I would like to rethink this paper in the light of the two natures of Christ vivified by the same divine Person. Christ as divine nature is Creator [Ipsum Esse] and Christ as man is creature [esse received]. Christ the creature is the revelation of how creation must be lived relationally and will help to account for the Pope's mind in "Laudato 'Si."
(From: Proceedings of the American Catholic
Philosophical Association, Vol. LXV 1991)
My purpose in
this paper is to propose the Thomistic act of existence as the explanation of
the relational dimension of person as well as its unique substantiality. Both
relation and substantiality are equal as dimensions of that act of existence.
Relation is not considered as the predicamental "accident" but as the
constitutive expansiveness of the act of existence understood
"intensively." That act of existence, when it is intensively
intellectual, is the person.
The topic falls
under the rubric of "Christian Philosophy" because as the act
of existence or esse, as I will now
refer to it, may have involved the revealed notion of creation for its
discovery, the notion of person certainly involves the revelation of the
Trinity of three Persons in one God. If this is so, and if the One God is
considered substantial Being, then the Three Persons, revealing themselves in
dialogue, can only be subsistent relationalities, dialogue being a relational
ontologic. St. Augustine
remarks: "In God there are no accidents, only substance and
relation." Explaining himself, Augustine says: "He is not called
Father with reference to himself but only in relation to the Son; seen by
himself he is simply God."
Cardinal
Ratzinger comments that "this means that the First Person does not beget
the Son in the sense of the act of begetting coming on top of the finished
Person; it is the act of begetting, of giving oneself, of streaming forth. It
is identical with the act of giving. Only as this act is it person 3 What is
being affirmed here is that the notion of person is constitutively expansive as
relation. Therefore, the notion of being has to be rethought and reformulated
in the dyadic terms of substance or intrinsic existence and its constitutive
relationality.4 So also, the purpose of this paper is to confront the challenge
which Cardinal Ratzinger throws down to a metaphysic which has affirmed being
only as substance without a constitutive relational dimension: `Therein lies
concealed a revolution in man's view of the world: the undivided sway of
thinking in terms of substance is ended; relation is discovered as an equally
valid primordial mode of reality ... a new plane of being comes into view
."5 It could also be mentioned here that the Second Vatican Council has
wanted to suggest the parallel
between the relational character of the Divine Persons and the relational
character of the human person when it says: "man can fully discover his
true self only in a sincere giving of himself."6 I might also insert here
the recent statement of Walter Kasper which says that theology needs a metaphysics
which has been developed precisely within theology. He comments:
The regaining of
the metaphysical dimension appears to me, therefore, one of the most important
tasks of contemporary theology. This holds true, even though many contemporary
theologians, to use Hegel's terms, keep a safe distance from metaphysics as if
it were a leper. But without a transcendent ground and point of reference,
statements of faith are finally only subjective projections or social and
ecclesial ideologies...one cannot
... adopt this theologically necessary
metaphysics `from the outside.' Rather, one must develop it on the basis of the
testimonies of revelation and the understanding of reality implicit in them... Up
to this moment, the analysis of person has traditionally been made from the
bottom ups That is to say, man has been viewed as a part of nature to which has
been superadded the distinguishing ingredients of rationality and free will.
This has also been the analytical procedure of Aristotelian anthropology,
shepherded through the Middle Ages under the guiding thought of Boethius in to
the present day. Boethius defined person as the naturae rationalis individual
substantia. Person, then, has traditionally been defined from the side
of essence as substance, which in Thomistic existentialism is the source of
finitude and limit. Even when it has not been defined that way, as in the case
of Capreolus, esse was seen only as the actuality of essence and not as
intensive in itself and intrinsically expansive.9 Hence, even when person was constituted
from the side of esse, esse was not
considered in its expansiveness but as the "thin" actuality of
essence. Therefore, as long as the metaphysical model for describing a person
was Aristotelian substance and relation was always an accident, then being as
relation would never be able to pass from its immanentized domestication within
the Trinity, to man and thereon to all reality as relational being. The
cultural effect of understanding being to be relational in its very
intrinsicness has been admirably presented by David
Schindler in a number of articles in recent
years. The proposal, then, is to accept the theological elaboration of person
as constitutively relational as expansive and offer the Thomistic esse as
'the ontological explanation of that expansiveness.
