Happy feast of St. Thomas Aquinas!

Ditto!

In Memoriam: Fr. Lawrence Dewan, O.P. (1932-2015)

I view this post as a long (too long) delayed tribute to one of the greatest teachers, Thomists, and Christians I have had the privilege of knowing in my life.

John Lawrence Dewan was born in North Bay, Ontario, in 1932, and took the B.A. and M.A. at the University of Toronto in 1953 and 1955. He did his doctoral work in two stints, 1954–57 and again 1966–67, leading to his dissertation “The Doctrine of Being of John Capreolus: A Contribution to the History of the Notion of Esse” (1967), defended before a committee that included Owens, Pegis, and Edward Synan. In these years he also studied under Etienne Gilson and Marshall McLuhan.

His first published article, “Leslie Dewart and Spiritual Hedonism,” appeared in Laval théologique et philos­ophique 27 in 1971. Although to my knowledge no one has prepared a complete bibliography of Dewan’s voluminous writings, he published well over 100 major articles, a Marquette lecture, and two collections of the work he considered his best: Form and Being with CUA Press in 2006, and Wisdom, Law, and Virtue with Fordham University Press in 2008. Among his major concerns throughout his career were the doctrine of esse and how it relates to form and substance; the doctrine of analogy in its various theoretical constructions; the interpretation of the Five Ways of proving God’s existence; the relationship of natural philosophy to metaphysics, and the relationship of both to modern science; and the foundations of ethics and political philosophy. He sparred often with fellow Thomists such as Joseph Owens and the River Forest School. While it would be an exaggeration to speak of a “school” of Fr. Dewan, there is no doubt he shaped every facet of Thomism in the past fifty years.

How does one worthily honor the memory of a teacher who made an enormous difference in one’s own life and in the lives of so many friends and acquaintances? There is always something far greater, more abundant and varied in the person and his legacy than any homage can do justice to. For me, Fr. Dewan was three things to the fullest: a teacher who dearly loved his teacher, St. Thomas, as well as his students, all potential Thomists waiting to be actualized; an intellectual who never stopped studying, researching, and writing, constantly advancing the science of metaphysics and probing the rich relationship between modern-day subjects and the perennial insights of Aquinas; and a priest who lived his life not merely as a scholar or professor, but as a genuine disciple of Jesus Christ, walking along the particular path of the Order of Preachers founded by St. Dominic.

I was blessed with many experiences of all three sides of Fr. Dewan. I enjoyed several semesters of metaphysics with him at The Catholic University of America from 1994–1998. Can anyone who attended his classes forget the owl-like eyes that gazed through coke-bottle glasses, the face that lit up with excitement as he engaged the intricacies of being and essence, form and matter, act and potency? I still consult the detailed lectures and collections of texts he handed out at the start of each class, with my own annotations in the margins, based on his improvised commentary. I remember the course on the Five Ways in which he assigned student presentations, and I had the fortune (or misfortune) to choose Gilson on the Third Way, not realizing yet that Fr. Dewan—an ardent admirer of Gilson’s intellectual legacy—was a most severe critic of some of his interpretive moves. Needless to say, my presentation was subjected to the dialectical shredder and ended as a pile of slivers, but in the process I had grown in both knowledge and humility, the indispensable precursor of wisdom.

Towards the end of my time at CUA, I began to realize, in spite of the innate modesty and simplicity of this white-robed teacher, just what a formidable intellectual Fr. Dewan was. In class we always smiled when he looked up from his lecture notes, raised a forefinger, and said, brightening: “I have a paper on this topic!” (meaning a publication), but little did we greenhorns know at the time that he had published article after article on seemingly every question of importance in the field of classical metaphysics, natural theology, physics, cosmology, and philosophical psychology, with forays into logic, ethics, politics, aesthetics, cultural history, biography, and sacred theology (I’m sure the list could be extended). At a certain point I began to collect his work more systematically to deepen and diversify my own grasp of Aristotle, Plato, St. Thomas, and other scholastics devoted to the philosophia perennis. It wasn’t an easy quarry to track, as he published in so many different (often obscure) journals, and, accordingly, it brought me pleasure, relief, and good hope for future scholars when Fr. Dewan decided to put together two collections of his best workIf I could urge an action to be taken, it would be to get and study both of these collections. They are pure gold.

