinguishing the bodyand the soul following the Platonic custom5 But most of thetime he sees according to Scripture three elements inman spirit soul and body He has recourse to thistrichotomy when it is a matter of explaining his idea of manand he states it each time he encounters in the texts anexpression that suggests it and this is so throughout hisliterary careerrdquo6 But it is Father Jacques Dupuis who drawsthe matter into perfect clarity in his important monographon ldquoLrsquoEsprit de lrsquohommerdquo eacutetude sur Irsquoanthropologicreligieuse drsquoOrigegravene For him ldquoThere can be no doubt thatthe verse from Saint Paul is the immediate source of hisanthropological trichotomyrdquo (65) It is principally he that wewill follow here

ldquoWe often find it asserted in Scripturerdquo says Origen ldquothatman is spirit body and soul and we have ourselvesdeveloped the subject at lengthrdquo7 In that as in othersubjects it is in fact the sacred text most especially that ofSaint Paul that truly constitutes the framework for histhought8 And it is with reference to Scripture that he triesto define clearly the notion of the Pneuma For him thePneuma is first of all the Divine Life in principle but it is alsothe shared divine life the creature itself becomes pneumain the measure that it possesses this life Yet it is a first kindof participation in the divine Pneuma which does not yetallow it to be said that man has become pneuma aparticipation that without betraying Origen we can alreadycall natural because it consists in an element that is anintegral part of the nature of all men and that is preciselyhis pneuma ldquoThe Spirit of God even when it is present inus is one thing and the pneuma proper to every man thatwhich is in him is something else The Apostle clearlyaffirms that this spirit (this pneuma) is different from theSpirit of God even when the Holy Spirit is present in usover and above the spirit of man that is in himrdquo9 The

distinction could not be put more clearly Origen asks againin the same passage of the commentary on Saint MatthewldquoIs the spirit of Elias the same as the Spirit of God whodwells in Elias or indeed do we have two different thingsthererdquo And he replies ldquoThe Apostle shows clearly that theSpirit of God when he dwells in man is distinct from thespirit of the man lsquoThe Spirit itself testifies to our spirit thatwe are children of Godrsquo (Rom 816) and in another placelsquoNo man knows what is in a man if not the spirit of the manwho is in him likewise no one knows what is in God if notthe Spirit of Godrsquo (1 Cor 211)rdquo10

Origen indeed says like Paul pneuma and not nous It isbecause they did not sufficiently distinguish between thesetwo concepts that several have identified the pneuma of theanthropological trichotomy with the preexisting nous andhave made it the higher (intellectus) part of the soulmdashunless in order better to distinguish between pneuma andpsyche they reduced this latter to its sensible part Theythen spoke of Origenrsquos imprecisions his unstableterminology indeed of his inconsistency of thought and ofhis contradictions This was from not having read himclosely enough11 He distinguishes the spirit from the soul(and in this case he is not speaking of the nous) as clearlyas he does the soul from the body and he repeats atdifferent times that ldquowe are composed of a soul and aspiritrdquo this is the case it seems in the third book of Periarchocircn12 so too in the fourth book in the famoustheoretical parallel that he institutes between man andScripture13 In the Entretien avec Heacuteraclite for theinstruction of his august audience he insists ldquoThat man is acomposite being we know through Scripture The Apostle infact says lsquoMay God make you holy spirit soul and bodyrsquoand so forth This spirit is not the Holy Spirit but one part ofthe human composite (μέϱος τής τοῦ ἀνθϱώ πουσυστάσεως) as the same Apostle teaches when he says

lsquoThe Spirit gives witness to our spiritrsquo rdquo14 In thecommentary on the Letter to the Romans he will also quotein support a text from Daniel15 here he invokes as anexample what happened at the death of Christ havingwanted to save all men the Savior had taken body soul andspirit now ldquothese three elements during the Passion wereseparated at the time of the Resurrection they werereunited During the Passion they were separated How Thebody in the tomb the soul in hell the spirit he deposited itin the hands of the Father rdquo16

This spirit of man represented by the eagle in Ezekiel17 isplaced above the soul18 But never in the texts of thetrichotomic series does Origen call it νοῦςmdashso that thiscould be a criterion for discerning the origin of certainpassages given as Origenian but which are in reality fromEvagrius19

But how are we to understand this spirit which is ldquoin usrdquo20 What is its role If we follow again the indications givenby the Apostle we will compare it to the moral conscienceldquoOur gloryrdquo says Paul ldquois the testimony of our consciencerdquo(2 Cor 112) The conscience always rejoices in what good Ido on the other hand it can never be accused of doing evilbut on the contrary it remonstrates it accuses the soul towhich it is bound this is a sovereign freedom I thereforethink that it is this very spirit that the Apostle tells us is withthe soul being associated with it like a pedagogue and aguide to teach it good to chastise it and to reprimand itwhen it sins It is this spirit of which the Apostle again saysthat ldquono one knows what the man is if not the spirit of theman who is in himrdquo it is the spirit of the conscience alsoaccording to what Paul says ldquoThe spirit himself giveswitness to our spiritrdquo21

We should not however in exalting the pneumaexcessively reduce its reality if it is not a simple member ofthe human composite neither is it the simple voice of the

conscience Inaccessible to evil22 placed in a way as wehave said ldquoabove the soulrdquo (ἀνωτέϱω) as a ldquoguide tovirtuerdquo23 it is ldquomuch more divine than the soul and thebodyrdquo24 ldquobelonging truly to man it remains entirely in aparticipation of the Holy Spirit who gives himself to us it isthe point of contact between man and the divine Pneumawho inhabits himrdquo25 This is why it is always holy it is holyby essence not of course the ldquoHoly Spiritrdquo but throughparticipation a ldquoholy spiritrdquo26 ldquothe seal of the Holy Spiritmakes holy the spirit that is in usrdquo27 in each of us Hencethe paradox the pneuma in man is holy and it mustbecome so we must affirm at the same time the holiness ofthis pneuma and ldquothe fortuitous character of a holy liferdquo28 Ifwe seek to bring out the fundamental idea expressed (let usnot say sought for Origen seems very much the master ofhis thought) in these texts and other similar ones we couldwithout betraying it express it thus the pneuma that is ldquoinmanrdquo in every man assures a certain hiddentranscendence of the man over himself a certain opening acertain received continuity between man and God Not thatthere is the least identity of essence between the one andthe other (like Irenaeus like Clement Origen is animplacable adversary of this pantheism of the pseudo-Gnostics) but it is at the heart of man the privileged placealways intact of their encounter

Would man therefore be after all impeccable No But thecenter of moral freedom and choice is not the pneuma Thatis why we can say that for Origen the pneuma ldquodivine giftrdquois not properly speaking part of the personality29 Thecenter of choice is the soul in its higher part (νοῦς) Thelatter can be inclined as Saint Paul says on the side of thespirit or on the side of the ldquofleshrdquo (which does not mean thebody) which is to say that it is ldquocapable of virtue and ofvicerdquo30 When it is said that the flesh desires against thespirit and the spirit against the flesh without any doubt the

soul is posed between the two as being able to acquiesceto the desires of the spirit (si eum sequi velit)31 or let itselfbe led to carnal desires in this latter case it becomes withthe flesh a single body of covetousness and of carnalappetite in the former case on the contrary beingassociated with the spirit it becomes a single spirit withitrdquo32 The spiritual man is the one in whom the spiritprevails33 the carnal man he in whom the flesh prevailsThe spirit itself the pneuma always remains holy but ineach one it can have vitality or torpor flight or fall flame orsluggishness34 This is why paradoxically Origen can affirmboth as we have said that the pneuma is holy and that itmust become so35

Still following Paul Origen also speaks of the ldquonaturalmanrdquo who is again neither carnal nor spiritual and theexplanation he gives in his respect manifests once again aparadoxical character distinguished only with difficulty fromthat spirit (pneuma) that is in man without being uniquely ofman and that becomes fully himself and fully completesman only in his participation in the Spirit of God ldquoThenatural man does not understand what the law of God is itis madness to him but the spiritual judges all thingsrdquo (1 Cor214) We think that there is a reason why Paul omits theword ldquomanrdquo after ldquospiritualrdquo For ldquothe spiritualrdquo is more thana man he is superior to that humanity defined by the soulthe body or by the two together and not by the spirit whichis more divine than these two elements and whosesupernatural participation once achieved defines thespiritual When the soul rises follows the spirit andseparates itself from the body when it no longer evencontents itself with following the spirit but remains in it (asthis passage shows ldquoToward you have I raised my soulrdquo Ps251) how would it not lose so to speak its own nature andnot itself become spirit36

Toward the end of this text a trace of the speculations ofPeri archocircn on the subject of the soul will be noted buttoned down by ldquoso to speakrdquo It is necessary toacknowledge however that from one work to the otheracross the succession of dates and the varieties of subjectstreated and literary genres the points of view are so diversethat in the words if not in the thought the reader has somedifficulty finding a perfect coherence among all theOrigenian texts on the pneuma

At death all pneuma returns to God this is whatEcclesiastes says ldquoThus the pneuma of the just and that ofthe sinner have an identical destiny both end at theFatherrdquo37 But ldquoit does not follow that saint and sinner sharethe same destiny With the saint the whole man enters intoGod with the sinner the pneuma returns to the Lord thesoul and body perish in Gehenna hence the intrinsic tearingof the human beingrdquo38 Like the remark by Father CrouzelOrigen is akin here to the thought of Saint Irenaeus whosaid ldquoAll those who are destined to life will be raised up withtheir bodies their souls and their spirits those who havemerited punishment will surrender their souls and theirbodies to it for with them they have strayed from divinegracerdquo39

Later Christian tradition will not be as unfaithful to thisconception of the pneuma as one might believe It is foundagain in a series of intuitions ideas and opinions of variedexpression This is for example the idea dear toRuysbroek of a certain ldquodeiformityrdquo of the human being ofhis higher ldquosuperessentialrdquo life in God40 It is the obscurefeeling that there exists in each of us even the greatestsinner a hidden room where no one but God can enter inldquothat sacred point in us that says Pater no iterrdquo as PaulClaudel says magnificently in the famous ldquoCantique dePalmyrerdquo and that cannot hide from love41 It is the intuitionof a Georges Bernanos at the threshold of death noting in

his diary that ldquosin makes us live on the surface of ourselvesrdquoand that even when we offend God ldquowe never ceaseentirely to desire what He desires in the depths of thesanctuary of our soulrdquo42 There are similar traits in the workof Dostoyevsky although they too can be rather equivocal(a novelist does not express himself like a theologian) theydo not prevent him from glorifying personal freedom andproclaiming the necessity of uprooting evil in receiving ldquonewbirthrdquo The Origenian doctrine of the pneuma alsoreverberates throughout the Bonaventurian tradition In atotally different climate and without any need to search fora precise influence from one to the other the very doctrineof Saint Thomas Aquinas would not be completely foreign tohim It questions neither the singularity of each humanbeing nor the drama of existence nor the divinetranscendence43

NOTE

In his commentary on John 423-24 Origen defines ldquotrueadorersrdquo first by the spirit then in relation to the truth Hethus breaks down the dual Johannine formula and explains itterm by term drawing his inspiration again from Paul whoopposes spirit and flesh (Rom 89 Gal 56 2 Cor 103) It isinteresting to note that in evoking Romans 89 Origen addsa μήϰετι those who are no longer in the flesh but in theldquospiritrdquo He thereby stresses the impact of the coming ofChrist and of the gift of the Spiritmdashalready evoked by Paulmdashwhich divide history into a before and an after Origen doesnot work therefore only on words (flesh and spirit) but heis inspired by the Pauline thought in which these terms arenot only anthropological but in which they evoke the impactthat the history of salvation the Incarnation and the gift ofthe Spirit have on man It is the same with Galatians 516fIn verse 18 Paul in fact opposes the condition of man underthe Spirit to that of this same man under the Law As for thethird evocation it is a little different Paul speaks there of hisconduct because some accuse him of acting according tothe flesh that is of allowing himself to be guided bymotives that are too human (Jean-Michel Poffet OP ldquoLeMeacutethode exeacutegeacutetique drsquoHeacuteracleacuteon et drsquoOrigegravenecommentateurs de Jean 4rdquo Jeacutesus la Samaritaine et lesSamaritains [Fribourg Switzerland Eacuteditions Universitaires1985] 191) III From Origen to Augustine A few examplesshould be enough to show the continuity of this tripartiteanthropology across the patristic age

Cyril of Jerusalem addresses to the newly baptized thesame wish that Paul did to the Thessalonians1 Gregory ofNyssa in his treatise on the Creation of Man practices acertain eclecticism Following the perspective that isnaturally his own since he compares the nature of man to

that of the beings that surround him and particularly ofother living beings he begins by distinguishing a threefoldactivity merely vital (that of plants) sentient (that ofbeasts) rational these are like three souls or threesubstances all three of which are found in man alone Thevocabulary is that of the philosophical ϰοινή of that periodthe higher life of man is λογιϰή it is directed by the νοῦςhis nature is a νοεϱά ϕύσις But this can also be understoodsays Gregory according to the words that the Apostleaddressed to the Ephesians (sic) First of all through a boldconcordism he places the body in an equivalence with thenutritive life the soul with the sensate life the spirit(πνεῦμα) with the intellectual life (νοεϱόν) then withoutfurther hesitation and without seeming to perceive that heis changing the perspective he finds once again the truePauline thought or at least comes close to it bydistinguishing life according to the flesh (σαϱϰιϰή) from lifeaccording to the spirit (πνευματιϰή) and by showing thesoul in an intermediary situation having to choose betweenvice and virtue2 Farther on he will explain that only thesoul endowed with reason such as it is in man fully meritsthis name of soul in such a way that he would haverejected it seems any attempt at concordism between theνοῦς and the πνεῦμα3

It is not Hellenism but indeed the Bible that inspires thetrichotomy of the Syrian tradition such as we see it in thishymn of Saint Ephraim of Nisibis For the soul is still moreprecious than the bodyAnd the spirit is still more precious than the soul

And the Divinitymore hidden than the spiritThe body will be clothed with the beauty of the soul when

the end arrives

The soul will put onthe beauty of the spiritThe spirit will put on in its very image the (divine) MajestyThe body on equal footing with the soul will see itself

elevated The soul on equal footing with the spiritThe spirit at the height where the Majesty is 4

In another later Syrian text the awkwardness of an attemptat harmonization between the three elements of man andthe three Persons of the divine Trinity will be noted JacquesdrsquoEacutedesse (d 708) writes in his Explanation of the MassldquoSacred things are holy The soul the body and the reasonare sanctified by three sacred things by water blood andspirit and besides by the Father the Son and the Spirit andtruly man does resemble God in virtue of this trinity ofcomposition the soul corresponds to the Father the body tothe corporeality of the Son and the reason to the HolySpirit Thereby man thus resembles Godrdquo5 One cannevertheless wonder if the word translated by ldquoreasonrdquo isnot here the equivalent of nous rather than of pneuma andif the soul is not merely the sensate soul The same doubtcan be expressed with respect to a passage from theTestament in Galilee of Our Lord Jesus Christ of which wehave the text in Ethiopian ldquoShould the body be judged withthe soul and the spirit Will the body of every man berevived with his living soul and his spiritrdquo6 We will find asimilar hesitation in examining the Latin tradition andperhaps one must say in certain cases at least it cannot beresolved

Saint Ambrose writes on the one hand ldquoHomo ex animarationali constat et corporerdquo7 but also on the other handldquoPrimum unusquisque homo est corporalis secundoanimalis tertio spiritualisrdquo and the parallel he institutesbetween these three elements and the three heavens towhich Saint Paul alludes in the Second Letter to the

Corinthians does not enlighten us much about the meaningof this trichotomy8 Ambrose is not alone in any case inacknowledging it We read in Gregory of Elvira ldquoManifestumest enim tribus perfectum constare semimortalemhominem id est corpore et anima et spiriturdquo9 AndAugustine expresses himself in a similar way on severaloccasions10

In reality Augustinersquos vocabulary is rather evasive Theterm mens as we know holds a privileged place in his workIn De Trinitate he develops a distinction destinedsubsequently to become more rigid that between ratioinferior and ratio superior In commenting on Psalm 3 verse4 ldquoet exaltans caput meumrdquo he explains that this ldquocaputanimaerdquo is the ldquospiritusrdquo or the ldquomensrdquo and so on11

Certain texts which have the appearance of explicitdefinitions speak of two single elements as constitutive ofman ldquoHomo enim constat ex corpore et spiriturdquo12 ldquoNihil estin homine quod ad ejus substantiam pertineat atquenaturam praeter corpus et animam totus homo hoc estspiritus et carordquo13 Yet Augustine does not consider the twowords anima and spiritus to be simply synonyms althoughfor brevityrsquos sake he includes in only one of the two thecomplex meaning of both ldquoNomen animae spiritus est abeo quod spiritalis est animae nomen est ab eo quodcorpus animet hoc est vivificetrdquo14 From which we have acertain number of explicitly trichotomic texts which are ofgreat importance for a correct understanding of Augustiniananthropology for it is on this trichotomy that Augustinebases his doctrine of the memoria15 and he gives it asessential to the Catholic Faith ldquoSi quis tenuerit catholicamfidem ut totum hominem credat a Verbo Dei essesusceptum id est corpus animam spiritum rdquo16

In the same De fide et symbolo Augustine explainshimself at somewhat greater length ldquoEt quoniam tria suntquibus homo constat spiritus anima et corpusmdashquae

rursus duo sunt quia saepe anima simul cum spiritunominatur pars enim quaedam ejusdem rationalis quacarent bestiae spiritus diciturmdashprincipale nostrum spiritusest deinde vita qua conjungimur corpori anima diciturpostremo ipsum corpus quoniam visibile est ultimumnostrum est Anima vero cum carnalia bona appetit caronominatur rdquo17 we also quote several similar texts ldquoUttotus homo sit spiritus et anima et corpus sed aliquandoduo ista simul nomine animae nuncupari rdquo18 ldquoPropterspiritum et animam et corpus rdquo19 ldquoAd creaturaeintegritatem id est spiritum et animam et corpus et illudquo intelligimus et illud quo vivimus et illud quo visibiles etcontrectabiles sumusrdquo20

In De fide et symbolo at the same time as hedistinguishes anima from spiritus Augustine identifiesspiritus and mens21 Likewise too he distinguishes theldquopars rationalisrdquo of the soul (which is thus no longer only theanimator of the body as in animals) from the ldquopars quaeexcellit id est ipsa mensrdquo22 It is practically the lastdistinction expressed in De Trinitate by the seeminglyequivalent words ratio inferior and ratio superior23

In brief the anthropological analyses of Saint Augustineare varied H I Marrou has set up a table which does notintend to be exhaustive24 and it must be noted besides thatunder the same word under the same verbal distinction ithappens that Augustine places different realities On thewhole less dependent on a literal interpretation ofScripture and more particularly of Saint Paul than Origenwished to be25 more inclined to express himself in avocabulary borrowed in part from Neoplatonism Augustineplaces under the word spiritus a reality that sometimesmore closely resembles the nous of Greek philosophythan the pneuma of the sacred text Yet through the dualityhe recognizes within this spiritus (or this ratio or this mens)he remains a faithful witness of the Christian tradition

3 From Saint Augustine to Our Day

I Medieval Spiritual Masters In Augustine as in Origen (andas in the whole patristic tradition) the notions are fluid the

historian must strive to grasp the movement of theirthought rather than to classify their concepts Augustinianexplanations moreover do not correspond point by pointwith Origenian analyses The Christian spiritual masters ofthe Middle Ages will rather often be in this regard closer to

Origen than to Augustine In order not to interpret them in asimplistic way it is necessary constantly to bring analogy

into play Perhaps even the undertaking to reunite them in akind of continuous chain extending to our time is a little

too reminiscent of concordism Let us say finally thatspiritus is not only designated or understood in variousways with some it splits so that one has to deal rather

with a quadripartite anthropology one of the causes for thisis the desire to make a place for the Platonian tradition ofthe intelligence a tradition that is amalgamated somehowor other to the Pauline tradition It is having made these

remarks that we gather together the examples that follow

For John Scotus man is composed of three elements butthe third element called in turn animus intellectus or mensresembles the νοῦς more than the πνεῦμα We read in book5 of De divisione naturae ldquoTotam humanam naturamcorpus videlicet et animam et intellectumrdquo (PL 122 910-11)But another text in book 2 chapter 5 expresses aconception closer to the biblical conception ldquoAciem mentisqua ilium [Deum] intelligimus et in qua maxime imagocreatoris condita estrdquo (PL 122 531 c)1

The traditional trichotomy dominates the structure ofBernardrsquos Brevis Commentatio on the Song of Songs (n 1)In William of Saint Thierry the third term the ldquospiritrdquo splitseither in order to grant a certain place to the nous to theintellectus to rational understanding or rather in order todetail the principal stages of the spiritual life The Letter tothe Brethren at Mont Dieu that important text distinguishesa triplex status animalismdashrationalismdashspiritualis which is tosay ldquothose beginningrdquo ldquothose on the wayrdquo and ldquotheperfectrdquo The opposition between the flesh and the spirit isnot denied William will be able to remind those who havingbegun to taste the sweetness of contemplation might betempted to neglect the permanent necessity of spiritualcombat2 But rather than this dialectical opposition theobject of the Letter is to set forth a pedagogical ladderwhich is moreover nonetheless Pauline in its inspirationThe beginners are still guided by an animalis sensus (this isthe natural man of Saint Paul which is not the carnal man)those on the way acquire a rationalis scientia (we observehere the care to integrate into the formation of the monkthe whole cycle of human knowledge) and the perfect enjoyspiritualis sapientia3 In addition these are not threeairtight categories or perfectly distinct and successivestages just as there is passage from one to the other thereis immanence from one to the other William remains faithfulto the same schema in Miroir de la foi4 as well as in hiscommentaries on the Song of Songs ldquotres status esseorantium vel orationum animalem rationalemspiritualemrdquo5 In De contemplando Deo a subdivisionintervenes between the ratio the discursive faculty andthe intellectus which does not seem to be at this point theequivalent of the spiritus (1 4)

Isaac of Stella speaks in nearly the same way in alanguage however that has more of an intellectualist ringto it in distinguishing the understanding from the reason

which abstracts the forms of the sensate vis animae quaimmediate supponitur Deo6 We have the feeling that thissecond-generation Cistercian was familiar withScholasticism

Hugh of Saint Victor is closer than Isaac to Bernard andWilliam of Saint Thierry According to him the eye of theflesh (which is to say here the body) sees the world andwhat it contains the eye of the reason sees the soul andwhat it contains but the eye of contemplation penetrates tothe innermost depths of man and above man This eye ofcontemplation belongs to those who possess the spirit ofGod7 In Achard of Saint-Victor the order of the last twoelements or of the last two stages seems reversed hetreats de discretione animae spiritus et mentis mens wasas another author of the twelfth century says quasiquoddam divinitatis insigne8 (But this is hardly a questionof vocabulary alone) Whatever might be the distinctionsand subdistinctions orientations inflections and differencesin vocabulary it can be said of all these spiritual masters ofthe Middle Ages as well as of many of those who will followthat they took up the essential chorus of the Pauline andpatristic trichotomy and that most even attribute extremeimportance to it as Sandaeus a seventeenth-centuryauthority was to remark

Magni aestimant Mystici nonnulli et putant maxime necessariam ad suamTheologiam ac perfectionem divisionem inter spiritum et animam9

This is also true of Bonaventure ldquoHabet enim anima trespotentias animalem intellectualem divinam secundumtriplicem oculum carnis rationis contemplationisrdquo10 Werecognize the schema of William of Saint Thierry and Hughof Saint Victor11 For Thomas Gallus closer in this regard toIsaac of Stella ldquoreason feels the intelligence seesrdquo12

Johannes Tauler in several of his sermons teaches thatldquoman is so to speak composed of three menrdquo and that one

must distinguish in him first of all an ldquoexternal manrdquo orldquoanimal manrdquo then a ldquoreasonable manrdquo finally a ldquohigherman wholly inner and hiddenrdquo that ldquonoble and deiformrdquoman ldquomade in the image of Godrdquo13 The mystical theologyof Harphius (Henry Herp) also says that ldquothe soul isaccording to Scripture divided into three parts rdquo14 andthe appeal to Scripture despite the appearance is justifiedFor our authors in fact the adding of a supplementary termto the Pauline enumeration does not derive from the factthat they would abandon Paul in favor of Plato but from thefact that they are concerned besides about a theory ofknowledge which Paul did not at all have in view in hisaddress to the Thessalonians Yet La Perle eacutevangeacutelique leadsus to a tripartite schema the body being understood as inPaul but at base the difference from the medieval authorswe have just enumerated is hardly perceptible

Each man seems almost to represent three men according to the body heis bestial according to the soul he is reasonable and intellectual andaccording to the spirit or the naked essence of the soul where God dwellshe is deiform 15This very noble portion of the soul some call mens insofar as itcontinually breathes after God and is as it were a largely deiform or divinething and the image of God in man It is something divine in being as itwere flooded with God and united to him It is also called the point and thesummit of the spirit because God without intermission shines in the latterlike a mirror It is also according to what the good Father Ruysbroek saysthe highest part of the soul It is also called the sparkle of the soulbecause it is in God what the sparkle is in fire In the first [unity or union] we are superessential and deiform and in thesecond spiritual and internal and in the third active and moral 16

The foregoing is the text of a compiler from which one mustnot ask too great a coherence in terminology or too great aunity in point of view If we now appeal to a theologian whowas the adversary of the mystical school represented byTauler Harphius and La Perle eacutevangeacutelique and who refers tomore reliable authors such as Augustine ldquoBernardrdquo andHugh he will give us the same essential distinctions

Tres cognoscendi modi sunt quorum unus animalis dicitur utens maximeoculo carnis alius rationalis utens plus oculo rationis tertius spiritualisutens oculo contemplationis sicut distinxerunt divini homines tres oculoset tres vivendi modos17

Louis de Blois finally in the Institution spirituelleperseveres in bringing out this ldquodepth of the soulrdquo thatunder different names always corresponds to the ldquoPaulinepneumardquo and that will not find a place in the late Scholasticanthropologies or in most modern anthropologies

God who to tell the truth is everywhere dwells in the spirit of man and inthe simple depth or inner sanctuary of the soul in a particular manner Hedwells there in his own image and never absents himself18This depth naked and stripped of any image is raised above all creatures it transcends time and place and through a kind of perpetual adhesionremains united to God in his principle It is however in us by essence forthe abyss and depth of the soul are essence The soul possesses a certain supernatural unity of spirit in which itdwells as in its own habitation and it is carried away into the divineessence even to this supreme unity in which the Father Son and Holy Spiritare in the simplicity of the divine essence itself 19

Assuredly these speculations about the divine essencemdasheven if they maintain a trinitarian affirmationmdashand aboutthe essence of man presuppose a long evolution of thoughtthat in one sense distances us greatly from Saint Paul Butacross languages theories and as one never stops sayingtoday cultural contexts that differ greatly to be sure it ispossible to discern a fundamental continuity

This continuity will not be broken by the period called theRenaissance

II Saint Thomas Aquinas in Tradition1

I

In the spiritual history of mankind the three domainsconstituted by what one can designate under the threedenominations of religion morality and mysticism are oftenpresented as independent or even opposed to each otherThe alliance or the mutual penetration between mysticismand morality does not appear achieved in and of itself anymore than that between morality and religion Yet one couldnot conclude that such an alliance or such a mutualpenetration is an artificial and wholly contingentphenomenon In opposition to an empiricism thatdisintegrates everything without explaining anything wewill say rather that it responds if not to the demands atleast to the profound wish of nature But nature itself hastaken time in finding itself

In fact we note that it has not fully found itself outside theChristian revelation The union of the three aforementionedelements religion2 morality and mysticism does not reachits fullness it does not become harmonious and indissolublein principle except in the tradition coming from the GospelThere and most specifically in the Catholic form of thistradition it does not appear as a secondary fact obtainedby convergence subsequent to various gropings but as anoriginal and essential fact Religion morality and mysticismmanifest themselves there ldquoin a reciprocal envelopmentrdquoBetween these three both an attraction and a tension existthat could be the source of many vital problems but there isobjectively neither separation exclusion nor conflict forldquothe Deity while transcending being the true and the goodcontains them formallyrdquo3

This is why in particular in the Catholic traditionmdashlivedand reflectedmdashldquoreasonablerdquo life and ldquospiritualrdquo life or lifeldquoaccording to the spiritrdquo penetrate each other without beingidentified with each other4 and morality penetrates themystical life to the end Pseudo-Gnosticism relegated therewarding of good and punishing of evil those pillars of theldquoDemiurgerdquo to the lower level of ldquoexotericrdquo faith the greattradition on the contrary maintains this moral aspect ldquoatthe heart of the revelation of the Father through the uniqueSonrdquo5 ldquoIt is notrdquo says Saint Justin for example ldquobecause ofhis [natural] affinity with God or because he is spirit like himthat man sees God it is because he is virtuous and justrdquo6 Inhis Psychologie des mystiques Joseph Marechal noted thisessential characteristic Mystical ascent he explains doesnot erase ldquoany specific trait of the common Christian liferdquo7In other words the Christian virtues proposed for thepractice of all are not simply means of freeing oneself theirexercise is not simply something transitory in theirsubstance they are already something of the end itself Thisis what Saint Ambrose was able to explain wonderfully in abrief sentence in his commentary on Saint Luke withrespect to the Beatitudes ldquoSicut enim spei nostrae octavaperfectio est ita octava summa virtutum estrdquo8 And this iswhat Saint Augustine repeated in similar terms speaking ofadhesion to God the blessed life and eternal wisdom ldquoUnaibi virtus erit et idipsum erit virtus praemiumque virtutisrdquo9

In a remarkable thesis Pierre Nemeshegyi has posed thesame problem with respect to Origen ldquoTo place Being andmoral Goodness in equation to place this moral Goodnessin God formally and as characterizing the final ground of hisBeingmdashis this not to be condemned to enclosing all spirituallife in an anti-mystical moralism The Good is atranscendental But is it formally what we understand byldquomoral Goodrdquo Or is there not a deepening of this moralGoodness which would reestablish the possibility of an

innermost mystical depthrdquo And Nemeshegyi concludes ldquoInfact in Origenrsquos conception moralism and mysticism areone and the same thingrdquo10 Saint Gregory the Great oftenso close to Origen will unite good sense to spiritual fervor inorder to remind contemplatives that if they want to befaithful to the Gospels and to advance on the true way theymust take care to scorn the humble precepts of morality andto seek to understand them in a more sublime sense11

The medieval spiritual masters will take up again thesethoughts of Origen Ambrose Augustine and GregoryExpressing ourselves in the customary categories of theirexegesis which the Middle Ages systematized we will saythat for them ldquoanagogyrdquo achieves the final perfection bothof ldquoallegoryrdquo and of ldquotropologyrdquo (of dogma and ofmorality)12 Of all authentically Catholic mysticism onecould declare what one historian said of Saint Bernard byallusion to the traditional interpretation of the ldquoBooks ofSolomonrdquo for each of them as for him ldquothe moral school ofEcclesiasticus and Proverbs the necessary preliminary forthe mystical school of the Song of Songs is a school whosedoors are never closed behind usrdquo13

This ldquospiritualrdquo equilibrium has at times seemedthreatened in one direction or another Some spiritualscholars have seemed to want to transcend purely andsimply the sphere of morality and reason This is whatcauses Evagrius not without reason to be judged severelyat times it is what Ruysbroek reproaches in the falsemystics of his time it is one of the points that the bull Inagro of John XXII criticizes in Meister Eckhart Whatever mayhave been true in each of these cases the thing thatinterests us here is the norm that inspired such criticismsWhile following Saint Paul in distinguishing the ldquosoulrdquo fromthe ldquospiritrdquo (not moreover as two substances nor even astwo ldquofacultiesrdquo) one always refuses to separate them as ifthe penetration into the higher zone of the ldquospiritrdquo must

make us reject as no longer valid the operations of theinferior zone of the ldquosoulrdquo But the hierarchical distinction ismaintained which is to say that the mystical life is not forall that reduced to the plane of simple morality A text fromSaint Teresa is very enlightening here the saint observesthat the ldquocenter of the soulrdquo or the ldquospirit of the soulrdquo is aldquodifficult thing to express and even to believerdquo

Certain interior effects give the certitude that there is in certain respectsa very real difference between the soul and the spirit Although in realitythey are but one we sometimes perceive a division between them that isso delicate that it seems the one functions in one way and the other inanother There are so many things in our innermost depths and thingsso subtle that it would be boldness on my part to undertake to explainthem We will understand all that in the other life if God deigns toadmit us to the dwelling where we will have understanding of all thesesecrets14

Yet the equilibrium can be upset in the opposite directionfrom that for which Evagrius and Meister Eckhart werereproached This has been true periodically for anti-mysticalscholars or simply anti-mystics against whom periodicallytoo protests are raised With them it is not the ldquosoulrdquo thatis forgotten or scorned in the name of the superior ldquospiritrdquoit is the ldquospiritrdquo that is ignored misunderstood in the nameof a truncated moral wisdom But with any of the greatscholars of the Catholic tradition we do not have to registerany such misunderstanding This is what we would wish todemonstrate here with respect to Saint Thomas Aquinasand more particularly with respect to the Summatheologica

II

From first appearances one might be brought to believethat Saint Thomas in the Summa is one of those scholarswho upset the equilibrium in the second direction But in

reality he did nothing of the sort His doctrine in the Summatheologica contains in fact the equivalent of what othershave expressed through the distinction of soul and spiritunderstood as the distinction of a moral region and amystical region If one does not observe this right at thebeginning it is because Saint Thomas expresses himself indifferent words

It could be written that in his doctrine ldquoall the problemsthat the spiritual life and its evolution pose return in thisconsideratio moralis which has but one object man inprogress toward his blessed destinyrdquo15 The thing isincontestable Still it might be useful to specify how Nomore in Saint Thomas than in others is the union of the twomoral and spiritual (or ldquomysticalrdquo) elements a confusion or areduction pure and simple from the mystical to the moralThe synthesis is not a unification in the exclusive favor ofone of the two Of course one could judge that the Thomistanthropology by its Aristotelian roots favors the originalityof the mystical life less than others And like the virtue ofldquoreligionrdquo the theological virtues seem at first glance mixedin a long list of ldquovirtuesrdquo within the second part of theSumma It is appropriate nevertheless to remark beforeseeing things at closer range that only a later usage givesthis second part the name ldquomoralrdquo After having in the firstpart considered God as the universal cause Saint Thomasconsiders him now as end after the divine model he clingsto his image after the departure of God from all things heenvisages the return of all things to God Nowmdashthis is theimportant point for our subjectmdashthis itinerary of returncomprises several stages

It is true that the prologue to the Secunda secundaespeaks of scientia moralis of materia moralis and that allseems right at first to be reduced to the consideratiovirtutum But let us look a little closer In this sameprologue as in the articles that follow Saint Thomas

nonetheless distinguishes from the virtutes morales notonly the virtutes theologicae but also the virtutesintellectuales which are along with prudence wisdomunderstanding and knowledge closely connected to thegifts of the Holy Spirit of the same name Moreover afterhaving exhausted the plan he had outlined for ldquoomittingnothing of moral thingsrdquo by studying successively thevirtues and the vices that are opposed to them heconsiders in a kind of extension a series of new questionsrelated first of all to ldquoprophecyrdquo to ldquorapturerdquo and othergratuitous gifts then to the ldquocontemplative liferdquo a series heattaches a little artificially one must admit to the sectionon the different states of life

This artifice has sometimes embarrassed commentatorswho do not always understand the articulations that theplan of the Summa comprises here Thus we have Father MD Chenu who has the ldquotreatise on the states of liferdquo beginat question 183 starting from where ldquothe spiritual life islinked to social functionsrdquo16 The thing seems in fact ratherlogical Yet Saint Thomas himself said in his littleintroduction to question 171 ldquoDe prophetiardquo

Postquam dictum est de singulis virtutibus et vitiis quae pertinent adomnium hominum conditiones et status nunc considerandum est de hisquae specialiter ad aliquos homines pertinent

So Father Antoine Lemonnyer had adopted a differentsolution from that of Father Chenu He saw in questions 171to 198 concerning the gratuitous gifts a kind of parenthesisand made the final treatise of the Secunda secundae beginfrom question 179 which is to say from the ldquocontemplativeliferdquo he gave a certain unity to this final treatise thanks tothis single yet twofold title ldquoHuman Life Its Forms and ItsStatesrdquo17

The divisions adopted respectively by Father Chenu andFather Lemonnyer both have their probability and both can

be supported In fact however as Father Chenu remarkedSaint Thomas treats the states of life properly onlybeginning with question 183 entitled ldquoDe officiis et statibushominum in generalirdquo But already before that questions171 to 182 form a whole very distinct from the precedingquestions in which we have the equivalent of a littletreatise on mysticism

Even if he did not treat explicitly at that time the relationsbetween active life and contemplative life18 the placeaccorded by Saint Thomas to this latter in his general planwould thus authorize us to distinguish it from the domain ofmorality He himself besides tells us so in proper termsldquoThe moral virtues are not a constitutive element of thecontemplative liferdquo19 in fact ldquothey are ordained toactionrdquo20 Now action is inferior to contemplation The latteris ldquosimpliciter meliorrdquo21 Action prepares for contemplationby winning the soul through the external exercise of thevirtues the necessary ldquopreliminary dispositionsrdquo bydisciplining the passions and by submitting them to thereason22 Contemplation is the act of the ldquohigher reasonrdquowhich is to the inferior reason following an old biblical andPhilonic symbolism revived and slightly transformed23 asthe man is to the woman24 It is ordained to ldquoperfect loverdquoand as Saint Gregory taught while the active life issynonymous with service the contemplative life issynonymous with freedom25 As Aristotle had alreadyaffirmedmdashbut we know with what freedom Saint Thomaschanged and transformed the thought of the philosophereven while he invoked him as an authority26mdashit is a lifeabove the human condition27 and is made to last always28

No more than any other of the great witnesses of theChristian tradition did Saint Thomas reduce the spiritual lifeto the exercise of morality or spiritual understanding torationality Father Pierre Rousselot too neglected today (atleast in France) demonstrated this well by placing in

evidence the distinction between intellectus and ratio afundamental distinction with numerous consequences29mdashBut neither does he separate them on the one hand as anauthentic heir of the Fathers he integrates the virtuous lifeinto eternal life by saying ldquoUniuscujusque perfectio nihilaliud est quam participatio divinae similitudinisrdquo30 And onthe other hand he knows that in the earthly conditionexternal action which is first of all the virtuous life mustitself proceed from contemplation

The comparison with the Plotinian philosophy or with theldquoagnosticsrdquo can in this regard be very enlightening becauseof the apparent proximity of the doctrines

In a parallel way one would find in Christianity [says Jean Trouillard on thissubject] a going beyond ethics by the theological virtues and the gifts ofthe Holy Spirit The Christian life consists in divinization not in ascesis Yetthe role of the will seems much more considerable in Christians than in thePlotinians not only in charity but also in faith which is itself presented as aduty Theologians do not ordinarily situate the theological virtues on theother side of the decisions of the faculties or on this side of the constitutedvalues This is what must not be forgotten when faced with the use of theNeoplatonic doctrine of virtues attempted by Christian authors inparticular by Saint Thomas (1a 2ae q 61 a 5)31

And again Maurice de GandillacPlotinus harshly criticizes the Gnostics who believe that by ldquoraisingoneself near to God on wings of a dreamrdquo (2 9 9) one escapes the humancondition According to the fragments of Heracles (Legrand 315) Mosesthe author of the Law belongs to the ldquonaturalrdquo world Superior to purematter however he ignores the spirit By proscribing by judging bypunishing he fulfills an inferior ministry and the ldquoperfectrdquo are in no waysubject to his commandments Pure at the beginning they are savedwithout exercise as without repentance and without pardon Thispresumption will be the common gospel for all the sectarians who across the Middle Ages will preach a ldquogoing beyond the ethicalrdquo32

We should not let the differences in emphasis from oneauthor to another or from one school to another hide fromus therefore the consistent thought of the Christiantradition Already in someone like Origen the union is

achieved between ldquoa resolutely contemplative religiousideal and a passionately active liferdquo33 For Saint Gregory theGreat to whom Thomas Aquinas refers the whole spirituallife is subject to a rhythm and ldquotrue perfection begins tomature only in the difficulties and obstacles of the activeliferdquo34 Medieval monasticism did not scorn Martha in thename of Mary it maintained that action must be joined tocontemplation or the ldquopracticerdquo to the ldquotheoryrdquo a little likelove of neighbor to the love of God35 The two inseparableaspects of the Christian doctrine on this subject will onceagain be expressed very well in the reflections of John HenryNewman still an Anglican preaching on ldquoevangelicalsanctity the completion of natural virtuerdquo Newman in factshows in this sermon that there is ldquoan essentialresemblance between the spiritual man and the virtuousmanrdquo following the words of Saint Paul ldquoThe fruit of theSpirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truthrdquomdashwhiledrawing the attention of his listeners to ldquothe point ofdifference between them viz that the Christian graces arefar superior in rank and dignity to the moral virtuesrdquo36

Moral perfection and holiness virtuous life and mystical lifeare distinct they are hierarchical but at the same time theyare united in charity forma virtutum vinculum perfectionis

III Renaissance and Reformation Nicholas of Cusa takes upthe Pauline trichotomy again in the same terms as the

Apostle He places it in correspondence with on the onehand a cosmic trichotomy and on the other hand what isperhaps unexpected the three Persons of the Trinity He

uses Saint Augustine as his authority for both thesecorrespondences

We read in fact in one of his Sermons ldquoIn homine suntspiritus anima et corpus sicut in mundo elementalia vitaliaet intellectualiardquo1 and in his opuscule the Beryl he

distinguishes ldquothree modes of knowledge the sensate theintellectual and the intelligentialrdquo which he sayscorrespond according to Saint Augustine to the threeldquoheavensrdquo2 That was the cosmic analogy And for thetrinitarian analogy set forth in the work De Concordantiacatholica

Unde homo secundum Augustinum Super symbolo (40 193-94) ad instarTrinitatis imaginem gerens ex spiritu et anima et corpore constitutusexsistit Spiritus autem est superior nobilior et altior intellectualispersonae Patris figuram repraesentans et corpus personam Filii et animaquasi utriusque naturam participans ab utroque procedens personamSpiritus sancti3

Taking up his position like Nicholas of Cusa from the pointof view of knowledge Marsilio Ficino distinguishes thesensus the ratio and the intellectus We recognize in thatthe heritage of the great Scholasticism In a similar mannerin the prologue of his Heptaplus Giovanni Pico dellaMirandola distinguishes the vital instinct discursive andpractical knowledge and the contemplative faculty4 Moreimportant is the twofold witness here in agreement ofErasmus and Luther

In his famous Enchiridion militis christiani Erasmus whotakes his inspiration directly from Saint Paul ldquoends finally ina tripartite anthropology which finds its completion in thegift of the Spiritrdquo5 After having in chapters 4 and 5 spokenof man such as Plato describes him first according to theTimaeus then according to the Phaedo Phaedrus and theRepublic and recalled his distinction of the soul asreasonable irascible and concupiscible Erasmus describesin chapter 6 the Pauline opposition between the flesh andthe spirit then he comes in chapter 7 to the trichotomy of1 Thessalonians which he comments on with reference toOrigen ldquoHe does not hiderdquo observes Charles Beacuteneacute ldquohispleasure in setting forth this theory lsquoLibet et Origenicamhominis sectionem breviter referrersquo rdquo He sees it based as

well on Isaiah (299) and on Daniel (386) so he adopts it inorder to make it intervene ldquoas a definitive stage after theanalyses of pagan philosophersrdquo to serve ldquoas anintroduction to the great rules of Christianityrdquo6 With Origenhe sees in the soul this ldquomedian partrdquo of the human beingwhich can swing either to the side of the flesh or to the sideof the spirit7 In the Methodus or Ratio verae theologiae asimilar text recalls our trichotomy indirectly ldquoNec omnisaffectus hominis est caro sed est qui dicitur anima et quidicitur spiritus quo nitimur ad honestardquo8 But it isparticularly in the controversy with Luther about free willthat Erasmus opposes to the exclusivism of his adversaryhypnotized by the sole dialectic of the flesh and the spiritthe divine pedagogy explained by Origen according to thePauline schema

Luther himself paradoxically had provided a commentaryin his own manner with respect to the first words of theMagnificat (1520) on the text of 1 Thessalonians and hismanner did not differ perceptibly from so many of theothers we have seen

ldquoMy soul glorifies the Lordrdquo Scripture divides man into three partswhen Paul says at the end of 1 Thessalonians ldquoMay God make youholy through and through in such a way that all your spirit and your souland your body rdquo And each of these partsmdashlike the entire man mdashisequally divided in another way concerning not nature but quality In otherwords nature has three parts spirit soul and body all three of which canbe good or bad The first part the spirit is the highest the mostprofound the most noble part of man it is what makes him capable ofgrasping imperceptible invisible and eternal things In brief it is the housewhere faith and the word of God dwell The second part the soul isexactly the same spirit according to nature but accomplishes a differentfunction It is the spirit insofar as it animates the body and acts through it Its proper role consists in grasping the things that reason can knowand probe 9

As for the third term the body its function is to ldquoactrdquo and toldquoput into practice the knowledge of the soul and the faith of

the spiritrdquo As Maurice de Gandillac observes here the bodyhas nothing to do with ldquomirerdquo And by adopting such atripartition of the human being (which is not at all to beunderstood we repeat as a division of three ldquofacultiesrdquo)Luther envisages the human subject as Saint Paul and afterhim the whole of Christian tradition have done ldquoin aperspective that is more biblical than Greekrdquo10 The relativeassimilation that he works between the soul and the spirit isthe echo of a common Scholasticism and the fruit of aninflection toward the point of view of knowledge which wasnot that of Saint Paul in his address to the Thessalonians butin no way contradicts it Of these two characteristics thepreceding centuries have already brought us many anexample11

Like his predecessors Luther thus maintains the threefoldgradation which he also develops through a traditionalimage

We will give a simile for that drawn from Scripture Moses made atabernacle with three different edifices The first edifice was calledsanctum sanctorum it was the dwelling of God and there was no lightfrom within The other sanctum contained a chandelier with sevenbranches and lights The third was called atrium the parvis it was locatedin the open air in the light of the sun This figure depicts the Christian Hisspirit is sanctum sanctorum the dwelling of God in the night (stripped oflight) of faith for he believes what he neither sees nor senses norunderstands His soul is the sanctum there are found the seven lights towit all kinds of understanding discernment science and knowledge ofcorporal and visible things His body is atrium it is manifest for all in sucha way that one can see what he does and how he lives12

It is necessary however to recognize that this trichotomydid not have for Luther an importance comparable to hisdialectical opposition between the flesh and the spirit InSaint Paul from before the commentary on the Magnificathe had been selective the lessons on the Letter to theRomans (1515-1516) were already setting up an oppositionbetween the flesh and the spirit without anthropological

reference to any subject whatever13 and later in hiscontroversy with Erasmus he was to prove all the morehostile to the anthropology drawn from 1 Thessalonians 5 byhis adversary whom the latter guided by Origen used toweaken his dialectic He writes in De servo arbitrio

I am well aware of Origenrsquos fable about the threefold affection of man offlesh soul and spirit14 the soul holding the middle between the flesh andthe spirit and able to turn either toward the one or toward the other Butthis is dreaming he says them but does not prove them at all Saint Paulcalls flesh everything that is without spirit as we have demonstrated15

Luther does not formally contradict here what he had said inthe commentary on the Magnificat What he reproaches inOrigen as in Erasmus is believing in free will But thispreoccupation leads him to falsify their anthropology andthereby to forget or to misunderstand the Pauline verse thathe had first interpreted correctly To which in his enormoussecond Hyperaspistes Erasmus will reply several times overthat the tripartition of 1 Thessalonians 5 even ifcounterparts are found in the philosophers is proper toSaint Paul The philosophers in fact do not usually call thehighest part of the human being spiritus (pneuma) butmens or ratio and what Paul understands by spiritus is notany ratio whatever but the ratio already inspired by graceThat he concludes is what Luther does not want torecognize As often happens the discussion in whichErasmus finds himself involved leads him himself to apartially inaccurate interpretation of Saint Paulrsquos text bymaking him attribute to the ldquospiritrdquo what Paul says of ldquothespiritual manrdquo Yet it remains true that he had first analyzedperfectly the address of the Apostle to the Thessaloniansand Luther had at first done the same16

Lutheran mysticism at least in the rather unorthodoxSebastien Frank (1499-1542) nonetheless recognizes thethree elements of which man is composed body soul andspirit Frank sees in the soul the personal and free being

capable of orienting himself in one direction or in the otherhe sees in the spirit the inner Word or God present at theheart of every man enlightening him through his Word andinclining his will through his Spirit17

The same traditional distinctions originating in Saint Paulare found in the humanists of the sixteenth century ofmystical tendency For a Paracelsus (1493-1541) since manis a microcosm he must unite within himself the threeconstitutive parts or elements corresponding to the threestages of the universe material world astral worldDivinity18 (an idea of Nicholas of Cusa although distorted isrecognizable in this) Cornelius Agrippa in his De occultaphilosophia tried to unite the Platonic traditions to Mosesand to Saint Paul

Plotinus itaque et Platonici omnes post Trismegistum similiter tria ponunt inhomine quae vocant supremum infimum et medium Supremum est illuddivinum quam mentem sive portionem superiorem sive intellectumillustratum vocant Moses in Genesi vocat ipsum spiraculum vitarum a Deovid vel a Spiritu ejus in nos spiratum Infimum est sensitiva anima quametiam idolum dicunt Paulus Apostolus animalem hominem nuncupatMedium est spiritus rationalis utraque connectens extrema atque ligansvid animam animalem cum mente et utriusque sapiens naturamextremorum 19

Guillaume Postel as original as ever at least in expressiondistinguishes in man the anima the animus and the mens20

It was undoubtedly following him four years later thatCharles Toutain wrote in his tragedy Agamemnon Threenatures in us which all talk with each other Excite our lifeand keep it alive The Spirit the Soul and Animus And onebeing taken away Suddenly all life together would depart21

The Anglican Lancelot Andrewes (155 5-1626) expresseshimself in a similar way in his devotions Into Thy hands OLord I commend myself my spirit soul and body 22

IV The Modern Period Saint Francis de Sales will open thisperiod for us His Traiteacute de lrsquoamour de Dieu [Treatise on theLove of God] reproduces the Pauline doctrine to perfectionAfter having explained that ldquowe have three kinds of loving

actions spiritual reasonable and sensualrdquo Francis de Salesobserves that ldquothe powers of the sensory part which are ormust be the servants of the spirit ask seek and take what

has been rejected by the reason dishonoring thepurity of the intention of their master who is the spirit andin the measure that the soul is converted to such gross andsensate unions it is diverted from the delicate intellectual

and cordial unionrdquo Thus by the same movement as we findin Saint Paul the way is sketched to the opposition of the

flesh to the spirit Like many in the Middle Ages Francis deSales following Saint Augustine also distinguishes ldquotwoportions of the soul the inferior and the superiorrdquo theinferior being that which discourses on the basis of the

experience of the senses while the superior founded ldquoonthe discernment and judgment of the spirit is commonly

called the spirit and mental part of the soulrdquo in thisldquosuperior portionrdquo he also distinguishes ldquotwo kinds of lightrdquo

a natural one and a supernatural one and so forth Thiswhole apparatus of precisions which aims at integrating aswe have already seen in others the ldquodegrees of knowingrdquo

within the spiritual movement is not without interest but itis in some ways only a flowering from the basic trichotomy1

It is this same trichotomy that we find again as might beexpected in a philosopher attentive to the spiritual lifesuch as Maine de Biran We know the place that the doctrineof the ldquothree livesrdquo holds in Biran animal life human lifeand divine life particularly in the reflections of his Journalintime2 Jules Lachelier also adopts it but perhaps bydiminishing it in his desire to work a kind of synthesisbetween Maine de Biran and Kant when he explains thethree components of existence sensibility understanding

and reason3 We detect also an indication of the very strongmystical tendencies in Joseph de Maistre in this affirmationfrom the Eacuteclaircissements sur les sacrifices ldquoThe animal hasreceived only a soul to us were given a soul and a spiritrdquo4

One might be tempted to seek a distant analogy withSaint Paul in the Kierkegaardian theory of the three spheres(rather than stages) of existence aesthetic ethicalreligious If that analogy is an illusion other thoughts ofKierkegaard are right in finding their place here ldquoIt isimpossible to treat of sin in any of the sciences thatordinarily speak of it because all are occupied with what ispsychological in our nature while sin is a determination ofthe spiritrdquo and again ldquoThe spirit intervening psychology isimpotent So good as its name indicates is occupied withthe soul It sees everything from outside the spirit itself islived only from within Seen from outside an act isalways determined and for all that the object of psychologyBut rdquo5

One might also be tempted to evoke here the Blondeliandistinction between ldquonoeticrdquo and ldquopneumaticrdquo This wouldnot be completely wrong But Blondel places these twokinds of thought in correlation rather than inviting us to risefrom one to the other He does not thereby have in mind arelation of the psyche to the pneuma but rather a divisionof the function within the spirit Despite the word ldquonoeticrdquothis is not the nous but rather the logos which would beaccording to him the partner of the pneuma6 and thedialectic of the noetic and the pneumatic is in play at everystep so to speak of the development of thought and life inthis conception the first the concrete principle ofuniversality being the factor of objectivization and unifyingforce while conversely the second the concrete principleof singularity is the diversifying element and subjectivefunction7 Both at the same level are thus essentiallycomplementary Blondel held to his distinction he often took

up the study of it He wrote in 1907 in one of his personalnotebooks ldquoThink out the discovery of the two thoughtsrdquo8

Now in 1909 he wrote again ldquoThe two thoughts Ah howthey are always in me tending to supplant each other whileit is necessary to reconcile them hierarchize them makethem differently but equally serve the divine work of finaland total reintegrationrdquo9 This word ldquohierarchizerdquo must beunderstood as demanding a reciprocal hierarchization10 Itdoes not necessarily follow however that any analogy withthe Pauline trichotomy any echo of the ldquothree livesrdquo ofBiran are absent from the Blondelian work Blondel was toopenetrated with the thought of Saint Paul and Saint Bernardhe was too closely interested in mysticism he was toofamiliar with the spiritual authors of the Christian traditionto let us believe in such an absence without a fullerexamination But the fact that his dialectic of the noetic andthe pneumatic which is fundamental in his philosophy doesnot turn explicitly into a hierarchy of the soul and spirit or ofthe discursive reason and mystical intuition (although heobviously knew of this distinction as well as that betweenthe understanding and higher intelligence)11 is not anegligible indication Blondel maintained a prudent attitudein the face of natural mysticism just as on the other handhe remained prudent in the face of facile personalisms

In the Russian theologian Sergius Bulgakov the Paulinedistinction between the soul and the spirit is placed inpowerful relief It assumes a mystical aspect that is moreemphasized than in the Apostle or at least it proceeds froma base of natural mysticism that despite the reference tothe famous discourse at Athens does not seem tocorrespond perfectly to its more complex notion of thespirit

Although it is a creature a certain eternity of creation a certain non-creation are proper to the spirit Spiritual existence is rooted in the

eternity of God the created spirit itself is similarly eternal and uncreatedCf Acts 1728

It is true that Bulgakov can also invoke the authority of theGreek Fathers Had Saint Cyril of Alexandria not written thatldquothe image of the divine nature was imprinted in man by theinfusion of the Holy Spiritrdquo12 The importance of hisanthropological theory derives in any case from the fact thatit is from this that he explains the mystery of theIncarnation

The postulate of the divine Incarnation is a certain original identitybetween the divine I and the I of man an identity that does not abrogatetheir essential distinction The human hypostatic spirit draws itsdivine and uncreated origin from the ldquobreath of Godrdquo Through hisspirit man communicates with the divine substance and he is fit to beldquodivinizedrdquo Man is god-man by predestination potentially throughhis formal structure At the same time he is flesh through anldquoanimatedrdquo body he sums up the entire world Man is made of anuncreated divine spirit hypostasized by the I of the creature and of a souland of a body created from the psycho-somatic being13

Bulgakov insists The very idea of divinity by predestinationseems too weak to him He corrects himself almostimmediately ldquoNot only is man theanthropic bypredestination but also the Logos is the eternal God-Maninsofar as the first Image of the created man This is whythe hypostasis of the Logos the heavenly Man could itselfbecome the hypostasis of created man and make of thelatter the authentic God-man by achieving its eternaltheanthropyrdquo The conclusion is nonetheless fundamentallyin keeping with the spirit of Christian faith ldquoMan is alreadythe form ready for the authentic theanthropy that he is notcapable of achieving himself but in view of which he wascreated and called The divine Incarnation is not at all acatastrophe for the human essence or some violation onthe contrary it is an accomplishmentrdquo14

This leads us far from the narrow anthropological dualismthat triumphed in modern Scholasticism as well as in the

university philosophy springing from Cartesianism ldquoSaintPaulrdquo noted R M Albaregraves15 ldquohad distinguished threeorders the carnal the intellectual and the spiritual16 TheCartesian dualism had fused together the intellectual andthe spiritual and rationalism had gradually reduced thespirit thus created to being only an intellect withouttranscendence without dynamism or immortality destinedonly to understand and to organize the worldrdquo On the otherhand for all sorts of reasons that we do not at all have toseek here but in particular because of a certain poverty inits common philosophy Christian thought did not seem ableto fill the void thus created in man It must not thereforebe surprising that the inevitable reaction was produced inpara-Christian forms ldquoIf a scholarrdquo Andreacute Preacuteaux recentlywrote17 ldquoencounters the old doctrine that man is composedof a body a soul and a spirit he has scruples aboutconsidering it for what do lsquosoulrsquo and lsquospiritrsquo mean Unfortunately in a society where science is the supremeauthority this silence is equivalent to a negation Whatdissolves the errors and complexes what protects againstneuroses and fantasies is precisely that which is silentlyand discreetly dismissedrdquo

The same year as Andreacute Preacuteaux and reacting like himGabriel Germain took support from Saint Teresa to remindus of the unrecognized depths of the life of the spirit

Above the understanding below the ordinary conscience and what fills itexists a sheet of peace and light Whoever approaches it can have nomore doubt of it Anyone who has not sought it has no right to judge itSaint Teresa expresses the same reality in very different terms Now no onehad taught her this nor had anyone prepared her for such an experienceThis agreement over the centuries and doctrines reassures me more thananything She writes in the book of the Mansions (seventh Mansionchapter 1) ldquoInterior things are seen that show in a sure way that there isbeneath a certain relationship an obvious difference between the soul andthe spirit although they are but a single thing rdquo18

Likewise again situating his own thought in relation to theldquonoosphererdquo of Teilhard de Chardin and in relation to theldquocollective unconsciousrdquo of Jung

The noosphere in the philosophy of Teilhard de Chardin appears to be likea mental view a conclusion This is because its very name evokes anintellectual activity the subtlest but whether exploratory or constructivedirected according to logical norms19 What I could call (but I will keepmyself from doing so) pneumatosphere let us say the spiritual ocean isthe object of experience By other paths to other ends it is the samereality I suppose that Jung attained and which he called the collectiveunconscious But these two terms restrict the origin and meaning of it 20

With Jung in fact we penetrate but we remain within whatis psychological The life of the spirit in the Spirit is whollydifferent A certain Calvinist dryness a phobia aboutmysticism and all ldquointeriorityrdquo conspire at times along withrationalism and contemporary positivism of all forms tobrush this life in the Spirit aside But in a quite natural waythe Lutheran Paul Tillich who was interested in ontology inthe history of religions in mysticism as well as in biblicalhistory brings the Pauline tripartition up to date again

There is no religious statement on man and his destiny without a judgmenton the relation between different elements that are combined and opposedin the life of man These elements have been variously described as beinghis body his soul and his spirit 21

The exegetes in contemporary Catholicism seem no moredisposed than most of the theologians to return the Paulineverse to a place of honor and draw its consequences It istoward the writers that we must turn to perceive an echo ofit in free expression Although this expression is truly webelieve faithful to the doctrine of the Pneuma and to itsauthentic development it is not certain that Saint Paulwould have recognized his thought at first glance ldquoI havegood news to announce to yourdquo says Paul Claudel in theldquoCantique de Palmyrerdquo ldquomdashit is another within the depths of

you who has the word I have good news to announce toyou You need only close your eyes to find your treasurein the night There are many souls but there is not oneof them with whom I am not in communion through thissacred point in us that says Pater nosterrdquo22 And GeorgesBernanos in his diary ldquoHis will is ours and when we revoltagainst it it is only at the price of an uprooting of our wholeinner being Our will has been united to his since thebeginning of the world What sweetness to think thateven while offending him we never cease completely todesire what he desires at the depths of the Sanctuary of thesoulrdquo23 A wonderful conjunction of Claudel and Bernanos

The reader will have noted in Claudelrsquos text the wordldquosoulrdquo An inversion of vocabulary is in fact produced Theldquospiritrdquo having become in the modern leveling dichotomythe immediate correlative of the body it is the ldquosoulrdquo thathas taken its place in those who have not taken part in thisleveling We are familiar again in Claudel with the parabolaof animus and anima The word ldquosoulrdquo in the same sensecompels recognition with greater strength in order to escapethe scientistic totalitarianism that reigns abusively in thename of the ldquohuman sciencesrdquo ldquoIn the measure in whichthey are scientificrdquo wrote Henri Gouhier in 1973 ldquothesciences of man can consider man only by selecting pointsof view under which it is possible to treat him objectively Itis obviously not a question for the philosopher to ignore thevarious forms of sociology psychology ethnologyneurology and so forth he must simply wonder if thesciences of man added up constitute a science of manrdquo24

And man simply as such man who cannot renounce the callhe hears in the depths of himself refuses to let himselfsuffocate He rehabilitates the word ldquosoulrdquo as the mostfitting to express what philosophers and men of science aretoo often skilled at eliminating through preterition orthrough negation The soul then becomes almost the

synonym for the pneuma of Saint Paul and Origen Thepassage from Henri Gouhier that we have just quotedfigures in a preface to LrsquoAvegravenement de lrsquoacircme by Aime[Andre] Forest a work he says that ldquofinds its timeliness inits apparent obsolescencerdquo The author of the work and thatof its preface both evoke on this subject the ldquothree livesrdquo ofMaine de Biran Andre Forest also recalls these words ofHenri Bergson ldquoBy calling a certain assurance of facileintelligibility an idea and a certain uneasiness of life thesoul an invincible current brings modern philosophy toelevate the soul above the ideardquo Modern philosophy as awhole has not followed the path on which Bergson thoughthe saw it engaged Gabriel Marcel however among otherswanted to preserve this word ldquosoulrdquo and to keep ldquothefullness of its meaningrdquo Charles du Bos in search of tracesof God in us asked ldquoWho will leave us a journal of thedilation of the soulrdquo What Andre Forest wants is to help usdiscover or to rediscover a certain ldquoinner unityrdquo a certainldquopure sourcerdquo and each of the chapters of his work tracesan avenue toward an encounter with this ldquoThe discovery ofthe soulrdquo he tells us ldquois the development of a spiritualphilosophy The soul is the advent of presence and graceraised above the world of nature and objectivityrdquo25

The same fundamental reaction the same sudden startor if you wish the same awakening five years later in amuch younger author whose nostalgia if this is what it iscannot be that for the past but that which springs from anew reflection this time against the oppression of a thoughtreduced to its politico-social components the final end ofscientistic intelligence In his essay on Job ou lrsquoexcegraves dumal Philippe Nemo insists on this same word ldquosoulrdquo in orderto recall man to himself and to his essential problem 26

Across the numerous changes in vocabulary thecomplications introduced by theoreticians eager foranalysis across too the unceasing variations in points of

view the tripartite anthropology whose expression is foundin Saint Paul has consistently furnished in the tradition ofthe Church a basis for spiritual doctrine and life

4 The Spirit

I The Place of Mysticism As we have already been able toperceive these various distinctions are far from always

being covered perfectly either from one author to another oreven as in the case of Augustine in the work of the same

author C R Doddaursquos remark on the subject of the ancientGreeks applies here ldquoOne must undoubtedly agree that the

average man of the fifth century (and this is true in allperiods) possessed a very complicated psychological

vocabularyrdquo1

The Pauline tripartition has nonetheless remained theconstant basis serving to support the spiritual doctrines ofthe Christian tradition

Commenting on Pseudo-Dionysius Saint Maximus theConfessor defined man by this threefold pair of epithetsldquoSupermundialis et spiritualismdashcircummundialis animalismdashmundialis carnalisrdquo2 The author of the celebratedPhilokalia Saint Nikodemos of the Holy Mountain (748-809)will explain that the ldquoJesus Prayerrdquo brings into operation thethree powers of the soul the intellect (nous) the discursivereason (logos) the will or spirit (theacutelē sis pneuma) in theaction of the soul alone by which uniting in itself the soulis made fit to be united to God3 But perhaps that is amatter rather of a ldquohorizontalrdquo trichotomy of threefunctions or three activities proper to the higher part of thespirit

With more than one spiritual writer of the Latin MiddleAges one should speak of four elements rather than ofthree in their analysis of manmdasheven without consideringother complications many subtle subdivisions an echo ofScholasticism dear to a certain number subdivisions

destined either to establish agreement between authors orto detail the stages of spiritual itineraries As for examplethis schema traced by Isaac of Stella in his Epistola deanima ldquoAnimae in mundo sui corporis peregrinanti quinquesunt ad sapientiam progressus sensusmdashimaginatiomdashratiomdashintellectusmdashintelligentiardquo4 Two different modes will benoted both inspired by Saint Augustine in the expression oftripartism for some it is corpus anima spiritus5 forothers corpus ratio mens Hence to accord these twomodes the quadripartite division corpusmdashanimamdashratioinferiormdashratio superior sive mens We know the groundgained in the Middle Ages by that Augustinian subdivision ofthe ratio inferior and the ratio superior6 What willcorrespond to this in Saint Thomas Aquinas will beparticularly the distinction between the ratio and theintellectus recently brought out by Pierre Rousselot7 Thiswould also be the place to mention the Franciscan doctrineof the two faces of the soul which is of Neoplatonic origincoming through the twofold channel of Augustine and theArabs8mdashbut that like moreover the Thomist distinction ofthe intellectus and the ratio is an essentially ldquoscientificrdquo(philosophical) theory having little relation to the spirituallife The explanation of the latter is founded rather on thedoctrine of the twofold ratio lower and higher whichcorresponds to action and contemplation But then a newsubdivision is introduced the ratio superior the place ofcontemplation assimilated to the intellectus becomes thehigher part or function of the mens and receives namessuch as acies mentis oculus cordis and so forth

Whatever might be the various complications and thevarieties in the names ldquoall the great Christian mystics are inagreement in considering the human soul as a complexreality presenting regions and stages All are also inagreement in admitting that among these various regionsthere is a privileged one that where God dwells in a

particular manner rdquo9 ldquoThere is a spiritual life when arelationship with God existsrdquo10 and there is a secret point inman that is the permanent place of that relationship of thatpossible encounter because it is already and always hasbeen the place of the divine presence that pneuma of Paulcommented on by Origen that ldquosacred point in us that saysPater nosterrdquo of the ldquoCantique de Palmyrerdquo11

So we see that the philosophers and theologians moreconcerned about rationality than mysticism tend to reduce(even in their historical studies) the trichotomy to adichotomymdashwhile on the contrary the spiritual masterstend to bring out the trichotomy They readily glorify thespiritus not only above the anima but above the ratiowhether theoretical or practical It is instructive to comparein this regard the Abeacutelardian writing Ysagoge in theologiamwith the commentary on the Song of Songs by William ofSaint Thierry For the first ldquoDuo haec nomina sc spiritus etanima non magnam habent in significationediscrepantiamrdquo12 The second on the contrary stronglyemphasizes the hierarchical distinction of three ordersldquoanimalrdquo ldquorationalrdquo and ldquospiritualrdquo13

To keep to the general schema that results from the textof Saint Paulmdasha schema that itself in fact includes manynuances and as we have seen many interpretationsmdashmorality will therefore be the act of the soul mysticism theact of the spirit ldquoThe bodyrdquo says Evagrius Ponticus ldquohasbread for nourishment the soul has virtue theunderstanding has spiritual prayerrdquo14 Morality whoseobject is virtue is the πϱᾶ ξις and the life of the spirit iscontemplation the θεωϱία The first is ordained to thesecond as the soul is ordained to the spirit ldquoStriverdquo saysCassian reporting the statements of Abbot Nesteros ldquotoacquire in the first place a complete possession of moraldiscipline (πϱαϰτιϰή) for without that you cannot obtaincontemplative purity (θεωϱητιϰή)rdquo15 For Gregory of Nyssa

virtue is ldquothe forecourt of the Templerdquo16 Origen had saidbefore them ldquoAccording to the doctrine of the very wiseSolomon he who wishes to acquire wisdom must begin bystudying moralityrdquo it is in fact ldquogood conductrdquo that preparesone to receive the visits of the Logos and when one issolidly exercised in it then one will be able ldquoto pass frommoral things to mystical understandingrdquo17 In his treatiseaddressed ldquoTo the Brethren at Mont Dieurdquo which remainsone of the fundamental texts of Christian spiritualityWilliam of Saint Thierry traces a similar route for those whowant to give themselves over to the perfect life and for thefinal stage his program is even one of a boldness that somecould misunderstand (it is true that it is addressed to aCarthusian monastery) ldquoIt is for othersrdquo he tells them ldquotoserve God it is for you to cling to him It is for others tobelieve in God to know that he exists to love him andrevere him it is for you to taste him to understand him toknow him to enjoy himrdquo18 The same doctrine is set forthas it had been earlier with Origen in parallel with thedoctrine of the threefold biblical sense by another writer ofthe twelfth century Godefroi drsquoAdmont

Sicut triplex est visio corporis spiritus et mentis ita triplex etiam sensusest in scripturis Sanctis litteralis spiritalis intellectualis Litteralem atquespiritalem sensus egregius ipse Doctor gentium tunc transcenderat etusque ad tertium coelum intellectualem scilicet sensum glorioseconscenderat quando toto cordis intellectu ita coelestibus est conjunctusquod utrum in corpore an extra corpus esset se nescire asseruit19

The same fundamental schema is found again in the greatrepresentatives of what one often calls with a term that canlend to confusion ldquointellectualist mysticismrdquo which is tosay with the Rheno-Flemish mystics of the fourteenth andfifteenth centuries The same schema although withdifferences in terminology and in a sometimes differentclimate of thought particularly in Meister Eckhart

Ruysbroek ldquoassigns to the spirit a threefold role First of alla vital role in which it animates the body then anintellectual role that is manifested by thought finally a roleof higher spiritual activity in which it becomes the principleof unification of the whole inner life and in which it is mixedwith the very essence of the soulrdquo20 Hence for example inthe Livre des sept clotures the definition of the seventhenclosure ldquowhich surpasses all the othersrdquo ldquosimplebeatitude beyond all holy life and practice of the virtuesrdquo21

Likewise in the Miroir du salut eacuteternel in which the higherdegree is only divided after ldquothe virtuous life which dies tosin and grows in virtuesrdquo comes the state where ldquoallownership of the will diesrdquo then the spirit is made fully freethrough its union to the Spirit of God even to the point ofthe ldquoliving liferdquo (levende leven) that blossoms which is allldquohidden in God and in the substance of our soulrdquo22

Ruysbroek takes up again here an expression long sincecurrent which he could have read in Saint Bernard (vividavita et vitalis)23 William of Saint Thierry (vita vivens)24 orThomas de Froidmont (vita vitalis)25

The same gradation is found in Tauler based on the sametraditional ldquoternary schemardquo Tauler distinguishes in manldquothree things one clings to nature in flesh and blood theother is the reason the third is an essence of the pure souland without mixturerdquo This is what he expresses again ldquointhe symbolism of the three men which correspond to thesensate life the intellectual life and the spiritual life in thesense of union with Godrdquo26 This ldquothird manrdquo this ldquoessenceof the pure soulrdquo is what Tauler often calls the gemuete aword that Father Etienne Hugueny translates as ldquodeep-seated willrdquo and Louis Cognet prefers to call ldquodeep instinctrdquoit is the ldquodepthsrdquo of being to which says Tauler the ldquodivinegroundrdquo alone corresponds abyssus abyssum invocat itimprints on our nature ldquoan eternal and deep-seatedtendency to return to its originrdquo a tendency that ldquopersists

even in the damned because it is linked to the very essenceof the soulrdquo27 Taulerrsquos preaching rests on this structure Theabnegation to which he invites his listeners is not only theliberation from sensible appetites it goes beyond simplemorality it is a profound attitude that ldquoflows from thegrowing experience of Godrdquo mystical passivity succeedingthe activity of the virtuous life ldquoinner recollectionrdquo abovethe exercise of the virtues and reason as well as that of thesenses28 ldquoIt is necessary that after having overcome thesenses the reason be freed from itself renounce itself soas to be transformed into pure and simple spiritrdquo29 Then theKingdom of God is established And Tauler repeats so as tomake himself well understood ldquoThis Kingdom is establishedin its own manner in the innermost part of the spirit assoon as man through all his exercise has absorbed theexterior man in the inner and reasonable man and as soonas the man of sense and of reasonable power are entirelyabsorbed into the more interior man in the hidden groundof the spirit where the true image of God dwells and assoon as he flees into this divine ground into which manfrom all eternity is found in his uncreated staterdquo30

The relationship of Tauler to Eckhart is obvious In one asin the other the distinction of the soul and the spirit (of thepsyche and the πνεῦμα) colored by Platonic exemplarism isaffirmed everywhere Eckhart enunciates it with reference toSaint Augustine ldquoAccording to Augustinerdquo he says ldquoourintellectual element divides itself into two parts through theone we are oriented intellectually toward an intellectualgrasp of knowledge that our cognitive faculty receives fromoutside the other to use the very words of Augustinemanifests itself at the deepest center of our spirit (lsquoabditummentisrsquo)rdquo31 It is this center that particularly interested thatfascinated Eckhart this place ldquowhere no image enters orleaves but where there is only God himselfrdquo ldquoThe soulrdquo healso said ldquohas two eyes the inner one and the other outer

one the inner eye of the soul is that by which itcontemplates being and receives it directly from Godrdquo32

What differentiates him from Origen and Augustine Bernardand William of Saint Thierry is the ldquouncreatedrdquo characterthat he attributes to this ldquoinner eyerdquo or to this ldquoabditummentisrdquo The disquieting feature of his mysticism consists inthis a feature that will be less emphasized in Tauler andeven in Henry Suso although the latter speaks also of theground of the spirit as ldquoeternalrdquo33

Follower and compiler Harphius (Henry Herp) willsymbolize the ldquothree kinds of liferdquo emanating from the threeparts of man in the three biblical figures of Leah Rachel andMary Magdalen34 and he works at length to describe themens or the apex mentis the spiritus or the interior sinusmentis which is to say still that pneuma by which the zoneof rational and moral activity is transcended

Dicitur etiam [anima] quandoque mens quae sc ipsis viribus interior est etsupereminet quia vires in mente sicut in origine sua sunt counitae ex quasc effl uunt ut radii ex solari rota et in quam refluunt Et est illud centrumin anima in quo vera Trinitatis imago relucet et tarn nobile quod nullumibi nomen proprie convenit licet in multis nominibus circumlocutivemanifestatur Haec est igitur mens vel apex mentis aut centrum ipsiusanimae ut feliciter renovetur ipsae vires quae dicuntur spiritus adinteriorem sinum mentis sunt reflectendae et mens ipsa ad intimum suumregerenda sc in Deum ibidem suaviter recubantem 35

Warning us that this higher part of man cannot beappropriately designated by any name and multiplying theformulas himself by which one must indeed try even tospeak of it Harphius invites us not to stress whatever theinterest of the other part might be the variations invocabulary from one author to another or from one period toanother which could hide from us the continuity of atradition that in essentials is very firm

Saint Catherine of Genoa offers us a similar schema veryclassically she distinguishes body soul and spirit the latterbeing designated in itself by the word mente and when it is

animated by infused love by the word spirito in this lattercase the spirito is finally identified with infused Love whichis God Since the Saint is less concerned to give us atheoretical course in anthropology even spiritual than todescribe the spiritual life itself we can understand that fromher pen mente is rare and spirito frequent36 On the otherhand following the example of many other mystics sheloves to detail the stages of ascent ldquoWhen Godrdquo she saysldquoaddresses his first call to us he gives us at first the instinctfor virtues later he urges us to perfection then throughinfused grace he leads us to the annihilation of ourselvesfinally to true transformationrdquo37 Saint Teresa and Saint Johnof the Cross likewise know that there exists a life higherthan the exercise of the virtues when they celebrateldquofreedom of spiritrdquo38 ldquoholy freedom of spiritrdquo39 and SaintTeresa observes in her Interior Castle that ldquocertain interioreffects give certitude that there is in us in certain relationsa very real difference between the soul and the spiritrdquo40 Wealso quote as an example Fenelon who in commenting onCassian finds himself at the same time summing up thewhole mystical tradition ldquoAlthough we judge the othervirtues to be necessary and useful we believe however weshould place them only at the second degree because oneseeks them all only in view of this one thing of which JesusChrist says lsquoMartha Martha you trouble yourself aboutmany things there is only one thing necessaryrsquo He placedthe sovereign good not in work although laudable andabundant in fruit but in contemplation that is truly simpleand one He declares that little is necessary for this perfectbeatitude that contemplation isrdquo41 And a little farther on inthe same writing ldquoThere is thus a state where thisappropriation of virtues is no longer opportunerdquo42

The great Protestant spiritual master Gerhard Tersteegen(1697-1769) professes the same doctrine ldquoThere mustnecessarily be in us a capacity to recognize God and

spiritual things in an essential and present way And thatexists in the pure Reason [Vernunft] which has been givenus closed and unused until God gives us the understandingby which we know the very Truth so intimately andessentially that we are ourselves drawn into the trueGodrdquo43

If a certain number of authors in the course of this longtradition that we have just examined seem also todistinguish as it were two elements above the psychewhile Saint Paul saw only the pneuma above it this isusually as we could ascertain from some of the examplescited because they mean by psyche only the animal soulanimater of the body and seat of sensation or ratherbecause they want to assure a seat for ldquoobjectiverdquoknowledge and profane culture For Paul on the contraryand more explicitly for Origen the soul is the very seat ofthe personality the reasoning and self-willed being whichjudges and freely determines itself It is the place ofdecision According to the orientation taken by the soul thehuman being will become ldquocarnalrdquo or ldquospiritualrdquo(pneumatikos) As opposed as he might be to free willLuther himself saw very clearly that the Pauline psyche of 1Thessalonians 5 was much more than the principle ldquothatanimates the body and acts through itrdquo In an article in theRevue thomiste (1971) Father P R Reacutegamey OP isperfectly in keeping with the traditional line when hedistinguishes (497) these three degrees psychosomaticcomplexmdashrational function of abstraction and discoursemdashprimacy of spirit in its greatest purity And what in thetheoretical order is the ldquorational functionrdquo corresponds inthe practical order to what we could call in a ratherrestrictive sense the ldquomoral functionrdquo Saint Paul alsoinvites us not to confuse this moral function with theproperly spiritual life which raises man above himself whenhe places above the exercise of active benevolence and of

all virtue this reality of another order a gift of God which isCharity (1 Cor 133) Dietrich Bonhoeffer was also faithful tothe tradition that originated in the Apostle when heexhorted the Christians over whom he had responsibility notto confuse in their assemblies ldquospiritual community withmystical overheatingrdquo (cf A Dumas 64) ldquoThe great themeof community life is the revival of the very Paulinedistinction between the natural eager equivocal nostalgicdesiring in a word idealistic and the spiritual respectfulenlightened serving knowing in a word realistrdquo (ibid145) ldquoThe onerdquo Bonhoeffer also says ldquowho does not letChrist be a path toward the other falls into naturalchattering which kills the spiritual word Prayer is thesalutary limit to desires of immediate effusiveness Community life is communion through spiritual mediationand non-confusion in the natural immediacyrdquo (146-47)

II Morality Integrated into Mysticism In Christianity itself itis characteristic of the Catholic Church to assure theequilibrium between the three components (religion

morality and mysticism) an equilibrium necessary to theintegrity of the human being Faithful in everything to her

spirit of synthesis she maintains all three in solidaritywithout ever letting any one of the three be lacking or

eclipse the others or be devalued in the humblest forms ofspiritual life any more than in the highest To take a verysimple example when Fenelon exclaims in his Traiteacute de

lrsquoexistence et des attributs de Dieu ldquoMy length of life is buta perpetual extinctionrdquo1 these words to be well

understood must be taken at once morally religiously andmystically

The various Protestant confessions place more emphasison contrasts and clashes as has often been remarked J AMoehler wrote in the last century in his Symbolique withrespect to morality and religion ldquoIn the eyes of Catholics

religiosity and morality if we may be permitted to use thesetwo terms are united by their essence and are both eternalAccording to the Protestants on the other hand there is norelationship between these two things for one is of aneternal price and the other is of only passing value Lutherinsists in many places on this difference rdquo2 There wouldbe many nuances besides to note here but in this essay ontypology we must keep to the most general characteristics3In Calvinism mysticism is the object of mistrust or evenreprobation4 We also know the abyss in Luther thatseparates ethics and faith As a result of this there is atendency with Lutheran mysticsmdashto say nothing of Lutherhimself and of Lutheranism in generalmdashto depreciate allmoral activity as constituting on manrsquos part an affirmationof self that far from bringing him closer to God distanceshim and to recognize a value in religious life only in anabandonment close to quietism5 a depreciation of moralitythat goes hand in hand with that of reason and that offreedommdashwe recently read from a Protestant pen an articleon morality considered solely as ldquocultural realityrdquo Such anattitude to take it simply as such could also facilitateinvaluable analyses in many regards such as the analysis ofthe ldquolevels of liferdquo in Kierkegaard or that of the ldquosacredrdquo inRudolf Otto But these analyses do not always stop at posingformal distinctions Thus in order to bring out more clearlythe specificity of the category of the sacred or of thereligious Otto cuts the latter off from morality he is notcontent with showing that on the level of history orpsychology these two orders are often separated in fact heis well on his way to a separation by right6 As arepercussion when morality reclaims its place in otherauthors of Protestant inspiration it sometimes absorbsreligion and dries up mysticism by incarcerating all spirituallife ldquowithin the limits of reasonrdquo

In reality howevermdashthat is to say by right in the natureof thingsmdashon the one hand ldquothe sacred is not reabsorbedinto moral value the religious transcends the ethicalrdquo buton the other hand it does not merely accommodatemorality and mysticism it remolds them so to speak byinstalling them in its heart Religion morality and mysticismldquoappear in a reciprocal envelopmentrdquo there exists betweenthe three both an attraction and a tension which will be thesource of many vital problems but there is objectivelyneither separation nor exclusion nor conflict for ldquothe Deitywhile transcending being truth and the good contains themformallyrdquo7 This is why in particular in Catholicism just asthe reasonable life and life according to the spirit penetrateeach other8 morality impregnates the mystical life to theend ldquoThrough it the good rewarded and the bad punishedthese pillars of the revelation of the Demiurge degraded byGnosticism to a lower level than exoteric faith regain theirplace at the heart of the revelation of the Father through theonly Sonrdquo9 Hence Saint Justin in his Dialogue ldquoIt is notbecause of his affinity with God or because he is spirit likehim that man sees God it is because he is virtuous andjustrdquo10 And Father Jean Rigoleuc on spiritual persons ldquoAlltheir reason and the lights they receive by it are given tothem only so that they might be perfected in thesevirtuesrdquo11 ldquoThe mystical ascentrdquo does not efface ldquofromcommon Christian life any specific traitrdquo12 The Christianvirtues are not merely means of freeing oneself from theworld in their substance they are the end itself thepromised beatitude is not made of different material This iswhat Saint Ambrose expresses admirably in a brief sentencefrom his commentary on Saint Luke with respect to thebeatitudes ldquoSicut enim speri nostrae octava perfectio estita octava summa virtutum estrdquo13

Pierre Nemeshegyi poses the same problem with respectto Origen ldquoTo place Being and moral Goodness in equation

to place this moral Goodness in God formally and ascharacterizing the final ground of his Beingmdashis this not to becondemned to enclosing all spiritual life in an anti-mysticalmoralism The Good is a transcendental But is it formallywhat we understand by lsquomoral Goodrsquo Or is there not adeepening of this moral Goodness which would reestablishthe possibility of an innermost mystical depthrdquo14 Againwith respect to Origen W Voumllker remarks ldquoWe observe a hesitation very characteristic of Origenrsquos turn of spirit and which one finds again in a nearly identical way in Philoside by side and sometimes even the mutual penetrationof moralism and mysticismrdquo15 And Nemeshegyi concludesldquo lsquoMoralismrsquo and lsquomysticismrsquo are in fact one and the samething in Origenrsquos conceptionrdquo16 Origen himself specifies inhis argument against Celsus ldquoGod is not merely lsquothe Goodrsquoas all the Platonists say he is lsquothe Righteousrsquordquo17 SaintGregory the Great also reminds us with his usual goodsense always linked with spiritual fervor

Solent quidam scripta sacri eloquii legentes cum sublimiores sententiasejus penetrant minora mandata quae infirmioribus data sunt tumentisensu despicere et ea velle in alium intellectum permutare Qui si recte ineo alta intelligerent mandata quoque minima despectui non haberent quidivina praecepta sic in quibusdam loquuntur magnis ut tamen inquibusdam congruant parvulis qui per incrementa intelligentiae quasiquibusdam passibus mentis crescant atque ad majora intelligendaperveniant18

Saint Augustine had said the same in a very Origenianshortcut in speaking of eternal life ldquoUna ibi virtus erit etidipsum erit virtus praemiumque virtutisrdquo19 Picking upagain Saint Ambrosersquos turn of phrase Alexander Neckhamcosmologist of the twelfth century explains that the octaveof the beatitude brings the perfection of its consonance tothe septenary of the virtues as in our material universe theeighth sphere including the whole universe brings itsconclusion to the harmony of the heavens20 Let us say in

the categories of medieval exegesis that anagogy achievesperfection both of allegory and of tropology Thus oneshould say of all Catholic mysticism what one historian saysof Saint Bernard through allusion to the traditionalinterpretation of the ldquoBooks of Solomonrdquo and of theirprogressive sequence for each of them as for him ldquothemoral school of Ecclesiasticus and Proverbs a necessarypreliminary for the mystical school of the Song of Songs is aschool whose doors are never closed behind usrdquo21 Andreciprocally in fulfilling the precept of the Lord one meritsnot only the eternal dwelling one does not merely preparefor it one is already building Saint Hildegarde tells us thetower of the heavenly Jerusalem22

It would be good to return to the celebrated GoldenEpistle in which William of Saint Thierry the friend of SaintBernard condenses for the brothers of the Carthusianmonastery of Mont Dieu the essence of Christiananthropology and spirituality such as the most commonCatholic tradition understands them William puts first ofall the sublime ideal of the contemplative in abrupt termsand with an appearance of separation of completetranscendence from one degree to another which could besurprising

You have not only pledged complete holiness but the perfection of allholiness and the height of all perfection It is not your business to languishin the practice of ordinary precepts or to devote yourself only to thatwhich God commands but to aim at what he wishes in the search for hisgood agreeable and perfect will It is for others to serve God it is for youto cling to him Faith in God knowledge love and reverence are for othersFor you taste understanding knowledge enjoyment A high vocation anarduous task 23

Farther on William takes up again the distinction of thethree states or three degrees which is reminiscent of thefree fashion of the Pauline trichotomy

The state of beginners can be called ldquoanimalrdquo that of progressersldquorationalrdquo that of the perfect ldquospiritualrdquo The first state attends to thebody the second is busy with the reasoning soul the third finds its restonly in God 24

These kinds of schemas are several times accompanied byappeals to humility which should form the common andunalterable basis for all disciples of Christ at whateverdegree they find themselves in their spiritual ascent25

Several points of resemblance to Saint Paul are still to benoted the distinction between anima and animus whichcorresponds closely to that between the psyche and thepneuma26 the reference to the discourse at Athens27 (Acts1727-28) the definition of the spiritual man as the onewhose spirit is informed by the Spirit of love28 theindication of the end as being ldquothe unity of spiritrdquo with God

There is also another resemblance to God so particular that it is nolonger given the name of resemblance but that of unity of spirit It is whenman becomes a single thing a single spirit with God not only through theunity of a single will but also through some truer expression of a virtue thatis no longer capable of willing anything else Once conformed to wisdom the reason [= reasoning soul] puts[everything] to profit and hastens to spring toward freedom of spirittoward unity so well that the faithful man becomes as has often beenstated one single spirit with God29

Freedom of spirit unity with God we know the abuses thatsuch formulas have frequently covered throughout twentycenturies of history30 We know too how the fear of theseabuses have made a number of timorous souls avoid themhow still more the bourgeois individualist incomprehensionof the last century banished them and how they seemedsuspect to many who thought they were judging in thename of pure Catholic orthodoxy31 Within the context ofthat spiritual masterpiece the Letter to the Brothers of MontDieu these expressions can be accepted in all their powerin the same sense that they have in Scripture And thekeeping of a moral life integrated into a mystical life is also

explicitly recognized here besides the word ldquovirtuerdquo whichfigures in the same text we have just quoted on ldquothe unityof spiritrdquo with God other texts recall it with insistence Theyspeak ldquoin praise of virtue the daughter of reason but evenmore of gracerdquo32 they show it not surpassed by butassumed into spiritual perfection the latter is achievedldquowhen the soul encompasses all the virtues in itself not aselements borrowed from somewhere else but as quasi-natural products of its being according to that resemblanceto God by which it is the whole of what isrdquo Mystical unitywith God is wholly impregnated with morality because it isthe perfect adherence to Him who is not only the Righteousbut in the most concrete and singular sense the Good33

This Catholic equilibrium was undoubtedly alreadyjeopardized in a great spiritual master who is not at all to beconfused with the false spirituals to whom we have alludedEvagrius was considered a disciple of Origen but in this anunfaithful disciple Despite the appearances of severalexpressions the same criticism could not be made of aTauler or a Ruysbroek they condemn without equivocationthe mystical claims that think to hold themselves abovemorality and reason beyond affirmations of the faith Thecase of Meister Eckhart is perhaps more disputable but it isright to dissociate the profound intention of this greatthinker and this great mystic from some paradoxicalexpressions held to be condemnable by the bull In agro LaPerle eacutevangeacutelique following Eckhart and several othersseems to place ldquothe spiritrdquo in contact with the divine Unityldquoabove the multiplicity of the Personsrdquo34 a grave problemwhich we will not take up here but which for a Christiangoverns the judgment to be passed on mysticism in itsrelation to the primary mystery of his faith35 To stay withthe relation between mysticism and morality let us say thatone is happy to find a fine example of equilibrium in anauthor carried in other respects to many unilateral

excesses This refers to George Tyrrell who wrote in a finepassage from Christianity at the Cross-roads

[The apocalyptic Kingdom of heaven] is the fruit and reward of the morallife but is a supermoral lifemdashthe continuation of that divine and spirituallife which under present contingencies manifests itself principally bymorality and above all in religion and conscious union with God But[in the Kingdom] the contingencies that now call for the moral strugglewith all its pain and suffering shall be done away36

