e aquinas imago dei 1151341859

Revista electrónica mensual del Instituto Santo Tomás (Fundación Balmesiana)

e-aquinas

Año 4 Julio 2006 ISSN 1695-6362

© Copyright 2003-2006 INSTITUTO SANTO TOMÁS (Fundación Balmesiana)

Este mes... IMAGO DEI

(Cátedra de Estudios Tomistas del IST)

Aula Magna: ABELARDO LOBATO, La verdad integral sobre el hombre: La

antropología tomista 2-9

Documento: J. AUGUSTINE DI NOIA, Imago Dei – Imago Christi: The

Theological Foundations of Christian Humanism 10-20FRANCISCO CANALS, Naturaleza humana y generación: “Homo est

de homine sicut Deus de Deo” 21-30 Publicación: ELISABETH REINHARDT, La dignidad del hombre en cuanto imagen

de Dios. Tomás de Aquino ante sus fuentes 31-38 Noticia: Doctorado honoris causa a fray Abelardo Lobato, O.P. 39-40

J. Augustine Di Noia, Imago Dei – Imago Christi

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Imago Dei – Imago Christi The Theological Foundations of Christian Humanism 1

J. Augustine Di Noia, O.P.

Undersecretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith

Many conferences and symposia will be held this year, including several sponsored by universities here in Rome, marking the tenth anniversary of the encyclical Veritatis Splendor. As it happens, this year's international congress of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas coincides with a symposium on Veritatis Splendor sponsored by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (beginning tomorrow and running until the end of the week). We may perhaps be permitted to take the title of the CDF symposium – “The Anthropology of Moral Theology according to the Encyclical Veritatis Splendor” – as a sign that the theme of congress this year, which does not explicitly concern the encyclical, is nonetheless very close to the mark. While the CDF symposium takes up the anthropological foundations of Catholic moral theology in Veritatis Splendor, the focus of our own congress is the somewhat broader but still closely connected theme of Christian humanism in the third millennium from the perspective of St. Thomas Aquinas. In considering this theme, we cannot fail to note, as Aquinas himself would and as Veritatis Splendor emphatically does, that a critical task of Christian anthropology in every age is precisely to supply an adequate basis for moral theology.

It has been widely recognized that the documents of the Second Vatican

Council represent a notable re-affirmation of the theology of the imago Dei2.

For a variety of reasons, in some traditions of Catholic theology after the Reformation and Enlightenment periods, this element of classical theological anthropology had not received the attention it properly deserved. But in the first half of the twentieth century theology, both in neo-Thomistic and ressourcement circles, the theology of the imago Dei enjoyed a significant revival. Inspired in part by this retrieval of classical theological anthropology, the council Fathers sought to recover the christological and eschatological contexts which had been essential in the theology of the imago Dei of the best patristic and scholastic authors. Among the conciliar documents, perhaps none was more complete in its articulation of the theology of the imago Dei than Gaudium et Spes3.

1 Ponencia de fray Augustine di Noia en el Congreso Tomista Internacional, en el

aula magna de la Pontificia Università di San Tommaso “Angelicum”, en Roma, el 22 de septiembre de 2003.

2 See Luis Ladaria, S.J., “Humanity in the Light of Christ in the Second Vatican Council,” in René Latourelle, ed., Vatican II: Assessment and Perspectives, Vol. II (New York: Paulist Press, 1989), 386-401.

3 See the comprehensive treatment in George Karakunnel, The Christian Vision of Man: A Study of the Theological Anthropology in “Gaudium et Spes” of Vatican II (Bangalore: Asian Trading Association, 1984).

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The importance of the connection between anthropology and christology

both for a correct interpretation of Gaudium et Spes and for an authentic Christian humanism was noted early on. Over thirty years ago, in one of the first theological commentaries on Gaudium et Spes, the now Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger argued that it is essential to take into account the intrinsic linking of anthropology with christology (and thus with eschatology) which unfolds across the entire text and which in his view constitutes its crucial insight. Any properly comprehensive interpretation of the theology of the imago Dei in Gaudium et Spes would need to balance passages which speak of man as created in the image of God (such as article 12) with those which speak of Christ as key to the mystery of man (such as the crucial article 22). The perfect image of God is the incarnate Word who is both the exemplar of the image of God in man and the pattern for its transformation4. The concrete human person who is created in the image of God is always in via, always being drawn to the Father, but partly impeded by sin; he is redeemed by Christ, yet undergoing a lifelong transformation in the power of the Holy Spirit, with a view to the final consummation of a life of communion with the Blessed Trinity and the saints. The image of God is always, as it were, in a process of becoming. From the moment of creation, the perfection of the image of God – more simply, holiness – is already intimated as the end of human life. A Christian theology of creation “is only intelligible in eschatology; the Alpha is only truly to be understood in the Omega.”5 Thus, according to Cardinal Ratzinger’s early essay, Gaudium et Spes presents “Christ as the eschatological Adam to whom the first Adam already pointed; as the true image of God which transforms man once more into likeness to God.”6

Subsequently, as is well known, Pope John Paul II made this cluster of

themes the hallmark of his pontificate. The dominant interest in anthropology, which had characterized his entire career as a philosopher and theologian, now blossomed prodigiously in his papal magisterium into the fullblown reaffirmation of an authentic Christian humanism.7 A distinctive element in

4 Joseph Ratzinger, "The Dignity of the Human Person," in Herbert Vorgrimler et al,

eds., Commentary on the Documents of Vatican Il, Vol. V (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969), 115-163.

5 Ibid., 121. 6 Ibid., 159. See the discussion of these issues in Walter Kasper, “The Theological

Anthropology of Gaudium et Spes,” and David L. Schindler, “Christology and the lmago Dei: Interpreting Gaudium et Spes” Communio 23 (1996), 129-41, and 156-84.

7 See Kenneth Schmitz, At the Center of the Human Drama: The Philosophical Anthropology of Karol Wojtyla/Pope John Paul II (Washington: Catholic University of


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Pope John Paul’s teaching about the imago Dei has been his stress on the relational character of the image: creation in the image of God is the basis for and is realized precisely in the communion of persons. In addition, the Holy Father has made his own the distinctive blend of anthropology and christology which is the mark of conciliar teaching. Pope John Paul II frequently invokes the words of Gaudium et Spes #22 which state that “it is only in the mystery of the Word made flesh that the mystery of man truly becomes clear.” Anthropology and christology are always to be found interwoven in the relational theology of the imago Dei expounded by the Holy Father.