Beyond these official publications, Fr. Dewan conducted a substantial correspondence with people who asked him philosophical and theological questions. I remember submitting to him some knotty difficulties that arose from a reading of St. Thomas’s treatment of transubstantiation in the Tertia Pars of the Summa theologiae, and he replied with a mini-treatise of his own, making the distinctions I had failed to make. He often sent me papers of his own, either in response to my queries or just to share his recent work. He displayed no “proprietary” attitude over his writings and relished a vigorous debate, never giving the impression that he had heard or said the last word.

As for Fr. Dewan’s religious life and priestly identity, he was a wonderful combination of total transparen­cy and dignified reserve. You knew from the moment he entered the room in his white Dominican habit that he was a Catholic religious, and if you were in the right place at the right time you would see him involved in the celebration of Mass, but he discussed religious topics only when the subject of the class or a student question demanded it, and he neither pietistically mixed theology into everything nor arbitrarily excluded it from consideration—he was too much a son of St. Thomas Aquinas either to blur the lines of discourse or to compartmentalize and thus falsify reality. My warmest personal memories of him come from the semester he spent at the International Theological Institute in Gaming, Austria, where he co-taught a special seminar on Thomistic metaphysics and epistemology, and seemed to leave a gentle mark on the entire community’s academic and spiritual life. My wife and I remember with special fondness the Masses he celebrated in the campus church and how he would bless our little children so lovingly, not in any rush, and with joy lighting up his countenance.

Fr. Dewan’s dedicated students always wanted to show him how much they appreciated him, but it was not easy to find ways to do so with a man who was not exactly a social extrovert. I am glad to have spearheaded the publication with CUA Press of a Festschrift for Fr. Dewan’s seventy-fifth birthday in 2007, under the title Wisdom’s Apprentice, which brought together work by twelve authors, several of them students of his. When Fr. Dewan received his copy in the mail, the first thing he wrote to me—altogether typical of this dedicated intellectual—is that he found compelling so-and-so’s argument about the real distinction and couldn’t help but disagree with another fellow on a different point. He received the book simply as a philosopher in search of wisdom, not as a man looking for applause or resting on his laurels. It made me love him all the more.

One can say without hyperbole that Fr. Dewan’s life was dedicated to pursuing truth and handing it on with unstinting generosity. May he now behold the beauty of that truth unveiled.

Duns Scotus's Lost Island

As is well known Aquinas opposes the forced baptism of Jewish children because it would constitute a violation of “natural justice” (ST III, 68, 10 c). I knew that Duns Scotus encourages forced baptism, arguing that, while private persons such as the parents may not do so, a public person, in the form of a prince, under whose dominion the parents live, has a higher obligation to God and hence the prince has a duty to override the parental rights (… per consequens non solum licet, sed debet Princeps auferre parvulos a dominio parentum volentium eos educare contra cultum Dei, qui est supremus et honestissimus dominus, et debet eos applicare cultui divino, In Sent. IV, d. 4, q. 9, ed. Vivès, t. 16, p. 487b) (I wasn’t able to consult at this time the critical edition of these questions, which was published by the Scotist Commission in 2010).

With this position Scotus runs into difficulty with the view that, based on Rom. 9,27 (“… reliquiæ salvæ fient”) and Psalm 59,12 (“ne occidas eos, nequando obliviscantur populi mei.”), there should be a continued Jewish presence, even within a Christian society (see for instance Augustine, De civitate Dei, 18,46, ed. CCSL 48, pp. 644-645). Scotus himself recognizes this because, after quoting Rom. 9,27 he writes: “ideo Judaeos non oportet cogere totaliter ad Baptismus scipiendum et relinquendum legem suam” (ed. Vivès, t. 16, p. 489b).

At this point Scotus comes up with the outlandish idea of placing a small group of Jews on an island, allowing them to practice their faith.