We will end by quoting a more authoritative witness thegreat Saint Teresa who unites the soul and spirit of whichSaint Paul spoke as much as she distinguishes them withhim by observing that ldquothe center of the soulrdquo or the ldquospiritof the soulrdquo is a difficult thing to express and even tobelieve

Certain interior effects give the certitude that there is under certainrelations a very real difference between the soul and the spirit Although inreality they are but one we sometimes perceive a division between themthat is so delicate that it seems that the one functions in one way and theother in another There are so many things in our innermost depthsand things so subtle that it would be boldness on my part to undertake toexplain them We will understand all that in the other life if God deignsto admit us to the dwelling where we will have understanding of all thesesecrets37

III Conclusions Optimi corruption pessima One should notat all conclude from this as some authors particularly in

Protestantism have done that mysticism should becondemned1 Nevertheless even without considering the

case of the aberrations we have just seen certainprecautions should be taken in order not to jeopardize the

spiritual equilibrium Just as it is necessary to reject ananthropology that refusing man any higher faculty stifles

the spirit in himmdashwhich is what all positivisms allrationalisms and all psychologisms domdashso it is necessary toguard against reducing theoretical or practical reason in itby failing to recognize its transcendence in relation to the

sensible order and its participation in the absolute ldquoThemindrdquo writes Hans Urs von Balthasar2 ldquodestroys itself andcrumbles if it splits into an inferior and a superior mind an

autonomously functioning reason (Verstand) and a ratio(Vernunft) that is reserved for special philosophical and

religious purposesrdquo Then the risk of a short-circuit appearsfrom ldquoinfantile naturalismrdquo to high spirituality from

alienating exteriority to ldquodivinerdquo magnetization from theldquocaves of the unconsciousrdquo to the ldquobirthrdquo from above from

the ldquopossessive Irdquo that is ldquoradical servituderdquo toldquodisinterestedrdquo love

Charles du Bos was not lacking in clearsightedness theday he noted in his Journal ldquothe necessity from an ethicalpoint of view of guarding oneself against mysticismrdquo3 In thesame sense he wrote one day to Father Auguste Valensin

Since the end of July 1927 God in his goodness has recalled me toHimself I have happened to suffer in the face of a certain unformulatedmdashand at times even formulatedmdashdisdain that believers who are advancedmoreover in spiritual ways and even mystics witness or at least seem towitness toward the moral order as such If one admits (and I admit it verystrongly) that ethics are only the narthex of religious truth neverthelessthere exist natures (to the number of which I belong) who venerate thenarthex all the more as it helps to introduce them into the sanctuary andthe more their religious life deepens the more faithful their gratitudebecomes 4

Du Bos had noted in his Journal on January 11 1925 ldquothenecessity of guarding against mysticismrdquo and on January18 1929 analyzing himself

Basically it is always a question with me of an offensive directed by themoral against the religious because as my Journal often notes the moralbeing is primary with me in the period when the plane of temperament istranscended the form that temptation then takes is a moral form summedup in the question of my right to religious life Yes that is indeed it and myeffort now must be not only to adhere to God but to consider that fromthe instant I do what I must on the plane of living I adhere to him de facto 5

Du Bosrsquo reflection as we see was not unilateral althoughhe emphasizes the moral which he judges to bedangerously disregarded (what would he not say thirty orforty years later) In return Emmanuel Mounier was no lessright to bring out the complementary truth in recalling thatldquomorality has no other end but the spirituality of which itkeeps houserdquo when one isolates it and clings to it heexplains one kills it it is replaced by moralism6 the enemyof mysticism as well as of religion History in fact shows thatthe abandonment of mysticism in the name of any formwhatever of moralism has never been at best anything buta stage in spiritual development in view of a less confusedmysticism ldquoAs it is nearly inevitable in philosophy to passthrough a phase of idealism so it is inevitable to passthrough a phase of intellectualism in morality inevitableand goodrdquo But on condition that one does not cling to it Adeeper understanding knows that it is not knowledge thatsaves man from sin and it will always ask ldquoWho forexample is the one more free of appearancesmdasha Spinozawho in observing actions or sentiments that the commonmen call sin explains them through a defect in knowledgemdashor a Surin who proclaims that to the degree that one doesnot see sins even in onersquos inadvertencies and firstmovements to that degree one will not weep over onersquosvanities as sacrileges one will lsquonever get to the rootrsquordquo7

Both have cut through appearances (not always the sameones) both in their order are right But basically howmuch more is this true of Surin And if the intellectualcriticism worked by a Spinozist is not coupled with aspiritual deepening how his clearsightedness ends inblaming it The world Bergson said very justly has much tolearn from the great mystics8

Likewise one is right not to consent to letting theunderstanding be classed among the provisional values tobe reduced to the rank of ldquonaturalismrdquo that is close to

animality Perhaps the word ldquosoulrdquo so far from beingunivocal9 used in the tripartite division of man is notwithout some danger in this regard But this is not asufficient motive for rejecting the very idea of this tripartitedivision such as some as we have seen above were led todo Even Sandaeus himself an apologist and theoretician ofmysticism while noting that a number of mystics judgerecourse to this division indispensable declared that therecould be room to debate this10 Sandaeus was therebyechoing a fear or a mistrust frequently shown in the mostbrutal fashion by Schoolmen in the face of all mysticalthought we know how sharp the dispute was even withinthe Catholic Church throughout the seventeenth century11

Since then through their efforts to minimize the text ofSaint Paul on which the distinction is based others witness adiscomfort if not a similar hostility The mystical tradition ofthe great Church however offers them desirableassurances thus with Tauler transforming the way oneviews the classical terms of the division He is thereby goingparallel to the doctrinal tradition such as it is expressed in aSaint Augustine for example or a Saint Thomas The ratherpusillanimous minds to which we are alluding do not giveenough consideration to the fact that in wanting to save theabsolute of morality and reason they risk failing torecognize the gifts of the Spirit and lowering the mysticallife Stifled unrecognized in its authentic forms the latterin despair is then in danger of developing on the margins ofall rational and moral norms A certain intellectualismmdashverypoorly namedmdashis a worthy counterpart of moralism and aspernicious

To return to this latter we can think that the general usein the ecclesiastical vocabulary of the modern ChristianWest of the term ldquodirector of consciencerdquo to the detrimentof the traditional terms ldquospiritual fatherrdquo or spiritusmoderator12 is the sign of an inflation of pure morality

tending to casuistry or lends itself to falling intopsychologism (while waiting for psychiatry) to thedetriment of the attention paid to things of the spirit whichis to say to the relation to God ldquoHave we not seen peoplerdquowrote Reneacute Gueacutenon ldquowho when it is a question of lsquospiritualmasterrsquo go so far as to translate it lsquodirector ofconsciencersquordquo13 It is possible to agree with his remarkwithout sharing the least part of his own notion of ldquospiritualmasterrdquo or more precisely his doctrine of the spirit Stillanother sign of the small esteem given to things of thespirit and first of all of an inadequate understanding ofthem is manifested in the designation ldquointellectualismrdquowhich is too easily attributed today to the whole doctrine ofcontemplation There is of course a philosophicalcontemplation There is a Greek intellectualism that isexpressed in an ideal of contemplation We discern sometraces of it in the history of Christian thought and life butthese are only tracesmdashand all are not moreoverblameworthy14 As it has done for many other conceptsChristianity has modified this at the same time as it took onits permanent values it profoundly transformed it How is itthat even Christian historians have perceived so little ofthis One can indeed if one wishes reject the word inseeking another that lends less to equivocation but itshould not be necessary at the same time to reject thedoctrine that the Christian centuries had included within itit should not be necessary to depreciate what is the verybasis of the best spiritual tradition at the heart ofChristianity This would be at the same stroke to depreciatethe order of the theological virtues in direct contradiction toScripture itself The supremely active Father Teilhard deChardin did not fall into such contempt he forcefullymaintained the primacy of contemplation in which he couldrecognize the superior form of action that which an activistwill never achieve15 The transformations and progress

achieved in the course of history the entrance into an agedominated by the technical the development of the ldquohumansciencesrdquo that tend to assimilate man to the object of thesciences of nature will change nothing not only the highmystical life but already the whole spiritual life while takingthe greatest consideration of morality and including morality(as well as of rational activity) comprises along with variednuances according to the case something beyond moralitytaken in the human sense of the word something beyond allthat we commonly call action because it always comprisessomething beyond man

That is what signifies the great traditional theme ofMartha and Mary based on the Gospel It will always remaintrue ldquoIn his duabus mulieribus duas istas esse figurataspraesentem et futuram latoriosam et quietam temporalemet aeternamrdquo16 And of these two realities the second isalready present as an active anticipation at the heart ofthe man en route toward his divine destiny

Finally the maintenance of the distinction between thezone of the natural [psychisme] and that of the spiritual is ofa major importance for maintaining in their just place withinthe limits of their competence all the kinds of psychology Itopposes ldquothe dissolving psychoanalytical confusion ofnatural and spiritualrdquo17 If stopping onersquos aim at theldquorationalrdquo and the ldquomoralrdquo was often the great temptationand if this temptation remains what is to be even moregreatly feared today is stopping at the ldquonatural[psychique]rdquo One of Teilhardrsquos weaknesses which wasbenign to tell the truth because he thought above all todissipate the illusion of a materialistic monism was acertain confusion of vocabulary between spiritual andnatural in the Pheacutenomegravene humain (which does not claim tobe a treatise on spirituality) he happens to speak at will ofldquospiritual energyrdquo or of ldquonatural energyrdquo mdashBut ldquothe spiritintervening psychology is powerless It sees everything

from outside although the spirit is lived only from withinrdquo itsees uniquely ldquothat part of the natural life that the spirit hasnot touched and which consequently unfolds in theunconsciousrdquo18

Without doubt it is only through our participation in themystery of the trinitarian Life that we are to become fullycapable of going beyond this psychological vision that canindeed scrutinize certain ldquodepthsrdquo but to which this otherdepth is not accessible this depth which is humantranscendence this otherwise mysterious zone where theimpulse toward God is situated the encounter with God

There is in us a certain root that plunges into the depths of the Trinity Weare these complex beings who exist on successive levels on an animal andbiological level on an intellectual and human level and on an ultimate levelin those very abysses that are those of the life of God and those of theTrinity This is why we have the right to say that Christianity is an integralhumanism which is to say which develops man on all the levels of hisexperience We must always be in defiance of all the attempts to reducethe space in which our existence moves We breathe fully in the measureto which we do not let ourselves be enclosed in the prison of the rationaland psychological world but to which a part of us emerges into these greatspaces that are those of the Trinity And this is what creates theincomparable joy of existence in Christianity19

Pertinent remarks of great importance in ecclesiology aswell as in the liturgy more timely today than ever Thedistinctions recalled by Dietrich Bonhoeffer and by Father PR Reacutegamey based like those of so many others on thePauline anthropology of the First Letter to the Thessaloniansare at once for every member of the Church an appeal tothe highest spiritual life and a warning against itscounterfeits

EPILOGUETO PART ONE

The Light of Christ ldquoIf you believerdquo we are told ldquoin thedivinity of the Christian religion it is because you are

ignorant about all the conditions that marked its beginningand growth The comparative history of religions has madeenough progress so that henceforth it is no longer possibleto speak of a lsquoChristian miraclersquo coming to break the thread

of human religious acts There is nothing in it that is notexplained in the way everything is explained Of course

some points still remain obscure certain influences remainunperceived The task of historians has not yet been

accomplished One can also recognize that several of themhave been a little too quick in thinking to detect here orthere analogies or relationships and their intemperance

was capable of provoking a prudent reaction in somescholars anxious for a more rigorous method But the

general orientation of science is nonetheless certain and itsresult is nonetheless assured Every day leads to a new

light uncovering some new connection and here and nowwe see clearly enough to be able to affirm that Christianityis a human phenomenon very human deeply rooted in the

earth of history where it has drawn all the essence fromwhich its marvelous vigor is nourishedrdquo

An objection that insinuates itself under a thousand formswith respect to a thousand problems A stronger objectionin many eyes than all those of dialectics because withoutfighting it claims to explain Believers are upset by it Menof good will whom Christianity attracts and who alreadybelieve they see Godrsquos work in it find themselves stoppedin their tracks by it they fear to commit themselves

thoroughly to what is perhaps only the work of man If itwere a question only of a milieu providentially prepared tofavor the birth and rise of the religion of ChristmdashJewishMessianism Stoic universalism the organization of theDiaspora the Roman peace mdashthis ensemble of fortuitousconditions could indeed account for its concrete possibilitybut it would definitely not for all that cancel out the miracleof its existence A favorable atmosphere has never sufficedto explain the fact of a birth One would have to becompletely incapable of perceiving religious values to betempted to explain the apparition and success ofChristianity solely by a series of external circumstances asimportant and as favorable as one supposes them to beBetter known the information that history brings in thisorder can therefore only add to the admiration that alreadyseized the Fathers such as Saint Leo exclaiming before hisRoman listeners ldquoNumerous States have been united into asingle Empire so that the ways necessary for the preachingof the Gospel might be readyrdquo1 Admiration that was alsoPascalrsquos ldquoHow beautiful it is to see through the eyes of faithDarius and Cyrus Alexander the Romans Pompey Herodact without knowing it for the triumph of the Gospelrdquo andwho a short time earlier had had this sung to Peacuteguy ldquoThesteps of the legions had marched for Him rdquo2

But history seems to show us much more today Muchmore even than a subjective preparation of soulssuffocating in paganism thirsty for salvation One by oneall the elements of which Christianity is made theconceptions it presupposes the notions it sets in motion itsworship practices the forms of its institutions theprescriptions of its morality all are identified classifiedranked in their place along continuous series Not a dogmanot a feature of discipline or of liturgy that does not have itshistorymdasha history that always includes a first pre-Christianperiod All that had been amalgamated in it is returned to its

origin and soon it seems that nothing of its own remainsHow dare we still in the face of these facts a great numberof which at least are solidly established speak of a religiongiven from heaven of divine revelation How consequentlydare we speak of ldquotranscendencerdquo of supernaturalabsolute definitive truth Everything that is born and growsaccording to the common law is transformed and alsoperishes according to the common law As imposing as itseems Christianity will not escape it Even more perhapsthan the defeats to which it has submitted in the course ofthese recent centuries the history of its origins warns us ofits inevitable decline It is no longer for us the uniqueexception the extraordinary thing that it seemed to be forso long a time It can no longer be loyally preserved fromuniversal evolution Whether the brilliant flash projected byreligion ever since humanity existed is a false flash or anauthentic light is of little importance here in the case ofChristianity one thought to see a unique star appearabruptly in the heaven of religions and miraculously hangthere but a more experienced look discerns that it too wasonly for a moment welded to the others passing like theothers in this long luminous trail

Yet the illusion if such it be has existed It still persists withmany who are not at all ignorant people This too is a factthat must be taken into consideration One should not replywithout further examination that the same is true for allreligion Contrary to almost all the others without exceptingeven Judaism Christianity appeared in the middle of ahistoric period Its legend if there is a legend iscontemporaneous with its existence What a differencethere is in this regard for example with its great rivalBuddhism3 Why then contrary to so many humanphenomena is it presented in so tenacious a way as beingabsolutely exceptional Is ignorance about its true originsenough to explain this illusion in its regard or might it not

be rather the very true perception of its transcendencethat veiled by its brilliant flash certain features of its humanhistory The hypothesis at least deserves consideration It isnot without analogies Many men think themselves free inactions where without doubt they are not at all or with afreedom that is not at all real Is this illusion completelyexplained by a myopia that prevents them from perceivingthe bonds of determinism or does it too not come from anobscure but truthful perception Rather than a total illusionis it not a simple error of localization An error attesting toan awkwardness in analysis a scientific inferiority butwithout any damage to the essential truth

Now it happens too that one badly localizes thetranscendence that one recognizes in Christianity setting itup in positions from which the experienced historian willhave no trouble dislodging it This is why in a more or lessexplicit way one conceives of it then above all as a solutionof continuity To suppose such a transcendence possible atranscendence whose true name would be ldquoexteriorityrdquo isnot the act of Christianity What would remain for exampleof the thought of Saint Paulmdashwho nevertheless sodominated the thoughts of his centurymdashif one cut it fromthe thousand roots that in fact attached it to the earth ofTarsus and Jerusalem How can a single one of its essentialpoints be analyzed without constant reference not only tothe history of the Hebrew people but also to Greekcivilization to Eastern mysticism to the Roman EmpireThis would be an imaginary transcendence pure chimeralinked to a no less chimerical ideal of revelation The realitythat it would effect if this were possible would not besuperhuman but inhuman Far from being sublimated by itit would only be impoverished dried up

It would find the path neither of our spirit nor of our heartArtificial superficial and not at all supernatural Such asthose devout people of whom Peacuteguy speaks who becausethey do not have the strength to be of nature imagine that

they are of grace in reality dried fruits But there is anothertranscendence a true transcendence of which the first wasonly at best the naiumlve transcription An intrinsictranscendence in virtue of which a given reality consideredas synthesis in what comprises its own being surpassesessentially the realities of the same kind that surround itwhatever might be the community of elements that itinforms along with theirs whatever might be too the tiesof origin that render these different elements solidary Anytrue synthesis is always more than synthesis A certainrecasting that is much more than a new combination acertain ldquorevival from withinrdquo transforms everything It is in aphenomenal continuity the passage to a new higherincomparable order4

Now for anyone who can seemdashbut which of us can natterhimself that he always can once and for allmdashthe intrinsictranscendence of Christianity is obvious It alone countsand a direct look well aimed is enough to establish it Theunbeliever does not have to overcome historicalcontinuities nor does the believer have to refuse to seethem A priori they must be Scholars dedicated todiscovering these continuities are not at all devotingthemselves to a vain task They can indeed often bemistaken (certainly they do not fail to be so) or give in tothe temptation of confused conjectures the hypothesis thatguides them is nonetheless sound The fragility of certainconstructions does not at all prevent the firmness of theirfoundations Besides in research that some would hold tobe sacrilege science is after all only exploiting the Paulineidea of the ldquofullness of timerdquo It is uniting in a way with thethought of the Fathers of the Church so anxious to bring outthe ldquoevangelical preparationsrdquo in order to spare Christianitythe appearance of a ldquosudden improvisationrdquo ldquoNihil putem aDeo subitum quia nihil a Deo non dispositumrdquo5 It agreeswith the reflection of the philosopher who considering the

Christian event refuses by very reason of its unparalleledproportions to attribute an accidental character to it6

But in what touches the very basis of religion thesecontinuities are only appearance Yes in one senseChristianity is human completely human We can we mustspeak of its birth If the words it uses are necessarilyborrowed then it is unavoidable that the concepts are tooAnd how would man tell himself the truth even divinelyrevealed truth except by using concepts There is norevelation except supernatural ldquoin the pure staterdquo Howwould God give himself to man if he remained a stranger tohim And how would his Word penetrate him if it were notalso to become a human word The messages of Saint Paulor Saint John are already ldquotheologiesrdquo and the veryconsciousness of Christ is the consciousness of the Wordmade flesh But a less rudimentary psychology has shownus that the concepts themselves are in their multiplicity farfrom expressing the whole of a doctrine for they are withinthe spirit the part closest to matter With how much greaterreason if it is a question of an object that is not onlydoctrine but first of all reality By what makes it itself by itsoriginal essence which consists neither in words nor inconcepts and which the whole sum of words and concepts isnever capable of translating adequately Christianity isdivine completely divine Through the close texture ofrelationships of ideas and beliefs without break withouttear a new spiritmdashthe Spirit himselfmdashhas passed He hasstolen in with gentleness and he has burst in with powerHe has penetrated human history and all has beentransformed The face of the earth has been renewed by itThis was a new Fiat a true creation ldquoEmitte Spiritum tuumet creabuntur et renovabis faciem terraerdquo7 The Spirit ofChrist has founded a wholly new thing the religion of Christand this religion of Christ for which all human history hadprepared for which all human thought had slowly woven the

fabric suddenly rises up in the midst of men ldquosine patresine matre sine genealogiardquo Pure creation pure miracleThere we have this ldquonewrdquo idea which Jules Lachelier saidldquois born from nothing like a worldrdquo

What new ideas though that do not come from usourselves The inventions of man enrich humanitydiscovering in the soul some nuance unperceived until thenbut always leaving it to its essential finitudemdashto itsincurable decay Once past the first amazement the ironicand despairing refrain of Ecclesiastes is heard again Thecircle enlarged or shifted closes again On the contrarywith a leap the Christian Idea transports us beyond ourlimits It breaks this circle within which all our progress hadbeen condemned in advance to fit Such was the thought atits appearance breaking the circle of animaltransformations It is born in its own time it has its markedplace within the progress of life and nevertheless what itbrings is much more than progress From the time itemerges a new kingdom has begun the human kingdomSo the preaching of Jesus marks the advent of the Kingdomof God8 For how many of the sentences of the Sermon onthe Mount would we not find analogies in the Jewish Bible orin the teaching of the rabbis The One who pronounces itspeaks nonetheless as man had never spokenmdashas manwould never speak9 The Gospel inaugurates the time ofgrace It is a wholly new order that begins ldquoa new order oflove in the universerdquo10 A dike has been broken which letsthe flow of Love pass through Now it would be as vain todream of a reality more divine than Love than to imagine areality more spiritual than Thought The transcendence ofChristianity is thus not only relative to such and such anearlier achievement It is not only something originalsomething superior a provisional novelty clearing the wayfor some ulterior invention destined to go beyond it It is anabsolute transcendence ldquoOmnem novitatem attulitrdquo11

Peacuteguy has also sung it He was going to inherit a worldalready made And yet he was going to remake it entirely

Of course the order of charity is not revealed any morethan is the order of the spirit in all its fullness or in all itsdepth to that observation from outside that constitutes thework of the pure historian But if their inner essence stillescapes observation would the simple sight of their effectnot already arouse the sense of their incomparablegreatness We know the repercussions observable to thenaturalist not blinded by an overly narrow concept ofscience produced in the universe by the apparition ofthought the paradoxical properties of the ldquohumanphenomenonrdquo its extraordinary power for expansion andconcentration out of proportion with the weakmorphological originality of man presuppose a presence ofwhich the naturalist can only catch a glimpse but they sethim on the way that must normally lead him to go beyondhis science to discover in truth the human kingdom12 Therepercussions produced in humanity by the advent ofChristianity are no less prodigious the human spiritimmeasurably increased an unparalleled moral fruitfulnessa society tirelessly at work for an ideal of justice and unityand so forth These features are accessible to the historianwho knows how to step back a pace Nevertheless let usrecognize just as reflection alone properly speaking canreveal thought to itself so too only a process of a religiousorder can disclose the absolute superioritymdashwhich is to sayproperly the transcendencemdashof Christianity Like thedivinity of Christ itself the definitive newness of theChristian principle can be perceived only by the eyes offaith It is here that the advantage of the simple believerover the man of science and of life over technique shinesforth For the anthropologist who systematically denieshimself any inner reflection on the lived thought as well as

the historian of religions who does not consent to regardChristianity from within and to begin to live it at leastthrough a basic attitude of real sympathy will neverunderstand anything about the true object of their learnedstudies If their science itself does not lead them to the finalaffirmations it must at least set them on the path But ifthey wish to trust solely in it to the end surrendering theirconscience as men into the hands of their intelligence asspecialists the greater the latter will be and the more it willrisk misleading them

ldquoThe history of the formation of ideasrdquo said Amiel ldquoiswhat makes the spirit freerdquo13 Beneath the ideas that itorganizes and transforms let us know how to discern theChristian Idea This Idea has no history this is what mustmake the spirit submit to it

A great Deed was done for the world twenty centuries agothe Deed of Charity14 Right at first menrsquos habits of thoughtwere not any more overturned by it than were empires Wasan obscure variety of Jewish ldquoMessianistsrdquo worth even aglance The grain of wheat sown by Christ remained buriedin little upper rooms that counted for nothing in the historyof the world Christianity itself would wait five hundred yearsto found retrospectively the ldquoChristian erardquo and it wouldtake another five hundred years for full Christian practice tobecome widespread15 The first disciples of Jesus stilldreamed of the Kingdom of David their father they went upto the Temple as was their custom with a fervor that wasonly increased Having contemplated the Deed that hadbeen done before them they must nevertheless have hadthe feeling of an unparalleled newness The testimony of itappears everywhere in their rare writings ldquoNew teachingnew covenant new commandment new name new songnew man new life second genesis of the worldrdquo16 Such afeeling did not mislead them They were not in danger

those who had seen who had heard those who hadtouched of taking the Christian Mystery to be a more or lessspontaneous mixture of the Jewish Messianism exalted byJesus and cult forms then in vogue in the Hellenized Eastmdashany more than Christian dogma was in danger of appearingto their successors of the great patristic period as a learnedproduct of the Bible and Greek philosophy This chemistry ofimpotent historians could not have been created by themThey knew from an immediate source that they weredealing with something very different They sensed theunity of what myopic analysts think to understand bydecomposing it This is because the principle of synthesiswas in them living and active It is because living thisdogma themselves before drawing up the inventory of itadoring this mystery before translating it they penetratedits spiritual meaning

In addition their testimony is for us more than aguarantee It constitutes a call If that call is at firstnecessary for us we do not have to hold to it ldquoNowrdquo saidthe inhabitants of Sichar to the woman who had led them toChrist ldquoit is no longer because of what you have said to usthat we believe for we have heard him himself and weknow that he is truly the Savior of the worldrdquo17 For twentycenturies the witness of the first generation of believers ispreserved intact because it always remains a living witnessabyssus abyssum invocat [deep calls to deep] Why shouldwe be riveted to history The Spirit still gives witness to ourspirit18 The Kingdom of God is still in the midst of us ldquoTheGospel of Jesus Christ Son of Godrdquo which was heard for thefirst time in Galilee under Herod during the fifteenth yearof Tiberius Caesar at the time of the High Priests Annas andCaiaphas still resounds today and if the forms of itspreaching are different it is the same Voice that proclaimsit Like the creative Deed which does not cease to maintainbeing and life everywhere the Deed of Charity is pursued

over the world The second Genesis henceforth aspermanent as the first and like it infinitely fruitful TheChurch Bride of Christ continues the work of herBridegroom We have only to contemplate hermdashnot fromoutside in her sole visible organization with its humancharacteristics which are often too human perhaps with itsdefects not even in the works of its scholars alwaysunequal to their task and whose insufficiency can be sopainful19mdashespecially when they themselves do not seem tofeel itmdashbut in her inner life in her ideal in her belief in hersecret fidelity in the purity of her zeal in the marvelousfruits of holy joy that she makes ripen in the depths ofhuman hearts In all that the ldquoworldrdquo does not perceiveThen the light shines then the Truth bears witness to itselfveritas index sui No need for laborious comparisons or of anerudite return to the past The clearsightedness of a limpidlook is preferable here to all the sharp perspicacities ofcriticism This is because the miracle is endlessly producedbefore our eyes Today as formerly by virtue of Christianityldquoall things are becoming newrdquo EvenmdashSaint Augustine hadalready noted itmdashthe more time advances the moreprivileged is our situation as witness The mystical Christ inthe measure he increases better reveals his power To thesigns of it that already multiply still others will be addedwhen his message has truly reached the most distantpeoples Today we only begin to see all the fullness of theDeed that renewed the world The sudden clarity of the firstdays has become a great luminous path which grows withthe centuries

This great Deed of Love Jesus it is You Yourself Perceptible to manhumble dying in a corner of Judea oh yes You are man Flower of JesseYou are indeed the fruit of our earth Born of a woman truly formed fromher substance You are not some sort of phantom come down from theclouds of heaven You are deeply rooted in our earth20 But in You Jesus asin no other child of our race God showed himself You were not merely Hismessenger You are His living and substantial appearance Through You He

has not only spoken Or rather His language is an action His word is adeed it is You Yourself Splendor Verbum et imago Patris You Jesus onyour Cross the act uniting earth to heaven21

In You God still shows Himself and in your holy Church Inyour best disciples He still shines so well that one cannotmistake it For it is You who live in them Have we not allknown someone in whom a divine flame burned which theyhad lit at your hearth alone Their silent testimony is all themore persuasive Non eloquimur magna sed vivimus22 ldquoAsfor merdquo said Gerbet ldquoI lend an ear to the sounds that holysouls make with greater respect than to the voice ofgeniusrdquo23 What a great wise man concludes after longstudies and profound meditations in favor of your divinitythat encourages me but scarcely moves me forward Butthat a Francis of Assisi that being so obviously predestinedto make a ray of eternity shine over our earth makeshimself your absolute disciple that he loves You adoresYou annihilating himself before You that he is ambitiousonly to place his steps in your steps and to live from You byreproducing each of your features that he wants always tobe only your humble repetitor24 that not for a moment doeshe entertain the idea of engaging in a personal way oftrying another experience of adding at least something toyour message this humble and total will to imitatemdashChristototus concrucifixus et configuratusmdashin the face of yoursovereign independence such literalness in such an effusionof the Spirit such contrast in a similar holiness Themore I reflect on it the stronger the argument seems tome25

After that what do the difficulties matter in which myreason gets tangled Or rather how could it be that so loftyan object would not put it to flight If You have come tounveil a new kingdom and a new existence to me howshould I not consent to letting myself be removed from myusual surroundings Is it not normal that I have to abandon

my usual modes of thought26 Your word upsets myinstinctive logic it overturns all my arrangements of ideasit shatters my concepts This is the price for the liberation ofmy understanding Yet little by little in mystery a newequilibrium is established Under the secret action of yourSpirit faith is able to find its exact expressions whichprotect it against the ever-reborn assaults of a reason toolittle converted This was not without a long and arduouswork To define your twofold nature as for all that is worththe effort of our understanding it takes time reflectiongroping disputes materials from all sources A long andperilous journey A complicated winding history strewnwith a thousand contingencies An often tragic historymdashawonderful history27 It was through the adventurousconcepts of thinkers that Catholic Christology ended inrejoining the first intuition of faith

More than any other because it is at the center of all thedefinition in which the result of this labor is found today isimperfect An inevitable and blessed imperfection Notaccidental but essential necessary so that humbleastonishment before the mystery may subsist in theprecision of belief and in the firmness of adherence Butalready Jesus your very first disciples when they loved Youabove all and when they left all to follow You when theygave You all without thinking thereby to take anything fromGod when they contemplated You seated at the right handof the Father when they called You the one Lordproclaiming that all had been renewed by You and that allknees must bend before You your disciples believed in YouExtraordinary impossible faithmdashand yet authenticatedbeyond doubt A scandal as grave for the historian as thedogma itself for the thinker For though not beingabsolutely the same as ours the difficulties for a Saint Peteror a Saint Paul in believing were no less strong Nor werethose of their successors the Origens and the Cyrils the

Ambroses and the Augustines Modern man flatters himselfwhen he judges that the Copernican revolution or theKantian revolution dug out a new hiatus between histhought and the thought of the Ancients It was as hard tobelieve then as it is today It was hard for a JewishmonotheistmdashldquoListen Israel Your God is onerdquomdashto believe inthe divinity of a man28 It was hard to believe in thecrucifixion of the Son of God29 It was hard for a reasonableman who had been able to see up close the Son of Man inhis humiliation to believe in the resurrected Christ and inall these histories ldquothat do not allow themselves to beallegorized rdquo30

ldquoA scandal for the Greeks and folly for the Jewsrdquo OurFathers passed beyond their faith conquered all theobstacles What they were capable of we ourselves will becapable of and if we do not make ourselves unworthy ofthem the reasons that quickened them will not be lessstrong for us Their attitude will thus be ours We could nottranscend it but neither could we restrict it without denyingyour message at the same stroke Jesus For it is no morepossible to abstract You from this message than it ispossible to abstract God from Yourself On what would webase the demands of your Law if we began by failing torecognize the Demand of your Person Who wouldguarantee us the hope of the Kingdom if we were not torecognize the King of it Does everything in You not tell usthat You are Yourself the Kingdom as You are the Truth andthe Life31 So from the beginning the religion of Jesuswhich is the ideal of love was indivisibly the religion ofChrist that is the cult of incarnate Love It is folly to want todissociate them and to believe that the first would survivethe ruin of the second The religion of which Jesus is thesubject and norm is gradually achieved in us only throughthe religion of which Christ is the object Moreover it isblindness not to recognize their identity it is to tear the

seamless robe that the Gospel presents to us and it is notto see the metaphysical significance of Love

Evangelium ChristimdashEvangelium de Christo a modernscarcely more subtle form of the old antithesis betweenpractice and dogma32 But in maintaining contrary to thosewho set them in opposition that there is an essentialrelation between them we do not mean simply that onemust observe dogma as a means for assuring practice Theirties are intrinsic33 and the necessity of their agreement isonly one consequence On the one hand ldquopracticerdquo can becorrectly defined only by dogma from it alone does itreceive its meaning and spirit and on the other hand inone sense it already contains everything in itself for it issummed up in charity which is the spiritual being in act

God is Love and in a great feat of Love he came to takeup man sinner and miserable Man and God embraced eachother in Christ The unique intellectual fecundity of thisDeed it is specifically pregnant with all Christian dogmaticsso that the latter must be called strictly revealed No morein fact than one could dissociate the revealed truths fromthe very Person of the Revealer could one conceive a justand complete idea of the transcendent newness ofChristianity if one did not see that in this Person of Christsuch as the Apostles already show him to us and such asthe Church never ceases to contemplate and reproduce himthe reality of Charity and the truth of Dogma areindissolubly united Charity constituting the reality of thisDogma as this Dogma itself constitutes the truth of thisCharity34

As for the intellectual elaboration from which the dogmain its second state results which is to say in that abstractand learned formulation that multiplies it in distinctenunciations wholly guided by the Spirit of Truth as it is itnevertheless remains a human operation The materials it

employs just like those that entered into the firstspontaneous expression of faith are human materials Theycan thus serve them too in the real (though alwaysinadequate) transmission of divine truth only in the measureto which they are related to the Whole of Dogma35 In themeasure to which on the contrary they are consideredeach in isolation the formulas cease to bear witness to thedivinity of their origin they lose the best of their meaningceasing to have relation to divine charity such as itappeared to us in Christ For our faith is one and it is whollysummed up in You O Jesus36 You are the center and thebond of all its ldquoarticlesrdquo All its expressions all itsdevelopments are only so many means of understandingYou better and of situating ourselves better before You Thisis why the historians who instead of considering Christianityin its living unitymdashwhich one can do fully only if one lives itoneselfmdashalways scrutinize its elements only by taking themone after the other as a series of detached pieces resistany possibility of understanding it The essence escapesthem They do not find the soul at the end of their scalpelIn Christianity they find nothing divine not seeing Christ init

How true it is therefore to say that if dogma is necessaryfor the maintenance of practice the role of practice isnonetheless essential for maintaining the reality of dogmaintact We now discover the whole meaning of such anaxiom Without the truth of dogmamdashalthough there may besome good ldquounfaithfulrdquomdashone will only have an apparentpractice but on the other hand without the reality ofpracticemdashalthough there may be some bad Christiansmdashonewill no longer have anything but an apparent dogma On theone hand a charity that is less than genuine on the other asuperstitious belief or a verbal orthodoxy an ldquoorthologyrdquowithout any real content This is because if the articles offaith are numbered the Object of Faith is marvelously one If

the former are formed of abstract propositions the Latter ismarvelously Living And just as according to the oldScholastic theory all physico-chemical bodies onceassimilated by the human organism are directly informedby the soul so that there is no longer either carbon oroxygen and so forth but only human matter so with all theelements religious or profane in origin that enter into theChristian synthesis Constructed completely in one sensewith human materials the dogmatic formulas neverthelessexpress divine truth Elaborated by men they channel apart of divine revelation But this is on condition onceagain that one always relates them to that same revelationto the living Center to the divine Center from which allradiates and to which all must lead us to Jesus Christ JesusChrist the personal manifestation of Charity Jesus Christ inwhom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledgebecause in him dwells the fullness of the Divinity JesusChrist Word of the Father who speaks him and gives himentirely There is no absolute newness no revelationproperly speaking no true transcendence outside of theunique reality of his Person We must always return to thewords of Saint Irenaeus ldquoOmnem novitatem attulitsemetipsum afferensrdquo37

Jesus I believe in You I confess that You are God You are forus the whole Mystery of God38 What other definition of Godwould we seek than that given by your Apostle And was itnot in contemplating You that he found it God is Love Thissingle word contains an unfathomable mystery which Iadore But through You this mystery illumines our nightalready For Love has done a great deed and this Deed ofLove the Love made visible to our eyes perceptible tohearts of flesh effective and saving Love is You Yourself Itis God made man it is the Incarnation of God

We stammer as we can Our formulas are insufficientNecessary to shield the treasure of our faith their form

nevertheless troubles us But your true adorers O Jesushavenrsquot You Yourself said are not those who put their trustin frail words they are those who understand your feat andwho sustained by Youmdashfor that costs more than bloodmdashstrive to reproduce it

An absolute feat nothing has any value except throughcharity Charity demands all assumes all Charity judges all

An efficacious feat through this ldquodivine strengthrdquo alreadyrecognized by the Apostle Paul39 he uproots us from ouregotism he opens us takes us raises us makes us capableof adopting the contours of it in our turn He eradicates theold man and implants the new man Operatorius sermoChristi40

A finally definitive feat Whatever might be the futureprogress of our race whatever the enlargement of itsknowledge or the refinement of its ideal we will not betaken unawares The coming of Christ has marked thefullness of time No fullness no depth will ever exhaust theDeed of Calvary41

That is why peaceful about the past we also look to thefuture without fear ldquoQuid amplius reservandum cumamplius nihil sit plenitudine perfectionisrdquo42 Sure that ourfaith will never mislead us we go ahead of the excavationsof history and the research of science Ahead too of humanprogressmdashand we know too well that all progress of theworld will not obtain the least beginning of salvation Aheadof the new values to which history gives birth through itscrises Man can vary and perfect his culture without end Hecan discover and exploit new potentialities in it The veryUniverse can grow immeasurably and distant stars can oneday reveal a humanity more numerous more civilizedmdashmore miserablemdashthan our own the Deed of Christ wouldstill take it in It embraces all worlds just as it shines abovetime For all equally for each one of us and at all times for

those who believe in man and for those who despair of himits rays are those of Eternal Life

ldquoHe has come the Christ of God the Leader of thePromises And without any doubt he has been he alone tothe exclusion of all those who preceded himmdashand I have theaudacity to say he is to the exclusion of all those who followhimmdashthe one awaited by the Nationsrdquo43

clearly between the phenomena that indicate the body souland spiritrdquo19 He does so in the First Letter to theCorinthians when twice he contrasts the unspiritual ornatural [psychique] man and the spiritual man20 W DavidStacey has maintained that these latter texts cannotcorrespond to that of the Letter to the Thessalonians of thetwo conceptions in conflict it would be necessary on thebasis of all evidence to choose the one later in date asexpressing the mature thought of the Apostle21 theantagonism of natural and spiritual would be substituted forthe hierarchical union of soul and spirit But here again thedesire to eliminate or at least to neutralize a text deemedembarrassing seems to us to have led Dr Stacey astray It isvery evident that the text of 1 Thessalonians is far fromhaving the same significance as that of 1 Corinthians thatdoes not prevent the thought of Saint Paul from remainingcoherent from one letter to another The soul (the psyche) isnever for its part the object in itself of a pejorativeappreciation If in another context he is severe or not veryadmiring of the man he calls ldquonaturalrdquo it is insofar as thelatter is only natural insofar as he closes himselfmdashorremains still provisionally closed22mdashto the Spirit of God whowould (or will) make of him a ldquospiritualrdquo man conferring onhim thus his ldquofullnessrdquo as the Letter to the Ephesians willexpress it (518) The natural man of 1 Corinthians 2 canhave a certain ldquohuman wisdomrdquo that is not uniquely ldquocarnalwisdomrdquo (cf 2 Cor 112) which does not lack all value butunderstands nothing ldquoof the things of the Spirit of Godrdquo forhim they are ldquofollyrdquo To this ldquowise manrdquo to this ldquocultivatedmanrdquo to this ldquoman of reason here belowrdquo the Apostlecontrasts the ldquowisdom of Godrdquo manifested in Christ23

It would be no more appropriate to bring out here thePauline opposition in a still more radical sense between theflesh and the spirit The carnal man is not the one whowould stop so to speak at a first landing that of the flesh

which is to say in such a case at things of the body but theone who has fallen into evil Body and flesh (it is reallynecessary to repeat this since people still seem to bemistaken about this at times) are in no way synonymous oreven comparable and do not belong to categories of thesame order In the thinking of Saint Paul the ldquofleshrdquo has ldquoaclose solidarity with sinrdquo it is this congenital weakness thatmakes the human soul fall into the slavery of sin Theldquospiritrdquo its antagonist is ldquothe state of freedom in which itblossoms when it has been faithful to the Spirit of God whoattracts it and comes to dwell within itrdquo There is noquestion here of any gradation but of opposition pure andsimple Saint Paul does not speak there of any dualitywhatever in the structure of the human being he does notcorrect a tripartite anthropology by another bipartite oneFor him flesh and spirit never designate two components ofhuman naturemdashlike body and soul would bemdashbut alwaysstatesmdashcontrasted statesmdash of the whole man24

If one wants therefore to find a certain Greek antecedentof philosophical significance for the Pauline trichotomy itwould not be appropriate to look for it on Platorsquos side Itwould rather be in Aristotle The Stagirite in factacknowledges in man an animated body the presence of asuperior element the spirit (νοῦς) the principle ofintellectual life immortal and divine Nevertheless theparallel takes a sharp turn for there would be at least onemajor difference While Aristotle spoke of a νοῦς Paulspeaks of a πνεῦμα Now as we know the difference is notmerely one of terminology It is no longer a question of asimple nuance of thought The substitution of one term foranother was besides not made by Paul alone it hadalready been carried out a little earlier by Philo Friendlytoward Hellenism Philo ldquowas imbued with the doctrine ofthe contemplative nousrdquo25 nevertheless in the passageswhere he comments on the creation account he does not

speak of νοῦς but of πνεῦμα God he says breathes intoman a pneuma not content with making him simply alivecomposed of soul and body he gave him part of his spiritthis is what Moses teaches by saying that he made him inhis image This pneuma in man is the principle of a higherlife the place of communication with God26 Now such isalso one of the meanings of pneuma in Saint Paul It is not inGreece that we must search for its origin but in the Bible

Father Joseph Huby has said it in a few words which morerecent authors would benefit from rereading In the Paulineverse ldquofamous because of the trichotomy spirit soul bodyof the human composite some thought to see a borrowingfrom Plato or Aristotle Both do acknowledge in fact threeprinciples in man but if the latter two of those coincide withthose27 enumerated by Saint Paul the first is different InPlato it is the nous the intellectual soul consideredmoreover by Aristotle as separable Instead of νοῦς SaintPaul puts spirit or pneuma here with him as in Philo this isa Semitic term suggested by the account in Genesis (27)where it is said that God breathed into the nostrils of theman a breath of life rdquo28 The Pleiade Bible has taken thesame explanation which seems imperative to us ldquoSpiritsoul bodyrdquo recalls Michel Leturmy in a note to histranslation ldquosuch is with the Semites the most commondivision with respect to the human compositerdquo29 In a noteto the translation of Matthew 625 the same authorexplains that the Greek ψ υχή translates the Aramaeannaumlfshacirc breath of the throat animal life (the ldquosoulrdquo) throughopposition to πνεῦμα which translates the Aramaean roucirc hacircdivine respiration breath of the nostrils (the ldquospiritrdquo) seeGenesis 2730

We do not believe it would be enough however to tracethe words of the Pauline triad simply to those of the BibleThe Apostlersquos anthropology is also based in part on hisexperience acquired from life in the Spirit of God There are

numerous commentators who in consequence consider thePauline πνεῦμα to designate in reality not something of manthat would be higher than his soul but the human soulinsofar as it is informed by grace participating as theSecond Letter of Peter (14) says in an effective way in thedivine nature united to the very essence of God by thecoming of the divine Spirit into it31 The ψ υχή in this casewould be not only ldquosensible liferdquo but also the higher realityof man as man that is although Buzy translates it in anoverly intellectualist language ldquoreason without gracerdquo32

This would be ldquothe state of the specifically living beingwhich is inherent in man as suchrdquo33 So too schematicallyBonnetain ldquoThe three terms come back to the followinggrace soul and bodyrdquo34 Father Andreacute-Jean Festugiegravere isclearly opposed to this interpretation which also proceedsin some from the fear of attributing to the Apostle ananthropology judged to be ldquoPlatonicrdquo For him theanthropology of Saint Paul is undoubtedly trichotomic thepneuma in question in the wish addressed to theThessalonians as in the texts mentioned above from theFirst Letter to the Corinthiansmdashand as in addition the Letterto the Hebrews speaks of itmdashis not the Holy Spirit butactually a part of man ldquothe movement of the phrase thetwo ϰαί the insistence on saying that we must becompletely in our whole being under the divine safeguardrdquoare the proof of it35 Besides if this pneuma is not itself thedivine life realized in man it is indeed in him the center ofthe higher life moral religious mystical it is the ldquocenter ofthe Christian liferdquo which is not a matter of feelings but offaith36

Some hesitate to choose between these two contradictoryinterpretations even if it means apparently contradictingthemselves in their explanatory formulas They are of thefeeling that the thought of Paul is profound and complexthey would like to lose nothing of it but do not see well how

to explain it in our language in a coherent fashion Such isFather Joseph Huby following the passage we have quotedldquoFor Paul the pneuma is more precisely the spirit of maninsofar as influenced informed and heightened by divinegracerdquo it is the ldquoprinciple of thinking center of moral andreligious life and summit of the soul The original (biblical)concept of the pneuma the human soul breathes from Godis magnificently deepened the pneuma designates thereason informed by grace man insofar as he becomes spiritparticipating in the nature of God through the spirit theνοῦς becomes capable of conquering the flesh it isunited to the very essence of God through the coming of thedivine Spiritrdquo37 In this essay somewhat awkward in itsattempts at reconciliation in which a fourth term (νοῦς) isintroduced we see to which side the author is leaning Wewill say as much of Max Alain Chevallier who with respectto 1 Corinthians 1414-16 after having noted for us ldquothefreely equivocal use of the word pneuma by Paulrdquo seems torestrict immediately the significance of his observation bysaying that this word ldquodesignates without describing it theinner man filled with the presence of Godrdquo38 Karl Barth inhis Dogmatics escapes such oscillations only thanks to hisgeneral doctrine which prohibits him from ldquoreifyingrdquo in away from giving a proper consistency to the human spiritconsidered in its relation to God After having justlyobserved that the ruah of the Old Testament does notcorrespond to the πνεῦμα ἅ γιον of the New39 but insofar asa ldquoanthropological notionrdquo to the πνεῦμα of the address tothe Thessalonians Barth makes haste to add ldquoOn the otherhand one cannot assert without reservation that the OldTestament and the New refer to a trichotomy of the humanbeing For both the human being in himself is body andsoul earthly form and earthly life but the body possesses asoul and its earthly form is that of a living being in themeasure in which the human being receives the spirit and

safeguards itrdquo This spirit must however be conceived ldquonotas a property of man but as a gratuitous giftrdquo which atdeath must be returned to God and which persists ldquowhichGod withdraws from him or grants to himrdquo40 What must bemaintained above all according to Barth is that man ldquois inno way lsquorelated to Godrsquo (Gunkel) he has simply beenawakened to his proper existence by the breath that Godbreathes into him and which allows him to breathe himselfWhat is he and what does he possess that he has notreceived and that does not differentiate him from God sinceit is God who has created himrdquo41

The human pneuma of which Paul speaks would thus beboth an element so little constitutive of his being that Godcan take it back from him and a created element thatdifferentiates him from God Such is the Barthian paradoxWithout having to take him literally perhaps we would haveto unite ourselves with the ldquospiritrdquo of it Would it in fact benecessary to choose between two contradictoryinterpretations that confront each other or resign ourselvesto a [false] harmonization that itself does not avoidcontradiction An expression used by Saint Paul himself 1Corinthians 211 could suggest an intermediate solution tous ldquoWho therefore among men knows the secrets of a manif not the spirit of the man which is in him (τὸ πνεῦμα τοῦἀνθϱώ που τὸ ἐν αὐτῷ)rdquo This pneuma is certainly not theHoly Spirit since Paul adds ldquoSimilarly no one knows thesecrets of God except the Spirit of Godrdquo Yet it does notappear completely like a constituent part of man as suchlike the body or the soul after having said ldquothe spirit of themanrdquo Paul corrects himself in a way to say ldquothe spirit whois in himrdquo which marks a nuance of capital importanceThus what par excellence makes a man what constitutesman in his worth among the beings of this world muchmore what makes him a being superior to the world wouldbe an element that rather than being ldquoof manrdquo would be

ldquoin manrdquo There is it seems to us in this Pauline πνεῦμα thesame kind of ambiguity notional because real as in thedivine ldquoimagerdquo or divine ldquobreathrdquo of creation such asChristian tradition interprets them From one author toanother and sometimes in the same author the sameambiguity will give place to oscillations which will not gohowever to the point of compromising before a ratherrecent date the idea of a tripartite anthropology Weconclude with a recent interpreter that the Pauline conceptof πνεῦμα is a concept ldquoof which our modern anthropologiescan absolutely not take accountrdquo42

2 Patristic Tradition

I The First Two Centuries Irenaeus It is a fact that Christianantiquity did not judge insignificant the Pauline verse about

body soul and spirit Nevertheless from one author toanother the interpretations differ without always being in

contradictory opposition to each otherIn his letter to the Philadelphians Saint Ignatius of Antioch

simply makes the Apostlersquos enumeration his own in judgingthat his correspondents like the Ephesians and theSmyrnians ldquowill be honored by the Lord Jesus Christ inwhom they hope with flesh soul and spirit (σαϱϰί ψ υχῇ πνεύματι) in faith charity and concordrdquo1 Athenagoras alsodistinguishes between soul and spirit for him the soul isplaced between ldquothe spirit of matterrdquo which is to say ldquotheflesh and bloodrdquo and the ldquoheavenly spiritrdquo which is ldquopurespiritrdquo and it can according to its choice mix with one orbecome the other

The soul becomes passive when it receives the spirit of matter and ismixed with it by looking below toward earthly things and to speak in ageneral way when it becomes only flesh and blood and ceases to be apure spirit2We believe that we will live another life heavenly and no longer earthlyif at least close to God and with God we have steadfast souls masteringpassion and if we remain not like bodies but like a heavenly spirit 3

In Tatian also the distinction seems clear when he saysldquoWe have knowledge of two sorts of spirits one of them iscalled soul the other is greater than the soul it is the imageand resemblance of Godrdquo4 Only subsequently it isimpossible to discern clearly if the spirit he distinguishesthus from the soul and which he calls ldquodivinerdquo is not simplythe Spirit of God The soul he explains is not immortal in

and of itself so ldquoif it remains by itself it dies with the flesh But when it is united to the divine spirit (θεῖ ον) it doesnot lack for help and it rises to where the spirit leads it Forthe seat of the latter is above while its origin is below Nowin the beginning the spirit was the guide of the soul itabandoned it when it did not want to follow it Now theSpirit of God does not reside in all but in some who livejustly The souls who have obeyed wisdom have drawnthe Spirit who is closely related5 to them (συγγενές) rdquo

Saint Irenaeus then Origen should make us pause a littlelonger because of the abundance of texts their importanceand their difficulty6

It is in the fifth book of Adversus Haereses that Irenaeusgives us his views about anthropology But his goal was notto write a clear and didactic exposition for the use of thehistorians who would pore over his text later on it was torefute heretics who conceived of salvation for man only inldquorejection of the fleshrdquo7 On the other hand careful alwaysto stick very close to Scripture he lets himself be guidedsuccessively by the different texts he uses which leads himto change more or less his perspective and his terminologyin the course of his text8 Hence the difficulties forinterpreters

The first passage in which the distinction between the souland the spirit is affirmed is of little interest to us for it isthere a question of an exposition of heretical doctrine9 Inresponse chapter 6 no 1 is presented as an orthodoxcommentary on the Pauline texts

Through the hands of the Father which is to say by the Son and the Spiritit is man and not a part of man who becomes the image and theresemblance of God Now the soul and the spirit can be a part of man butin no way man the perfect man is a mixture and union of the soul who hasreceived the Spirit of the Father and who has been mixed with the fleshmodeled according to the image of God Under the name of ldquoperfectrdquo the Apostle designates those who havereceived the Spirit of God He also calls them ldquospiritualrdquo they arespiritual through a participation of the Spirit but not through a voiding and

a suppression of the flesh In fact if one dismisses the substance of theflesh that is of the modeled work in order to consider only what isproperly spirit such a thing is no longer the spiritual man but the Spirit ofthe man or the Spirit of God By contrast when this Spirit in mixing withthe soul is united to the modeled work thanks to this effusion of the Spiritthe spiritual and perfect man is achieved and it is he himself who has beenmade in the image and resemblance of God When on the contrary theSpirit is absent in the soul such a man remaining in all truth natural andcarnal will be imperfect possessing indeed the image of God in themodeled work but not having received the resemblance by means of theSpirit10

From all the evidence Irenaeus counts here three elementsin man But is it simply a matter of man or of the perfectman Or rather to speak without ambiguity is it simply aquestion of the ldquoperfectrdquo man which is to say complete inhis nature or man divinized through the participation of theSpirit of God Or indeed does Irenaeus mix the two thingsThe text that follows will perhaps enlighten us

Modeled flesh alone is not the perfect man it is only the body of man thusone part of man Neither is the soul alone man it is only the soul of manthus one part of man Nor is the Spirit man one gives it the name of Spiritnot that of man It is the mixture and union of all these things thatconstitute the perfect man And this is why the Apostle in explaininghimself has clearly defined the perfect and spiritual man beneficiary ofsalvation when he says in this First Letter to the Thessalonians ldquoMay theGod of peace make you perfect and holy so that you may be fullycomplete and so that your whole beingmdashto wit your Spirit your soul andyour bodymdashmay be preserved without reproach for the coming of the LordJesusrdquoWhat motive did he have in asking that these three things to wit the soulthe body and the Spirit be preserved whole for the coming of the Lord if hehad not known that all three were to be restored and reunited and thatthere is for them but one and the same salvation This is why he calls ldquofullycompleterdquo those who present these three things without reproach to theLord Thus those are perfect who all at once possess the Spirit of Godremaining always with them and maintain themselves without reproachwith respect to their souls and their bodies which is to say preserving faithtoward God and keeping justice toward their neighbor11

The hesitation remains On the one hand the Spiritconstitutes with the soul one part of man it is called theldquoSpirit of the manrdquo and seems to be distinguished from the

ldquoSpirit of Godrdquo it in itself does not constitute the man anymore than the body or the soul does but it is one of thethree elements that constitute him these three elementsare also enumerated according to Saint Paul who wishesthem all three to be without reproachmdasha wish that wouldbe irrelevant even impertinent in the case of the Spirit ofGod finally moreover Irenaeus himself considers that theyare all three to be ldquorestoredrdquo and to be presented to theLord But on the other hand the soul receives ldquothe Spirit ofthe Fatherrdquo the man is called ldquospiritualrdquo insofar as hereceives participation of the Spirit and this participationmakes him to be not only in the image but in theresemblance of God finally if this man is ldquoperfectrdquo it isbecause in addition to the soul and the body he ldquopossessesthe Spirit of Godrdquo12 And these two series of affirmations arenot found in different contexts they are closelyintermingled

Yet a little farther on several passages come to supportthe second series

Those who possess the deposit of the Spirit and who surrenderthemselves to the Spirit the Apostle rightly calls ldquospiritualrdquo since theSpirit of God dwells in them For spirits without bodies will never bespiritual men but it is our substancemdashthat is the composite of soul andfleshmdashthat in receiving the Spirit of God constitutes the spiritual man 13 The weakness of the flesh makes the power of the Spirit shine forth and it is of these two things that the living man is made living due to theparticipation of the Spirit man through the substance of the flesh mdashTherefore without the Spirit of God the flesh is dead 14The breath of life which makes the natural man is one thing and thevivifying Spirit which renders him spiritual is another The breath has beengiven indistinctly to all the people who inhabit the earth while the Spirithas been given exclusively to those who trample down earthly covetousdesires 15ldquoFor the Spirit will come out around me and it is I who made all breathrdquo (Is5716) He ranks in a way the Spirit in a sphere apart beside God who inthe last days spread it over mankind for adoption but he situates thebreath in the common sphere among creatures and he declares itsomething created Now what has been created is different from the onewho creates it The breath is thus a temporary thing while the Spirit is

eternal After having enveloped man from within and without heremains always with him and henceforth will never abandon him16

One will note however that in these texts the perspectiveis no longer that of an anthropological analysis and thatthey are condemned by other biblical passages than thepreceding Moreover as Irenaeusrsquo principal objective justnow was to claim for the body itself a salvation of which theheretics say it is incapable his objective here is to show thatthis salvation the definitive blossoming of the spiritual lifewhose seed is in each man is the work of the Spirit of Godin each man In no passage is Irenaeus concerned to give uswhat we would call a philosophical anthropology He doesnot go deeply intomdashto tell the truth he does not even havein mindmdashthe problem of the insertion of the Spirit of God inman Despite the several expressions we have brought outand several others as well we believe that the Spirit ofwhich he speaks is always the Spirit of God even when heconsiders it in man If for example it is said in 5 6 1 thatthe soul and the Spirit can be ldquoone part of manrdquo one canobserve with Dom Adelin Rousseau that ldquoparsrdquo is in thesingular ldquoThus although Irenaeus does not hesitate to seein the Spirit of God one of the three constitutive elements ofthe perfect man he refuses and for good reason to makethis Spirit a lsquopartrsquo of the perfect man rdquo A little farther onit is said that the Spirit like the soul and the body is to berestored and saved which seems strange if it is indeed aquestion of the Spirit of God but Dom Rousseau againcomments ldquowhat is to be saved is not the Spirit as such butthe Holy Spirit insofar as communicated to man for his fullachievement in other words the Spirit is less saved than itsaves rdquo These explanations are ingenious they canseem a little subtle they do not however in our opinionfalsify the general line of Irenaean thought Perhaps it isonly necessary to complete them by recognizing that thetexts that are to be thus explained give witness to a rather

clear tendency to conceive of man (even if it is a question ofthe ldquoperfect manrdquo) according to the anthropological schemesuggested by the Apostle17

If therefore the Spirit indeed designates for Irenaeus theSpirit of God his very manner of considering this Spirit ofGod in man and of seeing in it thus one of the threeelements that combine to constitute the perfect man posesan anthropological problem18 Just like the text of the FirstLetter to the Corinthians of which Irenaeus wants to give anaccount it invites a resolution of this problem in thedirection of a certain ldquotrichotomyrdquomdashwhich Origen more of aphilosopher will soon do ldquoThe hereticsrdquo we read again inthe fifth book of Adversus Haereses ldquo do not understandthat three things as we have shown constitute the perfectman the flesh the soul and the Spirit One of them savesand forms to wit the Spirit another is saved and formed towit the flesh another finally is between those two to witthe soul which now follows the Spirit and takes its flightthanks to him now lets itself be persuaded by the flesh andfalls into earthly desiresrdquo19

These explanations seem to us akin to those of FatherJean Meyen-dorff with respect to man ldquocomposed of fleshsoul and Holy Spiritrdquo ldquoThis viewrdquo he observes ldquowhichsounds strangely pantheistic if one judges it according tolater theological categories shows in fact a dynamicconcept of man that excludes the notion of lsquopure naturersquoMan is created so as to share the existence of God this iswhat distinguishes him from the animal and is expressed inthe biblical account of the creation of Adam lsquoin the image ofGodrsquo rdquo20 As Pierre Boyer-Maurel also says21 if for Irenaeusa certain dichotomy ldquoaccounts for man fashioned in theimage of Godrdquo it is nevertheless a trichotomy ldquoin which thebreath only precedes the Spiritrdquo who ldquoaccounts for thebecoming of man of that man who is created by lettinghimself be created throughout the divine Economyrdquo

II Origen Irenaeus spoke particularly of the Spirit of Godeven when that Spirit shared became by consent of thesoul the spirit of man Origen will speak more explicitly of

the spirit of man insofar as an opening to the Spirit of GodThese are two inverse perspectives much rather than two

adverse doctrines1One authority on Origen Gustave Bardy has however

written that the tripartite division ldquowhich is imposed onhim in a way by several Scripture passages plays no rolein his teachingrdquo2 Another historian of ancient Christiandoctrines Francois Bonifas had expressed a judgment inthe contrary direction but as little conformed to the realityafter having pointed out that ldquounsteadinessrdquo of the Paulineterminology ldquomakes it doubtful that the Apostle intended [in1 Thessalonians 523] to make a scientific distinctionrdquo hewent on thinking essentially of Origen ldquoYet the Fathers ofthe Church saw in the expressions of Saint Paul a rigorousdivision in which they found once again that of their oldmentor Platordquo3 Previously J Denis while not mixing Platoup in the affair had recognized in Origen the existence oftrichotomic texts but he saw in that only a foreign body inthe midst of Origenian doctrine ldquoGenerally speakingrdquo hesaid ldquothe soul and the spirit are but one for Origen and ifhe had not respected a division that came to him from SaintPaul and which appears to have been adopted generallyas much by the orthodox Fathers as by the heretic scholarshe would have suppressed one of the terms of this divisionand would thereby have been spared numerouscontradictionsrdquo4 The prejudice to which in each of thesethree last cases the historian is unconsciously giving way isnot difficult to perceive To overcome it would require an in-depth study After the work by G Verbeke on LrsquoEvolution dela doctrine du Pneuma du Stoiumlcisme agrave saint Augustin (1945)the works of Henri Crouzel and Jacques Dupuis have broughtus all desirable light on this point ldquoAt timesrdquo Father Crouzel

tells us ldquoOrigen is a dichotomist distinguishing the bodyand the soul following the Platonic custom5 But most of thetime he sees according to Scripture three elements inman spirit soul and body He has recourse to thistrichotomy when it is a matter of explaining his idea of manand he states it each time he encounters in the texts anexpression that suggests it and this is so throughout hisliterary careerrdquo6 But it is Father Jacques Dupuis who drawsthe matter into perfect clarity in his important monographon ldquoLrsquoEsprit de lrsquohommerdquo eacutetude sur Irsquoanthropologicreligieuse drsquoOrigegravene For him ldquoThere can be no doubt thatthe verse from Saint Paul is the immediate source of hisanthropological trichotomyrdquo (65) It is principally he that wewill follow here

ldquoWe often find it asserted in Scripturerdquo says Origen ldquothatman is spirit body and soul and we have ourselvesdeveloped the subject at lengthrdquo7 In that as in othersubjects it is in fact the sacred text most especially that ofSaint Paul that truly constitutes the framework for histhought8 And it is with reference to Scripture that he triesto define clearly the notion of the Pneuma For him thePneuma is first of all the Divine Life in principle but it is alsothe shared divine life the creature itself becomes pneumain the measure that it possesses this life Yet it is a first kindof participation in the divine Pneuma which does not yetallow it to be said that man has become pneuma aparticipation that without betraying Origen we can alreadycall natural because it consists in an element that is anintegral part of the nature of all men and that is preciselyhis pneuma ldquoThe Spirit of God even when it is present inus is one thing and the pneuma proper to every man thatwhich is in him is something else The Apostle clearlyaffirms that this spirit (this pneuma) is different from theSpirit of God even when the Holy Spirit is present in usover and above the spirit of man that is in himrdquo9 The

distinction could not be put more clearly Origen asks againin the same passage of the commentary on Saint MatthewldquoIs the spirit of Elias the same as the Spirit of God whodwells in Elias or indeed do we have two different thingsthererdquo And he replies ldquoThe Apostle shows clearly that theSpirit of God when he dwells in man is distinct from thespirit of the man lsquoThe Spirit itself testifies to our spirit thatwe are children of Godrsquo (Rom 816) and in another placelsquoNo man knows what is in a man if not the spirit of the manwho is in him likewise no one knows what is in God if notthe Spirit of Godrsquo (1 Cor 211)rdquo10

Origen indeed says like Paul pneuma and not nous It isbecause they did not sufficiently distinguish between thesetwo concepts that several have identified the pneuma of theanthropological trichotomy with the preexisting nous andhave made it the higher (intellectus) part of the soulmdashunless in order better to distinguish between pneuma andpsyche they reduced this latter to its sensible part Theythen spoke of Origenrsquos imprecisions his unstableterminology indeed of his inconsistency of thought and ofhis contradictions This was from not having read himclosely enough11 He distinguishes the spirit from the soul(and in this case he is not speaking of the nous) as clearlyas he does the soul from the body and he repeats atdifferent times that ldquowe are composed of a soul and aspiritrdquo this is the case it seems in the third book of Periarchocircn12 so too in the fourth book in the famoustheoretical parallel that he institutes between man andScripture13 In the Entretien avec Heacuteraclite for theinstruction of his august audience he insists ldquoThat man is acomposite being we know through Scripture The Apostle infact says lsquoMay God make you holy spirit soul and bodyrsquoand so forth This spirit is not the Holy Spirit but one part ofthe human composite (μέϱος τής τοῦ ἀνθϱώ πουσυστάσεως) as the same Apostle teaches when he says

lsquoThe Spirit gives witness to our spiritrsquo rdquo14 In thecommentary on the Letter to the Romans he will also quotein support a text from Daniel15 here he invokes as anexample what happened at the death of Christ havingwanted to save all men the Savior had taken body soul andspirit now ldquothese three elements during the Passion wereseparated at the time of the Resurrection they werereunited During the Passion they were separated How Thebody in the tomb the soul in hell the spirit he deposited itin the hands of the Father rdquo16

This spirit of man represented by the eagle in Ezekiel17 isplaced above the soul18 But never in the texts of thetrichotomic series does Origen call it νοῦςmdashso that thiscould be a criterion for discerning the origin of certainpassages given as Origenian but which are in reality fromEvagrius19

But how are we to understand this spirit which is ldquoin usrdquo20 What is its role If we follow again the indications givenby the Apostle we will compare it to the moral conscienceldquoOur gloryrdquo says Paul ldquois the testimony of our consciencerdquo(2 Cor 112) The conscience always rejoices in what good Ido on the other hand it can never be accused of doing evilbut on the contrary it remonstrates it accuses the soul towhich it is bound this is a sovereign freedom I thereforethink that it is this very spirit that the Apostle tells us is withthe soul being associated with it like a pedagogue and aguide to teach it good to chastise it and to reprimand itwhen it sins It is this spirit of which the Apostle again saysthat ldquono one knows what the man is if not the spirit of theman who is in himrdquo it is the spirit of the conscience alsoaccording to what Paul says ldquoThe spirit himself giveswitness to our spiritrdquo21

We should not however in exalting the pneumaexcessively reduce its reality if it is not a simple member ofthe human composite neither is it the simple voice of the

conscience Inaccessible to evil22 placed in a way as wehave said ldquoabove the soulrdquo (ἀνωτέϱω) as a ldquoguide tovirtuerdquo23 it is ldquomuch more divine than the soul and thebodyrdquo24 ldquobelonging truly to man it remains entirely in aparticipation of the Holy Spirit who gives himself to us it isthe point of contact between man and the divine Pneumawho inhabits himrdquo25 This is why it is always holy it is holyby essence not of course the ldquoHoly Spiritrdquo but throughparticipation a ldquoholy spiritrdquo26 ldquothe seal of the Holy Spiritmakes holy the spirit that is in usrdquo27 in each of us Hencethe paradox the pneuma in man is holy and it mustbecome so we must affirm at the same time the holiness ofthis pneuma and ldquothe fortuitous character of a holy liferdquo28 Ifwe seek to bring out the fundamental idea expressed (let usnot say sought for Origen seems very much the master ofhis thought) in these texts and other similar ones we couldwithout betraying it express it thus the pneuma that is ldquoinmanrdquo in every man assures a certain hiddentranscendence of the man over himself a certain opening acertain received continuity between man and God Not thatthere is the least identity of essence between the one andthe other (like Irenaeus like Clement Origen is animplacable adversary of this pantheism of the pseudo-Gnostics) but it is at the heart of man the privileged placealways intact of their encounter

Would man therefore be after all impeccable No But thecenter of moral freedom and choice is not the pneuma Thatis why we can say that for Origen the pneuma ldquodivine giftrdquois not properly speaking part of the personality29 Thecenter of choice is the soul in its higher part (νοῦς) Thelatter can be inclined as Saint Paul says on the side of thespirit or on the side of the ldquofleshrdquo (which does not mean thebody) which is to say that it is ldquocapable of virtue and ofvicerdquo30 When it is said that the flesh desires against thespirit and the spirit against the flesh without any doubt the

soul is posed between the two as being able to acquiesceto the desires of the spirit (si eum sequi velit)31 or let itselfbe led to carnal desires in this latter case it becomes withthe flesh a single body of covetousness and of carnalappetite in the former case on the contrary beingassociated with the spirit it becomes a single spirit withitrdquo32 The spiritual man is the one in whom the spiritprevails33 the carnal man he in whom the flesh prevailsThe spirit itself the pneuma always remains holy but ineach one it can have vitality or torpor flight or fall flame orsluggishness34 This is why paradoxically Origen can affirmboth as we have said that the pneuma is holy and that itmust become so35

Still following Paul Origen also speaks of the ldquonaturalmanrdquo who is again neither carnal nor spiritual and theexplanation he gives in his respect manifests once again aparadoxical character distinguished only with difficulty fromthat spirit (pneuma) that is in man without being uniquely ofman and that becomes fully himself and fully completesman only in his participation in the Spirit of God ldquoThenatural man does not understand what the law of God is itis madness to him but the spiritual judges all thingsrdquo (1 Cor214) We think that there is a reason why Paul omits theword ldquomanrdquo after ldquospiritualrdquo For ldquothe spiritualrdquo is more thana man he is superior to that humanity defined by the soulthe body or by the two together and not by the spirit whichis more divine than these two elements and whosesupernatural participation once achieved defines thespiritual When the soul rises follows the spirit andseparates itself from the body when it no longer evencontents itself with following the spirit but remains in it (asthis passage shows ldquoToward you have I raised my soulrdquo Ps251) how would it not lose so to speak its own nature andnot itself become spirit36

Toward the end of this text a trace of the speculations ofPeri archocircn on the subject of the soul will be noted buttoned down by ldquoso to speakrdquo It is necessary toacknowledge however that from one work to the otheracross the succession of dates and the varieties of subjectstreated and literary genres the points of view are so diversethat in the words if not in the thought the reader has somedifficulty finding a perfect coherence among all theOrigenian texts on the pneuma

At death all pneuma returns to God this is whatEcclesiastes says ldquoThus the pneuma of the just and that ofthe sinner have an identical destiny both end at theFatherrdquo37 But ldquoit does not follow that saint and sinner sharethe same destiny With the saint the whole man enters intoGod with the sinner the pneuma returns to the Lord thesoul and body perish in Gehenna hence the intrinsic tearingof the human beingrdquo38 Like the remark by Father CrouzelOrigen is akin here to the thought of Saint Irenaeus whosaid ldquoAll those who are destined to life will be raised up withtheir bodies their souls and their spirits those who havemerited punishment will surrender their souls and theirbodies to it for with them they have strayed from divinegracerdquo39

Later Christian tradition will not be as unfaithful to thisconception of the pneuma as one might believe It is foundagain in a series of intuitions ideas and opinions of variedexpression This is for example the idea dear toRuysbroek of a certain ldquodeiformityrdquo of the human being ofhis higher ldquosuperessentialrdquo life in God40 It is the obscurefeeling that there exists in each of us even the greatestsinner a hidden room where no one but God can enter inldquothat sacred point in us that says Pater no iterrdquo as PaulClaudel says magnificently in the famous ldquoCantique dePalmyrerdquo and that cannot hide from love41 It is the intuitionof a Georges Bernanos at the threshold of death noting in

his diary that ldquosin makes us live on the surface of ourselvesrdquoand that even when we offend God ldquowe never ceaseentirely to desire what He desires in the depths of thesanctuary of our soulrdquo42 There are similar traits in the workof Dostoyevsky although they too can be rather equivocal(a novelist does not express himself like a theologian) theydo not prevent him from glorifying personal freedom andproclaiming the necessity of uprooting evil in receiving ldquonewbirthrdquo The Origenian doctrine of the pneuma alsoreverberates throughout the Bonaventurian tradition In atotally different climate and without any need to search fora precise influence from one to the other the very doctrineof Saint Thomas Aquinas would not be completely foreign tohim It questions neither the singularity of each humanbeing nor the drama of existence nor the divinetranscendence43

NOTE

In his commentary on John 423-24 Origen defines ldquotrueadorersrdquo first by the spirit then in relation to the truth Hethus breaks down the dual Johannine formula and explains itterm by term drawing his inspiration again from Paul whoopposes spirit and flesh (Rom 89 Gal 56 2 Cor 103) It isinteresting to note that in evoking Romans 89 Origen addsa μήϰετι those who are no longer in the flesh but in theldquospiritrdquo He thereby stresses the impact of the coming ofChrist and of the gift of the Spiritmdashalready evoked by Paulmdashwhich divide history into a before and an after Origen doesnot work therefore only on words (flesh and spirit) but heis inspired by the Pauline thought in which these terms arenot only anthropological but in which they evoke the impactthat the history of salvation the Incarnation and the gift ofthe Spirit have on man It is the same with Galatians 516fIn verse 18 Paul in fact opposes the condition of man underthe Spirit to that of this same man under the Law As for thethird evocation it is a little different Paul speaks there of hisconduct because some accuse him of acting according tothe flesh that is of allowing himself to be guided bymotives that are too human (Jean-Michel Poffet OP ldquoLeMeacutethode exeacutegeacutetique drsquoHeacuteracleacuteon et drsquoOrigegravenecommentateurs de Jean 4rdquo Jeacutesus la Samaritaine et lesSamaritains [Fribourg Switzerland Eacuteditions Universitaires1985] 191) III From Origen to Augustine A few examplesshould be enough to show the continuity of this tripartiteanthropology across the patristic age

Cyril of Jerusalem addresses to the newly baptized thesame wish that Paul did to the Thessalonians1 Gregory ofNyssa in his treatise on the Creation of Man practices acertain eclecticism Following the perspective that isnaturally his own since he compares the nature of man to

that of the beings that surround him and particularly ofother living beings he begins by distinguishing a threefoldactivity merely vital (that of plants) sentient (that ofbeasts) rational these are like three souls or threesubstances all three of which are found in man alone Thevocabulary is that of the philosophical ϰοινή of that periodthe higher life of man is λογιϰή it is directed by the νοῦςhis nature is a νοεϱά ϕύσις But this can also be understoodsays Gregory according to the words that the Apostleaddressed to the Ephesians (sic) First of all through a boldconcordism he places the body in an equivalence with thenutritive life the soul with the sensate life the spirit(πνεῦμα) with the intellectual life (νοεϱόν) then withoutfurther hesitation and without seeming to perceive that heis changing the perspective he finds once again the truePauline thought or at least comes close to it bydistinguishing life according to the flesh (σαϱϰιϰή) from lifeaccording to the spirit (πνευματιϰή) and by showing thesoul in an intermediary situation having to choose betweenvice and virtue2 Farther on he will explain that only thesoul endowed with reason such as it is in man fully meritsthis name of soul in such a way that he would haverejected it seems any attempt at concordism between theνοῦς and the πνεῦμα3

It is not Hellenism but indeed the Bible that inspires thetrichotomy of the Syrian tradition such as we see it in thishymn of Saint Ephraim of Nisibis For the soul is still moreprecious than the bodyAnd the spirit is still more precious than the soul

And the Divinitymore hidden than the spiritThe body will be clothed with the beauty of the soul when

the end arrives

The soul will put onthe beauty of the spiritThe spirit will put on in its very image the (divine) MajestyThe body on equal footing with the soul will see itself

elevated The soul on equal footing with the spiritThe spirit at the height where the Majesty is 4

In another later Syrian text the awkwardness of an attemptat harmonization between the three elements of man andthe three Persons of the divine Trinity will be noted JacquesdrsquoEacutedesse (d 708) writes in his Explanation of the MassldquoSacred things are holy The soul the body and the reasonare sanctified by three sacred things by water blood andspirit and besides by the Father the Son and the Spirit andtruly man does resemble God in virtue of this trinity ofcomposition the soul corresponds to the Father the body tothe corporeality of the Son and the reason to the HolySpirit Thereby man thus resembles Godrdquo5 One cannevertheless wonder if the word translated by ldquoreasonrdquo isnot here the equivalent of nous rather than of pneuma andif the soul is not merely the sensate soul The same doubtcan be expressed with respect to a passage from theTestament in Galilee of Our Lord Jesus Christ of which wehave the text in Ethiopian ldquoShould the body be judged withthe soul and the spirit Will the body of every man berevived with his living soul and his spiritrdquo6 We will find asimilar hesitation in examining the Latin tradition andperhaps one must say in certain cases at least it cannot beresolved

Saint Ambrose writes on the one hand ldquoHomo ex animarationali constat et corporerdquo7 but also on the other handldquoPrimum unusquisque homo est corporalis secundoanimalis tertio spiritualisrdquo and the parallel he institutesbetween these three elements and the three heavens towhich Saint Paul alludes in the Second Letter to the

Corinthians does not enlighten us much about the meaningof this trichotomy8 Ambrose is not alone in any case inacknowledging it We read in Gregory of Elvira ldquoManifestumest enim tribus perfectum constare semimortalemhominem id est corpore et anima et spiriturdquo9 AndAugustine expresses himself in a similar way on severaloccasions10

In reality Augustinersquos vocabulary is rather evasive Theterm mens as we know holds a privileged place in his workIn De Trinitate he develops a distinction destinedsubsequently to become more rigid that between ratioinferior and ratio superior In commenting on Psalm 3 verse4 ldquoet exaltans caput meumrdquo he explains that this ldquocaputanimaerdquo is the ldquospiritusrdquo or the ldquomensrdquo and so on11

Certain texts which have the appearance of explicitdefinitions speak of two single elements as constitutive ofman ldquoHomo enim constat ex corpore et spiriturdquo12 ldquoNihil estin homine quod ad ejus substantiam pertineat atquenaturam praeter corpus et animam totus homo hoc estspiritus et carordquo13 Yet Augustine does not consider the twowords anima and spiritus to be simply synonyms althoughfor brevityrsquos sake he includes in only one of the two thecomplex meaning of both ldquoNomen animae spiritus est abeo quod spiritalis est animae nomen est ab eo quodcorpus animet hoc est vivificetrdquo14 From which we have acertain number of explicitly trichotomic texts which are ofgreat importance for a correct understanding of Augustiniananthropology for it is on this trichotomy that Augustinebases his doctrine of the memoria15 and he gives it asessential to the Catholic Faith ldquoSi quis tenuerit catholicamfidem ut totum hominem credat a Verbo Dei essesusceptum id est corpus animam spiritum rdquo16

In the same De fide et symbolo Augustine explainshimself at somewhat greater length ldquoEt quoniam tria suntquibus homo constat spiritus anima et corpusmdashquae

rursus duo sunt quia saepe anima simul cum spiritunominatur pars enim quaedam ejusdem rationalis quacarent bestiae spiritus diciturmdashprincipale nostrum spiritusest deinde vita qua conjungimur corpori anima diciturpostremo ipsum corpus quoniam visibile est ultimumnostrum est Anima vero cum carnalia bona appetit caronominatur rdquo17 we also quote several similar texts ldquoUttotus homo sit spiritus et anima et corpus sed aliquandoduo ista simul nomine animae nuncupari rdquo18 ldquoPropterspiritum et animam et corpus rdquo19 ldquoAd creaturaeintegritatem id est spiritum et animam et corpus et illudquo intelligimus et illud quo vivimus et illud quo visibiles etcontrectabiles sumusrdquo20

In De fide et symbolo at the same time as hedistinguishes anima from spiritus Augustine identifiesspiritus and mens21 Likewise too he distinguishes theldquopars rationalisrdquo of the soul (which is thus no longer only theanimator of the body as in animals) from the ldquopars quaeexcellit id est ipsa mensrdquo22 It is practically the lastdistinction expressed in De Trinitate by the seeminglyequivalent words ratio inferior and ratio superior23

In brief the anthropological analyses of Saint Augustineare varied H I Marrou has set up a table which does notintend to be exhaustive24 and it must be noted besides thatunder the same word under the same verbal distinction ithappens that Augustine places different realities On thewhole less dependent on a literal interpretation ofScripture and more particularly of Saint Paul than Origenwished to be25 more inclined to express himself in avocabulary borrowed in part from Neoplatonism Augustineplaces under the word spiritus a reality that sometimesmore closely resembles the nous of Greek philosophythan the pneuma of the sacred text Yet through the dualityhe recognizes within this spiritus (or this ratio or this mens)he remains a faithful witness of the Christian tradition

3 From Saint Augustine to Our Day

I Medieval Spiritual Masters In Augustine as in Origen (andas in the whole patristic tradition) the notions are fluid the

historian must strive to grasp the movement of theirthought rather than to classify their concepts Augustinianexplanations moreover do not correspond point by pointwith Origenian analyses The Christian spiritual masters ofthe Middle Ages will rather often be in this regard closer to

Origen than to Augustine In order not to interpret them in asimplistic way it is necessary constantly to bring analogy

into play Perhaps even the undertaking to reunite them in akind of continuous chain extending to our time is a little

too reminiscent of concordism Let us say finally thatspiritus is not only designated or understood in variousways with some it splits so that one has to deal rather

with a quadripartite anthropology one of the causes for thisis the desire to make a place for the Platonian tradition ofthe intelligence a tradition that is amalgamated somehowor other to the Pauline tradition It is having made these

remarks that we gather together the examples that follow

For John Scotus man is composed of three elements butthe third element called in turn animus intellectus or mensresembles the νοῦς more than the πνεῦμα We read in book5 of De divisione naturae ldquoTotam humanam naturamcorpus videlicet et animam et intellectumrdquo (PL 122 910-11)But another text in book 2 chapter 5 expresses aconception closer to the biblical conception ldquoAciem mentisqua ilium [Deum] intelligimus et in qua maxime imagocreatoris condita estrdquo (PL 122 531 c)1

The traditional trichotomy dominates the structure ofBernardrsquos Brevis Commentatio on the Song of Songs (n 1)In William of Saint Thierry the third term the ldquospiritrdquo splitseither in order to grant a certain place to the nous to theintellectus to rational understanding or rather in order todetail the principal stages of the spiritual life The Letter tothe Brethren at Mont Dieu that important text distinguishesa triplex status animalismdashrationalismdashspiritualis which is tosay ldquothose beginningrdquo ldquothose on the wayrdquo and ldquotheperfectrdquo The opposition between the flesh and the spirit isnot denied William will be able to remind those who havingbegun to taste the sweetness of contemplation might betempted to neglect the permanent necessity of spiritualcombat2 But rather than this dialectical opposition theobject of the Letter is to set forth a pedagogical ladderwhich is moreover nonetheless Pauline in its inspirationThe beginners are still guided by an animalis sensus (this isthe natural man of Saint Paul which is not the carnal man)those on the way acquire a rationalis scientia (we observehere the care to integrate into the formation of the monkthe whole cycle of human knowledge) and the perfect enjoyspiritualis sapientia3 In addition these are not threeairtight categories or perfectly distinct and successivestages just as there is passage from one to the other thereis immanence from one to the other William remains faithfulto the same schema in Miroir de la foi4 as well as in hiscommentaries on the Song of Songs ldquotres status esseorantium vel orationum animalem rationalemspiritualemrdquo5 In De contemplando Deo a subdivisionintervenes between the ratio the discursive faculty andthe intellectus which does not seem to be at this point theequivalent of the spiritus (1 4)

Isaac of Stella speaks in nearly the same way in alanguage however that has more of an intellectualist ringto it in distinguishing the understanding from the reason

which abstracts the forms of the sensate vis animae quaimmediate supponitur Deo6 We have the feeling that thissecond-generation Cistercian was familiar withScholasticism

Hugh of Saint Victor is closer than Isaac to Bernard andWilliam of Saint Thierry According to him the eye of theflesh (which is to say here the body) sees the world andwhat it contains the eye of the reason sees the soul andwhat it contains but the eye of contemplation penetrates tothe innermost depths of man and above man This eye ofcontemplation belongs to those who possess the spirit ofGod7 In Achard of Saint-Victor the order of the last twoelements or of the last two stages seems reversed hetreats de discretione animae spiritus et mentis mens wasas another author of the twelfth century says quasiquoddam divinitatis insigne8 (But this is hardly a questionof vocabulary alone) Whatever might be the distinctionsand subdistinctions orientations inflections and differencesin vocabulary it can be said of all these spiritual masters ofthe Middle Ages as well as of many of those who will followthat they took up the essential chorus of the Pauline andpatristic trichotomy and that most even attribute extremeimportance to it as Sandaeus a seventeenth-centuryauthority was to remark

Magni aestimant Mystici nonnulli et putant maxime necessariam ad suamTheologiam ac perfectionem divisionem inter spiritum et animam9

This is also true of Bonaventure ldquoHabet enim anima trespotentias animalem intellectualem divinam secundumtriplicem oculum carnis rationis contemplationisrdquo10 Werecognize the schema of William of Saint Thierry and Hughof Saint Victor11 For Thomas Gallus closer in this regard toIsaac of Stella ldquoreason feels the intelligence seesrdquo12

Johannes Tauler in several of his sermons teaches thatldquoman is so to speak composed of three menrdquo and that one

must distinguish in him first of all an ldquoexternal manrdquo orldquoanimal manrdquo then a ldquoreasonable manrdquo finally a ldquohigherman wholly inner and hiddenrdquo that ldquonoble and deiformrdquoman ldquomade in the image of Godrdquo13 The mystical theologyof Harphius (Henry Herp) also says that ldquothe soul isaccording to Scripture divided into three parts rdquo14 andthe appeal to Scripture despite the appearance is justifiedFor our authors in fact the adding of a supplementary termto the Pauline enumeration does not derive from the factthat they would abandon Paul in favor of Plato but from thefact that they are concerned besides about a theory ofknowledge which Paul did not at all have in view in hisaddress to the Thessalonians Yet La Perle eacutevangeacutelique leadsus to a tripartite schema the body being understood as inPaul but at base the difference from the medieval authorswe have just enumerated is hardly perceptible

Each man seems almost to represent three men according to the body heis bestial according to the soul he is reasonable and intellectual andaccording to the spirit or the naked essence of the soul where God dwellshe is deiform 15This very noble portion of the soul some call mens insofar as itcontinually breathes after God and is as it were a largely deiform or divinething and the image of God in man It is something divine in being as itwere flooded with God and united to him It is also called the point and thesummit of the spirit because God without intermission shines in the latterlike a mirror It is also according to what the good Father Ruysbroek saysthe highest part of the soul It is also called the sparkle of the soulbecause it is in God what the sparkle is in fire In the first [unity or union] we are superessential and deiform and in thesecond spiritual and internal and in the third active and moral 16

The foregoing is the text of a compiler from which one mustnot ask too great a coherence in terminology or too great aunity in point of view If we now appeal to a theologian whowas the adversary of the mystical school represented byTauler Harphius and La Perle eacutevangeacutelique and who refers tomore reliable authors such as Augustine ldquoBernardrdquo andHugh he will give us the same essential distinctions

Tres cognoscendi modi sunt quorum unus animalis dicitur utens maximeoculo carnis alius rationalis utens plus oculo rationis tertius spiritualisutens oculo contemplationis sicut distinxerunt divini homines tres oculoset tres vivendi modos17

Louis de Blois finally in the Institution spirituelleperseveres in bringing out this ldquodepth of the soulrdquo thatunder different names always corresponds to the ldquoPaulinepneumardquo and that will not find a place in the late Scholasticanthropologies or in most modern anthropologies

God who to tell the truth is everywhere dwells in the spirit of man and inthe simple depth or inner sanctuary of the soul in a particular manner Hedwells there in his own image and never absents himself18This depth naked and stripped of any image is raised above all creatures it transcends time and place and through a kind of perpetual adhesionremains united to God in his principle It is however in us by essence forthe abyss and depth of the soul are essence The soul possesses a certain supernatural unity of spirit in which itdwells as in its own habitation and it is carried away into the divineessence even to this supreme unity in which the Father Son and Holy Spiritare in the simplicity of the divine essence itself 19

Assuredly these speculations about the divine essencemdasheven if they maintain a trinitarian affirmationmdashand aboutthe essence of man presuppose a long evolution of thoughtthat in one sense distances us greatly from Saint Paul Butacross languages theories and as one never stops sayingtoday cultural contexts that differ greatly to be sure it ispossible to discern a fundamental continuity

This continuity will not be broken by the period called theRenaissance

II Saint Thomas Aquinas in Tradition1

I

In the spiritual history of mankind the three domainsconstituted by what one can designate under the threedenominations of religion morality and mysticism are oftenpresented as independent or even opposed to each otherThe alliance or the mutual penetration between mysticismand morality does not appear achieved in and of itself anymore than that between morality and religion Yet one couldnot conclude that such an alliance or such a mutualpenetration is an artificial and wholly contingentphenomenon In opposition to an empiricism thatdisintegrates everything without explaining anything wewill say rather that it responds if not to the demands atleast to the profound wish of nature But nature itself hastaken time in finding itself

In fact we note that it has not fully found itself outside theChristian revelation The union of the three aforementionedelements religion2 morality and mysticism does not reachits fullness it does not become harmonious and indissolublein principle except in the tradition coming from the GospelThere and most specifically in the Catholic form of thistradition it does not appear as a secondary fact obtainedby convergence subsequent to various gropings but as anoriginal and essential fact Religion morality and mysticismmanifest themselves there ldquoin a reciprocal envelopmentrdquoBetween these three both an attraction and a tension existthat could be the source of many vital problems but there isobjectively neither separation exclusion nor conflict forldquothe Deity while transcending being the true and the goodcontains them formallyrdquo3

This is why in particular in the Catholic traditionmdashlivedand reflectedmdashldquoreasonablerdquo life and ldquospiritualrdquo life or lifeldquoaccording to the spiritrdquo penetrate each other without beingidentified with each other4 and morality penetrates themystical life to the end Pseudo-Gnosticism relegated therewarding of good and punishing of evil those pillars of theldquoDemiurgerdquo to the lower level of ldquoexotericrdquo faith the greattradition on the contrary maintains this moral aspect ldquoatthe heart of the revelation of the Father through the uniqueSonrdquo5 ldquoIt is notrdquo says Saint Justin for example ldquobecause ofhis [natural] affinity with God or because he is spirit like himthat man sees God it is because he is virtuous and justrdquo6 Inhis Psychologie des mystiques Joseph Marechal noted thisessential characteristic Mystical ascent he explains doesnot erase ldquoany specific trait of the common Christian liferdquo7In other words the Christian virtues proposed for thepractice of all are not simply means of freeing oneself theirexercise is not simply something transitory in theirsubstance they are already something of the end itself Thisis what Saint Ambrose was able to explain wonderfully in abrief sentence in his commentary on Saint Luke withrespect to the Beatitudes ldquoSicut enim spei nostrae octavaperfectio est ita octava summa virtutum estrdquo8 And this iswhat Saint Augustine repeated in similar terms speaking ofadhesion to God the blessed life and eternal wisdom ldquoUnaibi virtus erit et idipsum erit virtus praemiumque virtutisrdquo9

