Christ and Reconciliation
ShareChrist and Reconciliation
Romanus Cessario, O.P.
Fr. Cessario, in his first essay in Faith & Reason, offers a profound reflection upon the role of Christ in fulfilling the Father's salvific plan.
Introduction
The theological act remains an act of historical understanding in two
respects.1 First of all, it bears upon a content that the Christian
tradition has historically transmitted, beginning with the scriptural
witness and proceeding thence through its transmission in tradition.
Its objective, therefore, concerns a set of claims about history that
have themselves been historically mediated. At the same time, we can
consider the theological exercise historical in another sense. For
it investigates the testimonial materials received from the past
tradition in light of the present historical situation. Of course,
its retrieval of the past is not an historically neutral one,
consisting in an immediate attainment of past meanings and older
explanations. Rather, the encounter embraces the perspective of
concerns that remain contemporary with the theological act itself.2
We call such encounter critical and even scientific to the extent
that the perspectives of the past and that of present theological
inquiry mutually illumine one another. Appropriately enough, then,
German thinkers especially remind us that theology forms a kind of
retrieval and, consequently, call it a
During the course of the Christian millennia, Christian claims about salvation and about the role of Jesus of Nazareth in God's final and definitive deed of saving humanity have included a variety of understandings, explanations, and analogies. Moreover, those claims and their various renderings have a doctrinal and theological history, within which St. Thomas Aquinas occupies a canonical position.3 We characterize the received tradition as fundamentally objectivist in kind, evident, for example, in his discussion of the incarnation. There Aquinas employs the notion of "common nature assumed" as a central concept. Even in his treatment of the sacraments, he introduces the Aristotelian categories of efficient and instrumental cause to account for what a sacrament accomplishes, in particular, the abiding sacrament. Other examples occur in his works which confirm the realist temper of his thought. On the other hand, from a slightly different outlook, we might wonder whether Aquinas, in fact, does not enjoy an unique historical position. Writing as he does during the middle of the thirteenth-century, Aquinas both follows the period of monastic theology, with its reliance on literary forms and allegorical imagery, and at the same time antedates the modern period, with its much vaunted turn towards the subject and human consciousness.4
Because it also precedes the balkanization of the
Yet the difference in perspective necessarily establishes the
starting point of any theological exercise directed toward recovering
the Christian soteriological tradition and its extension in the
sacraments of the Christian faith. For the practitioner of
theological inquiry, even the one disposed to value the tradition,
will enter upon the theological enterprise undoubtedly shaped to some
extent by the contemporary perspective. Consequently, owing to this
initial difference in perspectives, a certain experience of the
"foreignness" of the received tradition will undoubtedly mark the
initial encounter with the Thomist synthesis. But this heterogeneity
need not constitute an insurmountable obstacle. Why? Because the
genius of any theological exercise always seeks to discover certain
latent intelligibilities in the tradition without too facilely
eliding the difference of perspectives. Thus, in his introduction to
the 1984 Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation,
In this essay, Aquinas' soteriological model of satisfaction allows
us to question whether a received theological tradition can measure
up to the canons of contemporary theological inquiry. To be sure,
its basic perspective appears alien at first, and any number of
authors have taken up the challenge to explain why. Besides,
Aquinas' theology of satisfaction also suffers from the baggage of
the metaphorical residue which St. Anselm's satisfaction theory in
First of all, I would like to present a theology of Christian
satisfaction. Since it takes full account of the continuity between
creation and redemption, the doctrine portrays salvation as a work of
image-perfection and image-restoration. These analogues, which
actually derive from common Augustinian theology, represent the dyad
of Christian merit and satisfaction which essentially constitute the
work of salvation.12 In the first instance, image-perfection refers
to that reward of a distinctively supernatural life which Christ
makes available to the members of his Body. "Through grace, Christ's
soul was moved by God," writes Aquinas, "in such a way that not only
