God's Grace and Human Action

Joseph P. Wawrykow

Description

Offering a fresh approach to one significant aspect of the soteriology of Thomas Aquinas, God's Grace and Human Action brings new scholarship and insights to the issue of merit in Aquinas's theology. Through a careful historical analysis, Joseph P. Wawrykow delineates the precise function of merit in Aquinas's account of salvation. Wawrykow accounts for the changes in Thomas's teaching on merit from the early Scriptum on the Sentences of Peter Lombard to the later Summa theologiae in two ways. First, he demonstrates how the teaching of the Summa theologiae discloses the impact of Thomas's profound encounter with the later writings of Augustine on predestination and grace. Second, Wawrykow notes the implications of Thomas's mature theological judgment that merit is best understood in the context of the plan of divine wisdom. The portrayal of merit in sapiential terms in the Summa permits Thomas to insist that the attainment of salvation through merit testifies not only to the dignity of the human person but even more to the goodness of God.

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Philosophie de la religion
• Philosophie médiévale, scolastique
• Surveys
• Medieval
• Religious
• PHILOSOPHY
• Philosophie et théologie
• Edad Media
• Protestant Reformation
• Theology
• Middle Ages
• Réformation
• History
• Somme théologique

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 08 janvier 1996
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780268096830
• Langue: English