In a remarkable thesis Pierre Nemeshegyi has posed thesame problem with respect to Origen ldquoTo place Being andmoral Goodness in equation to place this moral Goodnessin God formally and as characterizing the final ground of hisBeingmdashis this not to be condemned to enclosing all spirituallife in an anti-mystical moralism The Good is atranscendental But is it formally what we understand byldquomoral Goodrdquo Or is there not a deepening of this moralGoodness which would reestablish the possibility of an

innermost mystical depthrdquo And Nemeshegyi concludes ldquoInfact in Origenrsquos conception moralism and mysticism areone and the same thingrdquo10 Saint Gregory the Great oftenso close to Origen will unite good sense to spiritual fervor inorder to remind contemplatives that if they want to befaithful to the Gospels and to advance on the true way theymust take care to scorn the humble precepts of morality andto seek to understand them in a more sublime sense11

The medieval spiritual masters will take up again thesethoughts of Origen Ambrose Augustine and GregoryExpressing ourselves in the customary categories of theirexegesis which the Middle Ages systematized we will saythat for them ldquoanagogyrdquo achieves the final perfection bothof ldquoallegoryrdquo and of ldquotropologyrdquo (of dogma and ofmorality)12 Of all authentically Catholic mysticism onecould declare what one historian said of Saint Bernard byallusion to the traditional interpretation of the ldquoBooks ofSolomonrdquo for each of them as for him ldquothe moral school ofEcclesiasticus and Proverbs the necessary preliminary forthe mystical school of the Song of Songs is a school whosedoors are never closed behind usrdquo13

This ldquospiritualrdquo equilibrium has at times seemedthreatened in one direction or another Some spiritualscholars have seemed to want to transcend purely andsimply the sphere of morality and reason This is whatcauses Evagrius not without reason to be judged severelyat times it is what Ruysbroek reproaches in the falsemystics of his time it is one of the points that the bull Inagro of John XXII criticizes in Meister Eckhart Whatever mayhave been true in each of these cases the thing thatinterests us here is the norm that inspired such criticismsWhile following Saint Paul in distinguishing the ldquosoulrdquo fromthe ldquospiritrdquo (not moreover as two substances nor even astwo ldquofacultiesrdquo) one always refuses to separate them as ifthe penetration into the higher zone of the ldquospiritrdquo must

make us reject as no longer valid the operations of theinferior zone of the ldquosoulrdquo But the hierarchical distinction ismaintained which is to say that the mystical life is not forall that reduced to the plane of simple morality A text fromSaint Teresa is very enlightening here the saint observesthat the ldquocenter of the soulrdquo or the ldquospirit of the soulrdquo is aldquodifficult thing to express and even to believerdquo

Certain interior effects give the certitude that there is in certain respectsa very real difference between the soul and the spirit Although in realitythey are but one we sometimes perceive a division between them that isso delicate that it seems the one functions in one way and the other inanother There are so many things in our innermost depths and thingsso subtle that it would be boldness on my part to undertake to explainthem We will understand all that in the other life if God deigns toadmit us to the dwelling where we will have understanding of all thesesecrets14

Yet the equilibrium can be upset in the opposite directionfrom that for which Evagrius and Meister Eckhart werereproached This has been true periodically for anti-mysticalscholars or simply anti-mystics against whom periodicallytoo protests are raised With them it is not the ldquosoulrdquo thatis forgotten or scorned in the name of the superior ldquospiritrdquoit is the ldquospiritrdquo that is ignored misunderstood in the nameof a truncated moral wisdom But with any of the greatscholars of the Catholic tradition we do not have to registerany such misunderstanding This is what we would wish todemonstrate here with respect to Saint Thomas Aquinasand more particularly with respect to the Summatheologica

II

From first appearances one might be brought to believethat Saint Thomas in the Summa is one of those scholarswho upset the equilibrium in the second direction But in

reality he did nothing of the sort His doctrine in the Summatheologica contains in fact the equivalent of what othershave expressed through the distinction of soul and spiritunderstood as the distinction of a moral region and amystical region If one does not observe this right at thebeginning it is because Saint Thomas expresses himself indifferent words

It could be written that in his doctrine ldquoall the problemsthat the spiritual life and its evolution pose return in thisconsideratio moralis which has but one object man inprogress toward his blessed destinyrdquo15 The thing isincontestable Still it might be useful to specify how Nomore in Saint Thomas than in others is the union of the twomoral and spiritual (or ldquomysticalrdquo) elements a confusion or areduction pure and simple from the mystical to the moralThe synthesis is not a unification in the exclusive favor ofone of the two Of course one could judge that the Thomistanthropology by its Aristotelian roots favors the originalityof the mystical life less than others And like the virtue ofldquoreligionrdquo the theological virtues seem at first glance mixedin a long list of ldquovirtuesrdquo within the second part of theSumma It is appropriate nevertheless to remark beforeseeing things at closer range that only a later usage givesthis second part the name ldquomoralrdquo After having in the firstpart considered God as the universal cause Saint Thomasconsiders him now as end after the divine model he clingsto his image after the departure of God from all things heenvisages the return of all things to God Nowmdashthis is theimportant point for our subjectmdashthis itinerary of returncomprises several stages

It is true that the prologue to the Secunda secundaespeaks of scientia moralis of materia moralis and that allseems right at first to be reduced to the consideratiovirtutum But let us look a little closer In this sameprologue as in the articles that follow Saint Thomas

nonetheless distinguishes from the virtutes morales notonly the virtutes theologicae but also the virtutesintellectuales which are along with prudence wisdomunderstanding and knowledge closely connected to thegifts of the Holy Spirit of the same name Moreover afterhaving exhausted the plan he had outlined for ldquoomittingnothing of moral thingsrdquo by studying successively thevirtues and the vices that are opposed to them heconsiders in a kind of extension a series of new questionsrelated first of all to ldquoprophecyrdquo to ldquorapturerdquo and othergratuitous gifts then to the ldquocontemplative liferdquo a series heattaches a little artificially one must admit to the sectionon the different states of life

This artifice has sometimes embarrassed commentatorswho do not always understand the articulations that theplan of the Summa comprises here Thus we have Father MD Chenu who has the ldquotreatise on the states of liferdquo beginat question 183 starting from where ldquothe spiritual life islinked to social functionsrdquo16 The thing seems in fact ratherlogical Yet Saint Thomas himself said in his littleintroduction to question 171 ldquoDe prophetiardquo

Postquam dictum est de singulis virtutibus et vitiis quae pertinent adomnium hominum conditiones et status nunc considerandum est de hisquae specialiter ad aliquos homines pertinent

So Father Antoine Lemonnyer had adopted a differentsolution from that of Father Chenu He saw in questions 171to 198 concerning the gratuitous gifts a kind of parenthesisand made the final treatise of the Secunda secundae beginfrom question 179 which is to say from the ldquocontemplativeliferdquo he gave a certain unity to this final treatise thanks tothis single yet twofold title ldquoHuman Life Its Forms and ItsStatesrdquo17

The divisions adopted respectively by Father Chenu andFather Lemonnyer both have their probability and both can

be supported In fact however as Father Chenu remarkedSaint Thomas treats the states of life properly onlybeginning with question 183 entitled ldquoDe officiis et statibushominum in generalirdquo But already before that questions171 to 182 form a whole very distinct from the precedingquestions in which we have the equivalent of a littletreatise on mysticism

Even if he did not treat explicitly at that time the relationsbetween active life and contemplative life18 the placeaccorded by Saint Thomas to this latter in his general planwould thus authorize us to distinguish it from the domain ofmorality He himself besides tells us so in proper termsldquoThe moral virtues are not a constitutive element of thecontemplative liferdquo19 in fact ldquothey are ordained toactionrdquo20 Now action is inferior to contemplation The latteris ldquosimpliciter meliorrdquo21 Action prepares for contemplationby winning the soul through the external exercise of thevirtues the necessary ldquopreliminary dispositionsrdquo bydisciplining the passions and by submitting them to thereason22 Contemplation is the act of the ldquohigher reasonrdquowhich is to the inferior reason following an old biblical andPhilonic symbolism revived and slightly transformed23 asthe man is to the woman24 It is ordained to ldquoperfect loverdquoand as Saint Gregory taught while the active life issynonymous with service the contemplative life issynonymous with freedom25 As Aristotle had alreadyaffirmedmdashbut we know with what freedom Saint Thomaschanged and transformed the thought of the philosophereven while he invoked him as an authority26mdashit is a lifeabove the human condition27 and is made to last always28

No more than any other of the great witnesses of theChristian tradition did Saint Thomas reduce the spiritual lifeto the exercise of morality or spiritual understanding torationality Father Pierre Rousselot too neglected today (atleast in France) demonstrated this well by placing in

evidence the distinction between intellectus and ratio afundamental distinction with numerous consequences29mdashBut neither does he separate them on the one hand as anauthentic heir of the Fathers he integrates the virtuous lifeinto eternal life by saying ldquoUniuscujusque perfectio nihilaliud est quam participatio divinae similitudinisrdquo30 And onthe other hand he knows that in the earthly conditionexternal action which is first of all the virtuous life mustitself proceed from contemplation

The comparison with the Plotinian philosophy or with theldquoagnosticsrdquo can in this regard be very enlightening becauseof the apparent proximity of the doctrines

In a parallel way one would find in Christianity [says Jean Trouillard on thissubject] a going beyond ethics by the theological virtues and the gifts ofthe Holy Spirit The Christian life consists in divinization not in ascesis Yetthe role of the will seems much more considerable in Christians than in thePlotinians not only in charity but also in faith which is itself presented as aduty Theologians do not ordinarily situate the theological virtues on theother side of the decisions of the faculties or on this side of the constitutedvalues This is what must not be forgotten when faced with the use of theNeoplatonic doctrine of virtues attempted by Christian authors inparticular by Saint Thomas (1a 2ae q 61 a 5)31

And again Maurice de GandillacPlotinus harshly criticizes the Gnostics who believe that by ldquoraisingoneself near to God on wings of a dreamrdquo (2 9 9) one escapes the humancondition According to the fragments of Heracles (Legrand 315) Mosesthe author of the Law belongs to the ldquonaturalrdquo world Superior to purematter however he ignores the spirit By proscribing by judging bypunishing he fulfills an inferior ministry and the ldquoperfectrdquo are in no waysubject to his commandments Pure at the beginning they are savedwithout exercise as without repentance and without pardon Thispresumption will be the common gospel for all the sectarians who across the Middle Ages will preach a ldquogoing beyond the ethicalrdquo32

We should not let the differences in emphasis from oneauthor to another or from one school to another hide fromus therefore the consistent thought of the Christiantradition Already in someone like Origen the union is

achieved between ldquoa resolutely contemplative religiousideal and a passionately active liferdquo33 For Saint Gregory theGreat to whom Thomas Aquinas refers the whole spirituallife is subject to a rhythm and ldquotrue perfection begins tomature only in the difficulties and obstacles of the activeliferdquo34 Medieval monasticism did not scorn Martha in thename of Mary it maintained that action must be joined tocontemplation or the ldquopracticerdquo to the ldquotheoryrdquo a little likelove of neighbor to the love of God35 The two inseparableaspects of the Christian doctrine on this subject will onceagain be expressed very well in the reflections of John HenryNewman still an Anglican preaching on ldquoevangelicalsanctity the completion of natural virtuerdquo Newman in factshows in this sermon that there is ldquoan essentialresemblance between the spiritual man and the virtuousmanrdquo following the words of Saint Paul ldquoThe fruit of theSpirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truthrdquomdashwhiledrawing the attention of his listeners to ldquothe point ofdifference between them viz that the Christian graces arefar superior in rank and dignity to the moral virtuesrdquo36

Moral perfection and holiness virtuous life and mystical lifeare distinct they are hierarchical but at the same time theyare united in charity forma virtutum vinculum perfectionis

III Renaissance and Reformation Nicholas of Cusa takes upthe Pauline trichotomy again in the same terms as the

Apostle He places it in correspondence with on the onehand a cosmic trichotomy and on the other hand what isperhaps unexpected the three Persons of the Trinity He

uses Saint Augustine as his authority for both thesecorrespondences

We read in fact in one of his Sermons ldquoIn homine suntspiritus anima et corpus sicut in mundo elementalia vitaliaet intellectualiardquo1 and in his opuscule the Beryl he

distinguishes ldquothree modes of knowledge the sensate theintellectual and the intelligentialrdquo which he sayscorrespond according to Saint Augustine to the threeldquoheavensrdquo2 That was the cosmic analogy And for thetrinitarian analogy set forth in the work De Concordantiacatholica

Unde homo secundum Augustinum Super symbolo (40 193-94) ad instarTrinitatis imaginem gerens ex spiritu et anima et corpore constitutusexsistit Spiritus autem est superior nobilior et altior intellectualispersonae Patris figuram repraesentans et corpus personam Filii et animaquasi utriusque naturam participans ab utroque procedens personamSpiritus sancti3

Taking up his position like Nicholas of Cusa from the pointof view of knowledge Marsilio Ficino distinguishes thesensus the ratio and the intellectus We recognize in thatthe heritage of the great Scholasticism In a similar mannerin the prologue of his Heptaplus Giovanni Pico dellaMirandola distinguishes the vital instinct discursive andpractical knowledge and the contemplative faculty4 Moreimportant is the twofold witness here in agreement ofErasmus and Luther

In his famous Enchiridion militis christiani Erasmus whotakes his inspiration directly from Saint Paul ldquoends finally ina tripartite anthropology which finds its completion in thegift of the Spiritrdquo5 After having in chapters 4 and 5 spokenof man such as Plato describes him first according to theTimaeus then according to the Phaedo Phaedrus and theRepublic and recalled his distinction of the soul asreasonable irascible and concupiscible Erasmus describesin chapter 6 the Pauline opposition between the flesh andthe spirit then he comes in chapter 7 to the trichotomy of1 Thessalonians which he comments on with reference toOrigen ldquoHe does not hiderdquo observes Charles Beacuteneacute ldquohispleasure in setting forth this theory lsquoLibet et Origenicamhominis sectionem breviter referrersquo rdquo He sees it based as

well on Isaiah (299) and on Daniel (386) so he adopts it inorder to make it intervene ldquoas a definitive stage after theanalyses of pagan philosophersrdquo to serve ldquoas anintroduction to the great rules of Christianityrdquo6 With Origenhe sees in the soul this ldquomedian partrdquo of the human beingwhich can swing either to the side of the flesh or to the sideof the spirit7 In the Methodus or Ratio verae theologiae asimilar text recalls our trichotomy indirectly ldquoNec omnisaffectus hominis est caro sed est qui dicitur anima et quidicitur spiritus quo nitimur ad honestardquo8 But it isparticularly in the controversy with Luther about free willthat Erasmus opposes to the exclusivism of his adversaryhypnotized by the sole dialectic of the flesh and the spiritthe divine pedagogy explained by Origen according to thePauline schema

Luther himself paradoxically had provided a commentaryin his own manner with respect to the first words of theMagnificat (1520) on the text of 1 Thessalonians and hismanner did not differ perceptibly from so many of theothers we have seen

ldquoMy soul glorifies the Lordrdquo Scripture divides man into three partswhen Paul says at the end of 1 Thessalonians ldquoMay God make youholy through and through in such a way that all your spirit and your souland your body rdquo And each of these partsmdashlike the entire man mdashisequally divided in another way concerning not nature but quality In otherwords nature has three parts spirit soul and body all three of which canbe good or bad The first part the spirit is the highest the mostprofound the most noble part of man it is what makes him capable ofgrasping imperceptible invisible and eternal things In brief it is the housewhere faith and the word of God dwell The second part the soul isexactly the same spirit according to nature but accomplishes a differentfunction It is the spirit insofar as it animates the body and acts through it Its proper role consists in grasping the things that reason can knowand probe 9

As for the third term the body its function is to ldquoactrdquo and toldquoput into practice the knowledge of the soul and the faith of

the spiritrdquo As Maurice de Gandillac observes here the bodyhas nothing to do with ldquomirerdquo And by adopting such atripartition of the human being (which is not at all to beunderstood we repeat as a division of three ldquofacultiesrdquo)Luther envisages the human subject as Saint Paul and afterhim the whole of Christian tradition have done ldquoin aperspective that is more biblical than Greekrdquo10 The relativeassimilation that he works between the soul and the spirit isthe echo of a common Scholasticism and the fruit of aninflection toward the point of view of knowledge which wasnot that of Saint Paul in his address to the Thessalonians butin no way contradicts it Of these two characteristics thepreceding centuries have already brought us many anexample11

Like his predecessors Luther thus maintains the threefoldgradation which he also develops through a traditionalimage

We will give a simile for that drawn from Scripture Moses made atabernacle with three different edifices The first edifice was calledsanctum sanctorum it was the dwelling of God and there was no lightfrom within The other sanctum contained a chandelier with sevenbranches and lights The third was called atrium the parvis it was locatedin the open air in the light of the sun This figure depicts the Christian Hisspirit is sanctum sanctorum the dwelling of God in the night (stripped oflight) of faith for he believes what he neither sees nor senses norunderstands His soul is the sanctum there are found the seven lights towit all kinds of understanding discernment science and knowledge ofcorporal and visible things His body is atrium it is manifest for all in sucha way that one can see what he does and how he lives12

It is necessary however to recognize that this trichotomydid not have for Luther an importance comparable to hisdialectical opposition between the flesh and the spirit InSaint Paul from before the commentary on the Magnificathe had been selective the lessons on the Letter to theRomans (1515-1516) were already setting up an oppositionbetween the flesh and the spirit without anthropological

reference to any subject whatever13 and later in hiscontroversy with Erasmus he was to prove all the morehostile to the anthropology drawn from 1 Thessalonians 5 byhis adversary whom the latter guided by Origen used toweaken his dialectic He writes in De servo arbitrio

I am well aware of Origenrsquos fable about the threefold affection of man offlesh soul and spirit14 the soul holding the middle between the flesh andthe spirit and able to turn either toward the one or toward the other Butthis is dreaming he says them but does not prove them at all Saint Paulcalls flesh everything that is without spirit as we have demonstrated15

Luther does not formally contradict here what he had said inthe commentary on the Magnificat What he reproaches inOrigen as in Erasmus is believing in free will But thispreoccupation leads him to falsify their anthropology andthereby to forget or to misunderstand the Pauline verse thathe had first interpreted correctly To which in his enormoussecond Hyperaspistes Erasmus will reply several times overthat the tripartition of 1 Thessalonians 5 even ifcounterparts are found in the philosophers is proper toSaint Paul The philosophers in fact do not usually call thehighest part of the human being spiritus (pneuma) butmens or ratio and what Paul understands by spiritus is notany ratio whatever but the ratio already inspired by graceThat he concludes is what Luther does not want torecognize As often happens the discussion in whichErasmus finds himself involved leads him himself to apartially inaccurate interpretation of Saint Paulrsquos text bymaking him attribute to the ldquospiritrdquo what Paul says of ldquothespiritual manrdquo Yet it remains true that he had first analyzedperfectly the address of the Apostle to the Thessaloniansand Luther had at first done the same16

Lutheran mysticism at least in the rather unorthodoxSebastien Frank (1499-1542) nonetheless recognizes thethree elements of which man is composed body soul andspirit Frank sees in the soul the personal and free being

capable of orienting himself in one direction or in the otherhe sees in the spirit the inner Word or God present at theheart of every man enlightening him through his Word andinclining his will through his Spirit17

The same traditional distinctions originating in Saint Paulare found in the humanists of the sixteenth century ofmystical tendency For a Paracelsus (1493-1541) since manis a microcosm he must unite within himself the threeconstitutive parts or elements corresponding to the threestages of the universe material world astral worldDivinity18 (an idea of Nicholas of Cusa although distorted isrecognizable in this) Cornelius Agrippa in his De occultaphilosophia tried to unite the Platonic traditions to Mosesand to Saint Paul

Plotinus itaque et Platonici omnes post Trismegistum similiter tria ponunt inhomine quae vocant supremum infimum et medium Supremum est illuddivinum quam mentem sive portionem superiorem sive intellectumillustratum vocant Moses in Genesi vocat ipsum spiraculum vitarum a Deovid vel a Spiritu ejus in nos spiratum Infimum est sensitiva anima quametiam idolum dicunt Paulus Apostolus animalem hominem nuncupatMedium est spiritus rationalis utraque connectens extrema atque ligansvid animam animalem cum mente et utriusque sapiens naturamextremorum 19

Guillaume Postel as original as ever at least in expressiondistinguishes in man the anima the animus and the mens20

It was undoubtedly following him four years later thatCharles Toutain wrote in his tragedy Agamemnon Threenatures in us which all talk with each other Excite our lifeand keep it alive The Spirit the Soul and Animus And onebeing taken away Suddenly all life together would depart21

The Anglican Lancelot Andrewes (155 5-1626) expresseshimself in a similar way in his devotions Into Thy hands OLord I commend myself my spirit soul and body 22

IV The Modern Period Saint Francis de Sales will open thisperiod for us His Traiteacute de lrsquoamour de Dieu [Treatise on theLove of God] reproduces the Pauline doctrine to perfectionAfter having explained that ldquowe have three kinds of loving

actions spiritual reasonable and sensualrdquo Francis de Salesobserves that ldquothe powers of the sensory part which are ormust be the servants of the spirit ask seek and take what

has been rejected by the reason dishonoring thepurity of the intention of their master who is the spirit andin the measure that the soul is converted to such gross andsensate unions it is diverted from the delicate intellectual

and cordial unionrdquo Thus by the same movement as we findin Saint Paul the way is sketched to the opposition of the

flesh to the spirit Like many in the Middle Ages Francis deSales following Saint Augustine also distinguishes ldquotwoportions of the soul the inferior and the superiorrdquo theinferior being that which discourses on the basis of the

experience of the senses while the superior founded ldquoonthe discernment and judgment of the spirit is commonly

called the spirit and mental part of the soulrdquo in thisldquosuperior portionrdquo he also distinguishes ldquotwo kinds of lightrdquo

a natural one and a supernatural one and so forth Thiswhole apparatus of precisions which aims at integrating aswe have already seen in others the ldquodegrees of knowingrdquo

within the spiritual movement is not without interest but itis in some ways only a flowering from the basic trichotomy1

It is this same trichotomy that we find again as might beexpected in a philosopher attentive to the spiritual lifesuch as Maine de Biran We know the place that the doctrineof the ldquothree livesrdquo holds in Biran animal life human lifeand divine life particularly in the reflections of his Journalintime2 Jules Lachelier also adopts it but perhaps bydiminishing it in his desire to work a kind of synthesisbetween Maine de Biran and Kant when he explains thethree components of existence sensibility understanding

and reason3 We detect also an indication of the very strongmystical tendencies in Joseph de Maistre in this affirmationfrom the Eacuteclaircissements sur les sacrifices ldquoThe animal hasreceived only a soul to us were given a soul and a spiritrdquo4

One might be tempted to seek a distant analogy withSaint Paul in the Kierkegaardian theory of the three spheres(rather than stages) of existence aesthetic ethicalreligious If that analogy is an illusion other thoughts ofKierkegaard are right in finding their place here ldquoIt isimpossible to treat of sin in any of the sciences thatordinarily speak of it because all are occupied with what ispsychological in our nature while sin is a determination ofthe spiritrdquo and again ldquoThe spirit intervening psychology isimpotent So good as its name indicates is occupied withthe soul It sees everything from outside the spirit itself islived only from within Seen from outside an act isalways determined and for all that the object of psychologyBut rdquo5

One might also be tempted to evoke here the Blondeliandistinction between ldquonoeticrdquo and ldquopneumaticrdquo This wouldnot be completely wrong But Blondel places these twokinds of thought in correlation rather than inviting us to risefrom one to the other He does not thereby have in mind arelation of the psyche to the pneuma but rather a divisionof the function within the spirit Despite the word ldquonoeticrdquothis is not the nous but rather the logos which would beaccording to him the partner of the pneuma6 and thedialectic of the noetic and the pneumatic is in play at everystep so to speak of the development of thought and life inthis conception the first the concrete principle ofuniversality being the factor of objectivization and unifyingforce while conversely the second the concrete principleof singularity is the diversifying element and subjectivefunction7 Both at the same level are thus essentiallycomplementary Blondel held to his distinction he often took

up the study of it He wrote in 1907 in one of his personalnotebooks ldquoThink out the discovery of the two thoughtsrdquo8

Now in 1909 he wrote again ldquoThe two thoughts Ah howthey are always in me tending to supplant each other whileit is necessary to reconcile them hierarchize them makethem differently but equally serve the divine work of finaland total reintegrationrdquo9 This word ldquohierarchizerdquo must beunderstood as demanding a reciprocal hierarchization10 Itdoes not necessarily follow however that any analogy withthe Pauline trichotomy any echo of the ldquothree livesrdquo ofBiran are absent from the Blondelian work Blondel was toopenetrated with the thought of Saint Paul and Saint Bernardhe was too closely interested in mysticism he was toofamiliar with the spiritual authors of the Christian traditionto let us believe in such an absence without a fullerexamination But the fact that his dialectic of the noetic andthe pneumatic which is fundamental in his philosophy doesnot turn explicitly into a hierarchy of the soul and spirit or ofthe discursive reason and mystical intuition (although heobviously knew of this distinction as well as that betweenthe understanding and higher intelligence)11 is not anegligible indication Blondel maintained a prudent attitudein the face of natural mysticism just as on the other handhe remained prudent in the face of facile personalisms

In the Russian theologian Sergius Bulgakov the Paulinedistinction between the soul and the spirit is placed inpowerful relief It assumes a mystical aspect that is moreemphasized than in the Apostle or at least it proceeds froma base of natural mysticism that despite the reference tothe famous discourse at Athens does not seem tocorrespond perfectly to its more complex notion of thespirit

Although it is a creature a certain eternity of creation a certain non-creation are proper to the spirit Spiritual existence is rooted in the

eternity of God the created spirit itself is similarly eternal and uncreatedCf Acts 1728

It is true that Bulgakov can also invoke the authority of theGreek Fathers Had Saint Cyril of Alexandria not written thatldquothe image of the divine nature was imprinted in man by theinfusion of the Holy Spiritrdquo12 The importance of hisanthropological theory derives in any case from the fact thatit is from this that he explains the mystery of theIncarnation

The postulate of the divine Incarnation is a certain original identitybetween the divine I and the I of man an identity that does not abrogatetheir essential distinction The human hypostatic spirit draws itsdivine and uncreated origin from the ldquobreath of Godrdquo Through hisspirit man communicates with the divine substance and he is fit to beldquodivinizedrdquo Man is god-man by predestination potentially throughhis formal structure At the same time he is flesh through anldquoanimatedrdquo body he sums up the entire world Man is made of anuncreated divine spirit hypostasized by the I of the creature and of a souland of a body created from the psycho-somatic being13

Bulgakov insists The very idea of divinity by predestinationseems too weak to him He corrects himself almostimmediately ldquoNot only is man theanthropic bypredestination but also the Logos is the eternal God-Maninsofar as the first Image of the created man This is whythe hypostasis of the Logos the heavenly Man could itselfbecome the hypostasis of created man and make of thelatter the authentic God-man by achieving its eternaltheanthropyrdquo The conclusion is nonetheless fundamentallyin keeping with the spirit of Christian faith ldquoMan is alreadythe form ready for the authentic theanthropy that he is notcapable of achieving himself but in view of which he wascreated and called The divine Incarnation is not at all acatastrophe for the human essence or some violation onthe contrary it is an accomplishmentrdquo14

This leads us far from the narrow anthropological dualismthat triumphed in modern Scholasticism as well as in the

university philosophy springing from Cartesianism ldquoSaintPaulrdquo noted R M Albaregraves15 ldquohad distinguished threeorders the carnal the intellectual and the spiritual16 TheCartesian dualism had fused together the intellectual andthe spiritual and rationalism had gradually reduced thespirit thus created to being only an intellect withouttranscendence without dynamism or immortality destinedonly to understand and to organize the worldrdquo On the otherhand for all sorts of reasons that we do not at all have toseek here but in particular because of a certain poverty inits common philosophy Christian thought did not seem ableto fill the void thus created in man It must not thereforebe surprising that the inevitable reaction was produced inpara-Christian forms ldquoIf a scholarrdquo Andreacute Preacuteaux recentlywrote17 ldquoencounters the old doctrine that man is composedof a body a soul and a spirit he has scruples aboutconsidering it for what do lsquosoulrsquo and lsquospiritrsquo mean Unfortunately in a society where science is the supremeauthority this silence is equivalent to a negation Whatdissolves the errors and complexes what protects againstneuroses and fantasies is precisely that which is silentlyand discreetly dismissedrdquo

The same year as Andreacute Preacuteaux and reacting like himGabriel Germain took support from Saint Teresa to remindus of the unrecognized depths of the life of the spirit

Above the understanding below the ordinary conscience and what fills itexists a sheet of peace and light Whoever approaches it can have nomore doubt of it Anyone who has not sought it has no right to judge itSaint Teresa expresses the same reality in very different terms Now no onehad taught her this nor had anyone prepared her for such an experienceThis agreement over the centuries and doctrines reassures me more thananything She writes in the book of the Mansions (seventh Mansionchapter 1) ldquoInterior things are seen that show in a sure way that there isbeneath a certain relationship an obvious difference between the soul andthe spirit although they are but a single thing rdquo18

Likewise again situating his own thought in relation to theldquonoosphererdquo of Teilhard de Chardin and in relation to theldquocollective unconsciousrdquo of Jung

The noosphere in the philosophy of Teilhard de Chardin appears to be likea mental view a conclusion This is because its very name evokes anintellectual activity the subtlest but whether exploratory or constructivedirected according to logical norms19 What I could call (but I will keepmyself from doing so) pneumatosphere let us say the spiritual ocean isthe object of experience By other paths to other ends it is the samereality I suppose that Jung attained and which he called the collectiveunconscious But these two terms restrict the origin and meaning of it 20

With Jung in fact we penetrate but we remain within whatis psychological The life of the spirit in the Spirit is whollydifferent A certain Calvinist dryness a phobia aboutmysticism and all ldquointeriorityrdquo conspire at times along withrationalism and contemporary positivism of all forms tobrush this life in the Spirit aside But in a quite natural waythe Lutheran Paul Tillich who was interested in ontology inthe history of religions in mysticism as well as in biblicalhistory brings the Pauline tripartition up to date again

There is no religious statement on man and his destiny without a judgmenton the relation between different elements that are combined and opposedin the life of man These elements have been variously described as beinghis body his soul and his spirit 21

The exegetes in contemporary Catholicism seem no moredisposed than most of the theologians to return the Paulineverse to a place of honor and draw its consequences It istoward the writers that we must turn to perceive an echo ofit in free expression Although this expression is truly webelieve faithful to the doctrine of the Pneuma and to itsauthentic development it is not certain that Saint Paulwould have recognized his thought at first glance ldquoI havegood news to announce to yourdquo says Paul Claudel in theldquoCantique de Palmyrerdquo ldquomdashit is another within the depths of

you who has the word I have good news to announce toyou You need only close your eyes to find your treasurein the night There are many souls but there is not oneof them with whom I am not in communion through thissacred point in us that says Pater nosterrdquo22 And GeorgesBernanos in his diary ldquoHis will is ours and when we revoltagainst it it is only at the price of an uprooting of our wholeinner being Our will has been united to his since thebeginning of the world What sweetness to think thateven while offending him we never cease completely todesire what he desires at the depths of the Sanctuary of thesoulrdquo23 A wonderful conjunction of Claudel and Bernanos

The reader will have noted in Claudelrsquos text the wordldquosoulrdquo An inversion of vocabulary is in fact produced Theldquospiritrdquo having become in the modern leveling dichotomythe immediate correlative of the body it is the ldquosoulrdquo thathas taken its place in those who have not taken part in thisleveling We are familiar again in Claudel with the parabolaof animus and anima The word ldquosoulrdquo in the same sensecompels recognition with greater strength in order to escapethe scientistic totalitarianism that reigns abusively in thename of the ldquohuman sciencesrdquo ldquoIn the measure in whichthey are scientificrdquo wrote Henri Gouhier in 1973 ldquothesciences of man can consider man only by selecting pointsof view under which it is possible to treat him objectively Itis obviously not a question for the philosopher to ignore thevarious forms of sociology psychology ethnologyneurology and so forth he must simply wonder if thesciences of man added up constitute a science of manrdquo24

And man simply as such man who cannot renounce the callhe hears in the depths of himself refuses to let himselfsuffocate He rehabilitates the word ldquosoulrdquo as the mostfitting to express what philosophers and men of science aretoo often skilled at eliminating through preterition orthrough negation The soul then becomes almost the

synonym for the pneuma of Saint Paul and Origen Thepassage from Henri Gouhier that we have just quotedfigures in a preface to LrsquoAvegravenement de lrsquoacircme by Aime[Andre] Forest a work he says that ldquofinds its timeliness inits apparent obsolescencerdquo The author of the work and thatof its preface both evoke on this subject the ldquothree livesrdquo ofMaine de Biran Andre Forest also recalls these words ofHenri Bergson ldquoBy calling a certain assurance of facileintelligibility an idea and a certain uneasiness of life thesoul an invincible current brings modern philosophy toelevate the soul above the ideardquo Modern philosophy as awhole has not followed the path on which Bergson thoughthe saw it engaged Gabriel Marcel however among otherswanted to preserve this word ldquosoulrdquo and to keep ldquothefullness of its meaningrdquo Charles du Bos in search of tracesof God in us asked ldquoWho will leave us a journal of thedilation of the soulrdquo What Andre Forest wants is to help usdiscover or to rediscover a certain ldquoinner unityrdquo a certainldquopure sourcerdquo and each of the chapters of his work tracesan avenue toward an encounter with this ldquoThe discovery ofthe soulrdquo he tells us ldquois the development of a spiritualphilosophy The soul is the advent of presence and graceraised above the world of nature and objectivityrdquo25

The same fundamental reaction the same sudden startor if you wish the same awakening five years later in amuch younger author whose nostalgia if this is what it iscannot be that for the past but that which springs from anew reflection this time against the oppression of a thoughtreduced to its politico-social components the final end ofscientistic intelligence In his essay on Job ou lrsquoexcegraves dumal Philippe Nemo insists on this same word ldquosoulrdquo in orderto recall man to himself and to his essential problem 26

Across the numerous changes in vocabulary thecomplications introduced by theoreticians eager foranalysis across too the unceasing variations in points of

view the tripartite anthropology whose expression is foundin Saint Paul has consistently furnished in the tradition ofthe Church a basis for spiritual doctrine and life

4 The Spirit

I The Place of Mysticism As we have already been able toperceive these various distinctions are far from always

being covered perfectly either from one author to another oreven as in the case of Augustine in the work of the same

author C R Doddaursquos remark on the subject of the ancientGreeks applies here ldquoOne must undoubtedly agree that the

average man of the fifth century (and this is true in allperiods) possessed a very complicated psychological

vocabularyrdquo1

The Pauline tripartition has nonetheless remained theconstant basis serving to support the spiritual doctrines ofthe Christian tradition

Commenting on Pseudo-Dionysius Saint Maximus theConfessor defined man by this threefold pair of epithetsldquoSupermundialis et spiritualismdashcircummundialis animalismdashmundialis carnalisrdquo2 The author of the celebratedPhilokalia Saint Nikodemos of the Holy Mountain (748-809)will explain that the ldquoJesus Prayerrdquo brings into operation thethree powers of the soul the intellect (nous) the discursivereason (logos) the will or spirit (theacutelē sis pneuma) in theaction of the soul alone by which uniting in itself the soulis made fit to be united to God3 But perhaps that is amatter rather of a ldquohorizontalrdquo trichotomy of threefunctions or three activities proper to the higher part of thespirit

With more than one spiritual writer of the Latin MiddleAges one should speak of four elements rather than ofthree in their analysis of manmdasheven without consideringother complications many subtle subdivisions an echo ofScholasticism dear to a certain number subdivisions

destined either to establish agreement between authors orto detail the stages of spiritual itineraries As for examplethis schema traced by Isaac of Stella in his Epistola deanima ldquoAnimae in mundo sui corporis peregrinanti quinquesunt ad sapientiam progressus sensusmdashimaginatiomdashratiomdashintellectusmdashintelligentiardquo4 Two different modes will benoted both inspired by Saint Augustine in the expression oftripartism for some it is corpus anima spiritus5 forothers corpus ratio mens Hence to accord these twomodes the quadripartite division corpusmdashanimamdashratioinferiormdashratio superior sive mens We know the groundgained in the Middle Ages by that Augustinian subdivision ofthe ratio inferior and the ratio superior6 What willcorrespond to this in Saint Thomas Aquinas will beparticularly the distinction between the ratio and theintellectus recently brought out by Pierre Rousselot7 Thiswould also be the place to mention the Franciscan doctrineof the two faces of the soul which is of Neoplatonic origincoming through the twofold channel of Augustine and theArabs8mdashbut that like moreover the Thomist distinction ofthe intellectus and the ratio is an essentially ldquoscientificrdquo(philosophical) theory having little relation to the spirituallife The explanation of the latter is founded rather on thedoctrine of the twofold ratio lower and higher whichcorresponds to action and contemplation But then a newsubdivision is introduced the ratio superior the place ofcontemplation assimilated to the intellectus becomes thehigher part or function of the mens and receives namessuch as acies mentis oculus cordis and so forth

Whatever might be the various complications and thevarieties in the names ldquoall the great Christian mystics are inagreement in considering the human soul as a complexreality presenting regions and stages All are also inagreement in admitting that among these various regionsthere is a privileged one that where God dwells in a

particular manner rdquo9 ldquoThere is a spiritual life when arelationship with God existsrdquo10 and there is a secret point inman that is the permanent place of that relationship of thatpossible encounter because it is already and always hasbeen the place of the divine presence that pneuma of Paulcommented on by Origen that ldquosacred point in us that saysPater nosterrdquo of the ldquoCantique de Palmyrerdquo11

So we see that the philosophers and theologians moreconcerned about rationality than mysticism tend to reduce(even in their historical studies) the trichotomy to adichotomymdashwhile on the contrary the spiritual masterstend to bring out the trichotomy They readily glorify thespiritus not only above the anima but above the ratiowhether theoretical or practical It is instructive to comparein this regard the Abeacutelardian writing Ysagoge in theologiamwith the commentary on the Song of Songs by William ofSaint Thierry For the first ldquoDuo haec nomina sc spiritus etanima non magnam habent in significationediscrepantiamrdquo12 The second on the contrary stronglyemphasizes the hierarchical distinction of three ordersldquoanimalrdquo ldquorationalrdquo and ldquospiritualrdquo13

To keep to the general schema that results from the textof Saint Paulmdasha schema that itself in fact includes manynuances and as we have seen many interpretationsmdashmorality will therefore be the act of the soul mysticism theact of the spirit ldquoThe bodyrdquo says Evagrius Ponticus ldquohasbread for nourishment the soul has virtue theunderstanding has spiritual prayerrdquo14 Morality whoseobject is virtue is the πϱᾶ ξις and the life of the spirit iscontemplation the θεωϱία The first is ordained to thesecond as the soul is ordained to the spirit ldquoStriverdquo saysCassian reporting the statements of Abbot Nesteros ldquotoacquire in the first place a complete possession of moraldiscipline (πϱαϰτιϰή) for without that you cannot obtaincontemplative purity (θεωϱητιϰή)rdquo15 For Gregory of Nyssa

virtue is ldquothe forecourt of the Templerdquo16 Origen had saidbefore them ldquoAccording to the doctrine of the very wiseSolomon he who wishes to acquire wisdom must begin bystudying moralityrdquo it is in fact ldquogood conductrdquo that preparesone to receive the visits of the Logos and when one issolidly exercised in it then one will be able ldquoto pass frommoral things to mystical understandingrdquo17 In his treatiseaddressed ldquoTo the Brethren at Mont Dieurdquo which remainsone of the fundamental texts of Christian spiritualityWilliam of Saint Thierry traces a similar route for those whowant to give themselves over to the perfect life and for thefinal stage his program is even one of a boldness that somecould misunderstand (it is true that it is addressed to aCarthusian monastery) ldquoIt is for othersrdquo he tells them ldquotoserve God it is for you to cling to him It is for others tobelieve in God to know that he exists to love him andrevere him it is for you to taste him to understand him toknow him to enjoy himrdquo18 The same doctrine is set forthas it had been earlier with Origen in parallel with thedoctrine of the threefold biblical sense by another writer ofthe twelfth century Godefroi drsquoAdmont

Sicut triplex est visio corporis spiritus et mentis ita triplex etiam sensusest in scripturis Sanctis litteralis spiritalis intellectualis Litteralem atquespiritalem sensus egregius ipse Doctor gentium tunc transcenderat etusque ad tertium coelum intellectualem scilicet sensum glorioseconscenderat quando toto cordis intellectu ita coelestibus est conjunctusquod utrum in corpore an extra corpus esset se nescire asseruit19

The same fundamental schema is found again in the greatrepresentatives of what one often calls with a term that canlend to confusion ldquointellectualist mysticismrdquo which is tosay with the Rheno-Flemish mystics of the fourteenth andfifteenth centuries The same schema although withdifferences in terminology and in a sometimes differentclimate of thought particularly in Meister Eckhart

Ruysbroek ldquoassigns to the spirit a threefold role First of alla vital role in which it animates the body then anintellectual role that is manifested by thought finally a roleof higher spiritual activity in which it becomes the principleof unification of the whole inner life and in which it is mixedwith the very essence of the soulrdquo20 Hence for example inthe Livre des sept clotures the definition of the seventhenclosure ldquowhich surpasses all the othersrdquo ldquosimplebeatitude beyond all holy life and practice of the virtuesrdquo21

Likewise in the Miroir du salut eacuteternel in which the higherdegree is only divided after ldquothe virtuous life which dies tosin and grows in virtuesrdquo comes the state where ldquoallownership of the will diesrdquo then the spirit is made fully freethrough its union to the Spirit of God even to the point ofthe ldquoliving liferdquo (levende leven) that blossoms which is allldquohidden in God and in the substance of our soulrdquo22

Ruysbroek takes up again here an expression long sincecurrent which he could have read in Saint Bernard (vividavita et vitalis)23 William of Saint Thierry (vita vivens)24 orThomas de Froidmont (vita vitalis)25

The same gradation is found in Tauler based on the sametraditional ldquoternary schemardquo Tauler distinguishes in manldquothree things one clings to nature in flesh and blood theother is the reason the third is an essence of the pure souland without mixturerdquo This is what he expresses again ldquointhe symbolism of the three men which correspond to thesensate life the intellectual life and the spiritual life in thesense of union with Godrdquo26 This ldquothird manrdquo this ldquoessenceof the pure soulrdquo is what Tauler often calls the gemuete aword that Father Etienne Hugueny translates as ldquodeep-seated willrdquo and Louis Cognet prefers to call ldquodeep instinctrdquoit is the ldquodepthsrdquo of being to which says Tauler the ldquodivinegroundrdquo alone corresponds abyssus abyssum invocat itimprints on our nature ldquoan eternal and deep-seatedtendency to return to its originrdquo a tendency that ldquopersists

even in the damned because it is linked to the very essenceof the soulrdquo27 Taulerrsquos preaching rests on this structure Theabnegation to which he invites his listeners is not only theliberation from sensible appetites it goes beyond simplemorality it is a profound attitude that ldquoflows from thegrowing experience of Godrdquo mystical passivity succeedingthe activity of the virtuous life ldquoinner recollectionrdquo abovethe exercise of the virtues and reason as well as that of thesenses28 ldquoIt is necessary that after having overcome thesenses the reason be freed from itself renounce itself soas to be transformed into pure and simple spiritrdquo29 Then theKingdom of God is established And Tauler repeats so as tomake himself well understood ldquoThis Kingdom is establishedin its own manner in the innermost part of the spirit assoon as man through all his exercise has absorbed theexterior man in the inner and reasonable man and as soonas the man of sense and of reasonable power are entirelyabsorbed into the more interior man in the hidden groundof the spirit where the true image of God dwells and assoon as he flees into this divine ground into which manfrom all eternity is found in his uncreated staterdquo30

The relationship of Tauler to Eckhart is obvious In one asin the other the distinction of the soul and the spirit (of thepsyche and the πνεῦμα) colored by Platonic exemplarism isaffirmed everywhere Eckhart enunciates it with reference toSaint Augustine ldquoAccording to Augustinerdquo he says ldquoourintellectual element divides itself into two parts through theone we are oriented intellectually toward an intellectualgrasp of knowledge that our cognitive faculty receives fromoutside the other to use the very words of Augustinemanifests itself at the deepest center of our spirit (lsquoabditummentisrsquo)rdquo31 It is this center that particularly interested thatfascinated Eckhart this place ldquowhere no image enters orleaves but where there is only God himselfrdquo ldquoThe soulrdquo healso said ldquohas two eyes the inner one and the other outer

one the inner eye of the soul is that by which itcontemplates being and receives it directly from Godrdquo32

What differentiates him from Origen and Augustine Bernardand William of Saint Thierry is the ldquouncreatedrdquo characterthat he attributes to this ldquoinner eyerdquo or to this ldquoabditummentisrdquo The disquieting feature of his mysticism consists inthis a feature that will be less emphasized in Tauler andeven in Henry Suso although the latter speaks also of theground of the spirit as ldquoeternalrdquo33

Follower and compiler Harphius (Henry Herp) willsymbolize the ldquothree kinds of liferdquo emanating from the threeparts of man in the three biblical figures of Leah Rachel andMary Magdalen34 and he works at length to describe themens or the apex mentis the spiritus or the interior sinusmentis which is to say still that pneuma by which the zoneof rational and moral activity is transcended

Dicitur etiam [anima] quandoque mens quae sc ipsis viribus interior est etsupereminet quia vires in mente sicut in origine sua sunt counitae ex quasc effl uunt ut radii ex solari rota et in quam refluunt Et est illud centrumin anima in quo vera Trinitatis imago relucet et tarn nobile quod nullumibi nomen proprie convenit licet in multis nominibus circumlocutivemanifestatur Haec est igitur mens vel apex mentis aut centrum ipsiusanimae ut feliciter renovetur ipsae vires quae dicuntur spiritus adinteriorem sinum mentis sunt reflectendae et mens ipsa ad intimum suumregerenda sc in Deum ibidem suaviter recubantem 35

Warning us that this higher part of man cannot beappropriately designated by any name and multiplying theformulas himself by which one must indeed try even tospeak of it Harphius invites us not to stress whatever theinterest of the other part might be the variations invocabulary from one author to another or from one period toanother which could hide from us the continuity of atradition that in essentials is very firm

Saint Catherine of Genoa offers us a similar schema veryclassically she distinguishes body soul and spirit the latterbeing designated in itself by the word mente and when it is

animated by infused love by the word spirito in this lattercase the spirito is finally identified with infused Love whichis God Since the Saint is less concerned to give us atheoretical course in anthropology even spiritual than todescribe the spiritual life itself we can understand that fromher pen mente is rare and spirito frequent36 On the otherhand following the example of many other mystics sheloves to detail the stages of ascent ldquoWhen Godrdquo she saysldquoaddresses his first call to us he gives us at first the instinctfor virtues later he urges us to perfection then throughinfused grace he leads us to the annihilation of ourselvesfinally to true transformationrdquo37 Saint Teresa and Saint Johnof the Cross likewise know that there exists a life higherthan the exercise of the virtues when they celebrateldquofreedom of spiritrdquo38 ldquoholy freedom of spiritrdquo39 and SaintTeresa observes in her Interior Castle that ldquocertain interioreffects give certitude that there is in us in certain relationsa very real difference between the soul and the spiritrdquo40 Wealso quote as an example Fenelon who in commenting onCassian finds himself at the same time summing up thewhole mystical tradition ldquoAlthough we judge the othervirtues to be necessary and useful we believe however weshould place them only at the second degree because oneseeks them all only in view of this one thing of which JesusChrist says lsquoMartha Martha you trouble yourself aboutmany things there is only one thing necessaryrsquo He placedthe sovereign good not in work although laudable andabundant in fruit but in contemplation that is truly simpleand one He declares that little is necessary for this perfectbeatitude that contemplation isrdquo41 And a little farther on inthe same writing ldquoThere is thus a state where thisappropriation of virtues is no longer opportunerdquo42

The great Protestant spiritual master Gerhard Tersteegen(1697-1769) professes the same doctrine ldquoThere mustnecessarily be in us a capacity to recognize God and

spiritual things in an essential and present way And thatexists in the pure Reason [Vernunft] which has been givenus closed and unused until God gives us the understandingby which we know the very Truth so intimately andessentially that we are ourselves drawn into the trueGodrdquo43

If a certain number of authors in the course of this longtradition that we have just examined seem also todistinguish as it were two elements above the psychewhile Saint Paul saw only the pneuma above it this isusually as we could ascertain from some of the examplescited because they mean by psyche only the animal soulanimater of the body and seat of sensation or ratherbecause they want to assure a seat for ldquoobjectiverdquoknowledge and profane culture For Paul on the contraryand more explicitly for Origen the soul is the very seat ofthe personality the reasoning and self-willed being whichjudges and freely determines itself It is the place ofdecision According to the orientation taken by the soul thehuman being will become ldquocarnalrdquo or ldquospiritualrdquo(pneumatikos) As opposed as he might be to free willLuther himself saw very clearly that the Pauline psyche of 1Thessalonians 5 was much more than the principle ldquothatanimates the body and acts through itrdquo In an article in theRevue thomiste (1971) Father P R Reacutegamey OP isperfectly in keeping with the traditional line when hedistinguishes (497) these three degrees psychosomaticcomplexmdashrational function of abstraction and discoursemdashprimacy of spirit in its greatest purity And what in thetheoretical order is the ldquorational functionrdquo corresponds inthe practical order to what we could call in a ratherrestrictive sense the ldquomoral functionrdquo Saint Paul alsoinvites us not to confuse this moral function with theproperly spiritual life which raises man above himself whenhe places above the exercise of active benevolence and of

all virtue this reality of another order a gift of God which isCharity (1 Cor 133) Dietrich Bonhoeffer was also faithful tothe tradition that originated in the Apostle when heexhorted the Christians over whom he had responsibility notto confuse in their assemblies ldquospiritual community withmystical overheatingrdquo (cf A Dumas 64) ldquoThe great themeof community life is the revival of the very Paulinedistinction between the natural eager equivocal nostalgicdesiring in a word idealistic and the spiritual respectfulenlightened serving knowing in a word realistrdquo (ibid145) ldquoThe onerdquo Bonhoeffer also says ldquowho does not letChrist be a path toward the other falls into naturalchattering which kills the spiritual word Prayer is thesalutary limit to desires of immediate effusiveness Community life is communion through spiritual mediationand non-confusion in the natural immediacyrdquo (146-47)

II Morality Integrated into Mysticism In Christianity itself itis characteristic of the Catholic Church to assure theequilibrium between the three components (religion

morality and mysticism) an equilibrium necessary to theintegrity of the human being Faithful in everything to her

spirit of synthesis she maintains all three in solidaritywithout ever letting any one of the three be lacking or

eclipse the others or be devalued in the humblest forms ofspiritual life any more than in the highest To take a verysimple example when Fenelon exclaims in his Traiteacute de

lrsquoexistence et des attributs de Dieu ldquoMy length of life is buta perpetual extinctionrdquo1 these words to be well

understood must be taken at once morally religiously andmystically

The various Protestant confessions place more emphasison contrasts and clashes as has often been remarked J AMoehler wrote in the last century in his Symbolique withrespect to morality and religion ldquoIn the eyes of Catholics

religiosity and morality if we may be permitted to use thesetwo terms are united by their essence and are both eternalAccording to the Protestants on the other hand there is norelationship between these two things for one is of aneternal price and the other is of only passing value Lutherinsists in many places on this difference rdquo2 There wouldbe many nuances besides to note here but in this essay ontypology we must keep to the most general characteristics3In Calvinism mysticism is the object of mistrust or evenreprobation4 We also know the abyss in Luther thatseparates ethics and faith As a result of this there is atendency with Lutheran mysticsmdashto say nothing of Lutherhimself and of Lutheranism in generalmdashto depreciate allmoral activity as constituting on manrsquos part an affirmationof self that far from bringing him closer to God distanceshim and to recognize a value in religious life only in anabandonment close to quietism5 a depreciation of moralitythat goes hand in hand with that of reason and that offreedommdashwe recently read from a Protestant pen an articleon morality considered solely as ldquocultural realityrdquo Such anattitude to take it simply as such could also facilitateinvaluable analyses in many regards such as the analysis ofthe ldquolevels of liferdquo in Kierkegaard or that of the ldquosacredrdquo inRudolf Otto But these analyses do not always stop at posingformal distinctions Thus in order to bring out more clearlythe specificity of the category of the sacred or of thereligious Otto cuts the latter off from morality he is notcontent with showing that on the level of history orpsychology these two orders are often separated in fact heis well on his way to a separation by right6 As arepercussion when morality reclaims its place in otherauthors of Protestant inspiration it sometimes absorbsreligion and dries up mysticism by incarcerating all spirituallife ldquowithin the limits of reasonrdquo

In reality howevermdashthat is to say by right in the natureof thingsmdashon the one hand ldquothe sacred is not reabsorbedinto moral value the religious transcends the ethicalrdquo buton the other hand it does not merely accommodatemorality and mysticism it remolds them so to speak byinstalling them in its heart Religion morality and mysticismldquoappear in a reciprocal envelopmentrdquo there exists betweenthe three both an attraction and a tension which will be thesource of many vital problems but there is objectivelyneither separation nor exclusion nor conflict for ldquothe Deitywhile transcending being truth and the good contains themformallyrdquo7 This is why in particular in Catholicism just asthe reasonable life and life according to the spirit penetrateeach other8 morality impregnates the mystical life to theend ldquoThrough it the good rewarded and the bad punishedthese pillars of the revelation of the Demiurge degraded byGnosticism to a lower level than exoteric faith regain theirplace at the heart of the revelation of the Father through theonly Sonrdquo9 Hence Saint Justin in his Dialogue ldquoIt is notbecause of his affinity with God or because he is spirit likehim that man sees God it is because he is virtuous andjustrdquo10 And Father Jean Rigoleuc on spiritual persons ldquoAlltheir reason and the lights they receive by it are given tothem only so that they might be perfected in thesevirtuesrdquo11 ldquoThe mystical ascentrdquo does not efface ldquofromcommon Christian life any specific traitrdquo12 The Christianvirtues are not merely means of freeing oneself from theworld in their substance they are the end itself thepromised beatitude is not made of different material This iswhat Saint Ambrose expresses admirably in a brief sentencefrom his commentary on Saint Luke with respect to thebeatitudes ldquoSicut enim speri nostrae octava perfectio estita octava summa virtutum estrdquo13

Pierre Nemeshegyi poses the same problem with respectto Origen ldquoTo place Being and moral Goodness in equation

to place this moral Goodness in God formally and ascharacterizing the final ground of his Beingmdashis this not to becondemned to enclosing all spiritual life in an anti-mysticalmoralism The Good is a transcendental But is it formallywhat we understand by lsquomoral Goodrsquo Or is there not adeepening of this moral Goodness which would reestablishthe possibility of an innermost mystical depthrdquo14 Againwith respect to Origen W Voumllker remarks ldquoWe observe a hesitation very characteristic of Origenrsquos turn of spirit and which one finds again in a nearly identical way in Philoside by side and sometimes even the mutual penetrationof moralism and mysticismrdquo15 And Nemeshegyi concludesldquo lsquoMoralismrsquo and lsquomysticismrsquo are in fact one and the samething in Origenrsquos conceptionrdquo16 Origen himself specifies inhis argument against Celsus ldquoGod is not merely lsquothe Goodrsquoas all the Platonists say he is lsquothe Righteousrsquordquo17 SaintGregory the Great also reminds us with his usual goodsense always linked with spiritual fervor

Solent quidam scripta sacri eloquii legentes cum sublimiores sententiasejus penetrant minora mandata quae infirmioribus data sunt tumentisensu despicere et ea velle in alium intellectum permutare Qui si recte ineo alta intelligerent mandata quoque minima despectui non haberent quidivina praecepta sic in quibusdam loquuntur magnis ut tamen inquibusdam congruant parvulis qui per incrementa intelligentiae quasiquibusdam passibus mentis crescant atque ad majora intelligendaperveniant18

Saint Augustine had said the same in a very Origenianshortcut in speaking of eternal life ldquoUna ibi virtus erit etidipsum erit virtus praemiumque virtutisrdquo19 Picking upagain Saint Ambrosersquos turn of phrase Alexander Neckhamcosmologist of the twelfth century explains that the octaveof the beatitude brings the perfection of its consonance tothe septenary of the virtues as in our material universe theeighth sphere including the whole universe brings itsconclusion to the harmony of the heavens20 Let us say in

the categories of medieval exegesis that anagogy achievesperfection both of allegory and of tropology Thus oneshould say of all Catholic mysticism what one historian saysof Saint Bernard through allusion to the traditionalinterpretation of the ldquoBooks of Solomonrdquo and of theirprogressive sequence for each of them as for him ldquothemoral school of Ecclesiasticus and Proverbs a necessarypreliminary for the mystical school of the Song of Songs is aschool whose doors are never closed behind usrdquo21 Andreciprocally in fulfilling the precept of the Lord one meritsnot only the eternal dwelling one does not merely preparefor it one is already building Saint Hildegarde tells us thetower of the heavenly Jerusalem22

It would be good to return to the celebrated GoldenEpistle in which William of Saint Thierry the friend of SaintBernard condenses for the brothers of the Carthusianmonastery of Mont Dieu the essence of Christiananthropology and spirituality such as the most commonCatholic tradition understands them William puts first ofall the sublime ideal of the contemplative in abrupt termsand with an appearance of separation of completetranscendence from one degree to another which could besurprising

You have not only pledged complete holiness but the perfection of allholiness and the height of all perfection It is not your business to languishin the practice of ordinary precepts or to devote yourself only to thatwhich God commands but to aim at what he wishes in the search for hisgood agreeable and perfect will It is for others to serve God it is for youto cling to him Faith in God knowledge love and reverence are for othersFor you taste understanding knowledge enjoyment A high vocation anarduous task 23

Farther on William takes up again the distinction of thethree states or three degrees which is reminiscent of thefree fashion of the Pauline trichotomy

The state of beginners can be called ldquoanimalrdquo that of progressersldquorationalrdquo that of the perfect ldquospiritualrdquo The first state attends to thebody the second is busy with the reasoning soul the third finds its restonly in God 24

These kinds of schemas are several times accompanied byappeals to humility which should form the common andunalterable basis for all disciples of Christ at whateverdegree they find themselves in their spiritual ascent25

Several points of resemblance to Saint Paul are still to benoted the distinction between anima and animus whichcorresponds closely to that between the psyche and thepneuma26 the reference to the discourse at Athens27 (Acts1727-28) the definition of the spiritual man as the onewhose spirit is informed by the Spirit of love28 theindication of the end as being ldquothe unity of spiritrdquo with God

There is also another resemblance to God so particular that it is nolonger given the name of resemblance but that of unity of spirit It is whenman becomes a single thing a single spirit with God not only through theunity of a single will but also through some truer expression of a virtue thatis no longer capable of willing anything else Once conformed to wisdom the reason [= reasoning soul] puts[everything] to profit and hastens to spring toward freedom of spirittoward unity so well that the faithful man becomes as has often beenstated one single spirit with God29

Freedom of spirit unity with God we know the abuses thatsuch formulas have frequently covered throughout twentycenturies of history30 We know too how the fear of theseabuses have made a number of timorous souls avoid themhow still more the bourgeois individualist incomprehensionof the last century banished them and how they seemedsuspect to many who thought they were judging in thename of pure Catholic orthodoxy31 Within the context ofthat spiritual masterpiece the Letter to the Brothers of MontDieu these expressions can be accepted in all their powerin the same sense that they have in Scripture And thekeeping of a moral life integrated into a mystical life is also

explicitly recognized here besides the word ldquovirtuerdquo whichfigures in the same text we have just quoted on ldquothe unityof spiritrdquo with God other texts recall it with insistence Theyspeak ldquoin praise of virtue the daughter of reason but evenmore of gracerdquo32 they show it not surpassed by butassumed into spiritual perfection the latter is achievedldquowhen the soul encompasses all the virtues in itself not aselements borrowed from somewhere else but as quasi-natural products of its being according to that resemblanceto God by which it is the whole of what isrdquo Mystical unitywith God is wholly impregnated with morality because it isthe perfect adherence to Him who is not only the Righteousbut in the most concrete and singular sense the Good33

This Catholic equilibrium was undoubtedly alreadyjeopardized in a great spiritual master who is not at all to beconfused with the false spirituals to whom we have alludedEvagrius was considered a disciple of Origen but in this anunfaithful disciple Despite the appearances of severalexpressions the same criticism could not be made of aTauler or a Ruysbroek they condemn without equivocationthe mystical claims that think to hold themselves abovemorality and reason beyond affirmations of the faith Thecase of Meister Eckhart is perhaps more disputable but it isright to dissociate the profound intention of this greatthinker and this great mystic from some paradoxicalexpressions held to be condemnable by the bull In agro LaPerle eacutevangeacutelique following Eckhart and several othersseems to place ldquothe spiritrdquo in contact with the divine Unityldquoabove the multiplicity of the Personsrdquo34 a grave problemwhich we will not take up here but which for a Christiangoverns the judgment to be passed on mysticism in itsrelation to the primary mystery of his faith35 To stay withthe relation between mysticism and morality let us say thatone is happy to find a fine example of equilibrium in anauthor carried in other respects to many unilateral

excesses This refers to George Tyrrell who wrote in a finepassage from Christianity at the Cross-roads

[The apocalyptic Kingdom of heaven] is the fruit and reward of the morallife but is a supermoral lifemdashthe continuation of that divine and spirituallife which under present contingencies manifests itself principally bymorality and above all in religion and conscious union with God But[in the Kingdom] the contingencies that now call for the moral strugglewith all its pain and suffering shall be done away36

We will end by quoting a more authoritative witness thegreat Saint Teresa who unites the soul and spirit of whichSaint Paul spoke as much as she distinguishes them withhim by observing that ldquothe center of the soulrdquo or the ldquospiritof the soulrdquo is a difficult thing to express and even tobelieve

Certain interior effects give the certitude that there is under certainrelations a very real difference between the soul and the spirit Although inreality they are but one we sometimes perceive a division between themthat is so delicate that it seems that the one functions in one way and theother in another There are so many things in our innermost depthsand things so subtle that it would be boldness on my part to undertake toexplain them We will understand all that in the other life if God deignsto admit us to the dwelling where we will have understanding of all thesesecrets37

III Conclusions Optimi corruption pessima One should notat all conclude from this as some authors particularly in

Protestantism have done that mysticism should becondemned1 Nevertheless even without considering the

case of the aberrations we have just seen certainprecautions should be taken in order not to jeopardize the

spiritual equilibrium Just as it is necessary to reject ananthropology that refusing man any higher faculty stifles

the spirit in himmdashwhich is what all positivisms allrationalisms and all psychologisms domdashso it is necessary toguard against reducing theoretical or practical reason in itby failing to recognize its transcendence in relation to the

sensible order and its participation in the absolute ldquoThemindrdquo writes Hans Urs von Balthasar2 ldquodestroys itself andcrumbles if it splits into an inferior and a superior mind an

autonomously functioning reason (Verstand) and a ratio(Vernunft) that is reserved for special philosophical and

religious purposesrdquo Then the risk of a short-circuit appearsfrom ldquoinfantile naturalismrdquo to high spirituality from

alienating exteriority to ldquodivinerdquo magnetization from theldquocaves of the unconsciousrdquo to the ldquobirthrdquo from above from

the ldquopossessive Irdquo that is ldquoradical servituderdquo toldquodisinterestedrdquo love

Charles du Bos was not lacking in clearsightedness theday he noted in his Journal ldquothe necessity from an ethicalpoint of view of guarding oneself against mysticismrdquo3 In thesame sense he wrote one day to Father Auguste Valensin

Since the end of July 1927 God in his goodness has recalled me toHimself I have happened to suffer in the face of a certain unformulatedmdashand at times even formulatedmdashdisdain that believers who are advancedmoreover in spiritual ways and even mystics witness or at least seem towitness toward the moral order as such If one admits (and I admit it verystrongly) that ethics are only the narthex of religious truth neverthelessthere exist natures (to the number of which I belong) who venerate thenarthex all the more as it helps to introduce them into the sanctuary andthe more their religious life deepens the more faithful their gratitudebecomes 4

Du Bos had noted in his Journal on January 11 1925 ldquothenecessity of guarding against mysticismrdquo and on January18 1929 analyzing himself

Basically it is always a question with me of an offensive directed by themoral against the religious because as my Journal often notes the moralbeing is primary with me in the period when the plane of temperament istranscended the form that temptation then takes is a moral form summedup in the question of my right to religious life Yes that is indeed it and myeffort now must be not only to adhere to God but to consider that fromthe instant I do what I must on the plane of living I adhere to him de facto 5

Du Bosrsquo reflection as we see was not unilateral althoughhe emphasizes the moral which he judges to bedangerously disregarded (what would he not say thirty orforty years later) In return Emmanuel Mounier was no lessright to bring out the complementary truth in recalling thatldquomorality has no other end but the spirituality of which itkeeps houserdquo when one isolates it and clings to it heexplains one kills it it is replaced by moralism6 the enemyof mysticism as well as of religion History in fact shows thatthe abandonment of mysticism in the name of any formwhatever of moralism has never been at best anything buta stage in spiritual development in view of a less confusedmysticism ldquoAs it is nearly inevitable in philosophy to passthrough a phase of idealism so it is inevitable to passthrough a phase of intellectualism in morality inevitableand goodrdquo But on condition that one does not cling to it Adeeper understanding knows that it is not knowledge thatsaves man from sin and it will always ask ldquoWho forexample is the one more free of appearancesmdasha Spinozawho in observing actions or sentiments that the commonmen call sin explains them through a defect in knowledgemdashor a Surin who proclaims that to the degree that one doesnot see sins even in onersquos inadvertencies and firstmovements to that degree one will not weep over onersquosvanities as sacrileges one will lsquonever get to the rootrsquordquo7

Both have cut through appearances (not always the sameones) both in their order are right But basically howmuch more is this true of Surin And if the intellectualcriticism worked by a Spinozist is not coupled with aspiritual deepening how his clearsightedness ends inblaming it The world Bergson said very justly has much tolearn from the great mystics8

Likewise one is right not to consent to letting theunderstanding be classed among the provisional values tobe reduced to the rank of ldquonaturalismrdquo that is close to

animality Perhaps the word ldquosoulrdquo so far from beingunivocal9 used in the tripartite division of man is notwithout some danger in this regard But this is not asufficient motive for rejecting the very idea of this tripartitedivision such as some as we have seen above were led todo Even Sandaeus himself an apologist and theoretician ofmysticism while noting that a number of mystics judgerecourse to this division indispensable declared that therecould be room to debate this10 Sandaeus was therebyechoing a fear or a mistrust frequently shown in the mostbrutal fashion by Schoolmen in the face of all mysticalthought we know how sharp the dispute was even withinthe Catholic Church throughout the seventeenth century11

Since then through their efforts to minimize the text ofSaint Paul on which the distinction is based others witness adiscomfort if not a similar hostility The mystical tradition ofthe great Church however offers them desirableassurances thus with Tauler transforming the way oneviews the classical terms of the division He is thereby goingparallel to the doctrinal tradition such as it is expressed in aSaint Augustine for example or a Saint Thomas The ratherpusillanimous minds to which we are alluding do not giveenough consideration to the fact that in wanting to save theabsolute of morality and reason they risk failing torecognize the gifts of the Spirit and lowering the mysticallife Stifled unrecognized in its authentic forms the latterin despair is then in danger of developing on the margins ofall rational and moral norms A certain intellectualismmdashverypoorly namedmdashis a worthy counterpart of moralism and aspernicious

To return to this latter we can think that the general usein the ecclesiastical vocabulary of the modern ChristianWest of the term ldquodirector of consciencerdquo to the detrimentof the traditional terms ldquospiritual fatherrdquo or spiritusmoderator12 is the sign of an inflation of pure morality

tending to casuistry or lends itself to falling intopsychologism (while waiting for psychiatry) to thedetriment of the attention paid to things of the spirit whichis to say to the relation to God ldquoHave we not seen peoplerdquowrote Reneacute Gueacutenon ldquowho when it is a question of lsquospiritualmasterrsquo go so far as to translate it lsquodirector ofconsciencersquordquo13 It is possible to agree with his remarkwithout sharing the least part of his own notion of ldquospiritualmasterrdquo or more precisely his doctrine of the spirit Stillanother sign of the small esteem given to things of thespirit and first of all of an inadequate understanding ofthem is manifested in the designation ldquointellectualismrdquowhich is too easily attributed today to the whole doctrine ofcontemplation There is of course a philosophicalcontemplation There is a Greek intellectualism that isexpressed in an ideal of contemplation We discern sometraces of it in the history of Christian thought and life butthese are only tracesmdashand all are not moreoverblameworthy14 As it has done for many other conceptsChristianity has modified this at the same time as it took onits permanent values it profoundly transformed it How is itthat even Christian historians have perceived so little ofthis One can indeed if one wishes reject the word inseeking another that lends less to equivocation but itshould not be necessary at the same time to reject thedoctrine that the Christian centuries had included within itit should not be necessary to depreciate what is the verybasis of the best spiritual tradition at the heart ofChristianity This would be at the same stroke to depreciatethe order of the theological virtues in direct contradiction toScripture itself The supremely active Father Teilhard deChardin did not fall into such contempt he forcefullymaintained the primacy of contemplation in which he couldrecognize the superior form of action that which an activistwill never achieve15 The transformations and progress

achieved in the course of history the entrance into an agedominated by the technical the development of the ldquohumansciencesrdquo that tend to assimilate man to the object of thesciences of nature will change nothing not only the highmystical life but already the whole spiritual life while takingthe greatest consideration of morality and including morality(as well as of rational activity) comprises along with variednuances according to the case something beyond moralitytaken in the human sense of the word something beyond allthat we commonly call action because it always comprisessomething beyond man

That is what signifies the great traditional theme ofMartha and Mary based on the Gospel It will always remaintrue ldquoIn his duabus mulieribus duas istas esse figurataspraesentem et futuram latoriosam et quietam temporalemet aeternamrdquo16 And of these two realities the second isalready present as an active anticipation at the heart ofthe man en route toward his divine destiny

Finally the maintenance of the distinction between thezone of the natural [psychisme] and that of the spiritual is ofa major importance for maintaining in their just place withinthe limits of their competence all the kinds of psychology Itopposes ldquothe dissolving psychoanalytical confusion ofnatural and spiritualrdquo17 If stopping onersquos aim at theldquorationalrdquo and the ldquomoralrdquo was often the great temptationand if this temptation remains what is to be even moregreatly feared today is stopping at the ldquonatural[psychique]rdquo One of Teilhardrsquos weaknesses which wasbenign to tell the truth because he thought above all todissipate the illusion of a materialistic monism was acertain confusion of vocabulary between spiritual andnatural in the Pheacutenomegravene humain (which does not claim tobe a treatise on spirituality) he happens to speak at will ofldquospiritual energyrdquo or of ldquonatural energyrdquo mdashBut ldquothe spiritintervening psychology is powerless It sees everything

from outside although the spirit is lived only from withinrdquo itsees uniquely ldquothat part of the natural life that the spirit hasnot touched and which consequently unfolds in theunconsciousrdquo18

Without doubt it is only through our participation in themystery of the trinitarian Life that we are to become fullycapable of going beyond this psychological vision that canindeed scrutinize certain ldquodepthsrdquo but to which this otherdepth is not accessible this depth which is humantranscendence this otherwise mysterious zone where theimpulse toward God is situated the encounter with God

There is in us a certain root that plunges into the depths of the Trinity Weare these complex beings who exist on successive levels on an animal andbiological level on an intellectual and human level and on an ultimate levelin those very abysses that are those of the life of God and those of theTrinity This is why we have the right to say that Christianity is an integralhumanism which is to say which develops man on all the levels of hisexperience We must always be in defiance of all the attempts to reducethe space in which our existence moves We breathe fully in the measureto which we do not let ourselves be enclosed in the prison of the rationaland psychological world but to which a part of us emerges into these greatspaces that are those of the Trinity And this is what creates theincomparable joy of existence in Christianity19

Pertinent remarks of great importance in ecclesiology aswell as in the liturgy more timely today than ever Thedistinctions recalled by Dietrich Bonhoeffer and by Father PR Reacutegamey based like those of so many others on thePauline anthropology of the First Letter to the Thessaloniansare at once for every member of the Church an appeal tothe highest spiritual life and a warning against itscounterfeits

EPILOGUETO PART ONE

The Light of Christ ldquoIf you believerdquo we are told ldquoin thedivinity of the Christian religion it is because you are

ignorant about all the conditions that marked its beginningand growth The comparative history of religions has madeenough progress so that henceforth it is no longer possibleto speak of a lsquoChristian miraclersquo coming to break the thread

of human religious acts There is nothing in it that is notexplained in the way everything is explained Of course

some points still remain obscure certain influences remainunperceived The task of historians has not yet been

accomplished One can also recognize that several of themhave been a little too quick in thinking to detect here orthere analogies or relationships and their intemperance

was capable of provoking a prudent reaction in somescholars anxious for a more rigorous method But the

general orientation of science is nonetheless certain and itsresult is nonetheless assured Every day leads to a new

light uncovering some new connection and here and nowwe see clearly enough to be able to affirm that Christianityis a human phenomenon very human deeply rooted in the

earth of history where it has drawn all the essence fromwhich its marvelous vigor is nourishedrdquo

An objection that insinuates itself under a thousand formswith respect to a thousand problems A stronger objectionin many eyes than all those of dialectics because withoutfighting it claims to explain Believers are upset by it Menof good will whom Christianity attracts and who alreadybelieve they see Godrsquos work in it find themselves stoppedin their tracks by it they fear to commit themselves

thoroughly to what is perhaps only the work of man If itwere a question only of a milieu providentially prepared tofavor the birth and rise of the religion of ChristmdashJewishMessianism Stoic universalism the organization of theDiaspora the Roman peace mdashthis ensemble of fortuitousconditions could indeed account for its concrete possibilitybut it would definitely not for all that cancel out the miracleof its existence A favorable atmosphere has never sufficedto explain the fact of a birth One would have to becompletely incapable of perceiving religious values to betempted to explain the apparition and success ofChristianity solely by a series of external circumstances asimportant and as favorable as one supposes them to beBetter known the information that history brings in thisorder can therefore only add to the admiration that alreadyseized the Fathers such as Saint Leo exclaiming before hisRoman listeners ldquoNumerous States have been united into asingle Empire so that the ways necessary for the preachingof the Gospel might be readyrdquo1 Admiration that was alsoPascalrsquos ldquoHow beautiful it is to see through the eyes of faithDarius and Cyrus Alexander the Romans Pompey Herodact without knowing it for the triumph of the Gospelrdquo andwho a short time earlier had had this sung to Peacuteguy ldquoThesteps of the legions had marched for Him rdquo2

But history seems to show us much more today Muchmore even than a subjective preparation of soulssuffocating in paganism thirsty for salvation One by oneall the elements of which Christianity is made theconceptions it presupposes the notions it sets in motion itsworship practices the forms of its institutions theprescriptions of its morality all are identified classifiedranked in their place along continuous series Not a dogmanot a feature of discipline or of liturgy that does not have itshistorymdasha history that always includes a first pre-Christianperiod All that had been amalgamated in it is returned to its

origin and soon it seems that nothing of its own remainsHow dare we still in the face of these facts a great numberof which at least are solidly established speak of a religiongiven from heaven of divine revelation How consequentlydare we speak of ldquotranscendencerdquo of supernaturalabsolute definitive truth Everything that is born and growsaccording to the common law is transformed and alsoperishes according to the common law As imposing as itseems Christianity will not escape it Even more perhapsthan the defeats to which it has submitted in the course ofthese recent centuries the history of its origins warns us ofits inevitable decline It is no longer for us the uniqueexception the extraordinary thing that it seemed to be forso long a time It can no longer be loyally preserved fromuniversal evolution Whether the brilliant flash projected byreligion ever since humanity existed is a false flash or anauthentic light is of little importance here in the case ofChristianity one thought to see a unique star appearabruptly in the heaven of religions and miraculously hangthere but a more experienced look discerns that it too wasonly for a moment welded to the others passing like theothers in this long luminous trail

Yet the illusion if such it be has existed It still persists withmany who are not at all ignorant people This too is a factthat must be taken into consideration One should not replywithout further examination that the same is true for allreligion Contrary to almost all the others without exceptingeven Judaism Christianity appeared in the middle of ahistoric period Its legend if there is a legend iscontemporaneous with its existence What a differencethere is in this regard for example with its great rivalBuddhism3 Why then contrary to so many humanphenomena is it presented in so tenacious a way as beingabsolutely exceptional Is ignorance about its true originsenough to explain this illusion in its regard or might it not

be rather the very true perception of its transcendencethat veiled by its brilliant flash certain features of its humanhistory The hypothesis at least deserves consideration It isnot without analogies Many men think themselves free inactions where without doubt they are not at all or with afreedom that is not at all real Is this illusion completelyexplained by a myopia that prevents them from perceivingthe bonds of determinism or does it too not come from anobscure but truthful perception Rather than a total illusionis it not a simple error of localization An error attesting toan awkwardness in analysis a scientific inferiority butwithout any damage to the essential truth

Now it happens too that one badly localizes thetranscendence that one recognizes in Christianity setting itup in positions from which the experienced historian willhave no trouble dislodging it This is why in a more or lessexplicit way one conceives of it then above all as a solutionof continuity To suppose such a transcendence possible atranscendence whose true name would be ldquoexteriorityrdquo isnot the act of Christianity What would remain for exampleof the thought of Saint Paulmdashwho nevertheless sodominated the thoughts of his centurymdashif one cut it fromthe thousand roots that in fact attached it to the earth ofTarsus and Jerusalem How can a single one of its essentialpoints be analyzed without constant reference not only tothe history of the Hebrew people but also to Greekcivilization to Eastern mysticism to the Roman EmpireThis would be an imaginary transcendence pure chimeralinked to a no less chimerical ideal of revelation The realitythat it would effect if this were possible would not besuperhuman but inhuman Far from being sublimated by itit would only be impoverished dried up

It would find the path neither of our spirit nor of our heartArtificial superficial and not at all supernatural Such asthose devout people of whom Peacuteguy speaks who becausethey do not have the strength to be of nature imagine that

they are of grace in reality dried fruits But there is anothertranscendence a true transcendence of which the first wasonly at best the naiumlve transcription An intrinsictranscendence in virtue of which a given reality consideredas synthesis in what comprises its own being surpassesessentially the realities of the same kind that surround itwhatever might be the community of elements that itinforms along with theirs whatever might be too the tiesof origin that render these different elements solidary Anytrue synthesis is always more than synthesis A certainrecasting that is much more than a new combination acertain ldquorevival from withinrdquo transforms everything It is in aphenomenal continuity the passage to a new higherincomparable order4

Now for anyone who can seemdashbut which of us can natterhimself that he always can once and for allmdashthe intrinsictranscendence of Christianity is obvious It alone countsand a direct look well aimed is enough to establish it Theunbeliever does not have to overcome historicalcontinuities nor does the believer have to refuse to seethem A priori they must be Scholars dedicated todiscovering these continuities are not at all devotingthemselves to a vain task They can indeed often bemistaken (certainly they do not fail to be so) or give in tothe temptation of confused conjectures the hypothesis thatguides them is nonetheless sound The fragility of certainconstructions does not at all prevent the firmness of theirfoundations Besides in research that some would hold tobe sacrilege science is after all only exploiting the Paulineidea of the ldquofullness of timerdquo It is uniting in a way with thethought of the Fathers of the Church so anxious to bring outthe ldquoevangelical preparationsrdquo in order to spare Christianitythe appearance of a ldquosudden improvisationrdquo ldquoNihil putem aDeo subitum quia nihil a Deo non dispositumrdquo5 It agreeswith the reflection of the philosopher who considering the

Christian event refuses by very reason of its unparalleledproportions to attribute an accidental character to it6

But in what touches the very basis of religion thesecontinuities are only appearance Yes in one senseChristianity is human completely human We can we mustspeak of its birth If the words it uses are necessarilyborrowed then it is unavoidable that the concepts are tooAnd how would man tell himself the truth even divinelyrevealed truth except by using concepts There is norevelation except supernatural ldquoin the pure staterdquo Howwould God give himself to man if he remained a stranger tohim And how would his Word penetrate him if it were notalso to become a human word The messages of Saint Paulor Saint John are already ldquotheologiesrdquo and the veryconsciousness of Christ is the consciousness of the Wordmade flesh But a less rudimentary psychology has shownus that the concepts themselves are in their multiplicity farfrom expressing the whole of a doctrine for they are withinthe spirit the part closest to matter With how much greaterreason if it is a question of an object that is not onlydoctrine but first of all reality By what makes it itself by itsoriginal essence which consists neither in words nor inconcepts and which the whole sum of words and concepts isnever capable of translating adequately Christianity isdivine completely divine Through the close texture ofrelationships of ideas and beliefs without break withouttear a new spiritmdashthe Spirit himselfmdashhas passed He hasstolen in with gentleness and he has burst in with powerHe has penetrated human history and all has beentransformed The face of the earth has been renewed by itThis was a new Fiat a true creation ldquoEmitte Spiritum tuumet creabuntur et renovabis faciem terraerdquo7 The Spirit ofChrist has founded a wholly new thing the religion of Christand this religion of Christ for which all human history hadprepared for which all human thought had slowly woven the

fabric suddenly rises up in the midst of men ldquosine patresine matre sine genealogiardquo Pure creation pure miracleThere we have this ldquonewrdquo idea which Jules Lachelier saidldquois born from nothing like a worldrdquo

What new ideas though that do not come from usourselves The inventions of man enrich humanitydiscovering in the soul some nuance unperceived until thenbut always leaving it to its essential finitudemdashto itsincurable decay Once past the first amazement the ironicand despairing refrain of Ecclesiastes is heard again Thecircle enlarged or shifted closes again On the contrarywith a leap the Christian Idea transports us beyond ourlimits It breaks this circle within which all our progress hadbeen condemned in advance to fit Such was the thought atits appearance breaking the circle of animaltransformations It is born in its own time it has its markedplace within the progress of life and nevertheless what itbrings is much more than progress From the time itemerges a new kingdom has begun the human kingdomSo the preaching of Jesus marks the advent of the Kingdomof God8 For how many of the sentences of the Sermon onthe Mount would we not find analogies in the Jewish Bible orin the teaching of the rabbis The One who pronounces itspeaks nonetheless as man had never spokenmdashas manwould never speak9 The Gospel inaugurates the time ofgrace It is a wholly new order that begins ldquoa new order oflove in the universerdquo10 A dike has been broken which letsthe flow of Love pass through Now it would be as vain todream of a reality more divine than Love than to imagine areality more spiritual than Thought The transcendence ofChristianity is thus not only relative to such and such anearlier achievement It is not only something originalsomething superior a provisional novelty clearing the wayfor some ulterior invention destined to go beyond it It is anabsolute transcendence ldquoOmnem novitatem attulitrdquo11

Peacuteguy has also sung it He was going to inherit a worldalready made And yet he was going to remake it entirely

Of course the order of charity is not revealed any morethan is the order of the spirit in all its fullness or in all itsdepth to that observation from outside that constitutes thework of the pure historian But if their inner essence stillescapes observation would the simple sight of their effectnot already arouse the sense of their incomparablegreatness We know the repercussions observable to thenaturalist not blinded by an overly narrow concept ofscience produced in the universe by the apparition ofthought the paradoxical properties of the ldquohumanphenomenonrdquo its extraordinary power for expansion andconcentration out of proportion with the weakmorphological originality of man presuppose a presence ofwhich the naturalist can only catch a glimpse but they sethim on the way that must normally lead him to go beyondhis science to discover in truth the human kingdom12 Therepercussions produced in humanity by the advent ofChristianity are no less prodigious the human spiritimmeasurably increased an unparalleled moral fruitfulnessa society tirelessly at work for an ideal of justice and unityand so forth These features are accessible to the historianwho knows how to step back a pace Nevertheless let usrecognize just as reflection alone properly speaking canreveal thought to itself so too only a process of a religiousorder can disclose the absolute superioritymdashwhich is to sayproperly the transcendencemdashof Christianity Like thedivinity of Christ itself the definitive newness of theChristian principle can be perceived only by the eyes offaith It is here that the advantage of the simple believerover the man of science and of life over technique shinesforth For the anthropologist who systematically denieshimself any inner reflection on the lived thought as well as

the historian of religions who does not consent to regardChristianity from within and to begin to live it at leastthrough a basic attitude of real sympathy will neverunderstand anything about the true object of their learnedstudies If their science itself does not lead them to the finalaffirmations it must at least set them on the path But ifthey wish to trust solely in it to the end surrendering theirconscience as men into the hands of their intelligence asspecialists the greater the latter will be and the more it willrisk misleading them

ldquoThe history of the formation of ideasrdquo said Amiel ldquoiswhat makes the spirit freerdquo13 Beneath the ideas that itorganizes and transforms let us know how to discern theChristian Idea This Idea has no history this is what mustmake the spirit submit to it

A great Deed was done for the world twenty centuries agothe Deed of Charity14 Right at first menrsquos habits of thoughtwere not any more overturned by it than were empires Wasan obscure variety of Jewish ldquoMessianistsrdquo worth even aglance The grain of wheat sown by Christ remained buriedin little upper rooms that counted for nothing in the historyof the world Christianity itself would wait five hundred yearsto found retrospectively the ldquoChristian erardquo and it wouldtake another five hundred years for full Christian practice tobecome widespread15 The first disciples of Jesus stilldreamed of the Kingdom of David their father they went upto the Temple as was their custom with a fervor that wasonly increased Having contemplated the Deed that hadbeen done before them they must nevertheless have hadthe feeling of an unparalleled newness The testimony of itappears everywhere in their rare writings ldquoNew teachingnew covenant new commandment new name new songnew man new life second genesis of the worldrdquo16 Such afeeling did not mislead them They were not in danger

those who had seen who had heard those who hadtouched of taking the Christian Mystery to be a more or lessspontaneous mixture of the Jewish Messianism exalted byJesus and cult forms then in vogue in the Hellenized Eastmdashany more than Christian dogma was in danger of appearingto their successors of the great patristic period as a learnedproduct of the Bible and Greek philosophy This chemistry ofimpotent historians could not have been created by themThey knew from an immediate source that they weredealing with something very different They sensed theunity of what myopic analysts think to understand bydecomposing it This is because the principle of synthesiswas in them living and active It is because living thisdogma themselves before drawing up the inventory of itadoring this mystery before translating it they penetratedits spiritual meaning

In addition their testimony is for us more than aguarantee It constitutes a call If that call is at firstnecessary for us we do not have to hold to it ldquoNowrdquo saidthe inhabitants of Sichar to the woman who had led them toChrist ldquoit is no longer because of what you have said to usthat we believe for we have heard him himself and weknow that he is truly the Savior of the worldrdquo17 For twentycenturies the witness of the first generation of believers ispreserved intact because it always remains a living witnessabyssus abyssum invocat [deep calls to deep] Why shouldwe be riveted to history The Spirit still gives witness to ourspirit18 The Kingdom of God is still in the midst of us ldquoTheGospel of Jesus Christ Son of Godrdquo which was heard for thefirst time in Galilee under Herod during the fifteenth yearof Tiberius Caesar at the time of the High Priests Annas andCaiaphas still resounds today and if the forms of itspreaching are different it is the same Voice that proclaimsit Like the creative Deed which does not cease to maintainbeing and life everywhere the Deed of Charity is pursued

over the world The second Genesis henceforth aspermanent as the first and like it infinitely fruitful TheChurch Bride of Christ continues the work of herBridegroom We have only to contemplate hermdashnot fromoutside in her sole visible organization with its humancharacteristics which are often too human perhaps with itsdefects not even in the works of its scholars alwaysunequal to their task and whose insufficiency can be sopainful19mdashespecially when they themselves do not seem tofeel itmdashbut in her inner life in her ideal in her belief in hersecret fidelity in the purity of her zeal in the marvelousfruits of holy joy that she makes ripen in the depths ofhuman hearts In all that the ldquoworldrdquo does not perceiveThen the light shines then the Truth bears witness to itselfveritas index sui No need for laborious comparisons or of anerudite return to the past The clearsightedness of a limpidlook is preferable here to all the sharp perspicacities ofcriticism This is because the miracle is endlessly producedbefore our eyes Today as formerly by virtue of Christianityldquoall things are becoming newrdquo EvenmdashSaint Augustine hadalready noted itmdashthe more time advances the moreprivileged is our situation as witness The mystical Christ inthe measure he increases better reveals his power To thesigns of it that already multiply still others will be addedwhen his message has truly reached the most distantpeoples Today we only begin to see all the fullness of theDeed that renewed the world The sudden clarity of the firstdays has become a great luminous path which grows withthe centuries

This great Deed of Love Jesus it is You Yourself Perceptible to manhumble dying in a corner of Judea oh yes You are man Flower of JesseYou are indeed the fruit of our earth Born of a woman truly formed fromher substance You are not some sort of phantom come down from theclouds of heaven You are deeply rooted in our earth20 But in You Jesus asin no other child of our race God showed himself You were not merely Hismessenger You are His living and substantial appearance Through You He

has not only spoken Or rather His language is an action His word is adeed it is You Yourself Splendor Verbum et imago Patris You Jesus onyour Cross the act uniting earth to heaven21

In You God still shows Himself and in your holy Church Inyour best disciples He still shines so well that one cannotmistake it For it is You who live in them Have we not allknown someone in whom a divine flame burned which theyhad lit at your hearth alone Their silent testimony is all themore persuasive Non eloquimur magna sed vivimus22 ldquoAsfor merdquo said Gerbet ldquoI lend an ear to the sounds that holysouls make with greater respect than to the voice ofgeniusrdquo23 What a great wise man concludes after longstudies and profound meditations in favor of your divinitythat encourages me but scarcely moves me forward Butthat a Francis of Assisi that being so obviously predestinedto make a ray of eternity shine over our earth makeshimself your absolute disciple that he loves You adoresYou annihilating himself before You that he is ambitiousonly to place his steps in your steps and to live from You byreproducing each of your features that he wants always tobe only your humble repetitor24 that not for a moment doeshe entertain the idea of engaging in a personal way oftrying another experience of adding at least something toyour message this humble and total will to imitatemdashChristototus concrucifixus et configuratusmdashin the face of yoursovereign independence such literalness in such an effusionof the Spirit such contrast in a similar holiness Themore I reflect on it the stronger the argument seems tome25

After that what do the difficulties matter in which myreason gets tangled Or rather how could it be that so loftyan object would not put it to flight If You have come tounveil a new kingdom and a new existence to me howshould I not consent to letting myself be removed from myusual surroundings Is it not normal that I have to abandon

my usual modes of thought26 Your word upsets myinstinctive logic it overturns all my arrangements of ideasit shatters my concepts This is the price for the liberation ofmy understanding Yet little by little in mystery a newequilibrium is established Under the secret action of yourSpirit faith is able to find its exact expressions whichprotect it against the ever-reborn assaults of a reason toolittle converted This was not without a long and arduouswork To define your twofold nature as for all that is worththe effort of our understanding it takes time reflectiongroping disputes materials from all sources A long andperilous journey A complicated winding history strewnwith a thousand contingencies An often tragic historymdashawonderful history27 It was through the adventurousconcepts of thinkers that Catholic Christology ended inrejoining the first intuition of faith

