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"it was in those nights of prayer that he learned what he would write or dictate in the day-time. . . . It was as though the prayer of his mind never ceased, and in fact no external business could ever distract it from the thoughts in which he delighted and the revelations for which he prayed. He never set himself to study or argue a point, or lecture or write or dictate without first having recourse inwardly—but with tears—to prayer for the understanding and the words required by the subject. When perplexed by a difficulty he would kneel and pray and then, on returning to his writing or dictation, . . . was accustomed to find that his thought had become so clear that it seemed to show him inwardly, as in a book, the words he needed. All this is confirmed by his own statement to brother Reginald that prayer and the help of God had been of greater service to him in the search for truth than his natural intelligence and habit of study."
Bernard Gui, Vita S. Thomae Aquinatis 15 (=Fontes Vitae S. Thomae Aquinatis, ed. D. Prümmer, vol. 3, pp. 161-263), trans. Kenelm Foster, O.P. (The life of Saint Thomas Aquinas: biographical documents, trans. and ed. Kenelm Foster, O.P. (London: Longmans, Green and Co; Baltimore: Helicon Press, 1959), 37). This theme is continued in secs. 16 (mission of Sts. Peter and Paul) and 24 (Jesus himself), as elsewhere. Cf. chap. 30 of William of Tocco's Ystoria sancti Thome de Aquino:
like Solomon [he] asked for nothing from God but wisdom. Hence it may easily be believed, nay the fact is manifest, that it was through the merits of his prayer and piety that he received what he taught and wrote and dictated. This we have, too, from the mouth of brother Reginald, his socius, who was in his master's confidence and saw things that he did not reveal while the latter was still living. But after the death of his master, when Reginald returned to Naples from Fossanova, and resumed his lecturing (for he was a lector) he spoke thus, with many tears: 'My brothers, while my master lived he would not let me reveal the wonderful things I knew about him, among which was this, that his amazing knowledge was not an effect of human intelligence but of prayer. For always, before he studied or disputed or lectured or wrote or dictated, he would pray from the heart, begging with tears to be shown the truth about the divine things that he had to investigate. . . . And when any difficulty arose he . . . had recourse to prayer, whereupon the matter would become wonderfully clear to him. Thus, in his soul, intellect and desire somehow contained each other, the two faculties freely serving one another in such a way that each in turn took the lead: his desire, through prayer, gained access to divine realities, which then the intellect, deeply apprehending, drew into a light which kindled to greater intensity the flame of love'
(70n44). Cf. Ystoria sancti Thome de Aquino de Guillaume de Tocco (1323) (=Fontes Vitae S. Thomae Aquinatis, ed. D. Prümmer, vol. 2, pp. 59-160), ed. Claire le Brun-Gouanvic, Studies and texts 127 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1996), 157-158, and in a French translation, L'histoire de saint Thomas d'Aquin, trans. Claire le Brun-Gouanvic, Sagesses chrétiennes (Paris: Cerf, 2005), 80-81. In German: Das Leben des heiligen Thomas von Aquino erzählt von Wilhelm von Tocco und andere Zeugnisse zu seinem Leben, trans. Willehad Paul Eckert, Heilige der ungeteilten Christenheit dargstellt von den Zeugen ihres Lebens, ed. Walter Nigg and Wilhelm Schamoni (Düsseldorf: Patmos-Verlag, 1965), 125-126.
Yet there was, of course, a vast ocean of insight yet to come, there being limits to what "'can be answered, in human language, by man still living in this mortal life'":
'Reginald, my son, I will tell you a secret which you must not repeat to anyone while I remain alive. All my writing is now at an end; for such things have been revealed to me that all I have taught and written seems quite trivial to me now. The only thing I want now is that as God has put an end to my writing, He may quickly end my life also'
(Bernard Gui, Vita 27, trans. Foster (p. 46)). Cf. chap. 47 of the Life by Tocco, chap. 24 of the Life by Calo, and most famously chap. 79 of the first inquiry into canonization (or Bartholomew of Capua), which appears on pp. 109-110 of this translation by Foster ("'all that I have written seems to me so much straw'"; "'All that I have written seems to me like straw compared with what has now been revealed to me'"). And
'You have written well, Thomas, of the sacrament of my Body; you have answered the question put to you as well as it can be answered, in human language, by man still living in this mortal life.'
