Francis Beckwith and Ralph McInerny confess (sort of)

Francis Beckwith recounts a story that is perfectly Ralph.

Thomas Hibbs on Ralph McInerny

Thomas Hibbs, a former-student of Ralph McInerny’s (and current Dean of the Honors College at Baylor University), wrote an appreciation of Ralph that appeared in First Things magazine (link).

John Deely Awarded for World-Wide Scholarly Achievement

The PR people at the University of St Thomas in Houston just sent me this announcement:

Dr. John Deely, who holds the Rudman Chair of Philosophy in the Center for Thomistic Studies at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, won two prestigious medals for his world-wide scholarly achievement. He received the Aquinas Medal for Excellence in Christian Philosophy at the international Gilson Society meeting in Baltimore, Oct. 1-3, and the Maritain Medal for scholarly achievement, awarded at the annual meeting in Houston, Oct. 22-24 by UST Associate Professor Fr. Ted Baenziger, CSB, on behalf of the American Maritain Association.

Etienne Gilson and Jacques Maritain were the two foremost Thomists of the 20th century, and they had close teaching connections with the Basilians at the Pontifical Institute for Medieval Studies in Toronto. Maritain is also an honorary member of the UST Center for Thomistic Studies.

Deely’s prolific single-authored books and voluminous editorial enterprises include two opuses and a classic, Basics of Semiotics, which is in its sixth edition and has been translated into more than 10 languages, including Japanese and Chinese. One of his five books published in 2009, Augustine & Poinsot, has been on window display at the University of Paris Sorbonne. His work, as Professor Anne Hénault of the Sorbonne puts it, “opens horizons of thought absolutely essential for the 21st century.”

“Dr. Deely is a pioneer in demonstrating the implications of Thomistic thought for problems today,” said Padre Roberto Busa, SJ, Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome and creator of the Index Thomisticus database. “He maintains the thought of St. Thomas as a living force in the intellectual culture, rather than simply as a kind of museum piece among the exhibits of history, making that thought come to the attention of thinkers who would not in the normal course of events have any particular interest in Thomism at all.”

Reflecting on Deely’s legacy in opening frontiers within and beyond the Catholic world, famous novelist and Latin philosopher Umberto Eco concludes, “John Deely has not only paid attention to the Second Scholasticism, and (while dealing with questions that are at the center stage of contemporary culture, and working across all the disciplines, both the humanities and the sciences) he has contributed to expand the knowledge of the Thomistic tradition beyond the confines of the Catholic world.”

The more than 400-page Deely Reader, Realism for the 21st Century (University of Scranton Press, Pa.), edited by Paul Cobley, London, was published in late October 2009.

In the words of Benedict Ashley, OP, professor emeritus, Aquinas Institute of Theology at St. Louis University, “No current thinker has carried out a more penetrating advance into a genuine post-modernism … than John Deely, and this collection gives us the heart of his work.”

Scheduled for publication later this year is Deely’s Semiotic Animal (St. Augustine’s Press, South Bend, Ind.).

Go to the site’s search page, punch in “Deely,” and you’ll see that he has been a big supporter of Thomistica.net by way of providing information and PDF files of interest.

A Report on the Pontifical Academy of Saint Thomas Aquinas 2009

With thanks to Jörgen Vijgen, who was in attendance, a report on the 2009 meeting of the Pontifical Academy of Saint Thomas Aquinas:

Report on the IX Plenary Session of the Pontifical Academy of Saint Thomas Aquinas, 19-21 June 2009

At their seat in the 16^th century villa Casina Pio IV in Vatican City the Pontifical Academy of Saint Thomas Aquinas held their annual Plenary Session on June 19-21, 2009. Since its reform by the motu proprio Inter Munera Academiarum, issued by Pope John Paul II, the Pontifical Academy of Saint Thomas Aquinas, founded by Pope Leo XIII on October 15, 1879, organizes each year its plenary session on a single topic. In previous years topics such as ‘Truth’, ‘Goodness’, and ‘Natural Law’ were treated. To mark the end of the Pauline Year, this year’s topic was fittingly entitled “Saint-Thomas’s Interpretation of Saint-Paul’s Doctrines”.

The newly appointed president Lluis Clavell of the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross had organized an intensive program to which some 30 members took part among which were Stephen Brock, Romanus Cessario O.P., Joseph Di Noia O.P., Kevin Flannery S.J., the papal theologian Wojciech Giertych O.P., Russell Hittinger, Charles Morerod O.P., Robert Wielockx, Horst Seidl, Card. Georges Cottier O.P., Leo Elders S.V.D. and Enrique Alarcon.