Three major
points will be considered: (1) esse as intensive act; (2) the relation
of intensive esse and agere; and (3) the transmutation of the
subject or person from limiting essence to expansive esse. We will assume
the dynamic character of the Thomistic esse as expounded by Gerald
Phelan when he comments:
What
was my joy, then, to read in the very first article of St. Thomas's Quaestio Disputata De Veritate, that
reality, unity, truth and all the transcendentals were general modes of being (modi essendi), not properties or
attributes of beings (entia) and
that all those things we are accustomed to designate by nouns-substance,
quantity, quality, relation and the rest-are likewise modes of being [(modi essendi, mark you, not modi entis or modi entium)]. They are, therefore, more accurately expressed by
adverbial adjuncts to the verb "to be" than by the customary
substantives.”11
The proposal,
then, is to see this "to be" (esse), not as an actuality of
substance, but as an intensive act in its own right of which agere, and
expansiveness as an agere is another "mode" of that esse. Thus,
agere is "esse-becoming" and so constitutive of "esse's
esse. I will offer a presentation of essence as limit
not as "exercising" subject of esse. The final development
will be to suggest the transference of agency from essence to esse. When
esse is intelligere the agent
is the person.
The first order
of business is to establish the priority of esse as on and source of all
reality. Rev. Gerald B. Phelan was taught at Louvain that esse is the only act
which "God gives when he creates,"12 and understood it to mean that
"God gives esse and nothing more .... Just nothing but esse, writ
small."13 "The act of existence (esse)," says
Phelan,
"is not a state, it is an act and not
as any static definable object of conception. Esse is dynamic impulse,
energy, act- the first, the most persistent and enduring of all dynamisms, all
energies, all acts. In all things on earth, the act of being (esse) is
the consubstantial urge of nature, a restless, striving force, carrying each being
(ens) onward, from within the depths of its own reality to its full
self-achievement ...14
Our purpose here is to see what kind of act esse
is so as to be able to discern if it is merely the actuality of essences
which would be the subjects receiving and exercising esse. Rather, might
it be a constitutive relationality because of its intensity as intelligible act
and so be a wo candidate for the ontological category of person. The gambit
then is: where there is intensity, there is relationality. Relationality means
intensity. Vivere, sentire, intelligere are hierarchical gradings of directly proportional
relationalities and corresponding intensities of being. If personality is
defined by relationality (and we saw that this was the offering from Trinitarian
theology and reinforced today by the Magisterium of the Church) then the
principle of relationality should be the principle of personality as intensity.
If we can show the Thomistic esse to be intensive and therefore relational, it
should be the principle of personality. And if essence, thick or thin, is to be
considered merely as limit of esse, then finite esse, as limited, should
not only be considered the principle of personality but the subject, the being
of the person himself.
I have three
texts of St. Thomas
on a major issue, namely, the "kind" of esse that belongs to the soul,
that enables it to be immaterial and by nature intrinsically related to matter
at the same time. The whole conundrum of whether an intellectual soul can be at
the same time the form of the body is resolved by St. Thomas through his understanding of esse:
...the human
soul exists through its own esse; and matter shares in this esse up to a
point without completely enveloping it, because the dignity of such a form
transcends the capacity of matter. And that is why nothing prevents the soul
from having an operation or power beyond the reach of matter. 15
Now, the esse of
the soul which becomes the esse of the body is not just the actuality of the
soul extended to the body, but an intelligere which is of a completely
different order of intelligible density than the esse of the composite. Esse as intelligere is not "thin.
"17 It has an intensity, a "thickness," an intelligibility,(18)
and an immateriality which the body cannot exhaust in its own way of being. Man
exists, then, "in his totality and in his compositeness through an act of
existence which is wholly
intellectual."(19) Anton Pegis sums up
his article on the subject affirming, that "Man is an intellect, an incarnate
intellect, and this by nature."
To clarify the
use of the word "intelligere," St. Thomas makes a distinction between two
meanings of the word: "Sensation and intelligence, and the like, are
sometimes taken for the operations, sometimes for the existence (ipso esse) of
the operator.” (21)
And so, St.
Thomas is talking about esse, but not as some homogeneous actuality or
facticity, but about a real "quo" which is on a different level of
density in a hierarchy of real beings.
Exactly the same
idea appears in his De Spiritualibus Creaturis, when he answers the 14th
objection:
Intelligere
is sometimes understood as an operation, and as such its origin is a power of
the soul or habit. At other times it is understood to be the existence (ipso
esse) of an intellectual nature. Arid so, the origin of this “intelligere" is the essence of
the intellective soul.
