Symbolism A Systematic Theology of The Symbol

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Symbolism: A Systematic Theology of the Symbol
MOBLEY, JOSHUA,KENDALL
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SYMBOLISM
A BRIEF SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY OF THE SYMBOL
By
Joshua Kendall Mobley
Thesis submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy
Durham University
Department of Theology and Religion
2020
1
ABSTRACT
SYMBOLISM
A BRIEF SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY OF THE SYMBOL
Joshua Kendall Mobley
This thesis is a speculative systematic theology that attempts to provide a dogmatic outline for
the recovery of a traditional theological practice and rationale. It arises from the problematic
posed by Henri de Lubac. De Lubac sought to recover a mode of theology that he called
“symbolism,” a patristic mode of thought that assumed a real unity-in-distinction between
symbolized and symbol, sustaining a thoroughly sacramental vision. A symbol is a sign that
mediates the presence of the symbolized, and “reading” symbols is a work of spiritual exegesis.
Such reading involves understanding the symbol, encountering God in and through the symbol,
and being transformed into a clearer symbol. Recovering such a theology, de Lubac thinks,
offers a vision that can nurture forms of Christian life fit for the challenges of the present. Yet
de Lubac is coy about how such a theology might be recovered. What would symbolism,
systematically developed in a contemporary idiom, entail and accomplish? This thesis proposes
an answer to this question. I take up de Lubac’s fragmentary reflections on symbolism and
develop them systematically in order to provide a dogmatic outline for symbolism’s recovery.
Beginning with God, I explore the ways the language of symbols can furnish an appropriate
analogy for the Trinity. Father-Son-Spirit can be described as symbolized-symbol-symbolism;
the Son is the symbol of the Father, and the Spirit is the personal agent of unity between symbol
and symbolized. Creatures then participate analogically in these relations, so that symbolized-
symbol-symbolism analogically corresponds to God-creation-church: creation is a symbol of
God, and the church is symbolism, the unity of creation with creator. Symbolism, thus
developed, resists modernity’s “ontotheological” temptation, refuses both a “Barthian”
flattening of nature and a neo-Thomist reification of pure nature, and recovers a sense of
theology as an ecclesial discipline of mystical reason.
2
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract 2
Table of Contents 3
Statement of Copyright 5
Acknowledgements 6
Introduction 7
1. Background 7
2. The Argument 17
3. Outline 20
Chapter One: Signs, Symbols, and the Trinity 23

1. Introduction 23
2. Augustine, Signs, and the Trinity 25
3. Karl Rahner’s Symbolized and Symbol 34
4. De Lubac’s Sacramental Pneumatology 43
5. Conclusion 54
Chapter Two: Creation 57

1. Introduction 57
2. Two Trinitarian Models 60
3. Aquinas on Creation 60
4. Duns Scotus 77
5. Conclusion 93
Chapter Three: Anthropology 97

1. Introduction 97
2. Nature and Grace 99
3. Anthropology and Fourfold Exegesis 109
4. Mary the Exegete 122
3
Chapter Four: Ecclesiology 130
1. Introduction 130
2. Symbolism and Ecclesiology 131
3. A Few Critiques 148
4. Conclusion 163
Chapter Five: Toward Mystical Reason 165

1. Introduction 165
2. From Mysteries to Mystery 168
3. From Mystery to Mysticism 179
4. From Mysticism to Mystical Reason 194
Conclusion 202
1. Symbolism: a Reprise 202
2. Evil, the Symbol, and the Cross 205
Bibliography 216
4
STATEMENT OF COPYRIGHT
The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published
without the author's prior written consent and information derived from it should be
acknowledged.
5
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks are due first to my primary supervisor, Rev’d Professor Simon Oliver, who introduced
me to ressourcement theology in an MA program over six years ago and whose encouragement
and guidance made this project possible. My second supervisor, Professor Karen Kilby, also
deserves immense thanks for her input and direction. While all deficiencies are my own, this
project owes its conception and completion to this exemplary supervisory team.
I gratefully received funding from numerous contributors. The Centre for Catholic
Studies at Durham University, under the leadership of Professor Paul D. Murray, contributed
much in financial, academic and social terms. University Baptist Church of Houston, Texas
has long been a home to me, and their financial support was immensely helpful. Thanks are
also due to the St. Matthias Trust and the Shed Trust for invaluable assistance. Without these
and numerous individual contributors, this undertaking would not have been possible.
I have had the privilege of doing theology among friends and family. Hanna Lucas and
the fellowship of Dun Cow Cottage formed the daily context of this work. Dr. Jameson Ross
has been a key conversation partner and friend, and his family a treasure to mine. I would never
have started graduate school without the encouragement and example of Dr. Benjamin Crace,
for whose friendship and family I am eternally grateful. To my parents, who first taught me to
believe and think together, to my siblings and their families, and the rest of our family, I am
indebted. Our children have been delightful and patient (our daughter once equated me
finishing my PhD with the eschaton!).
Finally, for Caitlyn, from whom I have learned more than any thesis could unfold: the
gratitude offered here is wholly inadequate to the joy received.
6
INTRODUCTION
1. BACKGROUND
This thesis is a speculative systematic theology that attempts to provide a dogmatic outline for
the recovery of a traditional theological practice and rationale. It arises from the problematic
posed by the great ressourcement theologian, Henri de Lubac.1 De Lubac sought to recover a
mode of theology that he called “symbolism,” a patristic mode of thought that assumed a real
unity-in-distinction between symbolized and symbol, sustaining a thoroughly sacramental
vision.2 It indicates an entire theological paradigm in which symbols ontologically participate
in what they symbolize, and all things ultimately symbolize God. To put it somewhat
simplistically, a symbol is a sign that mediates the presence of the symbolized,3 and “reading”
symbols is a work of spiritual exegesis, a holistic engagement in and through symbols with
their hidden source. Such reading involves understanding the symbol itself, encountering God
in and through the symbol, and being personally and corporately transformed into a clearer
symbol through the encounter. This was a vision at once mystical and rational, thoroughly
scriptural and profoundly philosophical, and through and through was theological, that is, it
sought to understand God in all things and all things in God. De Lubac traces the various
dissolutions of modernity – the severing of faith from reason, mysticism from rationality,
biblical exegesis from theology, etc. – to the demise of this theological framework.4
Recovering such a theology, de Lubac thinks, is not just an exercise in nostalgia, but offers a
vision that can nurture forms of Christian life fit for the challenges of the present.
Yet de Lubac is characteristically coy about how such a theology might be recovered,
or what such a recovery might entail. What would symbolism, systematically developed in a
contemporary idiom, entail and accomplish? This thesis proposes an answer to this question. I
1
For an excellent and accessible volume outlining the broad concerns of the ressourcement movement, see
Gabriel Flynn and Paul D. Murray, eds., Ressourcement: A Movement for Renewal in Twentieth-Century
Catholic Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); see also Jürgen Mettepenningen Nouvelle
Theologie – New Theology (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2010). For an overview de Lubac’s work and its reception,
see Jordan Hillebert, ed., The T&T Clark Companion to Henri de Lubac (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark,
2017). Other important works include Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Theology of Henri de Lubac: an Overview,
trans. Joseph Fressio and Michael Waldstein (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1991); John Milbank, The Suspended
Middle, 2nd edition (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005); Susan K. Wood, Spiritual Exegesis and the Church in the
Theology of Henri de Lubac (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998); Hans Boersma, Nouvelle Theologie and
Sacramental Ontology: A Return to Mystery (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); for a biography, see
Rudolf Voderholzer, Meet Henri de Lubac: His Life and Work (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2008).
2
Henri de Lubac, Corpus Mysticum, 2nd ed., trans. Gemma Simmonds et. al. (London: SCM Press, 2006), 221-
248.
3
Peter Struck, Birth of the Symbol: Ancient Readers and the Limits of their Texts (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2004), 262.
4
De Lubac, Corpus, 221-248.
7
take up de Lubac’s important but fragmentary reflections on symbolism and develop them
systematically in order to address a number of crucial issues in contemporary theology.
Beginning with God, I explore the ways the language of symbols can furnish an appropriate
analogy for the Trinity. In brief, Father-Son-Spirit can be described as symbolized-symbol-
symbolism; the Son is the symbol of the Father, and the Spirit is the personal agent of unity
between symbol and symbolized. Creatures then participate analogically in these relations, so
that symbolized-symbol-symbolism analogically corresponds to God-creation-church:
creation is a symbol of God, and the church is symbolism, the unity of creation with creator.
To anticipate what will be gained from such a theology, I will argue that symbolism, thus
developed, resists modernity’s “ontotheological” temptation, refuses both a “Barthian”
flattening of nature and a neo-Thomist reification of pure nature, and recovers a sense of
theology as an ecclesial discipline of mystical reason. But those are end results of a rather long
road, which I have now to narrate.
Beginning in the late 1930s, Henri de Lubac helped to initiate the movement known as
ressourcement, a return to the sources of Christian theology in scripture, tradition and the
liturgy.5 De Lubac advocated the retrieval of patristic texts as a way of regaining the dynamic
spirit of Christian theology. This implied a critique of the then dominant neo-Scholastic
theological manuals, an implication verified when, in Surnaturel, de Lubac explicitly called
into question the spiritual and theological adequacy of the scholastic theory of pure nature.
Such a theory, de Lubac argued, leaves nature untouched by grace save in the most extrinsic
fashion, creating the conditions for modern secularism and atheism. His argument hinged on a
re-reading of Thomas in light of patristic tradition, arguing that the weight of tradition lay on
the paradoxical position that humans have a natural desire for the supernatural that can
nonetheless only be fulfilled by grace. While the argument was by no means new, de Lubac’s
articulation of it was explosive, earning him an apparent censure from the papacy.6 And yet,
by the Second Vatican Council, the theological tide shifted and de Lubac’s stock rose
precipitously: he was invited to assist as a theological expert at the Council and was
subsequently made a cardinal.
5
See Jordan Hillebert, “Introducing Henri de Lubac” in Companion, 3-28.
6
Pope Pius XII, Humani generis, available at http://www.vatican.va/content/pius-
xii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_12081950_humani-generis.html. De Lubac’s defenders and de
Lubac himself claim that he was not the target of this encyclical. That his own theology, rightly understood,
does not conflict with humani generis is clear, but it seems equally clear that he was indeed its intended target.
8
While his work on nature and grace remains controversial, his advocacy of patristic
retrieval is nearly universally lauded.7 But what did de Lubac see in tradition that he thought
worth reclaiming? De Lubac refers to the style of patristic theology he sought to retrieve as
“symbolism,” in contrast to a later style he calls “dialectics.” Corpus Mysticum is de Lubac’s
book-length treatment of the theme, showing how the shift from symbolism to dialectics was
the crucial driver of the evolution of eucharistic theology. The details of sacramental semantics
will be addressed in chapter four, so I will focus here on the changing theological paradigms
that underwrote those shifts. “Symbolism” is de Lubac’s word for a broadly Augustinian
approach to theology which “consisted in the consideration of ‘signs’ and ‘things’.”8 While
never precisely defined, symbolism is, for de Lubac, a sacramental outlook in which symbols
truly make present that which they symbolize. The universe is a theophanic network of symbols
that disclose the mystery of their creator, a reality seen most especially in the church and the
Eucharist.9 Those symbols are in turn open to exploration by the faculty of reason. The
discovery of the symbolized in the symbol requires a union of mysticism and rationality, for
the symbolized “is itself radiant with a secret intelligibility.”10
A set of vocabulary swirls around de Lubac’s concept of symbolism. Hans Boersma
has variously called this de Lubac’s ‘participatory ontology’, ‘sacramental ontology’ or simply,
a return to ‘mystery’.11 De Lubac himself strings together interrelated phrases to describe the
symbolic outlook:
If we could for a moment translate Augustine’s thought into our own language, we
would say that for him any mystery, that is to say any revealed truth, is a sacrament,
that is to say a sign, and that on the other hand any sacrament, that is to say any sacred
rite, is itself a mystery, that is to say broadly a truth to be understood.12
Symbolism indicates a sacramental created order that contains mysteries to be understood by
faith. If de Lubac’s description lacks systematic clarity, it is intended to convey the spirit in
which symbolic theology was conducted. The symbolic structure of reality was a ubiquitous
7
I say “nearly” because neo-Thomists still bristle at the idea that patristic tradition can be understood by
anything other than commentarial Thomism. See Steven A. Long, Natura Pura (New York: Fordham
8
De Lubac, Corpus, 274. Citing Augustine, On Christian Teaching 1.4, trans. R.P.H. Green (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1997), 8. The translator has chosen an uncommon numbering system for this work. For
consistency I follow his system and include a page number.
9
De Lubac, “Internal Causes of the Weakening and Disappearance of the Sense of the Sacred” in Theology in
History (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1996), 231.
10
De Lubac, Corpus, 231.
11
Hans Boersma, Nouvelle, 290.
12
9
assumption, a paradigm that influenced the entire patristic theological outlook in ways never
fully articulated. Augustine is only one exemplar of this approach; all the Fathers were
“geniuses of ontological symbolism.”13
Symbolism thus presumes an ontology of the real presence of the symbolized in the
symbol. A symbol is not merely an “imitation” or “resemblance” of the symbolized. Because
they carry within them the “ontological trace” of their source, as Peter Struck summarizes,
“representations are not phantoms but manifestations.”14 Symbols manifest in their very being
what they symbolize. Contemplation of symbols, therefore, has “the anagogic power to lift us
up” to the symbolized itself.15 To ascend through a symbol to what it symbolizes is indeed a
mode of rationality, for it is to grasp the inherent logic of a thing, but it is a rationality that is
inherently mystical, for the logic of a symbol is a meaningful presence. To understand a symbol
is to encounter what it symbolizes. Yet the symbol is not the symbolized. It remains other, so
that what is symbolized remains hidden, glimpsed only in its absence.16 This rather bold
Neoplatonism was embraced, but significantly qualified in ancient Christianity. Augustine,
especially in De trinitate, will emphasize the human inability to meet God in this way.17
Humans are made in the image of God, but this image is marred by sin, and our ability to read
the image is also broken. We thus need a new image and new vision, a new Adam and a new
Spirit. But this does not alter the fundamental structure: it rather means that all ascent through
symbols must now be conducted in and through Christ, which means in communion with his
body the Church and in reflection on scripture. And this means that the right reading of
symbols, and the encounter it engenders, can only be received as a gift of grace, the generous
bestowal of vision from Christ in the Spirit.
According to de Lubac, symbolic theology dominated Christian thought until
approximately the high middle ages and allowed theologians to hold together as symbol and
symbolized the threefold body of Christ. The historical body of Christ, born of the Virgin and
ascended into Heaven, is symbolized in the eucharistic church, truly made present by it.18 This
presence-in-symbol does not, however, collapse the distinction between the two terms.
Symbolism sees unity-in-distinction, structured after intra-Trinitarian relations. To call the
13
14
Struck, Symbol, 262. This quote is specifically in relation to Dionysius, but he is representative of a broader
practice, even as his reception of Neoplatonism is less critical than Augustine’s.
15
Struck, Symbol, 262.
16
While this language is very Heideggerian, as Peter Struck shows, it is actually ancient and Neoplatonic.
17
See John Cavadini, Visioning Augustine (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2019), 1-22.
18
De Lubac does not specifically formulate ‘the church makes the eucharist’ in Corpus Mysticum. That formula
comes much later in Henri de Lubac, The Splendor of the church, trans. Michael Mason (San Francisco:
Ignatius, 1986), 106.
10
eucharistic church the body of Christ is not merely an “elegant comparison”; its symbolic
substructure makes it an expression of the highest realism.19
This symbolic architecture was slowly reconfigured into a dialectical form of theology,
which came to view symbolic vocabulary with suspicion.20 Under a dialectical impulse the
terms “mystical” and “spiritual” came to be viewed in contrast to “real” and “true”: “all the
symbolic inclusions were transformed into dialectical antitheses.”21 The old formulas needed
to be rethought under new semantic orientations. De Lubac argues that this dialectical shift
began in earnest with Berengar of Tours (d. 1088) but can also be seen in theologians of
unimpeachable orthodoxy. St. Anselm is emblematic of this shift, and Aquinas is implicated
as well.22 For de Lubac, Anselm’s mode of faith seeking understanding remained broadly
Augustinian, but his concept of understanding consisted less in participation than in
demonstration. While by no means a “rationalist,” Anselm helped inaugurate a Christian
rationalism which “could no longer envisage the understanding of mysteries outside [its]
demonstration.”23 This tendency rapidly developed in the Barengarian controversy. De Lubac
argues that eucharistic terminology became a flashpoint in the evolution of theological method,
with the rise of dialectical rationalism displacing an older symbolism that sought understanding
as both reason and mystical participation. Underwriting the shifts in eucharistic terminology,
and driven by the requirements of that debate, a new era of dialectical Christian theology was
born, an era with an ominous trajectory: dialectics became Christian rationalism, which became
secular rationalism, eventually occluding Christianity altogether.
De Lubac does not have an entirely negative view of dialectical theology. Its
development “was normal and therefore good.”24 Eucharistic realism had to be defended; de
Lubac has no desire to forget the dialectical age. The theologian can no less abandon dialectical
theology than abandon Anselm and Aquinas. So with discernable frustration de Lubac asks,
“could eucharistic realism not have been safeguarded without the virtually total abandonment
19
20
While this was a new a development in Christianity, it had ancient roots. Aristotle had already questioned the
allegorism that was to become symbolism. Aristotle redefines an enigma in a text, so central to allegorical
reading, as a flaw, favoring instead discursive clarity. Struck’s summary could just as well apply to early
modern scholasticism as to ancient poetry: “where others see murky riddles hinting at profound truths Aristotle
sees murky nonsense.” Struck, Symbol, 24.
21
22
De Lubac, Corpus, 236-238, 242.
23
De Lubac, Corpus, 238. Italics added. Fideism is the also linked to this shift: ‘the mystery to be understood
gave way before the miracle to be believed’, De Lubac, Corpus, 240.
24
De Lubac, Corpus, p. xxiv. Anselm is also seen as the great defenders of the Augustinian outlook in Henri de
Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, vol. I (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 62, 67.
11
of symbolism?”25 De Lubac’s call to recover symbolism is thus not a call to nostalgic
forgetfulness, but to a new synthesis. De Lubac prescribes what would become his own
program of ressourcement as a means of regaining such symbolic theology: the theologian
should be steeped in patristic theology.26 This retrieval of patristic symbolism informs three
major pillars of his oeuvre: scripture, creation and ecclesiology.27
If the demise of symbolism is bound up with eucharistic controversy, symbolism itself
is found in its most concentrated form in spiritual exegesis. The literal sense of scripture is the
symbol of the spiritual, and reading is a matter of discovering Christ, and thereby being
ecclesially and morally formed toward an eschatological fulfillment.28 Because symbols truly
mediate the symbolized, Christ can truly be found in the literal sense, and the reader truly raised
up to life in God. As with eucharistic ecclesiology, fourfold exegesis would decline with the
rise of dialectics. 29 While the fourfold sense was formally maintained, dialectical theology
eroded the links between exegesis, theology and life: “this doctrine, once its strength had been
sapped, survived too long outside the pale of living exegesis, not to mention living theology
and spirituality.”30 While fourfold exegesis persisted beyond the patristic era, it did so as the
flower of a patristic paradigm blooming beyond the paradigm itself. The flower too would
eventually decay.
The controversial Surnaturel explores what it means for humanity to be a symbol of
God. For de Lubac, humanity has a natural desire for the supernatural, a desire borne of its
ontological link to God as both source and end. Though marred by the fall, the human soul is
“par ses propriétés naturelles, par son essence même, au moin inchoativement l’image de
Dieu.” Consequently, the soul “n’est vraiment ‘formée’ que lorsqu’elle est devenue
‘déiforme’.”31 The formation of the soul consists of being conformed to the image of God,
symbolizing the divine life more and more truly (though never, of course, fully). There is no
such thing as pure nature, for human nature is a symbol, always already desirous of its divine
source and end. Yet this divine end can only be received as a gratuitous gift. The human
symbol, then, inhabits the now (in)famous “suspended middle.”32 The fulfillment of its nature
25
26
27
Henri De Lubac, Catholicism: Christ and Common Destiny of Man, trans. Lancelot Sheppard and Sr
Elizabeth Englund, OCD (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1988), 99, ch. 6.
28
De Lubac, Catholicism, ch. 6; Medieval Exegesis, 3 vols. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998-2009), passim; De
Lubac, Surnaturel: Etudes Historique (Aubier: Editions Montaigne, 1946), 25.
29
De Lubac, Medieval I, 53-74.
30
De Lubac, Medieval I, 74.
31
De Lubac, Surnatural, 31.
32
Balthasar, De Lubac, 15. Milbank, Suspended, passim.
12
lies in participating in the divine life, but the divine life can only be received, never demanded.
Yet ontological symbolism does not thereby imply the destruction of the integrity of the natural
by the supernatural. The natural desire for the supernatural is the paradox of human nature, and
by extension, the entire natural world, as a symbol of the divine.33 The demise of symbolism
led to the imposition of a dialectical either/or: either human nature was autonomous in its own
realm, or nature was overrun by grace. On de Lubac’s account, human nature thus came to be
isolated from its supernatural destiny in all but the most extrinsic fashion, opening the door to
secularism and atheism.
Taken together, Corpus Mysticum and Catholicism evidence a thoroughly symbolic
ecclesiology. The church is the symbol of Christ, his real presence on earth by the unifying
work of the eucharist. De Lubac summarizes his symbolic approach in sacramental terms in
his celebrated phrase: “if Christ is the sacrament of God, the church is for us the sacrament of
Christ; she represents him, in the full and ancient meaning of the term; she really makes him
present.”34 Here too the loss of symbolism heralds an ominous future: eucharistic theology
collapsed into individualistic piety, and the church became more and more identified with its
bureaucratic and juridical structures. The symbolic heart of ecclesiology was slowly lost in the
dialectical era.35
These three doctrines then are all immediately concerned with de Lubac’s appeal to
symbolism. In each of these doctrines the decay of symbolism is disastrous: scriptural
interpretation is reduced to an historical discipline, pure nature opens the way to secularism,
and the church devolves into individualistic piety internally and juridical authority externally.
Whether in scripture, human nature or ecclesiology, the story is the same: patristic assumption
gets dissected by dialectics, dismembered by rationalism, and buried by modernity. The logic
of de Lubac’s case is that any attempt to reclaim any one of these patristic doctrines in isolation
will treat a symptom of the demise of symbolism, without treating the underlying cause.
Neither the spiritual interpretation of scripture, nor the transcendent calling of the human
person, nor the mutual constitution of church and eucharist can be adequately secured apart
from a reclaiming of theological symbolism. It must be reclaimed as a whole, as a unified
theological vision, if these various sub-topics are also to be secured. De Lubac himself never
attempts such a holistic account. To fulfill de Lubac’s ressourcement vision, therefore, what is
33
See chapters 3 and 5 for expanded discussions.
34
De Lubac, Catholicism, 76.
35
See chapter 4 for an extended discussion.
13
needed is a systematic framework for symbolism, however lightly sketched, in which
symbolism might be recovered in contemporary terms.
One prerequisite for such a framework would be a reconstruction of the requisite
theologies of the Fathers. Symbolism was less of a specific subject matter in theology than a
general habit of thought characteristic of the patristic era, and any recovery of it will require a
broad and clear account of patristic theology itself. This is an important work, and one that has
proceeded apace for some time.36 This work has been key, not least because de Lubac’s own
account often lacked nuance and detail, at his own admission.37 The shift from symbolism to
dialectics was not so uniform as his early account in Corpus Mysticum might seem to suggest,
as his own late work on Pico della Mirandola and Nicholas of Cusa shows.38 But reconstruction
is not the whole of the ressourcement project for the simple reason that we cannot nostalgically
leap across a millennium-and-a-half of Christian thought and practice as though it never
happened. Assuming that patristic theology ought to enrich our own, we will need to know
why our minds do not naturally turn in patterns of symbolism; why do patristic habits of
thought appear not only uncomfortable to us, but even positively wrong-headed? A judicious
narration is therefore also required, an understanding of the road from there to here. This
project, too, has proceeded apace. Many genealogies of modernity have contributed to
understanding how patristic assumptions became so highly suspicious in the modern era.39 This
thesis seeks to draw on both of these ressourcement projects. I will draw heavily on the
reconstructive efforts directed toward Augustine, Aquinas, and others. Key portions of the
thesis will also follow the trajectories of certain genealogies of modernity. For instance, I will
explore the much-debated Thomas-Scotus difference in a chapter on creation. To the reader of
contemporary theology, neither my reconstructions nor my genealogy will be new or
surprising.
36
I have relied especially on Lewis Ayres, Augustine and the Trinity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2010); Rowan Williams, On Augustine (London: Bloomsbury, 2016); John C. Cavadini, Visioning Augustine
(Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley Blackwell, 2019); Gilles Emery, Trinity in Aquinas (Naples, Florida: Sapientia
Press, 2003); Rik van Nieuwenhove and Joseph Wawrykow, eds., The Theology of Thomas Aquinas (Notre
Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005).
37
See Bernhard Blankenhorn’s critique in a review of Boersma’s Heavenly Participation: the Weaving of a
Sacramental Tapestry in The Thomist 78, no. 3 (July 2014), 477. De Lubac called it a naïve book in Mémoire
sur l’occasion de mes éctrits (Namur, Belgium: Culture et Vérité, 1989), 28; cited in Laurence Paul Hemming,
“Henri de Lubac: Reading Corpus Mysticum”, New Blackfriars 90, no. 1029 (Sept. 2009), 521.
38
Henri de Lubac, Pic de la Mirandole (Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1974).
39
For example, Conor Cunningham, Genealogy of Nihilism: Philosophies of Nothing and the Difference of
Theology (London: Routledge, 2002); portions of John Milbank, John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory:
Beyond Secular Theory, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006); Amos Funkenstein, Theology and the Scientific
Imagination, 2nd ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986); Alain de Libera, La philosophie médiévale,
3rd ed. (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1998).
14
What remains to be done after reconstruction and genealogy is a fresh synthesis into a
new and living whole. While there are numerous excellent studies of de Lubac’s work, three
systematicians in particular have made de Lubac’s theology central to their own synthetic
projects. Hans Boersma leans heavily on the work of de Lubac to advocate a return to a
“sacramental ontology.”40 Boersma rightly points out that at the core of de Lubac’s project
(and ressourcement more generally) is an ontology that is sacramental and participatory.
Building on the analogy of being, Boersma argues that because creation exists by participation
in God, creation is inherently sacramental, i.e., that it mediates the presence of its creator. I am
generally in agreement with Boersma, and “sacramental ontology” is certainly a synonym for
symbolism. However, Boersma’s account needs a more stable dogmatic grounding: his
sacramental ontology remains almost entirely Christological, and I am not convinced that this
is sufficient. Any account of analogical participation assumes a doctrine of creation, and that
doctrine must be, as it is for Augustine and Aquinas, fully trinitarian if it is to be fully
Christian.41 Boersma’s emphasis on Christ as the source and end of creation is not misplaced,
but it is incomplete: the Father creates in Christ by the Spirit. The divine life symbolized in
creation is the life of the Father, Son and Spirit, and this reality must structure any dogmatic
account of analogical participation. Beyond Boersma, this thesis is a performance of the claim
that only a robust trinitarian theology can sustain a sacramental ontology. The validity of that
claim will need to be judged by the success of this project as a whole.
John Milbank, the theologian perhaps most closely associated with de Lubac, builds off
de Lubac’s account of the natural desire for the supernatural to pursue his own highly original
ends. Milbank’s engagement with de Lubac stems from a conviction that de Lubac more than
any other twentieth-century theologian identified in the paradox of nature and grace the key to
“a renewal of speculative theology in a new mode that would restore its closeness to the
exegetical, mystical, and liturgical reading of revealed signs.”42 Such a reading more closely
unites philosophy and theology and creates space within dogmatic theology for history, politics
and event. Where Milbank radicalizes de Lubac’s thesis and expands it into the realm of
political theology and social theory, I attempt to integrate it (beyond de Lubac’s own account)
into trinitarian theology. For instance, throughout the thesis I will point to the importance of
40
Hans Boersma, Nouvelle, introduction and ch. 3; Heavenly Participation: Weaving a Sacramental Tapestry
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011). Due to coronavirus restrictions, I was only able to obtain this on Kindle. I
have provided a chapter number and Kindle location to aid referencing.
41
Boersma does in fact state this in relation to Gregory of Nyssa’s trinitarian theology, but this brief appeal
serves mostly as an example of Nyssa’s critical appropriation of Platonism, rather than a structuring principle
for theology. Boersma, Sacramental, ch. 2, Loc. 595.
42
Milbank, Suspended, 2.
15
pneumatology for the engagement of theology with history, for as Augustine and Aquinas both
insist, creation is spoken in the Word, but it is set in motion by the life of the Spirit.43 My own
project therefore moves from de Lubac’s account of symbolism in a different direction than
Milbank’s: where Milbank moves “out” to politics, my project moves “in” toward a trinitarian
core. Of course, neither Christology (Boersma) nor politics (Milbank) can be separated from
Trinitarian theology, so this thesis is not in competition with theirs. Indeed, Boersma’s
Christology and Milbank’s political theology are both moments “within” Trinitarian theology,
and this makes it all the more important to specify the trinitarian structure of symbolism more
clearly.
Perhaps the most holistic, and certainly the most sustained, attempt to renew symbolism
for today is that of Hans Urs von Balthasar, whose sweeping work seeks, among many other
things, to reintegrate all of theology into a trinitarian paradigm.44 In many ways his appeal for
a return to aesthetics and drama in light of trinitarian theology goes a long way toward
providing an account of symbolism. But in one crucial area, indeed, the crucial area, it is
deficient. Symbolism, as I will argue, is indeed held together by a trinitarian logic, but
Balthasar’s Trinity turns on a logic of distance, or at least threatens to do so.45 That logic of
distance risks what John Milbank, with characteristic verve, has called “a gnostic
hypostasization of the violence of the cross.”46 While it is not clear that Balthasar has actually
instantiated such a gnosticism, it is undoubtedly risked by his notion of infinite distance
between the trinitarian persons and his theology of Holy Saturday. A logic of symbols,
however, avoids such a temptation altogether, while nonetheless embracing the many gains
that Balthasar’s work affords. It does so by insisting with Balthasar, but more consistently than
Balthasar, that the Spirit is the ground of difference and freedom within the Trinity, rendering
talk of distance or an abyss wholly superfluous. But that argument requires a clear sense of
what a logic of symbols entails, and so I defer that discussion to the conclusion where I will
43
Augustine, The Literal Meaning of Genesis, I.36, translated by John Hammond Taylor, Ancient Christian
Writers 41 (New York: Newman Press, 1982), 41; Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae Ia.45.6.ad. 2, All
quotations from Laurence Shapcote, O.P., trans., Latin/English Edition of the Works of St. Thomas Aquinas
(Lander, Wyoming: The Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred Doctrine, 2012).
44
Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord, 7 vols. (San Fancisco: Ignatius Press, 1982-1989); Theo-
Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory, 5 vols. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988-1998); Theo-Logic, 4 vols.
(San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000-2005); Mysterium Paschale (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000), and
many more.
45
See Karen Kilby, “Hans Urs von Balthasar on the Trinity” in Peter C. Phan, ed., The Cambridge Companion
to the Trinity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 208-222; Balthasar: A (Very) Critical
Introduction (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), ch. 5.
46
16
argue both for and against Balthasar. It remains, then, for symbolism to be adequately
systematically accounted for, a goal this thesis seeks to fulfill.
This thesis is therefore a speculative systematic theology that attempts to articulate a
traditional theological practice and rationale in a contemporary mode: it is an attempt to provide
a dogmatic outline for what symbolism might mean today. It will, of course, only be an outline,
but as I will argue, there is real value in glimpsing the whole as a whole, however lightly
sketched. Indeed, where prior engagements have been somewhat fragmentary, one contribution
of this thesis will be its attention to the whole context in which a theology of the symbol must
be understood.
2. THE ARGUMENT
The road to such a dogmatic outline runs through a particular way of conceiving and employing
trinitarian theology. In the tradition of Augustine’s De trinitate, I develop two triads by which
to understand the Trinity and all things in relation to the Trinity. I first offer what I argue is an
appropriate analogy for trinitarian relations: to Father-Son-Spirit corresponds symbolized-
symbol-symbolism. The Father is symbolized in the Son, who is the symbol of the Father, the
Father’s replete self-expression. The Spirit is the fully personal agent of unity and love of the
Father and Son. Thus, if the Father is the symbolized, the Son the symbol, then the Spirit is
symbolism, the dynamic and personal union between symbolized and symbol. This is not so
much to understand the Trinity by overlaying it with a predetermined logic of symbols. Rather,
it is to begin with trinitarian faith and attempt to shape an analogy around that faith, in this
case, to understand symbols in a trinitarian pattern.47
The great value of construing symbols in this trinitarian way is that it allows us to see
more clearly how created symbols mediate God’s presence. Created symbols, I will argue,
analogically participate in these triune relations. As the Father is eternally symbolized in the
Son as the hidden source of divinity, so by analogy God is symbolized in creation, ever hidden
within and beyond it. As the Son is the symbol of the Father, so, analogically, creation is a
symbol of God. This is true because of the role of the Logos in creation. Creation is, as Nicholas
of Cusa says, the unfolding of the Logos through time, and is thus wholly significant, for it
symbolizes God in its very being.48 And this unfolding is destined to be re-enfolded in God, to
return to its hidden source in grace. As the Spirit is the fully personal union of Father and Son,
47
Chapter five will detail the necessary circularity of this kind of protocol.
48
Nicholas of Cusa, De Dato Patris Luminum 4.110, in Jasper Hopkins, Complete Philosophical and
Theological Treatises of Nicholas of Cusa, Vol. 1 (Mineapolis: Arthur J. Banning Press, 2001), 381.
17
so the church, understood as the totus Christus, is the unity, the movement of love and desire
between God and creation. The church, then, is symbolism, a finite participation in the work
of the Spirit, the world reconciled.
Thus we have three triads:
1) Father Son Spirit
2) Symbolized Symbol Symbolism
3) God Creation Church
The first triad grounds the others. It is an understanding of the Trinity in an Augustinian-
Thomist mode that provides the basic structure of what follows. The second triad describes the
first, seeking to articulate trinitarian relations in the language of symbols. The final triad is the
creaturely correlate to the triune mystery. Its relations are analogical reflections of the
primordial relations of the Trinity. Thus, God is temporally symbolized in creation, as the
Father is eternally symbolized in the Son. Creation is the temporal symbol of God as the Son
is the eternal symbol of the Father. And the church is the union of symbol with symbolized,
creation and God, just as the Spirit is the fully personal agent of unity between Father and Son.
While much detail, nuance, and qualification will be added, these three triads are the basic
structure of the thesis.
All of this has significant and salutary consequences for contemporary theology.
Thinking in this way allows us to see how it is that God is always hidden in creation, never an
object over and against which I might stand as a subject. This resituates a Heideggerian
complaint about the ontotheological drift of western philosophy and theology into firmly
trinitarian territory: God is hidden as the Father is hidden, the mysterious fount and source who
may only be encountered through the symbol. God can never be objectified within creation,
only symbolized. It indicates, further, that creation cannot be conceived as a mere “vacuole”
for grace, a passive recipient of divine revelation, as in certain strands of Barthianism (though
not all).49 Barth’s famous triad, revealer-revelation-revealedness risks bypassing the doctrine
of creation in favor of a wholly-determinative “God-from-outside.”50 While Barth has tools for
overcoming this christologically, Barthianism has not always been successful in deploying
those tools. Because creation is the unfolding of the eternal Word in the Spirit it is truly a
symbol of God, and therefore a “thick” reality. If creation cannot be evacuated of integral
reality, neither can it be reified by a concept of pure nature. As a symbol, creation is always in
49
Steven A. Long coined this term as a critique of de Lubac and Balthasar’s view of nature. This is possibly a
good descriptor of Barth’s view, but not de Lubac’s. Long, Natura, ch. 2.
50
Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics I/1 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1956), 363.
18
a movement of desire toward God. As a symbol it is always more than natural, for it is always
in motion back toward its hidden source, always also symbolism. It is this dynamic that de
Lubac’s natural desire for the supernatural seeks to describe. And this finally sustains theology
as intrinsically mystical. If a hidden God speaks in time through symbols, then theology is the
discipline of learning the language of these symbols that God might be rightly known and
loved. Theology, at its core, is therefore the extension of the spiritual interpretation of scripture
into all creation: the search for Christ hidden within and beyond the literal sense of everything.
This movement from the literal to the spiritual sense of creation is one way of uniting the
symbol with symbolized, for to “read” creation in this way is to return it to God in praise and
right living. Theology is therefore a form of symbolism, the exercise of rationality in the Spirit;
it is mystical reason.51 Thus, my configuration of triads avoids an ontotheological reduction of
God, a “Barthian” flattening of nature and a neo-Thomist reification of pure nature, and finally
recovers theology’s intrinsic mysticism.
I should make clear that triads two and three are entirely my own. They will not be
found in this particular arrangement in any of my sources. It is thus this particular conceptuality
and its attendant benefits that constitutes the unique contribution of this thesis. It is not,
however, entirely foreign to my sources. It is, as will be shown, deeply rooted in Augustinian
and Thomist theologies of the inner word, of creation ex nihilo, of the church as the totus
Christus, of the desire, love and unity of the Spirit. I have drawn the logic of these themes
together in a way that highlights their inner unity, their mutual internality to each other. In
short, trinitarian discourse has the potential to reunite what has been pulled apart. It is this very
traditional notion – God and all things in relation to God – that I have sought to give new
articulation. This is not, therefore, a precise repetition of patristic symbolism: it is newly
articulated in a dogmatic outline of what symbolism might mean for us today.
The grand conceptualities of this work risk a certain shallowness with both its sources
and its themes as I attempt to articulate them together in such a limited space. But central to
my argument is not merely the relations between the three terms in the triads, but their
fundamental unity. One cannot understand a symbol without some notion of what it
symbolizes, and a correlative understanding of its intrinsic motion of symbolism. An attempt
must be made, therefore, however minimally sketched, to understand all three together. The
triad symbolized-symbol-symbolism names a structure of relations, and these relations only
51
My focus on the discipline of theology is not intended to downplay the myriad of other ways the symbolism
of creation is instantiated. Theology is an act of love in service of the whole Body of Christ, who will of course
exhibit other forms of this love.
19
function as a whole. They must, therefore, like the Trinity, be grasped together or not at all.
What I offer, then, is a brief systematics of the symbol which could no doubt fill volumes, but
which offers an overarching dogmatic framework in which to place much recent research in
the ressourcement tradition of Christian theology.
3. OUTLINE
Chapter one establishes the trinitarian foundation of such a theology. I first explore Augustine’s
trinitarian account of signs and knowledge, outlining the role of the inner word rightly guided
by love in understanding trinitarian relations. I then follow Karl Rahner in expanding this logic
throughout the theological spectrum. Rahner follows Thomas and Augustine’s doctrines of the
inner word to argue that all of being is symbolic, meaning that it comes into being by expression
in a symbol: Father in Son, church in sacrament, soul in body, etc. The Son, as the Inner Word
of the Father, is the Father’s symbol, the fullness of the Father expressed in another. In dialogue
with de Lubac, I then argue that the Spirit is symbolism, the dynamic movement of unity
between Father and Son. The Spirit, moreover, secures the difference between the Father and
Son, as the Father desires and loves the Son as the other, and the Son the Father. The Spirit is
therefore the fully personal agent of unity-in-distinction within the godhead. Moreover, while
I maintain the controversial filioque of the western tradition, I emphasize the paradox of Son
and Spirit. The Spirit proceeds from the Father per filioque but is also the gift the Father gives
the Son in generation, and so is paradoxically “pre-present” in the Son’s begetting. This
paradox will ground every other paradox touched on in this thesis.52 Symbolized-Symbol-
Symbolism thus describes the aboriginal triad of Father-Son-Spirit. Everything that exists is
given its own share in this triune pattern.
Chapter two explores how the Father, Son and Spirit create in a single unified act that
is nonetheless accomplished according to the trinitarian taxis and paradox. I explore this in
relation to Thomas Aquinas’s account of creation. The Father speaks creation in the speaking
of the Word, and that divine speech is set in motion through time by the movement of the Spirit.
Thus, creation is a symbol of the Trinity, a temporal unfolding of the Word in motion back
toward the Father in the Spirit. This account is not the only one available, however: Duns
Scotus provides an alternative account of creation on the basis of a different account of the
Trinity, one that emphasizes a logic of productive power over a logic of symbols. Scotus
52
On de Lubac and paradox, see Rowan Williams, “A Paradoxical Humanism” in Hillebert, Companion, xiv-
xix.
20
modifies the Franciscan tradition to prioritize the productive powers of the divine essence over
the relations of the persons, and this turns his doctrine of creation into an account not
principally of trinitarian relations in act, but of divine causal power. Once the distinction
between God’s absolute and ordained power was centralized by Scotus’s successors, creation
came to be seen as so exhaustively threatened by God’s absolute power that it could no longer
be trusted to symbolize God. The desacralization of creation ensues. My argument is that this
change is rooted in trinitarian theology, and a recovery of a trinitarian theology of symbols can
help recover the sacral value of creation as symbol of the triune God.
Chapter three extends this reflection on creation by turning to anthropology. Creation
is destined to return to God in humanity, specifically in the humanity of Christ. Humanity thus
forms the hinge between creation and redemption. As the hinge, it is marked by a natural desire
for the supernatural: naturally desirous of God as source and end but requiring grace for the
fulfillment of that desire. Rather than rehash that debate at length, I will instead draw attention
to the isomorphism between scripture and anthropology. Under a trinitarian logic of symbols,
the shape of scripture is the shape of the human, with Christ standing at the middle of both.
Both scripture and humanity are symbols, stories authored by God to be read by a spiritual
creature capable of reading symbols. In particular, the structure of nature and grace mirrors the
structure of the Old and New Testaments.53 Just as Christ is only intelligible as Israel’s
messiah, as the fulfillment of Israel’s founding promises, so grace assumes and perfects but
does not destroy nature. But just as there is no aspect of Israel’s scripture in which the eternal
Logos is not always-already present and working, so there is no pure nature not always-already
marked by grace. Nonetheless, in spite of the “pre-presence” of Christ in the Old Testament
and the undeniable continuity of Christ’s life and work with Old Testament messianic
promises, Christ comes in a manner completely beyond Israel’s expectations, a fulfillment at
once longed for and yet unforeseeable. So too is nature “suspended,” caught up in a destiny at
once constitutive of it and yet beyond it. This paradox is summed up in Mary’s fiat and
Magnificat, where constitutive desires are fulfilled by a surpassing grace. To be a human
symbol is to be like Israel, desirous by nature for a destiny that can only be gratuitously given.
If humanity is suspended between created nature and divine grace, it is in Christ’s body
that the consummation of nature in the supernatural is attained. Chapter four thus focusses on
ecclesiology and proceeds in two stages. I first argue that the totus Christus can be conceived
53
I say mirrors because the relationship is by no means identical. The Old Testament is the story of God’s grace
at work! But its structural relation to Christ is shaped by the same logic of symbols as nature and grace.
21
along the same triad: Christ is symbolized in the church by the symbolism of the eucharist.
This is a rescription of de Lubac’s work in Corpus Mysticum. The church is the body of Christ,
his living symbol in the world, alive by the dynamic movement of desire and love instantiated
in the eucharist. Thus, the eucharist makes the church, and all three are the totus Christus. The
second stage considers the totus Christus – the eucharistic church in union with its head – in
relation to creation and God. If creation is a symbol of God, then the totus Christus is
symbolism, creation in motion back toward the Father. The church in its life and especially its
sacraments returns creation to God in praise, not as a contrast to creation, but as the revelation
of its deepest life. In this way we can understand de Lubac’s assertion that the church is a
sacrament. It is creation united to God, symbol to symbolized. The church is a finite
participation in the eternal work of the Spirit, i.e., symbolism.
Chapter five then makes a final appeal for symbolism by drawing attention to the
relation of symbolism to mystery. This secures three particular gains which must be held
together to be held at all. First, it avoids an “ontotheological” reduction of God by maintaining
absolute divine transcendence: God is only ever symbolized in the world, as the Father is
eternally symbolized in the Son. It then secures the mystical quality of creation by refusing
either a “Barthian” flattening of nature or a neo-Thomist reification of pure nature. Creation is
the temporal unfolding of the life of God in time, as the Son is the symbol of the Father, and is
thus neither mere vacuole, nor a self-enclosed perfection. And this finally reclaims theology as
a discipline of mystical reason, as the discipline of reading mystical signs in the Spirit.
An entire theological program is thus enfolded in a trinitarian vision. While these gains
are present in other theologies, a systematic theology of the symbol gathers them together under
one trinitarian paradigm. Only such an account, or something very much like it, can accomplish
de Lubac’s vision of a reclaimed theological symbolism. I have undertaken this project because
de Lubac’s call to symbolism has yet to be sufficiently accounted for in systematic terms. I
account for it with a trinitarian theology of the symbol, a way of understanding and loving God
and all things in relation to God. If, then, we are to continue de Lubac’s program of
ressourcement, symbolism must be systematically reclaimed. The next chapter begins such a
systematic theology with the doctrine of the Trinity.
22
CHAPTER ONE
SIGNS, SYMBOLS, AND THE TRINITY
1. INTRODUCTION
As we have seen, Henri de Lubac calls the patristic theology he hoped to recover “symbolism,”
a mode of theology that assumed a real union-in-distinction between symbols and what they
symbolize. But de Lubac nowhere develops this idea systematically. The goal of this chapter
is to begin such a systematic account by setting out the trinitarian structure of symbols. In the
end, I will argue that the Trinity can be understood as symbolized-symbol-symbolism: the
Father is symbolized in the Son, who is the Father’s replete self-expression in another. The
Son, as the eternal Word, is thus the symbol of the Father, receiving the fullness of the Father’s
being. The Spirit is symbolism, the fully personal agent of love and unity of symbol and
symbolized. To arrive at this account, I engage three theologians: Augustine’s trinitarian
doctrine of signs, Karl Rahner’s christology of the symbol, and de Lubac’s pneumatological
sacramentology.
De Lubac’s account of symbolism claims to arise from Augustine’s theology of signs:
“Augustinian theology consisted in the consideration of ‘signs’ and ‘things’.”1 I turn to
Augustine, therefore, to begin this systematic theology of the symbol. Augustine’s early De
magistro builds off an analysis of human learning to argue that only Christ can teach us the
truth.2 Christ is both the origin of all experience as creator and of all knowledge as illuminator,
and so all experiences within creation are only finally meaningful in Christ. Yet this account
remains abstract from the life, teachings, death, and resurrection of Christ. In later works,
Augustine will emphasize that it is specifically in the incarnation, death and resurrection of
Christ that creaturely symbols are finally meaningful. In the incarnation the eternal Word
becomes a creaturely symbol, and this renders all creation a symbol of God. The incarnation is
intended to shape not only our concepts about God, but our desire and love for God. This is
borne out in Augustine’s doctrine of the inner word. The inner word is the capacity of the mind
for self-understanding and self-expression. But in order to be true, it must be begotten in right
love. This inner word begotten in love is, Augustine thinks, an apt analogy for the Trinity. The
1
Henri de Lubac, Corpus Mysticum, 2nd edn., trans. Gemma Simmonds et. al. (London: SCM Press, 2006), 274;
Augustine, De doctrina christiana, 1.4, trans. by R.P.H. Green (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 8.
2
Augustine, The Teacher in The Teacher; The Free Choice of the Will; Grace and Free Will, trans. by Russel P.
Robert (Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1968). Due to coronavirus restrictions, I did
not have access to the book I originally used in this chapter. I have the numbering system used by the translator,
but not exact page numbers.
23
Son can thus be conceived as a sign (for a word is a sign) that bears the fullness of the Father’s
presence and is thus the symbol par excellence. The Spirit, then, is the fully personal agent of
love and unity between symbolized and symbol. I will call this pneumatological dynamic,
symbolism. Thus we could summarize Augustine’s Trinity with the triad, symbolized-symbol-
symbolism, an apt analogy for Father-Son-Spirit.
I will then turn to Karl Rahner who expands Augustinian symbolism into a great chain
of symbols: Father in the Son, the divinity of Christ in his humanity, Christ in church, church
in sacrament, soul in body.3 The theology of the symbol, in Rahner’s hands, is given maximum
theological scope, touching on everything that is. But Rahner’s theology of the symbol remains
entirely dyadic – neglecting the role of the Holy Spirit. To reclaim a trinitarian theology of the
symbol, we will need a pneumatology of signs.
To unfold the place of the Spirit in symbolic theology, I will turn finally to de Lubac’s
theology of those two paradigmatic signs and things: sacraments and mysteries. De Lubac
discovers three nuances between patristic usages of the words “mystery” and “sacrament.”
Each nuance points toward the Spirit in a firmly Augustinian mode. First, mysteries are hidden
within sacraments, as symbolized within symbol, giving rise to desire and love. Secondly, a
mystery is the self-donation that makes a sacrament a sacrament, a gift from symbolized to
symbol. Finally, a mystery is the nuptial union between sacraments and what they signify, so
that symbol and symbolized are known together. Desire, gift and unity, then, are the animating
centers of de Lubac’s sacramentology, and while he rarely draws this link, are firmly
Augustinian understandings of the Spirit. The Spirit is the active and personal agent of unity,
internal to both Father and Son, Symbolized and Symbol, and wholly personal and hypostatic.
This pneumatology then ensures that symbols are not arbitrarily related to the symbolized, for
the Spirit is wholly internal to both symbolized and symbol. Between symbolized and symbol
breathes the Spirit, the wholly personal and active agent of desire, gift and union: symbolism
itself. Creatures then participate in the Spirit by reading the symbols, uniting symbols to the
divine symbolized, knowing God in all things and returning creation to God in praise.
Beginning with Augustine’s Trinity, taking on the ontological and theological implications of
Rahner’s Christology of the symbol and de Lubac’s pneumatology of symbolism, we arrive at
the trinitarian triad: symbolized-symbol-symbolism. In the next chapter we will consider the
3
Karl Rahner, ‘The Theology of the Symbol’ in Theological Investigations, vol. 4 (New York: Seabury, 1974),
221-252.
24
implications of this for the created order, and this discussion of the Trinity will be deepened
there as well, but I begin here to establish the basic trinitarian structure of symbols.
2. AUGUSTINE, SIGNS AND THE TRINITY

Augustine’s semiotics is a first on two accounts. He is the first to make a theory of signs
coextensive with a theory of language, and he is the first to account for the role of a receiving
subject or interpreter of the sign.4 Prior accounts, notably in sustained debate between Stoics
and Epicureans, never tied a sign-theory so closely to a theory of language, and never
recognized that the interpretive act is a key component of signification. These two insights
make Augustine a seminal figure in the development of the philosophy of semiotics.5 In
Augustine’s classic definition, “a sign is a thing which of itself makes some other thing come
to mind.”6 Three poles: a sign signifies something to someone. This tripartite structure is most
obviously the case in human language, but in contemporary times has been applied to all life
and even all physical existence.7 Augustine’s two breakthroughs set the stage for a full-fledged
“semiotic point of view.”8
But Augustine’s point is never the sign theory. Semiotics is always a servant of his
theology. So much is to be expected. But the more important point of Augustine’s theory of
signs is that signification itself is a symbol, and therefore contemplation of the creaturely
process of communication becomes a pathway of ascent into God. Semiotics itself must be
“referred” to love of God and neighbor. It is the eternal source for which the structure of
signification is a symbol that Augustine is after. Semiotics, in Augustine’s thought, modulates
into a higher key, becoming a tool of anagogical ascent. Such modulations are not, however,
the end of his semiotic discourse. Rather, semiotics is universalized, coextensive with creation,
and rooted in eternal generation and procession. If the extensiveness of Augustine’s semiotics
is a breakthrough, which it certainly is, then it is theology that enables such an extension. This
accounts for the difficulty of extracting from Augustine a sign-theory for its own sake. It simply
does not exist for its own sake. Indeed, Augustine would argue that to stop at a semiotics qua
semiotics would be to fail to go where semiotics itself leads: “it is a miserable kind of spiritual
slavery to interpret signs as things.”9 A philosophy of signs, Augustine would say, should lead
4
Cf. R.A. Markus, “St. Augustine on Signs”, Phronesis 2, no. 1 (Brill: 1957), 60-83.
5
Cf. John Deely, Four Ages of Understanding (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), ch. 6. See also,
Markus, “Signs”, Appendix A, for a helpful, though dated, delineation of terminology.
6
Augustine, de doctr., 30.
7
Cf. John Deely, Basics of Semiotics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990).
8
Cf. Deely, Understanding, 221.
9
Augustine, De doctr., 3.21 (Green: 72).
25
us into the divine life in which all signification analogically participates. I will therefore follow
Augustine in ascent from an analysis of signs and signification, to the precondition of external
signs in inner words begotten in love, to the eternal life of God. Humans beget inner words in
love; the Father speaks the Word in the Spirit. Reflection on the former will lead to greater
participation in the latter.
2.1 From Him…

How may we understand the Trinity if it is so utterly beyond all creaturely reality? We are
temporal creatures, and all our knowledge arises through processes of signification. We require
signs to understand. But how then can we know the triune God who is ineffably beyond our
signifying capacity? Augustine consistently returns to this difficulty in different forms, and
while his position is refined throughout his career, his answer consistently turns on a logic of
presence. We come know God through signs because signification itself is a finite participation
in the eternal speaking of the Word. It is the presence of eternal truth itself to both the mind
and that which the mind seeks to understand that renders signification possible and
revelatory.10 Signs are thus always more than “mere” signs, for they can only be recognized as
signs by their participation in God.
This insight is developed in an early treatment of language and signs. In De magistro
Augustine reflects in dialogue with his son on the problem of learning.11 Two axioms arise
from his discussion: everything we learn, we learn by signs, but we only know the meanings
of signs by the things they signify. An experience of things without signs would be an
undifferentiated pile of sensation; an experience of signs without things would be nothing but
empty noise. But how then do we learn, if we can know neither signs without things nor things
without signs? Which comes first? Augustine solves this aporia christologically. Christ, as the
source of all that is, operates on both sides of the sign/thing distinction: he is the creative source
of each thing, and the illumination that makes signs meaningful. Christ is the Inner Teacher in
whom the simultaneous knowledge of signs and things arises.12 Thus, for Augustine, neither
human teachers of signs, nor the accumulated effects of experience, can ever teach anything to
the human mind unless joined together by Christ; we have no other teacher.
10
See for instance, Augustine, De trin., 9.11 (Hill: 277).
11
Augustine, De magistro, 10.30 and 10.33.
12
Augustine, De magistro, 11.38.
26
Robert Markus argues that this solution “short-circuits” the development of
Augustine’s semiotics.13 Augustine, according to Markus, is on the cusp of realizing that our
experiences and the language we use to narrate and understand them arise together and are co-
constitutive, but Augustine stops short to pursue his own Christological purposes. The concern
of De Magistro is Christological, so Markus does not fault him for making his theory of signs
auxiliary to Christology. But had Augustine not reached so quickly for Christological
resolution, Markus argues, he might have seen that sign-systems themselves coordinate signs
and significata, without requiring christic mediation. Augustine has almost, but not entirely
“broken through the barrier between signs and significata, the mutual externality to each other
of language and experience.”14 Indeed, Augustine does not make this breakthrough. But
Markus’ observation (it is not quite, for Markus, a critique) risks missing the point. Markus is
right that there is no mutual externality of language and experience, but neither is there, for
Augustine, any mutual externality of Christ the Interior Teacher and the human mind, and
therefore no mutual externality of Christology and semiotics. Markus is attempting to
reconstruct Augustine’s semiotics independent of Christological concerns, a goal that he
acknowledges is not really possible.15 In building an Augustinian semiotics qua semiotics, he
methodically ignores Augustine’s point that semiotics is Christological, and his Christological
solution is no less semiotic for its Christology. Christology is not an alien solution to a native
semiotic problem, so that invoking the former interrupts the latter.
This would be an alien solution to a semiotic problem if Christ were alien to the human
mind and the created order, since he would be performing a function in place of the mind,
competitively replacing its native (in)capacities. But christic illumination is not extrinsic to the
human capacity to learn. Christology is woven into the very fabric of anthropology, so that the
union of sign and thing in Christ is what sustains their union in the human mind. Yet the
intellect does not end where christic illumination begins. The paradox is that this christic
dynamism is both wholly the work of Christ and natural to the human mind; because Christ is
both creator and illuminator, all functions of the human mind are finite participations in his
eternal reality as Logos. His ongoing work is wholly interior to the mind, so that there is no
competition between Christ’s work of illumination and the human act of understanding. To
think is to be ontologically related to the Logos in this human way. This means that Augustine’s
13
Markus, “Signs”, 70. This is repeated by Deely, Ages, 218. The term “semiotics” arises “after Locke and
Peirce,” and is a theory of signs. The medievals called it doctrina signorum. Augustine had no name for it.
Deely, Ages, 362.
14
Markus, “Signs”, 70.
15
27
Christological resolution is not thereby not semiotic resolution. It is fully semiotic because
fully human. Signs and things are unified in Christ and therefore arise in a single act of human
understanding.
Thus, it is not quite true that language and experience remain mutually external to one
another in De magistro. Augustine’s negative claim that neither experience nor signs teach is
a claim about origins and ends: knowledge, the union of signs and things in the mind, neither
arises from, nor is consummated in, signs or things. Their simultaneity disallows any claims to
priority. Christ, as the power and wisdom of God, the creator and illuminator of all things,16 is
prior to and the proper end of both experience and significance, and therefore the one in whom
the two cohere.17 The mind’s unified act of understanding is dependent upon this prior and
teleological unity of sign and thing in Christ. Christic illumination thus places all meaning
within a narrative of procession and return, a doctrine of creation in which intelligibility is an
analogical expression of eternal intelligibility en se. The upshot is that all our sensory
experience is grounded in Christ’s knowledge of his creation, and all our linguistic expression
arises from the higher functions of rationality which are a participation in Christ’s own
illuminative nature as Logos. To make any sense of anything at all is to do something
profoundly Christological, for it is to unite experience and illumination in an irreducibly
singular way. Markus is surely right that Augustine does not press the semiotic analysis far
enough, but even if he had recognized that language systems themselves are capable of
coordinating signs and significata, this would still be but a finite reflection of Christ’s work. It
is not going far beyond Augustine to say that it is because there is one Christ who is both
wisdom and power that there is one unified language-experience event.
This fully human and yet Christic account of learning begins to articulate a symbolic
account of humanity. It is because all experience and all signs participate in the power and
wisdom of Christ that experience is significant. Thus read, the human mind is itself symbol,
for it mediates the presence of Christ. This symbolic logic then ensures that there is no
“dialectical antithesis” between Christology and semiotics.18 The two form a “symbolic
inclusion” in which the latter is contained within, illuminated and sustained by the former. The
process of signification, it turns out, is a vestigial presence of Christ in the mundane exchanges
of daily life. The mind’s ability to synthesize signs and things with an irreducible and
seemingly impossible spontaneity is a symbol of Christ in his dual work of power and wisdom
16
De magistro, 9.38. Quoting 1 Cor. 1:23.
17
Cf. De trinitate 4.25, trans. Edmund Hill, OP (New York: New City Press, 1991), 171.
18
28
– creation and signification. The symbolic relation allows Augustine to modulate from one
paradox to a higher one present within it and beyond it, but not in competition with it. In this
case, the paradox of learning points to the paradox of Christ at once constitutively “in” and yet
not “of” the human mind.19
Yet for all its Christological emphasis, De magistro remains at a distance from the
history of Christ himself. It simply is not clear what role the incarnation, death and resurrection
of Christ makes to this scheme, or what role sin plays in distorting our knowledge. In short,
this Christianized Neoplatonism fails to fully integrate the Christian gospel, a shortcoming
Augustine will rectify in his later years.20
2.2 Through Him…