The juxtaposition of imago Dei and imago Christi in the title of my paper is

meant to capsulize the christocentric anthropology that is characteristic of patristic and scholastic theology of the image of God and that has been expressed anew by the Second Vatican Council, by Pope John Paul II, and by Cardinal Ratzinger and other theologians. According to this vision, in brief, the human person is created in the image of God (imago Dei) in order to grow into the image of Christ (imago Christi). This christocentric vision of the human person is the foundation of authentic Christian humanism. What is more, Gaudium et Spes and the magisterium of Pope John Paul II testify to the immense relevance of this vision for the new evangelization and for theology today as the Church confronts a wide range of challenges in her proclamation of the truth about man.

The challenges to authentic Christian humanism today are of at least two

kinds, though the first arises from within the Christian theological tradition itself and is represented by the lingering influence of nominalist patterns of thought in moral theology and in the anthropology that undergirds it. A second kind of challenge has sources largely external to the Christian tradition, and is represented by the variety of secular humanisms and post-modern anti-humanisms which advance alternative accounts of the meaning (or lack of it) in human existence. Another important kind of challenge arises from the distinctive religious visions of the human espoused by Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam, but I shall not be considering it here. The two kinds of challenge I do want to consider can be seen to be convergent in their final outcomes, and I hope it will not seem amiss – in this gathering of the Pontifical Academy of the St. Thomas – to suggest that the Angelic Doctor’s theology of the imago Dei can be of particular assistance in facing them.

America Press, 1993), and Jaroslav Kupczak, O.P., Destined for Liberty: The Human Person in the Philosophy of Karol Wojtyla/John Paul ll (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 2000).


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We have seen that the christocentric anthropology of Pope John II and the Second Vatican Council insists on the intrinsic link between what human beings are as such and what they can hope to be. There is a link, and certainly no opposition, between human fulfillment and religious consummation. Holiness (religious consummation) is the perfection of the image (human fulfillment). Created in the image of God, they are meant to grow into the image of Christ. There is thus a finality built into human nature as such and, although its realization is possible only with the assistance of divine grace, this realization is in a real sense continuous with the tendencies and even aspirations essential to the nature as such. The cultivation and fulfillment of the human person through seeking the good in a graced moral life enables one to enjoy the Good that is beyond life.

It is precisely this linkage between human fulfillment and religious

perfection that is, in different ways, severed or negated by the lingering nominalism of some Catholic moral theology and by the competing secular humanisms and anti-humanisms of Western modernity. The result in both cases is a crisis in which the goods of human life are disengaged from the desire for transcendence. Nominalism divorces human moral fulfillment from the possibility of the enjoyment of a transcendent good, while modern secular humanism and post-modern anti-humanism declare the desire for this transcendence to be itself irrelevant and even injurious, to complete human fulfillment. Let us consider these challenges in turn.

The features of nominalist thought that are crucial to my argument here

will be familiar to students of the history of late medieval philosophy and theology.8 Nominalist thinkers famously sought to preserve the divine freedom by stressing the unlimited possibilities available to the absolute power of God (the potentia absoluta) which cannot be regarded as in any way constrained by the existing order of things in creation and redemption established by the divine potentia ordinata. To a certain extent under the influence of Scotus, who had already made Aquinas the target of his criticism,9 the nominalists explicitly

8 For details, see Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy, vol. 3 (New York:

Doubleday, 1963), 43-122, and Paul Vincent Spade, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Ockham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), especially the essays by Peter King, Marilyn McCord Adams, A.S. McGrade, and Alfred J. Freddoso.

9 See Thomas Williams, “How Scotus Separates Mora1ity from Happiness,” American Philosophical Quarterly 69 (1995), 425-45. See also Cop1eston, A History of Philosophy, vol. 2, 476-551, and Thomas Wi1liarns, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Scotus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), especial1y the essays by James Ross and Todd Bates, William E. Mann, Hans Möhle, Thomas Miller and Bonnie Kent. For the contrast


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denied that which Aquinas had affirmed, namely, the existence of a rationally ordered universe reflecting the divine wisdom and accessible to human knowing. Whereas for Aquinas there is a congruence between the knowable divine law inscribed in human nature (natural law) and human aspirations for fulfillment, on the one hand, and the enjoyment of supernatural beatitude, on the other, for nominalism God is completely unconstrained in enjoining moral laws. The moral law imposes obligations which reflect neither the rational nature of God nor the inbuilt finalities of human nature. Moreover, since absolutely free, God’s decision to save or damn a particular individual could not be made in any way dependent on the fulfillment, or lack of it, of these obligations. Rather than being the intrinsic principle of the moral life, as in Aquinas, beatitude becomes an external reward whose enjoyment may or may not reflect the moral character of a particular human life. Since moral law is the expression of the divine will and thus ceases to depend upon a particular account of human nature, moral theology is detached from theological anthropology and from any exemplary christology. Yielding its place in theological anthropology and moral theology, christocentrism in the form of intense devotion to Christ became a persistent feature of the spirituality of the devotio moderna, itself a strategy designed to bypass the troublesome philosophical and theological perplexities of nominalism. In an important recent book, Anthony Levi has argued that nominalist theology gave rise to an “intolerable spiritual tension, deriving from the separation of moral achievement from religious fulfillment,” principally because individuals “could not know what unalterable fate God had decreed for them without reference to the exercise of autonomously self-determining powers during life.”10 With the divorce of moral achievement from religious perfection, religious practices and observances served to allay this tension independently of the moral state of the individual.

Father Servais Pinckaers has convincingly demonstrated that certain

fundamental presuppositions of nominalist theology are embedded in the casuistic moral theology of the manuals in use from the seventeenth century to the eve of the Second Vatican Council.11 Among these, perhaps the most

between Scotus and Aquinas, and the links between nominalism and Scotus on these issues, see especially Anthony Levi, Renaissance and Reformation: The Intellectual Genesis (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 30-67.