(Bernard Gui, Vita 24, trans. Foster (p. 44), italics mine).
Moreover, this was as far from a tradition- or church-deprecating illuminism as it could have been. For on this same deathbed St. Thomas is also supposed to have said, addressing Christ himself in the viaticum,
O price of my redemption and food for my pilgrimage, I receive You. For Your sake I have studied and toiled and kept vigil. I have preached You and taught You. Never consciously have I said a word against You. But if I should have said or written anything amiss on this sacrament or any of the others, I leave it all to the judgment of the holy Roman Church, in obedience to whom I desire to end my life
(Bernard Gui, Vita 39, trans. Foster (pp. 55-56)).
See also this note here.
"the commandments of the New Law . . . have been given about matters that are necessary to gain the end of eternal Happiness, . . . but . . . the counsels are about matters that render the gaining of this end more assured and expeditious" (St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I-II.108.4.Resp., trans. FEDP).
"the evangelical counsels are 'not perfections but . . . dispositions to perfection'" (St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles III.130.3, trans. Vernon J. Bourke).
Cf. Dieter Witschen, "Zur Bestimmung supererogatorischer Handlungen: der Beitrag des Thomas von Aquin," Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie 51, nos. 1/3 (2004): 32-33 (27-40).
"The content of the doctrine of the Trinity which the Church has formulated and dogmatics has to repeat and Church proclamation respect is not that God in His relation to man is Creator, Mediator and Redeemer, but that God in Himself is eternally God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. . . . God Himself cannot be dissolved [nicht aufgeht] into His work and activity [for us]. . . ."
Karl Barth, CD I/2, pp. 878-879, as quoted by George Hunsinger, in his "Election and the Trinity: twenty-five theses on the theology of Karl Barth," Modern theology 24, no. 2 (April 2008): 189, but with the Thomson/Knight translation restored (since Hunsinger, or perhaps just Modern theology, drops an ellipsis).
The stress in context is on "revelation," [1] that "work and activity of God in His revelation" from which is derived the both [2b] the doctrine of God as "in His revelation . . . Creator, Mediator and Redeemer" and [2a] the logically prior and much more foundational doctrine of God as "in Himself and to all eternity . . . Father, Son and Holy Spirit." [1] "The work and activity" of revelation is therefore the "organising and controlling centre of dogmatics" out of which [2] doctrine arises, and in particular [2a] "the doctrine of the Trinity . . . as part of [2b] "the doctrine of God [as Creator, Mediator and Redeemer], which cannot be exhausted in [2a] the doctrine of the Trinity," and stands with it "alongside [3] the doctrines of creation, atonement and redemption." We need [2b] because "the impression can and must be destroyed that at every point [(I might have said level)] we have to do with a system of trinitarian doctrine." Yet [2a] is nonetheless "the foundation of th[e] threefold division of His self-revealing action", and guarantees that "even in [2b] this differentiation of God in His revelation . . . we have to do with God Himself."
So much for the context. But here's the point being made by Hunsinger: "We have to" place [2b] the doctrine of God as "in His revelation" Creator, Mediator, and Redeemer, and within and behind that [2a] the doctrine of God as "in Himself and to all eternity" Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, "alongside [3] the doctrines of creation, atonement and redemption"
because [2] this Subject God Himself [and behind that the God who is [2a] "in Himself and to all eternity" Father, Son, and Holy Spirit] cannot be dissolved into His work and activity, if His work and activity is rightly to be seen and understood as His.
Here is how I put this distinction between context and use the first time round:
We must distinguish God's "work and activity" ad extra, "the actuality of the Word of God", from "the doctrine of the Trinity" considered as a "dogma," "doctrine," "basic view, or . . . controllable principle which can be used as such for the construction of a system. . . . of trinitarian doctrine."