(22)
Again what he is
affirming is that the esse of the intellectual nature is not just simply
esse as facticity or actuality but an expanding and relational esse which, as
finite and immaterial, has the power of becoming, as intelligere, an
infinity of other beings in an immaterial, intentional way and thus increasing its
density as act. As finite act, this being is only this being. As an expanding esse,
an intelligere, it has the power to become all things. St. Thomas 's first part of
the answer to objection 14 presents the point clearly:
the
soul, in so far as it is the form of the body, according to its essence as
substantial form, gives esse to the body. But it also gives an esse of a certain kind which is vivere, in so far as it is such a
form, i.e., soul. And it also gives a vivere of a certain kind, i.e., of an
intellectual nature, in so far as it is a certain kind of soul, i.e.,
intellective. (23)
The same point
is made in the `"I'reatise on Separate Substances" where St. Thomas
says:
(I)n
immaterial substances, their esse itself is their vivere, and their vivere is
not other than their intellectivum esse. Therefore they are living and
understanding from the same principle by which they are beings. (24)
And again, in
the "Quaestiones de Animae,' in that all important first question,
St. Thomas answers the 17th objection in the following manner:
Although
esse is the most formal of all perfections, still it is also the most
communicable, although it is not shared in the same way by those beings which
are lower and higher. Hence the body shares in the esse of the soul but not so
excellently as the soul itself does. (25)
Notice that the
esse of the human body is of a higher intensity than what would be the esse of
body taken as mere material conglomeration. It is much more than a given order
of heterogeneous parts. It is a dynamic ordering. And ordering always involves
an intellect sighting a purpose. There is no order that is not purposeful, that
is not relational toward a "telos." The very to be of the body is
relational to the "telos" of the
person. The eye is an ordering of parts
"for sight." But one sees in order to know. This expansiveness of the
esse of the person, immaterial at its level of intelligere, impacts on
every organized structure from the biochemical through the physiological to the
gross anatomical. 26
The body is an
instrument of relationality, of knowledge and love. It is person enfleshed.
Notice that St. Thomas
emphasizes that this esse in man who is mineral, vegetable, sentient and
intelligent is one: "It is necessary, if a soul is the form of a body,
that there be common to both one esse which is the esse of the composite."27
This esse of the body is the intelligere which I am suggesting to
be the very person. The teleology of the body orienting it toward the very
goals of the person is due to the fact that its esse is the personal intelligere.
My point here is that esse is not just actualization of essence or
facticity of being but rather it is relational, teleological, even in its
generation of the body. If "person" means relationality on the level
of intelligere, then esse as intelligere is "person."
Having
considered esse as intensive act, let us now consider it as expansive.
In so doing, we take up more directly the challenge of Cardinal Ratzinger:
"relation is discovered as an equally valid primordial mode of reality..
.a new plane of being comes into view." esse as expansive and hence
relational must do so as agere. The question, then, is: what is the
relation between esse and agere?
The Greek
Fathers of the Church, particularly Gregory of Nyssa, offer light on this point
in their implicit and original metaphysics where ousia and energeia are
one and the same simple Reality, the Trinity of Persons. The Magisterium of the
Church responded to the rationalism of an Arius or a Eunomius with the homousios.
This term meant that the one simple Being of the Godhead was at the same time a
generating
and proceeding reality. The ousia or
esse of God is constituted by the energeia or agere of
generation and procession. The same is true of Jesus Christ; Cardinal Ratzinger
affirms that the starting point of all Christology is "the identity of work
and being, of deed and person. 28
The point of
this section is to lay heavy stress on finite agere as an intrinsic and
constitutive dimension of esse rather than as an accident of substance. The
best way to consider it is to see agere as finite esse itself in its
state of expansion. Gilson glosses the mind of St. Thomas in the following way:
Not:
to be, then to act, but: to be is to act. And the very first thing which
"to be" does, is to make its own essence to be, that is, "to be
a being." This is done at once, completely and definitively... But the
next thing which "to be" does, is to begin bringing its own
individual essence somewhat nearer its completion.
(29)
Gilson makes it
clear that the primacy of esse as dynamism radically transforms the Aristotelian
dynamism of form. When St. Thomas
made this transformation,
the
whole philosophical outlook on reality at once became different... .Instead of
a self-achieving end, form becomes an end to be achieved by its own esse, which progressively makes it an
actual being. To be (esse) is to act (agere),
and to act is to tend (tender to
an end wherein achieved being may ultimately rest.(30)
This is a
critical point of the proposal because expanding esse (i.e., relational
esse), which is implied in the magisterial formulations concerning the Trinity
and in the theology of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Greek Fathers, is axiomatic
to Thomistic metaphysics. Esse achieves: its expansion precisely as agere.
