the logic of desire: aquinas on emotion, by nicholas e. lombardo op

DOI:10.1111/j.1741-2005.2012.01488.x

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A PECULIAR KIND OF MISSION: THE ENGLISH DOMINICAN SISTERS, 1845–2010 by Anselm Nye, Gracewing, Leominster, 2011, pp. xiv + 338, £25.00,hbk

Commissioned by the Dominican Sisters of the English Congregation ofSt Catherine of Siena to write their history, Anselm Nye, librarian at QueenMary College, University of London, has turned to good account his skills as anarchivist to write this thoroughly documented and very readable book.

More than a hundred congregations of Dominican Sisters were founded in thenineteenth century, sometimes initiated by a Dominican friar or a bishop butmostly by an individual woman who had discovered for herself the ideals of StDominic. The best known in England is Mother Margaret Hallahan (1802–1868).Born in London, the only surviving child of first-generation Irish immigrants, shewas baptized in the Sardinian Embassy Chapel. Her father, a porter for a winemerchant, died in 1813 at the age of thirty-five, his health undermined by drinkand tuberculosis. Her mother died a few months later. The orphan was soon indomestic service. Eventually, in 1829, she accompanied her then employers toBruges, where there was a flourishing English Catholic community, — ‘attracted’,Nye tells us, ‘by the lower cost of living, particularly that of educating theirchildren’. Margaret was to try her vocation with the English Canonesses of StAugustine, where a daughter of her employers went to school, but left after aweek when she found that as a lay sister she would not say the Divine Office.

Nye does not explain when or why Margaret’s ‘ardent desire to be receivedas a Dominican tertiary’ emerged. Perhaps the documentation does not exist.Perhaps, if we may speculate, some part was played by Fr Bernard Moulaert OP,prior of the house at Tienen, even at the earliest stage. In 1844, as Nye reports,Margaret was to return to Belgium, consult him, and probably obtain from himcopies of various Dominican constitutions. Then, in 1849, Moulaert visited herfirst stable community, instructing them in Dominican observances, teaching themthe Dominican Salve Regina and so on. However her vocation originated, she wascounseled by the English-speaking chaplain at the famous Beguinage until he feltshe was ready to make profession as a Dominican tertiary, which she did, onthe feast of St Catherine of Siena, 30 April 1835, in the hands of another priest,himself a Dominican tertiary.

Soon afterwards Margaret suffered a complete breakdown. She even spent somemonths as a patient in a hospital for incurables, at Lovendegem, run by the Sis-ters of Charity of Jesus and Mary. Perhaps, Nye speculates, their combination ofcontemplation with action inspired Margaret. Instead of returning to her employ-ers, anyway, she strove to establish a community of Dominican tertiaries, withthe sanction of the local friars, but her efforts came to nothing. Now aged forty,and after more than twelve years in Belgium, Margaret returned to England toestablish Dominican life for women. Her former employers’ family put her intouch with Mrs Amherst of Kenilworth, a wealthy benefactor and mother of afuture bishop. She recommended Margaret to William Bernard Ullathorne, theBenedictine monk and future bishop, under whose protection, with many set-backs, she founded one community after another, until given a small house in thequiet country town of Stone in Staffordshire in 1853 by James Beech of Longton

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(five of whose grand daughters would become Dominicans) she was able to buildthe convent where she was to die in 1868.

Nye has no reason to mention this but Mother Margaret proved a great supportto Bl John Henry Newman, as early as 1852, when he was found guilty of libelin the Achilli trial, fined £100 and left to meet expenses amounting to about£14,000. She was ‘a regular old brick’ as Newman’s friend Ambrose St John toldhim.

Newman appears as the guide and friend of Catherine Anne Bathurst (1825–1907), the founder of another congregation, of which there were to be five. Morethan eighty letters from Newman to her survive. She could not have been moredifferent from Mother Margaret. The daughter of a general, grand daughter of anearl, and a godchild of the Duke of Wellington, she belonged to a large family,with brothers in Anglican orders. Received into the Church at Farm Street shemade her first communion in Paris while staying with the Duchess of Norfolk.Her breakfast companions that day included Henri-Dominique Lacordaire OP andGustave de Ravignan SJ. In 1861, through the brother received at BirminghamOratory and by then mission priest at Stone, Catherine tried her vocation there buthad to leave as a result of a breakdown following the suicide of her only survivingsister. By 1868, after several false starts, she was co-founder of a Dominicancommunity in Ghent. Since relations with the local bishop were tense, it musthave come as a relief when she was invited by Cardinal Henry Edward Manningin 1877 to open a house at Harrow. She persuaded him to allow girls at the schoolto sit for the Oxford and Cambridge local examinations.

The other foundresses were equally remarkable. There were of course hundredsof women, as Nye shows, some who spent a few months, others a whole life-time,in the five distinct, autonomous congregations, with their mother houses Stone,Stroud, Leicester, Harrow and Portobello Road. All five of the original buildingsstill stand: Stone, the only one occupied by the Sisters; Stroud, converted intoworkshops and therapy rooms, with the Sisters nearby; Dane Hills, Leicester, aresidential care home; Harrow, converted into St Dominic’s Sixth Form Collegewith the original building an office block; and Portobello Road, now the ColegioEspanol Vicente Canada Blanch.

Religious orders and congregations have always split, for good and less goodreasons, just as they have also merged, sometimes with reluctance. As Nye notes,in the wake of the 1917 Code of Canon Law, there were moves towards central-ization. In one type of union a smaller group is absorbed into a larger, as theWest Grinstead Dominicans submerged their identity to join the Congregation ofSt Catherine of Siena of Newcastle, Natal: see Being driven Forward: the storyof Mother Rose Niland and the foundation of the Newcastle Dominican Sisters,by Columba Cleary, Eleanora Murphy and Flora McGlynn (Boksburg 1997). Inthe other kind of union each group gives up its distinctive identity to give birth toa completely new entity. The Bishop of Nottingham had come to believe that theweakness of the Leicester congregation (as he perceived it) would best be dealtwith by amalgamation with a stronger congregation. After delicate negotiationsthe five congregations amalgamated in 1929: the plan by which the unificationwas to be phased in, and for which the Sisters had voted, was overridden by theVatican, with the result that a few left the Order, recruitment for whatever reasondeclined, and a certain unhappiness persisted for years.