Augustine will revisit the theme of Christ’s role in human knowledge often, but with increasing
emphasis on the concrete life of Christ. Christ is still the foundation of all knowledge and
experience, but this is now centered on his life and death. Sin deforms created symbols, making
ascent to God through created symbols impossible. We need a new symbol and a new vision.
If De magistro emphasizes that all things are from Christ, later works like De doctrina
christiana and especially De trinitate will emphasize that all things must pass through Christ.
In Rowan Williams’ words, in the incarnation “God has ‘placed himself in the order of signs’
(in de la Taille’s famous phrase), and so brought to light the nature of all signs in respect of his
own nature as uniquely res.”21 The incarnation reveals that all signs point to God:
Everything that has taken place in time in “originated” matters which have been
produced from the eternal and reduced back to the eternal, and has been designed to
elicit the faith we must be purified by in order to contemplate the truth, has either been
testimony to this mission or has been the actual mission of the Son of God. Some
testimonies foretold that he was going to come, some testified that he had come. It was
only fitting that when he through whom every creature was made became a creature
himself, all creation should bear witness to him.22
All creation is a sign of Christ, and in him a sign of God. Moreover, Christ is a sign of God by
being the very presence of God on earth. If a symbol is a sign that mediates presence, then
19
Not accidentally, there are echoes here of the natural desire for the supernatural: it is “in” us, but not “of” us.
Henri de Lubac, Theology in History (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1996), 129.
20
Hence, John Cavadini will compare the Christ of De magistro to the far more tactile blood of Christ that is so
pivotal in De trinitate. Cf. Visioning Augustine (Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley Blackwell, 2019), 52
21
Rowan Williams, On Augustine (London: Bloosmbury, 2016), 148.
22
De trin. 4.25 (Hill: 171).
29
Christ is the symbol par excellence. And this reveals all creation to be a symbol of God in
Christ. The incarnation reveals discourse about “signs and things” to be discourse about
“symbols and symbolized.” All creation is now seen to carry within it the ontological trace of
the divine, for it is created in Christ and for Christ. This is not to say that creation just is God,
nor that there is not a second work of redemption and elevation needed to see God. I will
discuss these issues in chapters two and three. The point here is that Christ is the symbol of
God, and all creation now joins with him in symbolizing the Father.
That all creation is now a symbol of God renders the Christian faith truly catholic: all
that is good, beautiful, and true now has a place in the faith, even if that place can only be
discerned by a contentious testing. Entire modes of discourse, then, are to be embraced and
then modulated into a higher key (“used,” in Augustine’s words). Languages, history, science,
and rhetoric, whether of pagan or heretical origin, are to be learned and directed toward love
of God and neighbor.23 Of course, love of God and neighbor will require modification of many
discourses, but Augustine is happy to affirm the aims of all endeavors of human culture,
because all things are symbols – contain the ontological trace of Christ – and no true thing is a
dialectical contrast to the final “Thing.” If all things are a symbol of God in Christ, then nothing
dialectically opposes God. Indeed, because the symbol-symbolized relation is universalized,
even sin is not a dialectical antithesis to the true “Thing.” Apart from God there is no-thing.
The failure to symbolize God is a pure lack, an unspeakable contradiction.24 Strictly speaking,
there are no dialectical antitheses, only degrees of symbolic inclusion.25
The Christian life, then, consists in making these kinds of modulations from symbols
to symbolized. Doing so is a process of purification: not escaping from the world of created
things, but embracing created things according to their eternal source and end. That embrace
is made possible, for Augustine, only in the incarnation. If in De magistro the human intellect
is a symbol because of the presence of Christ the creator and illuminator, in later works all
creation is a symbol because God became human and raised creation to God through Christ.
2.3 To Him…
23
doctr. 2.102 (Green: 54). On Augustine’s engagement with rhetoric, see Lewis Ayres, Augustine and the
Trinity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 132.
24
See discussion of privatio boni in the conclusion.
25
I am aware that this touches on very sensitive questions about power and privilege: who gets to decide what
degree of symbolic inclusion a thing inherently has, and what modifications it requires in order to be embraced?
But the disposition of openness I describe here must be instantiated as a true listening openness. I envision
catholicity that is not hegemonic precisely because it is universal, and so none can claim a total vision of the
whole.
30
Learning to read created symbols, especially the incarnation, is intended to shape the formation
of what Augustine calls the “inner word.” When a mind comes to know something, it generates
an inner word, a “word of the heart.”26 John Cavadini describes it thus: “it is an eternally valid
precultural reality focused on a capacity for self-awareness and self-expression which is
productive of culture – of signs and sign-systems – but not reducible to any particular cultural
expression.”27 When the human mind comes to know something it “begets” an inner word that
can then be “incarnated” in language and culture. It is wholly interior to the mind, and is thus
one with the mind itself, and yet it is also a word, so it is a kind of sign. It is the mind fully
expressed in another – the mind’s self-symbol. An inner word that is wholly true is impossible
in this life, for our perspective always remains fragmentary and clouded by sin. The journey to
eternity is thus one of learning to know God and ourselves rightly and instantiating that right
knowledge in culture.
But the quality or truthfulness of an inner word is not merely constituted by the
correctness of its perceptions or its comprehension of facts. An inner word is true according to
the quality of the love in which it is begotten. As we currently live, our desires and loves are
too deformed and disordered to know either God or ourselves rightly, and the cultures instituted
by the incarnations of our inner words are likewise deformed. If we are to reach our
eschatological destiny, we will need a newly aligned will. This is one reason the incarnation is
necessary. The incarnation is not merely the gift of new information about what God is like, or
even a substitution of our broken symbols for his whole one on the cross. The incarnation is
also intended to present our wills with a moving picture of eternity that we might learn to desire
and love it rightly.28 It is by contemplating the life of Christ that we learn to desire and love
God rightly, as Christ works to entice us into meeting the Father in himself. As I will argue in
the third section of this chapter, the symbol works by concealing the symbolized, so that the
allure of a treasure hidden in a field might entice us to sell all to acquire it.29 The incarnation,
then, is an erotic symbol, a drawing toward the secret trace of the symbolized hidden within.
This language of desire and love puts us firmly in the territory of the Holy Spirit. The
point of love’s necessity for the begetting of true inner words is that the eternal Son is never
without the Spirit. If Christ is the eternal Word of the Father and therefore the analogical source
of all knowledge, the Spirit is the fully personal agent of love between Father and Son and
26
De trin. 14.10 (Hill: 378), 15.19 (Hill: 409).
27
Cavadini, Augustine, 47.
28
Cavadini, Visioning, 51.
29
Matt. 13:44.
31
therefore the analogical source of all love and desire. The union of symbols with the
symbolized is therefore a work of the Spirit. I will expand this pneumatology of the symbol in
section three, but the point here is that humanity is a symbol of God not just by participation
in the eternal Word but also by participation in the Spirit. And thus encountering God in
symbols is as much a matter of desire and love as of right knowledge, for to know the hidden
Father is to know the Son in the Spirit.
Right love and a true inner word are eternal realities: our fragmentary inner words and
partially aligned loves are echoes of the presence of the eternal Word and eternal Spirit. For
Augustine,
In that eternal truth according to which all temporal things were made we observe with
the eye of the mind the form according to which we are and according to which we do
anything with true and right reason, either in ourselves or in bodies. And by this form
we conceive true knowledge of things, which we have with us as a kind of word that
we beget by uttering inwardly.30
The reason we have any knowledge at all, or any love of what we know, is that we bear within
ourselves the presence of the eternal Logos and the eternal Spirit. Only against this eternal
backdrop can we recognize or love anything at all. But this presence is not to say that we
possess the Word and Spirit as something we own and control. The presence of the eternal
remains ever beyond, outside our grasp. In reflecting on the difference between goodness
instantiated in a particular thing and goodness itself, Augustine says, “we should seek the good
of the soul, not the good it can hover over in judgment but the good it can cling to in love, and
what is this but God?”31 The presence of God in signs can only be recognized and known as it
is loved; it can never be positively possessed. A symbolic presence is thus something like a
presence-in-absence, the transcendence hidden within symbols.
For this reason, Markus rightly refers to Augustine’s concept of the inner word as
“persistently close to an eschatological perspective.”32 A true inner word, begotten in right
love, is something only possible in the beatific vision: “this is a perfection of the image that
lies some time in the future.”33 While all temporal knowledge and love presupposes the trace
of the eternal Word and Spirit, only in eternity will knowledge and love be perfected by a
perfect presence. When we finally see the Father in his Word by the Spirit, our own inner words
30
De trin. 9.12 (Hill: 277-278).
31
De trin. 8.4 (Hill: 244).
32
33
De trin., 15.20 (Hill: 409-410).
32
will finally be true and our loves pure. The reason for this is that our inner word will be a
perception of the eternal Word, and our love a reception of eternal Love. When both of these
are present in a way undistorted by sin, our own knowledge and love will be eternally satisfied,
having returned to their original source.
And here we have the most profound implication of Augustine’s analysis. God is
symbolized in creation because God is first symbolized in God. A symbol is a sign that
mediates presence. An inner word is a wholly interior symbol: inasmuch as it is a word, it is a
sign,34 and inasmuch as it is wholly equal to the mind it is the mind’s self-presence. The inner
word of the Father, the eternal Son, is the symbol par excellence, the sign that is the Father’s
presence expressed in another. And this replete self-expression is only possible because of the
agent of unity who actively unites symbol and symbolized, being wholly of the Father and the
Son, the Spirit. The Spirit could thus be conceived as the eternal reception and interpretation
of the eternal symbol, “interpreting” the Word as wholly reflective of the Father, and therefore
the love generated by its reception.35 And because the Son is the symbol – the sign that mediates
presence – then the Spirit’s act of interpretation is likewise an interpretive presence. Like the
Son, then, the Spirit is wholly personal love and wholly divine unity, receiving the presence of
the Father by the Son and returning Son to Father in and “interpretive” act of love. I will return
to this somewhat contentious pneumatology below.
Thus, the language of symbols, to borrow a principle of Thomas, is more appropriately
said of God than of us.36 Our inner words formed in love are temporal symbols of God because
the Father is eternally symbolized in the Son by the Spirit. Symbols are a trinitarian reality
first, and only by analogy a creaturely reality. In generation, the Father is present in a sign, i.e.,
in a symbol. In spiration this symbol is “interpreted” and united to the Father as love. We are
called to participate in this same process – to know the Father in the Son by the Spirit – only
because the Father eternally is in the Son by the Spirit. Augustine’s Trinity is symbolic, the
mediation of presence in a rightly loved symbol.
This brief sketch has followed Augustine upward. From Christ protologically, through
Christ in the incarnation, and to Christ the eternal Word in the Spirit, Augustine has directed
our gaze toward the eternal life of God. Humans learn through signs, but such learning is only
possible because all knowledge and experience arise from Christ’s own work as creator and
34
doctr. 1.9 (Green: 9)
35
Cf. John Milbank, The Word Made Strange (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), 187.
36
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 1a.13.5, Laurence Shapcote, O.P., trans., Latin/English Edition of the
Works of St. Thomas Aquinas (Lander, Wyoming: The Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred Doctrine,
2012).
33
illuminator, power and wisdom. Augustine will come to center this analysis more firmly on the
life of Christ: Christ is the sign that fully mediates God’s presence, i.e. the replete symbol of
God. Thereafter, all creation is a symbol in Christ, mediating the presence of God by its
inclusion in Christ’s humanity. In contemplating Christ’s life, humans learn to form right inner
words in rightly ordered love, and this, Augustine thinks, is an apt analogy for the Trinity. The
Father begets the Son in the Spirit, as an inner Word in Love. The Son is the symbol of the
Father, the Spirit the union of love between symbolized and symbol. All creaturely symbols
exist by participation in this eternal source. Of course, inasmuch as creaturely signification is
a multi-phase process, God is nothing like this. There is not first a Father, then a Son, then a
Spirit. Rather, the three subsist as symbolic relations.
Thus, we might summarize this account of the Trinity with the triad, symbolized-
symbol-symbolism. The Father is the eternal source, symbolized in the Son, the eternal symbol,
by the symbolism of the Spirit. Symbolism, on this account, is the active, personal movement
of love and unity between the symbol and the symbolized. As we will see, this has the benefit
of opening all of reality to a trinitarian logic. If all things are symbols by the incarnation, then
they participate in this process of symbolism, and learning to narrate that process will be part
of the theological task. To move toward such an account, I turn to an essay by Karl Rahner,
who has sought to narrate the entire theological spectrum as a theology of symbols. In the
process of narrating all things in relation to God, here and especially in the next chapter, more
detail and nuance will be added to this brief account of the Trinity.
3. KARL RAHNER’S SYMBOLIZED AND SYMBOL37

The systematic possibilities of the symbolized-symbol relation are explored and expanded in
the middle of the 20th Century by Karl Rahner. Augustine’s story of ascent is recast by Rahner
as a chain of symbolic inclusions cascading down from God. His story moves from the Trinity,
through Christology, to ecclesiology and anthropology, before returning again to
Christological devotion. Yet Rahner fails to consistently apply his theology of the symbol and
neglects the role of the Spirit. Nonetheless, his systematic analysis of the symbolized-symbol
relation opens significant theological possibilities.
3.1 The Theology of the Symbol
37
Much of this section is taken from my “Symbolism after Dialectics: de Lubac, Rahner and Symbolic
Theology” in The International Journal of Systematic Theology 20, no. 4 (October, 2018), 537-553.
34
Rahner’s essay, “The Theology of the Symbol” follows a scheme of exitus and reditus similar
to Augustine’s account, but with clearer systematic focus.38 Rahner receives Augustine’s
Christology of the symbol through Aquinas, and thematizes it. For Rahner, all being is
symbolic, meaning “a being comes to itself by expression” in a symbol.39 Being, then, is self-
realizing, and the symbol is this self-realization in self-representation: “the symbol, strictly
speaking (symbolic reality) is the self-realization of a being in the other, which is constitutive
of its essence.”40 A true symbol is not an arbitrary sign because it is intrinsic to the being that
it symbolizes. This is founded, Rahner tells us, on Trinitarian logic. Within the Trinity the
Father has his being inasmuch as he is symbolized in the Son.41 That the Son is the image of
the Father is an expression of the strongest and most foundational unity. The entire created
order then shares analogically in this symbolism, albeit in a creaturely and refracted form.
Rahner’s symbolism thus reverberates throughout the theological spectrum, pointing toward a
fully symbolic ontology. From the symbolism of Father in Son, Rahner moves to Christology,
ecclesiology, sacramental theology, anthropology, and finally back again to his initial concern,
the sacred heart of Jesus. Christ is the symbol of God, Christ’s humanity the symbol of his
divinity, the church the symbol of Christ, the Sacraments symbols of grace and the church, the
body symbol of the soul, the sacred heart of Jesus the symbol of his whole.42
Rahner’s ressourcement of symbolism involves a synthesis of patristic, Thomist and
neo-Thomist theology. He follows Augustine and Aquinas in arguing that the Word is the self-
expression of the Father: The Father “speaks” his essence as the Logos, in such a way that the
Father only is inasmuch as he is expressed in the Son.43 The Thomist doctrine of analogy then
provides Rahner with a link between the symbolism of divine being and that of creaturely
being.44 Creatures participate in the eternal symbolization of the Father in the Son analogically,
becoming themselves analogical symbols. Christ is the highpoint of this creaturely
symbolization, being both creaturely symbol and divine symbol, the Realsymbol of God, as
Rahner puts it.45
38
Rahner, “Symbol”, passim.
39
Rahner, “Symbol”, 230.
40
41
To take one example, De trinitate, 15.12 (Hill: 403): “The Son is understanding, begotten from the
understanding of the Father, which is the Father.”
42
Cf. Annice Callahan, ‘Karl Rahner’s Theology of the Symbol’, Irish Theological Quarterly 49, no. 3
(September, 1982), 195-205.
43
44
45
35
Creaturely participation in symbolic reality is then reflected in Thomist sacramental
theology and metaphysics. Substances are truly present in their accidents, and accidents are the
symbols of their substances. In eucharistic theology, this means the eucharistic elements
become the body of Christ by being his symbol. Symbolizing Christ means making him really
present. For humanity this means that the body is the symbol of the soul – the body is the self-
realization of the soul in a symbol; neither exists, properly speaking, without the other.46
Rahner thereby returns to his initial concern that in worshiping the sacred heart of Jesus,
worshipers are not worshiping a part of Jesus but his integral whole. His sacred heart is the
symbol of his entire being, as the body is to the soul, an accident to its substance, Christ to
God. Therefore, debates about what exactly is worshiped in the Sacred Heart are transcended
by reclaiming a patristic assumption along medieval theological lines. Christ’s sacred heart
symbolically is his entire person. The worshipper need not worry whether it is Christ’s love,
Christ’s humanity, or Christ’s body being worshiped, for there is only one Christ, one
Realsymbol of God.
3.2 Christological Trajectories

Rahner’s account is therefore bookended by Christological concerns. An initial concern for
intra-trinitarian symbolization ultimately leads to a reflection on the unity of the incarnate
Christ – a unity so profound as to guarantee that the human heart of Christ is the symbol of
God. The Cyriline shape of this should not be missed. Whatever we make of Rahner’s remark
that if given the choice between being an “orthodox Monophysite” and an “orthodox
Nestorian,” he would choose to be an “orthodox Nestorian,” we should not see him as thereby
denying or minimizing a firmly Cyriline Christology of unity.47 Rahner’s point is precisely that
in the incarnation God is born a man, as his Marian and Sacred Heart theologies affirm. In
symbolic theology, there is no distance between the human and divine natures of Christ, for
the one makes the other truly present in a single unified person. There is only one divine Son,
one Christ who, in being the Realsymbol of God, makes God fully present.
Rahner’s “orthodox Nestorianism” expresses his concern to guard the integrity of the
authentic humanity of Christ as the symbol of the Divine. Christ symbolizes God as a human
46
Cf. Aquinas, ST 1a.93.3.
47
Karl Rahner, Karl Rahner in Dialogue: Conversations and Interviews 1965-1982, trans. and ed. H.
Biallowons, et al (New York: Crossoad 1986), 127. For the accusation of quasi-Nestorianism, see Aaron
Riches, Ecce Homo (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016), 9. Riches’ is an extraordinary work, but he misses the
ways Rahner’s symbolism unites divinity and humanity in Christ, balancing Rahner’s avowal of “orthodox
Nestorianism.” See Joseph Wong, “Karl Rahner’s Theology of Symbol and Three Models of Christology” in
Heythrop Journal 27, no 1 (1986), 6-7.
36
– his humanity is irreducible, for it is only in his humanity that we meet his divinity. Indeed,
“orthodox Nestorianism” is a very unfortunate phrase, since it is actually Nestorius who
jeopardizes the symbolic value of the humanity of Christ. Nestorius’ concern to guard against
God suffering makes it very difficult for him to see how God can be born. If God is born,
Nestorius worries, God dies – better to minimize such language. Mary, therefore, cannot be the
mother of God. But in making this move, a break is implied between the human and divine
natures of Christ, since the Virgin birth, for Nestorius, is not quite the birth of God. The crucial
link between symbolized and symbol is interrupted, an interruption that at least threatens to be
more than a distinction.48 For Rahner, by contrast, the incarnation reveals that all reality points
to God not just as cause, but as “his substantial determination or as his own proper
environment.”49 The humanity of Christ is not an arbitrary sign; it is the symbol – the only
possible symbol – that discloses the reality of God. It is only as a human that Christ symbolizes
God. This is possible because of the divine image in which humanity is created. The incarnation
reveals the dramatic extent of humanity’s image-bearing capacity: from the incarnation
onward, God has a human heart which can be worshiped without any fear of idolatry. The
grammar of the theotokos and the grammar of the sacred heart are the grammar of the
Realsymbol.
This symbolic structure can also accommodate Cyril’s concept of the enhypostatic
union. Because the movement between symbolized and symbol first describes the procession
of the Son from the Father, it retains a certain “processional priority” for the symbolized. In
terms of the Trinity ad intra, this means the Son proceeds from the Father. In Lewis Ayres’s
description of Augustine’s trinitarian theology, “divine communion [is] constituted by the
intra-divine acts of the divine three, in an order established by the Father.”50 There is a
“direction of travel” in the Trinity and in the created order. The symbol proceeds from the
symbolized. This processional priority is altogether magnified when elements of the created
world symbolize the divine. The divine is in no way reliant on its created symbols, in the way
that the Father is “mutually determinative” with the Son, but sustains them entirely in relation
to its own self-sufficiency.51 God does not need to be symbolized in creation in order to be
God, so a created symbol symbolizes God asymmetrically. Within creation, the “processional”
48
Cf. Riches, Ecce Homo, ch. 1. For a similar analysis, see Rowan Williams, Christ the Heart of Creation
(London: Bloomsbury, 2018), Ch. 2. The extent to which this was a genuine division between the natures of
Christ is debated. Cf. Richard A. Norris Jr (ed.), the Christological Controversy (Philadelphia: Fortress Press,
1980).
49
50
Ayres, Augustine, 258.
51
Simon Oliver, Creation: A Guide for the Perplexed (Londo: Bloomsbury, 2017), 52.
37
priority of the symbolized is a structure of ontological difference, a one-way dependence.
Since, therefore, the human nature of Christ is the symbol of his divinity, the divine nature
retains ontological – “processional” – priority. The human nature of Christ is entirely founded
upon, sustained within, his divine nature. This does not imply any diminution of the human
nature of Christ, since the created symbol is neither arbitrary nor elidable. Rather, it sustains
the fundamental ontological difference between God and creation, while guaranteeing the
identity of God and Christ, the Realsymbol. In Christ, symbolized and symbol meet in one
divine man.
While God does not need his created symbols, God is not thereby only arbitrarily
related to them. Recall that for Rahner a true symbol is intrinsic to that which it symbolizes –
it is its necessary self-expression. Creaturely symbols are, we might say, unnecessary divine
self-expression. They are unnecessary because the divine is not co-constitutive with them. But
they are nonetheless divine self-expressions. In what Aquinas calls a “mixed relation,” the
creature expresses the divine life without being necessary to that divine life.52 What is
unnecessarily expressed is the divine life in another key. The incarnation is the baffling
extremity of this symbolic structure where created symbol perfectly coincides with uncreated
Symbol – no longer by participation but by nature. Since the human symbol cannot be arbitrary,
the incarnation reveals that humanity is God’s “own proper environment.” Simply put, this
human, Jesus Christ, is what the life of God looks like in time. Christ is the symbol of God, as
the Word, and the symbol of humanity, as the replete human life. This makes him, in turn, the
symbol of the entire created order, so that symbolic relations obtain all the way down. From
Father to Son, Son to Christ’s humanity, Christ to Church, Church to world and all creation,
all are enmeshed in symbolic relations: in the Symbol we live and move and have our being.
Rahner therefore confidently declares that a theology of symbols is “the basic structure of all
Christianity.”53 From Rahner’s analysis of the relation between symbolized and symbol, an
entire symbolic ontology begins to emerge, and Rahner’s accomplishment is to see the
expansive possibilities this affords.
3.3 The Hiddenness of the Symbolized

This relation between symbolized and symbol should also be read in the other direction, for
mediation in a symbol implies the hiddenness of the symbolized. Eternally, this means the
52
Aquinas calls this dynamic “mixed relations.” Cf. Oliver, Creation, 48-53.
53
Rahner, “Symbol”, 252. Of course, Rahner’s theology of the symbol is also complicatedly philosophical. See
Stephen Fields, Being as Symbol (Washington: Georgetown University Press, 2007).
38
Father is only known through the Son – the Father is the hidden source and mysterious fount
of divinity. The Father remains “hidden” in the Son by the Spirit as the unoriginated one. And
this has analogical consequences in creatures, for whom God remains hidden within and
beyond created symbols. We cannot step out of our creaturely status to see God – we must seek
God through the symbols of life in time, a way definitively opened by Christ the Realsymbol.
To see God in Christ is to see the Father hidden in the Son and is thus the temporal refraction
of the eternal hiddenness of the Father in the Son. Indeed, this funds the entire theology of the
symbol outlined by Rahner. We must ascend through the chain of symbols to meet God;
anything less than this would make a theology of symbols an idle and otiose speculation. But
if the Father is eternally known in an eternal symbol, then we as creatures are bound to come
to know God through temporal symbols. A systematic account of the nature of symbols thus
becomes an important theological task.
In chapter five, I will develop this crucial point in more detail in conversation with a
different essay of Rahner’s. To anticipate the argument there, acknowledging God as only ever
symbolized in creation helps resist the “ontotheological” temptation to reduce God to one being
among others. If God is present in symbols, God is absent as an object for evaluation. God can
never be objectified, only symbolized. And this means that God is present in creation precisely
in God’s absence. I will, however, defer that analysis to chapter five, for it requires a stronger
sense of what it means for creation to be a symbol (chapter two), and the work of the Spirit in
the church as symbolism (chapter three). I flag it here because it relates first and foremost to
the person of the Father, whose personhood is his hiddenness in the Son. The two sides of the
symbolized-symbol correspond to Father and Son, to hiddenness and manifestation, a relation
that holds true in creaturely relations to God as well. What is needed, then, is a systematic
theology of the symbol by which to understand these relations in greater depth and richness.
3.4 Roads Untaken

For its expansive gains, Rahner’s theology of the symbol remains inconsistent. Rahner
sees his theology of the symbol everywhere in Christian theology: it is “the basic structure of
all Christianity.”54 But the theology of the symbol is not quite the basic structure of all of
Rahner’s theology. It remains an underdeveloped theme. A few have located symbolism as the
hermeneutical key for understanding Rahner,55 but in the ocean of secondary literature on his
54
Rahner, “Symbol”, p. 252.
55
For instance, Stephen Fields: “It is generally acknowledged that the Realsymbol lies at the core of Rahner’s
thought.” Fields, Being, 2. See also: Callahan, “Rahner’s Theology”, 195-205; Maria Elisabeth Motzko, “Karl
39
work, these appeals are rare. It may be that symbolism represents an overlooked cornerstone
of Rahner’s thought, but it seems more likely that symbolism is one stone among many. Studies
elucidating symbolism’s role in Rahner’s wider thought are welcome and helpful, but the fact
remains that while symbolism sits comfortably in Rahner’s work, it does not have the level of
ubiquity he suggests it should. Rahner has produced an insightful theology of the symbol, but
he has not quite produced a symbolic theology.
The under-deployment of Rahner’s theology of the symbol can be seen in a number of
common criticisms of his work. A more consistent deployment of this theme could mitigate
the impact of these critiques. George Lindbeck accuses Rahner of building his theology on a
foundation of common human experience, thereby flattening the particular forms of life that
constitute the diverse actualities of religion.56 A common ‘transcendental’ experience is the
foundation from which specifically Christian, i.e. ‘categorical’, experience is understood.
Similarly, Johann Baptist Metz argues that Rahner ahistoricizes Christianity by his
transcendental method, giving Christianity a ‘transcendental omnipresence’.57 This
transcendental omnipresence obviates the need for Christians to ‘run the race’ of seeking
justice and loving mercy because the church is ‘always already’ there. John Milbank argues
that Rahner is unsuccessful at banishing an extrinsic view of grace. Because Rahner maintains
a formal reality for pure nature, he ends up repeating the two-tiered metaphysics of neo-
scholasticism. Rahner’s metaphysics of subjectivity, according to Milbank, leaves Christian
revelation as simply making explicit a pre-existing orientation toward transcendence which is
not itself grace. Thus, Rahner ‘naturalizes the supernatural’, that is, he makes the supernatural
merely the explication of a natural orientation already present. Therefore,
the historical events, the human acts and images which can alone be the site of
supernatural difference, are here reduced to mere signs of a perfect inward self-
transcendence, always humanly available.58
Though every critic has their distinctive concerns, the common consequence of these perceived
weaknesses is that Rahner’s ontology overruns or overlooks concrete human existence. The
Rahner’s Theology: A Theology of the Symbol” (PhD diss., Fordham University, 1976); For Joseph Wong
Christology is central and symbology central to Christology: Joseph Wong, Logos-Symbol in the Christology of
Karl Rahner (Rome: Libreria Ateneo Salesiano, 1984).
56
George Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Doctrine in a Postliberal Age (Philadelphia:
Westminster Press, 1984), 24, 31.
57
Johann Baptiste Metz, Faith in History and Society, trans. David Smith (New York: Seabury Press, 1980),
161.
58
John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, 2nd edn (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 224.
40
particular is drowned in a tide of foundationalism, transcendental methodology and extrinsic
grace.
Rahner is not without fault in relation to these criticisms. His style and method certainly
lend themselves to the sense that he proceeds ahistorically, moving from general ontology
toward Christian particularity. Even his ‘Theology of the Symbol’ begins with a general
ontological analysis and only then acknowledges that he is actually developing a christological
ontology. His method and his insistence on a formal category of pure nature make the criticisms
seem warranted. But a more consistent symbolism could have at least blunted the consequences
these critics see in those moves. In Rahner’s symbolic ontology, being only is as it represents
itself outwardly. In response to Lindbeck, Rahner could say that the Incarnation, in which the
humanity of this person, Jesus, is revealed to be the non-arbitrary symbol of the Father,
guarantees the irreducible value and particularity of every human. The incarnational symbol
here is not an arbitrary ‘any’ human, or a vague anthropological principle. It is the expression
of God’s nature in time, revealing all individual human natures to be derivative symbols of the
divine. Thereafter, every particular can be seen as a symbol of God only in its particularity.
There is no such thing as a general symbol. For Metz, Rahner could respond that symbolizing
the divine is not an absolute given – it requires active participation in becoming. So the race is
not already run. Rather, God has revealed in the incarnation that only in the running of each
particular race is the symbol revealed to signify its creator.
This suggests a partial response to Milbank. If Rahner is guilty of maintaining extrinsic
grace and therefore, as Milbank puts it, ‘naturalizing the supernatural’, it is also true, for Rahner
as for de Lubac, that symbolism flows in the opposite direction. Symbolism supernaturalizes
the natural by making concrete human existence the site of divine signification. This
signification is an intrinsic signification, otherwise the symbol would be arbitrary. We could
further ask the question whether it is pure nature or graced nature that symbolizes the divine.
Rahner is clear that symbolic reality is concrete reality, and since pure nature never in fact
exists, it is graced human nature that symbolizes the divine. This is obvious since for Rahner
grace is the gift of God himself, so to make God present as his symbol is to have already
received the gift of God’s self. So all the granular details of human existence become potential
sites of supernatural difference. Alleged extrinsicism in regard to grace can be mitigated by
intrinsicism in regard to the symbol.
This does not solve the disagreement with Milbank, since Rahner retains a “remainder
concept” of pure nature to secure the gratuity of grace. Milbank locates the gratuity of grace in
41
the act of creation ex nihilo and sees the notion of pure nature as unnecessary and dangerous.59
For my part, I agree with Milbank about the risky superfluity of a theoretically pure nature,
since that would seem to imply a human nature that was not already, at least inchoately, a
symbol of the divine. Rahner’s symbolism does not solve this disagreement with Milbank or
the inheritors of de Lubac’s Surnaturel thesis.60 What I am suggesting is that Rahner’s
intrincism in regard to the symbol mitigates the consequences risked by his metaphysics. The
case is the same for postliberal, liberationist and intrinsicist critiques: Rahner’s theology of the
symbol could help him avoid departicularizing and dehistoricizing the human experience of
the divine.
But these are responses we must supply. The conceptual tools to blunt these critiques
are there, but Rahner has not made the most of them. The symbolic nature of reality is certainly
‘there’ in his theology, but had he applied his ontological symbolism more ubiquitously, he
could have escaped at least some of his later critics. Rahner himself expresses the
incompleteness of his theology of the symbol and points toward needed development.61 Yet
Rahner does not quite reclaim the ubiquity of symbolic theology. Nonetheless, Rahner’s
account is expansive and suggestive and deserves to be engaged. Where Augustine ascends the
chain of symbolic inclusions from the temporal to the eternal, Rahner descends from divine
life, down through Christology into the entire created order, developing with extraordinary
clarity a christological and thereby symbolic ontology.
3.5 The Vanishing Ghost

Yet the account of symbols I have offered so far, for all its expansive possibilities, is
significantly aporetic, for it fails to make the Spirit necessary for the symbol-symbolized
relation. For Rahner, the symbolized only is inasmuch as it is self-symbolized in the symbol:
being is self-realizing. But this way of stating it risks leaving little if any “necessity” or
“rationale” for the Spirit. The Spirit becomes quite literally an afterthought – thought only after
the primal differentiated unity between Father and Son has been established. It then becomes
difficult to see why the Spirit is necessary to the already established symbol-symbolized
relation, and if unnecessary, how the Spirit is not simply an arbitrary datum of Christian faith.62
If the theology of the symbol is “the basic structure of all Christianity,” then the question of
59
Milbank, Theology, 220-222.
60
Milbank’s position should be distinguished from de Lubac’s, since de Lubac is prepared to allow a minimal
role for hypothetical pure nature.
61
Rahner, “Symbol”, 242-243.
62
This is the problem posed by Milbank, Strange, 171-193.
42
the relation of the Spirit to the symbol-symbolized dyad becomes all the more pressing. Is the
Spirit not essential to the basic structure of Christianity? It should be impossible to give an
account of the basic structure of Christianity without accounting for the Spirit. How might we
account for the Spirit in a way that neither reduces it to a datum of faith to be fideistically
affirmed nor to a sub-personal union between symbol and symbolized? It will not do to say
that I have been developing a Christology, and thereby excuse myself for neglecting the Spirit,
for, again, to establish a relation between Father and Son independent of a pneumatology is
already to relegate the Spirit to an after-thought, crippling the entire trinitarian program from
the outset.63
In fact, embedded in the contours of the discussion so far are the tools to “see” the
Spirit. The structures of symbolic presence demand a third term: a closer look at the play of
symbolized and symbol in the sacraments will reveal this ineludible third person. To discern
the shape of that person we turn to Henri de Lubac. De Lubac is of course not the ressourcement
theologian known for pneumatology. That title certainly belongs to Yves Congar. Yet de
Lubac’s theology of the sacraments, those archetypal signs and things, reveals a significant
pneumatological character. Engaging him rather than Congar’s more direct discussions of the
Spirit allows me to stay within the arc of an Augustinian theology of “signs and things.”
Between symbolized and symbol is symbolism, the necessary and irreducible movement of the
Holy Spirit. Yet de Lubac fails to fully extract the pneumatological implications of his own
thought. There is some digging left to be done.
4. DE LUBAC’S SACRAMENTAL PNEUMATOLOGY

If Karl Rahner develops the symbolized-symbol relation, I will argue that de Lubac gives us
symbolism – the union of symbolized and symbol, the eternal Holy Spirit and the creaturely
act of interpretation. Symbolism, as we will see, is the union of symbolized and symbol, the
life of the symbolized-symbol relation. In every place de Lubac speaks of this dynamic it is
obvious that it can only be the Holy Spirit. Nevertheless, de Lubac rarely makes the connection.
The systematic possibilities of this remain a road untaken. What follows is an attempt to take
a few steps down that road. Symbolism is the Spirit and, analogically, the spiritual life,
including those spheres so dear to de Lubac: spiritual theology, spiritual exegesis, and the
human spirit as such. In what follow I reason with de Lubac from the sacraments toward the
63
This is a problem endemic to Christologies, even ones by otherwise careful authors; Rowan Williams' Christ
the Heart of Creation, for example, barely mentions the role the Spirit might play in Christology.
43
Spirit. The relation between two words in particular, “mystery” and “sacrament” point toward
a pneumatology of the symbol.
4.1 Desire
The word “mystery” takes us right to the heart of de Lubac’s concept of symbolism. Generally
speaking, de Lubac argues, mystery and sacrament are used interchangeably in patristic
theology. Often enough, an author will substitute one word for the other just to avoid verbal
repetition.64 Yet de Lubac discerns three basic nuances between the two terms. First, a mystery
is often that which is hidden beneath the sacrament, which is to say, the symbolized contained
within the symbol:
The sacramentum would therefore play the role of container, or envelope, with regard
to the mysterium hidden within it. In this way, according to Paschasius Radbertus, the
purple cloak in which the soldiers clothed Jesus is the mystery of which the scarlet
thread of Rahab was the sign. The ordained series of the different sacramenta leads us
as if by so many stages right to the ultimate mysteries, which are no longer sacraments
at all: the ‘mysteries of the Godhead.’65
So far this is nothing more than the Augustinian sense of signs and things outlined above. Signs
spiral upward to their ultimate source in God; signs are the pedagogy of eternity, and
sacraments are those special signs that orient the pilgrim’s use of all other signs, leading the
learner upward.66
But the word mystery draws out an often-unnoticed function of symbols: that they also
conceal.67 The point of this concealing is multifaceted. On one hand there is the basic fact that
none can see God and live: God adapts godself to temporal signs so that the divine presence
can be mediated to us without our annihilation. Symbols conceal God’s glory. The second
reason is connected to the first, namely, that struggling through symbols to discover things
produces the humility necessary for the vision of God. The journey to eternal vision is a journey
through symbols, and gaining that final vision is requisite upon acquiring the virtues developed
in the arduous processes of learning to read. Hiddenness in symbols accomplishes this.
64
De Lubac, Corpus, 45, 49. Jerome translates the Greek mysterion as sacramentum in Ephesians 5:32.
65
De Lubac, Corpus, 47. Citing numerous examples including Ambrose (PL, 15, 1605 B, 1663 C, 1770 A).
66
The connection between the sign-value of all things and the specific signification of sacraments is discussed
by Augustine. Our inability to read the signs of creation owing to the fall necessitated an entire sacramental
framework to teach us to read again. doctr., 3.22-32 (Green: 72-75).
67
Neither Markus nor Deely recognize this.
44
But symbols also conceal for the joy of discovering things hidden in symbols.
Concealment gives rise to the desire for revelation and the delight of discovery. Augustine
offers the example of hearing straightforwardly of how saints, originally living in sin, are born
again by the Spirit in the waters of baptism to love God and neighbor. How much more joyous
is it, he asks, to learn this lesson by way of a mystical exegesis of Song of Songs 4:2, where
the beloved is the church whose “teeth” tear people away from sin, baptizing them like “ewes”
coming from washing, who bear the “twins” of love of God and neighbor?68 What is enjoyable
about learning through signs is the erotic pull and fulfillment of desire. Because our growth in
virtue requires, for Augustine, the realignment of our desires, God speaks to us through
mysteries hidden in signs as a lover playfully teasing the beloved into deeper intimacy. The
concealing work of signs releases the power of eros: it is the erotic pull of a faintly perceived
yet hidden presence. In de Lubac’s words, “the mystery is itself radiant with a secret
intelligibility.”69 The play of hiddenness and manifestation between signs and things calls forth
desire; sacraments conceal mysteries that desire might have its day.
This whole dynamic is closely associated with Augustine’s pneumatology. Indeed,
Augustine finds it to be an apt analogy for the Spirit. In de Trinitate IX.18, Augustine asks why
the Spirit – love, in his triad memory-understanding-love/will – is not begotten. He appeals to
the processes of learning. Obtaining knowledge, Augustine’s analogy for the begetting of the
Word, is preceded by inquisitiveness, a desire to know. Knowledge is therefore begotten by
both the mind and the mind’s desire for knowledge. Once knowledge is realized, desire to know
becomes love of what is known, so that desire and love “are something of the same kind.”70
Desire, then, is a kind of down payment, a “deposit guaranteeing an inheritance” in love.
Desire-love is the dynamic in which knowledge is born. It is therefore improper to say that the
love of knowledge is begotten alongside knowledge, for knowledge is begotten in desire, which
is an anticipatory participation in love. This, Augustine argues, is an analogy for why the Spirit
is not begotten: as the desire/love between Father and Son, the generation of the Son occurs in
the Spirit.71 This is an important clarification in Augustine’s trinitarian theology. His
affirmation of the filioque has been held up as evidence that the Spirit is really just an
afterthought for him – thought after the initial unity of Father and Son. On the contrary, that
the Spirit is of the Father and the Son does not mean the Spirit is parasitic upon a prior unity,
68
Augustine, doctr., 2.10-15 (Green: 32-33).
69
70
Augustine, De trin. 9.18.
71
Cf. Lewis Ayres, Augustine and the Trinity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 265-266.
45
for the Spirit is that unity. The Spirit is the desire in which the Son is begotten and the love the
Son returns to the Father, and is thus, paradoxically “pre-present” in the filiation by which it is
spirated.
To say that the Son is begotten in the Spirit does not suggest that the Son has a relation
of origin to the Spirit. To say that the Spirit is active on “both sides” of filiation – desire of
Father, love of Son – is not to say that the Spirit has no relation of origin to the Son. The Son,
as Aquinas would later argue, is the subsistent relation of Son from Father and only the
Father.72 The Spirit, then, is the subsistent relation of the Father by the Son. But this does not
make the Spirit superfluous to the Father and Son, for to use any of the classical terms for Spirit
– desire, gift, unity, love – is to suggest that “the Father and Son can only be Father and Son in
the act of spiration.”73 This means that while the Spirit proceed from the Father per filioque,
the Spirit is paradoxically necessary to the Father-Son relation.
We can see this pneumatological paradox in the created order in the natural desire for
the supernatural.74 For de Lubac, following a reading of Thomas in line with Patristic tradition,
humans have a natural desire for the vision of God. However, in spite of being a natural desire,
the desire can only be fulfilled by grace. From a neo-Scholastic perspective, this is seen as
problematic, for a natural desire, according to the Aristotelian principle of proportionality, must
be naturally attainable. A natural desire that can only be fulfilled by grace is simply a
contradiction.75 But de Lubac is convinced, and his reading of tradition on this is convincing,
that humans are not subject to the law of proportionality in this way, that humans are
constituted by a paradoxical natural desire for the supernatural. I will expound on this in chapter
three, but here I want to point out this paradox has an eternal precedent in the Spirit. The
desiderium naturale and its fulfillment in grace is the Spirit both “before” and “after,” a kind
of “pre-participation” and an active participation in grace. Desire is an anticipatory
participation in the fullness of love, and because it is a symbolic inclusion and not a dialectical
contrast, it is at once fully natural and fully supernatural.
This “pre-participatory” dynamic can be clarified by returning to Augustine’s signs and
things. The hiddenness of a mystery beneath a sign is not an absolute opacity. If it were, it
would not be enticing, for we would have no way of recognizing or pre-apprehending its
intrinsic desirability or even recognizing the symbol as a symbol. Only if we have some down-
72
Aquinas, ST 1a.36.3.
73
Milbank, Strange, 173.
74
Henri de Lubac, Surnaturel, 488 and elsewhere.
75
Cf. Lawrence Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God according to St Thomas Aquinas and His Interpreters
(Naples, Florida: Sapientia Press, 2010), xxix.
46
payment or deposit in the eternal goodness of God can we recognize its goodness as such. Only
if we already participate in the Spirit can we desire the Spirit. In other words grace must be
erotic. It must elicit a desire that is not purely elicited, but naturally embedded in the human
spirit. It is this very desire, de Lubac argues, that makes the human spiritual.76 And human
spirituality, the natural desire for the supernatural, is a finite participation in eternal
“spirituality,” the desire and love of Father for Son and Son for Father moving for all eternity
in a dance of eros and fulfillment. This should not be surprising. If the Spirit is the unity of
Father and Son, then the Spirit’s work in time is to unite us to God – a union anticipated by
erotic desire, fulfilled in love, and through and through a work of the Spirit. The natural desire
for the supernatural will be discussed in more detail in chapter three. For now the point is that
sacramental mysteries conceal in order to provoke desire, and that desire is a natural and
supernatural participation in eternal spiration.
But there is more to be said about the Spirit as desire. The language of desire is the
language of difference. In the grammar of symbols, desire arises in the concealment of the
symbolized in the symbol, which is only possible on the basis of the difference between them.
A symbol cannot simply be the symbolized, otherwise it would not be a symbol. If symbols
did not conceal, they would simply be identical to the things they symbolize. But what might
this constellation of terms – “desire,” “concealment,” “difference” – involve when speaking of
the Trinity? We should be careful not to indulge too deeply in curiositas, but the question
cannot be avoided. Von Balthasar’s reflections on Holy Saturday and divine difference are
perhaps the most obvious place to turn. There is much to retain here, especially his insistence
that the difference between the Father and Son is the ground of the possibility of creation as
what is analogically different. Unfortunately, as Karen Kilby points out, for Balthasar the gift
from the Father to the Son involves something like the risk of loss, and in the infinite distance
between Father and Son lies the possibility of sin.77 In consequence, Holy Saturday risks
becoming, in John Milbank’s words, “an abandonment of the metaphysics of cosmic harmony
in favor of a gnostic hypostasization of the violence of the cross.”78 By seeing an abyss in the
difference between Father and Son, Balthasar founds the possibility of sin in the godhead, and
hints at “the shadow of rupture between the Father and the Son.”79 We must, with Balthasar,
76
Cf. De Lubac, Surnaturel, 484.
77
Cf. Karen Kilby, “Hans Urs von Balthasar on the Trinity” in The Cambridge Companion to Hans Urs von
Balthasar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 211.
78
79
Milbank, Suspended, 80. See, for instance, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Mysterium Paschale (San Francisco:
Ignatius, 1990), preface, Kindle Loc. 66, and elsewhere. Hereafter, MP. Due to Coronavirus restrictions, I was
47
speak of the eternal value of the difference between Father and Son – a difference which will
become especially important in the next chapter on creation. But unlike Balthasar, we must
ground this difference in a logic of symbols, not a logic of distance. I will expound this in more
detail in the conclusion, but to anticipate, Balthasar speaks of the Spirit as sustaining the unity-
in-difference between Father and Son as love and desire. If this is already provided by the
Spirit, why does he need an “abyss” between Father and Son to sustain their loving difference?
I will argue in the conclusion that Balthasar has all he needs in the Spirit without positing an
infinite abyss between the persons. In this way, divine difference is in the Spirit, the first place
as desire, in the second as love. The Father already loves the Son in his desire, which is to say
he knows the Son and the Son’s return gift even in his begetting of the Son. This is why the
Spirit must be fully personal and not some quasi-personal go-between. Otherwise, the distance
between God and God would be an empty space. On the contrary, the distance between God
and God is God, the fully personal Holy Spirit, in whom the Father begets the Son.
4.2 Gift
The desire consequent upon concealment leads to the second nuance de Lubac
discovers between mysteries and sacraments. A mystery is often more of an act or
accomplishment than a static reality: “while the sacramentum is ‘confected’, carried, deposed,
kept, divided, broken, distributed, received, absorbed, eaten and drunk, the mysterium itself is
‘done’, worked, celebrated, offered, completed, interrupted, re-started, frequented.”80 In this
sense the mystery is not only the thing the sacrament conceals, but the dynamic making of the
sacrament. A mystery is a sacrament enacted, a sacrament accomplished. In accomplishing the
sacrament, the mystery makes the sacrament sacramental. And so we “adore the sacrament,”
but we “celebrate the mysteries.”81 In this case, the host is made the body of Christ by the
transubstantiating mystery. It is this motion, this dynamic “making” of the sacrament, that is
the mystery.
The direction of the trinitarian taxis is key here. Recall that for Augustine’s trinitarian
theology and Rahner’s theology of the symbol, the symbolized maintains a “processional
priority.” The symbol proceeds from the symbolized. So in sacramental terms, the sacrament
is made a sacrament by the mystery. But in trinitarian terms, this “making” cannot be a kind of
not able to obtain a physical copy of this book and have relied on the Kindle edition. I have cited the chapter
number and Kindle location to aid referencing.
80
81
48
creation ex nihilo of the Son. To avoid any hint of subordinationism, it must be the complete
self-donation of the Father to the Son, so that the Son is entirely from the Father and of the
Father’s own Spirit. For Augustine, this self-constituting self-donation is the fully personal
Holy Spirit.
The Spirit is the “active agent of unity”82 between Father and Son. The union of Father
and Son, while made under the arche of the Father, is accomplished in the Spirit. The full and
active personhood of the Spirit is irreducibly important – and in no way diminished by being
“of the Father and of the Son” – in a trinitarian symbolism. This is made clear again in the
ways the Spirit is active in the generation of the Son. When the Father begets the Son, he does
so by donating his entire Spirit to the Son. This donation, this gift of self, is constitutive of
filiation, so that it is in the giving of the Spirit that the Son is begotten.83 The Spirit is therefore
properly called gift. The Son returns the gift of love to the Father, a love that is the Son’s entire
being, and most properly called the Spirit. So the Spirit, in being of the Father and of the Son,
both gift and love, sits on both sides of filiation – “constituting” the symbol as a symbol of the
Father who alone is arche. If the Spirit as desire indicates the difference between Father and
Son, the constituting Spirit-as-gift is the realization of the presence of the Father in the Son.
Here, then, is another symbolic inclusion. The sacrament is accomplished, as filiation
is “accomplished,” in the Spirit. Sacraments come alive – become sacraments – in the Spirit
who, as the eternal and active agent of unity and love, accomplishes the presence of the
symbolized in the symbol. What “makes” the sacrament a sacrament is the self-giving of the
mystery. The mystery gives itself to the sacrament, becoming truly present within it. This act
of donation is what constitutes both the mystery as a mystery in relation to a sacrament, and
the sacrament as a sacrament. Without the donation, the mystery would not be a sacramental
mystery, just an unknown and unknowable fact, which, from a human perspective, might as
well not exist. The sacrament would then not be a sacrament, just some base material that may
or may not bear metaphorical similarity to the mystery. The gift of the mystery to the sacrament
establishes both in a mutual relationship. When de Lubac draws our attention to the activating
sense of the word mystery, he draws us into the realm of the Spirit. The Spirit is the activating
gift of real presence.
4.3 Unity
82
83
49
This active sense of mystery immediately implies the third nuance de Lubac discovers
between sacraments and mysteries. If a mystery is the accomplishment of a sacrament, then it
necessarily includes both sacrament and that which is symbolized by the sacrament: it is the
nuptial union between the two. The word “mystery” “focuses less on the apparent sign, or
rather the hidden reality, than on both at the same time: on their mutual relationship, union and
implications, on the way in which one passes into the other, or is penetrated by the other.”84 A
mystery, in this sense, is the penetration of the symbol by the symbolized, the “transfer of
attributes,” the “communication of idioms” between them.85 Both symbol and symbolized are
implicated in the mystery, for a mystery is the union of the two. In the eucharist, the presence
of Christ in the host, the union of his body with the eucharistic body is the mystery – the way
the one and the other come together in a differentiated unity.
Once again, de Lubac’s account of mystery leads us into the realm of the Spirit. As the
union between Father and Son, the Spirit is fully of them both. The Spirit is the Spirit of the
Father and the Spirit of the Son, the replete gift of the Father and the replete love the Son,
establishing the Trinity as a union-in-distinction. The Spirit is the original symbolic inclusion,
the fully personal and active agent of unity in whom all symbols are joined to the symbolized.
In Lewis Ayres’s words: “the Spirit gives himself as the Father’s gift and as the Son’s gift.
Father and Son are one because the Spirit gives himself in the begetting of the Son and gives
himself as the Son’s love for the Father.”86 And here the trinitarian paradox comes into its own:
the Spirit is wholly internal to both Father and Son and yet wholly personal and hypostatic.
Here in Spiration we have the eternal movement in which every other symbolic inclusion is a
participatory refraction.
4.4 Roads Untaken

The irony is that de Lubac seems oblivious to the pneumatological implications of this
sacramentology. His concern is sacramentality as such, the dynamics of presence, and, most
importantly, the “spirit” of the fathers, the animating mode of their theological discourse. And
these three nuances recover just that. While there is a touch of equivocity in these uses of the
word mystery, it is not a sheer difference. De Lubac has in fact unearthed three irreducible
requirements of a systematic theology of symbolism. The entire conceptual framework in
which signs and things, sacraments and mysteries function require these nuances of meaning.
84
85
86
Ayres, Augustine, 254. Emphasis mine.
50
(1) Without the concealing work of signs, the symbol-symbolized relation risks falling into an
undifferentiated identity in which the sign simply is the thing. If symbols did not conceal and
reveal, there would be no distinction between symbol and symbolized, and no room for the
movement of eros in between. (2) Without the actualizing movement of the Spirit, signs would
lose all organic and living links to things, being reduced to either brute facts of revelation or
clever metaphors; the former resulting in sacramental fideism, the latter in Zwinglianism. And
(3) if a mystery is not the coinherence of symbol and symbolized, their mutual union and
exchange of idioms, then the entire landscape of symbolic inclusions collapses for want of an
eternal source and abiding rationale. It is the Spirit as fully-personal unity who overcomes all
apparent dialectical antitheses. Without this final nuance, any hope of a sacramental or
symbolic ontology is lost; the dissolutions of modernity win the day.
In trinitarian terms, each of these nuances necessitates the Spirit. Whether the eros of
the Father and Son, the self-gift of the Father to the Son, or the unity of Father and Son, the
entire construct breathes the life of the Spirit. Without the Spirit, in other words, it would be
impossible to distinguish Father from Son, see the Father in the Son, or know the Father and
Son together as one. Only the Spirit fully and finally banishes the specter of the arbitrary from
a trinitarian theology of signs and things, for only the Spirit can secure a link between Father
and Son that distinguishes and unites and is entirely intrinsic to both.
But these are implications we must draw. The fact that all three of these nuances can
be mined from patristic usage of a single word underscores the extent to which their thought,
never fully systematized, turned upon a pneumatological logic. De Lubac has indeed uncovered
the patristic vision. The word mystery is simply the focal point of a systematic theology built
on the axiom “unify to distinguish.” It’s three nuances are necessary facets of what unity-in-
distinction requires. And that living unity-in-distinction is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, in
other words, is the eternal source in which all symbolic inclusions participate. The “spirit of
the Fathers,” it turns out, is the Holy Spirit, which must be the most obvious statement de Lubac
never wrote.
4.5 The Slant of Light

And this finally returns us to Augustine’s tripartite definition of signs and things. Signs reveal
something to someone. Signification terminates in interpretation, so that the third term forms
the consummate moment in every act of communication. This interpretive moment, I want to
suggest, is eternally the Holy Spirit, who unites symbolized and symbol in an overflowing act
of interpretation. De Lubac hints at this possibility in his theology of Scripture.
51
For de Lubac, scripture is the “distending” through time of the Word spoken eternally
in the heart of the Father:
‘Semel locutus est Deus: God has spoken once: God pronounces only one word
[Parole], not only in himself, in his unchanging eternity, in the immovable act by which
he engenders his Word [Verbe], as Saint Augustine recalled, but also, just as Saint
Ambrose already taught, in time, and among human beings, in the act by which he sent
his Word to dwell in our earth87
The one Word of the Father is the word spoken in the pages of scripture. The Incarnation
reveals this identity:
A twofold recapitulation, that of the Word [Parole] eternally pronounced in the breast
of the Father and that of the Word addressed to men in the sequence of the ages, the
first being there to permit the second, and the second also to reveal the first.88
And just as the Word is spoken in eternity in the desire, gift and unity of the Spirit, so the Word
is spoken in the Old Testament in the Spirit:
what was given in the Old Testament ‘was under another form, but it was already under
the action of the same Spirit. The Word of God had been truly sent to them, just as it
was to be truly sent to Mary, and God has no other word [parole] than his Word [Verbe],
his only Son.89
As the Logos is joined to the Father in the Spirit, so the Logos is joined to humanity in the
womb of Mary in the Spirit. In the same way, the Spirit incarnates the Word in the Old
Testament, so that Christ is everywhere the “Spirit” of the letter. Thereafter, reading the Old
Testament will be a matter of spiritual exegesis. Reading in the Spirit, then, will be a matter of
desire becoming love in the discovery of the eternal Word, receiving the gift of God’s presence
in the sacrament of his Word, and uniting all disparate symbols to that which they symbolize:
Christ, the Symbol of the Father. All the nuances mined in the previous section come to bear
in spiritual exegesis.
The union of the Word in eternity and time establishes the possibility of spiritual
exegesis, for recognizing and “reading the word” is the work proper to the Spirit. The meaning
of the text is secured by the Spirit, for the Spirit unites scriptural symbol with eternal
symbolized:
87
Henri de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, vol. III (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 142.
88
De Lubac, ME III, 142.
89
52
The words of the revelation uncover their unity by accepting their final sense in the
Spirit. By that very fact, they receive their final permanence. Indeed, just as the
eternally uttered Word [Parole] is unique, so now is its human hearing, for time and
eternity are joined in the Word made flesh.90
But spiritual exegesis expands beyond the book of Scripture, so that the entire book of
nature becomes a site of divine signification. Recall that all signification is from, through, and
to Christ; now we are in a position to specify that the final referent of all symbols is only known
under the action of the Holy Spirit. If the Spirit is the union of Symbolized and Symbol, then
uniting symbolized and symbol in creaturely understanding is a kind of spiritual interpretation.
Ascending through symbolic inclusions requires learning to interpret symbols, or, in
Augustine’s terms, to refer all signs to the ultimate res. All things symbolize God, and learning
to read God in all things is the work of spiritual exegesis.
But creaturely symbols are entirely inadequate to the divine symbolized, and so there
is always a surplus of meaning. And this immediately calls into question our ability to
exhaustively map creaturely symbols onto the divine. God’s infinite nature means that when
creatures symbolize God, they do so in indeterminate and multivalent ways. Every symbol
admits of multiple “readings,” a pattern exemplified in the fourfold interpretation of scripture.
Divine abundance forbids any rigid taxonomy of symbols, so that any given event in scripture
(roughly, the literal sense) might correspond in various ways to Christ and his Church (the
analogical sense), to moral living (the tropological sense) and eschatological promise (the
anagogical sense). The movement between these categories is persistently more aesthetic than
discursive. The infinite perfection of God ensures that uniting creaturely symbols to
Symbolized requires aesthetic judgments of fittingness.
If spiritual exegesis is an aesthetic discipline, it is not thereby un-rational. The mystery
of God does not silence reason; it entices it higher. For de Lubac as for Augustine, reason is
always already circumscribed in mystery and thus always mystical: “the more mystery there
is, the more reason.”91 This aesthetic mysticism takes the form of right living, so that reading
the symbols is the process of becoming a truthful symbol. Spiritual exegesis is not forming
noetic or conceptual comparisons between God and the World; it is participating in the
perfections of God in the pluriform contexts of life in time.92 Spiritual interpretation is lived
interpretation. So finite participation in the work of the Spirit is an aesthetic, mystical (which
90
91
92
Cf. Milbank, Strange, Ch. 1.
53
symbolically includes rational) and ethical interpretive endeavor, for it is nothing other than to
know and understand the Word, spoken from all eternity, in all the contingent moments of
human existence. It is an ascent – aesthetic, mystical, ethical – through spiraling symbolic
inclusions into the life of God.
When de Lubac advocates Augustine’s “signs and things” as the framework for
overcoming all the dissolutions of modernity, he is advocating a return to the Spirit, a
pneumatology of symbolic inclusions. As the Spirit is of the Father and the Son, so semiotics
might be semiotic and Christological, Christ might be divine and human, reason might be
rational and mystical, and on and on. In every symbolic inclusion the symbol is united to the
symbolized in an analogical “non-identical repetition.”93 Any movement from a creaturely
paradox to a divine one, from a structure in creation to a “structure” in God, in short, any ascent
from symbol to symbolized is a movement in the Spirit. For the Spirit is symbolism.
4.6 Denigrating the Spirit?

