Philosophy and Theology in the Long Middle Ages: A Tribute to Stephen F. Brown

Written by Kent Emery Jr., Russell L. Friedman, and Andreas Speer, eds Reviewed By James E. Dolezal

In this Festschrift for the medievalist Stephen Brown, the editors have assembled an impressive array of essays. The volume's thirty-five chapters are distributed topically through five sections: (1) metaphysics and natural theology; (2) epistemology and ethics; (3) philosophy and theology; (4) theological questions; and (5) text and context. Some of the contributions bring little-known figures to light for the first time. Others challenge prevailing assumptions about certain medieval thinkers (usually Thomas Aquinas). Others seek to break new ground entirely, suggesting new paradigms of interpretation. While it is difficult in a volume of such magnitude and diversity to isolate dominant or recurring themes, at least two stand out. First, the contributors show that the Christian commitment of the medieval theologians tends to shape their philosophizing to such an extent that their philosophy cannot be simply read as a Christian repristination of one or another of the ancients. Medieval Christian philosophy is distinct in its own right. Second, the contributors show that medieval Christian theology and philosophy was not monolithic, but was characterized by great diversity and lively debates. Each chapter is marked by extensive interaction with primary sources, and each attempts to offer interpretations based on those sources rather than on secondary literature. It will suffice for this review to consider a few of the chapters that spotlight philosophical and theological changes that develop in the middle ages.

In the opening chapter, Jan Aertsen sets the tone for the volume by examining the transformation of metaphysics in the middle ages. This emphasis upon transformation is striking inasmuch as many medievals, such as Aquinas, are often charged with simply appropriating a ready-made Aristotelian conception of metaphysics in which God stands atop the univocal great chain of being. Yet Aertsen notes that Aquinas made a major contribution to the Christian understanding of metaphysics by distinguishing “First Philosophy” from Christian theology. The two are distinguished not only according to their sources-nature and Scripture, respectively-but also according to their subjects. “In philosophical theology,” Aertsen explains, “the divine is not the subject-that is being-as-being-but the causal principle of this subject. Christian theology, on the other hand, considers the divine in itself as the subject of its science” (p. 27). The basic assumption is that the proper cause of a science's subject-in the case of metaphysics, being-in-general-cannot also be the proper subject of that science since each science takes its subject as a given and must look beyond itself for its ultimate and proper cause. Christian theology does not need to do this because God, its subject, has no proper cause. This distinction between Christian theology and the lower science of metaphysics is possible only on the Christian assumption that God is the ultimate cause of being-in-general-an assumption that Aristotle and Plato did not make inasmuch as they believed in eternal, uncreated, non-divine realities (e.g., matter, forms, or ideas). Thus, Aquinas's Christian commitment caused his conception of the proper subject of metaphysics itself to differ monumentally from the ancients.

Andreas Speer's chapter, on the other hand, shows that Aquinas's conception of metaphysics as a science distinct from Christian theology was by no means the universal consensus among the medievals. Others, such as Meister Eckhart, sought to preserve a form of metaphysics inherited from Boethius that was fundamentally at odds with Aquinas's. In other words, there is no “Aristotelian master narrative” that explains the high middle ages and its relationship to earlier Christian philosophers (p. 94). Boethius equated metaphysics and theology, and Aquinas disapproved. Many fail to see the stark contrast between Boethius and Aquinas, according to Speer, because both share a common Aristotelian understanding of the lower speculative sciences such as physics and mathematics. But Aquinas's later distinction between “First Philosophy” and Christian theology signals “a division of two divergent and incommensurate metaphysical discourses” (p. 104) and does not represent an advancement of a single shared metaphysical outlook with Boethius. In following Boethius's equation of metaphysics and theology, Eckhart is led to treat God himself as if he were a transcendental in nature. Yet he presumes to have the advantage of uniting reason and faith, philosophy, and Christianity.

Oliva Blanchette also pushes back against the notion that Aquinas endorsed Greek philosophy whole-hog. Following the conclusions of Arthur Lovejoy's 1936 study The Great Chain of Being, many have assumed that Aquinas self-contradictorily held to two different conceptions of the universe-the Christian one in which God freely wills the world's existence and the Greek one in which he creates the world by an absolute necessity rooted in the diffusiveness of his goodness. In his chapter, Blanchette seeks to exonerate Aquinas by showing that Lovejoy has set up a false dichotomy between divine freedom and necessity. Lovejoy, according to Blanchette, fails to perceive that the causality Aquinas associates with the necessary diffusiveness of God's goodness is not an efficient causality-which remains free for God-but a final causality. Part of the reason Lovejoy makes this mistake is that he thinks of the diffusiveness of divine goodness as a Spinozan “principle of plentitude” rather than according to its common medieval connotation, as a “principle of perfection” (pp. 157-58). As a principle of perfection God's necessary diffusion of goodness is for the purpose of bringing all things to their proper end (which is God himself as the highest good). But this diffusion is necessary only on the assumption that God has in fact efficiently willed to create anything at all. Thus, the absolute necessity of the diffusion of God's goodness is not an absolute necessity requiring the world's existence, but only necessitates that if God should efficiently (and freely) will a world to exist he wills it to exist with himself as its final end and good. Blanchette masterfully dismantles Lovejoy's paradigm and shows that he has misconceived Aquinas's understanding of the role of divine freedom and necessity in creation.