he himself should arrive at the glory of eternal life but should
bring others to it as well."13 Again, Aquinas consciously places his
treatment of the grace of Christ in a context which illumines two
important features of his christology. First, he affirms that
Christ's merit derives from the ontologically prior
On the other hand, image-restoration points to the fact that this eschatological achievement occurs principally and determinatively during the course of our ordinary human existence, which even after baptism retains the scars and creases of original sin. As a result, the believer moves towards image-restoration by accomplishing certain penitential actions which have as their chief purpose the rehabilitation of our human capacities, however disordered as a result of both personal and original sin. For the Christian, every freely-accepted or self-imposed suffering, especially consecrated by the power of Christ in the sacrament of penance, conforms him or her more closely to the person of Christ. Moreover, at the same time, it restores a complete life of virtue to the individual. Christian satisfaction, then, marks an important step in the realization of the economy of salvation. This explains why the early Fathers of the Church coined the axiom, "what was not assumed was not saved."15 Indeed, Christ had to assume every part of human nature because no part of that nature escaped the effects of sin. As a result, image- restoration, which constitutes our personal share in the sufferings of Christ, embraces every feature and aspect of our created nature. It comes as no surprise, then, that during the great period of christological debate (before the Council of Chalcedon, 451) the axiom mentioned above served as a principal criterion for orthodoxy.
Central to the image-perfection and image-restoration of every human
person remain the mysteries of Christ's life and death. For example,
in the final section of his
The history of the theory demonstrates that Aquinas' use of
satisfaction as a central category for Christian soteriology marks a
decided advance in the development of western theology. Admittedly,
the notion that Christ died in order to satisfy the heavenly Father
for the sins of the human race intrigued the thirteenth century
medieval theologians. Although the image behind satisfaction, if not
the actual term itself, can make a reputable claim to represent some
of the earliest Christian soteriology, it is St. Anselm of Canterbury
and his eleventh century work
On the positive side, however, the impulse to identify the atonement as an integral and connected part of the trinitarian movement in the world did contribute towards the solution of one problem intrinsic to the theology of satisfaction. How can a past historical event, such as the death of Christ, remain effective for salvation in every subsequent historical moment? Theologians still wrestle with accounts given to support the universal character of Christian redemption.19 Even so, it is interesting to note the theological intuition of the medieval theologians. Because they generally held to the authentic transcendence of God, these theologians, by representing the sacrifice of Christ as really involved with the Trinity, provided a way out of a problem which later theologians, either less convinced of the divine transcendence or, more likely, more intent on remaining strictly within the limits of historical and textual analysis, still find difficult to resolve. Indeed, fundamental to an adequate sacramental theology remains an account that explains how the actions of the divine and human agents converge in the achievement of the sacramental effects. In Christ, of course, the hypostatic union provides both the explanatory concept for the incarnation and the model for all other mediations in the Church. But the sacraments, since they involve individual human agency in both the minister and the recipient _ "separated instruments," in the phrase of Aquinas _ require further explanation. One of the chief purposes of this essay, then, remains to advance a proposal about how one can coherently affirm this "double agency" in sacramental theory.
First of all, we should look at the satisfaction of Christ. Scholars
agree that St. Thomas Aquinas, especially during the latter part of
his career, gave St. Anselm's formulation of christological
satisfaction an entirely new focus.20 Of course, cultural changes
which occurred during the thirteenth century, especially the gradual
disappearance of feudalism and the transferal of monastery schools to
the newly-founded universities, helped Aquinas recognize that
Anselm's feudal metaphor of an insulted lord assuaged by the
superabundant good deed of his son, although perfectly intelligible
within the perspectives of monastic theology, would simply no longer
satisfy the theological sophistication of the university masters.