The War came, and then Vatican II and its aftermath, which accelerated theunexpected process by which the Sisters exchanged their corporate apostolate forindividual missions: from schools entirely staffed by Sisters collectively, to rolesin parish administration, seminary teaching, university and hospital chaplaincy,catechetical instruction of the deaf, the study of St Thomas Aquinas, and muchelse, apostolates which usually depend on an individual’s personal abilities andinterests.

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There is an odd reference to ‘a Miss Gulson’ (p. 123), a legacy from whomallowed the Sisters to engage the eminent Scottish architect Reginald Fairlie(1883–1952) to design the convent at Myreslaw Green, Hawick (completed in1912, vacated by the Sisters in 1986, now a residential care home). This mustbe Miss Helen M. Gulson, who inherited the Hawkesyard estate in Staffordshirefrom her uncle Josiah Spode IV and bequeathed it at her death in 1896 to theDominican friars. Miss Gulson and her uncle were received into the CatholicChurch in 1885, at Stone as it happens.

As Susan O’Brien lamented, in her essay in From without the FlaminianGate: 150 years of Roman Catholicism in England and Wales, 1850–2000 (Lon-don 1999), a valuable collection that surveys the scene and would fill out thebackground to this story, the place of women religious in recent years is littleunderstood. Yet, throughout the greater part of the decades covered in this book,religious sisters did far more than bishops, priests or any pope, or anyone buttheir parents, to form the faith of the vast majority of ordinary Catholics. To thehandful of histories that exist of religious congregations in England Anselm Nyehas made a valuable addition.

FERGUS KERR OP

THE LOGIC OF DESIRE: AQUINAS ON EMOTION by Nicholas E. LombardoOP, The Catholic University of America Press, Washington DC, 2010, pp. 319,£31.50 pbk.

The classical theological tradition in general, and St Thomas in particular, arefrequently if erroneously seen as the enemies of the passions, the repressors offeeling, and the deniers of desire. Yet those who think of Aquinas as a dryscholastic would do well to note Templeton prize winner Nicholas Lombardo’sclaim ‘that the theme of human affectivity and its perfection by virtue is oneof the major organising principles of the Summa – that is not just one of manythemes, but a theme of central importance to his project’ (p. 198).

On reading The Logic of Desire it is hard to remain unconvinced of this.Lombardo expertly shows how for Aquinas the dynamics of desire, appetite andaffect are not only essential to normal human functioning, but are intrinsicallygood and equally essential aspects of our God seeking; they ‘direct being towardits telos’ (p. 26). In a Summa whose structure is seen as moving from God,to creation and humanity, through Christ back to God, the power of this ideabecomes self-evident once the connection between appetitive movement and ournatural desire for the good is grasped. ‘Appetite is inextricably linked to being andgoodness’ (p. 27), and is ‘the engine driving the exitus-reditus: both in the divineexitus, since it flows from an act of God’s will, and in the creaturely reditus,since appetite motivates creation to return to God’ (p. 30). ‘As a doe longs forrunning streams, so my soul longs for you, my God’ (Ps 42). By contrast, andhere is an interesting idea, evil is ‘not just . . . a privation of goodness but also . . . afrustration of appetite and the consequent disintegration of being, insofar as evilblocks appetite from attaining its natural telos (p. 30). Thus, ‘(o)ur sins againstGod are also and always sins against our deepest desires’ (p. 242). So much, sopositively stated, then, by a supposed despiser of affect.

Yet I suspect all this may be less obvious to those who fail to see the (teleo-logical) point of emotion, or who having severed its connection with reason, treatit as a ‘mere’ sentiment to be privately indulged perhaps, but a major impedimentto rationality. It may be equally hard to grasp by those who view emotion asan enslaving tyrant to be ascetically overcome or a disrupter to be repressed.But those who more positively value feeling might be reassured: according to


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Lombardo’s Thomas, we are born to desire, love, and delight, and our naturalloves, properly ordered, with and by God’s grace, can lead us to true flourish-ing and to God. ‘For Aquinas, love . . . is the most paradigmatic of the passions’(p. 36). Examining closely Aquinas’s views on the passions and affections, ex-plicating their inner structure, and locating them in their historical and ethicalcontexts, Lombardo thus offers both a theological and a quasi-psychological ac-count – the ‘logic’ of desire – in a situated analysis which can serve as the basisfor future interdisciplinary discussion. This is a first rate book which deservesclose study by philosophers and psychologists as well as by theologians and me-diaeval scholars, and is as a good primer for the primary texts, but I fear fewpsychologists will get to read it. More’s the pity.

After a useful introduction which includes a brief consideration of the handlingof emotion by recent analytic philosophy, we are treated in the first three chaptersto a tour, manuductio, through the nature of the passions in general, their struc-ture, and the intellectual appetites and affections. In the next three, the crucialconnections are articulated between passions, reason and virtue, the disorderingeffects of sin, the redeeming effects of grace, and the nature of human flourishing.Christ’s affectivity is then carefully considered and the book concludes with twouseful evaluative chapters and a short conclusion.

If passions are movements of the appetites, virtues, as becomes crystal clear,are simply the flip side of passions. They are the habitually practised appetitesand desires, politically ruled by reason, and properly ordered to the true, thegood and the beautiful. Or as Lombardo quoting Melina puts it: ‘virtue is desireeducated to see the stars’ (FN 97, p. 116). Hence, ‘Aquinas’s account of thepassions vis-a-vis reason occupies a point midway between Hume and Kant’(FN 98, p. 116). But the moral life is far from straightforward for it is the ‘confluxof appetites that makes us complicated’ (p. 33) yet ‘each is necessary for humanflourishing; each is a God-given inner compass oriented toward happiness; nonecan be ignored and their careful discernment and prudent management is the keyto a balanced life’ (p. 34).

