Riches (and Caldecott) on Western pneumatology and the filioque

"Is Jenson correct to suggest that Barth's binitarianism results from an inherent Western trinitarian deficiency? Do the filioque and the vinculum amoris necessarily lead to a mere modus? David Hart, from an Orthodox perspective, and Joseph Ratzinger, from a Catholic perspective, have commonly shown the depth of the personal reality of the Spirit according to the Western/Augustinian theology of the Spirit as the ineffabilis quidam complexus of Father and Son. Defending the Augustinian view, they have identified 'communio' itself as the crucial, personal mode of the Spirit, just as sonship and paternity are respectively the personal modes of the second and first persons. . . . From this, one can perhaps go further, arguing that the fully personal nature of the Spirit is most perfectly secured by the filioque--as, for example, Stratford Caldecott has argued in the context of a defense of Meister Eckhart's trinitarianism. Caldecott suggests that the Holy Spirit is only distinguished from the Father and Son by virtue of his 'dual origin': 'the filioque tradition permits us to distinguish the Persons purely as relations within the Trinity. The Orthodox allege that this undermines our sense of the Father as the sole principle of the Trinity. The Latins might reply that by rejecting the filioque the East reduces the distinctive 'spiration' of the Spirit to no more than another 'coming forth' from the Father. Some theologians have suggested that the dispute could be solved by agreeing to speak of the Spirit proceeding from the Father 'through' the Son. But this also has a disadvantage: it presents the Son as a mere way-station or tunnel. The metaphor of 'giving,' as distinct from 'generating' or 'proceeding,' helps us remember that God is no impersonal substance but only and forever personal. But then, if the Son is truly to be the image of his Father, he must also be a giver in his own right, and not just a transmitter of the Father's gift to himself. . . . The Father remains the sole principle, because the Son has nothing he has not received from this source. But the Trinity is asymmetrical reciprocity, not a symmetrical hierarchy proceeding from the Father. Its asymmetry is precisely the root of its dynamism as eternal Act, eternal perichoresis'".

Aaron Riches, "Church, Eucharist and predestination in Barth and De Lubac: convergence and divergence in communio," Communio: international Catholic review 35, no. 4 (Winter 2008): 574n34.

Healy on the natural desire for the beatific vision

"the deepest desire of nature is precisely the renunciation of anything like a claim or a demand in the first place; it is a holding-oneself-in-readiness so that God may be God."

Nicholas J. Healy, "Henri de Lubac on nature and grace: a note on some recent contributions to the debate," Communio: international Catholic review 35, no. 4 (Winter 2008): 547. "our natural desire for God entails a renunciation both of self-sufficiency and of demand" (548). "the perfection or consistency of the natural end in its own order--and, indeed, this very 'order' itself--is indeed relative, or relationally constituted, from top to bottom. In other words, the very (relative) closure of nature in its own order is itself a deeper, pervasive openness to God; the autonomy of nature is creaturely dependence on the Creator. This openness and dependence is, of course, first of all a feature of creatureliness and so is not immediately a matter of grace. Nevertheless, its role in constituting the relative perfection of nature in its own order (and the entire natural order itself) helps us understand how this very perfection can be a disponibility, an active readiness for God--one whose innate character is fully revealed precisely when this readiness is 'mobilized' in the Son's assumption of human nature from the 'Yes' of his immaculate Mother. The real bone of contention, then, between Lubacians and Neo-Thomists is not whether or not there is a relative integrity to nature, but whether or not (at least in the present economy) nature itself is best understood in the light of Mary's immaculate divine motherhood and the filial existence of the Son. Our 'Yes' or 'No' to this question pertains not only to theology, but lays bare the philosophical presuppositions about the nature of nature--and the relevance to it of creation as gift--that we bring to the debate about nature and grace" (562-563). "Christ reveals the nature of nature as receptive readiness for a surpassing gift" (564).

Torrell on Aquinas on the Holy Spirit

"A simple reading of the texts suffices to destroy the myth that [(légende selon laquelle)] our Western theology would not speak [(parlerait)] of the Holy Spirit. The opposite is true of Thomas, from whom we inherit an embarrassment of riches [(Avec Thomas au contraire nous n'avons que l'embarras du choix)]."

Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P., "Saint Thomas d'Aquin, maître de vie spirituelle," Revue des sciences religieuses 71, no. 4 (1997): 445. I'm not quite sure what to do with that conditional (parlerait).

A gift beyond all earthly knowing

"Now she comes to him again. He can see her again: a bride, dressed all in white, as innocent as himself of the great power they were putting on, frightened and smiling—a gift to him such as he did not know, such as would not be known until the death that they would promise to meet together had been met, and so perhaps never to be known in this world."

     Wendell Berry, Remembering (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1988), 113.

Dorie Catlett

"'Oh, my boy, how far away will you be sometime, remembering this?'"

     Dorie Wheeler Catlett to her grandson Andy, who is remembering it many years later in San Francisco (where "Nobody in thousands of miles . . . knows him" (51)), confused and on the verge of a great abandonment. It is the latest in a series of "rememberings" that reminds him that

He is held, though he does not hold. He is caught up again in the old pattern of entrances: of minds into minds, minds into place, places into minds. The pattern limits and complicates him, singling him out in his own flesh. Out of the multitude of possible lives that have surrounded him and beckoned to him like a crowd around a star [(cf. p. 45)], he returns now to himself, a mere meteorite, scorched, small, and fallen. He has met again his one life and one death, and he takes them back. It is as though, leaving, he has met himself already returning, pushing in front of him a barn seventy-five feet by forty, and a hundred acres of land, six generations of his own history, partly failed, and a few dead and living whose love has claimed him forever. He will be partial, and he will die; he will live out the truth of that. Though he does not hold, he is held. He is grieving, and he is full of joy. What is that Egypt but his Promised Land?

     Wendell Berry, Remembering (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1988), 51, 57-58.

Berry on how little we understand

"Within limits we can know. Within somewhat wider limits we can imagine. We can extend compassion to the limit of imagination. We can love, it seems, beyond imagining. But how little we understand!"

     Wendell Berry, A world lost (Washington, DC: Counterpoint, 1996), 149.

For Aquinas the eye is not a source of light

"the illumination of the material sun does not bring about in the bodily eye some light connatural to it, through which it can make things actually visible [(lumen aliquod sibi connaturale, per quod possit facere visibilia in actu)], as does happen in our mind by the illustration of the uncreated sun. Therefore the eye always needs an exterior light, but mind does not."

Thomas Aquinas, Expositio super librum Boethii De Trinitate, pars 1 q. 1 a. 1 ad 3, as translated by Ralph McInerny (Thomas Aquinas: selected writings, ed. and trans. with an introduction and notes by Ralph McInerny (London: Penguin Books, 1998), 114). The Latin is taken from the Leiden (i.e. Brill) edition of 1959, ed. Bruno Decker, as reproduced in Corpus Thomisticum here: http://www.corpusthomisticum.org/cbt.html#84303. At the beginning of the Responsio Aquinas stresses "the difference between active and passive powers", and calls even some lower powers (the vegetative) active, but not the sensitive: because "the passive powers cannot actually perform their proper operations unless moved by the active", "sense cannot sense unless it is moved by the sensible", and "the bodily eye can see bodies only by means of the supervenient illumination of the material sun" (arg. 3, http://www.corpusthomisticum.org/cbt.html#84287, which isn't contradicted by ad 3). Clearly, then, the eye is not for Aquinas illuminative; it is not a source of light. I don't know that anyone has ever claimed this for Aquinas specifically, and I haven't read any of the specialized histories of ancient or medieval optics, but I have, I think, heard this claim made for the pre-moderns generally. Cf. this: Although "Archytas of Tarentum . . . held that vision arises as the effect of an invisible 'fire' emitted from the eyes so that on encountering objects it may reveal their shapes and colors", "the possible solutions of the problem of vision were [in antiquity] very limited; either something from the object arrives at the eye, or something from the eye goes out to the object, or else the intervening medium serves as the connection between the object and the eye" (Vasco Ronchi, "Optics and vision," Dictionary of the history of ideas, ed. Philip P. Wiener (New York, NY: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1973), vol. 3, p. 407; cf. http://etext.virginia.edu/cgi-local/DHI/dhi.cgi?id=dv3-51).