Now, to the
charge that agere must always be an accident of created: being, let me
suggest the following. Agere varies according to the hierarchy of being.
The more limited the esse, the more extrinsic or transitive the action is, the
greater the effect on the exterior and the, more limited the extent of
relation. The charge of a bull or a landslide is almost totally extrinsic,
devastating and limited. On the other end, of the spectrum, the higher the
degree of being, the more immanent the action, the less the exterior manifestation
and the wider the extent of relation. A man in love with God may have a zero
exterior manifestation, yet with an intense universal relation to every man and
to creation itself. From the perspective of substance, we place the charge of
the bull in the; category of "action" while the love of God would be
categorized a "quality." They would both be accidents.
From the point
of view of esse as the primum metaphysicum, however, they would
both be manifestations of esse, as "modes," according' to the degree
of limit constricting it. To see substance as a subject receiving, specifying
and exercising esse with agere and intelligere as accidents of it
is to miss the intensive character of the Thomistic esse while reducing
it to the actualization of reified metaphysical components, substance being one
of them. Again, if Fr. Phelan is correct in his evaluation of De Veritate,
1,1, (p. 7, n. 16), substance is a mode of being, a kind of limited way of
seeing esse. (3l) Therefore, instead of
seeing different kinds of accidents, it would be truer to see hierarchical
levels of limitation of esse producing different kinds of agere, remote
and sporadic like the charge of a bull, or intrinsic and constitutive like the
thought and love of a man. Thus, instead of seeing agere as the manifestation
of the nature of a substance and hence an accident of the substance, it
would be more true to
see it as esse itself at various levels of
limitation. The less limited manifestations would be levels of intelligere and
velle. Where there is no limitation, esse is agere as in the case
of the Person of Christ and the inner life of the Trinity. My point is to
connect esse and agere as states of one another32 without
perfectly identifying them except where they
reach infinity. As Fr. de Finance remarks:
Esse accidentale will not be anything else
than a particular aspect of the unique act of existence; operation (agere) will truly be more being, not
another being (l'operation verait
vraiment un plus etre, non un etre de plus).
We will see
below how esse/agere correspond to the two states of esse itself:
intrinsic existence and relationality.
Up to this
point, the positive aspect of the proposal has consisted in highlighting the
intensive character of esse as well as its expansive tendency as agere. We
now come to the negative side of the proposal which is to suggest that essence
be downgraded from its traditional role as limiting and exercising subject and
be restricted to the lesser role as limit of esse. Two theories of
essence as limit suggest themselves. The one is the "thin" theory
pioneered in this country by G.B. Phelan and advanced by William Carlo,34
and W. Norris Clarks, S.J. (35) It
maintains that since esse, in the mind of St. Thomas, is all the act and reality
there is in being, so as not to fall into contradiction by assigning
"reality" to a "really distinct" essence which
"receives," "exercises" as well as limits this esse, they
maintain that essence "is an intrinsic principle of limitation only, that
makes no positive contribution of its own but merely limits or 'contracts'.
..what would otherwise be the de se plenitude of existence.... " (36)
The traditional or
“thick” thomistic notion of essence as the limitation of esse consists in esse
limiting itself mediately, through essence which in this case is positive, distinct
from esse but derived from it. Esse "autodetermines"
itself. By "determining" is meant to confer a perfection and to limit
a perfection. Esse does both. It gives reality to essence which in turn
limits esse specifying and limiting it to be this kind of being and this
individual existent.
Both theories of
essence as limit have advantages and disadvantages. The "thin" theory
is coherent with the vision that esse is all the act there is in being.
As we saw above from Gerald Phelan: "God gives esse and nothing
more." But it limps explaining how "nothing" limits esse to
be this "chunk" of esse; i.e. there is no explanation because there
is nothing there,37 since esse is all there is. It also limps explaining the
"plasticity" or "tending" of esse. By denying the reality
of a distinct potency, it introduces, without
warrant, potency into esse.
The thick theory
is the temptress/haven of the reification of principles. Even when essence is
not presumed real as "receiving" and "exercising" esse, the
awkward situation of esse limiting itself arises because it has recourse
to distinct levels of causality. On the positive side, however, it does
give an explanation of limit of esse and potency of being.