More than any other because it is at the center of all thedefinition in which the result of this labor is found today isimperfect An inevitable and blessed imperfection Notaccidental but essential necessary so that humbleastonishment before the mystery may subsist in theprecision of belief and in the firmness of adherence Butalready Jesus your very first disciples when they loved Youabove all and when they left all to follow You when theygave You all without thinking thereby to take anything fromGod when they contemplated You seated at the right handof the Father when they called You the one Lordproclaiming that all had been renewed by You and that allknees must bend before You your disciples believed in YouExtraordinary impossible faithmdashand yet authenticatedbeyond doubt A scandal as grave for the historian as thedogma itself for the thinker For though not beingabsolutely the same as ours the difficulties for a Saint Peteror a Saint Paul in believing were no less strong Nor werethose of their successors the Origens and the Cyrils the

Ambroses and the Augustines Modern man flatters himselfwhen he judges that the Copernican revolution or theKantian revolution dug out a new hiatus between histhought and the thought of the Ancients It was as hard tobelieve then as it is today It was hard for a JewishmonotheistmdashldquoListen Israel Your God is onerdquomdashto believe inthe divinity of a man28 It was hard to believe in thecrucifixion of the Son of God29 It was hard for a reasonableman who had been able to see up close the Son of Man inhis humiliation to believe in the resurrected Christ and inall these histories ldquothat do not allow themselves to beallegorized rdquo30

ldquoA scandal for the Greeks and folly for the Jewsrdquo OurFathers passed beyond their faith conquered all theobstacles What they were capable of we ourselves will becapable of and if we do not make ourselves unworthy ofthem the reasons that quickened them will not be lessstrong for us Their attitude will thus be ours We could nottranscend it but neither could we restrict it without denyingyour message at the same stroke Jesus For it is no morepossible to abstract You from this message than it ispossible to abstract God from Yourself On what would webase the demands of your Law if we began by failing torecognize the Demand of your Person Who wouldguarantee us the hope of the Kingdom if we were not torecognize the King of it Does everything in You not tell usthat You are Yourself the Kingdom as You are the Truth andthe Life31 So from the beginning the religion of Jesuswhich is the ideal of love was indivisibly the religion ofChrist that is the cult of incarnate Love It is folly to want todissociate them and to believe that the first would survivethe ruin of the second The religion of which Jesus is thesubject and norm is gradually achieved in us only throughthe religion of which Christ is the object Moreover it isblindness not to recognize their identity it is to tear the

seamless robe that the Gospel presents to us and it is notto see the metaphysical significance of Love

Evangelium ChristimdashEvangelium de Christo a modernscarcely more subtle form of the old antithesis betweenpractice and dogma32 But in maintaining contrary to thosewho set them in opposition that there is an essentialrelation between them we do not mean simply that onemust observe dogma as a means for assuring practice Theirties are intrinsic33 and the necessity of their agreement isonly one consequence On the one hand ldquopracticerdquo can becorrectly defined only by dogma from it alone does itreceive its meaning and spirit and on the other hand inone sense it already contains everything in itself for it issummed up in charity which is the spiritual being in act

God is Love and in a great feat of Love he came to takeup man sinner and miserable Man and God embraced eachother in Christ The unique intellectual fecundity of thisDeed it is specifically pregnant with all Christian dogmaticsso that the latter must be called strictly revealed No morein fact than one could dissociate the revealed truths fromthe very Person of the Revealer could one conceive a justand complete idea of the transcendent newness ofChristianity if one did not see that in this Person of Christsuch as the Apostles already show him to us and such asthe Church never ceases to contemplate and reproduce himthe reality of Charity and the truth of Dogma areindissolubly united Charity constituting the reality of thisDogma as this Dogma itself constitutes the truth of thisCharity34

As for the intellectual elaboration from which the dogmain its second state results which is to say in that abstractand learned formulation that multiplies it in distinctenunciations wholly guided by the Spirit of Truth as it is itnevertheless remains a human operation The materials it

employs just like those that entered into the firstspontaneous expression of faith are human materials Theycan thus serve them too in the real (though alwaysinadequate) transmission of divine truth only in the measureto which they are related to the Whole of Dogma35 In themeasure to which on the contrary they are consideredeach in isolation the formulas cease to bear witness to thedivinity of their origin they lose the best of their meaningceasing to have relation to divine charity such as itappeared to us in Christ For our faith is one and it is whollysummed up in You O Jesus36 You are the center and thebond of all its ldquoarticlesrdquo All its expressions all itsdevelopments are only so many means of understandingYou better and of situating ourselves better before You Thisis why the historians who instead of considering Christianityin its living unitymdashwhich one can do fully only if one lives itoneselfmdashalways scrutinize its elements only by taking themone after the other as a series of detached pieces resistany possibility of understanding it The essence escapesthem They do not find the soul at the end of their scalpelIn Christianity they find nothing divine not seeing Christ init

How true it is therefore to say that if dogma is necessaryfor the maintenance of practice the role of practice isnonetheless essential for maintaining the reality of dogmaintact We now discover the whole meaning of such anaxiom Without the truth of dogmamdashalthough there may besome good ldquounfaithfulrdquomdashone will only have an apparentpractice but on the other hand without the reality ofpracticemdashalthough there may be some bad Christiansmdashonewill no longer have anything but an apparent dogma On theone hand a charity that is less than genuine on the other asuperstitious belief or a verbal orthodoxy an ldquoorthologyrdquowithout any real content This is because if the articles offaith are numbered the Object of Faith is marvelously one If

the former are formed of abstract propositions the Latter ismarvelously Living And just as according to the oldScholastic theory all physico-chemical bodies onceassimilated by the human organism are directly informedby the soul so that there is no longer either carbon oroxygen and so forth but only human matter so with all theelements religious or profane in origin that enter into theChristian synthesis Constructed completely in one sensewith human materials the dogmatic formulas neverthelessexpress divine truth Elaborated by men they channel apart of divine revelation But this is on condition onceagain that one always relates them to that same revelationto the living Center to the divine Center from which allradiates and to which all must lead us to Jesus Christ JesusChrist the personal manifestation of Charity Jesus Christ inwhom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledgebecause in him dwells the fullness of the Divinity JesusChrist Word of the Father who speaks him and gives himentirely There is no absolute newness no revelationproperly speaking no true transcendence outside of theunique reality of his Person We must always return to thewords of Saint Irenaeus ldquoOmnem novitatem attulitsemetipsum afferensrdquo37

Jesus I believe in You I confess that You are God You are forus the whole Mystery of God38 What other definition of Godwould we seek than that given by your Apostle And was itnot in contemplating You that he found it God is Love Thissingle word contains an unfathomable mystery which Iadore But through You this mystery illumines our nightalready For Love has done a great deed and this Deed ofLove the Love made visible to our eyes perceptible tohearts of flesh effective and saving Love is You Yourself Itis God made man it is the Incarnation of God

We stammer as we can Our formulas are insufficientNecessary to shield the treasure of our faith their form

nevertheless troubles us But your true adorers O Jesushavenrsquot You Yourself said are not those who put their trustin frail words they are those who understand your feat andwho sustained by Youmdashfor that costs more than bloodmdashstrive to reproduce it

An absolute feat nothing has any value except throughcharity Charity demands all assumes all Charity judges all

An efficacious feat through this ldquodivine strengthrdquo alreadyrecognized by the Apostle Paul39 he uproots us from ouregotism he opens us takes us raises us makes us capableof adopting the contours of it in our turn He eradicates theold man and implants the new man Operatorius sermoChristi40

A finally definitive feat Whatever might be the futureprogress of our race whatever the enlargement of itsknowledge or the refinement of its ideal we will not betaken unawares The coming of Christ has marked thefullness of time No fullness no depth will ever exhaust theDeed of Calvary41

That is why peaceful about the past we also look to thefuture without fear ldquoQuid amplius reservandum cumamplius nihil sit plenitudine perfectionisrdquo42 Sure that ourfaith will never mislead us we go ahead of the excavationsof history and the research of science Ahead too of humanprogressmdashand we know too well that all progress of theworld will not obtain the least beginning of salvation Aheadof the new values to which history gives birth through itscrises Man can vary and perfect his culture without end Hecan discover and exploit new potentialities in it The veryUniverse can grow immeasurably and distant stars can oneday reveal a humanity more numerous more civilizedmdashmore miserablemdashthan our own the Deed of Christ wouldstill take it in It embraces all worlds just as it shines abovetime For all equally for each one of us and at all times for

those who believe in man and for those who despair of himits rays are those of Eternal Life

ldquoHe has come the Christ of God the Leader of thePromises And without any doubt he has been he alone tothe exclusion of all those who preceded himmdashand I have theaudacity to say he is to the exclusion of all those who followhimmdashthe one awaited by the Nationsrdquo43

which is to say in such a case at things of the body but theone who has fallen into evil Body and flesh (it is reallynecessary to repeat this since people still seem to bemistaken about this at times) are in no way synonymous oreven comparable and do not belong to categories of thesame order In the thinking of Saint Paul the ldquofleshrdquo has ldquoaclose solidarity with sinrdquo it is this congenital weakness thatmakes the human soul fall into the slavery of sin Theldquospiritrdquo its antagonist is ldquothe state of freedom in which itblossoms when it has been faithful to the Spirit of God whoattracts it and comes to dwell within itrdquo There is noquestion here of any gradation but of opposition pure andsimple Saint Paul does not speak there of any dualitywhatever in the structure of the human being he does notcorrect a tripartite anthropology by another bipartite oneFor him flesh and spirit never designate two components ofhuman naturemdashlike body and soul would bemdashbut alwaysstatesmdashcontrasted statesmdash of the whole man24

If one wants therefore to find a certain Greek antecedentof philosophical significance for the Pauline trichotomy itwould not be appropriate to look for it on Platorsquos side Itwould rather be in Aristotle The Stagirite in factacknowledges in man an animated body the presence of asuperior element the spirit (νοῦς) the principle ofintellectual life immortal and divine Nevertheless theparallel takes a sharp turn for there would be at least onemajor difference While Aristotle spoke of a νοῦς Paulspeaks of a πνεῦμα Now as we know the difference is notmerely one of terminology It is no longer a question of asimple nuance of thought The substitution of one term foranother was besides not made by Paul alone it hadalready been carried out a little earlier by Philo Friendlytoward Hellenism Philo ldquowas imbued with the doctrine ofthe contemplative nousrdquo25 nevertheless in the passageswhere he comments on the creation account he does not

speak of νοῦς but of πνεῦμα God he says breathes intoman a pneuma not content with making him simply alivecomposed of soul and body he gave him part of his spiritthis is what Moses teaches by saying that he made him inhis image This pneuma in man is the principle of a higherlife the place of communication with God26 Now such isalso one of the meanings of pneuma in Saint Paul It is not inGreece that we must search for its origin but in the Bible

Father Joseph Huby has said it in a few words which morerecent authors would benefit from rereading In the Paulineverse ldquofamous because of the trichotomy spirit soul bodyof the human composite some thought to see a borrowingfrom Plato or Aristotle Both do acknowledge in fact threeprinciples in man but if the latter two of those coincide withthose27 enumerated by Saint Paul the first is different InPlato it is the nous the intellectual soul consideredmoreover by Aristotle as separable Instead of νοῦς SaintPaul puts spirit or pneuma here with him as in Philo this isa Semitic term suggested by the account in Genesis (27)where it is said that God breathed into the nostrils of theman a breath of life rdquo28 The Pleiade Bible has taken thesame explanation which seems imperative to us ldquoSpiritsoul bodyrdquo recalls Michel Leturmy in a note to histranslation ldquosuch is with the Semites the most commondivision with respect to the human compositerdquo29 In a noteto the translation of Matthew 625 the same authorexplains that the Greek ψ υχή translates the Aramaeannaumlfshacirc breath of the throat animal life (the ldquosoulrdquo) throughopposition to πνεῦμα which translates the Aramaean roucirc hacircdivine respiration breath of the nostrils (the ldquospiritrdquo) seeGenesis 2730

We do not believe it would be enough however to tracethe words of the Pauline triad simply to those of the BibleThe Apostlersquos anthropology is also based in part on hisexperience acquired from life in the Spirit of God There are

numerous commentators who in consequence consider thePauline πνεῦμα to designate in reality not something of manthat would be higher than his soul but the human soulinsofar as it is informed by grace participating as theSecond Letter of Peter (14) says in an effective way in thedivine nature united to the very essence of God by thecoming of the divine Spirit into it31 The ψ υχή in this casewould be not only ldquosensible liferdquo but also the higher realityof man as man that is although Buzy translates it in anoverly intellectualist language ldquoreason without gracerdquo32

This would be ldquothe state of the specifically living beingwhich is inherent in man as suchrdquo33 So too schematicallyBonnetain ldquoThe three terms come back to the followinggrace soul and bodyrdquo34 Father Andreacute-Jean Festugiegravere isclearly opposed to this interpretation which also proceedsin some from the fear of attributing to the Apostle ananthropology judged to be ldquoPlatonicrdquo For him theanthropology of Saint Paul is undoubtedly trichotomic thepneuma in question in the wish addressed to theThessalonians as in the texts mentioned above from theFirst Letter to the Corinthiansmdashand as in addition the Letterto the Hebrews speaks of itmdashis not the Holy Spirit butactually a part of man ldquothe movement of the phrase thetwo ϰαί the insistence on saying that we must becompletely in our whole being under the divine safeguardrdquoare the proof of it35 Besides if this pneuma is not itself thedivine life realized in man it is indeed in him the center ofthe higher life moral religious mystical it is the ldquocenter ofthe Christian liferdquo which is not a matter of feelings but offaith36

Some hesitate to choose between these two contradictoryinterpretations even if it means apparently contradictingthemselves in their explanatory formulas They are of thefeeling that the thought of Paul is profound and complexthey would like to lose nothing of it but do not see well how

to explain it in our language in a coherent fashion Such isFather Joseph Huby following the passage we have quotedldquoFor Paul the pneuma is more precisely the spirit of maninsofar as influenced informed and heightened by divinegracerdquo it is the ldquoprinciple of thinking center of moral andreligious life and summit of the soul The original (biblical)concept of the pneuma the human soul breathes from Godis magnificently deepened the pneuma designates thereason informed by grace man insofar as he becomes spiritparticipating in the nature of God through the spirit theνοῦς becomes capable of conquering the flesh it isunited to the very essence of God through the coming of thedivine Spiritrdquo37 In this essay somewhat awkward in itsattempts at reconciliation in which a fourth term (νοῦς) isintroduced we see to which side the author is leaning Wewill say as much of Max Alain Chevallier who with respectto 1 Corinthians 1414-16 after having noted for us ldquothefreely equivocal use of the word pneuma by Paulrdquo seems torestrict immediately the significance of his observation bysaying that this word ldquodesignates without describing it theinner man filled with the presence of Godrdquo38 Karl Barth inhis Dogmatics escapes such oscillations only thanks to hisgeneral doctrine which prohibits him from ldquoreifyingrdquo in away from giving a proper consistency to the human spiritconsidered in its relation to God After having justlyobserved that the ruah of the Old Testament does notcorrespond to the πνεῦμα ἅ γιον of the New39 but insofar asa ldquoanthropological notionrdquo to the πνεῦμα of the address tothe Thessalonians Barth makes haste to add ldquoOn the otherhand one cannot assert without reservation that the OldTestament and the New refer to a trichotomy of the humanbeing For both the human being in himself is body andsoul earthly form and earthly life but the body possesses asoul and its earthly form is that of a living being in themeasure in which the human being receives the spirit and

safeguards itrdquo This spirit must however be conceived ldquonotas a property of man but as a gratuitous giftrdquo which atdeath must be returned to God and which persists ldquowhichGod withdraws from him or grants to himrdquo40 What must bemaintained above all according to Barth is that man ldquois inno way lsquorelated to Godrsquo (Gunkel) he has simply beenawakened to his proper existence by the breath that Godbreathes into him and which allows him to breathe himselfWhat is he and what does he possess that he has notreceived and that does not differentiate him from God sinceit is God who has created himrdquo41

The human pneuma of which Paul speaks would thus beboth an element so little constitutive of his being that Godcan take it back from him and a created element thatdifferentiates him from God Such is the Barthian paradoxWithout having to take him literally perhaps we would haveto unite ourselves with the ldquospiritrdquo of it Would it in fact benecessary to choose between two contradictoryinterpretations that confront each other or resign ourselvesto a [false] harmonization that itself does not avoidcontradiction An expression used by Saint Paul himself 1Corinthians 211 could suggest an intermediate solution tous ldquoWho therefore among men knows the secrets of a manif not the spirit of the man which is in him (τὸ πνεῦμα τοῦἀνθϱώ που τὸ ἐν αὐτῷ)rdquo This pneuma is certainly not theHoly Spirit since Paul adds ldquoSimilarly no one knows thesecrets of God except the Spirit of Godrdquo Yet it does notappear completely like a constituent part of man as suchlike the body or the soul after having said ldquothe spirit of themanrdquo Paul corrects himself in a way to say ldquothe spirit whois in himrdquo which marks a nuance of capital importanceThus what par excellence makes a man what constitutesman in his worth among the beings of this world muchmore what makes him a being superior to the world wouldbe an element that rather than being ldquoof manrdquo would be

ldquoin manrdquo There is it seems to us in this Pauline πνεῦμα thesame kind of ambiguity notional because real as in thedivine ldquoimagerdquo or divine ldquobreathrdquo of creation such asChristian tradition interprets them From one author toanother and sometimes in the same author the sameambiguity will give place to oscillations which will not gohowever to the point of compromising before a ratherrecent date the idea of a tripartite anthropology Weconclude with a recent interpreter that the Pauline conceptof πνεῦμα is a concept ldquoof which our modern anthropologiescan absolutely not take accountrdquo42

2 Patristic Tradition

I The First Two Centuries Irenaeus It is a fact that Christianantiquity did not judge insignificant the Pauline verse about

body soul and spirit Nevertheless from one author toanother the interpretations differ without always being in

contradictory opposition to each otherIn his letter to the Philadelphians Saint Ignatius of Antioch

simply makes the Apostlersquos enumeration his own in judgingthat his correspondents like the Ephesians and theSmyrnians ldquowill be honored by the Lord Jesus Christ inwhom they hope with flesh soul and spirit (σαϱϰί ψ υχῇ πνεύματι) in faith charity and concordrdquo1 Athenagoras alsodistinguishes between soul and spirit for him the soul isplaced between ldquothe spirit of matterrdquo which is to say ldquotheflesh and bloodrdquo and the ldquoheavenly spiritrdquo which is ldquopurespiritrdquo and it can according to its choice mix with one orbecome the other

The soul becomes passive when it receives the spirit of matter and ismixed with it by looking below toward earthly things and to speak in ageneral way when it becomes only flesh and blood and ceases to be apure spirit2We believe that we will live another life heavenly and no longer earthlyif at least close to God and with God we have steadfast souls masteringpassion and if we remain not like bodies but like a heavenly spirit 3

In Tatian also the distinction seems clear when he saysldquoWe have knowledge of two sorts of spirits one of them iscalled soul the other is greater than the soul it is the imageand resemblance of Godrdquo4 Only subsequently it isimpossible to discern clearly if the spirit he distinguishesthus from the soul and which he calls ldquodivinerdquo is not simplythe Spirit of God The soul he explains is not immortal in

and of itself so ldquoif it remains by itself it dies with the flesh But when it is united to the divine spirit (θεῖ ον) it doesnot lack for help and it rises to where the spirit leads it Forthe seat of the latter is above while its origin is below Nowin the beginning the spirit was the guide of the soul itabandoned it when it did not want to follow it Now theSpirit of God does not reside in all but in some who livejustly The souls who have obeyed wisdom have drawnthe Spirit who is closely related5 to them (συγγενές) rdquo

Saint Irenaeus then Origen should make us pause a littlelonger because of the abundance of texts their importanceand their difficulty6

It is in the fifth book of Adversus Haereses that Irenaeusgives us his views about anthropology But his goal was notto write a clear and didactic exposition for the use of thehistorians who would pore over his text later on it was torefute heretics who conceived of salvation for man only inldquorejection of the fleshrdquo7 On the other hand careful alwaysto stick very close to Scripture he lets himself be guidedsuccessively by the different texts he uses which leads himto change more or less his perspective and his terminologyin the course of his text8 Hence the difficulties forinterpreters

The first passage in which the distinction between the souland the spirit is affirmed is of little interest to us for it isthere a question of an exposition of heretical doctrine9 Inresponse chapter 6 no 1 is presented as an orthodoxcommentary on the Pauline texts

Through the hands of the Father which is to say by the Son and the Spiritit is man and not a part of man who becomes the image and theresemblance of God Now the soul and the spirit can be a part of man butin no way man the perfect man is a mixture and union of the soul who hasreceived the Spirit of the Father and who has been mixed with the fleshmodeled according to the image of God Under the name of ldquoperfectrdquo the Apostle designates those who havereceived the Spirit of God He also calls them ldquospiritualrdquo they arespiritual through a participation of the Spirit but not through a voiding and

a suppression of the flesh In fact if one dismisses the substance of theflesh that is of the modeled work in order to consider only what isproperly spirit such a thing is no longer the spiritual man but the Spirit ofthe man or the Spirit of God By contrast when this Spirit in mixing withthe soul is united to the modeled work thanks to this effusion of the Spiritthe spiritual and perfect man is achieved and it is he himself who has beenmade in the image and resemblance of God When on the contrary theSpirit is absent in the soul such a man remaining in all truth natural andcarnal will be imperfect possessing indeed the image of God in themodeled work but not having received the resemblance by means of theSpirit10

From all the evidence Irenaeus counts here three elementsin man But is it simply a matter of man or of the perfectman Or rather to speak without ambiguity is it simply aquestion of the ldquoperfectrdquo man which is to say complete inhis nature or man divinized through the participation of theSpirit of God Or indeed does Irenaeus mix the two thingsThe text that follows will perhaps enlighten us

Modeled flesh alone is not the perfect man it is only the body of man thusone part of man Neither is the soul alone man it is only the soul of manthus one part of man Nor is the Spirit man one gives it the name of Spiritnot that of man It is the mixture and union of all these things thatconstitute the perfect man And this is why the Apostle in explaininghimself has clearly defined the perfect and spiritual man beneficiary ofsalvation when he says in this First Letter to the Thessalonians ldquoMay theGod of peace make you perfect and holy so that you may be fullycomplete and so that your whole beingmdashto wit your Spirit your soul andyour bodymdashmay be preserved without reproach for the coming of the LordJesusrdquoWhat motive did he have in asking that these three things to wit the soulthe body and the Spirit be preserved whole for the coming of the Lord if hehad not known that all three were to be restored and reunited and thatthere is for them but one and the same salvation This is why he calls ldquofullycompleterdquo those who present these three things without reproach to theLord Thus those are perfect who all at once possess the Spirit of Godremaining always with them and maintain themselves without reproachwith respect to their souls and their bodies which is to say preserving faithtoward God and keeping justice toward their neighbor11

The hesitation remains On the one hand the Spiritconstitutes with the soul one part of man it is called theldquoSpirit of the manrdquo and seems to be distinguished from the

ldquoSpirit of Godrdquo it in itself does not constitute the man anymore than the body or the soul does but it is one of thethree elements that constitute him these three elementsare also enumerated according to Saint Paul who wishesthem all three to be without reproachmdasha wish that wouldbe irrelevant even impertinent in the case of the Spirit ofGod finally moreover Irenaeus himself considers that theyare all three to be ldquorestoredrdquo and to be presented to theLord But on the other hand the soul receives ldquothe Spirit ofthe Fatherrdquo the man is called ldquospiritualrdquo insofar as hereceives participation of the Spirit and this participationmakes him to be not only in the image but in theresemblance of God finally if this man is ldquoperfectrdquo it isbecause in addition to the soul and the body he ldquopossessesthe Spirit of Godrdquo12 And these two series of affirmations arenot found in different contexts they are closelyintermingled

Yet a little farther on several passages come to supportthe second series

Those who possess the deposit of the Spirit and who surrenderthemselves to the Spirit the Apostle rightly calls ldquospiritualrdquo since theSpirit of God dwells in them For spirits without bodies will never bespiritual men but it is our substancemdashthat is the composite of soul andfleshmdashthat in receiving the Spirit of God constitutes the spiritual man 13 The weakness of the flesh makes the power of the Spirit shine forth and it is of these two things that the living man is made living due to theparticipation of the Spirit man through the substance of the flesh mdashTherefore without the Spirit of God the flesh is dead 14The breath of life which makes the natural man is one thing and thevivifying Spirit which renders him spiritual is another The breath has beengiven indistinctly to all the people who inhabit the earth while the Spirithas been given exclusively to those who trample down earthly covetousdesires 15ldquoFor the Spirit will come out around me and it is I who made all breathrdquo (Is5716) He ranks in a way the Spirit in a sphere apart beside God who inthe last days spread it over mankind for adoption but he situates thebreath in the common sphere among creatures and he declares itsomething created Now what has been created is different from the onewho creates it The breath is thus a temporary thing while the Spirit is

eternal After having enveloped man from within and without heremains always with him and henceforth will never abandon him16

One will note however that in these texts the perspectiveis no longer that of an anthropological analysis and thatthey are condemned by other biblical passages than thepreceding Moreover as Irenaeusrsquo principal objective justnow was to claim for the body itself a salvation of which theheretics say it is incapable his objective here is to show thatthis salvation the definitive blossoming of the spiritual lifewhose seed is in each man is the work of the Spirit of Godin each man In no passage is Irenaeus concerned to give uswhat we would call a philosophical anthropology He doesnot go deeply intomdashto tell the truth he does not even havein mindmdashthe problem of the insertion of the Spirit of God inman Despite the several expressions we have brought outand several others as well we believe that the Spirit ofwhich he speaks is always the Spirit of God even when heconsiders it in man If for example it is said in 5 6 1 thatthe soul and the Spirit can be ldquoone part of manrdquo one canobserve with Dom Adelin Rousseau that ldquoparsrdquo is in thesingular ldquoThus although Irenaeus does not hesitate to seein the Spirit of God one of the three constitutive elements ofthe perfect man he refuses and for good reason to makethis Spirit a lsquopartrsquo of the perfect man rdquo A little farther onit is said that the Spirit like the soul and the body is to berestored and saved which seems strange if it is indeed aquestion of the Spirit of God but Dom Rousseau againcomments ldquowhat is to be saved is not the Spirit as such butthe Holy Spirit insofar as communicated to man for his fullachievement in other words the Spirit is less saved than itsaves rdquo These explanations are ingenious they canseem a little subtle they do not however in our opinionfalsify the general line of Irenaean thought Perhaps it isonly necessary to complete them by recognizing that thetexts that are to be thus explained give witness to a rather

clear tendency to conceive of man (even if it is a question ofthe ldquoperfect manrdquo) according to the anthropological schemesuggested by the Apostle17

If therefore the Spirit indeed designates for Irenaeus theSpirit of God his very manner of considering this Spirit ofGod in man and of seeing in it thus one of the threeelements that combine to constitute the perfect man posesan anthropological problem18 Just like the text of the FirstLetter to the Corinthians of which Irenaeus wants to give anaccount it invites a resolution of this problem in thedirection of a certain ldquotrichotomyrdquomdashwhich Origen more of aphilosopher will soon do ldquoThe hereticsrdquo we read again inthe fifth book of Adversus Haereses ldquo do not understandthat three things as we have shown constitute the perfectman the flesh the soul and the Spirit One of them savesand forms to wit the Spirit another is saved and formed towit the flesh another finally is between those two to witthe soul which now follows the Spirit and takes its flightthanks to him now lets itself be persuaded by the flesh andfalls into earthly desiresrdquo19

These explanations seem to us akin to those of FatherJean Meyen-dorff with respect to man ldquocomposed of fleshsoul and Holy Spiritrdquo ldquoThis viewrdquo he observes ldquowhichsounds strangely pantheistic if one judges it according tolater theological categories shows in fact a dynamicconcept of man that excludes the notion of lsquopure naturersquoMan is created so as to share the existence of God this iswhat distinguishes him from the animal and is expressed inthe biblical account of the creation of Adam lsquoin the image ofGodrsquo rdquo20 As Pierre Boyer-Maurel also says21 if for Irenaeusa certain dichotomy ldquoaccounts for man fashioned in theimage of Godrdquo it is nevertheless a trichotomy ldquoin which thebreath only precedes the Spiritrdquo who ldquoaccounts for thebecoming of man of that man who is created by lettinghimself be created throughout the divine Economyrdquo

II Origen Irenaeus spoke particularly of the Spirit of Godeven when that Spirit shared became by consent of thesoul the spirit of man Origen will speak more explicitly of

the spirit of man insofar as an opening to the Spirit of GodThese are two inverse perspectives much rather than two

adverse doctrines1One authority on Origen Gustave Bardy has however

written that the tripartite division ldquowhich is imposed onhim in a way by several Scripture passages plays no rolein his teachingrdquo2 Another historian of ancient Christiandoctrines Francois Bonifas had expressed a judgment inthe contrary direction but as little conformed to the realityafter having pointed out that ldquounsteadinessrdquo of the Paulineterminology ldquomakes it doubtful that the Apostle intended [in1 Thessalonians 523] to make a scientific distinctionrdquo hewent on thinking essentially of Origen ldquoYet the Fathers ofthe Church saw in the expressions of Saint Paul a rigorousdivision in which they found once again that of their oldmentor Platordquo3 Previously J Denis while not mixing Platoup in the affair had recognized in Origen the existence oftrichotomic texts but he saw in that only a foreign body inthe midst of Origenian doctrine ldquoGenerally speakingrdquo hesaid ldquothe soul and the spirit are but one for Origen and ifhe had not respected a division that came to him from SaintPaul and which appears to have been adopted generallyas much by the orthodox Fathers as by the heretic scholarshe would have suppressed one of the terms of this divisionand would thereby have been spared numerouscontradictionsrdquo4 The prejudice to which in each of thesethree last cases the historian is unconsciously giving way isnot difficult to perceive To overcome it would require an in-depth study After the work by G Verbeke on LrsquoEvolution dela doctrine du Pneuma du Stoiumlcisme agrave saint Augustin (1945)the works of Henri Crouzel and Jacques Dupuis have broughtus all desirable light on this point ldquoAt timesrdquo Father Crouzel

tells us ldquoOrigen is a dichotomist distinguishing the bodyand the soul following the Platonic custom5 But most of thetime he sees according to Scripture three elements inman spirit soul and body He has recourse to thistrichotomy when it is a matter of explaining his idea of manand he states it each time he encounters in the texts anexpression that suggests it and this is so throughout hisliterary careerrdquo6 But it is Father Jacques Dupuis who drawsthe matter into perfect clarity in his important monographon ldquoLrsquoEsprit de lrsquohommerdquo eacutetude sur Irsquoanthropologicreligieuse drsquoOrigegravene For him ldquoThere can be no doubt thatthe verse from Saint Paul is the immediate source of hisanthropological trichotomyrdquo (65) It is principally he that wewill follow here

ldquoWe often find it asserted in Scripturerdquo says Origen ldquothatman is spirit body and soul and we have ourselvesdeveloped the subject at lengthrdquo7 In that as in othersubjects it is in fact the sacred text most especially that ofSaint Paul that truly constitutes the framework for histhought8 And it is with reference to Scripture that he triesto define clearly the notion of the Pneuma For him thePneuma is first of all the Divine Life in principle but it is alsothe shared divine life the creature itself becomes pneumain the measure that it possesses this life Yet it is a first kindof participation in the divine Pneuma which does not yetallow it to be said that man has become pneuma aparticipation that without betraying Origen we can alreadycall natural because it consists in an element that is anintegral part of the nature of all men and that is preciselyhis pneuma ldquoThe Spirit of God even when it is present inus is one thing and the pneuma proper to every man thatwhich is in him is something else The Apostle clearlyaffirms that this spirit (this pneuma) is different from theSpirit of God even when the Holy Spirit is present in usover and above the spirit of man that is in himrdquo9 The

distinction could not be put more clearly Origen asks againin the same passage of the commentary on Saint MatthewldquoIs the spirit of Elias the same as the Spirit of God whodwells in Elias or indeed do we have two different thingsthererdquo And he replies ldquoThe Apostle shows clearly that theSpirit of God when he dwells in man is distinct from thespirit of the man lsquoThe Spirit itself testifies to our spirit thatwe are children of Godrsquo (Rom 816) and in another placelsquoNo man knows what is in a man if not the spirit of the manwho is in him likewise no one knows what is in God if notthe Spirit of Godrsquo (1 Cor 211)rdquo10

Origen indeed says like Paul pneuma and not nous It isbecause they did not sufficiently distinguish between thesetwo concepts that several have identified the pneuma of theanthropological trichotomy with the preexisting nous andhave made it the higher (intellectus) part of the soulmdashunless in order better to distinguish between pneuma andpsyche they reduced this latter to its sensible part Theythen spoke of Origenrsquos imprecisions his unstableterminology indeed of his inconsistency of thought and ofhis contradictions This was from not having read himclosely enough11 He distinguishes the spirit from the soul(and in this case he is not speaking of the nous) as clearlyas he does the soul from the body and he repeats atdifferent times that ldquowe are composed of a soul and aspiritrdquo this is the case it seems in the third book of Periarchocircn12 so too in the fourth book in the famoustheoretical parallel that he institutes between man andScripture13 In the Entretien avec Heacuteraclite for theinstruction of his august audience he insists ldquoThat man is acomposite being we know through Scripture The Apostle infact says lsquoMay God make you holy spirit soul and bodyrsquoand so forth This spirit is not the Holy Spirit but one part ofthe human composite (μέϱος τής τοῦ ἀνθϱώ πουσυστάσεως) as the same Apostle teaches when he says

lsquoThe Spirit gives witness to our spiritrsquo rdquo14 In thecommentary on the Letter to the Romans he will also quotein support a text from Daniel15 here he invokes as anexample what happened at the death of Christ havingwanted to save all men the Savior had taken body soul andspirit now ldquothese three elements during the Passion wereseparated at the time of the Resurrection they werereunited During the Passion they were separated How Thebody in the tomb the soul in hell the spirit he deposited itin the hands of the Father rdquo16

This spirit of man represented by the eagle in Ezekiel17 isplaced above the soul18 But never in the texts of thetrichotomic series does Origen call it νοῦςmdashso that thiscould be a criterion for discerning the origin of certainpassages given as Origenian but which are in reality fromEvagrius19

But how are we to understand this spirit which is ldquoin usrdquo20 What is its role If we follow again the indications givenby the Apostle we will compare it to the moral conscienceldquoOur gloryrdquo says Paul ldquois the testimony of our consciencerdquo(2 Cor 112) The conscience always rejoices in what good Ido on the other hand it can never be accused of doing evilbut on the contrary it remonstrates it accuses the soul towhich it is bound this is a sovereign freedom I thereforethink that it is this very spirit that the Apostle tells us is withthe soul being associated with it like a pedagogue and aguide to teach it good to chastise it and to reprimand itwhen it sins It is this spirit of which the Apostle again saysthat ldquono one knows what the man is if not the spirit of theman who is in himrdquo it is the spirit of the conscience alsoaccording to what Paul says ldquoThe spirit himself giveswitness to our spiritrdquo21

We should not however in exalting the pneumaexcessively reduce its reality if it is not a simple member ofthe human composite neither is it the simple voice of the

conscience Inaccessible to evil22 placed in a way as wehave said ldquoabove the soulrdquo (ἀνωτέϱω) as a ldquoguide tovirtuerdquo23 it is ldquomuch more divine than the soul and thebodyrdquo24 ldquobelonging truly to man it remains entirely in aparticipation of the Holy Spirit who gives himself to us it isthe point of contact between man and the divine Pneumawho inhabits himrdquo25 This is why it is always holy it is holyby essence not of course the ldquoHoly Spiritrdquo but throughparticipation a ldquoholy spiritrdquo26 ldquothe seal of the Holy Spiritmakes holy the spirit that is in usrdquo27 in each of us Hencethe paradox the pneuma in man is holy and it mustbecome so we must affirm at the same time the holiness ofthis pneuma and ldquothe fortuitous character of a holy liferdquo28 Ifwe seek to bring out the fundamental idea expressed (let usnot say sought for Origen seems very much the master ofhis thought) in these texts and other similar ones we couldwithout betraying it express it thus the pneuma that is ldquoinmanrdquo in every man assures a certain hiddentranscendence of the man over himself a certain opening acertain received continuity between man and God Not thatthere is the least identity of essence between the one andthe other (like Irenaeus like Clement Origen is animplacable adversary of this pantheism of the pseudo-Gnostics) but it is at the heart of man the privileged placealways intact of their encounter

Would man therefore be after all impeccable No But thecenter of moral freedom and choice is not the pneuma Thatis why we can say that for Origen the pneuma ldquodivine giftrdquois not properly speaking part of the personality29 Thecenter of choice is the soul in its higher part (νοῦς) Thelatter can be inclined as Saint Paul says on the side of thespirit or on the side of the ldquofleshrdquo (which does not mean thebody) which is to say that it is ldquocapable of virtue and ofvicerdquo30 When it is said that the flesh desires against thespirit and the spirit against the flesh without any doubt the

soul is posed between the two as being able to acquiesceto the desires of the spirit (si eum sequi velit)31 or let itselfbe led to carnal desires in this latter case it becomes withthe flesh a single body of covetousness and of carnalappetite in the former case on the contrary beingassociated with the spirit it becomes a single spirit withitrdquo32 The spiritual man is the one in whom the spiritprevails33 the carnal man he in whom the flesh prevailsThe spirit itself the pneuma always remains holy but ineach one it can have vitality or torpor flight or fall flame orsluggishness34 This is why paradoxically Origen can affirmboth as we have said that the pneuma is holy and that itmust become so35

Still following Paul Origen also speaks of the ldquonaturalmanrdquo who is again neither carnal nor spiritual and theexplanation he gives in his respect manifests once again aparadoxical character distinguished only with difficulty fromthat spirit (pneuma) that is in man without being uniquely ofman and that becomes fully himself and fully completesman only in his participation in the Spirit of God ldquoThenatural man does not understand what the law of God is itis madness to him but the spiritual judges all thingsrdquo (1 Cor214) We think that there is a reason why Paul omits theword ldquomanrdquo after ldquospiritualrdquo For ldquothe spiritualrdquo is more thana man he is superior to that humanity defined by the soulthe body or by the two together and not by the spirit whichis more divine than these two elements and whosesupernatural participation once achieved defines thespiritual When the soul rises follows the spirit andseparates itself from the body when it no longer evencontents itself with following the spirit but remains in it (asthis passage shows ldquoToward you have I raised my soulrdquo Ps251) how would it not lose so to speak its own nature andnot itself become spirit36

Toward the end of this text a trace of the speculations ofPeri archocircn on the subject of the soul will be noted buttoned down by ldquoso to speakrdquo It is necessary toacknowledge however that from one work to the otheracross the succession of dates and the varieties of subjectstreated and literary genres the points of view are so diversethat in the words if not in the thought the reader has somedifficulty finding a perfect coherence among all theOrigenian texts on the pneuma

At death all pneuma returns to God this is whatEcclesiastes says ldquoThus the pneuma of the just and that ofthe sinner have an identical destiny both end at theFatherrdquo37 But ldquoit does not follow that saint and sinner sharethe same destiny With the saint the whole man enters intoGod with the sinner the pneuma returns to the Lord thesoul and body perish in Gehenna hence the intrinsic tearingof the human beingrdquo38 Like the remark by Father CrouzelOrigen is akin here to the thought of Saint Irenaeus whosaid ldquoAll those who are destined to life will be raised up withtheir bodies their souls and their spirits those who havemerited punishment will surrender their souls and theirbodies to it for with them they have strayed from divinegracerdquo39

Later Christian tradition will not be as unfaithful to thisconception of the pneuma as one might believe It is foundagain in a series of intuitions ideas and opinions of variedexpression This is for example the idea dear toRuysbroek of a certain ldquodeiformityrdquo of the human being ofhis higher ldquosuperessentialrdquo life in God40 It is the obscurefeeling that there exists in each of us even the greatestsinner a hidden room where no one but God can enter inldquothat sacred point in us that says Pater no iterrdquo as PaulClaudel says magnificently in the famous ldquoCantique dePalmyrerdquo and that cannot hide from love41 It is the intuitionof a Georges Bernanos at the threshold of death noting in

his diary that ldquosin makes us live on the surface of ourselvesrdquoand that even when we offend God ldquowe never ceaseentirely to desire what He desires in the depths of thesanctuary of our soulrdquo42 There are similar traits in the workof Dostoyevsky although they too can be rather equivocal(a novelist does not express himself like a theologian) theydo not prevent him from glorifying personal freedom andproclaiming the necessity of uprooting evil in receiving ldquonewbirthrdquo The Origenian doctrine of the pneuma alsoreverberates throughout the Bonaventurian tradition In atotally different climate and without any need to search fora precise influence from one to the other the very doctrineof Saint Thomas Aquinas would not be completely foreign tohim It questions neither the singularity of each humanbeing nor the drama of existence nor the divinetranscendence43

NOTE

In his commentary on John 423-24 Origen defines ldquotrueadorersrdquo first by the spirit then in relation to the truth Hethus breaks down the dual Johannine formula and explains itterm by term drawing his inspiration again from Paul whoopposes spirit and flesh (Rom 89 Gal 56 2 Cor 103) It isinteresting to note that in evoking Romans 89 Origen addsa μήϰετι those who are no longer in the flesh but in theldquospiritrdquo He thereby stresses the impact of the coming ofChrist and of the gift of the Spiritmdashalready evoked by Paulmdashwhich divide history into a before and an after Origen doesnot work therefore only on words (flesh and spirit) but heis inspired by the Pauline thought in which these terms arenot only anthropological but in which they evoke the impactthat the history of salvation the Incarnation and the gift ofthe Spirit have on man It is the same with Galatians 516fIn verse 18 Paul in fact opposes the condition of man underthe Spirit to that of this same man under the Law As for thethird evocation it is a little different Paul speaks there of hisconduct because some accuse him of acting according tothe flesh that is of allowing himself to be guided bymotives that are too human (Jean-Michel Poffet OP ldquoLeMeacutethode exeacutegeacutetique drsquoHeacuteracleacuteon et drsquoOrigegravenecommentateurs de Jean 4rdquo Jeacutesus la Samaritaine et lesSamaritains [Fribourg Switzerland Eacuteditions Universitaires1985] 191) III From Origen to Augustine A few examplesshould be enough to show the continuity of this tripartiteanthropology across the patristic age

Cyril of Jerusalem addresses to the newly baptized thesame wish that Paul did to the Thessalonians1 Gregory ofNyssa in his treatise on the Creation of Man practices acertain eclecticism Following the perspective that isnaturally his own since he compares the nature of man to

that of the beings that surround him and particularly ofother living beings he begins by distinguishing a threefoldactivity merely vital (that of plants) sentient (that ofbeasts) rational these are like three souls or threesubstances all three of which are found in man alone Thevocabulary is that of the philosophical ϰοινή of that periodthe higher life of man is λογιϰή it is directed by the νοῦςhis nature is a νοεϱά ϕύσις But this can also be understoodsays Gregory according to the words that the Apostleaddressed to the Ephesians (sic) First of all through a boldconcordism he places the body in an equivalence with thenutritive life the soul with the sensate life the spirit(πνεῦμα) with the intellectual life (νοεϱόν) then withoutfurther hesitation and without seeming to perceive that heis changing the perspective he finds once again the truePauline thought or at least comes close to it bydistinguishing life according to the flesh (σαϱϰιϰή) from lifeaccording to the spirit (πνευματιϰή) and by showing thesoul in an intermediary situation having to choose betweenvice and virtue2 Farther on he will explain that only thesoul endowed with reason such as it is in man fully meritsthis name of soul in such a way that he would haverejected it seems any attempt at concordism between theνοῦς and the πνεῦμα3

It is not Hellenism but indeed the Bible that inspires thetrichotomy of the Syrian tradition such as we see it in thishymn of Saint Ephraim of Nisibis For the soul is still moreprecious than the bodyAnd the spirit is still more precious than the soul

And the Divinitymore hidden than the spiritThe body will be clothed with the beauty of the soul when

the end arrives

The soul will put onthe beauty of the spiritThe spirit will put on in its very image the (divine) MajestyThe body on equal footing with the soul will see itself

elevated The soul on equal footing with the spiritThe spirit at the height where the Majesty is 4

In another later Syrian text the awkwardness of an attemptat harmonization between the three elements of man andthe three Persons of the divine Trinity will be noted JacquesdrsquoEacutedesse (d 708) writes in his Explanation of the MassldquoSacred things are holy The soul the body and the reasonare sanctified by three sacred things by water blood andspirit and besides by the Father the Son and the Spirit andtruly man does resemble God in virtue of this trinity ofcomposition the soul corresponds to the Father the body tothe corporeality of the Son and the reason to the HolySpirit Thereby man thus resembles Godrdquo5 One cannevertheless wonder if the word translated by ldquoreasonrdquo isnot here the equivalent of nous rather than of pneuma andif the soul is not merely the sensate soul The same doubtcan be expressed with respect to a passage from theTestament in Galilee of Our Lord Jesus Christ of which wehave the text in Ethiopian ldquoShould the body be judged withthe soul and the spirit Will the body of every man berevived with his living soul and his spiritrdquo6 We will find asimilar hesitation in examining the Latin tradition andperhaps one must say in certain cases at least it cannot beresolved

Saint Ambrose writes on the one hand ldquoHomo ex animarationali constat et corporerdquo7 but also on the other handldquoPrimum unusquisque homo est corporalis secundoanimalis tertio spiritualisrdquo and the parallel he institutesbetween these three elements and the three heavens towhich Saint Paul alludes in the Second Letter to the

Corinthians does not enlighten us much about the meaningof this trichotomy8 Ambrose is not alone in any case inacknowledging it We read in Gregory of Elvira ldquoManifestumest enim tribus perfectum constare semimortalemhominem id est corpore et anima et spiriturdquo9 AndAugustine expresses himself in a similar way on severaloccasions10

In reality Augustinersquos vocabulary is rather evasive Theterm mens as we know holds a privileged place in his workIn De Trinitate he develops a distinction destinedsubsequently to become more rigid that between ratioinferior and ratio superior In commenting on Psalm 3 verse4 ldquoet exaltans caput meumrdquo he explains that this ldquocaputanimaerdquo is the ldquospiritusrdquo or the ldquomensrdquo and so on11

Certain texts which have the appearance of explicitdefinitions speak of two single elements as constitutive ofman ldquoHomo enim constat ex corpore et spiriturdquo12 ldquoNihil estin homine quod ad ejus substantiam pertineat atquenaturam praeter corpus et animam totus homo hoc estspiritus et carordquo13 Yet Augustine does not consider the twowords anima and spiritus to be simply synonyms althoughfor brevityrsquos sake he includes in only one of the two thecomplex meaning of both ldquoNomen animae spiritus est abeo quod spiritalis est animae nomen est ab eo quodcorpus animet hoc est vivificetrdquo14 From which we have acertain number of explicitly trichotomic texts which are ofgreat importance for a correct understanding of Augustiniananthropology for it is on this trichotomy that Augustinebases his doctrine of the memoria15 and he gives it asessential to the Catholic Faith ldquoSi quis tenuerit catholicamfidem ut totum hominem credat a Verbo Dei essesusceptum id est corpus animam spiritum rdquo16

In the same De fide et symbolo Augustine explainshimself at somewhat greater length ldquoEt quoniam tria suntquibus homo constat spiritus anima et corpusmdashquae

rursus duo sunt quia saepe anima simul cum spiritunominatur pars enim quaedam ejusdem rationalis quacarent bestiae spiritus diciturmdashprincipale nostrum spiritusest deinde vita qua conjungimur corpori anima diciturpostremo ipsum corpus quoniam visibile est ultimumnostrum est Anima vero cum carnalia bona appetit caronominatur rdquo17 we also quote several similar texts ldquoUttotus homo sit spiritus et anima et corpus sed aliquandoduo ista simul nomine animae nuncupari rdquo18 ldquoPropterspiritum et animam et corpus rdquo19 ldquoAd creaturaeintegritatem id est spiritum et animam et corpus et illudquo intelligimus et illud quo vivimus et illud quo visibiles etcontrectabiles sumusrdquo20

In De fide et symbolo at the same time as hedistinguishes anima from spiritus Augustine identifiesspiritus and mens21 Likewise too he distinguishes theldquopars rationalisrdquo of the soul (which is thus no longer only theanimator of the body as in animals) from the ldquopars quaeexcellit id est ipsa mensrdquo22 It is practically the lastdistinction expressed in De Trinitate by the seeminglyequivalent words ratio inferior and ratio superior23

In brief the anthropological analyses of Saint Augustineare varied H I Marrou has set up a table which does notintend to be exhaustive24 and it must be noted besides thatunder the same word under the same verbal distinction ithappens that Augustine places different realities On thewhole less dependent on a literal interpretation ofScripture and more particularly of Saint Paul than Origenwished to be25 more inclined to express himself in avocabulary borrowed in part from Neoplatonism Augustineplaces under the word spiritus a reality that sometimesmore closely resembles the nous of Greek philosophythan the pneuma of the sacred text Yet through the dualityhe recognizes within this spiritus (or this ratio or this mens)he remains a faithful witness of the Christian tradition

3 From Saint Augustine to Our Day

I Medieval Spiritual Masters In Augustine as in Origen (andas in the whole patristic tradition) the notions are fluid the

historian must strive to grasp the movement of theirthought rather than to classify their concepts Augustinianexplanations moreover do not correspond point by pointwith Origenian analyses The Christian spiritual masters ofthe Middle Ages will rather often be in this regard closer to

Origen than to Augustine In order not to interpret them in asimplistic way it is necessary constantly to bring analogy

into play Perhaps even the undertaking to reunite them in akind of continuous chain extending to our time is a little

too reminiscent of concordism Let us say finally thatspiritus is not only designated or understood in variousways with some it splits so that one has to deal rather

with a quadripartite anthropology one of the causes for thisis the desire to make a place for the Platonian tradition ofthe intelligence a tradition that is amalgamated somehowor other to the Pauline tradition It is having made these

remarks that we gather together the examples that follow

For John Scotus man is composed of three elements butthe third element called in turn animus intellectus or mensresembles the νοῦς more than the πνεῦμα We read in book5 of De divisione naturae ldquoTotam humanam naturamcorpus videlicet et animam et intellectumrdquo (PL 122 910-11)But another text in book 2 chapter 5 expresses aconception closer to the biblical conception ldquoAciem mentisqua ilium [Deum] intelligimus et in qua maxime imagocreatoris condita estrdquo (PL 122 531 c)1

The traditional trichotomy dominates the structure ofBernardrsquos Brevis Commentatio on the Song of Songs (n 1)In William of Saint Thierry the third term the ldquospiritrdquo splitseither in order to grant a certain place to the nous to theintellectus to rational understanding or rather in order todetail the principal stages of the spiritual life The Letter tothe Brethren at Mont Dieu that important text distinguishesa triplex status animalismdashrationalismdashspiritualis which is tosay ldquothose beginningrdquo ldquothose on the wayrdquo and ldquotheperfectrdquo The opposition between the flesh and the spirit isnot denied William will be able to remind those who havingbegun to taste the sweetness of contemplation might betempted to neglect the permanent necessity of spiritualcombat2 But rather than this dialectical opposition theobject of the Letter is to set forth a pedagogical ladderwhich is moreover nonetheless Pauline in its inspirationThe beginners are still guided by an animalis sensus (this isthe natural man of Saint Paul which is not the carnal man)those on the way acquire a rationalis scientia (we observehere the care to integrate into the formation of the monkthe whole cycle of human knowledge) and the perfect enjoyspiritualis sapientia3 In addition these are not threeairtight categories or perfectly distinct and successivestages just as there is passage from one to the other thereis immanence from one to the other William remains faithfulto the same schema in Miroir de la foi4 as well as in hiscommentaries on the Song of Songs ldquotres status esseorantium vel orationum animalem rationalemspiritualemrdquo5 In De contemplando Deo a subdivisionintervenes between the ratio the discursive faculty andthe intellectus which does not seem to be at this point theequivalent of the spiritus (1 4)

Isaac of Stella speaks in nearly the same way in alanguage however that has more of an intellectualist ringto it in distinguishing the understanding from the reason

which abstracts the forms of the sensate vis animae quaimmediate supponitur Deo6 We have the feeling that thissecond-generation Cistercian was familiar withScholasticism

Hugh of Saint Victor is closer than Isaac to Bernard andWilliam of Saint Thierry According to him the eye of theflesh (which is to say here the body) sees the world andwhat it contains the eye of the reason sees the soul andwhat it contains but the eye of contemplation penetrates tothe innermost depths of man and above man This eye ofcontemplation belongs to those who possess the spirit ofGod7 In Achard of Saint-Victor the order of the last twoelements or of the last two stages seems reversed hetreats de discretione animae spiritus et mentis mens wasas another author of the twelfth century says quasiquoddam divinitatis insigne8 (But this is hardly a questionof vocabulary alone) Whatever might be the distinctionsand subdistinctions orientations inflections and differencesin vocabulary it can be said of all these spiritual masters ofthe Middle Ages as well as of many of those who will followthat they took up the essential chorus of the Pauline andpatristic trichotomy and that most even attribute extremeimportance to it as Sandaeus a seventeenth-centuryauthority was to remark

Magni aestimant Mystici nonnulli et putant maxime necessariam ad suamTheologiam ac perfectionem divisionem inter spiritum et animam9

This is also true of Bonaventure ldquoHabet enim anima trespotentias animalem intellectualem divinam secundumtriplicem oculum carnis rationis contemplationisrdquo10 Werecognize the schema of William of Saint Thierry and Hughof Saint Victor11 For Thomas Gallus closer in this regard toIsaac of Stella ldquoreason feels the intelligence seesrdquo12

Johannes Tauler in several of his sermons teaches thatldquoman is so to speak composed of three menrdquo and that one

must distinguish in him first of all an ldquoexternal manrdquo orldquoanimal manrdquo then a ldquoreasonable manrdquo finally a ldquohigherman wholly inner and hiddenrdquo that ldquonoble and deiformrdquoman ldquomade in the image of Godrdquo13 The mystical theologyof Harphius (Henry Herp) also says that ldquothe soul isaccording to Scripture divided into three parts rdquo14 andthe appeal to Scripture despite the appearance is justifiedFor our authors in fact the adding of a supplementary termto the Pauline enumeration does not derive from the factthat they would abandon Paul in favor of Plato but from thefact that they are concerned besides about a theory ofknowledge which Paul did not at all have in view in hisaddress to the Thessalonians Yet La Perle eacutevangeacutelique leadsus to a tripartite schema the body being understood as inPaul but at base the difference from the medieval authorswe have just enumerated is hardly perceptible

Each man seems almost to represent three men according to the body heis bestial according to the soul he is reasonable and intellectual andaccording to the spirit or the naked essence of the soul where God dwellshe is deiform 15This very noble portion of the soul some call mens insofar as itcontinually breathes after God and is as it were a largely deiform or divinething and the image of God in man It is something divine in being as itwere flooded with God and united to him It is also called the point and thesummit of the spirit because God without intermission shines in the latterlike a mirror It is also according to what the good Father Ruysbroek saysthe highest part of the soul It is also called the sparkle of the soulbecause it is in God what the sparkle is in fire In the first [unity or union] we are superessential and deiform and in thesecond spiritual and internal and in the third active and moral 16

The foregoing is the text of a compiler from which one mustnot ask too great a coherence in terminology or too great aunity in point of view If we now appeal to a theologian whowas the adversary of the mystical school represented byTauler Harphius and La Perle eacutevangeacutelique and who refers tomore reliable authors such as Augustine ldquoBernardrdquo andHugh he will give us the same essential distinctions

Tres cognoscendi modi sunt quorum unus animalis dicitur utens maximeoculo carnis alius rationalis utens plus oculo rationis tertius spiritualisutens oculo contemplationis sicut distinxerunt divini homines tres oculoset tres vivendi modos17

Louis de Blois finally in the Institution spirituelleperseveres in bringing out this ldquodepth of the soulrdquo thatunder different names always corresponds to the ldquoPaulinepneumardquo and that will not find a place in the late Scholasticanthropologies or in most modern anthropologies

God who to tell the truth is everywhere dwells in the spirit of man and inthe simple depth or inner sanctuary of the soul in a particular manner Hedwells there in his own image and never absents himself18This depth naked and stripped of any image is raised above all creatures it transcends time and place and through a kind of perpetual adhesionremains united to God in his principle It is however in us by essence forthe abyss and depth of the soul are essence The soul possesses a certain supernatural unity of spirit in which itdwells as in its own habitation and it is carried away into the divineessence even to this supreme unity in which the Father Son and Holy Spiritare in the simplicity of the divine essence itself 19

Assuredly these speculations about the divine essencemdasheven if they maintain a trinitarian affirmationmdashand aboutthe essence of man presuppose a long evolution of thoughtthat in one sense distances us greatly from Saint Paul Butacross languages theories and as one never stops sayingtoday cultural contexts that differ greatly to be sure it ispossible to discern a fundamental continuity

This continuity will not be broken by the period called theRenaissance

II Saint Thomas Aquinas in Tradition1

I

In the spiritual history of mankind the three domainsconstituted by what one can designate under the threedenominations of religion morality and mysticism are oftenpresented as independent or even opposed to each otherThe alliance or the mutual penetration between mysticismand morality does not appear achieved in and of itself anymore than that between morality and religion Yet one couldnot conclude that such an alliance or such a mutualpenetration is an artificial and wholly contingentphenomenon In opposition to an empiricism thatdisintegrates everything without explaining anything wewill say rather that it responds if not to the demands atleast to the profound wish of nature But nature itself hastaken time in finding itself

In fact we note that it has not fully found itself outside theChristian revelation The union of the three aforementionedelements religion2 morality and mysticism does not reachits fullness it does not become harmonious and indissolublein principle except in the tradition coming from the GospelThere and most specifically in the Catholic form of thistradition it does not appear as a secondary fact obtainedby convergence subsequent to various gropings but as anoriginal and essential fact Religion morality and mysticismmanifest themselves there ldquoin a reciprocal envelopmentrdquoBetween these three both an attraction and a tension existthat could be the source of many vital problems but there isobjectively neither separation exclusion nor conflict forldquothe Deity while transcending being the true and the goodcontains them formallyrdquo3

This is why in particular in the Catholic traditionmdashlivedand reflectedmdashldquoreasonablerdquo life and ldquospiritualrdquo life or lifeldquoaccording to the spiritrdquo penetrate each other without beingidentified with each other4 and morality penetrates themystical life to the end Pseudo-Gnosticism relegated therewarding of good and punishing of evil those pillars of theldquoDemiurgerdquo to the lower level of ldquoexotericrdquo faith the greattradition on the contrary maintains this moral aspect ldquoatthe heart of the revelation of the Father through the uniqueSonrdquo5 ldquoIt is notrdquo says Saint Justin for example ldquobecause ofhis [natural] affinity with God or because he is spirit like himthat man sees God it is because he is virtuous and justrdquo6 Inhis Psychologie des mystiques Joseph Marechal noted thisessential characteristic Mystical ascent he explains doesnot erase ldquoany specific trait of the common Christian liferdquo7In other words the Christian virtues proposed for thepractice of all are not simply means of freeing oneself theirexercise is not simply something transitory in theirsubstance they are already something of the end itself Thisis what Saint Ambrose was able to explain wonderfully in abrief sentence in his commentary on Saint Luke withrespect to the Beatitudes ldquoSicut enim spei nostrae octavaperfectio est ita octava summa virtutum estrdquo8 And this iswhat Saint Augustine repeated in similar terms speaking ofadhesion to God the blessed life and eternal wisdom ldquoUnaibi virtus erit et idipsum erit virtus praemiumque virtutisrdquo9

In a remarkable thesis Pierre Nemeshegyi has posed thesame problem with respect to Origen ldquoTo place Being andmoral Goodness in equation to place this moral Goodnessin God formally and as characterizing the final ground of hisBeingmdashis this not to be condemned to enclosing all spirituallife in an anti-mystical moralism The Good is atranscendental But is it formally what we understand byldquomoral Goodrdquo Or is there not a deepening of this moralGoodness which would reestablish the possibility of an

innermost mystical depthrdquo And Nemeshegyi concludes ldquoInfact in Origenrsquos conception moralism and mysticism areone and the same thingrdquo10 Saint Gregory the Great oftenso close to Origen will unite good sense to spiritual fervor inorder to remind contemplatives that if they want to befaithful to the Gospels and to advance on the true way theymust take care to scorn the humble precepts of morality andto seek to understand them in a more sublime sense11

The medieval spiritual masters will take up again thesethoughts of Origen Ambrose Augustine and GregoryExpressing ourselves in the customary categories of theirexegesis which the Middle Ages systematized we will saythat for them ldquoanagogyrdquo achieves the final perfection bothof ldquoallegoryrdquo and of ldquotropologyrdquo (of dogma and ofmorality)12 Of all authentically Catholic mysticism onecould declare what one historian said of Saint Bernard byallusion to the traditional interpretation of the ldquoBooks ofSolomonrdquo for each of them as for him ldquothe moral school ofEcclesiasticus and Proverbs the necessary preliminary forthe mystical school of the Song of Songs is a school whosedoors are never closed behind usrdquo13

This ldquospiritualrdquo equilibrium has at times seemedthreatened in one direction or another Some spiritualscholars have seemed to want to transcend purely andsimply the sphere of morality and reason This is whatcauses Evagrius not without reason to be judged severelyat times it is what Ruysbroek reproaches in the falsemystics of his time it is one of the points that the bull Inagro of John XXII criticizes in Meister Eckhart Whatever mayhave been true in each of these cases the thing thatinterests us here is the norm that inspired such criticismsWhile following Saint Paul in distinguishing the ldquosoulrdquo fromthe ldquospiritrdquo (not moreover as two substances nor even astwo ldquofacultiesrdquo) one always refuses to separate them as ifthe penetration into the higher zone of the ldquospiritrdquo must

make us reject as no longer valid the operations of theinferior zone of the ldquosoulrdquo But the hierarchical distinction ismaintained which is to say that the mystical life is not forall that reduced to the plane of simple morality A text fromSaint Teresa is very enlightening here the saint observesthat the ldquocenter of the soulrdquo or the ldquospirit of the soulrdquo is aldquodifficult thing to express and even to believerdquo

Certain interior effects give the certitude that there is in certain respectsa very real difference between the soul and the spirit Although in realitythey are but one we sometimes perceive a division between them that isso delicate that it seems the one functions in one way and the other inanother There are so many things in our innermost depths and thingsso subtle that it would be boldness on my part to undertake to explainthem We will understand all that in the other life if God deigns toadmit us to the dwelling where we will have understanding of all thesesecrets14

Yet the equilibrium can be upset in the opposite directionfrom that for which Evagrius and Meister Eckhart werereproached This has been true periodically for anti-mysticalscholars or simply anti-mystics against whom periodicallytoo protests are raised With them it is not the ldquosoulrdquo thatis forgotten or scorned in the name of the superior ldquospiritrdquoit is the ldquospiritrdquo that is ignored misunderstood in the nameof a truncated moral wisdom But with any of the greatscholars of the Catholic tradition we do not have to registerany such misunderstanding This is what we would wish todemonstrate here with respect to Saint Thomas Aquinasand more particularly with respect to the Summatheologica

II

From first appearances one might be brought to believethat Saint Thomas in the Summa is one of those scholarswho upset the equilibrium in the second direction But in

reality he did nothing of the sort His doctrine in the Summatheologica contains in fact the equivalent of what othershave expressed through the distinction of soul and spiritunderstood as the distinction of a moral region and amystical region If one does not observe this right at thebeginning it is because Saint Thomas expresses himself indifferent words

It could be written that in his doctrine ldquoall the problemsthat the spiritual life and its evolution pose return in thisconsideratio moralis which has but one object man inprogress toward his blessed destinyrdquo15 The thing isincontestable Still it might be useful to specify how Nomore in Saint Thomas than in others is the union of the twomoral and spiritual (or ldquomysticalrdquo) elements a confusion or areduction pure and simple from the mystical to the moralThe synthesis is not a unification in the exclusive favor ofone of the two Of course one could judge that the Thomistanthropology by its Aristotelian roots favors the originalityof the mystical life less than others And like the virtue ofldquoreligionrdquo the theological virtues seem at first glance mixedin a long list of ldquovirtuesrdquo within the second part of theSumma It is appropriate nevertheless to remark beforeseeing things at closer range that only a later usage givesthis second part the name ldquomoralrdquo After having in the firstpart considered God as the universal cause Saint Thomasconsiders him now as end after the divine model he clingsto his image after the departure of God from all things heenvisages the return of all things to God Nowmdashthis is theimportant point for our subjectmdashthis itinerary of returncomprises several stages

It is true that the prologue to the Secunda secundaespeaks of scientia moralis of materia moralis and that allseems right at first to be reduced to the consideratiovirtutum But let us look a little closer In this sameprologue as in the articles that follow Saint Thomas

nonetheless distinguishes from the virtutes morales notonly the virtutes theologicae but also the virtutesintellectuales which are along with prudence wisdomunderstanding and knowledge closely connected to thegifts of the Holy Spirit of the same name Moreover afterhaving exhausted the plan he had outlined for ldquoomittingnothing of moral thingsrdquo by studying successively thevirtues and the vices that are opposed to them heconsiders in a kind of extension a series of new questionsrelated first of all to ldquoprophecyrdquo to ldquorapturerdquo and othergratuitous gifts then to the ldquocontemplative liferdquo a series heattaches a little artificially one must admit to the sectionon the different states of life

This artifice has sometimes embarrassed commentatorswho do not always understand the articulations that theplan of the Summa comprises here Thus we have Father MD Chenu who has the ldquotreatise on the states of liferdquo beginat question 183 starting from where ldquothe spiritual life islinked to social functionsrdquo16 The thing seems in fact ratherlogical Yet Saint Thomas himself said in his littleintroduction to question 171 ldquoDe prophetiardquo

Postquam dictum est de singulis virtutibus et vitiis quae pertinent adomnium hominum conditiones et status nunc considerandum est de hisquae specialiter ad aliquos homines pertinent

So Father Antoine Lemonnyer had adopted a differentsolution from that of Father Chenu He saw in questions 171to 198 concerning the gratuitous gifts a kind of parenthesisand made the final treatise of the Secunda secundae beginfrom question 179 which is to say from the ldquocontemplativeliferdquo he gave a certain unity to this final treatise thanks tothis single yet twofold title ldquoHuman Life Its Forms and ItsStatesrdquo17

The divisions adopted respectively by Father Chenu andFather Lemonnyer both have their probability and both can

be supported In fact however as Father Chenu remarkedSaint Thomas treats the states of life properly onlybeginning with question 183 entitled ldquoDe officiis et statibushominum in generalirdquo But already before that questions171 to 182 form a whole very distinct from the precedingquestions in which we have the equivalent of a littletreatise on mysticism

Even if he did not treat explicitly at that time the relationsbetween active life and contemplative life18 the placeaccorded by Saint Thomas to this latter in his general planwould thus authorize us to distinguish it from the domain ofmorality He himself besides tells us so in proper termsldquoThe moral virtues are not a constitutive element of thecontemplative liferdquo19 in fact ldquothey are ordained toactionrdquo20 Now action is inferior to contemplation The latteris ldquosimpliciter meliorrdquo21 Action prepares for contemplationby winning the soul through the external exercise of thevirtues the necessary ldquopreliminary dispositionsrdquo bydisciplining the passions and by submitting them to thereason22 Contemplation is the act of the ldquohigher reasonrdquowhich is to the inferior reason following an old biblical andPhilonic symbolism revived and slightly transformed23 asthe man is to the woman24 It is ordained to ldquoperfect loverdquoand as Saint Gregory taught while the active life issynonymous with service the contemplative life issynonymous with freedom25 As Aristotle had alreadyaffirmedmdashbut we know with what freedom Saint Thomaschanged and transformed the thought of the philosophereven while he invoked him as an authority26mdashit is a lifeabove the human condition27 and is made to last always28

No more than any other of the great witnesses of theChristian tradition did Saint Thomas reduce the spiritual lifeto the exercise of morality or spiritual understanding torationality Father Pierre Rousselot too neglected today (atleast in France) demonstrated this well by placing in

evidence the distinction between intellectus and ratio afundamental distinction with numerous consequences29mdashBut neither does he separate them on the one hand as anauthentic heir of the Fathers he integrates the virtuous lifeinto eternal life by saying ldquoUniuscujusque perfectio nihilaliud est quam participatio divinae similitudinisrdquo30 And onthe other hand he knows that in the earthly conditionexternal action which is first of all the virtuous life mustitself proceed from contemplation

The comparison with the Plotinian philosophy or with theldquoagnosticsrdquo can in this regard be very enlightening becauseof the apparent proximity of the doctrines

In a parallel way one would find in Christianity [says Jean Trouillard on thissubject] a going beyond ethics by the theological virtues and the gifts ofthe Holy Spirit The Christian life consists in divinization not in ascesis Yetthe role of the will seems much more considerable in Christians than in thePlotinians not only in charity but also in faith which is itself presented as aduty Theologians do not ordinarily situate the theological virtues on theother side of the decisions of the faculties or on this side of the constitutedvalues This is what must not be forgotten when faced with the use of theNeoplatonic doctrine of virtues attempted by Christian authors inparticular by Saint Thomas (1a 2ae q 61 a 5)31

And again Maurice de GandillacPlotinus harshly criticizes the Gnostics who believe that by ldquoraisingoneself near to God on wings of a dreamrdquo (2 9 9) one escapes the humancondition According to the fragments of Heracles (Legrand 315) Mosesthe author of the Law belongs to the ldquonaturalrdquo world Superior to purematter however he ignores the spirit By proscribing by judging bypunishing he fulfills an inferior ministry and the ldquoperfectrdquo are in no waysubject to his commandments Pure at the beginning they are savedwithout exercise as without repentance and without pardon Thispresumption will be the common gospel for all the sectarians who across the Middle Ages will preach a ldquogoing beyond the ethicalrdquo32

We should not let the differences in emphasis from oneauthor to another or from one school to another hide fromus therefore the consistent thought of the Christiantradition Already in someone like Origen the union is

achieved between ldquoa resolutely contemplative religiousideal and a passionately active liferdquo33 For Saint Gregory theGreat to whom Thomas Aquinas refers the whole spirituallife is subject to a rhythm and ldquotrue perfection begins tomature only in the difficulties and obstacles of the activeliferdquo34 Medieval monasticism did not scorn Martha in thename of Mary it maintained that action must be joined tocontemplation or the ldquopracticerdquo to the ldquotheoryrdquo a little likelove of neighbor to the love of God35 The two inseparableaspects of the Christian doctrine on this subject will onceagain be expressed very well in the reflections of John HenryNewman still an Anglican preaching on ldquoevangelicalsanctity the completion of natural virtuerdquo Newman in factshows in this sermon that there is ldquoan essentialresemblance between the spiritual man and the virtuousmanrdquo following the words of Saint Paul ldquoThe fruit of theSpirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truthrdquomdashwhiledrawing the attention of his listeners to ldquothe point ofdifference between them viz that the Christian graces arefar superior in rank and dignity to the moral virtuesrdquo36

Moral perfection and holiness virtuous life and mystical lifeare distinct they are hierarchical but at the same time theyare united in charity forma virtutum vinculum perfectionis

III Renaissance and Reformation Nicholas of Cusa takes upthe Pauline trichotomy again in the same terms as the

Apostle He places it in correspondence with on the onehand a cosmic trichotomy and on the other hand what isperhaps unexpected the three Persons of the Trinity He

uses Saint Augustine as his authority for both thesecorrespondences

We read in fact in one of his Sermons ldquoIn homine suntspiritus anima et corpus sicut in mundo elementalia vitaliaet intellectualiardquo1 and in his opuscule the Beryl he

distinguishes ldquothree modes of knowledge the sensate theintellectual and the intelligentialrdquo which he sayscorrespond according to Saint Augustine to the threeldquoheavensrdquo2 That was the cosmic analogy And for thetrinitarian analogy set forth in the work De Concordantiacatholica

Unde homo secundum Augustinum Super symbolo (40 193-94) ad instarTrinitatis imaginem gerens ex spiritu et anima et corpore constitutusexsistit Spiritus autem est superior nobilior et altior intellectualispersonae Patris figuram repraesentans et corpus personam Filii et animaquasi utriusque naturam participans ab utroque procedens personamSpiritus sancti3

Taking up his position like Nicholas of Cusa from the pointof view of knowledge Marsilio Ficino distinguishes thesensus the ratio and the intellectus We recognize in thatthe heritage of the great Scholasticism In a similar mannerin the prologue of his Heptaplus Giovanni Pico dellaMirandola distinguishes the vital instinct discursive andpractical knowledge and the contemplative faculty4 Moreimportant is the twofold witness here in agreement ofErasmus and Luther

In his famous Enchiridion militis christiani Erasmus whotakes his inspiration directly from Saint Paul ldquoends finally ina tripartite anthropology which finds its completion in thegift of the Spiritrdquo5 After having in chapters 4 and 5 spokenof man such as Plato describes him first according to theTimaeus then according to the Phaedo Phaedrus and theRepublic and recalled his distinction of the soul asreasonable irascible and concupiscible Erasmus describesin chapter 6 the Pauline opposition between the flesh andthe spirit then he comes in chapter 7 to the trichotomy of1 Thessalonians which he comments on with reference toOrigen ldquoHe does not hiderdquo observes Charles Beacuteneacute ldquohispleasure in setting forth this theory lsquoLibet et Origenicamhominis sectionem breviter referrersquo rdquo He sees it based as

well on Isaiah (299) and on Daniel (386) so he adopts it inorder to make it intervene ldquoas a definitive stage after theanalyses of pagan philosophersrdquo to serve ldquoas anintroduction to the great rules of Christianityrdquo6 With Origenhe sees in the soul this ldquomedian partrdquo of the human beingwhich can swing either to the side of the flesh or to the sideof the spirit7 In the Methodus or Ratio verae theologiae asimilar text recalls our trichotomy indirectly ldquoNec omnisaffectus hominis est caro sed est qui dicitur anima et quidicitur spiritus quo nitimur ad honestardquo8 But it isparticularly in the controversy with Luther about free willthat Erasmus opposes to the exclusivism of his adversaryhypnotized by the sole dialectic of the flesh and the spiritthe divine pedagogy explained by Origen according to thePauline schema

Luther himself paradoxically had provided a commentaryin his own manner with respect to the first words of theMagnificat (1520) on the text of 1 Thessalonians and hismanner did not differ perceptibly from so many of theothers we have seen

ldquoMy soul glorifies the Lordrdquo Scripture divides man into three partswhen Paul says at the end of 1 Thessalonians ldquoMay God make youholy through and through in such a way that all your spirit and your souland your body rdquo And each of these partsmdashlike the entire man mdashisequally divided in another way concerning not nature but quality In otherwords nature has three parts spirit soul and body all three of which canbe good or bad The first part the spirit is the highest the mostprofound the most noble part of man it is what makes him capable ofgrasping imperceptible invisible and eternal things In brief it is the housewhere faith and the word of God dwell The second part the soul isexactly the same spirit according to nature but accomplishes a differentfunction It is the spirit insofar as it animates the body and acts through it Its proper role consists in grasping the things that reason can knowand probe 9

As for the third term the body its function is to ldquoactrdquo and toldquoput into practice the knowledge of the soul and the faith of

the spiritrdquo As Maurice de Gandillac observes here the bodyhas nothing to do with ldquomirerdquo And by adopting such atripartition of the human being (which is not at all to beunderstood we repeat as a division of three ldquofacultiesrdquo)Luther envisages the human subject as Saint Paul and afterhim the whole of Christian tradition have done ldquoin aperspective that is more biblical than Greekrdquo10 The relativeassimilation that he works between the soul and the spirit isthe echo of a common Scholasticism and the fruit of aninflection toward the point of view of knowledge which wasnot that of Saint Paul in his address to the Thessalonians butin no way contradicts it Of these two characteristics thepreceding centuries have already brought us many anexample11

Like his predecessors Luther thus maintains the threefoldgradation which he also develops through a traditionalimage

We will give a simile for that drawn from Scripture Moses made atabernacle with three different edifices The first edifice was calledsanctum sanctorum it was the dwelling of God and there was no lightfrom within The other sanctum contained a chandelier with sevenbranches and lights The third was called atrium the parvis it was locatedin the open air in the light of the sun This figure depicts the Christian Hisspirit is sanctum sanctorum the dwelling of God in the night (stripped oflight) of faith for he believes what he neither sees nor senses norunderstands His soul is the sanctum there are found the seven lights towit all kinds of understanding discernment science and knowledge ofcorporal and visible things His body is atrium it is manifest for all in sucha way that one can see what he does and how he lives12

It is necessary however to recognize that this trichotomydid not have for Luther an importance comparable to hisdialectical opposition between the flesh and the spirit InSaint Paul from before the commentary on the Magnificathe had been selective the lessons on the Letter to theRomans (1515-1516) were already setting up an oppositionbetween the flesh and the spirit without anthropological

reference to any subject whatever13 and later in hiscontroversy with Erasmus he was to prove all the morehostile to the anthropology drawn from 1 Thessalonians 5 byhis adversary whom the latter guided by Origen used toweaken his dialectic He writes in De servo arbitrio

I am well aware of Origenrsquos fable about the threefold affection of man offlesh soul and spirit14 the soul holding the middle between the flesh andthe spirit and able to turn either toward the one or toward the other Butthis is dreaming he says them but does not prove them at all Saint Paulcalls flesh everything that is without spirit as we have demonstrated15

Luther does not formally contradict here what he had said inthe commentary on the Magnificat What he reproaches inOrigen as in Erasmus is believing in free will But thispreoccupation leads him to falsify their anthropology andthereby to forget or to misunderstand the Pauline verse thathe had first interpreted correctly To which in his enormoussecond Hyperaspistes Erasmus will reply several times overthat the tripartition of 1 Thessalonians 5 even ifcounterparts are found in the philosophers is proper toSaint Paul The philosophers in fact do not usually call thehighest part of the human being spiritus (pneuma) butmens or ratio and what Paul understands by spiritus is notany ratio whatever but the ratio already inspired by graceThat he concludes is what Luther does not want torecognize As often happens the discussion in whichErasmus finds himself involved leads him himself to apartially inaccurate interpretation of Saint Paulrsquos text bymaking him attribute to the ldquospiritrdquo what Paul says of ldquothespiritual manrdquo Yet it remains true that he had first analyzedperfectly the address of the Apostle to the Thessaloniansand Luther had at first done the same16

Lutheran mysticism at least in the rather unorthodoxSebastien Frank (1499-1542) nonetheless recognizes thethree elements of which man is composed body soul andspirit Frank sees in the soul the personal and free being

capable of orienting himself in one direction or in the otherhe sees in the spirit the inner Word or God present at theheart of every man enlightening him through his Word andinclining his will through his Spirit17

The same traditional distinctions originating in Saint Paulare found in the humanists of the sixteenth century ofmystical tendency For a Paracelsus (1493-1541) since manis a microcosm he must unite within himself the threeconstitutive parts or elements corresponding to the threestages of the universe material world astral worldDivinity18 (an idea of Nicholas of Cusa although distorted isrecognizable in this) Cornelius Agrippa in his De occultaphilosophia tried to unite the Platonic traditions to Mosesand to Saint Paul

Plotinus itaque et Platonici omnes post Trismegistum similiter tria ponunt inhomine quae vocant supremum infimum et medium Supremum est illuddivinum quam mentem sive portionem superiorem sive intellectumillustratum vocant Moses in Genesi vocat ipsum spiraculum vitarum a Deovid vel a Spiritu ejus in nos spiratum Infimum est sensitiva anima quametiam idolum dicunt Paulus Apostolus animalem hominem nuncupatMedium est spiritus rationalis utraque connectens extrema atque ligansvid animam animalem cum mente et utriusque sapiens naturamextremorum 19

Guillaume Postel as original as ever at least in expressiondistinguishes in man the anima the animus and the mens20

It was undoubtedly following him four years later thatCharles Toutain wrote in his tragedy Agamemnon Threenatures in us which all talk with each other Excite our lifeand keep it alive The Spirit the Soul and Animus And onebeing taken away Suddenly all life together would depart21

The Anglican Lancelot Andrewes (155 5-1626) expresseshimself in a similar way in his devotions Into Thy hands OLord I commend myself my spirit soul and body 22

IV The Modern Period Saint Francis de Sales will open thisperiod for us His Traiteacute de lrsquoamour de Dieu [Treatise on theLove of God] reproduces the Pauline doctrine to perfectionAfter having explained that ldquowe have three kinds of loving

actions spiritual reasonable and sensualrdquo Francis de Salesobserves that ldquothe powers of the sensory part which are ormust be the servants of the spirit ask seek and take what

has been rejected by the reason dishonoring thepurity of the intention of their master who is the spirit andin the measure that the soul is converted to such gross andsensate unions it is diverted from the delicate intellectual

and cordial unionrdquo Thus by the same movement as we findin Saint Paul the way is sketched to the opposition of the

flesh to the spirit Like many in the Middle Ages Francis deSales following Saint Augustine also distinguishes ldquotwoportions of the soul the inferior and the superiorrdquo theinferior being that which discourses on the basis of the

experience of the senses while the superior founded ldquoonthe discernment and judgment of the spirit is commonly

called the spirit and mental part of the soulrdquo in thisldquosuperior portionrdquo he also distinguishes ldquotwo kinds of lightrdquo

a natural one and a supernatural one and so forth Thiswhole apparatus of precisions which aims at integrating aswe have already seen in others the ldquodegrees of knowingrdquo

within the spiritual movement is not without interest but itis in some ways only a flowering from the basic trichotomy1

It is this same trichotomy that we find again as might beexpected in a philosopher attentive to the spiritual lifesuch as Maine de Biran We know the place that the doctrineof the ldquothree livesrdquo holds in Biran animal life human lifeand divine life particularly in the reflections of his Journalintime2 Jules Lachelier also adopts it but perhaps bydiminishing it in his desire to work a kind of synthesisbetween Maine de Biran and Kant when he explains thethree components of existence sensibility understanding

and reason3 We detect also an indication of the very strongmystical tendencies in Joseph de Maistre in this affirmationfrom the Eacuteclaircissements sur les sacrifices ldquoThe animal hasreceived only a soul to us were given a soul and a spiritrdquo4

One might be tempted to seek a distant analogy withSaint Paul in the Kierkegaardian theory of the three spheres(rather than stages) of existence aesthetic ethicalreligious If that analogy is an illusion other thoughts ofKierkegaard are right in finding their place here ldquoIt isimpossible to treat of sin in any of the sciences thatordinarily speak of it because all are occupied with what ispsychological in our nature while sin is a determination ofthe spiritrdquo and again ldquoThe spirit intervening psychology isimpotent So good as its name indicates is occupied withthe soul It sees everything from outside the spirit itself islived only from within Seen from outside an act isalways determined and for all that the object of psychologyBut rdquo5

One might also be tempted to evoke here the Blondeliandistinction between ldquonoeticrdquo and ldquopneumaticrdquo This wouldnot be completely wrong But Blondel places these twokinds of thought in correlation rather than inviting us to risefrom one to the other He does not thereby have in mind arelation of the psyche to the pneuma but rather a divisionof the function within the spirit Despite the word ldquonoeticrdquothis is not the nous but rather the logos which would beaccording to him the partner of the pneuma6 and thedialectic of the noetic and the pneumatic is in play at everystep so to speak of the development of thought and life inthis conception the first the concrete principle ofuniversality being the factor of objectivization and unifyingforce while conversely the second the concrete principleof singularity is the diversifying element and subjectivefunction7 Both at the same level are thus essentiallycomplementary Blondel held to his distinction he often took

up the study of it He wrote in 1907 in one of his personalnotebooks ldquoThink out the discovery of the two thoughtsrdquo8

Now in 1909 he wrote again ldquoThe two thoughts Ah howthey are always in me tending to supplant each other whileit is necessary to reconcile them hierarchize them makethem differently but equally serve the divine work of finaland total reintegrationrdquo9 This word ldquohierarchizerdquo must beunderstood as demanding a reciprocal hierarchization10 Itdoes not necessarily follow however that any analogy withthe Pauline trichotomy any echo of the ldquothree livesrdquo ofBiran are absent from the Blondelian work Blondel was toopenetrated with the thought of Saint Paul and Saint Bernardhe was too closely interested in mysticism he was toofamiliar with the spiritual authors of the Christian traditionto let us believe in such an absence without a fullerexamination But the fact that his dialectic of the noetic andthe pneumatic which is fundamental in his philosophy doesnot turn explicitly into a hierarchy of the soul and spirit or ofthe discursive reason and mystical intuition (although heobviously knew of this distinction as well as that betweenthe understanding and higher intelligence)11 is not anegligible indication Blondel maintained a prudent attitudein the face of natural mysticism just as on the other handhe remained prudent in the face of facile personalisms

In the Russian theologian Sergius Bulgakov the Paulinedistinction between the soul and the spirit is placed inpowerful relief It assumes a mystical aspect that is moreemphasized than in the Apostle or at least it proceeds froma base of natural mysticism that despite the reference tothe famous discourse at Athens does not seem tocorrespond perfectly to its more complex notion of thespirit

Although it is a creature a certain eternity of creation a certain non-creation are proper to the spirit Spiritual existence is rooted in the

eternity of God the created spirit itself is similarly eternal and uncreatedCf Acts 1728

It is true that Bulgakov can also invoke the authority of theGreek Fathers Had Saint Cyril of Alexandria not written thatldquothe image of the divine nature was imprinted in man by theinfusion of the Holy Spiritrdquo12 The importance of hisanthropological theory derives in any case from the fact thatit is from this that he explains the mystery of theIncarnation

The postulate of the divine Incarnation is a certain original identitybetween the divine I and the I of man an identity that does not abrogatetheir essential distinction The human hypostatic spirit draws itsdivine and uncreated origin from the ldquobreath of Godrdquo Through hisspirit man communicates with the divine substance and he is fit to beldquodivinizedrdquo Man is god-man by predestination potentially throughhis formal structure At the same time he is flesh through anldquoanimatedrdquo body he sums up the entire world Man is made of anuncreated divine spirit hypostasized by the I of the creature and of a souland of a body created from the psycho-somatic being13

Bulgakov insists The very idea of divinity by predestinationseems too weak to him He corrects himself almostimmediately ldquoNot only is man theanthropic bypredestination but also the Logos is the eternal God-Maninsofar as the first Image of the created man This is whythe hypostasis of the Logos the heavenly Man could itselfbecome the hypostasis of created man and make of thelatter the authentic God-man by achieving its eternaltheanthropyrdquo The conclusion is nonetheless fundamentallyin keeping with the spirit of Christian faith ldquoMan is alreadythe form ready for the authentic theanthropy that he is notcapable of achieving himself but in view of which he wascreated and called The divine Incarnation is not at all acatastrophe for the human essence or some violation onthe contrary it is an accomplishmentrdquo14

This leads us far from the narrow anthropological dualismthat triumphed in modern Scholasticism as well as in the

university philosophy springing from Cartesianism ldquoSaintPaulrdquo noted R M Albaregraves15 ldquohad distinguished threeorders the carnal the intellectual and the spiritual16 TheCartesian dualism had fused together the intellectual andthe spiritual and rationalism had gradually reduced thespirit thus created to being only an intellect withouttranscendence without dynamism or immortality destinedonly to understand and to organize the worldrdquo On the otherhand for all sorts of reasons that we do not at all have toseek here but in particular because of a certain poverty inits common philosophy Christian thought did not seem ableto fill the void thus created in man It must not thereforebe surprising that the inevitable reaction was produced inpara-Christian forms ldquoIf a scholarrdquo Andreacute Preacuteaux recentlywrote17 ldquoencounters the old doctrine that man is composedof a body a soul and a spirit he has scruples aboutconsidering it for what do lsquosoulrsquo and lsquospiritrsquo mean Unfortunately in a society where science is the supremeauthority this silence is equivalent to a negation Whatdissolves the errors and complexes what protects againstneuroses and fantasies is precisely that which is silentlyand discreetly dismissedrdquo

The same year as Andreacute Preacuteaux and reacting like himGabriel Germain took support from Saint Teresa to remindus of the unrecognized depths of the life of the spirit

Above the understanding below the ordinary conscience and what fills itexists a sheet of peace and light Whoever approaches it can have nomore doubt of it Anyone who has not sought it has no right to judge itSaint Teresa expresses the same reality in very different terms Now no onehad taught her this nor had anyone prepared her for such an experienceThis agreement over the centuries and doctrines reassures me more thananything She writes in the book of the Mansions (seventh Mansionchapter 1) ldquoInterior things are seen that show in a sure way that there isbeneath a certain relationship an obvious difference between the soul andthe spirit although they are but a single thing rdquo18

Likewise again situating his own thought in relation to theldquonoosphererdquo of Teilhard de Chardin and in relation to theldquocollective unconsciousrdquo of Jung

The noosphere in the philosophy of Teilhard de Chardin appears to be likea mental view a conclusion This is because its very name evokes anintellectual activity the subtlest but whether exploratory or constructivedirected according to logical norms19 What I could call (but I will keepmyself from doing so) pneumatosphere let us say the spiritual ocean isthe object of experience By other paths to other ends it is the samereality I suppose that Jung attained and which he called the collectiveunconscious But these two terms restrict the origin and meaning of it 20

With Jung in fact we penetrate but we remain within whatis psychological The life of the spirit in the Spirit is whollydifferent A certain Calvinist dryness a phobia aboutmysticism and all ldquointeriorityrdquo conspire at times along withrationalism and contemporary positivism of all forms tobrush this life in the Spirit aside But in a quite natural waythe Lutheran Paul Tillich who was interested in ontology inthe history of religions in mysticism as well as in biblicalhistory brings the Pauline tripartition up to date again

There is no religious statement on man and his destiny without a judgmenton the relation between different elements that are combined and opposedin the life of man These elements have been variously described as beinghis body his soul and his spirit 21

The exegetes in contemporary Catholicism seem no moredisposed than most of the theologians to return the Paulineverse to a place of honor and draw its consequences It istoward the writers that we must turn to perceive an echo ofit in free expression Although this expression is truly webelieve faithful to the doctrine of the Pneuma and to itsauthentic development it is not certain that Saint Paulwould have recognized his thought at first glance ldquoI havegood news to announce to yourdquo says Paul Claudel in theldquoCantique de Palmyrerdquo ldquomdashit is another within the depths of

you who has the word I have good news to announce toyou You need only close your eyes to find your treasurein the night There are many souls but there is not oneof them with whom I am not in communion through thissacred point in us that says Pater nosterrdquo22 And GeorgesBernanos in his diary ldquoHis will is ours and when we revoltagainst it it is only at the price of an uprooting of our wholeinner being Our will has been united to his since thebeginning of the world What sweetness to think thateven while offending him we never cease completely todesire what he desires at the depths of the Sanctuary of thesoulrdquo23 A wonderful conjunction of Claudel and Bernanos

The reader will have noted in Claudelrsquos text the wordldquosoulrdquo An inversion of vocabulary is in fact produced Theldquospiritrdquo having become in the modern leveling dichotomythe immediate correlative of the body it is the ldquosoulrdquo thathas taken its place in those who have not taken part in thisleveling We are familiar again in Claudel with the parabolaof animus and anima The word ldquosoulrdquo in the same sensecompels recognition with greater strength in order to escapethe scientistic totalitarianism that reigns abusively in thename of the ldquohuman sciencesrdquo ldquoIn the measure in whichthey are scientificrdquo wrote Henri Gouhier in 1973 ldquothesciences of man can consider man only by selecting pointsof view under which it is possible to treat him objectively Itis obviously not a question for the philosopher to ignore thevarious forms of sociology psychology ethnologyneurology and so forth he must simply wonder if thesciences of man added up constitute a science of manrdquo24