I was fascinated to be reminded that Aquinas situates his Christology afteroffering his accounts of God and the person and hence that ‘ . . . theology andanthropology thus provide an ontological foundation for his discussion of Christ’(p. 204). Psychology has much to learn from Aquinas, therefore, and potentiallymuch to give back. Obvious concepts for rediscovery by the human sciencesinclude the appetites, will-as-desire, schooled-passions as virtues, and the full,flourishing possibilities for human nature, but to do so psychology will need tomake its peace with teleology as well as theology. And to do this it may needto grasp a deeper learning point. Far from being mere ‘folk psychology’, goodtheological anthropology offers accounts of faith (e.g. Newman), and now here ofemotion and virtue, that govern the psychological landscape without having to dealdirectly with underlying mechanisms. In this important sense theology is formallyarchitectonic for psychology. Lombardo accurately refers to this overview as aform of ‘Faculty Psychology’. He is right to do so, but knows that the termis freighted. Quite correctly he warns against the reductionist danger of takingit too literally at the level of mechanism. Personally I prefer to think of thiswhole family of theological accounts as offering structural grammars for thepsychological activities involved. Hence the appropriateness of Lombardo’s title,the logic of desire.

On therapy, Lombardo offers a brief yet creative account of how psycho-analytic accounts of repression could be elucidated through engagement withAquinas. There are, of course, other approaches to therapy, and issues in psy-chology in general, that might benefit from a similar engagement. Acceptanceand commitment therapy (ACT), for example, could be rescued from its currentshotgun marriage of behaviourism, Buddhist mindfulness, experiential acceptance,


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and pragmatic hedonism, by working on prayerful acceptance and discernmentof desires, and commitment to actions characterised by courage and fortitude.And the connection between existential security (peace of mind) and virtuousaction has still to be empirically explored. In several places, therefore, I foundmyself wanting to read more, but, frankly, this is work for other scholars andresearchers, and for other disciplines to reciprocate and complement with whatthey have already discovered.

Lombardo’s overall treatment is nuanced, balanced and does not pull punches.He is alert to omissions in St Thomas’s coverage of experience and memory,and honest too in acknowledging potential difficulties in Aquinas’s considerationof Christ’s affectivity and suggestion that the earthly Christ had full beatificknowledge. ‘His [Aquinas’s] approach does not just jeopardize his affirmationof the authenticity of Christ’s humanity. It also creates problems for his accountof human affectivity’ (p. 217). This is because in at least one case, Christ’s,Lombardo’s reading suggests that the appetites can function separately and this‘atomizes the faculties of the human person in a way that belies the complexity ofhuman affectivity’ (pp. 217–8). As he points out, however, these discontinuitiesderive mainly from Aquinas’s metaphysical understanding of Christ’s divinity and‘not from any uneasiness about attributing ordinary human experiences to Christ’(p. 218).

Throughout, the quality of the writing is high, as are the book’s production val-ues, and there are many pithy, quotable sayings often relating to our embodimentand nature. ‘For Aquinas, an itch is a passion of the body, but the desire to scratchthe itch is a passion of the soul’ (p. 229). Quoting Donohoo, Lombardo notesthat ‘ . . . ideology can lay down pavement over human nature, but sooner or latervegetation starts to come up through the cracks’ (FN 7, p. 233). ‘Sins are locatedmainly in affection’ (p. 190), but ‘virtue is the proper fulfilment of appetite, notjust its restraint (p. 191). And, in a phrase worthy of the bard, the ‘sadness ofenvy’ (p. 191) arises when the envious person misguidedly sees another’s goodsas diminishing his own happiness.

This is a book for keeping or, more charitably, at least prudent lending! Notsurprisingly, given its author, what comes through is a strong Dominican senseof the goodness of creation, creatures and nature; a creation that is not withoutflaws, for sure, but not so irredeemably fallen that there is no hope for us. For me,this easily ‘out-positives’ positive psychology without suffering from the latter’simplicit Pelagianism. And this reviewer felt wiser and happier for having read it.As the author concludes, ‘Still a gracious host, Aquinas continues to reward thosewho engage him in conversation and his writings on emotion deserve a widerreadership’ (p. 274). I couldn’t agree more.

PETER HAMPSON

SURNATUREL : A CONTROVERSY AT THE HEART OF TWENTIETH CENTURYTHOMISTIC THOUGHT edited by Serge-Thomas Bonino OP. Translated byRobert William and Matthew Levering, Sapientia Press, Ave Maria, Fl, 2009,pp. 349, $34.95 pbk

THE NATURAL DESIRE TO SEE GOD ACCORDING TO ST THOMAS AQUINASAND HIS INTERPRETERS by Lawrence Feingold, Sapientia Press, Ave Maria,Fl., (2nd ed), 2010, pp. 490, $32.95 pbk

Recent times have seen fresh interest in assessing the contribution of Henride Lubac SJ to Thomistic scholarship. This collection of essays forms part of


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that assessment focusing on the role that de Lubac’s book Surnaturel played inunderstanding St. Thomas’s account of the supernatural. The essays originated ata colloquium in Toulouse in 2000 and the Revue Thomiste first published them in2001. The essays are now offered in English translation in the Sapientia Press’sFaith and Reason series thus bringing them to the attention of a wider audience.