10 Levi, 64. 11 Servais Pinckaers, O.P., « La nature de la moralité: morale casuistique at morale

thomiste, » in Somme théologique: Les actes humains, vol. 2, trans. S. Pinckaers (Paris: Desc1ée & Cie, 1966), 215-76. See also his The Sources of Christian Ethics (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1995), 327-53. For a helpfu1 summary of


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important for our theme are the centrality accorded to obligation in the moral life and the eclipse of beatitude as an intrinsic principle of moral action. In this tradition of moral theology, the categories of the permitted and the forbidden are prior to the categories of good and evil in actions. Actions are bad or wrong because they are forbidden, rather than vice versa. Actions that are bad or wrong merit punishment, while those that are good or right merit reward. But there is no intrinsic connection between these actions as such and the punishment or reward they merit. The predestinating God of nominalism has vanished, of course, to be replaced by a calculating deity who confers reward or punishment in view of an individual's success or failure in meeting moral obligations. Under the influence of nominalism, casuist moral theology has no need for an account of how moral agents become good by seeking the good. It is significant, as Father Pinckaers has pointed out, that the treatise on beatitude disappears from manualist moral theology while the treatise on the virtues is consigned to the realm of spiritual theology.

The fundamental difficulty here – echoing Anthony Levi's description of

the religious situation in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, one might speak of the “intolerable spiritual tension” – is that many people can no longer discern an intrinsic link between the moral law and their good, and, furthermore, no longer view religious achievement (the reward of happiness) as intrinsically connected with moral or human fulfillment. Religious practices – often in the form of eclectic spiritualities – are now often seen as unconnected from moral obligations, themselves in any case greatly reduced in specific content. Morality, even when faithfully observed, is viewed as disengaged from, and indeed is often regarded as in conflict with, basic human aspirations for a good and happy life. In addition, a good and happy life here is not seen as continuous with the life of beatitude as such. Heaven is inevitable in any case, while hell is unthinkable and purgatory unintelligible.

Although I cannot pursue the point here, the prevalence of this kind of

moral theology gave rise to the intolerable tensions experienced by many Catholics in the face of the moral teaching of Humanae Vitae – and indeed the entirety of Christian teaching about human sexuality – which seemed to impose an outdated moral obligation whose connection with the human good was either denied or dismissed or, more commonly, simply not discerned. The proportionalist moral theories devised with a view to allaying these tensions failed to question, and indeed often presupposed, the edifice of casuistic moral theology that had made these tensions almost inevitable. Pinckaers’ argument, see Romanus Cessario, O.P., Introduction to Moral Theology (Washington: Catho1ic University of America Press, 2001), 229-42.


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In accounting for the revolution that came with modernity and saw the emergence of secular humanism and, more recently, of neo-Nietzschean anti-humanisms, one can certainly point to the spiritual mentality fostered by casuist moral theology as among the likely contributing factors. Certainly, Charles Taylor is right in seeing affective and spiritual factors as crucial in fostering this revolution and maintaining the West in what he terms a “post-revolutionary” climate.12 It is not simp1y the loss of belief in God and in other central Christian dogmas that contributed to this revolution, but possibly, in the terms of the argument of this paper, the long-term insupportability of the edifice of casuist moral theology with its divorce of human and moral fulfillment from religious perfection. According to Taylor, secular humanisms and post-modern anti-humanisms agree in affirming a good to human life without the peed to invoke any good beyond lire. What distinguishes them is the anti-humanist insistence that a comprehensive affirmation of human life must embrace (and even celebrate) suffering and death. Both secular humanism and post-modem anti-humanism simply deny that religious aspirations have any relevance for human and moral fulfillment. The desire for transcendence is a kind of human and moral dead end. “Immortal longings,” to use Fergus Kerr's felicitous phrase, may not be good for one's moral health or, indeed, for one's humanity.13 For Taylor, the “horizon of assumptions” that “shapes the pervasive outlook toward religion in our culture” includes the view that for us “life, flourishing, driving back the frontiers of death and suffering, are of supreme value” and that what prevented people from seeing this sooner and more widely was “precisely a sense, inculcated by religion, that there were higher goals,” a good beyond life. In the post-revolutionary climate, “to speak of aiming beyond life is to appear to undermine the supreme concern with life in our humanitarian, ‘civilized,’ world.”14

One can readily see, in the terms of Taylor’s persuasive analysis of

Western modernity, that in order to seek the good of human life, one must give up pursuing a good beyond life or, at least, one must define the good beyond life in non-religious terms. Religious perfection is seen not only as irrelevant to human fulfillment but as an actual obstacle to it. We can also readily see, if we recall the fundamental features of the christocentric anthropology of Pope John Paul II and the Second Vatican Council, how radical a challenge is posed both

12 Charles Taylor, “Iris Murdoch and Moral Philosophy,” in Maria Antonaccio and

Michael Schweiker, eds., lris Murdoch and the Search for Human Goodness (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996),3-28.

13 Fergus Kerr, O.P., Immortal Longings (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997).

14 Taylor, 23.


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by moral theology in the nominalist-casuist vein and by the secular humanisms and anti-humanisms of Western modernity.

According to the christocentric anthropology sketched earlier, there is an

intrinsic link between what human beings are as such and what they can hope to be. There is a link, not a contradiction, between human fulfillment and religious consummation. Holiness (religious consummation) is the perfection of the image (human fulfillment). The lingering influence of nominalism is such as to make it very difficult to grasp the terms of an authentic Christian humanism even when they are forcefully presented. (Consider, in this connection, the cool reception still accorded to Veritatis Splendor in some quarters). Without a moral theology that is thoroughly integrated with anthropology and christology, it is difficult to make any headway with the variety of secular humanisms and anti-humanisms of Western modernity. In the climate of contemporary culture, there is a powerful temptation for some religious people, including Catholics, tacitly to accept the “horizon of assumptions” of Western modernity and to promote precisely (and sometimes chiefly) those aspects of their faith that can be seen as contributing to the good of human life. The documents of the Second Vatican Council have themselves sometimes been subjected to readings employing this strategy with an eye to programs of renewal that, without denying the good beyond life, do not always leave much room for it in practice. It may well be that the divorce between human/moral fulfillment and religious perfection, embedded in prevailing forms of Catholic moral reflection, makes it difficult for Catholics influenced by them to respond to the challenges posed by non-religious or anti-religious humanisms for which the presumption of this divorce is axiomatic.