“Et si dicas, quod visa destructione Antichristi, illi qui sibi adhaeserant, convertentur, dico pro tam paucis, et sic tarde convertendis, non oporteret tot Judaeos, in tot partibus mundi, tantis temporibus sustinere in lege sua persistere, quia finalis fructus de eis Ecclesiae est, et erit modicus. Unde sufficeret aliquos paucos in aliqua insula sequestratos permitti legem suam servare, de quibus tandem illa prophetia Isaeiae impleretur.” (ed. Vives, t. 16, p. 489b).

The Princeps Thomistarum, Johannes Capreolus, naturally discusses these views in his Defensiones theologiae. He rejects Scotus’ view on the role of the prince, arguing that “baptizari et credere non pertinet ad ius humanum vel civile, sed ad naturale vel divinum.” (ed. Paban/Pègues, t. 6, p. 119a).

He quotes exetensively from Petrus de Palude and concludes: “nec Imperator nec Papa debet filios infidelium ipsis invitis baptizare, quamdiu pueri ex jure divino vel naturali subsunt curae parentum. Et principalis ratio est: quia Deus prohibet ne infideles, aut eorum filii ante usum rationis, cogantur ad suscipiendum fidel vel baptismum. Sed specialis ratio est de parvulus: quia, hoc faciendo, fieret injuria parentibus, et contra jus naturale.” (ed. cit. 121b).

What about the outlandish idea of an island for Jews?

“Quinto, dicitur quod, quia divina praescientia et revelatio prophetica habet Judaeos per Antichristum fore pervertendos, et ad praedicationem Eliae convertendos, hoc solum debet sufficere ad propositum, quod scilicet non sunt cogendi in totum ad fidem, quia hoc esset frustra niti contra divinum praescientiam et revelationem; et, eadem ratione, neque in partem; et sic reclusio et sequaestratio illorum in quadam insula parum valeret.” (122a).

It would be interesting to know whether Scotus changed his mind and whether other Thomists responded to Scotus’ idea. So far as I know Cajetan does not mention this idea in his commentary on ST III, 68, 10.

Aquinas's use of the lex parsimoniae

We all know that Ockham's razor wasn't really Ockham's razor. He got the shaving device second hand from his predecessors, among them, Aquinas.

Below are some instances of Aquinas's use of it, which I have shamelessly lifted from Schütz's Lexikon. Schütz lists them in the entry for fieri (and you'll see why). I came across them last week and I thought it would be handy to gather them here for anyone who is interested in the topic.

Three things to note: (1) Of the instances from the Contra gentiles and the Summa theologiae below (which are all the instances save one), almost all are found in objections. The only one that isn't from an objection is the one from CG, I, 42 (the first one). (2) The instance from the commentary on the Physics (the last one) is used in explicating Aristotle's argument. (3) I made minor changes to the wording and punctuation of the second and last ones since I noticed discrepancies with the Leonine text.

Don't cut yourself!

*** 

quod sufficienter fit uno posito, melius est per unum fieri, quam per multa (CG, I, 42)  

quod potest sufficienter fieri per unum, superfluum est si per multa fiat (CG, III, 70)

quod potest compleri per pauciora principia, non fit per plura (ST, I, a. 2, arg. 2)

quod potest sufficienter fieri per unum, superfluum est, quod fiat per multa (ST, I, q. 108, a. 3, arg. 2)

quod sufficienter potest fieri per unum, non oportet, quod per aliquid aliud inducatur (ST, II-II, q. 22, q. 1, arg. 1)

quod potest fieri per unum, superfluum est plura ponere (ST, II-II, q. 45, a. 2, arg. 3)

quod potest fieri per unum, superflue fit per multos (ST, III, q. 82, a. 2, arg. 2)

Quod potest fieri per pauciora, superfluum est si fiat per plura (In Physic., I, l. 11, n. 14)

Save the unicorn!

This has almost nothing to do with Aquinas. But I invite you to consider my defense of the unicorn and examine your conscience. Perhaps unicorns would be an appropriate topic for a synod of bishops in Rome. I wonder what Walter Kasper thinks about them.

Godoy's Philosophical Works?

