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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
1 Abraham, William J., Canon and Criterion in Christian Theology: From the Fathers to Feminism, paperback edition with a new preface (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cf. Abraham, , “Faith, Assurance, and Conviction: An Epistemological Commentary on Hebrews 11:1,”Ex Auditu 19 (2003): 65–75Google Scholar, which offers an insightful reading of Hebrews 11:1. In responding to this essay, D. Stephen Long treats as well Abraham's Canon and Criterion in Christian Theology. Long's concerns are largely my own. Proposing a “reexamination of Aquinas and his incorporation of Aristotle's phronesis—thinking—into theology,” Long asks, “Why is Aquinas's virtue tradition with its emphasis on practical reasoning and the key role of the gifts, beatitudes, and theological virtues so readily rejected in Abraham's work in favor of a call for ‘a new subdiscipline identified as the epistemology of theology that will engage in a rigorous and comprehensive way the nature of rationality, warrant, justification, and knowledge in theology’?…I would designate the true culprit in the western tradition as Locke who turned miracles into positivist evidence and made possible something like the verification hypothesis” (Long, , “Response to Abraham,”Ex Auditu 19 [2003]: 76–80, at 78)Google Scholar. As Long points out, “Would a recovery of the importance of illumination and a metaphysics of participation not provide what we need without the invention of a new subdiscipline of the epistemology of theology?” (79) See also Webster, John, “Canon and Criterion: Some Reflections on a Recent Proposal,”Scottish Journal of Theology 54 (2001): 67–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Work, Telford, Living and Active: Scripture in the Economy of Salvation (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002): 256–59Google Scholar.
2 Abraham, Canon and Criterion in Christian Theology, vii.
3 Ibid., 112. Abraham admits that he is not clear on the full range and scope of what he calls the “canonical heritage,” and he therefore suggests that his constructive proposals await first the work of historians: “In my view, despite the deeply contested nature of historical investigation, and despite its corrosive effects on the canonical heritage of the church in the hands of much modern scholarship, historical investigation is richly inventive in throwing light on the content and significance of that heritage. In a way, my proposal is liberating in the extreme, for it allows the historian full and free range in coming to terms with the actual canonical heritage given to us in the Church. It is pivotal that we come to terms with the gifts of the Holy Spirit as they actually exist in the canonical heritage rather than impose some external standard on their content and meaning. History is indispensable in this process. Moreover, the results of critical historical investigation can be deployed in a spiritually fruitful and discerning way when canonical materials and practices are used as means of grace. To be sure, there are crucial metaphysical and epistemological issues in the neighbourhood, for there is no historical investigation without reliance on a vast network of varied assumptions. However, dealing with these matters does nothing to deliver us from the demanding labour of specific, detailed historical inquiry into the origins, content, and meaning of the canonical heritage of the Church” (xii).
4 Ibid., 112.
5 Ratzinger, Joseph, “Anglican-Catholic Dialogue: Its Problems and Hopes,” trans. Sandemann, Dame Fridesweide O.S.B., in Ratzinger, , Church, Ecumenism and Politics: New Essays in Ecclesiology (New York: Crossroad, 1988): 65–98Google Scholar, at 83–84. Ratzinger continues, “If we had today to ‘prove’ the Trinitarian dogma and Christological faith from scripture in the same controversial way as the sacrificial character of the eucharist, our endeavour to reach common conclusions would certainly be no less arduous. On the other hand, if the basic form of the liturgy of the early Church were accepted as a lasting heritage, ranking with conciliar creeds, this would provide unifying hermeneutics which would render many points of contention superfluous. The Church's liturgy being the original interpretation of the biblical heritage has no need to justify itself before historical reconstructions: it is rather itself the standard, sprung from what is living, which directs research back to the initial stages” (84–85). This full “heritage” is “living” and (as liturgical) salvific, and thus no mere “criterion.” Cf. for a positive ecumenical response to Ratzinger's essay, Geoffrey Wainwright, “Towards an Ecumenical Hermeneutic: How Can All Christians Read the Scriptures Together?,” 639, 653. Wainwright also notes convergences between the Catechism of the Catholic Church's approach to biblical interpretation and that of John Wesley.