The collection is divided into four sections. The first section focuses on Sur-naturel and its reception. Etienne Fouilloux begins the section with a discussionof the historical context of the publication of Surnaturel. Secondly, GeorgesChantraine SJ considers the basic theses of Surnaturel. Thirdly, Henry DonneaudOP discusses three different critical thomistic responses to Surnaturel. Fourthly,Rene Mougal considers the relationship of the theses put forward in Surnaturel tothe work of Jacques Maritain. The second section focuses on St. Thomas’ views.Michel Bastit considers the relationship between Thomism and Aristotelianism.Secondly, Jean-Miguel Garrigues discusses the grace of Christ. Thirdly, Serge-Thomas Bonino OP discusses St. Thomas’ account of limbo. Fourthly, Jean-PierreTorrell OP summarizes St. Thomas teaching on nature and grace. The third sectiontakes up the later scholastic development of St. Thomas’s view. Laurence Renaultdiscusses Ockham’s view. Secondly, Jacob Schmutz considers a link between atheory of pure nature and late medieval accounts of secondary causality. Thirdly,Marie-Bruno Borde OCD outlines the views of the Salmanticences on the naturaldesire for God. The final section considers the role of the supernatural in contem-porary theology. Cardinal Cottier OP argues that not every mystical experience issupernatural. Secondly, Gilbert Narcisse OP discusses how a number of themesfrom Surnaturel are favourable to contemporary theological reflection. Thirdly,Benoıt-Dominique de La Soujeole OP considers the role of the supernatural incontemporary ecclesiology. Finally, Bishop Andre-Mutien Leonard discusses thetheological necessity of the concept of pure nature.

Undoubtedly there is much to praise about the collection. The contributions areall of a very high standard; they are well written and scholarly, and all of themrepay careful study. The contributions also serve to give a taste of the vibrancyof Thomism in France today, and in Toulouse in particular. There are three maindifficulties with the collection however. First, it never defends what it thinksde Lubac’s contribution to Thomism is. The collection largely assumes that deLubac’s contribution to Thomism is obvious and moves on from there. HenceBonino in the introduction to the collection suggests that ‘attention to the textsand to development within the history of doctrines, care to place St. Thomasin continuity with the Patristic tradition, the congenital openness of the mindto the supernatural, or the primacy of theology in Christian wisdom’, (viii) arebenefits that traditional Thomism acquired from its engagement with de Lubac.But much of this can be challenged. Donneaud’s piece, for example, shows thatRosaire Gagnebet OP, a traditional Thomist, paid close attention to the texts of StThomas. Marie-Michel Labourdette OP, another traditional Thomist, was certainlyopen to the Patristic tradition, even if he did not want to use it in the same waythat de Lubac did. Most significantly of all, no attempt is made to explain whythose who think that St. Thomas’ account of the natural desire for God is bestexplained by an elicited desire cannot also accept that human beings possess a‘ . . . congenital openness of the mind to the supernatural’. It might be that someor all of these claims can be justified, but there is no attempt to do so in thecollection.

Secondly, throughout the collection one notices an unwillingness to criticisede Lubac’s views explicitly. Bonino’s penetrating study shows that St. Thomastaught that unbaptised infants enjoy a purely natural end in limbo. That beingthe case St Thomas not only allowed for the possibility of a state of pure naturebut also maintained that in certain circumstances that possibility was realised.


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Clearly, a theologian who wants to deny this cannot also hold the same view asSt. Thomas. Similarly, Torrell’s study shows that St. Thomas distinguished humannature’s ‘natural’ capacities (pura naturalia) from its gratuitious gifts (gratuita).Since the former do not depend on grace but the latter do it is easy to imaginehuman nature existing with the former capacity but not the latter and hence affirmthe possibility of human nature in a merely natural state. Whether such a statediffers from the state of pure nature, as Torrell suggests, will depend on historicalstudy of the theologians who constructed the theology of the state of pure nature.Prima facie though the two states are the same and thus one is left to wonderwhy it is that only Bishop Andre-Mutien Leonard defends the necessity of a stateof pure nature.

The third difficulty with the collection is the most telling-there are no studiesof Denis the Carthusian, Cajetan, Sylvester of Ferrara or Suarez. These thinkers,presumably, constructed the theology that de Lubac allegedly overcame and whichdiffered in some significant way from St. Thomas’ theology. These claims needsto be tested though and whilst the historical studies offered are all interestingnone of them investigate whether there actually is a gap between St. Thomasand his commentators. The closest one comes to such an investigation is Borde’sfascinating essay on the Salmanticenses but much more is needed.

The collection would have been stronger if it had subjected de Lubac’s versionof St. Thomas’ account of the supernatural to more scrutiny. That it did not doesnot mean it is without value, it just needs to be read with that qualification inmind.

Lawrence Feingold’s ambitious book addresses the question in what sense didSt. Thomas and his major interpreters think that the natural desire for God wasnatural. Essentially Feingold’s project has two objectives: to show that the maincommentatorial account of Aquinas’s position is the substantially correct inter-pretation of St. Thomas’ view and to show that that commentatorial accountidentifies the true sense in which human beings have a natural desire for God.This second edition of Feingold’s book differs from the first in three main ways.First, Feingold has removed the Latin texts for the footnotes that the first edi-tion contained. Secondly, Feingold has removed the first edition’s chapters onconditional willing and Capreolus. Thirdly, Feingold has added a new conclusionand some bibliographical updates. The result is a work of sixteen chapters and aconclusion which is smaller than the first edition but nevertheless still substantial.

The book can be divided into four sections: first Aquinas’s view (chapters 1–3),secondly Scotus’s view (chapter 4), thirdly the attempts of the commentators toexpound Aquinas’s view (Chapters 5–12) and fourthly the challenge to that com-mentatorial account from its principle critics Jansenius and de Lubac (chapters13–16). In the first three chapters Feingold introduces a number of distinctionscentral to the views of Aquinas and his interpreters and analyses a number ofAquinas’s texts on the natural desire for God. There are two crucial points. First,Feingold argues that Aquinas is committed to a distinction between desires whichare independent of knowledge and desires which are dependent on knowledge.Adopting subsequent terminology Feingold suggests that we call the former de-sires ‘innate’ and the latter desires ‘elicited’. Secondly, Feingold suggests that inAquinas’s view some elicited desires are natural desires. The force of these firstthree chapters is to lay the groundwork for arguing that when Aquinas speaks of‘a natural desire for God’, what he has in mind is an elicited desire for God thatis subsequent to a naturally acquired knowledge of God.