So, he looked for a different approach to the question, one which
reflected, moreover, his more mature grasp of the reality of grace
and divinization. At the same time, Aquinas also developed a deeper
intuition about the whole nature of theological language. For he
recognized that neither the juridical categories of crime and
punishment, nor the mercantile categories of exchange and purchase
(and still less the mythological category which spoke about a ransom
to the devil) could adequately serve as ways of talking about
Christian redemption. Since all images limp, so these images only
partially reflected the full teaching of the
Drawing upon the richness of the various Fathers available to him,
St. Thomas fashioned a satisfaction model which derives both its
structure and meaning from an animated vision of the saving work of
Jesus Christ. We see a good example of this borrowing in his
treatment of the sacraments. Within this context, Aquinas preferred
to speak about salvation as actualized in the individual believer in
order to move him or her forward on the journey towards beatific
fellowship. For Aquinas, then, the human person always remains set
between God and God. As I have already said, central to this
explanation, which coheres with the
Indeed, any discussion of a given part of the theological synthesis
which Aquinas and those who follow him adopt requires that we grasp
how these theologians understand the nature of the divine essence and
how that shapes their conception of the divine activity
In order to gain an accurate understanding of how this reconciling love actually works, we need to inquire about a personalist perspective on Christian satisfaction and sacramental practice, one which transcends the somewhat inert and highly impersonal categories of saving subject and saved objects. Even so, after nearly a millennium of formalized "satisfaction-theory," neither Roman Catholics nor Protestants have entirely succeeded in escaping from such conceptual frameworks. To tell the truth, theologians still strive to stretch out the saving efficacy of Christ towards its potential beneficiaries in much the same way that modern philosophy endeavors to match an object up with its appropriate knowing subject. Furthermore, this occurs across the spectrum of theological opinions. We can see it both in Marxist inspired theologies of liberation, where the stretching reaches straightaway and, it seems exclusively, to the economically disadvantaged and politically dispossessed. We find it also in so-called conservative soteriologies, where the stretching takes the form of additions and subtractions in an account-ledger, as if Christ asked us to earn so many quarters of social security in order to insure safely a comfortable (heavenly) retirement. Unfortunately both positions ultimately establish a theoretical distance between God's work and the creature, when, in fact, by reason of the incarnation, none exists; such subject-object perspectives can only interfere with the divine initiative for salvation. Aquinas, for example, makes a point of insisting upon the immediacy of the union between the creature and God which the incarnation itself makes possible. So not even the sacred humanity of Christ stands between the individual believer and his relationship with God.
St. Thomas' developed theological view of Christian salvation, one of
the great achievements of his
From another and more proximate point of view, however, the explanation for St. Thomas' understanding of personalism lies in a theological awareness, developed during the latter part of his career, of the unqualified uniqueness of the divine presence to human creatures. Largely as a result of reading the Greek Fathers (probably during his Italian sojourn, 1259-1268), St. Thomas came to realize that the notion of divinization, a complex theory whereby the Eastern Church sought to describe the effects of God's special presence to the world in Christ, grace, and the Eucharist, radically changed the way one should describe the theology of Christian life and practice. Accordingly, this changed perspective fundamentally affects the way that subsequent theologians, in principle, explain sacramental efficacy. Penitential satisfaction, for example, is not something that God requires of man, nor even, for that matter, of Jesus, as a condition for accomplishing the divine plan of salvation. Rather it remains the means whereby God accomplishes his eternal design, "the mystery of his will, according to his purpose which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth" (Eph 1:9-10).27
To sum up: It is man and not God whom satisfaction changes. For, on the one hand, the increment and restoration of perfection designated by the term "satisfaction" pertains entirely to the human creature. By contrast, the communication of that increment pertains with absolute priority to the divine goodness and mercy penetrating the human creature with God's own love. It remains the individual, then, in the historical and social dimensions of his or her personhood, who in the progressive reformation of the God-like image (in the present order of things marred by the sin of Adam as well as by personal sin) is gradually changed into being what God intends his creature to be. Thus, St. Paul reminds the Colossians: "For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross" (Col 1:19-20). As a sure mark of theological integrity, well-founded soteriology always centers on the revealed truth about Jesus Christ.28
II. Sin and Human Disorder: Imago Dei
A personalist perspective on salvation, however, requires that the
theologian likewise understand the reverse side of the picture,
namely sin and its own dyadic structure, which the scholastics called
To tell the truth, the
The authentic tradition, of course, also refuses to accept a vision of human nature which insists on post-lapsarian humanity as an essentially corrupt instance of what had been something very good. Such a view, however, does approximate, among other positions, the reformed misconception on original sin. At the same time, the Christian tradition also refuses to endorse the thesis which grants fallen human nature the capacity for permanent integral operation without divine grace. That contention amounts to the Pelagian extreme. Rather, the orthodox benchmark for the doctrine of grace points to a view of original sin and its effect on human nature. This avoids having to choose between two heterodox alternatives which continue to polarize the lengthy discussions generated by these questions.