Still in both cases, essence as limit should be disqualified as on
logical candidate for personality precisely because person is coming to us from
its theological origin as a positive expansive dynamic, not a limiting(negative)
principle, and – as we have seen in Walter Kasper – “one cannot… adopt this
theologically necessary metaphysics ‘from the outside.’ Rather, one must
develop it on the basis of the testimonies of revelation and the understanding
of reality implicit in them.” And not only “testimonies of revelation.” What is
essential for both theology and philosophy is to craft a positive metaphysics
of being as pure relation so that, on the one side, Christianity not dwindle
into mere paradox (one finds self by gift of self [Gaudium et Spes #24]), nor,
on the other side, that Being be
eliminated with the question of death and God. Hence, if essence is only a
limit of expanding esse, it cannot be the principle of personality.
Having presented
the act of existence positively as intensive expansive and the essence as reduced
to limit and specification of that act, I would like to focus attention on a
Thomistically heterodox yet crucial conclusion. If esse as intensive (intelligere)
is relational, an person is characterized by relationality, then esse should
be the principle of personality. Essence as principle of limit of act and
therefore limit relationality should be rejected as subject of being and hence
person. The pinpointing of esse as the intersection of intensiveness and
relatio ality can be made clearer with this gloss by Josef Pieper on St. Thomas
Summa Contra Gentiles 4, 11. He shows the direct proportionate between esse
as intrinsic existence and its outreach as relation, as age The
greater the relationality of the agere, the more intensive the esse.
The principle
that I want to be faithful to here is that which se person as relational energy
in God and as image and likeness of God man. Josef Pieper's gloss on Summa
Contra Gentiles 4, 11 could put the proposal on display. St. Thomas begins the question:
Following
a diversity of natures, one finds a diverse manner of emanation in things, and,
the higher a nature is, the more intimate to the nature is that which flows
from it.
Pieper gives an elucidation
of this principle. He says:
For
the notion of ‘having an intrinsic existence’ corresponds to ‘being able to
relate,’ so that the most comprehensive ability to relate – namely, the power
to ‘conform to all that is’ – implies at the same time also the highest form of
intrinsic existence, of selfness. (39)
Pieper
identifies "having an intrinsic existence" with a "self"
and, makes it the "core" of the emanations or relationalities (agere).
He obviously means "being an intrinsic existence" as opposed to "having"
and to that effect, says:
The
concept of "intrinsic existence" refers to that dynamic core of an entity
from which all active manifestations originate and toward which all endurance
and receptivity are focused and directed. An entity endowed with an intrinsic
existence is ontologically a "subject," a self-contained unified
being. (40)
I see esse as
"that dynamic core of an entity from which all active manifestations
originate." Pieper goes on to explain how a rock has no intrinsic
existence (from a common sense perspective) and therefore no proper
relationality.
Plants
do possess a true intrinsic existence; animals even more so. The most genuine
and highest form of intrinsic existence is the spirit-endowed se1f. (41)
The
"emanations" of which St.
Thomas spoke, Pieper translates as relation, not as
accident of substance, but as an orientation of the subject itself, from the
"inside." He says:
Only
in reference to an inside can there be an outside. Without a self-contained
"subject" there can be no "object." Relating-to,
conforming-with, being-oriented- toward - all these notions presuppose an
inside starting point.... The higher the form of intrinsic existence, the more
developed becomes the relatedness with reality, also the more profound and
comprehensive becomes the sphere of this relatedness: namely, the world. And
the deeper such relations penetrate the world of reality, the more intrinsic
becomes the respective subject's existence. (42)
The rock relates
only in the sense of placement. The plant reaches into the soil and toward the
sun. The animal senses all material reality and moves with regard to it. Man
does all of that and besides he knows all being and relates correspondingly
with love, transcending all created reality. He sums up:
to
have (or to be) an "intrinsic existence" means "to be able to
relate" and "to be the sustaining subject at the center of a field of
reference. The hierarchy of existing things, being equally a hierarchy of
intrinsic existences, corresponds on each level to the intensity and extension
of the respective relationship in their power, character and domain....These two
aspects, combined---dwelling most intensively within itself, and being capax
universe, able to grasp the universe-together constitute the essence of the
spirit. Any definition of "spirit" will have to contain these two
aspects as its core. (43)
My proposal is that that core is esse itself
as intensive. Although the essence is "thick" or "thin" in its
function as limit, it is not a substantialized essence that is the subject at
various hierarchical levels. Intensive esse itself is that subject.' There is no doubt that I am transmuting esse
from its status as created quo to that of created quis or quod. (45) As quis or quod I understand it to be the principle and subject of all
operations. As such, "I" am this finite esse which is this intelligere
and velle. As created (46), this esse
is finite. (47) As such, it cannot be God, nor can it be strictly identified
with agere which alone takes place in God. That is why there is a
systole and a diastole between the going forth as relation and the return as
self-actualization (an intrinsic existence). I become myself by giving myself.