Chapter 4 expounds Scotus’s view that the natural desire for God is an innatedesire. He reasons that because elicited desires are dependent on knowledgeyet the will can always will the contrary of what is known, elicited desirescannot be natural desires. But if elicited desires are not natural desires, then


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the natural desire for God cannot be an elicited desire – it must be an innatedesire. Scotus’s view is important because it provides one of the key elementsin the intellectual context in which the Thomistic commentators try to expoundAquinas’s view. Rather than desiring to unleash militant secularism on the world,the commentators disagree with Scotus on the technical question of whether therecan be an innate desire for a supernatural end without necessarily possessing theresources to explain how the alternative view – that the natural desire for God isan elicited desire – can be coherent.

Chapters 5–12 chart the vicissitudes of the commentatorial attempts to expoundAquinas’s view. Feingold pieces together an account which argues that St Thomasheld that the objects of innate desires are proportionate (chapter 6) and owed(chapter 11) to the subject of those desires. Since the beatific vision does notmeet either of these two criteria, human beings do not have an innate desire(chapters 5, 6, 11) or a natural passive potency for that vision (chapter 7). Ratherwhat human beings have is an elicited desire for God which depends on a priornatural knowledge that God exists (chapter 9) and a specific obediential potencyfor the beatific vision (chapter 7).

Chapters 13–16 engage with the critics of the commentatorial reading ofAquinas. Feingold argues that the commentatorial critics misinterpret Aquinas’sview and undermine the gratuity of grace by insisting that human beings as theycurrently are could not have a purely natural end.

Feingold has produced a very impressive work. He is able to show that Janse-nius’s and de Lubac’s readings of Aquinas are at fault: they lack textual corrob-oration in Aquinas and they entail theologically erroneous consequences. At thesame time, Feingold finds textual corroboration for the commentatorial accountin St Thomas’ work and where that commentatorial account does depart from StThomas, Feingold can show that such departure is due to an inadequate responseto Scotus. In sum, it seems to the reviewer at least that Feingold is successfulin showing that the main commentatorial account of Aquinas’s position is thesubstantially correct interpretation of St. Thomas’ view.

Where Feingold is less convincing is in showing that the commentatorial ac-count he identifies captures the true sense in which human beings have a naturaldesire for God. This is not just a matter of interpreting St. Thomas – one cancorrectly interpret a view of St Thomas which nevertheless is false. Rather thisis about defending the Thomist claim that the objects of innate desires are pro-portionate and owed to the subject of those desires. Again, that this is a Thomistclaim is not in question, that this claim is true is subject to doubt, because noneof the defences offered for it in the book are entirely satisfactory. For example,one might simply reject the Aristotelian principle that natural active powers andpassive powers complement each other and thus find fault with any view whichdepends upon that principle. Likewise, one can argue that Cajetan’s criticismsof Scotus in De potentia neutra (p 82–85) merely show that one must excludeviolent perfections from a creature’s innate desire – a position Scotus would ac-cept (p53), not that these criticisms entail that the object of innate desire mustbe proportionate to the subject of that desire. Finally, against Suarez (p 251)one might argue that whilst a creature does not have two innate desires for twodifferent actual ends that does not exclude a creature having two innate desiresfor two different possible ends. What prohibits the former but not the latter is thelogic of identity not the constitution of the will.

None of this however should detract from Feingold’s achievement. It is ameasure of Feingold’s success that he has managed to shift the debate frommatters of Thomistic interpretation to arguing for the truth of that interpretationwith non-Thomist interlocutors.

DOMINIC RYAN OP


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FAITH, HOPE AND POETRY : THEOLOGY AND THE POETIC IMAGINATIONby Malcolm Guite, Ashgate, Farnham, 2010, pp 257, £47.50

The last few years have seen a general academic consensus on the need for andlegitimacy of an interdisciplinary study of literature and theology, an acceptancethat owes much to the work of scholars such as Stephen Prickett and DavidJasper. What will emerge as the parameters of that study is still unsure. However,the book under review here belongs to its hinterland rather than its mainstream.Faith, Hope and Poetry, which bears an endorsement from the Archbishop ofCanterbury, is an interesting exercise which promises one offering, only to delivera different one. According to the dustjacket:

‘Guite builds towards a substantial theology of imagination and providesunique insights into truth which complement and enrich more strictly rationalways of knowing’.

This kind of language always makes one wary: what sort of thing might a theologyof the imagination be? How would one identify its categories? Guite explains hispurpose by asserting his conviction that the poetic imagination is truth-bearing:

‘Through poetry I hope to explore our imagination as an aspect of the ImagoDei in humankind, as an active, shaping power of perception exercised bothindividually and collectively, and as a faculty which is capable of both appre-hending and embodying truth . . . My hope is to illustrate the ways in whichthe poetic imagination can help to redress a lost balance, renew and deepenour vision of the world and, in so doing, also enrich our understanding oftheology’. (15)

First of all it should be remarked that this is quite an expensive book and onewould have expected a higher standard of copy-editing. There are comparativelyfew pages without an error of some kind, omitted words, wrong punctuation ormisspellings. Lope de Vega’s name appears in two different forms, both incorrect,‘Magdelen’ (College) and ‘Phillip’ (Larkin) fairly leap off the page and StephenPrickett’s magisterial Words and The Word (1986) features in the bibliography asWord and Word.

Malcolm Guite is chaplain of Girton College, Cambridge, and this is recog-nisably a clerical rather than academic book. He writes of a disjunction betweenReason and Imagination, which he attributes to the deleterious effect of theEnlightenment, and which, he says, has relegated religion to the area of thesubjective inner mind while science has assumed the mantle of real, objectiveknowledge. One has only to say ‘Richard Dawkins’ to appreciate that there istruth in what Guite says, but the development of which he writes has a muchmore complicated provenance than simple Cartesian dualism. Guite does refer inpassing to Owen Barfield’s discussion of a participational or transactional con-sciousness that informed poetry from the earliest days, a consciousness whichlater dissipated. Stephen Prickett, in Words and The Word (1986) deals at somelength with this change of consciousness, but in a much profounder and morenuanced way. Whatever one calls it, the disposition, evident in medieval litera-ture, to read the direct action of God into the experience of the natural world wasdisappearing long before the Enlightenment and is logically a target of Luther’searliest writings on grace and the will: the practitioners of Radical Orthodoxy,indeed, suggest that the rot was already setting in with Duns Scotus.