Extrait

God’s Grace and Human Action
‘Merit’ in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas
Joseph P. Wawrykow
U NIVERSITY OF N OTRE D AME P RESS
Notre Dame London
1995
Copyright © 1995
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, IN 46556
E-ISBN 978-0-268-09683-0
This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at [e-mail] Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wawrykow, Joseph Peter. God’s grace and human action: ‘merit’ in the theology of Thomas Aquinas / by Joseph Peter Wawrykow. p. cm. Includes bibliographic references. ISBN 0–268–01031–5 (hard: alk. paper) 1. Merit (Christianity) 2. Grace (Theology) 3. Thomas, Aquinas, Saint. 1225?-1274—Contributions in theology. I. Title. BT773.W38 1995 234—dc20     95–18777 CIP ∞The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—permanence of Paper for Printed Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1984 -->
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1. The Literature on Merit and Related Concepts
Section I. The Literature on Merit
Section II. The Literature on Related Concepts
A. Grace and Merit
B. Hope and Merit
Chapter 2. The Early Teaching on Merit
Section I. The Scriptum Super Libros Sententiarum
A. In II d. XXVII q. I, aa. 3–6
B. In III d. XVIII
C. Hope and Merit
Section II. De Veritate
Chapter 3. The Mature Teaching on Merit
Section I. The Background to the Discussion of Merit
A. God’s Creative and Redemptive Plan
B. Grace
Section II. Merit in the Summa : I-II 114 (and related texts)
Section III. The Merit of Angels, and, of Christ
Section IV. Hope (and Merit)
A. Summa Theologiae
B. Other Writings of the Mature Period
Chapter 4. Concluding Observations: Thomas and His Authorities
Section I. Aquinas and Augustine
Section II. Thomas and Scripture (especially Paul)
Selected Bibliography
Preface
I N THE FOLLOWING PAGES , I have examined ‘merit’ in the theological writings of Thomas Aquinas. Medieval discussions of merit are important for at least two reasons. Taken in itself, the treatment of merit can provide an important barometer of central theological and anthropological convictions—about medieval notions of the dignity and possibilities of human existence, about the seriousness with which different authors consider the fact of sin and its lingering effects even in the life of the justified, and about the ways in which God can come to figure in human existence through grace. But the medieval discussions have taken on added significance because of their use in the Reformation and since. Luther’s insistence on “justification by faith alone” was at the same time an attack on Catholic claims about the religious value of morally good acts; the sixteenth-century Catholic rejection of Luther also entailed the re-affirmation of the notion of merit, with its official proclamation at the Council of Trent.
It is thus not surprising that modern scholars, both Protestant and Catholic, have shown a certain fascination with merit. Some of the medieval analyses of merit, so significant in the working out of the divisions between the churches during the Reformation, have as a result been studied in considerable detail and indeed adequately. One might cite here the researches of Werner Dettloff into the teachings on merit of Scotus and Ockham and their followers, work that has found its echo in other scholars such as Bernd Hamm. 1 But while the topic of merit not been wholly neglected, it is the underlying conviction of this book that the teachings of Thomas Aquinas about merit have only imperfectly been understood. Indeed, that Thomas had more than one teaching on merit, corresponding to different stages of his theological development, has itself not been sufficiently appreciated. The imperfect state of research on Thomas’s approaches to merit has thus had a twofold effect. The main lines of Thomas’s soteriology, including his sense of the precise roles played in human salvation by God and the human person, remain only partially sketched. And lacking a precise depiction of what Thomas himself taught or an explanation of the version of merit that had evolved by the time of the Summa Theologiae , evaluations of the reception of Thomas—in the later middle ages, during the Reformation, indeed, even in the present—remain stuck at a somewhat elementary stage.
The present close study of Aquinas on merit accordingly has a twofold audience in mind. The book is directly addressed to those who seek to understand more adequately an important part of Thomas’s theology, viewed in its own terms. The primary goal of the book is to delineate the precise function performed by merit in Aquinas’s account of salvation and, concomitantly, to chart the development in his understanding of merit evident in the course of his theological career. This study has been motivated by my concern to evaluate Thomas’s success in combining his assertion (in this teaching on merit) of the religious value of human action done in obedience to God’s will with his unequivocal affirmation (at least by the time of the Summa Theologiae ) that human salvation at every stage (predestination, initial justification, perseverance on the path to God, beatitude) is dependent on the free and gracious involvement of God in the life of the individual.
It is hoped that a second set of readers will also find this book of interest, those concerned primarily with the Reformation and the later reception of high medieval teachings. By necessity, however, my book must stay for these readers at the level of an invitation to further study, merely suggestive of the value of a better-informed examination of the ways in which later theologians encountered the thought of Thomas Aquinas on merit. Comparative comments are kept to a minimum in this book; apart from some suggestions about the differences between Thomistic ordinatio and Scotist acceptatio , I have not brought Thomas into dialogue with other medieval authors. Nor do I attempt here to demonstrate that later medieval and Reformation responses to Thomas, even those of his self-described adherents, may fall short of the mature teaching in significant ways. Before establishing his teachings, that argument would undoubtedly have been premature. Rather, mindful of the need for a thorough study of Thomas himself, I have been forced to be content with the careful, at times painstaking, re-evaluation of what Thomas wrote on merit. The invitation to scholars of the later middle ages and of the Reformation to reconsider the fate of the mature teaching comes, then, precisely in the delineation of this rather distinctive account of merit. My suspicion, one that needs testing by others, is that Thomas’s later readers, both Catholic and Protestant, were in fact blind to much that was crucial in the mature teaching. Armed with this analysis of Aquinas on merit, modern scholars of the Reformation will perhaps be inspired to investigate anew the quality of later readings of Thomas on merit and grace. 2
In preparing this study it did not suffice to examine only the ex professo treatments or major passages on merit in Thomas’s corpus. Rather, I have read through Thomas’s theological writings virtually in their entirety, impelled by the conviction that one can fully understand Thomas on merit at different stages of his career only when familiar with the development in his positions on such related doctrines as providence and predestination, grace, and hope. As will become evident over the course of the book, the genesis apparent in Thomas’s teaching about merit to a large degree mirrors that in these related doctrines. Tempting as it is, with the advent of the Index Thomisticus , to allow the computer to do one’s research, what might be gained in “statistical accuracy” through exclusive reliance on the Index would, in the end, be more than offset by a loss of a feel for the texture and flow of Thomas’s theological argument. Sensitivity to Thomas’s concerns and to the spirit of his theology of merit can be achieved only by studying in their entirety the works in which Thomas discusses merit. Attention to the changing nuances in his analysis of the crucial related concepts which serve as the background to merit and to the inter-relationships between these concepts and merit makes it possible to know what Thomas means by merit and determine why he has proposed the teaching which he has. Hence, I turned to the Index only at the end of my study of the writings themselves to insure that no pertinent texts had been overlooked and, moreover, to see whether Thomas had also discussed merit in any unexpected places (he does not).
The book is divided into four chapters. The first, through its extensive and sometimes detailed orientation to the literature, indicates the assured results of earlier research into merit (and related concepts), the questions that remain open, and the main lines of argument that will be pursued in the subsequent chapters. The first chapter also provides the opportunity to acknowledge my debt to such scholars as Lynn and Pesch (on merit), Bouillard and Lonergan (on grace), and Pfürtner (on hope). The second and third chapters offer close readings of the discussions of merit in the various works of the Thomistic corpus, considered in rough chronological order; hence, in Chapter 2, I discuss Thomas’s teaching about merit in the Scriptum Super Libros Sententiarum , and, in the De Veritate , and, in Chapter 3, his analysis in the Summa Theologiae . 3 The structure of these chapters differs slightly. By the time of the discussion of merit in the Summa Theologiae , Thomas has developed an account of merit that is thoroughly integrated into his basic understanding of God-human relations and of human sa