Aquinas, for example, who inherits the language, if not the concepts,
of the era of metaphorical theology, serves as a representative
exponent of the realist tradition. Although he continues the
metaphor of stain, the
Sin, as I have said, also entails a liability to punishment, a
Sin, then, includes the notion of a human order deprived of its
ultimate and proper end. Admittedly, philosophers argue about the
suitability of enumerating basic purposes and goals for human
existence, but the Christian faith maintains no such uncertainty.
For it makes beatific fellowship with the triune God the main measure
of an authentic Christian life. Even if sin distances us from God,
the justified life compensates for that imbalance. This explains why
in the final analysis the fundamental measure of the estrangement
also remains the measure of our own discontent. We can speculate
further as to whether only the theologian really is able to grasp the
full implications of sin. Even if philosophers can adequately
articulate the dimensions of the human malaise and its predicament,
the full meaning of sin still requires a context of faith in order
for one to comprehend fully what it means to lose God. Although it
may sound strange, philosophers can only stumble onto sin's meaning;
thus they rightly speak about the
This principle especially holds true when it comes to speaking about original sin. St. Thomas' notion of original sin and original justice represents a high point of theological achievement in his career.34 Contending with multiple viewpoints concerning the authentic meaning of the biblical doctrine of the Fall and the original state of our first parents, Aquinas developed a comprehensive theory. It has two advantages: one recognizes the parameters of God's creative goodness and the other takes account as well of what role original sin plays in describing the human condition. Despite the questionably earnest efforts of creation- centered spiritualities, authentic Catholic teaching simply will not allow for a facile reinterpretation of original sin. In particular, an attempt to reformulate the doctrine in continuity with magisterial teaching must maintain the following elements: (a) original sin comprises a privation located at the level of nature and (b) it forms a part of human history.35 These elements make it an originating sin which affects subsequent development in the race. As Cardinal Ratzinger recently remarked, the notion is quite widespread these days that a whole series of dogmas of the Catholic faith, especially creation, original sin, Christology, and sacramental doctrine, are no longer defensible. But such biases cannot stand the test of serious theological reflection.36
On the other hand, a more controversial debate centers around the
personal status of the first parents before sin. In addressing this
question, controverted even in the Middle Ages, Aquinas enunciates a
set of principles which help us to interpret the difference between
creation freely willed and grace gratuitously bestowed _ what we call
justification. He recognizes, of course, that original justice does
constitute a grace precisely because both the praeternatural gifts
and the actual enjoyment of divine fellowship itself remain freely-
bestowed; and in the latter case, supernatural endowments for the
human creature. On the other hand, original justice does not
comprise a grace in the sense that it forms an integral part of human
nature in its original constitution. Rather the human person remains
The above distinction between grace and creation would help settle some of the confusion which surrounds the now common assertion that we were created in grace. Of course, we can hold this position but not the conclusions drawn by some theologians. They miss the distinction between a grace freely given in creation and what would amount to the essentially oxymoronic reality of a "natural grace." Moreover, to speak about the state of integral nature, as original justice is sometimes called, does not imply what certain periods in theology described as a state of "pure nature." Like a photographic negative, a so-called "pure nature" could only provide a frozen image of mankind, but it could never put on the stage an acting person. Likewise, sexual congress alone can never account for the propagation of original justice. On the contrary, Aquinas held the view that grace remained the root cause of the praeternatural gifts. If Adam had not sinned, for example, each new member of his progeny would have had to receive original justice much after the fashion of the immediate infusion of the spiritual soul.38 Altogether original sin constitutes a lack of original justice, "a corrupt habit of sorts," but still not a positive inclination to evil; it includes only the loss of these supernatural endowments that would have restrained the development of moral and even physical defect.