I am convinced that a recovery of Aquinas's theology of the imago Dei can

and has already begun to make a significant contribution to the Catholic response to these challenges. Presenting to you what is essentially still a work in progress, I can only sketch briefly the possibilities as I see them in the time left to me. That Aquinas’s theology affords such resources may not be obvious to everyone. Certainly, many will readily admit that, in linking anthropology, christology and eschatology in its theology of the imago Dei, Gaudium et Spes had recovered important strands in the patristic doctrine of the imago Dei. Perhaps less widely known is how thoroughly christological and eschatological is the theology of the imago Dei advanced in the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas. One of the more refreshing aspects of recent scholarship on Aquinas is the emergence of a broad appreciation of this central element of his theology.15

15 For an orientation to the literature on this topic, see Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P., St. Thomas Aquinas: Vol. II: Spiritual Master, translated by Robert Royal (Washington:


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A crucial feature of this more comprehensive appraisal of Aquinas’s theology of the imago Dei has involved the recognition that his explicit consideration of the matter as part of the theology of creation in question 93 of the Prima Pars cannot be treated in isolation but must be located within the broader context of the overall argument of the Summa Theologiae.16 It is well known that the structure of this argument is framed in terms of Aquinas's distinctive appropriation of the exitus-reditus scheme. This structure has immense significance for his theology of the imago Dei: the human being created in the image of God is by the very fact of his human nature and from the very first moment of his existence directed toward God as his ultimate end.17 Catholic University of America Press, 2003). See also: Emile Bailleux, “A l'image du Fils premier-né,” Revue Thomiste 76 (1976), 181-207; Romanus Cessario, O.P., Christian Faith and the Theological Life (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1996), 38-48; Michael A. Dauphinais, “Loving the Lord Your God: The Imago Dei in St. Thomas Aquinas,” The Thomist 63 (1999), 241-67; Ignatius Eschamnn, O.P., “St. Thomas Aquinas, the Summary of Theology I-II: The Ethics of the Image of God,” in Edward A. Synan, ed., The Ethics of St. Thomas Aquinas: Two Courses (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1997), 159-231; L.-B. Gillon, O.P., Cristo e la Teologia Morale (Roma: Edizioni Romane Mame, 1961); Thomas Hibbs, "Imitatio Christi and the Foundation of Aquinas's Ethics,” Communio 18 (1991), 556-73; Fergus Kerr, O.P., After Aquinas: Versions of Thomism (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002); Matthew Levering, Christ's Fulfillment ofTorah and Temple (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002),83-107; D. Juvenal Merriell, To the Image of the Trinity: A Study in the Development of Aquinas's Teaching (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medeival Studies, 1990); Luc-Thomas Somme, Fils adoptifs de Dieu par Jésus Christ (Paris: Vrins, 1997); Battista Mondin, “Il bene morale come perfezione della persona,” Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas, Atti della II1 Sessione Plenaria 2002, 127-37; A. N. Williams, “Deification in the Summa Theologiae: A Structural Interpretation of the Prima Pars,” The Thomist 61 (1997), 219-55.

16 See G. Lafont, Structures et méthode dans le Somme théologique de saint Thomas d’Aquin (Paris: 1961), and, more recently, Servais Pinckaers, « Le thème de l'image de Dieu en l'homme et l'anthropologie, » P. Bühler, ed., Humain à l'image de Dieu (Geneva: 1989), 147-63. See also Thomas S. Hibbs, “The Hierarchy of Moral Discourses in Aquinas,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 64 (1990), 199-214, and A. N. Williams, “Mystical Theology Redux: The Pattern of Aquinas' Summa Theologiae,” Modern Theology 13 (1997) 53-74.

17 In this paper, I have not dealt with the controversy that has surrounded the “nature and grace” of theological anthropology which originated in the work of Henri de Lubac and has been sharpened lately in the writings of David Schindler and others in the “communio” school. It will be evident to the careful reader that, with Aquinas and many other Thomists, I both hold for the description of a natural end for human nature and deny a double order of nature and grace extrinsically related to one another. For a perspective on this controversy touching on the issues raised in this paper, see Romanus Cessario, O.P., “On Bad Actions, Good Intentions and Loving God: Three Much Misunderstood Issues about the Happy Life that St. Thomas Aquinas Clarifies


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Contrary to a widespread misrepresentation of his thought (which while losing much its currency remains entrenched in certain quarters), for Aquinas the theology of the imago Dei constitutes not a static and thus a historical conception of human nature, but rather a fundamentally dynamic and active one.18

This is already explicit in question 93. The dynamism is that of the exitus-

reditus, a movement rooted in the divine purposes in creation and redemption, and inscribed in the created order by the very finalities of human nature. In addition, Aquinas's account of the imago Dei explicitly asserts that it is primarily in acts of knowing and loving God through faith, hope and charity that the imaging of God is realized.19 According to Father Romanus Cessario, “Aquinas contends that we should look for the image of God, not primarily in the intellectual capacities of the soul, but in the very acts of those operative capacities or habits.”20

Looking beyond question 93, to the Secunda and Tertia Pars, we can see

that the theology of the imago Dei within the overall argument of the Summa theologiae secures the intrinsic link between moral theology, anthropology and christology, and thus the connection between human/moral fulfillment and religious perfection, or beatitude. For one thing, we find that the entirety of the Secunda Pars – Aquinas's expansive treatise on the moral life – unfolds as an explication of what it means for man to made in the image of God. Here the dynamic character of the imago Dei is clear: human beings must be active in the grace-enabled actualization of the image of God within them. Coming from God, they are participants in the movement of their return to him. What draws them is their pursuit of the good of human life which is continually revealed as the Good beyond life. No one demonstrates better than Aquinas the continuity between the inbuilt desire for the good and the enjoyment of the Good beyond for Us,” Logos l (1997), 100-22. On the broader issues, see the comprehensive treatment of Schindler's position in Tracey Rowland, Culture and the Thomist Tradition (London: Routledge, 2003). For a splendid survey of the twentieth century controversy, see Lawrence Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God (Rome: Appolinare Studi, 2000). See also: Benedict Ashley, O.P., "What is the End of the Human Person? The Vision of God and Integral Human Fulfillment," in Luke Gormally, ed., Moral Truth and Moral Tradition (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1994), 68-96; Steven A. Long, “On the Possibility of a Purely Natural End for Man,” The Thomist 64 (2000), 211-37; Peter A. Pagan-Aguiar, “St. Thomas Aquinas and Human Finality: Paradox or Mysterium Fidei?” The Thomist 64 (2000), 374-99.