Does anyone know who might have plagiarized Pedro de Godoy's philosophical works.  Echard merely writes, "Opera ejus philosophica alii usurparunt, et inverecundi plagiarii sub proprio nomine typis ediderunt."  He mentions Calavieri's Galeria de'Pontefici Domenicani, p. 699, which is available on Google and does not explain in any more detail how to find the text itself or who might have published it.

German Theology and Philosophy vs Scholastic

After reading selections from The Pope Emeritus's interview on Vatican II, it occurred to me that twentieth-century German theology and its antecedents in some ways seem to share the same faults as medieval German thought (with the exception of St. Albert.)  I was reminded of this text from De Wulf's Philosophy and Civilization in the Middle Ages:

"Endowmentof the personal worth of the individual with metaphysical support; devotion to clear ideas and their correct expression; moderation in doctrine and observance of a just mean between extremes;  the combination of experience and deduction,-these are the characteristics, or, if you will, the tendencies, of the scholastic philosophy as it was elaborated by Neo-Latins and Anglo-Celts.    But,  in the Neo-Platonic group of German thinkers in the thirteenth century,  all of this is replaced by very different characteristics,­ fascination for monism and pantheism; mystic communion of the soul with Deity;  craving for extreme deduction; predilection for the study of Being, and of its descending steps;  aversion to clarified intellectualism;  delight in examples and metaphors, which are misleading and equivocal; and above ail the want of balanced equilibrium, in exaggerating certain aspects and doctrines regardless of all else."

For interview selections, see http://www.onepeterfive.com/benedict-xvi-admits-qualms-of-conscience-about-vatican-ii/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Onepeterfive+%28OnePeterFive%29

How bad was scholastic manualism?

Perhaps not all that bad. See my brief post on this at the AMU philosophy department blog.

Dare I say that Aquinas was the first "textbook Thomist"?

Indissolubility of Marriage Outside of Thomism

The recent denials of the dogmatic character of Trent's teaching on divorce was mentioned in previous posts about Thomists.  It is helpful to supplement these texts with the non-Thomistic account by Giovanni Perrone, S.J.  You can find many references to other discussions in his notes, and he has some material on Sarpius and Launoy, who denied that the canon is about the teaching of the Church on a dogmatic issue.  The discussion of the canon is on pp., 407-420. There is interesting background material on the Greeks starting at p. 389.  He seems to be followed by Van de Burgt in his Tractatus de Matrimonio.  I don't have a copy of the update by Shaepman.  Any links or suggestions would be helpful.  I imagine that this material will be more solidly covered by Brugge, but it is interesting to read over.

https://books.google.com/books?id=XX4xVSakuwgC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Matrimonio+christiano+3+libri+tres&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiYzYff0YzPAhXJ4CYKHXqHCX0Q6AEIHjAA#v=onepage&q=Matrimonio%20christiano%203%20libri%20tres&f=false

The previous post is here.

http://thomistica.net/commentary/2016/3/24/thomism-and-indissolubility-of-marriage-at-trent?rq=Gonet

Reflections on St. Thomas's Marvelous Commentary on Job

(A Guest Post by Dr. Jeremy Holmes of Wyoming Catholic College.)

It is commonly said that Thomas Aquinas wrote commentaries on Scripture.  But the claim is liable to misunderstanding: in our day, biblical scholars write commentaries on Scripture while theologians write monographs about theology. [1] St. Thomas would have found this division of labor interesting in theory but odd in practice, because his job as a medieval university master was to teach theology to the most advanced students by lecturing on a book of the Bible.  He lectured on Scripture in class, wrote theological treatises at home, and did theology all the time. [2]

When St. Thomas was named lector for the priory at Orvieto, he was expected to expound a book of Scripture for the brethren. [3] He had already begun work on Book III of the Summa contra gentiles, on divine providence, so to keep his work focused he looked for a book of Scripture that would allow him to lecture on divine providence.  Where to turn?

His clue came from Maimonides, who devoted two chapters of his Guide of the Perplexed to the book of Job.  According to this venerable Jewish teacher, Job was written to explain the various opinions people hold about divine providence. [4]Literal exposition of the book of Job was rare in the Christian tradition, but St. Thomas saw this as an opportunity to fill a gap. [5] And so he set out to teach his fellow Dominicans about divine providence via the book of Job, declaring that “The whole intention of this book is directed to this: to show that human affairs are ruled by divine providence using probable arguments.”