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The Reason/Imagination opposition, then, is just not up to the job of explainingwhy early modern scientists thought that language could dispense with imagery,or exactly how this misapprehension contributed to the increase of secularism.Guite follows a rough chronological order in his discussion of various poems,but the whole is contained within a framework of reference to images foundin the poetry of Seamus Heaney. Heaney and Coleridge are, he declares, themain writers to whom he owes the development of his ideas, but they do not,singly or together, provide a unified structure for his book, and the piecemealquality of the chapters suggests something on the lines of a poetical Desert IslandDiscs.

Guite’s discussion of the OE Dream of the Rood is sensitive, and in manyways valuable to readers unfamiliar with the poem, but his treatment of it is rep-resentative of his general method. He introduces the Dream with a short overviewof Macrobius’s categories of dream-vision, which for the general reader is notnecessary and for the academic not adequate. Most readers can deal readilywith the dream-trope, but for the non-academic, some comment on the Germanicwarrior-ethos according to which the crucified and abused Christ was portrayed,strangely and powerfully, as a proactive hero (der Held von Juda of Gen: 49),would have been helpful. Instead, Guite comments on the literary motif of thewarrior dying with his lord, which is not particularly relevant to this poem. Thatsaid, Guite’s commentary, on parts of the Dream and different modern versionsof it, is thoroughly worthwhile and, for devotional purposes, often inspirational.A chapter follows, on “feigning” in Shakepeare, quoting speeches from A Mid-summer Night’s Dream and The Tempest. This does not present any surprisesexcept the complete absence of any reference to Platonism and to Sir PhilipSidney’s Defence of Poesie, which is very relevant to the question of truth inpoetry and which might have helped to dispel the impression that this chapterwas included only because Guite liked the Shakespearian passages so much. Inthe Jesuit poet and martyr, Robert Southwell, there was a contemporary writerwhose conscious Ignatian use of the imagination might have aided his argument,but Guite ignores him (as, more surprisingly, he largely ignores the later Je-suit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins). The chapter on Donne and Herbert workswell as devotional writing but fails to comment on Augustine’s influence onDonne, which, in the context of imaginative composition, might have been il-luminating, and leaves unvisited the doctrinal problems suggested by Herbert’suse of metaphor. With Milton, serious difficulties arise. It is almost impossible toread Paradise Lost as devotional material. The Christian reader may marvel, asC.S.Lewis does, at the piety and intellectual grandeur of Milton, but it is doubtfulthat his poetic appreciation will have very much to do with promoting the loveof God.

Guite then jumps rather a long way from Vaughan to Coleridge and the Roman-tics, giving the reader the impression that there was no religious poetry writtenbetween the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. He is unjustly dismissive ofPope and completely ignores Dryden, which, considering how much of Dryden’soutput was religiously propelled, seems perverse. The section on Coleridge, whichthe reader has been expecting to trace the derivation and provide an exposition ofGuite’s theology of imagination, comes as something of a disappointment. Guiteparaphrases Coleridge’s theory of Secondary Imagination, but does not clarify orbuild upon it. Coleridge’s celebrated intellectual excursions from poetic theoryinto other areas of thought are groundbreaking, but they do not in any sense forma systematic philosophy or theology.

Malcolm Guite is clearly a sensitive and perceptive reader of poetry, not acritic, and as an admirer of George Steiner, he should appreciate the distinction.This book is a successful and often powerful celebration of certain mostly reli-gious poems for devotional purposes. In claiming to outline a particular theology,


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however, the author has overestimated what an enthusiasm for poetry is able todo. Sometimes, certainly, the imagination may bear witness to the truth, but, justas often, it does not. Both Sidney and Southwell, had Guite mentioned them,could have testified to the fact that the will is an all-important factor in suchwitness. Truth is beauty, of a sort, but beauty is not always truth and privilegingthe ‘reasons of the heart’ is not a very reliable way to learn about God.

Guite writes sympathetically about the poems of Seamus Heaney and had heconfined himself to this poet he would have made a better book and a better case,as Heaney’s poetry amply demonstrates the importance of authorial intention in‘God-talk’. This is more nourishing and convincing fare for the truth-seeker thanthe occasional and fortuitous glimpse of something Christian-friendly in Hardyor Larkin. Perhaps Guite is arguing for the worth of poetry, in which he is to besupported, but his argument is not a particularly beguiling one. In a brief visitto Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, he remarks that the The Wasteland and Ulysses werepublished in the same year, implying that they somehow present a refutation of it.One feels inclined to pin Malcom Guite down and ask him to locate and explicatethe precise occasions of ‘truth’ in these two great modern works. Of course, sucha silly enterprise would get us nowhere. The need for poetry is as natural tohuman beings as physical hunger, though one not as regularly recognised orindulged. It is ultimately God-given, as food is, and sometimes, given the willto prayer, it acts like a grace after meals, but a grace is not the same thing as atheology

CECILIA HATT

SOME LATER MEDIEVAL THEORIES OF THE EUCHARIST. THOMASAQUINAS, GILES OF ROME, DUNS SCOTUS, AND WILLIAM OCKHAM byMarilyn McCord Adams, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2010, pp. viii +318, £ 30 hbk