And man simply as such man who cannot renounce the callhe hears in the depths of himself refuses to let himselfsuffocate He rehabilitates the word ldquosoulrdquo as the mostfitting to express what philosophers and men of science aretoo often skilled at eliminating through preterition orthrough negation The soul then becomes almost the

synonym for the pneuma of Saint Paul and Origen Thepassage from Henri Gouhier that we have just quotedfigures in a preface to LrsquoAvegravenement de lrsquoacircme by Aime[Andre] Forest a work he says that ldquofinds its timeliness inits apparent obsolescencerdquo The author of the work and thatof its preface both evoke on this subject the ldquothree livesrdquo ofMaine de Biran Andre Forest also recalls these words ofHenri Bergson ldquoBy calling a certain assurance of facileintelligibility an idea and a certain uneasiness of life thesoul an invincible current brings modern philosophy toelevate the soul above the ideardquo Modern philosophy as awhole has not followed the path on which Bergson thoughthe saw it engaged Gabriel Marcel however among otherswanted to preserve this word ldquosoulrdquo and to keep ldquothefullness of its meaningrdquo Charles du Bos in search of tracesof God in us asked ldquoWho will leave us a journal of thedilation of the soulrdquo What Andre Forest wants is to help usdiscover or to rediscover a certain ldquoinner unityrdquo a certainldquopure sourcerdquo and each of the chapters of his work tracesan avenue toward an encounter with this ldquoThe discovery ofthe soulrdquo he tells us ldquois the development of a spiritualphilosophy The soul is the advent of presence and graceraised above the world of nature and objectivityrdquo25

The same fundamental reaction the same sudden startor if you wish the same awakening five years later in amuch younger author whose nostalgia if this is what it iscannot be that for the past but that which springs from anew reflection this time against the oppression of a thoughtreduced to its politico-social components the final end ofscientistic intelligence In his essay on Job ou lrsquoexcegraves dumal Philippe Nemo insists on this same word ldquosoulrdquo in orderto recall man to himself and to his essential problem 26

Across the numerous changes in vocabulary thecomplications introduced by theoreticians eager foranalysis across too the unceasing variations in points of

view the tripartite anthropology whose expression is foundin Saint Paul has consistently furnished in the tradition ofthe Church a basis for spiritual doctrine and life

4 The Spirit

I The Place of Mysticism As we have already been able toperceive these various distinctions are far from always

being covered perfectly either from one author to another oreven as in the case of Augustine in the work of the same

author C R Doddaursquos remark on the subject of the ancientGreeks applies here ldquoOne must undoubtedly agree that the

average man of the fifth century (and this is true in allperiods) possessed a very complicated psychological

vocabularyrdquo1

The Pauline tripartition has nonetheless remained theconstant basis serving to support the spiritual doctrines ofthe Christian tradition

Commenting on Pseudo-Dionysius Saint Maximus theConfessor defined man by this threefold pair of epithetsldquoSupermundialis et spiritualismdashcircummundialis animalismdashmundialis carnalisrdquo2 The author of the celebratedPhilokalia Saint Nikodemos of the Holy Mountain (748-809)will explain that the ldquoJesus Prayerrdquo brings into operation thethree powers of the soul the intellect (nous) the discursivereason (logos) the will or spirit (theacutelē sis pneuma) in theaction of the soul alone by which uniting in itself the soulis made fit to be united to God3 But perhaps that is amatter rather of a ldquohorizontalrdquo trichotomy of threefunctions or three activities proper to the higher part of thespirit

With more than one spiritual writer of the Latin MiddleAges one should speak of four elements rather than ofthree in their analysis of manmdasheven without consideringother complications many subtle subdivisions an echo ofScholasticism dear to a certain number subdivisions

destined either to establish agreement between authors orto detail the stages of spiritual itineraries As for examplethis schema traced by Isaac of Stella in his Epistola deanima ldquoAnimae in mundo sui corporis peregrinanti quinquesunt ad sapientiam progressus sensusmdashimaginatiomdashratiomdashintellectusmdashintelligentiardquo4 Two different modes will benoted both inspired by Saint Augustine in the expression oftripartism for some it is corpus anima spiritus5 forothers corpus ratio mens Hence to accord these twomodes the quadripartite division corpusmdashanimamdashratioinferiormdashratio superior sive mens We know the groundgained in the Middle Ages by that Augustinian subdivision ofthe ratio inferior and the ratio superior6 What willcorrespond to this in Saint Thomas Aquinas will beparticularly the distinction between the ratio and theintellectus recently brought out by Pierre Rousselot7 Thiswould also be the place to mention the Franciscan doctrineof the two faces of the soul which is of Neoplatonic origincoming through the twofold channel of Augustine and theArabs8mdashbut that like moreover the Thomist distinction ofthe intellectus and the ratio is an essentially ldquoscientificrdquo(philosophical) theory having little relation to the spirituallife The explanation of the latter is founded rather on thedoctrine of the twofold ratio lower and higher whichcorresponds to action and contemplation But then a newsubdivision is introduced the ratio superior the place ofcontemplation assimilated to the intellectus becomes thehigher part or function of the mens and receives namessuch as acies mentis oculus cordis and so forth

Whatever might be the various complications and thevarieties in the names ldquoall the great Christian mystics are inagreement in considering the human soul as a complexreality presenting regions and stages All are also inagreement in admitting that among these various regionsthere is a privileged one that where God dwells in a

particular manner rdquo9 ldquoThere is a spiritual life when arelationship with God existsrdquo10 and there is a secret point inman that is the permanent place of that relationship of thatpossible encounter because it is already and always hasbeen the place of the divine presence that pneuma of Paulcommented on by Origen that ldquosacred point in us that saysPater nosterrdquo of the ldquoCantique de Palmyrerdquo11

So we see that the philosophers and theologians moreconcerned about rationality than mysticism tend to reduce(even in their historical studies) the trichotomy to adichotomymdashwhile on the contrary the spiritual masterstend to bring out the trichotomy They readily glorify thespiritus not only above the anima but above the ratiowhether theoretical or practical It is instructive to comparein this regard the Abeacutelardian writing Ysagoge in theologiamwith the commentary on the Song of Songs by William ofSaint Thierry For the first ldquoDuo haec nomina sc spiritus etanima non magnam habent in significationediscrepantiamrdquo12 The second on the contrary stronglyemphasizes the hierarchical distinction of three ordersldquoanimalrdquo ldquorationalrdquo and ldquospiritualrdquo13

To keep to the general schema that results from the textof Saint Paulmdasha schema that itself in fact includes manynuances and as we have seen many interpretationsmdashmorality will therefore be the act of the soul mysticism theact of the spirit ldquoThe bodyrdquo says Evagrius Ponticus ldquohasbread for nourishment the soul has virtue theunderstanding has spiritual prayerrdquo14 Morality whoseobject is virtue is the πϱᾶ ξις and the life of the spirit iscontemplation the θεωϱία The first is ordained to thesecond as the soul is ordained to the spirit ldquoStriverdquo saysCassian reporting the statements of Abbot Nesteros ldquotoacquire in the first place a complete possession of moraldiscipline (πϱαϰτιϰή) for without that you cannot obtaincontemplative purity (θεωϱητιϰή)rdquo15 For Gregory of Nyssa

virtue is ldquothe forecourt of the Templerdquo16 Origen had saidbefore them ldquoAccording to the doctrine of the very wiseSolomon he who wishes to acquire wisdom must begin bystudying moralityrdquo it is in fact ldquogood conductrdquo that preparesone to receive the visits of the Logos and when one issolidly exercised in it then one will be able ldquoto pass frommoral things to mystical understandingrdquo17 In his treatiseaddressed ldquoTo the Brethren at Mont Dieurdquo which remainsone of the fundamental texts of Christian spiritualityWilliam of Saint Thierry traces a similar route for those whowant to give themselves over to the perfect life and for thefinal stage his program is even one of a boldness that somecould misunderstand (it is true that it is addressed to aCarthusian monastery) ldquoIt is for othersrdquo he tells them ldquotoserve God it is for you to cling to him It is for others tobelieve in God to know that he exists to love him andrevere him it is for you to taste him to understand him toknow him to enjoy himrdquo18 The same doctrine is set forthas it had been earlier with Origen in parallel with thedoctrine of the threefold biblical sense by another writer ofthe twelfth century Godefroi drsquoAdmont

Sicut triplex est visio corporis spiritus et mentis ita triplex etiam sensusest in scripturis Sanctis litteralis spiritalis intellectualis Litteralem atquespiritalem sensus egregius ipse Doctor gentium tunc transcenderat etusque ad tertium coelum intellectualem scilicet sensum glorioseconscenderat quando toto cordis intellectu ita coelestibus est conjunctusquod utrum in corpore an extra corpus esset se nescire asseruit19

The same fundamental schema is found again in the greatrepresentatives of what one often calls with a term that canlend to confusion ldquointellectualist mysticismrdquo which is tosay with the Rheno-Flemish mystics of the fourteenth andfifteenth centuries The same schema although withdifferences in terminology and in a sometimes differentclimate of thought particularly in Meister Eckhart

Ruysbroek ldquoassigns to the spirit a threefold role First of alla vital role in which it animates the body then anintellectual role that is manifested by thought finally a roleof higher spiritual activity in which it becomes the principleof unification of the whole inner life and in which it is mixedwith the very essence of the soulrdquo20 Hence for example inthe Livre des sept clotures the definition of the seventhenclosure ldquowhich surpasses all the othersrdquo ldquosimplebeatitude beyond all holy life and practice of the virtuesrdquo21

Likewise in the Miroir du salut eacuteternel in which the higherdegree is only divided after ldquothe virtuous life which dies tosin and grows in virtuesrdquo comes the state where ldquoallownership of the will diesrdquo then the spirit is made fully freethrough its union to the Spirit of God even to the point ofthe ldquoliving liferdquo (levende leven) that blossoms which is allldquohidden in God and in the substance of our soulrdquo22

Ruysbroek takes up again here an expression long sincecurrent which he could have read in Saint Bernard (vividavita et vitalis)23 William of Saint Thierry (vita vivens)24 orThomas de Froidmont (vita vitalis)25

The same gradation is found in Tauler based on the sametraditional ldquoternary schemardquo Tauler distinguishes in manldquothree things one clings to nature in flesh and blood theother is the reason the third is an essence of the pure souland without mixturerdquo This is what he expresses again ldquointhe symbolism of the three men which correspond to thesensate life the intellectual life and the spiritual life in thesense of union with Godrdquo26 This ldquothird manrdquo this ldquoessenceof the pure soulrdquo is what Tauler often calls the gemuete aword that Father Etienne Hugueny translates as ldquodeep-seated willrdquo and Louis Cognet prefers to call ldquodeep instinctrdquoit is the ldquodepthsrdquo of being to which says Tauler the ldquodivinegroundrdquo alone corresponds abyssus abyssum invocat itimprints on our nature ldquoan eternal and deep-seatedtendency to return to its originrdquo a tendency that ldquopersists

even in the damned because it is linked to the very essenceof the soulrdquo27 Taulerrsquos preaching rests on this structure Theabnegation to which he invites his listeners is not only theliberation from sensible appetites it goes beyond simplemorality it is a profound attitude that ldquoflows from thegrowing experience of Godrdquo mystical passivity succeedingthe activity of the virtuous life ldquoinner recollectionrdquo abovethe exercise of the virtues and reason as well as that of thesenses28 ldquoIt is necessary that after having overcome thesenses the reason be freed from itself renounce itself soas to be transformed into pure and simple spiritrdquo29 Then theKingdom of God is established And Tauler repeats so as tomake himself well understood ldquoThis Kingdom is establishedin its own manner in the innermost part of the spirit assoon as man through all his exercise has absorbed theexterior man in the inner and reasonable man and as soonas the man of sense and of reasonable power are entirelyabsorbed into the more interior man in the hidden groundof the spirit where the true image of God dwells and assoon as he flees into this divine ground into which manfrom all eternity is found in his uncreated staterdquo30

The relationship of Tauler to Eckhart is obvious In one asin the other the distinction of the soul and the spirit (of thepsyche and the πνεῦμα) colored by Platonic exemplarism isaffirmed everywhere Eckhart enunciates it with reference toSaint Augustine ldquoAccording to Augustinerdquo he says ldquoourintellectual element divides itself into two parts through theone we are oriented intellectually toward an intellectualgrasp of knowledge that our cognitive faculty receives fromoutside the other to use the very words of Augustinemanifests itself at the deepest center of our spirit (lsquoabditummentisrsquo)rdquo31 It is this center that particularly interested thatfascinated Eckhart this place ldquowhere no image enters orleaves but where there is only God himselfrdquo ldquoThe soulrdquo healso said ldquohas two eyes the inner one and the other outer

one the inner eye of the soul is that by which itcontemplates being and receives it directly from Godrdquo32

What differentiates him from Origen and Augustine Bernardand William of Saint Thierry is the ldquouncreatedrdquo characterthat he attributes to this ldquoinner eyerdquo or to this ldquoabditummentisrdquo The disquieting feature of his mysticism consists inthis a feature that will be less emphasized in Tauler andeven in Henry Suso although the latter speaks also of theground of the spirit as ldquoeternalrdquo33

Follower and compiler Harphius (Henry Herp) willsymbolize the ldquothree kinds of liferdquo emanating from the threeparts of man in the three biblical figures of Leah Rachel andMary Magdalen34 and he works at length to describe themens or the apex mentis the spiritus or the interior sinusmentis which is to say still that pneuma by which the zoneof rational and moral activity is transcended

Dicitur etiam [anima] quandoque mens quae sc ipsis viribus interior est etsupereminet quia vires in mente sicut in origine sua sunt counitae ex quasc effl uunt ut radii ex solari rota et in quam refluunt Et est illud centrumin anima in quo vera Trinitatis imago relucet et tarn nobile quod nullumibi nomen proprie convenit licet in multis nominibus circumlocutivemanifestatur Haec est igitur mens vel apex mentis aut centrum ipsiusanimae ut feliciter renovetur ipsae vires quae dicuntur spiritus adinteriorem sinum mentis sunt reflectendae et mens ipsa ad intimum suumregerenda sc in Deum ibidem suaviter recubantem 35

Warning us that this higher part of man cannot beappropriately designated by any name and multiplying theformulas himself by which one must indeed try even tospeak of it Harphius invites us not to stress whatever theinterest of the other part might be the variations invocabulary from one author to another or from one period toanother which could hide from us the continuity of atradition that in essentials is very firm

Saint Catherine of Genoa offers us a similar schema veryclassically she distinguishes body soul and spirit the latterbeing designated in itself by the word mente and when it is

animated by infused love by the word spirito in this lattercase the spirito is finally identified with infused Love whichis God Since the Saint is less concerned to give us atheoretical course in anthropology even spiritual than todescribe the spiritual life itself we can understand that fromher pen mente is rare and spirito frequent36 On the otherhand following the example of many other mystics sheloves to detail the stages of ascent ldquoWhen Godrdquo she saysldquoaddresses his first call to us he gives us at first the instinctfor virtues later he urges us to perfection then throughinfused grace he leads us to the annihilation of ourselvesfinally to true transformationrdquo37 Saint Teresa and Saint Johnof the Cross likewise know that there exists a life higherthan the exercise of the virtues when they celebrateldquofreedom of spiritrdquo38 ldquoholy freedom of spiritrdquo39 and SaintTeresa observes in her Interior Castle that ldquocertain interioreffects give certitude that there is in us in certain relationsa very real difference between the soul and the spiritrdquo40 Wealso quote as an example Fenelon who in commenting onCassian finds himself at the same time summing up thewhole mystical tradition ldquoAlthough we judge the othervirtues to be necessary and useful we believe however weshould place them only at the second degree because oneseeks them all only in view of this one thing of which JesusChrist says lsquoMartha Martha you trouble yourself aboutmany things there is only one thing necessaryrsquo He placedthe sovereign good not in work although laudable andabundant in fruit but in contemplation that is truly simpleand one He declares that little is necessary for this perfectbeatitude that contemplation isrdquo41 And a little farther on inthe same writing ldquoThere is thus a state where thisappropriation of virtues is no longer opportunerdquo42

The great Protestant spiritual master Gerhard Tersteegen(1697-1769) professes the same doctrine ldquoThere mustnecessarily be in us a capacity to recognize God and

spiritual things in an essential and present way And thatexists in the pure Reason [Vernunft] which has been givenus closed and unused until God gives us the understandingby which we know the very Truth so intimately andessentially that we are ourselves drawn into the trueGodrdquo43

If a certain number of authors in the course of this longtradition that we have just examined seem also todistinguish as it were two elements above the psychewhile Saint Paul saw only the pneuma above it this isusually as we could ascertain from some of the examplescited because they mean by psyche only the animal soulanimater of the body and seat of sensation or ratherbecause they want to assure a seat for ldquoobjectiverdquoknowledge and profane culture For Paul on the contraryand more explicitly for Origen the soul is the very seat ofthe personality the reasoning and self-willed being whichjudges and freely determines itself It is the place ofdecision According to the orientation taken by the soul thehuman being will become ldquocarnalrdquo or ldquospiritualrdquo(pneumatikos) As opposed as he might be to free willLuther himself saw very clearly that the Pauline psyche of 1Thessalonians 5 was much more than the principle ldquothatanimates the body and acts through itrdquo In an article in theRevue thomiste (1971) Father P R Reacutegamey OP isperfectly in keeping with the traditional line when hedistinguishes (497) these three degrees psychosomaticcomplexmdashrational function of abstraction and discoursemdashprimacy of spirit in its greatest purity And what in thetheoretical order is the ldquorational functionrdquo corresponds inthe practical order to what we could call in a ratherrestrictive sense the ldquomoral functionrdquo Saint Paul alsoinvites us not to confuse this moral function with theproperly spiritual life which raises man above himself whenhe places above the exercise of active benevolence and of

all virtue this reality of another order a gift of God which isCharity (1 Cor 133) Dietrich Bonhoeffer was also faithful tothe tradition that originated in the Apostle when heexhorted the Christians over whom he had responsibility notto confuse in their assemblies ldquospiritual community withmystical overheatingrdquo (cf A Dumas 64) ldquoThe great themeof community life is the revival of the very Paulinedistinction between the natural eager equivocal nostalgicdesiring in a word idealistic and the spiritual respectfulenlightened serving knowing in a word realistrdquo (ibid145) ldquoThe onerdquo Bonhoeffer also says ldquowho does not letChrist be a path toward the other falls into naturalchattering which kills the spiritual word Prayer is thesalutary limit to desires of immediate effusiveness Community life is communion through spiritual mediationand non-confusion in the natural immediacyrdquo (146-47)

II Morality Integrated into Mysticism In Christianity itself itis characteristic of the Catholic Church to assure theequilibrium between the three components (religion

morality and mysticism) an equilibrium necessary to theintegrity of the human being Faithful in everything to her

spirit of synthesis she maintains all three in solidaritywithout ever letting any one of the three be lacking or

eclipse the others or be devalued in the humblest forms ofspiritual life any more than in the highest To take a verysimple example when Fenelon exclaims in his Traiteacute de

lrsquoexistence et des attributs de Dieu ldquoMy length of life is buta perpetual extinctionrdquo1 these words to be well

understood must be taken at once morally religiously andmystically

The various Protestant confessions place more emphasison contrasts and clashes as has often been remarked J AMoehler wrote in the last century in his Symbolique withrespect to morality and religion ldquoIn the eyes of Catholics

religiosity and morality if we may be permitted to use thesetwo terms are united by their essence and are both eternalAccording to the Protestants on the other hand there is norelationship between these two things for one is of aneternal price and the other is of only passing value Lutherinsists in many places on this difference rdquo2 There wouldbe many nuances besides to note here but in this essay ontypology we must keep to the most general characteristics3In Calvinism mysticism is the object of mistrust or evenreprobation4 We also know the abyss in Luther thatseparates ethics and faith As a result of this there is atendency with Lutheran mysticsmdashto say nothing of Lutherhimself and of Lutheranism in generalmdashto depreciate allmoral activity as constituting on manrsquos part an affirmationof self that far from bringing him closer to God distanceshim and to recognize a value in religious life only in anabandonment close to quietism5 a depreciation of moralitythat goes hand in hand with that of reason and that offreedommdashwe recently read from a Protestant pen an articleon morality considered solely as ldquocultural realityrdquo Such anattitude to take it simply as such could also facilitateinvaluable analyses in many regards such as the analysis ofthe ldquolevels of liferdquo in Kierkegaard or that of the ldquosacredrdquo inRudolf Otto But these analyses do not always stop at posingformal distinctions Thus in order to bring out more clearlythe specificity of the category of the sacred or of thereligious Otto cuts the latter off from morality he is notcontent with showing that on the level of history orpsychology these two orders are often separated in fact heis well on his way to a separation by right6 As arepercussion when morality reclaims its place in otherauthors of Protestant inspiration it sometimes absorbsreligion and dries up mysticism by incarcerating all spirituallife ldquowithin the limits of reasonrdquo

In reality howevermdashthat is to say by right in the natureof thingsmdashon the one hand ldquothe sacred is not reabsorbedinto moral value the religious transcends the ethicalrdquo buton the other hand it does not merely accommodatemorality and mysticism it remolds them so to speak byinstalling them in its heart Religion morality and mysticismldquoappear in a reciprocal envelopmentrdquo there exists betweenthe three both an attraction and a tension which will be thesource of many vital problems but there is objectivelyneither separation nor exclusion nor conflict for ldquothe Deitywhile transcending being truth and the good contains themformallyrdquo7 This is why in particular in Catholicism just asthe reasonable life and life according to the spirit penetrateeach other8 morality impregnates the mystical life to theend ldquoThrough it the good rewarded and the bad punishedthese pillars of the revelation of the Demiurge degraded byGnosticism to a lower level than exoteric faith regain theirplace at the heart of the revelation of the Father through theonly Sonrdquo9 Hence Saint Justin in his Dialogue ldquoIt is notbecause of his affinity with God or because he is spirit likehim that man sees God it is because he is virtuous andjustrdquo10 And Father Jean Rigoleuc on spiritual persons ldquoAlltheir reason and the lights they receive by it are given tothem only so that they might be perfected in thesevirtuesrdquo11 ldquoThe mystical ascentrdquo does not efface ldquofromcommon Christian life any specific traitrdquo12 The Christianvirtues are not merely means of freeing oneself from theworld in their substance they are the end itself thepromised beatitude is not made of different material This iswhat Saint Ambrose expresses admirably in a brief sentencefrom his commentary on Saint Luke with respect to thebeatitudes ldquoSicut enim speri nostrae octava perfectio estita octava summa virtutum estrdquo13

Pierre Nemeshegyi poses the same problem with respectto Origen ldquoTo place Being and moral Goodness in equation

to place this moral Goodness in God formally and ascharacterizing the final ground of his Beingmdashis this not to becondemned to enclosing all spiritual life in an anti-mysticalmoralism The Good is a transcendental But is it formallywhat we understand by lsquomoral Goodrsquo Or is there not adeepening of this moral Goodness which would reestablishthe possibility of an innermost mystical depthrdquo14 Againwith respect to Origen W Voumllker remarks ldquoWe observe a hesitation very characteristic of Origenrsquos turn of spirit and which one finds again in a nearly identical way in Philoside by side and sometimes even the mutual penetrationof moralism and mysticismrdquo15 And Nemeshegyi concludesldquo lsquoMoralismrsquo and lsquomysticismrsquo are in fact one and the samething in Origenrsquos conceptionrdquo16 Origen himself specifies inhis argument against Celsus ldquoGod is not merely lsquothe Goodrsquoas all the Platonists say he is lsquothe Righteousrsquordquo17 SaintGregory the Great also reminds us with his usual goodsense always linked with spiritual fervor

Solent quidam scripta sacri eloquii legentes cum sublimiores sententiasejus penetrant minora mandata quae infirmioribus data sunt tumentisensu despicere et ea velle in alium intellectum permutare Qui si recte ineo alta intelligerent mandata quoque minima despectui non haberent quidivina praecepta sic in quibusdam loquuntur magnis ut tamen inquibusdam congruant parvulis qui per incrementa intelligentiae quasiquibusdam passibus mentis crescant atque ad majora intelligendaperveniant18

Saint Augustine had said the same in a very Origenianshortcut in speaking of eternal life ldquoUna ibi virtus erit etidipsum erit virtus praemiumque virtutisrdquo19 Picking upagain Saint Ambrosersquos turn of phrase Alexander Neckhamcosmologist of the twelfth century explains that the octaveof the beatitude brings the perfection of its consonance tothe septenary of the virtues as in our material universe theeighth sphere including the whole universe brings itsconclusion to the harmony of the heavens20 Let us say in

the categories of medieval exegesis that anagogy achievesperfection both of allegory and of tropology Thus oneshould say of all Catholic mysticism what one historian saysof Saint Bernard through allusion to the traditionalinterpretation of the ldquoBooks of Solomonrdquo and of theirprogressive sequence for each of them as for him ldquothemoral school of Ecclesiasticus and Proverbs a necessarypreliminary for the mystical school of the Song of Songs is aschool whose doors are never closed behind usrdquo21 Andreciprocally in fulfilling the precept of the Lord one meritsnot only the eternal dwelling one does not merely preparefor it one is already building Saint Hildegarde tells us thetower of the heavenly Jerusalem22

It would be good to return to the celebrated GoldenEpistle in which William of Saint Thierry the friend of SaintBernard condenses for the brothers of the Carthusianmonastery of Mont Dieu the essence of Christiananthropology and spirituality such as the most commonCatholic tradition understands them William puts first ofall the sublime ideal of the contemplative in abrupt termsand with an appearance of separation of completetranscendence from one degree to another which could besurprising

You have not only pledged complete holiness but the perfection of allholiness and the height of all perfection It is not your business to languishin the practice of ordinary precepts or to devote yourself only to thatwhich God commands but to aim at what he wishes in the search for hisgood agreeable and perfect will It is for others to serve God it is for youto cling to him Faith in God knowledge love and reverence are for othersFor you taste understanding knowledge enjoyment A high vocation anarduous task 23

Farther on William takes up again the distinction of thethree states or three degrees which is reminiscent of thefree fashion of the Pauline trichotomy

The state of beginners can be called ldquoanimalrdquo that of progressersldquorationalrdquo that of the perfect ldquospiritualrdquo The first state attends to thebody the second is busy with the reasoning soul the third finds its restonly in God 24

These kinds of schemas are several times accompanied byappeals to humility which should form the common andunalterable basis for all disciples of Christ at whateverdegree they find themselves in their spiritual ascent25

Several points of resemblance to Saint Paul are still to benoted the distinction between anima and animus whichcorresponds closely to that between the psyche and thepneuma26 the reference to the discourse at Athens27 (Acts1727-28) the definition of the spiritual man as the onewhose spirit is informed by the Spirit of love28 theindication of the end as being ldquothe unity of spiritrdquo with God

There is also another resemblance to God so particular that it is nolonger given the name of resemblance but that of unity of spirit It is whenman becomes a single thing a single spirit with God not only through theunity of a single will but also through some truer expression of a virtue thatis no longer capable of willing anything else Once conformed to wisdom the reason [= reasoning soul] puts[everything] to profit and hastens to spring toward freedom of spirittoward unity so well that the faithful man becomes as has often beenstated one single spirit with God29

Freedom of spirit unity with God we know the abuses thatsuch formulas have frequently covered throughout twentycenturies of history30 We know too how the fear of theseabuses have made a number of timorous souls avoid themhow still more the bourgeois individualist incomprehensionof the last century banished them and how they seemedsuspect to many who thought they were judging in thename of pure Catholic orthodoxy31 Within the context ofthat spiritual masterpiece the Letter to the Brothers of MontDieu these expressions can be accepted in all their powerin the same sense that they have in Scripture And thekeeping of a moral life integrated into a mystical life is also

explicitly recognized here besides the word ldquovirtuerdquo whichfigures in the same text we have just quoted on ldquothe unityof spiritrdquo with God other texts recall it with insistence Theyspeak ldquoin praise of virtue the daughter of reason but evenmore of gracerdquo32 they show it not surpassed by butassumed into spiritual perfection the latter is achievedldquowhen the soul encompasses all the virtues in itself not aselements borrowed from somewhere else but as quasi-natural products of its being according to that resemblanceto God by which it is the whole of what isrdquo Mystical unitywith God is wholly impregnated with morality because it isthe perfect adherence to Him who is not only the Righteousbut in the most concrete and singular sense the Good33

This Catholic equilibrium was undoubtedly alreadyjeopardized in a great spiritual master who is not at all to beconfused with the false spirituals to whom we have alludedEvagrius was considered a disciple of Origen but in this anunfaithful disciple Despite the appearances of severalexpressions the same criticism could not be made of aTauler or a Ruysbroek they condemn without equivocationthe mystical claims that think to hold themselves abovemorality and reason beyond affirmations of the faith Thecase of Meister Eckhart is perhaps more disputable but it isright to dissociate the profound intention of this greatthinker and this great mystic from some paradoxicalexpressions held to be condemnable by the bull In agro LaPerle eacutevangeacutelique following Eckhart and several othersseems to place ldquothe spiritrdquo in contact with the divine Unityldquoabove the multiplicity of the Personsrdquo34 a grave problemwhich we will not take up here but which for a Christiangoverns the judgment to be passed on mysticism in itsrelation to the primary mystery of his faith35 To stay withthe relation between mysticism and morality let us say thatone is happy to find a fine example of equilibrium in anauthor carried in other respects to many unilateral

excesses This refers to George Tyrrell who wrote in a finepassage from Christianity at the Cross-roads

[The apocalyptic Kingdom of heaven] is the fruit and reward of the morallife but is a supermoral lifemdashthe continuation of that divine and spirituallife which under present contingencies manifests itself principally bymorality and above all in religion and conscious union with God But[in the Kingdom] the contingencies that now call for the moral strugglewith all its pain and suffering shall be done away36

We will end by quoting a more authoritative witness thegreat Saint Teresa who unites the soul and spirit of whichSaint Paul spoke as much as she distinguishes them withhim by observing that ldquothe center of the soulrdquo or the ldquospiritof the soulrdquo is a difficult thing to express and even tobelieve

Certain interior effects give the certitude that there is under certainrelations a very real difference between the soul and the spirit Although inreality they are but one we sometimes perceive a division between themthat is so delicate that it seems that the one functions in one way and theother in another There are so many things in our innermost depthsand things so subtle that it would be boldness on my part to undertake toexplain them We will understand all that in the other life if God deignsto admit us to the dwelling where we will have understanding of all thesesecrets37

III Conclusions Optimi corruption pessima One should notat all conclude from this as some authors particularly in

Protestantism have done that mysticism should becondemned1 Nevertheless even without considering the

case of the aberrations we have just seen certainprecautions should be taken in order not to jeopardize the

spiritual equilibrium Just as it is necessary to reject ananthropology that refusing man any higher faculty stifles

the spirit in himmdashwhich is what all positivisms allrationalisms and all psychologisms domdashso it is necessary toguard against reducing theoretical or practical reason in itby failing to recognize its transcendence in relation to the

sensible order and its participation in the absolute ldquoThemindrdquo writes Hans Urs von Balthasar2 ldquodestroys itself andcrumbles if it splits into an inferior and a superior mind an

autonomously functioning reason (Verstand) and a ratio(Vernunft) that is reserved for special philosophical and

religious purposesrdquo Then the risk of a short-circuit appearsfrom ldquoinfantile naturalismrdquo to high spirituality from

alienating exteriority to ldquodivinerdquo magnetization from theldquocaves of the unconsciousrdquo to the ldquobirthrdquo from above from

the ldquopossessive Irdquo that is ldquoradical servituderdquo toldquodisinterestedrdquo love

Charles du Bos was not lacking in clearsightedness theday he noted in his Journal ldquothe necessity from an ethicalpoint of view of guarding oneself against mysticismrdquo3 In thesame sense he wrote one day to Father Auguste Valensin

Since the end of July 1927 God in his goodness has recalled me toHimself I have happened to suffer in the face of a certain unformulatedmdashand at times even formulatedmdashdisdain that believers who are advancedmoreover in spiritual ways and even mystics witness or at least seem towitness toward the moral order as such If one admits (and I admit it verystrongly) that ethics are only the narthex of religious truth neverthelessthere exist natures (to the number of which I belong) who venerate thenarthex all the more as it helps to introduce them into the sanctuary andthe more their religious life deepens the more faithful their gratitudebecomes 4

Du Bos had noted in his Journal on January 11 1925 ldquothenecessity of guarding against mysticismrdquo and on January18 1929 analyzing himself

Basically it is always a question with me of an offensive directed by themoral against the religious because as my Journal often notes the moralbeing is primary with me in the period when the plane of temperament istranscended the form that temptation then takes is a moral form summedup in the question of my right to religious life Yes that is indeed it and myeffort now must be not only to adhere to God but to consider that fromthe instant I do what I must on the plane of living I adhere to him de facto 5

Du Bosrsquo reflection as we see was not unilateral althoughhe emphasizes the moral which he judges to bedangerously disregarded (what would he not say thirty orforty years later) In return Emmanuel Mounier was no lessright to bring out the complementary truth in recalling thatldquomorality has no other end but the spirituality of which itkeeps houserdquo when one isolates it and clings to it heexplains one kills it it is replaced by moralism6 the enemyof mysticism as well as of religion History in fact shows thatthe abandonment of mysticism in the name of any formwhatever of moralism has never been at best anything buta stage in spiritual development in view of a less confusedmysticism ldquoAs it is nearly inevitable in philosophy to passthrough a phase of idealism so it is inevitable to passthrough a phase of intellectualism in morality inevitableand goodrdquo But on condition that one does not cling to it Adeeper understanding knows that it is not knowledge thatsaves man from sin and it will always ask ldquoWho forexample is the one more free of appearancesmdasha Spinozawho in observing actions or sentiments that the commonmen call sin explains them through a defect in knowledgemdashor a Surin who proclaims that to the degree that one doesnot see sins even in onersquos inadvertencies and firstmovements to that degree one will not weep over onersquosvanities as sacrileges one will lsquonever get to the rootrsquordquo7

Both have cut through appearances (not always the sameones) both in their order are right But basically howmuch more is this true of Surin And if the intellectualcriticism worked by a Spinozist is not coupled with aspiritual deepening how his clearsightedness ends inblaming it The world Bergson said very justly has much tolearn from the great mystics8

Likewise one is right not to consent to letting theunderstanding be classed among the provisional values tobe reduced to the rank of ldquonaturalismrdquo that is close to

animality Perhaps the word ldquosoulrdquo so far from beingunivocal9 used in the tripartite division of man is notwithout some danger in this regard But this is not asufficient motive for rejecting the very idea of this tripartitedivision such as some as we have seen above were led todo Even Sandaeus himself an apologist and theoretician ofmysticism while noting that a number of mystics judgerecourse to this division indispensable declared that therecould be room to debate this10 Sandaeus was therebyechoing a fear or a mistrust frequently shown in the mostbrutal fashion by Schoolmen in the face of all mysticalthought we know how sharp the dispute was even withinthe Catholic Church throughout the seventeenth century11

Since then through their efforts to minimize the text ofSaint Paul on which the distinction is based others witness adiscomfort if not a similar hostility The mystical tradition ofthe great Church however offers them desirableassurances thus with Tauler transforming the way oneviews the classical terms of the division He is thereby goingparallel to the doctrinal tradition such as it is expressed in aSaint Augustine for example or a Saint Thomas The ratherpusillanimous minds to which we are alluding do not giveenough consideration to the fact that in wanting to save theabsolute of morality and reason they risk failing torecognize the gifts of the Spirit and lowering the mysticallife Stifled unrecognized in its authentic forms the latterin despair is then in danger of developing on the margins ofall rational and moral norms A certain intellectualismmdashverypoorly namedmdashis a worthy counterpart of moralism and aspernicious

To return to this latter we can think that the general usein the ecclesiastical vocabulary of the modern ChristianWest of the term ldquodirector of consciencerdquo to the detrimentof the traditional terms ldquospiritual fatherrdquo or spiritusmoderator12 is the sign of an inflation of pure morality

tending to casuistry or lends itself to falling intopsychologism (while waiting for psychiatry) to thedetriment of the attention paid to things of the spirit whichis to say to the relation to God ldquoHave we not seen peoplerdquowrote Reneacute Gueacutenon ldquowho when it is a question of lsquospiritualmasterrsquo go so far as to translate it lsquodirector ofconsciencersquordquo13 It is possible to agree with his remarkwithout sharing the least part of his own notion of ldquospiritualmasterrdquo or more precisely his doctrine of the spirit Stillanother sign of the small esteem given to things of thespirit and first of all of an inadequate understanding ofthem is manifested in the designation ldquointellectualismrdquowhich is too easily attributed today to the whole doctrine ofcontemplation There is of course a philosophicalcontemplation There is a Greek intellectualism that isexpressed in an ideal of contemplation We discern sometraces of it in the history of Christian thought and life butthese are only tracesmdashand all are not moreoverblameworthy14 As it has done for many other conceptsChristianity has modified this at the same time as it took onits permanent values it profoundly transformed it How is itthat even Christian historians have perceived so little ofthis One can indeed if one wishes reject the word inseeking another that lends less to equivocation but itshould not be necessary at the same time to reject thedoctrine that the Christian centuries had included within itit should not be necessary to depreciate what is the verybasis of the best spiritual tradition at the heart ofChristianity This would be at the same stroke to depreciatethe order of the theological virtues in direct contradiction toScripture itself The supremely active Father Teilhard deChardin did not fall into such contempt he forcefullymaintained the primacy of contemplation in which he couldrecognize the superior form of action that which an activistwill never achieve15 The transformations and progress

achieved in the course of history the entrance into an agedominated by the technical the development of the ldquohumansciencesrdquo that tend to assimilate man to the object of thesciences of nature will change nothing not only the highmystical life but already the whole spiritual life while takingthe greatest consideration of morality and including morality(as well as of rational activity) comprises along with variednuances according to the case something beyond moralitytaken in the human sense of the word something beyond allthat we commonly call action because it always comprisessomething beyond man

That is what signifies the great traditional theme ofMartha and Mary based on the Gospel It will always remaintrue ldquoIn his duabus mulieribus duas istas esse figurataspraesentem et futuram latoriosam et quietam temporalemet aeternamrdquo16 And of these two realities the second isalready present as an active anticipation at the heart ofthe man en route toward his divine destiny

Finally the maintenance of the distinction between thezone of the natural [psychisme] and that of the spiritual is ofa major importance for maintaining in their just place withinthe limits of their competence all the kinds of psychology Itopposes ldquothe dissolving psychoanalytical confusion ofnatural and spiritualrdquo17 If stopping onersquos aim at theldquorationalrdquo and the ldquomoralrdquo was often the great temptationand if this temptation remains what is to be even moregreatly feared today is stopping at the ldquonatural[psychique]rdquo One of Teilhardrsquos weaknesses which wasbenign to tell the truth because he thought above all todissipate the illusion of a materialistic monism was acertain confusion of vocabulary between spiritual andnatural in the Pheacutenomegravene humain (which does not claim tobe a treatise on spirituality) he happens to speak at will ofldquospiritual energyrdquo or of ldquonatural energyrdquo mdashBut ldquothe spiritintervening psychology is powerless It sees everything

from outside although the spirit is lived only from withinrdquo itsees uniquely ldquothat part of the natural life that the spirit hasnot touched and which consequently unfolds in theunconsciousrdquo18

Without doubt it is only through our participation in themystery of the trinitarian Life that we are to become fullycapable of going beyond this psychological vision that canindeed scrutinize certain ldquodepthsrdquo but to which this otherdepth is not accessible this depth which is humantranscendence this otherwise mysterious zone where theimpulse toward God is situated the encounter with God

There is in us a certain root that plunges into the depths of the Trinity Weare these complex beings who exist on successive levels on an animal andbiological level on an intellectual and human level and on an ultimate levelin those very abysses that are those of the life of God and those of theTrinity This is why we have the right to say that Christianity is an integralhumanism which is to say which develops man on all the levels of hisexperience We must always be in defiance of all the attempts to reducethe space in which our existence moves We breathe fully in the measureto which we do not let ourselves be enclosed in the prison of the rationaland psychological world but to which a part of us emerges into these greatspaces that are those of the Trinity And this is what creates theincomparable joy of existence in Christianity19

Pertinent remarks of great importance in ecclesiology aswell as in the liturgy more timely today than ever Thedistinctions recalled by Dietrich Bonhoeffer and by Father PR Reacutegamey based like those of so many others on thePauline anthropology of the First Letter to the Thessaloniansare at once for every member of the Church an appeal tothe highest spiritual life and a warning against itscounterfeits

EPILOGUETO PART ONE

The Light of Christ ldquoIf you believerdquo we are told ldquoin thedivinity of the Christian religion it is because you are

ignorant about all the conditions that marked its beginningand growth The comparative history of religions has madeenough progress so that henceforth it is no longer possibleto speak of a lsquoChristian miraclersquo coming to break the thread

of human religious acts There is nothing in it that is notexplained in the way everything is explained Of course

some points still remain obscure certain influences remainunperceived The task of historians has not yet been

accomplished One can also recognize that several of themhave been a little too quick in thinking to detect here orthere analogies or relationships and their intemperance

was capable of provoking a prudent reaction in somescholars anxious for a more rigorous method But the

general orientation of science is nonetheless certain and itsresult is nonetheless assured Every day leads to a new

light uncovering some new connection and here and nowwe see clearly enough to be able to affirm that Christianityis a human phenomenon very human deeply rooted in the

earth of history where it has drawn all the essence fromwhich its marvelous vigor is nourishedrdquo

An objection that insinuates itself under a thousand formswith respect to a thousand problems A stronger objectionin many eyes than all those of dialectics because withoutfighting it claims to explain Believers are upset by it Menof good will whom Christianity attracts and who alreadybelieve they see Godrsquos work in it find themselves stoppedin their tracks by it they fear to commit themselves

thoroughly to what is perhaps only the work of man If itwere a question only of a milieu providentially prepared tofavor the birth and rise of the religion of ChristmdashJewishMessianism Stoic universalism the organization of theDiaspora the Roman peace mdashthis ensemble of fortuitousconditions could indeed account for its concrete possibilitybut it would definitely not for all that cancel out the miracleof its existence A favorable atmosphere has never sufficedto explain the fact of a birth One would have to becompletely incapable of perceiving religious values to betempted to explain the apparition and success ofChristianity solely by a series of external circumstances asimportant and as favorable as one supposes them to beBetter known the information that history brings in thisorder can therefore only add to the admiration that alreadyseized the Fathers such as Saint Leo exclaiming before hisRoman listeners ldquoNumerous States have been united into asingle Empire so that the ways necessary for the preachingof the Gospel might be readyrdquo1 Admiration that was alsoPascalrsquos ldquoHow beautiful it is to see through the eyes of faithDarius and Cyrus Alexander the Romans Pompey Herodact without knowing it for the triumph of the Gospelrdquo andwho a short time earlier had had this sung to Peacuteguy ldquoThesteps of the legions had marched for Him rdquo2

But history seems to show us much more today Muchmore even than a subjective preparation of soulssuffocating in paganism thirsty for salvation One by oneall the elements of which Christianity is made theconceptions it presupposes the notions it sets in motion itsworship practices the forms of its institutions theprescriptions of its morality all are identified classifiedranked in their place along continuous series Not a dogmanot a feature of discipline or of liturgy that does not have itshistorymdasha history that always includes a first pre-Christianperiod All that had been amalgamated in it is returned to its

origin and soon it seems that nothing of its own remainsHow dare we still in the face of these facts a great numberof which at least are solidly established speak of a religiongiven from heaven of divine revelation How consequentlydare we speak of ldquotranscendencerdquo of supernaturalabsolute definitive truth Everything that is born and growsaccording to the common law is transformed and alsoperishes according to the common law As imposing as itseems Christianity will not escape it Even more perhapsthan the defeats to which it has submitted in the course ofthese recent centuries the history of its origins warns us ofits inevitable decline It is no longer for us the uniqueexception the extraordinary thing that it seemed to be forso long a time It can no longer be loyally preserved fromuniversal evolution Whether the brilliant flash projected byreligion ever since humanity existed is a false flash or anauthentic light is of little importance here in the case ofChristianity one thought to see a unique star appearabruptly in the heaven of religions and miraculously hangthere but a more experienced look discerns that it too wasonly for a moment welded to the others passing like theothers in this long luminous trail

Yet the illusion if such it be has existed It still persists withmany who are not at all ignorant people This too is a factthat must be taken into consideration One should not replywithout further examination that the same is true for allreligion Contrary to almost all the others without exceptingeven Judaism Christianity appeared in the middle of ahistoric period Its legend if there is a legend iscontemporaneous with its existence What a differencethere is in this regard for example with its great rivalBuddhism3 Why then contrary to so many humanphenomena is it presented in so tenacious a way as beingabsolutely exceptional Is ignorance about its true originsenough to explain this illusion in its regard or might it not

be rather the very true perception of its transcendencethat veiled by its brilliant flash certain features of its humanhistory The hypothesis at least deserves consideration It isnot without analogies Many men think themselves free inactions where without doubt they are not at all or with afreedom that is not at all real Is this illusion completelyexplained by a myopia that prevents them from perceivingthe bonds of determinism or does it too not come from anobscure but truthful perception Rather than a total illusionis it not a simple error of localization An error attesting toan awkwardness in analysis a scientific inferiority butwithout any damage to the essential truth

Now it happens too that one badly localizes thetranscendence that one recognizes in Christianity setting itup in positions from which the experienced historian willhave no trouble dislodging it This is why in a more or lessexplicit way one conceives of it then above all as a solutionof continuity To suppose such a transcendence possible atranscendence whose true name would be ldquoexteriorityrdquo isnot the act of Christianity What would remain for exampleof the thought of Saint Paulmdashwho nevertheless sodominated the thoughts of his centurymdashif one cut it fromthe thousand roots that in fact attached it to the earth ofTarsus and Jerusalem How can a single one of its essentialpoints be analyzed without constant reference not only tothe history of the Hebrew people but also to Greekcivilization to Eastern mysticism to the Roman EmpireThis would be an imaginary transcendence pure chimeralinked to a no less chimerical ideal of revelation The realitythat it would effect if this were possible would not besuperhuman but inhuman Far from being sublimated by itit would only be impoverished dried up

It would find the path neither of our spirit nor of our heartArtificial superficial and not at all supernatural Such asthose devout people of whom Peacuteguy speaks who becausethey do not have the strength to be of nature imagine that

they are of grace in reality dried fruits But there is anothertranscendence a true transcendence of which the first wasonly at best the naiumlve transcription An intrinsictranscendence in virtue of which a given reality consideredas synthesis in what comprises its own being surpassesessentially the realities of the same kind that surround itwhatever might be the community of elements that itinforms along with theirs whatever might be too the tiesof origin that render these different elements solidary Anytrue synthesis is always more than synthesis A certainrecasting that is much more than a new combination acertain ldquorevival from withinrdquo transforms everything It is in aphenomenal continuity the passage to a new higherincomparable order4

Now for anyone who can seemdashbut which of us can natterhimself that he always can once and for allmdashthe intrinsictranscendence of Christianity is obvious It alone countsand a direct look well aimed is enough to establish it Theunbeliever does not have to overcome historicalcontinuities nor does the believer have to refuse to seethem A priori they must be Scholars dedicated todiscovering these continuities are not at all devotingthemselves to a vain task They can indeed often bemistaken (certainly they do not fail to be so) or give in tothe temptation of confused conjectures the hypothesis thatguides them is nonetheless sound The fragility of certainconstructions does not at all prevent the firmness of theirfoundations Besides in research that some would hold tobe sacrilege science is after all only exploiting the Paulineidea of the ldquofullness of timerdquo It is uniting in a way with thethought of the Fathers of the Church so anxious to bring outthe ldquoevangelical preparationsrdquo in order to spare Christianitythe appearance of a ldquosudden improvisationrdquo ldquoNihil putem aDeo subitum quia nihil a Deo non dispositumrdquo5 It agreeswith the reflection of the philosopher who considering the

Christian event refuses by very reason of its unparalleledproportions to attribute an accidental character to it6

But in what touches the very basis of religion thesecontinuities are only appearance Yes in one senseChristianity is human completely human We can we mustspeak of its birth If the words it uses are necessarilyborrowed then it is unavoidable that the concepts are tooAnd how would man tell himself the truth even divinelyrevealed truth except by using concepts There is norevelation except supernatural ldquoin the pure staterdquo Howwould God give himself to man if he remained a stranger tohim And how would his Word penetrate him if it were notalso to become a human word The messages of Saint Paulor Saint John are already ldquotheologiesrdquo and the veryconsciousness of Christ is the consciousness of the Wordmade flesh But a less rudimentary psychology has shownus that the concepts themselves are in their multiplicity farfrom expressing the whole of a doctrine for they are withinthe spirit the part closest to matter With how much greaterreason if it is a question of an object that is not onlydoctrine but first of all reality By what makes it itself by itsoriginal essence which consists neither in words nor inconcepts and which the whole sum of words and concepts isnever capable of translating adequately Christianity isdivine completely divine Through the close texture ofrelationships of ideas and beliefs without break withouttear a new spiritmdashthe Spirit himselfmdashhas passed He hasstolen in with gentleness and he has burst in with powerHe has penetrated human history and all has beentransformed The face of the earth has been renewed by itThis was a new Fiat a true creation ldquoEmitte Spiritum tuumet creabuntur et renovabis faciem terraerdquo7 The Spirit ofChrist has founded a wholly new thing the religion of Christand this religion of Christ for which all human history hadprepared for which all human thought had slowly woven the

fabric suddenly rises up in the midst of men ldquosine patresine matre sine genealogiardquo Pure creation pure miracleThere we have this ldquonewrdquo idea which Jules Lachelier saidldquois born from nothing like a worldrdquo

What new ideas though that do not come from usourselves The inventions of man enrich humanitydiscovering in the soul some nuance unperceived until thenbut always leaving it to its essential finitudemdashto itsincurable decay Once past the first amazement the ironicand despairing refrain of Ecclesiastes is heard again Thecircle enlarged or shifted closes again On the contrarywith a leap the Christian Idea transports us beyond ourlimits It breaks this circle within which all our progress hadbeen condemned in advance to fit Such was the thought atits appearance breaking the circle of animaltransformations It is born in its own time it has its markedplace within the progress of life and nevertheless what itbrings is much more than progress From the time itemerges a new kingdom has begun the human kingdomSo the preaching of Jesus marks the advent of the Kingdomof God8 For how many of the sentences of the Sermon onthe Mount would we not find analogies in the Jewish Bible orin the teaching of the rabbis The One who pronounces itspeaks nonetheless as man had never spokenmdashas manwould never speak9 The Gospel inaugurates the time ofgrace It is a wholly new order that begins ldquoa new order oflove in the universerdquo10 A dike has been broken which letsthe flow of Love pass through Now it would be as vain todream of a reality more divine than Love than to imagine areality more spiritual than Thought The transcendence ofChristianity is thus not only relative to such and such anearlier achievement It is not only something originalsomething superior a provisional novelty clearing the wayfor some ulterior invention destined to go beyond it It is anabsolute transcendence ldquoOmnem novitatem attulitrdquo11

Peacuteguy has also sung it He was going to inherit a worldalready made And yet he was going to remake it entirely

Of course the order of charity is not revealed any morethan is the order of the spirit in all its fullness or in all itsdepth to that observation from outside that constitutes thework of the pure historian But if their inner essence stillescapes observation would the simple sight of their effectnot already arouse the sense of their incomparablegreatness We know the repercussions observable to thenaturalist not blinded by an overly narrow concept ofscience produced in the universe by the apparition ofthought the paradoxical properties of the ldquohumanphenomenonrdquo its extraordinary power for expansion andconcentration out of proportion with the weakmorphological originality of man presuppose a presence ofwhich the naturalist can only catch a glimpse but they sethim on the way that must normally lead him to go beyondhis science to discover in truth the human kingdom12 Therepercussions produced in humanity by the advent ofChristianity are no less prodigious the human spiritimmeasurably increased an unparalleled moral fruitfulnessa society tirelessly at work for an ideal of justice and unityand so forth These features are accessible to the historianwho knows how to step back a pace Nevertheless let usrecognize just as reflection alone properly speaking canreveal thought to itself so too only a process of a religiousorder can disclose the absolute superioritymdashwhich is to sayproperly the transcendencemdashof Christianity Like thedivinity of Christ itself the definitive newness of theChristian principle can be perceived only by the eyes offaith It is here that the advantage of the simple believerover the man of science and of life over technique shinesforth For the anthropologist who systematically denieshimself any inner reflection on the lived thought as well as

the historian of religions who does not consent to regardChristianity from within and to begin to live it at leastthrough a basic attitude of real sympathy will neverunderstand anything about the true object of their learnedstudies If their science itself does not lead them to the finalaffirmations it must at least set them on the path But ifthey wish to trust solely in it to the end surrendering theirconscience as men into the hands of their intelligence asspecialists the greater the latter will be and the more it willrisk misleading them

ldquoThe history of the formation of ideasrdquo said Amiel ldquoiswhat makes the spirit freerdquo13 Beneath the ideas that itorganizes and transforms let us know how to discern theChristian Idea This Idea has no history this is what mustmake the spirit submit to it

A great Deed was done for the world twenty centuries agothe Deed of Charity14 Right at first menrsquos habits of thoughtwere not any more overturned by it than were empires Wasan obscure variety of Jewish ldquoMessianistsrdquo worth even aglance The grain of wheat sown by Christ remained buriedin little upper rooms that counted for nothing in the historyof the world Christianity itself would wait five hundred yearsto found retrospectively the ldquoChristian erardquo and it wouldtake another five hundred years for full Christian practice tobecome widespread15 The first disciples of Jesus stilldreamed of the Kingdom of David their father they went upto the Temple as was their custom with a fervor that wasonly increased Having contemplated the Deed that hadbeen done before them they must nevertheless have hadthe feeling of an unparalleled newness The testimony of itappears everywhere in their rare writings ldquoNew teachingnew covenant new commandment new name new songnew man new life second genesis of the worldrdquo16 Such afeeling did not mislead them They were not in danger

those who had seen who had heard those who hadtouched of taking the Christian Mystery to be a more or lessspontaneous mixture of the Jewish Messianism exalted byJesus and cult forms then in vogue in the Hellenized Eastmdashany more than Christian dogma was in danger of appearingto their successors of the great patristic period as a learnedproduct of the Bible and Greek philosophy This chemistry ofimpotent historians could not have been created by themThey knew from an immediate source that they weredealing with something very different They sensed theunity of what myopic analysts think to understand bydecomposing it This is because the principle of synthesiswas in them living and active It is because living thisdogma themselves before drawing up the inventory of itadoring this mystery before translating it they penetratedits spiritual meaning

In addition their testimony is for us more than aguarantee It constitutes a call If that call is at firstnecessary for us we do not have to hold to it ldquoNowrdquo saidthe inhabitants of Sichar to the woman who had led them toChrist ldquoit is no longer because of what you have said to usthat we believe for we have heard him himself and weknow that he is truly the Savior of the worldrdquo17 For twentycenturies the witness of the first generation of believers ispreserved intact because it always remains a living witnessabyssus abyssum invocat [deep calls to deep] Why shouldwe be riveted to history The Spirit still gives witness to ourspirit18 The Kingdom of God is still in the midst of us ldquoTheGospel of Jesus Christ Son of Godrdquo which was heard for thefirst time in Galilee under Herod during the fifteenth yearof Tiberius Caesar at the time of the High Priests Annas andCaiaphas still resounds today and if the forms of itspreaching are different it is the same Voice that proclaimsit Like the creative Deed which does not cease to maintainbeing and life everywhere the Deed of Charity is pursued

over the world The second Genesis henceforth aspermanent as the first and like it infinitely fruitful TheChurch Bride of Christ continues the work of herBridegroom We have only to contemplate hermdashnot fromoutside in her sole visible organization with its humancharacteristics which are often too human perhaps with itsdefects not even in the works of its scholars alwaysunequal to their task and whose insufficiency can be sopainful19mdashespecially when they themselves do not seem tofeel itmdashbut in her inner life in her ideal in her belief in hersecret fidelity in the purity of her zeal in the marvelousfruits of holy joy that she makes ripen in the depths ofhuman hearts In all that the ldquoworldrdquo does not perceiveThen the light shines then the Truth bears witness to itselfveritas index sui No need for laborious comparisons or of anerudite return to the past The clearsightedness of a limpidlook is preferable here to all the sharp perspicacities ofcriticism This is because the miracle is endlessly producedbefore our eyes Today as formerly by virtue of Christianityldquoall things are becoming newrdquo EvenmdashSaint Augustine hadalready noted itmdashthe more time advances the moreprivileged is our situation as witness The mystical Christ inthe measure he increases better reveals his power To thesigns of it that already multiply still others will be addedwhen his message has truly reached the most distantpeoples Today we only begin to see all the fullness of theDeed that renewed the world The sudden clarity of the firstdays has become a great luminous path which grows withthe centuries

This great Deed of Love Jesus it is You Yourself Perceptible to manhumble dying in a corner of Judea oh yes You are man Flower of JesseYou are indeed the fruit of our earth Born of a woman truly formed fromher substance You are not some sort of phantom come down from theclouds of heaven You are deeply rooted in our earth20 But in You Jesus asin no other child of our race God showed himself You were not merely Hismessenger You are His living and substantial appearance Through You He

has not only spoken Or rather His language is an action His word is adeed it is You Yourself Splendor Verbum et imago Patris You Jesus onyour Cross the act uniting earth to heaven21

In You God still shows Himself and in your holy Church Inyour best disciples He still shines so well that one cannotmistake it For it is You who live in them Have we not allknown someone in whom a divine flame burned which theyhad lit at your hearth alone Their silent testimony is all themore persuasive Non eloquimur magna sed vivimus22 ldquoAsfor merdquo said Gerbet ldquoI lend an ear to the sounds that holysouls make with greater respect than to the voice ofgeniusrdquo23 What a great wise man concludes after longstudies and profound meditations in favor of your divinitythat encourages me but scarcely moves me forward Butthat a Francis of Assisi that being so obviously predestinedto make a ray of eternity shine over our earth makeshimself your absolute disciple that he loves You adoresYou annihilating himself before You that he is ambitiousonly to place his steps in your steps and to live from You byreproducing each of your features that he wants always tobe only your humble repetitor24 that not for a moment doeshe entertain the idea of engaging in a personal way oftrying another experience of adding at least something toyour message this humble and total will to imitatemdashChristototus concrucifixus et configuratusmdashin the face of yoursovereign independence such literalness in such an effusionof the Spirit such contrast in a similar holiness Themore I reflect on it the stronger the argument seems tome25

After that what do the difficulties matter in which myreason gets tangled Or rather how could it be that so loftyan object would not put it to flight If You have come tounveil a new kingdom and a new existence to me howshould I not consent to letting myself be removed from myusual surroundings Is it not normal that I have to abandon

my usual modes of thought26 Your word upsets myinstinctive logic it overturns all my arrangements of ideasit shatters my concepts This is the price for the liberation ofmy understanding Yet little by little in mystery a newequilibrium is established Under the secret action of yourSpirit faith is able to find its exact expressions whichprotect it against the ever-reborn assaults of a reason toolittle converted This was not without a long and arduouswork To define your twofold nature as for all that is worththe effort of our understanding it takes time reflectiongroping disputes materials from all sources A long andperilous journey A complicated winding history strewnwith a thousand contingencies An often tragic historymdashawonderful history27 It was through the adventurousconcepts of thinkers that Catholic Christology ended inrejoining the first intuition of faith

More than any other because it is at the center of all thedefinition in which the result of this labor is found today isimperfect An inevitable and blessed imperfection Notaccidental but essential necessary so that humbleastonishment before the mystery may subsist in theprecision of belief and in the firmness of adherence Butalready Jesus your very first disciples when they loved Youabove all and when they left all to follow You when theygave You all without thinking thereby to take anything fromGod when they contemplated You seated at the right handof the Father when they called You the one Lordproclaiming that all had been renewed by You and that allknees must bend before You your disciples believed in YouExtraordinary impossible faithmdashand yet authenticatedbeyond doubt A scandal as grave for the historian as thedogma itself for the thinker For though not beingabsolutely the same as ours the difficulties for a Saint Peteror a Saint Paul in believing were no less strong Nor werethose of their successors the Origens and the Cyrils the

Ambroses and the Augustines Modern man flatters himselfwhen he judges that the Copernican revolution or theKantian revolution dug out a new hiatus between histhought and the thought of the Ancients It was as hard tobelieve then as it is today It was hard for a JewishmonotheistmdashldquoListen Israel Your God is onerdquomdashto believe inthe divinity of a man28 It was hard to believe in thecrucifixion of the Son of God29 It was hard for a reasonableman who had been able to see up close the Son of Man inhis humiliation to believe in the resurrected Christ and inall these histories ldquothat do not allow themselves to beallegorized rdquo30

ldquoA scandal for the Greeks and folly for the Jewsrdquo OurFathers passed beyond their faith conquered all theobstacles What they were capable of we ourselves will becapable of and if we do not make ourselves unworthy ofthem the reasons that quickened them will not be lessstrong for us Their attitude will thus be ours We could nottranscend it but neither could we restrict it without denyingyour message at the same stroke Jesus For it is no morepossible to abstract You from this message than it ispossible to abstract God from Yourself On what would webase the demands of your Law if we began by failing torecognize the Demand of your Person Who wouldguarantee us the hope of the Kingdom if we were not torecognize the King of it Does everything in You not tell usthat You are Yourself the Kingdom as You are the Truth andthe Life31 So from the beginning the religion of Jesuswhich is the ideal of love was indivisibly the religion ofChrist that is the cult of incarnate Love It is folly to want todissociate them and to believe that the first would survivethe ruin of the second The religion of which Jesus is thesubject and norm is gradually achieved in us only throughthe religion of which Christ is the object Moreover it isblindness not to recognize their identity it is to tear the

seamless robe that the Gospel presents to us and it is notto see the metaphysical significance of Love

Evangelium ChristimdashEvangelium de Christo a modernscarcely more subtle form of the old antithesis betweenpractice and dogma32 But in maintaining contrary to thosewho set them in opposition that there is an essentialrelation between them we do not mean simply that onemust observe dogma as a means for assuring practice Theirties are intrinsic33 and the necessity of their agreement isonly one consequence On the one hand ldquopracticerdquo can becorrectly defined only by dogma from it alone does itreceive its meaning and spirit and on the other hand inone sense it already contains everything in itself for it issummed up in charity which is the spiritual being in act

God is Love and in a great feat of Love he came to takeup man sinner and miserable Man and God embraced eachother in Christ The unique intellectual fecundity of thisDeed it is specifically pregnant with all Christian dogmaticsso that the latter must be called strictly revealed No morein fact than one could dissociate the revealed truths fromthe very Person of the Revealer could one conceive a justand complete idea of the transcendent newness ofChristianity if one did not see that in this Person of Christsuch as the Apostles already show him to us and such asthe Church never ceases to contemplate and reproduce himthe reality of Charity and the truth of Dogma areindissolubly united Charity constituting the reality of thisDogma as this Dogma itself constitutes the truth of thisCharity34

As for the intellectual elaboration from which the dogmain its second state results which is to say in that abstractand learned formulation that multiplies it in distinctenunciations wholly guided by the Spirit of Truth as it is itnevertheless remains a human operation The materials it

employs just like those that entered into the firstspontaneous expression of faith are human materials Theycan thus serve them too in the real (though alwaysinadequate) transmission of divine truth only in the measureto which they are related to the Whole of Dogma35 In themeasure to which on the contrary they are consideredeach in isolation the formulas cease to bear witness to thedivinity of their origin they lose the best of their meaningceasing to have relation to divine charity such as itappeared to us in Christ For our faith is one and it is whollysummed up in You O Jesus36 You are the center and thebond of all its ldquoarticlesrdquo All its expressions all itsdevelopments are only so many means of understandingYou better and of situating ourselves better before You Thisis why the historians who instead of considering Christianityin its living unitymdashwhich one can do fully only if one lives itoneselfmdashalways scrutinize its elements only by taking themone after the other as a series of detached pieces resistany possibility of understanding it The essence escapesthem They do not find the soul at the end of their scalpelIn Christianity they find nothing divine not seeing Christ init

How true it is therefore to say that if dogma is necessaryfor the maintenance of practice the role of practice isnonetheless essential for maintaining the reality of dogmaintact We now discover the whole meaning of such anaxiom Without the truth of dogmamdashalthough there may besome good ldquounfaithfulrdquomdashone will only have an apparentpractice but on the other hand without the reality ofpracticemdashalthough there may be some bad Christiansmdashonewill no longer have anything but an apparent dogma On theone hand a charity that is less than genuine on the other asuperstitious belief or a verbal orthodoxy an ldquoorthologyrdquowithout any real content This is because if the articles offaith are numbered the Object of Faith is marvelously one If

the former are formed of abstract propositions the Latter ismarvelously Living And just as according to the oldScholastic theory all physico-chemical bodies onceassimilated by the human organism are directly informedby the soul so that there is no longer either carbon oroxygen and so forth but only human matter so with all theelements religious or profane in origin that enter into theChristian synthesis Constructed completely in one sensewith human materials the dogmatic formulas neverthelessexpress divine truth Elaborated by men they channel apart of divine revelation But this is on condition onceagain that one always relates them to that same revelationto the living Center to the divine Center from which allradiates and to which all must lead us to Jesus Christ JesusChrist the personal manifestation of Charity Jesus Christ inwhom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledgebecause in him dwells the fullness of the Divinity JesusChrist Word of the Father who speaks him and gives himentirely There is no absolute newness no revelationproperly speaking no true transcendence outside of theunique reality of his Person We must always return to thewords of Saint Irenaeus ldquoOmnem novitatem attulitsemetipsum afferensrdquo37

Jesus I believe in You I confess that You are God You are forus the whole Mystery of God38 What other definition of Godwould we seek than that given by your Apostle And was itnot in contemplating You that he found it God is Love Thissingle word contains an unfathomable mystery which Iadore But through You this mystery illumines our nightalready For Love has done a great deed and this Deed ofLove the Love made visible to our eyes perceptible tohearts of flesh effective and saving Love is You Yourself Itis God made man it is the Incarnation of God

We stammer as we can Our formulas are insufficientNecessary to shield the treasure of our faith their form

nevertheless troubles us But your true adorers O Jesushavenrsquot You Yourself said are not those who put their trustin frail words they are those who understand your feat andwho sustained by Youmdashfor that costs more than bloodmdashstrive to reproduce it

An absolute feat nothing has any value except throughcharity Charity demands all assumes all Charity judges all

An efficacious feat through this ldquodivine strengthrdquo alreadyrecognized by the Apostle Paul39 he uproots us from ouregotism he opens us takes us raises us makes us capableof adopting the contours of it in our turn He eradicates theold man and implants the new man Operatorius sermoChristi40

A finally definitive feat Whatever might be the futureprogress of our race whatever the enlargement of itsknowledge or the refinement of its ideal we will not betaken unawares The coming of Christ has marked thefullness of time No fullness no depth will ever exhaust theDeed of Calvary41

That is why peaceful about the past we also look to thefuture without fear ldquoQuid amplius reservandum cumamplius nihil sit plenitudine perfectionisrdquo42 Sure that ourfaith will never mislead us we go ahead of the excavationsof history and the research of science Ahead too of humanprogressmdashand we know too well that all progress of theworld will not obtain the least beginning of salvation Aheadof the new values to which history gives birth through itscrises Man can vary and perfect his culture without end Hecan discover and exploit new potentialities in it The veryUniverse can grow immeasurably and distant stars can oneday reveal a humanity more numerous more civilizedmdashmore miserablemdashthan our own the Deed of Christ wouldstill take it in It embraces all worlds just as it shines abovetime For all equally for each one of us and at all times for

those who believe in man and for those who despair of himits rays are those of Eternal Life

ldquoHe has come the Christ of God the Leader of thePromises And without any doubt he has been he alone tothe exclusion of all those who preceded himmdashand I have theaudacity to say he is to the exclusion of all those who followhimmdashthe one awaited by the Nationsrdquo43

speak of νοῦς but of πνεῦμα God he says breathes intoman a pneuma not content with making him simply alivecomposed of soul and body he gave him part of his spiritthis is what Moses teaches by saying that he made him inhis image This pneuma in man is the principle of a higherlife the place of communication with God26 Now such isalso one of the meanings of pneuma in Saint Paul It is not inGreece that we must search for its origin but in the Bible

Father Joseph Huby has said it in a few words which morerecent authors would benefit from rereading In the Paulineverse ldquofamous because of the trichotomy spirit soul bodyof the human composite some thought to see a borrowingfrom Plato or Aristotle Both do acknowledge in fact threeprinciples in man but if the latter two of those coincide withthose27 enumerated by Saint Paul the first is different InPlato it is the nous the intellectual soul consideredmoreover by Aristotle as separable Instead of νοῦς SaintPaul puts spirit or pneuma here with him as in Philo this isa Semitic term suggested by the account in Genesis (27)where it is said that God breathed into the nostrils of theman a breath of life rdquo28 The Pleiade Bible has taken thesame explanation which seems imperative to us ldquoSpiritsoul bodyrdquo recalls Michel Leturmy in a note to histranslation ldquosuch is with the Semites the most commondivision with respect to the human compositerdquo29 In a noteto the translation of Matthew 625 the same authorexplains that the Greek ψ υχή translates the Aramaeannaumlfshacirc breath of the throat animal life (the ldquosoulrdquo) throughopposition to πνεῦμα which translates the Aramaean roucirc hacircdivine respiration breath of the nostrils (the ldquospiritrdquo) seeGenesis 2730

We do not believe it would be enough however to tracethe words of the Pauline triad simply to those of the BibleThe Apostlersquos anthropology is also based in part on hisexperience acquired from life in the Spirit of God There are

numerous commentators who in consequence consider thePauline πνεῦμα to designate in reality not something of manthat would be higher than his soul but the human soulinsofar as it is informed by grace participating as theSecond Letter of Peter (14) says in an effective way in thedivine nature united to the very essence of God by thecoming of the divine Spirit into it31 The ψ υχή in this casewould be not only ldquosensible liferdquo but also the higher realityof man as man that is although Buzy translates it in anoverly intellectualist language ldquoreason without gracerdquo32

This would be ldquothe state of the specifically living beingwhich is inherent in man as suchrdquo33 So too schematicallyBonnetain ldquoThe three terms come back to the followinggrace soul and bodyrdquo34 Father Andreacute-Jean Festugiegravere isclearly opposed to this interpretation which also proceedsin some from the fear of attributing to the Apostle ananthropology judged to be ldquoPlatonicrdquo For him theanthropology of Saint Paul is undoubtedly trichotomic thepneuma in question in the wish addressed to theThessalonians as in the texts mentioned above from theFirst Letter to the Corinthiansmdashand as in addition the Letterto the Hebrews speaks of itmdashis not the Holy Spirit butactually a part of man ldquothe movement of the phrase thetwo ϰαί the insistence on saying that we must becompletely in our whole being under the divine safeguardrdquoare the proof of it35 Besides if this pneuma is not itself thedivine life realized in man it is indeed in him the center ofthe higher life moral religious mystical it is the ldquocenter ofthe Christian liferdquo which is not a matter of feelings but offaith36

Some hesitate to choose between these two contradictoryinterpretations even if it means apparently contradictingthemselves in their explanatory formulas They are of thefeeling that the thought of Paul is profound and complexthey would like to lose nothing of it but do not see well how

to explain it in our language in a coherent fashion Such isFather Joseph Huby following the passage we have quotedldquoFor Paul the pneuma is more precisely the spirit of maninsofar as influenced informed and heightened by divinegracerdquo it is the ldquoprinciple of thinking center of moral andreligious life and summit of the soul The original (biblical)concept of the pneuma the human soul breathes from Godis magnificently deepened the pneuma designates thereason informed by grace man insofar as he becomes spiritparticipating in the nature of God through the spirit theνοῦς becomes capable of conquering the flesh it isunited to the very essence of God through the coming of thedivine Spiritrdquo37 In this essay somewhat awkward in itsattempts at reconciliation in which a fourth term (νοῦς) isintroduced we see to which side the author is leaning Wewill say as much of Max Alain Chevallier who with respectto 1 Corinthians 1414-16 after having noted for us ldquothefreely equivocal use of the word pneuma by Paulrdquo seems torestrict immediately the significance of his observation bysaying that this word ldquodesignates without describing it theinner man filled with the presence of Godrdquo38 Karl Barth inhis Dogmatics escapes such oscillations only thanks to hisgeneral doctrine which prohibits him from ldquoreifyingrdquo in away from giving a proper consistency to the human spiritconsidered in its relation to God After having justlyobserved that the ruah of the Old Testament does notcorrespond to the πνεῦμα ἅ γιον of the New39 but insofar asa ldquoanthropological notionrdquo to the πνεῦμα of the address tothe Thessalonians Barth makes haste to add ldquoOn the otherhand one cannot assert without reservation that the OldTestament and the New refer to a trichotomy of the humanbeing For both the human being in himself is body andsoul earthly form and earthly life but the body possesses asoul and its earthly form is that of a living being in themeasure in which the human being receives the spirit and

safeguards itrdquo This spirit must however be conceived ldquonotas a property of man but as a gratuitous giftrdquo which atdeath must be returned to God and which persists ldquowhichGod withdraws from him or grants to himrdquo40 What must bemaintained above all according to Barth is that man ldquois inno way lsquorelated to Godrsquo (Gunkel) he has simply beenawakened to his proper existence by the breath that Godbreathes into him and which allows him to breathe himselfWhat is he and what does he possess that he has notreceived and that does not differentiate him from God sinceit is God who has created himrdquo41

The human pneuma of which Paul speaks would thus beboth an element so little constitutive of his being that Godcan take it back from him and a created element thatdifferentiates him from God Such is the Barthian paradoxWithout having to take him literally perhaps we would haveto unite ourselves with the ldquospiritrdquo of it Would it in fact benecessary to choose between two contradictoryinterpretations that confront each other or resign ourselvesto a [false] harmonization that itself does not avoidcontradiction An expression used by Saint Paul himself 1Corinthians 211 could suggest an intermediate solution tous ldquoWho therefore among men knows the secrets of a manif not the spirit of the man which is in him (τὸ πνεῦμα τοῦἀνθϱώ που τὸ ἐν αὐτῷ)rdquo This pneuma is certainly not theHoly Spirit since Paul adds ldquoSimilarly no one knows thesecrets of God except the Spirit of Godrdquo Yet it does notappear completely like a constituent part of man as suchlike the body or the soul after having said ldquothe spirit of themanrdquo Paul corrects himself in a way to say ldquothe spirit whois in himrdquo which marks a nuance of capital importanceThus what par excellence makes a man what constitutesman in his worth among the beings of this world muchmore what makes him a being superior to the world wouldbe an element that rather than being ldquoof manrdquo would be

ldquoin manrdquo There is it seems to us in this Pauline πνεῦμα thesame kind of ambiguity notional because real as in thedivine ldquoimagerdquo or divine ldquobreathrdquo of creation such asChristian tradition interprets them From one author toanother and sometimes in the same author the sameambiguity will give place to oscillations which will not gohowever to the point of compromising before a ratherrecent date the idea of a tripartite anthropology Weconclude with a recent interpreter that the Pauline conceptof πνεῦμα is a concept ldquoof which our modern anthropologiescan absolutely not take accountrdquo42

2 Patristic Tradition

I The First Two Centuries Irenaeus It is a fact that Christianantiquity did not judge insignificant the Pauline verse about

body soul and spirit Nevertheless from one author toanother the interpretations differ without always being in

contradictory opposition to each otherIn his letter to the Philadelphians Saint Ignatius of Antioch

simply makes the Apostlersquos enumeration his own in judgingthat his correspondents like the Ephesians and theSmyrnians ldquowill be honored by the Lord Jesus Christ inwhom they hope with flesh soul and spirit (σαϱϰί ψ υχῇ πνεύματι) in faith charity and concordrdquo1 Athenagoras alsodistinguishes between soul and spirit for him the soul isplaced between ldquothe spirit of matterrdquo which is to say ldquotheflesh and bloodrdquo and the ldquoheavenly spiritrdquo which is ldquopurespiritrdquo and it can according to its choice mix with one orbecome the other

The soul becomes passive when it receives the spirit of matter and ismixed with it by looking below toward earthly things and to speak in ageneral way when it becomes only flesh and blood and ceases to be apure spirit2We believe that we will live another life heavenly and no longer earthlyif at least close to God and with God we have steadfast souls masteringpassion and if we remain not like bodies but like a heavenly spirit 3

In Tatian also the distinction seems clear when he saysldquoWe have knowledge of two sorts of spirits one of them iscalled soul the other is greater than the soul it is the imageand resemblance of Godrdquo4 Only subsequently it isimpossible to discern clearly if the spirit he distinguishesthus from the soul and which he calls ldquodivinerdquo is not simplythe Spirit of God The soul he explains is not immortal in

and of itself so ldquoif it remains by itself it dies with the flesh But when it is united to the divine spirit (θεῖ ον) it doesnot lack for help and it rises to where the spirit leads it Forthe seat of the latter is above while its origin is below Nowin the beginning the spirit was the guide of the soul itabandoned it when it did not want to follow it Now theSpirit of God does not reside in all but in some who livejustly The souls who have obeyed wisdom have drawnthe Spirit who is closely related5 to them (συγγενές) rdquo

Saint Irenaeus then Origen should make us pause a littlelonger because of the abundance of texts their importanceand their difficulty6

It is in the fifth book of Adversus Haereses that Irenaeusgives us his views about anthropology But his goal was notto write a clear and didactic exposition for the use of thehistorians who would pore over his text later on it was torefute heretics who conceived of salvation for man only inldquorejection of the fleshrdquo7 On the other hand careful alwaysto stick very close to Scripture he lets himself be guidedsuccessively by the different texts he uses which leads himto change more or less his perspective and his terminologyin the course of his text8 Hence the difficulties forinterpreters

The first passage in which the distinction between the souland the spirit is affirmed is of little interest to us for it isthere a question of an exposition of heretical doctrine9 Inresponse chapter 6 no 1 is presented as an orthodoxcommentary on the Pauline texts

Through the hands of the Father which is to say by the Son and the Spiritit is man and not a part of man who becomes the image and theresemblance of God Now the soul and the spirit can be a part of man butin no way man the perfect man is a mixture and union of the soul who hasreceived the Spirit of the Father and who has been mixed with the fleshmodeled according to the image of God Under the name of ldquoperfectrdquo the Apostle designates those who havereceived the Spirit of God He also calls them ldquospiritualrdquo they arespiritual through a participation of the Spirit but not through a voiding and

a suppression of the flesh In fact if one dismisses the substance of theflesh that is of the modeled work in order to consider only what isproperly spirit such a thing is no longer the spiritual man but the Spirit ofthe man or the Spirit of God By contrast when this Spirit in mixing withthe soul is united to the modeled work thanks to this effusion of the Spiritthe spiritual and perfect man is achieved and it is he himself who has beenmade in the image and resemblance of God When on the contrary theSpirit is absent in the soul such a man remaining in all truth natural andcarnal will be imperfect possessing indeed the image of God in themodeled work but not having received the resemblance by means of theSpirit10

From all the evidence Irenaeus counts here three elementsin man But is it simply a matter of man or of the perfectman Or rather to speak without ambiguity is it simply aquestion of the ldquoperfectrdquo man which is to say complete inhis nature or man divinized through the participation of theSpirit of God Or indeed does Irenaeus mix the two thingsThe text that follows will perhaps enlighten us

Modeled flesh alone is not the perfect man it is only the body of man thusone part of man Neither is the soul alone man it is only the soul of manthus one part of man Nor is the Spirit man one gives it the name of Spiritnot that of man It is the mixture and union of all these things thatconstitute the perfect man And this is why the Apostle in explaininghimself has clearly defined the perfect and spiritual man beneficiary ofsalvation when he says in this First Letter to the Thessalonians ldquoMay theGod of peace make you perfect and holy so that you may be fullycomplete and so that your whole beingmdashto wit your Spirit your soul andyour bodymdashmay be preserved without reproach for the coming of the LordJesusrdquoWhat motive did he have in asking that these three things to wit the soulthe body and the Spirit be preserved whole for the coming of the Lord if hehad not known that all three were to be restored and reunited and thatthere is for them but one and the same salvation This is why he calls ldquofullycompleterdquo those who present these three things without reproach to theLord Thus those are perfect who all at once possess the Spirit of Godremaining always with them and maintain themselves without reproachwith respect to their souls and their bodies which is to say preserving faithtoward God and keeping justice toward their neighbor11

The hesitation remains On the one hand the Spiritconstitutes with the soul one part of man it is called theldquoSpirit of the manrdquo and seems to be distinguished from the

ldquoSpirit of Godrdquo it in itself does not constitute the man anymore than the body or the soul does but it is one of thethree elements that constitute him these three elementsare also enumerated according to Saint Paul who wishesthem all three to be without reproachmdasha wish that wouldbe irrelevant even impertinent in the case of the Spirit ofGod finally moreover Irenaeus himself considers that theyare all three to be ldquorestoredrdquo and to be presented to theLord But on the other hand the soul receives ldquothe Spirit ofthe Fatherrdquo the man is called ldquospiritualrdquo insofar as hereceives participation of the Spirit and this participationmakes him to be not only in the image but in theresemblance of God finally if this man is ldquoperfectrdquo it isbecause in addition to the soul and the body he ldquopossessesthe Spirit of Godrdquo12 And these two series of affirmations arenot found in different contexts they are closelyintermingled

Yet a little farther on several passages come to supportthe second series

Those who possess the deposit of the Spirit and who surrenderthemselves to the Spirit the Apostle rightly calls ldquospiritualrdquo since theSpirit of God dwells in them For spirits without bodies will never bespiritual men but it is our substancemdashthat is the composite of soul andfleshmdashthat in receiving the Spirit of God constitutes the spiritual man 13 The weakness of the flesh makes the power of the Spirit shine forth and it is of these two things that the living man is made living due to theparticipation of the Spirit man through the substance of the flesh mdashTherefore without the Spirit of God the flesh is dead 14The breath of life which makes the natural man is one thing and thevivifying Spirit which renders him spiritual is another The breath has beengiven indistinctly to all the people who inhabit the earth while the Spirithas been given exclusively to those who trample down earthly covetousdesires 15ldquoFor the Spirit will come out around me and it is I who made all breathrdquo (Is5716) He ranks in a way the Spirit in a sphere apart beside God who inthe last days spread it over mankind for adoption but he situates thebreath in the common sphere among creatures and he declares itsomething created Now what has been created is different from the onewho creates it The breath is thus a temporary thing while the Spirit is

eternal After having enveloped man from within and without heremains always with him and henceforth will never abandon him16

One will note however that in these texts the perspectiveis no longer that of an anthropological analysis and thatthey are condemned by other biblical passages than thepreceding Moreover as Irenaeusrsquo principal objective justnow was to claim for the body itself a salvation of which theheretics say it is incapable his objective here is to show thatthis salvation the definitive blossoming of the spiritual lifewhose seed is in each man is the work of the Spirit of Godin each man In no passage is Irenaeus concerned to give uswhat we would call a philosophical anthropology He doesnot go deeply intomdashto tell the truth he does not even havein mindmdashthe problem of the insertion of the Spirit of God inman Despite the several expressions we have brought outand several others as well we believe that the Spirit ofwhich he speaks is always the Spirit of God even when heconsiders it in man If for example it is said in 5 6 1 thatthe soul and the Spirit can be ldquoone part of manrdquo one canobserve with Dom Adelin Rousseau that ldquoparsrdquo is in thesingular ldquoThus although Irenaeus does not hesitate to seein the Spirit of God one of the three constitutive elements ofthe perfect man he refuses and for good reason to makethis Spirit a lsquopartrsquo of the perfect man rdquo A little farther onit is said that the Spirit like the soul and the body is to berestored and saved which seems strange if it is indeed aquestion of the Spirit of God but Dom Rousseau againcomments ldquowhat is to be saved is not the Spirit as such butthe Holy Spirit insofar as communicated to man for his fullachievement in other words the Spirit is less saved than itsaves rdquo These explanations are ingenious they canseem a little subtle they do not however in our opinionfalsify the general line of Irenaean thought Perhaps it isonly necessary to complete them by recognizing that thetexts that are to be thus explained give witness to a rather

clear tendency to conceive of man (even if it is a question ofthe ldquoperfect manrdquo) according to the anthropological schemesuggested by the Apostle17

If therefore the Spirit indeed designates for Irenaeus theSpirit of God his very manner of considering this Spirit ofGod in man and of seeing in it thus one of the threeelements that combine to constitute the perfect man posesan anthropological problem18 Just like the text of the FirstLetter to the Corinthians of which Irenaeus wants to give anaccount it invites a resolution of this problem in thedirection of a certain ldquotrichotomyrdquomdashwhich Origen more of aphilosopher will soon do ldquoThe hereticsrdquo we read again inthe fifth book of Adversus Haereses ldquo do not understandthat three things as we have shown constitute the perfectman the flesh the soul and the Spirit One of them savesand forms to wit the Spirit another is saved and formed towit the flesh another finally is between those two to witthe soul which now follows the Spirit and takes its flightthanks to him now lets itself be persuaded by the flesh andfalls into earthly desiresrdquo19

These explanations seem to us akin to those of FatherJean Meyen-dorff with respect to man ldquocomposed of fleshsoul and Holy Spiritrdquo ldquoThis viewrdquo he observes ldquowhichsounds strangely pantheistic if one judges it according tolater theological categories shows in fact a dynamicconcept of man that excludes the notion of lsquopure naturersquoMan is created so as to share the existence of God this iswhat distinguishes him from the animal and is expressed inthe biblical account of the creation of Adam lsquoin the image ofGodrsquo rdquo20 As Pierre Boyer-Maurel also says21 if for Irenaeusa certain dichotomy ldquoaccounts for man fashioned in theimage of Godrdquo it is nevertheless a trichotomy ldquoin which thebreath only precedes the Spiritrdquo who ldquoaccounts for thebecoming of man of that man who is created by lettinghimself be created throughout the divine Economyrdquo

II Origen Irenaeus spoke particularly of the Spirit of Godeven when that Spirit shared became by consent of thesoul the spirit of man Origen will speak more explicitly of

the spirit of man insofar as an opening to the Spirit of GodThese are two inverse perspectives much rather than two

adverse doctrines1One authority on Origen Gustave Bardy has however

written that the tripartite division ldquowhich is imposed onhim in a way by several Scripture passages plays no rolein his teachingrdquo2 Another historian of ancient Christiandoctrines Francois Bonifas had expressed a judgment inthe contrary direction but as little conformed to the realityafter having pointed out that ldquounsteadinessrdquo of the Paulineterminology ldquomakes it doubtful that the Apostle intended [in1 Thessalonians 523] to make a scientific distinctionrdquo hewent on thinking essentially of Origen ldquoYet the Fathers ofthe Church saw in the expressions of Saint Paul a rigorousdivision in which they found once again that of their oldmentor Platordquo3 Previously J Denis while not mixing Platoup in the affair had recognized in Origen the existence oftrichotomic texts but he saw in that only a foreign body inthe midst of Origenian doctrine ldquoGenerally speakingrdquo hesaid ldquothe soul and the spirit are but one for Origen and ifhe had not respected a division that came to him from SaintPaul and which appears to have been adopted generallyas much by the orthodox Fathers as by the heretic scholarshe would have suppressed one of the terms of this divisionand would thereby have been spared numerouscontradictionsrdquo4 The prejudice to which in each of thesethree last cases the historian is unconsciously giving way isnot difficult to perceive To overcome it would require an in-depth study After the work by G Verbeke on LrsquoEvolution dela doctrine du Pneuma du Stoiumlcisme agrave saint Augustin (1945)the works of Henri Crouzel and Jacques Dupuis have broughtus all desirable light on this point ldquoAt timesrdquo Father Crouzel

tells us ldquoOrigen is a dichotomist distinguishing the bodyand the soul following the Platonic custom5 But most of thetime he sees according to Scripture three elements inman spirit soul and body He has recourse to thistrichotomy when it is a matter of explaining his idea of manand he states it each time he encounters in the texts anexpression that suggests it and this is so throughout hisliterary careerrdquo6 But it is Father Jacques Dupuis who drawsthe matter into perfect clarity in his important monographon ldquoLrsquoEsprit de lrsquohommerdquo eacutetude sur Irsquoanthropologicreligieuse drsquoOrigegravene For him ldquoThere can be no doubt thatthe verse from Saint Paul is the immediate source of hisanthropological trichotomyrdquo (65) It is principally he that wewill follow here

ldquoWe often find it asserted in Scripturerdquo says Origen ldquothatman is spirit body and soul and we have ourselvesdeveloped the subject at lengthrdquo7 In that as in othersubjects it is in fact the sacred text most especially that ofSaint Paul that truly constitutes the framework for histhought8 And it is with reference to Scripture that he triesto define clearly the notion of the Pneuma For him thePneuma is first of all the Divine Life in principle but it is alsothe shared divine life the creature itself becomes pneumain the measure that it possesses this life Yet it is a first kindof participation in the divine Pneuma which does not yetallow it to be said that man has become pneuma aparticipation that without betraying Origen we can alreadycall natural because it consists in an element that is anintegral part of the nature of all men and that is preciselyhis pneuma ldquoThe Spirit of God even when it is present inus is one thing and the pneuma proper to every man thatwhich is in him is something else The Apostle clearlyaffirms that this spirit (this pneuma) is different from theSpirit of God even when the Holy Spirit is present in usover and above the spirit of man that is in himrdquo9 The

distinction could not be put more clearly Origen asks againin the same passage of the commentary on Saint MatthewldquoIs the spirit of Elias the same as the Spirit of God whodwells in Elias or indeed do we have two different thingsthererdquo And he replies ldquoThe Apostle shows clearly that theSpirit of God when he dwells in man is distinct from thespirit of the man lsquoThe Spirit itself testifies to our spirit thatwe are children of Godrsquo (Rom 816) and in another placelsquoNo man knows what is in a man if not the spirit of the manwho is in him likewise no one knows what is in God if notthe Spirit of Godrsquo (1 Cor 211)rdquo10

Origen indeed says like Paul pneuma and not nous It isbecause they did not sufficiently distinguish between thesetwo concepts that several have identified the pneuma of theanthropological trichotomy with the preexisting nous andhave made it the higher (intellectus) part of the soulmdashunless in order better to distinguish between pneuma andpsyche they reduced this latter to its sensible part Theythen spoke of Origenrsquos imprecisions his unstableterminology indeed of his inconsistency of thought and ofhis contradictions This was from not having read himclosely enough11 He distinguishes the spirit from the soul(and in this case he is not speaking of the nous) as clearlyas he does the soul from the body and he repeats atdifferent times that ldquowe are composed of a soul and aspiritrdquo this is the case it seems in the third book of Periarchocircn12 so too in the fourth book in the famoustheoretical parallel that he institutes between man andScripture13 In the Entretien avec Heacuteraclite for theinstruction of his august audience he insists ldquoThat man is acomposite being we know through Scripture The Apostle infact says lsquoMay God make you holy spirit soul and bodyrsquoand so forth This spirit is not the Holy Spirit but one part ofthe human composite (μέϱος τής τοῦ ἀνθϱώ πουσυστάσεως) as the same Apostle teaches when he says

lsquoThe Spirit gives witness to our spiritrsquo rdquo14 In thecommentary on the Letter to the Romans he will also quotein support a text from Daniel15 here he invokes as anexample what happened at the death of Christ havingwanted to save all men the Savior had taken body soul andspirit now ldquothese three elements during the Passion wereseparated at the time of the Resurrection they werereunited During the Passion they were separated How Thebody in the tomb the soul in hell the spirit he deposited itin the hands of the Father rdquo16