Continuing with the tradition of previous years, the Academy had also invited experts from outside the Academy to speak on the topic at hand. This year’s speakers were Michael Waldstein (Ave Maria University) and Reinhard Hütter (Duke University).

The program was as follows:

Friday

1. Reinhard Hütter: “In hope he believed against hope” (Romans 4:18). Faith and Hope, two Pauline motifs as interpreted by Aquinas: an approach to the encyclical letter of Pope Benedict XVI, “Spe Salvi”
2. Joseph Di Noia O.P.: Christ brings freedom from sin and death: Thomas’s Understanding of Romans 5, 12-21, on Original Sin

Saturday

1. Mons. Inos Biffi, La figura di Cristo nel commento di Tommaso alla Lettera agli Ebrei
2. Pedro Rodriguez, El ‘sacrum ministerium’ en los comentários de Santo Tomás al ‘Corpus Paulinum’
3. Mons. Fernando Ocariz, ‘L’adozione filiale e il mistero di Cristo nel Commento di San Tommaso alla Lettera ai Romani
4. Leo Elders S.V.D., Thomas’s comments on the Letters of St. Paul to the Philippians and the Colossians
5. Robert Wielockx, Au sujet du commentaire de S. Thomas sur le ‘Corpus Paulinum’ : critique littéraire et aperçus exégétiques

Sunday

1. Michael Waldstein, The Spousal Logic of Justification : St. Thomas and Luther on Paul’s Key Topic Statement Romans, 1:17
2. Ricardo Ferrara, La dottrina della grazia nel Commento alla Lettera ai Romani
3. Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, Grace as “new creation”

Needless to say that with these 45 min.-lectures and 30 min.-discussions, which seldom sufficed to treat all the questions, it was an in-depth three days- study of St. Thomas and St. Paul. (The Roman sun, the Vatican Gardens, Saint-Peter’s Basilica, Santa Sabina, the diners and the private trips to the abbeys of Monte Cassino and Fossanova and the village of Aquino however brought it all back in balance.)

Readers who were present at the conference on Aquinas’s Commentary on Romans in February of this year at Ave Maria University (Naples, Florida) might be interested to hear that ecumenical explorations came up more than once during the discussions. We’re looking forward to the final versions of all these papers to be published in the next issue of Doctor Communis.

(NOTE: Jörgen took pictures of the trips south, which I’ll post very soon).

Fear in Heaven?

Gary Culpepper of the Department of Theology at Providence College (Rhode Island) sent me the following inquiry:

Does anyone know of any significant research into ST II-II, 19, 11, utrum timor remaneat in patria? Or any allied research into medieval inquires into religious fear, whether in Jesus or the saint who is on the road to wisdom?

E-mail any responses or ideas to Gary directly.

Harvard University Press to open a medieval "Loeb"

According to Karen Green, the Ancient and Medieval History and Religion Librarian at Columbia University, Dr. Jan Ziolkowski, the new director of Dumbarton Oaks, recently talked Harvard University Press into opening a new “Loeb” for the medieval period, to be entitled something like the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library.  Ten titles within two years, and then eight (or is it four?) per year thereafter.  Note that this is in addition to what it’s been doing for the Renaissance (I Tatti Renaissance Library).  An English translation facing the original.

The theologian as Jacob wrestling with the angel (Chenu)

A colleague in the American Theological Library Association wrote its listserv ATLANTIS as follows:

I’m looking for the source of a statement by Thomas Aquinas [to the effect] that delving into the doctrine of the Trinity is like Jacob wrestling with the angel. Can someone suggest where this might be from? I’m assuming it’s in [the] Summa Theologi[ae] somewhere, but that’s not very specific. Thanks.

After much free-searching of Index Thomisticus, I’ve had to settle for the following, which I discovered via Google, and which I would like very much to track to its source. A major problem is that Chenu gives not the slightest indication where (in Aquinas?) he encountered it:

In a very suggestive allegory, St Thomas gives a symbolic description of the theologian confronted with the mystery of God [(note: not specifically the Trinity, as requested)]. Calling to mind Jacob’s struggle with the angel he writes:

The whole night they wrestled [(s’affrontèrent)], muscles straining, neither yielding [(muscles tenus, sans que l’un ou l’autre cédassent)]; but at daybreak the angel disappeared, apparently leaving the field clear to his adversary. But Jacob then felt a violent pain in his thigh [(un douleur vive à la cuisse)]. He was left wounded and limping [(blessé et claudicant)]. It is thus that the theologian grapples with the mystery [(le théologien affronte le mystère)] when God brings him face to face with it. He is taut, like a bent bow, grappling with human language [(tendu, comme arc-bouté à ses expressions humaines)]; he struggles like a wrestler [(en saisit les objects à bras-le-corps)]; he even seems to win the mastery [(s’enrendre maitre)]. But then he feels a weakness, a weakness at once painful and delicious [(une faiblesse douloureuse et delectable à la fois)], for to be thus defeated is in fact the proof that his combat was divine [(de son divin combat)]

(M. D. Chenu, Is theology a science?, 47). Fragments of the original French I insert not from La théologie est-elle une science? directly, but from The Trinity: an analysis of St. Thomas Aquinas’ Expositio of the De Trinitate of Boethius, by Douglas C. Hall, who treats Chenu as a gloss on a passage from the commentary on Genesis by Peter John Olivi, which he (Hall) attributes erroneously to Aquinas himself.

Treating the Chenu as a possible loose rendition of chap. 32 of Olivi’s (not Aquinas’) commentary on Genesis seems a promising lead at first, given especially certain echoes, e.g. “neither overcoming the other, neither yielding” (trans. Hall; cf. Chenu, above), the potential bow-language (flectendo, “bowing [it]”; cf. Chenu on the “bent bow”, above), and so forth. But the most important of these, the former, is, so far as I can tell, a mistranslation, indeed, probably the result of Hall reading Olivi in the light of Chenu, rather than the Latin actually before him (those of you who know Latin better please correct me, as I’m a rank amateur). I give first the Hall, then the Latin, then my own fumbling translation:

‘No longer will you be called Jacob, but Israel. For if you have placed your strength against God,’ by means of violence, that is, he grasped God and fought with God, neither overcoming the other, neither yielding… . ‘And you ask my name, which is marvelous?’ The sense of this can be that here it is said that his name is marvelous, or that his name is marvelous in that it is not comprehensible for us.

Nequaquam Jacob appellabitur nomen tuum, sed Israel. … quia si contra Deum fortis fuisti, per violentiam scilicet detentivarum precum et importunarum pulsationum cum Deo pugnando, ejusque rigorem superando, sive flectendo: quanto magis contra hominess praevalebis? … Cur quaeris nomen meum, quod est mirabile? Sensus potest esse, quod … mirabile est nomen ejus: vel quod nomen suum est mirabile, quod non est nobis comprehensibile.

Your name shall be no longer Jacob, but Israel. … because if you have been strong against God, contending with God and overcoming his rigidity or [at least] bending/bowing [it] through violence, namely [etc.] … Why do you ask for my name, which is wonderful? The sense can be [either] that … his name is Wonderful, or that his name is wonderful, i.e. to us incomprehensible.

Translated in this way, the phrase “neither overcoming the other, neither yielding”, so reminiscent of Chenu’s “muscles taut, neither yielding”, simply vanishes. Add to this the lack of any reference in the Latin here to Jacob’s being “taut, like a bent bow” (here it is the Lord whose muscular inflexibility is ultimately bent or bowed by Jacob), the lack (in the rest of this chapter, at least) of any interest in the work of the theologian specifically, or his/her grapplings with the limitations of human language, so central to the passage quoted by Chenu, etc., and this, too, falls away as probably a false lead.

This is not to say that there is not some other passage in this pseudo-Thomistic commentary on Genesis or even Aquinas himself (or some other Father) to match the Chenu, or even something other than the Chenu that I should be trying to trace back to a source in Thomas, but only that it doesn’t seem to be this one (chap. 32 of the Olivian commentary on Genesis), despite this suggestive juxtaposition (but also misleading translation?) in Hall. Perhaps the fragments of the original French I give above will help someone else search Index Thomisticus more effectively than I have done.

I would be grateful for any further input.

Steve Perisho
Theology/Humanities/Fine Arts Librarian
Seattle Pacific University

Update on 2008-01-04 20:33 by Steve Perisho

I have now the original French (pp. 47-48 of La théologie est–elle une science?) before me, and see that Chenu neither places these words in quotation marks nor makes of them (as does the English translation) an indented block quotation.  (Elsewhere in La théologie est–elle une science? he abides by the usual conventions.)

His introduction to them, though, is pretty explicit: “Dans une allégorie très suggestive, saint Thomas décrit symboliquement l’affrontement du théologien au mystère de Dieu. Evoquant l’épisode de la lutte de Jacob avec l’ange (Genèse, chap. 32), il commente:”, etc.  “Genèse, chap. 32” could be invoking the commentary by Olivi, but is more likely a reference to the biblical text itself.