Touching matters more theological, Jeremy Wilkens argues in his chapter that many have incorrectly judged Aquinas's Trinitarianism and his “psychological analogy” as privileging substances over Persons and generally isolating itself from the rest of his theology. This charge was perpetrated in the last century by Karl Rahner in his criticism of Thomas's division of theology into De Deo Uno and De Deo Trino. According to Wilkens, no such division was ever made by Thomas and in fact his Trinitarianism is fully conversant with his views on God's simplicity, work of creation, and work in the salvation of sinners. While many will likely disagree with Thomas's conception of divine grace and sanctification, Wilkens's chapter should persuade readers that Thomas was a truly Trinitarian theologian.

In one of the volume's most intriguing chapters, Michael Gorman investigates the question of how many “existences” Christ has. Does he have one according to his one person or two according to his two natures? The Chalcedonian formula alone is not sufficient to answer this challenge. Aquinas, Gorman observes, answers the question by affirming in four texts only one act of existence (esse) in Christ and in another text that he has more than one esse. Thomas distinguishes between the esse that we ascribe to supposits (persons) and to natures so that, for instance, we may distinguish between the affirmations “Christ exists” and “Christ's human nature exists.” The existence of supposits is the more fundamental sense of existence. Inasmuch as Aquinas is clear that Christ as a person can have only one esse, Gorman reformulates the question: “Instead of asking merely how may existences are had by Christ, the supposit, we can ask, first, how many substantial existences he has and second, how many non-substantial existences he has” (p. 721). In answer to the first, Gorman discovers that Thomas holds to only one substantial existence in Christ: “To attribute two substantial existences to him would be to make him a supposit twice over, which would be to fall into the Nestorian heresy” (p. 722). So what does Christ's human nature contribute if not substantial existence? Here Gorman shows that Thomas transcends the bounds of Aristotelian categories in the interest of theological truth by affirming that the existence of Christ's human nature is neither substantial nor accidental. Some readers will undoubtedly feel that Gorman leaves them on the hook as he declines to explicate this doctrine of the secondary non-accidental existence of Christ's humanity. He is satisfied to have isolated the questions and divisions embedded in Aquinas's texts. This article is a tantalizing bit of clarification that should be an impetus to further research in Thomas's Christology.

Two other chapters that deserve brief mention treat figures other than Aquinas. Matthew Levering offers a careful study of William of Ockham's teaching on the possibility of papal heresy and his proposed response that national, regional, or local churches may have to resort to an aristocratic form of church government as a stopgap measure to ensure the maintenance of orthodoxy. From a Catholic perspective, Levering locates the weakness of Ockham's argument in his conception of the church's papal headship as a primarily juridical reality rather than a sacramental reality. Ockham's implicit anti-monarchial posture with respect to ultimate church authority was a harbinger of the conflicts over ecclesiastical authority that would follow in the ensuing centuries. Finally, John Slotemaker offers the thesis that John Calvin's Trinitarianism is wrongly categorized by those who claim its essential Cappadocianism (T. F. Torrance) and those who hold to its essential Augustinianism (B. B. Warfield, Paul Helm). Beside the fact that Calvin most frequently appeals to the pre-Nicenes for patristic support, he also tends to distinguish the divine persons by their possession of the non-relational properties of source (Father), wisdom (Son), and power (Spirit). Slotemaker interprets this as an explicit rejection of the Cappadocian, Augustinian, and Thomistic insistence that the properties that distinguish the persons are relations. Instead, he notes, Calvin's view most closely approximates that of John Duns Scotus. Whatever one makes of this thesis, no future work on Calvin's Trinitarianism can ignore Slotemaker's argument.

While its cost ensures that Philosophy and Theology in the Long Middle Ages will be primarily a volume for institutional collections, its content cannot be ignored by students working in the field. Many of its chapters will undoubtedly become staples in the years to come. The book is simply brimming with numerous original discoveries and new interpretations of old discoveries.


James E. Dolezal

James E. Dolezal
Westminster Theological Seminary
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

Other Articles in this Issue

Children's story bibles are not Bibles and, it turns out, neither are they for children...

This article is written in love and admiration for pastors in North America...

As I write this the UK Parliament is considering Clause 1(1) of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill...

I shall begin with a well-known exegetical conundrum and then branch out to a much larger issue that none of us can afford to ignore...