Does this pneumatology denigrate the Spirit? Is it not problematic to make the Spirit something
between the other two? I do not think so. Rather, in conceiving the Spirit as desire/love, gift
and unity, Augustine elevates those terms to the level of hypostasis. The fact that our culture
finds union or desire or gift to be less “personal” says more about our own failure than
Augustine’s. The proper upshot of an Augustinian pneumatology is that desire, love, gift, and
union are all equally important to (and indeed co-constitutive of) word, reason and origin. That
we have historically elevated one over the other is no indictment of Augustine. For the word,
power and reason of God can only arise in love, gift and unity. To call the Spirit these things
is not to denigrate the Spirit, but to elevate the mode of existence that draws together the life
of symbols as lives worth living. Recognizing this would go a long way toward better
understanding Augustine, to say nothing of the apostle Paul.
5. CONCLUSION
Augustine offers us a vision of theology in which we ascend through symbols to the eternal
life of God. He accomplishes this by dramatically expanding the scope of the sign-thing
relation, so that all things are a sign of their creator. But this sign is not a mere pointer, for it
contains the “ontological trace,” and thus the presence of the signified. I use the term symbol
to mark this difference: a symbol is a sign that mediates presence. For Augustine, the
93
Cf. Catherine Pickstock, After Writing (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 25.
54
incarnation renders all creation a symbol, it reveals the presence of Christ at the heart of
everything that is. Our pilgrimage toward the heavenly city is one of learning to read these
symbols and refer them to their divine res. That process is intended to shape our own inner
words in right love, that we might know and love God rightly. In the end, all our inner words
and loves will be perfected in the immediate presence of the first Word and first love: we will
know God even as we are known. And this, Augustine thinks, is where an ascent through signs
leads us. From Christ the creator, through Christ the redeemer, to the triune life of God: the
Father who speaks an inner Word in Love, Father-Son-Spirit. The inner Word of the Father is
the symbol of the Father, the sign that bears the fullness of the Father’s being. Unlike created
symbols, the eternal Word and the Father are one, there is no hiatus between Father and Son.
The Spirit, then, is the active agent of love and unity of Father and Son. The Spirit is fully
personal, and yet mutually internal to both Father and Son, and so “paradoxically pre-present”
in the generation of the Son. Thus, Augustine’s Father-Son-Spirit could be described as
symbolized-symbol-symbolism.
This trinitarian account of the symbols is developed by Karl Rahner’s theology of the
symbol. Where Augustine moves from temporal signs to heavenly reality, Rahner moves from
heavenly reality down through the chain of symbolic inclusions. The Father is symbolized in
the Son, divinity in the humanity of Jesus, substance in accident, soul in body, Christ in his
sacred heart. This analogy of symbols, or great chain of symbols, opens the possibility of
describing all things according to a symbolic logic. It moves us toward an ontology of the
symbol founded upon the relation of Father and Son.
Henri de Lubac’s sacramental pneumatology closes the circuit. While de Lubac does
not draw the connections clearly, his sacramentology foregrounds the Spirit. The Spirit is the
desire of Father for Son and love of Son for Father, maintaining the distinction between Father
and Son. The Spirit is the active gift of the Father and the Son, the one in whom the presence
of the Father in the Son is established. And the Spirit is the union of Father and Son, the active
and personal agent of divine unity and love. While filling out an account of the Spirit, it also
points the way toward understanding more deeply how symbols function. There must be a
dynamic movement between symbol and symbolized, a gift of presence donated from
symbolized to symbol, and received and returned in love. The unity of symbolized and symbol
is not a static thing, but a constant movement, a real presence. This pneumatology will have
significant consequences in future chapters for our understanding of created symbols. The
Spirit is symbolism, the personal movement of love, gift and unity between Father and Son.
55
All of this finally yields the triad, symbolized-symbol-symbolism as an apt analogy for Father-
Son-Spirit.
This triad offers a number of benefits. It draws together a number of themes in
trinitarian theology in a useful shorthand. It marks the Father as the hidden source: hidden
because only ever known in the Son, and source as the overflowing fount of divinity. It
indicates the nature of the Son as begotten Word, consubstantial with and yet nonidentical to
the Father, avoiding both an Arian diminution of the Son and a modalist flattening of difference
between Son and Father. It indicates the irreducibility of the Spirit, the Spirit’s paradoxical
“pre-presence” in the begetting of the Son, and the Spirit’s mutual internality to both Father
and Son.
If this triad draws together a number of helpful themes in understanding the Trinity, it
performs an enormous amount of work in understanding triune action in time. Because God’s
being and God’s act are one, the relations of the Trinity structure the shape of God’s works,
most especially creation and redemption. In what follows I argue that the triad symbolized-
symbol-symbolism corresponds, analogically, to God-creation-church. Like Father to Son,
God is the hidden source of creation who can only be known through created symbols. As
Augustine and Thomas both argue, creation is spoken in the speaking of the Word, and this
makes creation the “unfolding” of the Logos through time. Creation is thus a participation in
the Son as a symbol of God. This is by no means to suggest that creation just is the Son, only
that it exists by participation in the relation of Son to Father.94 The church, then, is the union
of God with creation, symbol with symbolized, and is thus symbolism, a finite participation in
the work of the Spirit. At each stage, the structure of relations I have named from the Trinity
unlocks the hidden structures of reality: the ontological trace of God’s presence in the world. I
turn now to creation, the temporal symbol of this eternal Trinity.
94
There are pneumatological dimensions to creation as well, but that will be unfolded in the next chapter.
56
CHAPTER TWO
CREATION: SYMBOL OF GOD
There are two reasons why the knowledge of the divine persons was necessary for us. It was
necessary for the right idea of creation…In another way, and chiefly, that we may think
rightly concerning the salvation of the human race.1
-St. Thomas Aquinas
1. INTRODUCTION
In the previous chapter I sketched a view of trinitarian theology that, following de Lubac, I call
symbolism. It arises from an Augustinian account of the Son as the inner Word of the Father,
and the Spirit as the union or love between them. I summarized this account with the triad
symbolized-symbol-symbolism as a fitting analogy for Father-Son-Spirit. In formulating this
triad, I focused on Henri de Lubac’s term, “symbolic inclusion” to describe the ways various
theological topics are enfolded within this trinitarian paradigm. Symbols carry all the way
down, so that what we encounter in the world symbolizes the life of God: symbols mediate the
presence of the symbolized. This means that lower things are symbolically included in higher
things, and the Augustinian shape of theology is to ascend through the chain of symbolic
inclusions to the Trinitarian life of God.
In this chapter I turn to the doctrine of creation, but in doing this I do not leave the
doctrine of the Trinity. Indeed, more detail will be added to the discussion of the Trinity from
chapter one. This is because creation is first of all a doctrine about God, and secondly a doctrine
about creatures.2 As Thomas Aquinas says, “the processions of the divine persons are the cause
of creation,”3 therefore knowledge of the divine processions is “necessary for the right idea of
creation.”4 To know the universe we inhabit, we must know the Father, Son and Spirit.
But this is not to say that theology is an entirely top-down affair. For God is known to
us only in the created effects of temporal reality, that is, through God’s symbols. These symbols
1
St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 1a.32.1.ad 3. All quotations from Laurence Shapcote, O.P., trans.,
Latin/English Edition of the Works of St. Thomas Aquinas (Lander, Wyoming: The Aquinas Institute for the
Study of Sacred Doctrine, 2012). Hereafter, ST.
2
Cf. John Webster, “Trinity and Creation” in The International Journal of Systematic Theology 12, no. 1
(January 2010), 5.
3
ST 1a.45.6.ad 1.
4
ST 1a.32.1.ad 3.
57
have been given that we might come to know the divine through them. And so I have
formulated a second triad, symbolically included in the first. As Father-Son-Spirit can be
described as symbolized-symbol-symbolism, so can God-creation-church. The latter triad is
analogically related to the prior two. Creation is a symbol of God, God’s gift of participation
in being. The fact that we only come to know God through the material elements of life in time
follows this same symbolic logic: The Father is only known in the Son, God is only known by
creatures through created analogies. This is the heart of Thomas’s doctrine of analogy, and his
use of Augustine’s psychological analogy for the Trinity. God is present to us in creation by
analogy, and theology is disciplined reflection on the analogical symbols of God. Meditation
on the structures of life in time – not least the human mind – is not a way to furnish data for
theological science to dissect, but a means of ascent, a symbolic inclusion through which we
might glimpse God.
This account of creation as a symbol seeks to ground a doctrine of analogy in the Trinity
itself. Analogical participation in God is possible because the Son symbolizes the Father in the
Spirit; analogical participation is the creaturely correlate to intra-divine symbolism. In this
way, the shape of the Trinity is also the shape of participation in the Trinity. Only if the analogy
of being is first a doctrine about God and secondly a doctrine about the relations between God
and creation can it avoid the Barthian critique that it opens the way to a deracinated natural
theology. Symbolism is an attempt to express just such a trinitarian doctrine of analogy.
I will develop a trinitarian doctrine of creation with reference to two thirteenth century
theologians. Thomas Aquinas, as representative of a Dominican school of theology, places a
premium on the relations of the divine persons, seeing in their inner-relatedness the foundation
of a theology of creation. Duns Scotus, representative of a Franciscan strand of theology,
prioritizes the productive powers of the divine essence over the relations of the persons.5 This
prioritization of production over relation, I will argue, fractures the symbolic value of creation,
making it the product of sheer divine power irrespective of the persons. The specter of pure
nature then arises from this particular trinitarian theology, since creation finally adverts only
to the causal powers of the divine intellect and will which are formally prior to the persons:
Creation is a symbol of power, not persons, and this devolves over the centuries to two-tier
5
For an accessible and neutral overview of these two schools, see Russell Friedman, “Medieval Trinitarian
Theology from the Late Thirteenth to the Fifteenth Centuries” in The Oxford Handbook of the Trinity (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2011), 197-209. For a more aggressive account, see Catherine Pickstock, “Duns
Scotus: His Historical and Contemporary Significance”, Modern Theology 12:4 (Oct. 2005), 566.
58
theology of pure nature (under the rubric of divine power) and grace (under the rubric of the
persons).
I pursue this now common comparison between Aquinas and Scotus because it is
germane to a systematic theology of the symbol.6 A differently conceived doctrine of the
Trinity generates a different concept of creation. Once Scotus prioritizes productive power over
persons, the world is no longer a symbol of divine life, but of divine power. Scotus is only
representative in these moves – he is a part of a theological school, and by no means the only
person who holds these theological commitments. But he is this school’s most influential
thinker, and so it is helpful to focus on his theology as indicative of broader trends. In restricting
my focus to the theological question of symbolism, I hope the reader will forgive my tredding
a well-worn road. I will indicate in a few brief paragraphs the Scotist legacy in early modern
thought, because Scotus’s abandonment of symbolism was to have significant consequences
which must be named, even if every consequence was not already fully and explicitly present
in Scotus.
I will conclude with a reflection on Thomas and Scotus’s respective uses of Augustine’s
psychological analogy. When Thomas adapts Augustine’s “psychological analogy” for the
Trinity, he does so in a way broadly consistent with Augustine’s usage: a created structure that
participates in, but is not univocally attributable to, the divine life. Scotus, by contrast, follows
a general trend in medieval Franciscan theology to reify the analogy, making divine intellect
and will literally the producers of the divine persons.7 For Scotus, intellect and will are not
analogical symbols of divine life; they are the productive principles of the divine life. Aquinas,
I argue, follows Augustine in using the analogy as a means to glimpse God; Scotus uses the
analogy to prove God. In the latter case, theology ceases to be a mysticism, concerned only
with the formalities of logic irrespective of the theologian’s own analogical participation. Thus,
the decline of symbolism in theological content corresponds to a decline of symbolism in
theological method, a method in which naming God is coextensive with becoming like God,
becoming a truer symbol.
6
This kind of comparison between Scotus and Aquinas has become a common and controverted move in
contemporary theology. See Daniel Horan, Postmodernity and Univocity: A Critical Account of Radical
Orthodoxy and John Duns Scotus (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014), 3. As Horan’s subtitle demonstrates, this
critique of Scotus is commonly associated with Radical Orthodoxy, though, as he notes but fails to respond to,
the story that Scotus lies at or near the birthplace of modernity shares far broader support than this one Anglo-
American theological movement. Cf. John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, 2nd Edition (Oxford:
Blackwell, 2006), 305. The primary point of contention is whether Scotus’s theory of univocity is ontological or
merely conceptual. See Richard Cross, Duns Scotus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), ch. 3.
7
This is well documented. See Russell Friedman, Medieval Trinitarian Thought from Aquinas to Ockham
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), ch. 2.
59
2. TWO TRINITARIAN MODELS
In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries two distinct models of the Trinity are discernable. A
predominately Dominican model, represented by Thomas Aquinas, prioritizes the mutual
relations of the persons.8 The persons subsist as their relations of origin. For the Franciscans
this was worrisome, for how could a person be defined by a relation without in some way
preceding that relation? On what basis could a relation obtain without a logically prior person?
Bonaventure therefore formulates an account of the persons founded on emanation: the
emanation of the Son must logically precede the Son’s relation to the Father, since integral
personhood precedes relation.9 For Bonaventure, this is entirely within the realm of our
conceptualization of the Trinity, a way of speaking necessary to the inadequacies of our
capacities. But the Franciscan tradition will quickly set about reifying Bonaventure’s
emanationist account: “for [the Franciscan tradition], then, emanation or origin is the actual
and not merely the conceptual source of the distinction between the persons.”10 What for
Bonaventure had been a fruitful analogy for the “how” of processions became a quasi-
mechanical description of how emanation actually occurs and therefore how the integrity of
the persons is actually secured.11 Eventually, Scotus will embrace this reification of concepts
of the processions and combine it with Augustine’s psychological analogy: the Son and Spirit
are products of the divine essence, literally the inner Word and Love proceeding from the
intellect and will. These two accounts of the Trinity result in two accounts of creation, a
difference whose consequences I will attempt to show.
3. AQUINAS ON CREATION
3.1 Processions
In the Summa Theologiae, Thomas begins his discourse on the Trinity with the question of
whether there are processions in God.12 The crux of the question is the phrase “in God.” For
Arius, Aquinas argues, the Father is the cause of the Son, who is an effect as the Father’s first
8
Cf. Russell Friedman, Medieval, chs. 1-2.
9
Bonaventure, I Sent., d. 27, pars I, a. un., q. 2, solutio. See discussion in Friedman, Medieval, 23.
10
Friedman, Medieval, 31.
11
To this extent, Bonaventure remains within the tradition of symbolic theology. See Joseph Wawrykow,
“Franciscan and Dominican Trinitarian Theology (Thirteenth Century): Bonaventure and Aquinas” in The
Oxford Handbook of the Trinity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 182-196. For this reason, I rather
draw the contrast between Scotus and Aquinas, where it is more decisive.
12
ST 1a.27.1.
60
creature. The Spirit is then the creature of both the Father and Son. In this way, Arius places
the processions of the Son and Spirit outside of God. Similarly, Aquinas argues, Sabelius
maintained that the Father, Son and Spirit are only so in their relations to the world. Yet again,
the processions are determined by something external to God. But how are we to understand
two processions – of the Son and the Spirit – that remain entirely internal to God?
Thomas appeals to two powers he explored in the previous sections of the Summa. The
divine intellect and will, he argues, are where we should look for two wholly internal and self-
constitutive processions in God. Since God has acted outwardly in creation, and God’s being
and God’s act are one, Thomas argues there must also be “an inward procession corresponding
to the act remaining within the agent,”13 which is the principle of the outward act. In other
words, the twin affirmations that God is simple and that God has created require that God’s
simplicity be processional. If God establishes creation as something other than God, there must
be a prior differentiation within God to ground this external difference. 14 An undifferentiated
monad could not create something external to itself and maintain its simplicity. An inner
procession is required, so that God’s outer action might conform to God’s inner being. The
inner procession of the Word is thus the ground of the external procession of creatures.
Thomas argues:
This [internal procession] applies most conspicuously to the intellect, the action of
which remains in the intelligent agent. For whenever we understand, by the very fact
of understanding there proceeds something within us, which is a conception of the
object understood, a conception issuing from our intellectual power and proceeding
from our knowledge of that object. This conception is signified by the spoken word;
and it is called the word of the heart signified by the word of the voice.15
Aquinas follows Augustine in appealing to the “inner word” as an analogy of the eternal Word.
When we understand something, our intellect understands it in producing an interior “likeness”
or “word.” This inner word is the completion of the act of knowing, so that all knowledge is a
kind of emanation from the self. For the divine intellect, what is known is, in the first place,
the divine essence, so that the procession of the inner word is a procession of self-knowledge.16
Since God is pure and perfect intellect, then this procession must be constitutive of who God
is: God is irreducibly and eternally processional. The divine intellect then corresponds to the
13
ST. Ia.27.1.
14
See Simon Oliver, “Trinity, Motion and Creation ex Nihilo” in David Burrell, ed., Creation and the God of
Abraham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 133-151.
15
ST Ia.27.1.
16
ST 1a.14.2.
61
eternal Word, now conceived as the inner word proceeding from the Father:17 in the beginning
was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
The will is the other – the only other – procession that remains entirely internal to the
agent.18 The logic is similar. To the procession of the inner word in the intellect, there
corresponds the procession of love in the will:
The operation of the will within ourselves involves another procession, that of love,
whereby the object loved is in the lover; as, by the conception of the word, the object
spoken of or understood is in the intelligent agent.19
Where the inner word is an emanation that makes the known present in the knower by its
intellect, love proceeding from the will is the emanation that makes the beloved present to the
lover. In God, this emanation of the will remains entirely internal, for what is loved is God’s
own self: the Son by the Father and the Father by the Son. This mode of operation as the love
between the Father and Son is the reason the divine will corresponds to the Spirit.
This correlation of intellect and will to Son and Spirit is not a literal identification.
Thomas’s trinitarian theology is a spiritual “‘exercise’ carried out by means of ‘reasons.’”20 By
examining the structures of life in time, Thomas intends to train the mind toward knowledge
of God. The training had by consideration of creation leads us to God because all of creation
is analogically related to God. Because God is pure act, God is God’s intellect and will; God
is pure intellection and pure willing. Human (and Angelic) intellects and wills participate in
the original intellect and will that God eternally is. Thomas is therefore free to seek in the
functioning of intellect and will an appropriate analogy for the Son and Spirit. But in calling
this an “appropriate analogy,” I am not suggesting that it is a weakly correlated similarity or
thin metaphor. This is precisely the critique that Scotus will make.21 Scotus claims that in the
Dominican tradition, the inner word and love bear only an “extraneous likeness” to the Son
and Spirit.22 For some Dominicans, this charge is not unwarranted, notably Durand of Pourçain,
17
Cf. ST 1a.27.2: “So in this manner the procession of the Word in God is generation; for He proceeds by way
of intelligible action, which is a vital operation:—from a conjoined principle (as above described):—by way of
similitude, inasmuch as the concept of the intellect is a likeness of the object conceived:—and exists in the
same nature, because in God the act of understanding and His existence are the same, as shown above (1a.14.4).
Hence the procession of the Word in God is called generation; and the Word Himself proceeding is called
the Son.”
18
ST 1a.27.5. Aquinas examines goodness and power as alternate candidates for processions, but rejects them as
common to the divine essence, not to one of the three persons.
19
ST 1a.27.3.
20
Gilles Emery, “Trinitarian Theology as Spiritual Exercise in Augustine and Aquinas” in Trinity, Church and
the Human Person (Naples, Florida: Sapientia Press, 2007), 71; citing Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra
Gentiles I, ch. 8 (#49-50); De potentia q. 9, a. 5 and others.
21
Scotus, I Ord. 13, nn. 21, 23.
22
Scotus, I Ord. 13, nn. 21, 23. See discussion and translation in Friedman, Medieval, 74-75.
62
for whom the name “Word” is only appropriated to the Son, not properly predicated. But
Durand notwithstanding, Scotus’s accusation of metaphorical equivocation does not stand for
the following reasons.
The Son is not literally the product of the divine intellect coming to know the divine
essence, and yet the Son is properly called Word, as the Spirit is properly called love. The
reason for this is that “Word” and “Love” are analogical terms – they apply more appropriately
to God than to creatures. It is not, in fact, our understanding of the Trinity that is crafted around
the concept of the inner word, but the concept of an inner word is modified to fit the Trinity.
For Thomas, “Word” refers most properly to emanation: “‘Word’, according as we use the
term strictly of God, signifies something proceeding from another.”23 The word “word,”
considered in its most primordial meaning (“first and chiefly”) is nothing other than
emanation.24 The inner word of the Father is the Father’s understanding of all that is, so that
God’s knowledge is always begotten in a kind of “speaking”: “thus the whole Trinity is
‘spoken’ in the Word; and likewise all of creatures.”25 From a perspective of symbols, this last
statement is extraordinary. It implies that because the relation of Father to Son is that of
symbolized to symbol, then everything that exists, exists because the Father is not without the
symbol. The emanation of the symbol from the Father underwrites everything. When Aquinas
affirms that the Son is properly called “Word,” he is invoking an entire symbolic ontology, of
which the Son is the primordial type. Thereafter, every inner word is a faint participation in
this original unity of symbolized and symbol. It is for this reason that the contemplation of
similitudes is “a foretaste of what [believers] hope to see in the beatific vision.”26 Every act of
knowledge is the emanation of another from within, an inner word ultimately derived from the
primordial word, the Word most properly speaking. So central is the analogy that Emery states,
Thomas’s “whole Trinitarian theology depends upon [its] validity.”27 The production of an
inner word in the intellect and of love in the will are, Thomas thinks, the highest created image
of the divine life. Creaturely intellection and willing are participation in the divine processions
of Son and Spirit and are therefore key links in the chain of symbols leading us into knowledge
of God. The psychological analogy is not a “thin metaphor”; it is the affirmation that God is
more truly Word and Love than our words and our love, which is to say that all of being is
symbolic.
23
ST Ia.34.1.
24
ST Ia.34.1. Cf. Gilles Emery, O.P., Trinity in Aquinas (Naples, Florida: Sapientia Press, 2003), 148-153.
25
ST Ia.34.1.ad 3.
26
Emery, Trinity, 128.
27
Emery, Trinity, 256.
63
Distinctions must be made between the Son-Word and Spirit-Love. The Spirit does not
proceed in the same way as the Son, which is reflected in differences between intellection and
willing. Thomas says in an earlier section of the Summa that “knowledge is of things as they
exist in the knower; but the will is directed to things as they exist in themselves.”28 Intellectual
procession, Aquinas tells us, operates by likeness.29 The inner word is a similitude or image of
the thing known, so that likeness mediates presence. A thing is present to the intellect by its
image. I know something, in other words, because of the unity that exists between the thing
and my mind, the extent to which the thing is “in” my mind by its likeness. This is not, however,
the facile “representation” of cartesian cognition. For Thomas, the relationship between the
world “outside” and the world “inside” is not a simple dualism. Rather, the intellect actually
makes the “outside” world present “inside,” by the dual processes of the migration of the form
into the mind, and the production of an inner word.30 For the divine intellect, what is known is
the divine essence, so that by the speaking of the Word, the divine essence is made present to
the Father. This means that, to translate into my terminology, for Aquinas the Father only is
inasmuch as he is symbolized in the Son. The Word is the eternal image, the symbol by which
the Father knows and is God.
The procession of the Will, on the other hand, proceeds not by likeness, but by
inclination or movement.31 Love, which is to the will what the inner word is to the intellect, is
a directedness toward another. Thus, while the intellect speaks of divine likeness, the will
speaks of divine desire-in-difference: the Father in himself and the Son in himself, as their
mutual movement toward each other. Because the Father is not the Son, and the Son not the
Father, there is a mutual motion of desire and love between them, and this movement is called
the Spirit. While the classic description of the Spirit as the unity of Father and Son might seem
to place it in the role of the intellect, focusing on the exactness of the representation of the
Father by the Son, for Aquinas, the Spirit-as-will emphasizes the unity of the Father and the
Son as a term that maintains their distinct integrity as divine persons while uniting them in
mutual movement toward one another. The Spirit secures the eternal distinction between Father
and Son by uniting them as Father and Son, and so not collapsing them into a single person.
As the previous chapter argued, the Spirit is union-in-distinction, the original “symbolic
inclusion” in which all others participate.
28
ST 1a.19.3.ad 6.
29
ST 1a.27.4.
30
Cf. John Milbank and Catherine Pickstock, Truth in Aquinas (New York: Routledge, 2001), Ch. 1.
31
ST 1a.27.4.
64
Indeed, without the Spirit, it would be impossible to maintain any meaningful
distinction between the Father and Son, since a word must itself be received, or “interpreted”
as meaningful. For Augustine and Aquinas, the Spirit is the love in which the divine knower
knows its knowledge.32 To love what is known by an inner word is to make an interpretive
judgment about its value or worth. It is to recognize the representative value of the Word as
truly shining forth the fullness of the Father and responding to this depiction with pleasure and
desire. If there were no such “interpretive moment” in the Trinity, the speaking of the Word
would merely be a blunt self-assertion without reciprocity. In this situation, even the Word
would fail to be a hypostasis, since it would lack any reciprocal act of love with which to return
to the Father. It would be merely a pulsar in a vacuum, a burst of light never seen or reflected
or truly known. An inner word without either desire or love fails even to be an inner word,
becoming instead a product of the Father’s capricious self-expression. When Christocentrism
eclipses pneumatology, divine self-communication is reduced to sheer imposition without the
appropriate reciprocity required by relations of love. If the Spirit is not an authentic “second
difference” from the Father, then neither the Son nor the Spirit (and therefore neither the
Father) can maintain any hypostatic integrity.33 To the emanation of the inner word
corresponds the emanation of love, necessarily.
These emanations have a distinct “direction of travel.” The one indivisible divine
essence is received according to a particular taxis: “the Son receives it from the Father, and the
Holy Ghost from both.”34 In receiving the divine nature from the Father, the Son is the symbol
of the Father. The Spirit, in being of the Father and the Son is the mutual love and unity between
them. This distinction of order maintains for intellect and will: “the procession of love occurs
in due order as regards the procession of the Word; since nothing can be loved by the will
unless it is conceived by the intellect.”35 So the inner word proceeds from the intellect, and
love proceeds from the will after the intellect.
The Son and Spirit therefore share equally in the divine essence but do so in different
ways. This is the heart of Thomas’s argument for the filioque. Unless the Son and Spirit
proceed in different ways from the Father, then they would be impossible to distinguish
eternally, since they are only distinguishable by their relations.36 If the Spirit proceeds directly
32
Augustine, De trinitate 4.19, translated and edited by Edmund Hill, OP (New York: New City Press, 119),
282; ST 1a.37.1.
33
I take this phrase from John Milbank, The Word Made Strange (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), 187.
34
ST 1a.45.6.ad 2.
35
ST 1a.27.3.ad 3.
36
ST 1a.36.2-3.
65
from the Father, as does the Son, the Spirit shares the same relation of origin as the Son, making
the Son and Spirit indistinguishable.37 What procession per filium offers is a second procession
in a mode distinct from the Son’s, a “second difference” from the Father that is still from the
one paternal arche.38 The Son proceeds from the Father, the Spirit proceeds from the Father by
the Son, ensuring the eternally distinct relations of origin of the Son and Spirit.
And yet, this divine taxis does not obviate the mutual inclusion of Word and Spirit,
intellect and will: “the will and the intellect mutually include one another: for the intellect
understands the will, and the will wills the intellect to understand.”39 Since the Spirit is what
is donated to the Son in filiation, the Son’s reception of the gift of the Spirit is constitutive of
the Son’s procession. Thus, we can say with John Milbank that the Spirit is “retroactively
causal” in the generation of the Son.40 The Spirit proceeds from the Father and Son, but the
Spirit’s procession is intrinsic and necessary to the prior procession of Son from Father. This
is confirmed by the status of the Spirit as the love between Father and Son: the Father begets
the Son in love, the Son loves the Father in return, and this love that proceeds from them is
somehow coeval with their very relations.41 There is both an irrevocable taxis and an ineludible
paradox.
This paradox coheres profoundly with Thomas’s argument for the mutual internality of
will and intellect. While the intellect is, strictly speaking, prior to the will, the will is always-
already present within it, functioning on both sides of the procession of an inner word. The will
“follows upon intellect,” as the Spirit proceeds from the Father by the Son.42 But the movement
of the will constitutes the intellect as such, as the Son’s reception of the Spirit constitutes the
Son. Thomas explains it this way: the intellect has a natural aptitude for intellection, which
takes the form of desire. I come to know because I want to know. Once knowledge has been
obtained, the intellect “rests” in its knowledge, which is also a function of the will: the intellect
strives to intellection “so as to rest therein when possessed, and when not possessed to seek to
possess it, both of which pertain to the will.”43 This means that the will establishes the intellect
as its desire to know, while nonetheless following from its knowledge. Similarly, the divine
37
Cf. discussion in Milbank, Strange, 172. On the commonality of the per filium sense of the filioque
throughout the Christian East, see David Bentley Hart, “The Mirror of the Infinite: Gregory of Nyssa on the
Vestigia Trinitatis” in Modern Theology 18:4 (October 2002): 541-561.
38
Milbank, Strange, ch. 7.
39
ST 1a.16.4.ad 1.
40
Milbank, Word, 187. The concept of the Spirit deployed in this chapter derives largely from Milbank’s
account.
41
ST 1a.39.8.
42
ST 1a.19.1.
43
ST 1a.19.1.
66
taxis requires the Spirit be after the Son and yet “retroactively causal” in the generation of the
Son.
Thus, for Thomas, Son and Spirit are tightly woven into an understanding of inner word
and love because both are internal to the agent and irreducibly processional. To the procession
of the inner word in the intellect corresponds the procession of love in the will. The Son and
Spirit, like the intellect and will, mutually include one another, and while they must be
distinguished, can never be separated. This entire conceptual apparatus, the symbolic inclusion
of Intellect-Will in Son-Spirit, and the divine taxis and paradoxical mutual internality are all
brought to bear on Thomas’s theology of creation. God creates according to God’s unity in the
divine processions: by the inner Word, in love. Thus, understanding both the divine taxis and
the coinherence of the persons is “necessary for the right idea of creation.”44
3.2 Trinity, Simplicity and Creation

“The processions of the divine persons,” Aquinas argues, “are the cause of creation.”45
Aquinas repeats this reasoning nearly twenty times throughout his career.46 Gilles Emery
concludes: “the systematic exploitation of this thesis appears as a characteristic feature of his
theology.”47 Aquinas’s general point is that the “procession” of creation is founded on the
ontologically prior processions of the Son and Spirit. Three factors converge on this assertion:
Divine simplicity, Blessed Trinity, and the external act of creation. It is the combination of the
first two that guarantee the symbolic value of the latter.
God is wholly simple.48 God is not composite, neither bodily, nor between matter and
form, existence and essence, substance and accident.49 This means that God is not included
under any genus, including that of being.50 God’s words to Moses are the paradigmatic biblical
ground of this understanding: “I am that I am.”51 David Burrell’s translates Thomas’s
44
ST 1a.32.1.ad 3. The second reason knowledge of the processions is necessary is for the knowledge of
salvation. It is because creation is symbolic that both creation and salvation converge on trinitarian discourse.
45
ST 1a.45.6.ad 1. Cf. discussion in Emery, Human Person, 115-154.
46
Emery, Human Person, 122. Key instances include I Sent., dist. 14, q. 1, a. 1; de potentia, q. 10, a. 2, arg. 19,
ad 19; and ST 1a.45.7. ad 3.
47
Emery, Human Person, 123.
48
D. Stephen Long, The Perfectly Simple Triune God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2016), ch. 4-9; James
Dolezal, God without Parts: Divine Simplicity and the metaphysics of God’s Absoluteness (Eugene, OR:
Pickwick, 2011); and the recent edition dedicated to simplicity, Modern Theology 35, no. 3 (July, 2019).
49
ST 1a.3.1, 2, 3, 6 respectively.
50
ST 1a.3.5.
51
Exodus 3:14. On simplicity as a principle of biblical interpretation in Aquinas, see D. Stephen Long, “Thomas
Aquinas’ Divine Simplicity as Biblical Hermeneutic” in Modern Theology 35, no. 3 (July 2019), 496-507.
67
application of this text: “to be God is to be to-be.”52 But how can the Christian belief in the
Trinity stand in the face of such a strident simplicity?
One problem with answering that question is that it tacitly assumes a complete account
of simplicity to which Trinitarian theology is later added, often mapped onto philosophy and
theology respectively.53 But as Gilles Emery notes, “[Thomas] has no treatise ‘of the one God’
separated from the treatise of the Trinity.”54 Thomas is not concerned with conforming a
doctrine of the Trinity to a pre-established philosophy of unified simplicity. Rather, he is
concerned with what kind of simplicity is necessary to understand the Trinity.55 Simplicity is
how we speak of three divine persons who are one essence. It is a rule of Christian grammar
dictated by the commitment to God as three-in-one.56 To speak of a distinction of persons and
identity of essence requires an account of simplicity, specifically trinitarian simplicity, in D.
Stephen Long’s words, the perfectly simple triunity of God.57
Consider Thomas’s basic account of simplicity: God’s essence and existence are the
same. What God is and that God is are identical. There is not a choice, then, between a
trinitarian God or a monadic God, because God’s triunity is God’s existence. This means there
can be no temporal progression in God – we do not start with God’s essence, then get the
Father, then the Son, and after all this the Spirit. The language of begetting cannot imply this
kind of process. All of the processions are coeval and interdependent. This commitment to the
Trinity and simplicity drives Thomas’s formulation of substantive relations: the Father only is
in relation to the Son in the Spirit. Since there can be no progress from one person to another,
there is no Father prior to the generation of the Son in the Spirit; the persons just are their
relations of origin. This is nothing other than what is demanded by the grammar Christian
trinitarian simplicity. But this does not imperil the arche of the Father, for the divine nature
exists in its taxis. Processions are the non-temporal taxis of the divine nature within the paradox
of coinherence.
Simplicity further demands that God’s being is God’s act, so that there is no shadow
between what God does externally and who God is internally. Simplicity, then, is the crucial
52
David Burrell, Aquinas: God and Action (London: Routledge, 1979), 24.
53
For instance, John Wippel argues that Thomas’s philosophical content can be extracted from its theological
context in Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press,
1984), 28.
54
Emery, Trinity, XX. Cf. D. Stephen Long, The Perfectly Simple Triune God: Aquinas and His Legacy
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2016), 5.
55
Long, Simple, 21-22.
56
Cf. Burrell, Aquinas, 5. The seminal text for doctrine as grammar is George Linbeck, The Nature of Doctrine:
Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (Lousiville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1984).
57
Long, Simple, ch. 1.
68
link between the doctrine of the Trinity and the doctrine of creation: God’s act in creation, as
God’s being in eternity, is trinitarian, though the latter in no way depends on the former. Simple
triunity demands that God’s acts “ad extra” are enacting according to both the taxis and the
unity of the divine nature. The Father who is arche creates; the Son who is begotten is the one
by whom the Father creates; and the Spirit who proceeds as the love between Father and Son
is the one in whom God creates. Creation is wholly a product of Trinitarian movement, while
not identical with, or necessary to, that movement.
This is what it means to say that creation is a symbol of God. Because God acts
according to God’s being, God’s act of creation is accomplished by the internal movement of
the godhead; creation thereby bears in itself the stamp of this trinitarian pattern without being
necessary to divine life. Creation is thus not a symbol in precisely the same way that the Son
is the symbol of the Father. Substantive relations demand that the Father only is inasmuch as
he is symbolized in the Son by the symbolism of the Spirit. When we move to the second triad,
God-creation-church, the relationship does not bear the same necessity. God does not depend
on creation in order to be God, for this would violate both triunity and simplicity. If God has a
necessary relationship to creation, either God will not be simple (since God would be composed
of God’s nature and a relation to creation) or God would not be triune (since creation would be
a kind of fourth hypostasis). Thomas therefore describes the relation between God and creation
as logical on the part of God and real on the part of creation. God is perfectly simple, and so
cannot have a relation added to God’s essence. Thomas therefore calls this a relation of reason.
But creation is existentially bound to God, and hence has a real relation to him.58 But this does
not mean creation is cut off from God’s life – far from it. Creation has its existence by
participation in the divine life, a participation funded, as will be shown below, by the way
creation arises from the trinitarian processions.
This move from Creator to creature is shaped by the twin commitments to simplicity
and Trinity. Creation is symbolic because God acts according to God’s essence, and the effects
of God’s acts therefore bear a trinitarian shape. Symbolism is first a doctrine about God and
only secondarily about creation. Divine simplicity is the link between the two. The simplicity
of the Trinity mandates a symbolic creation.59
3.3 From Intellect and Will to Creation
58
ST 1a.45.3.
59
So, Emery, Human Person, 123: “A correct and integral understanding of God’s action in the world requires
knowledge of the procession of the divine Persons.”
69
Divine simplicity is expressed in the trinitarian taxis, a “direction of travel” that applies to the
act of creation as well. For Aquinas, following Augustine, God acts in creation according to
God’s unity, but also according to the Trinitarian order.60 Just as “the Son receives [the one
divine essence] from the Father, and the Holy Ghost from both,”61 so the act of creation is
unfolded along the same internal divine motion. Creation is enacted according to the particular
“mode of operation” of each person. The Father speaks all of creation in his speaking of the
Son, and loves the Son and all creation in the procession of the Spirit:
As the Father speaks Himself and every creature by His begotten Word, inasmuch as
the Word "begotten" adequately represents the Father and every creature; so He loves
Himself and every creature by the Holy Ghost…Thus it is evident that relation to the
creature is implied both in the Word and in the proceeding Love, as it were in a
secondary way, inasmuch as the divine truth and goodness are a principle of
understanding and loving all creatures.62
The taxis of the processions displays the order of creation. In Emery’s words, “the Son exists
in receiving eternally his being from the Father, and he acts in receiving eternally his act from
the Father.”63 The modus operandi of each Person arises from its modus essendi.64
The Father creates by the Son in the Spirit, which, for Thomas, means by his intellect
according to his will. I will take intellect and will in turn. The Father speaks the world by his
speaking of the Word; he knows the world by his knowledge of himself. By understanding the
eternal Word as God’s knowledge, Thomas is able to say that God’s knowledge of the world
is the world’s existence. God does not know the universe because it exists, rather, the universe
exists because God knows it.65 What Thomas means by this is that the Word is the prototype
and form of the world, so that everything that is is eternally contained in the Logos. Thomas
expresses this in his doctrine of divine ideas.66 The divine ideas, the prototypes of things, are
the one divine Word, and their multiplicity is nothing more than the multiple ways creatures
60
For example, St. Augustine, The Literal Meaning of Genesis, I.36, translated by John Hammond Taylor,
Ancient Christian Writers 41 (New York: Newman Press, 1982), 41.
61
ST, 1a.45.6.ad 2.
62
ST 1a.37.2.ad 3.
63
Emery, Human Person, 132, emphasis original.
64
ST 1a.89.1; Emery, Human Person, 134.
65
ST 1a.14.8.
66
The key work on this topic is Gregory Doolan, Aquinas on the Divine Ideas as Exemplar Causes
(Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2008). See also Gregory Doolan, “Aquinas on the
Divine Ideas and the Really Real” in Nova et Vetera 13, no. 4 (2015), 1059-1091; Norris Clark, “The Problem
of Reality and Multiplicity of Divine Ideas in Christian Neoplatonism” in Creative Retrieval of St. Thomas
Aquinas (New York: Fordham University Press, 2009), 66-88; John Wippel, Thomas Aquinas on the Divine
Ideas (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1993).
70
participate in the divine essence.67 God knows God and all things in relation to God. What is
striking about this arrangement is the radical God-orientation of Thomas’s doctrine of creation.
Creation is known by God entirely as it participates in God’s own being. And since God’s
knowledge of creation in accordance with his will is creation’s existence, creation only is
inasmuch as creation symbolizes the divine.
Doolan notes four features of a divine idea in Thomas. The first is that an idea is a form
of a thing. It is the form according to which the thing is made. But this is not to imply that it is
the thing’s substantial form, which leads to the second feature of an idea. It is not the form
intrinsic to a thing, but, so to speak, the form of the form: “a thing receives its determinate form
from its exemplar.”68 The reason for this, as Nicholas of Cusa argues, is that if the divine idea
were the substantial form of the thing, this would obliterate the integrity of the thing and reduce
God to the order of nature.69 Rather, God gives substantial form to everything as a gift from
the Father of lights.70 This gift arises from the divine ideas but only moves from the divine
mind to created existence through the mediation of the divine will. This indicates the third
feature of an idea: it “occurs because of an agent’s intention.”71 A divine idea is an intentional
idea, the nexus of intellect and will in the divine agent.
It might be asked at this point whether God knows the entire spectrum of possibilities
God might create whether or not God in fact wills to? Yes.72 God might know that God is
capable of created spotted Zebras, but God has in fact willed to create striped ones. So the
divine idea of a spotted Zebra is a possible way God’s nature might be participated in. But this
does not establish a Scotist realm of logically prior pure possibility (a possible world of spotted
Zebras), since God always already knows spotted Zebras as that which God has not willed to
create. The mutual internality of divine intellect and will, as will be made clear below, cannot
be so simply sequentially parsed.
Finally, the fourth feature of an idea is that it is enacted according to an end chosen by
the agent. A couple might have a child, and be the immediate givers of form to the child, but
the ends of that form are outside the parents’ control. For God, however, the form is given
along with the end. The donation of form from the divine ideas is also the gift of an end,
67
ST 1a.15.2.
68
Doolan, Exemplar, 26. See also Mark D. Jordan, “The Intelligibility of the World and the Divine Ideas in
Aquinas,” The Review of Metaphysics 38, no. 1 (Sept. 1984), 17-32.
69
Nicholas of Cusa, De Dato Patris Luminum, 2.98 (Hopkins, Complete Philosophical and Theological
Treatises of Nicholas of Cusa: Volume One (Minneapolis: The Arthur J. Banning Press, 2001), 376).
70
The paradigmatic passage is James 1:17.
71
Doolan, Exemplar, 26.
72
See John Wippel, “The Reality of Non-Existing Possibles according to Thomas Aquinas, Henry of Ghent, and
Godfrey Fontaines” in The Review of Metaphysics 34, no. 4 (June, 1981), 729-740.
71
namely, the knowledge and love of the triune God. This end is wholly within the power of the
giver to give, unlike the parent to the child. Thus, the divine ideas, inasmuch as they are
exemplars of created things, are the intentional ideas of God, the forms of forms and the gift
of an end.
Truthfulness, then, is conformity to these divine ideas. The divine ideas are the measure
of all things, and anything’s truthfulness is its adequation to this primordial foundation.73 But
while the divine mind is the measure of things, the human mind is, in a sense, measured by
things. When the mind grasps the nature of a thing by the migration of form into the intellect,
its truthfulness (that is, the truthful perception of reality in the human mind) is measured by its
adequation to the reality of the thing, which is in its turn measured by its adequation to the
divine mind. Things are thus suspended between the mind of God and the human mind.
Therefore, creation is known to us only inasmuch as it symbolizes God. When I recognize the
form of a tree, I recognize it inasmuch as it participates in the divine idea of a tree. The tree’s
very intelligibility is derived from its participation in the divine ideas, which are identical to
God’s essence.74 All knowledge is a participation in divine knowledge, and since God knows
creation as it symbolizes God, a symbolic creation, On Thomas’s terms, is necessary to any
knowledge whatsoever.75
While the divine intellect knows things according to their eternal form as various modes
of participation in God, God’s knowledge of creatures is not for all that merely formal. He also
knows all creatures in their specificity. Thomas argues that God is not just the source of the
form of things, but also of every accidental feature they might possess, every possible
combination of the two, and their actual act of existence.76 God, because he is the author and
source of everything that is, at every level of existence and intelligibility, knows every minute
particular of created existence. There is therefore no need for a Scotist “third-term”, haecceitas,
to account for individuation between matter and form. The noble aim of affirming the
ontological uniqueness of each individual is satisfied by the universality of the divine intellect,
73
Cf. Doolan, Real, 1080-1081.
74
Cf. Milbank and Pickstock, Truth, 12: “since the tree only exhibits treeness – indeed, only exists at all – as
imitating the divine, what we receive in truth is a participation in the divine. To put this another way, in
knowing a tree, we are catching it on its way back to God.” Bruce Marshall objects: “Created things exist only
by their participation in their eternal exemplars, lodged in the divine Word, and we can know them only by the
participation of our own intellect, through the creator Spirit’s gift, in the uncreated light. But we don’t have to
know about the exemplars and the light, the Word and the Spirit, in order to have this knowledge”: “Review of
Truth in Aquinas” in The Thomist 66, no. 4 (Oct. 2002), 633. But Milbank and Pickstock are arguing for an
“integral knowledge” of creation.
75
Cf. The illuminating discussion in Gilles Emery, “Trinity and Truth” in Human Person, Ch. 3.
76
ST 1a.44.2.
72
and as we shall see, its mutual inclusion with the will. Every individual thing, inasmuch as it
is, symbolizes the divine, for it is a living expression of the divine mind.
The shocking implication of all this is that “things as they are in God are the divine
essence.”77 The Father knows creation in his knowledge of the Son, but his knowledge of the
Son is self-knowledge, therefore creation is enfolded in God’s own self-knowledge. God does
not know creation as something other than himself. God knows creation in and (by
participation) as godself.78 In other words, God only knows creation inasmuch at it symbolizes
God, for to be a symbol of God is what it means to be.
What saves Thomas from pantheism at this point is that God’s knowledge of things in
the divine ideas does not account for their actual existence, each thing’s esse.79 Creation is
enacted by the intellect according to the will, that is, by the Son in the Spirit. So while creatures
have a kind of “pre-existence” in the Son, that existence is only actualized as other than God
by the Spirit, the divine Will.80 In Thomas’s words: “[God’s] inclination to put in act what his
intellect has conceived appertains to the will.”81 Were we to stop at divine knowledge as the
cause of things, God would indeed have a necessary relationship to the world. As it is, the
supplement of intellect by will creates a complex concurrence of necessity and non-necessity.
Creation is necessary in the divine intellect and unnecessary in the divine will. In a complex
passage that deserves full quotation, the objection is raised that since God knows things
necessarily, he also wills things necessarily, and since his knowledge and will are his essence,
he has a necessary relation to creation. Thomas responds:
As the divine essence is necessary of itself, so is the divine will and the divine
knowledge; but the divine knowledge has a necessary relation to the thing known; not
the divine will to the thing willed. The reason for this is that knowledge is of things as
they exist in the knower; but the will is directed to things as they exist in themselves.
Since then all other things have necessary existence inasmuch as they exist in God; but
no absolute necessity so as to be necessary in themselves, in so far as they exist in
themselves; it follows that God knows necessarily whatever He wills, but does not
will necessarily whatever He wills.82
77
ST 1a.18.4.ad 1.
78
Cf. ST 1a.105.3: “Since he is the First Being, and all other beings pre-exist in him as in their First Cause, it
follows that they exist intelligibly in him after the mode of his own nature.”
79
On this point, see Doolan, Real, 1086.
80
ST 1a.14.8: “The intelligible form does not denote a principle of action in so far as it resides in the one who
understands unless there is added to it the inclination to an effect, which inclination is the through the will.”
81
ST 1a.19.4.
82
ST 1a.19.3.ad 6.
73
The basic distinction here is between internality and externality. The intellect knows things as
they exist in the intellect (i.e., by the inner word). The mode of presence practiced by the
intellect is an internal and necessary one. Thus, creation is present in the divine mind as the
divine ideas. The will, by contrast is externally directed: desirous of the other as the other.
Creation has no necessary existence in itself, being neither its own ground nor its own end.
Therefore, Thomas reasons, when the divine will wills creation – being directed toward
creation in itself – it wills it unnecessarily. The will wills unnecessary things unnecessarily. On
this reading, the will wills God’s own goodness necessarily, since God’s goodness is necessary,
but creation unnecessarily, because creation is contingent.
This structure has profound trinitarian resonances. We glimpse the importance of the
divine taxis in the interplay of necessity and gratuity in creation. The necessity of creation as
it is known in the Word is what secures the non-necessity of creation in the Will. Because
creation is “the divine essence” as it is known in the Word, it is therefore not its own. If creation
were a wholly separate entity to God, God would know it as something other than godself,
something that has some ground outside of God. But because God knows creation necessarily
as God’s own essence, creation cannot be its own ground: creation is wholly and utterly
dependent on God. Therefore, when God wills creation, God does so unnecessarily. Because
the Son precedes the Spirit, as the intellect precedes the will, creation is first grounded in God
– because necessarily known by the divine Word – and therefore willed gratuitously. In regard
to creation, God necessarily knows what God freely wills, so that divine necessity is coeval
with divine freedom. And this marks out the difference between creation as a symbol and the
Son as a symbol. The latter is wholly necessary, the former unnecessary. But the non-necessity
of creation does not posit an arbitrary relation between God and creation, rather, creation
necessarily reflects the divine life (because spoken in the word), but because this life is God’s
life and not its own, creation is entirely contingent.
Moreover, creation is not only contingent because it has God’s self-knowledge as its
ground; it is also contingent because it has God’s own goodness as its end. The will necessarily
wills the good, and God wills the world in the willing of God’s own goodness: “As he
understands things apart from himself by understanding his own essence, so he wills things
apart from himself by willing his own goodness.”83 Further, as Dionysius says, the good is
diffusive of itself, which Thomas takes to mean that the divine will, in willing its own
83
ST 1a.19.2.
74
goodness, wills to share that goodness with others.84 The difference is that while God’s will is
entirely oriented to its own goodness, creation is entirely oriented to God’s goodness.
Creation’s end is beyond it, and so it lacks its own necessity. Creation lacks the self-sufficiency
to “satiate” the divine will; creation itself therefore joins the divine will in desiring and loving
God’s goodness, and this telos beyond itself makes creation contingent, and therefore
contingently willed. So the freedom of the divine will is guaranteed by the twin affirmations
that creation is neither its own ground nor its own end.
This indicates, further, that creation is not the activation of potency in God. The divine
ideas are not potencies lying latent in the mind of God until the will actualizes them. God’s
knowledge and love of the divine essence is fully actual, there is no potentiality in it. This is
why God knows all the possible ways the divine nature is participable. The will, on the other
hand, is fully fixed on the divine goodness and satisfied by it. Neither the intellect nor the will,
neither the Son nor the Spirit, have any need for creation. Both are replete and satisfied in the
divine life.85 Creation is therefore an utterly gratuitous act. God has no need to desire and love
another, for in the fullness of the Father’s love for the Son, and the Son’s love for the Father,
there is no lack. God does not create to meet some unfulfilled requirement of the divine nature.
Creation in itself is entirely a gift, entirely a grace. Little wonder, then, that the Spirit is also
called gift, for God’s willing of creation is God’s giving the gift of existence by participation
in his own being.
Further, in receiving existence creation itself becomes a secondary object of divine
desire. Because creation’s “pre-existence” is the Logos, when creation is given gratuitous
existence by the Spirit, the desire of the Father for the Son “pursues” the diffusion of the divine
goodness through time, as it were. The Father loves creation in his love for the Son. This is
why, Aquinas tells us, when Genesis says “and God saw that the light was good,” it refers the
origin of light to the Son and the light’s goodness to the Spirit.86 Creation is no sooner made
(as the unfolding of the Logos) than it is pronounced upon (in the Spirit) as good, the object of
divine desire. One way of stating this is to say that there is no fact/value divide in creation, for
the fact of creation is its value as sharing in the divine goodness. Creation is an always-already
valued fact; it is because it is good and is good because it is. God knows creation (intellect) as
desirable (will), and desires creation as it is known.
84
ST 1a.19.2. See John Wippel, “Thomas Aquinas on the Ultimate Why Question: Why is there Anything at All
Rather than Nothing Whatsoever?”, The Review of Metaphysics 60, no. 4 (Jun. 2007), 731-753.
85
Cf. Simon Oliver, Creation: A Guide for the Perplexed (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2017), 50.
86
ST 1a.32.1.ad 3.
75
But creation is not only constituted by its desirability; it is also constituted by its own
desire for God. This is simply the temporal outworking of the Son’s response of love to the
Father. What makes creation desirable (again, paradoxically) is its original desire for God.
Thomas explains this in terms of the non-necessity of the divine will. The divine will wills the
divine goodness, and in creation wills others to will that same goodness. The divine will is
directed toward creation because creation is directed toward God. Creation is the gift of desire
for God. In this light, we can expand de Lubac’s statement, in a letter to Maurice Blondel, to
the entire created order: “How can a conscious spirit be anything other than an absolute desire
for God?”87 God desires creation as that which desires God. And as the Spirit is given to the
Son in filiation and returned to the Father, so creation receives the gift of desirable existence
as the gift of desirous existence. As the Spirit’s modus essendi is the mutual play of love and
desire between Father and Son, so the Spirit’s modus operandi is the reciprocal acts of desire
between creation and God.
The gift of existence that is God’s will in creation is therefore threefold: the gift of
existence, the gift of desirable existence, and the gift of desirous existence. This threefold act
is a gift because it is gratuitous. But its gratuity is not funded by a separation from divine life.
Rather, God’s freedom in creation is secured by God’s “constraint” to creation in godself. This
is what it means for creation to be a symbol. It necessarily expresses the divine life as the
unfolding of the Logos and is yet the unnecessary overflow of divine goodness. To refuse this
mixture of necessity and non-necessity is to evacuate creation of symbolic value.
I have so far attempted to expound the statement that the Father creates by the Son in
the Spirit. Doing so has led to a discussion of the divine intellect and will. The first correlation
between them is of the divine taxis so that the will follows the intellect. But just as the Spirit
is “retroactively causal” in the generation of the Son, so the will is “retroactively causal” in
intellection: the intellect and will mutually include one another. Creation follows this dual
pattern: the Spirit proceeds ex Patre filioque, and so creation is entirely contained in the divine
intellect, and then breathed into motion by the divine will. And yet the Spirit sits on both sides
of filiation, so that creation is known as it is willed, and willed as it is known. This processional
paradox finally underwrites a complex coincidence of necessity and non-necessity. Creation is
necessary as it is known in the divine ideas, and gratuitous as it is willed.
87
Henri de Lubac, At the Service of the Church: Henri de Lubac Reflects on the Circumstances that Occasioned
his Writings, trans. by Anne Elizabeth Englund (San Francisco: Communio Books, 1993), 184.
76
All of this means that creation is entirely and necessarily theophanic and yet
gratuitously so. God is under no compulsion to create, and yet creation is truly expressive of
the divine. Because God is triune simplicity, creation is a simple triune act. The Father creates
by the Son in the Spirit. And this means that creation is a gift of God’s own life, a gift of
participation. To be a created symbol is to receive the gift of existence from the simple triune
God. Throughout this section, I have not argued that the procession of an inner word in the
intellect and love in the will are a literal account of generation and spiration. The language is
analogical, and so is communicated with a significant amount of apophatic reserve. The Son is
more truly a word, and the Spirit more truly love than anything we have access to as creatures.
Meditation on these themes, then, is a way of working into the mystery of the simplicity and
triunity of God. I have attempted to think with Thomas about the ways creation hums with the
resonant tones of its creator.
Through the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, a very different approach to the
purpose and method of Trinitarian theology emerged, and with it material differences in
Trinitarian content. Thomas’s account of triune simplicity was sharply contested by the
Franciscan tradition (though its proponents were not always Franciscans). It is not that the
Franciscan alternative denied simplicity or triunity, but that it fundamentally rethought the
links between them. Duns Scotus is the most influential of the school, and so I turn to his
thought next. My argument is that to defend his Trinitarian theology, Scotus weakens the
symbolic value of creation and its more meditative theological method.
4. DUNS SCOTUS
A comparison like the one I am conducting between Aquinas and Scotus is common and
controverted in contemporary theology. Daniel Horan pejoratively calls it “the Scotus story”:
“the establishment of an explicit genealogy that traces modernity, and, subsequently, the
concept of nihilism as substantial res, back to John Duns Scotus.”88 It is commonly associated
with Radical Orthodoxy, though it neither originates with nor is limited to them.89 Scotus, on
88
Horan, Postmodernity, 15. Horan’s footnotes offer a significant resource to the Radical Orthodoxy literature
on the subject. Unfortunately, his focus on Radical Orthodoxy obscures the far wider literature that agrees – at
least in outline – with their perspective. See below for some examples.
89
Notably proponents of the genealogy include John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular
Theory, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), xxv n41; Conor Cunningham, Genealogy of Nihilism: Philosophies
of Nothing and the Difference of Theology (London: Routledge, 2002); Catherine Pickstock, “Duns Scotus: His
Historical and Contemporary Significance” in Modern Theology 21 (October 2005), 543-574, especially
footnote 2 for a bibliography of historians of ideas that concur with the genealogy; also Brad Gregory, The
Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2012). This interpretation arises especially from Etienne Gilson, Jean Duns Scot (Paris: Vrin,
77
this reading represents a definitive break in theological tradition, inaugurating a univocal
ontology, and paving the way for nominalism, voluntarism, and eventually modernity and
secularization. Alain de Libera summarizes the significance of Scotus: “en quarante-trois ans
de vie, Scot a inventé tout ce qui sépare conceptuellement son époque des époques
antérieures.”90 Scotus inaugurates a univocal ontology, the story goes, where God and the
world both exist under the same quasi-genus of being, flattening ontology;91 Scotus’s “formal
distinction” imperils divine simplicity; a new centrality of the distinction between God’s
ordained and absolute power “prioritizes the possible” over the real; the individuating principle
disconnects individual things from their networks of relations. All of this ultimately makes
God irrelevant, since God is seen as a very big being whose work in the world becomes less
obvious, and therefore of less explanatory necessity with the rise of modern science.92 It also
leads to nihilism: since the possible is given priority over actual being, nothingness is reified
as a kind of thing, and a more fundamental one.93 It leads to nominalism, since each thing is
just an individual thing, disconnected in principle from everything else: Scotus is “the
unraveller.”94 According to this genealogy the specter of an atheistic, nihilistic nominalism is
thus glimpsed in Scotus’s work.
This has proved controversial, notably among Scotus specialists.95 They argue that
Scotus explicitly denies that God and creatures share being, and therefore the charge of a
univocal ontology is fallacious.96 Univocity is a purely semantic term for Scotus, not an
1952), but includes numerous other historians of ideas of diverse sensibility, notably Amos Funkenstein,
Theology and the Scientific Imagination, 2nd ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986); Alain de Libera,
La philosophie médiévale, 3rd ed. (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1998), 421-425; Olivier Boulnois,
“Quand Commence L’Ontothéologie? Aristote, Thomas D’Aquin et Duns Scot” in Revue Thomiste, XCV, no. 1
(Jan – Mar 1995), 84-108; J-F Courtine, Suarez et le Système de la Métaphysique (Paris: PUF, 1990), and many
more.
90
De Libera, Philosophie, 421. De Libera’s list of inventions is 1) the univocal concept of being, 2) the formal
distinction, 3) the intuitive knowledge of singulars, and 4) the non-static treatment of modalities. He calls
Scotus the apogee of “formalist theology.”
91
Cf. John Milbank, The Suspended Middle: Henri de Lubac and the Renewed Split in Modern Catholic
Theology, 2nd Edition (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 86.
92
Cf. Jacob Schmutz, “The Medieval Doctrine of Causality and the Theology of Pure Nature” in Surnaturel: A
Controversy at the Heart of Twentieth-Century Thomistic Thought (Ave Maria, FL: Sapientia Press, 2009), 203-
250.
93
Cf. Cunningham, Nihilism, chs. 1-2.
94
Cunningham, Nihilism, 22; quoting Gerard Manley Hopkins, “Duns Scotus’s Oxford” in Gerard Manley
Hopkins: The Major Works (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 142.
95
Most notably, Thomas Williams, “The Doctrine of Univocity is True and Salutary”, Modern Theology 21, no.
4 (Oct. 2005), 575-585; Richard Cross, Duns Scotus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 33-38; Richard
Cross, “Where Angels Fear to Tread: Duns Scotus and Radical Orthodoxy”, Antonianum Annus LXXVI Fasc. I
(January-March, 2001); Peter King, “Scotus on Metaphysics”, in Thomas Williams, ed., The Cambridge
Companion to Duns Scotus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 15-68.
96
For instance, I Ordinatio 8.1.3, no. 82: God and creatures “are, however, diverse first in reality, because they
agree in no reality.” All translations of Ordinatio, Peter L.P. Simpson, trans., https://www.aristotelophile.com
/current.htm, accessed 19 July, 2019. See also Joshua Benson, “Review of The Unintended Reformation: How a
78
ontological one.97 The univocal concept of being, on this reading, entails nothing other than
that “there are concepts under whose extension God and creatures fall.”98 This is not an
ontological claim because Scotus is a nominalist about the transcendentals: being “is not a real
feature of a thing at all, but merely a vicious abstraction, proper to nothing.”99 By definition,
there can be no univocal being between God and creatures because there is no-thing called
“being”. This position is simply the logical outworking of a commitment to univocal
predication combined with the classic Christian commitment to God’s supremacy in all things.
If the concept of being must extend equally to creatures and God, but God is not subordinated
to any greater reality, then being must be merely conceptual, a name we use to speak our
commonsense intuition that God exists.
As to Scotus’s role in the development of modernity (nominalism, nihilism, atheism,
etc), his defenders are simply uninterested in history.100 If Scotus is not a nominalistic, nihilistic
atheist, he cannot be blamed for their later development. I am not, however, convinced that
history can be so summarily dismissed. But while I am convinced the rise of modernity is
causally linked to the demise of symbolism, I do not intend to rigorously demonstrate that here.
My immediate concern is the systematic theology of the symbol, so I will approach Scotus as
a systematic theologian. Indeed, I will hew quite closely to his own texts and the interpretations
of his defenders. Toward the end of my analysis I will offer a few brief thoughts on how
Scotus’s systematic theology contributes to the historical erosion of symbolism, as well as
some of the more controverted questions of ontology. But the bulk of my argument is that
Scotus’s systematic theology on its own terms has no place for the symbolic, with significant
consequences for theological content and method.
4.1 POWERS AND PERSONS

Compared with Aquinas, Scotus’s God is “far less simple.”101 Scotus’s doctrine of
univocity requires the actual existence of formal distinctions both in creation and in God,
leading him to argue that God’s one essence, God’s powers and perfections, and the three
persons are all formally distinct from one another. The logic is that when I say “John is a good
person,” I mean something distinct from “John is a wise person.” These perfections may
Religious Revolution Secularized Society by Brad S. Gregory” in The Catholic Historical Review 98, no. 3 (July
2012, 508.
97
Cf. Williams, “Salutary”, passim.
98
Richard Cross, Duns Scotus on God (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 253.
99
Cross, God, 256.
100
Williams, “Salutary”, 575. Indeed, few defenders of Scotus ever bother to address historical claims.
101
Cross, “Scotus”, 45.
79
ultimately coincide in John, but they are not identical. If they were identical, we would not
need two words for them. Because, then, these words are univocally ascribed to God, they must
also exist in God as formally distinct, albeit without fragmentation.102 Whereas Aquinas is
happy to say that God’s goodness is God’s wisdom on the basis of divine simplicity, and are
only therefore distinct for us in our temporal perspective, Scotus thinks this vitiates language
too much to be intelligible. God must, therefore, have truly distinct formal properties. God’s
goodness is not God’s wisdom. The same then holds for the divine essence and each divine
person. The essence is formally distinct from each person, as well as from the divine
perfections. Formal distinctions are not “real distinctions,” as the distinction between John and
Thomas as individuals. But neither are they purely conceptual; a formal distinction signifies a
real non-identity between two terms, but not in a way, Scotus argues, that endangers divine
simplicity.103
These formal distinctions then acquire an entirely novel, supra-trinitarian taxis. The
divine essence alone is formally infinite, and so from the one essence “emanate all other
features in an orderly fashion.”104 Emanating first from the essence “are the intrinsic essential
features.”105 These are the divine intellect, will, and perfections. “Second, come the notional,”
that is, the three persons. Finally come “created or extrinsic things.” At each stage, what is
emanated receives the measure of infinity appropriate to it, in descending order. The essence
is formally infinite, as are the powers and perfections. The persons are not formally infinite,
since the Father is not the Son.106 This does not mean the persons are finite; they occupy an
obscure middle ground between infinite and finite. Finally, creatures are finite because finitude
“pertains to them.”107 That Scotus is able to narrate this scheme in a straight line, as it were, of
descending levels of infinity underscores the extent of his doctrine of univocity. All things
emanate from the divine essence, and the “mechanisms” of these emanations are essentially
the same, as will be shown. This sequence is not merely conceptual. Each level is “produced”
by the previous one. The essence produces divine intellect and will, which are then wholly
possessed by the Father. The Son is then “produced [automatically] by the fecundity of the
intellect.”108 In filiation the Son receives both the divine intellect and will. The Spirit is then
102
Cf. John Duns Scotus, I Ord. 8.1.4, n. 192.
103
Cf. Scotus, I Ord, 8.1.4, nn. 191-92. See also, Friedman, Trinitarian, 109.
104
John Duns Scotus, Quodlibetal Questions, 5.55 in Felix Alluntis and Allan Wolter, trans., God and
Creatures: The Quodlibetal Questions (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1975), 127.
105
Scotus, Quod. lib., 5.55.
106
107
108
Scotus, I Ord. 12.7.
80
produced by the divine will now shared by the Father and Son. The Son is therefore the product
of the logically prior divine intellect in the Father, and the Spirit the product of the logically
prior divine will in the Father and Son.109
This supra-trinitarian taxis neutralizes any threat of mutual inclusion or paradoxical
“retroactive causality.” Formal distinctions police the borders of Father, Son, Spirit,
perfections, powers and essence.110 The Father must be conceived as Father without the Son
and Spirit, otherwise the Father’s identity would not be formally prior to generation and
spiration.111 Paternity therefore does not presuppose filiation, as this would make the Son
necessary for the Father. Rather, paternity only presupposes the divine essence as a “formal
reason for” generating the Son.112 The Father is therefore constituted as such by his possession
of the logically prior productive principles of intellect and will in the divine essence. The Son
is then constituted by the operation of divine intellect in the Father, and since the intellect
precedes the will, the Son receives both divine intellect and will in filiation. The object of the
divine intellect possessed by the Father is the divine essence, so that the intellect and the
essence are each a “quasi partiale principium” for the production of the Son.113 What makes
the Son the Son is not his relation to the Father as Father, but his production by and sharing in
the divine intellect and essence. This is because, again, Paternity is in the first instance the
possession of the productive principles of divine intellect and will, not the relation to the Son.
The Spirit then proceeds from the common principle of Father and Son, entirely distinct
from that principle. The Spirit is not the love of the Father for Son and Son for Father. If Father
and Son produce the Spirit as their love for one another, then the Spirit is paradoxically
necessary to the Father-Son relation. This would violate the taxis, imperiling the logical priority
of the common principle of Father and Son before spiration.114 The Spirit is therefore the love
109
Scotus, I Ord. 12.7: “The Father has first in origin the act of fecundity of the intellect before that of the will;
in that prior stage there is communicated to the Son the same fecundity as is in the Father, because in the
moment of origin – in which the Son is produced by the fecundity of the Intellect – there is communicated to
him by the Father whatever is not repugnant to him, and so the fecundity of the will is communicated; therefore,
in the other moment of origin, when a person is produced by the act of the second fecundity (namely of the
will), that person is produced by the Father and the Son as altogether by one principle, because of the fecundity
of the productive principle in them.”
110
For Russell Friedman, the central aim of the Franciscan tradition was to introduce order into the Trinity, and
so this hardened taxis is clearly within the scope of Franciscan theology. Friedman, Medieval, 39.
111
Cf. Scotus, Quod. lib. 4.67.
112
Scotus, Quod. lib. 4.67. This concept derives from Bonaventure who posited something like a “proto-Father”
before generation. Freidman, Medieval, 27; “proto-Father” is Friedman’s term for the way Bonaventure
describes the readiness of the Father to produce, citing Bonaventure, I Sent., d. 2, a. 1, q. 2, solutio. While this
might seem to press Scotus toward a kind of tri-theism, it is perhaps more appropriate to call it a “logico-
gnostic” myth of divine origins.
113
Scotus, I Ord. 2.2.3, n. 310.
114
Scotus, I Ord. 12.14; I Ord. 12.20.
81
of Father and Son for the one divine essence.115 The precision of Scotus’s formal distinctions
requires developing a new taxis that both conditions and hardens the trinitarian taxis and
forestalls any paradoxical mutual inclusion. Scotus has no time for “retroactive causality.”
Scotus does not ignore the doctrine of perichoresis, but it plays no role in his logic. For Scotus,
the coinherence of Father, Son and Spirit is only “over and above the unity they exhibit in
virtue of the divine essence,” so that perichoresis is “superfluous to the requirements” of
Scotus’s theology.116 The result is that the divine relations are an afterthought – literally,
thought after the divine essence.117
Scotus is merely reading the logic of univocity into the godhead. Because we make
distinctions in temporal matters and we speak of God univocally, then the trinitarian persons
must also be formally distinct. He distinguishes them by abstracting their commonality before
any notion of coinherence. The result is that persons only find their divinity in a shared essence,
but that essence is not defined in terms of any of the persons.118 Persons are a postscript to
essence.119
More precisely, persons are a postscript to divine intellect and will. As essential
attributes, intellect and will are prior to the persons, and in fact are the productive principles of
the Son and Spirit. Whereas the word from the intellect and love from the will for Aquinas and
Augustine are fruitful analogies, Scotus sees them as literally the mechanisms of the
processions: the production of persons “proceeds from a potency that is essential, for it is an
action either of the intellect or of the will.”120 And here again formal distinctions police the
boundaries of both. The divine intellect and will no longer “mutually include” one another, as
for Aquinas, but are hardened into two entirely distinct operations in a series.121
115
Cf. Scotus, I Ord.12.23: “the Father does not inspirate the Holy Spirit insofar as he loves the Son first, nor
the Son insofar as he loves the Father, but the Father and Son insofar as they have the divine essence present to
them as the first object of their will.”
116
Cross, Scotus, 183, n. 71. Citing Scotus, I Ord. 19.2, nn. 42, 54, 67.
117
In Catherine Pickstock’s words, “without recourse to substantive relation…the attribution of intellect to the
Son, and Will to the Spirit, ceases to be remote analogical naming…and becomes the means of literal
distinction.” Pickstock, “Significance”, 565.
118
Compare Aquinas who, as Emery argues, subsumes the one divine essence into the discourse on persons:
Gilles Emery, Trinity in Aquinas (Naples, Florida: Sapientia Press, 2003), Ch. 5.
119
Cross, God, 181: “The divine essence, as the causal power in virtue of which Son and Spirit are produced, is
prior to the persons…this essence, although not a person or suppositum, is a subsistent in itself.” Citing III Ord.
1.2, n. 6 and I Ord. 28.3, n. 81.
120
Scotus, Quod. lib. 1.55. Cf. Pickstock, Scotus, 565.
121
John Duns Scotus, Questions on the Metaphysics IX, q. 15, in Allan B. Wolter, trans., Duns Scotus on the
Will and Morality (Washington DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1986), 141. Cf. Peter King,
“Scotus on Metaphysics” in The Cambridge Companion to Duns Scotus (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2003), 23: “the psychological faculties of intellect and will are really identical with the soul, but formally
distinct from one another since what it is to be an intellect does not include the will, and what it is to be a will
does not include the intellect.”
82
In commenting on Aristotle’s distinction between rational and non-rational potencies,
Scotus argues that the intellect is “natural” in the sense that it’s operations are involuntary: the
intellect is “of itself determined to understand.”122 The will, by contrast, does not operate
“naturally,” for it is not determined to anything. The will stands equally before all logically
possible alternatives and is defined – to the extent that it is free – by its equal potentiality
toward its options. The intellect, then, is “not rational” because it is blindly determined by the
reality it understands. Indeed, “it is rational only in the qualified sense that it is a precondition
for the act of a rational potency.”123 The intellect precedes rationality as its necessary pre-
condition, but is not itself rational. The will then “follows the intellect,” but unlike the intellect
“acts freely, for it has the power of self-determination.”124 The intellect recognizes and presents
options to the will, which is equally disposed between them. The will then, being self-
determining, chooses one. Such self-determination is possible because the will is formally
distinct from the intellect. The choice of the will in turn determines the intellect to organize its
powers toward the attainment of the chosen goal. The intellect then is doubly determined. In
the first instance it is blindly bound to the reality it perceives, and in the second it is determined
by the choice of the will. The result is that any one effect is not a product of the combination
of will and intellect together, as for Aquinas, but is the direct result of the will, the only rational
faculty per se.125
Scotists are eager to point out that this does not make Scotus a voluntarist, strictly
speaking.126 Rather, the will is a higher function for which the intellect provides a foundation.
Scotus does not call into question a Scholastic intellectualism in which the will follows the
intellect. Rather, he hardens the taxis of intellect and will by subordinating the former to the
latter as a lower to a higher function. The hardening of this taxis guarantees the will’s freedom.
The will is free insofar as it is not determined to any particular possibility. It stands before the
field of compossibles identified by the intellect, unconstrained by any innate directional
impulse, for that would be a kind of constraint on the will. Within the realm of possibilities
perceived by the intellect, the will is free insofar as it is free from reason: to put it bluntly, the
will is free precisely in its ability to be unreasonable.127 This is not to say that the will cannot
be influenced by the intellect – the intellect can propose certain options as better than others
122
Scotus, Questions, 9.15 (Wolter: 141).
123
Scotus, Questions 9.15 (Wolter: 142).
124
125
126
Cf. Hannes Möhle, “Scotus’s Theory of Natural Law” in Thomas Williams, ed., The Cambridge Companion
to Duns Scotus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 324.
127
Cf. Scotus, II Ord. I.91-92; Scotus, Questions 9.15 (Wolter: 142); Möhle, “Law”, 324-325.
83
on the basis of what it naturally perceives, but the freedom of the will is defined by its ability
to ignore or embrace such recommendations. The result is both greater autonomy for the will
(within the range of what the intellect acknowledges as compossible) and a greater deference
to the range of givens grasped by the intellect.128 The intellect (and nature) is more determined,
the will more “free,” but only because their functions have been so firmly separated. This is a
long way from both Augustine and Aquinas for whom intellect operates only by right desiring,
and desire only after the operations of intellect. There is no paradoxical core in Scotus’s
psychology – only a logically necessary and inviolable taxis. Moreover, because the intellect
and will are the productive principles of the processions, Scotus subordinates his trinitarian
theology to this psychology. Inasmuch as his psychology precludes paradox, so does his
Trinity.129 Augustine and Aquinas reconfigure intellect and will along trinitarian lines,
“building in” mutual inclusion and paradoxical pre-presence;130 Scotus reconfigures trinitarian
theology in terms of intellect and will, now imagined as the rigid order of operations of
productive principles.
4.2 Powers and Creation