But it is from esse that agere issues. Fr. Phelan comments:
From
esse issue all operations,
immanent and transient, as from a living source of dynamic power, while essence
or nature gives direction and determinant character to that ceaseless flow of
entitative energy within which the being (ens) rows and waxes stronger,
becoming more and more itself.
The
ramifications of a proposal such as this are many. The first, which is the
proposal of the paper, is that esse as person subject is the
principle of expansion and relation, not the principle of limit. If relation is
a dimension constitutive of being itself, then love and ultimately relation to
others will not be accidental but constitutive. Sanctity would then be of the
essence of personality and not an adjunct to it. So also, freedom
would be transmuted from the narrowness of
freedom of choice as indetermination before the finite good, to the dynamic,
both divine and human now, of "being-for-the-other." As Cardinal
Ratzinger says:
The
real God is bound to himself in threefold love and is thus pure freedom. Man's
vocation is to be this image of God, to become like him.... For this reason,
the person who has become at one with his or her essential nature, at one with
truth itself, is free.(49)
The migration of subject and person from
the limiting essence to the expanding esse
redefines the relationship between God, man and reality. It puts the
relationship more in agreement with the Fathers of the Church, particularly the
Greek Fathers. Instead of there being a gap between God and creation, there is ontological
common ground: infinite esse and expanding esse.
Instead of a heteronatural relationship, it is connatural. Freedom and sanctity
become constitutive requirements for ontological development instead of accidental
exceptions for the elite. The ultimate closing of ground is found in that
ontological center where God became man that men might become gods. This is not
pantheism but divinization of the created, i.e., finite and expanding esse
is touched by Divine Grace and actualized in its steady drive towards union
with the Infinite.
If
"person" is a being with the relational dimension of knowing and
loving, and esse, as intensive and expansive, gives that dimension, and
essence is only a limit of esse, then esse as intelligere is the prime candidate to be "person."
This would give us a new and more coherent profile of finite being, fashion a
more relevant tool for theological speculation, reintroduce metaphysics to
ethical reasoning which yearns for a dynamic
grounding and give us an ontologic of
freedom and personal sanctity: the pro-structure of being. Being has become
love (Agape). This would be the truth that makes us free in its metaphysical
formulation.
* * * * * *
* * * * *
Notes
1. De Trinitate, V, 5, 6 (Patrologia Latina [PL] 42,
913f).
2. Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos,
68,1, 5, in CCL 39,905 (PL 36, 385).
3. J. Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity (New York : Herder and
Herder,
1970), 131-32.
4. Gregory of Nyssa complained of Eunomius,
the Arian, because "he suppresses the names of 'Father, Son and Holy Ghost"
and speaks of a "Supreme and Absolute Being" instead of the
Father, of "another existing through it, but after
it" instead of the Son, and of "a
third ranking with neither of these two" instead of the Holy Ghost."
He complains that this substitution robbed the revelation of the Trinity of its
constitutive relational dimension. Gregory of Nyssa, Against Eunomius, Book
I, par. 14 from A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, ed.
P Schaff and H. Wace
(Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Erdmans, 1892),
51-52.5. ibid, 132.
5. J. Ratzinger, op. cit., p. 132.
6. Gaudium et
Spes, #24.
7. Walter Kasper, "Postmodern Dogmatics"
in Communio, Summer 1990, 189-90.
8. "Whereas in the days of Aristotelian
hegemony the task was to integrate the world of the person into that of nature,
the task now is to constitute the world of personhood (both inter-human and
divine-human) and then integrate the world of physical nature into it
(ecology). Now only persons are transcendent in that they alone can constitute
a world of mutually intelligent interaction. Only personal relationship can be
normative, and even the 'otherness' of physical nature can only be respected
when mediated by the doctrine of creation seen from the vantage point of the
covenant with God." Quoted from David Novak by David Bruckbauer in The
Recovery of Classical Reason in The Wanderer,
9/18,90, 7.