For today’s students of St. Thomas, this was a stroke of luck.  Everyone knows that the artist flourishes under constraint:  the poet’s creativity is unlocked, not diminished, by a rigid sonnet structure; the architect’s brilliance emerges especially under the demands of an unusual terrain; the painter’s genius rises to the challenge of a fresco where ceiling and walls dictate the contours.  The same is true of a theologian.  It is one thing to compose a treatise on divine providence in the open spaces of unshackled speculative reason; it is quite another thing to teach about divine providence through respectful engagement with the complicated, pungent, and often obscure poetry of Job.

The result is one of St. Thomas’s most lyrical works, a book Jean-Pierre Torrell describes as “beautiful.” [6] The dramatic situation and the nooks and crannies of the poetry elicit insights from St. Thomas that might never have come up any other way.  For example, in the first chapter of Job, God calls Satan’s attention to Job’s outstanding life.  It is an odd scene, to say the least:  no one thinks of Satan as standing in God’s presence at all, few hope that Satan will notice them, and most would be stunned to think that God would bring them to Satan’s mind.  But the curious story prompts St. Thomas to a marvelous observation:

Consider that God not only orders the lives of the just for their own good, but he represents it for others to see.  Still those who see this example are not all influenced by it in the same way.  For the good who consider the life of the just as an example profit from the experience; whereas the wicked, if they are not corrected so that they become good by his example, revolt against the life of the just which they have observed….

The just man’s life amplifies the goodness of the good and the wickedness of the wicked at the same time, thus driving forward God’s plan.  Job’s story is not just about whether Job gets a fair shake, and my story and yours are not just about whether we get our own.  Our life—including our misfortunes—is also for the sake of others.

There are many such jewels in St. Thomas’s treatment of Job. [7] Consequently, the time has come for an English edition of this masterwork suitable for serious study.  The Aquinas Institute is happy to announce the release of our latest volume in the Opera Omnia project, a hard-cover, Latin-English edition of the Job commentary, with a translation by Brian Thomas Becket Mullady, OP, STD.  We hope this volume will serve both theologians and biblical scholars and contribute to dialogue between them.

***

[1] There is the outstanding exception of the Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible, which recruits theologians who are not biblical scholars to write commentaries on various books of Scripture.  Even here, however, the theologians enlisted have been influenced by the modern convention of the “commentary,” and what they write tends to lack the unity of intention one sees in Aquinas’ biblical expositions.

[2] A marvelously clear example of this biblical-theological unity, predating the university, is Rupert of Deutz’s treatiseDe honore et gloria filii hominis super Matthaeum.  It is a treatise on the Incarnation that takes as its literary form a commentary on the Gospel of Matthew.

[3] The lector’s role was to prepare those Dominicans who had no opportunity to attend the university for their mission of preaching and hearing confessions.  In addition to lecturing on Scripture, he was supposed to offer classes on moral issues, material which may have laid the groundwork for the Secunda Pars of St. Thomas’s Summa theologiae.  See Jean-Pierre Torrell, St. Thomas Aquinas: The Person and His Work (vol 1; trans. Robert Royal; Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1996), 118-119.

[4] The Guide of the Perplexed, Book III, chapters 22-23.  A translation is available online here.  For a comparison of Maimonides and Aquinas on Job, see Martin D. Yaffe, “Providence in Medieval Aristotelianism: Moses Maimonides and Thomas Aquinas on the Book of Job” in Hebrew Studies 20/21 (1979-1980): 62-74.

[5] An anonymous medieval letter, probably written by a Victorine monk, denies that Job has any useful literal sense.  Hugh of St. Cher allows that Job’s literal intention is to show the depths of human misery and to teach patience, but he concludes that the value of Job lies more in its practical than in its speculative teachings.  See Beryl Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1964), 88-89 and 301-302.  Roland of Cremona, the first Dominican master at the university of Paris, composed a literal exposition of Job about thirty years prior to that of Aquinas, but it does not appear that St. Thomas was familiar with this work.  See Torell, St. Thomas Aquinas, 57-58.