Scotus reads his psychology univocally into the divine act of creation. The divine intellect first
“creates” all possible worlds.131 These possible worlds all have a real and necessary existence
in the divine intellect. These possibilities are then presented to the divine will.132 The divine
will then stands unconditioned before a vast field of options. The will then selects one. There
can be no reason for this selection, not even one arising from the divine intellect, for the will
is its own reason. The result is a creation inscrutably chosen by God, created by the two
separate productive principles of intellect and will.
128
Because only the immanently graspable can be the object of the will, Scotus’s metaphysics requires
univocity to account for our desire for God.
129
It might be argued that Scotus merely shifts the location of the paradox. The “non-infinity” of the persons,
the indivisibility and yet repeatability of the divine essence, or the existence of formal distinctions at all might
be instances of paradox in Scotus’s trinity. And yet the driving impulse of Scotus’s theology is the resolution of
any outstanding philosophical aporia, leaving the reader with the impression that if Scotus could absolve his
theology of paradox, he would. See Friedman, Medieval, 112: “Scotus’ theory…is an attempt to explain just
about everything.” Richard Cross prefers Scotus’s trinitarian theology precisely because it represents a “marked
improvement over the very agnostic accounts of his predecessors”; Cross, Scotus, 70. For an account of why
Cross cannot understand the “agnosticism” of pre-Scotist theologians, see Lewis Ayres, Nicea and its Legacy
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), ch. 16. Unsurprisingly, this is the one chapter that Cross takes issue
with: Richard Cross, “Nicaea and its Legacy” in Reviews in Religion and Theology 13:1 (Jan. 2006), 16-18.
130
On Augustine, see John Milbank, “Sacred Triads: Augustine and the Indo-European Soul” in Modern
Theology 13:4 (October, 1997).
131
Scotus, I Ord. 43.16-17. Cf. analysis in Cal Ledsham, “Love, Power and Consistency: Scotus’ Doctrines of
God’s Power, Contingent Creation, Induction and Natural Law” in Sophia 49 (2010): 557-575.
132
Scotus, Lect. I.39.1-5, n. 62 (Vatican, 17:500). Cf. Cross, Scotus, 58.
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This structure makes the processions and creation two stages in a productive process,
the former necessary and the latter contingent.133 For Scotus, intellect and will are the causal
principles of the processions, necessarily producing the Son and Spirit. Creation is also a
production of the divine intellect and will, but a contingent one, a contingency grounded in the
divine will’s ability to have chosen some other creation or no creation. Because the persons are
necessary, they are logically prior to the contingent production of creation.134 Thus, the causal
principles of intellect and will “pass through” the persons and are shared equally by the persons.
Yet this order tends to prioritize the same productive principles of intellect and will over the
persons. While the Persons thereby enact creation, they do so only by virtue of their sharing in
the causal powers of intellect and will. Indeed, for Scotus, if per impossible there were no
Trinity, “whatever is necessary in God for causing a creature would still be possessed, for
[there would be] both a perfect and complete formal principle of causing, and a suppositum
having that formal perfect principle.”135 Because intellect and will are prior to the persons,
creation is principally of the essence. The processions are logically prior to creation, but
ultimately incidental to it. This is a perversion of the Augustinian principle that the persons act
as one ad extra. Because Augustine and Aquinas see divine unity as the perichoresis of the
persons, divine acts ad extra are fully trinitarian: by the Son, in the Spirit.136 The roles of divine
intellect and will are then conformed to this triune shape. Scotus, by contrast, secures divine
unity by centralizing the one divine essence, rendering perichoresis superfluous. Creation is
then an act of God’s one essence, conceived as the productive principles of intellect and will.
Because the intellect and will are “pre-trinitarian,” creation is only symbolic of essential
productive power, not of the processional life of God. In the first instance, it is symbolic of
God’s absolute power grounded in the divine intellect’s knowledge of all possible worlds.
Secondly, it is symbolic of God’s ordained power grounded in the free choice of the divine will
for this world. In neither instance does it refer in its deepest reality to Father, Son and Spirit.137
4.3 Univocity and Symbolism
133
See discussion in Antonie Vos, The Theology of John Duns Scotus (Boston: Brill, 2018), 149-162.
134
Scotus, Lect. II 1.24.
135
Scotus, Quod. 14, n. 9 (Alluntis and Wolter, 323).
136
Emery, Human Person, 143-148.
137
On the influence of ordained and absolute power, see Funkenstein, Imagination, 124-151. Funkenstein notes,
rightly, that this position at least latent in most Christian theology, the difference is that Scotus centralizes its
importance.
85
All of this is in keeping with univocity and its attendant nominalism.138 Scotus’s commitment
to render theological language as intelligible as possible commits him to univocity, which
requires the transcendentals be merely conceptual to avoid conflating divine and creaturely
being. Once being is merely a vicious abstraction, there is nothing left to emanation other than
power: creation is not the gift of a share in divine being, but an assertion of divine will.139 As
I will now argue, the demise of any sense of “sharing in” means that creation cannot be
symbolic of God’s own trinitarian reality, since symbolism requires analogy.
Funkenstein summarizes the symbolist position:
The most natural way [for Patristic and medieval theology] to perceive God’s presence
in the world was symbolical. Patristic and medieval theology were inevitably led
toward an interpretation of the universe as a sign, symbol, picture of God. A true
symbol, to use a phrase of Durkheim, manifests a participation mystique with that of
which it is a symbol. It is both one with, and different from, its symbol; it is much more
than a linguistic metaphor. Nature reveals God’s symbolic presence, and was seen as a
system of symbols, of signatures of God; so also was man’s soul; and so was history.140
It is as a late flowering of this context that Aquinas formulates his doctrine of analogy. The
ontological aspects of that doctrine stipulate a hierarchy of likenesses to the divine. Because
things only are by participation in God, then anything that is is an image of God, with
gradations of intensity from the inert object to the fully actualized intellect.141 To the extent
that something participates in God, God is present “in” that thing: recall, a symbol is a sign
that mediates presence.142 Thus for Thomas, God never acts at a distance from creation, for his
action is always coextensive with his presence.143 This ontological analogy requires analogical
semantics since God’s presence cannot mean the same thing in creatures and in God. God is
“in” a creature in a very different way from the way that, for example, the Father is in the Son.
But nonetheless, the difference and identity between the persons is the ground of the difference
and presence of God in creation, as the analysis above showed. Indeed, unity in difference is
more true of God than creation, but creation participates in this primordial truth.
In this context of semantic and ontological analogy Thomas deploys the psychological
analogy for the Trinity. The analogy is not a “model” of the Trinity, as much as a site of
138
I mean by this Scotus’s denial of the reality of the transcendentals, not to conflate him with later nominalists.
139
While he is not a strict voluntarist, there is certainly a kind of voluntarism at work in Scotus’s psychology
and theology.
140
Funkenstein, Imagination, 49.
141
ST 1a.13.2; ST 1a.8.1.
142
143
ST 1a.8.1.
86
analogical participation. Reflection on the human mind – the highest internal image of the
Trinity – is more a meditation than a discursive argument, though it contains much discursus.
It is ontologically analogical since it is the highest sharing in the imago dei discoverable within
the human; it is semantically analogical since “word” and “love” are more true of God than of
us. This enforces a significant apophatic reserve about the inner divine life. The Son is the
Word, which Thomas identifies simply as something that proceeds, but we lack the intellectual,
and therefore ontological, capacity to know what this means. It would be wholly inappropriate,
on Thomas’s terms, to suggest that the Son is literally an inner word. Human inner words,
rather, are symbols of this eternal Word: they bear the ontological trace of the eternal Word,
and so reflection upon them can be an encounter with the presence of the Logos. For both
Thomas and Augustine, inner words and love are a symbol, reflection upon which enables the
theologian to grow in the image of God.
This is not to suggest that Aquinas and Augustine treat the analogy in the same way.
Thomas famously shifts from questions of the working of the mind to the ontology of the soul.
But more importantly for our present purposes, Aquinas “shows less of his work” and focusses
more on presenting the results of his reflection.144 This has led to the accusation that while
Augustine’s analogy was a spiritual exercise, Aquinas’s was a detached academic
inspection.145 But when considered within the scope of the Summa (a breadth far exceeding
what Augustine attempts in De trinitate), it lacks none of the pedagogical value. The Summa
itself is an exercise in manuduction, being led by the hand into a greater vision of God.146
If the human soul (or the working of the human mind) is a symbol, then meeting God
in contemplating the symbol is symbolism, joining the symbol to the symbolized in an act of
desire and love. Thus, “symbolism” is intimately tied to Thomas’s doctrine of analogy, both in
its semantic and ontological aspects. What distinguishes my term “symbolism” from Thomas’s
analogia is that what I term symbolism attempts to articulate the Trinitarian core of the doctrine
of analogy. Symbolism names the interface of the doctrine of analogy with a doctrine of the
Trinity. It indicates how created symbols are themselves participants in eternal triune
symbolism.147 Their active participation in the eternal symbol by their reading of the divine
signs is symbolism, a participation in the Spirit, interpreting the symbol and returning the
symbol to God in praise. Symbolism thus only works with a doctrine of creation that integrates
144
Emery, Thomistic, 71.
145
See Emery, Thomistic, ch. 2.
146
Cf. Peter Candler, Theology, Rhetoric and Manuduction (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006).
147
This is, as chapter one argued, an extension of Karl Rahner’s “Theology of the Symbol” in a more complete
Trinitarian direction.
87
creation into the trinitarian processions. The doctrine of analogy, as a constituent part of the
doctrine of creation, also has a trinitarian logic.
If analogy requires a particular trinitarian theology, the rejection of analogy requires
one as well. The Franciscans did not deny the spiritual value of Trinitarian theology, nor the
mystical possibilities of theological reflection. But their concerns were more firmly fixed on
bringing “order” to the doctrine of the Trinity.148 Scotus reacted, and not without reason,
against late Dominican tendencies to minimize the real concourse between God and creaturely
analogies. Durand of St. Pourçain went so far as to deny that the name “Word” is properly
predicated of the Son, calling it a mere “metaphor”.149 This confirmed Scotus’s concern: at its
worst analogy is just systematic equivocation, at its best, unacknowledged univocity.150
For Scotus, the very discipline of theology, in both its ecclesial and evangelical aims,
requires univocal semantics. There must be some concept that univocally extends to cover
“John is” and “God is,” otherwise we have failed to say anything meaningful at all; neither
comforting for the faithful, nor compelling for the unbeliever. Scotus sees the real payout of
univocity in the doctrine of the Trinity:
Unless ‘being’ implies one univocal intention, theology would simply perish. For
theologians prove that the divine Word proceeds and is generated by way of intellect,
and the Holy Spirit proceeds by way of will. But if intellect and will were found in us
and in God equivocally, there would be no evidence at all that, since a word is generated
in us in such and such a fashion, it is so in God – and likewise with regard to love in us
– because then intellect and will in these two cases would be of a wholly different kind
(ratio).151
Without univocity, for Scotus, Trinitarian theology suffers death by equivocation. The very
proofs of God’s two emanations, and thereby of the Son and Spirit, would fail to prove anything
if intellect and will did not mean substantially the same thing in divinity and humanity.152 Thus,
Cross: “the very divine and human features of which the same concepts are applicable must
be, at root, the same.”153 This proof, which entails the inviolable logical taxis examined above
(from essence, through attributes, Persons and finally creation) requires univocity.154
148
Freidman, Medieval, 39.
149
Durand of Pourçain, I Sent. (C), d. 27, q. 3; Freidman, Medieval, 72.
150
Scotus, Rep. 1.3.1, n. 7. See Cross, God, 256.
151
Scotus, Lect. 1.3.1.1-2, n. 113, translation Richard Cross in Cross, God, 253.
152
Cf. Scotus, Resp. 1.3.1, n. 7 (Waddington, XI, 43b).
153
Cross, God, 110.
154
Specifically, it requires semantic univocity in the case of being, and real univocity in the case of attributes
and faculties.
88
And univocity requires selective nominalism. Scotus recognizes that claiming that God
and creatures can be conceived as falling under a common “genus” of being is indeed
idolatrous. So Scotus denies that being is anything other than a mental abstraction: being, and
the other transcendentals simply do not exist.155 That God falls under the same concept of being
as creatures does not entail that God falls under something called being, since there is no such
thing as being. But this is not a thoroughgoing nominalism, since Scotus wants to maintain real
ascription of creaturely distinctions to God. Scotus is not a nominalist about properties, for
instance. When we ascribe wisdom to God, this wisdom is real, and really convertible with the
wisdom we ascribe to Socrates. In the quote above, moreover, it is clear that faculties like
intellect and will are also essentially the same in divinity and humanity. When we say the
divine Word emanates from the divine intellect, the emanation is real and really convertible
with the emanation of our own inner words. In order to secure the stability of arguments about
God (his properties and faculties), Scotus rejects “global nominalism,” but so as not to
subordinate God to being, Scotus adopts a nominalist view of the transcendentals.156 Scotus
has bartered real properties and faculties (for the sake of argumentative validity) for nominalist
transcendentals (for the sake of orthodoxy). Wisdom is real; intellect is real; being is not.
From a Thomist perspective, this leads to an emaciated account of participation. Once
being can no longer be shared, existence is still a gift from God, but only by imitation at a
distance of an exemplar and efficient cause, not by an abiding inner presence. To be sure,
Scotus assents to a thin account of participation, but it is accounted for solely in terms of a
distant exemplar and mechanical efficient causality.157 For since Scotus is a nominalist about
the transcendentals, the goodness of any given thing is only the product of its being caused by
an original good thing. It is not the ongoing presence of an original goodness in the created
thing; how could it be, since goodness is merely conceptual? No instance of being, goodness,
truth, or beauty indicates the presence of being, goodness, truth, or beauty, only a mechanical
dependence on a good, true and beautiful Agent who just is. So what, then links this original
agent with its effects? It is God’s power that provides the all-important connections, but power
now conceptually independent of presence. Indeed, for Scotus, God’s omnipotence does not
necessarily entail his omnipresence: God could exercise causal power from a distance, if, per
155
Scotus, I Ord. 8.1.3, nn. 137-150. Richard Cross’s most helpful treatment of this topic is “Appendix:
Religious Language and Divine Ineffability” in Cross, God, 249-260.
156
Cross, God, 110.
157
Scotus, I Ord. 8.1.3, n. 86. Cross tends to equivocate on the extent to which this is a very different kind of
participation from the previous tradition. Cross, God, 111.
89
impossibile, God were not essentially omnipresent.158 Participation is then tilted toward such
causality and away from presence. The reason for this is obvious: God’s presence “in”
something is only possible analogically and is far more difficult to isolate and secure logically.
Efficient and exemplar causality (understood in terms of imitation as effect to cause, not an
ontological sharing in) offers a far more robust, “scientific” basis for construing the
relationship between God and creatures.159 Participation is then not a matter of the mysterious
presence of the symbolized in the symbol, but of a discursively provable correspondence
between cause and effect.
To be sure, Aquinas reasons from causality, but the doctrine of analogy allows him to
see divine causality as that which is most internal to a creature. While Aquinas argues for
analogy on the basis of divine causality, even this term “causality” must be understood
analogically, so that divine causality is not “at root the same” as creaturely causality.160 As
Jacob Schmutz notes, for Aquinas divine causality functions by influxus or influentia, so that
161
the first cause acts “in” second causes. This is an ontological affirmation: “being
communicates itself per influentiam beginning with the first cause, who gives form and
being.”162 God, Thomas argues, is the giver of being, that which is most intimate to everything
that exists, and so God’s causality acts most intimately, that is, as ontological first principle
within the second cause.163 God “gives being, the secondary causes only determine it.”164 By
contrast, univocity forces Scotus to see divine and creaturely causation as two instances of
essentially the same thing. For Scotus, divine causality thereby functions not in, but with
second causes. The first cause only “concurs” with the second, making both but partial causes
of one effect. Second causes, for Scotus, add something to the first.165 Scotus did not initiate
this evolution in the understanding of causality, but his doctrine of univocity gave it forceful
expression.166
Thus, when being is nominalized, causation is homogenized. Scotus rejects Thomas’s
position that “esse is directly an effect of God,” because “every composite effect can be
158
Scotus, I Ord. 37, n. 9. Cf. Cross, God, 101.
159
Cross argues that Scotus has an account of participation but fails to note the serious difference in how
participation is construed.
160
Cross, God, 110.
161
Schmutz, “Causality”, 211.
162
163
ST 1a.105.5.
164
165
Cf. Scotus, I Ord. 36.65; Scotus, IV Ord. 1.1.7.
166
It is a broader Franciscan tendency in the 13th century. Peter Olivi and Henry of Ghent both doubt the
viability of “influentia.” Schmutz, “Causality”, 212.
90
generated by a created cause only by passing through the action of creatures themselves, who
by the very fact become themselves equally ‘givers of being.’”167 Because being has no
transcendental reality, the gift of being is nothing other than its instantiation, which can be
effected by divine and creaturely causal power. In other words, creative power is reduced to
productive power, a power contained preeminently in the divine essence, but possessed in
essentially the same way by the Essence, the Persons, and creatures. While only God can create
ex nihilo, thereafter, God and creatures become co-makers of being. This effectively removes
ontological considerations from causality altogether, tilting it toward the entirely “ontic” play
of productive powers, divine and creaturely, cooperating to varying degrees.
Once primary and secondary causality are conceived under a common ratio, it becomes
necessary to delineate two distinct spheres of operation, for if creaturely and divine causality
cooperate in production, this might make God culpable for human sin. Scotus uses an
illustration from a medieval ball game. Divine causality is not that in which the ball moves and
has its being, but “is reduced to an ‘assistance or general influence’ and hence designates
nothing other than the ‘actual conjunction of such active causes, out of which, being so
conjoined and their proper activities being presupposed to the conjunction, ensues the common
effect of both causes.’”168 Now two orders of causal power concur toward a “common effect.”
For Scotus, this means that under the general influence of God, creaturely sin does not
contaminate God, since God is only supplying the minimal requirements to ensure the
effectiveness of creaturely free choice.
Ockham would then filter all of this through Scotus’s distinction between God’s
absolute and ordained power to “eliminate the whole traditional hierarchy between first and
second causes.”169 Once Scotus flattened the ontological hierarchy of causes, there was little
reason for Ockham to maintain their formal order. God may as well skip secondary causes
altogether, making them always potentially illusory phenomenon to which only the loose
ascription of nominales applies. This is, for Ockham, only a possibility latent in God’s absolute
power; God in fact ordains the arrangement of secondary causes.170 But this de jure situation
would not last. By the sixteenth century, the possibility that God might usurp secondary causes
167
168
Schmutz, “Causality”, 222. Quoting Scotus, II Ord. 3.2.1, no. 281.
169
Schmutz, “Causality”, 232. Cf. Funkenstein, Imagination, 143: “For Thomas, ‘the world’ meant, first and
foremost, the unity and cohesiveness of its structure. For Ockham it was derived from the brute fact that it is one
aggregate. That it is well ordered he does not deny, but does not assume any order as a necessary condition for
‘this world’ to be one.”
170
It should be noted that Aquinas would not deny God’s absolute power; the point here is that the terms of the
debate have so dramatically changed that Aquinas and Ockham are not having the same conversation.
91
becomes an affirmation that God programmatically does. For Luis de Molina, God’s potentia
ordinata and potentia absoluta map directly onto nature and grace. God sustains the natural
world by his general concurrence, but directly intervenes in that world by his absolute power
to bestow grace.
In this realm of pure nature, God’s action comes to be seen as “neutral” in regard to
ends. God concurs with creaturely action in a way that merely follows upon the creature’s free
choice. Where for Scotus, the creature “adds” to divine causality, by the sixteenth century it is
God who “adds” to creaturely causality: God provides the additional power necessary to
accomplish an act. Quickly enough a Cistercian, Juan Caramuel Lobkowitz puts Ockham’s
razor to work: why retain concurrent divine causality at all?171 If free creatures freely act and
God’s power secretly and imperceptibly “seals the deal,” so to speak, what need is there for
divine causal power at all? Would it not be simpler to inhabit a world of discreet independent
causes? God may perhaps intervene occasionally, but otherwise, there is only pure nature.172
Pure nature has no place for symbolism. In the first instance, symbolism requires
analogy – both ontologically and semantically (the two cannot in fact be separated). And since
analogy, for Scotus and his followers, is nothing but equivocation mixed with unacknowledged
univocity, symbolism must be done away with. Once being is no longer an analogical sharing,
it becomes nothing other than an instantiation of power, thereby making the entire created order
merely the expression of divine productive power. The important question then becomes not
so much “what has God done?” but “what can God do?”. The distinction between God’s
ordained and absolute power, always present in some form in tradition, takes on a novel and
paramount importance. To guard the freedom of God’s will, God must be capable of creating
any possible world, and those possible worlds always hover in the background of this actual
world. As developed by the Scotist Alexander Broadie: “since our world is one of many
possible worlds that God could have created, our world is permeated by non-being.”173
Funkenstein concludes:
The Termists could not but object to any attempt to see God symbolized in nature
because the order of nature was, in their eyes, so utterly contingent upon God’s
171
172
This razor cuts both ways. Calvinism and Jansenism react to the prospect of pure nature by destroying nature
– there is only divine causality.
173
Alexander Broadie, “Scotist Metaphysics and Creation ex nihilo” in David Burrell, et al., eds., Creation and
the God of Abraham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 59.
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will…the nominalists had to reject the doctrine of analogy because they had already
desymbolized the universe (as well as history) almost completely.”174
In other words, the world is so exhaustively threatened by God’s absolute power that nature
can in no way be counted on to symbolize the divine.
Thus, under the weight of univocity, Scotus nominalizes being to avoid idolatrously
subordinating God to being. Once Scotus reduces being to a vicious abstraction, there is
nothing left to emanation other than power: creation is merely the result of God’s ordained
power, in principle always threatened by God’s absolute power. Since power is of the essence,
logically prior to the persons, creation cannot be symbolic of God’s own trinitarian reality. The
symbolic value of creation can only be guaranteed when creation is a share in the divine life
of Father, Son and Spirit; symbolism dies by univocation.175
5. CONCLUSION
Thomas and Scotus think very differently about the Trinity, and this alters how they think of
creation. For Thomas, creation is enacted according to the persons: spoken from the Father in
the Son by the Spirit. While the persons act as one in all their external acts, they act according
to the trinitarian taxis. Creation is thus the work of Father-Son-Spirit, and carries within it the
ontological trace of the triune life. While this trace must still be elevated to grace and glory, it
is, nonetheless a mode of participation in the triune God. Creation is truly a symbol of God, a
sign that mediates God’s presence. It is this presence, moreover, that funds theology as a
spiritual exercise. In “reading” the symbols of created life – in this case, the psychological
analogy – the theologian encounters not just facts about God, but the vestigial presence of God.
As Peter Struck summarizes the approach of Dionysius, symbols have “the anagogic power to
lift us up” to the symbolized itself.176 While certainly the product of a very different time and
place, Thomas’s theology does not depart much from the symbolism of Augustine’s analogical
ascent. Thomas still intends his readers to encounter God in the spiritual exercise of his
reflection on the Trinity, a manuduction into the Trinity.177
For Scotus, creation “passes through” the persons, but the persons are inessential to the
act of creation itself: creation, like the persons themselves, is a product of the powers of the
divine essence. Creation thus symbolizes not the persons of the Trinity, but divine power. That
174
175
Of course, Scotus and the later nominalists did not develop these concepts in the same ways. Scotus thought
univocity meant we could prove a great deal about God, later nominalists demurred.
176
Struck, Symbol, 262.
177
Candler, Manuduction, passim.
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power is formally distinct from the divine presence, so it becomes conceivable that God might
act apart from God’s presence. Once the distinction between God’s absolute and ordained
power is centralized, creation is so exhaustively threatened by God’s absolute power that it
cannot be counted on to symbolize the Trinity. The God who might have done anything from
a distance, becomes a God who does a few things from a distance, which in turn becomes no
God at all. Scotus of course is not personally responsible for every link in this chain of events,
but in prioritizing the powers of the essence over the persons in eternity, Scotus prioritizes
power over presence in time, and creation ceases to be a symbol. That is, creation ceases to be
a sign that mediates God’s presence, only a product of divine power. And this, in turn, changes
the texture of theology. No longer an exercise of spiritual ascent, theology is the discovery of
or imposition of conceptual order. Scotus thought of the psychological analogy as a proof of
the Trinity, in spite of Augustine’s clearly different aims.178 The purpose is no longer
contemplation and ascent, but maximal discursive clarity.179
Thomas’s account, I am arguing, better secures the symbolic quality of creation, and
therefore its sacral and sacramental value. Fundamental to this theology of the symbol is the
conviction that “symbolized-symbol-symbolism” is more truly said of God than creation. A
systematics of the symbol, then, will turn on a doctrine of the Trinity. Only because the Father
subsists as the symbolized, the Son the symbol, and the Spirit symbolism, do we have any
reason to understand creation as a symbol, for created symbols participate analogically in the
uncreated symbol. The Father speaks creation in the speaking of the Word, there is nothing
outside this relation to ground creation – no logically prior divine essence or divine power, just
the relations of the persons. And once this relation is seen in its absolute priority, we can be
quite bold about the depth of connection between creation and God. Thomas will say that
creation, as known in the Word, is the divine essence. That is a strong statement. It indicates
an unspeakable intimacy between creation and God, that creation itself is revelatory, that it
carries within it God’s vestigial presence. And yet creation is not God. Because creation’s
178
See the argument about Augustine’s pedagogical intentions in Lewis Ayres, Augustine and the Trinity
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); see also Rowan Williams, On Augustine (London:
Bloomsbury, 2016), ch. 9. Russell Freidman is thus wrong in his attempt to give Scotus the benefit of the doubt
by saying that “Augustine was by no means explicit as to how he meant the psychological analogy to be
taken…[both Franciscan and Dominican approaches] should be viewed as honest attempts at coming to grips
with the available theological data.” Friedman, Medieval, 61. To call the analogy “theological data” is already to
misconstrue its purpose in a Franciscan direction. Of course, it was an honest attempt, but it departs
significantly from Augustine.
179
The Trinity is, of course, not entirely provable, but Scotus thinks his arguments are “strongly deductive,
though not demonstrative in the strict sense,” since God must choose to reveal himself to us, the premises of the
proof are not immediately available. Cf. Scotus, Quod. 14, n. 9 (Wolter, 323-324); Cross, God, 128.
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ground and end is God, creation is not its own, it is not self-subsistent. On Thomist terms,
creation has existence, but only God is existence, and thus creation is not to be identified with
God. But even this “not-God” quality is itself an expression of God’s life, for God’s Spirit
overflows in self-diffusive goodness, establishing creation as an-other that is nonetheless not
at a distance. Creation’s contingency is not an expression of its distance from God, but of the
free and overflowing goodness of God, the willingness of God to share God’s life with another.
What Thomas’s analysis of creation allows us to say is that while it is indeed the work
of the whole Trinity, creation’s relation to the Trinity most closely approximates that of Son
and Father. As the Son receives the gift of the divine essence from the Father, so creation
receives participation in being from God; as the Son is the fullness of the Father expressed in
another eternally and necessarily, so creation is the divine essence expressed in another
temporally and contingently; and just as the Father is only known in the Son, so God can only
be known within creation by created symbols. Moreover, just as the Father remains the hidden
source and eternal fount of divinity, so God is the hidden source of creation who remains
hidden even as revealed in created symbols.
Thus, the Son is the symbol of the Father, and creation is the symbol of God. But this
does not obviate the need for redemption and elevation. Creation is indeed a symbol, but that
symbol must be returned to God in a motion of symbolism. I argued above that the Spirit is
necessary to the Trinity because without an “interpreter” of the Word spoken, the speaking of
the Word would be a blunt self-assertion, a pulsar firing in a vacuum. Likewise it would be
unfitting for the created symbol to be spoken into existence, only to remain “unread,”
unreturned to God in love. As the Spirit eternally “interprets” the Son and returns to the Father
in praise, so creation should be read and returned to God. For this to happen, there must be a
creature capable of reading the symbols. And in this creature, more than anywhere else in
creation, the paradox of the trinitarian relations is most evidently displayed. Humanity
occupies a paradoxical middle of the created order: it naturally desires the vision of God, but
that desire can only be fulfilled by grace. As the Spirit follows the Son, so grace presupposes
nature, but as the Spirit is paradoxically pre-present in the generation of the Word, so grace is
paradoxically “pre-present” as the natural desire for the supernatural. Nature is always-already
graced, a paradox grounded in the paradoxical relation of Son and Spirit. Humanity is thus
suspended, always a symbol, but also always in a motion of desire toward God. As the Spirit
is the paradoxical unity of Father and Son, so humanity is the paradoxical unity of all creation;
the site where God and creation are destined to meet in Christ. Before turning to redemption,
properly speaking, in the body of Christ, I turn to humanity, suspended in a motion of desire
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and love. If the human is the suspended middle of the universe, anthropology is the suspended
middle of this thesis; it speaks of the natural inclination of all things to be rejoined to God, and
yet the need for supernatural grace to achieve that union. I turn, then, to anthropology.
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CHAPTER THREE
ANTHROPOLOGY
1. INTRODUCTION
In the first chapter, I developed the triad symbolized-symbol-symbolism as an analogy for the
Trinity. This analogy, I argued, could also be used to understand all things in relation to God,
so that symbolized-symbol-symbolism analogically corresponds to God-creation-church. God
is symbolized in creation, and the church is symbolism, the movement of unity between God
and world. The last chapter developed an understanding of creation as a symbol of God as the
temporal unfolding of the eternal Word in the Spirit. This means that our trinitarian theology
is intimately connected to our doctrine of creation, as I showed in the contrast between Aquinas
and Duns Scotus. The mystery and paradox of substantive relations was seen to more
successfully guard the symbolic, which is to say the sacral value of creation, than Scotus’s
more discursively confident emanationist account of the Trinity. Creation, I argued, necessarily
reflects the divine life as the unnecessary outpouring of that life; creation is a symbol not
merely of divine causal power, but of the divine relations.
One potential concern with the closely linked trinitarian theology and doctrine of
creation I outlined is that it seems to neglect the difference between nature and grace, between
creation and elevation to grace and glory. If creation is to be elevated to the divine life, if nature
is to be perfected by grace, then the doctrine of creation cannot be the last word. The question
then arises about the relation between creation as a natural symbol, and the supernatural destiny
to which it is called. I will address this issue in the present chapter in terms of anthropology.
This is appropriate because, as a great deal of Christian tradition has supposed, humanity is a
microcosm of the entire created order. For Thomas, for instance, in being a hylomorphic unity
of body and soul, humanity joins material creation with spiritual creation, so that everything
from cosmic radiation to angels is summed in humanity.1 Human nature is created and
redeemed on behalf of all nature.2 Thus, the relation between nature and grace in the human
speaks for the relation of creation to consummation in the created order as a whole. As de
Lubac would say, the doctrine of creation is “symbolically included” in anthropology, so that
something said of one applies to the other.
1
Gilles Emery calls humanity the “hyphen” between material and immaterial creation. Gilles Emery, Trinity,
Church and the Human Person (Naples, Florida: Sapientia Press, 2007), 220. Citing Thomas Aquinas, Summa
Contra Gentiles II, ch. 68 (#1453).
2
This is clear, for instance, in Romans 8, where creation itself longs for its own freedom and renewal as the
revelation of God’s people.
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Humanity, like creation, is naturally a symbol of God. Moreover, on behalf of all
creation, humanity is destined to a supernatural end. I will argue for de Lubac’s view that the
link between created nature and supernatural destiny is the natural desire for the supernatural.
I will not be adding much by way of new argument, but I will be indicating why it is that I
maintain de Lubac’s position that humanity has a natural desire for the vision of God, but this
desire can only be fulfilled by grace. To be a symbol is to occupy this “suspended middle.”3
This view has been expounded and controverted often. The literature is immense, and
apparently intractable. In the first section, I will outline some of the issues surrounding Henri
de Lubac’s understanding of nature and grace, with reference to the criticisms of Lawrence
Feingold, Steven A. Long and Reinhardt Hütter. 4 I will not, however, be mounting a full
defense against any of them. While each has distinct and important concerns, their projects all
turn on an interpretation of Thomas.5 As important as that undertaking is, missing from any of
them is the broader dogmatic context of the question. For example, one searches in vain for
any reference to the Holy Spirit in Feingold or Long’s work, and Hütter only glances across
the surface of pneumatological thinking, a symptom of the dissolutions that de Lubac claimed
could be traced back to the very doctrine of pure nature they variously defend. This chapter,
then, will not attempt an exegesis of Thomas, but to ask the question within a broader frame of
reference.
In particular I want to draw attention to the isomorphism identified by de Lubac
between nature and grace and the Old and New Testaments. The second section of this chapter
will argue that a trinitarian theology of symbols sustains an isomorphism between scripture
and anthropology, so that the relation of nature to grace can be understood in light of the
relation of Old to New Testament, with Christ standing at the middle of both. Just as Christ is
only intelligible as Israel’s messiah, as the fulfillment of Israel’s founding promises, so grace
presupposes and perfects but does not destroy nature. But just as there is no aspect of Israel’s
scripture in which the eternal Logos is not always-already present and working, so there is no
pure nature not always-already marked by grace. Nonetheless, in spite of the “pre-presence”
of Christ in the Old Testament and the continuity of Christ’s life and work with Old Testament
3
Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Theology of Henri de Lubac: an Overview (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991),
15.
4
Lawrence Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God according to St Thomas Aquinas and His Interpreters
(Naples, Florida: Sapientia Press, 2010); Steven A. Long, Natura Pura (New York: Fordham University Press,
2010); Reinhard Hütter, Dust Bound for Heaven (Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2012).
5
Roughly, Feingold focuses on the reception history of Thomas, Long on the question of natural law and nature
as a “theonomic” principle, and Hütter on the details of Thomas’s text in the Summa Contra Gentiles. Of the
three, Hütter’s is the most sensitive to the actual questions thrown up by de Lubac’s proposal and broader
dogmatic concerns.
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messianic promises, Christ comes in a manner completely beyond Israel’s expectations, a
fulfillment at once longed for and yet unforeseeable. So too is nature “suspended,” caught up
in a destiny at once constitutive of it and yet beyond it, having a natural desire for the
supernatural that it is incapable of fulfilling on its own. There is thus a profound coherence or
fittingness between the natural desire for the supernatural and the shape of scripture.
I will end this reflection with a reading of the opening chapter of the gospel of Luke,
with particular attention to the annunciation, and Mary’s Magnificat. Mary is shown to be a
spiritual interpreter of scripture who displays in her own embodied exegesis the natural longing
for God that is gratuitously fulfilled in Christ. Humanity is thus seen to be a symbol by being
suspended, longing by nature for a fulfillment only possible by grace on behalf of all creation.
The result is a clearer understanding of the nature of the created symbol, and its intrinsic desire
for consummation in Christ. This chapter itself is a kind of “suspended middle” of this thesis:
it articulates the relation between creation (chapter 2) and creation’s ecclesial consummation
(chapter 4). I seek to account for the hinge between symbol and symbolism, the created symbol
and its gratuitous return to God. To be a symbol is to be always-already in a motion of
symbolism back toward God, for nature is always-already graced.
2. NATURE AND GRACE

The question of the relation of nature to grace was one of the most controverted of the last
century and simmers still today.6 While all Catholic and many Protestant theologians agree that
grace perfects and does not destroy nature, the relation between nature and grace remains
heavily contested. Henri de Lubac questioned the reigning neo-Scholastic synthesis in
Surnaturel, a series of historical studies arguing that the theory of pure nature was a late
aberration in Thomist theology, one that goes beyond and controverts both Thomas and the
tradition Thomas inherited.7 De Lubac argued that humans have a natural desire for the
supernatural, a desire implanted in human nature for “l’union divine…la participation de la
6
For an overview, see Serge-Thomas Bonino, ed., Surnaturel: A Controversy at the Heart of Twentieth-Century
Catholic Thomistic Thought (Ave Maria, Florida: Sapientia Press, 2009), especially chs. 1-3.
7
Henri de Lubac, Surnaturel: Etudes Historique, nouvelle edition (Paris: Lethielleux, 2010; originally published
Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1946); The Mystery of the Supernatural (New York: Herder and Herder, 1967);
Augustinianism and Modern Theology, trans. Lancelot Shepperd (New York: Crossroad, 2000). Influential
analyses of de Lubac’s position include Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Theology of Henri de Lubac: an overview
(San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991), ch. 4; John Milbank, The Suspended Middle: Henri de Lubac and the
Renewed Split in Modern Catholic Theology, Second Edition (Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2005); Nicholas J. Healy
Jr., “The Christian Mystery of Nature and Grace” in Jordan Hillebert, ed., The T&T Clark Companion to Henri
de Lubac (London: T&T Clark-Bloomsbury, 2017), 181-204.
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Vie trinitaire dans la ‘vision de Dieu.’”8 Such a natural desire, however, can only be fulfilled
by grace. Nature is thus “suspended,” driven by desire for God, but unable to fulfill that desire
but for the gift of grace.9
For Neo-Scholasticism and its heirs this violates the crucial Aristotelian axiom that
desires of nature must be achievable by natural means.10 Obviously, if the natural desire for the
supernatural could be fulfilled by natural means, this would entail Pelagianism. Alternatively,
if the desire is truly natural but can only be fulfilled by grace, this would seem to obligate God
by justice to fulfill it. A natural desire for the supernatural would imply that human nature is
only fulfilled – only fully natural – by grace, and therefore it would be ontological cruelty for
God to deny nature what is natural to it. Grace would then not be gratuitous, since mandated
by divine justice.11 Moreover, if nature has this natural desire for the supernatural, it would
compromise the integrity of nature, since it requires God’s grace for its own fulfillment.12 De
Lubac’s position, it is argued, compromises both the integrity of nature and the gratuity of
grace, collapsing them together in the human spirit.
The Neo-Scholastic alternative is to imagine two distinct spheres, nature and grace, two
“tiers” of anthropology. Human nature constitutes a purely natural order with purely natural
ends. These ends suffice for the fulfillment of nature qua nature, for example, building homes,
agriculture and family relations. This is the realm of common human inquiry, natural law,
science, apologetics, philosophy.13 The desire for God in this state is a desire for God as end
only inasmuch as God is the one creator, in principle discoverable by unaided human reason,
but not yet the Trinitarian God of Christianity. Hence Steven A. Long: “yes, God is the natural
end, but God as First Cause of these effects, not God precisely as Father, Son and Spirit.”14
8
De Lubac, Surnaturel, 421.
9
Hans Urs von Balthasar borrows this term from Erich Przywara to describe de Lubac’s theology. It is picked
up by John Milbank. Balthasar, Theology, 15; Milbank, Suspended, 12.
10
Feingold, Natural, xxix: “innate appetite is always proportionate to the nature of the creature and to his
natural powers, and thus it cannot extend to something which exceeds the natural order, such as the vision of
God.”
11
Feingold, Natural, xxix: “In addition, it would put in jeopardy the possibility of a connatural end for man and
thus create grave problems for the theological understanding of the gratuitousness of grace and glory.”
12
Cf. Long’s argument that de Lubac’s position constitutes the “loss of nature as a theonomic principle” in
Natura, especially chapter 1.
13
Long, Natura, 202: “the full range of naturally knowable truth, in metaphysics, natural theology, natural
philosophy, anthropology, and morality, forms a crucially central point of analogous reference for the church in
her evangelical mission.” One payout for Long is that pure nature secures the universal validity and availability
of natural law (hence the title ‘theonomic’), which enables him, among other things, to uphold the American
constitutional framework as a high-water mark for the political manifestation of natural teleology. See Long’s
chapter 4, “Why Natura Pura Is Not the Theological Stalking Horse for Secularist Minimalism or Pelagianism.”
14
Long, Natura, 17. Advocates appeal to Vatican I: “If anyone says that the one, true God, our creator and
Lord, cannot be known with certainty from the things that have been made, by the natural light of reason: let
him be anathema,” in Norman P. Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, Vol. 2 (1990), 810. The neo-
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Long reads a strong distinction in Thomas between a discourse on the one God and a discourse
on the Trinity, corresponding to two ends, one natural and immanently attainable, the other
supernatural and requiring the extrinsic addition of grace.15 Securing a realm of pure nature
therefore secures an entire range of universally available goods, including especially a basic
concept of one creator God and a universally valid natural law.
Accordingly, any confusion of nature with grace destroys the integrity of those
disciplines which comprise the realm of pure nature, since their internal coherence is corrupted
by a natural longing for grace: natural law, science, philosophy, and apologetics lose their
inherent intelligibility if human nature naturally desires the supernatural. Nature must therefore
be preserved in its own order by a purely natural end, achievable by purely natural means.
Grace, on the other hand, brings an entirely new order: nature is elevated, given both a new
supernatural end and the supernatural gifts needed to obtain that end. Pure nature is
proportionate to purely natural ends; graced nature is proportionate to supernatural ends. This
is the realm of revelation, theology, sacraments, beatitude. The realm of grace is superior to
that of nature, and no one who positively understands what it contains can sensibly reject it.
But the realm of grace remains always subsequent to, and sharply distinguished from, the realm
of nature for the sake of the former’s gratuity and the latter’s integrity.
This theory of pure nature, according to de Lubac, is too “mediocre” to risk any
“rampant heterodoxy.”16 It is an over-simplification wrought by the demands of safeguarding
certain aspects of truth. Those unwilling to let the paradox stand, resolve it. The problem is
that every paradox has two sides and resolving it in one direction – even if satisfactory in one
sense – will always be at the expense of the other. Pure nature may succeed in keeping grace
from collapsing into nature, but it destroys the integral dynamism of human life toward the
divine. This dynamism is lost, De Lubac argues, because of two errors: “thinking of God in the
same way as man, and thinking of man in the same way as ‘natural being.’”17 Both errors
naturalize the supernatural. This needs unpacking.
Isolating the spheres of nature and grace turns on the idea that God and nature are
subject to the same methodological and ontological principles. The Aristotelian principle of
Thomist interpretation of Vatican I, however, is not necessarily original to the council; see Fergus Kerr,
“Knowing God by Reason Alone: What Vatican I Never Said”, New Blackfriars 91, no. 1033 (May, 2010), 215-
228.
15
Long, Natura, 49. He is rejecting the view of, among others, Gilles Emery, Trinity in Aquinas (Naples,
Florida: Sapientia Press, 2003), XX: “[Thomas] has no treatise ‘of the one God’ separated from the treatise of
the Trinity.”
16
De Lubac, Mystery, 166.
17
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the proportionality of desire and ability reigns supreme. Natural desires must be obtainable by
natural means, so God, on pain of being unjust, cannot give a creature a natural desire without
also giving those creatures the natural means to attain that desire. For example, it would be
ontological cruelty for God to create humans who hunger for food in a world with nothing
edible. For grace to be gratuitous, then, the desire for God must be purely “elicited,” arising
entirely from wonder at creation and terminating in an entirely natural knowledge of God. The
natural desire for God thus begins and ends as any other desire in a neo-Thomist anthropology:
consequent upon knowledge and naturally attainable. Knowledge provokes wonder and desire
to know, just as knowledge of Texas barbeque provokes hunger and desire to eat. The latter
knowledge provokes a sense appetite, the former knowledge provokes an intellectual appetite.
Because an intellectual appetite is more profound than a sense appetite, the natural desire for
God is more important than any desire for smoked brisket, but the structure of desiring is
identical. The fact that the terminus of the desire is God makes no difference to the process of
desiring. Here is no ontological elán, no natural dynamism, just wills desiring objects wholly
known within the ambit of nature, and whose significance remains wholly immanent. God is
thus objectified, reduced to the realm of the naturally knowable and therefore naturally
desirable.
The reason for this strict proportionality, according to Long, is that everything is
defined by its proportionate end. So a natural desire for the supernatural would transgress the
boundaries of what makes humanity an intelligible species. Such a desire would make humans
indistinguishable from angels, since angels also have the vision of God as their supernatural
end.18 But even more strikingly, Long argues that if human nature were to have an intrinsic
desire for the beatific vision, this would erase the very difference between God and creation:
How would God Himself distinguish nature and supernature were it not the case that
between the divine nature and the nature of the created person there are naturally
diverse ends? A natural end is that toward which a being naturally tends as to the
perfection proportionate to it and from which its species is distinguished…only the
divine nature is defined by intrinsically supernatural and deific felicity.19
Long’s point is that definitions matter. God and creatures are defined differently (and therefore
are really different) because they have diverse ends. A natural desire can only correspond to a
natural end, and so a natural desire for the supernatural, in spite of unsavory appeals to paradox,
18
Long, Natura, 91.
19
Long, Natura, 29.
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makes glory the de facto natural end of humanity. But only God can have God as a naturally
proportionate end. But what is striking about this passage is the univocity with which he treats
Divine and creaturely nature and knowledge. Just like creatures, God’s nature is defined by a
proportionate end and is subject to the epistemological constraints of the law of proportionality.
Hence, for Long, if humanity has a supernatural destiny inscribed on its nature, it would, as the
serpent in the garden put it, be like God. So inviolable is the law of proportionality that even
God would be confused about where God’s nature ends and human nature begins if humanity
were to have a natural desire for a supernatural end. But this is to treat the divine nature as one
nature among others, and the divine mind as one mind among others. If we remember that we
live and move and have our being in God, then it is clear that the divine nature is not a nature
like any other, and God’s knowledge is subject to none of the epistemological constraints of
creaturely knowledge. Why should we assume that a creature endowed with a natural desire
for the supernatural would be confusing for God, whose nature is fully known only to God and
whose knowledge is the very existence of what is known? Long has risked naturalizing God,
now so readily definable in wholly natural terms and so firmly subject to the epistemological
methods and constraints of creatures.
The naturalization of God is risked in Long’s argument, but it is not his point. His point,
rather, is that a natural desire for the supernatural is simply incoherent, and God can no more
be expected to recognize such a creature than to create a rock too big for God to lift. The law
of proportionality is simply, for Long, the law of non-contradiction applied to the question of
desire. A creature is only capable of desiring that which it is capable of attaining, at least
formally: a fish cannot desire a tenure-track position at a research university. A natural desire
for the supernatural is simply a logical contradiction, and like a tenured fish, an absurdity that
no epistemology, no matter how mystical, can overcome. This insistence that de Lubac’s
understanding of the natural desire is a contradiction requires a flat-out denial or complete
ignoring of paradox. Reinhard Hütter, for example, makes “avoiding the paradox” the payoff
of his own proposal.20 Faced with an apparent contradiction, or at least ambiguity, in Thomas’s
texts on the natural desire for the vision of God, Neo-Thomism resolves it by further definition,
specification and delineation. Those taking their bearings from de Lubac are more likely to
argue that the tension in Thomas serves to clarify a central Christian paradox, namely, the
20
Hütter, Dust, 178. Also Long, Natura, 234n.33. This is one of the few places Long mentions paradox, and he
marks it off with scare quotes to signal his distaste.
103
paradox of a nature destined beyond itself.21 For John Milbank, who presses the Lubacian
paradox as far as it can go (certainly further than de Lubac himself does), the natural desire for
the supernatural is something wholly nature and wholly grace, unmixed and undivided, at the
core of human reality, a kind of Chalcedonian moment that frames the entirety of human
existence from and to God.22
The paradox of a natural desire for the supernatural is only a contradiction if the divine
nature is a nature like any other and therefore desired like any other good. But because God is
not a nature among others, God is not desired as one good among others. Since all our knowing
and willing occurs in God, the desire of nature for the vision of God necessarily takes the form
of an ontological élan. If we truly live and move and have our being in God, then our desire
for God cannot precisely mirror our desire for finite objects. It must be more aboriginal, more
intrinsic, coded in the very structure of desire itself. Indeed, the very shape of finite desire takes
its motion from this original desire for and movement toward God. My desire for God is not
merely the intellectual version of my desire for barbeque. Rather, my material desires arise
only within the horizon of this original desire; the natural desire for God is not a desire, it is
the condition for the possibility of any desire whatsoever, since it marks out my motion in time
from and to God.23 If God were one nature among natures, then the disproportion between God
and creatures would indeed make such a natural desire for the supernatural a contradiction. But
because God’s nature is the exclusive context of created existence, transcendence rather than
proportionality becomes the operative principle. A third way is thereby opened up between
contradiction and resolution, namely the paradox of a desire constitutive of nature that can
nonetheless only be fulfilled by a supernatural gift of grace.24
This paradoxical desire is an echo of humanity’s trinitarian origin. Thomas follows
Augustine in arguing that while the Father speaks creation in the speaking of the Logos, the
Spirit is the life of creation, drawing it back to God.25 The movement of creation, its drive
21
On the centrality of paradox to de Lubac’s theology, see Rowan Williams, “Forward: A Paradoxical
Humanism” in Hillebert, Companion, xiv-xix.
22
Milbank’s is overtly a radicalization of de Lubac’s paradox. It is not the only interpretive option for
understanding de Lubac’s paradox of nature and grace. For a contrasting position, see Jordan Hillebert,
“Introduction to Henri de Lubac” in Hillebert, Companion, 22. Hillebert’s forthcoming book will fill out this
alternative interpretation.
23
The language of “horizon” is Rahner’s, borrowed from Heidegger. Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian
Faith, translated by Williams Dych (London: Crossroad, 1978), 63.
24
Hence, Rahner: “preaching is the express awakening of what is already present in the depths of man’s being,
not by nature, but by grace. But it is a grace which always surrounds man, even the sinner and the unbeliever, as
the inescapable setting of his existence.” Theological Investigations, Vol. 4, translated by Cornelius Ernst, (New
York: Helicon, 1966), 181.
25
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae Ia.45.6.ad. 2: “by his sway [the Holy Spirit] governs and quickens what
is created by the Father through the Son,” in Laurence Shapcote, O.P., trans., Latin/English Edition of the Works
104
toward God is its participation in the Spirit. This aspect of movement toward another is
precisely why the will is taken as an analogy for the Spirit in Thomas’s Trinitarian theology.26
The will is an outward motion toward another. While the intellect sustains an interior mode of
presence by the inner word, the will creates a form of “external” presence by desiring and
loving things in themselves. Because the Spirit is the union of Father and Son, their mutual
movement toward one another, the Spirit is correlated to the divine will, since by the Spirit the
Father and Son desire and love each other as the other. And just as, paradoxically, there is no
Son not already loved and desired by the Father in the Spirit, so there is no creation not already
desirous of God in the Spirit. The modus essendi of each Person is its modus operandi; in
creation the Spirit works to draw nature beyond itself toward God. The Spirit does this not by
some extrinsic intervention in an otherwise pre-constituted world, but by establishing the very
life of creation as a sharing in the life that is the Spirit. The desire for God is a finite
participation in the Spirit; to desire God is to be an intellectual creature in motion by the Spirit,
that is, a created spirit.27
This is important when it comes to questions of gratuity, since Thomas secures the
gratuity of the created order by the operation of the divine will. Recall that creation is a
contingent act of God’s will not because God made a choice between two options – God could
have refrained from creating, but this bare fact is not how Thomas ensures the contingency of
creation. Rather, creation is contingent and therefore gratuitous because the will is directed
toward things in themselves, and since creation is neither its own ground nor end, when God’s
will is directed toward creation in itself, it is directed to something contingent, and therefore
wills it contingently.28 The divine will is fully satisfied by the divine essence, and so does not
of St. Thomas Aquinas (Lander, Wyoming: The Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred Doctrine, 2012), 469.
Hereafter ST.
26
Cf. Simon Oliver, Philosophy, God and Motion (London: Routledge, 2005), 115: “God’s knowledge becomes
the cause of creation and the ground of the continual subsistence of the cosmos, while the Holy Spirit, which
proceeds from the Father and Son by way of love, is properly described as the principle of the motion of
nature.”
27
See de Lubac’s articulation of this position outlined below. See also Rahner, TI 4, 179: “we must say that for
Scripture, the communication of the Spirit (the divine pneuma) is not just a trans-conscious entitative ‘elevation’
of the conscious moral acts of man, which remain existentially the same and are only changed extrinsically by
the fides ex auditu. It is is ‘life’, ‘unction’, ‘light’, the inexpressible co-intercession of the Spirit, pneuma which
is more than nous, an inward attraction, testimony given by the Spirit.”
28
ST 1a.19.3.ad 6: “As the divine essence is necessary of itself, so is the divine will and the divine knowledge;
but the divine knowledge has a necessary relation to the thing known; not the divine will to the thing willed.
The reason for this is that knowledge is of things as they exist in the knower; but the will is directed to things as
they exist in themselves. Since then all other things have necessary existence inasmuch as they exist in God; but
no absolute necessity so as to be necessary in themselves, in so far as they exist in themselves; it follows
that God knows necessarily whatever He wills, but does not will necessarily whatever He wills.” See the
discussion in John Wippel, “Thomas Aquinas on the Ultimate Why Question: Why is there anything at all rather
than nothing whatsoever?”, The Review of Metaphysics 60, no. 4 (June, 2007), esp. 745-746.
105
require the willing of creation for its own fulfillment. So when God wills creation, it is willed
as something both unnecessary to the divine nature and wholly ordered toward it. In fact,
creation is wholly unnecessary to the divine nature precisely because it is wholly ordered
toward it. Were creation its own ground or end, it would be a legitimate “end” for the divine
will, an end that would compete with the divine goodness for the divine will’s attention. But
creation’s end is the divine goodness, so that when God wills this creation, it is wholly within
the replete movement of God toward God; creation is the gift of sharing in God as end and is
therefore entirely contingent. And since within the godhead this movement of unity from God
to God, Father to Son, is the person of the Spirit, creation’s contingency is an expression of its
temporal sharing in the life of the eternal Spirit.
This way of securing the gratuity of creation has the significant benefit of making
creation’s ongoing actual existence entirely gratuitous. Gratuity is ensured not by appeal to
some alternate universe rejected by a divine decision made “prior” to time, but by the very
structure of divine willing in this creation right now. The very structure of created existence
ensures that it is a free gift of God. This concept of gratuity is a long way from Scotus’s gratuity
of exhaustive alternatives. This is important because the bare fact that God may have done
otherwise gives rise to the question of God’s freedom once the initial decision to create has
been made. Is God then constrained by this decision? Scotus resolves this by maintaining the
ongoing reality of compossibles – the creations not chosen lurk in the background of all that
is.29 Aquinas, alternatively, secures the ongoing gratuity of this creation by appeal to its being
entirely directed toward God as source and end. Creation’s directedness toward God secured
by its position in the trinitarian act of creation means that anytime God wills anything in regard
to creation, this willing is entirely gratuitous.30
But this indicates a surprising inversion. In a particularly experimental mode, we might
say that if the gratuity of creation is founded on creation’s orientation toward God as source
and end, and if this is not some generic one-God, but is the trinitarian God of Christianity, then
the gratuity of creation is in fact inextricably bound to the gratuity of grace and glory. Creation
is gratuitous because its end is God, and that end is accomplished through the humanity and
divinity of Jesus Christ, so the grace of creation by the Logos cannot be separated from the
grace of redemption and beatification in the Logos incarnate. And this re-centers the
29
See Alexander Broadie, “Scotist Metaphysics and Creation ex nihilo” in David Burrell, et al., eds., Creation
and the God of Abraham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 59.
30
This is why Feingold’s sidelining of the “platonic” scheme in Thomas is a fatal error, for it is precisely the
platonic framework of emanation and return that makes creation an ongoing act of gratuity, irrespective of
questions about divine justice. Feingold, Natural, 31.
106
conversation on the subject from which it never should have strayed: the concrete center of the
person and work of God incarnate. Precisely because the incarnation makes reditus possible,
the gratuity of creation is inseparable from the grace offered in incarnation.31 Where a doctrine
of pure nature requires that nature be thought without Christ, the logic of gratuity requires that
all creation be understood as creation in and for Christ, as Colossians 1 makes abundantly
clear.32 Here we must part company with Thomas; not only is the incarnation the point of
creation, on Thomas’s own terms the incarnation is inseparable from the gratuity of creation.
Rahner is particularly helpful in this regard. “Grace is God himself,” Rahner rightly
says, “the communication in which he gives himself to man as the divinizing favour which he
is himself.”33 Rahner continues: “such grace, from the very start, cannot be thought of
independently of the personal love of God and its answer in man.”34 Christ is this personal love
and human answer – Logos and humanity, Symbolized and symbol. Christ is not, therefore,
the merely de facto agent of grace since the felix culpa of the fall. Rather, Christ is “the person
who by his free Incarnation creates the order of grace and nature as his own presupposition
(nature) and his milieu (the grace of the other spiritual creatures).”35 Creation, as I argued in
the previous chapter, is the unfolding of the Logos in time, and thus the nature necessarily
presupposed in the incarnation of the same Logos. The incarnation then is the joining of created
reality to its eternal source. This is nothing other than to specify how God is the beginning and
end of creatures. The Logos is the source and archetype of creation; it is in the Logos incarnate
that creation returns to God.36 Or again, creation is an ecstatic outpouring of love from the
Logos, the same Logos whose kenosis in Christ is an ecstatic outpouring of love for creation’s
deification.37 Creation and incarnation are thus two expressions of the same Logos. And
because creation and incarnation are of the same love, there is no reason to think the incarnation
was God’s plan B. Rather, the love of God in creation is the love of God in deification, and the
former was made for the latter.
31
De Lubac by no means denies the order of creation, or a natural end for human nature. The two form “a real
and ordered duality” which can never be separated. Henri de Lubac, Augustinianism and Modern Theology,
trans. Lancelot Shepperd (New York: Crossroad, 2000), 130-131. See discussion in Healy, “Christian Mystery”,
194-195.
32
Cf. Healy, “Christian Mystery”, 181; Aaron Riches, “Christology and duplex hominis beatitudo: Re-sketching
the Supernatural Again”, International Journal of Systematic Theology 14, no. 1 (January 2012), 44-69.
33
Rahner, TI 4, 177.
34
Ranner, TI 4, 177.
35
Rahner, TI 4, 176.
36
Of course, creation and incarnation are both accomplished in the Spirit. See below.
37
See Simon Oliver, “Trinity, Motion and Creation ex Nihilo” in David Burrell, et al., eds., Creation and the
God of Abraham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 133-151.
107
But if the incarnation is inseparable from the gratuity of creation, since it secures
creation’s reditus to the Father, does this not make grace necessary to creation, and therefore
no longer gratuitous? It is in this context that de Lubac’s appeal to the logic of gift is important.
God, in creating ex nihilo, gives gifts that entirely constitute the recipient. That God creates a
creature with a natural desire and a destiny beyond its nature establishes no obligation on God,
for there is no prior substance toward which God could be obligated.38 God’s determination to
create such a creature is coextensive with God’s determination to offer that creature beatitude,
for there is but one divine act. In de Lubac’s terms:
as soon as I say “I,” I exist and I have being; and once I exist and have being, I have a
finality. It is impossible to dissociate in reality these three elements by spreading them
out over three instants in time with gaps between them.39
This does not mean that the offer of grace is the same as creation. Grace is indeed a second
gift, but like the Spirit to the Son, it is “retroactively causal” in the first.40 Nature precedes
grace, but nature is given for grace and in grace, as the Son is generated by his reception of the
gift of the Spirit. This is because if nature is a symbol of God, then grace is the gift of unity
between symbol and symbolized, and thus mirrors the role of the Spirit. Nature and grace
therefore follow the taxis of Son and Spirit, but this taxis does not obviate the paradox. That
paradox is the utter transcendent unity of God, in whom the twofold act of creation and
salvation are finally one. God is beyond any law of proportionality: God cannot be desired as
one good among others, even as the largest good among others. God is goodness itself, and the
desire for this end is inscribed on my very nature. The transcendent unity of God sustains
creatures in a paradoxical desire for a supernatural end.
And this leads to the second error de Lubac identifies: thinking of human nature as
“natural being.” De Lubac points out that Thomas follows the entirety of Christian tradition in
arguing that humans are unique among created things: “There is something in man, a certain
capacity for the infinite, which makes it impossible to consider him one of those beings whose
whole nature and destiny are inscribed within the cosmos.”41 The theory of pure nature tends
to conflate human nature with the natural, a conflation which ignores humanity’s supernatural
vocation. Rahner makes the point forcefully:
38
See Milbank, Suspended, 48-50.
39
De Lubac, Mystery, 79. Nor does humani generis conflict with this account. God could have created a rational
creature and withheld beatitude from it, but de Lubac is right that this would not be the same humanity.
40
De Lubac, Mystery, 76-79.
41
108
It might be asked whether the scholastic concept of “nature” as applied to the “nature”
of man does not still owe too much to the model of what is less than human…. What is
signified by the “definition,” and hence the circumscription, of man’s “nature,” if he is
the essence of transcendence, and hence the surpassing of limitation?42
Analyses of human nature in terms of other natures in the world can only be carried on
analogically. The human calling is a calling to transcendence, and hence to break the strictures
of Aristotelian definition and natural proportion.43 It turns out that neither God nor humanity
can be circumscribed within the law of proportionality. But once human nature is elevated, and
this is the heart of the mystery of the Logos incarnate, all creation is elevated with it. The entire
natural order is elevated to the life of God in the transcendent nature of humanity by the
redeeming work of the Logos. This again re-centers the question of nature and grace on the
concrete center of Jesus Christ, and that means we must return to scripture, the word that
witnesses to the Word. It is, de Lubac suggests, patristic exegesis, with its reading so radically
centered on the work of Christ, that places in sharp relief the anthropology of nature and grace.
3. ANTHROPOLOGY AND FOURFOLD EXEGESIS