6 Abraham, Canon as Criterion, 108–110, 471.
7 As Abraham points out, “I see no good reasons why the best insights of the evangelical tradition cannot be preserved in a thoroughly robust way in my revisionist account of canon and scripture. The challenge to Roman Catholicism runs much deeper” (xii).
8 Abraham treats this theme most deeply in his chapter on Newman. While ultimately strongly critical of Newman's account of papal infallibility, Abraham is impressed by what he takes to be Newman's distance from Aquinas, a distance that perhaps opens some room for Roman Catholic return to the canonical heritage that Newman himself deeply explored: “Thus, while Aquinas is committed to the primacy of the literal sense, Newman is committed to the primacy of the spiritual sense, locating theological error in the former. While Aquinas is one of the great inventors of natural theology, Newman is far from convinced by its validity, and explores altogether different territory in the experience of self and conscience for the foundation of his theism. While Aquinas favours scientia as the paradigm of theology, Newman develops an entirely different conception which picks up a very different legacy from Aristotle: namely, phronesis, or the illative sense. While Aquinas has one conception of probability, Newman has an entirely different one. While Aquinas is happy to appeal to the dexterity of the interpreter to find a reading of Scripture which will be reconcilable with science, Newman is happy to await the formal pronouncements of the Pope as a crucial ingredient in the apologetic task. While Aquinas clearly favours the relatively clear deployment of deduction and proof, Newman favours the more subtle and murky world of human judgement and probability. Aquinas and Newman are seen to represent radically different epistemological projects when these considerations are taken seriously” (352–53). The question is whether Abraham understands Aquinas's theology.
9 Ibid., 107.
10 Ibid., 89.
11 Ibid., 107. For somewhat similar concerns, cf. Buckley, Michael J. S.J.'s, At the Origins of Modern Atheism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987)Google Scholar and Buckley's recent clarification of his view in Denying and Disclosing God: The Ambiguous Progress of Modern Atheism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004)Google Scholar: chapter 3, “Thomas Aquinas and the Rise of Modern Atheism,” 48–69, which acquits the Summa Theologiae of rationalism.
12 Ibid., 85.
13 While Abraham certainly possesses an animus against Aquinas, Abraham is right to note, as he does in the preface to the paperback edition, that his argument does not rest upon positive or negative assessments of Aquinas's personality or intentions. Abraham states in his preface: “Nothing I say about Aquinas is undermined by the additional claim that he had a resolute grasp of the spiritual content of the gospel, or that he was an extremely insightful commentator on scripture, using it to great effect soteriologically in exegesis and homiletics. My claim is that he also has the epistemological position I attribute to him here, and that this position is integral to his conception of canon” (viii). He goes on to remark that the view that Aquinas's “epistemology was really a secondary affair that operated as an anti-epistemology in the service of removing epistemological pretensions” is not a viable reading of Aquinas, because “Aquinas's doctrine of revelation is at the core of his doctrine of scripture. Once we relocate the canon of scripture within this framework, then the shift to canon as a criterion is as secure as it can be” (viii). Drawing upon Yves Congar, Abraham argues that Aquinas is instrumental in narrowing the meaning of “Scripture” and making its “primary function” to be “operating as an authority” (ix). In Abraham's view, this is the necessary result of Aquinas's theology of revelation. Abraham argues that Aquinas is “a towering figure” in the transition from appreciating the canonical heritage as a means of grace to giving “primacy to ideas of revelation and inspiration as applying in some unique fashion to the Bible, and to limit scripture to the Bible. However, it is only someone already smitten by epistemology, and more precisely by the kind of epistemology furnished by Aquinas, who can accept the shift identified here so gladly and readily. If one has deep reservations materially about epistemological claims, and if one is sceptical formally of giving epistemology a privileged place in the life of the mind, then the changes proposed by Aquinas will be stoutly resisted. My book is a long-winded argument for stout resistance. We need a more modest conception of scripture as sacred writings; and we need to be more generous in identifying the range of material to which scripture can apply” (xi). Abraham seems to want both the “canonical heritage”—he suggests that “evangelicals who have long insisted on the great classical doctrines of the Church and who have focused on the soteriological function of scripture, should find a ready home for my proposals” (xi)—and the pluralistic approach to other religions offered by theological liberalism.