We did not derive our differentiation of the Loci [into De creatione, De reconciliatione, De redemptione (and before those De Deo)] from the doctrine of the Trinity. We derived the doctrine of the Trinity itself from the same source as that from which is now derived the differentiation of the Loci, viz., the work and activity of God in His revelation.
The doctrine of the Trinity, like all other doctrines, is preceded by the fact of revelation in itself and as such. The essence of this fact is that God confronts us as Creator, Mediator, and Redeemer, that as such He speaks and deals with us, that He is therefore God and Lord in this threefold way. This being of God in His work and activity is not a dogma, or a basic view, or a controllable principle which can be used as such for the construction of a system. It is the actuality of the Word of God, freely preceding and underlying all views and dogmas. We attained our differentiation of the Loci by reference to this actuality and not to the doctrine of the Trinity, although inevitably [this actuality] both confirms the latter, and is itself confirmed by it, and safeguarded against misunderstandings.
Only with what I've just placed in italics do we arrive at the use Hunsinger makes of this passage. This use is perfectly legitimate, as indeed Barth himself makes abundantly clear
("In §§ 10-12 we thought it necessary to understand God in His revelation as Creator, Mediator and Redeemer in order to see as the foundation of this threefold division of His self-revealing action the fact that in Himself and to all eternity God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit" (and then very shortly the first of the two sentences quoted by Hunsinger)),
but not the main point here.
The dangers Hunsinger sees in the new revisionism of McCormack and company were, in my judgment, dangers for the substitution of Creator-Redeemer-Sustainer before that.
I am contriving to win glory from my shame.
ἐκ τῶν γὰρ αἰσχρῶν ἐσθλὰ μηχανώμεθα.
Phaedra, in Euripides' Hippolytus, l. 331, trans. James Morwood (Medea, Hippolytus, Electra, Helen, trans. & ed. James Morwood, Oxford world's classics (Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 48). The verb is a plural (we), and either indicative (as in the Morwood translation here) or subjunctive. Greek from p. 188 here.
"Contriving" indeed! In the end she played it badly: "I began with this policy--to stay quiet about this sickness and to keep it hidden. . . . My second course was this--I planned to conquer my madness through self-control and thus to bear it easily. My third course--since I was failing to win victory over Cypris by these means--was to resolve on death" (ll. 391 ff.). And her fourth course? Deadly false witness (ll. 885 ff.).
Where did that come from?
"She tried to conquer Cypris by reason but suffered ruin she did not wish for through the schemes of her nurse who made known her sickness to your son under oath" (ll. 1304 ff.).
But whatever else there may be that is more dear than life,
darkness hides it, wrapping it round in clouds.
We show ourselves to be infatuated lovers
of this thing, whatever it is, that glistens here on earth,
for we have no experience of another life
and no revelation of what lies below the ground,
but we drift on a sea of idle myths.
The nurse in Euripides' Hippolytus, ll. 191-197, trans. James Morwood (Medea, Hippolytus, Electra, Helen, trans. & ed. James Morwood, Oxford world's classics (Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 44). Greek on p. 176 here.
"God is to be so understood, and the world or creatures are to be so understood, that nothing greater, maius, is achieved if the world or creatures are added to God. To bring out this implication, and to state the [unstated] premise in terms more akin to Anselm's own expression, we must say:
(God plus the world) cannot be conceived as greater than God alone; or:
(God plus any creature) cannot be conceived as greater than God alone.
. . . if the world or any creature were to contribute greatness to God, then God would not be that than which nothing greater can be thought. God plus the creature or God plus the world would be thinkable as greater than God alone. Anselm's definition of how God is to be understood is usually taken to mean that no other being, or no other combination of beings, could be conceived as greater than God; but it must also be true that any being or any beings taken together with God cannot be conceived as amounting to something greater than God alone. . . .