The Nachlass of Angelus Walz, OP

Angelus Walz, OP (1893-1978), was for years a prolific professor of church history at the Angelicum in Rome, and contributed to the cause of Thomas-scholarship in many ways, notably by his biography of Aquinas (especially in its French translation, known simply as Walz-Novarina).

This past week I received an e-mail from a Martin Walter in Germany, who told me that he had found (about five years ago) some interesting pictures in the “Nachlass” of Fr Walz in the Dominican convent in Augsburg. These pictures had been evidently taken by a photographer named Anderson, who had a shop in Rome, in the 1920’s. The pictures were of triumphalistic paintings of St. Thomas, and Fr Walz had obtained copies with the option of having them used in the ground-breaking Xenia Thomistica, a 3-volume publication in 1925 commemorating the 600^th anniversary of Thomas’s birth, loaded with articles by key players in early 20^th-century Thomism (Maritain, Lottin, Garrigou-Lagrange, Merkelbach, Prümmer, Mandonnet, Walz, Grabmann, Pelster, Roland-Gosselin, Chenu [in Latin!]). Of the pictures in Fr Walz’s Nachlass, only one made it into Xenia Thomistica, the one by the painter Francisco de Zurbarán, which you can see in the frontispiece of the third volume.

Martin Walter scanned the three pictures he found, and kindly sent them to me for presentation here. They are found below.

Francisco de Zurbarán’s “Apotheosis of St. Thomas” (1661): this is the picture found in volume 3 of Xenia Thomistica (Seville).

Ludwig Seitz’s “St. Thomas Offers His Works to the Church,” commissioned by Pope Leo XIII (Vatican Museum).

“Heretics Vanquished by the Works of St. Thomas,” also by Ludwig Seitz, and commissioned by Leo XIII (Vatican Museum).

Thank you, Martin Walter!

RIP: B.-G. Guyot, OP

This sad news in, from Fr. Adriano Oliva, OP, president of the Leonine Commission, in Paris:

Chère Amie, Cher Ami,
Il y a une heure, dans le couvent de l'Annonciation à Paris, le P. Betrand Georges Guyot s'est endormi dans le Seigneur. Il était dans sa 87ème année, 62ème de vie religieuse. Le 12 avril j'avais parlé avec lui et il se sentait très fatigué, sans savoir pourquoi. Il était serein et joyeux comme nous l'avons connu. Dès que nous connaîtrons le jour de ses obsèques je vous le communiquerai.

Amitiés, Adriano Oliva.

Fr Guyot was one of the hard-working members of the Commission for many, many years, and author of critical articles on medieval manuscripts, particularly those pertaining to philosophy and theology.

The work of Fr Leo Elders SVD

This is just in from Holland: the updated bibliography of Prof. Leo Elders, probably best known to the English-speaking readers of Thomistica for his books on the metaphysics, philosophical theology, natural philosophyand most recently the ethics of St. Thomas.

Leo Elders was born in Enkhuizen (Netherlands), studied philosophy and theology at the houses of study of the Societas Verbi Divini in the Netherlands and Germany and was ordained in 1953. His Ph.D. dissertation, begun under Werner Jäger at Harvard University and completed at the University of Montréal (Canada) under Vianney Décarie in 1959 was published as Aristotle’s theory of the One. A commentary on Book X of the Metaphysics in 1961.

Fr. Elders taught from 1959 until 1971 at Nanzan University, Nagoya, Japan, where he served as dean of the philosophy department and rector of the Major Seminary of Nagoya (Theology Faculty of the University Nanzan). He worked for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith from 1971-1976 while teaching at the Angelicum and the Lateran University in Rome. Since 1976 fr. Elders is a member of the faculty of the Major Seminary Rolduc (Netherlands). He has been visiting professor at the Center for Thomistic Studies in Houston from 1981-1987 and holds the chair of metaphysics since 1988 at the Faculté de philosophie comparée in Paris and the chair of the history of philosophy at the Gustav-Siewerth-Akademie in Germany. Here one can find a more complete CV.

In addition to the books mentionned above, his current list of publications numbers 306 titles covering almost every aspect of Aquinas’s philosophy and theology. Here is the complete list. Among the recent titles are: ‘Tomás de Aquino, comentador de San Pablo’ (2006), ‘Présence de saint Jérôme dans les oeuvres de Thomas d’Aquin’ (2005), ‘La teología de Santo Tomás de la imagen de Dios en el hombre’ (2004), ‘St. Thomas Aquinas on education and instruction’ (2003), ‘La paternité de Dieu dans la théologie spirituelle de saint Thomas d’Aquin’ (2001), ‘Il dialogo in San Tommaso’ (2001), ‘La relation entre l’Ancienne et la Nouvelle Alliance selon saint Thomas’ (2000).