If it be adequate to interpret the authentic tradition, theological
anthropology must embrace a fully Christian view of man. This,
moreover, requires a broad view of creation, providence and sin.
Creation remains a coming forth from God's sustaining power and
providence. And whatever the full meaning of fallen nature entails,
it surely includes certain privative effects in the powers of the
soul, the intellect, the will and the sense appetites; these amount,
in effect, to a disordering of the powers of the soul among
themselves. As something concrete and consonant with the biblical
teaching, the alienation accomplished by original sin exists on three
distinct levels: the individual, societal and the divine. Thus, in
our post-lapsarian state, deprived of the special endowments which
our first parents enjoyed, the work of Christian grace on fallen
nature must always remain elevating and restorative, or as the
scholastics put it,
III. The Sacrament of Reconciliation
Finally, I would like to remark briefly on the sacrament of penance. The Holy Father points to this sacrament as a principal locus where through the working of the Holy Spirit the human person encounters the reconciliation effected by Christ's salvific death. As happens in every sacrament, penance also manifests God's saving providence for the baptized member of Christ's Body or, as St. Leo the Great remarks, "Our Redeemer's presence has passed into the sacraments."39 In the case of penance, however, this providential care exists in order to provide for a certain contingency in human affairs. In short, we require penance as a remedy for sins committed after baptism. This explains why the Council of Trent accepted the metaphorical reference, a second plank after shipwreck, as an apt image for this sacrament.40 Expressing one of his fundamental convictions about this sacrament, the Holy Father writes: "[F]or a Christian, the sacrament of penance is the ordinary way of obtaining forgiveness and the remission of serious sins committed after baptism."41 The sacrament of penance, then, provides the sinner with an opportunity to encounter personally the cause of divine reconciliation.
Following a principle basic to and constitutive of every sacramental
reality, theologians advance the view that the efficacy of penance
derives from the passion of Christ itself. Only the satisfaction of
Christ can merit our spiritual well-being. But penance holds a
secondary place relative to the integrity which the other sacraments,
especially baptism and the eucharist, confer and preserve on the
member of Christ's Body. Hence the Church correctly, if only
metaphorically, refers to the sacrament as "the second plank after
shipwreck." Indeed, the first protection for those crossing a sea
remains the safety provided by an intact ship; but after shipwreck,
one can only cling to a plank as a second remedy. Thus Aquinas
concludes: "So also, the first protection in the sea of this life
remains that a person preserve spiritual integrity; but if one, by
committing sin, should lose it, the second remedy is that regained
through penance."42 However obliquely, this emphasis on the
conditional character of penance points to the mystery of human
freedom and divine providence. The sacrament of penance, then,
establishes the condition necessary to transform sin into a
The history of this sacrament within the Church evidences several misconceptions concerning its nature and efficacy. To begin with one example of misguided instruction on how the Christian should react to sin and temptation, historical Quietism subverted the Church's teaching in order to accommodate a spirituality negligent with respect to moral discipline. And although current interest in the works of Madame Guyon suggests a limited renaissance of this view, the ecclesiastical condemnation and subsequent punishment of Miguel Molinos still remains an effective witness to the truth that the simplicity of God's love never provides an excuse for vicious behavior.43 Likewise, the sacrament of Christ's reconciliation can never become an excuse for moral indifference or spiritual laxity. Mortal sin remains the greatest evil which can befall the human person. Indeed, spiritual authors continually warn against the especially vicious sin of ingratitude for the forgiveness of past sins. To be sure, mortal sin always embodies the prime analogue for any sinful activity because only this kind of aversion from God destroys the bond of charity and friendship with God which baptismal grace establishes in the soul. So theories about penance err both by excess and by defect.