This spirit of man represented by the eagle in Ezekiel17 isplaced above the soul18 But never in the texts of thetrichotomic series does Origen call it νοῦςmdashso that thiscould be a criterion for discerning the origin of certainpassages given as Origenian but which are in reality fromEvagrius19

But how are we to understand this spirit which is ldquoin usrdquo20 What is its role If we follow again the indications givenby the Apostle we will compare it to the moral conscienceldquoOur gloryrdquo says Paul ldquois the testimony of our consciencerdquo(2 Cor 112) The conscience always rejoices in what good Ido on the other hand it can never be accused of doing evilbut on the contrary it remonstrates it accuses the soul towhich it is bound this is a sovereign freedom I thereforethink that it is this very spirit that the Apostle tells us is withthe soul being associated with it like a pedagogue and aguide to teach it good to chastise it and to reprimand itwhen it sins It is this spirit of which the Apostle again saysthat ldquono one knows what the man is if not the spirit of theman who is in himrdquo it is the spirit of the conscience alsoaccording to what Paul says ldquoThe spirit himself giveswitness to our spiritrdquo21

We should not however in exalting the pneumaexcessively reduce its reality if it is not a simple member ofthe human composite neither is it the simple voice of the

conscience Inaccessible to evil22 placed in a way as wehave said ldquoabove the soulrdquo (ἀνωτέϱω) as a ldquoguide tovirtuerdquo23 it is ldquomuch more divine than the soul and thebodyrdquo24 ldquobelonging truly to man it remains entirely in aparticipation of the Holy Spirit who gives himself to us it isthe point of contact between man and the divine Pneumawho inhabits himrdquo25 This is why it is always holy it is holyby essence not of course the ldquoHoly Spiritrdquo but throughparticipation a ldquoholy spiritrdquo26 ldquothe seal of the Holy Spiritmakes holy the spirit that is in usrdquo27 in each of us Hencethe paradox the pneuma in man is holy and it mustbecome so we must affirm at the same time the holiness ofthis pneuma and ldquothe fortuitous character of a holy liferdquo28 Ifwe seek to bring out the fundamental idea expressed (let usnot say sought for Origen seems very much the master ofhis thought) in these texts and other similar ones we couldwithout betraying it express it thus the pneuma that is ldquoinmanrdquo in every man assures a certain hiddentranscendence of the man over himself a certain opening acertain received continuity between man and God Not thatthere is the least identity of essence between the one andthe other (like Irenaeus like Clement Origen is animplacable adversary of this pantheism of the pseudo-Gnostics) but it is at the heart of man the privileged placealways intact of their encounter

Would man therefore be after all impeccable No But thecenter of moral freedom and choice is not the pneuma Thatis why we can say that for Origen the pneuma ldquodivine giftrdquois not properly speaking part of the personality29 Thecenter of choice is the soul in its higher part (νοῦς) Thelatter can be inclined as Saint Paul says on the side of thespirit or on the side of the ldquofleshrdquo (which does not mean thebody) which is to say that it is ldquocapable of virtue and ofvicerdquo30 When it is said that the flesh desires against thespirit and the spirit against the flesh without any doubt the

soul is posed between the two as being able to acquiesceto the desires of the spirit (si eum sequi velit)31 or let itselfbe led to carnal desires in this latter case it becomes withthe flesh a single body of covetousness and of carnalappetite in the former case on the contrary beingassociated with the spirit it becomes a single spirit withitrdquo32 The spiritual man is the one in whom the spiritprevails33 the carnal man he in whom the flesh prevailsThe spirit itself the pneuma always remains holy but ineach one it can have vitality or torpor flight or fall flame orsluggishness34 This is why paradoxically Origen can affirmboth as we have said that the pneuma is holy and that itmust become so35

Still following Paul Origen also speaks of the ldquonaturalmanrdquo who is again neither carnal nor spiritual and theexplanation he gives in his respect manifests once again aparadoxical character distinguished only with difficulty fromthat spirit (pneuma) that is in man without being uniquely ofman and that becomes fully himself and fully completesman only in his participation in the Spirit of God ldquoThenatural man does not understand what the law of God is itis madness to him but the spiritual judges all thingsrdquo (1 Cor214) We think that there is a reason why Paul omits theword ldquomanrdquo after ldquospiritualrdquo For ldquothe spiritualrdquo is more thana man he is superior to that humanity defined by the soulthe body or by the two together and not by the spirit whichis more divine than these two elements and whosesupernatural participation once achieved defines thespiritual When the soul rises follows the spirit andseparates itself from the body when it no longer evencontents itself with following the spirit but remains in it (asthis passage shows ldquoToward you have I raised my soulrdquo Ps251) how would it not lose so to speak its own nature andnot itself become spirit36

Toward the end of this text a trace of the speculations ofPeri archocircn on the subject of the soul will be noted buttoned down by ldquoso to speakrdquo It is necessary toacknowledge however that from one work to the otheracross the succession of dates and the varieties of subjectstreated and literary genres the points of view are so diversethat in the words if not in the thought the reader has somedifficulty finding a perfect coherence among all theOrigenian texts on the pneuma

At death all pneuma returns to God this is whatEcclesiastes says ldquoThus the pneuma of the just and that ofthe sinner have an identical destiny both end at theFatherrdquo37 But ldquoit does not follow that saint and sinner sharethe same destiny With the saint the whole man enters intoGod with the sinner the pneuma returns to the Lord thesoul and body perish in Gehenna hence the intrinsic tearingof the human beingrdquo38 Like the remark by Father CrouzelOrigen is akin here to the thought of Saint Irenaeus whosaid ldquoAll those who are destined to life will be raised up withtheir bodies their souls and their spirits those who havemerited punishment will surrender their souls and theirbodies to it for with them they have strayed from divinegracerdquo39

Later Christian tradition will not be as unfaithful to thisconception of the pneuma as one might believe It is foundagain in a series of intuitions ideas and opinions of variedexpression This is for example the idea dear toRuysbroek of a certain ldquodeiformityrdquo of the human being ofhis higher ldquosuperessentialrdquo life in God40 It is the obscurefeeling that there exists in each of us even the greatestsinner a hidden room where no one but God can enter inldquothat sacred point in us that says Pater no iterrdquo as PaulClaudel says magnificently in the famous ldquoCantique dePalmyrerdquo and that cannot hide from love41 It is the intuitionof a Georges Bernanos at the threshold of death noting in

his diary that ldquosin makes us live on the surface of ourselvesrdquoand that even when we offend God ldquowe never ceaseentirely to desire what He desires in the depths of thesanctuary of our soulrdquo42 There are similar traits in the workof Dostoyevsky although they too can be rather equivocal(a novelist does not express himself like a theologian) theydo not prevent him from glorifying personal freedom andproclaiming the necessity of uprooting evil in receiving ldquonewbirthrdquo The Origenian doctrine of the pneuma alsoreverberates throughout the Bonaventurian tradition In atotally different climate and without any need to search fora precise influence from one to the other the very doctrineof Saint Thomas Aquinas would not be completely foreign tohim It questions neither the singularity of each humanbeing nor the drama of existence nor the divinetranscendence43

NOTE

In his commentary on John 423-24 Origen defines ldquotrueadorersrdquo first by the spirit then in relation to the truth Hethus breaks down the dual Johannine formula and explains itterm by term drawing his inspiration again from Paul whoopposes spirit and flesh (Rom 89 Gal 56 2 Cor 103) It isinteresting to note that in evoking Romans 89 Origen addsa μήϰετι those who are no longer in the flesh but in theldquospiritrdquo He thereby stresses the impact of the coming ofChrist and of the gift of the Spiritmdashalready evoked by Paulmdashwhich divide history into a before and an after Origen doesnot work therefore only on words (flesh and spirit) but heis inspired by the Pauline thought in which these terms arenot only anthropological but in which they evoke the impactthat the history of salvation the Incarnation and the gift ofthe Spirit have on man It is the same with Galatians 516fIn verse 18 Paul in fact opposes the condition of man underthe Spirit to that of this same man under the Law As for thethird evocation it is a little different Paul speaks there of hisconduct because some accuse him of acting according tothe flesh that is of allowing himself to be guided bymotives that are too human (Jean-Michel Poffet OP ldquoLeMeacutethode exeacutegeacutetique drsquoHeacuteracleacuteon et drsquoOrigegravenecommentateurs de Jean 4rdquo Jeacutesus la Samaritaine et lesSamaritains [Fribourg Switzerland Eacuteditions Universitaires1985] 191) III From Origen to Augustine A few examplesshould be enough to show the continuity of this tripartiteanthropology across the patristic age

Cyril of Jerusalem addresses to the newly baptized thesame wish that Paul did to the Thessalonians1 Gregory ofNyssa in his treatise on the Creation of Man practices acertain eclecticism Following the perspective that isnaturally his own since he compares the nature of man to

that of the beings that surround him and particularly ofother living beings he begins by distinguishing a threefoldactivity merely vital (that of plants) sentient (that ofbeasts) rational these are like three souls or threesubstances all three of which are found in man alone Thevocabulary is that of the philosophical ϰοινή of that periodthe higher life of man is λογιϰή it is directed by the νοῦςhis nature is a νοεϱά ϕύσις But this can also be understoodsays Gregory according to the words that the Apostleaddressed to the Ephesians (sic) First of all through a boldconcordism he places the body in an equivalence with thenutritive life the soul with the sensate life the spirit(πνεῦμα) with the intellectual life (νοεϱόν) then withoutfurther hesitation and without seeming to perceive that heis changing the perspective he finds once again the truePauline thought or at least comes close to it bydistinguishing life according to the flesh (σαϱϰιϰή) from lifeaccording to the spirit (πνευματιϰή) and by showing thesoul in an intermediary situation having to choose betweenvice and virtue2 Farther on he will explain that only thesoul endowed with reason such as it is in man fully meritsthis name of soul in such a way that he would haverejected it seems any attempt at concordism between theνοῦς and the πνεῦμα3

It is not Hellenism but indeed the Bible that inspires thetrichotomy of the Syrian tradition such as we see it in thishymn of Saint Ephraim of Nisibis For the soul is still moreprecious than the bodyAnd the spirit is still more precious than the soul

And the Divinitymore hidden than the spiritThe body will be clothed with the beauty of the soul when

the end arrives

The soul will put onthe beauty of the spiritThe spirit will put on in its very image the (divine) MajestyThe body on equal footing with the soul will see itself

elevated The soul on equal footing with the spiritThe spirit at the height where the Majesty is 4

In another later Syrian text the awkwardness of an attemptat harmonization between the three elements of man andthe three Persons of the divine Trinity will be noted JacquesdrsquoEacutedesse (d 708) writes in his Explanation of the MassldquoSacred things are holy The soul the body and the reasonare sanctified by three sacred things by water blood andspirit and besides by the Father the Son and the Spirit andtruly man does resemble God in virtue of this trinity ofcomposition the soul corresponds to the Father the body tothe corporeality of the Son and the reason to the HolySpirit Thereby man thus resembles Godrdquo5 One cannevertheless wonder if the word translated by ldquoreasonrdquo isnot here the equivalent of nous rather than of pneuma andif the soul is not merely the sensate soul The same doubtcan be expressed with respect to a passage from theTestament in Galilee of Our Lord Jesus Christ of which wehave the text in Ethiopian ldquoShould the body be judged withthe soul and the spirit Will the body of every man berevived with his living soul and his spiritrdquo6 We will find asimilar hesitation in examining the Latin tradition andperhaps one must say in certain cases at least it cannot beresolved

Saint Ambrose writes on the one hand ldquoHomo ex animarationali constat et corporerdquo7 but also on the other handldquoPrimum unusquisque homo est corporalis secundoanimalis tertio spiritualisrdquo and the parallel he institutesbetween these three elements and the three heavens towhich Saint Paul alludes in the Second Letter to the

Corinthians does not enlighten us much about the meaningof this trichotomy8 Ambrose is not alone in any case inacknowledging it We read in Gregory of Elvira ldquoManifestumest enim tribus perfectum constare semimortalemhominem id est corpore et anima et spiriturdquo9 AndAugustine expresses himself in a similar way on severaloccasions10

In reality Augustinersquos vocabulary is rather evasive Theterm mens as we know holds a privileged place in his workIn De Trinitate he develops a distinction destinedsubsequently to become more rigid that between ratioinferior and ratio superior In commenting on Psalm 3 verse4 ldquoet exaltans caput meumrdquo he explains that this ldquocaputanimaerdquo is the ldquospiritusrdquo or the ldquomensrdquo and so on11

Certain texts which have the appearance of explicitdefinitions speak of two single elements as constitutive ofman ldquoHomo enim constat ex corpore et spiriturdquo12 ldquoNihil estin homine quod ad ejus substantiam pertineat atquenaturam praeter corpus et animam totus homo hoc estspiritus et carordquo13 Yet Augustine does not consider the twowords anima and spiritus to be simply synonyms althoughfor brevityrsquos sake he includes in only one of the two thecomplex meaning of both ldquoNomen animae spiritus est abeo quod spiritalis est animae nomen est ab eo quodcorpus animet hoc est vivificetrdquo14 From which we have acertain number of explicitly trichotomic texts which are ofgreat importance for a correct understanding of Augustiniananthropology for it is on this trichotomy that Augustinebases his doctrine of the memoria15 and he gives it asessential to the Catholic Faith ldquoSi quis tenuerit catholicamfidem ut totum hominem credat a Verbo Dei essesusceptum id est corpus animam spiritum rdquo16

In the same De fide et symbolo Augustine explainshimself at somewhat greater length ldquoEt quoniam tria suntquibus homo constat spiritus anima et corpusmdashquae

rursus duo sunt quia saepe anima simul cum spiritunominatur pars enim quaedam ejusdem rationalis quacarent bestiae spiritus diciturmdashprincipale nostrum spiritusest deinde vita qua conjungimur corpori anima diciturpostremo ipsum corpus quoniam visibile est ultimumnostrum est Anima vero cum carnalia bona appetit caronominatur rdquo17 we also quote several similar texts ldquoUttotus homo sit spiritus et anima et corpus sed aliquandoduo ista simul nomine animae nuncupari rdquo18 ldquoPropterspiritum et animam et corpus rdquo19 ldquoAd creaturaeintegritatem id est spiritum et animam et corpus et illudquo intelligimus et illud quo vivimus et illud quo visibiles etcontrectabiles sumusrdquo20

In De fide et symbolo at the same time as hedistinguishes anima from spiritus Augustine identifiesspiritus and mens21 Likewise too he distinguishes theldquopars rationalisrdquo of the soul (which is thus no longer only theanimator of the body as in animals) from the ldquopars quaeexcellit id est ipsa mensrdquo22 It is practically the lastdistinction expressed in De Trinitate by the seeminglyequivalent words ratio inferior and ratio superior23

In brief the anthropological analyses of Saint Augustineare varied H I Marrou has set up a table which does notintend to be exhaustive24 and it must be noted besides thatunder the same word under the same verbal distinction ithappens that Augustine places different realities On thewhole less dependent on a literal interpretation ofScripture and more particularly of Saint Paul than Origenwished to be25 more inclined to express himself in avocabulary borrowed in part from Neoplatonism Augustineplaces under the word spiritus a reality that sometimesmore closely resembles the nous of Greek philosophythan the pneuma of the sacred text Yet through the dualityhe recognizes within this spiritus (or this ratio or this mens)he remains a faithful witness of the Christian tradition

3 From Saint Augustine to Our Day

I Medieval Spiritual Masters In Augustine as in Origen (andas in the whole patristic tradition) the notions are fluid the

historian must strive to grasp the movement of theirthought rather than to classify their concepts Augustinianexplanations moreover do not correspond point by pointwith Origenian analyses The Christian spiritual masters ofthe Middle Ages will rather often be in this regard closer to

Origen than to Augustine In order not to interpret them in asimplistic way it is necessary constantly to bring analogy

into play Perhaps even the undertaking to reunite them in akind of continuous chain extending to our time is a little

too reminiscent of concordism Let us say finally thatspiritus is not only designated or understood in variousways with some it splits so that one has to deal rather

with a quadripartite anthropology one of the causes for thisis the desire to make a place for the Platonian tradition ofthe intelligence a tradition that is amalgamated somehowor other to the Pauline tradition It is having made these

remarks that we gather together the examples that follow

For John Scotus man is composed of three elements butthe third element called in turn animus intellectus or mensresembles the νοῦς more than the πνεῦμα We read in book5 of De divisione naturae ldquoTotam humanam naturamcorpus videlicet et animam et intellectumrdquo (PL 122 910-11)But another text in book 2 chapter 5 expresses aconception closer to the biblical conception ldquoAciem mentisqua ilium [Deum] intelligimus et in qua maxime imagocreatoris condita estrdquo (PL 122 531 c)1

The traditional trichotomy dominates the structure ofBernardrsquos Brevis Commentatio on the Song of Songs (n 1)In William of Saint Thierry the third term the ldquospiritrdquo splitseither in order to grant a certain place to the nous to theintellectus to rational understanding or rather in order todetail the principal stages of the spiritual life The Letter tothe Brethren at Mont Dieu that important text distinguishesa triplex status animalismdashrationalismdashspiritualis which is tosay ldquothose beginningrdquo ldquothose on the wayrdquo and ldquotheperfectrdquo The opposition between the flesh and the spirit isnot denied William will be able to remind those who havingbegun to taste the sweetness of contemplation might betempted to neglect the permanent necessity of spiritualcombat2 But rather than this dialectical opposition theobject of the Letter is to set forth a pedagogical ladderwhich is moreover nonetheless Pauline in its inspirationThe beginners are still guided by an animalis sensus (this isthe natural man of Saint Paul which is not the carnal man)those on the way acquire a rationalis scientia (we observehere the care to integrate into the formation of the monkthe whole cycle of human knowledge) and the perfect enjoyspiritualis sapientia3 In addition these are not threeairtight categories or perfectly distinct and successivestages just as there is passage from one to the other thereis immanence from one to the other William remains faithfulto the same schema in Miroir de la foi4 as well as in hiscommentaries on the Song of Songs ldquotres status esseorantium vel orationum animalem rationalemspiritualemrdquo5 In De contemplando Deo a subdivisionintervenes between the ratio the discursive faculty andthe intellectus which does not seem to be at this point theequivalent of the spiritus (1 4)

Isaac of Stella speaks in nearly the same way in alanguage however that has more of an intellectualist ringto it in distinguishing the understanding from the reason

which abstracts the forms of the sensate vis animae quaimmediate supponitur Deo6 We have the feeling that thissecond-generation Cistercian was familiar withScholasticism

Hugh of Saint Victor is closer than Isaac to Bernard andWilliam of Saint Thierry According to him the eye of theflesh (which is to say here the body) sees the world andwhat it contains the eye of the reason sees the soul andwhat it contains but the eye of contemplation penetrates tothe innermost depths of man and above man This eye ofcontemplation belongs to those who possess the spirit ofGod7 In Achard of Saint-Victor the order of the last twoelements or of the last two stages seems reversed hetreats de discretione animae spiritus et mentis mens wasas another author of the twelfth century says quasiquoddam divinitatis insigne8 (But this is hardly a questionof vocabulary alone) Whatever might be the distinctionsand subdistinctions orientations inflections and differencesin vocabulary it can be said of all these spiritual masters ofthe Middle Ages as well as of many of those who will followthat they took up the essential chorus of the Pauline andpatristic trichotomy and that most even attribute extremeimportance to it as Sandaeus a seventeenth-centuryauthority was to remark

Magni aestimant Mystici nonnulli et putant maxime necessariam ad suamTheologiam ac perfectionem divisionem inter spiritum et animam9

This is also true of Bonaventure ldquoHabet enim anima trespotentias animalem intellectualem divinam secundumtriplicem oculum carnis rationis contemplationisrdquo10 Werecognize the schema of William of Saint Thierry and Hughof Saint Victor11 For Thomas Gallus closer in this regard toIsaac of Stella ldquoreason feels the intelligence seesrdquo12

Johannes Tauler in several of his sermons teaches thatldquoman is so to speak composed of three menrdquo and that one

must distinguish in him first of all an ldquoexternal manrdquo orldquoanimal manrdquo then a ldquoreasonable manrdquo finally a ldquohigherman wholly inner and hiddenrdquo that ldquonoble and deiformrdquoman ldquomade in the image of Godrdquo13 The mystical theologyof Harphius (Henry Herp) also says that ldquothe soul isaccording to Scripture divided into three parts rdquo14 andthe appeal to Scripture despite the appearance is justifiedFor our authors in fact the adding of a supplementary termto the Pauline enumeration does not derive from the factthat they would abandon Paul in favor of Plato but from thefact that they are concerned besides about a theory ofknowledge which Paul did not at all have in view in hisaddress to the Thessalonians Yet La Perle eacutevangeacutelique leadsus to a tripartite schema the body being understood as inPaul but at base the difference from the medieval authorswe have just enumerated is hardly perceptible

Each man seems almost to represent three men according to the body heis bestial according to the soul he is reasonable and intellectual andaccording to the spirit or the naked essence of the soul where God dwellshe is deiform 15This very noble portion of the soul some call mens insofar as itcontinually breathes after God and is as it were a largely deiform or divinething and the image of God in man It is something divine in being as itwere flooded with God and united to him It is also called the point and thesummit of the spirit because God without intermission shines in the latterlike a mirror It is also according to what the good Father Ruysbroek saysthe highest part of the soul It is also called the sparkle of the soulbecause it is in God what the sparkle is in fire In the first [unity or union] we are superessential and deiform and in thesecond spiritual and internal and in the third active and moral 16

The foregoing is the text of a compiler from which one mustnot ask too great a coherence in terminology or too great aunity in point of view If we now appeal to a theologian whowas the adversary of the mystical school represented byTauler Harphius and La Perle eacutevangeacutelique and who refers tomore reliable authors such as Augustine ldquoBernardrdquo andHugh he will give us the same essential distinctions

Tres cognoscendi modi sunt quorum unus animalis dicitur utens maximeoculo carnis alius rationalis utens plus oculo rationis tertius spiritualisutens oculo contemplationis sicut distinxerunt divini homines tres oculoset tres vivendi modos17

Louis de Blois finally in the Institution spirituelleperseveres in bringing out this ldquodepth of the soulrdquo thatunder different names always corresponds to the ldquoPaulinepneumardquo and that will not find a place in the late Scholasticanthropologies or in most modern anthropologies

God who to tell the truth is everywhere dwells in the spirit of man and inthe simple depth or inner sanctuary of the soul in a particular manner Hedwells there in his own image and never absents himself18This depth naked and stripped of any image is raised above all creatures it transcends time and place and through a kind of perpetual adhesionremains united to God in his principle It is however in us by essence forthe abyss and depth of the soul are essence The soul possesses a certain supernatural unity of spirit in which itdwells as in its own habitation and it is carried away into the divineessence even to this supreme unity in which the Father Son and Holy Spiritare in the simplicity of the divine essence itself 19

Assuredly these speculations about the divine essencemdasheven if they maintain a trinitarian affirmationmdashand aboutthe essence of man presuppose a long evolution of thoughtthat in one sense distances us greatly from Saint Paul Butacross languages theories and as one never stops sayingtoday cultural contexts that differ greatly to be sure it ispossible to discern a fundamental continuity

This continuity will not be broken by the period called theRenaissance

II Saint Thomas Aquinas in Tradition1

I

In the spiritual history of mankind the three domainsconstituted by what one can designate under the threedenominations of religion morality and mysticism are oftenpresented as independent or even opposed to each otherThe alliance or the mutual penetration between mysticismand morality does not appear achieved in and of itself anymore than that between morality and religion Yet one couldnot conclude that such an alliance or such a mutualpenetration is an artificial and wholly contingentphenomenon In opposition to an empiricism thatdisintegrates everything without explaining anything wewill say rather that it responds if not to the demands atleast to the profound wish of nature But nature itself hastaken time in finding itself

In fact we note that it has not fully found itself outside theChristian revelation The union of the three aforementionedelements religion2 morality and mysticism does not reachits fullness it does not become harmonious and indissolublein principle except in the tradition coming from the GospelThere and most specifically in the Catholic form of thistradition it does not appear as a secondary fact obtainedby convergence subsequent to various gropings but as anoriginal and essential fact Religion morality and mysticismmanifest themselves there ldquoin a reciprocal envelopmentrdquoBetween these three both an attraction and a tension existthat could be the source of many vital problems but there isobjectively neither separation exclusion nor conflict forldquothe Deity while transcending being the true and the goodcontains them formallyrdquo3

This is why in particular in the Catholic traditionmdashlivedand reflectedmdashldquoreasonablerdquo life and ldquospiritualrdquo life or lifeldquoaccording to the spiritrdquo penetrate each other without beingidentified with each other4 and morality penetrates themystical life to the end Pseudo-Gnosticism relegated therewarding of good and punishing of evil those pillars of theldquoDemiurgerdquo to the lower level of ldquoexotericrdquo faith the greattradition on the contrary maintains this moral aspect ldquoatthe heart of the revelation of the Father through the uniqueSonrdquo5 ldquoIt is notrdquo says Saint Justin for example ldquobecause ofhis [natural] affinity with God or because he is spirit like himthat man sees God it is because he is virtuous and justrdquo6 Inhis Psychologie des mystiques Joseph Marechal noted thisessential characteristic Mystical ascent he explains doesnot erase ldquoany specific trait of the common Christian liferdquo7In other words the Christian virtues proposed for thepractice of all are not simply means of freeing oneself theirexercise is not simply something transitory in theirsubstance they are already something of the end itself Thisis what Saint Ambrose was able to explain wonderfully in abrief sentence in his commentary on Saint Luke withrespect to the Beatitudes ldquoSicut enim spei nostrae octavaperfectio est ita octava summa virtutum estrdquo8 And this iswhat Saint Augustine repeated in similar terms speaking ofadhesion to God the blessed life and eternal wisdom ldquoUnaibi virtus erit et idipsum erit virtus praemiumque virtutisrdquo9

In a remarkable thesis Pierre Nemeshegyi has posed thesame problem with respect to Origen ldquoTo place Being andmoral Goodness in equation to place this moral Goodnessin God formally and as characterizing the final ground of hisBeingmdashis this not to be condemned to enclosing all spirituallife in an anti-mystical moralism The Good is atranscendental But is it formally what we understand byldquomoral Goodrdquo Or is there not a deepening of this moralGoodness which would reestablish the possibility of an

innermost mystical depthrdquo And Nemeshegyi concludes ldquoInfact in Origenrsquos conception moralism and mysticism areone and the same thingrdquo10 Saint Gregory the Great oftenso close to Origen will unite good sense to spiritual fervor inorder to remind contemplatives that if they want to befaithful to the Gospels and to advance on the true way theymust take care to scorn the humble precepts of morality andto seek to understand them in a more sublime sense11

The medieval spiritual masters will take up again thesethoughts of Origen Ambrose Augustine and GregoryExpressing ourselves in the customary categories of theirexegesis which the Middle Ages systematized we will saythat for them ldquoanagogyrdquo achieves the final perfection bothof ldquoallegoryrdquo and of ldquotropologyrdquo (of dogma and ofmorality)12 Of all authentically Catholic mysticism onecould declare what one historian said of Saint Bernard byallusion to the traditional interpretation of the ldquoBooks ofSolomonrdquo for each of them as for him ldquothe moral school ofEcclesiasticus and Proverbs the necessary preliminary forthe mystical school of the Song of Songs is a school whosedoors are never closed behind usrdquo13

This ldquospiritualrdquo equilibrium has at times seemedthreatened in one direction or another Some spiritualscholars have seemed to want to transcend purely andsimply the sphere of morality and reason This is whatcauses Evagrius not without reason to be judged severelyat times it is what Ruysbroek reproaches in the falsemystics of his time it is one of the points that the bull Inagro of John XXII criticizes in Meister Eckhart Whatever mayhave been true in each of these cases the thing thatinterests us here is the norm that inspired such criticismsWhile following Saint Paul in distinguishing the ldquosoulrdquo fromthe ldquospiritrdquo (not moreover as two substances nor even astwo ldquofacultiesrdquo) one always refuses to separate them as ifthe penetration into the higher zone of the ldquospiritrdquo must

make us reject as no longer valid the operations of theinferior zone of the ldquosoulrdquo But the hierarchical distinction ismaintained which is to say that the mystical life is not forall that reduced to the plane of simple morality A text fromSaint Teresa is very enlightening here the saint observesthat the ldquocenter of the soulrdquo or the ldquospirit of the soulrdquo is aldquodifficult thing to express and even to believerdquo

Certain interior effects give the certitude that there is in certain respectsa very real difference between the soul and the spirit Although in realitythey are but one we sometimes perceive a division between them that isso delicate that it seems the one functions in one way and the other inanother There are so many things in our innermost depths and thingsso subtle that it would be boldness on my part to undertake to explainthem We will understand all that in the other life if God deigns toadmit us to the dwelling where we will have understanding of all thesesecrets14

Yet the equilibrium can be upset in the opposite directionfrom that for which Evagrius and Meister Eckhart werereproached This has been true periodically for anti-mysticalscholars or simply anti-mystics against whom periodicallytoo protests are raised With them it is not the ldquosoulrdquo thatis forgotten or scorned in the name of the superior ldquospiritrdquoit is the ldquospiritrdquo that is ignored misunderstood in the nameof a truncated moral wisdom But with any of the greatscholars of the Catholic tradition we do not have to registerany such misunderstanding This is what we would wish todemonstrate here with respect to Saint Thomas Aquinasand more particularly with respect to the Summatheologica

II

From first appearances one might be brought to believethat Saint Thomas in the Summa is one of those scholarswho upset the equilibrium in the second direction But in

reality he did nothing of the sort His doctrine in the Summatheologica contains in fact the equivalent of what othershave expressed through the distinction of soul and spiritunderstood as the distinction of a moral region and amystical region If one does not observe this right at thebeginning it is because Saint Thomas expresses himself indifferent words

It could be written that in his doctrine ldquoall the problemsthat the spiritual life and its evolution pose return in thisconsideratio moralis which has but one object man inprogress toward his blessed destinyrdquo15 The thing isincontestable Still it might be useful to specify how Nomore in Saint Thomas than in others is the union of the twomoral and spiritual (or ldquomysticalrdquo) elements a confusion or areduction pure and simple from the mystical to the moralThe synthesis is not a unification in the exclusive favor ofone of the two Of course one could judge that the Thomistanthropology by its Aristotelian roots favors the originalityof the mystical life less than others And like the virtue ofldquoreligionrdquo the theological virtues seem at first glance mixedin a long list of ldquovirtuesrdquo within the second part of theSumma It is appropriate nevertheless to remark beforeseeing things at closer range that only a later usage givesthis second part the name ldquomoralrdquo After having in the firstpart considered God as the universal cause Saint Thomasconsiders him now as end after the divine model he clingsto his image after the departure of God from all things heenvisages the return of all things to God Nowmdashthis is theimportant point for our subjectmdashthis itinerary of returncomprises several stages

It is true that the prologue to the Secunda secundaespeaks of scientia moralis of materia moralis and that allseems right at first to be reduced to the consideratiovirtutum But let us look a little closer In this sameprologue as in the articles that follow Saint Thomas

nonetheless distinguishes from the virtutes morales notonly the virtutes theologicae but also the virtutesintellectuales which are along with prudence wisdomunderstanding and knowledge closely connected to thegifts of the Holy Spirit of the same name Moreover afterhaving exhausted the plan he had outlined for ldquoomittingnothing of moral thingsrdquo by studying successively thevirtues and the vices that are opposed to them heconsiders in a kind of extension a series of new questionsrelated first of all to ldquoprophecyrdquo to ldquorapturerdquo and othergratuitous gifts then to the ldquocontemplative liferdquo a series heattaches a little artificially one must admit to the sectionon the different states of life

This artifice has sometimes embarrassed commentatorswho do not always understand the articulations that theplan of the Summa comprises here Thus we have Father MD Chenu who has the ldquotreatise on the states of liferdquo beginat question 183 starting from where ldquothe spiritual life islinked to social functionsrdquo16 The thing seems in fact ratherlogical Yet Saint Thomas himself said in his littleintroduction to question 171 ldquoDe prophetiardquo

Postquam dictum est de singulis virtutibus et vitiis quae pertinent adomnium hominum conditiones et status nunc considerandum est de hisquae specialiter ad aliquos homines pertinent

So Father Antoine Lemonnyer had adopted a differentsolution from that of Father Chenu He saw in questions 171to 198 concerning the gratuitous gifts a kind of parenthesisand made the final treatise of the Secunda secundae beginfrom question 179 which is to say from the ldquocontemplativeliferdquo he gave a certain unity to this final treatise thanks tothis single yet twofold title ldquoHuman Life Its Forms and ItsStatesrdquo17

The divisions adopted respectively by Father Chenu andFather Lemonnyer both have their probability and both can

be supported In fact however as Father Chenu remarkedSaint Thomas treats the states of life properly onlybeginning with question 183 entitled ldquoDe officiis et statibushominum in generalirdquo But already before that questions171 to 182 form a whole very distinct from the precedingquestions in which we have the equivalent of a littletreatise on mysticism

Even if he did not treat explicitly at that time the relationsbetween active life and contemplative life18 the placeaccorded by Saint Thomas to this latter in his general planwould thus authorize us to distinguish it from the domain ofmorality He himself besides tells us so in proper termsldquoThe moral virtues are not a constitutive element of thecontemplative liferdquo19 in fact ldquothey are ordained toactionrdquo20 Now action is inferior to contemplation The latteris ldquosimpliciter meliorrdquo21 Action prepares for contemplationby winning the soul through the external exercise of thevirtues the necessary ldquopreliminary dispositionsrdquo bydisciplining the passions and by submitting them to thereason22 Contemplation is the act of the ldquohigher reasonrdquowhich is to the inferior reason following an old biblical andPhilonic symbolism revived and slightly transformed23 asthe man is to the woman24 It is ordained to ldquoperfect loverdquoand as Saint Gregory taught while the active life issynonymous with service the contemplative life issynonymous with freedom25 As Aristotle had alreadyaffirmedmdashbut we know with what freedom Saint Thomaschanged and transformed the thought of the philosophereven while he invoked him as an authority26mdashit is a lifeabove the human condition27 and is made to last always28

No more than any other of the great witnesses of theChristian tradition did Saint Thomas reduce the spiritual lifeto the exercise of morality or spiritual understanding torationality Father Pierre Rousselot too neglected today (atleast in France) demonstrated this well by placing in

evidence the distinction between intellectus and ratio afundamental distinction with numerous consequences29mdashBut neither does he separate them on the one hand as anauthentic heir of the Fathers he integrates the virtuous lifeinto eternal life by saying ldquoUniuscujusque perfectio nihilaliud est quam participatio divinae similitudinisrdquo30 And onthe other hand he knows that in the earthly conditionexternal action which is first of all the virtuous life mustitself proceed from contemplation

The comparison with the Plotinian philosophy or with theldquoagnosticsrdquo can in this regard be very enlightening becauseof the apparent proximity of the doctrines

In a parallel way one would find in Christianity [says Jean Trouillard on thissubject] a going beyond ethics by the theological virtues and the gifts ofthe Holy Spirit The Christian life consists in divinization not in ascesis Yetthe role of the will seems much more considerable in Christians than in thePlotinians not only in charity but also in faith which is itself presented as aduty Theologians do not ordinarily situate the theological virtues on theother side of the decisions of the faculties or on this side of the constitutedvalues This is what must not be forgotten when faced with the use of theNeoplatonic doctrine of virtues attempted by Christian authors inparticular by Saint Thomas (1a 2ae q 61 a 5)31

And again Maurice de GandillacPlotinus harshly criticizes the Gnostics who believe that by ldquoraisingoneself near to God on wings of a dreamrdquo (2 9 9) one escapes the humancondition According to the fragments of Heracles (Legrand 315) Mosesthe author of the Law belongs to the ldquonaturalrdquo world Superior to purematter however he ignores the spirit By proscribing by judging bypunishing he fulfills an inferior ministry and the ldquoperfectrdquo are in no waysubject to his commandments Pure at the beginning they are savedwithout exercise as without repentance and without pardon Thispresumption will be the common gospel for all the sectarians who across the Middle Ages will preach a ldquogoing beyond the ethicalrdquo32

We should not let the differences in emphasis from oneauthor to another or from one school to another hide fromus therefore the consistent thought of the Christiantradition Already in someone like Origen the union is

achieved between ldquoa resolutely contemplative religiousideal and a passionately active liferdquo33 For Saint Gregory theGreat to whom Thomas Aquinas refers the whole spirituallife is subject to a rhythm and ldquotrue perfection begins tomature only in the difficulties and obstacles of the activeliferdquo34 Medieval monasticism did not scorn Martha in thename of Mary it maintained that action must be joined tocontemplation or the ldquopracticerdquo to the ldquotheoryrdquo a little likelove of neighbor to the love of God35 The two inseparableaspects of the Christian doctrine on this subject will onceagain be expressed very well in the reflections of John HenryNewman still an Anglican preaching on ldquoevangelicalsanctity the completion of natural virtuerdquo Newman in factshows in this sermon that there is ldquoan essentialresemblance between the spiritual man and the virtuousmanrdquo following the words of Saint Paul ldquoThe fruit of theSpirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truthrdquomdashwhiledrawing the attention of his listeners to ldquothe point ofdifference between them viz that the Christian graces arefar superior in rank and dignity to the moral virtuesrdquo36

Moral perfection and holiness virtuous life and mystical lifeare distinct they are hierarchical but at the same time theyare united in charity forma virtutum vinculum perfectionis

III Renaissance and Reformation Nicholas of Cusa takes upthe Pauline trichotomy again in the same terms as the

Apostle He places it in correspondence with on the onehand a cosmic trichotomy and on the other hand what isperhaps unexpected the three Persons of the Trinity He

uses Saint Augustine as his authority for both thesecorrespondences

We read in fact in one of his Sermons ldquoIn homine suntspiritus anima et corpus sicut in mundo elementalia vitaliaet intellectualiardquo1 and in his opuscule the Beryl he

distinguishes ldquothree modes of knowledge the sensate theintellectual and the intelligentialrdquo which he sayscorrespond according to Saint Augustine to the threeldquoheavensrdquo2 That was the cosmic analogy And for thetrinitarian analogy set forth in the work De Concordantiacatholica

Unde homo secundum Augustinum Super symbolo (40 193-94) ad instarTrinitatis imaginem gerens ex spiritu et anima et corpore constitutusexsistit Spiritus autem est superior nobilior et altior intellectualispersonae Patris figuram repraesentans et corpus personam Filii et animaquasi utriusque naturam participans ab utroque procedens personamSpiritus sancti3

Taking up his position like Nicholas of Cusa from the pointof view of knowledge Marsilio Ficino distinguishes thesensus the ratio and the intellectus We recognize in thatthe heritage of the great Scholasticism In a similar mannerin the prologue of his Heptaplus Giovanni Pico dellaMirandola distinguishes the vital instinct discursive andpractical knowledge and the contemplative faculty4 Moreimportant is the twofold witness here in agreement ofErasmus and Luther

In his famous Enchiridion militis christiani Erasmus whotakes his inspiration directly from Saint Paul ldquoends finally ina tripartite anthropology which finds its completion in thegift of the Spiritrdquo5 After having in chapters 4 and 5 spokenof man such as Plato describes him first according to theTimaeus then according to the Phaedo Phaedrus and theRepublic and recalled his distinction of the soul asreasonable irascible and concupiscible Erasmus describesin chapter 6 the Pauline opposition between the flesh andthe spirit then he comes in chapter 7 to the trichotomy of1 Thessalonians which he comments on with reference toOrigen ldquoHe does not hiderdquo observes Charles Beacuteneacute ldquohispleasure in setting forth this theory lsquoLibet et Origenicamhominis sectionem breviter referrersquo rdquo He sees it based as

well on Isaiah (299) and on Daniel (386) so he adopts it inorder to make it intervene ldquoas a definitive stage after theanalyses of pagan philosophersrdquo to serve ldquoas anintroduction to the great rules of Christianityrdquo6 With Origenhe sees in the soul this ldquomedian partrdquo of the human beingwhich can swing either to the side of the flesh or to the sideof the spirit7 In the Methodus or Ratio verae theologiae asimilar text recalls our trichotomy indirectly ldquoNec omnisaffectus hominis est caro sed est qui dicitur anima et quidicitur spiritus quo nitimur ad honestardquo8 But it isparticularly in the controversy with Luther about free willthat Erasmus opposes to the exclusivism of his adversaryhypnotized by the sole dialectic of the flesh and the spiritthe divine pedagogy explained by Origen according to thePauline schema

Luther himself paradoxically had provided a commentaryin his own manner with respect to the first words of theMagnificat (1520) on the text of 1 Thessalonians and hismanner did not differ perceptibly from so many of theothers we have seen

ldquoMy soul glorifies the Lordrdquo Scripture divides man into three partswhen Paul says at the end of 1 Thessalonians ldquoMay God make youholy through and through in such a way that all your spirit and your souland your body rdquo And each of these partsmdashlike the entire man mdashisequally divided in another way concerning not nature but quality In otherwords nature has three parts spirit soul and body all three of which canbe good or bad The first part the spirit is the highest the mostprofound the most noble part of man it is what makes him capable ofgrasping imperceptible invisible and eternal things In brief it is the housewhere faith and the word of God dwell The second part the soul isexactly the same spirit according to nature but accomplishes a differentfunction It is the spirit insofar as it animates the body and acts through it Its proper role consists in grasping the things that reason can knowand probe 9

As for the third term the body its function is to ldquoactrdquo and toldquoput into practice the knowledge of the soul and the faith of

the spiritrdquo As Maurice de Gandillac observes here the bodyhas nothing to do with ldquomirerdquo And by adopting such atripartition of the human being (which is not at all to beunderstood we repeat as a division of three ldquofacultiesrdquo)Luther envisages the human subject as Saint Paul and afterhim the whole of Christian tradition have done ldquoin aperspective that is more biblical than Greekrdquo10 The relativeassimilation that he works between the soul and the spirit isthe echo of a common Scholasticism and the fruit of aninflection toward the point of view of knowledge which wasnot that of Saint Paul in his address to the Thessalonians butin no way contradicts it Of these two characteristics thepreceding centuries have already brought us many anexample11

Like his predecessors Luther thus maintains the threefoldgradation which he also develops through a traditionalimage

We will give a simile for that drawn from Scripture Moses made atabernacle with three different edifices The first edifice was calledsanctum sanctorum it was the dwelling of God and there was no lightfrom within The other sanctum contained a chandelier with sevenbranches and lights The third was called atrium the parvis it was locatedin the open air in the light of the sun This figure depicts the Christian Hisspirit is sanctum sanctorum the dwelling of God in the night (stripped oflight) of faith for he believes what he neither sees nor senses norunderstands His soul is the sanctum there are found the seven lights towit all kinds of understanding discernment science and knowledge ofcorporal and visible things His body is atrium it is manifest for all in sucha way that one can see what he does and how he lives12

It is necessary however to recognize that this trichotomydid not have for Luther an importance comparable to hisdialectical opposition between the flesh and the spirit InSaint Paul from before the commentary on the Magnificathe had been selective the lessons on the Letter to theRomans (1515-1516) were already setting up an oppositionbetween the flesh and the spirit without anthropological

reference to any subject whatever13 and later in hiscontroversy with Erasmus he was to prove all the morehostile to the anthropology drawn from 1 Thessalonians 5 byhis adversary whom the latter guided by Origen used toweaken his dialectic He writes in De servo arbitrio

I am well aware of Origenrsquos fable about the threefold affection of man offlesh soul and spirit14 the soul holding the middle between the flesh andthe spirit and able to turn either toward the one or toward the other Butthis is dreaming he says them but does not prove them at all Saint Paulcalls flesh everything that is without spirit as we have demonstrated15

Luther does not formally contradict here what he had said inthe commentary on the Magnificat What he reproaches inOrigen as in Erasmus is believing in free will But thispreoccupation leads him to falsify their anthropology andthereby to forget or to misunderstand the Pauline verse thathe had first interpreted correctly To which in his enormoussecond Hyperaspistes Erasmus will reply several times overthat the tripartition of 1 Thessalonians 5 even ifcounterparts are found in the philosophers is proper toSaint Paul The philosophers in fact do not usually call thehighest part of the human being spiritus (pneuma) butmens or ratio and what Paul understands by spiritus is notany ratio whatever but the ratio already inspired by graceThat he concludes is what Luther does not want torecognize As often happens the discussion in whichErasmus finds himself involved leads him himself to apartially inaccurate interpretation of Saint Paulrsquos text bymaking him attribute to the ldquospiritrdquo what Paul says of ldquothespiritual manrdquo Yet it remains true that he had first analyzedperfectly the address of the Apostle to the Thessaloniansand Luther had at first done the same16

Lutheran mysticism at least in the rather unorthodoxSebastien Frank (1499-1542) nonetheless recognizes thethree elements of which man is composed body soul andspirit Frank sees in the soul the personal and free being

capable of orienting himself in one direction or in the otherhe sees in the spirit the inner Word or God present at theheart of every man enlightening him through his Word andinclining his will through his Spirit17

The same traditional distinctions originating in Saint Paulare found in the humanists of the sixteenth century ofmystical tendency For a Paracelsus (1493-1541) since manis a microcosm he must unite within himself the threeconstitutive parts or elements corresponding to the threestages of the universe material world astral worldDivinity18 (an idea of Nicholas of Cusa although distorted isrecognizable in this) Cornelius Agrippa in his De occultaphilosophia tried to unite the Platonic traditions to Mosesand to Saint Paul

Plotinus itaque et Platonici omnes post Trismegistum similiter tria ponunt inhomine quae vocant supremum infimum et medium Supremum est illuddivinum quam mentem sive portionem superiorem sive intellectumillustratum vocant Moses in Genesi vocat ipsum spiraculum vitarum a Deovid vel a Spiritu ejus in nos spiratum Infimum est sensitiva anima quametiam idolum dicunt Paulus Apostolus animalem hominem nuncupatMedium est spiritus rationalis utraque connectens extrema atque ligansvid animam animalem cum mente et utriusque sapiens naturamextremorum 19

Guillaume Postel as original as ever at least in expressiondistinguishes in man the anima the animus and the mens20

It was undoubtedly following him four years later thatCharles Toutain wrote in his tragedy Agamemnon Threenatures in us which all talk with each other Excite our lifeand keep it alive The Spirit the Soul and Animus And onebeing taken away Suddenly all life together would depart21

The Anglican Lancelot Andrewes (155 5-1626) expresseshimself in a similar way in his devotions Into Thy hands OLord I commend myself my spirit soul and body 22

IV The Modern Period Saint Francis de Sales will open thisperiod for us His Traiteacute de lrsquoamour de Dieu [Treatise on theLove of God] reproduces the Pauline doctrine to perfectionAfter having explained that ldquowe have three kinds of loving

actions spiritual reasonable and sensualrdquo Francis de Salesobserves that ldquothe powers of the sensory part which are ormust be the servants of the spirit ask seek and take what

has been rejected by the reason dishonoring thepurity of the intention of their master who is the spirit andin the measure that the soul is converted to such gross andsensate unions it is diverted from the delicate intellectual

and cordial unionrdquo Thus by the same movement as we findin Saint Paul the way is sketched to the opposition of the

flesh to the spirit Like many in the Middle Ages Francis deSales following Saint Augustine also distinguishes ldquotwoportions of the soul the inferior and the superiorrdquo theinferior being that which discourses on the basis of the

experience of the senses while the superior founded ldquoonthe discernment and judgment of the spirit is commonly

called the spirit and mental part of the soulrdquo in thisldquosuperior portionrdquo he also distinguishes ldquotwo kinds of lightrdquo

a natural one and a supernatural one and so forth Thiswhole apparatus of precisions which aims at integrating aswe have already seen in others the ldquodegrees of knowingrdquo

within the spiritual movement is not without interest but itis in some ways only a flowering from the basic trichotomy1

It is this same trichotomy that we find again as might beexpected in a philosopher attentive to the spiritual lifesuch as Maine de Biran We know the place that the doctrineof the ldquothree livesrdquo holds in Biran animal life human lifeand divine life particularly in the reflections of his Journalintime2 Jules Lachelier also adopts it but perhaps bydiminishing it in his desire to work a kind of synthesisbetween Maine de Biran and Kant when he explains thethree components of existence sensibility understanding

and reason3 We detect also an indication of the very strongmystical tendencies in Joseph de Maistre in this affirmationfrom the Eacuteclaircissements sur les sacrifices ldquoThe animal hasreceived only a soul to us were given a soul and a spiritrdquo4

One might be tempted to seek a distant analogy withSaint Paul in the Kierkegaardian theory of the three spheres(rather than stages) of existence aesthetic ethicalreligious If that analogy is an illusion other thoughts ofKierkegaard are right in finding their place here ldquoIt isimpossible to treat of sin in any of the sciences thatordinarily speak of it because all are occupied with what ispsychological in our nature while sin is a determination ofthe spiritrdquo and again ldquoThe spirit intervening psychology isimpotent So good as its name indicates is occupied withthe soul It sees everything from outside the spirit itself islived only from within Seen from outside an act isalways determined and for all that the object of psychologyBut rdquo5

One might also be tempted to evoke here the Blondeliandistinction between ldquonoeticrdquo and ldquopneumaticrdquo This wouldnot be completely wrong But Blondel places these twokinds of thought in correlation rather than inviting us to risefrom one to the other He does not thereby have in mind arelation of the psyche to the pneuma but rather a divisionof the function within the spirit Despite the word ldquonoeticrdquothis is not the nous but rather the logos which would beaccording to him the partner of the pneuma6 and thedialectic of the noetic and the pneumatic is in play at everystep so to speak of the development of thought and life inthis conception the first the concrete principle ofuniversality being the factor of objectivization and unifyingforce while conversely the second the concrete principleof singularity is the diversifying element and subjectivefunction7 Both at the same level are thus essentiallycomplementary Blondel held to his distinction he often took

up the study of it He wrote in 1907 in one of his personalnotebooks ldquoThink out the discovery of the two thoughtsrdquo8

Now in 1909 he wrote again ldquoThe two thoughts Ah howthey are always in me tending to supplant each other whileit is necessary to reconcile them hierarchize them makethem differently but equally serve the divine work of finaland total reintegrationrdquo9 This word ldquohierarchizerdquo must beunderstood as demanding a reciprocal hierarchization10 Itdoes not necessarily follow however that any analogy withthe Pauline trichotomy any echo of the ldquothree livesrdquo ofBiran are absent from the Blondelian work Blondel was toopenetrated with the thought of Saint Paul and Saint Bernardhe was too closely interested in mysticism he was toofamiliar with the spiritual authors of the Christian traditionto let us believe in such an absence without a fullerexamination But the fact that his dialectic of the noetic andthe pneumatic which is fundamental in his philosophy doesnot turn explicitly into a hierarchy of the soul and spirit or ofthe discursive reason and mystical intuition (although heobviously knew of this distinction as well as that betweenthe understanding and higher intelligence)11 is not anegligible indication Blondel maintained a prudent attitudein the face of natural mysticism just as on the other handhe remained prudent in the face of facile personalisms

In the Russian theologian Sergius Bulgakov the Paulinedistinction between the soul and the spirit is placed inpowerful relief It assumes a mystical aspect that is moreemphasized than in the Apostle or at least it proceeds froma base of natural mysticism that despite the reference tothe famous discourse at Athens does not seem tocorrespond perfectly to its more complex notion of thespirit

Although it is a creature a certain eternity of creation a certain non-creation are proper to the spirit Spiritual existence is rooted in the

eternity of God the created spirit itself is similarly eternal and uncreatedCf Acts 1728

It is true that Bulgakov can also invoke the authority of theGreek Fathers Had Saint Cyril of Alexandria not written thatldquothe image of the divine nature was imprinted in man by theinfusion of the Holy Spiritrdquo12 The importance of hisanthropological theory derives in any case from the fact thatit is from this that he explains the mystery of theIncarnation

The postulate of the divine Incarnation is a certain original identitybetween the divine I and the I of man an identity that does not abrogatetheir essential distinction The human hypostatic spirit draws itsdivine and uncreated origin from the ldquobreath of Godrdquo Through hisspirit man communicates with the divine substance and he is fit to beldquodivinizedrdquo Man is god-man by predestination potentially throughhis formal structure At the same time he is flesh through anldquoanimatedrdquo body he sums up the entire world Man is made of anuncreated divine spirit hypostasized by the I of the creature and of a souland of a body created from the psycho-somatic being13

Bulgakov insists The very idea of divinity by predestinationseems too weak to him He corrects himself almostimmediately ldquoNot only is man theanthropic bypredestination but also the Logos is the eternal God-Maninsofar as the first Image of the created man This is whythe hypostasis of the Logos the heavenly Man could itselfbecome the hypostasis of created man and make of thelatter the authentic God-man by achieving its eternaltheanthropyrdquo The conclusion is nonetheless fundamentallyin keeping with the spirit of Christian faith ldquoMan is alreadythe form ready for the authentic theanthropy that he is notcapable of achieving himself but in view of which he wascreated and called The divine Incarnation is not at all acatastrophe for the human essence or some violation onthe contrary it is an accomplishmentrdquo14

This leads us far from the narrow anthropological dualismthat triumphed in modern Scholasticism as well as in the

university philosophy springing from Cartesianism ldquoSaintPaulrdquo noted R M Albaregraves15 ldquohad distinguished threeorders the carnal the intellectual and the spiritual16 TheCartesian dualism had fused together the intellectual andthe spiritual and rationalism had gradually reduced thespirit thus created to being only an intellect withouttranscendence without dynamism or immortality destinedonly to understand and to organize the worldrdquo On the otherhand for all sorts of reasons that we do not at all have toseek here but in particular because of a certain poverty inits common philosophy Christian thought did not seem ableto fill the void thus created in man It must not thereforebe surprising that the inevitable reaction was produced inpara-Christian forms ldquoIf a scholarrdquo Andreacute Preacuteaux recentlywrote17 ldquoencounters the old doctrine that man is composedof a body a soul and a spirit he has scruples aboutconsidering it for what do lsquosoulrsquo and lsquospiritrsquo mean Unfortunately in a society where science is the supremeauthority this silence is equivalent to a negation Whatdissolves the errors and complexes what protects againstneuroses and fantasies is precisely that which is silentlyand discreetly dismissedrdquo

The same year as Andreacute Preacuteaux and reacting like himGabriel Germain took support from Saint Teresa to remindus of the unrecognized depths of the life of the spirit

Above the understanding below the ordinary conscience and what fills itexists a sheet of peace and light Whoever approaches it can have nomore doubt of it Anyone who has not sought it has no right to judge itSaint Teresa expresses the same reality in very different terms Now no onehad taught her this nor had anyone prepared her for such an experienceThis agreement over the centuries and doctrines reassures me more thananything She writes in the book of the Mansions (seventh Mansionchapter 1) ldquoInterior things are seen that show in a sure way that there isbeneath a certain relationship an obvious difference between the soul andthe spirit although they are but a single thing rdquo18

Likewise again situating his own thought in relation to theldquonoosphererdquo of Teilhard de Chardin and in relation to theldquocollective unconsciousrdquo of Jung

The noosphere in the philosophy of Teilhard de Chardin appears to be likea mental view a conclusion This is because its very name evokes anintellectual activity the subtlest but whether exploratory or constructivedirected according to logical norms19 What I could call (but I will keepmyself from doing so) pneumatosphere let us say the spiritual ocean isthe object of experience By other paths to other ends it is the samereality I suppose that Jung attained and which he called the collectiveunconscious But these two terms restrict the origin and meaning of it 20

With Jung in fact we penetrate but we remain within whatis psychological The life of the spirit in the Spirit is whollydifferent A certain Calvinist dryness a phobia aboutmysticism and all ldquointeriorityrdquo conspire at times along withrationalism and contemporary positivism of all forms tobrush this life in the Spirit aside But in a quite natural waythe Lutheran Paul Tillich who was interested in ontology inthe history of religions in mysticism as well as in biblicalhistory brings the Pauline tripartition up to date again

There is no religious statement on man and his destiny without a judgmenton the relation between different elements that are combined and opposedin the life of man These elements have been variously described as beinghis body his soul and his spirit 21

The exegetes in contemporary Catholicism seem no moredisposed than most of the theologians to return the Paulineverse to a place of honor and draw its consequences It istoward the writers that we must turn to perceive an echo ofit in free expression Although this expression is truly webelieve faithful to the doctrine of the Pneuma and to itsauthentic development it is not certain that Saint Paulwould have recognized his thought at first glance ldquoI havegood news to announce to yourdquo says Paul Claudel in theldquoCantique de Palmyrerdquo ldquomdashit is another within the depths of

you who has the word I have good news to announce toyou You need only close your eyes to find your treasurein the night There are many souls but there is not oneof them with whom I am not in communion through thissacred point in us that says Pater nosterrdquo22 And GeorgesBernanos in his diary ldquoHis will is ours and when we revoltagainst it it is only at the price of an uprooting of our wholeinner being Our will has been united to his since thebeginning of the world What sweetness to think thateven while offending him we never cease completely todesire what he desires at the depths of the Sanctuary of thesoulrdquo23 A wonderful conjunction of Claudel and Bernanos

The reader will have noted in Claudelrsquos text the wordldquosoulrdquo An inversion of vocabulary is in fact produced Theldquospiritrdquo having become in the modern leveling dichotomythe immediate correlative of the body it is the ldquosoulrdquo thathas taken its place in those who have not taken part in thisleveling We are familiar again in Claudel with the parabolaof animus and anima The word ldquosoulrdquo in the same sensecompels recognition with greater strength in order to escapethe scientistic totalitarianism that reigns abusively in thename of the ldquohuman sciencesrdquo ldquoIn the measure in whichthey are scientificrdquo wrote Henri Gouhier in 1973 ldquothesciences of man can consider man only by selecting pointsof view under which it is possible to treat him objectively Itis obviously not a question for the philosopher to ignore thevarious forms of sociology psychology ethnologyneurology and so forth he must simply wonder if thesciences of man added up constitute a science of manrdquo24

And man simply as such man who cannot renounce the callhe hears in the depths of himself refuses to let himselfsuffocate He rehabilitates the word ldquosoulrdquo as the mostfitting to express what philosophers and men of science aretoo often skilled at eliminating through preterition orthrough negation The soul then becomes almost the

synonym for the pneuma of Saint Paul and Origen Thepassage from Henri Gouhier that we have just quotedfigures in a preface to LrsquoAvegravenement de lrsquoacircme by Aime[Andre] Forest a work he says that ldquofinds its timeliness inits apparent obsolescencerdquo The author of the work and thatof its preface both evoke on this subject the ldquothree livesrdquo ofMaine de Biran Andre Forest also recalls these words ofHenri Bergson ldquoBy calling a certain assurance of facileintelligibility an idea and a certain uneasiness of life thesoul an invincible current brings modern philosophy toelevate the soul above the ideardquo Modern philosophy as awhole has not followed the path on which Bergson thoughthe saw it engaged Gabriel Marcel however among otherswanted to preserve this word ldquosoulrdquo and to keep ldquothefullness of its meaningrdquo Charles du Bos in search of tracesof God in us asked ldquoWho will leave us a journal of thedilation of the soulrdquo What Andre Forest wants is to help usdiscover or to rediscover a certain ldquoinner unityrdquo a certainldquopure sourcerdquo and each of the chapters of his work tracesan avenue toward an encounter with this ldquoThe discovery ofthe soulrdquo he tells us ldquois the development of a spiritualphilosophy The soul is the advent of presence and graceraised above the world of nature and objectivityrdquo25

The same fundamental reaction the same sudden startor if you wish the same awakening five years later in amuch younger author whose nostalgia if this is what it iscannot be that for the past but that which springs from anew reflection this time against the oppression of a thoughtreduced to its politico-social components the final end ofscientistic intelligence In his essay on Job ou lrsquoexcegraves dumal Philippe Nemo insists on this same word ldquosoulrdquo in orderto recall man to himself and to his essential problem 26

Across the numerous changes in vocabulary thecomplications introduced by theoreticians eager foranalysis across too the unceasing variations in points of

view the tripartite anthropology whose expression is foundin Saint Paul has consistently furnished in the tradition ofthe Church a basis for spiritual doctrine and life

4 The Spirit

I The Place of Mysticism As we have already been able toperceive these various distinctions are far from always

being covered perfectly either from one author to another oreven as in the case of Augustine in the work of the same

author C R Doddaursquos remark on the subject of the ancientGreeks applies here ldquoOne must undoubtedly agree that the

average man of the fifth century (and this is true in allperiods) possessed a very complicated psychological

vocabularyrdquo1

The Pauline tripartition has nonetheless remained theconstant basis serving to support the spiritual doctrines ofthe Christian tradition

Commenting on Pseudo-Dionysius Saint Maximus theConfessor defined man by this threefold pair of epithetsldquoSupermundialis et spiritualismdashcircummundialis animalismdashmundialis carnalisrdquo2 The author of the celebratedPhilokalia Saint Nikodemos of the Holy Mountain (748-809)will explain that the ldquoJesus Prayerrdquo brings into operation thethree powers of the soul the intellect (nous) the discursivereason (logos) the will or spirit (theacutelē sis pneuma) in theaction of the soul alone by which uniting in itself the soulis made fit to be united to God3 But perhaps that is amatter rather of a ldquohorizontalrdquo trichotomy of threefunctions or three activities proper to the higher part of thespirit

With more than one spiritual writer of the Latin MiddleAges one should speak of four elements rather than ofthree in their analysis of manmdasheven without consideringother complications many subtle subdivisions an echo ofScholasticism dear to a certain number subdivisions

destined either to establish agreement between authors orto detail the stages of spiritual itineraries As for examplethis schema traced by Isaac of Stella in his Epistola deanima ldquoAnimae in mundo sui corporis peregrinanti quinquesunt ad sapientiam progressus sensusmdashimaginatiomdashratiomdashintellectusmdashintelligentiardquo4 Two different modes will benoted both inspired by Saint Augustine in the expression oftripartism for some it is corpus anima spiritus5 forothers corpus ratio mens Hence to accord these twomodes the quadripartite division corpusmdashanimamdashratioinferiormdashratio superior sive mens We know the groundgained in the Middle Ages by that Augustinian subdivision ofthe ratio inferior and the ratio superior6 What willcorrespond to this in Saint Thomas Aquinas will beparticularly the distinction between the ratio and theintellectus recently brought out by Pierre Rousselot7 Thiswould also be the place to mention the Franciscan doctrineof the two faces of the soul which is of Neoplatonic origincoming through the twofold channel of Augustine and theArabs8mdashbut that like moreover the Thomist distinction ofthe intellectus and the ratio is an essentially ldquoscientificrdquo(philosophical) theory having little relation to the spirituallife The explanation of the latter is founded rather on thedoctrine of the twofold ratio lower and higher whichcorresponds to action and contemplation But then a newsubdivision is introduced the ratio superior the place ofcontemplation assimilated to the intellectus becomes thehigher part or function of the mens and receives namessuch as acies mentis oculus cordis and so forth

Whatever might be the various complications and thevarieties in the names ldquoall the great Christian mystics are inagreement in considering the human soul as a complexreality presenting regions and stages All are also inagreement in admitting that among these various regionsthere is a privileged one that where God dwells in a

particular manner rdquo9 ldquoThere is a spiritual life when arelationship with God existsrdquo10 and there is a secret point inman that is the permanent place of that relationship of thatpossible encounter because it is already and always hasbeen the place of the divine presence that pneuma of Paulcommented on by Origen that ldquosacred point in us that saysPater nosterrdquo of the ldquoCantique de Palmyrerdquo11

So we see that the philosophers and theologians moreconcerned about rationality than mysticism tend to reduce(even in their historical studies) the trichotomy to adichotomymdashwhile on the contrary the spiritual masterstend to bring out the trichotomy They readily glorify thespiritus not only above the anima but above the ratiowhether theoretical or practical It is instructive to comparein this regard the Abeacutelardian writing Ysagoge in theologiamwith the commentary on the Song of Songs by William ofSaint Thierry For the first ldquoDuo haec nomina sc spiritus etanima non magnam habent in significationediscrepantiamrdquo12 The second on the contrary stronglyemphasizes the hierarchical distinction of three ordersldquoanimalrdquo ldquorationalrdquo and ldquospiritualrdquo13

To keep to the general schema that results from the textof Saint Paulmdasha schema that itself in fact includes manynuances and as we have seen many interpretationsmdashmorality will therefore be the act of the soul mysticism theact of the spirit ldquoThe bodyrdquo says Evagrius Ponticus ldquohasbread for nourishment the soul has virtue theunderstanding has spiritual prayerrdquo14 Morality whoseobject is virtue is the πϱᾶ ξις and the life of the spirit iscontemplation the θεωϱία The first is ordained to thesecond as the soul is ordained to the spirit ldquoStriverdquo saysCassian reporting the statements of Abbot Nesteros ldquotoacquire in the first place a complete possession of moraldiscipline (πϱαϰτιϰή) for without that you cannot obtaincontemplative purity (θεωϱητιϰή)rdquo15 For Gregory of Nyssa

virtue is ldquothe forecourt of the Templerdquo16 Origen had saidbefore them ldquoAccording to the doctrine of the very wiseSolomon he who wishes to acquire wisdom must begin bystudying moralityrdquo it is in fact ldquogood conductrdquo that preparesone to receive the visits of the Logos and when one issolidly exercised in it then one will be able ldquoto pass frommoral things to mystical understandingrdquo17 In his treatiseaddressed ldquoTo the Brethren at Mont Dieurdquo which remainsone of the fundamental texts of Christian spiritualityWilliam of Saint Thierry traces a similar route for those whowant to give themselves over to the perfect life and for thefinal stage his program is even one of a boldness that somecould misunderstand (it is true that it is addressed to aCarthusian monastery) ldquoIt is for othersrdquo he tells them ldquotoserve God it is for you to cling to him It is for others tobelieve in God to know that he exists to love him andrevere him it is for you to taste him to understand him toknow him to enjoy himrdquo18 The same doctrine is set forthas it had been earlier with Origen in parallel with thedoctrine of the threefold biblical sense by another writer ofthe twelfth century Godefroi drsquoAdmont

Sicut triplex est visio corporis spiritus et mentis ita triplex etiam sensusest in scripturis Sanctis litteralis spiritalis intellectualis Litteralem atquespiritalem sensus egregius ipse Doctor gentium tunc transcenderat etusque ad tertium coelum intellectualem scilicet sensum glorioseconscenderat quando toto cordis intellectu ita coelestibus est conjunctusquod utrum in corpore an extra corpus esset se nescire asseruit19

The same fundamental schema is found again in the greatrepresentatives of what one often calls with a term that canlend to confusion ldquointellectualist mysticismrdquo which is tosay with the Rheno-Flemish mystics of the fourteenth andfifteenth centuries The same schema although withdifferences in terminology and in a sometimes differentclimate of thought particularly in Meister Eckhart

Ruysbroek ldquoassigns to the spirit a threefold role First of alla vital role in which it animates the body then anintellectual role that is manifested by thought finally a roleof higher spiritual activity in which it becomes the principleof unification of the whole inner life and in which it is mixedwith the very essence of the soulrdquo20 Hence for example inthe Livre des sept clotures the definition of the seventhenclosure ldquowhich surpasses all the othersrdquo ldquosimplebeatitude beyond all holy life and practice of the virtuesrdquo21

Likewise in the Miroir du salut eacuteternel in which the higherdegree is only divided after ldquothe virtuous life which dies tosin and grows in virtuesrdquo comes the state where ldquoallownership of the will diesrdquo then the spirit is made fully freethrough its union to the Spirit of God even to the point ofthe ldquoliving liferdquo (levende leven) that blossoms which is allldquohidden in God and in the substance of our soulrdquo22

Ruysbroek takes up again here an expression long sincecurrent which he could have read in Saint Bernard (vividavita et vitalis)23 William of Saint Thierry (vita vivens)24 orThomas de Froidmont (vita vitalis)25

The same gradation is found in Tauler based on the sametraditional ldquoternary schemardquo Tauler distinguishes in manldquothree things one clings to nature in flesh and blood theother is the reason the third is an essence of the pure souland without mixturerdquo This is what he expresses again ldquointhe symbolism of the three men which correspond to thesensate life the intellectual life and the spiritual life in thesense of union with Godrdquo26 This ldquothird manrdquo this ldquoessenceof the pure soulrdquo is what Tauler often calls the gemuete aword that Father Etienne Hugueny translates as ldquodeep-seated willrdquo and Louis Cognet prefers to call ldquodeep instinctrdquoit is the ldquodepthsrdquo of being to which says Tauler the ldquodivinegroundrdquo alone corresponds abyssus abyssum invocat itimprints on our nature ldquoan eternal and deep-seatedtendency to return to its originrdquo a tendency that ldquopersists

even in the damned because it is linked to the very essenceof the soulrdquo27 Taulerrsquos preaching rests on this structure Theabnegation to which he invites his listeners is not only theliberation from sensible appetites it goes beyond simplemorality it is a profound attitude that ldquoflows from thegrowing experience of Godrdquo mystical passivity succeedingthe activity of the virtuous life ldquoinner recollectionrdquo abovethe exercise of the virtues and reason as well as that of thesenses28 ldquoIt is necessary that after having overcome thesenses the reason be freed from itself renounce itself soas to be transformed into pure and simple spiritrdquo29 Then theKingdom of God is established And Tauler repeats so as tomake himself well understood ldquoThis Kingdom is establishedin its own manner in the innermost part of the spirit assoon as man through all his exercise has absorbed theexterior man in the inner and reasonable man and as soonas the man of sense and of reasonable power are entirelyabsorbed into the more interior man in the hidden groundof the spirit where the true image of God dwells and assoon as he flees into this divine ground into which manfrom all eternity is found in his uncreated staterdquo30

The relationship of Tauler to Eckhart is obvious In one asin the other the distinction of the soul and the spirit (of thepsyche and the πνεῦμα) colored by Platonic exemplarism isaffirmed everywhere Eckhart enunciates it with reference toSaint Augustine ldquoAccording to Augustinerdquo he says ldquoourintellectual element divides itself into two parts through theone we are oriented intellectually toward an intellectualgrasp of knowledge that our cognitive faculty receives fromoutside the other to use the very words of Augustinemanifests itself at the deepest center of our spirit (lsquoabditummentisrsquo)rdquo31 It is this center that particularly interested thatfascinated Eckhart this place ldquowhere no image enters orleaves but where there is only God himselfrdquo ldquoThe soulrdquo healso said ldquohas two eyes the inner one and the other outer

one the inner eye of the soul is that by which itcontemplates being and receives it directly from Godrdquo32

What differentiates him from Origen and Augustine Bernardand William of Saint Thierry is the ldquouncreatedrdquo characterthat he attributes to this ldquoinner eyerdquo or to this ldquoabditummentisrdquo The disquieting feature of his mysticism consists inthis a feature that will be less emphasized in Tauler andeven in Henry Suso although the latter speaks also of theground of the spirit as ldquoeternalrdquo33

Follower and compiler Harphius (Henry Herp) willsymbolize the ldquothree kinds of liferdquo emanating from the threeparts of man in the three biblical figures of Leah Rachel andMary Magdalen34 and he works at length to describe themens or the apex mentis the spiritus or the interior sinusmentis which is to say still that pneuma by which the zoneof rational and moral activity is transcended

Dicitur etiam [anima] quandoque mens quae sc ipsis viribus interior est etsupereminet quia vires in mente sicut in origine sua sunt counitae ex quasc effl uunt ut radii ex solari rota et in quam refluunt Et est illud centrumin anima in quo vera Trinitatis imago relucet et tarn nobile quod nullumibi nomen proprie convenit licet in multis nominibus circumlocutivemanifestatur Haec est igitur mens vel apex mentis aut centrum ipsiusanimae ut feliciter renovetur ipsae vires quae dicuntur spiritus adinteriorem sinum mentis sunt reflectendae et mens ipsa ad intimum suumregerenda sc in Deum ibidem suaviter recubantem 35

Warning us that this higher part of man cannot beappropriately designated by any name and multiplying theformulas himself by which one must indeed try even tospeak of it Harphius invites us not to stress whatever theinterest of the other part might be the variations invocabulary from one author to another or from one period toanother which could hide from us the continuity of atradition that in essentials is very firm

Saint Catherine of Genoa offers us a similar schema veryclassically she distinguishes body soul and spirit the latterbeing designated in itself by the word mente and when it is

animated by infused love by the word spirito in this lattercase the spirito is finally identified with infused Love whichis God Since the Saint is less concerned to give us atheoretical course in anthropology even spiritual than todescribe the spiritual life itself we can understand that fromher pen mente is rare and spirito frequent36 On the otherhand following the example of many other mystics sheloves to detail the stages of ascent ldquoWhen Godrdquo she saysldquoaddresses his first call to us he gives us at first the instinctfor virtues later he urges us to perfection then throughinfused grace he leads us to the annihilation of ourselvesfinally to true transformationrdquo37 Saint Teresa and Saint Johnof the Cross likewise know that there exists a life higherthan the exercise of the virtues when they celebrateldquofreedom of spiritrdquo38 ldquoholy freedom of spiritrdquo39 and SaintTeresa observes in her Interior Castle that ldquocertain interioreffects give certitude that there is in us in certain relationsa very real difference between the soul and the spiritrdquo40 Wealso quote as an example Fenelon who in commenting onCassian finds himself at the same time summing up thewhole mystical tradition ldquoAlthough we judge the othervirtues to be necessary and useful we believe however weshould place them only at the second degree because oneseeks them all only in view of this one thing of which JesusChrist says lsquoMartha Martha you trouble yourself aboutmany things there is only one thing necessaryrsquo He placedthe sovereign good not in work although laudable andabundant in fruit but in contemplation that is truly simpleand one He declares that little is necessary for this perfectbeatitude that contemplation isrdquo41 And a little farther on inthe same writing ldquoThere is thus a state where thisappropriation of virtues is no longer opportunerdquo42

The great Protestant spiritual master Gerhard Tersteegen(1697-1769) professes the same doctrine ldquoThere mustnecessarily be in us a capacity to recognize God and

spiritual things in an essential and present way And thatexists in the pure Reason [Vernunft] which has been givenus closed and unused until God gives us the understandingby which we know the very Truth so intimately andessentially that we are ourselves drawn into the trueGodrdquo43

If a certain number of authors in the course of this longtradition that we have just examined seem also todistinguish as it were two elements above the psychewhile Saint Paul saw only the pneuma above it this isusually as we could ascertain from some of the examplescited because they mean by psyche only the animal soulanimater of the body and seat of sensation or ratherbecause they want to assure a seat for ldquoobjectiverdquoknowledge and profane culture For Paul on the contraryand more explicitly for Origen the soul is the very seat ofthe personality the reasoning and self-willed being whichjudges and freely determines itself It is the place ofdecision According to the orientation taken by the soul thehuman being will become ldquocarnalrdquo or ldquospiritualrdquo(pneumatikos) As opposed as he might be to free willLuther himself saw very clearly that the Pauline psyche of 1Thessalonians 5 was much more than the principle ldquothatanimates the body and acts through itrdquo In an article in theRevue thomiste (1971) Father P R Reacutegamey OP isperfectly in keeping with the traditional line when hedistinguishes (497) these three degrees psychosomaticcomplexmdashrational function of abstraction and discoursemdashprimacy of spirit in its greatest purity And what in thetheoretical order is the ldquorational functionrdquo corresponds inthe practical order to what we could call in a ratherrestrictive sense the ldquomoral functionrdquo Saint Paul alsoinvites us not to confuse this moral function with theproperly spiritual life which raises man above himself whenhe places above the exercise of active benevolence and of

all virtue this reality of another order a gift of God which isCharity (1 Cor 133) Dietrich Bonhoeffer was also faithful tothe tradition that originated in the Apostle when heexhorted the Christians over whom he had responsibility notto confuse in their assemblies ldquospiritual community withmystical overheatingrdquo (cf A Dumas 64) ldquoThe great themeof community life is the revival of the very Paulinedistinction between the natural eager equivocal nostalgicdesiring in a word idealistic and the spiritual respectfulenlightened serving knowing in a word realistrdquo (ibid145) ldquoThe onerdquo Bonhoeffer also says ldquowho does not letChrist be a path toward the other falls into naturalchattering which kills the spiritual word Prayer is thesalutary limit to desires of immediate effusiveness Community life is communion through spiritual mediationand non-confusion in the natural immediacyrdquo (146-47)

II Morality Integrated into Mysticism In Christianity itself itis characteristic of the Catholic Church to assure theequilibrium between the three components (religion

morality and mysticism) an equilibrium necessary to theintegrity of the human being Faithful in everything to her

spirit of synthesis she maintains all three in solidaritywithout ever letting any one of the three be lacking or

eclipse the others or be devalued in the humblest forms ofspiritual life any more than in the highest To take a verysimple example when Fenelon exclaims in his Traiteacute de

lrsquoexistence et des attributs de Dieu ldquoMy length of life is buta perpetual extinctionrdquo1 these words to be well

understood must be taken at once morally religiously andmystically

The various Protestant confessions place more emphasison contrasts and clashes as has often been remarked J AMoehler wrote in the last century in his Symbolique withrespect to morality and religion ldquoIn the eyes of Catholics

religiosity and morality if we may be permitted to use thesetwo terms are united by their essence and are both eternalAccording to the Protestants on the other hand there is norelationship between these two things for one is of aneternal price and the other is of only passing value Lutherinsists in many places on this difference rdquo2 There wouldbe many nuances besides to note here but in this essay ontypology we must keep to the most general characteristics3In Calvinism mysticism is the object of mistrust or evenreprobation4 We also know the abyss in Luther thatseparates ethics and faith As a result of this there is atendency with Lutheran mysticsmdashto say nothing of Lutherhimself and of Lutheranism in generalmdashto depreciate allmoral activity as constituting on manrsquos part an affirmationof self that far from bringing him closer to God distanceshim and to recognize a value in religious life only in anabandonment close to quietism5 a depreciation of moralitythat goes hand in hand with that of reason and that offreedommdashwe recently read from a Protestant pen an articleon morality considered solely as ldquocultural realityrdquo Such anattitude to take it simply as such could also facilitateinvaluable analyses in many regards such as the analysis ofthe ldquolevels of liferdquo in Kierkegaard or that of the ldquosacredrdquo inRudolf Otto But these analyses do not always stop at posingformal distinctions Thus in order to bring out more clearlythe specificity of the category of the sacred or of thereligious Otto cuts the latter off from morality he is notcontent with showing that on the level of history orpsychology these two orders are often separated in fact heis well on his way to a separation by right6 As arepercussion when morality reclaims its place in otherauthors of Protestant inspiration it sometimes absorbsreligion and dries up mysticism by incarcerating all spirituallife ldquowithin the limits of reasonrdquo

In reality howevermdashthat is to say by right in the natureof thingsmdashon the one hand ldquothe sacred is not reabsorbedinto moral value the religious transcends the ethicalrdquo buton the other hand it does not merely accommodatemorality and mysticism it remolds them so to speak byinstalling them in its heart Religion morality and mysticismldquoappear in a reciprocal envelopmentrdquo there exists betweenthe three both an attraction and a tension which will be thesource of many vital problems but there is objectivelyneither separation nor exclusion nor conflict for ldquothe Deitywhile transcending being truth and the good contains themformallyrdquo7 This is why in particular in Catholicism just asthe reasonable life and life according to the spirit penetrateeach other8 morality impregnates the mystical life to theend ldquoThrough it the good rewarded and the bad punishedthese pillars of the revelation of the Demiurge degraded byGnosticism to a lower level than exoteric faith regain theirplace at the heart of the revelation of the Father through theonly Sonrdquo9 Hence Saint Justin in his Dialogue ldquoIt is notbecause of his affinity with God or because he is spirit likehim that man sees God it is because he is virtuous andjustrdquo10 And Father Jean Rigoleuc on spiritual persons ldquoAlltheir reason and the lights they receive by it are given tothem only so that they might be perfected in thesevirtuesrdquo11 ldquoThe mystical ascentrdquo does not efface ldquofromcommon Christian life any specific traitrdquo12 The Christianvirtues are not merely means of freeing oneself from theworld in their substance they are the end itself thepromised beatitude is not made of different material This iswhat Saint Ambrose expresses admirably in a brief sentencefrom his commentary on Saint Luke with respect to thebeatitudes ldquoSicut enim speri nostrae octava perfectio estita octava summa virtutum estrdquo13

Pierre Nemeshegyi poses the same problem with respectto Origen ldquoTo place Being and moral Goodness in equation

to place this moral Goodness in God formally and ascharacterizing the final ground of his Beingmdashis this not to becondemned to enclosing all spiritual life in an anti-mysticalmoralism The Good is a transcendental But is it formallywhat we understand by lsquomoral Goodrsquo Or is there not adeepening of this moral Goodness which would reestablishthe possibility of an innermost mystical depthrdquo14 Againwith respect to Origen W Voumllker remarks ldquoWe observe a hesitation very characteristic of Origenrsquos turn of spirit and which one finds again in a nearly identical way in Philoside by side and sometimes even the mutual penetrationof moralism and mysticismrdquo15 And Nemeshegyi concludesldquo lsquoMoralismrsquo and lsquomysticismrsquo are in fact one and the samething in Origenrsquos conceptionrdquo16 Origen himself specifies inhis argument against Celsus ldquoGod is not merely lsquothe Goodrsquoas all the Platonists say he is lsquothe Righteousrsquordquo17 SaintGregory the Great also reminds us with his usual goodsense always linked with spiritual fervor

Solent quidam scripta sacri eloquii legentes cum sublimiores sententiasejus penetrant minora mandata quae infirmioribus data sunt tumentisensu despicere et ea velle in alium intellectum permutare Qui si recte ineo alta intelligerent mandata quoque minima despectui non haberent quidivina praecepta sic in quibusdam loquuntur magnis ut tamen inquibusdam congruant parvulis qui per incrementa intelligentiae quasiquibusdam passibus mentis crescant atque ad majora intelligendaperveniant18

Saint Augustine had said the same in a very Origenianshortcut in speaking of eternal life ldquoUna ibi virtus erit etidipsum erit virtus praemiumque virtutisrdquo19 Picking upagain Saint Ambrosersquos turn of phrase Alexander Neckhamcosmologist of the twelfth century explains that the octaveof the beatitude brings the perfection of its consonance tothe septenary of the virtues as in our material universe theeighth sphere including the whole universe brings itsconclusion to the harmony of the heavens20 Let us say in

the categories of medieval exegesis that anagogy achievesperfection both of allegory and of tropology Thus oneshould say of all Catholic mysticism what one historian saysof Saint Bernard through allusion to the traditionalinterpretation of the ldquoBooks of Solomonrdquo and of theirprogressive sequence for each of them as for him ldquothemoral school of Ecclesiasticus and Proverbs a necessarypreliminary for the mystical school of the Song of Songs is aschool whose doors are never closed behind usrdquo21 Andreciprocally in fulfilling the precept of the Lord one meritsnot only the eternal dwelling one does not merely preparefor it one is already building Saint Hildegarde tells us thetower of the heavenly Jerusalem22

It would be good to return to the celebrated GoldenEpistle in which William of Saint Thierry the friend of SaintBernard condenses for the brothers of the Carthusianmonastery of Mont Dieu the essence of Christiananthropology and spirituality such as the most commonCatholic tradition understands them William puts first ofall the sublime ideal of the contemplative in abrupt termsand with an appearance of separation of completetranscendence from one degree to another which could besurprising

You have not only pledged complete holiness but the perfection of allholiness and the height of all perfection It is not your business to languishin the practice of ordinary precepts or to devote yourself only to thatwhich God commands but to aim at what he wishes in the search for hisgood agreeable and perfect will It is for others to serve God it is for youto cling to him Faith in God knowledge love and reverence are for othersFor you taste understanding knowledge enjoyment A high vocation anarduous task 23

Farther on William takes up again the distinction of thethree states or three degrees which is reminiscent of thefree fashion of the Pauline trichotomy

The state of beginners can be called ldquoanimalrdquo that of progressersldquorationalrdquo that of the perfect ldquospiritualrdquo The first state attends to thebody the second is busy with the reasoning soul the third finds its restonly in God 24

These kinds of schemas are several times accompanied byappeals to humility which should form the common andunalterable basis for all disciples of Christ at whateverdegree they find themselves in their spiritual ascent25

Several points of resemblance to Saint Paul are still to benoted the distinction between anima and animus whichcorresponds closely to that between the psyche and thepneuma26 the reference to the discourse at Athens27 (Acts1727-28) the definition of the spiritual man as the onewhose spirit is informed by the Spirit of love28 theindication of the end as being ldquothe unity of spiritrdquo with God

There is also another resemblance to God so particular that it is nolonger given the name of resemblance but that of unity of spirit It is whenman becomes a single thing a single spirit with God not only through theunity of a single will but also through some truer expression of a virtue thatis no longer capable of willing anything else Once conformed to wisdom the reason [= reasoning soul] puts[everything] to profit and hastens to spring toward freedom of spirittoward unity so well that the faithful man becomes as has often beenstated one single spirit with God29

Freedom of spirit unity with God we know the abuses thatsuch formulas have frequently covered throughout twentycenturies of history30 We know too how the fear of theseabuses have made a number of timorous souls avoid themhow still more the bourgeois individualist incomprehensionof the last century banished them and how they seemedsuspect to many who thought they were judging in thename of pure Catholic orthodoxy31 Within the context ofthat spiritual masterpiece the Letter to the Brothers of MontDieu these expressions can be accepted in all their powerin the same sense that they have in Scripture And thekeeping of a moral life integrated into a mystical life is also

explicitly recognized here besides the word ldquovirtuerdquo whichfigures in the same text we have just quoted on ldquothe unityof spiritrdquo with God other texts recall it with insistence Theyspeak ldquoin praise of virtue the daughter of reason but evenmore of gracerdquo32 they show it not surpassed by butassumed into spiritual perfection the latter is achievedldquowhen the soul encompasses all the virtues in itself not aselements borrowed from somewhere else but as quasi-natural products of its being according to that resemblanceto God by which it is the whole of what isrdquo Mystical unitywith God is wholly impregnated with morality because it isthe perfect adherence to Him who is not only the Righteousbut in the most concrete and singular sense the Good33

This Catholic equilibrium was undoubtedly alreadyjeopardized in a great spiritual master who is not at all to beconfused with the false spirituals to whom we have alludedEvagrius was considered a disciple of Origen but in this anunfaithful disciple Despite the appearances of severalexpressions the same criticism could not be made of aTauler or a Ruysbroek they condemn without equivocationthe mystical claims that think to hold themselves abovemorality and reason beyond affirmations of the faith Thecase of Meister Eckhart is perhaps more disputable but it isright to dissociate the profound intention of this greatthinker and this great mystic from some paradoxicalexpressions held to be condemnable by the bull In agro LaPerle eacutevangeacutelique following Eckhart and several othersseems to place ldquothe spiritrdquo in contact with the divine Unityldquoabove the multiplicity of the Personsrdquo34 a grave problemwhich we will not take up here but which for a Christiangoverns the judgment to be passed on mysticism in itsrelation to the primary mystery of his faith35 To stay withthe relation between mysticism and morality let us say thatone is happy to find a fine example of equilibrium in anauthor carried in other respects to many unilateral

excesses This refers to George Tyrrell who wrote in a finepassage from Christianity at the Cross-roads

[The apocalyptic Kingdom of heaven] is the fruit and reward of the morallife but is a supermoral lifemdashthe continuation of that divine and spirituallife which under present contingencies manifests itself principally bymorality and above all in religion and conscious union with God But[in the Kingdom] the contingencies that now call for the moral strugglewith all its pain and suffering shall be done away36

We will end by quoting a more authoritative witness thegreat Saint Teresa who unites the soul and spirit of whichSaint Paul spoke as much as she distinguishes them withhim by observing that ldquothe center of the soulrdquo or the ldquospiritof the soulrdquo is a difficult thing to express and even tobelieve

Certain interior effects give the certitude that there is under certainrelations a very real difference between the soul and the spirit Although inreality they are but one we sometimes perceive a division between themthat is so delicate that it seems that the one functions in one way and theother in another There are so many things in our innermost depthsand things so subtle that it would be boldness on my part to undertake toexplain them We will understand all that in the other life if God deignsto admit us to the dwelling where we will have understanding of all thesesecrets37

III Conclusions Optimi corruption pessima One should notat all conclude from this as some authors particularly in

Protestantism have done that mysticism should becondemned1 Nevertheless even without considering the

case of the aberrations we have just seen certainprecautions should be taken in order not to jeopardize the

spiritual equilibrium Just as it is necessary to reject ananthropology that refusing man any higher faculty stifles

the spirit in himmdashwhich is what all positivisms allrationalisms and all psychologisms domdashso it is necessary toguard against reducing theoretical or practical reason in itby failing to recognize its transcendence in relation to the

sensible order and its participation in the absolute ldquoThemindrdquo writes Hans Urs von Balthasar2 ldquodestroys itself andcrumbles if it splits into an inferior and a superior mind an

autonomously functioning reason (Verstand) and a ratio(Vernunft) that is reserved for special philosophical and

religious purposesrdquo Then the risk of a short-circuit appearsfrom ldquoinfantile naturalismrdquo to high spirituality from

alienating exteriority to ldquodivinerdquo magnetization from theldquocaves of the unconsciousrdquo to the ldquobirthrdquo from above from

the ldquopossessive Irdquo that is ldquoradical servituderdquo toldquodisinterestedrdquo love

Charles du Bos was not lacking in clearsightedness theday he noted in his Journal ldquothe necessity from an ethicalpoint of view of guarding oneself against mysticismrdquo3 In thesame sense he wrote one day to Father Auguste Valensin

Since the end of July 1927 God in his goodness has recalled me toHimself I have happened to suffer in the face of a certain unformulatedmdashand at times even formulatedmdashdisdain that believers who are advancedmoreover in spiritual ways and even mystics witness or at least seem towitness toward the moral order as such If one admits (and I admit it verystrongly) that ethics are only the narthex of religious truth neverthelessthere exist natures (to the number of which I belong) who venerate thenarthex all the more as it helps to introduce them into the sanctuary andthe more their religious life deepens the more faithful their gratitudebecomes 4

Du Bos had noted in his Journal on January 11 1925 ldquothenecessity of guarding against mysticismrdquo and on January18 1929 analyzing himself

Basically it is always a question with me of an offensive directed by themoral against the religious because as my Journal often notes the moralbeing is primary with me in the period when the plane of temperament istranscended the form that temptation then takes is a moral form summedup in the question of my right to religious life Yes that is indeed it and myeffort now must be not only to adhere to God but to consider that fromthe instant I do what I must on the plane of living I adhere to him de facto 5