Furthermore, in chapters three and five [of the Proslogion] Anselm introduces the theme of being better, melius, as parallel to the theme of being greater, so another formulation of his unstated premise would be:
(God plus the world) cannot be conceived as better than God alone; or:
(God plus any creature) cannot be conceived as better than God alone.
That is, no perfection would be lost if God had not created the world. The world and God must be so understood that nothing but God could be all that there is, and there would be no diminution of greatness or goodness or perfection. God is not better or greater because of creation, nor is 'there' more goodness or greatness because God did create. This does not imply that God does not care about his creation, or that what is created is not worth anything. On the contrary, God's benevolence is so great that even though he does not need creation in any sense at all--he does not need it to be himself, nor does he need it for 'there' to be greater excellence; nullo alio indigens--still he has created and, beyond that, has entered into his creation in the person of Jesus."
Robert Sokolowski, The God of faith and reason: foundations of Christian theology (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1995 (1982)), 8-9.
"The error of most modern biblical exegetes is a subliminal assumption that the church in and for which Matthew or Paul wrote, or in which Irenaeus shaped the canon, and the church in which we now read what they put together, are historically distant from one another. That is, the error is the assumption that there is no one diachronically identical universal church. And that is, the initiating error of standard modern exegesis is that it presumes a sectarian ecclesiology. But while Athens may perhaps have disappeared into the past and been replaced by Paris or London or New York, Paul's church still lives as the very one to which believing exegetes now belong. . . .
"When academic exegetes, continuing our examples, say that Paul's opinions about sexuality are too historically conditioned now to be helpful, or that the parable of the vineyard-keepers cannot itself control what we make shift to draw from it, they are simply interpreting Scripture as it now will inevitably be interpreted outside the church."
Robert Jenson, "The religious power of Scripture," Scottish journal of theology 52, no. 1 (1999): 98-101 (89-105). The relevant
historical distances. . . . are [only] differences of times and places within the life of one community.
The historical distances with which the interpretation must indeed reckon and of which historical-critical labors must maintain the awareness, are the distances between Moses and the later prophets, or between the prophets and Jesus, or between Jesus and Paul and Paul and us, but never between the story as a whole and us, never between the biblical community as a whole and the present church. . . .
. . . [There is only] the one story of God with his people, who are we
(100-101). After "they are simply interpreting Scripture as it now will inevitably be interpreted outside the church", this follows immediately:
Current academic, political, and publicistic elite communities are indeed alienated historically from the community in which the Bible emerged, and this is the reason and indeed excuse of their helplessness before this body of text. But when the church reads Scripture in course of her own worship and catechetics and preaching, her interpreters cannot give up so easily, because they are themselves at stake.
Those who interpret Scripture in and for the church are compelled to keep trying to say what it says, and by the mere act claim that Scripture does say something to us; the struggle itself is the hermeneutical principle. Pastors and other scholars in their service are the ones who labor to read the text honestly and faithfully, and whose assumption of the labor this means in their office, will maintain the authority of Scripture, or whose failure to do so will undercut it. The old-Protestant doctrine of Scripture gave it a second essential predicate: it is 'perspicuous', by which they did not mean it contains no obscurities or can be understood without effort, but that the effort need not be finally defeated
What the most percipient of the previous generation's 'hermeneutical' theory said must therefore hold in the church and of her Scripture, though perhaps nowhere else: our present effort to understand a handed-down text cannot be hopeless, since it is merely the further appropriation of a continuing communal tradition within which we antecedently live. Past and present do not need to be bridged before understanding can begin, since they are always already mediated by the continuity of the community's language and discourse: the questions and concepts and turns of phrase and dominating metaphors and ready-to-hand warrants with which I now try to say what the text says, cannot be wholly unsuitable since they were inculcated in me by the very tradition of which the text is a part. 'Understanding is not so much an undertaking by the subject as it is further entry into a continuing tradition-event in which past and present anyway mediate themselves'.
Citation for the direct quote is Hans Georg Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1965), 275.