Basic bibliography for the Lectura romana from Santiago Argüello

I wanted to post this a while back, but forgot!

Santiago Argüello has been working on some texts from the Lectura romana this past year at PIMS in Toronto, and he kindly send along the following bibliographical notes, listing the basic bibliography for the Lectura:

Biographers of St. Thomas referring the fact

Bernardus Gui , Legenda sancti Thomae Aquinatis, in Angelico F errua , S. Thomae Aquinatis vitae fontes praecipuae, Edizioni Dominicane, Alba, 1968, 127-95: vid. 189.

Ptolomeus de Lucca , Historia ecclesiastica nova, in A. F errua , op. cit., 355-69: vid. 368.

Torrell , Jean-Pierre, Initiation à saint Thomas d’Aquin. Sa personne et son oeuvre, Éditions Universitaires (Fribourg, Suisse) – Éditions du Cerf (Paris), 1993: vid. 66-9 and 210.

Weisheipl , James Athanasius, Friar Thomas d’Aquino. His Life, Thought, and Works, The Catholic University of America Press, Washington, D. C., 1983 (with Corrigenda and Addenda): vid. 216-7 and 359.

Bibliography referring the fact

Bataillon , Louis Jacques, “Bulletin d’histoire des doctrines médiévales. Le treizième siècle: Th omas d’Aquin”, Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques, 73 (1989), 584-604; especially: 590-1.

Biffi , Inos, “Il Co mmento di S. Tommaso alle «Sentenze» di Pietro Lombardo”, Sacra Doctrina, 46,5 (2001), 11-122: repr. of his “Introduzione generale” to italian ed. of the Scriptum (2000).

Dondaine , Antoine, “Autor de secrétaires de saint Thomas”, in Paul Wilpert (ed.) Miscellanea Medievalia, Band 2: “Die Metaphysik im Mittelalter”, Walter de Gruyter & Co., Berlin, 1963, 745-54. ————- This is the first time in which is announced the existence of the texts in the margins of the Ms. Lincoln College.

——. “ Hayen A. S. Thomas a-t-il édité deux fois son Commentaire sur le livre des Sentences. – Rech. théol. anc. et méd. IX (1937), pp. 219-236”, Bulletin Thomiste, 6 (Anées XVII-XIX: 1940-2), 100-8.

Hayen, A., “S. Thomas a-t-il édité deux fois son Commentaire sur le livre des Sentences?”, Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale, 9 (1937), 219-236.

Mandonnet, Pierre, Des écrits authentiques de saint Thomas d’Aquin, Imprimerie de l’oeuvre de Saint-Paul, Fribourg (Suisse), 1910 (2 ^e éd. Revue et corrigée).

Merriell, Juvenal, To the Image of the Trinity. A Study in the Development of Aquinas’ Teaching, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto, 1990.

Motte, A.-R., “ Dondaine , A., O. P. Saint Thomas a-t-il disputé à Rome la question des «Attributs Divins»? (I Sent., d. 2, q. 1, a. 3). – Notes et Comm. du Bull. Thom., I (1931-33), pp. 171*-182*”, Bulletin Thomiste, 4 (Anées XI-XIII: 1934-6), 135-6.

Ramírez, Santiago, “Introducción general” a Santo Tomás de Aquino , Suma teológica, B.A.C., Madrid, 1947, 1*-237*: vid. 33* and 183*-4*.

Torrell , J.-P., “Introduction” to Boyle , L.E., Facing History…, especially xviii-xxiv.

Vansteenkiste, P. Clemente, “ Boyle , Leonard E., A.P., «Alia lectura fratris thome» . MSt 1983 (45) 418-429”, Rassegna di Letteratura Tomistica (Nuova serie del «Bulletin Thomiste» - Vol. XXXI), 19 (1986: letteratura dell’anno 1983), p. 40, n. 73.

“ Boyle , Leonard E., The setting of the Summa Theologiae of Saint Thomas . (The Etienne Gilson series, 5). Toronto Pontif. Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1982”, Rassegna di Letteratura Tomistica (Nuova serie del «Bulletin Thomiste» - Vol. XXX), 18 (1985: letteratura dell’anno 1982), 45-6.

“Dondaine , H.-F., Alia lectura fratris Thome? (Super 1 Sent.)”. MSt 1980 (42) 308-336.

Thanks for your help, Santiago.