Du Bosrsquo reflection as we see was not unilateral althoughhe emphasizes the moral which he judges to bedangerously disregarded (what would he not say thirty orforty years later) In return Emmanuel Mounier was no lessright to bring out the complementary truth in recalling thatldquomorality has no other end but the spirituality of which itkeeps houserdquo when one isolates it and clings to it heexplains one kills it it is replaced by moralism6 the enemyof mysticism as well as of religion History in fact shows thatthe abandonment of mysticism in the name of any formwhatever of moralism has never been at best anything buta stage in spiritual development in view of a less confusedmysticism ldquoAs it is nearly inevitable in philosophy to passthrough a phase of idealism so it is inevitable to passthrough a phase of intellectualism in morality inevitableand goodrdquo But on condition that one does not cling to it Adeeper understanding knows that it is not knowledge thatsaves man from sin and it will always ask ldquoWho forexample is the one more free of appearancesmdasha Spinozawho in observing actions or sentiments that the commonmen call sin explains them through a defect in knowledgemdashor a Surin who proclaims that to the degree that one doesnot see sins even in onersquos inadvertencies and firstmovements to that degree one will not weep over onersquosvanities as sacrileges one will lsquonever get to the rootrsquordquo7

Both have cut through appearances (not always the sameones) both in their order are right But basically howmuch more is this true of Surin And if the intellectualcriticism worked by a Spinozist is not coupled with aspiritual deepening how his clearsightedness ends inblaming it The world Bergson said very justly has much tolearn from the great mystics8

Likewise one is right not to consent to letting theunderstanding be classed among the provisional values tobe reduced to the rank of ldquonaturalismrdquo that is close to

animality Perhaps the word ldquosoulrdquo so far from beingunivocal9 used in the tripartite division of man is notwithout some danger in this regard But this is not asufficient motive for rejecting the very idea of this tripartitedivision such as some as we have seen above were led todo Even Sandaeus himself an apologist and theoretician ofmysticism while noting that a number of mystics judgerecourse to this division indispensable declared that therecould be room to debate this10 Sandaeus was therebyechoing a fear or a mistrust frequently shown in the mostbrutal fashion by Schoolmen in the face of all mysticalthought we know how sharp the dispute was even withinthe Catholic Church throughout the seventeenth century11

Since then through their efforts to minimize the text ofSaint Paul on which the distinction is based others witness adiscomfort if not a similar hostility The mystical tradition ofthe great Church however offers them desirableassurances thus with Tauler transforming the way oneviews the classical terms of the division He is thereby goingparallel to the doctrinal tradition such as it is expressed in aSaint Augustine for example or a Saint Thomas The ratherpusillanimous minds to which we are alluding do not giveenough consideration to the fact that in wanting to save theabsolute of morality and reason they risk failing torecognize the gifts of the Spirit and lowering the mysticallife Stifled unrecognized in its authentic forms the latterin despair is then in danger of developing on the margins ofall rational and moral norms A certain intellectualismmdashverypoorly namedmdashis a worthy counterpart of moralism and aspernicious

To return to this latter we can think that the general usein the ecclesiastical vocabulary of the modern ChristianWest of the term ldquodirector of consciencerdquo to the detrimentof the traditional terms ldquospiritual fatherrdquo or spiritusmoderator12 is the sign of an inflation of pure morality

tending to casuistry or lends itself to falling intopsychologism (while waiting for psychiatry) to thedetriment of the attention paid to things of the spirit whichis to say to the relation to God ldquoHave we not seen peoplerdquowrote Reneacute Gueacutenon ldquowho when it is a question of lsquospiritualmasterrsquo go so far as to translate it lsquodirector ofconsciencersquordquo13 It is possible to agree with his remarkwithout sharing the least part of his own notion of ldquospiritualmasterrdquo or more precisely his doctrine of the spirit Stillanother sign of the small esteem given to things of thespirit and first of all of an inadequate understanding ofthem is manifested in the designation ldquointellectualismrdquowhich is too easily attributed today to the whole doctrine ofcontemplation There is of course a philosophicalcontemplation There is a Greek intellectualism that isexpressed in an ideal of contemplation We discern sometraces of it in the history of Christian thought and life butthese are only tracesmdashand all are not moreoverblameworthy14 As it has done for many other conceptsChristianity has modified this at the same time as it took onits permanent values it profoundly transformed it How is itthat even Christian historians have perceived so little ofthis One can indeed if one wishes reject the word inseeking another that lends less to equivocation but itshould not be necessary at the same time to reject thedoctrine that the Christian centuries had included within itit should not be necessary to depreciate what is the verybasis of the best spiritual tradition at the heart ofChristianity This would be at the same stroke to depreciatethe order of the theological virtues in direct contradiction toScripture itself The supremely active Father Teilhard deChardin did not fall into such contempt he forcefullymaintained the primacy of contemplation in which he couldrecognize the superior form of action that which an activistwill never achieve15 The transformations and progress

achieved in the course of history the entrance into an agedominated by the technical the development of the ldquohumansciencesrdquo that tend to assimilate man to the object of thesciences of nature will change nothing not only the highmystical life but already the whole spiritual life while takingthe greatest consideration of morality and including morality(as well as of rational activity) comprises along with variednuances according to the case something beyond moralitytaken in the human sense of the word something beyond allthat we commonly call action because it always comprisessomething beyond man

That is what signifies the great traditional theme ofMartha and Mary based on the Gospel It will always remaintrue ldquoIn his duabus mulieribus duas istas esse figurataspraesentem et futuram latoriosam et quietam temporalemet aeternamrdquo16 And of these two realities the second isalready present as an active anticipation at the heart ofthe man en route toward his divine destiny

Finally the maintenance of the distinction between thezone of the natural [psychisme] and that of the spiritual is ofa major importance for maintaining in their just place withinthe limits of their competence all the kinds of psychology Itopposes ldquothe dissolving psychoanalytical confusion ofnatural and spiritualrdquo17 If stopping onersquos aim at theldquorationalrdquo and the ldquomoralrdquo was often the great temptationand if this temptation remains what is to be even moregreatly feared today is stopping at the ldquonatural[psychique]rdquo One of Teilhardrsquos weaknesses which wasbenign to tell the truth because he thought above all todissipate the illusion of a materialistic monism was acertain confusion of vocabulary between spiritual andnatural in the Pheacutenomegravene humain (which does not claim tobe a treatise on spirituality) he happens to speak at will ofldquospiritual energyrdquo or of ldquonatural energyrdquo mdashBut ldquothe spiritintervening psychology is powerless It sees everything

from outside although the spirit is lived only from withinrdquo itsees uniquely ldquothat part of the natural life that the spirit hasnot touched and which consequently unfolds in theunconsciousrdquo18

Without doubt it is only through our participation in themystery of the trinitarian Life that we are to become fullycapable of going beyond this psychological vision that canindeed scrutinize certain ldquodepthsrdquo but to which this otherdepth is not accessible this depth which is humantranscendence this otherwise mysterious zone where theimpulse toward God is situated the encounter with God

There is in us a certain root that plunges into the depths of the Trinity Weare these complex beings who exist on successive levels on an animal andbiological level on an intellectual and human level and on an ultimate levelin those very abysses that are those of the life of God and those of theTrinity This is why we have the right to say that Christianity is an integralhumanism which is to say which develops man on all the levels of hisexperience We must always be in defiance of all the attempts to reducethe space in which our existence moves We breathe fully in the measureto which we do not let ourselves be enclosed in the prison of the rationaland psychological world but to which a part of us emerges into these greatspaces that are those of the Trinity And this is what creates theincomparable joy of existence in Christianity19

Pertinent remarks of great importance in ecclesiology aswell as in the liturgy more timely today than ever Thedistinctions recalled by Dietrich Bonhoeffer and by Father PR Reacutegamey based like those of so many others on thePauline anthropology of the First Letter to the Thessaloniansare at once for every member of the Church an appeal tothe highest spiritual life and a warning against itscounterfeits

EPILOGUETO PART ONE

The Light of Christ ldquoIf you believerdquo we are told ldquoin thedivinity of the Christian religion it is because you are

ignorant about all the conditions that marked its beginningand growth The comparative history of religions has madeenough progress so that henceforth it is no longer possibleto speak of a lsquoChristian miraclersquo coming to break the thread

of human religious acts There is nothing in it that is notexplained in the way everything is explained Of course

some points still remain obscure certain influences remainunperceived The task of historians has not yet been

accomplished One can also recognize that several of themhave been a little too quick in thinking to detect here orthere analogies or relationships and their intemperance

was capable of provoking a prudent reaction in somescholars anxious for a more rigorous method But the

general orientation of science is nonetheless certain and itsresult is nonetheless assured Every day leads to a new

light uncovering some new connection and here and nowwe see clearly enough to be able to affirm that Christianityis a human phenomenon very human deeply rooted in the

earth of history where it has drawn all the essence fromwhich its marvelous vigor is nourishedrdquo

An objection that insinuates itself under a thousand formswith respect to a thousand problems A stronger objectionin many eyes than all those of dialectics because withoutfighting it claims to explain Believers are upset by it Menof good will whom Christianity attracts and who alreadybelieve they see Godrsquos work in it find themselves stoppedin their tracks by it they fear to commit themselves

thoroughly to what is perhaps only the work of man If itwere a question only of a milieu providentially prepared tofavor the birth and rise of the religion of ChristmdashJewishMessianism Stoic universalism the organization of theDiaspora the Roman peace mdashthis ensemble of fortuitousconditions could indeed account for its concrete possibilitybut it would definitely not for all that cancel out the miracleof its existence A favorable atmosphere has never sufficedto explain the fact of a birth One would have to becompletely incapable of perceiving religious values to betempted to explain the apparition and success ofChristianity solely by a series of external circumstances asimportant and as favorable as one supposes them to beBetter known the information that history brings in thisorder can therefore only add to the admiration that alreadyseized the Fathers such as Saint Leo exclaiming before hisRoman listeners ldquoNumerous States have been united into asingle Empire so that the ways necessary for the preachingof the Gospel might be readyrdquo1 Admiration that was alsoPascalrsquos ldquoHow beautiful it is to see through the eyes of faithDarius and Cyrus Alexander the Romans Pompey Herodact without knowing it for the triumph of the Gospelrdquo andwho a short time earlier had had this sung to Peacuteguy ldquoThesteps of the legions had marched for Him rdquo2

But history seems to show us much more today Muchmore even than a subjective preparation of soulssuffocating in paganism thirsty for salvation One by oneall the elements of which Christianity is made theconceptions it presupposes the notions it sets in motion itsworship practices the forms of its institutions theprescriptions of its morality all are identified classifiedranked in their place along continuous series Not a dogmanot a feature of discipline or of liturgy that does not have itshistorymdasha history that always includes a first pre-Christianperiod All that had been amalgamated in it is returned to its

origin and soon it seems that nothing of its own remainsHow dare we still in the face of these facts a great numberof which at least are solidly established speak of a religiongiven from heaven of divine revelation How consequentlydare we speak of ldquotranscendencerdquo of supernaturalabsolute definitive truth Everything that is born and growsaccording to the common law is transformed and alsoperishes according to the common law As imposing as itseems Christianity will not escape it Even more perhapsthan the defeats to which it has submitted in the course ofthese recent centuries the history of its origins warns us ofits inevitable decline It is no longer for us the uniqueexception the extraordinary thing that it seemed to be forso long a time It can no longer be loyally preserved fromuniversal evolution Whether the brilliant flash projected byreligion ever since humanity existed is a false flash or anauthentic light is of little importance here in the case ofChristianity one thought to see a unique star appearabruptly in the heaven of religions and miraculously hangthere but a more experienced look discerns that it too wasonly for a moment welded to the others passing like theothers in this long luminous trail

Yet the illusion if such it be has existed It still persists withmany who are not at all ignorant people This too is a factthat must be taken into consideration One should not replywithout further examination that the same is true for allreligion Contrary to almost all the others without exceptingeven Judaism Christianity appeared in the middle of ahistoric period Its legend if there is a legend iscontemporaneous with its existence What a differencethere is in this regard for example with its great rivalBuddhism3 Why then contrary to so many humanphenomena is it presented in so tenacious a way as beingabsolutely exceptional Is ignorance about its true originsenough to explain this illusion in its regard or might it not

be rather the very true perception of its transcendencethat veiled by its brilliant flash certain features of its humanhistory The hypothesis at least deserves consideration It isnot without analogies Many men think themselves free inactions where without doubt they are not at all or with afreedom that is not at all real Is this illusion completelyexplained by a myopia that prevents them from perceivingthe bonds of determinism or does it too not come from anobscure but truthful perception Rather than a total illusionis it not a simple error of localization An error attesting toan awkwardness in analysis a scientific inferiority butwithout any damage to the essential truth

Now it happens too that one badly localizes thetranscendence that one recognizes in Christianity setting itup in positions from which the experienced historian willhave no trouble dislodging it This is why in a more or lessexplicit way one conceives of it then above all as a solutionof continuity To suppose such a transcendence possible atranscendence whose true name would be ldquoexteriorityrdquo isnot the act of Christianity What would remain for exampleof the thought of Saint Paulmdashwho nevertheless sodominated the thoughts of his centurymdashif one cut it fromthe thousand roots that in fact attached it to the earth ofTarsus and Jerusalem How can a single one of its essentialpoints be analyzed without constant reference not only tothe history of the Hebrew people but also to Greekcivilization to Eastern mysticism to the Roman EmpireThis would be an imaginary transcendence pure chimeralinked to a no less chimerical ideal of revelation The realitythat it would effect if this were possible would not besuperhuman but inhuman Far from being sublimated by itit would only be impoverished dried up

It would find the path neither of our spirit nor of our heartArtificial superficial and not at all supernatural Such asthose devout people of whom Peacuteguy speaks who becausethey do not have the strength to be of nature imagine that

they are of grace in reality dried fruits But there is anothertranscendence a true transcendence of which the first wasonly at best the naiumlve transcription An intrinsictranscendence in virtue of which a given reality consideredas synthesis in what comprises its own being surpassesessentially the realities of the same kind that surround itwhatever might be the community of elements that itinforms along with theirs whatever might be too the tiesof origin that render these different elements solidary Anytrue synthesis is always more than synthesis A certainrecasting that is much more than a new combination acertain ldquorevival from withinrdquo transforms everything It is in aphenomenal continuity the passage to a new higherincomparable order4

Now for anyone who can seemdashbut which of us can natterhimself that he always can once and for allmdashthe intrinsictranscendence of Christianity is obvious It alone countsand a direct look well aimed is enough to establish it Theunbeliever does not have to overcome historicalcontinuities nor does the believer have to refuse to seethem A priori they must be Scholars dedicated todiscovering these continuities are not at all devotingthemselves to a vain task They can indeed often bemistaken (certainly they do not fail to be so) or give in tothe temptation of confused conjectures the hypothesis thatguides them is nonetheless sound The fragility of certainconstructions does not at all prevent the firmness of theirfoundations Besides in research that some would hold tobe sacrilege science is after all only exploiting the Paulineidea of the ldquofullness of timerdquo It is uniting in a way with thethought of the Fathers of the Church so anxious to bring outthe ldquoevangelical preparationsrdquo in order to spare Christianitythe appearance of a ldquosudden improvisationrdquo ldquoNihil putem aDeo subitum quia nihil a Deo non dispositumrdquo5 It agreeswith the reflection of the philosopher who considering the

Christian event refuses by very reason of its unparalleledproportions to attribute an accidental character to it6

But in what touches the very basis of religion thesecontinuities are only appearance Yes in one senseChristianity is human completely human We can we mustspeak of its birth If the words it uses are necessarilyborrowed then it is unavoidable that the concepts are tooAnd how would man tell himself the truth even divinelyrevealed truth except by using concepts There is norevelation except supernatural ldquoin the pure staterdquo Howwould God give himself to man if he remained a stranger tohim And how would his Word penetrate him if it were notalso to become a human word The messages of Saint Paulor Saint John are already ldquotheologiesrdquo and the veryconsciousness of Christ is the consciousness of the Wordmade flesh But a less rudimentary psychology has shownus that the concepts themselves are in their multiplicity farfrom expressing the whole of a doctrine for they are withinthe spirit the part closest to matter With how much greaterreason if it is a question of an object that is not onlydoctrine but first of all reality By what makes it itself by itsoriginal essence which consists neither in words nor inconcepts and which the whole sum of words and concepts isnever capable of translating adequately Christianity isdivine completely divine Through the close texture ofrelationships of ideas and beliefs without break withouttear a new spiritmdashthe Spirit himselfmdashhas passed He hasstolen in with gentleness and he has burst in with powerHe has penetrated human history and all has beentransformed The face of the earth has been renewed by itThis was a new Fiat a true creation ldquoEmitte Spiritum tuumet creabuntur et renovabis faciem terraerdquo7 The Spirit ofChrist has founded a wholly new thing the religion of Christand this religion of Christ for which all human history hadprepared for which all human thought had slowly woven the

fabric suddenly rises up in the midst of men ldquosine patresine matre sine genealogiardquo Pure creation pure miracleThere we have this ldquonewrdquo idea which Jules Lachelier saidldquois born from nothing like a worldrdquo

What new ideas though that do not come from usourselves The inventions of man enrich humanitydiscovering in the soul some nuance unperceived until thenbut always leaving it to its essential finitudemdashto itsincurable decay Once past the first amazement the ironicand despairing refrain of Ecclesiastes is heard again Thecircle enlarged or shifted closes again On the contrarywith a leap the Christian Idea transports us beyond ourlimits It breaks this circle within which all our progress hadbeen condemned in advance to fit Such was the thought atits appearance breaking the circle of animaltransformations It is born in its own time it has its markedplace within the progress of life and nevertheless what itbrings is much more than progress From the time itemerges a new kingdom has begun the human kingdomSo the preaching of Jesus marks the advent of the Kingdomof God8 For how many of the sentences of the Sermon onthe Mount would we not find analogies in the Jewish Bible orin the teaching of the rabbis The One who pronounces itspeaks nonetheless as man had never spokenmdashas manwould never speak9 The Gospel inaugurates the time ofgrace It is a wholly new order that begins ldquoa new order oflove in the universerdquo10 A dike has been broken which letsthe flow of Love pass through Now it would be as vain todream of a reality more divine than Love than to imagine areality more spiritual than Thought The transcendence ofChristianity is thus not only relative to such and such anearlier achievement It is not only something originalsomething superior a provisional novelty clearing the wayfor some ulterior invention destined to go beyond it It is anabsolute transcendence ldquoOmnem novitatem attulitrdquo11

Peacuteguy has also sung it He was going to inherit a worldalready made And yet he was going to remake it entirely

Of course the order of charity is not revealed any morethan is the order of the spirit in all its fullness or in all itsdepth to that observation from outside that constitutes thework of the pure historian But if their inner essence stillescapes observation would the simple sight of their effectnot already arouse the sense of their incomparablegreatness We know the repercussions observable to thenaturalist not blinded by an overly narrow concept ofscience produced in the universe by the apparition ofthought the paradoxical properties of the ldquohumanphenomenonrdquo its extraordinary power for expansion andconcentration out of proportion with the weakmorphological originality of man presuppose a presence ofwhich the naturalist can only catch a glimpse but they sethim on the way that must normally lead him to go beyondhis science to discover in truth the human kingdom12 Therepercussions produced in humanity by the advent ofChristianity are no less prodigious the human spiritimmeasurably increased an unparalleled moral fruitfulnessa society tirelessly at work for an ideal of justice and unityand so forth These features are accessible to the historianwho knows how to step back a pace Nevertheless let usrecognize just as reflection alone properly speaking canreveal thought to itself so too only a process of a religiousorder can disclose the absolute superioritymdashwhich is to sayproperly the transcendencemdashof Christianity Like thedivinity of Christ itself the definitive newness of theChristian principle can be perceived only by the eyes offaith It is here that the advantage of the simple believerover the man of science and of life over technique shinesforth For the anthropologist who systematically denieshimself any inner reflection on the lived thought as well as

the historian of religions who does not consent to regardChristianity from within and to begin to live it at leastthrough a basic attitude of real sympathy will neverunderstand anything about the true object of their learnedstudies If their science itself does not lead them to the finalaffirmations it must at least set them on the path But ifthey wish to trust solely in it to the end surrendering theirconscience as men into the hands of their intelligence asspecialists the greater the latter will be and the more it willrisk misleading them

ldquoThe history of the formation of ideasrdquo said Amiel ldquoiswhat makes the spirit freerdquo13 Beneath the ideas that itorganizes and transforms let us know how to discern theChristian Idea This Idea has no history this is what mustmake the spirit submit to it

A great Deed was done for the world twenty centuries agothe Deed of Charity14 Right at first menrsquos habits of thoughtwere not any more overturned by it than were empires Wasan obscure variety of Jewish ldquoMessianistsrdquo worth even aglance The grain of wheat sown by Christ remained buriedin little upper rooms that counted for nothing in the historyof the world Christianity itself would wait five hundred yearsto found retrospectively the ldquoChristian erardquo and it wouldtake another five hundred years for full Christian practice tobecome widespread15 The first disciples of Jesus stilldreamed of the Kingdom of David their father they went upto the Temple as was their custom with a fervor that wasonly increased Having contemplated the Deed that hadbeen done before them they must nevertheless have hadthe feeling of an unparalleled newness The testimony of itappears everywhere in their rare writings ldquoNew teachingnew covenant new commandment new name new songnew man new life second genesis of the worldrdquo16 Such afeeling did not mislead them They were not in danger

those who had seen who had heard those who hadtouched of taking the Christian Mystery to be a more or lessspontaneous mixture of the Jewish Messianism exalted byJesus and cult forms then in vogue in the Hellenized Eastmdashany more than Christian dogma was in danger of appearingto their successors of the great patristic period as a learnedproduct of the Bible and Greek philosophy This chemistry ofimpotent historians could not have been created by themThey knew from an immediate source that they weredealing with something very different They sensed theunity of what myopic analysts think to understand bydecomposing it This is because the principle of synthesiswas in them living and active It is because living thisdogma themselves before drawing up the inventory of itadoring this mystery before translating it they penetratedits spiritual meaning

In addition their testimony is for us more than aguarantee It constitutes a call If that call is at firstnecessary for us we do not have to hold to it ldquoNowrdquo saidthe inhabitants of Sichar to the woman who had led them toChrist ldquoit is no longer because of what you have said to usthat we believe for we have heard him himself and weknow that he is truly the Savior of the worldrdquo17 For twentycenturies the witness of the first generation of believers ispreserved intact because it always remains a living witnessabyssus abyssum invocat [deep calls to deep] Why shouldwe be riveted to history The Spirit still gives witness to ourspirit18 The Kingdom of God is still in the midst of us ldquoTheGospel of Jesus Christ Son of Godrdquo which was heard for thefirst time in Galilee under Herod during the fifteenth yearof Tiberius Caesar at the time of the High Priests Annas andCaiaphas still resounds today and if the forms of itspreaching are different it is the same Voice that proclaimsit Like the creative Deed which does not cease to maintainbeing and life everywhere the Deed of Charity is pursued

over the world The second Genesis henceforth aspermanent as the first and like it infinitely fruitful TheChurch Bride of Christ continues the work of herBridegroom We have only to contemplate hermdashnot fromoutside in her sole visible organization with its humancharacteristics which are often too human perhaps with itsdefects not even in the works of its scholars alwaysunequal to their task and whose insufficiency can be sopainful19mdashespecially when they themselves do not seem tofeel itmdashbut in her inner life in her ideal in her belief in hersecret fidelity in the purity of her zeal in the marvelousfruits of holy joy that she makes ripen in the depths ofhuman hearts In all that the ldquoworldrdquo does not perceiveThen the light shines then the Truth bears witness to itselfveritas index sui No need for laborious comparisons or of anerudite return to the past The clearsightedness of a limpidlook is preferable here to all the sharp perspicacities ofcriticism This is because the miracle is endlessly producedbefore our eyes Today as formerly by virtue of Christianityldquoall things are becoming newrdquo EvenmdashSaint Augustine hadalready noted itmdashthe more time advances the moreprivileged is our situation as witness The mystical Christ inthe measure he increases better reveals his power To thesigns of it that already multiply still others will be addedwhen his message has truly reached the most distantpeoples Today we only begin to see all the fullness of theDeed that renewed the world The sudden clarity of the firstdays has become a great luminous path which grows withthe centuries

This great Deed of Love Jesus it is You Yourself Perceptible to manhumble dying in a corner of Judea oh yes You are man Flower of JesseYou are indeed the fruit of our earth Born of a woman truly formed fromher substance You are not some sort of phantom come down from theclouds of heaven You are deeply rooted in our earth20 But in You Jesus asin no other child of our race God showed himself You were not merely Hismessenger You are His living and substantial appearance Through You He

has not only spoken Or rather His language is an action His word is adeed it is You Yourself Splendor Verbum et imago Patris You Jesus onyour Cross the act uniting earth to heaven21

In You God still shows Himself and in your holy Church Inyour best disciples He still shines so well that one cannotmistake it For it is You who live in them Have we not allknown someone in whom a divine flame burned which theyhad lit at your hearth alone Their silent testimony is all themore persuasive Non eloquimur magna sed vivimus22 ldquoAsfor merdquo said Gerbet ldquoI lend an ear to the sounds that holysouls make with greater respect than to the voice ofgeniusrdquo23 What a great wise man concludes after longstudies and profound meditations in favor of your divinitythat encourages me but scarcely moves me forward Butthat a Francis of Assisi that being so obviously predestinedto make a ray of eternity shine over our earth makeshimself your absolute disciple that he loves You adoresYou annihilating himself before You that he is ambitiousonly to place his steps in your steps and to live from You byreproducing each of your features that he wants always tobe only your humble repetitor24 that not for a moment doeshe entertain the idea of engaging in a personal way oftrying another experience of adding at least something toyour message this humble and total will to imitatemdashChristototus concrucifixus et configuratusmdashin the face of yoursovereign independence such literalness in such an effusionof the Spirit such contrast in a similar holiness Themore I reflect on it the stronger the argument seems tome25

After that what do the difficulties matter in which myreason gets tangled Or rather how could it be that so loftyan object would not put it to flight If You have come tounveil a new kingdom and a new existence to me howshould I not consent to letting myself be removed from myusual surroundings Is it not normal that I have to abandon

my usual modes of thought26 Your word upsets myinstinctive logic it overturns all my arrangements of ideasit shatters my concepts This is the price for the liberation ofmy understanding Yet little by little in mystery a newequilibrium is established Under the secret action of yourSpirit faith is able to find its exact expressions whichprotect it against the ever-reborn assaults of a reason toolittle converted This was not without a long and arduouswork To define your twofold nature as for all that is worththe effort of our understanding it takes time reflectiongroping disputes materials from all sources A long andperilous journey A complicated winding history strewnwith a thousand contingencies An often tragic historymdashawonderful history27 It was through the adventurousconcepts of thinkers that Catholic Christology ended inrejoining the first intuition of faith

More than any other because it is at the center of all thedefinition in which the result of this labor is found today isimperfect An inevitable and blessed imperfection Notaccidental but essential necessary so that humbleastonishment before the mystery may subsist in theprecision of belief and in the firmness of adherence Butalready Jesus your very first disciples when they loved Youabove all and when they left all to follow You when theygave You all without thinking thereby to take anything fromGod when they contemplated You seated at the right handof the Father when they called You the one Lordproclaiming that all had been renewed by You and that allknees must bend before You your disciples believed in YouExtraordinary impossible faithmdashand yet authenticatedbeyond doubt A scandal as grave for the historian as thedogma itself for the thinker For though not beingabsolutely the same as ours the difficulties for a Saint Peteror a Saint Paul in believing were no less strong Nor werethose of their successors the Origens and the Cyrils the

Ambroses and the Augustines Modern man flatters himselfwhen he judges that the Copernican revolution or theKantian revolution dug out a new hiatus between histhought and the thought of the Ancients It was as hard tobelieve then as it is today It was hard for a JewishmonotheistmdashldquoListen Israel Your God is onerdquomdashto believe inthe divinity of a man28 It was hard to believe in thecrucifixion of the Son of God29 It was hard for a reasonableman who had been able to see up close the Son of Man inhis humiliation to believe in the resurrected Christ and inall these histories ldquothat do not allow themselves to beallegorized rdquo30

ldquoA scandal for the Greeks and folly for the Jewsrdquo OurFathers passed beyond their faith conquered all theobstacles What they were capable of we ourselves will becapable of and if we do not make ourselves unworthy ofthem the reasons that quickened them will not be lessstrong for us Their attitude will thus be ours We could nottranscend it but neither could we restrict it without denyingyour message at the same stroke Jesus For it is no morepossible to abstract You from this message than it ispossible to abstract God from Yourself On what would webase the demands of your Law if we began by failing torecognize the Demand of your Person Who wouldguarantee us the hope of the Kingdom if we were not torecognize the King of it Does everything in You not tell usthat You are Yourself the Kingdom as You are the Truth andthe Life31 So from the beginning the religion of Jesuswhich is the ideal of love was indivisibly the religion ofChrist that is the cult of incarnate Love It is folly to want todissociate them and to believe that the first would survivethe ruin of the second The religion of which Jesus is thesubject and norm is gradually achieved in us only throughthe religion of which Christ is the object Moreover it isblindness not to recognize their identity it is to tear the

seamless robe that the Gospel presents to us and it is notto see the metaphysical significance of Love

Evangelium ChristimdashEvangelium de Christo a modernscarcely more subtle form of the old antithesis betweenpractice and dogma32 But in maintaining contrary to thosewho set them in opposition that there is an essentialrelation between them we do not mean simply that onemust observe dogma as a means for assuring practice Theirties are intrinsic33 and the necessity of their agreement isonly one consequence On the one hand ldquopracticerdquo can becorrectly defined only by dogma from it alone does itreceive its meaning and spirit and on the other hand inone sense it already contains everything in itself for it issummed up in charity which is the spiritual being in act

God is Love and in a great feat of Love he came to takeup man sinner and miserable Man and God embraced eachother in Christ The unique intellectual fecundity of thisDeed it is specifically pregnant with all Christian dogmaticsso that the latter must be called strictly revealed No morein fact than one could dissociate the revealed truths fromthe very Person of the Revealer could one conceive a justand complete idea of the transcendent newness ofChristianity if one did not see that in this Person of Christsuch as the Apostles already show him to us and such asthe Church never ceases to contemplate and reproduce himthe reality of Charity and the truth of Dogma areindissolubly united Charity constituting the reality of thisDogma as this Dogma itself constitutes the truth of thisCharity34

As for the intellectual elaboration from which the dogmain its second state results which is to say in that abstractand learned formulation that multiplies it in distinctenunciations wholly guided by the Spirit of Truth as it is itnevertheless remains a human operation The materials it

employs just like those that entered into the firstspontaneous expression of faith are human materials Theycan thus serve them too in the real (though alwaysinadequate) transmission of divine truth only in the measureto which they are related to the Whole of Dogma35 In themeasure to which on the contrary they are consideredeach in isolation the formulas cease to bear witness to thedivinity of their origin they lose the best of their meaningceasing to have relation to divine charity such as itappeared to us in Christ For our faith is one and it is whollysummed up in You O Jesus36 You are the center and thebond of all its ldquoarticlesrdquo All its expressions all itsdevelopments are only so many means of understandingYou better and of situating ourselves better before You Thisis why the historians who instead of considering Christianityin its living unitymdashwhich one can do fully only if one lives itoneselfmdashalways scrutinize its elements only by taking themone after the other as a series of detached pieces resistany possibility of understanding it The essence escapesthem They do not find the soul at the end of their scalpelIn Christianity they find nothing divine not seeing Christ init

How true it is therefore to say that if dogma is necessaryfor the maintenance of practice the role of practice isnonetheless essential for maintaining the reality of dogmaintact We now discover the whole meaning of such anaxiom Without the truth of dogmamdashalthough there may besome good ldquounfaithfulrdquomdashone will only have an apparentpractice but on the other hand without the reality ofpracticemdashalthough there may be some bad Christiansmdashonewill no longer have anything but an apparent dogma On theone hand a charity that is less than genuine on the other asuperstitious belief or a verbal orthodoxy an ldquoorthologyrdquowithout any real content This is because if the articles offaith are numbered the Object of Faith is marvelously one If

the former are formed of abstract propositions the Latter ismarvelously Living And just as according to the oldScholastic theory all physico-chemical bodies onceassimilated by the human organism are directly informedby the soul so that there is no longer either carbon oroxygen and so forth but only human matter so with all theelements religious or profane in origin that enter into theChristian synthesis Constructed completely in one sensewith human materials the dogmatic formulas neverthelessexpress divine truth Elaborated by men they channel apart of divine revelation But this is on condition onceagain that one always relates them to that same revelationto the living Center to the divine Center from which allradiates and to which all must lead us to Jesus Christ JesusChrist the personal manifestation of Charity Jesus Christ inwhom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledgebecause in him dwells the fullness of the Divinity JesusChrist Word of the Father who speaks him and gives himentirely There is no absolute newness no revelationproperly speaking no true transcendence outside of theunique reality of his Person We must always return to thewords of Saint Irenaeus ldquoOmnem novitatem attulitsemetipsum afferensrdquo37

Jesus I believe in You I confess that You are God You are forus the whole Mystery of God38 What other definition of Godwould we seek than that given by your Apostle And was itnot in contemplating You that he found it God is Love Thissingle word contains an unfathomable mystery which Iadore But through You this mystery illumines our nightalready For Love has done a great deed and this Deed ofLove the Love made visible to our eyes perceptible tohearts of flesh effective and saving Love is You Yourself Itis God made man it is the Incarnation of God

We stammer as we can Our formulas are insufficientNecessary to shield the treasure of our faith their form

nevertheless troubles us But your true adorers O Jesushavenrsquot You Yourself said are not those who put their trustin frail words they are those who understand your feat andwho sustained by Youmdashfor that costs more than bloodmdashstrive to reproduce it

An absolute feat nothing has any value except throughcharity Charity demands all assumes all Charity judges all

An efficacious feat through this ldquodivine strengthrdquo alreadyrecognized by the Apostle Paul39 he uproots us from ouregotism he opens us takes us raises us makes us capableof adopting the contours of it in our turn He eradicates theold man and implants the new man Operatorius sermoChristi40

A finally definitive feat Whatever might be the futureprogress of our race whatever the enlargement of itsknowledge or the refinement of its ideal we will not betaken unawares The coming of Christ has marked thefullness of time No fullness no depth will ever exhaust theDeed of Calvary41

That is why peaceful about the past we also look to thefuture without fear ldquoQuid amplius reservandum cumamplius nihil sit plenitudine perfectionisrdquo42 Sure that ourfaith will never mislead us we go ahead of the excavationsof history and the research of science Ahead too of humanprogressmdashand we know too well that all progress of theworld will not obtain the least beginning of salvation Aheadof the new values to which history gives birth through itscrises Man can vary and perfect his culture without end Hecan discover and exploit new potentialities in it The veryUniverse can grow immeasurably and distant stars can oneday reveal a humanity more numerous more civilizedmdashmore miserablemdashthan our own the Deed of Christ wouldstill take it in It embraces all worlds just as it shines abovetime For all equally for each one of us and at all times for

those who believe in man and for those who despair of himits rays are those of Eternal Life

ldquoHe has come the Christ of God the Leader of thePromises And without any doubt he has been he alone tothe exclusion of all those who preceded himmdashand I have theaudacity to say he is to the exclusion of all those who followhimmdashthe one awaited by the Nationsrdquo43

numerous commentators who in consequence consider thePauline πνεῦμα to designate in reality not something of manthat would be higher than his soul but the human soulinsofar as it is informed by grace participating as theSecond Letter of Peter (14) says in an effective way in thedivine nature united to the very essence of God by thecoming of the divine Spirit into it31 The ψ υχή in this casewould be not only ldquosensible liferdquo but also the higher realityof man as man that is although Buzy translates it in anoverly intellectualist language ldquoreason without gracerdquo32

This would be ldquothe state of the specifically living beingwhich is inherent in man as suchrdquo33 So too schematicallyBonnetain ldquoThe three terms come back to the followinggrace soul and bodyrdquo34 Father Andreacute-Jean Festugiegravere isclearly opposed to this interpretation which also proceedsin some from the fear of attributing to the Apostle ananthropology judged to be ldquoPlatonicrdquo For him theanthropology of Saint Paul is undoubtedly trichotomic thepneuma in question in the wish addressed to theThessalonians as in the texts mentioned above from theFirst Letter to the Corinthiansmdashand as in addition the Letterto the Hebrews speaks of itmdashis not the Holy Spirit butactually a part of man ldquothe movement of the phrase thetwo ϰαί the insistence on saying that we must becompletely in our whole being under the divine safeguardrdquoare the proof of it35 Besides if this pneuma is not itself thedivine life realized in man it is indeed in him the center ofthe higher life moral religious mystical it is the ldquocenter ofthe Christian liferdquo which is not a matter of feelings but offaith36

Some hesitate to choose between these two contradictoryinterpretations even if it means apparently contradictingthemselves in their explanatory formulas They are of thefeeling that the thought of Paul is profound and complexthey would like to lose nothing of it but do not see well how

to explain it in our language in a coherent fashion Such isFather Joseph Huby following the passage we have quotedldquoFor Paul the pneuma is more precisely the spirit of maninsofar as influenced informed and heightened by divinegracerdquo it is the ldquoprinciple of thinking center of moral andreligious life and summit of the soul The original (biblical)concept of the pneuma the human soul breathes from Godis magnificently deepened the pneuma designates thereason informed by grace man insofar as he becomes spiritparticipating in the nature of God through the spirit theνοῦς becomes capable of conquering the flesh it isunited to the very essence of God through the coming of thedivine Spiritrdquo37 In this essay somewhat awkward in itsattempts at reconciliation in which a fourth term (νοῦς) isintroduced we see to which side the author is leaning Wewill say as much of Max Alain Chevallier who with respectto 1 Corinthians 1414-16 after having noted for us ldquothefreely equivocal use of the word pneuma by Paulrdquo seems torestrict immediately the significance of his observation bysaying that this word ldquodesignates without describing it theinner man filled with the presence of Godrdquo38 Karl Barth inhis Dogmatics escapes such oscillations only thanks to hisgeneral doctrine which prohibits him from ldquoreifyingrdquo in away from giving a proper consistency to the human spiritconsidered in its relation to God After having justlyobserved that the ruah of the Old Testament does notcorrespond to the πνεῦμα ἅ γιον of the New39 but insofar asa ldquoanthropological notionrdquo to the πνεῦμα of the address tothe Thessalonians Barth makes haste to add ldquoOn the otherhand one cannot assert without reservation that the OldTestament and the New refer to a trichotomy of the humanbeing For both the human being in himself is body andsoul earthly form and earthly life but the body possesses asoul and its earthly form is that of a living being in themeasure in which the human being receives the spirit and

safeguards itrdquo This spirit must however be conceived ldquonotas a property of man but as a gratuitous giftrdquo which atdeath must be returned to God and which persists ldquowhichGod withdraws from him or grants to himrdquo40 What must bemaintained above all according to Barth is that man ldquois inno way lsquorelated to Godrsquo (Gunkel) he has simply beenawakened to his proper existence by the breath that Godbreathes into him and which allows him to breathe himselfWhat is he and what does he possess that he has notreceived and that does not differentiate him from God sinceit is God who has created himrdquo41

The human pneuma of which Paul speaks would thus beboth an element so little constitutive of his being that Godcan take it back from him and a created element thatdifferentiates him from God Such is the Barthian paradoxWithout having to take him literally perhaps we would haveto unite ourselves with the ldquospiritrdquo of it Would it in fact benecessary to choose between two contradictoryinterpretations that confront each other or resign ourselvesto a [false] harmonization that itself does not avoidcontradiction An expression used by Saint Paul himself 1Corinthians 211 could suggest an intermediate solution tous ldquoWho therefore among men knows the secrets of a manif not the spirit of the man which is in him (τὸ πνεῦμα τοῦἀνθϱώ που τὸ ἐν αὐτῷ)rdquo This pneuma is certainly not theHoly Spirit since Paul adds ldquoSimilarly no one knows thesecrets of God except the Spirit of Godrdquo Yet it does notappear completely like a constituent part of man as suchlike the body or the soul after having said ldquothe spirit of themanrdquo Paul corrects himself in a way to say ldquothe spirit whois in himrdquo which marks a nuance of capital importanceThus what par excellence makes a man what constitutesman in his worth among the beings of this world muchmore what makes him a being superior to the world wouldbe an element that rather than being ldquoof manrdquo would be

ldquoin manrdquo There is it seems to us in this Pauline πνεῦμα thesame kind of ambiguity notional because real as in thedivine ldquoimagerdquo or divine ldquobreathrdquo of creation such asChristian tradition interprets them From one author toanother and sometimes in the same author the sameambiguity will give place to oscillations which will not gohowever to the point of compromising before a ratherrecent date the idea of a tripartite anthropology Weconclude with a recent interpreter that the Pauline conceptof πνεῦμα is a concept ldquoof which our modern anthropologiescan absolutely not take accountrdquo42

2 Patristic Tradition

I The First Two Centuries Irenaeus It is a fact that Christianantiquity did not judge insignificant the Pauline verse about

body soul and spirit Nevertheless from one author toanother the interpretations differ without always being in

contradictory opposition to each otherIn his letter to the Philadelphians Saint Ignatius of Antioch

simply makes the Apostlersquos enumeration his own in judgingthat his correspondents like the Ephesians and theSmyrnians ldquowill be honored by the Lord Jesus Christ inwhom they hope with flesh soul and spirit (σαϱϰί ψ υχῇ πνεύματι) in faith charity and concordrdquo1 Athenagoras alsodistinguishes between soul and spirit for him the soul isplaced between ldquothe spirit of matterrdquo which is to say ldquotheflesh and bloodrdquo and the ldquoheavenly spiritrdquo which is ldquopurespiritrdquo and it can according to its choice mix with one orbecome the other

The soul becomes passive when it receives the spirit of matter and ismixed with it by looking below toward earthly things and to speak in ageneral way when it becomes only flesh and blood and ceases to be apure spirit2We believe that we will live another life heavenly and no longer earthlyif at least close to God and with God we have steadfast souls masteringpassion and if we remain not like bodies but like a heavenly spirit 3

In Tatian also the distinction seems clear when he saysldquoWe have knowledge of two sorts of spirits one of them iscalled soul the other is greater than the soul it is the imageand resemblance of Godrdquo4 Only subsequently it isimpossible to discern clearly if the spirit he distinguishesthus from the soul and which he calls ldquodivinerdquo is not simplythe Spirit of God The soul he explains is not immortal in

and of itself so ldquoif it remains by itself it dies with the flesh But when it is united to the divine spirit (θεῖ ον) it doesnot lack for help and it rises to where the spirit leads it Forthe seat of the latter is above while its origin is below Nowin the beginning the spirit was the guide of the soul itabandoned it when it did not want to follow it Now theSpirit of God does not reside in all but in some who livejustly The souls who have obeyed wisdom have drawnthe Spirit who is closely related5 to them (συγγενές) rdquo

Saint Irenaeus then Origen should make us pause a littlelonger because of the abundance of texts their importanceand their difficulty6

It is in the fifth book of Adversus Haereses that Irenaeusgives us his views about anthropology But his goal was notto write a clear and didactic exposition for the use of thehistorians who would pore over his text later on it was torefute heretics who conceived of salvation for man only inldquorejection of the fleshrdquo7 On the other hand careful alwaysto stick very close to Scripture he lets himself be guidedsuccessively by the different texts he uses which leads himto change more or less his perspective and his terminologyin the course of his text8 Hence the difficulties forinterpreters

The first passage in which the distinction between the souland the spirit is affirmed is of little interest to us for it isthere a question of an exposition of heretical doctrine9 Inresponse chapter 6 no 1 is presented as an orthodoxcommentary on the Pauline texts

Through the hands of the Father which is to say by the Son and the Spiritit is man and not a part of man who becomes the image and theresemblance of God Now the soul and the spirit can be a part of man butin no way man the perfect man is a mixture and union of the soul who hasreceived the Spirit of the Father and who has been mixed with the fleshmodeled according to the image of God Under the name of ldquoperfectrdquo the Apostle designates those who havereceived the Spirit of God He also calls them ldquospiritualrdquo they arespiritual through a participation of the Spirit but not through a voiding and

a suppression of the flesh In fact if one dismisses the substance of theflesh that is of the modeled work in order to consider only what isproperly spirit such a thing is no longer the spiritual man but the Spirit ofthe man or the Spirit of God By contrast when this Spirit in mixing withthe soul is united to the modeled work thanks to this effusion of the Spiritthe spiritual and perfect man is achieved and it is he himself who has beenmade in the image and resemblance of God When on the contrary theSpirit is absent in the soul such a man remaining in all truth natural andcarnal will be imperfect possessing indeed the image of God in themodeled work but not having received the resemblance by means of theSpirit10

From all the evidence Irenaeus counts here three elementsin man But is it simply a matter of man or of the perfectman Or rather to speak without ambiguity is it simply aquestion of the ldquoperfectrdquo man which is to say complete inhis nature or man divinized through the participation of theSpirit of God Or indeed does Irenaeus mix the two thingsThe text that follows will perhaps enlighten us

Modeled flesh alone is not the perfect man it is only the body of man thusone part of man Neither is the soul alone man it is only the soul of manthus one part of man Nor is the Spirit man one gives it the name of Spiritnot that of man It is the mixture and union of all these things thatconstitute the perfect man And this is why the Apostle in explaininghimself has clearly defined the perfect and spiritual man beneficiary ofsalvation when he says in this First Letter to the Thessalonians ldquoMay theGod of peace make you perfect and holy so that you may be fullycomplete and so that your whole beingmdashto wit your Spirit your soul andyour bodymdashmay be preserved without reproach for the coming of the LordJesusrdquoWhat motive did he have in asking that these three things to wit the soulthe body and the Spirit be preserved whole for the coming of the Lord if hehad not known that all three were to be restored and reunited and thatthere is for them but one and the same salvation This is why he calls ldquofullycompleterdquo those who present these three things without reproach to theLord Thus those are perfect who all at once possess the Spirit of Godremaining always with them and maintain themselves without reproachwith respect to their souls and their bodies which is to say preserving faithtoward God and keeping justice toward their neighbor11

The hesitation remains On the one hand the Spiritconstitutes with the soul one part of man it is called theldquoSpirit of the manrdquo and seems to be distinguished from the

ldquoSpirit of Godrdquo it in itself does not constitute the man anymore than the body or the soul does but it is one of thethree elements that constitute him these three elementsare also enumerated according to Saint Paul who wishesthem all three to be without reproachmdasha wish that wouldbe irrelevant even impertinent in the case of the Spirit ofGod finally moreover Irenaeus himself considers that theyare all three to be ldquorestoredrdquo and to be presented to theLord But on the other hand the soul receives ldquothe Spirit ofthe Fatherrdquo the man is called ldquospiritualrdquo insofar as hereceives participation of the Spirit and this participationmakes him to be not only in the image but in theresemblance of God finally if this man is ldquoperfectrdquo it isbecause in addition to the soul and the body he ldquopossessesthe Spirit of Godrdquo12 And these two series of affirmations arenot found in different contexts they are closelyintermingled

Yet a little farther on several passages come to supportthe second series

Those who possess the deposit of the Spirit and who surrenderthemselves to the Spirit the Apostle rightly calls ldquospiritualrdquo since theSpirit of God dwells in them For spirits without bodies will never bespiritual men but it is our substancemdashthat is the composite of soul andfleshmdashthat in receiving the Spirit of God constitutes the spiritual man 13 The weakness of the flesh makes the power of the Spirit shine forth and it is of these two things that the living man is made living due to theparticipation of the Spirit man through the substance of the flesh mdashTherefore without the Spirit of God the flesh is dead 14The breath of life which makes the natural man is one thing and thevivifying Spirit which renders him spiritual is another The breath has beengiven indistinctly to all the people who inhabit the earth while the Spirithas been given exclusively to those who trample down earthly covetousdesires 15ldquoFor the Spirit will come out around me and it is I who made all breathrdquo (Is5716) He ranks in a way the Spirit in a sphere apart beside God who inthe last days spread it over mankind for adoption but he situates thebreath in the common sphere among creatures and he declares itsomething created Now what has been created is different from the onewho creates it The breath is thus a temporary thing while the Spirit is

eternal After having enveloped man from within and without heremains always with him and henceforth will never abandon him16

One will note however that in these texts the perspectiveis no longer that of an anthropological analysis and thatthey are condemned by other biblical passages than thepreceding Moreover as Irenaeusrsquo principal objective justnow was to claim for the body itself a salvation of which theheretics say it is incapable his objective here is to show thatthis salvation the definitive blossoming of the spiritual lifewhose seed is in each man is the work of the Spirit of Godin each man In no passage is Irenaeus concerned to give uswhat we would call a philosophical anthropology He doesnot go deeply intomdashto tell the truth he does not even havein mindmdashthe problem of the insertion of the Spirit of God inman Despite the several expressions we have brought outand several others as well we believe that the Spirit ofwhich he speaks is always the Spirit of God even when heconsiders it in man If for example it is said in 5 6 1 thatthe soul and the Spirit can be ldquoone part of manrdquo one canobserve with Dom Adelin Rousseau that ldquoparsrdquo is in thesingular ldquoThus although Irenaeus does not hesitate to seein the Spirit of God one of the three constitutive elements ofthe perfect man he refuses and for good reason to makethis Spirit a lsquopartrsquo of the perfect man rdquo A little farther onit is said that the Spirit like the soul and the body is to berestored and saved which seems strange if it is indeed aquestion of the Spirit of God but Dom Rousseau againcomments ldquowhat is to be saved is not the Spirit as such butthe Holy Spirit insofar as communicated to man for his fullachievement in other words the Spirit is less saved than itsaves rdquo These explanations are ingenious they canseem a little subtle they do not however in our opinionfalsify the general line of Irenaean thought Perhaps it isonly necessary to complete them by recognizing that thetexts that are to be thus explained give witness to a rather

clear tendency to conceive of man (even if it is a question ofthe ldquoperfect manrdquo) according to the anthropological schemesuggested by the Apostle17

If therefore the Spirit indeed designates for Irenaeus theSpirit of God his very manner of considering this Spirit ofGod in man and of seeing in it thus one of the threeelements that combine to constitute the perfect man posesan anthropological problem18 Just like the text of the FirstLetter to the Corinthians of which Irenaeus wants to give anaccount it invites a resolution of this problem in thedirection of a certain ldquotrichotomyrdquomdashwhich Origen more of aphilosopher will soon do ldquoThe hereticsrdquo we read again inthe fifth book of Adversus Haereses ldquo do not understandthat three things as we have shown constitute the perfectman the flesh the soul and the Spirit One of them savesand forms to wit the Spirit another is saved and formed towit the flesh another finally is between those two to witthe soul which now follows the Spirit and takes its flightthanks to him now lets itself be persuaded by the flesh andfalls into earthly desiresrdquo19

These explanations seem to us akin to those of FatherJean Meyen-dorff with respect to man ldquocomposed of fleshsoul and Holy Spiritrdquo ldquoThis viewrdquo he observes ldquowhichsounds strangely pantheistic if one judges it according tolater theological categories shows in fact a dynamicconcept of man that excludes the notion of lsquopure naturersquoMan is created so as to share the existence of God this iswhat distinguishes him from the animal and is expressed inthe biblical account of the creation of Adam lsquoin the image ofGodrsquo rdquo20 As Pierre Boyer-Maurel also says21 if for Irenaeusa certain dichotomy ldquoaccounts for man fashioned in theimage of Godrdquo it is nevertheless a trichotomy ldquoin which thebreath only precedes the Spiritrdquo who ldquoaccounts for thebecoming of man of that man who is created by lettinghimself be created throughout the divine Economyrdquo

II Origen Irenaeus spoke particularly of the Spirit of Godeven when that Spirit shared became by consent of thesoul the spirit of man Origen will speak more explicitly of

the spirit of man insofar as an opening to the Spirit of GodThese are two inverse perspectives much rather than two

adverse doctrines1One authority on Origen Gustave Bardy has however

written that the tripartite division ldquowhich is imposed onhim in a way by several Scripture passages plays no rolein his teachingrdquo2 Another historian of ancient Christiandoctrines Francois Bonifas had expressed a judgment inthe contrary direction but as little conformed to the realityafter having pointed out that ldquounsteadinessrdquo of the Paulineterminology ldquomakes it doubtful that the Apostle intended [in1 Thessalonians 523] to make a scientific distinctionrdquo hewent on thinking essentially of Origen ldquoYet the Fathers ofthe Church saw in the expressions of Saint Paul a rigorousdivision in which they found once again that of their oldmentor Platordquo3 Previously J Denis while not mixing Platoup in the affair had recognized in Origen the existence oftrichotomic texts but he saw in that only a foreign body inthe midst of Origenian doctrine ldquoGenerally speakingrdquo hesaid ldquothe soul and the spirit are but one for Origen and ifhe had not respected a division that came to him from SaintPaul and which appears to have been adopted generallyas much by the orthodox Fathers as by the heretic scholarshe would have suppressed one of the terms of this divisionand would thereby have been spared numerouscontradictionsrdquo4 The prejudice to which in each of thesethree last cases the historian is unconsciously giving way isnot difficult to perceive To overcome it would require an in-depth study After the work by G Verbeke on LrsquoEvolution dela doctrine du Pneuma du Stoiumlcisme agrave saint Augustin (1945)the works of Henri Crouzel and Jacques Dupuis have broughtus all desirable light on this point ldquoAt timesrdquo Father Crouzel

tells us ldquoOrigen is a dichotomist distinguishing the bodyand the soul following the Platonic custom5 But most of thetime he sees according to Scripture three elements inman spirit soul and body He has recourse to thistrichotomy when it is a matter of explaining his idea of manand he states it each time he encounters in the texts anexpression that suggests it and this is so throughout hisliterary careerrdquo6 But it is Father Jacques Dupuis who drawsthe matter into perfect clarity in his important monographon ldquoLrsquoEsprit de lrsquohommerdquo eacutetude sur Irsquoanthropologicreligieuse drsquoOrigegravene For him ldquoThere can be no doubt thatthe verse from Saint Paul is the immediate source of hisanthropological trichotomyrdquo (65) It is principally he that wewill follow here

ldquoWe often find it asserted in Scripturerdquo says Origen ldquothatman is spirit body and soul and we have ourselvesdeveloped the subject at lengthrdquo7 In that as in othersubjects it is in fact the sacred text most especially that ofSaint Paul that truly constitutes the framework for histhought8 And it is with reference to Scripture that he triesto define clearly the notion of the Pneuma For him thePneuma is first of all the Divine Life in principle but it is alsothe shared divine life the creature itself becomes pneumain the measure that it possesses this life Yet it is a first kindof participation in the divine Pneuma which does not yetallow it to be said that man has become pneuma aparticipation that without betraying Origen we can alreadycall natural because it consists in an element that is anintegral part of the nature of all men and that is preciselyhis pneuma ldquoThe Spirit of God even when it is present inus is one thing and the pneuma proper to every man thatwhich is in him is something else The Apostle clearlyaffirms that this spirit (this pneuma) is different from theSpirit of God even when the Holy Spirit is present in usover and above the spirit of man that is in himrdquo9 The

distinction could not be put more clearly Origen asks againin the same passage of the commentary on Saint MatthewldquoIs the spirit of Elias the same as the Spirit of God whodwells in Elias or indeed do we have two different thingsthererdquo And he replies ldquoThe Apostle shows clearly that theSpirit of God when he dwells in man is distinct from thespirit of the man lsquoThe Spirit itself testifies to our spirit thatwe are children of Godrsquo (Rom 816) and in another placelsquoNo man knows what is in a man if not the spirit of the manwho is in him likewise no one knows what is in God if notthe Spirit of Godrsquo (1 Cor 211)rdquo10

Origen indeed says like Paul pneuma and not nous It isbecause they did not sufficiently distinguish between thesetwo concepts that several have identified the pneuma of theanthropological trichotomy with the preexisting nous andhave made it the higher (intellectus) part of the soulmdashunless in order better to distinguish between pneuma andpsyche they reduced this latter to its sensible part Theythen spoke of Origenrsquos imprecisions his unstableterminology indeed of his inconsistency of thought and ofhis contradictions This was from not having read himclosely enough11 He distinguishes the spirit from the soul(and in this case he is not speaking of the nous) as clearlyas he does the soul from the body and he repeats atdifferent times that ldquowe are composed of a soul and aspiritrdquo this is the case it seems in the third book of Periarchocircn12 so too in the fourth book in the famoustheoretical parallel that he institutes between man andScripture13 In the Entretien avec Heacuteraclite for theinstruction of his august audience he insists ldquoThat man is acomposite being we know through Scripture The Apostle infact says lsquoMay God make you holy spirit soul and bodyrsquoand so forth This spirit is not the Holy Spirit but one part ofthe human composite (μέϱος τής τοῦ ἀνθϱώ πουσυστάσεως) as the same Apostle teaches when he says

lsquoThe Spirit gives witness to our spiritrsquo rdquo14 In thecommentary on the Letter to the Romans he will also quotein support a text from Daniel15 here he invokes as anexample what happened at the death of Christ havingwanted to save all men the Savior had taken body soul andspirit now ldquothese three elements during the Passion wereseparated at the time of the Resurrection they werereunited During the Passion they were separated How Thebody in the tomb the soul in hell the spirit he deposited itin the hands of the Father rdquo16

This spirit of man represented by the eagle in Ezekiel17 isplaced above the soul18 But never in the texts of thetrichotomic series does Origen call it νοῦςmdashso that thiscould be a criterion for discerning the origin of certainpassages given as Origenian but which are in reality fromEvagrius19

But how are we to understand this spirit which is ldquoin usrdquo20 What is its role If we follow again the indications givenby the Apostle we will compare it to the moral conscienceldquoOur gloryrdquo says Paul ldquois the testimony of our consciencerdquo(2 Cor 112) The conscience always rejoices in what good Ido on the other hand it can never be accused of doing evilbut on the contrary it remonstrates it accuses the soul towhich it is bound this is a sovereign freedom I thereforethink that it is this very spirit that the Apostle tells us is withthe soul being associated with it like a pedagogue and aguide to teach it good to chastise it and to reprimand itwhen it sins It is this spirit of which the Apostle again saysthat ldquono one knows what the man is if not the spirit of theman who is in himrdquo it is the spirit of the conscience alsoaccording to what Paul says ldquoThe spirit himself giveswitness to our spiritrdquo21

We should not however in exalting the pneumaexcessively reduce its reality if it is not a simple member ofthe human composite neither is it the simple voice of the

conscience Inaccessible to evil22 placed in a way as wehave said ldquoabove the soulrdquo (ἀνωτέϱω) as a ldquoguide tovirtuerdquo23 it is ldquomuch more divine than the soul and thebodyrdquo24 ldquobelonging truly to man it remains entirely in aparticipation of the Holy Spirit who gives himself to us it isthe point of contact between man and the divine Pneumawho inhabits himrdquo25 This is why it is always holy it is holyby essence not of course the ldquoHoly Spiritrdquo but throughparticipation a ldquoholy spiritrdquo26 ldquothe seal of the Holy Spiritmakes holy the spirit that is in usrdquo27 in each of us Hencethe paradox the pneuma in man is holy and it mustbecome so we must affirm at the same time the holiness ofthis pneuma and ldquothe fortuitous character of a holy liferdquo28 Ifwe seek to bring out the fundamental idea expressed (let usnot say sought for Origen seems very much the master ofhis thought) in these texts and other similar ones we couldwithout betraying it express it thus the pneuma that is ldquoinmanrdquo in every man assures a certain hiddentranscendence of the man over himself a certain opening acertain received continuity between man and God Not thatthere is the least identity of essence between the one andthe other (like Irenaeus like Clement Origen is animplacable adversary of this pantheism of the pseudo-Gnostics) but it is at the heart of man the privileged placealways intact of their encounter

Would man therefore be after all impeccable No But thecenter of moral freedom and choice is not the pneuma Thatis why we can say that for Origen the pneuma ldquodivine giftrdquois not properly speaking part of the personality29 Thecenter of choice is the soul in its higher part (νοῦς) Thelatter can be inclined as Saint Paul says on the side of thespirit or on the side of the ldquofleshrdquo (which does not mean thebody) which is to say that it is ldquocapable of virtue and ofvicerdquo30 When it is said that the flesh desires against thespirit and the spirit against the flesh without any doubt the

soul is posed between the two as being able to acquiesceto the desires of the spirit (si eum sequi velit)31 or let itselfbe led to carnal desires in this latter case it becomes withthe flesh a single body of covetousness and of carnalappetite in the former case on the contrary beingassociated with the spirit it becomes a single spirit withitrdquo32 The spiritual man is the one in whom the spiritprevails33 the carnal man he in whom the flesh prevailsThe spirit itself the pneuma always remains holy but ineach one it can have vitality or torpor flight or fall flame orsluggishness34 This is why paradoxically Origen can affirmboth as we have said that the pneuma is holy and that itmust become so35

Still following Paul Origen also speaks of the ldquonaturalmanrdquo who is again neither carnal nor spiritual and theexplanation he gives in his respect manifests once again aparadoxical character distinguished only with difficulty fromthat spirit (pneuma) that is in man without being uniquely ofman and that becomes fully himself and fully completesman only in his participation in the Spirit of God ldquoThenatural man does not understand what the law of God is itis madness to him but the spiritual judges all thingsrdquo (1 Cor214) We think that there is a reason why Paul omits theword ldquomanrdquo after ldquospiritualrdquo For ldquothe spiritualrdquo is more thana man he is superior to that humanity defined by the soulthe body or by the two together and not by the spirit whichis more divine than these two elements and whosesupernatural participation once achieved defines thespiritual When the soul rises follows the spirit andseparates itself from the body when it no longer evencontents itself with following the spirit but remains in it (asthis passage shows ldquoToward you have I raised my soulrdquo Ps251) how would it not lose so to speak its own nature andnot itself become spirit36

Toward the end of this text a trace of the speculations ofPeri archocircn on the subject of the soul will be noted buttoned down by ldquoso to speakrdquo It is necessary toacknowledge however that from one work to the otheracross the succession of dates and the varieties of subjectstreated and literary genres the points of view are so diversethat in the words if not in the thought the reader has somedifficulty finding a perfect coherence among all theOrigenian texts on the pneuma

At death all pneuma returns to God this is whatEcclesiastes says ldquoThus the pneuma of the just and that ofthe sinner have an identical destiny both end at theFatherrdquo37 But ldquoit does not follow that saint and sinner sharethe same destiny With the saint the whole man enters intoGod with the sinner the pneuma returns to the Lord thesoul and body perish in Gehenna hence the intrinsic tearingof the human beingrdquo38 Like the remark by Father CrouzelOrigen is akin here to the thought of Saint Irenaeus whosaid ldquoAll those who are destined to life will be raised up withtheir bodies their souls and their spirits those who havemerited punishment will surrender their souls and theirbodies to it for with them they have strayed from divinegracerdquo39

Later Christian tradition will not be as unfaithful to thisconception of the pneuma as one might believe It is foundagain in a series of intuitions ideas and opinions of variedexpression This is for example the idea dear toRuysbroek of a certain ldquodeiformityrdquo of the human being ofhis higher ldquosuperessentialrdquo life in God40 It is the obscurefeeling that there exists in each of us even the greatestsinner a hidden room where no one but God can enter inldquothat sacred point in us that says Pater no iterrdquo as PaulClaudel says magnificently in the famous ldquoCantique dePalmyrerdquo and that cannot hide from love41 It is the intuitionof a Georges Bernanos at the threshold of death noting in

his diary that ldquosin makes us live on the surface of ourselvesrdquoand that even when we offend God ldquowe never ceaseentirely to desire what He desires in the depths of thesanctuary of our soulrdquo42 There are similar traits in the workof Dostoyevsky although they too can be rather equivocal(a novelist does not express himself like a theologian) theydo not prevent him from glorifying personal freedom andproclaiming the necessity of uprooting evil in receiving ldquonewbirthrdquo The Origenian doctrine of the pneuma alsoreverberates throughout the Bonaventurian tradition In atotally different climate and without any need to search fora precise influence from one to the other the very doctrineof Saint Thomas Aquinas would not be completely foreign tohim It questions neither the singularity of each humanbeing nor the drama of existence nor the divinetranscendence43

NOTE

In his commentary on John 423-24 Origen defines ldquotrueadorersrdquo first by the spirit then in relation to the truth Hethus breaks down the dual Johannine formula and explains itterm by term drawing his inspiration again from Paul whoopposes spirit and flesh (Rom 89 Gal 56 2 Cor 103) It isinteresting to note that in evoking Romans 89 Origen addsa μήϰετι those who are no longer in the flesh but in theldquospiritrdquo He thereby stresses the impact of the coming ofChrist and of the gift of the Spiritmdashalready evoked by Paulmdashwhich divide history into a before and an after Origen doesnot work therefore only on words (flesh and spirit) but heis inspired by the Pauline thought in which these terms arenot only anthropological but in which they evoke the impactthat the history of salvation the Incarnation and the gift ofthe Spirit have on man It is the same with Galatians 516fIn verse 18 Paul in fact opposes the condition of man underthe Spirit to that of this same man under the Law As for thethird evocation it is a little different Paul speaks there of hisconduct because some accuse him of acting according tothe flesh that is of allowing himself to be guided bymotives that are too human (Jean-Michel Poffet OP ldquoLeMeacutethode exeacutegeacutetique drsquoHeacuteracleacuteon et drsquoOrigegravenecommentateurs de Jean 4rdquo Jeacutesus la Samaritaine et lesSamaritains [Fribourg Switzerland Eacuteditions Universitaires1985] 191) III From Origen to Augustine A few examplesshould be enough to show the continuity of this tripartiteanthropology across the patristic age

Cyril of Jerusalem addresses to the newly baptized thesame wish that Paul did to the Thessalonians1 Gregory ofNyssa in his treatise on the Creation of Man practices acertain eclecticism Following the perspective that isnaturally his own since he compares the nature of man to

that of the beings that surround him and particularly ofother living beings he begins by distinguishing a threefoldactivity merely vital (that of plants) sentient (that ofbeasts) rational these are like three souls or threesubstances all three of which are found in man alone Thevocabulary is that of the philosophical ϰοινή of that periodthe higher life of man is λογιϰή it is directed by the νοῦςhis nature is a νοεϱά ϕύσις But this can also be understoodsays Gregory according to the words that the Apostleaddressed to the Ephesians (sic) First of all through a boldconcordism he places the body in an equivalence with thenutritive life the soul with the sensate life the spirit(πνεῦμα) with the intellectual life (νοεϱόν) then withoutfurther hesitation and without seeming to perceive that heis changing the perspective he finds once again the truePauline thought or at least comes close to it bydistinguishing life according to the flesh (σαϱϰιϰή) from lifeaccording to the spirit (πνευματιϰή) and by showing thesoul in an intermediary situation having to choose betweenvice and virtue2 Farther on he will explain that only thesoul endowed with reason such as it is in man fully meritsthis name of soul in such a way that he would haverejected it seems any attempt at concordism between theνοῦς and the πνεῦμα3

It is not Hellenism but indeed the Bible that inspires thetrichotomy of the Syrian tradition such as we see it in thishymn of Saint Ephraim of Nisibis For the soul is still moreprecious than the bodyAnd the spirit is still more precious than the soul

And the Divinitymore hidden than the spiritThe body will be clothed with the beauty of the soul when

the end arrives

The soul will put onthe beauty of the spiritThe spirit will put on in its very image the (divine) MajestyThe body on equal footing with the soul will see itself

elevated The soul on equal footing with the spiritThe spirit at the height where the Majesty is 4

In another later Syrian text the awkwardness of an attemptat harmonization between the three elements of man andthe three Persons of the divine Trinity will be noted JacquesdrsquoEacutedesse (d 708) writes in his Explanation of the MassldquoSacred things are holy The soul the body and the reasonare sanctified by three sacred things by water blood andspirit and besides by the Father the Son and the Spirit andtruly man does resemble God in virtue of this trinity ofcomposition the soul corresponds to the Father the body tothe corporeality of the Son and the reason to the HolySpirit Thereby man thus resembles Godrdquo5 One cannevertheless wonder if the word translated by ldquoreasonrdquo isnot here the equivalent of nous rather than of pneuma andif the soul is not merely the sensate soul The same doubtcan be expressed with respect to a passage from theTestament in Galilee of Our Lord Jesus Christ of which wehave the text in Ethiopian ldquoShould the body be judged withthe soul and the spirit Will the body of every man berevived with his living soul and his spiritrdquo6 We will find asimilar hesitation in examining the Latin tradition andperhaps one must say in certain cases at least it cannot beresolved

Saint Ambrose writes on the one hand ldquoHomo ex animarationali constat et corporerdquo7 but also on the other handldquoPrimum unusquisque homo est corporalis secundoanimalis tertio spiritualisrdquo and the parallel he institutesbetween these three elements and the three heavens towhich Saint Paul alludes in the Second Letter to the

Corinthians does not enlighten us much about the meaningof this trichotomy8 Ambrose is not alone in any case inacknowledging it We read in Gregory of Elvira ldquoManifestumest enim tribus perfectum constare semimortalemhominem id est corpore et anima et spiriturdquo9 AndAugustine expresses himself in a similar way on severaloccasions10

In reality Augustinersquos vocabulary is rather evasive Theterm mens as we know holds a privileged place in his workIn De Trinitate he develops a distinction destinedsubsequently to become more rigid that between ratioinferior and ratio superior In commenting on Psalm 3 verse4 ldquoet exaltans caput meumrdquo he explains that this ldquocaputanimaerdquo is the ldquospiritusrdquo or the ldquomensrdquo and so on11

Certain texts which have the appearance of explicitdefinitions speak of two single elements as constitutive ofman ldquoHomo enim constat ex corpore et spiriturdquo12 ldquoNihil estin homine quod ad ejus substantiam pertineat atquenaturam praeter corpus et animam totus homo hoc estspiritus et carordquo13 Yet Augustine does not consider the twowords anima and spiritus to be simply synonyms althoughfor brevityrsquos sake he includes in only one of the two thecomplex meaning of both ldquoNomen animae spiritus est abeo quod spiritalis est animae nomen est ab eo quodcorpus animet hoc est vivificetrdquo14 From which we have acertain number of explicitly trichotomic texts which are ofgreat importance for a correct understanding of Augustiniananthropology for it is on this trichotomy that Augustinebases his doctrine of the memoria15 and he gives it asessential to the Catholic Faith ldquoSi quis tenuerit catholicamfidem ut totum hominem credat a Verbo Dei essesusceptum id est corpus animam spiritum rdquo16

In the same De fide et symbolo Augustine explainshimself at somewhat greater length ldquoEt quoniam tria suntquibus homo constat spiritus anima et corpusmdashquae

rursus duo sunt quia saepe anima simul cum spiritunominatur pars enim quaedam ejusdem rationalis quacarent bestiae spiritus diciturmdashprincipale nostrum spiritusest deinde vita qua conjungimur corpori anima diciturpostremo ipsum corpus quoniam visibile est ultimumnostrum est Anima vero cum carnalia bona appetit caronominatur rdquo17 we also quote several similar texts ldquoUttotus homo sit spiritus et anima et corpus sed aliquandoduo ista simul nomine animae nuncupari rdquo18 ldquoPropterspiritum et animam et corpus rdquo19 ldquoAd creaturaeintegritatem id est spiritum et animam et corpus et illudquo intelligimus et illud quo vivimus et illud quo visibiles etcontrectabiles sumusrdquo20

In De fide et symbolo at the same time as hedistinguishes anima from spiritus Augustine identifiesspiritus and mens21 Likewise too he distinguishes theldquopars rationalisrdquo of the soul (which is thus no longer only theanimator of the body as in animals) from the ldquopars quaeexcellit id est ipsa mensrdquo22 It is practically the lastdistinction expressed in De Trinitate by the seeminglyequivalent words ratio inferior and ratio superior23

In brief the anthropological analyses of Saint Augustineare varied H I Marrou has set up a table which does notintend to be exhaustive24 and it must be noted besides thatunder the same word under the same verbal distinction ithappens that Augustine places different realities On thewhole less dependent on a literal interpretation ofScripture and more particularly of Saint Paul than Origenwished to be25 more inclined to express himself in avocabulary borrowed in part from Neoplatonism Augustineplaces under the word spiritus a reality that sometimesmore closely resembles the nous of Greek philosophythan the pneuma of the sacred text Yet through the dualityhe recognizes within this spiritus (or this ratio or this mens)he remains a faithful witness of the Christian tradition

3 From Saint Augustine to Our Day

I Medieval Spiritual Masters In Augustine as in Origen (andas in the whole patristic tradition) the notions are fluid the

historian must strive to grasp the movement of theirthought rather than to classify their concepts Augustinianexplanations moreover do not correspond point by pointwith Origenian analyses The Christian spiritual masters ofthe Middle Ages will rather often be in this regard closer to

Origen than to Augustine In order not to interpret them in asimplistic way it is necessary constantly to bring analogy

into play Perhaps even the undertaking to reunite them in akind of continuous chain extending to our time is a little

too reminiscent of concordism Let us say finally thatspiritus is not only designated or understood in variousways with some it splits so that one has to deal rather

with a quadripartite anthropology one of the causes for thisis the desire to make a place for the Platonian tradition ofthe intelligence a tradition that is amalgamated somehowor other to the Pauline tradition It is having made these

remarks that we gather together the examples that follow

For John Scotus man is composed of three elements butthe third element called in turn animus intellectus or mensresembles the νοῦς more than the πνεῦμα We read in book5 of De divisione naturae ldquoTotam humanam naturamcorpus videlicet et animam et intellectumrdquo (PL 122 910-11)But another text in book 2 chapter 5 expresses aconception closer to the biblical conception ldquoAciem mentisqua ilium [Deum] intelligimus et in qua maxime imagocreatoris condita estrdquo (PL 122 531 c)1

The traditional trichotomy dominates the structure ofBernardrsquos Brevis Commentatio on the Song of Songs (n 1)In William of Saint Thierry the third term the ldquospiritrdquo splitseither in order to grant a certain place to the nous to theintellectus to rational understanding or rather in order todetail the principal stages of the spiritual life The Letter tothe Brethren at Mont Dieu that important text distinguishesa triplex status animalismdashrationalismdashspiritualis which is tosay ldquothose beginningrdquo ldquothose on the wayrdquo and ldquotheperfectrdquo The opposition between the flesh and the spirit isnot denied William will be able to remind those who havingbegun to taste the sweetness of contemplation might betempted to neglect the permanent necessity of spiritualcombat2 But rather than this dialectical opposition theobject of the Letter is to set forth a pedagogical ladderwhich is moreover nonetheless Pauline in its inspirationThe beginners are still guided by an animalis sensus (this isthe natural man of Saint Paul which is not the carnal man)those on the way acquire a rationalis scientia (we observehere the care to integrate into the formation of the monkthe whole cycle of human knowledge) and the perfect enjoyspiritualis sapientia3 In addition these are not threeairtight categories or perfectly distinct and successivestages just as there is passage from one to the other thereis immanence from one to the other William remains faithfulto the same schema in Miroir de la foi4 as well as in hiscommentaries on the Song of Songs ldquotres status esseorantium vel orationum animalem rationalemspiritualemrdquo5 In De contemplando Deo a subdivisionintervenes between the ratio the discursive faculty andthe intellectus which does not seem to be at this point theequivalent of the spiritus (1 4)

Isaac of Stella speaks in nearly the same way in alanguage however that has more of an intellectualist ringto it in distinguishing the understanding from the reason

which abstracts the forms of the sensate vis animae quaimmediate supponitur Deo6 We have the feeling that thissecond-generation Cistercian was familiar withScholasticism

Hugh of Saint Victor is closer than Isaac to Bernard andWilliam of Saint Thierry According to him the eye of theflesh (which is to say here the body) sees the world andwhat it contains the eye of the reason sees the soul andwhat it contains but the eye of contemplation penetrates tothe innermost depths of man and above man This eye ofcontemplation belongs to those who possess the spirit ofGod7 In Achard of Saint-Victor the order of the last twoelements or of the last two stages seems reversed hetreats de discretione animae spiritus et mentis mens wasas another author of the twelfth century says quasiquoddam divinitatis insigne8 (But this is hardly a questionof vocabulary alone) Whatever might be the distinctionsand subdistinctions orientations inflections and differencesin vocabulary it can be said of all these spiritual masters ofthe Middle Ages as well as of many of those who will followthat they took up the essential chorus of the Pauline andpatristic trichotomy and that most even attribute extremeimportance to it as Sandaeus a seventeenth-centuryauthority was to remark

Magni aestimant Mystici nonnulli et putant maxime necessariam ad suamTheologiam ac perfectionem divisionem inter spiritum et animam9

This is also true of Bonaventure ldquoHabet enim anima trespotentias animalem intellectualem divinam secundumtriplicem oculum carnis rationis contemplationisrdquo10 Werecognize the schema of William of Saint Thierry and Hughof Saint Victor11 For Thomas Gallus closer in this regard toIsaac of Stella ldquoreason feels the intelligence seesrdquo12

Johannes Tauler in several of his sermons teaches thatldquoman is so to speak composed of three menrdquo and that one

must distinguish in him first of all an ldquoexternal manrdquo orldquoanimal manrdquo then a ldquoreasonable manrdquo finally a ldquohigherman wholly inner and hiddenrdquo that ldquonoble and deiformrdquoman ldquomade in the image of Godrdquo13 The mystical theologyof Harphius (Henry Herp) also says that ldquothe soul isaccording to Scripture divided into three parts rdquo14 andthe appeal to Scripture despite the appearance is justifiedFor our authors in fact the adding of a supplementary termto the Pauline enumeration does not derive from the factthat they would abandon Paul in favor of Plato but from thefact that they are concerned besides about a theory ofknowledge which Paul did not at all have in view in hisaddress to the Thessalonians Yet La Perle eacutevangeacutelique leadsus to a tripartite schema the body being understood as inPaul but at base the difference from the medieval authorswe have just enumerated is hardly perceptible

Each man seems almost to represent three men according to the body heis bestial according to the soul he is reasonable and intellectual andaccording to the spirit or the naked essence of the soul where God dwellshe is deiform 15This very noble portion of the soul some call mens insofar as itcontinually breathes after God and is as it were a largely deiform or divinething and the image of God in man It is something divine in being as itwere flooded with God and united to him It is also called the point and thesummit of the spirit because God without intermission shines in the latterlike a mirror It is also according to what the good Father Ruysbroek saysthe highest part of the soul It is also called the sparkle of the soulbecause it is in God what the sparkle is in fire In the first [unity or union] we are superessential and deiform and in thesecond spiritual and internal and in the third active and moral 16

The foregoing is the text of a compiler from which one mustnot ask too great a coherence in terminology or too great aunity in point of view If we now appeal to a theologian whowas the adversary of the mystical school represented byTauler Harphius and La Perle eacutevangeacutelique and who refers tomore reliable authors such as Augustine ldquoBernardrdquo andHugh he will give us the same essential distinctions

Tres cognoscendi modi sunt quorum unus animalis dicitur utens maximeoculo carnis alius rationalis utens plus oculo rationis tertius spiritualisutens oculo contemplationis sicut distinxerunt divini homines tres oculoset tres vivendi modos17

Louis de Blois finally in the Institution spirituelleperseveres in bringing out this ldquodepth of the soulrdquo thatunder different names always corresponds to the ldquoPaulinepneumardquo and that will not find a place in the late Scholasticanthropologies or in most modern anthropologies

God who to tell the truth is everywhere dwells in the spirit of man and inthe simple depth or inner sanctuary of the soul in a particular manner Hedwells there in his own image and never absents himself18This depth naked and stripped of any image is raised above all creatures it transcends time and place and through a kind of perpetual adhesionremains united to God in his principle It is however in us by essence forthe abyss and depth of the soul are essence The soul possesses a certain supernatural unity of spirit in which itdwells as in its own habitation and it is carried away into the divineessence even to this supreme unity in which the Father Son and Holy Spiritare in the simplicity of the divine essence itself 19

Assuredly these speculations about the divine essencemdasheven if they maintain a trinitarian affirmationmdashand aboutthe essence of man presuppose a long evolution of thoughtthat in one sense distances us greatly from Saint Paul Butacross languages theories and as one never stops sayingtoday cultural contexts that differ greatly to be sure it ispossible to discern a fundamental continuity

This continuity will not be broken by the period called theRenaissance

II Saint Thomas Aquinas in Tradition1

I

In the spiritual history of mankind the three domainsconstituted by what one can designate under the threedenominations of religion morality and mysticism are oftenpresented as independent or even opposed to each otherThe alliance or the mutual penetration between mysticismand morality does not appear achieved in and of itself anymore than that between morality and religion Yet one couldnot conclude that such an alliance or such a mutualpenetration is an artificial and wholly contingentphenomenon In opposition to an empiricism thatdisintegrates everything without explaining anything wewill say rather that it responds if not to the demands atleast to the profound wish of nature But nature itself hastaken time in finding itself

In fact we note that it has not fully found itself outside theChristian revelation The union of the three aforementionedelements religion2 morality and mysticism does not reachits fullness it does not become harmonious and indissolublein principle except in the tradition coming from the GospelThere and most specifically in the Catholic form of thistradition it does not appear as a secondary fact obtainedby convergence subsequent to various gropings but as anoriginal and essential fact Religion morality and mysticismmanifest themselves there ldquoin a reciprocal envelopmentrdquoBetween these three both an attraction and a tension existthat could be the source of many vital problems but there isobjectively neither separation exclusion nor conflict forldquothe Deity while transcending being the true and the goodcontains them formallyrdquo3

This is why in particular in the Catholic traditionmdashlivedand reflectedmdashldquoreasonablerdquo life and ldquospiritualrdquo life or lifeldquoaccording to the spiritrdquo penetrate each other without beingidentified with each other4 and morality penetrates themystical life to the end Pseudo-Gnosticism relegated therewarding of good and punishing of evil those pillars of theldquoDemiurgerdquo to the lower level of ldquoexotericrdquo faith the greattradition on the contrary maintains this moral aspect ldquoatthe heart of the revelation of the Father through the uniqueSonrdquo5 ldquoIt is notrdquo says Saint Justin for example ldquobecause ofhis [natural] affinity with God or because he is spirit like himthat man sees God it is because he is virtuous and justrdquo6 Inhis Psychologie des mystiques Joseph Marechal noted thisessential characteristic Mystical ascent he explains doesnot erase ldquoany specific trait of the common Christian liferdquo7In other words the Christian virtues proposed for thepractice of all are not simply means of freeing oneself theirexercise is not simply something transitory in theirsubstance they are already something of the end itself Thisis what Saint Ambrose was able to explain wonderfully in abrief sentence in his commentary on Saint Luke withrespect to the Beatitudes ldquoSicut enim spei nostrae octavaperfectio est ita octava summa virtutum estrdquo8 And this iswhat Saint Augustine repeated in similar terms speaking ofadhesion to God the blessed life and eternal wisdom ldquoUnaibi virtus erit et idipsum erit virtus praemiumque virtutisrdquo9

In a remarkable thesis Pierre Nemeshegyi has posed thesame problem with respect to Origen ldquoTo place Being andmoral Goodness in equation to place this moral Goodnessin God formally and as characterizing the final ground of hisBeingmdashis this not to be condemned to enclosing all spirituallife in an anti-mystical moralism The Good is atranscendental But is it formally what we understand byldquomoral Goodrdquo Or is there not a deepening of this moralGoodness which would reestablish the possibility of an

innermost mystical depthrdquo And Nemeshegyi concludes ldquoInfact in Origenrsquos conception moralism and mysticism areone and the same thingrdquo10 Saint Gregory the Great oftenso close to Origen will unite good sense to spiritual fervor inorder to remind contemplatives that if they want to befaithful to the Gospels and to advance on the true way theymust take care to scorn the humble precepts of morality andto seek to understand them in a more sublime sense11

The medieval spiritual masters will take up again thesethoughts of Origen Ambrose Augustine and GregoryExpressing ourselves in the customary categories of theirexegesis which the Middle Ages systematized we will saythat for them ldquoanagogyrdquo achieves the final perfection bothof ldquoallegoryrdquo and of ldquotropologyrdquo (of dogma and ofmorality)12 Of all authentically Catholic mysticism onecould declare what one historian said of Saint Bernard byallusion to the traditional interpretation of the ldquoBooks ofSolomonrdquo for each of them as for him ldquothe moral school ofEcclesiasticus and Proverbs the necessary preliminary forthe mystical school of the Song of Songs is a school whosedoors are never closed behind usrdquo13

This ldquospiritualrdquo equilibrium has at times seemedthreatened in one direction or another Some spiritualscholars have seemed to want to transcend purely andsimply the sphere of morality and reason This is whatcauses Evagrius not without reason to be judged severelyat times it is what Ruysbroek reproaches in the falsemystics of his time it is one of the points that the bull Inagro of John XXII criticizes in Meister Eckhart Whatever mayhave been true in each of these cases the thing thatinterests us here is the norm that inspired such criticismsWhile following Saint Paul in distinguishing the ldquosoulrdquo fromthe ldquospiritrdquo (not moreover as two substances nor even astwo ldquofacultiesrdquo) one always refuses to separate them as ifthe penetration into the higher zone of the ldquospiritrdquo must

make us reject as no longer valid the operations of theinferior zone of the ldquosoulrdquo But the hierarchical distinction ismaintained which is to say that the mystical life is not forall that reduced to the plane of simple morality A text fromSaint Teresa is very enlightening here the saint observesthat the ldquocenter of the soulrdquo or the ldquospirit of the soulrdquo is aldquodifficult thing to express and even to believerdquo

Certain interior effects give the certitude that there is in certain respectsa very real difference between the soul and the spirit Although in realitythey are but one we sometimes perceive a division between them that isso delicate that it seems the one functions in one way and the other inanother There are so many things in our innermost depths and thingsso subtle that it would be boldness on my part to undertake to explainthem We will understand all that in the other life if God deigns toadmit us to the dwelling where we will have understanding of all thesesecrets14

Yet the equilibrium can be upset in the opposite directionfrom that for which Evagrius and Meister Eckhart werereproached This has been true periodically for anti-mysticalscholars or simply anti-mystics against whom periodicallytoo protests are raised With them it is not the ldquosoulrdquo thatis forgotten or scorned in the name of the superior ldquospiritrdquoit is the ldquospiritrdquo that is ignored misunderstood in the nameof a truncated moral wisdom But with any of the greatscholars of the Catholic tradition we do not have to registerany such misunderstanding This is what we would wish todemonstrate here with respect to Saint Thomas Aquinasand more particularly with respect to the Summatheologica

II

From first appearances one might be brought to believethat Saint Thomas in the Summa is one of those scholarswho upset the equilibrium in the second direction But in

reality he did nothing of the sort His doctrine in the Summatheologica contains in fact the equivalent of what othershave expressed through the distinction of soul and spiritunderstood as the distinction of a moral region and amystical region If one does not observe this right at thebeginning it is because Saint Thomas expresses himself indifferent words

It could be written that in his doctrine ldquoall the problemsthat the spiritual life and its evolution pose return in thisconsideratio moralis which has but one object man inprogress toward his blessed destinyrdquo15 The thing isincontestable Still it might be useful to specify how Nomore in Saint Thomas than in others is the union of the twomoral and spiritual (or ldquomysticalrdquo) elements a confusion or areduction pure and simple from the mystical to the moralThe synthesis is not a unification in the exclusive favor ofone of the two Of course one could judge that the Thomistanthropology by its Aristotelian roots favors the originalityof the mystical life less than others And like the virtue ofldquoreligionrdquo the theological virtues seem at first glance mixedin a long list of ldquovirtuesrdquo within the second part of theSumma It is appropriate nevertheless to remark beforeseeing things at closer range that only a later usage givesthis second part the name ldquomoralrdquo After having in the firstpart considered God as the universal cause Saint Thomasconsiders him now as end after the divine model he clingsto his image after the departure of God from all things heenvisages the return of all things to God Nowmdashthis is theimportant point for our subjectmdashthis itinerary of returncomprises several stages

It is true that the prologue to the Secunda secundaespeaks of scientia moralis of materia moralis and that allseems right at first to be reduced to the consideratiovirtutum But let us look a little closer In this sameprologue as in the articles that follow Saint Thomas

nonetheless distinguishes from the virtutes morales notonly the virtutes theologicae but also the virtutesintellectuales which are along with prudence wisdomunderstanding and knowledge closely connected to thegifts of the Holy Spirit of the same name Moreover afterhaving exhausted the plan he had outlined for ldquoomittingnothing of moral thingsrdquo by studying successively thevirtues and the vices that are opposed to them heconsiders in a kind of extension a series of new questionsrelated first of all to ldquoprophecyrdquo to ldquorapturerdquo and othergratuitous gifts then to the ldquocontemplative liferdquo a series heattaches a little artificially one must admit to the sectionon the different states of life

This artifice has sometimes embarrassed commentatorswho do not always understand the articulations that theplan of the Summa comprises here Thus we have Father MD Chenu who has the ldquotreatise on the states of liferdquo beginat question 183 starting from where ldquothe spiritual life islinked to social functionsrdquo16 The thing seems in fact ratherlogical Yet Saint Thomas himself said in his littleintroduction to question 171 ldquoDe prophetiardquo

Postquam dictum est de singulis virtutibus et vitiis quae pertinent adomnium hominum conditiones et status nunc considerandum est de hisquae specialiter ad aliquos homines pertinent

So Father Antoine Lemonnyer had adopted a differentsolution from that of Father Chenu He saw in questions 171to 198 concerning the gratuitous gifts a kind of parenthesisand made the final treatise of the Secunda secundae beginfrom question 179 which is to say from the ldquocontemplativeliferdquo he gave a certain unity to this final treatise thanks tothis single yet twofold title ldquoHuman Life Its Forms and ItsStatesrdquo17

The divisions adopted respectively by Father Chenu andFather Lemonnyer both have their probability and both can

be supported In fact however as Father Chenu remarkedSaint Thomas treats the states of life properly onlybeginning with question 183 entitled ldquoDe officiis et statibushominum in generalirdquo But already before that questions171 to 182 form a whole very distinct from the precedingquestions in which we have the equivalent of a littletreatise on mysticism

Even if he did not treat explicitly at that time the relationsbetween active life and contemplative life18 the placeaccorded by Saint Thomas to this latter in his general planwould thus authorize us to distinguish it from the domain ofmorality He himself besides tells us so in proper termsldquoThe moral virtues are not a constitutive element of thecontemplative liferdquo19 in fact ldquothey are ordained toactionrdquo20 Now action is inferior to contemplation The latteris ldquosimpliciter meliorrdquo21 Action prepares for contemplationby winning the soul through the external exercise of thevirtues the necessary ldquopreliminary dispositionsrdquo bydisciplining the passions and by submitting them to thereason22 Contemplation is the act of the ldquohigher reasonrdquowhich is to the inferior reason following an old biblical andPhilonic symbolism revived and slightly transformed23 asthe man is to the woman24 It is ordained to ldquoperfect loverdquoand as Saint Gregory taught while the active life issynonymous with service the contemplative life issynonymous with freedom25 As Aristotle had alreadyaffirmedmdashbut we know with what freedom Saint Thomaschanged and transformed the thought of the philosophereven while he invoked him as an authority26mdashit is a lifeabove the human condition27 and is made to last always28

No more than any other of the great witnesses of theChristian tradition did Saint Thomas reduce the spiritual lifeto the exercise of morality or spiritual understanding torationality Father Pierre Rousselot too neglected today (atleast in France) demonstrated this well by placing in

evidence the distinction between intellectus and ratio afundamental distinction with numerous consequences29mdashBut neither does he separate them on the one hand as anauthentic heir of the Fathers he integrates the virtuous lifeinto eternal life by saying ldquoUniuscujusque perfectio nihilaliud est quam participatio divinae similitudinisrdquo30 And onthe other hand he knows that in the earthly conditionexternal action which is first of all the virtuous life mustitself proceed from contemplation