Reinhardt Hütter describes two general approaches to anthropology. One, typified by
Augustine’s restless heart and advocated by de Lubac, sees nature as driven toward grace by
an inner dynamism.44 The other, Hütter argues, takes its starting point in the Psalm, “what is
man that thou art mindful of him and the son of man that thou dost care for him?” (Psalm 8:4,
RSV).45 This approach sees humanity as fragile and sinful, for which sinfulness alone the
eternal Son became incarnate, “not primarily to perfect creation by inchoately ushering in its
transcendent end.”46 This vision understands the natural desire to see God,
like Abraham having not the slightest inkling about his eventual calling and surely no
desire for it…like Israel being created out of the “nothingness” of Egyptian slavery and
42
Karl Rahner, Theological Investigations Vol. I (London: Longmann, Dartmon and Todd, 1963), 317. De
Lubac cites this and other passages from Rahner to show their essential agreement. De Lubac’s complaint
against Rahner is that the language of “supernatural existential” does not really answer the question, it just
displaces it behind additional, and therefore superfluous, terminology. Cf. De Lubac, Mystery, 101-102, n. 2.
43
This is, I take it, the heart of Rahner’s “transcendental anthropology.” To probe the question of humanity’s
transcendent source and end is not so much a Kantian apriori to police the boundaries of the finite, as a
grappling with the mystery of creatureliness, a mystery rooted in nothing other than the inexhaustible mystery
of God. See the essay presented at a symposium alongside de Lubac and other ressourcement figures,
“Theology and Anthropology” in T. Patrick Burke, ed., The Word in History (London: Collins, 1968), 1-24.
44
Hutter, Dust, 129. Of the theologians of pure nature engaged in the chapter, Hütter’s is the most sensitive. My
engagement with him here is critical but appreciative.
45
Hütter, Dust, 131.
46
Hütter, Dust, 131.
109
being called to something (Lev 19:2) for which it had no antecedent desire…so also
“the many” (Mk 10:45) from Israel and the nations are called to a supernatural destiny
categorically transcending the range of human imagination and desire. This destiny
grants its own supernatural desire with the call to it.47
Hütter goes on to advocate the neo-Thomist view of the natural desire for the vision of God
(proportionality, specific obediential potency, etc.). Now this brief interpolation from Scripture
is not the core of Hütter’s argument. He does not need Abraham, Israel and “the many” to be
suddenly commandeered by grace as if by lightning on a clear day to sustain his argument. His
argument centers on Thomas and his commentators. But since he has claimed at least broad
and programmatic support from Scripture for his position, it is worth asking whether this neo-
Thomist anthropology actually coheres with the story of Abraham, Israel, and the many. How
does Hütter know that Abraham “surely” (!) had no desire for his calling, especially since the
natural desire for the supernatural is an ontological élan? Abraham need not have been sitting
in Ur expressly wishing that God would call him to be the patriarch of a Messianic people to
naturally desire God. Again, on what grounds does Hütter know that Israel had no desire for
deliverance into freedom, even while they were calling out for this very thing from the nothing
of slavery? This is especially problematic since Israel was not first created and later awarded a
destiny. Israel was born in the promise to Abraham, always-already destined to the promised
land and to be a blessing to every nation on the earth. While enslaved in Egypt it would only
have been natural to desire that God fulfill this founding promise. How could a desire that God
fulfill the promise for which Israel was created be some kind of pelagian presumptuousness?
As for “the many” in Mark for whom the Son of Man came to give his life as a ransom, the
immediate context is of desirous expectation for the Kingdom of God. When James and John
ask in the preceding verses to sit at Jesus right and left hand it is in expectation of his coming
exaltation as Israel’s Messiah, in fulfillment of the founding promises of Israel made by God
to Abraham. The disciples were undoubtedly wrong about the shape of that Messianic calling,
which is the point of Jesus’ reproof, but the passage quite clearly indicates that they desired
the Kingdom without either knowing its exact shape or being capable of attaining it on their
own. We will return to false expectations of the Kingdom presently, but none of these passages
support a neo-Thomist anthropology.
47
Hütter, Dust, 132.
110
It is important to note once again that this brief appeal to scriptural motifs of calling is
not the heart of Hütter’s account. Indeed, it is not at all clear that an appeal to Scripture can be
anything other than a post-hoc gloss on Hütter’s argument. For Hütter,
Thomas is not concerned [in the texts on the natural desire to see God] with the concrete
givens of the one obtaining order of providence…Any attempt to read particular
statements or conclusions from Thomas’s precisely delimited metaphysical
argumentation here as prima facie theological claims about the obtaining order of
providence as it coincides with the economy of salvation can only obfuscate the status
of the conclusions reached.48
While Hütter is attempting to pinpoint just what exactly Thomas is and is not saying, the
implication of his strategy is that – lest we disturb the metaphysical purity of Thomas’s
conclusions – it is unwise to bring Abraham, Israel and the many into the argument at any of
its formative stages. Only after Thomas and his commentators have done the metaphysical
heavy-lifting without recourse to scripture or theology should we read scripture and do
theology – at least in regard to the natural desire for the vision of God. With this methodology
in place it is now clear how Hütter is so sure that Abraham did not desire his calling from God.
Abraham did not desire his calling because Thomistic metaphysical inquiry has ruled out such
a desire beforehand. But of course, Christian theology has traditionally been characterized as
a reflection arising from scripture and its context in Christian worship, not to scripture and
worship from apriori natural metaphysics.49 Hütter recognizes the historical novelty of this
procedure, and concedes that it is not strictly speaking how Thomas proceeds, even in the
Summa contra Gentiles.50 Nonetheless, Hütter maintains that this method is present enough in
the structure of the Summa contra Gentiles to warrant using it as a programmatic hermeneutic,
in spite of Thomas’s occasional (mis?)uses of theology and scripture.
The historical novelty of this foundational metaphysics can be seen in light of de
Lubac’s recovery of patristic exegesis.51 For de Lubac, it is the ancient practice of spiritual
interpretation that contains and displays the entire vista of ancient faith. The spiritual
48
Hütter, Dust, 188.
49
See Lewis Ayres, Nicea and its Legacy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), ch. 16. It is true that, as
Hütter points out, Pope Benedict advocated metaphysical inquiry as its own proper science, but he never
advocates subjecting scripture to this kind of apriori metaphysical analysis.
50
Hence, the “older discursive tradition” of commentarial Thomism “is not the oldest way of doing theology,”
Hutter, Dust, 140. As to Thomas’s untidy deployment of theology and scripture in “philosophical” writings, see
page 189: “a strict and clean separation between these two parts [i.e. theology and philosophy] is not possible.
Elements of the one are clearly present in the other.”
51
See Susan K. Wood, Spiritual Exegesis and the Church in the Theology of Henri de Lubac (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1998).
111
interpretation of scripture is a “theory that even in its very form, owes everything to this
Christian faith, and that, in its content, seeks to give it full expression;”52 it contains “a whole
mental universe;”53 it is “a complete act.”54 The principles of spiritual exegesis lie, as de Lubac
quotes Louis Bouyer, “at the heart of the Christian faith itself.”55 It is not that the Bible
provided important data for theologians, and the Fathers were privileged interpreters of that
data, but that exegesis was the very form of their religion, and the fourfold form of their
exegesis contains and displays their entire theological paradigm. Christian theology was not
founded on an apriori metaphysics, but on the sustained engagement of the church with Christ
in Scripture. This is not to say that Christians have ever had access to the Bible unmediated by
metaphysical assumptions and uninfluenced by philosophy. Far from it. But never has
theological inquiry been so exclusively founded on natural metaphysics, and certainly not a
metaphysic which exerts its right to proceed free from theology and scripture without returning
the favor.56
De Lubac describes the shift to this protocol as the rise of “dialectical theology,” which
slowly displaced the older “symbolism” that had conceived and sustained spiritual
interpretation.57 Medieval Exegesis traces this decline of spiritual interpretation from Paul and
Origin, through the Middle Ages into early modernity. Christian theologians had always
attended to the disputatio of questions thrown up by history. By the twelfth century, such
disputatio became a more clearly defined genre; “‘questions’ began to proliferate at an
unprecedented rate.”58 The flowering of learning in the twelfth century renaissance sustained
a new approach to knowledge, one that began to look more “scientific” and less mystical. By
the thirteenth century, “the break has taken place; ‘dialectic’ and its ‘questions’ have won the
day.”59 Fourfold exegesis remained “even after the advent of the Questions, even after the
victory of the Summas,” but it “was no longer the place where these vital elements [of exegesis,
theology and spirituality] met, or rather, the place where they achieved union.”60 The spiritual
52
De Lubac, ME 1, 235.
53
De Lubac, ME 1, XIV.
54
De Lubac, ME 1, XIX.
55
De Lubac, ME 1, XX. Citing Louis Bouyer, La vie de la liturgie (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1957), 261-262.
56
No doubt Hütter would object to this reading, but it seems to be the de facto status of a metaphysics that is in
no way dependent on theology. See chapter five for a discussion of the relation between theology and
metaphysics.
57
See my account of this in the introductory chapter of this thesis. De Lubac gives this account in different
forms throughout his work, but its core can be found in Corpus Mysticum, translated by Gemma Simmonds CJ
(London: SCM Press, 2006), Ch. 10.
58
ME 1, 60.
59
ME 1, 73.
60
ME 1, 74.
112
interpretation of Scripture, always affirmed, “became a lifeless shell.”61 Under the dialectical
impulse, scripture, while not necessarily eclipsed, was displaced from the center of theological
inquiry.62
De Lubac unfolds the fourfold sense as given by a thirteenth-century distich which
takes its cue from Thomas: the literal, the allegorical (we might call it Christological/ecclesial),
the tropological (moral) and the anagogical (eschatological). For Aquinas, “the literal sense is
that which the author intends,” and the author of scripture is God.63 Because creation is divine
speech, God communicates through events and things, not just words. Thus, the events and
things portrayed in scripture are the bearers of meanings beyond themselves, meanings written
into them by their author, God. The literal sense thus opens onto the spiritual contained within
and beyond it.
The spiritual sense of scripture is always Jesus Christ and by extension the church. The
four senses of scripture finally converge upon Jesus, the exegete par excellence, whose life is
the very meaning of the text. Because of this, de Lubac only permits a Christological and
ecclesiological allegory. This is, for de Lubac, what sets Christian allegorical interpretation
apart from its pagan uses. The meaning of all scripture is Christ, and by the unity he establishes
with his body, the church. The remaining two spiritual senses follow from this. The moral sense
is how we are to live as members of Christ’s body. The eschatological sense is the hope toward
which we live as his Body. But it is Christ who remains the definitive meaning of every text.
This call to return to the multiple senses of scripture has been enormously successful,
with “theological,” “spiritual,” or “figural” interpretation of scripture becoming more common
in biblical studies, alongside continuing theological reflection on the theme.64 But in an
important essay, Lewis Ayres points out that biblical studies, even as it has embraced
multivalent readings of scripture, has still failed to reckon with the anthropology required to
sustain such readings.65 The spiritual interpretation of scripture demands a robust notion of the
61
ME 1, 74.
62
Since de Lubac wrote this, a great deal has been published on Thomas as an exegete, and even on the
centrality of exegesis to Thomas’s task. See Thomas Prügl, “Thomas Aquinas as Interpreter of Scripture” in Rik
van Nieuwenhove and Joseph Wawrykow, eds., The Theology of Thomas Aquinas (Notre Dame: University of
Notre Dame Press, 2005), 386-415.
63
ST I.1.9.
64
Examples in biblical studies include Richard Hays, Reading Backward: Figural Christology and the Fourfold
Gospel Witness (London: SPCK, 2015); Walter Moberley, Old Testament Theology: Reading the Hebrew Bible
as Christian Scriptures (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2013); Francis Watson, Text and Truth: Redefining
Biblical Theology (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1997). Examples from theology include: Andrew Louth, Discerning
the Mystery (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983); Ephraim Radner, Time and the Word (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
2016); and many more.
65
Lewis Ayres, “The Soul and the Reading of Scripture”, Scottish Journal of Theology 61, no. 2 (2008), 173-
190.
113
soul, one which recognizes the central place of the soul in becoming an integral reader of
scripture. Of the twofold division of scripture into literal and spiritual (letter and spirit), the
three subdivisions of the spiritual sense are the realm of the soul. The soul learns to see Christ
in the literal sense of scripture as it learns to read in the church (allegorically), is conformed to
the image of Christ in faithful obedience (tropologically), and moves toward the fulfilment of
its blessed calling in the eschaton (anagogically). These “levels” of interpretation are not
extrinsically related to one another; they cohere in a single reality. In Ayres’ words:
Tropology discloses not simply the moral implications of Christian belief, but the shape
of the life of one who lives within Christ, within the ecclesia. This disclosure is only
possible when one has discovered the doctrinal matrix disclosed by allegorical reading.
The two reading practices are thus part of one whole: the deeper one penetrates the
mystery of God’s action in Christ the more one comes to see how the action of Christ
as and on the church is an action which shapes each Christian.66
The doctrine of multiple senses requires a robust account of the soul because it is the soul that
the senses are meant to in-form. In spiritual reading, the action of God in Christ glimpsed in
scripture becomes the action of Christ in the reader, forming a whole person into the image of
God.
It is for this reason that exegesis, for de Lubac, is not primarily about “reading”;
exegesis is primarily a mode of action, a way of being in the world. If learning to read scripture
is a process of the development of the soul, then it will ultimately converge on action, a union
of body and soul. This is why Christ is the exegete par excellence. While Christ is the meaning
of scripture, since “the spirit of the letter is Christ,”67 Christ is also its exegete: “Christ’s
exegesis, insofar as it is essential and decisive, does not consist of words first and foremost. It
is actual. It is Action.”68 Before Christ explains scripture to the disciples on the Emmaus road,
he fulfills scripture on the cross. Thus, the spiritual interpretation of scripture is a participation
in Christ’s exegetical action – it is to learn to live in time as Christ, truly becoming his body.
Such a Christological reading is possible because the Old Testament is the history of
the eternal Word unfolded through time.69 Christ is not foreign to the Old Testament, not a
“second layer” added onto a complete first layer, for the Old Testament is always-already the
eternal Word spread through time. To interpret scripture spiritually, therefore, is to find Christ
66
Ayres, “Soul”, 175.
67
68
69
114
hidden both within and beyond the letter, and to learn to live according to Christ’s own
exegetical action. The Old Testament, then, is the symbol of Christ. It is a vast sign in which
the ontological trace of Christ is hidden: Christ is the treasure hidden in the field of the literal
sense. And here an entire trinitarian texture becomes clear, for to read Christ in the letter, to
join symbolized to symbol, is to read spiritually. To read in the Spirit is to join in the Spirit’s
work of unity, discovering Christ hidden within and beyond his symbol, the Old Testament.
This “reading,” like the Spirit to the eternal Word, is not the impersonal recognition of
meaning, but a wholly personal response in love. As the Spirit is the wholly personal agent of
unity and love between Father and Son, so the spiritual exegete is the wholly personal agent in
whom the meaning of the text is revealed and returned to God in an act of loving devotion.70
To read the Word spoken in scripture by the Father is to join in the Spirit’s work of uniting
symbol and symbolized.
Buried not far beneath the surface of this analysis is an understanding of nature and
grace.71 The reason for this proximity is the unity of the divine Word. Creation is spoken in the
same eternal Word who is hidden in the scriptural word. The book of nature and the book and
scripture have the same eternal source, and both bear the same symbolic structure. Where
Christ is hidden within and yet gratuitously beyond the letter of the Old Testament, so the
incarnation reveals Christ to be hidden within and yet gratuitously beyond the “literal sense”
of nature. The revelation of Christ in the New Testament presupposes, perfects and does not
destroy the Old Testament, but Christ is not wholly external or superadded to the Old
Testament after the fact, for that would leave the unity of God’s purposes divided.72 In the
same way, grace presupposes, perfects and does not destroy nature, and this grace is not a
wholly extrinsic addition to an otherwise natural perfection. Because there is only one Word,
creation and redemption must be held together, even while being differentiated. It will not do
to divide them into a sphere of pure nature, to which is later added an additional layer of
perfection.73 For that would divide Christ in whom all things were created and by whom all
things are redeemed.
70
This is not to deny the integrity of the Hebrew scriptures, for the spiritual sense presupposes the literal, and
while the literal sense has its own historical integrity, the presence of Christ may be discerned within it in faith.
71
This isomorphism is noted by Susan Wood, Exegesis, 119, n. 148.
72
In de Lubac’s words, “The second arises from the first and does not repudiate it. The second does not destroy
the first. In fulfilling it, it gives it new life and renews it. It transfigures it.” This is about scripture, but the
isomorphism with nature/grace is abundantly clear. ME I, 228.
73
This is Feingold’s understanding of pure nature: that there is a replete natural order, perfect in its own sphere,
proportionate to its own ends, to which is superadded grace. That grace is accompanied by a new and second
end, along with the resources to meet that end. Feingold, Natural, 336.
115
Human nature is thus suspended in the same way as the Old Testament. De Lubac
highlights Jerome’s articulation of the paradox: “such, according to Saint Jerome in his
translation of Origen, is the double significance of the Greek word used by Saint Luke at the
beginning of his Gospel, a word that can only be translated by the conjoined words ‘fulfilled’
and ‘manifested.’”74 To fulfill implies a perfection not previously present; to manifest is to
show a reality already present. As the New Testament both fulfills the Old and reveals what
was always true of it, so grace both fulfills nature and reveals the dynamism always at work
within it.
De Lubac understands this natural dynamism as the natural desire for the supernatural.
De Lubac further identifies this desire with the nature of humanity as a created spirit. Here too,
then, the trinitarian dimension is key, for to desire God by nature is to be a spirit – a finite
participation in the eternal work of the Spirit as desire and love between Father and Son. In an
unfinished draft of an essay on mysticism, de Lubac advocates this view in reference to a
tripartite anthropology. He argues that Paul’s usage in 1 Thessalonians 5:23 – “may your spirit
and soul and body be kept sound and blameless” – is not just a haphazard borrowing from
Platonic philosophy.75 It is not actually platonic, for Paul substitutes pneuma for nous as the
highest of the three. This difference is crucial, for de Lubac, since it recalls the Spirit/breath of
God breathed into the first man in Genesis 2:7. The difference is thus a biblical one, one that
instantiates a link between God and humanity, a sharing in divine life. But this sharing is not
some little portion of God that constitutes the human. The human pneuma is not the Holy Spirit.
De Lubac points to Paul’s usage in 1 Corinthians 2:11 (“who…knows the secrets of a man if
not the spirit of the man which is in him”) to pinpoint the paradox. This is clearly not the Holy
Spirit, for God’s Spirit is compared to the human spirit in the next verse. Rather, this spirit is
something in humanity that is nonetheless not of humanity:
Thus, what par excellence makes a man, what constitutes man in his worth among the
beings of the world, much more, what makes him a being superior to the world, would
be an element that, rather than being “of man”, would be “in man”.76
De Lubac traces the ambiguity of pneuma through the patristic era: from Irenaeus who
“spoke particularly of the Spirit of God, even when that Spirit, shared, [becomes], by consent
74
De Lubac, ME 1, 238; citing In Luc., h. 1, Jerome’s translation. See Joseph Fitzmyer, The Gospel According
to Luke (I-IX) (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 292-293; Fitzmyer concludes that it means fulfill,
picking up on the promise-fulfillment motif in Luke.
75
De Lubac, “Tripartite Anthropology” in Theology in History, trans. Anne Englund Nash (San Francisco:
Ignatius, 1996), 117.
76
De Lubac, “Tripartite”, 129.
116
of the soul, the spirit of man,”77 to Origen who spoke “more explicitly about the spirit of man,
insofar as an opening to the Spirit of God.”78 This analysis continues through Augustine and
Thomas. De Lubac summarizes:
The pneuma that is “in man,” in every man, assures a certain hidden transcendence of
the man over himself, a certain opening, a certain received continuity between man and
God. Not that there is the least identity of essence between the one and the other…but
it is, at the heart of man, the privileged place, always intact, of their encounter.79
The summary is of Origen, but the view is de Lubac’s. The human spirit is the soul in
self-transcendence, that is, in concourse with God. One way of stating this, but that de Lubac
warns is open to misrepresentation, is that the spirit is the graced soul.80 The danger is that this
might falsely be taken to imply that there is some other part of the soul that could be described
as “reason without grace,” separable from the spirit.81 Such a misconstrual only shows, de
Lubac argues, that “the Pauline concept of pneuma is a concept ‘of which our modern
anthropologies can absolutely not take account.’”82 Lewis Ayres summarizes de Lubac’s
position:
At its “highest” or “deepest” the soul is constituted by a gift which is nevertheless its
own and which enables contemplation of the Spirit and Christ whose life wells up
within and through this gift: this gift is not truly “of” us but is “in” us.83
This anthropological truth is mirrored in the relation of the Testaments: at its deepest level the
history of God’s interaction with Israel is constituted by Christ who is nonetheless a gratuitous
gift beyond Israel’s expectations, a reading I will argue below from the first chapter of Luke.
Moreover, this “suspension” of the Old Testament is an expression of the Spirit’s work: Christ
is present in the Old Testament by the Spirit; Christ is the spirit of the letter.84 In spiritual
exegesis, the spirit of the letter calls out to the human spirit, deep unto deep, that the whole
human, body, soul and spirit might be formed more fully into the image of God.85
77
78
79
80
81
82
De Lubac, “Tripartite”, 129; quoting Max-Alain Chevallier, Esprit de Dieu (Paris: Delachaux and Niestle,
1966).
83
Ayres, “Soul”, 181.
84
De Lubac, ME I, 261.
85
De Lubac should not be understood as arguing that human nature is essentially spirit to the exclusion of soul
and body, for the human spirit is only finally formed by exegetical action, which is embodied action in time.
Hütter mistakenly ascribes this view to him. Hütter, Dust, 213.
117
This isomorphism is of course not an identification. The Thomist reading of nature and
grace is a metaphysical analysis, whereas the relation of Old to New Testament is theological
and historical. The Old Testament is the record of God’s dealings with Israel, and so
presupposes the work of grace. So I am not suggesting that the Old Testament just is nature
and the New Testament just is grace, certainly not that the Old Testament is a purely natural
reality and the New a supernatural one. I am, however, attempting to think the metaphysics of
nature and grace in dialogue with the history of God’s action in the world, the nature of God’s
triune life, and the Christian discipline of spiritual exegesis. And herein is the key difference
between de Lubac and neo-Thomists both new and old. De Lubac’s anthropology, because
rooted in the interpretation of scripture, remains tethered to history. According to the theology
assumed by patristic exegesis, history is exhaustively defined by its relation to the death and
resurrection of God incarnate and the sending of the Spirit.86 Spiritual interpretation of
scripture is “an entire theology of history.”87 It organizes the whole scope of human history
and meaning “around a concrete center, which is fixed in time and space by the Cross of Jesus
Christ.”88 Nothing remains untouched by God’s action in the world:
time and space, heaven and earth, angels and men, the Old Testament and the New, the
physical universe and the moral universe, nature and grace: everything is
encompassed, bound together, formed, ‘structured,’ and unified by this Cross, even as
everything is dominated by it.89
While Hütter celebrates Feingold’s complete disregard for history, which is, let us be clear, the
sidelining of the entire scriptural witness to God’s action in the world, de Lubac aims to reclaim
a theology inseparable from exegesis, inseparable from the history of God in the world. For it
is only in the telling of this history that my own history might finally be meaningfully
illuminated.90
There are trinitarian reasons for thinking that any analysis of human nature will need
to center on the history of God in Scripture and not be the sole purview of apriori and ahistorical
metaphysics. Recall that for Thomas, creation is spoken in the Father’s speaking of the Word.
He conceptualizes this as creation being contained in the divine ideas. But the life of creation,
86
On the Spirit, see De Lubac, “The Sense Given by the Spirit” in ME I, 261-267.
87
De Lubac, ME I, XIX.
88
De Lubac, ME I, XIX.
89
De Lubac, ME 1, 111, emphasis mine. See also ME I, 239: “By this sacrament of the Cross, he unites the two
Testaments into a single body of doctrine, intermingling the ancient precepts with the grace of the Gospel.”
90
Hütter, Dust, 138. On de Lubac’s understanding of history and scripture, see the excellent article by William
M. Wright, “Patristic Exegetical Theory and Practice in de Lubac and Congar,” New Blackfriars 96, no. 1061
(January 2015), 61-73.
118
its movement through time back toward God, is the life of the Spirit. And, crucially, the Son is
never without the Spirit. If one is to think of humanity, one must attend to the ways human
beings are living beings, caught up in histories not entirely their own. And this requires thinking
of them as always-already in movement through time, always-already called in grace. In the
language I have been developing, humanity is symbol – as a temporal unfolding of the eternal
Word – and the symbol cannot be understood in isolation from symbolism, from the movement
of desire and love back toward the symbolized that constitutes the symbol as a symbol. The
account of that motion is given in scripture, and the actualization of that motion comes from
the spiritual reading of scripture, from embodied exegesis of its spiritual senses. There is no
Son without Spirit, no symbol without symbolism: human nature cannot be understood apart
from its fundamental relation to the Trinity, created with a natural desire for a supernatural
destiny. As Thomas would say, “there are two reasons why the knowledge of the divine persons
was necessary for us. It was necessary for the right idea of creation…In another way, and
chiefly, that we may think rightly concerning the salvation of the human race.”91 The road
between creation and redemption is trinitarian, and neither can be understood without this
Logos and Spirit, this logic and life.
Thus, while I am not arguing discursively from spiritual exegesis to the natural desire,
I am arguing that the isomorphism between the spiritual interpretation of scripture and nature-
grace commends de Lubac’s understanding of the natural desire as a dynamic fitting of the
history of God’s dealings with his people. To think of natures in motion in this way presses us
into the realm of narrative, in particular, the narrative of God’s engagement with creation
through his people. Narratives do not operate on the rules of logical necessity, but have an
aesthetic logic all their own, what the medievals called convenientia, or fittingness. Denys
Turner has described convenientia as “narrative necessity,” an aesthetic fittingness to what
went before and what comes after, like a Mozart melody that does not have to end the way it
does but only seems right the way Mozart ended it.92 Thomas appeals to fittingness to account
for the propriety of divine action in history. The category of convenientia enables Thomas to
articulate why it is appropriate for God to be revealed through the material history of the literal
sense of scripture and above all in the incarnation.93 The incarnation, and the revelation of God
in scripture, for Thomas, are not strictly necessary given God’s omnipotence, but the most
91
ST 1a.32.1.ad 3.
92
See Denys Turner, Faith, Reason and the Existence of God (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004),
243-245; he puts this idea to work in Julian of Norwich Theologian (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011),
44-45.
93
Scripture: ST 1a.1.9-10; Incarnation: ST 3a.1.
119
fitting ways to accomplish the divine plan.94 There is a narrative necessity to God’s revelation
in scripture and the incarnation. This is the most fitting action God could have taken, a beautiful
harmony of God’s character as self-diffusive goodness and the multi-valent effectiveness of
the incarnation.
This coordination of God’s character and the shape of the narrative relies on an
“aesthetic” judgment that what God has done is appropriate for God. And this turns on an
account of beauty. As Thomas Sammon has argued, for Thomas beauty is “the ratio of being
that orients the good to the cognitive faculties.”95 Beauty is what makes the good intelligible,
that which draws the intellect into “being’s intensive depths.” The reason for this is that beauty
is founded on the relation between the Son and the Father: as the Son draws us into the Father,
so beauty draws us into being. The integritas, proportio and claritas, of the Son’s
representation of the Father are the archetype of every beautiful thing, each of which re-present
the beauty of the filial relation by re-presenting beauty itself.96 Because creation is spoken in
the eternal Word, every individual component of creation exhibits beauty to the extent that it
participates in the eternal utterance of the Father.97 Fittingness is the extent to which divine
action in time conforms to the eternal reality of the Word, which is why the incarnation is the
supreme moment of fittingness, for by it the Word takes on a human nature, perfectly – and
paradoxically! – fitting created life to divine life. While this was not strictly necessary in a
logical sense, and was not in any way owed to nature, it was a narrative necessity founded on
the character of God as self-diffusive goodness, and the nature of creation as the unfolding of
the eternal Word. We recognize the events and things of scripture and the incarnation as divine
revelation because of the integrity, proportion and clarity with which they express the divine
life. It is the beautiful relation of the symbols of scripture to Christ, and the beautiful relation
of the symbol of Christ’s humanity to his divinity that allows us to recognize God in him. The
spiritual interpretation of scripture is thus the search for these harmonious resonances, it is an
“aesthetic” exercise in finding God in the beautiful correlations between creaturely life and
divine life.
94
Cf. John Milbank and Catherine Pickstock, Truth in Aquinas (New York: Routledge, 2001), Ch. 3.
95
Thomas Brendan Sammon, The God who Is Beauty: Beauty as a Divine Name in Thomas Aquinas and
Dionysius the Areopagite (Cambridge: James Clarke Company, 2014), 341. The theologian most well-known
for work in aesthetics is undoubtedly Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics,
7 Vols (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1984-1990); also influential is Gilbert Narcisse, Les Raisons de Dieu
(Fribourg: Éditions Universitaires Fribourg Suisse, 1997).
96
ST I.39.8.
97
Sammon, Beauty, 349: “what makes the participant beauty-filled, one might say, is a procession from beauty
itself as a creaturely recapitulation of the Son’s procession.”
120
We could never recognize God’s self-diffusive goodness if it were not beautiful, for we
would have no inherent attraction to it, no reason to want to know it. Just as we only know the
Father in the Son, so we only know goodness in its beauty, which is why Feingold and Hütter’s
appeal to convenientia as a construal of nature and grace does not really resolve the issue. 98
They argue that grace is fitting to nature, not by any necessity latent in nature as such (and so
not logically necessary), but in the way that we can recognize God’s action after the fact as
something befitting of God. Grace fits nature as an aesthetic rightness. This, for Feingold,
preserves the possibility or “non-absurdity” of God creating an intellectual creature in pure
nature. But this merely defers and does not answer the question. For to rely on the category of
fittingness is to rely on an aesthetic construal of nature and grace, which is an appeal to beauty.
Grace is thus the elevation of nature that is supremely beautiful. But how can a human
recognize the call of grace as a fitting or beautiful and so a desirable elevation of its nature, if
humans do not have a natural inclination toward beauty itself? It would seem that the category
of fittingness only works if humans have a natural desire for ultimate beauty, a desire for the
vision of God only available in the Son.
This desire for beauty is itself a finite participation in the Spirit, who forever joins
symbol to symbolized. If beauty is the proportion between symbol and symbolized, the Spirit
is the desire for this proportion and the love of it once found. Again we see that even in the
register of the aesthetic, the human spirit is an absolute desire for the vision of God. In terms
of scripture, what connects the literal sense to the spiritual senses is this same Spirit. Only the
Spirit can unlock the presence of Christ hidden within and beyond the literal sense. It is, for
this reason, spiritual exegesis: a reading in the Spirit. Our own transcendence is expressed by
this same word, we are spirit because we long to transcend the confines of our nature, to be
joined to that which we symbolize. We are symbols, and this means we long for union with the
symbolized. Thus even after our neo-Thomist metaphysicians punt the ball into the realm of
aesthetics, it remains a question of God the Trinity and the natural human desire for this
ultimate source and end.
This appeal to convenientia, then, is an appeal to a beautiful narrative, a story of a life
in time demarcated by fitting symbols. This life is beautiful to the extent that it participates in
the Son’s representation of the Father, and it is life to the extent that it participates in the
dynamic movement of the Spirit between Father and Son. What the patristic practice of
exegesis points to is the hidden transcendence embedded within the literal sense of our natures,
98
Feingold, Natural, 425. Hütter, Dust, 179.
121
which can nonetheless only be fulfilled by grace. It is, moreover, only in the living exegesis of
this scripture in prayer, liturgy, and love of others that such a desire can be satisfied. The
spiritual interpretation of scripture indeed contains “a whole mental universe;”99 it is indeed “a
complete act.”100 Both turn on a trinitarian logic of symbols. Symbols long for union with the
symbolized, a longing called symbolism. One cannot think of the human as a symbol of God
without thinking of the movement of desire and love at once “in” nature but not “of” nature,
for the Son is never without the Spirit. The understanding of the Trinity is thus necessary for
the right idea of creation and salvation, nature and grace. We come to know the Trinity and
conform to the life of the Trinity in the spiritual reading of scripture. And to sever our analysis
of human nature from the trinitarian witness of scripture is indeed supremely unfitting.
Lest this analysis remain entirely abstract, I turn now to an exegesis of scripture. When
the natural desire is brought to fulfilment in living exegesis, the result is an incarnation: the
body of Christ is born in the spiritual exegesis of scripture. This is nowhere more evident than
in Mary’s exegesis of Israel’s scriptures. There she discovers a destiny at once intrinsic to
Israel’s and her own history, and yet in gratuitous excess of Israel’s and her own greatest
desires and expectations. Her reading of the symbols in her very own life brings God into the
world.
4. MARY THE EXEGETE

Luke is concerned to narrate the story of Jesus as “the continuation of the story of Israel,”101
and goes so far as to imitate septuagintal Greek to “begin [his] Christian Gospel as though it
were a part of Israel’s Scriptures.”102 In typical Lukan fashion, the arrival of Gabriel to the
Virgin Mary recalls without quoting Daniel’s encounter with the same angel. In Daniel, Gabriel
arrives with the declaration that Daniel is “greatly beloved” and prophesies the forgiveness of
sin, atonement, and an anointed one abandoned to death. This whole context is invoked in
Gabriel’s appearance to Mary, both foreshadowing the ministry of Christ and placing Mary in
the context of Israel’s scriptures. Luke thus depicts Mary as between the Old Testament and
the New, the promise and its fulfillment, suspended between a destiny greatly desired but as
yet unknown.
99
De Lubac, ME 1, XIV.
100
De Lubac, ME 1, XIX.
101
Michael Wolter, The Gospel According to Luke, translated by Wayne Coppins and Christopher Heilig
(Waco: Baylor University Press, 2016), 25.
102
David Ravens, Luke and the Restoration of Israel, Journal for Study of the New Testament Supplement
Series 119 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), 29.
122
With Luke, Old Testament imagery comes thick and fast. Having invoked Daniel 8 and
9, with its apocalyptic and messianic overtones, Gabriel then paraphrases the Davidic promises
of 2 Samuel 7 and Psalm 89: Jesus’ greatness, sonship, eternal reign and eternal kingdom are
all direct citations of God’s promises to David.103 This places this moment at the very center
of God’s work in the world: “Luke places the fulfillment of the promise to David at the heart
of his promise-fulfillment scheme – not in isolation, but as the epitome and summation of the
promises, oaths, and covenants which God made to his people.”104 On this annunciation rests
all the promises of God’s history with his people, and through them the entire created order.
This is the fulfillment long promised and long desired. Founded in the Abrahamic promise,
deepened in the Davidic, tested and refined in exile, this is the moment Israel has desired, a
desire now concentrated in Mary.
But this does not mean that Mary’s desire comprehends its object. Gabriel’s promise of
fulfillment from Israel’s messianic calling is met by a question from nature: “How can this be,
since I have no husband?” Such a response is part of the literary form of angelic birth
announcements. The recipient is expected to respond with a question, but in Mary’s case the
question takes on a new potency. The bare physical fact is urgent enough. The promise will
require a profound physical miracle. But the question from Israelite history is equally urgent:
God has often delivered his people by miraculous birth, but this has never been accomplished
by a virgin birth. An elderly Sarah, a barren Hannah, the barren mother of Samson, these are
among the Israelite women who would miraculously conceive by otherwise normal sexual
means. But this cannot be the case with Mary. Mary’s response is thus more profound than
Zechariah’s, whose question regarding the conception of John could just as well be found on
the lips of Abraham, Elkanah or Manoah. John’s birth is a miracle wholly in keeping with Old
Testament precedent.105 But Mary’s question has no precedent; no one could have anticipated
this kind of fulfillment.
An unfortunate feature of popular theology and well-intentioned apologetics is to
assume the evangelists considered scripture a catalogue of prophecies to be checked off a list.
None of the gospel writers treat scripture this way.106 Rather, under the impact of Christ’s work
and the power of the Spirit, Christians learned to “read backward,” seeing Christ everywhere
103
Combining imagery from Daniel and David is common in first-century messianic texts, especially Enoch and
4 Ezra, see Mark Strauss, The Davidic Messiah in Luke-Acts (Edinbugh: T&T Clark, 1995), 46-47; for a
discussion of parallels between Gabriel’s annunciation and Davidic promises, see pages 88-89.
104
Strauss, Davidic, 97.
105
John is thereby placed in the lineage of prophets, and according to Jesus in Luke 7:26, more than a prophet.
106
See Richard Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2016), 192.
123
in places not previously expected.107 Luke sees Jesus as integral to the Old Testament – truly
its content and purpose – but nonetheless a surpassing perfection of it. Thus, while the virgin
birth is only intelligible as the fulfillment of the promises at the heart of Israel’s identity, it
arrives as something completely new and unanticipatable.108
Gabriel’s answer is stunning. We should not allow familiarity to obscure its
strangeness: “the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will
overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God.”109
While David, the king and Israel itself are said to be the “son of God,” this is always in the
context of adoption for a particular purpose. The Spirit is likewise shown to give life to
creation, individuals, and the dead, but this is never linked with sonship.110 Nowhere is the
Spirit’s creative power associated with the identity of a Son of God.111 While David is adopted
as a son in order to be king of God’s people, Jesus is both Son and King from his conception.
His sonship and kingship are not functions of his calling; rather, his sonship and kingship are
his identity.
The surpassing quality of this miracle can only be seen if we read diachronically.
Richard Hays advocates “reading backward,” learning to read the Old Testament in light of
Christ. This, he argues, is the strategy of the New Testament authors, and he is undoubtedly
correct. But “reading backward” should be qualified: only after reading forward is reading
backward possible.112 The symbols of the Old Testament are fundamental to recognizing the
symbolized, that is, Christ. Only in this symbolic world in which Davidic kings are sons of
God, is Christ recognized as the King-Son par excellence. Only in the symbolic world of Sarah,
the mother of Samson and especially Hannah is Mary’s miraculous conception seen to be a
deliverance beyond all others. The danger of reading backward is that it can abstract the story
from history as a process through time. As Rowan Williams points out, a reading that claims
to perceive the whole from the end implies a total spatialization of the text, which, like a
painting can be glimpsed all at once.113 But a story, in contrast to a painting, must be traced,
followed in its ambiguities and undulations through time. It is only in attending to the time of
107
This is Richard Hays’ phrase. Hays, Echoes, 5.
108
See Strauss, Davidic, 29: “one of Luke’s central purposes is to show that Jewish expectations concerning the
messiah were inadequate and incomplete”.
109
Luke 1:35.
110
Gen. 1:2; Ps. 33:6; Job 33:4; Ps. 104:30 and others. See the references at Strauss, Davidic, 91.
111
Strauss concludes that this is Luke’s “original application of the creative role of the Spirit,” Davidic, 91.
112
This is advocated by Hans Frei’s reading of Calvin’s exegetical practice. Hans Frei, The Eclipse of the
Biblical Narrative: a Study of Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Hermeneutics (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1974), 36; cited in Hays, Echoes, 370 n15.
113
Rowan Williams, “The Literal Sense of Scripture” in Modern Theology 7, no. 2 (January, 1991), 121-134.
124
the text that a reader may engage its literal sense. This is simply the logic of symbolism, for
we only have access to the symbolized in its symbols. We only come to know God through the
material conditions of life in time – there is no access to God unmediated by material history.
This is, moreover, why spiritual exegesis is ecclesial exegesis, for to read across time requires
a material community who have learned to speak the language of the symbols, who have come
to inhabit the symbolic world given by the literal sense of the text. This is one significance of
Luke’s use of septuagintal Greek. It places Luke in a concrete interpretive community (Second
Temple, Greek-Speaking Judaism), and it is Luke’s inclusion in this community that enables
him to “read backward” from Christ. There can therefore be no sharp distinction between the
time of Israel and the time of Christ, as has been influentially argued by Hans Conzelmann, for
such a sharp distinction would destroy Luke’s entire reading strategy.114 It is the continuity of
a community reading forward that enables Luke to read backward.
Reading forward allows us to see the stunning newness of Christ. Between John the
Prophet and Jesus the Messiah there is a fundamental qualitative difference.115 Mary’s question
from nature, which is also a question from history and a question from scripture is a question
of how this difference can be bridged: “how can this be, since I have no husband”? Gabriel’s
answer is the Holy Spirit. What connects these scriptural promises, motifs and metaphors with
this fulfillment in the body of this woman? The Spirit, the original “symbolic inclusion”
between Father and Son, continuing its work of unity, drawing these scriptural symbols into
unity with the Symbolized in the body of the Virgin. It is this act of symbolism in Mary’s
history that brings about the incarnation.
Even in Mary’s acceptance of this divine calling, Luke is pointing us to the Old
Testament. Joel 2:29 prophecies that God’s Spirit will be poured out on female servants.
Mary’s response, “I am the handmaiden of the Lord” contains an exact verbal correlate to the
translation of Joel 2:29 in the Septuagint.116 It is, moreover, this passage from Joel that frames
Peter’s Pentecost sermon. The birth narratives thus have a strikingly pentecostal quality, and
Pentecost an annunciatory quality. Nearly every participant in the first two chapters is filled
with the Spirit, and that Spirit-filling is what enables them to recognize Christ as Israel’s
Messiah. When Mary who has conceived by the Holy Spirit comes to Elizabeth, Elizabeth is
114
Conzelmann proposes a threefold theology of history in Luke: the time of Israel, the time of Jesus, and the
time of the church. Scholars are divided on its validity. To sustain his reading, Conzelmann dismisses the birth
narratives as inauthentic, a move that has been nearly universally critiqued. Hans Conzelmann, The Theology of
Saint Luke, translated by G. Buswell (London: Faber and Faber, 1961).
115
Strauss, Davidic, 23: “Jesus is presented as the messianic king promised to Israel. Yet he fulfills the Old
Testament promises in a new and surprising way”;
116
Ravens, Restoration, 27.
125
filled with the Spirit and proclaims, “why is this granted me, that the mother of my Lord should
come to me?”117 Gabriel announced that John would be filled with the Spirit from the womb.
When this Spirit-filled gestational John recognizes the presence of Jesus, he leaps for joy.
Those filled with the Spirit recognize Christ as the fulfillment of Israel’s scripture, at once at
home in those scriptures and yet beyond them. As Joseph Fitzmyer argues, the “assurance” that
Luke promises Theophilus is not the product of Luke’s faithful recording of the finer points of
the apostolic kerygma but is the gift of the Holy Spirit.118 Elizabeth recognizes Christ, John
rejoices because of him, Mary carries him, and we are led by Luke to join these characters in
worship by the Spirit. Luke thereby foreshadows the descent of the Spirit at Pentecost where a
community of Christ-followers is formed by the filling of the Spirit. Here in Luke’s opening
scenes, we the readers are invited to join two women and two babies for the first Christian
church service, which is nothing other than a recognition of Christ as the gratuitous fulfillment
of scripture.119
Mary’s receptivity in her fiat should not be overplayed. Her acceptance of the divine
calling is an act of boldness and freedom. In his book defending the Christian humanism of
Pico della Mirandola, De Lubac describes human dignity: “la dignité suprême de l’homme
réside avant tout, essentiellement, disons même uniquement dans la liberté.”120 That liberty is
not humanity’s ability to choose between options, but is rather the freedom of spirit, the
freedom to transcend the boundaries of nature by participation in the life of the Holy Spirit.121
Mary’s fiat is thus a supreme act of freedom in which Mary transcends all the natural
expectation of her cultural history to achieve a union with God unimaginable in any prior epoch
and unequalled since. This freedom in transcendence is a constitutive part of Mary’s identity
as the highly favored one and is expressed in her radical reinterpretation of Scripture. In the
Magnificat Mary interprets scripture spiritually, that is, in the freedom of transcendence that
allow her to move both with and beyond the literal sense. She rearranges scripture, especially
the song of Hannah, around her own life and calling as an expression of her own supreme
transcendent freedom.
117
Luke 1:43. Fitzmyer, Luke, 363: “Elizabeth is filled with the Spirit and inspired to interpret the sign thus
given to her.”
118
Fitzmyer, Luke, 13.
119
This motif continues: Zechariah and Simeon are both filled with the Spirit; Anna, though the Spirit is not
mentioned, her proximity to the story of Simeon and her role as temple prophetess would all imply the role of
the Spirit.
120
Henri De Lubac, Pico Della Mirandole (Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1974), 64.
121
De Lubac, Pic, 66.
126
Mary reinterprets scripture in the Magnificat, and in freedom she provides new
meanings to old songs, re-centering them on herself and her son. In her hands, the song of
Hannah, as well as in a secondary way those of Miriam, Deborah and Judith, and a great many
other Psalms and prophecies, are recast in light of the outpouring of the Spirit. This is funded,
in the first instance, by an understanding of the literal sense of Hannah’s song. Hannah was a
barren woman who prayed for son. She then dedicated that son to the Lord’s service, becoming
the prophet Samuel who was to anoint David. God’s miraculous provision for her was also
God’s provision for the whole of Israel. It is the literal sense of this story that funds any
connection to Mary’s. And so Mary takes up the story precisely because of its literal continuity
with her own.
But Mary does not stop there, for the literal story of Hannah opens onto the story of
what God is doing in history now, that is, it opens onto God’s provision for his people in Christ.
As the story looks forward to the birth of Christ, the entire song of Mary takes on christic
meanings: God shows his strength, casts down the proud and exalts the lowly, remembers his
mercy and helps his servant Israel in Christ. And God’s action in Christ is the culmination of
his mercy “from generation to generation.”122 With all its pentecostal overtones, the Magnificat
thus looks forward to the church as the community of the Spirit continuing Mary’s work of
reinterpreting scripture.123 The history of Hannah, the literal sense of scripture, thus opens onto
the allegorical sense of Christ and his church in Mary’s song.
The Magnificat is, moreover, a kind of moral response from Mary. Exalting the Lord
and rejoicing in God are not spontaneous and uncontrollable spasms of excitement. Mary has
decided to accept God’s calling, she has “believed that there would be a fulfillment,” she has
taken the decision to visit Elizabeth, and has wrapped her self-understanding of all these
decisions in the clothing of Hannah’s song. Scripture has opened for Mary onto a tropological
plane: she must now act, and inasmuch as that action is an exegesis of scripture, it is also an
enormous risk. She is risking the violence of history. Here is no prescinding from the real. In
taking God into her body, she risks everything, as Simeon will make clear to her in chapter
two. Yet she embraces this calling not because loss and diminishment are key to human
existence. Mary risks because in a fallen world scripture requires moral actions that the world
cannot recognize or understand. The sword that pierces Mary’s heart is not good in itself, but
122
Luke 1:50.
123
Luke clearly has Pentecost in mind as he writes his infancy narratives. See Ravens, Restoration, 27.
127
Mary shares in Christ’s tasting of the evil of the world so that, as Paul will say, she might share
in his glory.
And if Mary’s exegesis is her action risked in time, then it also looks forward to the
end of time. All generations will call Mary blessed, God is merciful toward those who fear him
from generation to generation, and finally, tying it all together, God’s promises to “our fathers”
are given “to Abraham and to his posterity forever.” The fulfillment of these promises is
nothing other than God himself, who is faithful to all generations who fear him, now and
forever. Mary’s song is in fact a delicate balance of past, present and future. Luke has her
consistently use the aorist tense, giving most of the song the appearance of an orientation
toward the past. This would perhaps be the shape of the song sung in a worship setting recalling
God’s past provision for Israel. But the immediate context implies God’s present action. This
serves to rhetorically underline the rootedness of God’s present action in Israel’s history,124 a
way of saying that what is happening now is the fullness of what happened then. The allusions
to the eschatological day of the Lord then ensure that this song covers all time: Hannah’s
deliverance, God’s present action in the world (and Mary’s action in response), and God’s
future and final action. The Magnificat thus plays between the literal, analogical, tropological
and anagogical senses.
This reading is only possible by the Holy Spirit. In the opening chapters of Luke, only
those filled with the Spirit recognize Christ as the Messiah, foreshadowing Pentecost.
Symbolism is an apt description of what is happening in these passages. Jesus is symbolized
in the diverse symbols of Old Testament messianic expectations, but the only way to join them
together is by the Spirit, the unity between symbolized and symbol that is symbolism. This
finds ultimate expression in Mary; the symbols of Old Testament expectations and the
Symbolized, Christ, are literally joined together by the Spirit in Mary’s own body. Mary
thereby becomes the paradigm of spiritual exegesis as her understanding of Christ in scripture
becomes her own embodied action in the world.
This mode of exegesis is not unique to Mary’s high calling. Rather, she has embodied
precisely the kind of exegesis that every person is invited into. She has read the symbols,
including the symbol she has been called to be, an interpretive endeavor that involves her whole
life: body, soul and spirit. In ascending through the senses of scripture, Mary discovers that
stories she has known her entire life contain a hidden transcendence, an inner dynamism at
once constitutive of them and yet from beyond them. She makes those stories her own when
124
See Ravens, Restoration, 36.
128
by the power of the Spirit she transcends all cultural and historical nature to become the mother
of God. The result is incarnation. The Word has taken on flesh, the Symbol has arrived in time,
unlocking all symbols and revealing their ultimate referent. Thereafter, all of life becomes a
kind of spiritual exegesis, and all exegesis becomes a kind of incarnation. What is born into
the world is Christ and Christological, the one who bears Christ is Christian and mariological.
Mary thus embodies both the desire and the gratuitous surprise of the relation between
the testaments. That relation, I am arguing, shares a profound isomorphism with the relation of
nature and grace. Like the hidden transcendence that Mary discovers in the song of Hannah,
so nature has a natural desire for the supernatural, a calling at once its own and yet wholly
beyond it. To receive Christ as the fulfillment of that desire is to learn to read in the Spirit, to
discover Christ hidden within and beyond the literal sense of human nature, as Mary discovers
Christ hidden within and beyond the literal sense of the Old Testament. Thus, a trinitarian logic
of symbols sustains both a theology of scripture and an anthropology as symbols that must be
read together in the symbolism of the Spirit. Christ is born into the world wherever his people
learn to read themselves as symbols in a story written by God, little words and little spirits,
symbols and symbolism in motion back to the Father. It is to this motion toward God that I
now turn. The church, I will argue, is symbolism, the unity of desire and love between God
and creation.
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CHAPTER FOUR
ECCLESIOLOGY
1. INTRODUCTION
As outlined in the introduction to this thesis, de Lubac first uses the term “symbolism” in
Corpus Mysticum, a groundbreaking work that tracks changes in ecclesiology and attempts to
account for them in terms of the demise of “symbolism.”1 Symbolism was a mode of doing
theology that enabled theologians from the patristic era to the high Middle Ages to hold
together diverse topics and diverse disciplines in one vibrant whole – Ecclesiology and
Christology, prayer and theology, reason and mysticism, etc. The church was “symbolically
included” in the eucharist, and both church and eucharist were symbolically included in the
mystery of Christ. So close were their relationships that to say something about one was to say
something about the other, a kind of exchange of idioms between the symbolized and the
symbol. And the cast of mind that allowed theologians to read these symbols and thereby unite
symbols with the symbolized, de Lubac calls symbolism. There is thus a threefold pattern to
the structure of de Lubac’s thought: symbolized-symbol-symbolism. I have developed this in
Trinitarian terms as the Father, the Son/Word, and the Spirit who unites Son to Father and
Father to Son. Creation, in turn, is a symbol of God, as the unfolding of the Logos through
time, animated by the symbolism of the Spirit. Humanity is the summit of this unfolding, the
little word and little spirit desirous by nature for its source and end in the triune life of God.
This natural desire can only be fulfilled by grace, the utterly free gift of God’s very self.
Creation, in humanity, participates in the original symbolic movement of God, and the
structures of this movement frame the structures of life in time.
The triad symbolized-symbol-symbolism is not a reified ontic thing; it is, rather, a
structure of relations. The structure of relations does not fix things in ontic space, it rather
attempts to narrate theological themes and topics in terms of the relations by which they subsist.
This structure of relations allows me to examine diverse topics within a logic governed by
trinitarian theology – without thereby lapsing into a crude personalism or social trinitarianism:
“there can be no question, we must repeat, of merely transposing into the natural order what
faith teaches us about the supernatural world: that would be to transform the divine reality,
which must be believed and lived in mystery – mysterium unitatis – into a dangerous kind of
1
Henri de Lubac, Corpus Mysticum, trans. Gemma Simmonds CJ (London: SCM, 2006), 221-247.
130
secularization.”2 The triad, then, is a contemplative tool, a way of exploring all things in
relation to God. While this method certainly has its limits, it allows me to examine diverse
topics under a trinitarian unifying theme.
As I turn to ecclesiology, I will deploy the triad in two ways. The first is an examination
of the threefold body of Christ. I will argue that prior to the late Middle Ages, the threefold
body was understood with Christ-Church-Eucharist corresponding to symbolized-symbol-
symbolism. The church was the symbol of Christ, his true presence in the world, while the
eucharist was the dynamic union of church with Christ, symbol with symbolized. This
configuration slowly evolved until the last two terms were switched: the eucharist came to be
seen as the symbol of Christ, his real presence, while the church came to be seen as symbolism,
the external structure that guaranteed the unity of the eucharist with Christ. This is a
“rescription” of the story de Lubac tells in Corpus Mysticum. My aim is to illuminate the inner-
relations of the threefold body as the One Body of Christ, the totus Christus in motion through
time toward God.
The second inquiry considers the One Body – the eucharistic church in union with its
head – in relation to creation and God. The resulting speculation is that the One Body can be
appropriated to symbolism, the dynamic unity of creation the symbol with God the symbolized.
The church in its life and especially its sacraments returns creation to God in praise, not as a
contrast to creation, but as the revelation of its deepest life. In this way we can understand de
Lubac’s assertion that the church is a sacrament. It unites creation to God, symbol to
symbolized.
To say the church is a sacrament is to say it is causes what it signifies. But this creates
two concerns. In an engagement with two contrasting texts from John Webster, I will show
that this “sacramental causality” is not Pelagian. Then, in an engagement with Louis-Marie
Chauvet, I will show that this is not ontotheological. My own language of symbols – distinct
from, though closely related to Chauvet’s – has the benefit of uniting a sacramental
ecclesiology to trinitarian theology, making reflection on the church itself a site of meditation
on the being of God, an ascent through the chain of symbols to the eternal and transcendent
“play” of symbolized-symbol-symbolism, Father-Son-Spirit.
2. SYMBOLISM AND ECCLESIOLOGY
2
Henri de Lubac, Catholicism, trans. Lancelot Sheppard and Sr Elizabeth Englund, OCD (San Francisco:
Ignatius, 1988), 364.
131
In Corpus Mysticum, de Lubac traces shifts in the meanings and uses of its two eponymous
words. The words Corpus Mysticum originally applied to the eucharist as the body of Christ in
its sacramental state; “mystery” and its related words had always been used in relation to
sacraments. It denoted a liturgical act, something done or celebrated. What was accomplished
in that act issued in the unity of the church, the ecclesial body of Christ. Hence, the eucharist
makes the church. De Lubac traces the slow severing of this link between the eucharist and the
church, as the words corpus mysticum evolved to signify the ecclesial body, eventually taken
in isolation from its eucharistic center. The driving factor in this evolution was the conflict
with Barengar, for whom the traditional phrase “mystical body,” when applied to the eucharist,
meant less-than-real. The word “mystical,” under the impulse of dialectical rationalism, had
come to be opposed to real. Traditional terminology thus shifted to account for this new
meaning. Challenging Barengar’s conclusion, but not his rationalism, theology eventually – if
grudgingly – ceded the ground and adjusted its terminology accordingly. The eucharist became
the true body of Christ, real presence winning the day over any references to “mystical”
presence, now in danger of non-realist interpretation. This had the effect of sidelining the
eucharistic center of the church, since the key issue was not how the eucharist made the church
a unified body, but how the eucharist was the true body of Christ. The ecclesial and social
implications of the eucharist were diminished in favor of real presence. I think this story can
be helpfully illuminated with the triad I have developed – which terms are assigned to which
realities is enormously consequential.
2.1 Christ – Church