9. Capreolus affirms that "the human
person adds something positive over the individuated nature. That positive "something,"
however, is the actus naturae... i.e., the esse actualis existentiae which
is the actus essentiae. Even though person is esse, esse only
actualizes a nature. Person continues unrelational." Ref. Defensiones
Theologiae
Divi Thomae Aquinatis, ed. Paban-Pegues, t. V, 105a.
10. "Is America
Bourgeois?," Communio 14 (1987),264-90; "Catholicity and the
State of Contemporary
Theology: The Need for an Ontologic of Holiness," Communio 14
(1987), 426-50; "Once Again: George Weigel, Catholicism and American
Culture," Communio 15 (1988), 92-120; "On Meaning and the
Death of God in the Academy," Communio
17 (1990), 192-206; "U.S.
Catholicism: a `Moment of Opportunity '?",
30 Days (1989) 57-60.
11. G.B. Phelan, "Being, Order and
Knowledge," Selected Papers (Toronto: PIMS, 1967), 127.
12. Ibid., 125-26.
13. Ibid., 126-27.
14. Ibid., `The Existentialism of St. Thomas ," 77.
15. De Unitate Intellectus, III; Editio
Critics, Leo W. Keeler, S.J., Romae aupd Aedes Pont. Universitatis Gregorianae,
1957, 53.
16. The same point can be found in the
answer to the 18th objection of Question 1 of the Questions on the Soul:
"Although the esse of a soul belongs in some way
to the body, still the body does not succeed in participating in the
esse of the soul according to the soul's
full excellence and power; and consequently:-there is an operation of soul in which
the body does not share." J. Robb, Questions on the Soul (Milwaukee:
Marquette University Press, 1984), 51.
17. This notion would seem to differ from
the "orthodox" position as exemplified in the works of Fr. Joseph Owens.
Following the vocabulary of St .4 Thomas himself, Fr. Owens always refers to esse
as "actuality." The intelligible density and operational power
which I am attributing to esse, for him, seem to come from the form of
which esse is the actuality. But esse itself is not
"dense." In this regard he says: “The positive character of the
essence, however, is actually positive only through the being that actualizes
the essence. Considered in priority to the actualization by being,
the form can function only as potency ... it is receiving its actuality. “The Accidental and Essential Character of
Being in the Doctrine of St. Thomas Aquinas,” Medieval Studies 20 (1958), 38.
18. "In the verb exists we have
the act of existing, or a super-intelligible. To say that which exists is
to join an intelligible to a super-intelligible; it is to have before our eyes
an intelligible engaged in and perfected by a super-intelligibility." J.
Maritain, Existence and the Existent (need place of publisher: Pantheon,
1948), 34.
19. J. Robb, "Intelligere Intelligentibus
Est Esse,"An Etienne
Gilson Tribute ed. Ch. O’Niele (Milwaukee: Marquette
University Press, 1959), 224.
20. A. Pegis, "St. Thomas and the Unity of Man," Progress
in Philosophy (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1955), 1972.
21. Summa
Theologiae, 1, q. 18,2, ad
1m.
23. Ibid.
22. De Spiritualibus Creatures, Art.
XI, obj. 14 and ad 14m. 23. Ibid.
24. De
Substantiis Sepamtis, XI, #61, ed. LescQe, 100-01.
25. St. Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones de
Anima, ed. J.H. Robb
(Toronto: PIMS, 1968), . p.63
26. "I will argue here that organisms are systems
which are intrinsically teleologically organized and that this fact is a
permanent obstacle to reduction. This is not to say that organisms are made of
any special matter or that biological phenomena will not be a complete account.
The claim I will explicate is that because of the teleological
organization of organisms there is an
explanatory relation that goes from the level of organization of the entire
entity as a system to the subsystems and parts and processes that constitute
the entity. There is an intimate relation between the character of organisms as
complex, developing wholes and their being teleologically organized ...
Hierarchical
organization is explanatory with respect to (at least
some of) its components and not merely consequent upon them," Jonathan
Jacobs, "Teleology and Reduction in Biology" in Biology and
Philosophy 1(place of publisher: D. Reidel Publishing Company,
1986) 389-99.
27. Quaestiones de Anima, q.1. ad 13m, 62, op. cit.: (..si anima est
forma corporis, quod animae et corporis sit unum esse commune quod est esse
compositi).
28. J. Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity,
Ignatius(1990) 168.
29. E. Gilson, Being and Some Philosophers (Toronto:
Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1949) 184.