18 See Ian A. McFarland, “When Time is of the Essence: Aquinas and the lmago Dei,” New Blackfriars 82 (2001), 208-23.

19 Summa theologiae, 1a., 93,4. 20 Cessario, Christian Faith and the Thelogical Life, 43.


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all limited goods which is beatitude. Hence the capital importance of the meditation on the nature of beatitude which begins Aquinas’s treatise on moral theology: only the supernatural beatitude of communion actualizes the movement of the human person towards his or her fulfillment.

In the Tertia Pars, Aquinas arrives at the culmination of the theology of

the imago Dei when he shows how Christ, the perfect image of the Father, is the principle and pattern of the restoration and the perfection of the image of God in us.21 All the mysteries of Christ’s life, but especially his passion, death and resurrection, bring about the work of transformation in us by which image of God, damaged by original sin and by our own personal sins, can be restored and perfected. Configured and transfigured in the imago Christi by the power of the Holy Spirit, we return to the Father, and come to enjoy to the communion of trinitarian life which is the essence of beatitude.

In the terms of the argument of this paper, and contrary to both

nominalist moral theology and to the secular humanisms and anti-humanisms of Western modernity, Aquinas can be construed as advancing a theology of the imago Dei that shows how in the gracious plan of divine providence religious perfection is central to human and moral fulfillment. The human person is created in the image of God in order to grow into the image of Christ. This truth about man is the foundation of the authentic Christian humanism central to the teaching of Vatican Council II and John Paul II.

21 In addition to the works by Torrell, Gillon, Hibbs, Levering, Somme, and Williams

cited in footnote 14 above, see also Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P., "Le Christ dans la 'spiritualité" de saint Thomas," in Kent Emery and Joseph P. Wawrykow, eds., Christ among the Medieval Dominicans (NO1re Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1998), 197-219, and J. A. Di Noia, O.P., "Veritatis Splendor: Mora! Life as Transfigured Life," in J. A. Di Noia, O.P. and Romanus Cessario, O.P., eds., Veritatis Splendor and the Renewal of Moral Theology (Princeton: Scepter, 1999), 1-10.


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Naturaleza humana y generación “Homo est de homine sicut Deus de Deo”

Francisco Canals Vidal

Miembro emérito de la Pontificia Academia de Santo Tomás Por la naturaleza del tema, y el modo de tratarlo del propio Santo Tomás, el enfoque de este escrito es teológico y, en este contexto, se subsumen las reflexiones filosóficas conducentes al desarrollo de la argumentación.

“Respondeo dicendum quod in statu innocentiae fuisset generatio ad multiplicationem humani generis, alioquin peccatum hominis fuisset valde necessarium, ex quo tantum bonum consecutum est”1. Santo Tomás inicia, con este argumento, la respuesta a la cuestión acerca de si “en el estado de inocencia, se hubiese dado la generación para la multiplicación del linaje humano”, o si, por el contrario, ésta sobrevino como consecuencia de la caída original.

En la sutil ironía de su argumentación ad absurdum toma como principio la grandeza del bien que constituye para los hombres el que entre ellos se dé la generación. Santo Tomás tiene plena conciencia de la singularidad de la generación humana, en la que se da, con una analogía proporcional con la operación de los animales superiores, pero, salvando, en esta proporcionalidad, una diversidad fundamental por razón del carácter personal de los individuos humanos, en contraste con cualquiera de los vivientes distintos y heterogéneos respecto del viviente racional:

“Est ergo considerandum quod homo, secundum suam naturam, est constitutus quasi medium quoddam inter creaturas corruptibiles et incorruptibiles, nam anima eius est naturaliter incorruptibilis, corpus vero naturaliter corruptibile. Est autem considerandum quod alio modo intentio naturae fertur ad corruptibiles, et incorruptibiles creaturas. Id enim per se videtur esse de intentione naturae, quod est semper et perpetuum. Quod autem est solum secundum aliquod tempus, non videtur esse principaliter de intentione naturae, sed quasi ad aliud ordinatum, alioquin, eo corrupto, naturae intentio cassaretur. Quia igitur

1 S.Th.I Qu. 98, artº 1, in c.

Francisco Canals, Naturaleza humana y generación

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in rebus corruptibilibus nihil est perpetuum et semper manens nisi species, bonum speciei est de principali intentione naturae, ad cuius conservationem naturalis generatio ordinatur. “Substantiae vero incorruptibiles manent semper non solum secundum speciem, sed etiam secundum individua, et ideo etiam ipsa individua sunt de principali intentione naturae. Sic igitur homini ex parte corporis, quod corruptibile est secundum naturam suam, competit generatio. Ex parte vero animae, quae incorruptibilis est, competit ei quod multitudo individuorum sit per se intenta a natura, vel potius a naturae auctore, qui solus est humanarum animarum creator. Et ideo, ad multiplicationem humani generis, generationem in humano genere statuit, etiam in statu innocentiae” 2.

Por esto, Santo Tomás puede afirmar que, aunque la imagen de Dios en

el hombre y en el ángel se da, principalmente, por razón de la espiritualidad, no obstante, pueden reconocerse en el hombre algunas dimensiones de su modo de ser en las que es más a imagen y semejanza de Dios que el propio ángel, y entre éstas afirma, precisamente, aquella por la que el hombre nace del hombre como Dios nace de Dios -homo est de homine sicut Deus de Deo3.