Initially, according to de Lubac, there was no need to distinguish between the three bodies of
Christ. When Almarius of Metz coined the term “threefold body of Christ,” Florus of Lyon
reproached him as “the greatest enemy of the unity of the church.”3 To make distinctions in
the one Body was to imperil its fundamental unity. Of specific concern was the unity of the
church with Christ its head:
the body par excellence, the one that always comes first to mind, the one that needs no
other designation is the Church…The mysterious continuity linking the incarnation to
the church was strongly felt by all…Is the church not the continuation of Christ?4
3
De Lubac, Corpus, 23-26. Citing Almarius of Metz, Elogae de officio missae (PL105, 1328 C); Florus of
Lyon, Adversus Amalarium 1, n. 7 (PL 119, 76-77) and II, n. 7 (PL 119, 85-87).
4
132
De Lubac’s point is not that these ninth-century writers cared more for the church than the
eucharist, but that even when they began to elaborate on three distinctions in the body, the
church required no qualification as did the historical body and the mystical or sacramental
body. The church was the body of Christ simpliciter.5
The church was therefore, in my language, the symbol of Christ, that in which Christ
is seen and known in the world. Hence de Lubac’s famous phrase, “If Christ is the sacrament
of God, the Church is for us the sacrament of Christ; she represents him, in the full and ancient
meaning of the term; she really makes him present.”6 For de Lubac to call the church a
sacrament is to say that the church effects what it signifies, that is, that it both images Christ
and mediates his presence and work. The church images Christ by displaying in its sacraments,
liturgy and life the shape and pattern of Christ’s own life. The mediation of the church follows
from this: it mediates Christ’s presence and work by extending in its sacraments and liturgy
the salvation secured once for all by Christ on the cross. De Lubac quotes Gregory of Nyssa,
“he who beholds the church really beholds Christ.”7
My language of the symbolized-symbol relation helps to indicate the extent to which
this is founded on a trinitarian logic. The Son is the symbol of the Father, the replete self-
representation of the Father. In an analogical way, the church is the symbol of Christ, Christ’s
ongoing self-expression in the world. As the Son proceeds from the Father, so analogically the
church proceeds from Christ, sharing in his humanity and by his humanity with divinity. Christ
thus retains priority over the church as the symbolized. But this priority is one of service, for
the traditional imagery sees the church born from Christ’s side as it is pierced.8 Christ is “over”
the church because he is raised over it on the cross. Christ exercises his authority over the
church as one who serves, as in the washing of the disciples’ feet or the husband washing with
the water of the word.9 Thus, ecclesiologically, Christ is the symbolized, the church the symbol,
and the founding principle of this relation is the Son’s procession from the Father.
There is a paradox in this relation. As the Father only is as he is symbolized in the Son,
so Christ has elected to only be present in the world in relation to his body, the totus Christus.
Paul McPartlan is right that de Lubac underplays this paradox. This is, in fact, McPartlan’s
principle critique: de Lubac consistently distinguishes Christ from the church, so that, as
5
6
7
8
John 19:34.
9
John 13:1-7; Ephesians 5:25.
133
McPartlan interprets him, the church is a “second phase” of the divine economy.10 In contrast,
McPartlan prefers Zizioulas’ undifferentiated identification of Christ with the church in the
eschatological mystery of the eucharist. On this reading, the “future” is made contemporary
each time the eucharist is celebrated. Because the church truly is this eschatological reality,
then it is always united to Christ and Christ cannot be thought without it.11 Zizioulas sought
“the de-individualization of Christ,” so that Christ is constituted as a corporate person; the
church just is Christ.12
It is true that de Lubac is eager to distinguish the church from Christ, but McPartlan
has curiously missed the logic of this distinction. The union of the church with Christ is a
sacramental union, which is to say that it turns on a logic of symbols. The church is the
sacrament of Christ, and so is the re-presentation of Christ in which he is truly present.
McPartlan seems at times to deploy an either/or logic, missing the centrality of paradox to de
Lubac’s thinking. To give just one example, “the personification of the church as spouse
uttering her ‘I’ of response to Christ conflicts with de Lubac’s conviction that the ‘I’ of the
church is Christ.”13 Either the church is the bride of Christ, or the church is Christ. But of
course, Paul invokes bridal language to indicate precisely a unity that transcends either/or. The
bride and bridegroom become one body, so that their distinction as bride and bridegroom
enables their profound identification: “he who loves his wife loves himself.”14 Within Paul’s
bridal framework, the church is certainly constitutive of Christ, but only on the basis of its
sacramental relationship to Christ, that is, the relation of symbol to symbolized. The
bridegroom is only the bridegroom in relation to the bride – otherwise he is just a bachelor; the
Messiah is only the Messiah in relation to the people he is anointed to redeem; Christ is only
Christ – that is, specifically, the one anointed to save – in relation to the church. Because all of
these are relational terms, this is nearly tautological. De Lubac need not abolish the distinction
of Christ and church to secure their unity. Indeed, the distinction makes the unity.15
But the differences run deeper. For de Lubac, the church we encounter and know in its
institutional or everyday form is not coextensive with Christ’s work in the world: “the church,
insofar as it is visible, is not the Kingdom.”16 If the visible church is indeed the sacrament of
10
Paul McPartlan, The Eucharist Makes the Church (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1993), 23, 65, and elsewhere.
11
McPartlan, Eucharist, 89.
12
McPartlan, Eucharist, 23; quoting John D. Zizioulas, “The Mystery of the Church in Orthodox Tradition,”
One in Christ 24 (1988), 299.
13
McPartlan, Eucharist, 94. There is a whole nest of issues in this book that I do not have space to address,
chiefly, the ecumenical question of the filioque.
14
Ephesians 5:28, RSV.
15
This is not to suggest that Paul’s nuptial mystery is only about the structure of the relationship.
16
134
Christ, it is so in its movement toward the kingdom, its characterization as the way. De Lubac
is keenly attentive to the historical movement of the church, its current state being fragile and
incomplete. McPartlan, while agreeing with the current fragility of the church, seeks to
overcome this by appeal to Zizioulas’ all-determinative eschatology. In the eucharist, the future
becomes present, the totus Christus in its eschatological fullness is truly made present and
“identical” with the gathered assembly.17 Eschatology, however, is doing too much work here,
not least because we are left with the awkward situation in which the future arrives at every
eucharist, and then disappears again until the next.18 For Zizioulas, this eschatological shot-in-
the-arm strengthens believers for the in-between time, but it cannot account for the ways Christ
is his church in the troubled and faltering ways it makes its way through history; indeed, it risks
turning the eucharist into an escape from history.
A better, but still not perfect, approach is John Milbank’s essay “The Name of Jesus,”
in which Christ is truly constituted by the church, but only inasmuch as Christ’s life is to be re-
presented by Christian practice in time. Milbank notes that Christ’s “personality” is noticeably
absent from the New Testament. Rather, the New Testament speaks of Christ already from an
ecclesial perspective. Jesus is indeed a “minimal” historical personality, but he is primarily
depicted as “the event of a transformation which is to be non-identically repeated, and therefore
still made to happen.”19 Scripture presents Christ as always-already received by the church, so
that the key question is not the personality of the historical Jesus, but rather, how Jesus’s life
and teachings establish a way; the name of Jesus is the name of the form of existence we call
the church. That this perfect form of human existence coincides with a single person nurtures
reflection on Jesus’s divine identity, so that dogmatic theology is itself contained in the
historical unfolding of this way. Milbank’s essay does indeed risk evacuating Christ – and
therefore the church – of historical constitution: it verges dangerously close to sheer idealism.
But I take his central point to be that there is no uninterpreted “life of Christ” beneath the text
that operates independently of the church that bears his name. When the church, therefore,
looks back to Christ, it does so as to the one who makes its own life intelligible and possible.
Thus, for example, it is well-known that the gospel of John substitutes the washing of
the disciples’ feet for the eucharistic narrative, with the implication being that Christ is present
in his body within and as the servant practices of the community. In substituting the foot-
washing for the eucharist, the gospel writer is not playing off ethics and institution. John 6 is
17
McPartlan, Eucharist, 187-211.
18
McPartlan, Eucharist, 169.
19
John Milbank, “The Name of Jesus” in The Word Made Strange (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), 153.
135
abundantly clear about the priority of the eucharist. Rather, John is indicating the extent to
which Christian life mediates the life of Christ. After having their feet washed – and in view
of the Passion – the disciples act as Christ, and anyone who receives them receives Christ.20 It
is in washing feet that the disciples act in persona Christi and instantiate his presence in the
world; the church participates in Christ’s life of service, and in so doing constitutes his presence
in the world. Christ’s body must still be his body at 10am on a Tuesday. Again, this is not at
the expense of the eucharist, but it does serve to illuminate de Lubac’s statement in a letter to
McPartlan that “[la] question du rapport entre l’Eucharistie et l’Eglise ne préjuge en rien
l’idée qu l’on peut se faire de la structure visible de l’Eglise.”21 The washing of feet is always
a contingent and local affair, one reflected in the practical structures of the church established
to meet such local needs.22 It is more a process of discernment and prophetic action than a
prescriptive blueprint on the basis of eucharistic theology.23 In this way, Christ is constituted
in the world by his church, not at the expense of the eucharist, or indeed at the expense of his
historical personality, but by the historical church acting in history in the name of Christ.
McPartlan does note that de Lubac’s account is more attentive than Zizioulas’s to the
evangelical requirements of proclaiming the gospel.24 The church’s structures serve the
proclamation of the gospel, and because this proclamation is always local, the structures
themselves cannot be exclusively prescribed by eucharistic theology. But even here we could
press further. The church’s core structures – especially the episcopacy and baptism –
themselves proclaim the gospel. In one of the Twentieth Century’s most remarkable
ecclesiological works, The Gospel and the Catholic Church, Michael Ramsey argues that the
church catholic is also the church evangelical.25 The church’s catholic structures, especially
the episcopacy and sacraments, actively proclaim the gospel. The episcopacy, as the visible
symbol of church unity across time (by apostolic succession) and geography (by the structural
communion between bishops) proclaims the gospel invitation to join the family of God. This
is an invitation to rebirth to, as de Lubac might say, a new mother in the church and a new
20
John 13:20.
21
Henri de Lubac, Letter to Paul McPartlan, 4 July 1986; quoted in McPartlan, Eucharist, 98.
22
I am not claiming that church structures are all transient, only that many forms are culture-specific. Another
aspect – which McPartlan is attentive to – is the importance of the proclamation of the gospel served by the
structures of the church. I would only add to this that the enduring structures of the church themselves proclaim
the gospel. See Michael Ramsey, The Gospel and the Catholic Church (London: SPCK, 1990).
23
Nicholas M. Healy has sought to centralize this prophetic aspect in a way that systematically refuses to
“prejudge” its content in Church, World and the Christian Life: Practical-Prophetic Ecclesiology (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2000). The term “blueprint ecclesiology” is his.
24
McPartlan, Eucharist, 289-291. Though McPartlan attributes this to an excessive anthropomorphism in de
Lubac, and a mere lack of detail in Zizioulas.
25
Michael Ramsey, The Gospel and the Catholic Church (London: SPCK, 1990).
136
Father in God. And rebirth requires a death of an old self. For Ramsey, this signals the
fundamental importance of baptism. In baptism, all die with Christ. This is not merely an
“entrance fee” into the rest of the sacraments; it is a continuing reality. “One died for all,
therefore all died” means that “the fact of Christ includes the fact of the church.”26 The death
and resurrection of Christ is both the shape of the gospel and the heart of the church. Practically,
this means that the Christian life is always a dying and a rising.
Of course, baptism is intrinsically linked to the eucharist, which “proclaims the Lord’s
death until he comes.”27 There is no need to play one off against the other. But in its enthusiasm
for sociality and unity, communion ecclesiologies such as those that follow Zizioulas and de
Lubac have often failed to recognize how the eucharist requires a death, a conversion, a
prophetic renunciation of sin enacted in baptism. Rowan Williams notes that when communion
ecclesiology meets political theology, it has served to undermine the church’s prophetic
witness as that which cannot be in unity with current social structures.28 What is lost is the
church as irritant, as prophetic witness against the very unity with which society proclaims
false gospels. And because the church is always a part of the societies from which it is drawn,
this prophetic witness must always take the form of self-criticism. Baptism enacts this self-
criticism in a visible and structural way. As Romans 6 makes clear, baptism is death to sin, but
a death which must be constantly recalled, constantly instantiated in practice. It is a prophetic
criticism of society and of our corporate and individual selves. That criticism takes the form of
a calling to come and die and be raised again. Thus, as Michael Ramsey indicates, baptism
helps explicate a eucharistic ecclesiology in gospel terms.29
With McPartlan, then, we should say that the church is constitutive of Christ. But where
this has been conceived in exclusively eucharistic terms, it has tended to minimize the church’s
calling as the redemption of history itself, limiting its gospel witness both to the church itself
and its culture. Rather than an absolute eschatological presence, it is better to think of the
eucharist as a movement, a dynamic exchange between symbol and symbolized. As the Holy
Spirit is the movement and life of creation, so the eucharist is the movement of the church
toward Christ, and of Christ toward church, in a mystery of consummation that is at the same
time a proclamation of death and new life. I turn now to this pneumatological account of the
eucharist.
26
2 Cor. 5:15. Ramsey, Gospel, 34.
27
I Corinthians 11:26, RSV.
28
Rowan Williams, “Incarnation and the Renewal of Community” in On Christian Theology (Oxford:
Blackwell, 2000), 225-238.
29
Gary Badcock, The House Where God Lives (Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2009), 99.
137
2.2 Christ-Church-Eucharist
De Lubac was not blind to the pneumatological function of the eucharist:
Over and above the institutional unity…faith recognized within it an internal unity. It
assigned to it a mysterious source of life: the very Spirit of Christ…Now, the eucharist
is the mystical principle, permanently at work at the heart of Christian society, which
gives concrete form to this miracle. It is it the universal bond, the ever-springing source
of life.30
To the “mysterious source of life” that is the Spirit corresponds the “mystical principle” of the
church, the eucharist. It is the concrete form of the church’s union with Christ. Just as the
church is the symbol of Christ, participating in the Son’s relation to the Father, so the eucharist
is symbolism, uniting church to Christ by participation in the work of the Spirit. The eucharist
is a pneumatological mystery not just because of the reintroduction of the epiclesis into
contemporary liturgies, but because the work of unity it accomplishes is the unity of the Holy
Spirit. The eucharist makes the church because the Spirit makes the church.
Like the Spirit, the eucharist is a movement between symbol and symbolized; it is a
finite participation in eternal symbolism.31 It marks the church’s motion toward Christ as its
fullness and head. It is an action, a mystery accomplished, not a static thing or a reified space:
the church in motion toward God.32 The everyday motions of the church, as well as all the other
sacraments, are gathered together in the eucharist. As Johann Adam Mohler points out, the
other sacraments are positioned at key points in life so that the very course of life in time is
sustained by a sacramental process: baptism at birth, confirmation at emerging adulthood,
either marriage or holy orders in the time of family life, confession and penance for the ongoing
struggle with sin, and anointing of the sick, in Mohler’s time, at the point of death.33 Every
stage of life is marked by a sacrament, so that in its administration of the sacraments, the church
redeems life across time. What ties all of these time-markers together is the eucharist, when
the whole church joins together in communion with God and one another. There is indeed an
30
31
Nor was Scholasticism blind to the ecclesial implications of the eucharist. The presence of Christ in the
sacrament was the res et sacramentum “between” the sacramentum tantum of the ritual and elements and the res
tantum of the church. Eucharistic presence was conceived as toward the church. See Brett Salkeld,
Transubstantiation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2019), 130; Emery, “The Ecclesial Fruit of the Eucharist
in St. Thomas Aquinas” in Trinity, Church and the Human Person (Naples, Florida: Sapientia Press, 2007),
155-172.
32
Cf. Henri de Lubac, Corpus, 49-50.
33
Johann Adam Mohler, Symbolism, trans. James Burton Robertson (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 1997),
212.
138
eschatological reality to the eucharist in which the church joins with all creation in worship
and communion. But it does this not by interjecting eternity into time in an enclosed moment,
rather, it is the redemption of time itself, all our history offered to God in thanksgiving and
praise. The eucharist is thus not so much a reified thing, as the ever-flowing “source and
summit” of life itself.34 It is symbolism, the movement of the symbol toward the symbolized.
But every sacramental action is not just the movement of the church toward Christ. It
is also the movement of Christ toward the church. The significance of this should not be missed.
The Spirit is the movement of Father toward Son and Son toward Father as desire and love,
and so symbolism is a two-way street. In the eucharist, Christ comes to meet his people; he
offers himself in the offering of the people and he is returned to the people in communion.35
This is not a “meeting-in-the-middle” of two terms, for that would require two independent,
pre-existent and self-possessed entities, a kind of eternal compromise between distinct agents.
Rather, the church only is as it receives itself from Christ. It is ever in the position of the
symbol, entirely dependent on the gift of donation from the symbolized. There is no meeting
in the middle because there is no church that is not always-already the body of Christ who is
its head. This is the significance of the eucharist as a divine act. It is an act of God that creates
the church, which flows from Christ’s side, on analogy to the emanation of creation from the
Trinity. The church is born in the eucharist, an act of God that unites symbol to the symbolized.
Without this union, this union and love of the Spirit, the church would not be the body of
Christ, and therefore would not be the church. The eucharist makes the church because Christ
makes the church, and the eucharist is the self-offering of Christ to the church and to God,
uniting both in his person.36
This indicates that the church is never a subject standing over and against an object.
One cannot conceive of the relation of church to Christ, or church to eucharist, or even church
to world, in terms of a separation between subject and object. Just as the church is always a
part of its worldly milieu and can never step outside its place in history (for to do so would be
to refuse its salvific function toward history), so the church is always a part of its divine milieu,
34
Dogmatic Constitution on the Church: Lumen Gentium, 11. Available at
https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen-
gentium_en.html.
35
The mutli-directional nature of this gift is explored in Catherine Pickstock, After Writing (Oxford: Blackwell,
1998), 240-247.
36
This points toward Thomas’s conception of instrumental causality, where, in this case, the eucharist is the
instrumental cause in the constitution of the church, which remains ever a divine act. Thomas Aquinas, Summa
Theologiae 3a.62.1. All quotations from the Summa from Laurence Shapcote, O.P., trans., Latin/English Edition
of the Works of St. Thomas Aquinas (Lander, Wyoming: The Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred Doctrine,
2012). Hereafter, ST.
139
ever a society whose founding and sustenance is God. There is not first a church that then needs
to be connected to Christ for which the eucharist might provide the necessary technology.
Rather, the church is established precisely in this relation to Christ: it finds itself to be his body,
often enough to its own surprise.37 “In theology as in philosophy, subjects can truly ‘grasp’
nothing without at the same time recognizing themselves to be already grasped by it”;38 this is
why, traditionally, to understand Christianity requires an understanding of the lives of the saints
and an attempt to live such a life.39 Ecclesiology is, in the first instance, a reflection on the
church’s gift of itself from Christ.40
In this way we can speak of the church as the symbol of Christ and the eucharist as
symbolism, the union of body with head. Just as in trinitarian theology, there is a network of
paradoxes nested in these relations. The classic taxis of Father-Son-Spirit prescribes that the
Spirit proceed from the Father per filium. On my terms, this means that symbolism (Spirit)
proceeds from symbolized by way of the symbol. So the eucharist proceeds from God by way
of the Church which is the context assumed for its performance. It is the priest who consecrates
the elements under the authority of the bishop whose authority descends through the ages from
Christ; the eucharist proceeds from the charism given to the Church by its head. But as the Son
is constituted by his reception of the Spirit from the Father, so the Church is constituted by its
reception of the eucharist from Christ, even as the eucharist proceeds from the church. The
eucharist is, like Spirit to Son, retroactively causal in the generation of the church. Moreover,
while Christ is the head from whom the church invariably proceeds, nonetheless Christ is
constituted across time in and as the eucharistic Church. Christ is only present by his symbol,
and so in life in time there is a kind of subsistent relationality between Christ and his church.
The head is only where the body is, and the church is the ineludible context of Christ’s presence
in the world. There is no Christ, as God incarnate, not in relation to his body, the church. While
de Lubac never formulates the mystery of the church in precisely these terms, my account
coheres profoundly with his presentation of patristic ecclesiology. The church is the symbol of
Christ, the society of his real presence, the sacrament of Christ in the world. The eucharist is
37
See Pickstock, Writing, 238-248.
38
Louis Marie Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, trans. Patrick Madigan and Madeleine Beaumont (Collegeville,
Minnesota: Pueblo, 1995), 43. He continues: “in showing why we must renounce, as much as this can be done,
the scheme of ‘explicative’ causality and embrace rather the symbolic scheme of language, of culture, and of
desire, we set up a discourse from which the believing subject is inseparable – just as language is inseparable
from being or Dasein from Sein.”
39
For example, Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 57 in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol 4.
Available at http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2802.htm.
40
Moreover, the church is also an eternal reality, and so its instantiation in time is always a donation from
eternity. The church is not exclusively, or even primarily, the church militant.
140
symbolism, the dynamic union of the ecclesial body with the historical body. All three taken
together are the totus Christus, the One Body of Christ. As de Lubac narrates, such an
ecclesiology would not last.
2.3 Christ-Eucharist-Church
De Lubac’s account of the demise of a eucharistic and communion ecclesiology can also be re-
narrated in terms of the triad I have developed. The crisis initiated by Barengar’s non-realist
reading of Augustine caused the terms to be switched to better emphasize the real presence of
Christ in the eucharist. To symbolized-symbol-symbolism was now joined Christ-eucharist-
church. The eucharist came to be seen as the symbol of Christ, his real presence, and the church
came to be seen as symbolism, the guarantor of the union of Symbolized (Christ) with symbol
(eucharist). This risked devolution into an understanding of the church as the external authority
that secured the internal miracle of transubstantiation. By making the church the guaranteed
location of the Christ-eucharist relation, the dynamic sociality of the church was diminished,
degenerating into an individualistic piety internally and a juridical structure externally. No
longer the corporate body living by a unifying miracle, the church became the objective space
of divine action guarding the object miraculously produced.
Historians and theologians have vigorously debated the accuracy of de Lubac’s
account, a debate that has become heated in the wake of the Second Vatican Council’s liturgical
reforms.41 Eamon Duffy has argued the vitality of pre-reformation and counter-reformation
Catholicism, which was by no means wholly individualistic and clerical.42 Some have extolled
the late Medieval liturgy as a premier example of “affective piety” which could point the way
toward a new evangelization.43 Others have pointed out that while the laity of the late middle
ages and early modernity lacked “full conscious participation” in the liturgy, they nonetheless
played a significant role in the liturgical drama, and that conscious participation is itself only
an ideal of the enlightenment.44 Generally speaking, the early modern church was precisely
41
The debate surrounding liturgical reform is complex. For an overview and bibliography, see Alciun Reid, The
Organic Development of the Liturgy, 2nd edition (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005). For a variety of
perspectives, see Alciun Reid, ed., The T&T Clark Companion to Liturgy (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark,
2016). This volume plays out as an extended debate over a range of related issues, and is immensely valuable.
42
Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992). See a similar argument
in Virginia Reinburg, “Liturgy and the Laity in Late Medieval and Reformation France,” The Sixteenth Century
Journal 23 (1992), 526-547.
43
James Monti, “Late Medieval Liturgy: A Celebration of Emmanuel – ‘God with Us’” in Alcuin Reid, ed., The
T&T Clark Companion to Liturgy (London: T&T Clark, 2016), 93-107.
44
Alcuin Reid, “In Pursuit of Participation – Liturgy and Liturgists in Early Modern And Post-Enlightenment
Catholicism” in T&T Clark Companion to Liturgy (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016), 133-153.
141
that – early modern – and exhibited all the complexity of its era. How a scholar perceives
modernity, whether as something to be overcome, embraced or as merely “there” without any
need for normative evaluation, will influence how she evaluates the changes that led to its
development. Nonetheless, a number of things seem clear. By the early modern era one can
see a strong centralization of liturgical protocol with local rites and customs pressured into
conformity. This accompanied a decline in liturgical participation by the Laity which was by
no means uniform but is certainly detectable. Together with the rise of the devotio moderna
with its emphasis on individual piety, this tended to emphasize the “spiritual” and individual
over the corporate gathering. Finally, a growing divide between theology as an Aristotelian
science, spirituality as a personal Neoplatonic exercise, and liturgy as principally the concern
of canon law ensured that even while the ecclesial fruit of the eucharist was maintained in
much scholastic theology, it failed to substantially influence piety and liturgical reflection.45
These factors tended to objectify the eucharist, with a juridical concern to ensure a
canonically valid sacrament that “worked.” There is a discernable technologization of the
eucharist in this era, even while it remained the center of a certain kind of social vitality.46 This
dynamic can be seen in the dramatic increase of votive and requiem masses. John Bossy points
out that the rise of masses said for dead individuals expressed a kind of sociality – a social
network encompassing both the living and their dead relatives and friends – and that this
sociality required the living to do their part in securing the beatitude of dead relations.47 But
this is to turn the mass into a technology for procuring improved relations with God for friends
in purgatory, an exchange mirrored in its more infamous cousin, the selling of indulgences.
While religious life remained intimately tethered to the social, it began to be tainted by the
logic of trade, with the eucharist becoming an object for the procurement of an outcome.48
Hence, while Bossy is eager to defend the Mass and eucharist as social institutions, he describes
it as having “secured or reenacted the ‘paying’ of God, the appeasement of his anger, the
restoration of diplomatic or social relations between God and man, the return of the universe
to a condition of peace.”49 While these motifs are common throughout Christian history, they
take on a new primacy in the transition from the Middle Ages to Modernity.
45
These are well-documented. See Gerard Rouwhorst, “The Mystical Body Falling Apart?”, Religion and
Theology 23 (2016), 35-56. The debate tends to be over their evaluation and cause.
46
John Bossy, “The Mass as a Social Institution 1200-1700,” Past and Present 100 (1983), 29-61.
47
Bossy, Mass, 37-42.
48
This is related to the rise of nominalism and univocity. For the ways this influenced Luther’s rejection of
Catholic sacramental theology, see Salkeld, Transubstantiation. See me review in Modern Theology
(forthcoming) for a critical evaluation of some aspects of Salkeld’s argument.
49
Bossy, Mass, 33-34.
142
It is this objectification of the eucharist that de Lubac protests. My argument is that this
story can be told as the move from seeing the eucharist as the pneumatological core of church
life to seeing it as the objective presence of Christ. The church is then the indefectible guardian
of the miraculous object, an indefectibility guaranteed by the Spirit. Indeed, as Congar rightly
argues, the Spirit was often blatantly replaced by this indefectibility.50 This identification with
the Spirit is a way of seeing the church as symbolism, as the term of union, but its overly
juridical tone focused on the church as a static reality, a structure sustained by the Spirit to
house and guard the christic symbol. Symbolized-symbol-symbolism was appropriated to
Christ-eucharist-church.
In an otherwise flawed book (see below), Louis Marie Chauvet presents an alternative
to this mechanized view of the eucharist.51 Chauvet objects to any sense in which sacraments
produce grace, for grace can never be a product of technology, however “spiritual” that
technology might be. Grace is more like the mannah that fed the Israelites in the wilderness:
“it’s very name is a question: Man-hu? Its name is ‘what is this?’” It seems to be a thing, and
yet it melts in the sun; it has no measure, for those who collect little have enough, and those
who collect much cannot use the excess. Grace thus refuses any element necessary to sustain
a logic of exchange: “grace as a question, grace as a non-thing, grace as a non-value.”52 As
Peter remonstrates Simon the Sorcerer, the gift of God transcends the transactional. The
eucharist is not principally a means of negotiating good relations with God, a gross devolution
of the mystery to which the reformers rightly reacted (which is not to say that they reacted
rightly).53 The point here is that, like mannah, the church is governed by the logic of the gift:
the gift of Christ to the Father on the cross, the gift of the Spirit to the church at Pentecost, the
gift of itself received at the altar. Like mannah, the church is more of a question, a non-thing,
a non-value, for it is precisely the grace of God at work in the world, a work that can neither
be quantified nor exchanged.
This is not to deny the institutional structure of the church. But this structure itself is
founded on a question: Peter receives his commission to feed Christ’s sheep only after Christ’s
question, “do you love me?”54 This question is not a one-time query; it is the question that
50
Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit, trans. David Smith (New York: Crossroad, 1997), 162-163. The Pope, in
this passage, is the figure of the church’s indefectibility.
51
Chauvet, Symbol, 44.
52
53
This, alas, in spite of my own Protestantism. Cf. Liam Walsh, “Sacraments” in Rik Van Nieuwenhove and
Joseph Wawrykow, eds., The Theology of Thomas Aquinas (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press,
2005), 328.
54
John 21:15-19.
143
continues to stand at the fountainhead of the priesthood whose founding principle is not
authority, but love. The institutions of the church are a perpetual response to an abiding
question. The first response of the world to this society founded on gift and love as it observed
Pentecost is also a question: “what does this mean?”55 Man-hu? When Ananias and Sapphira
try to bargain their way to status in the community, the results are disastrous.56 Simon the
Sorcerer cannot buy the Spirit.57 Neither status nor Spirit operate on the logic of exchange.
Both are, in fact, the same thing, as Peter discovers at Cornelius’s house, when to his surprise
the Spirit falls on gentiles, indicating that they are now full siblings in the house of God.58 A
question: do you love me?; a non-value: the gift of Christian community; a non-thing: the gift
of the Spirit.
The question, “what is this?” cannot be definitively answered on earth. For one thing,
the church is an eschatological reality, and until all have become saints, the church remains
incomplete, a pilgrim city. The final identity of the church will only be known when all have
been gathered together. But more fundamentally, the question cannot cease to be asked, for to
ask the question is to name the church precisely as an inexhaustible gift, one which is suited to
the “needs of the day,” but which nonetheless can never be possessed by anyone. To “go on
asking the question,” as Rowan Williams might put it, is to learn to be the church. The church
takes the form of innumerable acts of discernment played out at every level, from the most
intimately local to the public and universal. It is a patient and humble self-questioning: what is
the church in this situation?59 The church abides by the law of love, whose definitive shape is
given by Christ on the cross, but whose particular enacting is only possible by the Spirit of
Christ at work in his Body. To go on asking the question is to live the life of the church in time,
to refuse to prescind from the realities of history and to work always within the relational logic
of gift, the law of love.
While it is not possible to merely replace a modern ecclesiology with a premodern one,
it is possible to search for modes of reflection that help us re-learn the distant past. This will
not be merely to repeat the past, for while one can attempt to re-learn pre-modernity, one cannot
55
Acts 2:12.
56
Acts 5:1-11.
57
Acts Acts 8:9-24.
58
Acts 10-11.
59
Pope Francis, Amoris Laetitia, especially §300, where the Pope explicitly refutes the possibility of a
transactional logic in discernment and accompaniment. The pastoral responses imagined by the encyclical are
relational, examining all relations involved: the couple, their children, their parish, the engaged and newly
married around them, etc. Available at:
https://w2.vatican.va/content/dam/francesco/pdf/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-
ap_20160319_amoris-laetitia_en.pdf.
144
un-learn modernity. The triad I have developed is a kind of pedagogy. It seeks to illuminate
without capturing the mystery. In its light, we can say the church is the symbol of Christ,
Christ’s real presence in the world; the eucharist is symbolism, the dynamic movement of unity
of church and Christ. The result is One Body in motion through time, the totus Christus. I have
not described three separate things to which relations are later added. Rather, the threefold
Body is One Body composed of these relations. This One Body, in turn, stands in fundamental
relation to God and the world. I now turn, then, from the dynamics of the threefold body to the
relation of this One Body to God and the world. Here the terms are aligned differently. I take
the church to be the totus Christus, itself composed in the threefold way outlined above. But
taken as a unity, the threefold body takes on its own position in relation to God and creation,
which I will now explicate.
2.4 God, Creation and the One Body

In this thesis I have argued that creation is a symbol of God, truly the unfolding of the Logos
in time. We are now in a position to finish the triad that structures this thesis: God is the
symbolized, creation is the symbol, and the One Body of Christ is symbolism, the unity of love
and desire between creation and God. The One Body of Christ, that is, the eucharistic church
in union with its head, is the world in motion toward its creator. The totus Christus, to borrow
Augustine’s famous phrase, is the unity of creation with God, or, in that other famous
Augustinian phrase, the world reconciled.60
Just as the Spirit is the love of the Father for the Son, so the One Body is God’s love
toward his creation, his desire for its fulfillment and his action for its redemption. It is thus
God’s society, a divine gift for the sake of all. We must resist, then, any attempt to conceive of
the One Body in purely functional and managerial terms: the Body is not an assembly line, and
ministers are not “line managers,” “production managers,” or even “leaders.”61 Such titles are
broadly used, and are conceived entirely along the lines of trade: governance structures of the
modern American corporation have become the governance structures of many portions of the
church. While the One Body is always embedded in and expressive of its particular culture, it
is not clear that any of these terms have actually been redeemed; the logic of trade suffuses
their practice. Rather, the Body is the gift of God’s sacramental presence, the visible
60
Augustine, “Homilies on 1 John”, Homily 1, §2, The Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers, ed. Philip Schaff (New
York: The Christian Literature Company, 1888), 461; Sermon 48, §8, NPNF, 410.
61
Such titles are used throughout non-denominational churches, low churches, and even the Church of England.
Even in places where the titles are lacking, the mentality is often present. The mega-industry of “leadership
development” resources testifies to this.
145
community through which God redeems the world. Its priests, whatever their organizational
duties, are first and foremost the sacramental presence of Christ and the sacramental figures of
their communities. Their calling refuses all logic of exchange and governance structures
designed to maximize their “output.”
But if the model is the Spirit as the unity of Father and Son, then symbolism must be
mutually internal to both symbolized and symbol. The One Body, then, is also the movement
of creation toward God. It is the love and thanksgiving – the eucharisteo – offered to God. This
is not in exchange for salvation and presence but is the logic of a gift received and returned.
The One Body, while entirely of God (symbolized), is entirely of the world (symbol). It is thus
never able to excuse itself from the affairs of daily cultural life; it is in no way a flight from the
material contingencies of life in time into the security of a future kept in promise elsewhere. It
is entirely in the world for which it is called. That is to say that the One Body only ever exists
as the redemption of the societies in which it is found, and thus bears their life, their culture,
history, pain and victories in itself, as itself. This is not a neo-colonialist “claim” on the goods
of non-Christian cultures, though it risks becoming this. Rather, it is the claim of all cultures
on the body of Christ. The Body can never be owned by any particular culture, but the truth of
every society has a legitimate claim on the attention and affection of the Body.62 The One Body
receives itself as it patiently discerns and nurtures the truth, beauty and goodness of every
culture: servant of all, possession of none.
The same paradox we have encountered again and again in this systematic theology
holds true here as well. As the Spirit is “retroactively causal” in the generation of the Son, so
the One Body is retroactively causal in the creation of the world. It is the “first of God’s
creatures” in the sense that the body of Christ is the life for which creation is set in motion.63
The eucharistic church in unity with Christ is not, therefore, in an inversely proportional
relation with the world, so that one must conquer and subjugate the other. It is clear from the
life of Christ that the world will often have this attitude toward the Body, but the Body can
never have this attitude toward the world. The One Body is precisely the refusal of conquest,
for it is the power at work in the world, the leaven in the bread. De Lubac describes the church
as “the only reality which involves by its existence no opposition. It is therefore the very
62
De Lubac addresses these issues in Catholicism, 282-302. De Lubac’s most direct engagement with other
cultures is through his work on Buddhism. His most well-known work is Aspects of Buddhism (London: Sheed
and Ward, 1954). For an overview, see David Grumett, “De Lubac, Christ and the Buddha,” New Blackfriars
89, no. 1020 (March, 2008), 217-230.
63
Shepherd of Hermas 2.4, The Fathers of the Church: The Apostolic Fathers, trans. Francis X. Glimm, et al.
(New York: Christian Heritage, 1947), 241-242.
146
opposite of a closed society.”64 What he means is that the body of Christ is not competing for
space in the world – it is not struggling to carve out a niche for itself in an agonistic climate.
Rather, it finds itself fundamentally on the side of any and every culture precisely in its
goodness and strength, and opposed only to that which is evil, i.e., the privation of this good.
Indeed, the One Body just is this goodness and reality summoned together sacramentally in
eucharistic motion.65
This arrangement guards against the temptation to abstract the church from its place in
history. If the One Body is the world in motion toward God, then those still pilgrims in the
world can never flee temporal concerns. Indeed, the church precisely is this redemption of
time.66 It must be attentive, then, to its own time, even while living always in reference to the
time of scripture, and the eschatological future. The body of Christ is a product of its age,
always influenced by its surroundings and shaped to greater or lesser degrees by its culture.
This is why we must “go on asking the question” of the church, for only thus can we live in
time reflectively, not to master and so leap from our place in history, but to faithfully live in
the time given us by God. This process of discernment cannot be resolved by any apriori
evaluations. Asking the question requires the patience and discipline to learn to see our own
contexts rightly, even though this is a never-ending task. But we can go on asking the question
of the church in this culture at this time because we have faith that inasmuch as we are never
outside our own culture, so also we are never outside the gracious movement of God. Our very
existence is as a word spoken by God, the unfolding of the eternal Word by the Spirit, and there
is never a moment in our history not always-already embedded within this trinitarian
movement. All of history is circumscribed by Trinity. And this sustains our discernment, to
look to the symbols of creation, history and culture in hopeful expectation that by the Spirit,
the Logos will shine through, revealing the Father.
The reason the One Body can maintain this posture of “openness toward” creation is
because the One Body is not the symbol of God, creation is. The point is not that there is this
thing called the world out of which the church is revealed. Rather, the One Body is the world
in its most revelatory form: the Body is the revelation of the world. And this implies that the
Body can never adopt a “colonial” attitude to any aspect of creation. The Body just is creation
at its fullest, and so is nothing more than each culture, each time’s, reception of itself as a gift
from God in Christ, the giver of every good and perfect gift.
64
65
Of course this means the institutional church is not coextensive with the One Body.
66
Cf. John Milbank, “Enclaves, or Where is the Church?” New Blackfriars 73, no. 861 (June 1992), 341-352.
147
For these reasons it is entirely appropriate to call the church a sacrament, in the specific
sense that the eucharistic church in unity with its head is a sacrament. Only the threefold body
is the sacrament of God and creation. The external structures of the church in themselves are
not rightly considered a sacrament of God and creation, neither is the eucharist in abstraction
from its ecclesial context. Neither – and this is controversial – is Christ a sacrament except in
his ongoing unity with the visible church in the eucharist. The logic of the last statement is
simply that Christ is not known in the world without his material instantiation in the church,
and that instantiation is secured by the eucharist. Once the unity of the threefold body is
established, the relation of this One Body to creation and God becomes clear. The One Body
effects what it signifies; it signifies God’s redemption of the world and is the instrument by
which that redemption is wrought. Thus, to symbolized-symbol-symbolism corresponds God-
creation-church.
3. A FEW CRITIQUES
This arrangement is not without possible criticisms. Two, in particular, will be addressed
below. The first is a Barthian critique about the priority of God in all things. If even Christ is
not a sacrament without the eucharistic church, how does this not infringe on divine perfection?
Is it not better to conceive of the church not in sacramental terms, but in the gospel terms of
hearing and responding? If the Barthian critique worries about the dangers of semi-
pelagianism in ecclesiology, a Heideggerian critique worries about ontotheology.67 To call the
One Body a sacrament is to say that it causes what it signifies. Louis-Marie Chauvet rejects
the notion of causality as implementing a productionist scheme of grace. To think that the
sacraments in some way cause grace is to reduce God to an ontic force, to forget the utter
transcendence of God. Better, then, to conceive of the sacraments along the lines of human
symbolic meaning to respect both the transcendence of God and the irreducibility of human
language. I will argue that contra Barthians this is not semi-Pelagian; contra Chauvet this is
not ontotheological. There are, of course, numerous other objections one might imagine: a
Marxist objection that I have neglected the dynamics of power; a Thomist objection that I have
merely obscured what was made clear in the scholastic framework of res et sacramentum; a
post-colonial objection that I have underplayed the church’s enmeshment in social sin; a
Zwinglian objection that sacraments lack the power of presence; etc. Unfortunately, rather than
67
The term is most influentially developed by Martin Heidegger. In contemporary theology, it has come to
indicate an inappropriate forgetting of the radical difference between God and creatures. See see Judith Wolfe,
Heidegger and Theology (New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014).
148
answer every conceivable objection, what follows will have to merely indicate the kind of
thinking I would pursue in answering such questions. First, the Barthian concern.
3.1 John Webster on Divine Perfection

John Webster underwent an astonishing development in his understanding of divine perfection:
from a Barthian concern to protect a sphere of pure divine causality, to a Thomist understanding
of perfection as the sharing of causal power. Outlining this development helps me address the
Barthian concern that a sacramental ecclesiology infringes on divine perfection. In “On
Evangelical Ecclesiology,” John Webster calls Henri de Lubac’s Catholicism one of the
“magisterial ecclesiological texts of the last century.”68 But Webster’s point is not so much to
praise the text, as to discover the conditions under which it might avoid falling into a kind of
sacramental semi-pelagianism. Webster worries that behind talk about the Church as a
sacrament, behind a strong identification of the church with Christ in the eucharist, lies a
disorder of dogmatic protocol: a failure to think Christ and gospel first, and church second; a
conflation of the work of God and the work of creatures. To embrace this magisterial text,
Webster argues, it must be shorn of its tendency to identify the church with Christ and Christ’s
gospel.
Standing behind Webster’s concern is Eberhard Jüngel, and Barth before him. Jüngel
expresses deep reservation about the sacramental ecclesiology championed by de Lubac,
Rahner and others. For Jüngel, “the ‘sacrament of unity’ is not the church but Christ himself.”69
For Karl Barth, the trouble with the Catholic doctrine of the church is simply the trouble with
the doctrine of Mary:
In the doctrine and worship of Mary there is disclosed the one heresy of the Roman
Catholic Church which explains all the rest. The “Mother of God” of Roman Catholic
Marian dogma is quite simply the principle, type and essence of the human creature co-
operating servantlike (ministerialiter) in its own redemption on the basis of prevenient
grace, and to that extent the principle, type and essence of the church.70
The concern for each of these theologians is that the church has transgressed the territory that
belongs exclusively to Christ, as God’s redemptive action in the World, and thereby exchanged
divine supremacy for a semi-Pelagian notion of cooperation. The church is the people defined
68
Webster, “On Evangelical Ecclesiology” in Essays on Christian Dogmatics II (London: Bloomsbury, 2016),
172. Originally published in Ecclesiology 1, no. 1 (2004), 9-35.
69
Eberhardt Jüngel, “The church as sacrament?” in Theological Essays, trans. John Webster (Edinburgh, T&T
Clark, 1989), 191.
70
Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics Vol. 1, 2 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1956), 143.
149
by their hearing of the gospel, the recipient of divine action, and like Mary, perpetually a virgin,
i.e. perpetually under the repudiation of human capability. Webster’s essay is profound
summary of this central Protestant critique.
Webster outlines the relation between the church and the gospel, that is, the relation of
the church as a visible human community and the divine work that creates and sustains it.71
Webster is explicitly trying to avoid an ecclesiology in which the gospel is only extrinsically
related to the visible life of the church. He is therefore sympathetic to the concerns of
“communion ecclesiologies” that seek to make the action of Christ internal to the action of the
corporate body of the church.72 But such ecclesiologies, Webster argues, go too far. They
collapse Christ into the church, voiding an all-important dogmatic protocol: “the gospel
proceeds and the church follows.”73 To show this, Webster begins with divine perfections, on
the principle that an ecclesiology is only as good as the theology, properly speaking, that
underlies it: “as the perfect one, God is utterly realized, lacks nothing, and is devoid of no
element of his own blessedness. From all eternity he is wholly and unceasingly fulfilled.”74
God’s “internal” perfection implies the perfection of God’s “external” acts. There is “no point
at which God must call upon the assistance of other agents to bring his work to its
completion.”75 Of course, God graciously and freely chooses to include other agents, but this
is election for a particular service; in election, God “does not bestow an enduring capacity on
the creature so much as consecrate it for a specific appointment.”76 The perfection of God’s
life entails the perfection of God’s acts, which only include creatures to the extent they are
elected for a specific purpose within it.
But at no point do creatures participate in either the divine work or the divine life.
Webster frames this in terms of a strict dichotomy: is God’s perfection “inclusive” or
“exclusive?”77 If inclusive, then God needs creation for his perfection. If exclusive, then
creation cannot participate in God:
71
Webster, “Ecclesiology”, 153-154.
72
Communion ecclesiologies are a family of ecclesiological thought tracing back to de Lubac’s Corpus
Mysticum and Catholicism that emphasis the sociality of the church, conceived as the unity of people among
themselves and participation in the unity of God and centered on the Eucharist. For an overview, see Dennis M.
Doyle, Communion Ecclesiology (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2000).
73
Webster, “Ecclesiology”, 154.
74
75
76
77
150
God’s relations to that which is other than himself are real; but they are expressions of
divine freedom, not of lack, and in those relations creatures do not participate in God,
but are elected for fellowship and therefore summoned into God’s presence.78
This is borne out christologically, where the incarnation is “an absolute beginning, the
introduction into creation of an absolute novum, unconditioned and unexpected.”79 The work
of Christ, as the work of God, is therefore unparticipable, unrepeatable and even “non-
representable.”80 And all of this finally issues in a firm “distance or difference” between Christ
and his church, even while remaining united by election.81 The death, resurrection and
ascension of Christ enact “his over-againstness to the church.”82 “The perfection of Christ,” as
the perfection of God, “is not integrative or inclusive, but complete in itself.”83 To be complete,
God’s perfection must be exclusive.
Two features of this argument are troubling. First, its nominalism. This is most obvious
in Webster’s account of the incarnation. In order for the incarnation to be an “absolute novum,”
the humanity of Christ must be an absolute creation ex nihilo, which calls into question any
real human nature common to all humans and Christ. For Webster, there can be no “pre-
existing creaturely coordinate” for the incarnation’s occurrence.84 He interprets such a situation
as requiring a kind of adoptionist pelagianism: “the humanity of Jesus is thus not a creaturely
quantity which is annexed or commandeered by God, for then it would precede the incarnation
as its creaturely condition.”85 There can be no real common human nature because that would
condition God’s act in the incarnation, diminishing God’s perfection by imposing a creaturely
pre-condition. Moreover, a common human nature would mean that humans are united to
Christ by participation in that common nature, illicitly insinuating humanity into this divine
act. This pays out immediately in soteriology: “In Christ, God unites himself to us, but he does
so only in this one person, and this one person is not the symbol of some more general
communion or identity.”86 Christ’s life and work is not salvific on the basis of the nature
common to him and us, but only inasmuch as Christ substitutes his own solitary individuality
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
151
for ours: “His humanity only gathers all others into itself as substitute; it includes all in itself
only as it also excludes them.”87
But we should ask, what does it mean for God to become a creature if not to subject the
Word to a “creaturely condition”? Webster secures divine perfection at the cost of real natures,
for a nature common to human creatures would indeed be a pre-condition for incarnation. This
necessitates nominalism because were humans to share a common nature, but Christ be some
peculiar instance of creation ex nihilo, his humanity could not meaningfully be our own. To
avoid creaturely pre-conditions and still affirm the full humanity of Christ, every human would
have to be an isolated instance of creation ex nihilo, bound together not by common nature, but
pure divine decree. Christ is therefore a unique, unrepeatable, unparticipable, “insistent
singularity” from which all other humans are excluded.88 That exclusion, ensured by
nominalism, is then bridged by God’s free and spontaneous choice in election to have this
insistently singular individual stand-alone before God’s judgment as a substitute for every
(singular) other.
To this Christological nominalism corresponds an ecclesial one. Even though the
proclamation of this exclusively divine act generates a community, the material practices of
that community can only be said to be the “phenomenal form of the church.”89 Webster makes
the perfectly valid argument that the Spirit is what makes the phenomenal practices of the
church the church. And yet, the phenomena of church life cannot be said to be the work of
God, for in its phenomenal acts, “the church simply points.”90 That is, the church testifies to
what God has done elsewhere, i.e. to the insistent singularity of Christ’s action in which the
church cannot participate. The church is “strictly subordinate to that which it is appointed and
empowered to indicate [signify], raised up not to participate in, extend, or realize a reality that
lies quite outside itself.”91 Here a nominalism of signs lurks. The sign does not participate in
the signified; the church is no symbol. The church is a pointer that those filled with the Spirit
can recognize, but only a pointer. The symbolized has done all the work, and there remains
nothing for the symbol to do but to evacuate itself in unreserved witness.
This indicates the second troubling feature of the text. The nominalism of Webster’s
account, in both its Christological and ecclesiological instantiations, coincides with a
competitive relation between God’s perfection and creaturely participation. Here, the doctrine
87
88
89
90
91
152
of creation ex nihilo serves to sever any concordance between divine and human action: “it is
a basic entailment of the doctrine of creation ex nihilo that God and creatures are in a certain
sense inversely proportional.”92 That “certain sense” is the absolute priority of divine
perfection in act, such that at every decisive moment – Webster lists the incarnation, the
ascension and Pentecost – “God acts alone.”93 The reason for this, as we have seen, is that a
perfect act can require no “other agents.”94 Were there some human correlate to these divine
acts, it would imperil their perfection. The result is that divine acts must not only be divine,
but exclusively so. Therefore, Webster argues, a concept of the eucharist as a participation in
Christ’s self-offering “undermines the alien character of Christ’s person and work, and so
compromises their perfection and grace.”95 This last statement summarizes the logic of the
essay: if Christ is not alien to the world, and the world alien to Christ, God’s perfection is
compromised. His worry about “other agents” is telling, for it indicates that creaturely
participation is really, in spite of protests to the contrary, competitively arrayed against divine
agency. Here, nominalism and a univocal ontology lurk hand-in-hand.
And yet, nine years and a great deal of Thomas Aquinas later, Webster argues this:
Perfect power does not absorb, exclude or overwhelm and dispossess other dependent
powers and agents, but precisely the opposite: omnipotent power creates and perfects
creaturely causal capacity and movement. Exclusive power is less than perfect and falls
short of divinity.96
Here the question is again divine perfection, and the founding premise is the same – creation
from nothing entails the absolute priority of divine action – but this time the doctrine serves
rather to undermine attempts to play God and creatures off from one another. He identifies a
pressing theological-historical task as discovering “how there has arisen a condition in which
the axiom aut Gloria Dei aut Gloria homini has gathered such cultural authority, one in which
God and creatures are natural antagonists, ‘two units in a symmetrical or asymmetrical
relationship, each poised in such contradiction that one must sink if the other is to rise.’”97
Efforts at undertaking that task have traced the condition to:
a narrowing of divine causality to efficient causality; decline of appeal to final causality
in the explanation of nature, or the reorientation of final causality to human, not divine,
92
93
94
95
96
John Webster, “Creatio Ex Nihilo and Creaturely Goodness”, Modern Theology 29, no. 2 (April, 2013), 170.
97
Webster, “Creatio”, 168; quoting Michael J. Buckley, Denying and Disclosing God: the Ambiguous Progress
of Modern Atheism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 94.
153
purposes; a sense that natural motion is self-contained, not requiring talk of God’s
creative and providential operations to render it intelligible; in short, the retraction of
the concept of a divine source for natural and human movement.98
With the collapse of formal and final causality into efficient causality, it has become
increasingly difficult to see how God might be a first cause operative within creatures. As Jacob
Schmutz has argued, this reduces God to acting alongside or upon creatures.99 In this scheme,
divine action could only be conceived as somehow achieved at the expense of human action:
“the idea whose spell must be broken is that God is a supremely forceful agent in the same
order of being as creatures, acting upon them and so depriving them of movement.”100
The trouble with this spellbinding idea, as Aquinas points out, is that perfect power
cannot be in competition with anything. It is far more perfect to bestow both being and causal
power, than to withhold causal power out of anxiety about losing a causal monopoly.101
Webster appeals to creatio ex nihilo precisely to avoid a situation in which creatures and creator
compete in ontic space, allowing creaturely action to be authentically creaturely and yet never
in fact separated from divine action. And this, at the very least, opens the possibility that God
need not “act alone” to maintain the priority of providence and the ultimacy of divine glory.
This does not entail a repudiation of Webster’s previous concerns. The priority is still
divine action, but the mode of this action is now recast according to a clearer truth of perfection:
divine perfection is displayed precisely in its sharing of causal power, its bestowal of agency,
its generosity. Everything, then, is founded upon creation, a divine act in which “God acts
alone.” But that act creates and sustains other actors, so that from Genesis 1:1 on, God never
acts alone, at least not in the sense of competitively replacing second causes. This is not merely
the result of the divine will in election – though it is indeed that – it is also an indication of
God’s very nature as goodness itself, which seeks to share itself, and in so doing freely creates
creatures whose existence is their sharing in that original goodness. Gone, therefore, is
Webster’s allergy to the language of participation: “participation is theologically to be
98
Webster, “Creatio”, 167. For an account of these shifts, see Simon Oliver, Philosophy, God and Motion
(London: Routledge, 2005).
99
Jacob Schmutz, “The Medieval Doctrine of Causality and the Theology of Pure Nature” in Surnaturel: A
Controversy at the Heart of Twentieth-Century Thomistic Thought (Ave Maria, FL: Sapientia Press, 2009), 203-
250.
100
Webster, “Creatio”, 170.
101
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame press, 1975),
III.69.15: “The perfection of the effect demonstrates the perfection of the cause…So, to detract from the
perfection of the creature is to detract from the perfection of divine power. But, if no creature has any active role
in the production of any effect, much is detracted from the perfection of the creature. Indeed, it is part of the
fullness of perfection to be able to communicate to another being the perfection one possesses. Therefore this
position detracts from the divine power.”
154
understood in terms of the operation of creative benevolence, and so in terms of the
differentiated sharing of creator and creature in the good of being, each in their proper order
and mode.”102 The creature exists by participation in being, according its proper mode as a
creature. This does not detract from God’s perfection but is funded precisely by God’s
perfection which is perfect enough to share itself. This sharing takes the form of the most
intimate form of causality. God is first cause because God works at the deepest level of
creaturely life, both giving and sustaining being, and giving and sustaining agency. It is
creation ex nihilo that ensures this most intimate involvement: “even after it has come into
being, the creature is not a reality to which God is ‘other,’ some correlate in a common
order.”103 In other words, God cannot be “alien” to the creature, for the creature only ever is in
God.
While he likely would still have maintained that communion ecclesiologies go too far
in uniting church to Christ – and not entirely without reason104 – his later outlook lacks the
anxiety to protect a sphere of exclusively divine causality. If we follow Webster’s turn to
Thomas, where does that leave the church? If creaturely causality need not infringe on divine
perfection, we need not be as worried about the church participating in Christ’s work. But I
think Webster would want to know – with great specificity! – just what kind of causality we
are talking about when we speak of the church in relation to the divine economy. Clearly the
work of the church is not run-of-the-mill human action. Nor are we speaking of a moment
where God unequivocally “acts alone,” since this formula assumes a competitive contrast
between divine and human agency. I have claimed that the church stands between God and the
world as symbolism, which is to say, as a sacrament, then something like sacramental causality
will need to be examined. But before that, I must answer an objection from an entirely different
direction: a Heideggerian objection to any language about causes whatsoever.
3.2 Sacraments, Causes and Symbolism

What might it mean for the church to occupy the place of symbolism, a sacrament of world
and God? If the church in some way participates in God’s work of redemption, what kind of
causality is at work here? To understand this, we need to look at sacramental causes. To explain
such causality, it might help to start with a misunderstanding, specifically, Louis Marie
Chauvet’s misconstrual of sacramental causality as a kind of technologization of mystery. For
102
103
104
See discussion above on Zizioulas.
155
Chauvet, “the communication of grace is to be understood, not according to the ‘metaphysical’
scheme of cause and effect, but according to the symbolic scheme of communication through
language.”105 Chauvet argues this as both an affirmation and a critique of Thomas’s view of
the sacraments. He applauds Aquinas’s late attempt in the Summa to “subordinate the notion
of causality to that of sign.”106 While the rest of Middle Ages saw it necessary to add the notion
of causality to Augustine’s “definition” of sacraments as signs, Thomas adds only that it is “a
sign of a sacred thing inasmuch as it sanctifies human beings.”107 Here, Thomas studiously
avoids conflating signs with causality, prioritizing the sign-value of sacraments, and so the
priority of the symbolic over the technological.
But this prioritization would not last. When Thomas turns to examine the operations of
the sacraments, he immediately switches to a discourse about causes. This, according to
Chauvet, removes the discussion from the realm of the symbol and into the realm of
mechanical. Moreover, once the symbolic has been abandoned, Thomas must bracket out the
church from the functioning of the sacraments. Even though he has maintained the ecclesial
connection with the eucharist, when Thomas turns to its mode of functioning, the language of
causes forces him to focus exclusively on the efficient causality of God and the instrumental
causality of the sacrament, occluding the church until after the “how” of the sacraments has
been examined. The all-important vision of the mutual constitution of the totus Christus in the
threefold body of Christ is lost to the language of causes. Grace is then something that the
sacraments produce, with subsequent centuries taking the ontotheological bait and
technologizing the sacramental life of the body of Christ.
In order to unlearn the logic of causes, Chauvet turns to Heidegger and the logic of
symbols. All of reality is mediated through language and culture, so that it is impossible to get
behind our symbolic understandings of the world to a pure, unmediated moment. The world is
always-already mediated through language, through rites and rituals, through society, whether
the casual society of pop culture, the formal structures of the Royal Society, or the heavenly
society of the church. The sacraments, then, are to be understood as mediating rituals, rites that
both institute and are instituted by the community. They are formative rituals that bind together
past with present and future, uniting the community together and to God. They function to the
extent that they signify, that is, to the extent that they mediate reality through a particular ritual
105
Chauvet, Symbol, 139. For an accessible introduction to Chauvet’s thought, see Lieven Boeve, “Theology in
a Postmodern Context and the Hermeneutical Project of Louis-Marie Chauvet” in Sacraments: Revelation of the
Humanity of God (Collegeville, Minnesota: Pueblo, 2008), 5-24.
106
107
Chauvet, Symbol, 15; Citing his translation of ST 3a.60.2.
156
and linguistic culture. Because the real is unavailable except through the mediation of language
and ritual, the sacraments witness to the presence of the absence of God; God is certainly
“here,” but because the real is always mediated, God is not available for inspection, and is
certainly not subject to possession or manipulation. The sacraments institute and are instituted
as an exhaustive hermeneutic, a reading of the world that constitutes both world and reader as
a dynamic whole.
For Chauvet, while grace and the sacraments are not reducible to the symbolic, thinking
of them in terms of the symbolic has distinct advantages over thinking of them in terms of
causality. The symbolic avoids the dangers of technologizing grace, for language is most fully
language when it transcends the requirements of object mastery – i.e., in poetry.108 The
symbolic also emphasizes the humanity of the sacraments, for it examines them precisely as
human rites, rituals, and culture. This is important for Chauvet because “the metaphysical”
elides the human in search of a reality untainted by history and culture. Sacrament and Symbol
thus represents a sacramentology “from below.”109 Finally, examining the sacraments in the
register of the symbolic is a project in the overcoming of all the ravages of metaphysics,
especially the corrosive dualism of subject and object. In his symbolic account, the sacramental
object and the sacramental subject are mutually constitutive, so that neither a pure objectivity
nor a pure subjectivity are possible.110 Rather, objects and subjects only are in their relations
to one another. Thus, the eucharist is the presence of Christ only in its relation to the church,
so that the threefold body of Christ is once again reunited.
This can be summed up in the nature of language as poetry. For Chauvet, following
Heidegger, “poetry is the human vocation.”111 He quotes G. Bachelard: “poetry casts language
into a state of emergence.”112 What he means by this is the priority of symbolic presence – the
way a poem can summon, say, a wheelbarrow or a rose garden – as more fundamental than
physical presence or presence by production. Poetry opens the possibility for presence as
absence, for presence as what is fleeting, playing in the margins of language and life. The
wheelbarrow is present but not “available,” not objectively there for inspection and use. This,
Chauvet and Heidegger think, is the propaedeutic for the glimpsing of Being, indeed, it is the
“clearest” instance of Being in time. Being is only present as an absence, it can never be
108
Chauvet, Symbol, 58-63.
109
This is Liam Walsh’s interpretation. Walsh, “Sacraments”, 329-330.
110
This is also Laurence Hemming’s concern in “Henri de Lubac: Reading Corpus Mysticum” in New
Blackfriars 90, no. 1029 (September 2009).
111
112
Chauvet, Symbol, 57; quoting Gaston Bachelard, La poétique de l’espace (Paris: PUF, 1957), 10.
157
captured and dissected, for this would be to turn the transcendent into a cadaver. Poetry shows
the play of Being in time, glimpsing the real in its very absence. It is, moreover, the
forgetfulness of Being’s transcendence that reduces language to technology for accomplishing
tasks, a forgetfulness that only further guarantees the impossibility of overcoming metaphysics.
In terms of Christian theology, this forgetfulness reduces the presence of Christ to a quasi-
physical presence, something to be manipulated, owned, and bartered. Chauvet sees this
forgetfulness at work in Christian tradition, especially scholasticism.
Much of Chauvet’s account resonates with my own. His attention to the mediation of
symbols, the dangers of naturalizing the transcendent, and the centrality of the sacraments to
the Christian life. But we should query his allergy to the language of cause, especially as found
in Thomas Aquinas. This is not because cause is a better analogy than sign, but because to
abandon the question of causes is to fail to fully “overcome” ontotheology. While Thomas’s
account certainly benefits from Chauvet’s exploration of cultural anthropology, Thomas in the
end subordinates the language of cause to that of sign, rendering even causes as symbols of
God. In contrast, by studiously avoiding the language of cause, Chauvet abandons such
discourse to its ontotheological fate. Thomas maintains a more radical symbolic theology by
turning even the most technical into symbols, into poetry.
While for Chauvet grace and the sacraments are not reducible to the symbol, since this
would reduce grace to a secular anthropology, Chauvet never indicates in what way this
reduction is impossible. What is it about grace that is more than the anthropological dynamics
of rites, rituals and community formation? Chauvet is suspicious about talk of God, presumably
because of the ontotheological risks such talk involves. A contrast with Rahner will serve as
an example. Rahner, himself a kind of Heideggerian, says that grace is the gift of God’s own
self, the abiding nearness of the mystery.113 Chauvet, in contrast, says that grace is the gift of
ourselves from God, on the model of Augustine’s “become what you are,” and that the
mechanism for this reception is the otherwise normal processes of human ritual identity
formation.114 Now both are certainly true, but Chauvet has placed the emphasis entirely on
human reception. This is not a pure immanentism, rather, it is the conviction that because God
is not a thing in the world, God’s gift of grace must work in and through creaturely realities.
113
Karl Rahner, “Nature and Grace” in Theological Investigations, vol. 4 (London: Darton, Longman & Todd,
1966), 175. For a comparison of Rahner and Chauvet, see Conor Sweeney, Sacramental Presence after
Heidegger (Eugene, Oregon: Cascade, 2015), 57: “Thomas-Rahner-Chauvet reflects a progressive shift away
from causal categories to a symbolic discourse.” This is because Rahner does not fully jettison Aquinas’s
sacramental theology. My argument below shows that Rahner was right to retain Thomas.
114
158
Too much attention to God as giver of grace risks the ontotheological picture of God as the
cause of grace, as a carpenter is the cause of a bed. Chauvet therefore focusses on its human
aspect. But still, what is it that separates this account of grace and the sacraments from a secular
anthropology of the symbol?
For Chauvet, the answer is faith. He is admirably attentive to this dynamic of
sacramental life.115 If the sacraments were more than human ritual in any register other than
faith, they would be an ontotheological reduction of divine action to a manageable and
therefore manipulatable ontic force. The language of faith marks them off as something of a
completely different order. This is not to say that the sacraments are run-of-the-mill human
rituals that Christians have decided to form their faith around, as though in a marketplace of
ritual options. Rather, the sacraments by their very enactment create the community whose
unity of life is the faith formed by their ritual instantiation. The content of this faith, for
Chauvet, is that in Christ – especially in his passion – we see God.116 But this answer itself
risks severe ontotheological reduction if God is seen to “act” in Christ as one cause among
others, as though God were some particular portion of Jesus’ identity as a human.117 To avoid
this, Chauvet turns to Moltmann’s crucified God – the crucifixion reveals the humanity of God
and becomes an event in the life of God. To avoid turning God into the perfect being of
ontotheology, Chauvet turns God into a being who becomes. The Passion is thus a supreme
moment of Freud’s Oedipus complex: the Father and Son become most fully themselves in
being “crossed out by the Other.”118 While we might be tempted to put this language down to
analogy, so that the Oedipus complex becomes something like the Augustine’s psychological
analogy, this is not an option; Chauvet has rejected analogy as merely erasing the tensions of
language.119 But if analogy is not an option, it is hard to see how this is not just pure projection
– a Freudian gnostic myth of intra-divine abandonment – and as such the most ontotheological
solution imaginable. God is conceived entirely along the lines of the identity formation of ontic
individuals, sustained by a violent severing of self from the other. His Freudian Trinity is a
pure projection of the ontic onto an infinite expanse. Has Chauvet not himself fallen prey to
his critique of ontotheology: “God’s sublime majesty is only the idealized projection of our
own megalomania”?120 If Thomas’s theology “from above” risks degenerating into an
115
Chauvet, Symbol, 154-155, and elsewhere.
116
Chauvet, Symbol, 492-509.
117
Cf. Kathryn Tanner, Jesus, Humanity and the Trinity (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), 16.
118
119
120
159
ontotheological domestication of God (a risk that history shows to be real), Chauvet’s theology
“from below” risks an ontotheological projection of creaturely reality onto God.
A better theological starting point would be the doctrine of creation, as John Webster
saw.121 Under the discipline of the doctrine of creation, even causes become symbols of God.
In his relentless rejection of the language of cause, Chauvet effectively writes off causation as
carrying the possibility of the symbolic. Aquinas, by contrast, subsumes the movements of the
created order under the logic of symbols. This is clearest in Thomas’s understanding of the
literal sense of scripture. Unlike human authors, God “writes” through the processes of material
life. 122 The doctrine of creation allows Thomas to say that all created processes – far from
being prelinguistic ontotheological foundations for knowledge of God – are in fact divine
symbols, the subjects sustained by divine speech, and therefore always-already enmeshed in
the “linguistic culture” of the Trinity. In other words, divine causality is divine speech; it is
symbolic. Coming to know God in the created order is a matter of learning to receive creation
as an address from God, the paradigmatic instance of which is the move from the literal to the
spiritual sense of scripture. It is not the case that “causes” supplant “signs” in Thomas’s
theology of the sacraments, rather, causes become signs under the discipline of the doctrine of
creation.
This is immensely important for the sacraments. When Thomas speaks of the
substances of bread and wine, for instance, he is not speaking of “the ultimate reality of
entities,” as Chauvet interprets it.123 Thomas’s notion of substance is a fundamentally relational
one – a real but asymmetrical relation to God.124 The ultimate reality of any given thing is not
its substance as a self-standing thing over-against God, but a relation to God who gives
substance itself.125 Moreover, “things” do not exist simply in themselves as static realities.
They exist with both forms and ends, which is another way of saying that God’s action in
creation is the gift of matter in motion (form) in a particular direction (telos). Form is the gift
of motion proper to each thing and telos is the direction proper to each thing, a movement and
an orientation by which creatures themselves act as causes. Divine causality works “most
internally” to creatures, making all causality a fundamentally relational phenomenon. Any
instance of causality in creation is a symbol of, which is to say a revelatory relation to, this
121
Among many others, most notably, David Burrell, Aquinas: God and Action, 3rd Edition (Eugene, Oregon:
Wipf and Stock, 2016).
122
ST 1a.1.10.
123
124
ST 1a.28.1. A real relation to God, a logical relation from God – this is, contra Chauvet, the only way to
maintain relationality without falling into an ontotheological conflation of divine and human registers of speech.
125
See discussion in chapter 2 the exemplar causality in the divine ideas.
160
original and abiding first cause. As in the Johannine phrase, “we love because he first loved
us,” so we cause because he first caused us. Just like Johannine love, this causality is both
authentically our own and received as a free gift; just like Johannine love, our causality is an
expression of our fundamental relatedness to God. Indeed, we cause because he first loved us.
Thomas has given us a way of reading any creaturely cause as a symbol of this original divine
love.
A miracle, then, is when God does not work through the regular motion of secondary
causes, but acts as a primary cause. Yet this is not a subversion of the created order. It is rather
the emergence of what is truest and most central to the created order, namely, its relation to
God. A miracle, then, as poetry to language, casts creation “in state of emergence,” revealing
its deepest logic and highest reality, which at the same time is never discursively available.
Chauvet speaks of his Heideggerian theological project as the “stripping away of a language
always on the point of self-destructing [so that] the trace of ‘the liberating presence of the very
thing we sought’ is disclosed.”126 A miracle, on Thomas’s terms, is precisely the stripping away
of a created order of causes always on the verge of the nihil so that the trace of the liberating
presence of the very thing every creature seeks is disclosed. A miracle is the poetry of creation.
Nowhere is this more evident than in transubstantiation. The accidents of bread and
wine are “orphaned,” since they lose their proper substances but do not modify the substance
of Christ. For Aristotelian metaphysics this is impossible, since an accident must modify its
substance or else cease to be. But the accidents of bread and wine do not modify Christ. They
are thus radically suspended over the nihil – against every requirement Aristotelian
metaphysics – sustained only by their original relation to God as primary cause. The accidents
are sustained entirely on the power of God as first cause – as is all creation – and yet they effect
the highest form of communion with God. In transubstantiation, the very logic of creation is
laid bare: creation is entirely a gift, sustained above the nihil by the presence of God, and yet
raised up into communion with God’s very life. Transubstantiation is precisely the poetic
emergence of creation’s mysterious depths.
This does not reduce God to a cause among causes. Between first and second causes is
an infinite qualitative difference, so that a divine cause is the kind of cause that can only be
glimpsed in faith. A miracle does not make God “available for inspection,” as though God left
fingerprints at the scene of the crime. The body of Christ remains under the accidents of bread
and wine but does not become the substance of those accidents precisely because the presence
126
Chauvet, Symbol, 71, quoting S. Breton, Le verbe et la croix (Paris: Desclée, 1981), 114.
161
of Christ is a symbolic presence (which in no way diminishes it as the real presence), not a
quasi-physical presence. When the accidents of bread and wine are suspended without a
substance to modify, they become, in Joseph Ratzinger’s words “pure signs,”127 that is,
symbols without remainder, creation in total transparency. But this transparency is only
transparent to faith. That faith is given shape by the community that receives and interprets
these “pure signs,” the community without which the signs would not be at all. So Chauvet is
not at all wrong to attend to the community-forming dynamics of symbols and symbol-making,
but he short-circuits the possibilities of this reflection by failing to subordinate causes to
symbols.128
In the sacraments we find ourselves grasped by a trinitarian movement in the very
movement of creation in its highest and truest state. The language of sacramental causes allows
us to see that communion with God is the poetry of creation, a poetry that reveals the presence
of the absence of the risen one – the one who is definitively here, whose presence is (most)
real, and yet whose presence is not for that discursively available. Sacramental causality allows
us to see that all causes, no matter how deeply enmeshed in techne, are symbols, and this finally
renders the sacraments as the poetry of creation, the emergence of creation’s inscrutable depths.
Indeed, in a world whose defining hubris is an all-powerful techne, the revelation that all causes
are entirely dependent on the movement of the Trinity and are therefore only contingently
suspended above the nihil is a salutary and prophetic word. Our ambitions to technocratic
control falter at the table, where causality itself is seen as pure gift, its powers and pretense
outflanked by the logic of gift, of grace, of mannah. Only thus may we actually discover how
to subordinate our technology – with its many clear benefits – to poetry.
The sacramental causality of the church is thus, contra Barthianism, not semi-pelagian.
God’s perfection establishes the perfection of others. There is no need to contrast created
agency with divine agency. The eucharistic church in union with its head thus effects what it
signifies, it participates in God’s redemption of the world; it is God’s redemption of the world.
This does not imply any diminution in either the glory or agency of God, who stands as the
first cause of all creaturely causality. Contra Chauvet, this is not ontotheological, since it
renders causality itself symbolic. The sacraments reveal all creation, even causality, to be
127
Benedict XVI, “The Problem of Transubstantiation and the Question about the Meaning of the Eucharist” in
Collected Works of Joseph Ratzinger, trans. John Saward et al. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2013), 237;
quoted in Salkeld, Transubstantiation, 118.
128
Moreover, the sacraments “cause” grace as ecclesially constituted and constituting symbols, and that grace
causes recipients to themselves become symbols, “likenesses of God,” who in turn sustain the sacraments as the
community of their reception. The “hermeneutical circle” of symbols – beloved of Chauvet – thus enfolds a
causal circle: what causes is in turn caused by what it caused!
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radically suspended above the nihil, and like the accidents of bread and wine, the site of highest
communion. Under the discipline of the doctrine of creation, the sacraments are the poetry of
creation. They “cause” grace inasmuch as they reveal from within entirely human rites and
rituals the action and intention of God, the poet.129 The One Body, then, is the sacrament of
God and creation precisely in its humanity and divinity. Another way of saying that the totus
Christus is symbolism is to say that the church is poetry: creation as it emerges before the God
hidden within and beyond. God as symbolized. Creation as symbol. Body of Christ as
symbolism. Speaker, language, poetry.
4. CONCLUSION
This chapter has advanced two reflections on the church. Both concern the triad Symbolized-
Symbol-Symbolism. The first is that the threefold body of Christ corresponds to Christ-church-
eucharist. The church is the symbol of Christ, his true presence in the world, and the eucharist
is symbolism, the movement of unity between church and Christ. Switching the terms so that
the eucharist became the symbol of Christ and the church the guarantor of unity between
symbolized and symbol, tended to technologize the eucharist, objectifying the host and turning
the church into a juridical structure for ensuring a valid sacrament. I have suggested that a
return to a theology of One Body helps sustain a sense of the dynamic reality of the church as
a movement across time, as the reception of grace as a gift. With this theology of the One Body
in place, I turned to my second concern, the relation of this One Body to God and the world.
Creation is a symbol of God, and the Body is symbolism, the dynamic unity of God and world.
This implies that the Body is a sacrament, an affirmation that is neither semi-Pelagian nor
ontotheological. The doctrine of creation ensures that the church cannot compete with God’s
work and that techne is itself enfolded in poetry. The One Body is the world in a state of
emergence, and what emerges is the presence – beyond all manipulation and control – of God’s
own self.
Thus the inner logic of this thesis. Reflection on the Trinity leads to reflection on
creation. This requires an anthropology, as humanity is the microcosm of the created order.
From the Trinity, through creation, emanates the church. The theological progress of this thesis
thus follows the divine taxis. To Father-Son-Spirit correlates God-creation-church. Just as the
Spirit is “retroactively causal” in the generation of the Son, so the church is retroactively causal
in the creation of the world. Just as the Spirit is mutually internal to Father and Son, so the
129
ST 3a.62.1.
163
church is mutually internal to God and world. I have sought to allow theological content to
dictate the form of theological inquiry. It remains, then, to make as clear as possible a why this
systematic theology is worth adopting. I turn then to a final appeal for symbolism.
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CHAPTER FIVE
TOWARD MYSTICAL REASON
1. INTRODUCTION
I have been developing a paradigm advocated but insufficiently elaborated by Henri de Lubac,
and to my knowledge never systematically unfolded by his interpreters in the way I have done
here. I have sought to create a dogmatic outline for a systematic theology of the symbol. A
symbol is a sign that mediates the presence of the symbolized, and symbolism is the dynamic
movement of unity between symbolized and symbol. This leads to the triad symbolized-
symbol-symbolism, which will not be found in de Lubac, or any of my sources, but which
provides a helpful framework for accomplishing his aims. I have sought to ground this in the
Trinity: the Father is the hidden source of divinity, the Son the replete symbol of the Father,
the fullness of the Father’s being expressed in another, and the Spirit is symbolism, the fully
personal movement of love and unity between Father and Son. I have then argued that creatures
participate in these relations analogically, so that symbolized-symbol-symbolism corresponds
to God-creation-church. God is the hidden source of creation, creation the symbol of God,
bearing within it the ontological trace of its maker, and the church is symbolism, the dynamic
movement of love and unity between God and creation. That is, in a compact form, what a
systematic theology of the symbol might include. In this chapter, I want to reflect in light of
this outline on the nature of theological thought.
In Corpus Mysticum, de Lubac articulates the modern perplexity with Augustinian
symbolism: “what, then, is this ‘understanding’ which in our eyes is neither reason, nor
mysticism but which aspires to being both at the same time?”1 Symbolism, according to de
Lubac, is characterized by its “mystical reason,” and a key test for this systematic theology of
the symbol will be whether it recovers such an outlook. The burden of this chapter is to show
how symbolism reclaims such mystical reason by incorporating mystery at every level of
reflection. The symbolized is eternally hidden, the one mystery anterior to everything that is.
The ontological trace of this mysterious source is then present in creation, rendering all creation
inherently mystical; creation points beyond itself, always already more than itself. To read the
mystical symbol of creation, then, is an act of mystical reason: reading the Logos dispersed
through creation by the power and inspiration of the Pneuma who eternally joins symbolized
to symbol. Theology is the discipline of reasoning in the Spirit, joining all creation to its
1
Henri de Lubac, Corpus Mysticum, 2nd ed., trans. Gemma Simmonds et. al. (London: SCM Press, 2006), 235.
165
mystical source in God. This finally unites not only the content of theological inquiry, but also
the theologian’s own rationality to the life of the Trinity, so that theological thought itself
approximates a mode of prayer. This is because to “read” a symbol is to encounter the
ontological trace of the symbolized. Creation “is radiant with a secret intelligibility,” and to
discover this secret is to encounter its radiant source, ascending to God in thought always on
its way to prayer. Thus, symbolism moves from the one mystery of God to the mysticism of
creation to the mystical reason of theological inquiry.
But why would such a return to mystical reason be desirable? What would it help us
achieve? This movement from mystery to mysticism to mystical reason addresses several
pressing concerns in contemporary theology. Addressing these concerns will be among the key
contributions of this thesis. I will argue that when rightly understood, in its parts and as a whole,
symbolism (1) avoids an ontotheological reduction of God, (2) avoids both a “Barthian”
flattening of nature and a neo-Scholastic reification of pure nature, and (3) regains theology as
intrinsically mystical, that is, as intrinsically linked to desire and love. Moreover, I will argue
that all three must be maintained together if they are to be maintained at all. This chapter thus
constitutes a final appeal for both the form and content of this systematic theology of the
symbol.
First, to understand God as “the symbolized” is to avoid an “ontotheological” reduction
of God. The word “ontotheological” is most famously developed by Martin Heidegger, and
while its meaning is complex both philosophically and theologically, I use it here in a
theological sense as a forgetfulness of the radical difference between God and creatures.2 It is
an inappropriate ratiocination about God, as though God were an object available for inspection
and dissection. I take this to be a perennial temptation in theology.
The triad I have developed, however, resists such a temptation. God can only ever be
known as the symbolized, that is, revealed precisely as hidden in and beyond created symbols.
As the Father is the eternal source and hidden fount of divinity, so God is the eternal source
and hidden fount of all creation. This relation of creation to God is analogical – since God is
not constituted by God’s relation to the world, as the Father is constituted by relation to the
2
The word itself originates with Kant but is significantly modified and redeployed by Heidegger. For
Heidegger, it derives from a threefold understanding of metaphysics: 1) as ratio or truth (logos); 2) as reason
that grounds being as such (onto-logic); 3) as reason that grounds being as a whole (theo-logic). Martin
Heidegger, “The Onto-Theo-Logical Constitution of Metaphysics” in Identity and Difference, translated by Joan
Stambaugh (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 57-60. See a brief summary in Andrew Prevot,
Thinking Prayer (Notre Dame: Notre Dame Universtiy Press, 2015), 48-49. See also, Judith Wolfe, Heidegger
and Theology (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014), 138-143, and the theological reception of Heidegger in
chs. 7-8.
166
Son in the Spirit – nonetheless, the former relation is grounded in the latter. Symbolism thus
preserves the mystery of God as a mystery by maintaining God’s complete anteriority to
everything that is. I argue this on the basis of an essay by Karl Rahner on the nature of mystery.
There is only one mystery, the horizon of all human thought and desire. Theology does not
make this mystery less mysterious by conquering its rational territory: God is a mystery to be
entered into, not a puzzle to be solved. Knowledge is ordered to this mystery, which positively
surpasses its capabilities, and as Rahner argues, this constrains knowledge to become love if it
is to fulfill its nature as knowledge. God is ever the symbolized and is thus the inscrutable
mystery anterior to all that is and must be loved to be known. Thus symbolism resists
theology’s ontotheological temptation by maintaining the transcendent mystery of God.
Second, to see creation as a mystical symbol avoids both a “Barthian” temptation to
flatten nature in favor of a wholly determinative “God from outside,” and an apparently settled,
independent and autonomous natura pura as advocated by Garrigou-Lagrange.3 Following de
Lubac, I argue that creation is a symbol because it is the temporal unfolding of the Logos,
destined to be returned to God in the Logos incarnate. This twofold ministry of Christ sustains
creation in a twofold mysticism: created with an ontological desire for union with the Word in
which it was spoken but requiring the grace of Christ to fulfill that desire. Creation is therefore
a Christological mystery, from creation to redemption, Christ to Christ. Created nature is thus
not a mere “vacuole,” a place-holder for grace, a wholly passive onlooker to divine revelation
as is discernable in some strands of Barthianism. But neither is it “pure” in natural self-
sufficiency.4 By its inclusion in Christ, creation is the moving image of the eternal mystery, a
mystical symbol spoken by God. I will compare this account of mysticism to both Barth and
Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange to argue that only the paradox of a natural desire for the
supernatural does justice to both the integrous and mystical nature of creation.
Third, and finally, if God is a mystery as the symbolized, and creation a mystical
symbol, then theology is the reading of that symbol by mystical reason. In chapter three I
expounded de Lubac’s view of the spiritual interpretation of scripture as an all-encompassing
3
I place scare quotes around “Barthian” advisedly. The issues surrounding Barth’s view of created nature are
complex and controverted. My point is that this trend is detectible in some strands of Barthianism. For an in-
depth account of some of the issues at play, see Tyler Wittman, God and Creation in the Theology of Thomas
Aquinas and Karl Barth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).
4
The use of the term pure nature is not always deployed the same way by neo-Thomists. I use it to indicate the
reality of nature abstracted from the actual economy of salvation. On this view, nature constitutes a perfection in
itself, to which a second supernatural end can then be superadded. De Lubac does not deny a natural end for
human nature, only that it can be so separated from its supernatural end. See discussion in Nicholas J. Healy Jr.,
“The Christian Mystery of Nature and Grace” in Jordan Hillebert, ed., The T&T Clark Companion to Henri de
Lubac (London: T&T Clark-Bloomsbury, 2017), 181-204.
167
theological program. Here I fill out this insight: theology is more like the spiritual interpretation
of scripture than an exclusively rational exposition of Christian teaching: the theologian reads
the spiritual sense embedded within and beyond the literal sense of creation. Theology seeks
to unite the diverse aspects of the symbol of creation to the symbolized: faith seeking
understanding of God and all things in relation to God. But the absolute anteriority of God
sustains a certain circularity to this seeking. We can only know the Trinity through created
symbols, but our symbols must be shaped and reshaped by the Trinity. This is not a weakness;
it is entirely traditional, as a reading of Augustine’s De trinitate will show. This circularity
produces a perpetual process of seeking and finding and seeking again, as we ascend through
a reading of symbols into God. It is finally intended to shape the image of God within us as we
learn to think and speak words worthy of God in love. In symbolism, theological thought begins
to approximate prayer, as the theologian encounters the presence of God in the symbols of
God. This systematic theology of the symbol thus takes significant steps toward accomplishing
de Lubac’s vision of regaining theology as a discipline of mystical reason: a mysterious God
speaks a mystical creation to be understood by an act of mystical reason.
One final note. These three levels must be held together; the three points of the triad
cannot be understood singularly. Because the triad symbolized-symbol-symbolism is an
analogy for the Trinity, a trinitarian logic governs its use: they must be grasped together or not
at all. To avoid resolving one problem only to raise another, all three must be held together in
a single theological vision. Thus, where a particular theology might preserve one pole
exceptionally well, it risks losing the others. For example, I will argue that “Barthianism” has
a strong sense of the transcendent mystery of God, but it fails to understand creation as a
mystical symbol, and so fails to understand theology as mystical reason, which in turn threatens
even the transcendence of God it intended to secure. That is why this brief dogmatic outline
for a theology of the symbol, however lightly sketched, needs to be articulated as a whole.
What is needed is a systematic theology of the symbol trinitarian in its parts and as a whole.
2. FROM MYSTERIES TO MYSTERY