30. Ibid., 184-86.
31. G.B. Phelan, "Being, Order and
Knowledge," Selected Papers (Toronto: PIMS, 1967), 126.
32. The union of action and its agent is therefore much closer
than that of subject and its accidents. ..Is there a perfect existential unity?
Does the same "esse" bring about the substance and its act at the
same time? It seems so... Would it not be more in conformity with the unity of
being to conceive the accident, and more particularly, the operation (action)
as expanding, so to speak, the capacity of the subject with regard to its
"esse," in
permitting it to exercise its function
more? Accidental "esse" would not be anything other than a particular
aspect of the unique act of existence: operation (action) will truly be a
"plus-etre de plus" (translation mine). J. de Finance, Etre et
Agir Dans la Philosophie de Saint
Thomas
33. Ibid., 249.
34. W. Carlo, The Ultimate Reducibility of Essence to Existence in
Existential Metaphysics (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966),1003-104.
Also, Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophic Association, 1957, 127-28.
35. “The Role of Essence Within St. Thomas '
Essence-Existence Doctrine: Positive or Negative Principle? A Dispute Within Thomism," from Atti
del Congresso Internazionale, no. 6: "L'Essere." 36. Ibid.,
112.
36. Ibid
112.
37. Carlo's thesis that essence is where esse stops does
not explain what makes esse stop. Joyce Little comments: `To say that
essence is the place where esse stops does nothing more than state a fact of
our everyday experience, i.e. that things are finite. Such a description
supposes the capacity (potency) of esse to stop, but provides no analysis of
the conditions of possibility which would permit esse to stop." Toward
a Thomistic Methodology (Lewiston, New York: Mellen Press, 1988), 92.
38. "Whatever we imagine determines
the act-of-being...it cannot be pure nothingness. Therefore, it is something
pertaining to being in virtue of an act-of-being." E. Gilson, The
Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas
39. J. Pieper, Living the Truth (San
Francisco, CA: Ignatius, 1989), 81. 40. Ibid, 81.
41. Ibid, 82.
42. Ibid, 82.
43. Ibid, 83.
44. This coincides with the
phenomenological analysis of Karol Wojtyla, but not necessarily with his
metaphysical
analysis. Phenomenologically, he asserts
that self-determination is the constituting element of the person: "`I do'
means that 'I am the efficient cause' of my action, of the actualization of
myself as the subject…The concept of self-determination contains more than the
concept of agency: man not only performs his actions, but by his actions he
becomes, in one way or another, his own `maker'. Doing is accompanies by
becoming; and, what is more, the two are organically fused together." K. Wojtyla,
"The Structure of Self-Determination as the Core of Theory of the
Person," in Congresso Internazionale
Tomasso DAquino nel suo Settimo Centenario (Rome/Naples, 1974), 38 and 40.
45. Frs. Dewan and Owens have debated
recently (The New Scholasticism, [1989], 173-82; and ACPQ, [1990],
261-64) over the essential or accidental relation of esse to essence.
Insofar as they both weigh essence as suppositum specifying esse (Dewan)
or exercising esse (Owens), esse will always be of essence
and incoherent with the vision of De Veritate, 1, 1.
46. For those who affirm that only Infinite
Esse is, and finite esse cannot be, in the sense of being its own
subject, do so by viewing esse as "thin" actuality, i.e., as
the non-intensive power actualizing an essence which is its subject. Therefore,
to say that "actuality is" is to say the "God is." As a
result, any attempt to subsistentialize esse outside of Infinite Esse
would be pantheism.
My answer to
that charge is to suggest the intensive and relational character of esse making
it suitable as subject, combined with its finiteness which characterizes its
creatureliness. Cf. Frederick D. Wilhelmsen, The Paradoxical Structure of
Existence (Albany: PCP, 1989), chs. 4 and 6.
47. The finitude of "thick" esse
is sufficient to dispel any charge of pantheism since finitude of intensity
means participation; i.e., the finite being has only "part" of the
full intensity of Infinite Being.
48. G.B. Phelan, The Existentialism of St. Thomas
49. J. Ratzinger, "Freedom and
Liberation," in Church, Ecumenism and Politics (New York: Crossroad,
1987), 274.
50. V. Lossky, The Mystical Theology of
the Eastern Church (Cambridge and London : James Clarke &
Co., Ltd., 1957),10,91-113; also, T. Paul Verghese, The Freedom of Man (Philadelphia:
The Westminster Press, 1968), 68.
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