We need to understand, then, how penance works. When the medieval
theologians sought to explain the constitutive reality of a given
sacrament, they identified three principal elements present in each
of the
This question, in fact, exacerbated certain medieval theologians who
found it difficult to pin down in a theological formulation something
so contingent as personal sorrow. Even Aquinas' position on the
sacramentality of penance remains a difficult feature of his entire
sacramental theology. After considering the relative merits of other
views, he mentions the
The tradition enumerates three principal elements which compose the
sacrament of penance: contrition of the heart, confession of the
lips, and the satisfaction of works. The Holy Father includes
reference to these "realities or parts" in
This explains Aquinas' contention that in penance not only is the
restoration of the balance of justice sought, as in retributive
justice, but above all the reconciliation of friendship.47 The very
notion of commutative justice prevails even here, resembling that
which can exist even between members of a family. When, for example,
a father distributes benefits to his children, he does so according
to a wisdom and love which he alone possesses. This allusion remains
the controlling image in Aquinas' explanation of reconciliation. In
fact, the actual living out of image-restorative works, now ratified
by the sacrament of Christ's love, itself constitutes the achievement
of divine grace. The liturgy still reflects this theology of
satisfaction when it counsels priests to join the following prayer
after the sacramental absolution: "May the Passion of Our Lord Jesus
Christ, the merits of the blessed Virgin Mary and of all the saints,
and also whatever good you do and evil you endure, be cause for the
remission of your sins, the increase of grace, and the reward of life
everlasting."48 Through it, the Church, making explicit reference to
the
To be sure, the institute of frequent confession does not occupy a
central place in contemporary pastoral theology and we find very
little written today which urges the celebration of the sacrament
precisely as a means towards spiritual growth. But the Holy Father
still maintains that "[T]he frequent use of the sacrament [of
penance] . . . strengthens the awareness that even minor sins offend
God and harm the Church, the Body of Christ."49 Christian
satisfaction and the sacrament of penance which establishes it as an
effective means for image-perfection both accomplishes this goal and
at the same time brings Christ's mission to completion. St. John
tells us that "[I]n this is love perfected with us, that we may have
confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so are we in
this world" (I Jn 4:12). Indeed, Christ wants to fulfill this
mission which he has received from the Father: "The glory which thou
hast given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we
are one, I in them and thou in me, that they may become perfectly
one, so that the world may know that thou hast sent me and hast loved
me" (Jn 17:24). The reconciliation of a fallen race remains Christ's
glory, the very task given him by the Father to accomplish. We read
in St. Luke's Gospel, "Father I have sinned against heaven and before
you."50 The power of Christ's passion mediated in the sacrament
turns the penitent person back to God, with a purpose of amendment,
as a son and daughter turn towards their father. It is precisely in
this aspect of divine forgiveness, that the Church especially
discerns the healing or medicinal character of reconciliation. "And
this is linked to the fact," writes the Holy Father, "that the Gospel
frequently presents Christ as healer, while his redemptive work is
often called
Foremost in any theological discussion remain two mysteries, the incarnation and the Trinity, a fact which all Catholic theologians accept. When practiced in accord with their original purposes, Christian soteriology and sacramental theory lead us to a personal communion with the three-personed God. That remains the only goal indicating where the work of Christ leads. Theologians speak about the missions of the divine persons as a way of indicating the active role which God takes in our personal histories. The missions, in turn, reflect the trinitarian processions which, with all of their inner necessity in knowledge and love, constitute the very Godhead itself. These trinitarian missions, moreover, form special relationships in those to whom God freely extends justification in the Church of faith and sacraments. Indeed, the visible sending of the Son and invisible coming of the Holy Spirit comprise the principal trinitarian missions which characterize the economy of salvation.52
The patristic doctrine of
IV. Conclusion
By divine condescension, human reality has been created in order to
enter into communion with the fellowship of the divine persons. This
destiny, moreover, remains strictly supernatural. The openendedness
of the human intellect and of human love remains as it were the
negative condition for the achievement of this supernatural destiny.