14 Ibid., 98–99. For discussion of Aquinas's position vis-à-vis the Orthodox East, see the work of Emery, Gilles O.P., Trinity in Aquinas, trans. Levering, Matthew et al. (Ypsilanti, MI: Sapientia Press, 2003)Google Scholar: chapter 6, “The Procession of the Holy Spirit a Filio According to St. Thomas Aquinas,” 209–69; idem, La théologie trinitaire de saint Thomas d'Aquin (Paris: Cerf, 2004): 321–52Google Scholar.
15 Abraham, Canon and Criterion, 98.
16 Ibid., 100.
17 Ibid., 101; cf. 107.
18 Ibid., 95.
19 Ibid.
20 Ibid., xi.
21 Ibid., 109.
22 Abraham notes in a footnote on p. 101: “In the light of the foregoing, it should come as no surprise that Aquinas should be admired and championed by astute and combative modern fundamentalists like Norman L. Geisler.”
23 Ibid., 471.
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid., 472.
26 Ibid., 477–478.
27 Pickstock, , “Duns Scotus: His Historical and Contemporary Significance,”Modern Theology 21 (2005): 543–74, at 54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
28 On idolatry within a “postmodern” culture see Brian J. Walsh, “Late/Post Modernity and Idolatry: A Contextual Reading of Colossians 2:8–3:4,”Ex Auditu 15 (1999): 1–17; cf. John Barton's study of the relationship between “you shall have no other gods before me” (Ex 20:3) and “you shall not make for yourself an idol” (Ex 20:4), “‘The Work of Human Hands’ (Ps 115:4): Idolatry in the Old Testament,” in the same volume of Ex Auditu, 63–72. Walsh writes, “The most foundational distinction in biblical faith is between neither heaven and earth, nor even good and evil, and certainly not infinite and finite or eternal and temporal, but Creator and creation. It is here that the biblical witness both begins and ends” (2). For further discussion see the introduction and first chapter of my Scripture and Metaphysics.
29 Walker, Adrian, “Editorial: Fundamentalism and the Catholicity of Truth,”Communio 29 (2002): 5–27Google Scholar, at 9; cf. 23. Walker describes this development as the “secularization of scientia,” and he attributes it to the division between nature and grace described by Henri de Lubac, S.J. Nature itself, one could add, has inbuilt teleologies (distinct, though not separable in actuality, from the gratuitous teleology of grace), and so the participatory dimension of “objectivity” is both Christological and metaphysical. Walker emphasizes, as do I, historical “participation in Christ's revelatory act” (11). On these questions, see also Ayres, Lewis, “On the Practice and Teaching of Christian Doctrine,”Gregorianum 80 (1999): 33–94Google Scholar, which likewise draws upon Aquinas, Augustine, and Hans Urs von Balthasar to advance an account of biblical interpretation as participatory doctrina.
30 Aquinas, Thomas St., Summa contra Gentiles, Book I, ch. 2 (trans. Pegis, Anton C. F.R.S.C., [Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975], pp. 61–62Google Scholar).
31 Walker, “Editorial: Fundamentalism and the Catholicity of Truth,” 21. Just before this quotation Walker writes: “If, in fact, the inspiration of Scripture passes through the Church's participation in Jesus' ‘traditioning,’ though without ever being simply reducible to it, then the historical genesis of the Biblical text is never neutral with respect to Tradition—and, therefore, cannot be properly understood without participation in the Church's sharing in Jesus' traditioning. To be sure, the introduction of the traditional reading of Scripture into ‘scientific’ exegesis need not, indeed, should not, mean a proof-texting that ignores the specificity of Biblical discourse in order to dragoon the Scriptural text into the service of some a priori agenda. There can and should be a relatively autonomous scientific exegesis in the Church” (ibid.). I share Walker's sense that “participation” is the key to understanding what ecclesial exegesis of Scripture might look like. Cf. my “Participation and Exegesis: Response to Catherine Pickstock,”Modern Theology (2005): 587–601.
32 This is the key point of Christ's Fulfillment of Torah and Temple: Salvation according to Thomas Aquinas (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002)Google Scholar.