Talk of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist has often been understood as endorsingthe idea that celebrations of the Eucharist are nothing but liturgical assembliesin which their participants remember Christ and witness to him. A very differentview of the Eucharist takes Christ to be literally on Christian altars (if also inheaven). Is one of these views preferable to the other? One can easily see howsomeone might want to embrace the first rather than the second since there seemto be formidable objections to the claim that when the Eucharist is celebratedChrist (the man who lived and taught in Galilee) comes to be present wheresomething else is to start with (bread and wine). Theologians sometimes speak ofthe ‘Eucharistic change’, the idea being that what is first bread and wine comesto be the body and blood of Christ. But though one can readily grasp the ideathat things often change into radically different things (that cows turn into beef,say), the ‘Eucharistic change’ (in traditional Catholic thinking, anyway) seemsnot to be a change in this sense. The idea is not that we start with some physicalobjects which become different physical objects because of ways in which causesin the world act on them. The idea seems to be that we start with bread and wineand that these, though not by being acted on by anything physical, truly becomethe body and blood of Christ while not appearing to be so. Our usual notion ofchange (as in cows becoming beef, or as in someone getting to look older) seemsnot really to work when it comes to talk about the Eucharist.

So how should one understand such talk? One might say that it is a deepmystery and should not be probed. Medieval thinkers, however, stand out, notso much as probing (should that suggest something impious) but as trying de-fensively to show that talk of Christ becoming present in the Eucharist is not


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demonstrably nonsensical, and that it should be understood with an eye on thenotion of sacrament and on the final state of holy people (beatitude). In thepresent book Marilyn Adams seeks to explain how some medieval thinkers pro-ceeded with such an agenda in mind. Her scholarship easily allows her sometimesto reference earlier medieval authors such as Anselm, but her focus is on fourimportant thirteenth and fourteenth century ones (those mentioned in her title).Given her previous philosophical publications, one might expect Adams in thisbook systematically to develop a line of her own about how to think, or notto think, about the Eucharist. And she does sometimes briefly characterize whatshe reports as ‘startling’ or ‘odd’ (cf. pp. 237 f. and pp. 280 f.). She also endsup offering ‘an alternative focus’ to some things said by her authors on the lifeto come (pp. 202 ff). Insofar as her book presents a thesis, the ‘big idea’ is:‘Where the metaphysics and physics of Eucharistic real presence are concerned,my authors were strikingly bold and remarkably resourceful. By contrast, theyproved much less imaginative when it came to integrating medieval Christianinsistence on material cult with traditional and emerging understandings of hu-man nature and destiny’ (p. 3, and pp. 290 ff). But, as Adams says herself, SomeLater Medieval Theories of the Eucharist is primarily ‘a work of historical the-ology and history of philosophy’ (p. 1), not an essay in theology or philosophicaltheology.

So given its intention, it fittingly starts with an account of Aristotelian theoriesof bodies and place designed ‘to orient students and non-specialists to ways ofthinking that our principal authors took for granted’ (p. 4). Note, though, that ‘tookfor granted’ here does not mean ‘accepted’ since, as Adams explains, her authorsvary in their approach to certain major Aristotelian teachings, notably concerningthe notions of ‘form’. As she goes on to note later in the book, the authors sheexpounds all (in the light of their belief in God as Creator) seriously depart fromwhat Aristotle envisages as they develop their Eucharistic thinking, and so Adamsrightly makes it clear that medieval Eucharistic theology was often anything butstraightforwardly Aristotelian, as some have taken it to be. In Chapters 2 and3 Adams sketches what she calls ‘Western medieval commonplaces about whatsacraments are and what they are for’ (p. 3). Chapters 1 to 3 of her book arereally scene-setting discussions leading to its core: Chapters 4 to 10 dealing withwhat Adams calls ‘The Metaphysics and Physics of Real Presence’. Chapter 11basically elaborates on what precedes it, but with an emphasis on eating anddrinking (‘Take and eat . . . ’), while the final chapter contains an account of whatsome thirteenth century authors meant by speaking of sacraments as ceasingin our future (this is the place where Adams seems to be most critical of herauthors).

Some Later Medieval Theories of the Eucharist is most definitely a very distin-guished volume. Adams knows her way around the work of the writers she dealswith, and she recounts their thinking about the Eucharist (and other matters) inconsiderable detail. Her book is, therefore, compulsory reading for anyone witha serious interest in later medieval Eucharistic theology. Much of it is somewhathard-going since Adams often packs a lot into a small space and since she oftensuddenly switches from expounding one of her authors to expounding another.In general (and with the exception of Chapter 1), the book seems to me to begeared less to a general or student audience than to people who are profession-ally working on certain medieval texts with a philosophical eye (though it alsostruck me at times that Adams sometimes makes expository assertions withoutproviding as many references to back them up as she might have). But her bookis a publishing landmark when it comes to its topic, and it should be received assuch.

BRIAN DAVIES OP


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THE SOCIAL AND POLITICAL THOUGHT OF BENEDICT XVI by ThomasR. Rourke, Lexington Books, Lanham, 2010, pp. i + 151, $ 55, hbk

Before Joseph Ratzinger became Bishop of Rome in 2005, only two books ofnote were published about him in English. These were Aidan Nichols’s TheTheology of Joseph Ratzinger (1988) and John Allen’s Cardinal Ratzinger (2000).Both were highly original and merited reissuing after Ratzinger’s election to thepapacy. Both, however, were lost in the tidal wave of new books on BenedictXVI that flooded the market from 2005 onwards. Yet, now that the internationalpublic largely knows who Pope Benedict is, the field is open to more specializedstudies of his life and thought.

Thomas Rourke’s The Social and Political Thought of Benedict XVI is a mostlysynthetic study, with little analysis of Ratzinger’s thought, let alone criticism ofit. Rourke is professor and chair of the Department of Political Science andPhilosophy at Clarion University of Pennsylvania, so it is natural that he shouldfocus on this aspect of Benedict’s thought. His previous publications includeA Conscience as Large as the World (1996), a critique of American Catholicneoconservatives like Michael Novak, Richard John Neuhaus and George Weigel;A Theory of Personalism (2004), co-written with Rosita A. Chazarreta Rourke;and a CTS pamphlet entitled Democracy & Tyranny (2009). Studies of influentialthinkers, such as Rourke’s book, often provide a systematization or a clarity ofexpression that their subjects often fail to achieve, but this is not the case withPope Benedict, whose writings are extraordinarily clear. His thought on socialand political issues may never have found expression in a systematic work, buthe cannot be accused of inconsistency.