[6] See Torrell, St. Thomas Aquinas, 120.

[7] For an appreciative review of Job commentary’s contribution to St. Thomas’s teaching on providence, see Roger Nutt, “Providence, Wisdom, and the Justice of Job’s Afflictions: Considerations from Aquinas’ Literal Exposition on Job,” in the Heythrop Journal LVI (2015): 44-66.

Thomism and travel bans

Occasionally here at Thomistica we discuss current events. I'm not going to do that in this post but shall rather direct you to where I've just done that elsewhere. I have an essay at Public Discourse today in which I try to apply Aquinas's moral theory to GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump's proposal to ban Muslim travel to the US.

Concepts of Numbers? Consequences for the Synthetic A Priori?

Just what 'is' the concept of a number? Further, what is the relation of this concept to a picture image of the quantity that corresponds to the concept? 

When it comes to the number 3, one can easily picture some image representing the quantitative value of 3. But let's try 37. That's harder. However, if I am familiar with numbers, I can churn out an image representing the value. I can place 37 dots on the paper, for instance. Here, we have a relationship between some intellectual idea and a physical 'phantasm' as it were, which we can generate. The paper will have better memory than I; hence, I need paper or a slate. Whatever this idea of the number is, then, comprised therein is the 'rule' for creating the phantasm. (Here, let phantasm have its impression on a physical medium.) 

Now, it seems to me that in the rule regarding the construction of the phantasm for 37 is any set of rules for the generation of, say, factors and sets of numbers equalling the number 37. If so, included in the rule for the construction of an image of 37 is the rule by which I can judge that concept from which I can construct the image of 13 added to the image of 24, equals 37. The latter rule seems included in the very rule by which I churn out the phantasm for 37. So, if the number were 36, I'd include in the rules included in 36 also those of its interesting factors (those besides 1 and 36). 

Now, to say that in the concept 37 I do not see the concept "13 plus 24" seems correct at first sight. If it is correct and yet our judgment of its truth is necessary, it seems that we have a synthetic a priori judgment. 

However, I suggest that whatever darkness lies between the concept 37 and the concept 13 + 24 is similar to the darkness that lies between the concept 37 and the very rule whereby I construct the image of 37. Just what is this latter relationship? 

In short, if it is correct that the concept "13 plus 24" is not included in 37, then, similarly, the rule for generating the image of 37 is not in the concept 37. But is it not obviously false that the rule for generating the image of 37 is not in the idea of 37, whatever an idea of 37 is? Would not all agree that the rule for generating the image of 37 is most certainly in the idea of 37? The alleged difficulty of finding in the concept 37 the concept 13+24 is really indistinguishable from the difficulty of finding the phantasm of 37 without the process of executing the rule. From the concept 37 I cannot perceive at once the image representative of 13+24.

However, I clearly do grasp from 37 the rule for the construction of the image of that quantity. Similarly, I grasp the various sets of rules tucked in the number; or I can acquire the habit of such knowledge; or I can work it out case by case, just as I work out case by case the image of the quantity 37 or 43 or 317. 

What does this matter? If it is claimed that the way I grasp the necessity of the rules regarding the parts of 37 is that of a 'synthetic a priori judgment', I respond by saying that the way I grasp the necessity of the rule regarding the creation of its phantasm is a 'synthetic a priori judgment.' But would anyone grant that one grasps the relation of a rule to the idea of a number by way of synthetic judgment? If few would, why would not few also agree that the relations of the concepts need not be grasped by synthetic judgment but rather that analytic judgment is what occurs? Further, if the relation of my concept of a number to the rule generating its image is grasped by synthetic judgment, what in fact would be linked in the judgment except a symbol and a rule? My concept becomes simply a symbol. Would all concepts vanish? Perplexity. What are the relations between concept, symbol, and the various rules? What is the concept of a determinate number?

The constructive character of arithmetic here certainly includes the relationship of concept to phantasm. Insofar as phantasm is required for insight, one can say that this constructive character is constitutes a dispositional condition for the growth in ideas, as one enters the science. I think the science of classical geometry follows a similar pattern.