Habiéndose apoyado en este principio, Santo Tomás puede abordar el diálogo con quienes habían negado que, en el estado de inocencia, pudiese darse la generación de los hombres por medio del coito, contemplándola desde su actitud característica y fundamental de la síntesis armónica entre la gracia, que nos hace partícipes de la divina naturaleza, y la misma naturaleza humana, que es su sujeto receptivo y su destinatario, que no es destruido por la gracia, sino por ella perfeccionado y elevado.

Por esto, frente a San Gregorio de Nisa y a los otros Doctores antiguos que, atendiendo a la fealdad de la concupiscencia que hallamos en el coito en este estado presente, habían negado este modo de la generación humana, e incluso afirmado que la creación, por Dios, del hombre como macho y hembra sólo miraba al modo de generación que sobrevendría después del pecado, del que Dios tenía presciencia, puede Santo Tomás replicar así:

“Sed hoc non dicitur rationabiliter. Ea enim quae sunt naturalia homini, neque subtrahuntur neque dantur homini per peccatum...” (Texto para ser meditado: la inclinación a la soberbia por la que la ciencia nos hincha

2 ibid. 3 S.Th.I. Qu. 93, artº 3, in c.


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no pertenece a la natural inclinación del hombre al conocimiento de la verdad. El ejercicio del libre albedrío, --exigido no sólo para el mérito, efecto de la gracia cooperante, sino para la justificación, efecto de la gracia operante— no se confunde con su flexibilidad al mal. Al hombre, según su naturaleza, le compete el estar dotado de libre albedrío). “...manifestum est autem quod homini, secundum animalem vitam, quam etiam ante peccatum habebat, ut supra dictum est, naturale est generare per coitum, sicut et ceteris animalibus perfectis. Et hoc declarant naturalia membra ad hunc usum deputata. Et ideo non est dicendum quod usus horum membrorum naturalium non fuisset ante peccatum, sicut et ceterorum membrorum”4.

Santo Tomás va a proseguir su reflexión orientado, como siempre, por la

convicción de la trascendentalidad del bien y el carácter privativo del mal. Atenderá, por tanto, a partir de los principios enunciados, a advertir sobre la privación del orden por la que la vida sexual humana está sujeta a deformación y puede darse en sus actos carencia de perfección moral:

“Sunt igitur in coitu duo consideranda, secundum praesentem statum. Unum quod naturae est, scilicet coniunctio maris et feminae ad generandum. In omni enim generatione requiritur virtus activa et passiva. Unde, cum in omnibus in quibus est distinctio sexuum, virtus activa sit in mare, virtus vero passiva in femina; naturae ordo exigit ut ad generandum conveniant per coitum mas et femina.

Aliud autem quod considerari potest, est quaedam deformitas immoderatae concupiscentiae. Quae in statu innocentiae non fuisset quando inferiores vires omnino rationi subdebantur. Unde Augustinus dicit, in xiv De civitate Dei, (cap. 26) absit ut suspicemur non potuisse prolem fieri sine libidinis morbo. Sed eo voluntatis nutu moverentur illa membra quo cetera, et sine ardore et illecebroso stimulo, cum tranquillitate animi et corporis”5.

Santo Tomás va a proseguir su argumentación en este punto tan capital

de un modo en que brilla el sentido humanístico y teológico de su aristotelismo. Se planteará esta objeción: “In coniunctione carnali maxime efficitur homo similis bestiis, propter vehementiam delectationis, unde etiam continentia laudatur, per quam homines ab huiusmodi delectationibus abstinent. Sed bestiis homo comparatur propter peccatum, secundum illud Psalmi xlviii, (21):

4 S.Th.I Qu. 98, artº 2, in c. 5 ibid.


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homo cum in honore esset, non intellexit, comparatus est iumentis insipientibus, et similis factus est illis. Ergo ante peccatum non fuisset maris et feminae carnalis coniunctio”6.

Merece la máxima atención la respuesta de Santo Tomás a la objeción planteada:

“Bestiae carent ratione. Unde secundum hoc homo in coitu bestialis efficitur, quod delectationem coitus et fervorem concupiscentiae ratione moderari non potest. Sed in statu innocentiae nihil huiusmodi fuisset quod ratione non moderaretur, non quia esset minor delectatio secundum sensum, ut quidam dicunt (fuisset enim tanto maior delectatio sensibilis, quanto esset purior natura, et corpus magis sensibile); sed quia vis concupiscibilis non ita inordinate se effudisset super huiusmodi delectatione, regulata per rationem, ad quam non pertinet ut sit minor delectatio in sensu, sed ut vis concupiscibilis non immoderate delectationi inhaereat; et dico immoderate, praeter mensuram rationis. Sicut sobrius in cibo moderate assumpto non minorem habet delectationem quam gulosus; sed minus eius concupiscibilis super huiusmodi delectatione requiescit. Et hoc sonant verba Augustini, quae a statu innocentiae non excludunt magnitudinem delectationis, sed ardorem libidinis et inquietudinem animi”7.

El mismo lenguaje de Santo Tomás aquí y el contexto general de su

doctrina sobre las virtudes morales en su relación con las pasiones del apetito sensible sugieren que, así como el sobrio no goza menos que el goloso, el orden del amor conyugal, fiel y obediente a los bienes del matrimonio, tendría que ser un título para reconocer que los casados cristianos se acercarán, en la medida de su mutuo amor conyugal, a aquella mayor intensidad gozosa que hubiera sido característica del estado de inocencia.

Ahora veremos a Santo Tomás completar su pensamiento al deducir, de las tesis expuestas, una valoración de importancia capital acerca de la fecundidad, el desorden de la libido y la continencia, elogiable en cuanto orientada a renunciar a este desorden pero no por la privación de la fecundidad:

“Et ideo continentia in statu innocentiae non fuisset laudabilis, quae in tempore isto laudatur non propter defectum fecunditatis, sed propter

6 ibid. objeción 3. 7 ibid. ad tertium.


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remotionem inordinatae libidinis. Tunc autem fuisset fecunditas absque libidine”8. Lejos, pues, de ceder a la tendencia que, atendiendo al desorden de las

pasiones humanas en la naturaleza herida por el pecado, llevaba a entender como consecuencia de esta herida la unión de los sexos y la generación, Santo Tomás se centra de tal modo en lo que es natural a la vida humana en cuanto tal que atribuye la mayor excelencia que damos, en el presente estado, a la continencia sobre la fecundidad a la conveniencia de evitar la desmesura y desorden que, en la naturaleza humana, se dan en este orden de cosas como privaciones resultantes de la caída original. Mientras que, situándose en la consideración esencial de lo que al hombre compete por su naturaleza, podría reconocerse una superior dignidad y excelencia en la fecundidad.