Rourke’s study of Pope Benedict’s social and political thought suffers fromtwo major omissions of subject matter. First, his book was substantially completeby the time the pope published his social encyclical Caritas in Veritate (2009).One imagines that Rourke’s book would have turned out quite differently hadthe encyclical been published earlier. In seeking to make the best of a difficultsituation, Rourke summarizes the encyclical in an appendix. It is probably bestthat Rourke was not able to take the encyclical into account because the temptationwould have been too great to treat it as entirely Benedict’s own work. Oneought, rather, to distinguish between the pope’s personal thought and his officialpronouncements. This is not to suggest a dichotomy between the two, however,but a difference in emphasis. This is easily observable in the more conciliatorytone that Ratzinger adopted after taking office.

Rourke makes excellent use of Benedict’s published books, as well as somearticles, but he largely neglects the many speeches and sermons that the popedaily delivers as part of his official duties. The pope’s addresses to diplomatsassigned to or visiting the Holy See, for example, are a valuable indicator of hispriorities for different parts of the world, touching on everything from the place ofCatholics in that country to humanitarian concerns. Moreover, Pope Benedict hasaddressed the United Nations on his visit to the United States, as well as manyother governments during his international travels. To neglect these expressionsof Benedict’s thought is to privilege his academic writings over more immediateand timely expressions of his thinking in relation to particular subjects, personsand events.

At the outset of The Social and Political Thought of Benedict XVI, Rourkeadmits that his subject writes, above all, as a theologian and not as a politician.Nevertheless, he notes that Benedict does not shy away from addressing the‘foundations of political and social order’. Benedict can do this precisely becausehis thinking is remarkably free of compartmentalization and over-specialization.Benedict is one who keeps the big picture ever in view. Rourke says surprisinglylittle about Benedict’s influences, apart from that of Henri de Lubac’s Catholicism


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and St Augustine’s City of God, despite Benedict himself saying plenty on thesubject. What is more curious, though, is that Rourke sees the concept of person atthe root of Benedict’s social thought. While such a concept is by no means absentin Benedict’s thought, it is far more prominent in that of his papal predecessor,John Paul II. One might conjecture that Rourke is ascribing his own views toBenedict, since personalism is the subject of one of Rourke’s previous books. Heis on much surer ground, however, when he discusses how important the doctrineof creation is in Benedict’s anthropology, and the role of reason in his ethics.

Reason is important in many ways. It finds its basis in revelation, especiallyin creation and in the Logos. Reason helps us see through the many myths thatpoliticians are forever creating, including those of Nazism, science and progress.Reason forms the basis of human rights, which, claims Rourke, Spanish scholas-tics developed from the natural law. For Benedict, natural law ‘expresses thefact that nature itself conveys a moral message’, although acknowledging thatsome theologians have overburdened natural law with Christian content, therebyupsetting the delicate balance of church and state. ‘The church can only be trueto its own inner existence so long as it sees itself as the repository of valuesthat absolutely transcend the state. Separation of church and state, notes Rourke,is something that Benedict puts forward as a uniquely Christian concept, onethat receives sustained treatment in his Without Roots: The West, Relativism,Christianity, Islam (2006).

After the more abstract initial chapters on anthropology, revelation and reason,Rourke moves on to special topics, such as conscience, world religions and liturgy.Anyone who has read Ratzinger’s Milestones: Memoirs 1927–77 (1998) will befamiliar with his critique of the Second Vatican Council’s Pastoral Constitutionon the Church in the Modern World, which is said to be overly optimistic aboutthe church’s position vis-a-vis the world. Rourke goes on to highlight Benedict’ssubtlety of argument in relation to the topic of liberation theology, which Benedictdid not condemn outright. Instead, he emphasised that sin is personal and thatstructures can only be sinful in a secondary sense. Moreover, he notes that opti-mism has always been a feature of the Church, especially in its tendency to createutopias, whether real (monasteries) or imagined (St Thomas More’s Utopia).

Liturgy, a topic Benedict continually addresses, might initially seem an oddchoice for a book on political and social thought. Yet, anyone who has followedICEL’s struggles to create a new translation of the missal that both laity andhierarchy can agree upon will know how political liturgy can be. Liturgy’s socialaspects have been analysed insightfully in Kieran Flanagan’s unjustly neglectedSociology and Liturgy: Re-Presentations of the Holy (1991). Rourke, summarisinga point of Benedict’s, aptly illuminates the effects of liturgy in the social sphere.‘Social activism authentically considered can only flow out of the Liturgy whichputs man in right relationship with others and indeed the entire order of creation’.

Rourke’s The Social and Political Thought of Benedict XVI well summarisesits subject, synthesising masses of disparate material, even if it neglects publishedspeeches and sermons that might have illuminated different emphases and othertopics. While it is difficult to disagree with Benedict because of his ecclesiasticaloffice and immense learning, Rourke never does so in the slightest. His analysiseven refrains from suggesting that Benedict might not have seen all sides ofan issue, missed important arguments or overlooked key sources. This, despiteBenedict’s numerous opponents, whose arguments Rourke could marshal againsthis subject. What possibly undermines Rourke’s book most of all, however, is nothis uncritical admiration for Benedict, but the clarity of Benedict’s own writings.There is almost nothing to explain or elucidate in Benedict’s written output thatBenedict has not already done himself – and more engagingly. Pope BenedictXVI is a profound and lucid thinker that we would all do well to emulate.

BARNABY HUGHESC© 2012 The AuthorNew Blackfriars C© 2012 The Dominican Council

the logic of desire: aquinas on emotion, by nicholas e. lombardo op

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