The comparison with the Plotinian philosophy or with theldquoagnosticsrdquo can in this regard be very enlightening becauseof the apparent proximity of the doctrines

In a parallel way one would find in Christianity [says Jean Trouillard on thissubject] a going beyond ethics by the theological virtues and the gifts ofthe Holy Spirit The Christian life consists in divinization not in ascesis Yetthe role of the will seems much more considerable in Christians than in thePlotinians not only in charity but also in faith which is itself presented as aduty Theologians do not ordinarily situate the theological virtues on theother side of the decisions of the faculties or on this side of the constitutedvalues This is what must not be forgotten when faced with the use of theNeoplatonic doctrine of virtues attempted by Christian authors inparticular by Saint Thomas (1a 2ae q 61 a 5)31

And again Maurice de GandillacPlotinus harshly criticizes the Gnostics who believe that by ldquoraisingoneself near to God on wings of a dreamrdquo (2 9 9) one escapes the humancondition According to the fragments of Heracles (Legrand 315) Mosesthe author of the Law belongs to the ldquonaturalrdquo world Superior to purematter however he ignores the spirit By proscribing by judging bypunishing he fulfills an inferior ministry and the ldquoperfectrdquo are in no waysubject to his commandments Pure at the beginning they are savedwithout exercise as without repentance and without pardon Thispresumption will be the common gospel for all the sectarians who across the Middle Ages will preach a ldquogoing beyond the ethicalrdquo32

We should not let the differences in emphasis from oneauthor to another or from one school to another hide fromus therefore the consistent thought of the Christiantradition Already in someone like Origen the union is

achieved between ldquoa resolutely contemplative religiousideal and a passionately active liferdquo33 For Saint Gregory theGreat to whom Thomas Aquinas refers the whole spirituallife is subject to a rhythm and ldquotrue perfection begins tomature only in the difficulties and obstacles of the activeliferdquo34 Medieval monasticism did not scorn Martha in thename of Mary it maintained that action must be joined tocontemplation or the ldquopracticerdquo to the ldquotheoryrdquo a little likelove of neighbor to the love of God35 The two inseparableaspects of the Christian doctrine on this subject will onceagain be expressed very well in the reflections of John HenryNewman still an Anglican preaching on ldquoevangelicalsanctity the completion of natural virtuerdquo Newman in factshows in this sermon that there is ldquoan essentialresemblance between the spiritual man and the virtuousmanrdquo following the words of Saint Paul ldquoThe fruit of theSpirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truthrdquomdashwhiledrawing the attention of his listeners to ldquothe point ofdifference between them viz that the Christian graces arefar superior in rank and dignity to the moral virtuesrdquo36

Moral perfection and holiness virtuous life and mystical lifeare distinct they are hierarchical but at the same time theyare united in charity forma virtutum vinculum perfectionis

III Renaissance and Reformation Nicholas of Cusa takes upthe Pauline trichotomy again in the same terms as the

Apostle He places it in correspondence with on the onehand a cosmic trichotomy and on the other hand what isperhaps unexpected the three Persons of the Trinity He

uses Saint Augustine as his authority for both thesecorrespondences

We read in fact in one of his Sermons ldquoIn homine suntspiritus anima et corpus sicut in mundo elementalia vitaliaet intellectualiardquo1 and in his opuscule the Beryl he

distinguishes ldquothree modes of knowledge the sensate theintellectual and the intelligentialrdquo which he sayscorrespond according to Saint Augustine to the threeldquoheavensrdquo2 That was the cosmic analogy And for thetrinitarian analogy set forth in the work De Concordantiacatholica

Unde homo secundum Augustinum Super symbolo (40 193-94) ad instarTrinitatis imaginem gerens ex spiritu et anima et corpore constitutusexsistit Spiritus autem est superior nobilior et altior intellectualispersonae Patris figuram repraesentans et corpus personam Filii et animaquasi utriusque naturam participans ab utroque procedens personamSpiritus sancti3

Taking up his position like Nicholas of Cusa from the pointof view of knowledge Marsilio Ficino distinguishes thesensus the ratio and the intellectus We recognize in thatthe heritage of the great Scholasticism In a similar mannerin the prologue of his Heptaplus Giovanni Pico dellaMirandola distinguishes the vital instinct discursive andpractical knowledge and the contemplative faculty4 Moreimportant is the twofold witness here in agreement ofErasmus and Luther

In his famous Enchiridion militis christiani Erasmus whotakes his inspiration directly from Saint Paul ldquoends finally ina tripartite anthropology which finds its completion in thegift of the Spiritrdquo5 After having in chapters 4 and 5 spokenof man such as Plato describes him first according to theTimaeus then according to the Phaedo Phaedrus and theRepublic and recalled his distinction of the soul asreasonable irascible and concupiscible Erasmus describesin chapter 6 the Pauline opposition between the flesh andthe spirit then he comes in chapter 7 to the trichotomy of1 Thessalonians which he comments on with reference toOrigen ldquoHe does not hiderdquo observes Charles Beacuteneacute ldquohispleasure in setting forth this theory lsquoLibet et Origenicamhominis sectionem breviter referrersquo rdquo He sees it based as

well on Isaiah (299) and on Daniel (386) so he adopts it inorder to make it intervene ldquoas a definitive stage after theanalyses of pagan philosophersrdquo to serve ldquoas anintroduction to the great rules of Christianityrdquo6 With Origenhe sees in the soul this ldquomedian partrdquo of the human beingwhich can swing either to the side of the flesh or to the sideof the spirit7 In the Methodus or Ratio verae theologiae asimilar text recalls our trichotomy indirectly ldquoNec omnisaffectus hominis est caro sed est qui dicitur anima et quidicitur spiritus quo nitimur ad honestardquo8 But it isparticularly in the controversy with Luther about free willthat Erasmus opposes to the exclusivism of his adversaryhypnotized by the sole dialectic of the flesh and the spiritthe divine pedagogy explained by Origen according to thePauline schema

Luther himself paradoxically had provided a commentaryin his own manner with respect to the first words of theMagnificat (1520) on the text of 1 Thessalonians and hismanner did not differ perceptibly from so many of theothers we have seen

ldquoMy soul glorifies the Lordrdquo Scripture divides man into three partswhen Paul says at the end of 1 Thessalonians ldquoMay God make youholy through and through in such a way that all your spirit and your souland your body rdquo And each of these partsmdashlike the entire man mdashisequally divided in another way concerning not nature but quality In otherwords nature has three parts spirit soul and body all three of which canbe good or bad The first part the spirit is the highest the mostprofound the most noble part of man it is what makes him capable ofgrasping imperceptible invisible and eternal things In brief it is the housewhere faith and the word of God dwell The second part the soul isexactly the same spirit according to nature but accomplishes a differentfunction It is the spirit insofar as it animates the body and acts through it Its proper role consists in grasping the things that reason can knowand probe 9

As for the third term the body its function is to ldquoactrdquo and toldquoput into practice the knowledge of the soul and the faith of

the spiritrdquo As Maurice de Gandillac observes here the bodyhas nothing to do with ldquomirerdquo And by adopting such atripartition of the human being (which is not at all to beunderstood we repeat as a division of three ldquofacultiesrdquo)Luther envisages the human subject as Saint Paul and afterhim the whole of Christian tradition have done ldquoin aperspective that is more biblical than Greekrdquo10 The relativeassimilation that he works between the soul and the spirit isthe echo of a common Scholasticism and the fruit of aninflection toward the point of view of knowledge which wasnot that of Saint Paul in his address to the Thessalonians butin no way contradicts it Of these two characteristics thepreceding centuries have already brought us many anexample11

Like his predecessors Luther thus maintains the threefoldgradation which he also develops through a traditionalimage

We will give a simile for that drawn from Scripture Moses made atabernacle with three different edifices The first edifice was calledsanctum sanctorum it was the dwelling of God and there was no lightfrom within The other sanctum contained a chandelier with sevenbranches and lights The third was called atrium the parvis it was locatedin the open air in the light of the sun This figure depicts the Christian Hisspirit is sanctum sanctorum the dwelling of God in the night (stripped oflight) of faith for he believes what he neither sees nor senses norunderstands His soul is the sanctum there are found the seven lights towit all kinds of understanding discernment science and knowledge ofcorporal and visible things His body is atrium it is manifest for all in sucha way that one can see what he does and how he lives12

It is necessary however to recognize that this trichotomydid not have for Luther an importance comparable to hisdialectical opposition between the flesh and the spirit InSaint Paul from before the commentary on the Magnificathe had been selective the lessons on the Letter to theRomans (1515-1516) were already setting up an oppositionbetween the flesh and the spirit without anthropological

reference to any subject whatever13 and later in hiscontroversy with Erasmus he was to prove all the morehostile to the anthropology drawn from 1 Thessalonians 5 byhis adversary whom the latter guided by Origen used toweaken his dialectic He writes in De servo arbitrio

I am well aware of Origenrsquos fable about the threefold affection of man offlesh soul and spirit14 the soul holding the middle between the flesh andthe spirit and able to turn either toward the one or toward the other Butthis is dreaming he says them but does not prove them at all Saint Paulcalls flesh everything that is without spirit as we have demonstrated15

Luther does not formally contradict here what he had said inthe commentary on the Magnificat What he reproaches inOrigen as in Erasmus is believing in free will But thispreoccupation leads him to falsify their anthropology andthereby to forget or to misunderstand the Pauline verse thathe had first interpreted correctly To which in his enormoussecond Hyperaspistes Erasmus will reply several times overthat the tripartition of 1 Thessalonians 5 even ifcounterparts are found in the philosophers is proper toSaint Paul The philosophers in fact do not usually call thehighest part of the human being spiritus (pneuma) butmens or ratio and what Paul understands by spiritus is notany ratio whatever but the ratio already inspired by graceThat he concludes is what Luther does not want torecognize As often happens the discussion in whichErasmus finds himself involved leads him himself to apartially inaccurate interpretation of Saint Paulrsquos text bymaking him attribute to the ldquospiritrdquo what Paul says of ldquothespiritual manrdquo Yet it remains true that he had first analyzedperfectly the address of the Apostle to the Thessaloniansand Luther had at first done the same16

Lutheran mysticism at least in the rather unorthodoxSebastien Frank (1499-1542) nonetheless recognizes thethree elements of which man is composed body soul andspirit Frank sees in the soul the personal and free being

capable of orienting himself in one direction or in the otherhe sees in the spirit the inner Word or God present at theheart of every man enlightening him through his Word andinclining his will through his Spirit17

The same traditional distinctions originating in Saint Paulare found in the humanists of the sixteenth century ofmystical tendency For a Paracelsus (1493-1541) since manis a microcosm he must unite within himself the threeconstitutive parts or elements corresponding to the threestages of the universe material world astral worldDivinity18 (an idea of Nicholas of Cusa although distorted isrecognizable in this) Cornelius Agrippa in his De occultaphilosophia tried to unite the Platonic traditions to Mosesand to Saint Paul

Plotinus itaque et Platonici omnes post Trismegistum similiter tria ponunt inhomine quae vocant supremum infimum et medium Supremum est illuddivinum quam mentem sive portionem superiorem sive intellectumillustratum vocant Moses in Genesi vocat ipsum spiraculum vitarum a Deovid vel a Spiritu ejus in nos spiratum Infimum est sensitiva anima quametiam idolum dicunt Paulus Apostolus animalem hominem nuncupatMedium est spiritus rationalis utraque connectens extrema atque ligansvid animam animalem cum mente et utriusque sapiens naturamextremorum 19

Guillaume Postel as original as ever at least in expressiondistinguishes in man the anima the animus and the mens20

It was undoubtedly following him four years later thatCharles Toutain wrote in his tragedy Agamemnon Threenatures in us which all talk with each other Excite our lifeand keep it alive The Spirit the Soul and Animus And onebeing taken away Suddenly all life together would depart21

The Anglican Lancelot Andrewes (155 5-1626) expresseshimself in a similar way in his devotions Into Thy hands OLord I commend myself my spirit soul and body 22

IV The Modern Period Saint Francis de Sales will open thisperiod for us His Traiteacute de lrsquoamour de Dieu [Treatise on theLove of God] reproduces the Pauline doctrine to perfectionAfter having explained that ldquowe have three kinds of loving

actions spiritual reasonable and sensualrdquo Francis de Salesobserves that ldquothe powers of the sensory part which are ormust be the servants of the spirit ask seek and take what

has been rejected by the reason dishonoring thepurity of the intention of their master who is the spirit andin the measure that the soul is converted to such gross andsensate unions it is diverted from the delicate intellectual

and cordial unionrdquo Thus by the same movement as we findin Saint Paul the way is sketched to the opposition of the

flesh to the spirit Like many in the Middle Ages Francis deSales following Saint Augustine also distinguishes ldquotwoportions of the soul the inferior and the superiorrdquo theinferior being that which discourses on the basis of the

experience of the senses while the superior founded ldquoonthe discernment and judgment of the spirit is commonly

called the spirit and mental part of the soulrdquo in thisldquosuperior portionrdquo he also distinguishes ldquotwo kinds of lightrdquo

a natural one and a supernatural one and so forth Thiswhole apparatus of precisions which aims at integrating aswe have already seen in others the ldquodegrees of knowingrdquo

within the spiritual movement is not without interest but itis in some ways only a flowering from the basic trichotomy1

It is this same trichotomy that we find again as might beexpected in a philosopher attentive to the spiritual lifesuch as Maine de Biran We know the place that the doctrineof the ldquothree livesrdquo holds in Biran animal life human lifeand divine life particularly in the reflections of his Journalintime2 Jules Lachelier also adopts it but perhaps bydiminishing it in his desire to work a kind of synthesisbetween Maine de Biran and Kant when he explains thethree components of existence sensibility understanding

and reason3 We detect also an indication of the very strongmystical tendencies in Joseph de Maistre in this affirmationfrom the Eacuteclaircissements sur les sacrifices ldquoThe animal hasreceived only a soul to us were given a soul and a spiritrdquo4

One might be tempted to seek a distant analogy withSaint Paul in the Kierkegaardian theory of the three spheres(rather than stages) of existence aesthetic ethicalreligious If that analogy is an illusion other thoughts ofKierkegaard are right in finding their place here ldquoIt isimpossible to treat of sin in any of the sciences thatordinarily speak of it because all are occupied with what ispsychological in our nature while sin is a determination ofthe spiritrdquo and again ldquoThe spirit intervening psychology isimpotent So good as its name indicates is occupied withthe soul It sees everything from outside the spirit itself islived only from within Seen from outside an act isalways determined and for all that the object of psychologyBut rdquo5

One might also be tempted to evoke here the Blondeliandistinction between ldquonoeticrdquo and ldquopneumaticrdquo This wouldnot be completely wrong But Blondel places these twokinds of thought in correlation rather than inviting us to risefrom one to the other He does not thereby have in mind arelation of the psyche to the pneuma but rather a divisionof the function within the spirit Despite the word ldquonoeticrdquothis is not the nous but rather the logos which would beaccording to him the partner of the pneuma6 and thedialectic of the noetic and the pneumatic is in play at everystep so to speak of the development of thought and life inthis conception the first the concrete principle ofuniversality being the factor of objectivization and unifyingforce while conversely the second the concrete principleof singularity is the diversifying element and subjectivefunction7 Both at the same level are thus essentiallycomplementary Blondel held to his distinction he often took

up the study of it He wrote in 1907 in one of his personalnotebooks ldquoThink out the discovery of the two thoughtsrdquo8

Now in 1909 he wrote again ldquoThe two thoughts Ah howthey are always in me tending to supplant each other whileit is necessary to reconcile them hierarchize them makethem differently but equally serve the divine work of finaland total reintegrationrdquo9 This word ldquohierarchizerdquo must beunderstood as demanding a reciprocal hierarchization10 Itdoes not necessarily follow however that any analogy withthe Pauline trichotomy any echo of the ldquothree livesrdquo ofBiran are absent from the Blondelian work Blondel was toopenetrated with the thought of Saint Paul and Saint Bernardhe was too closely interested in mysticism he was toofamiliar with the spiritual authors of the Christian traditionto let us believe in such an absence without a fullerexamination But the fact that his dialectic of the noetic andthe pneumatic which is fundamental in his philosophy doesnot turn explicitly into a hierarchy of the soul and spirit or ofthe discursive reason and mystical intuition (although heobviously knew of this distinction as well as that betweenthe understanding and higher intelligence)11 is not anegligible indication Blondel maintained a prudent attitudein the face of natural mysticism just as on the other handhe remained prudent in the face of facile personalisms

In the Russian theologian Sergius Bulgakov the Paulinedistinction between the soul and the spirit is placed inpowerful relief It assumes a mystical aspect that is moreemphasized than in the Apostle or at least it proceeds froma base of natural mysticism that despite the reference tothe famous discourse at Athens does not seem tocorrespond perfectly to its more complex notion of thespirit

Although it is a creature a certain eternity of creation a certain non-creation are proper to the spirit Spiritual existence is rooted in the

eternity of God the created spirit itself is similarly eternal and uncreatedCf Acts 1728

It is true that Bulgakov can also invoke the authority of theGreek Fathers Had Saint Cyril of Alexandria not written thatldquothe image of the divine nature was imprinted in man by theinfusion of the Holy Spiritrdquo12 The importance of hisanthropological theory derives in any case from the fact thatit is from this that he explains the mystery of theIncarnation

The postulate of the divine Incarnation is a certain original identitybetween the divine I and the I of man an identity that does not abrogatetheir essential distinction The human hypostatic spirit draws itsdivine and uncreated origin from the ldquobreath of Godrdquo Through hisspirit man communicates with the divine substance and he is fit to beldquodivinizedrdquo Man is god-man by predestination potentially throughhis formal structure At the same time he is flesh through anldquoanimatedrdquo body he sums up the entire world Man is made of anuncreated divine spirit hypostasized by the I of the creature and of a souland of a body created from the psycho-somatic being13

Bulgakov insists The very idea of divinity by predestinationseems too weak to him He corrects himself almostimmediately ldquoNot only is man theanthropic bypredestination but also the Logos is the eternal God-Maninsofar as the first Image of the created man This is whythe hypostasis of the Logos the heavenly Man could itselfbecome the hypostasis of created man and make of thelatter the authentic God-man by achieving its eternaltheanthropyrdquo The conclusion is nonetheless fundamentallyin keeping with the spirit of Christian faith ldquoMan is alreadythe form ready for the authentic theanthropy that he is notcapable of achieving himself but in view of which he wascreated and called The divine Incarnation is not at all acatastrophe for the human essence or some violation onthe contrary it is an accomplishmentrdquo14

This leads us far from the narrow anthropological dualismthat triumphed in modern Scholasticism as well as in the

university philosophy springing from Cartesianism ldquoSaintPaulrdquo noted R M Albaregraves15 ldquohad distinguished threeorders the carnal the intellectual and the spiritual16 TheCartesian dualism had fused together the intellectual andthe spiritual and rationalism had gradually reduced thespirit thus created to being only an intellect withouttranscendence without dynamism or immortality destinedonly to understand and to organize the worldrdquo On the otherhand for all sorts of reasons that we do not at all have toseek here but in particular because of a certain poverty inits common philosophy Christian thought did not seem ableto fill the void thus created in man It must not thereforebe surprising that the inevitable reaction was produced inpara-Christian forms ldquoIf a scholarrdquo Andreacute Preacuteaux recentlywrote17 ldquoencounters the old doctrine that man is composedof a body a soul and a spirit he has scruples aboutconsidering it for what do lsquosoulrsquo and lsquospiritrsquo mean Unfortunately in a society where science is the supremeauthority this silence is equivalent to a negation Whatdissolves the errors and complexes what protects againstneuroses and fantasies is precisely that which is silentlyand discreetly dismissedrdquo

The same year as Andreacute Preacuteaux and reacting like himGabriel Germain took support from Saint Teresa to remindus of the unrecognized depths of the life of the spirit

Above the understanding below the ordinary conscience and what fills itexists a sheet of peace and light Whoever approaches it can have nomore doubt of it Anyone who has not sought it has no right to judge itSaint Teresa expresses the same reality in very different terms Now no onehad taught her this nor had anyone prepared her for such an experienceThis agreement over the centuries and doctrines reassures me more thananything She writes in the book of the Mansions (seventh Mansionchapter 1) ldquoInterior things are seen that show in a sure way that there isbeneath a certain relationship an obvious difference between the soul andthe spirit although they are but a single thing rdquo18

Likewise again situating his own thought in relation to theldquonoosphererdquo of Teilhard de Chardin and in relation to theldquocollective unconsciousrdquo of Jung

The noosphere in the philosophy of Teilhard de Chardin appears to be likea mental view a conclusion This is because its very name evokes anintellectual activity the subtlest but whether exploratory or constructivedirected according to logical norms19 What I could call (but I will keepmyself from doing so) pneumatosphere let us say the spiritual ocean isthe object of experience By other paths to other ends it is the samereality I suppose that Jung attained and which he called the collectiveunconscious But these two terms restrict the origin and meaning of it 20

With Jung in fact we penetrate but we remain within whatis psychological The life of the spirit in the Spirit is whollydifferent A certain Calvinist dryness a phobia aboutmysticism and all ldquointeriorityrdquo conspire at times along withrationalism and contemporary positivism of all forms tobrush this life in the Spirit aside But in a quite natural waythe Lutheran Paul Tillich who was interested in ontology inthe history of religions in mysticism as well as in biblicalhistory brings the Pauline tripartition up to date again

There is no religious statement on man and his destiny without a judgmenton the relation between different elements that are combined and opposedin the life of man These elements have been variously described as beinghis body his soul and his spirit 21

The exegetes in contemporary Catholicism seem no moredisposed than most of the theologians to return the Paulineverse to a place of honor and draw its consequences It istoward the writers that we must turn to perceive an echo ofit in free expression Although this expression is truly webelieve faithful to the doctrine of the Pneuma and to itsauthentic development it is not certain that Saint Paulwould have recognized his thought at first glance ldquoI havegood news to announce to yourdquo says Paul Claudel in theldquoCantique de Palmyrerdquo ldquomdashit is another within the depths of

you who has the word I have good news to announce toyou You need only close your eyes to find your treasurein the night There are many souls but there is not oneof them with whom I am not in communion through thissacred point in us that says Pater nosterrdquo22 And GeorgesBernanos in his diary ldquoHis will is ours and when we revoltagainst it it is only at the price of an uprooting of our wholeinner being Our will has been united to his since thebeginning of the world What sweetness to think thateven while offending him we never cease completely todesire what he desires at the depths of the Sanctuary of thesoulrdquo23 A wonderful conjunction of Claudel and Bernanos

The reader will have noted in Claudelrsquos text the wordldquosoulrdquo An inversion of vocabulary is in fact produced Theldquospiritrdquo having become in the modern leveling dichotomythe immediate correlative of the body it is the ldquosoulrdquo thathas taken its place in those who have not taken part in thisleveling We are familiar again in Claudel with the parabolaof animus and anima The word ldquosoulrdquo in the same sensecompels recognition with greater strength in order to escapethe scientistic totalitarianism that reigns abusively in thename of the ldquohuman sciencesrdquo ldquoIn the measure in whichthey are scientificrdquo wrote Henri Gouhier in 1973 ldquothesciences of man can consider man only by selecting pointsof view under which it is possible to treat him objectively Itis obviously not a question for the philosopher to ignore thevarious forms of sociology psychology ethnologyneurology and so forth he must simply wonder if thesciences of man added up constitute a science of manrdquo24

And man simply as such man who cannot renounce the callhe hears in the depths of himself refuses to let himselfsuffocate He rehabilitates the word ldquosoulrdquo as the mostfitting to express what philosophers and men of science aretoo often skilled at eliminating through preterition orthrough negation The soul then becomes almost the

synonym for the pneuma of Saint Paul and Origen Thepassage from Henri Gouhier that we have just quotedfigures in a preface to LrsquoAvegravenement de lrsquoacircme by Aime[Andre] Forest a work he says that ldquofinds its timeliness inits apparent obsolescencerdquo The author of the work and thatof its preface both evoke on this subject the ldquothree livesrdquo ofMaine de Biran Andre Forest also recalls these words ofHenri Bergson ldquoBy calling a certain assurance of facileintelligibility an idea and a certain uneasiness of life thesoul an invincible current brings modern philosophy toelevate the soul above the ideardquo Modern philosophy as awhole has not followed the path on which Bergson thoughthe saw it engaged Gabriel Marcel however among otherswanted to preserve this word ldquosoulrdquo and to keep ldquothefullness of its meaningrdquo Charles du Bos in search of tracesof God in us asked ldquoWho will leave us a journal of thedilation of the soulrdquo What Andre Forest wants is to help usdiscover or to rediscover a certain ldquoinner unityrdquo a certainldquopure sourcerdquo and each of the chapters of his work tracesan avenue toward an encounter with this ldquoThe discovery ofthe soulrdquo he tells us ldquois the development of a spiritualphilosophy The soul is the advent of presence and graceraised above the world of nature and objectivityrdquo25

The same fundamental reaction the same sudden startor if you wish the same awakening five years later in amuch younger author whose nostalgia if this is what it iscannot be that for the past but that which springs from anew reflection this time against the oppression of a thoughtreduced to its politico-social components the final end ofscientistic intelligence In his essay on Job ou lrsquoexcegraves dumal Philippe Nemo insists on this same word ldquosoulrdquo in orderto recall man to himself and to his essential problem 26

Across the numerous changes in vocabulary thecomplications introduced by theoreticians eager foranalysis across too the unceasing variations in points of

view the tripartite anthropology whose expression is foundin Saint Paul has consistently furnished in the tradition ofthe Church a basis for spiritual doctrine and life

4 The Spirit

I The Place of Mysticism As we have already been able toperceive these various distinctions are far from always

being covered perfectly either from one author to another oreven as in the case of Augustine in the work of the same

author C R Doddaursquos remark on the subject of the ancientGreeks applies here ldquoOne must undoubtedly agree that the

average man of the fifth century (and this is true in allperiods) possessed a very complicated psychological

vocabularyrdquo1

The Pauline tripartition has nonetheless remained theconstant basis serving to support the spiritual doctrines ofthe Christian tradition

Commenting on Pseudo-Dionysius Saint Maximus theConfessor defined man by this threefold pair of epithetsldquoSupermundialis et spiritualismdashcircummundialis animalismdashmundialis carnalisrdquo2 The author of the celebratedPhilokalia Saint Nikodemos of the Holy Mountain (748-809)will explain that the ldquoJesus Prayerrdquo brings into operation thethree powers of the soul the intellect (nous) the discursivereason (logos) the will or spirit (theacutelē sis pneuma) in theaction of the soul alone by which uniting in itself the soulis made fit to be united to God3 But perhaps that is amatter rather of a ldquohorizontalrdquo trichotomy of threefunctions or three activities proper to the higher part of thespirit

With more than one spiritual writer of the Latin MiddleAges one should speak of four elements rather than ofthree in their analysis of manmdasheven without consideringother complications many subtle subdivisions an echo ofScholasticism dear to a certain number subdivisions

destined either to establish agreement between authors orto detail the stages of spiritual itineraries As for examplethis schema traced by Isaac of Stella in his Epistola deanima ldquoAnimae in mundo sui corporis peregrinanti quinquesunt ad sapientiam progressus sensusmdashimaginatiomdashratiomdashintellectusmdashintelligentiardquo4 Two different modes will benoted both inspired by Saint Augustine in the expression oftripartism for some it is corpus anima spiritus5 forothers corpus ratio mens Hence to accord these twomodes the quadripartite division corpusmdashanimamdashratioinferiormdashratio superior sive mens We know the groundgained in the Middle Ages by that Augustinian subdivision ofthe ratio inferior and the ratio superior6 What willcorrespond to this in Saint Thomas Aquinas will beparticularly the distinction between the ratio and theintellectus recently brought out by Pierre Rousselot7 Thiswould also be the place to mention the Franciscan doctrineof the two faces of the soul which is of Neoplatonic origincoming through the twofold channel of Augustine and theArabs8mdashbut that like moreover the Thomist distinction ofthe intellectus and the ratio is an essentially ldquoscientificrdquo(philosophical) theory having little relation to the spirituallife The explanation of the latter is founded rather on thedoctrine of the twofold ratio lower and higher whichcorresponds to action and contemplation But then a newsubdivision is introduced the ratio superior the place ofcontemplation assimilated to the intellectus becomes thehigher part or function of the mens and receives namessuch as acies mentis oculus cordis and so forth

Whatever might be the various complications and thevarieties in the names ldquoall the great Christian mystics are inagreement in considering the human soul as a complexreality presenting regions and stages All are also inagreement in admitting that among these various regionsthere is a privileged one that where God dwells in a

particular manner rdquo9 ldquoThere is a spiritual life when arelationship with God existsrdquo10 and there is a secret point inman that is the permanent place of that relationship of thatpossible encounter because it is already and always hasbeen the place of the divine presence that pneuma of Paulcommented on by Origen that ldquosacred point in us that saysPater nosterrdquo of the ldquoCantique de Palmyrerdquo11

So we see that the philosophers and theologians moreconcerned about rationality than mysticism tend to reduce(even in their historical studies) the trichotomy to adichotomymdashwhile on the contrary the spiritual masterstend to bring out the trichotomy They readily glorify thespiritus not only above the anima but above the ratiowhether theoretical or practical It is instructive to comparein this regard the Abeacutelardian writing Ysagoge in theologiamwith the commentary on the Song of Songs by William ofSaint Thierry For the first ldquoDuo haec nomina sc spiritus etanima non magnam habent in significationediscrepantiamrdquo12 The second on the contrary stronglyemphasizes the hierarchical distinction of three ordersldquoanimalrdquo ldquorationalrdquo and ldquospiritualrdquo13

To keep to the general schema that results from the textof Saint Paulmdasha schema that itself in fact includes manynuances and as we have seen many interpretationsmdashmorality will therefore be the act of the soul mysticism theact of the spirit ldquoThe bodyrdquo says Evagrius Ponticus ldquohasbread for nourishment the soul has virtue theunderstanding has spiritual prayerrdquo14 Morality whoseobject is virtue is the πϱᾶ ξις and the life of the spirit iscontemplation the θεωϱία The first is ordained to thesecond as the soul is ordained to the spirit ldquoStriverdquo saysCassian reporting the statements of Abbot Nesteros ldquotoacquire in the first place a complete possession of moraldiscipline (πϱαϰτιϰή) for without that you cannot obtaincontemplative purity (θεωϱητιϰή)rdquo15 For Gregory of Nyssa

virtue is ldquothe forecourt of the Templerdquo16 Origen had saidbefore them ldquoAccording to the doctrine of the very wiseSolomon he who wishes to acquire wisdom must begin bystudying moralityrdquo it is in fact ldquogood conductrdquo that preparesone to receive the visits of the Logos and when one issolidly exercised in it then one will be able ldquoto pass frommoral things to mystical understandingrdquo17 In his treatiseaddressed ldquoTo the Brethren at Mont Dieurdquo which remainsone of the fundamental texts of Christian spiritualityWilliam of Saint Thierry traces a similar route for those whowant to give themselves over to the perfect life and for thefinal stage his program is even one of a boldness that somecould misunderstand (it is true that it is addressed to aCarthusian monastery) ldquoIt is for othersrdquo he tells them ldquotoserve God it is for you to cling to him It is for others tobelieve in God to know that he exists to love him andrevere him it is for you to taste him to understand him toknow him to enjoy himrdquo18 The same doctrine is set forthas it had been earlier with Origen in parallel with thedoctrine of the threefold biblical sense by another writer ofthe twelfth century Godefroi drsquoAdmont

Sicut triplex est visio corporis spiritus et mentis ita triplex etiam sensusest in scripturis Sanctis litteralis spiritalis intellectualis Litteralem atquespiritalem sensus egregius ipse Doctor gentium tunc transcenderat etusque ad tertium coelum intellectualem scilicet sensum glorioseconscenderat quando toto cordis intellectu ita coelestibus est conjunctusquod utrum in corpore an extra corpus esset se nescire asseruit19

The same fundamental schema is found again in the greatrepresentatives of what one often calls with a term that canlend to confusion ldquointellectualist mysticismrdquo which is tosay with the Rheno-Flemish mystics of the fourteenth andfifteenth centuries The same schema although withdifferences in terminology and in a sometimes differentclimate of thought particularly in Meister Eckhart

Ruysbroek ldquoassigns to the spirit a threefold role First of alla vital role in which it animates the body then anintellectual role that is manifested by thought finally a roleof higher spiritual activity in which it becomes the principleof unification of the whole inner life and in which it is mixedwith the very essence of the soulrdquo20 Hence for example inthe Livre des sept clotures the definition of the seventhenclosure ldquowhich surpasses all the othersrdquo ldquosimplebeatitude beyond all holy life and practice of the virtuesrdquo21

Likewise in the Miroir du salut eacuteternel in which the higherdegree is only divided after ldquothe virtuous life which dies tosin and grows in virtuesrdquo comes the state where ldquoallownership of the will diesrdquo then the spirit is made fully freethrough its union to the Spirit of God even to the point ofthe ldquoliving liferdquo (levende leven) that blossoms which is allldquohidden in God and in the substance of our soulrdquo22

Ruysbroek takes up again here an expression long sincecurrent which he could have read in Saint Bernard (vividavita et vitalis)23 William of Saint Thierry (vita vivens)24 orThomas de Froidmont (vita vitalis)25

The same gradation is found in Tauler based on the sametraditional ldquoternary schemardquo Tauler distinguishes in manldquothree things one clings to nature in flesh and blood theother is the reason the third is an essence of the pure souland without mixturerdquo This is what he expresses again ldquointhe symbolism of the three men which correspond to thesensate life the intellectual life and the spiritual life in thesense of union with Godrdquo26 This ldquothird manrdquo this ldquoessenceof the pure soulrdquo is what Tauler often calls the gemuete aword that Father Etienne Hugueny translates as ldquodeep-seated willrdquo and Louis Cognet prefers to call ldquodeep instinctrdquoit is the ldquodepthsrdquo of being to which says Tauler the ldquodivinegroundrdquo alone corresponds abyssus abyssum invocat itimprints on our nature ldquoan eternal and deep-seatedtendency to return to its originrdquo a tendency that ldquopersists

even in the damned because it is linked to the very essenceof the soulrdquo27 Taulerrsquos preaching rests on this structure Theabnegation to which he invites his listeners is not only theliberation from sensible appetites it goes beyond simplemorality it is a profound attitude that ldquoflows from thegrowing experience of Godrdquo mystical passivity succeedingthe activity of the virtuous life ldquoinner recollectionrdquo abovethe exercise of the virtues and reason as well as that of thesenses28 ldquoIt is necessary that after having overcome thesenses the reason be freed from itself renounce itself soas to be transformed into pure and simple spiritrdquo29 Then theKingdom of God is established And Tauler repeats so as tomake himself well understood ldquoThis Kingdom is establishedin its own manner in the innermost part of the spirit assoon as man through all his exercise has absorbed theexterior man in the inner and reasonable man and as soonas the man of sense and of reasonable power are entirelyabsorbed into the more interior man in the hidden groundof the spirit where the true image of God dwells and assoon as he flees into this divine ground into which manfrom all eternity is found in his uncreated staterdquo30

The relationship of Tauler to Eckhart is obvious In one asin the other the distinction of the soul and the spirit (of thepsyche and the πνεῦμα) colored by Platonic exemplarism isaffirmed everywhere Eckhart enunciates it with reference toSaint Augustine ldquoAccording to Augustinerdquo he says ldquoourintellectual element divides itself into two parts through theone we are oriented intellectually toward an intellectualgrasp of knowledge that our cognitive faculty receives fromoutside the other to use the very words of Augustinemanifests itself at the deepest center of our spirit (lsquoabditummentisrsquo)rdquo31 It is this center that particularly interested thatfascinated Eckhart this place ldquowhere no image enters orleaves but where there is only God himselfrdquo ldquoThe soulrdquo healso said ldquohas two eyes the inner one and the other outer

one the inner eye of the soul is that by which itcontemplates being and receives it directly from Godrdquo32

What differentiates him from Origen and Augustine Bernardand William of Saint Thierry is the ldquouncreatedrdquo characterthat he attributes to this ldquoinner eyerdquo or to this ldquoabditummentisrdquo The disquieting feature of his mysticism consists inthis a feature that will be less emphasized in Tauler andeven in Henry Suso although the latter speaks also of theground of the spirit as ldquoeternalrdquo33

Follower and compiler Harphius (Henry Herp) willsymbolize the ldquothree kinds of liferdquo emanating from the threeparts of man in the three biblical figures of Leah Rachel andMary Magdalen34 and he works at length to describe themens or the apex mentis the spiritus or the interior sinusmentis which is to say still that pneuma by which the zoneof rational and moral activity is transcended

Dicitur etiam [anima] quandoque mens quae sc ipsis viribus interior est etsupereminet quia vires in mente sicut in origine sua sunt counitae ex quasc effl uunt ut radii ex solari rota et in quam refluunt Et est illud centrumin anima in quo vera Trinitatis imago relucet et tarn nobile quod nullumibi nomen proprie convenit licet in multis nominibus circumlocutivemanifestatur Haec est igitur mens vel apex mentis aut centrum ipsiusanimae ut feliciter renovetur ipsae vires quae dicuntur spiritus adinteriorem sinum mentis sunt reflectendae et mens ipsa ad intimum suumregerenda sc in Deum ibidem suaviter recubantem 35

Warning us that this higher part of man cannot beappropriately designated by any name and multiplying theformulas himself by which one must indeed try even tospeak of it Harphius invites us not to stress whatever theinterest of the other part might be the variations invocabulary from one author to another or from one period toanother which could hide from us the continuity of atradition that in essentials is very firm

Saint Catherine of Genoa offers us a similar schema veryclassically she distinguishes body soul and spirit the latterbeing designated in itself by the word mente and when it is

animated by infused love by the word spirito in this lattercase the spirito is finally identified with infused Love whichis God Since the Saint is less concerned to give us atheoretical course in anthropology even spiritual than todescribe the spiritual life itself we can understand that fromher pen mente is rare and spirito frequent36 On the otherhand following the example of many other mystics sheloves to detail the stages of ascent ldquoWhen Godrdquo she saysldquoaddresses his first call to us he gives us at first the instinctfor virtues later he urges us to perfection then throughinfused grace he leads us to the annihilation of ourselvesfinally to true transformationrdquo37 Saint Teresa and Saint Johnof the Cross likewise know that there exists a life higherthan the exercise of the virtues when they celebrateldquofreedom of spiritrdquo38 ldquoholy freedom of spiritrdquo39 and SaintTeresa observes in her Interior Castle that ldquocertain interioreffects give certitude that there is in us in certain relationsa very real difference between the soul and the spiritrdquo40 Wealso quote as an example Fenelon who in commenting onCassian finds himself at the same time summing up thewhole mystical tradition ldquoAlthough we judge the othervirtues to be necessary and useful we believe however weshould place them only at the second degree because oneseeks them all only in view of this one thing of which JesusChrist says lsquoMartha Martha you trouble yourself aboutmany things there is only one thing necessaryrsquo He placedthe sovereign good not in work although laudable andabundant in fruit but in contemplation that is truly simpleand one He declares that little is necessary for this perfectbeatitude that contemplation isrdquo41 And a little farther on inthe same writing ldquoThere is thus a state where thisappropriation of virtues is no longer opportunerdquo42

The great Protestant spiritual master Gerhard Tersteegen(1697-1769) professes the same doctrine ldquoThere mustnecessarily be in us a capacity to recognize God and

spiritual things in an essential and present way And thatexists in the pure Reason [Vernunft] which has been givenus closed and unused until God gives us the understandingby which we know the very Truth so intimately andessentially that we are ourselves drawn into the trueGodrdquo43

If a certain number of authors in the course of this longtradition that we have just examined seem also todistinguish as it were two elements above the psychewhile Saint Paul saw only the pneuma above it this isusually as we could ascertain from some of the examplescited because they mean by psyche only the animal soulanimater of the body and seat of sensation or ratherbecause they want to assure a seat for ldquoobjectiverdquoknowledge and profane culture For Paul on the contraryand more explicitly for Origen the soul is the very seat ofthe personality the reasoning and self-willed being whichjudges and freely determines itself It is the place ofdecision According to the orientation taken by the soul thehuman being will become ldquocarnalrdquo or ldquospiritualrdquo(pneumatikos) As opposed as he might be to free willLuther himself saw very clearly that the Pauline psyche of 1Thessalonians 5 was much more than the principle ldquothatanimates the body and acts through itrdquo In an article in theRevue thomiste (1971) Father P R Reacutegamey OP isperfectly in keeping with the traditional line when hedistinguishes (497) these three degrees psychosomaticcomplexmdashrational function of abstraction and discoursemdashprimacy of spirit in its greatest purity And what in thetheoretical order is the ldquorational functionrdquo corresponds inthe practical order to what we could call in a ratherrestrictive sense the ldquomoral functionrdquo Saint Paul alsoinvites us not to confuse this moral function with theproperly spiritual life which raises man above himself whenhe places above the exercise of active benevolence and of

all virtue this reality of another order a gift of God which isCharity (1 Cor 133) Dietrich Bonhoeffer was also faithful tothe tradition that originated in the Apostle when heexhorted the Christians over whom he had responsibility notto confuse in their assemblies ldquospiritual community withmystical overheatingrdquo (cf A Dumas 64) ldquoThe great themeof community life is the revival of the very Paulinedistinction between the natural eager equivocal nostalgicdesiring in a word idealistic and the spiritual respectfulenlightened serving knowing in a word realistrdquo (ibid145) ldquoThe onerdquo Bonhoeffer also says ldquowho does not letChrist be a path toward the other falls into naturalchattering which kills the spiritual word Prayer is thesalutary limit to desires of immediate effusiveness Community life is communion through spiritual mediationand non-confusion in the natural immediacyrdquo (146-47)

II Morality Integrated into Mysticism In Christianity itself itis characteristic of the Catholic Church to assure theequilibrium between the three components (religion

morality and mysticism) an equilibrium necessary to theintegrity of the human being Faithful in everything to her

spirit of synthesis she maintains all three in solidaritywithout ever letting any one of the three be lacking or

eclipse the others or be devalued in the humblest forms ofspiritual life any more than in the highest To take a verysimple example when Fenelon exclaims in his Traiteacute de

lrsquoexistence et des attributs de Dieu ldquoMy length of life is buta perpetual extinctionrdquo1 these words to be well

understood must be taken at once morally religiously andmystically

The various Protestant confessions place more emphasison contrasts and clashes as has often been remarked J AMoehler wrote in the last century in his Symbolique withrespect to morality and religion ldquoIn the eyes of Catholics

religiosity and morality if we may be permitted to use thesetwo terms are united by their essence and are both eternalAccording to the Protestants on the other hand there is norelationship between these two things for one is of aneternal price and the other is of only passing value Lutherinsists in many places on this difference rdquo2 There wouldbe many nuances besides to note here but in this essay ontypology we must keep to the most general characteristics3In Calvinism mysticism is the object of mistrust or evenreprobation4 We also know the abyss in Luther thatseparates ethics and faith As a result of this there is atendency with Lutheran mysticsmdashto say nothing of Lutherhimself and of Lutheranism in generalmdashto depreciate allmoral activity as constituting on manrsquos part an affirmationof self that far from bringing him closer to God distanceshim and to recognize a value in religious life only in anabandonment close to quietism5 a depreciation of moralitythat goes hand in hand with that of reason and that offreedommdashwe recently read from a Protestant pen an articleon morality considered solely as ldquocultural realityrdquo Such anattitude to take it simply as such could also facilitateinvaluable analyses in many regards such as the analysis ofthe ldquolevels of liferdquo in Kierkegaard or that of the ldquosacredrdquo inRudolf Otto But these analyses do not always stop at posingformal distinctions Thus in order to bring out more clearlythe specificity of the category of the sacred or of thereligious Otto cuts the latter off from morality he is notcontent with showing that on the level of history orpsychology these two orders are often separated in fact heis well on his way to a separation by right6 As arepercussion when morality reclaims its place in otherauthors of Protestant inspiration it sometimes absorbsreligion and dries up mysticism by incarcerating all spirituallife ldquowithin the limits of reasonrdquo

In reality howevermdashthat is to say by right in the natureof thingsmdashon the one hand ldquothe sacred is not reabsorbedinto moral value the religious transcends the ethicalrdquo buton the other hand it does not merely accommodatemorality and mysticism it remolds them so to speak byinstalling them in its heart Religion morality and mysticismldquoappear in a reciprocal envelopmentrdquo there exists betweenthe three both an attraction and a tension which will be thesource of many vital problems but there is objectivelyneither separation nor exclusion nor conflict for ldquothe Deitywhile transcending being truth and the good contains themformallyrdquo7 This is why in particular in Catholicism just asthe reasonable life and life according to the spirit penetrateeach other8 morality impregnates the mystical life to theend ldquoThrough it the good rewarded and the bad punishedthese pillars of the revelation of the Demiurge degraded byGnosticism to a lower level than exoteric faith regain theirplace at the heart of the revelation of the Father through theonly Sonrdquo9 Hence Saint Justin in his Dialogue ldquoIt is notbecause of his affinity with God or because he is spirit likehim that man sees God it is because he is virtuous andjustrdquo10 And Father Jean Rigoleuc on spiritual persons ldquoAlltheir reason and the lights they receive by it are given tothem only so that they might be perfected in thesevirtuesrdquo11 ldquoThe mystical ascentrdquo does not efface ldquofromcommon Christian life any specific traitrdquo12 The Christianvirtues are not merely means of freeing oneself from theworld in their substance they are the end itself thepromised beatitude is not made of different material This iswhat Saint Ambrose expresses admirably in a brief sentencefrom his commentary on Saint Luke with respect to thebeatitudes ldquoSicut enim speri nostrae octava perfectio estita octava summa virtutum estrdquo13

Pierre Nemeshegyi poses the same problem with respectto Origen ldquoTo place Being and moral Goodness in equation

to place this moral Goodness in God formally and ascharacterizing the final ground of his Beingmdashis this not to becondemned to enclosing all spiritual life in an anti-mysticalmoralism The Good is a transcendental But is it formallywhat we understand by lsquomoral Goodrsquo Or is there not adeepening of this moral Goodness which would reestablishthe possibility of an innermost mystical depthrdquo14 Againwith respect to Origen W Voumllker remarks ldquoWe observe a hesitation very characteristic of Origenrsquos turn of spirit and which one finds again in a nearly identical way in Philoside by side and sometimes even the mutual penetrationof moralism and mysticismrdquo15 And Nemeshegyi concludesldquo lsquoMoralismrsquo and lsquomysticismrsquo are in fact one and the samething in Origenrsquos conceptionrdquo16 Origen himself specifies inhis argument against Celsus ldquoGod is not merely lsquothe Goodrsquoas all the Platonists say he is lsquothe Righteousrsquordquo17 SaintGregory the Great also reminds us with his usual goodsense always linked with spiritual fervor

Solent quidam scripta sacri eloquii legentes cum sublimiores sententiasejus penetrant minora mandata quae infirmioribus data sunt tumentisensu despicere et ea velle in alium intellectum permutare Qui si recte ineo alta intelligerent mandata quoque minima despectui non haberent quidivina praecepta sic in quibusdam loquuntur magnis ut tamen inquibusdam congruant parvulis qui per incrementa intelligentiae quasiquibusdam passibus mentis crescant atque ad majora intelligendaperveniant18

Saint Augustine had said the same in a very Origenianshortcut in speaking of eternal life ldquoUna ibi virtus erit etidipsum erit virtus praemiumque virtutisrdquo19 Picking upagain Saint Ambrosersquos turn of phrase Alexander Neckhamcosmologist of the twelfth century explains that the octaveof the beatitude brings the perfection of its consonance tothe septenary of the virtues as in our material universe theeighth sphere including the whole universe brings itsconclusion to the harmony of the heavens20 Let us say in

the categories of medieval exegesis that anagogy achievesperfection both of allegory and of tropology Thus oneshould say of all Catholic mysticism what one historian saysof Saint Bernard through allusion to the traditionalinterpretation of the ldquoBooks of Solomonrdquo and of theirprogressive sequence for each of them as for him ldquothemoral school of Ecclesiasticus and Proverbs a necessarypreliminary for the mystical school of the Song of Songs is aschool whose doors are never closed behind usrdquo21 Andreciprocally in fulfilling the precept of the Lord one meritsnot only the eternal dwelling one does not merely preparefor it one is already building Saint Hildegarde tells us thetower of the heavenly Jerusalem22

It would be good to return to the celebrated GoldenEpistle in which William of Saint Thierry the friend of SaintBernard condenses for the brothers of the Carthusianmonastery of Mont Dieu the essence of Christiananthropology and spirituality such as the most commonCatholic tradition understands them William puts first ofall the sublime ideal of the contemplative in abrupt termsand with an appearance of separation of completetranscendence from one degree to another which could besurprising

You have not only pledged complete holiness but the perfection of allholiness and the height of all perfection It is not your business to languishin the practice of ordinary precepts or to devote yourself only to thatwhich God commands but to aim at what he wishes in the search for hisgood agreeable and perfect will It is for others to serve God it is for youto cling to him Faith in God knowledge love and reverence are for othersFor you taste understanding knowledge enjoyment A high vocation anarduous task 23

Farther on William takes up again the distinction of thethree states or three degrees which is reminiscent of thefree fashion of the Pauline trichotomy

The state of beginners can be called ldquoanimalrdquo that of progressersldquorationalrdquo that of the perfect ldquospiritualrdquo The first state attends to thebody the second is busy with the reasoning soul the third finds its restonly in God 24

These kinds of schemas are several times accompanied byappeals to humility which should form the common andunalterable basis for all disciples of Christ at whateverdegree they find themselves in their spiritual ascent25

Several points of resemblance to Saint Paul are still to benoted the distinction between anima and animus whichcorresponds closely to that between the psyche and thepneuma26 the reference to the discourse at Athens27 (Acts1727-28) the definition of the spiritual man as the onewhose spirit is informed by the Spirit of love28 theindication of the end as being ldquothe unity of spiritrdquo with God

There is also another resemblance to God so particular that it is nolonger given the name of resemblance but that of unity of spirit It is whenman becomes a single thing a single spirit with God not only through theunity of a single will but also through some truer expression of a virtue thatis no longer capable of willing anything else Once conformed to wisdom the reason [= reasoning soul] puts[everything] to profit and hastens to spring toward freedom of spirittoward unity so well that the faithful man becomes as has often beenstated one single spirit with God29

Freedom of spirit unity with God we know the abuses thatsuch formulas have frequently covered throughout twentycenturies of history30 We know too how the fear of theseabuses have made a number of timorous souls avoid themhow still more the bourgeois individualist incomprehensionof the last century banished them and how they seemedsuspect to many who thought they were judging in thename of pure Catholic orthodoxy31 Within the context ofthat spiritual masterpiece the Letter to the Brothers of MontDieu these expressions can be accepted in all their powerin the same sense that they have in Scripture And thekeeping of a moral life integrated into a mystical life is also

explicitly recognized here besides the word ldquovirtuerdquo whichfigures in the same text we have just quoted on ldquothe unityof spiritrdquo with God other texts recall it with insistence Theyspeak ldquoin praise of virtue the daughter of reason but evenmore of gracerdquo32 they show it not surpassed by butassumed into spiritual perfection the latter is achievedldquowhen the soul encompasses all the virtues in itself not aselements borrowed from somewhere else but as quasi-natural products of its being according to that resemblanceto God by which it is the whole of what isrdquo Mystical unitywith God is wholly impregnated with morality because it isthe perfect adherence to Him who is not only the Righteousbut in the most concrete and singular sense the Good33

This Catholic equilibrium was undoubtedly alreadyjeopardized in a great spiritual master who is not at all to beconfused with the false spirituals to whom we have alludedEvagrius was considered a disciple of Origen but in this anunfaithful disciple Despite the appearances of severalexpressions the same criticism could not be made of aTauler or a Ruysbroek they condemn without equivocationthe mystical claims that think to hold themselves abovemorality and reason beyond affirmations of the faith Thecase of Meister Eckhart is perhaps more disputable but it isright to dissociate the profound intention of this greatthinker and this great mystic from some paradoxicalexpressions held to be condemnable by the bull In agro LaPerle eacutevangeacutelique following Eckhart and several othersseems to place ldquothe spiritrdquo in contact with the divine Unityldquoabove the multiplicity of the Personsrdquo34 a grave problemwhich we will not take up here but which for a Christiangoverns the judgment to be passed on mysticism in itsrelation to the primary mystery of his faith35 To stay withthe relation between mysticism and morality let us say thatone is happy to find a fine example of equilibrium in anauthor carried in other respects to many unilateral

excesses This refers to George Tyrrell who wrote in a finepassage from Christianity at the Cross-roads

[The apocalyptic Kingdom of heaven] is the fruit and reward of the morallife but is a supermoral lifemdashthe continuation of that divine and spirituallife which under present contingencies manifests itself principally bymorality and above all in religion and conscious union with God But[in the Kingdom] the contingencies that now call for the moral strugglewith all its pain and suffering shall be done away36

We will end by quoting a more authoritative witness thegreat Saint Teresa who unites the soul and spirit of whichSaint Paul spoke as much as she distinguishes them withhim by observing that ldquothe center of the soulrdquo or the ldquospiritof the soulrdquo is a difficult thing to express and even tobelieve

Certain interior effects give the certitude that there is under certainrelations a very real difference between the soul and the spirit Although inreality they are but one we sometimes perceive a division between themthat is so delicate that it seems that the one functions in one way and theother in another There are so many things in our innermost depthsand things so subtle that it would be boldness on my part to undertake toexplain them We will understand all that in the other life if God deignsto admit us to the dwelling where we will have understanding of all thesesecrets37

III Conclusions Optimi corruption pessima One should notat all conclude from this as some authors particularly in

Protestantism have done that mysticism should becondemned1 Nevertheless even without considering the

case of the aberrations we have just seen certainprecautions should be taken in order not to jeopardize the

spiritual equilibrium Just as it is necessary to reject ananthropology that refusing man any higher faculty stifles

the spirit in himmdashwhich is what all positivisms allrationalisms and all psychologisms domdashso it is necessary toguard against reducing theoretical or practical reason in itby failing to recognize its transcendence in relation to the

sensible order and its participation in the absolute ldquoThemindrdquo writes Hans Urs von Balthasar2 ldquodestroys itself andcrumbles if it splits into an inferior and a superior mind an

autonomously functioning reason (Verstand) and a ratio(Vernunft) that is reserved for special philosophical and

religious purposesrdquo Then the risk of a short-circuit appearsfrom ldquoinfantile naturalismrdquo to high spirituality from

alienating exteriority to ldquodivinerdquo magnetization from theldquocaves of the unconsciousrdquo to the ldquobirthrdquo from above from

the ldquopossessive Irdquo that is ldquoradical servituderdquo toldquodisinterestedrdquo love

Charles du Bos was not lacking in clearsightedness theday he noted in his Journal ldquothe necessity from an ethicalpoint of view of guarding oneself against mysticismrdquo3 In thesame sense he wrote one day to Father Auguste Valensin

Since the end of July 1927 God in his goodness has recalled me toHimself I have happened to suffer in the face of a certain unformulatedmdashand at times even formulatedmdashdisdain that believers who are advancedmoreover in spiritual ways and even mystics witness or at least seem towitness toward the moral order as such If one admits (and I admit it verystrongly) that ethics are only the narthex of religious truth neverthelessthere exist natures (to the number of which I belong) who venerate thenarthex all the more as it helps to introduce them into the sanctuary andthe more their religious life deepens the more faithful their gratitudebecomes 4

Du Bos had noted in his Journal on January 11 1925 ldquothenecessity of guarding against mysticismrdquo and on January18 1929 analyzing himself

Basically it is always a question with me of an offensive directed by themoral against the religious because as my Journal often notes the moralbeing is primary with me in the period when the plane of temperament istranscended the form that temptation then takes is a moral form summedup in the question of my right to religious life Yes that is indeed it and myeffort now must be not only to adhere to God but to consider that fromthe instant I do what I must on the plane of living I adhere to him de facto 5

Du Bosrsquo reflection as we see was not unilateral althoughhe emphasizes the moral which he judges to bedangerously disregarded (what would he not say thirty orforty years later) In return Emmanuel Mounier was no lessright to bring out the complementary truth in recalling thatldquomorality has no other end but the spirituality of which itkeeps houserdquo when one isolates it and clings to it heexplains one kills it it is replaced by moralism6 the enemyof mysticism as well as of religion History in fact shows thatthe abandonment of mysticism in the name of any formwhatever of moralism has never been at best anything buta stage in spiritual development in view of a less confusedmysticism ldquoAs it is nearly inevitable in philosophy to passthrough a phase of idealism so it is inevitable to passthrough a phase of intellectualism in morality inevitableand goodrdquo But on condition that one does not cling to it Adeeper understanding knows that it is not knowledge thatsaves man from sin and it will always ask ldquoWho forexample is the one more free of appearancesmdasha Spinozawho in observing actions or sentiments that the commonmen call sin explains them through a defect in knowledgemdashor a Surin who proclaims that to the degree that one doesnot see sins even in onersquos inadvertencies and firstmovements to that degree one will not weep over onersquosvanities as sacrileges one will lsquonever get to the rootrsquordquo7

Both have cut through appearances (not always the sameones) both in their order are right But basically howmuch more is this true of Surin And if the intellectualcriticism worked by a Spinozist is not coupled with aspiritual deepening how his clearsightedness ends inblaming it The world Bergson said very justly has much tolearn from the great mystics8

Likewise one is right not to consent to letting theunderstanding be classed among the provisional values tobe reduced to the rank of ldquonaturalismrdquo that is close to

animality Perhaps the word ldquosoulrdquo so far from beingunivocal9 used in the tripartite division of man is notwithout some danger in this regard But this is not asufficient motive for rejecting the very idea of this tripartitedivision such as some as we have seen above were led todo Even Sandaeus himself an apologist and theoretician ofmysticism while noting that a number of mystics judgerecourse to this division indispensable declared that therecould be room to debate this10 Sandaeus was therebyechoing a fear or a mistrust frequently shown in the mostbrutal fashion by Schoolmen in the face of all mysticalthought we know how sharp the dispute was even withinthe Catholic Church throughout the seventeenth century11

Since then through their efforts to minimize the text ofSaint Paul on which the distinction is based others witness adiscomfort if not a similar hostility The mystical tradition ofthe great Church however offers them desirableassurances thus with Tauler transforming the way oneviews the classical terms of the division He is thereby goingparallel to the doctrinal tradition such as it is expressed in aSaint Augustine for example or a Saint Thomas The ratherpusillanimous minds to which we are alluding do not giveenough consideration to the fact that in wanting to save theabsolute of morality and reason they risk failing torecognize the gifts of the Spirit and lowering the mysticallife Stifled unrecognized in its authentic forms the latterin despair is then in danger of developing on the margins ofall rational and moral norms A certain intellectualismmdashverypoorly namedmdashis a worthy counterpart of moralism and aspernicious

To return to this latter we can think that the general usein the ecclesiastical vocabulary of the modern ChristianWest of the term ldquodirector of consciencerdquo to the detrimentof the traditional terms ldquospiritual fatherrdquo or spiritusmoderator12 is the sign of an inflation of pure morality

tending to casuistry or lends itself to falling intopsychologism (while waiting for psychiatry) to thedetriment of the attention paid to things of the spirit whichis to say to the relation to God ldquoHave we not seen peoplerdquowrote Reneacute Gueacutenon ldquowho when it is a question of lsquospiritualmasterrsquo go so far as to translate it lsquodirector ofconsciencersquordquo13 It is possible to agree with his remarkwithout sharing the least part of his own notion of ldquospiritualmasterrdquo or more precisely his doctrine of the spirit Stillanother sign of the small esteem given to things of thespirit and first of all of an inadequate understanding ofthem is manifested in the designation ldquointellectualismrdquowhich is too easily attributed today to the whole doctrine ofcontemplation There is of course a philosophicalcontemplation There is a Greek intellectualism that isexpressed in an ideal of contemplation We discern sometraces of it in the history of Christian thought and life butthese are only tracesmdashand all are not moreoverblameworthy14 As it has done for many other conceptsChristianity has modified this at the same time as it took onits permanent values it profoundly transformed it How is itthat even Christian historians have perceived so little ofthis One can indeed if one wishes reject the word inseeking another that lends less to equivocation but itshould not be necessary at the same time to reject thedoctrine that the Christian centuries had included within itit should not be necessary to depreciate what is the verybasis of the best spiritual tradition at the heart ofChristianity This would be at the same stroke to depreciatethe order of the theological virtues in direct contradiction toScripture itself The supremely active Father Teilhard deChardin did not fall into such contempt he forcefullymaintained the primacy of contemplation in which he couldrecognize the superior form of action that which an activistwill never achieve15 The transformations and progress

achieved in the course of history the entrance into an agedominated by the technical the development of the ldquohumansciencesrdquo that tend to assimilate man to the object of thesciences of nature will change nothing not only the highmystical life but already the whole spiritual life while takingthe greatest consideration of morality and including morality(as well as of rational activity) comprises along with variednuances according to the case something beyond moralitytaken in the human sense of the word something beyond allthat we commonly call action because it always comprisessomething beyond man

That is what signifies the great traditional theme ofMartha and Mary based on the Gospel It will always remaintrue ldquoIn his duabus mulieribus duas istas esse figurataspraesentem et futuram latoriosam et quietam temporalemet aeternamrdquo16 And of these two realities the second isalready present as an active anticipation at the heart ofthe man en route toward his divine destiny

Finally the maintenance of the distinction between thezone of the natural [psychisme] and that of the spiritual is ofa major importance for maintaining in their just place withinthe limits of their competence all the kinds of psychology Itopposes ldquothe dissolving psychoanalytical confusion ofnatural and spiritualrdquo17 If stopping onersquos aim at theldquorationalrdquo and the ldquomoralrdquo was often the great temptationand if this temptation remains what is to be even moregreatly feared today is stopping at the ldquonatural[psychique]rdquo One of Teilhardrsquos weaknesses which wasbenign to tell the truth because he thought above all todissipate the illusion of a materialistic monism was acertain confusion of vocabulary between spiritual andnatural in the Pheacutenomegravene humain (which does not claim tobe a treatise on spirituality) he happens to speak at will ofldquospiritual energyrdquo or of ldquonatural energyrdquo mdashBut ldquothe spiritintervening psychology is powerless It sees everything

from outside although the spirit is lived only from withinrdquo itsees uniquely ldquothat part of the natural life that the spirit hasnot touched and which consequently unfolds in theunconsciousrdquo18

Without doubt it is only through our participation in themystery of the trinitarian Life that we are to become fullycapable of going beyond this psychological vision that canindeed scrutinize certain ldquodepthsrdquo but to which this otherdepth is not accessible this depth which is humantranscendence this otherwise mysterious zone where theimpulse toward God is situated the encounter with God

There is in us a certain root that plunges into the depths of the Trinity Weare these complex beings who exist on successive levels on an animal andbiological level on an intellectual and human level and on an ultimate levelin those very abysses that are those of the life of God and those of theTrinity This is why we have the right to say that Christianity is an integralhumanism which is to say which develops man on all the levels of hisexperience We must always be in defiance of all the attempts to reducethe space in which our existence moves We breathe fully in the measureto which we do not let ourselves be enclosed in the prison of the rationaland psychological world but to which a part of us emerges into these greatspaces that are those of the Trinity And this is what creates theincomparable joy of existence in Christianity19

Pertinent remarks of great importance in ecclesiology aswell as in the liturgy more timely today than ever Thedistinctions recalled by Dietrich Bonhoeffer and by Father PR Reacutegamey based like those of so many others on thePauline anthropology of the First Letter to the Thessaloniansare at once for every member of the Church an appeal tothe highest spiritual life and a warning against itscounterfeits

EPILOGUETO PART ONE

The Light of Christ ldquoIf you believerdquo we are told ldquoin thedivinity of the Christian religion it is because you are

ignorant about all the conditions that marked its beginningand growth The comparative history of religions has madeenough progress so that henceforth it is no longer possibleto speak of a lsquoChristian miraclersquo coming to break the thread

of human religious acts There is nothing in it that is notexplained in the way everything is explained Of course

some points still remain obscure certain influences remainunperceived The task of historians has not yet been

accomplished One can also recognize that several of themhave been a little too quick in thinking to detect here orthere analogies or relationships and their intemperance

was capable of provoking a prudent reaction in somescholars anxious for a more rigorous method But the

general orientation of science is nonetheless certain and itsresult is nonetheless assured Every day leads to a new

light uncovering some new connection and here and nowwe see clearly enough to be able to affirm that Christianityis a human phenomenon very human deeply rooted in the

earth of history where it has drawn all the essence fromwhich its marvelous vigor is nourishedrdquo

An objection that insinuates itself under a thousand formswith respect to a thousand problems A stronger objectionin many eyes than all those of dialectics because withoutfighting it claims to explain Believers are upset by it Menof good will whom Christianity attracts and who alreadybelieve they see Godrsquos work in it find themselves stoppedin their tracks by it they fear to commit themselves

thoroughly to what is perhaps only the work of man If itwere a question only of a milieu providentially prepared tofavor the birth and rise of the religion of ChristmdashJewishMessianism Stoic universalism the organization of theDiaspora the Roman peace mdashthis ensemble of fortuitousconditions could indeed account for its concrete possibilitybut it would definitely not for all that cancel out the miracleof its existence A favorable atmosphere has never sufficedto explain the fact of a birth One would have to becompletely incapable of perceiving religious values to betempted to explain the apparition and success ofChristianity solely by a series of external circumstances asimportant and as favorable as one supposes them to beBetter known the information that history brings in thisorder can therefore only add to the admiration that alreadyseized the Fathers such as Saint Leo exclaiming before hisRoman listeners ldquoNumerous States have been united into asingle Empire so that the ways necessary for the preachingof the Gospel might be readyrdquo1 Admiration that was alsoPascalrsquos ldquoHow beautiful it is to see through the eyes of faithDarius and Cyrus Alexander the Romans Pompey Herodact without knowing it for the triumph of the Gospelrdquo andwho a short time earlier had had this sung to Peacuteguy ldquoThesteps of the legions had marched for Him rdquo2

But history seems to show us much more today Muchmore even than a subjective preparation of soulssuffocating in paganism thirsty for salvation One by oneall the elements of which Christianity is made theconceptions it presupposes the notions it sets in motion itsworship practices the forms of its institutions theprescriptions of its morality all are identified classifiedranked in their place along continuous series Not a dogmanot a feature of discipline or of liturgy that does not have itshistorymdasha history that always includes a first pre-Christianperiod All that had been amalgamated in it is returned to its

origin and soon it seems that nothing of its own remainsHow dare we still in the face of these facts a great numberof which at least are solidly established speak of a religiongiven from heaven of divine revelation How consequentlydare we speak of ldquotranscendencerdquo of supernaturalabsolute definitive truth Everything that is born and growsaccording to the common law is transformed and alsoperishes according to the common law As imposing as itseems Christianity will not escape it Even more perhapsthan the defeats to which it has submitted in the course ofthese recent centuries the history of its origins warns us ofits inevitable decline It is no longer for us the uniqueexception the extraordinary thing that it seemed to be forso long a time It can no longer be loyally preserved fromuniversal evolution Whether the brilliant flash projected byreligion ever since humanity existed is a false flash or anauthentic light is of little importance here in the case ofChristianity one thought to see a unique star appearabruptly in the heaven of religions and miraculously hangthere but a more experienced look discerns that it too wasonly for a moment welded to the others passing like theothers in this long luminous trail

Yet the illusion if such it be has existed It still persists withmany who are not at all ignorant people This too is a factthat must be taken into consideration One should not replywithout further examination that the same is true for allreligion Contrary to almost all the others without exceptingeven Judaism Christianity appeared in the middle of ahistoric period Its legend if there is a legend iscontemporaneous with its existence What a differencethere is in this regard for example with its great rivalBuddhism3 Why then contrary to so many humanphenomena is it presented in so tenacious a way as beingabsolutely exceptional Is ignorance about its true originsenough to explain this illusion in its regard or might it not

be rather the very true perception of its transcendencethat veiled by its brilliant flash certain features of its humanhistory The hypothesis at least deserves consideration It isnot without analogies Many men think themselves free inactions where without doubt they are not at all or with afreedom that is not at all real Is this illusion completelyexplained by a myopia that prevents them from perceivingthe bonds of determinism or does it too not come from anobscure but truthful perception Rather than a total illusionis it not a simple error of localization An error attesting toan awkwardness in analysis a scientific inferiority butwithout any damage to the essential truth

Now it happens too that one badly localizes thetranscendence that one recognizes in Christianity setting itup in positions from which the experienced historian willhave no trouble dislodging it This is why in a more or lessexplicit way one conceives of it then above all as a solutionof continuity To suppose such a transcendence possible atranscendence whose true name would be ldquoexteriorityrdquo isnot the act of Christianity What would remain for exampleof the thought of Saint Paulmdashwho nevertheless sodominated the thoughts of his centurymdashif one cut it fromthe thousand roots that in fact attached it to the earth ofTarsus and Jerusalem How can a single one of its essentialpoints be analyzed without constant reference not only tothe history of the Hebrew people but also to Greekcivilization to Eastern mysticism to the Roman EmpireThis would be an imaginary transcendence pure chimeralinked to a no less chimerical ideal of revelation The realitythat it would effect if this were possible would not besuperhuman but inhuman Far from being sublimated by itit would only be impoverished dried up

It would find the path neither of our spirit nor of our heartArtificial superficial and not at all supernatural Such asthose devout people of whom Peacuteguy speaks who becausethey do not have the strength to be of nature imagine that

they are of grace in reality dried fruits But there is anothertranscendence a true transcendence of which the first wasonly at best the naiumlve transcription An intrinsictranscendence in virtue of which a given reality consideredas synthesis in what comprises its own being surpassesessentially the realities of the same kind that surround itwhatever might be the community of elements that itinforms along with theirs whatever might be too the tiesof origin that render these different elements solidary Anytrue synthesis is always more than synthesis A certainrecasting that is much more than a new combination acertain ldquorevival from withinrdquo transforms everything It is in aphenomenal continuity the passage to a new higherincomparable order4

Now for anyone who can seemdashbut which of us can natterhimself that he always can once and for allmdashthe intrinsictranscendence of Christianity is obvious It alone countsand a direct look well aimed is enough to establish it Theunbeliever does not have to overcome historicalcontinuities nor does the believer have to refuse to seethem A priori they must be Scholars dedicated todiscovering these continuities are not at all devotingthemselves to a vain task They can indeed often bemistaken (certainly they do not fail to be so) or give in tothe temptation of confused conjectures the hypothesis thatguides them is nonetheless sound The fragility of certainconstructions does not at all prevent the firmness of theirfoundations Besides in research that some would hold tobe sacrilege science is after all only exploiting the Paulineidea of the ldquofullness of timerdquo It is uniting in a way with thethought of the Fathers of the Church so anxious to bring outthe ldquoevangelical preparationsrdquo in order to spare Christianitythe appearance of a ldquosudden improvisationrdquo ldquoNihil putem aDeo subitum quia nihil a Deo non dispositumrdquo5 It agreeswith the reflection of the philosopher who considering the

Christian event refuses by very reason of its unparalleledproportions to attribute an accidental character to it6

But in what touches the very basis of religion thesecontinuities are only appearance Yes in one senseChristianity is human completely human We can we mustspeak of its birth If the words it uses are necessarilyborrowed then it is unavoidable that the concepts are tooAnd how would man tell himself the truth even divinelyrevealed truth except by using concepts There is norevelation except supernatural ldquoin the pure staterdquo Howwould God give himself to man if he remained a stranger tohim And how would his Word penetrate him if it were notalso to become a human word The messages of Saint Paulor Saint John are already ldquotheologiesrdquo and the veryconsciousness of Christ is the consciousness of the Wordmade flesh But a less rudimentary psychology has shownus that the concepts themselves are in their multiplicity farfrom expressing the whole of a doctrine for they are withinthe spirit the part closest to matter With how much greaterreason if it is a question of an object that is not onlydoctrine but first of all reality By what makes it itself by itsoriginal essence which consists neither in words nor inconcepts and which the whole sum of words and concepts isnever capable of translating adequately Christianity isdivine completely divine Through the close texture ofrelationships of ideas and beliefs without break withouttear a new spiritmdashthe Spirit himselfmdashhas passed He hasstolen in with gentleness and he has burst in with powerHe has penetrated human history and all has beentransformed The face of the earth has been renewed by itThis was a new Fiat a true creation ldquoEmitte Spiritum tuumet creabuntur et renovabis faciem terraerdquo7 The Spirit ofChrist has founded a wholly new thing the religion of Christand this religion of Christ for which all human history hadprepared for which all human thought had slowly woven the

fabric suddenly rises up in the midst of men ldquosine patresine matre sine genealogiardquo Pure creation pure miracleThere we have this ldquonewrdquo idea which Jules Lachelier saidldquois born from nothing like a worldrdquo

What new ideas though that do not come from usourselves The inventions of man enrich humanitydiscovering in the soul some nuance unperceived until thenbut always leaving it to its essential finitudemdashto itsincurable decay Once past the first amazement the ironicand despairing refrain of Ecclesiastes is heard again Thecircle enlarged or shifted closes again On the contrarywith a leap the Christian Idea transports us beyond ourlimits It breaks this circle within which all our progress hadbeen condemned in advance to fit Such was the thought atits appearance breaking the circle of animaltransformations It is born in its own time it has its markedplace within the progress of life and nevertheless what itbrings is much more than progress From the time itemerges a new kingdom has begun the human kingdomSo the preaching of Jesus marks the advent of the Kingdomof God8 For how many of the sentences of the Sermon onthe Mount would we not find analogies in the Jewish Bible orin the teaching of the rabbis The One who pronounces itspeaks nonetheless as man had never spokenmdashas manwould never speak9 The Gospel inaugurates the time ofgrace It is a wholly new order that begins ldquoa new order oflove in the universerdquo10 A dike has been broken which letsthe flow of Love pass through Now it would be as vain todream of a reality more divine than Love than to imagine areality more spiritual than Thought The transcendence ofChristianity is thus not only relative to such and such anearlier achievement It is not only something originalsomething superior a provisional novelty clearing the wayfor some ulterior invention destined to go beyond it It is anabsolute transcendence ldquoOmnem novitatem attulitrdquo11

Peacuteguy has also sung it He was going to inherit a worldalready made And yet he was going to remake it entirely

Of course the order of charity is not revealed any morethan is the order of the spirit in all its fullness or in all itsdepth to that observation from outside that constitutes thework of the pure historian But if their inner essence stillescapes observation would the simple sight of their effectnot already arouse the sense of their incomparablegreatness We know the repercussions observable to thenaturalist not blinded by an overly narrow concept ofscience produced in the universe by the apparition ofthought the paradoxical properties of the ldquohumanphenomenonrdquo its extraordinary power for expansion andconcentration out of proportion with the weakmorphological originality of man presuppose a presence ofwhich the naturalist can only catch a glimpse but they sethim on the way that must normally lead him to go beyondhis science to discover in truth the human kingdom12 Therepercussions produced in humanity by the advent ofChristianity are no less prodigious the human spiritimmeasurably increased an unparalleled moral fruitfulnessa society tirelessly at work for an ideal of justice and unityand so forth These features are accessible to the historianwho knows how to step back a pace Nevertheless let usrecognize just as reflection alone properly speaking canreveal thought to itself so too only a process of a religiousorder can disclose the absolute superioritymdashwhich is to sayproperly the transcendencemdashof Christianity Like thedivinity of Christ itself the definitive newness of theChristian principle can be perceived only by the eyes offaith It is here that the advantage of the simple believerover the man of science and of life over technique shinesforth For the anthropologist who systematically denieshimself any inner reflection on the lived thought as well as

the historian of religions who does not consent to regardChristianity from within and to begin to live it at leastthrough a basic attitude of real sympathy will neverunderstand anything about the true object of their learnedstudies If their science itself does not lead them to the finalaffirmations it must at least set them on the path But ifthey wish to trust solely in it to the end surrendering theirconscience as men into the hands of their intelligence asspecialists the greater the latter will be and the more it willrisk misleading them

ldquoThe history of the formation of ideasrdquo said Amiel ldquoiswhat makes the spirit freerdquo13 Beneath the ideas that itorganizes and transforms let us know how to discern theChristian Idea This Idea has no history this is what mustmake the spirit submit to it

A great Deed was done for the world twenty centuries agothe Deed of Charity14 Right at first menrsquos habits of thoughtwere not any more overturned by it than were empires Wasan obscure variety of Jewish ldquoMessianistsrdquo worth even aglance The grain of wheat sown by Christ remained buriedin little upper rooms that counted for nothing in the historyof the world Christianity itself would wait five hundred yearsto found retrospectively the ldquoChristian erardquo and it wouldtake another five hundred years for full Christian practice tobecome widespread15 The first disciples of Jesus stilldreamed of the Kingdom of David their father they went upto the Temple as was their custom with a fervor that wasonly increased Having contemplated the Deed that hadbeen done before them they must nevertheless have hadthe feeling of an unparalleled newness The testimony of itappears everywhere in their rare writings ldquoNew teachingnew covenant new commandment new name new songnew man new life second genesis of the worldrdquo16 Such afeeling did not mislead them They were not in danger

those who had seen who had heard those who hadtouched of taking the Christian Mystery to be a more or lessspontaneous mixture of the Jewish Messianism exalted byJesus and cult forms then in vogue in the Hellenized Eastmdashany more than Christian dogma was in danger of appearingto their successors of the great patristic period as a learnedproduct of the Bible and Greek philosophy This chemistry ofimpotent historians could not have been created by themThey knew from an immediate source that they weredealing with something very different They sensed theunity of what myopic analysts think to understand bydecomposing it This is because the principle of synthesiswas in them living and active It is because living thisdogma themselves before drawing up the inventory of itadoring this mystery before translating it they penetratedits spiritual meaning

In addition their testimony is for us more than aguarantee It constitutes a call If that call is at firstnecessary for us we do not have to hold to it ldquoNowrdquo saidthe inhabitants of Sichar to the woman who had led them toChrist ldquoit is no longer because of what you have said to usthat we believe for we have heard him himself and weknow that he is truly the Savior of the worldrdquo17 For twentycenturies the witness of the first generation of believers ispreserved intact because it always remains a living witnessabyssus abyssum invocat [deep calls to deep] Why shouldwe be riveted to history The Spirit still gives witness to ourspirit18 The Kingdom of God is still in the midst of us ldquoTheGospel of Jesus Christ Son of Godrdquo which was heard for thefirst time in Galilee under Herod during the fifteenth yearof Tiberius Caesar at the time of the High Priests Annas andCaiaphas still resounds today and if the forms of itspreaching are different it is the same Voice that proclaimsit Like the creative Deed which does not cease to maintainbeing and life everywhere the Deed of Charity is pursued

over the world The second Genesis henceforth aspermanent as the first and like it infinitely fruitful TheChurch Bride of Christ continues the work of herBridegroom We have only to contemplate hermdashnot fromoutside in her sole visible organization with its humancharacteristics which are often too human perhaps with itsdefects not even in the works of its scholars alwaysunequal to their task and whose insufficiency can be sopainful19mdashespecially when they themselves do not seem tofeel itmdashbut in her inner life in her ideal in her belief in hersecret fidelity in the purity of her zeal in the marvelousfruits of holy joy that she makes ripen in the depths ofhuman hearts In all that the ldquoworldrdquo does not perceiveThen the light shines then the Truth bears witness to itselfveritas index sui No need for laborious comparisons or of anerudite return to the past The clearsightedness of a limpidlook is preferable here to all the sharp perspicacities ofcriticism This is because the miracle is endlessly producedbefore our eyes Today as formerly by virtue of Christianityldquoall things are becoming newrdquo EvenmdashSaint Augustine hadalready noted itmdashthe more time advances the moreprivileged is our situation as witness The mystical Christ inthe measure he increases better reveals his power To thesigns of it that already multiply still others will be addedwhen his message has truly reached the most distantpeoples Today we only begin to see all the fullness of theDeed that renewed the world The sudden clarity of the firstdays has become a great luminous path which grows withthe centuries

This great Deed of Love Jesus it is You Yourself Perceptible to manhumble dying in a corner of Judea oh yes You are man Flower of JesseYou are indeed the fruit of our earth Born of a woman truly formed fromher substance You are not some sort of phantom come down from theclouds of heaven You are deeply rooted in our earth20 But in You Jesus asin no other child of our race God showed himself You were not merely Hismessenger You are His living and substantial appearance Through You He

has not only spoken Or rather His language is an action His word is adeed it is You Yourself Splendor Verbum et imago Patris You Jesus onyour Cross the act uniting earth to heaven21

In You God still shows Himself and in your holy Church Inyour best disciples He still shines so well that one cannotmistake it For it is You who live in them Have we not allknown someone in whom a divine flame burned which theyhad lit at your hearth alone Their silent testimony is all themore persuasive Non eloquimur magna sed vivimus22 ldquoAsfor merdquo said Gerbet ldquoI lend an ear to the sounds that holysouls make with greater respect than to the voice ofgeniusrdquo23 What a great wise man concludes after longstudies and profound meditations in favor of your divinitythat encourages me but scarcely moves me forward Butthat a Francis of Assisi that being so obviously predestinedto make a ray of eternity shine over our earth makeshimself your absolute disciple that he loves You adoresYou annihilating himself before You that he is ambitiousonly to place his steps in your steps and to live from You byreproducing each of your features that he wants always tobe only your humble repetitor24 that not for a moment doeshe entertain the idea of engaging in a personal way oftrying another experience of adding at least something toyour message this humble and total will to imitatemdashChristototus concrucifixus et configuratusmdashin the face of yoursovereign independence such literalness in such an effusionof the Spirit such contrast in a similar holiness Themore I reflect on it the stronger the argument seems tome25

After that what do the difficulties matter in which myreason gets tangled Or rather how could it be that so loftyan object would not put it to flight If You have come tounveil a new kingdom and a new existence to me howshould I not consent to letting myself be removed from myusual surroundings Is it not normal that I have to abandon

my usual modes of thought26 Your word upsets myinstinctive logic it overturns all my arrangements of ideasit shatters my concepts This is the price for the liberation ofmy understanding Yet little by little in mystery a newequilibrium is established Under the secret action of yourSpirit faith is able to find its exact expressions whichprotect it against the ever-reborn assaults of a reason toolittle converted This was not without a long and arduouswork To define your twofold nature as for all that is worththe effort of our understanding it takes time reflectiongroping disputes materials from all sources A long andperilous journey A complicated winding history strewnwith a thousand contingencies An often tragic historymdashawonderful history27 It was through the adventurousconcepts of thinkers that Catholic Christology ended inrejoining the first intuition of faith

More than any other because it is at the center of all thedefinition in which the result of this labor is found today isimperfect An inevitable and blessed imperfection Notaccidental but essential necessary so that humbleastonishment before the mystery may subsist in theprecision of belief and in the firmness of adherence Butalready Jesus your very first disciples when they loved Youabove all and when they left all to follow You when theygave You all without thinking thereby to take anything fromGod when they contemplated You seated at the right handof the Father when they called You the one Lordproclaiming that all had been renewed by You and that allknees must bend before You your disciples believed in YouExtraordinary impossible faithmdashand yet authenticatedbeyond doubt A scandal as grave for the historian as thedogma itself for the thinker For though not beingabsolutely the same as ours the difficulties for a Saint Peteror a Saint Paul in believing were no less strong Nor werethose of their successors the Origens and the Cyrils the

Ambroses and the Augustines Modern man flatters himselfwhen he judges that the Copernican revolution or theKantian revolution dug out a new hiatus between histhought and the thought of the Ancients It was as hard tobelieve then as it is today It was hard for a JewishmonotheistmdashldquoListen Israel Your God is onerdquomdashto believe inthe divinity of a man28 It was hard to believe in thecrucifixion of the Son of God29 It was hard for a reasonableman who had been able to see up close the Son of Man inhis humiliation to believe in the resurrected Christ and inall these histories ldquothat do not allow themselves to beallegorized rdquo30

ldquoA scandal for the Greeks and folly for the Jewsrdquo OurFathers passed beyond their faith conquered all theobstacles What they were capable of we ourselves will becapable of and if we do not make ourselves unworthy ofthem the reasons that quickened them will not be lessstrong for us Their attitude will thus be ours We could nottranscend it but neither could we restrict it without denyingyour message at the same stroke Jesus For it is no morepossible to abstract You from this message than it ispossible to abstract God from Yourself On what would webase the demands of your Law if we began by failing torecognize the Demand of your Person Who wouldguarantee us the hope of the Kingdom if we were not torecognize the King of it Does everything in You not tell usthat You are Yourself the Kingdom as You are the Truth andthe Life31 So from the beginning the religion of Jesuswhich is the ideal of love was indivisibly the religion ofChrist that is the cult of incarnate Love It is folly to want todissociate them and to believe that the first would survivethe ruin of the second The religion of which Jesus is thesubject and norm is gradually achieved in us only throughthe religion of which Christ is the object Moreover it isblindness not to recognize their identity it is to tear the

seamless robe that the Gospel presents to us and it is notto see the metaphysical significance of Love

Evangelium ChristimdashEvangelium de Christo a modernscarcely more subtle form of the old antithesis betweenpractice and dogma32 But in maintaining contrary to thosewho set them in opposition that there is an essentialrelation between them we do not mean simply that onemust observe dogma as a means for assuring practice Theirties are intrinsic33 and the necessity of their agreement isonly one consequence On the one hand ldquopracticerdquo can becorrectly defined only by dogma from it alone does itreceive its meaning and spirit and on the other hand inone sense it already contains everything in itself for it issummed up in charity which is the spiritual being in act

God is Love and in a great feat of Love he came to takeup man sinner and miserable Man and God embraced eachother in Christ The unique intellectual fecundity of thisDeed it is specifically pregnant with all Christian dogmaticsso that the latter must be called strictly revealed No morein fact than one could dissociate the revealed truths fromthe very Person of the Revealer could one conceive a justand complete idea of the transcendent newness ofChristianity if one did not see that in this Person of Christsuch as the Apostles already show him to us and such asthe Church never ceases to contemplate and reproduce himthe reality of Charity and the truth of Dogma areindissolubly united Charity constituting the reality of thisDogma as this Dogma itself constitutes the truth of thisCharity34

As for the intellectual elaboration from which the dogmain its second state results which is to say in that abstractand learned formulation that multiplies it in distinctenunciations wholly guided by the Spirit of Truth as it is itnevertheless remains a human operation The materials it

employs just like those that entered into the firstspontaneous expression of faith are human materials Theycan thus serve them too in the real (though alwaysinadequate) transmission of divine truth only in the measureto which they are related to the Whole of Dogma35 In themeasure to which on the contrary they are consideredeach in isolation the formulas cease to bear witness to thedivinity of their origin they lose the best of their meaningceasing to have relation to divine charity such as itappeared to us in Christ For our faith is one and it is whollysummed up in You O Jesus36 You are the center and thebond of all its ldquoarticlesrdquo All its expressions all itsdevelopments are only so many means of understandingYou better and of situating ourselves better before You Thisis why the historians who instead of considering Christianityin its living unitymdashwhich one can do fully only if one lives itoneselfmdashalways scrutinize its elements only by taking themone after the other as a series of detached pieces resistany possibility of understanding it The essence escapesthem They do not find the soul at the end of their scalpelIn Christianity they find nothing divine not seeing Christ init

How true it is therefore to say that if dogma is necessaryfor the maintenance of practice the role of practice isnonetheless essential for maintaining the reality of dogmaintact We now discover the whole meaning of such anaxiom Without the truth of dogmamdashalthough there may besome good ldquounfaithfulrdquomdashone will only have an apparentpractice but on the other hand without the reality ofpracticemdashalthough there may be some bad Christiansmdashonewill no longer have anything but an apparent dogma On theone hand a charity that is less than genuine on the other asuperstitious belief or a verbal orthodoxy an ldquoorthologyrdquowithout any real content This is because if the articles offaith are numbered the Object of Faith is marvelously one If

the former are formed of abstract propositions the Latter ismarvelously Living And just as according to the oldScholastic theory all physico-chemical bodies onceassimilated by the human organism are directly informedby the soul so that there is no longer either carbon oroxygen and so forth but only human matter so with all theelements religious or profane in origin that enter into theChristian synthesis Constructed completely in one sensewith human materials the dogmatic formulas neverthelessexpress divine truth Elaborated by men they channel apart of divine revelation But this is on condition onceagain that one always relates them to that same revelationto the living Center to the divine Center from which allradiates and to which all must lead us to Jesus Christ JesusChrist the personal manifestation of Charity Jesus Christ inwhom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledgebecause in him dwells the fullness of the Divinity JesusChrist Word of the Father who speaks him and gives himentirely There is no absolute newness no revelationproperly speaking no true transcendence outside of theunique reality of his Person We must always return to thewords of Saint Irenaeus ldquoOmnem novitatem attulitsemetipsum afferensrdquo37

Jesus I believe in You I confess that You are God You are forus the whole Mystery of God38 What other definition of Godwould we seek than that given by your Apostle And was itnot in contemplating You that he found it God is Love Thissingle word contains an unfathomable mystery which Iadore But through You this mystery illumines our nightalready For Love has done a great deed and this Deed ofLove the Love made visible to our eyes perceptible tohearts of flesh effective and saving Love is You Yourself Itis God made man it is the Incarnation of God

We stammer as we can Our formulas are insufficientNecessary to shield the treasure of our faith their form

nevertheless troubles us But your true adorers O Jesushavenrsquot You Yourself said are not those who put their trustin frail words they are those who understand your feat andwho sustained by Youmdashfor that costs more than bloodmdashstrive to reproduce it

An absolute feat nothing has any value except throughcharity Charity demands all assumes all Charity judges all

An efficacious feat through this ldquodivine strengthrdquo alreadyrecognized by the Apostle Paul39 he uproots us from ouregotism he opens us takes us raises us makes us capableof adopting the contours of it in our turn He eradicates theold man and implants the new man Operatorius sermoChristi40

A finally definitive feat Whatever might be the futureprogress of our race whatever the enlargement of itsknowledge or the refinement of its ideal we will not betaken unawares The coming of Christ has marked thefullness of time No fullness no depth will ever exhaust theDeed of Calvary41

That is why peaceful about the past we also look to thefuture without fear ldquoQuid amplius reservandum cumamplius nihil sit plenitudine perfectionisrdquo42 Sure that ourfaith will never mislead us we go ahead of the excavationsof history and the research of science Ahead too of humanprogressmdashand we know too well that all progress of theworld will not obtain the least beginning of salvation Aheadof the new values to which history gives birth through itscrises Man can vary and perfect his culture without end Hecan discover and exploit new potentialities in it The veryUniverse can grow immeasurably and distant stars can oneday reveal a humanity more numerous more civilizedmdashmore miserablemdashthan our own the Deed of Christ wouldstill take it in It embraces all worlds just as it shines abovetime For all equally for each one of us and at all times for

those who believe in man and for those who despair of himits rays are those of Eternal Life

ldquoHe has come the Christ of God the Leader of thePromises And without any doubt he has been he alone tothe exclusion of all those who preceded himmdashand I have theaudacity to say he is to the exclusion of all those who followhimmdashthe one awaited by the Nationsrdquo43