To regain mystical reason, I begin first with the nature of mystery itself. Only with a clear idea
of what mystery is can we hope to regain mystical reason. I will develop this through Karl
Rahner’s theology of mystery. Rahner perceptively diagnoses the dominant and deficient
concept of mystery in modern theology and offers instead a notion of mystery as unified,
foundational, and abiding. This one abiding mystery both makes knowledge possible and
requires knowledge to become love if it is to fulfill itself as knowledge. This, I am arguing, is
168
what it means to understand God as “the symbolized”: the one mystery that is the horizon of
all existence who must be loved to be known and who can never be reduced ontotheologically
to one being among beings.
2.1 On the One Mystery

Karl Rahner asks, “can [mystery] be regarded as a defective type of another and better
knowledge which is still to come?”5 Is a mystery simply something we do not yet understand,
that is, something that otherwise should be available to reason but currently is not? His essay,
“The Concept of Mystery in Catholic Theology” diagnoses this as the “average concept [of
mystery] as proposed in the schools.”6 Rahner, notes three remarkable traits of this conception.
First, that mystery is “the property of a statement.”7 Because truth is in the domain of
statements, there are statements we must make (because by faith we accept them as true) for
which we do not have sufficient reason. A statement we must make in faith, which surpasses
reason, is a mystery – God’s triunity, for example. Second, because a truth’s natural abode is
in statements, and there are many statements we make in faith without sufficient reason, it
follows that there are many mysteries. There is quite obviously a great deal which we affirm
but do not understand, and so “mysteries” multiply. Thirdly, these mysteries are “provisionally
incomprehensible,”8 that is, they are only unknowable before beatitude. For Rahner, the
average notion of mystery is a statement among many such statements for which we
temporarily lack sufficient reason.9
Each of these traits, the focus on statements, their plurality, and their provisionality, all
follow from a conviction that a mystery is “oriented from the start to the ‘ratio.’”10. What is
5
Karl Rahner, “The Concept of Mystery in Catholic Theology” in Theological Investigations, vol. 4 (New
York: Crossroad Publishing, 1973), 42.
6
Rahner, “Mystery”, 38.
7
8
9
This understanding of mystery is alive and well. In Thomist circles it continues to be standard. W. Norris
Clark, who is more attentive to mystery and paradox than many, affirms that there are many “mysteries, things
which I, or even the human race as a whole on this earth cannot yet understand, whose sufficient reason we
cannot yet crack.” W. Norris Clarke, The One and the Many: a contemporary Thomist metaphysics (Notre
Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 2001), 22. From a previous generation, Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange
follows these contours quite precisely in The Sense of Mystery: Clarity and Obscurity in the Intellectual Life
(Steubenville, Ohio: Emmaus Academic, 2017). See analysis of this text below. Analytic theology tends to treat
mystery similarly. Cf. Oliver Crisp, Analyzing Doctrine (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2019), ch. 4.
10
169
mysterious is mysterious to reason. This is not surprising; it is the language of Vatican I.11 As
reason makes progress by degrees, mysteries decrease proportionally. As Dei Filius states:
And reason, indeed, enlightened by faith – when it seeks earnestly, piously and
somberly – attains by a gift from God some understanding of the mysteries, even a very
fruitful one…But…the Divine Mysteries by their own nature so far transcend the
created intelligence that, even when delivered by revelation and received by faith, they
remain covered with the veil of faith itself, and shrouded in a certain degree of
darkness, so long as we are pilgrims in this mortal life, not yet with God.12
Reason can attain some knowledge subject to certain degrees of abiding darkness. I might not
know everything about God, but I can know some things with confidence. Further, my lack of
knowledge is only provisional, for I am “not yet with God.”
As Rahner interprets Vatican I:
the silent presupposition throughout is that we are dealing with truths which should
strictly speaking have come within the scope of reason with its power to see and
comprehend, but in this case do not meet its demands.13
Rahner is frank in his assessment of the average notion of mystery. A mystery understood as
“one of many statements provisionally unknown to reason” is not necessarily wrong, but it fails
to take seriously the unique nature of the divine mystery and the corresponding human
orientation toward this mystery. He questions the conceptual and spiritual adequacy of the
concepts of “mystery” and the ratio to which it is addressed. What if mystery corresponds to
the unity of the human spirit prior to its division into faculties? What if unknowing is not just
the absence of knowledge “but a positive characteristic of a relationship between one subject
and another?”14 What if, in other words, mystery is foundational and abiding?
Rather than many statements that are unknowable to reason, Rahner proposes one
mystery that corresponds to the deepest unity of the human spirit precisely as mystery. The
mystery of God is irreducible, for it is the foundation of all human knowing, willing and being.
It is the “horizon” within which every finite experience is experienced, every thought thought,
every desire desired.15 Mystery cannot in any way be provisional, since its abiding reality is
11
Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith, IV, available at http://inters.org/Vatican-Council-I-Dei-Filius.
For an excellent account on the relation of reason and God at Vatican I, see Fergus Kerr, “Knowing God by
Reason Alone: What Vatican I Never Said,” New Blackfriars 91, no. 1033 (May, 2010), 215-228.
12
Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith, IV.
13
Rahner, “Mystery”, 39. Emphasis original.
14
15
This is obviously indebted to the thought of Martin Heidegger. Rahner is here seeking to avoid an “onto-
theological” reduction of God to one being among beings.
170
the foundation of creaturely existence. Solve the mystery, Rahner would say, and you dissolve
the creature. God is the one mystery, the entire context of all creaturely existence, and the
abiding mystery of eternity.
On this picture, ratio should be considered “a spiritual entity of absolute
transcendence,” by which Rahner means that reason is the faculty that propels humans beyond
themselves and into communion with God. Knowledge only “comes into being” in “self-
transcendence,” that is, only as it becomes love:
Knowledge, though prior to love and freedom, can only be realized in its true sense
when and in so far as the subject is more than knowledge, when in fact it is a freely
given love. This is only possible if knowledge is ultimately a faculty ordained to an
object attainable only because the object is greater than the faculty. And what but the
incomprehensibility of mystery can be such an object of knowledge, since it forces
knowledge to surpass itself in a more comprehensive act, that of love?16
Rahner has here touched on the recurring paradox of this thesis. In trinitarian terms, I have
argued the Spirit is “retroactively causal” in the generation of the Son, for the Son only is
inasmuch as he receives the Spirit from the Father, and yet the Son precedes the Spirit. This
plays out in Rahner’s anthropology, where knowledge precedes love and freedom, but only
becomes knowledge in love and freedom. The Son is the Son in the Spirit. Just like trinitarian
theology, a Thomist intellectualism must also acknowledge the fundamental unity of the human
person, the extent to which intellect and will are mutually constitutive.
For this reason, Rahner rejects a merely elicited desire for the supernatural: “merely to
say that love is aroused when the intellect discloses the goodness and appetibility of the object,
would be to fail to establish a true perichoresis and to leave the two faculties without any
fundamental unity.”17 Rahner rejects the idea that desire is merely aroused, for this would
divide love and desire from knowledge as two dis-integrated steps in a process.18 In Thomist
terms, knowledge is ordered to truth, the will to the good. But then how can the intellect
recognize the goodness of a thing in order to propose it to the will if not formally ordered to
goodness? There must be something in the nature of truth that constrains knowledge to become
love. That is the abiding mystery. Because knowledge is ordered to a truth it cannot positively
possess, it is forced “either to consume itself in protest or to transform itself in the self-
surrender by which it accepts the mystery as such, that is, in love, and so to attain its proper
16
17
18
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perfection.”19 Knowledge is thus ordered to the mystery, and this constrains knowledge to
become love if it is be true knowledge. In this way, the intellect and will coinhere in a unified
whole – i.e., a human spirit. Knowledge must become love in the face of the eternal mystery,
and because the eternal mystery is always present to the intellect as that which it cannot master,
love is intrinsic to knowledge. This is true of God and creatures, for mystery is “a positive
characteristic of a relationship between one subject and another.”20 Unmastery is the
precondition of love, indeed, the precondition of any relationship whatsoever. Rahner therefore
rejects a purely elicited desire for the supernatural, suggesting that the intellect’s orientation to
the mystery sustains a primordial natural dynamism toward the divine without which nature
and natural knowledge cannot function at all. We desire God because we know God as that
which is beyond all knowledge. Therefore if we are to truly know God, we must love God.
But this ordering to the mystery does not make the creature a mystery, strictly speaking:
“only God as such can be truly a mystery.”21 Creatures might be called mysterious, since they
have the eternal mystery as both source and end, but in created reality there “can be no absolute
mysteries.”22 So Rahner is not proposing something like John Milbank’s interpretation of de
Lubac’s desiderium naturale, for whom the natural desire for the supernatural is a wholly
natural and wholly supernatural constituent component of human nature.23 For Rahner, “it is
simply contradictory that something should belong completely to the order of creation, by
being created, and still belong to the strictly divine order, by being strictly supernatural.”24 The
mystery is God and God alone.
For Rahner, the incarnation and grace, however, can be called mysteries in a highly
qualified sense. They are only mysteries inasmuch as they involve God’s own being. In the
incarnation and grace, “God communicates himself in his own person to the creature, as
absolute proximity and as absolute holy mystery.”25 These two mysteries (incarnation and
grace) are the mysteries of the communication of the divine to the creature, not anything in the
creature as such. Therefore, “the possibility of such self-communication of God to the creature
19
Rahner, “Mystery”, 44. Rahner is not arguing against Thomism on this point – he offers this as a right
interpretation of Thomist intellectualism.
20
21
22
23
Cf. John Milbank, The Suspended Middle: Henri de Lubac and the Renewed Split in Modern Catholic
Theology, Second Edition (Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2005), 44.
24
25
Rahner, “Mystery”, 67. Rahner sees incarnation and grace as the communication of God’s own self because
of his insistence that the economic trinity is the immanent trinity. What God does in time (i.e. become incarnate
and give grace) is who God is eternally.
172
is what constitutes the theological mystery in these two mysteries.”26 Since only God is
mystery, within the finite world the mystery can only be the possibility of God’s presence. I
will contest this point below.
By maintaining the mystery as exclusively within the purview of divinity, Rahner seeks
to guard the unspeakable as unspeakable. The mystery is the ground of the possibility of all
categorical knowledge but is not itself a proper object of that knowledge. We cannot name
God: “we could call him (if we wished to give such a title to what is meant) the nameless, that
which is other than all finite things, the infinite: but we should not have thereby given him a
name, merely said that he has none.”27 The mystery that is God is the horizon within which all
else is grasped, and which never itself becomes something we could positively capture or
express. Indeed, knowledge of finite things and knowledge of the infinite that underlies all
finitude produce, for the Rahnerian subject, “two essentially different types of data for the
spirit.”28 The “data” of divinity is known only as that which cannot be known, even while it
makes possible the knowledge of every finite thing. The eternally unknowable mystery, then,
is that which illuminates all finite knowledge; as grace it is the possibility of God’s proximity;
eternally, it is the content of the beatific vision. In every modulation it remains a mystery. This
one mystery is the one context in which all of human existence is experienced and understood;
in its light we see light. All other “mysteries” are but derivates from this one, the mystery
stricte dicta.
2.2 Mystery and the Symbolized

This concept of mystery, I want to suggest, fills out what it means to say that God is “the
symbolized.” God is absolutely anterior to everything that is, the ground of all being who is
not a being. God stands as the source of creation, and never as an object within it. As such,
God is the horizon in which creation is intelligible: only in the light of the symbolized can we
see symbols. Moreover, just as we only see symbols in the light of the symbolized, so we only
glimpse the symbolized through its symbols. God cannot be circumscribed in the world of
symbols, yet symbols bear the ontological trace of God, and so it is in and through symbols
that we must meet God. We cannot step outside our status as creatures to gain direct access to
God. There is thus a circularity to this dynamic: only against the horizon of the symbolized can
we see symbols, and only through symbols can we come to know the symbolized. If it were
26
Rahner, “Mystery”, 67. Emphasis original.
27
28
173
otherwise, God would be some kind of object: if we could recognize symbols without the
horizon of the symbolized or the symbolized without symbols, we would have achieved a
God’s-eye-view, a universal vision of all things. And this would make us God’s equal, making
both God and creation objects for our mastery. Rather, `God can never be objectified in
creation, only symbolized.
If Heidegger is right that western theology and philosophy is perennially tempted to
forget the ontological difference between being itself and finite being, symbolism resists this
forgetfulness.29 Indeed, where Heidegger took his critique of ontotheology from theological
sources and then attempted to strip it of theological context, symbolism undercuts ontotheology
on firmly theological grounds, namely, a theology of the Trinity.30 The hiddenness of God in
the world is a temporal participation in the hiddenness of the Father in the Son by the Spirit.
The Father is the ungenerated source, the hidden fount of divinity, eternally the symbolized.31
This eternal hiddenness of the Father is echoed in the hiddenness of God in time, who is never
available to us as a thing that we might possess.
But does this Deus absconditus not make theology itself impossible? Surely, to account
for God, to explain God in human words is to domesticate God, to render God one being among
others, now subject to human linguistic control. This is certainly a temptation, but only if we
fail to recognize what the absolute mystery does to human thought: to think of the being beyond
all being requires that thinking transcend into love. We can only know God if we love God,
and this loving preserves the integrity of the divine as wholly other, as that which is never
“possessed” in my knowing. A God who can be understood apart from love is indeed an
ontotheological idol, for such a God is an object of knowledge, no longer a living mystery into
whom we are beckoned to enter.32 As argued above, only if knowledge is constituted
(paradoxically) by its consummation in love can theology avoid reducing God to a conceptual
idol.
This dynamic of knowledge-becoming-love, as Andrew Prevot notes, renders theology
inherently doxological.33 Symbolism preserves the difference between God and creation by
29
Wolfe, Heidegger, ch. 3.
30
Cf. Wolfe, Heidegger, 138.
31
This is not to deny subsistent relations in favor of a Franciscan/Scotist logical taxis founded on the primacy of
the Father who must first “be” in order to beget. The latter retains a risk of ontotheology inasmuch as it seeks to
make God yet another logically dictated sequence. Symbolism secures the Franciscan desire for the primacy of
the Father, but in a logic of subsistent relations: the Father is ungenerated only in relation to the generated,
symbolized only in relation to a symbol.
32
Cf. Andrew Prevot, Thinking Prayer (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 2015), 16.
33
Prevot, Prayer, 4. Prevot goes on to argue that Heidegger slides into nihilism because in the end he refuses
prayer (p. 43).
174
being intrinsically worshipful, opening upward toward a mysterious other that we can never
positively possess, but are nonetheless drawn toward in desire and love.34 A theology alive to
the irreducible mystery of the divine thus closely approximates prayer, indeed, it is destined to
become prayer.35 Moreover, as Prevot convincingly argues, the prayerful posture of theology
is a practice of giving and receiving hospitality by embracing God precisely as the other who
is irreducible to my knowledge, a way of making room for God’s unique otherness by
embracing my very unknowing. This practice of hospitality toward God then sustains a practice
of hospitality toward creatures. A theologian alive to mystery, Prevot argues, is a theologian
practicing the habits that nurture a hospitality toward (and an openness to receive hospitality
from) God’s creatures. Theology is thus supremely prayerful, practicing hospitality to the
irreducible mystery of God and God’s creatures.36 A theologian who has failed this hospitable
love of God and creatures has failed as a theologian. This of course indicates that we are all
failures, and that theology is necessarily an ongoing practice of hospitable reception of and
reception by the ineffable. This underscores that just as God is not one object of knowledge
among others, neither is God one object of love among others: love for God does not
competitively replace love for others. Rather, it sustains such a love.
God is thus the mysterious source, always anterior to creation. God cannot be one being
among beings, and therefore can only known in and through symbols: God can never be
objectified in creation, only symbolized. God must therefore be loved to be known, not as one
love among others, but as the all-encompassing mystery by which we love others. The practice
of coming to love God sustains the practice of loving others. This takes us a long way toward
a theology more closely linked to mysticism and prayer, but I do not think it goes far enough.
For to say that God is the symbolized implies that creation is a symbol, and the nature of this
symbol must be clearly understood if what has been gained in avoiding an ontotheological
reduction of God is not to be lost. As will be shown, if creation is viewed as insufficiently
symbolic, both the transcendence of God and the mystical tenor of theological reason will be
lost. Symbolized-symbol-symbolism must be understood together, or not at all. But to prepare
for this, we need to relocate Rahner’s paradox.
34
For a systematic theology that recentralizes desire, see Sarah Coakley, God, Sexuality and the Self
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).
35
Prevot, Prayer, 67.
36
Much more could be said about this: the requirement to practice hospitality toward and receive hospitality
from the cultural other, attending, among other things, to the history of racism and colonialism. We might also
note that this makes theology irreducibly social, an ongoing tradition of hospitable discourse with these people.
Even when our disagreements (whether across time or in contemporary discussion) seem to swamp our
agreement, our ongoing argument is itself a sign of our commitment to moving forward together, at least
ideally.
175
2.3 Relocating Rahner’s Paradox
For Rahner, the mystery can only be divinity as such, and therefore creatures can only be a
mystery inasmuch as they exhibit the possibility of the nearness of the divine. I wish to contest
this. It is true that nature is not grace; the natural is not the supernatural. But this does not entail
that the mystery in regard to humanity is only the possibility of the nearness of the mystery.
There is no reason, on Rahner’s terms, that the mystery should not be the actuality of the
nearness of the mystery. Indeed, there are good reasons to think that it is. Can a bare possibility,
a pure potentiality really be the correlate of an inexhaustible mystery? Can an overflowing,
superabundance really correspond to such a vacuous apriori? The mystery is not that I have a
nature that might have existed under the pure possibility of God’s nearness. The mystery is that
I have a nature that does exist under the actuality of God’s nearness.
This is made clear in relation to the incarnation. It is in regard to this mystery that
Rahner formulates his “possibility” argument. The problem is that if humanity is a mystery
only in possibility, this would seem to make Christ, in the unity of his person, not a mystery,
strictly speaking. His divinity would be a mystery properly speaking, while his humanity would
be a mystery only inasmuch as it exhibited the apriori possibility of union with God. But does
this not underestimate the unity of Christ’s person in the incarnation? Christ is not half-mystery
and half possibility. There is only one Christ, one divine Son. If God is the mystery, stricte
dictu, then we must say with Augustine that Christ is “the whole Mystery of God.”37 This latter
formulation is precisely what Rahner’s Christology consistently seeks to maintain. The God
given to us in Jesus of Nazareth is the whole God – there is not some other God lurking behind
the God of the economy.38 It is the irreducible unity of the incarnation that ensures humanity
itself is now eternally united to God in Christ. In short, in the incarnation humanity is revealed
to be a mystery, united forever to the triune God in the one God-man, Jesus Christ. Humanity
is not a mystery because God might come near, humanity is always already made a mystery by
being joined to God in Christ.
What has happened here is not necessarily a problem with Rahner’s theology of the
symbolized, the hidden mystery of God, but a failure to capture all three – symbolized-symbol-
symbolism – in a single vision. In trinitarian terms, to say that the Father is eternal source is
37
Henri de Lubac, Theology in History (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1996), 218; quoting Augustine, Epist.
187, n. 34. (PL 33, 845).
38
Rahner expresses as much in his theology of the symbol: the incarnation shows humanity is “God’s own
proper environment”, “The Theology of the Symbol” in TI 4, 235.
176
also to say that the Son and Spirit are eternally sourced, that is, the Father, Son and Spirit
subsist as relations.39 Hence, all three must be thought together. The same is true in an
analogical way of God, creation, and redemption in the church. The relations between God,
creation and church, while they participate in the relations between Father, Son and Spirit, are
indeed different: God is not a subsistent relation to the world, since the world is a free overflow
of the divine goodness.40 Creation, however, is constituted by its real relation to the Trinity –
to be created is to receive the gift of a relation to God.41 And this real relation makes creation
a symbol, albeit one that God freely emanates. In particular, creation is a participation in the
divine ideas contained in the Logos set in living motion by the Spirit. It is, as Cusa puts it, the
temporal unfolding of the eternal Word.42 This unfolding is destined to return to God in Christ,
the Logos incarnate. And because there is only one divine Son, creation and redemption are
both the work of Christ, as Colossians 1 makes clear. Hence, because Christ cannot be split in
two, creation cannot be thought in isolation from redemption. This work of Christ is indeed
twofold – creation is not redemption – but it is the work of one Christ, God and human. Creation
is, therefore, always-already christic.43
This always-already quality points toward the impossibility of separating symbol from
symbolism, creation from its motion of return back to God in Christ. This motion itself is a
finite participation in the life of the Spirit from Father to Son and Son to Father. To think of a
symbol is necessarily to think of symbolism, for that movement is what constitutes the symbol
as a symbol. And just like the Spirit is paradoxically pre-present in the generation of the Son,
so the incarnation, as creation joined to God in Christ, is paradoxically pre-present in creation.
The incarnation indeed presupposes creation, but like Spirit to Son, it is “retroactively causal”
in creation itself.
All of this is to say, in the strongest possible terms, that there is no moment of bare
“possibility” in creation’s relation to God. In conceiving of a human mystery as the possibility
of God’s nearness, Rahner appears to pause and isolate one portion of the triad from the others,
39
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 1a.29.4. All quotations from Laurence Shapcote, O.P., trans.,
40
See chapter two for an account of this freedom vis-à-vis the Spirit.
41
For a counter argument that substance precedes relation, see Steven A. Long, “Creation ad imaginem Dei: the
Obediential Potency of the Human Person to Grace and Glory,” Nova et Vetera 14, no. 4, English Edition
(2016). Long’s argument, however, is weak, for without the gift of a real relation to God, there could be no
substance to be in relation. His argument would only seem to confirm the suspicion that neo-Scholastic theology
sustains a secular vision of substances for whom relation with God is an inessential extra.
42
Nicholas of Cusa, De Dato Patris Luminum in Hopkins, ed., Complete Philosophical and Theological
Treatises of Nicholas of Cusa: Volume One (Minneapolis: The Arthur J. Banning Press, 2001).
43
See Rowan Williams, Christ the Heart of Creation (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2018).
177
at least conceptually. He has attempted to think of humanity without its essential relation to
God as a symbol, and without its gratuitous return to God in Christ by the movement of the
Spirit. This problem is methodological: Rahner is seeking the conditions for the possibility of
grace, and that requires that there first be a subject constituted prior to grace – a “remainder
concept” of pure nature. But the perichoretic unity of symbol and symbolized disallows such a
strategy: there is no symbol not already in a motion of symbolism toward God. We must, in
other words, say the nearness of God in the incarnation presupposes creation, but that the
incarnation is retroactively causal in creation, and therefore neither can be thought without the
other. The human correlate of the mystery is not therefore the possibility of God’s nearness,
for there is no conceptual moment of bare possibility. To posit such a moment is to endanger
the symbol as a symbol, for it takes away its constitutive relation to symbolism. The mystery
is therefore God’s always-already presence to creation in Christ. The point here is that we must
catch all three terms – even while distinguishing them – to do justice to any of them.
If isolating the symbol from symbolism endangers the symbol, it also endangers the
hiddenness of the symbolized. There is the risk that what Rahner has gained in terms of God’s
absolute otherness will be lost by so firmly isolating God’s creation from God’s own mystery.
To fix such a hard boundary for God is to say that the mystery of God may go no further. But
Kathryn Tanner is surely right that the incarnation reveals that there can be no such trade-off
between divinity and humanity.44 God is so utterly different from creation that God differs
differently; that creation might share in God’s mystery would not infringe on the absolute
mysteriousness of God, but would rather emphasize it. As Rahner would doubtless agree, God
is not a mystery diminished in its sharing. There is thus no reason so sharply to demarcate the
mystery of God from the mystery of creation. Indeed, by sharing in the mystery as a symbol,
creation displays in its own being, the mysterious otherness of God, namely, that God’s
mystery is not depleted by being shared.45 Thus, any attempt to isolate one term of the triad
from the others endangers all three. Even the symbolized loses its own hiddenness unless the
symbol and symbolism are simultaneously maintained. We will see this again.
The obvious repost to this is that it endangers the gratuity of grace in the incarnation.
If the Incarnation is “paradoxically pre-present” in creation, does this not make grace native to
nature and therefore not a supernatural gift? This would endanger the gratuity of God’s gifts if
we think of God as bound by some kind of logico-temporal process – as though God must first
44
See Kathryn Tanner, Jesus, Humanity and the Trinity (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001).
45
On this, see John Webster, “Love is Also a Lover of Life: Creatio Ex Nihilo and Creaturely Goodness”,
Modern Theology 29, no. 2 (April, 2013), 156-171.
178
create and then order to beatitude in Christ to avoid being bound to what God has already freely
chosen! Must we really imagine that God creates without the slightest thought for our elevation
in grace, and only then decides to redeem us? God’s being and act are one, (indeed, God creates
and redeems in and for the one Christ) even as God’s action is experienced as twofold by
creatures. To read this sequence back into God is to think of God as a very large creature, to
subject God to all the divisions of creaturely life. My notion of “retroactive causality” only
endangers gratuity if we forget the different difference of God.
Having seen how understanding God as the symbolized avoids an ontotheological
reduction of God, and how all three terms must be thought simultaneously if they are to be
thought rightly, I turn now to a closer examination of the created symbol. As de Lubac argues,
Christ’s twofold work of creation and redemption sustains creation in a twofold mysticism. To
that mysticism I now turn.
3. FROM MYSTERY TO MYSTICISM

Once we have moved Rahner’s mystery from the possibility to the actuality of divine nearness,
we open the possibility of mysticism. Having gained a rich theology of mystery from Rahner,
together with its insistence on the necessity of love in all thinking, I will now re-engage Henri
de Lubac’s work to move from mystery to mysticism. My argument is that only the natural
desire for the supernatural sufficiently secures the integrity of creation as a symbol, and thereby
the transcendence of God as symbolized and the motion of creation toward God in symbolism.
I will contrast de Lubac’s account of the natural desire with certain trajectories in Karl Barth’s
thought, as well as the mysticism superadded to pure nature advocated by Reginald Garrigou-
Lagrange.
3.1 Mysticism and the Natural Desire for the Supernatural

If Rahner takes us from many mysteries to one divine mystery, de Lubac clarifies how this one
mystery sustains all of creation as intrinsically mystical. I have argued that a symbol is a sign
that mediates the presence of the symbolized. It is the ontological trace of Christ that makes
creation intrinsically mystical: creation is spoken in the eternal Word, and naturally longs to
return to this source, a longing that can only be secured by the grace of Christ. In other words,
I will argue that because creation is a symbol – a sign that mediates Christ’s presence – it has
a natural desire for the supernatural.
In an introductory essay to a volume on mysticism, de Lubac argues that the natural
desire is the key to Christian mysticism. The essay is an attempt to articulate on one hand why
179
mysticism seems so consistent across religious traditions, and why, on the other hand, Christian
mysticism is distinctively Christian. “Human nature is basically the same everywhere,” de
Lubac argues; “God has made man in his image with the idea of bringing man to resemble him
– a resemblance that must be consummated in the ‘beatific vision’.”46 Citing the traditional
distinction between the image and likeness of God, de Lubac argues that “in each person’s
creation, the image is the gift received along with his very being.”47 There is thus a “mysticism
of essence” common to all humans, who, as image-bearers by nature, have an inner impulse
toward their source in God. The divine likeness, however, “is something to be realized, through
the action of the Holy Spirit, by man’s dependence on the redeeming Incarnation.”48 The
mysticism of essence requires a further “nuptial mysticism” that gratuitously joins humanity
to God in Christ.
This leads to the following formulation of the natural desire for the supernatural:
The aspiration [of the image to become the likeness] is inherent in human nature, since
man is made for this union. In other words, there must be in our nature a certain capacity
for the appropriation of the mystery that is both given and revealed in Jesus Christ. It
is a capacity that is naturally accompanied by desire, a desire that must be described as
ontological.49
This ontological desire, however, is liable to become an idolatrous fixation, a nameless
and pernicious mysticism, “if its aim is to generate its own object, fulfilling itself alone.”50 To
focus wholly on this élan in itself would indeed be “a most profound kind of atheism,”
celebrating the transcendence of human nature while refusing to see that unto which it longs to
transcend. The natural desire for the supernatural cannot fulfill itself, nor can it generate its
own object. It can only be fulfilled by grace, and this requires God’s loving and entirely
gratuitous gift of God’s own self in Christ.
Christian mysticism, then, is the convergence of two mystical modes. The Christian
mystic, according to de Lubac, shares with mystics of all faiths and none a certain sense of
interiority, an experience of the depths of the self as compelled toward transcendence. This
“mysticism of essence” arises from the depths of human nature itself as the image of God in
46
Henri de Lubac, Theological Fragments, trans. Rebeccah Howell Balinski (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1989) 51-
52.
47
De Lubac, Fragments, 51.
48
49
De Lubac, Fragments, 52. It should be pointed out that de Lubac is critical of attempts to equate the
distinction between image and likeness with a distinction between Aristotelian nature and Christian grace.
Aristotelian natures exist far too autonomously to be compatible with the Christian patristic and biblical concept
of the image.
50
180
time. But Christian mysticism has a more determinative outward dimension, a “nuptial
mysticism,” where the mystic experiences communion with the other, with what is outside
herself, namely, with God in Christ. What makes the Christian mystic unique is the extent to
which this mysticism of essence is circumscribed and subordinated to the nuptial mystery. It is
the one mystery of God, now come near in Christ, that determines the inward mysticism of
essence: “in Christian mysticism, the mystery is first and last.”51 A pure mysticism of essence,
exclusively internal, abandons its outward religious structures once mystical experience takes
hold; the wholly interiorized mystic leaves behind the concrete structures of its existence in
mystical rapture. For the Christian mystic, on the other hand, there is no question of ever
severing ties, ever leaving or surpassing the one mystery. Mystical ascent never climbs beyond
its source in the revelation of God in Christ.
Nonetheless, neither is the interior dimension of mysticism squelched in favor of a
wholly determinative “God from outside.” “Rooted in the Image,” de Lubac argues, “the sacred
part of our being that naturally touches God, it is apt to produce a secret echo in each person.”52
Because humanity is a symbol of God, created in the Son and Spirit for communion with God,
to look inward is to look outward, to seek God. This is not because nature is vacuous, so that
in the end the only thing to be discovered by interiority is God, but rather because humanity is
the image of the mystery, and this means that a proper interiority will always require a turn
outward, a search for that which is symbolized in this symbol. To interiorize the mystery is to
be drawn outward to God. What makes Christian mysticism distinctively Christian, according
to de Lubac, is the preservation of these two poles, the interiority proper to the human person,
and the harkening outward that this interiority requires; it is both essential and nuptial,
something intrinsic to human nature, and yet something that must be found beyond nature.
This entire structure is anchored christologically. De Lubac argues, “if the articles of
faith are numbered, the Object of Faith is marvelously one.”53 This one object of faith is none
other than Christ: “Christ is not a mystery: he is the mystery – there is no other.”54 There is
only one mystery, and Christ is, de Lubac quotes Augustine, “the whole mystery of God.”55 As
the incarnate Son, Christ reveals the Father, not by being indistinguishable from the Father, but
by being the Father’s symbol, the “exact imprint” of the Father’s nature.56 Moreover, Christ is
51
52
53
De Lubac, History, 217.
54
De Lubac, The Church – Paradox and Mystery, trans. James R. Dunne (Shannon, Ireland: Ecclesia Press,
1969), 14. This accords with the general shape of Rahner’s Christology, even if not his essay on mystery.
55
De Lubac, History, 218, quoting Augustine, Epist. 187, n. 34. (PL 33, 845).
56
Hebrews 1:3, NRSV.
181
not without the Spirit. Even though Christ’s ministry precedes that of the Spirit, Christ’s own
life and ministry are established by the Spirit: Mary is overshadowed by the Spirit and Christ
is anointed by the Spirit for ministry at his baptism.57 The Spirit is thus paradoxically pre-
present, or retroactively causal in both the generation and the mission of the Son. Christ is the
Son, the Realsymbol of the Father in the Spirit. We must therefore say with Augustine that
Christ is the whole mystery of God.
If Christ is the whole mystery of God he is also the whole mystery of creation. To see
this, we have to understand the identity of Christ as the eternal Son. Following Cyril of
Alexandria and Aquinas, we must say that there are not two sons – an eternal divine Son and
temporal creaturely Son.58 Rather, Christ’s human nature is entirely constituted by the person
of the eternal Word. The unity of Christ’s person means that everything predicated of the divine
nature is predicated of the human. Hence, Christ does divine things humanly and human things
divinely. Only in light of such a Cyriline Christology of unity can we understand Paul’s
insistence that all things are created by Christ – not the eternal Logos conceived independently
of Christ. Christ is the one in whom creation is spoken, for whom creation was made, and into
whose image creation is being remade. In Christ, moreover, all of creation is included. By
assuming a human nature, Christ assumes the entirety of creation. Thus, in the unity of Christ’s
person, all of creation is joined to all of God, deep unto deep. Christ is the whole mystery of
God; he is also the whole mystery of creation.59 This is why it is fitting that the Son become
incarnate, for creation already participates in the Son as a symbol of God. In Christ, the eternal
symbol becomes the temporal symbol, that all symbols might be united to God in the Spirit.
De Lubac points to what this means for human nature:
In Jesus Christ we have had the perfect and definitive revelation of the human being as
a personal being. God’s revelation to man was at the same time the revelation of a
relationship between man and God. What applies to one revelation, however, applies
to the other: as God reveals himself in his tripersonal Being, intervening in our
57
Luke 1:35; 3:22; 4:14.
58
On the import of a cyriline Christology, see Aaron Riches, Ecce Homo:On the Divine Unity of Christ (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016); On the Cyriline shape of Thomas’s Christology, see Joseph Wawrykow, “Hypostatic
Union” in Rik Van Niewenhove and Joseph Warwykow, eds., The Theology of Thomas Aquinas (Notre Dame:
Notre Dame University Press, 2005). Kathryn Tanner also develops a Christology along similar terms in Jesus,
Humanity and the Trinity.
59
Theologies of pure nature are therefore severely christologically deficient, since they conceive of creation as
constituted and intelligible in itself apart from Christ. But as Thomas says, the knowledge of the processions of
Persons is necessary for a right knowledge of creatures, and as his Christology shows, Christ is nothing other
than the single esse of the Son in two natures. See ST 1a.32.1.ad. 3.; 3.2. See also Wawrykow, “Hypostatic
Union”, 239.
182
humanity, he also reveals us to ourselves as personal beings capable through grace of
responding to him in love. What the Catholic Church calls mysticism is only the
conscious actualization of this gift of God.60
Christ reveals God to humanity and humanity to itself. And what Christ reveals is not a nature
replete within itself, but creation made in and for Christ, set in motion toward Christ in the
Spirit. The twofold mysticism of human nature (essential and nuptial) thus corresponds to this
twofold work of the Son in creation and redemption. Made in Christ, we desire to return to our
source; made for Christ, that return is only possible because of the gratuitous gift of salvation.
This is, in brief, what it means to be a symbol. To be a created symbol is to be made in Christ
and for Christ, suspended in motion toward the Father in the Spirit.
But it is not humanity alone that is a symbol of God. For De Lubac, all creation is a
“vast and diverse symbol across which the Face of God is mysteriously reflected. A man is
religious to the very degree that he recognizes everywhere these reflections of the divine face,
that is, that he lives in a sacred atmosphere.”61 De Lubac continues, “this world is for man like
a first and immense sacrament, the great natural sacrament.”62 The created world is a vast
symbol, and the theological vocation is to learn to read this symbol. But this is not some general
nature theology. It too has its concrete center in the person of Jesus Christ: now that sin has
corrupted the natural sacrament, it “is to rediscover all its meaning and all its sacral value
thanks to another great sacrament, more mysterious still and more intimate…the wholly divine
mystery in which all the others are summed up: Sacramentum Christi, Mysterium Christi.”63
In the sacramentum Christi, the “natural sacrament” of creation is restored to its sacral
character, it becomes what it is: a symbol of God. Christ, the great Christian mystery, thus
inflects everything with an inherent mysticism. There is no nature untouched by Christ, as John
1 and Colossians 1 make abundantly clear. Creation has an essential mysticism inasmuch as
creation itself is created in Christ, and that mystical symbol is elevated into a living likeness in
Christ.
Even here, Christ is not without the Spirit. Creation is spoken in Christ, but its living
motion is the life of the Spirit. The eternal Word is united to creatures in Christ by the Spirit,
and people are joined to Christ’s body by the Spirit. As argued above, the Spirit is paradoxically
60
De Lubac, Fragments, 63. See discussion of this passage in Bryan C. Hollon, “Mysticism and Mystical
Theology” in Jordan Hillebert, ed., T&T Clark Companion to Henri de Lubac (London: Bloomsbury T&T
Clark, 2017), 309.
61
De Lubac, “Internal Causes of the Weakening and Disappearance of the Sense of the Sacred” in History, 231.
62
De Lubac, History, 232.
63
De Lubac, History, 232-233.
183
pre-present in both the generation and the mission of the Son, and therefore a centralized
Christology need not be a christomonism. If Christ reveals humanity to itself, then Christ
reveals the human to be a living spirit, that is, always-already in a motion of love and desire
by the Spirit. That is to say that in humanity all creation is a symbol, always-already in a motion
of symbolism back toward God.
To sum up, creation is a symbol by being suspended in a twofold mysticism. Creation
is spoken in the eternal Word and has a natural longing to return to this source. Yet that natural
longing can only be fulfilled by the grace of Christ. This account of a mystical creation is
countered by two modern concepts of nature. Karl Barth and Garrigou-Lagrange, in their own
very different ways, call into question this twofold mysticism. While in-depth engagement with
these two prolific and subtle thinkers is obviously not possible here, I will try to indicate why
the view of symbols I have expounded here is superior to either a “Barthian” flattening of
nature and a neo-Thomist reification of pure nature.64
3.2 Between Barth and Garrigou-Lagrange

This mysticism of natural desire stands in contrast to a “Barthian” construal of creation.65 Karl
Barth seeks to undermine a modern prioritization of the self by appeal to a radically God-
centered theology. To do this, he theologically reinterprets Kant’s epistemological restriction
that we cannot know God.66 Barth embraces this alleged inability as an assault on the
pretensions of modernity in its Protestant liberal and neo-Scholastic varieties. If we are to know
God at all, it will have nothing to do with human ability or experience: humans “have no organ
or capacity for God.”67 Therefore, if God is to be known, it must be by an absolute miracle of
“self-revelation.”68 This term itself is quite modern – traceable to Hegel’s own solution to the
Kantian problematic69 – but here it is placed more firmly on theological grounds, namely, the
conviction that creation is sustained in existence over the nihil by God’s gracious and free
64
I use “nature” and “creation” interchangeably on purpose, for it underscores that nature (human or otherwise)
is created by God, and therefore always in a narrative of procession and return.
65
I use scare quotes advisedly. Barth’s thought is complex and controverted, and interpretations are vast and
varied. For an overview of key themes, see John Webster, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
66
This is not to say that Kant’s philosophy is entirely untheological. See Chris Insole, Kant and the Creation of
Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).
67
Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics I/1 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1956), 168. Hereafter, CD.
68
CD I/1, 238.
69
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, ed. by Peter C. Hodgson, trans. R.F.
Brown, P.C. Hodgson et al. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1988), 129-161. See discussion and
citation in Johannes Hoff, “The Rise and Fall of the Kantian Paradigm of Modern Theology” in Peter Candler,
ed., The Grandeur of Reason: Religion, Tradition and Universalism (London: SCM Press, 2010), 187.
184
election. The absolute dependence of creation on God renders God unknowable as another
subject within creation. Thus, knowledge of God can only come from divine self-disclosure.
This miracle is so absolute that its closest analogues are resurrection from the dead and, indeed,
creation ex nihilo.70 Thus, Barth’s most famous triad, revealer-revelation-revealedness, is
specifically designed to occlude creatures: God reveals God through God.71 Anything else
would be to “speak of God by speaking of man in a loud voice.”72 Self-revelation is thus a way
of allowing God to break the strictures of a Kantian epistemological problem, while allowing
the problem itself to remain in the strongest possible terms.73
Of course, Kant is surely right that God is unknowable, and my own account of mystery
in the previous section is but a theological variant on this same theme. But the texture of this
unknowing needs clarification. Johannes Hoff has pointed to a pre-modern vision of
unknowing exemplified by Nicholas of Cusa.74 For Cusa, as for much pre-modern thought, an
encounter with the infinite is not the absolute end of knowledge, rather, it transforms
knowledge from a discursive to a doxological mode.75 The unknowability of God does not fix
a chasm between creator and creature, so much as lure the creature into a relationship of
exaltation and praise. In a variant on de Lubac’s twofold mysticism of human nature, revelation
is seen as a dynamic movement from desire to love along a doxological continuum: praise for
a mystery desired becomes ever more fervent praise for a mystery now known in love.
This twofold mystical unknowing secures the benefits and avoids the weaknesses of
Barth’s Kantian chasm. God remains ineffable; creation remains utterly dependent on God and
entirely aporetic without reference to God; and the transcendence of the creature into loving
praise of God is an ecstatic response, not an inward function of an isolated cartesian ego. But
it also avoids a consistent Barthian temptation to re-establish a duality between God and
creation. This is only ever a temptation, more pronounced in Barth’s early work than his late,
and Barth has significant internal resources for resisting it, most importantly covenant and
Christology.76 But it remains a discernable tendency. By allowing his theology to be framed
70
Trevor Hart, “Revelation” in The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2000), 43-44.
71
CD I/1, 363.
72
Karl Barth, The Word of God and the Word of Man (London: Hodder, 1928), 195.
73
This is not to say that Barth’s central concern is a Kantian epistemological problem. His thought remains
committed to the Lordship of God. But in framing his trinitarian theology around self-revelation, Barth has
given this a decidedly epistemological texture.
74
Hoff, Kantian, 175, citing Nicholas of Cusa, Epistula ad Nicolaum Abergatum, n. 9, 5-10, 1.
75
Cusa calls this the “wisdom of unknowing.” Cf. Nicholas of Cusa, De Docta Ignorantia, trans. Jasper
Hopkins (Minneapolis: Banning Press, 1990), https://jasper-hopkins.info.
76
See Kathryn Tanner, “Creation and Providence” in Webster, Companion, 111-126.
185
by an absolute epistemological break between God and creation, Barth at times indicates a
competitive contrast between God and creatures in which divine fullness and self-sufficiency
correspond to and require creaturely lack and insufficiency.77 Self-revelation can too easily be
seen as something done to creation by a God who stands over and against it.
This tendency was inherited by Barthians. As I argued in chapter four, before his turn
to Aquinas, John Webster maintained an inverse proportionality between God and creatures, a
contrast in which God-in-Christ stands over-and-against creation, and even the church.78 It is
Kathryn Tanner who is perhaps most successful in avoiding this temptation, which she
accomplishes by drawing out the Cyriline shape of Barth’s Christology, along the lines of the
Christology I developed above.79 Thus, while Barth gestures toward a modern dualism of God-
creation, this is potentially overcome christologically. But a twofold mystical unknowing
avoids this temptation altogether. Rather than allowing a characteristically modern
preoccupation with epistemology to frame the question, a twofold mysticism adverts to the
doxological telos of knowledge in the unknowable goodness of God.80 To embrace this would
be to recognize that nature is not marked by an absolute limit: that it has a natural impulse
toward transcendence which can nonetheless only be fulfilled by grace. In other words, the
Barthian temptation to contrast God and world can be overcome by the natural desire for the
supernatural.
This would of course give more to nature than Barth is willing to give, but there are
perfectly Barthian reasons for embracing it. In the first instance, it better guards the sovereignty
of God, whose fullness cannot be diminished by its sharing. For creation to have an inner
impulse toward transcendence is not a loss to God’s sovereignty, but itself expressive of the
very abundance of that sovereignty, as John Webster’s later work makes clear.81 If God is
understood as hidden because creation is a symbol, then both the transcendent goodness of
God and the received goodness of creation are guarded without threat to either. Moreover, it
moves the center of gravity away from an epistemological problematic and toward a
doxological destiny, which is to say that it secures symbolism, the intrinsic movement of desire
and love between symbol and symbolized. Inasmuch as Barth’s theology threatens a contrast
77
This can be seen, for instance, in Barth’s relatively early treatment of Mary’s virginity, which for Barth
indicates only the absolute human lack vis-à-vis God. CD Vol. I. 2, 143.
78
John Webster, “On Evangelical Ecclesiology” in Essays on Christian Dogmatics II (London: Bloomsbury,
2016), 173. See also Eberhardt Jüngel, “The church as sacrament?” in Theological Essays, trans. John Webster
(Edinburgh, T&T Clark, 1989), 191.
79
Tanner, Jesus, Humanity and the Trinity, passim.
80
Alan Torrance has criticized Barth extensively on this score in Persons in Communion: An Essay on
Trinitarian Description and Human Participation (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996).
81
See Webster, “Love”, passim.
186
between God and creatures, it threatens the symbolic value of creation, losing the symbolized
and symbolism as well. The triad I have developed is a more fitting analogy than self-
revelation: it secures everything the latter searches for, without its concomitant temptations.
God reveals God by sharing God in and through symbols.
Of course, Barth’s concept of self-revelation was aimed at dethroning a view of creation
as autonomous within its own sphere, capable of discovering God (or the absence of God)
under the power of its own lights. The Catholic theory of pure nature was at least one of Barth’s
targets, and Barth was right to contest such a theory, for to leave nature untouched in natural
purity is neither scriptural nor traditional. Nonetheless, it too seeks to guard the transcendence
of God, the value of creation and, especially in the work of Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, the
superiority of mystical wisdom. It could be argued that the theory of pure nature, as presented
by Lagrange, better captures all three than my own triad. He guards divine transcendence by
ensuring the utter gratuity of grace; he maintains the value of creation by giving it its own
natural sphere of perfection; and he maintains the movement of symbolism between creation
and God by appeal to mysticism as the highest wisdom available to humans. While space does
not permit an exhaustive engagement, I will briefly indicate why this is not the case.
Lagrange’s work, The Sense of Mystery: Clarity and Obscurity in the Intellectual Life
is a series of meditations on the contrast of light and dark, the clair-obscur or “chiaroscuro”
effect of the limits and possibilities of the human intellect.82 His account is structured by a
theory of pure nature,83 moving from what is purely natural to what is supernatural and thus
represents an alternative to de Lubac’s mysticism of the natural desire.84 The combination of
that which is knowable and that which is unknowable drives the human soul toward mysticism
and love. The human intellect is ordered to a particular range of being; that which is too high
and profound or too low and profane are incomprehensible for the human mind. Lagrange
traces these kinds of obscurities through their permutations in nature and in grace to help the
reader gain the “sense of mystery,” by which he means a clear grasp of the “data” which is
82
Because of the Coronavirus lockdown in England, I was unable to obtain a physical copy of this book and
was forced to use an electronic Kindle edition. In addition to the Kindle location, I will cite the chapter number
to aid in locating the reference. Reginald Garrigou Lagrange, The Sense of Mystery: Clarity and Obscurity in the
Intellectual Life, trans. Matthew K. Minerd (Steubenville, Ohio: Emmaus Academic, 2017). Contemporary neo-
Thomists would do well to follow Lagrange’s recognition for the fundamental requirement for paradox.
83
The concept of pure nature itself varies among neo-Thomists. I use the term here to refer to what is possible
by the natural human intellect apart from grace or a calling to beatitude.
84
The Sense of Mystery was written before Surnaturel, and so it does not deal directly with de Lubac’s natural
desire for the supernatural. Lagrange does take aim at Maurice Blondel’s philosophy of action – an influential
text for de Lubac – for confusing the natural and supernatural (ch. 3, loc. 2848). He also takes aim at Suarez’s
active obediential potency (ch. 5, loc. 5535), but this is not to be identified with de Lubac’s position.
Nonetheless, the outline of Lagrange’s later response to de Lubac is readily apparent in this text.
187
entirely available to natural reason, the supernatural “data” on the other side of the epistemic
divide, and the further truth that will only be known in the beatific vision. That sense leads,
finally, to mysticism, where the intellectual search is fulfilled in silent, direct contemplation of
the divine essence. Gaining a sense of mystery, for Lagrange, requires an exhaustive mapping
of the epistemological terrain.
Lagrange envisions a three-tiered hierarchy of wisdom. The first is the discipline of
metaphysics, which “abstracts from all matter,” studying being qua being, which is God
inasmuch as God is the one creator and first cause (not yet the trinitarian God of Christianity).85
When the metaphysician comes to know created effects, a desire is elicited to know the causes
of these effects. By tracing the sequences of causes, the metaphysician can arrive at knowledge
of God as first cause and can even wish to know the essence of this First Cause, but that desire
remains entirely conditional on first coming to know created effects and, to avoid Pelagianism,
is wholly inefficacious.
Theology is the second wisdom and provides even greater epistemic surety than the
significant epistemic confidence afforded by metaphysics.86 Infused faith has more confidence
than metaphysics because it comes from God, not natural human knowledge, and this gracious
gift of revelation provides new data for the intellect to analyze. Theology is, then, the rational
analysis of the data of revelation.87 It is indeed a human work, but it is rooted in the grace of
faith, and so it is more reliable than metaphysics. That extra data moves the theologian beyond
considering God only as creator and first cause, to God’s own inner life: the divine essence,
the attributes, the Persons, etc. It thus concerns information knowable only if God chooses to
reveal it.
The third wisdom beyond theology is infused wisdom from the Holy Spirit, a quasi-
experiential knowledge of God, i.e. mysticism.88 Theology is a rational analysis of revealed
data by the intellect, mysticism arises from the infusion of charity into the will. The infusion
of charity from the Holy Spirit produces a “relation of conformity” between the data of
revelation and “our inner dispositions,” inspiring in us not just knowledge that revealed
mysteries are believable, but that they are supremely loveable.89 This wisdom is an intuitive
knowledge, a wisdom available to all regardless of their theological or philosophical training,
though it presupposes a certain amount of theological knowledge, namely, the necessary
85
Lagrange, Sense, ch. 1, loc. 1169.
86
87
88
Lagrane, Sense, ch. 1, loc. 1343.
89
188
dogmatic formulae of the creeds. This is a higher and surer knowledge than theology, for
theology is a human work, while mystical wisdom is an infused gift. If theology analyzes the
data of revelation, mysticism interiorizes that data: in mysticism, theology becomes us,
affording the highest epistemic confidence.
This three-stage sequence from natural metaphysics to faith and theology to charity and
mysticism is based on the taxis of intellect and will. Because the will necessarily follows the
intellect, the metaphysician can only desire the God she knows. Her desire for God is therefore
wholly elicited from her prior knowledge of God’s effects. Faith then provides the
metaphysician with newly revealed data, showing the First Cause to be the Trinity. In rationally
analyzing that new data, the metaphysician can become a theologian. Then the Spirit can infuse
the will with charity to love the newly revealed facts, and the theologian can become a mystic.
The will thus follows the intellect from pure nature to grace and beyond to glory.
Thus, natural metaphysics can become theology, and theology can become mysticism,
but because of the unidirectional nature of the sequence, theology is in no way intrinsic to
metaphysics, and mysticism intrinsic to neither. Metaphysics has no inner drive toward
theology or mysticism, for it lacks theological knowledge. The theologian will undoubtedly
want to love God by the effects of grace, but such a love is not intrinsic to the theological task,
defined only as “the conceptual analysis of revealed truths.”90 The mystic, of course, need not
be a trained metaphysician and theologian, but charity presupposes faith, which, for Lagrange,
is expressed in the body of dogmatic formulae, and so some minimal measure of rational
knowledge is necessary for mysticism to proceed. To put it bluntly, the mystic must have some
basic measure of theological knowledge, but neither the theologian nor the metaphysician need
have love.91
But there are trinitarian reasons to question the rigid taxis of intellect and will, faith and
charity, theology and mysticism established by Lagrange. As Thomas makes clear, faith
90
Lagrange, Sense, ch. 1, loc. 1257: “theology has for its ends: 1) the conceptual analysis of revealed truths…2)
the deduction of other truths that are virtually contained in revealed truths.” Lagrange elaborates: “the work of
conceptual analysis (which is the most important part of the theological treatises on the Trinity, the Incarnation,
the Sacraments, grace, etc.) and that of deducing theological conclusions is a human work undertaken on the
data of revelation” [ch. 1, loc. 1262]. Thus, while mysticism is knowledge “through connaturality or sympathy,
[theology] is…according to a perfect use of reason” [ch. 1, loc. 1361].
91
See Lagrange, Sense, ch. 4, loc. 3315: Love tends toward another “like a mysterious impulse that is difficult
to define…thus, things of love are known by experience.” And later, “the light that illuminates theological
science is not experience, but instead, is virtual revelation – that is, revelation inasmuch as it virtually contains
the conclusions deduced by the aid of a rational premise” [ch. 5, loc. 5704].
189
requires from the outset a decision of the will: faith is the assent to revealed dogma.92 The
intellect cannot “see” the truth of Christian teaching en se, since it would then no longer be
faith. So faith requires for its operation an act of the will. But this act of the will that precedes
faith cannot be an act of charity, since Thomas is clear that charity follows faith as the will
follows the intellect. This act of the will is, Thomas cryptically says, “a certain desire for the
promised good.”93 In other words, here the will precedes the intellect under the operation of
grace, even though it must follow from the intellect. Bruce Marshall identifies the trinitarian
dynamics of this paradox:
that our assent to Christian teaching has to stem from love for the God of whom it
speaks…follows from who the triune God is…Since knowledge of the Trinity is
beyond our natural capacity, it requires a definite action of the triune God himself, in
particular the instinctus interior by which the Son moves us to know him…The Father’s
eternal Son, however, “is not just any sort of Word, but one who brings forth Love,”
that is the Spirit….Therefore, the Trinity cannot be known save by being in some way
loved.94
The Logos cannot be separated from the Spirit, so the infused knowledge of faith cannot be
separated from infused love. This love is not the love of charity, but “some desire for the
promised good.”95 It is a kind of inchoate charity that makes faith possible, a paradoxical pre-
presence of charity in the act of believing.96 Faith is thus always-already love, even as it must
yet become love.
This always-already quality of faith and love has its precursor in the natural desire for
the supernatural. Our knowledge of created effects is always marked by desire. The reason for
this, again, is trinitarian. Everything that is only is because spoken in the eternal Logos, and
the Logos is never without the Spirit: facts are only factual because their existence is a
92
ST 2a-2ae.1.4. See Hoff, Self-Revelation, 177, where he argues that it is in Suarez that “the assent of faith is
no longer coincident with a pre-theoretical judgment or an ‘excess’ of worship.” It is only with Suarez that our
intellectual recognition of truth is separated from our spontaneous loving reception of it.
93
Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae de veritate, trans. J.V. McGlynn (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1952-
54), Q.14 a.2 ad10; quoted in Bruce Marshal, “Quod Scit Una Uetula: Aquinas on the Nature of Theology” in
Rik Van Nieuwenhove and Joseph Wawrykow, eds., The Theology of Thomas Aquinas (Notre Dame: Notre
Dame University Press, 2005), 33, n. 70.
94
Marshall, Uetula, 32, n. 69.
95
De Ver. Q.14 a.2 ad10. The question of desire, as Sarah Coakley has pointed out, is important in answering
the objections of postmodernity against systematic theology: a totalizing theological system can indeed conceal
an idolatrous desire “for mastery: a complete understanding of God, a regnant position in society, or a
domination of the gendered ‘other’.” Coakley, Sexuality, 51.
96
Lagrange avoids this paradox by urging that exterior miracles are sufficient to provide surety to the intellect,
grounding faith’s confidence “materially and extrinsically.” Lagrange, Sense, loc. 1289. This is not without
textual evidence in Thomas but is also highly problematic for the trinitarian reasons provided above. See
discussion in Marshall, Uetula.
190
participation in the movement of desire and love between Father and Son. To come to know
anything is to be drawn into this movement of divine desire; in this sense, truth is erotic.97
There are no pure facts that we might come to know before a desire for God is elicited, because
there is no pure Son separated from the Spirit. Indeed, to imagine something like pure facts
untainted by desire, or indeed, theology untainted by mysticism, would require imagining a
moment of pure paternity-filiation, in which the Father and Son have a complete relation to
one another, to which the relation of the Spirit could only be a superadded extra. The result
would be the much-stereotyped denigration of the Spirit in Western theology. But if we insist
that the Trinity condition the psychological analogy more thoroughly, then we will have to say
that all knowledge is already love, even if it must still then become what it is. There is no
eliding this paradoxical unity.
The strictness of this taxis is Lagrange’s way of guarding divine supremacy (by
maintaining the gratuity of grace), creaturely integrity, and mystical consummation. God, in
absolute freedom, creates nature within its own complete sphere, in which it can function in
perfect happiness. Then, in a second act of absolutely unconditioned freedom, God super-adds
a new realm of grace by which the creature might come to know God in mystical communion.
But does this actually accomplish its goals? It seems to conceive of grace as something that
threatens nature’s integrity, and so contrasts divine gift and human action. Why should we
assume that a nature never without grace is somehow less robustly natural, unless we think of
a tradeoff between divinity and humanity? This threatens to reduce God to one actor among
actors, another creature competing for limited space. Moreover, this threatened reduction of
God makes creation a symbol in only the barest sense. Creation is perfectly intelligible within
its own sphere, adverting only to God-as-first-cause to plug a metaphysical gap (crudely, God
becomes nothing more than the answer to the question, “how did this get here?”). But aside
from knowing that something called God must have created the world, there is no inner
disposition that might compel me to come to know this God. Why should I, if I can build my
house and raise my family quite apart from any ongoing interface with this first cause? It
becomes possible to think of creation apart from its nature as a divine word, a word to be
responded to in love: creation is no longer a symbol. Long before Lagrange wrote The Sense
of Mystery, secularism became a live option under the theory of pure nature, a danger
Lagrange’s account of mystery does not overcome. And this finally imperils symbolism, since
creation is conceivable without any motion of desire or love back to God. There is a moment
97
See Coakley, Sexuality, ch. 7.
191
of pure intellectual encounter with the world that precedes all love and desire, from which
alone curiosity about causes arises. This is even true in the discipline of theology, where it is
perfectly possible to conduct theology without love, since theology comes entirely before
mysticism.
It is precisely this last failure that de Lubac identifies in the shift from the theological
style he calls “symbolism” to “dialectics.”98 Mysticism and reason are prized apart, if not
opposed to one another, then as two separate steps in a series. But the triad I have developed
does not so prize them apart. Certainly, a distinction remains. There are insightful theologians
who fail as lovers of God and creatures, and there are extraordinary mystics with poor theology.
But at their root, thinking and loving are joined in one perichoretic unity, and thus cannot be
prized apart. That unity is itself expressive of a prior divine unity, so that symbolized is hidden
in the symbol which ever moves toward it in a motion of rational love: a reasonable act of
worship.99 Losing the symbol as a twofold mysticism results in the loss of God’s transcendence
as the symbolized and the intrinsic movement of the symbol as symbolism. Both Barth and
Lagrange in their own ways risk such losses. A return to symbolism will not only help return
us to a God we might sing and dance before, but it restores humanity as singers and dancers,
and recovers a song worth singing and dancing to.
3.3 The Symbol and Symbolism