Ante lo sorprendente y, tal vez, en cierto sentido, “escandaloso” de estas perspectivas, se hace necesario situarlas en su contexto total, filosófico y teológico. Me parece que esto nos llevará a profundizar en la comprensión de la visión que tiene Santo Tomás del lugar y misión del hombre en la obra divina de la Creación y de la Salvación sobrenatural.

Que el Hijo unigénito y eterno de Dios, de la misma naturaleza que Dios Padre, venido al mundo para nuestra salvación, se diese a Sí mismo, con la máxima frecuencia, el título de “Hijo del Hombre” y se revelase como “el Prometido”, hijo de Abraham, hijo de David, no es anecdótico, sino que está en el centro de la revelación de la economía salvadora. En la Carta a los Hebreos leemos que Dios “no son los ángeles a quienes alarga Su mano, sino al linaje de Abraham” (Heb. 2, 16).

Por esto, también, en la formulación ortodoxa y católica del misterio de la Encarnación redentora, el que nuestro Salvador es “Dios con nosotros” se expresó diciendo de una mujer, Su Madre María, que verdaderamente es “Madre de Dios”.

El hombre tiene una naturaleza por la que pertenece al mundo material y sensible. Es una substancia corporal, compuesta de materia y de forma, de tal manera que el alma humana es, para Santo Tomás, como para Aristóteles, la “primera forma de un cuerpo físico orgánico capaz de vida”.

8 ibid.


p. 26

Esta vida humana es, en el cosmos, un nivel de ser por el que el hombre, viviente racional, no sólo está en el culmen del cosmos material, sino en el confín entre el mundo de lo corpóreo y del espíritu.

Por pertenecer verdaderamente al mundo material, al viviente humano le compete la operación suprema de la vida vegetativa: la generación. Mientras el mismo crecimiento se ordena al individuo viviente, en su conservación y en su desarrollo, la generación es una operación comunicativa del propio grado de ser que es el vivir; es por ella por la que florecen y fructifican las plantas y por la que se multiplican fecundamente los animales. Estas especies corruptibles permanecen y superan los límites temporales de los individuos perecederos, para mantenerse presentes a través del tiempo sobre la faz de esta tierra.

Al hombre, animal superior en un sentido ya eminente entre los animales, le conviene, como a éstos, que esta operación comunicativa de la vida, que asegura la permanencia de las especies, se ejerza con movimientos orgánicos que, a diferencia de los que ocurren en los vegetales, se realizan, con conciencia sensible, movimientos impulsados por apeticiones y que, en el ejercicio de sus actos, se manifiestan en deleites que son, como notaba Aristóteles, perfección de las mismas operaciones, comparables a ellas como la hermosura lo es a la juventud.

Pero el hombre está constituido por una forma substancial, unida ciertamente a la materia e informando un cuerpo orgánico, pero no totalmente inmersa en ella, y tiene su ser, que “es el acto de todas las cosas, aun de las mismas formas”, por efecto inmediato del acto creador divino.

Objeto de solicitud providente de Dios en las operaciones de su vida, no sólo en cuanto a su esencia específica, sino en cuanto sus operaciones son actos personales -en los que decimos que consiste la vida humana personal de cada hombre- la generación no se ordena sólo a la conservación de la especie, sino a la multiplicación de los mismos individuos personales. Por esto, “el hombre nacido del hombre” es hijo de su generador, que es padre en un sentido analógico proporcional propio con respecto de la paternidad eterna del Padre celestial respecto de Su Hijo unigénito.

Ni en los ángeles, ni en el hombre por la fecundidad intelectual ejercida en el lenguaje, es ésta capaz de producir en el ser entes subsistentes personales. Por la finitud de los espíritus creados, en los que no se identifican su vivir intelectual y su acto de ser, no pueden las criaturas engendrar, por vía intelectual, seres personales que fuesen hijos suyos.


p. 27

Y esto a pesar de que, por la misma fecundidad del lenguaje del espíritu, pueda decir el Apóstol que “engendra por el Evangelio” a sus fieles, como hijos de Dios y el lenguaje de los padres constituya una comunicación de vida que funda la sucesión de los linajes y de las familias.

Pero una propia paternidad y filiación entre los hombres, si implica la dignidad de personas en el generante y el generado, implica también su corporeidad orgánica y, por lo mismo, la existencia en ellos de una facultad generativa ejercida al modo de los vivientes animales superiores.

Por esto, puede descubrir Santo Tomás, en la paternidad humana, la manifestación de la perfección de la vida humana, en la que el hombre es más a imagen de Dios que los mismos ángeles, a los que no hubiera podido alargar Su mano al modo como lo ha hecho con los hombres al hacerse el Verbo “Hijo del Hombre, hijo de Abraham, hijo de David, hijo de María”.

No conviene dejar de atender aquí a las afirmaciones de Santo Tomás referentes a lo que es propio, en la generación humana, de la paternidad y de la maternidad. Su lectura sencilla y no cavilosa deshará todas las objeciones que se formulan, a veces, y que tienden o a acusar el lenguaje bíblico de “masculinismo” o a corregir, con significados “hermafroditas”, aquel lenguaje tradicional. Se trata de contaminaciones de herencia de dualismos gnósticos, que tendían a absolutizar en lo divino las dualidades de las estructuras acto-potenciales propias de la finitud y la corporeidad. No procede ahora entrar en discusión con tales objeciones, sino leer atenta y sencillamente a Santo Tomás:

“Attendendum est autem quod generatio carnalis animalium perficitur per virtutem activam et passivam: et ab activa quidem virtute dicitur pater, a passiva vero dicitur mater. Unde eorum quae ad generationem prolis requiruntur, quaedam conveniunt patri, quaedam conveniunt matri: dare enim naturam et speciem prolis competit patri; concipere autem et parturire competit matri, tanquam patienti et recipienti”. “Cum autem processio Verbi secundum hoc dicta sit esse quod Deus seipsum intelligit; ipsum autem divinum intelligere non est per aliquam virtutem passivam, sed quasi activam, quia intellectus divinus non est in potentia, sed actu tantum: in generatione Verbi Dei non competit ratio matris, sed solum patris. Unde quae in generatione carnali distinctim patri et matri conveniunt, omnia in generatione Verbi Patri attribuuntur in Sacris Scripturis: dicitur enim Pater et dare Filio vitam, et concipere et parturire”.


p. 28

“Verbum Dei simul concipitur, parturitur et adest. Et quia quod paritur, ex utero procedit, sicut generatio Verbi Dei, ad insinuandam perfectam distinctionem eius a generante, dicitur partus, simili ratione dicitur generatio ex utero, secundum illud Psalmi: ex utero ante luciferum genui te. Quia tamen non est talis distinctio Verbi a Dicente quae impediat Verbum esse in Dicente, ut ex dictis patet; sicut ad insinuandam distinctionem Verbi, dicitur parturiri, vel ex utero genitum esse; ita, ad ostendendum quod talis distinctio non excludit Verbum esse in dicente, dicitur Ioan. 1-18, quod est in sinu Patris.”9.

Santo Tomás puede interpretar de modo coherente la generación

humana ejercida por el hombre y la mujer hechos “una sola carne” como semejanza participada de la divina generación eterna. A los vivientes corpóreos les compete, proporcionalmente, que la fecundidad generativa exija la polaridad complementaria de los sexos. En las antípodas de todo dualismo maniqueo, Santo Tomás no puede relacionar con el pecado, ni como causa ni como efecto, el modo de generación propia del linaje humano.

Conexas armónicamente con aquellos principios tan claramente establecidos, están una serie de tesis sobre la virginidad y la continencia, sobre la pertenencia de éstas al estado de perfección y sobre la misma naturaleza de la perfección cristiana, cuyo recuerdo es de la máxima congruencia y oportunidad para la época de la Iglesia católica posterior al Concilio Vaticano II.

“La virginidad es lícita y virtuosa porque no se abstiene de los deleites propios de las operaciones generativas por erróneo juicio, sino por la búsqueda de un bien mayor en orden a la unión con Dios. Es más excelente que el matrimonio y es una doctrina herética la preferencia de éste sobre la continencia y la virginidad”. “Pero no es la más excelente de las virtudes, pues ella misma se ordena a ejercitar más libremente las virtudes teologales y la virtud de religión. La Iglesia da un más excelente culto a los mártires que a las vírgenes”10 “Legítimamente pueden los fieles comprometerse con voto a la continencia y a la virginidad en el estado de perfección. Pero la perfección misma, por sí y esencialmente, consiste en la caridad hacia Dios y hacia el prójimo a la que estamos todos obligados por precepto”.

9 IV C.G. cap. 11. 10 cfr. S.Th. II-II Qu. 152.


p. 29

“Sólo secundaria e instrumentalmente, consiste la práctica de los consejos, que, como los mismos preceptos, se ordenan a la caridad”. “Por esto, no puede afirmarse que todo aquel que vive perfectamente su vida cristiana viva en estado de perfección: nada impide que algunos sean perfectos no estando en estado de perfección, y que algunos estén en estado de perfección y no sean, sin embargo, perfectos.”11 Para Santo Tomás, inequívocamente, la perfección cristiana no es de

consejo, sino de precepto. La vocación universal a la santidad, que es mensaje central en la enseñanza del Concilio Vaticano II, está, pues, afirmada y fundamentada en la obra del Doctor Angélico.

Ayudará a comprender cómo entendía Santo Tomás, en su esencia, la perfección cristiana y la santidad, la consideración de un principio orientado a la comparación de la gracia santificante, que se nos infunde por el Bautismo, y a cuya conservación y crecimiento estamos llamados todos los cristianos, con los dones extraordinarios, que llamamos “gracias gratis datae”, es decir, aquellos carismas que se distribuyen entre los miembros de la Iglesia para bien de la comunidad. Frente a la tendencia a considerar que lo más excelente, y que parece propio de los mejores, sea más digno que lo que es común a todos, Santo Tomás sostiene explícitamente, en lo que se refiere a la vida sobrenatural, la ordenación de lo menos común y extraordinario a lo más ordinario y común. Atendamos a sus palabras. Santo Tomás se plantea la siguiente objeción:

“Id quod est proprium meliorum, dignius est quam id quod est commune omnium, sicut ratiocinari, quod est proprium hominis, dignius est quam sentire, quod est commune omnibus animalibus. Sed gratia gratum faciens est communis omnibus membris Ecclesiae, gratia autem gratis data est proprium donum digniorum membrorum Ecclesiae. Ergo gratia gratis data est dignior quam gratia gratum faciens”.

A ello responde así:

“Sentire ordinatur ad ratiocinari sicut ad finem, et ideo ratiocinari est nobilius. Hic autem est e converso, quia id quod est proprium, ordinatur ad id quod est commune sicut ad finem. Unde non est simile.”12. En el

11 cfr. S.Th. II-II Qu. 184, artº 3-4. 12 S.Th.I-II Qu. 111, artº 5, ad tertium.


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cuerpo de este artículo, Santo Tomás ha podido afirmar que la gracia que nos hace gratos a Dios es mucho más excelente que las gracias gratis datae.

Es coherente con la tesis que formuló tan claramente Santo Tomás de la

mayor excelencia de lo común, y de la ordenación de lo más propio a lo común y ordinario, el que, en el Concilio Vaticano II, se afirme que el apostolado individual, al que están llamados y obligados todos los laicos, “es el principio y fundamento de todo el apostolado de los mismos laicos e incluso el apostolado social, que no puede ser sustituido por éste”13. También que, en el Catecismo de la Iglesia Católica, se afirme del sacerdocio ministerial o jerárquico de los Obispos y los Presbíteros que “está al servicio del sacerdocio común, en orden al desarrollo de la gracia bautismal de todos los cristianos. Es uno de los medios por los cuales Cristo no deja de conducir a Su Iglesia”14.

13 Decreto Apostolicam actuositatem nº 16. 14 Cat. nº 1547.