We are now in a position to understand more deeply what it means for creation to be a symbol
of God, and just why a symbol is an intrinsically mystical reality. The eternal Logos is the
symbol of the Father, and creation is the unfolding of this eternal symbol in time.100 Christ is
the eternal symbol incarnate in created symbol; in Christ creation is gratuitously elevated and
returned to its divine source. The unity of the incarnate Christ is such that Paul can say that
Christ is the image of the invisible God, firstborn over all creation, that in Christ all things
were created and in Christ all things are redeemed. All of creation is thus suspended from
Christ to Christ.
This suspension sustains a natural desire for the supernatural: human nature has an
ontological desire for the vision of God by virtue of its creation in Christ. But that “mysticism
of essence” is circumscribed by and subordinated to a nuptial mysticism: the natural desire can
98
Henri de Lubac, Corpus Mysticum, 2nd ed., trans. Gemma Simmonds et. al. (London: SCM Press, 2006), 221-
248.
99
Romans 12:1.
100
See discussion in chapter 2.
192
only be fulfilled by the grace of Christ. This means, in the first instance, that human nature is
always marked by its desire to know God – there is never a moment of pure intellectual
apprehension of finite sense phenomena not already marked by an ontological desire for God.
And yet that desire can only be fulfilled by the gift of grace. Faith, likewise, is never without
some inchoate charity, some “desire for the promised good.” Theology, in turn, is never
without mysticism: it is born in the mystical desire of the human soul to be united to God.
This is ultimately due to the trinitarian dynamics of human nature. The Son is never
without the Spirit, and we can even say that the Spirit is “retroactively causal” in the generation
of the Son, paradoxically pre-present in filiation. In the language I have developed, this
indicates that the symbol is only the symbol as it is in motion toward the symbolized. Thus,
even though we must distinguish nature from grace, as we must distinguish Son from Spirit,
we cannot isolate one from the other in a moment of pure nature, just as we cannot isolate a
moment of pure filiation. We must say that nature is not a mere “vacuole for grace,” but also
that nature can only be understood as always in motion toward its source and end.101 Thus,
contra certain Barthian tendencies, nature is a “thick reality,” but contra Lagrange, nature’s
substantial reality is aboriginally in motion back toward God. My triad, symbolized-symbol-
symbolism describes this paradox, avoiding the pitfalls of minimal-nature and pure-nature.
This indelible link between symbol and symbolism extends to all creation. Creation is
summed in humanity, which as intellectual and material is the microcosm of a universe in
which angelic and material creatures express each in their own ways the divine life of God. In
humanity all creation naturally desires God, and in Christ all creation is restored. Creation is a
symbol, a sign that mediates God’s presence: created in Christ by the Spirit, elevated and
returned to the Father in Christ by the Spirit.
Moreover, this always-already quality is an expression of God’s absolute anteriority as
the symbolized. There is no “me” before the twofold gift of my being and destiny, I cannot
unearth some pure identity, untainted by my creation in Son and Spirit and calling to
redemption in Son and Spirit. The quest for this “pure” identity is an attempt to gain a total
vision of myself. To have such a total view of myself would be to step out of the process of
symbolization, it would be to assume a God’s-eye-view of things, assuming a perspective that
can only belong to God. I can never assume the perspective of the symbolized because I am
always a symbol in motion. To insist on the fundamental nature of this motion is to insist on
the fundamental hiddenness of God’s perspective, that there is no pure nature that is not always
101
Steven A. Long, natura pura (New York: Fordham University Press, 2010), ch. 2.
193
circumscribed by the infinite mystery of God: my life is indeed hidden with Christ in God.102
This inseparability of symbol and symbolism safeguards the hiddenness of the symbolized.
The previous section argued that God-as-symbolized helps avoid an ontotheological
reduction of God to one being among beings. This section has argued that understanding
creation as a symbol avoids both a Barthian flattening of nature and a neo-Thomist reification
of pure nature. This is only possible if all three terms of the triad are held together. In the next
section, I will turn to the third term of the triad, symbolism, with specific reference to the
discipline of theology as one mode of symbolism, of joining the symbol to the symbolized in
an act of mystical reason. I will do this by a reading of Augustine.
4. FROM MYSTICISM TO MYSTICAL REASON

If we are to return to something like mystical reason, the arguments from the preceding two
sections will need to be taken into account. Rahner helps us see that we are ever faced with the
symbolized, the God who is mysteriously present within all things, and yet always beyond. As
beyond, God is the absolute horizon within which all created things are intelligible; as within,
God is the “radiant intelligibility” flowing from all things. This is to settle reason within
mystery. Reason functions by constant reference to the abiding mystery of God. Moreover,
because reason cannot attain this primordial mystery, it is constrained to become love if it is
be truly reasonable. Thus we have moved from many mysteries, as statements provisionally
inaccessible to reason, to one mystery that sustains all reason as reasonable and oriented toward
fulfillment in love. I then moved from one mystery to mysticism, showing that all creation lives
by participation in a movement of desire and love between Father and Son. There is thus a
twofold mysticism in the heart of creation. That twofold mysticism links theology explicitly to
mysticism in a way that makes them mutually internal to one another. Taken together, these
two commitments – that God is the symbolized, creation the symbol – open the possibility of
mystical reason. God speaks creation in the speaking of the Word, and creation is therefore
shot through with “mystical reasons,” ontological traces of its creator. The theological task,
then, is the uncovering and reading of those mystical reasons, joining them to the symbolized.
It can do so because it knows by faith that God is symbolized in creation, and it also knows
that creation is always-already in motion toward God. Mystical reason is the attention
necessary to catch these symbols on their way back to God and to join with them, ascending to
102
Colossians 3:3.
194
God in praise. Thus, the one mystery sustains creation in a twofold mysticism which can be
“read” in an act of mystical reason.
This way of framing the theological task makes it very similar to, if not simply the
extension of the spiritual interpretation of scripture. This is, in fact, Augustine’s practice. When
Augustine conducts the spiritual interpretation of scripture, he is searching for “mystical
reasons” latent within the literal sense.103 These mystical reasons are correspondences between
“levels” of discourse. The literal sense, say, a number in an obscure Old Testament passage,
opens upward to a corresponding spiritual sense.104 That correlation is always subordinate to
the Christian gospel, and so is not a wild flight of exegetical fancy. But neither is it a logical
entailment. It is entirely reasonable because scripture (or creation) is spoken in the Logos, and
so always related to Christ; Christ is the rationale of all things. But it is also mystical because
it is a search for a reason hidden within the literal sense that is only disclosed by the Spirit in
grace. This mysticism, moreover, is a mysticism of desire, since the dynamics of hiddenness
and revelation correspond to desire and delight.105 To move “beyond” the letter to the spirit is
to move through the letter toward God in desire and love. Mystical reason is this movement
between levels of discourse.
Augustine employs this logic from the spiritual interpretation of scripture in his reading
of the human soul as an analogy for the Trinity. The literal sense of the human soul opens
upward to the spiritual sense of God’s own trinitarian life, both in the economy in Christ, and
eternally in generation and procession. In a crucial moment in De trin., Augustine argues on
the basis of 1 Corinthians 13:12 that understanding the mind in a Trinitarian manner requires
the interpretation of an enigma.106 An enigma, Augustine explains, is an acutely obscure
allegory, and Augustine appeals to the spiritual interpretation of scripture as an analogue for
the kind of interpretation of the mind he is attempting. Like scripture, the mind has a literal
sense that opens onto a spiritual sense. This movement from the “literal” to the spiritual, from
the production of inner words in love to the eternal generation of the Word in the Spirit, is
governed by the rule of faith. The entire construct of Christian faith from creation, sin and
death to redemption and glory, and especially the trinitarian life of God thus control the analogy
used to understand the Trinity.
103
For example, in Augustine, The Trinity 4.10, trans. Edmund Hill (New York: New City Press, 1991), 160.
104
Cf. Henri de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, 3 Vols., trans. Mark Sebanc (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998).
105
See for instance, Augustine, On Christian Teaching, 2.10-15, trans. R.P.H. Green (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1997), 32-33.
106
De trin. 15.8.15 (Hill: 406).
195
This is quite circular. Augustine offers analogies by which to understand the Trinity,
but then urges that the analogies themselves can only be understood rightly when conformed
to the doctrine of the Trinity. Thus, the various triads Augustine offers all eventually fail: they
do not live up to the promise of delivering us to contemplation of God and must be revised
again. John Cavadini has argued that Augustine leads the reader through the various triads not
as merely heuristic exercises to discover whether or not a particular analogy “works.” Rather,
Augustine uses the doctrine of the Trinity to show how all analogies and all human efforts
finally fail in their image-bearing potential.107 The result is that the analogies used to
understand the Trinity must undergo transformation by Christ into a more complete trinitarian
pattern.
For Augustine, this transformative process takes place principally in the production of
inner words in rightly ordered love. An inner word is not a particular word in any language. It
is a pre-reflexive self-expression and is wholly equal to the mind itself. The pre-linguistic
quality of the inner word has been argued to be problematic, since all experience is linguistic
and cultural. Language is not, it has been argued, the translation of a pure inner experience
prior to all language and expression.108 Rather, our language shapes experience itself, and is so
bound up with it that experience can never be divorced from its cultural-linguistic context. Yet
Augustine is not unaware of the irreducibly linguistic and cultural nature of human
experience.109 Augustine locates the inner word as a pre-linguistic moment in the mind
because, as a constituent component of the image of God, it cannot be tied to any particular
linguistic expression; God’s native language is not Greek or Latin. The inner word is “an
eternally valid precultural reality focused on a capacity for self-awareness and self-expression
which is a product of culture – of signs and sign systems – but not reducible to any particular
cultural expression.”110 An inner word is something like the capacity for culture. It is a way of
saying that the human mind is symbolic, that is, that it comes into being by expression in a
symbol, but without prescribing the content of that symbol.
To get a grip on this admittedly obscure notion, Augustine leads the reader through a
number of triads focused on the moment the inner word is “incarnated” in an outer word. These
outer trinities represent the ways an inner word is actualized in signs and signification, how the
107
John Cavadini, Visioning Augustine (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2019), 1-22. The context of De trin. is
Augustine’s argument against the viability of Porphyrian ascent independent of Christ.
108
See for example the criticism in Robert Markus, “St. Augustine on Signs” in Phronesis 2, no. 1 (Brill: 1957),
60-83.
109
Cf. Cavadini, Augustine, 48.
110
196
imago Dei is manifested in culture. It is the quality of this incarnation that occupies Augustine
precisely because he is aware that all human experience is linguistic and cultural. Any
inadequacy of our language and culture to incarnate the divine image is a direct result of the
corruption of the mind itself, the mind’s inability to image God. And this corruption is self-
replicating, since it produces corrupt cultures that in turn form minds.
In Cavadini’s words, the “‘boxed set’ of trinities, described in books 9-15” can thus be
seen as a “phenomenology of culture production,” or perhaps more accurately, a
phenomenology of human corporate corruption.111 A corrupt culture is the incarnation of a
shared corrupt inner word, a corruption which that culture nurtures and passes on from one
generation to another. The point of the inner word is not that the human mind experiences the
world in pre-linguistic raw encounter, but that at the root of the cultures which pervade and
constitute our experience lies a failure to image God by failing to know God and ourselves
rightly. The inner word is the capacity of the mind to image God by symbolizing itself. And
the failure of this symbol is the root of the failure of society to love justice and mercy. To say
that the inner word is pre-linguistic is to say that some opaque mixture of image-bearing and
sin structures from the outset all our experience.
It would seem, then, that our hopes of contemplating God in God’s image are bound to
fail. Both the image and the seer are impaired. Here the ideal of Porphyrian ascent that has
structured De trin. is shipwrecked. Porphyrian ascent moves from matter to the immaterial via
the human soul, but Augustine has shown this ascent to be entirely impossible. We need
another image and another vision. Augustine seeks to break this introspective circuit by
returning to the blood of Christ in all its contingency, temporality and materiality.112 The failure
of our own inner words and their incarnation in broken cultures is met by the incarnation of
the eternal Word, the very Word of God spoken in the language of creation. When Augustine
moves from the literal sense to the spiritual, he exposes the failure of the soul to live up to this
spiritual potential. In turning the soul toward Christ, Augustine aims to help the reader move
toward that spiritual fullness.
This search for the mystical reasons of the soul is as much about the formation of the
will as of the intellect: only an inner word begotten in right love is worthy of God. In the first
instance, the spiritual sense is hidden within the literal to entice desire to know what is
111
112
On the centrality of Christ in Augustinian contemplation, see Rowan Williams, “The Soul in Paraphrase:
Augustine as Interpreter of the Psalms” in On Augustine, (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 25-40.
197
hidden.113 In the second, attention to Christ as revealed is intended to shape our loves – by
showing us the shape of a life ordered by right love, and by giving us a living image of God on
which to fix our love. In both hiddenness and manifestation, Augustinian theology is intended
to help heal the human will. Augustine thus leads his readers through a pedagogy of both
intellect and will that starts from the Trinity, moves through various analogies, then
reformulates those analogies in light of the Trinity known in and through Christ, in order to
return again to God.
What is remarkable about this process is how successfully it integrates multiple levels
of discourse. God’s inner life, God’s action in time, human society, the human mind, and finally
the thinker herself are all enfolded in a single theological vision. That vision is unfolded in the
making and remaking of triads, an attempt to unite all things to God. Augustine does not
conceive of these multiple levels of discourse sequentially, but as a kind of perpetual spiral.
The relationship between the human mind and the Trinity is not a stepwise sequence, but a
circling through multiple senses of reality, each one opening onto the next, with the Trinity
finally shaping and reshaping the whole.
De Lubac rightly called these multiple levels “symbolic inclusions.”114 The mind is
symbolically included in the Trinity, so that reflection on the Trinity – always necessarily in
and through Christ – shapes reflection on the mind, and ultimately forms the trinitarian shape
of the theologian herself. To ascend through symbolic inclusions is to find oneself also
symbolically included, where thinking emerges into prayer. To search for such symbolic
inclusions is to look for integration at every possible level: to find God in all things, and to
bring all things to God in praise. It is a spiritual interpretation of creation, moving from its
literal sense to the spiritual sense embedded within and beyond it, before returning again to
creation in a never-ending movement of desire and love.
These inclusions between levels of discourse are governed by the Christian gospel, and
reading them is more a matter of aesthetic discernment than logical deduction. A human inner
word and love are participations in the eternal Word and Spirit, but Son and Spirit are not
straightforwardly an inner word and love.115 They are certainly not quasi-mechanical effusions
of the divine intellect and will, as for Scotus.116 This is to enforce an inappropriate logical
entailment between levels of discourse – to reify the analogy. Once reified, analogies become
113
Augustine, On Christian Teaching, 2.10-15 (Green: 32-33).
114
115
Thomas expresses this in the language of appropriation. See Gilles Emery, O.P., Trinity in Aquinas (Naples,
Florida: Sapientia Press, 2003), ch. 4.
116
See discussion in chapter 2.
198
brittle, ceasing to be responsive to the transformative process of thinking our analogies into the
Trinity. One can see this not only in the Franciscan tendency to reify the psychological analogy,
but also in the intellectualism of baroque Thomism, where the taxis of intellect and will ceases
to be disciplined by perichoretic unity. Beyond fixing an airtight logical framework for the
Trinity, then, developing triads is a search for resonances and correspondences by which the
Trinity may be better understood and loved, but never circumscribed. Lewis Ayres has
described this dynamic:
One of the constitutive tasks of our journey down the path towards understanding of
faith is, then, to grow in the ability to hone these correspondences, identifying and
applying the principles that allow us to ‘look’ beyond the created categories within
which scripture speaks.117
The honing of these correspondences is a matter of “attention,” of attending to resonances
between the eternal life of God, and the material structures of life in time under the discipline
of scripture.
Because of the doctrine of creation, i.e. creation by the Father’s speaking of the Word
in the Spirit, everything is foundationally related to the triune life of God. But this relation
remains obscure and ineffective unless creation itself is elevated by Christ. And Christ is only
received in his body, the eucharistic church. Thus, what sustains and structures this kind of
movement between levels of discourse is first the relations of Father-Son-Spirit, and then the
relations of God-creation-church, where church is understood as the totus Christus. These are
something like the doctrinal conditions for the possibility of symbolic theology. And coming
to read the symbols of life in time is a matter of judging the fittingness of analogies, their
appropriateness to the shape of this whole. It is a process of discerning correlations and
resonances that is never fully finished, and the very act of pursuing it shapes the quality of our
own inner analogy, the image of God.
We will have to become comfortable with the circularity of this: we know God through
symbols, but we interpret symbols through our knowledge of God. Hence, I have proposed a
trinitarian theology of the symbol and also argued that we only understand the Trinity through
symbols. But this circularity is necessary if we are to do justice to the hiddenness of God as
the symbolized, to the sacral value of creation as a symbol of God, and the mystic quality of
theological thought as an act of symbolism. There is only one mystery, and that mystery is the
context of all we know and love; it is the ultimate horizon of creaturely existence. It thus
117
Lewis Ayres, Augustine and the Trinity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 152.
199
remains, strictly speaking, unknowable in any objective sense; we are never subjects standing
over and against God as an object. But this eternal mystery has in fact come near in Christ,
revealing all of creation to have an inner dynamism toward gratuitous consummation in grace.
But even here, we have not escaped the mystery. We have been given symbols – all of which
gain their essential orientation in Christ the Realsymbol – and we must learn to read them if
we too are to become true symbols. But we can never step outside this process of symbolism
to gain an objective grasp on the mystery we represent in our persons. The mystery thus founds
and ends our quest. Therefore, theology must keep returning to Christ in whom its language
and loves are perpetually reformed on the road to glory. Any understanding we obtain from
perpetual return must become again a seeking. This is why, Augustine explains, the psalmist
says to seek his face forevermore,118 for to find God is to seek God, whose inexhaustible
plenitude compels us to seek again.
This indicates that the psychological analogy is not a literal account of the processions.
Rather, as Lewis Ayres argues, “Augustine seems to see this way of exploring the divine life
as a way of bringing together a variety of scriptural (and philosophical) resources and
dynamics, not as a ‘model’ which can simply carry the field.”119 Augustine’s trinitarian
theology combines numerous motifs and sources as a fruitful synthesis through which to enter
into the mystery of God. That attempt is only ever provisional, and “progress” is determined
by the reformation of our own minds and hearts, and the cultures they shape and are shaped by
– there is therefore a political aspect to all theological thought. As Cavadini describes it:
In the trin., we have a theology which is, strictly speaking, neither apophatic nor
kataphatic, but specifically trinitarian in its call neither to renounce language nor to
accept its limitations as received, but to present the image of God ever more clearly in
a transformed and transforming begetting of words.120
My argument is that to reclaim such a theological style requires something like the systematic
theology of the symbol I have developed. If we are, as theologians, to search for mystical
reasons in loving regard for God, then creation itself must be a symbol that can be “read” in
grace, and thereby returned in praise to the God who remains symbolized within and beyond
it. Anything less risks reducing God to an ontic thing, flattening nature or reifying an
autonomous pure nature, and severing theology from mysticism, knowledge from love.
118
De trin. 15.2.2.
119
Ayres, Trinity, 325.
120
200
If the modern era was marked by a loss of faith in transcendence, an evacuation of the
sacral value of creation, and a severing of knowledge from love, the postmodern era has seen
numerous clumsy attempts at their rediscovery and reintegration: “spiritual but not religious”
names a longing for the transcendent, sacred and loveable, and a commensurate ambivalence
about how or where to find them. What is needed is a new illuminative synthesis, one that
unites all things to God in a single theological vision. I propose a trinitarian theology of the
symbol as such a vision. This vision is not actually new, as the scope of this thesis has shown.
It is, however, newly articulated, an attempt to giving living voice to a living tradition.
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CONCLUSION
1. SYMBOLISM: A REPRISE
Henri de Lubac sought to recover a form of theology that he called “symbolism,” a patristic
mode of thought that assumed a real unity-in-distinction between symbolized and symbol,
sustaining a thoroughly sacramental vision. Yet de Lubac never developed this systematically.
While numerous theologians have engaged and developed de Lubac’s work in various ways,1
none have integrated symbolism consistently into trinitarian theology, and thus into a
systematic whole. There remains, then, a need for a systematic theology of the symbol.
The word “symbolism” comes from a patristic theology deeply engaged with
Neoplatonism. As we have seen, a symbol is a sign that mediates the presence of the
symbolized. Symbolism was the theological discipline of searching for these symbols in
scripture and creation, and through them encountering the “ontological trace” of the
symbolized. As Peter Struck summarizes Dionysius, contemplation of symbols has “the
anagogic power to lift us up” to the symbolized itself.2 Thus, there is the symbolized, the
symbol and the reading of the symbol that de Lubac calls symbolism. This, I argued in the first
chapter, is an apt analogy for the Trinity. In dialogue with Augustine, Rahner, and de Lubac, I
argued that the Father is “the symbolized,” the hidden source and eternal fount of divinity. The
Son is the eternal symbol, the fullness of the Father’s being expressed in another. The Spirit is
symbolism, the wholly personal agent of love and unity between symbol and symbolized. This
network of relations must be understood together. The symbol is only a symbol in relation to
symbolism, the movement of unity between symbol and symbolized. This was expressed in
the trinitarian paradox of the Spirit. The Spirit proceeds from the Father by the Son, but is also
the gift given by the Father to the Son in generation, and thus is paradoxically “pre-present” or
“retroactively causal” in the generation of the son. Thus, the divine taxis also expresses a
perichoretic unity. Trinitarian theology points toward the triad symbolized-symbol-symbolism.
God’s being and God’s act are one, and so God’s action in time is undertaken according
to a trinitarian pattern. To express this reality I formulated a second triad, God-creation-church.
God is the symbolized, the hidden source and fount of creation. Creation is a symbol, a sign
1
To pick two of many, Hans Boersma, A Return to Mystery: Nouvelle Theologie and Sacramental Ontology
(Oxford: Oxford Universtity Press, 2013); John Milbank, The Suspended Middle: Henri de Lubac and the
Renewed Split in Modern Catholic Theology, 2nd edn, (Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2014). See below for an analysis
of Hans Urs von Balthasar.
2
Peter Struck, Birth of the Symbol: Ancient Readers and the Limits of their Texts (Princeton: Princeton
202
that contains the “ontological trace” of God. The church, understood as the totus Christus, is
the movement of love and unity between creation and God; it is the world reconciled. The rest
of the thesis seeks to explain this pattern. The doctrine of the Trinity thus opens onto a
trinitarian doctrine of creation. The Father speaks creation in the speaking of the Logos:
creation is thus the Logos “unfolded” through time, in the words of Nicholas of Cusa, while
the Logos does not depend on or require this unfolding.3 Moreover, creation is set in motion
back toward the Father by the life of Spirit. This motion is symbolism, a dynamic movement
toward the God who is its source and significance. Thus, creation is enacted according the
trinitarian processions. This makes creation a symbol of God – truly mediating the divine life,
although not necessary to the divine life. I also argued that a poor trinitarian theology leads to
an impoverished account of creation, as was seen with Duns Scotus. For Scotus, I argued,
because the productive powers of the divine essence are prior to the Persons, creation is a
symbol primarily of productive power, not trinitarian persons. As the distinction between
God’s absolute and ordained power was centralized in later centuries, it became less apparent
that divine power was needed to sustain creation, eventually occluding God altogether. I argued
that a “symbolic” Trinity better accounts for the sacral value of creation and the fundamental
importance of its relation to God than does a Trinity founded on essential productive power.
Creation is a symbol, created in, by and for the trinitarian persons.
Creation culminates in humanity, the creature par excellence. To approach this
immense topic, I expounded an isomorphism between human nature and the division of
scripture between Old and New Testament. Just as Christ is only intelligible as Israel’s
messiah, that is, the life and ministry of Christ presupposes and fulfils the promises and
expectations of the Old Testament, so grace presupposes and fulfills without destroying nature.
Nonetheless, just as there is never a moment that the Old Testament is without Christ, who is
mystically present within it, so nature is never without grace. Moreover, just as Christ came in
a way that was entirely unanticipated, so grace only ever comes as a gratuitous gift. The natural
desire for the supernatural, then, mirrors the structure of scripture: humans naturally desire the
triune God, but that desire can only be fulfilled by grace. Between scripture and human nature
there is a symbolic resonance, so that understanding one can open onto an understanding of the
other. Moreover, only this anthropology makes sense of the reading practice of spiritual
exegesis. Only if every literal sense – every nature – opens onto a spiritual sense can spiritual
3
Nicholas of Cusa, De Dato Patris Luminum 4.110, in Jasper Hopkins, Complete Philosophical and
Theological Treatises of Nicholas of Cusa, Vol. 1 (Mineapolis: Arthur J. Banning Press, 2001), 381.
203
exegesis not be merely an arbitrary addition to a literal history to which it does not otherwise
belong. The shape of the human is the shape of scripture: the literal sense is the symbol of the
spiritual hidden within and beyond it; the movement from literal to spiritual (whether of
scripture or nature) can only be enacted by grace.
Such a movement is only possible within a community formed by the Realsymbol.
Following Augustine’s principle that the church is the world reconciled, I argued that the
eucharistic church in communion with its head is symbolism, the dynamic unity of creation the
symbol and God the symbolized. This means the church is pneumatologically constituted. It
also means that the church is not reducible to an ontic space to be defended; the church is the
redemption of time, the movement of creation back toward God, and God toward creation in
Christ. To say that the church is symbolism is to join de Lubac in saying the church is a
sacrament: it effects what it signifies, namely, the union of God with creation. I defended this
view against a Barthian concern that this is Pelagian, and a Heideggerian concern that it is
ontotheological. The latter led to the conclusion that if poetry is language in a state of
emergence, the church is the poetry of creation: creation in emergence before God, God
emerging within creation.
If the church is symbolism, then theology is one particular mode of symbolism.
Specifically, it is the discipline of mystical reason. This argument unfolded in three steps, from
one mystery to mysticism to mystical reason. First, God, as “the symbolized” is an abiding
mystery that can never be possessed by creaturely knowledge. God is wholly anterior to all that
is and coming to know God requires coming to love God. This was seen to guard against the
threat of any ontotheological reduction of God. God, the abiding mystery, then speaks creation
in the speaking of the Word with a view to elevation in Christ. Creation is thus a symbol by
having a twofold mysticism: desirous by nature for the vision of God, but requiring grace for
the fulfillment of that desire. This was seen to guard against a Barthian flattening of nature and
a neo-Thomist reification of pure nature. And this finally renders theology a discipline of
mystical reason. Because creation is spoken by God, it is shot through with “mystical reasons”
to be read in the Spirit. That reading, like the spiritual interpretation of scripture – of which it
is an extension – is intended to form the character of the theologian. To “read” a mystical
symbol is to encounter the symbolized in and through it, so that theological thought
approximates a mode of prayer. Symbolism is thus reasonable and mystical, mystical reason.
Thus, the trinitarian logic of Father-Son-Spirit leads to the triad symbolized-symbol-
symbolism. Because creatures exist by participation in the Trinity, this triad can be correlated
to God-creation-church. Creation is a symbol of God, the church is symbolism, the union of
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God with the world. The breadth of this thesis has been necessary, for the three terms must be
held together if they are to be held at all. Thus, I have attempted a dogmatic outline, however
lightly sketched, of a systematic theology of the symbol. This theology of the symbol is my
own contribution – it does not exist in this form in Augustine, Aquinas, Rahner or even de
Lubac. I have sought to think with and beyond these lights, in the hope that God might be more
clearly known and more dearly loved.
There remain, however, a number of serious questions about this presentation. This
account might strike the Protestant as a studious avoiding of the issue of sin. Where might sin
and evil fit in this account? And where, then does the cross fit? What of resurrection? In what
remains I want to briefly sketch these themes from within a perspective of symbolism. Doing
so will enable an engagement with the work of Hans Urs von Balthasar, arguing both for and
against his project. I do so here, as a conclusion, not to relegate the work of Christ on the cross
to a footnote, but as a culminating reflection on the work of Christ in whom alone every symbol
shines truly.
2. EVIL, THE SYMBOL, AND THE CROSS

2.1 privatio boni
What, then, of evil? What of the cross? Evil is, I will argue, the privation of the symbol and
the fracturing of the possibility of symbolism. But to ascertain what a privation of the symbol
might mean, I must first look at what is good about symbols.
In the Summa, Thomas says,
Everything is therefore called good from the divine goodness, as from the first
exemplary, effective, and final principle of all goodness. Nevertheless, everything is
called good by reason of the similitude of the divine goodness belonging to it, which is
formally its own goodness, whereby it is denominated good. And so of all things there
is one goodness, and yet many goodnesses.4
God is the exemplar, efficient and final cause of goodness. Creatures are good inasmuch as
they are similitudes of this original goodness – inasmuch as they symbolize God. The goodness
of a thing depends upon its quality as a symbol, the extent to which it images the goodness of
God appropriate to it. To take up Rahner’s terminology, to be is to be a symbol; to be a symbol
is to be good.
4
St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 1a.6.4. All quotations from Laurence Shapcote, O.P., trans.,
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Moreover, goodness is appropriated to the Spirit because it indicates the object of love
and desire, it thus implies the work of the Spirit between Father and Son as well as governing
and drawing creation toward God.5 Whereas a creature’s very existence is good inasmuch as it
is a symbol, its movement through time is good because it is symbolism, a symbol in motion
toward the Father. This movement is effected in humans as they ascend through the chain of
symbols to know God through signs and things, now definitively centered on the life of Christ.
Thomas follows Augustine in arguing that evil is the privation of this goodness.6 Evil
is not a thing, a reified opposite to the good, but a pure lack, an unspeakable contradiction. This
is because the divine nature is goodness itself, and to reify evil would either establish a dualism
in which God has an eternal opposite or would fracture the divine unity by establishing both
evil and good in the divine nature. Both options are unacceptable, and so Thomas and
Augustine maintain that evil is nothing but the lack of the good, like darkness to light or cold
to heat. For creatures whose goodness is their symbolic quality, this means that evil is the
degradation of the quality of the symbol. When a symbol does not symbolize as it should, when
it distorts the picture it is meant to re-present, when the symbolized is no longer visible in the
symbol, or is less visible in the symbol, privation has occurred. Evil, then, in its most general
sense, is distortion between symbolized and symbol, between God and creature, and
concomitantly the fracturing of the possibility of symbolism. When such distortion intervenes
between symbol and a symbolism, it becomes difficult if not impossible “read” the symbol. In
evil, the clarity of the symbol is diminished, and the capacity for symbolism, for uniting the
symbol to the symbolized is also damaged.
This points toward the intuitive power of the privatio boni tradition. It has often been
argued that privatio boni grossly undervalues the phenomenon of sin, whose effects are
experienced as all-too-real.7 Is it not a terrible moral failure to deny the reality of anyone’s
suffering? On a logic of symbols, however, privatio boni does far better justice to the
experience of evil: it does not explain sin, for sin is the deprivation of explicability itself. The
symbol has been robbed of its intrinsic symbolic value and meaning. Evil is this degradation
5
ST 1a.39.8.
6
ST 1a.48.1; Augustine, De civitate Dei 11.9. For an account of Thomas’s view, see Rudi A. te Velde, “Evil,
Sin, and Death: Thomas Aquinas on Original Sin” in Rik van Nieuwenhove and Joseph Wawrykow, eds., The
Theology of Thomas Aquinas (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), 143-166. For Augustine,
see G.R. Evans, Augustine on Evil (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). The literature on evil is
immense. See Kenneth Surin, Theology and the Problem of Evil (Oxford: Basil Blacwell, 1986). I will, do little
more than state my position here. I will, moreover, assume a tight connection between sin and evil, even though
they are not to be conflated.
7
Todd Calder, ‘Is the Privation Theory of Evil Dead?’ American Philosophical Quarterly 44, no. 4 (2007): 371-
381. Calder views the privatio boni tradition as phenomenologically disproved.
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of symbolic meaning, and because we are made for knowledge and love, the absurdity of evil
can only be felt as pain and loss. The absence of God is felt most acutely in sin, evil, and its
resultant suffering, precisely because it is the “nature” of sin and evil to obscure the presence
of God by distorting the symbol-symbolized relation. This is why sin and evil are experienced
as a darkness, an oblique confusion, a loss. Every attempt, then, to make sin or evil intelligible
as some meaningful or potentially meaningful substance in the created order is ultimately a
metaphysical and theological disaster. In the final analysis it colludes in the distortion of God,
looking through the prism of the ugly to obtain an account of God’s beauty.8 Sin and evil are,
rather, the inability to see God in creation, the frustration of the human desire to know goodness
and beauty itself. It is the experience of the loss of the availability of God in the mediating
symbols of the world.
This is why the criticism of privatio boni as minimizing the very real effects of evil
misses the mark. Privatio boni ensures that the effects of sin and evil are seen for the ugliness
and barrenness they are; it is a refusal to decorate the darkness with unwarranted speculation
about goods attained elsewhere.9 It is the only logic that makes sin and evil truly lamentable,
for it affords a lamentation not short-circuited by some calculus of greater goods. It recognizes
that where sin and evil have their way, God cannot be found, for sin and evil are the erosion of
the “findability” of God. This is not because God is now absent or inattentive, but that the
symbol has become deformed. Sin and evil are the privation of the symbol, the distortion of
representation of the symbolized, and the ensuing impossibility of symbolism. It is the drying
up of reason and the death of mysticism.
2.2 Death
This is why death is the last and greatest enemy, for it is, for the human, the most immanent
sundering of symbol and symbolized. Karl Rahner argues that the body is the symbol of the
soul. The body-soul union is essential to human nature, for the soul comes into being by
expression in its bodily symbol. Death, then, is the utter separation of symbol from symbolized.
It makes symbolism impossible, both for the dead and for the living. For the dead, the union
of their bodily symbol with their soul is no longer attainable, and so the symbolism of body
8
See Rowan Williams, “Insubstantial Evil” in On Augustine (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 79-106 for a
navigation of these themes in relation to Augustine.
9
On the importance of refusing a rationalization of evil, see Karen Kilby, “Evil and the Limits of Theology”,
New Blackfriars 84, no. 983 (January, 2003), 13-29; on the relation of this to suffering, see Kilby’s “Julian of
Norwich, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and the Status of Suffering in Christian Theology”, New Blackfriars 99, no.
1081 (May, 2018), 298-311.
207
and soul is lost. For the living, symbolism is likewise lost, for the symbol of the deceased is no
longer available. Their living, symbolic presence no longer presents itself to be known and
loved.
This loss, this apparently final privation of symbol from symbolized, is the
paradigmatic instance of privatio boni. If sin is the failure to symbolize God, death is the failure
to symbolize self, and the latter is but the immanent expression of the former. Death is “the
wages of sin” because it is the perverse consummation of the “logic” of privation. It is thus a
loss, a darkness, wholly and entirely lamentable. But Paul will indeed speak of longing to
depart and be with the Lord, and so there is happiness in death.10 But the happiness of death,
for Paul, is funded by the bodily resurrection of Christ. And so to understand how death might
be the last and greatest enemy and yet contain joy for the Christian, we need to turn to the
death, repose and resurrection and Christ.
2.3 Mysterium Paschale: For and Against Balthasar

Hans Urs von Balthasar’s articulates a powerful and probing theology of the death of Christ.
For Balthasar, the death and resurrection of Christ is the temporal dramatization of the eternal
relation of Father, Son and Spirit. The cross shows not only the depth of the darkness of human
sin, but also the depths of difference between the persons of the godhead.11 Balthasar’s Trinity
is marked by a complete internal kenosis in which each person pours itself out into the others.12
This self-emptying is a true emptying – it represents an eternal “loss” of self, an eternal self-
destitution: “we shall never know how to express the abyss-like depths of the Father’s self-
giving, that Father who, in an eternal ‘super-Kenosis,’ makes himself ‘destitute’ of all that he
is and can be so as to bring forth a consubstantial divinity, the Son.”13 It is thus that between
Father and Son there is an infinite distance, an “abyss” which is only spanned by the return gift
of self in the Holy Spirit. It is this difference between Father and Son that founds the possibility
of creation – only an eternal difference between divine persons can fund a temporal difference
between God and creation.14 Moreover, this eternal abyssal distance grounds the possibility of
10
Philippians 1:23; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18.
11
Cf. Rowan Williams, “Balthasar and the Trinity” in The Cambridge Companion to Hans Urs von Balthasar
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 40: “a conception of [intra]divine difference has opened up so
radically that it effects everything that can be said of God’s relation to what is not God.”
12
Hans Urs von Balthasar, Mysterium Paschale (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1990), 35, and elsewhere. Hereafter,
MP. Due to Coronavirus restrictions, I was not able to obtain a physical copy of this book, and have relied on
the Kindle edition. I have cited the chapter number and Kindle location to aid referencing.
13
MP, preface, Loc. 66. Williams, “Balthasar”, 38.
14
For a fruitful deployment of this theme, free from the negative tendencies of Balthasar’s treatment, see Simon
Oliver, “Analogy, Creation and Descent in Cusa and Aquinas” in Isabelle Moulin, ed., Participation et Vision
208
sin.15 The reason for the latter is that generation and spiration are the gift of another in absolute
and unlimited freedom. In Rowan Williams’ summary: “the Father does not determine the Son,
but rather gives the Son infinite space to be who he is.”16 This gift of absolute freedom to the
other then sustains an account of creation in which creatures are granted a share of this absolute
freedom. And this includes the freedom to refuse to return the gift of love.
Of course, creatures do refuse the gift, and are plunged into the abyss, as it were,
between the divine persons. If they are to be rescued, God will have to come to them. Hence,
the incarnation. In the Incarnation, Christ receives the divine gift perfectly and constantly as a
human and returns the gift completely. Because the gift is given kenotically, it must be returned
kenotically. Thus Christ empties himself entirely on the cross, descending to the deepest depths
of darkness possible. Holy Saturday, then, is not a victorious descent in which Christ kicks
down the doors of Hell, but is victorious inasmuch as Christ abides in total and absolute
abandonment in what is not God. In freely giving himself to this depth, Christ accomplishes
the return gift required for the kenotic circle to be completed. The Father receives Christ’s
offering, and in turn offers himself again in fellowship and communion. Thus, the infinite
distance has once again been spanned: God has descended to the depths of darkness and
distance and joined it all to godself in Christ.
This account is powerful and provocative and captures a great number of scriptural and
patristic themes. Space does not permit a full survey of all that Balthasar’s theodramatic
account of the mystery of the Passion successfully accomplishes. I will highlight just a few. It
is profoundly Anselmic, properly understanding that atonement is an intra-trinitarian affair, not
as a meek Son appeasing an angry Father, but as a temporal expression of the gift of love
eternally offered from God to God. Moreover, Balthasar has rightly drawn attention to the
difference a doctrine of the Trinity makes for a doctrine of creation: only an eternal difference
between persons can sustain a temporal difference between God and creation.17 He has,
moreover, sought to do all of this a way that takes seriously the “drama” of revelation as
unfolded in scripture. And perhaps most impressively, he has integrated an enormous amount
of theological themes to trinitarian theology, as I have also sought to do throughout this thesis.
de Dieu Chez Nicolas de Cues (Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 2017), 125-141. Oliver clarifies that
Kenosis as self-giving is not a giving-away. This is on the basis of a strong and salutary theology of super-
abundance coming from Cusa’s Neoplatonism.
15
Theodrama 4, 323: the generation of the Son “is the positing of an absolute, infinite difference, within which
all possible other differences, as they emerge within the finite world, including even sin, are encircled and
embraced.”
16
Williams, “Balthasar”, 41.
17
I have sought to elucidate a similar point in chapter 2.
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Yet I want to indicate several ways that symbolism accomplishes what Balthasar wishes
to, without some of the weaknesses of his account. A number of significant problems have
been pointed out by commentators. Balthasar has a tendency to assume an enormous amount
of knowledge about the inner divine life: there is a concern that Balthasar’s theodrama reads
too deeply into the luminous darkness, assuming a very clear picture of the interpersonal
dynamics of the divine.18 This in turn funds an “epic” resolution to dramatic tension; that is,
Balthasar often assumes a God’s-eye-view of things, flattening the complex and ambiguous
particularities of history in favor of an exhaustive schema.19 This “epic” resolution and
exhaustive schematization is perhaps manifested in his controversial approach to gender and
sex.20 There is, additionally, the question of whether or not Balthasar has slipped into tritheism,
with three divine “selves” freely self-emptying into one another.21 Rather than address each of
these individually, I want to focus on one particular line of critique that I believe to be at or
near the core of them all, namely, the role that emptiness plays in Balthasar’s Trinity, for it is
here that my account differs most markedly from his.
For Balthasar, inner trinitarian life is marked by an absolute kenosis between the
persons: the Father completely empties himself into the Son. While Balthasar will dialectically
maintain that the Father “does not lose himself…he does not extinguish himself by self-
giving,” this is set against the statement that the Father’s ur-kenosis is a “destitution,” an
“absolute” self-emptying.22 There is a sense here of risk, of vulnerability in the begetting of the
Son.23 The reason for the latter is that the Father begets the Son in absolute freedom, bestowing
on the Son something like an infinite indeterminacy: “the Father does not determine the Son,”
rather, the Son is given “infinite space to be who he is.”24 The utter self-emptying of the Father
“risks” that the Son, in infinite freedom, will not return the gift, leaving nothing but the empty
abyss of kenotic love poured into a broken cistern. While this “risk” is never realized in the
divine life, it is precisely this risk that funds the possibility of sin. When creatures do indeed
refuse the gift, they are plunged into the void, and Christ must descend into that abyss (the
abyss wholly within God) to complete the kenotic circle. Williams is frank about what this
18
Cf. Karen Kilby, Hans Urs von Balthasar: A (Very) Critical Introduction (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012),
ch. 5.
19
Ben Quash, Theology and the Drama of History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), ch. 3.
20
For an overview of Balthasar’s thought on the sexes, see Corinne Crammer, “One Sex or Two? Balthasar’s
Theology of the Sexes” in Companion, ch. 8. For a more critical appraisal, see Kilby, Critical, ch. 6.
21
See for instance, the critique in Kevin Duffy, “Change, Suffering and Surprise in God: Von Balthasar’s Use
of Metaphor”, Irish Theological Quarterly 76, no. 4 (2011), 378.
22
Theo-Drama IV, 325; MP, Preface.
23
Cf. Karen Kilby, “Hans Urs von Balthasar on the Trinity” in Companion, 211.
24
210
entails: “there is a kind of ‘nothingness’ within the divine life, Balthasar suggests, a
groundlessness of freedom in the generation of such total otherness.”25 This “nothingness,”
this “abyss” is, on Balthasar’s terms, the distance that distinguishes the persons, the
nothingness that allows the Father to be the Father to the Son. It is difficult to avoid the
conclusion that this entirely unconditioned freedom, this “nothingness” at the very least risks
a kind of “trinitarian nihilism” in which the persons are dependent on an infinitely expansive
nihil in order to be freely personal. Trinitarian difference, and so trinitarian life, requires
something like nothingness. To put is as simply as possible, if the abyss is in God, the abyss is
God.
This intra-divine nihil then risks a logic of scarcity, a quasi-agonistic view of the
persons in which “selfhood” is received at the price of another. The whole process could in
fact be narrated as an exchange: the Son’s life is purchased at the price of the Father’s, received
only as the destitution of the other. This is in fact what Holy Saturday reveals. Christ so fully
destitutes himself as to descend to the very depths of the abyss, gazing not on the beatific
vision, but a vision of “sheer sin as such…contemplated in its bare reality as such (for sin is a
reality).”26 Here, in contemplating sin itself – treated as something like a substantial res – Christ
accomplishes his own utter self-destitution, restoring kenotic return precisely in the darkest
emptiness possible.27 Christ’s damned vision is therefore the vision of his own victory, for
obediential loss just is eternal communion. While certainly overstated, John Milbank is not
entirely wrong in accusing Balthasar of “an abandonment of the metaphysics of cosmic
harmony in favor of a gnostic hypostasization of the violence of the cross.”28 I would add that
this is because the violence of the cross does not annihilate the abyss, but enfolds it in deity
itself, revealing it to have been always latent in the infinite distance between the persons
eternally. This much, at the very least, is risked by Balthasar’s kenotic Trinity.
Symbolism, however, does not conceive of difference in these terms, and in fact points
to ways that Balthasar’s own speculation renders the intra-divine abyss superfluous. From
paternal plentitude flows the Son, a perfect and replete symbol whose union-in-distinction with
the Father has nothing to do with an infinite indeterminacy, distance or abyss, but is a
distinguished unity wholly hypostasized in the person of the Holy Spirit. The difference in the
25
26
Balthasar, MP, ch. 4, loc. 2589.
27
It is tempting to put down much of the distortion of Balthasar’s account to a partial reifying of sin as a
substance. Because sin is some kind of thing, it requires an eternal ground. For a discussion of Balthasar on sin,
and the ways he partially reifies sin, before subsuming it into the divine drama, see Les Oglesby, C.G. Jung and
Hans Urs von Balthasar: God and Evil, a Critical Comparison (New York: Routledge, 2014), 123-124.
28
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godhead is not a gap, but a person. Balthasar indeed accounts for the union-in-distinction of
Father and Son by the Spirit, while also urging the Spirit as a second difference, an
interpretation of the Word of the Father in ever increasing glory. Indeed, the Spirit is seen to
be the divine freedom itself in hypostatic form.29 But if this is the case, one wonders why
Balthasar has need of “infinite distance,” “abyss” and “nothingness” at all. There is in fact a
strange isomorphism between the role of the Spirit and role of the abyss in Balthasar’s Trinity.
If the Spirit is both the love between Father and Son and the ecstatic outpouring of love
“beyond,” what is the relation of this same Spirit to the abyss between the Father and Son, and
the nothingness that grounds the divine freedom spiraling outward and “beyond”? Is the Spirit
in a dialectical relationship with this nihil? Surely not. Is the nihil another name for the Spirit?
Again, surely not. It would seem, then, that if the Holy Spirit is the fully personal agent of unity
and love and the hypostatic person of divine freedom itself, there is no need to posit any
darkness or abyss whatsoever in the divine. And once the nihil is banished in favor of what we
might term the necessary surplus of the Spirit, then the specter of an eternal scarcity is finally
put to rest as well. If we have the Spirit – and Balthasar surely does – we need nothing, not
even “nothing.”
Holy Saturday, then, will take on a different texture in a theology of the symbol.
Balthasar is absolutely correct that the difference between Father and Son grounds the
difference between God and creation. On my terms, because the Father is symbolized in the
Son, God may be symbolized in creation. But it is not the distance between Father and Son that
grounds creation, it is their likeness which is at once a difference which is not a distance. This
likeness between God and creation, however, is ruptured by sin: distortion enters the
symbolized-symbol relation, and this in turn hinders symbolism: humanity can no longer
“read” the symbols rightly. In becoming human, Christ the eternal symbol takes on the
conditions of the temporal symbol. But whereas in Adam, the rupture between the human
symbol and God is echoed in the rupture between the human body and soul, Christ had no
rupture with God. Christ, as a human, lived as a replete human symbol, fully “transparent” to
the symbolized, even as the symbolized remained hidden within him. Thus, every moment
lived by the incarnate Logos is redeemed: birth now symbolizes God again because the eternal
symbol has been born. Adolescence now symbolizes God because the eternal symbol grew in
wisdom and stature, etc.
29
John R. Sachs, “Deus Semper Major – Ad Dei Gloriam: The Pneumatology and Spirituality of Hans Urs von
Balthasar”, Gregorianum 74, no. 4 (1993), 639.
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However, death itself does not symbolize God, because death is not a thing. Death is
the privation of the symbol and the impossibility of symbolism, and as such has no antecedent
condition in the God who is pure actuality. Christ’s descent to the dead is therefore a descent
into utter meaninglessness, where symbols no longer symbolize, and where symbolism is
impossible. This is true of Christ, whose soul once separated from its body cannot symbolize
itself; it is true of Christ’s community who cannot encounter his soul in and through his
physical body. Thus, Christ descended to the depths of human sin, disfigured beyond
recognition, a soul without its symbol into the darkness of the grave. Unable to symbolize God
in a holistic way, unable to symbolize himself, unable to be embraced and “read” by the
symbolism of his community. Christ does not descend to kick over the all the tables of Hell;
he descends to be forsaken. In the silence of Holy Saturday, the eternal Word experienced in
the humanity of Jesus the deepest rending of symbolized from symbol possible for the human;
the lowest possible point, the dissolution of the symbol.
And yet because this depth is experienced by the eternal symbol, the dissolution is a
triumph. The dissolution itself is not enfolded in God, for dissolution is not a thing to be
enfolded. Rather, in descending, the eternal word gathers to himself all fragmented symbols,
the scattered pieces of humanity, hardly even vestiges of themselves, and in his own person
restores their symbolic value. Where it seemed symbols could no longer symbolize God in
death, now that the eternal Word died a human death even dead symbols can symbolize God.
This is not because the eternal Word is cut off from the Father. Rather, because the eternal
Word remains the Word of the Father, in perfect union with the Father in the Spirit, human
symbols in death are joined to this unity: even a dead symbol can now symbolize God because
God has undergone creaturely dissolution. What unites Christ in the grave with the Father in
heaven continues to be the Holy Spirit, whose wholly personal love sustains the union-in-
difference between Father and Son. The Spirit is expansive enough to encompass both Christ
in the grave and Father in heaven, for “love is as strong as death, passion fierce as the grave.”30
And because the Spirit maintains the union of Father and Son even in human death, all humans
in death can once again symbolize God, for God has joined them in their death.
Easter Sunday, then, constitutes two restitutions. In rising, Christ brings those
fragmented symbols with him, now united in the reunion of his own body and soul. His
resurrection becomes the hope of theirs, and their fragmented persons are held vouchsafe in
his united person: they are held in security until the resurrection. Even in death symbols are
30
Song of Solomon 8:6, NRSV.
213
united to Christ, and thus symbolize God even in their dissolute state, awaiting the fullness of
restitution of body with soul in the resurrection. This is why Paul can expect to depart the body
and be with the Lord and expect the resurrection of the dead as the fullness of God’s purposes
for the earth. Paul is confident that he will meet Christ in death, for Christ has raised the souls
of the dead with himself, and because Paul’s confidence is founded on Christ’s resurrection,
he looks forward as well to his own resurrection.
If the first restitution of the resurrection is the human ability to symbolize God, even in
death, the second is the restitution of symbolism. This, in turn, has two dimensions. First,
human symbols are indeed united to God in death. The same Spirit that united Father to Son in
Christ’s death and that raised Christ from the dead now dwells in us, and in our own deaths
unites us to God.31 Symbolism, as the unity of symbolized and symbol, is thus restored between
the dead and God by the Spirit. The second dimension is horizontal. Recall that death, as a
communal reality, ends the community’s ability to “read” the symbol of their loved one and so
come to know God in and through them. The resurrection of Christ restores this ability, albeit
in an attenuated way. For because the dead are alive in Christ, we remain with them in one
body – the church, the totus Christus. That unity is established and sustained at the eucharist,
whose work of unity spans time and space. Symbolism now entails prayers offered on behalf
of one another, as well as ongoing reflection on the lives all the dead in Christ, and especially
of the saints, whose lives are not just memories of events long-since gone but living witnesses
to God’s goodness.32
I have argued that symbolized-symbol-symbolism corresponds to God-creation-church,
and it is the death and resurrection of Christ that establishes and sustains this correspondence.
Creation can symbolize God in spite of the distortion of sin because the eternal symbol was
made incarnate and descended to the depths of dissolution. In his rising, he joins in his body –
the church – the living and the dead, restoring the unity of love between symbol and
symbolized, and between the community of symbols. This unity, secured by Christ, is effected
by the Spirit who is the personal love stronger than the grave. If death is the privation of the
symbol and the impossibility of symbolism, the reunion of symbolized and symbol in a living
union is the essence of salvation. Salvation is the reunion of humanity with the God it has
consistently failed to symbolize, and this reunion is coextensive with the reunion of body and
soul, and the embodied soul with community. And because symbolism corresponds to the
31
Romans 8:11.
32
Much more could be said about the nature of judgment, the possibilities of various post-mortem states, but
space simply does not permit an examination of those important questions.
214
church, salvation is found in the union of Christ’s body, the totus Christus.33 There is no
salvation outside the church because the church just is this living unity.34
This union is the eternal work of the Spirit: Christ is raised in the Spirit, and the
community now sees Christ in the Spirit. While we await the eschatological fullness of unity,
we are joined to Christ’s own body, the church, in the eucharist by the Spirit. As we groan in
estrangements of every conceivable kind – our malfunctioning bodies, our disordered
communities, our sins and the sins of our societies – the Spirit groans in us in a language too
deep even for words, that is, in the eternal desire of Father for Son and Son for Father, now
distended through time as the pilgrim church. That desire will only be fulfilled when every
symbol shines purely with the radiant intelligibility of the symbolized, and God is all in all.
Truly, the Spirit and the Bride say “come”.
33
It is in this way that we should understand the phrase “no salvation outside the church.”
34
Of course, as Augustine makes clear, this means the boundaries of the institutional church are not coextensive
with the Kingdom of God.
215
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Symbolism A Systematic Theology of The Symbol

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Durham E-Theses

Symbolism: A Systematic Theology of the Symbol

Thesis submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Joshua Kendall Mobley

Chapter One: Signs, Symbols, and the Trinity 23

Chapter Two: Creation 57

Chapter Three: Anthropology 97

Chapter Five: Toward Mystical Reason 165

2. AUGUSTINE, SIGNS AND THE TRINITY

2.1 From Him…

2.2 Through Him…

3. KARL RAHNER’S SYMBOLIZED AND SYMBOL37

3.1 The Theology of the Symbol

3.2 Christological Trajectories

3.3 The Hiddenness of the Symbolized

3.4 Roads Untaken

3.5 The Vanishing Ghost

4. DE LUBAC’S SACRAMENTAL PNEUMATOLOGY

4.4 Roads Untaken

4.5 The Slant of Light

4.6 Denigrating the Spirit?

3.2 Trinity, Simplicity and Creation

3.3 From Intellect and Will to Creation

4.1 POWERS AND PERSONS

4.2 Powers and Creation

4.3 Univocity and Symbolism

2. NATURE AND GRACE

3. ANTHROPOLOGY AND FOURFOLD EXEGESIS

4. MARY THE EXEGETE

2. SYMBOLISM AND ECCLESIOLOGY

2.1 Christ – Church

2.4 God, Creation and the One Body

3.1 John Webster on Divine Perfection

3.2 Sacraments, Causes and Symbolism

2. FROM MYSTERIES TO MYSTERY

2.1 On the One Mystery

2.2 Mystery and the Symbolized

3. FROM MYSTERY TO MYSTICISM

3.1 Mysticism and the Natural Desire for the Supernatural

3.2 Between Barth and Garrigou-Lagrange

3.3 The Symbol and Symbolism

4. FROM MYSTICISM TO MYSTICAL REASON

2. EVIL, THE SYMBOL, AND THE CROSS

2.3 Mysterium Paschale: For and Against Balthasar

Barth, Karl. Church Dogmatics I/1. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1956.

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Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith. Available at http://inters.org/Vatican-Council-I-Dei-Filius.

Dogmatic Constitution on the Church: Lumen Gentium. Available at

Doyle, Dennis M. Communion Ecclesiology. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2000.

Fields, Stephen. Being as Symbol. Washington: Georgetown University Press, 2007.

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Louth, Andrew. Discerning the Mystery. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983.