This basically human structure aptitudinally images the personal
communion of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in knowledge
and love. The gracious conferral of resources proportionate to a
supernatural destiny of communion complement and fulfill what remains
only a trajectory impressed upon human nature. First of all,
habitual grace transforms the human person so as to share in the
divine nature and, then, the theological virtues confer a share in
the very divine loving and knowing. Thus, the merely aptitudinal
imaging of the three divine persons coincident with human nature
itself is achieved as an actual imaging of the three divine persons
as regards both their communion in the divine nature and their
personal communion in knowledge and love. It should be noted, then,
that the image of the three divine persons, the created analogue of
In St. Thomas' view, a particular expression of divine love and justice is showing mercy. Indeed, it is this condescension that accounts for the incarnation and actively shapes all that transpires in the human intellect and will of Christ. To the human will of Christ, God communicates the fullness of supernatural love as a capital endowment, such that his love for the Father should be both abounding love for us and the love of the Father on behalf of the members of his Body. Thus rectified by charity, the human will of Christ fulfills the divine justice _ that is, performs the substance of Adam's original establishment in justice: a complete submission and subjection of all human energies and interest to the Father. It is this "evangelical" justice, suffused by excelling charity, that forms the inner core of Christ's salvific work under its satisfactory aspects. For, in this attitude of subjection and obedience, Christ ratifies the Father's salvific plan within the ambit of his human history and destiny. What remains salvifically determinative and therefore satisfactory about Christ's human destiny therefore is not simply the physical event of his passion, the exaction of a penalty of death, but the interior attitudes of love, obedience, and self- disposal in the Father's favor that animate Christ's sufferings. The perfect interplay of the Father's loving initiative to save mankind and of Christ's human response remains a crucial feature of Christ's satisfactory work according to St. Thomas, for that communion of loves restores our own imaging communion with the Trinity.
Of course, Saint Thomas' account of Christ's salvific work in its satisfactory character addresses not merely the achievement of this sort of personal communion between head and members and of the whole Body through its Head with triune fellowship. It equally confronts the historical situation of such communion and that which has rendered such communion historically impossible: the reality of human sin, historical sin as a concrete determinant of universal human history. The "economy" of sin is by no means an ultimate nor even equiparent with the economy of salvation in the Christian view. Indeed, inasmuch as human moral failure instantiates whatever lacks due order, characterized by deficient causality and unintelligibility, its historical shape remains parasitic upon God's governance of his creation.
Likewise, medicinal punishment as an effect of human moral fault shows that God's loving intentions retain the upper hand in guiding human history to its true destiny. It is radically the incarnation of the Word and Christ's consequent disposal of his historical freedom in loving response to the Father which show that what remains uppermost and triumphant remains the Father's love. In that perfect response to the Father's saving will, Christ has freely and lovingly chosen solidarity with human history and a history of suffering (imposed as a punishment). In virtue of Christ's solidarity with suffering humanity, penal suffering becomes "once and for all" truly restorative and rectifies human willing. For, in truth, Christ "learned obedience through suffering," inasmuch as the full range of Christ's subjection of himself to the Father's saving will includes the acceptance of suffering experienced as the historical locus for obedient and loving acceptance of that will. The supernatural gifts which the Body derive from their Head accordingly effect a personal solidarity with him in other situations of human suffering. The grace and charity which Christ's members receive from him and in him always remain the grace and love of his passion. These conform Christ's Body to Christ's own obedience and love. This conformity urges the members of the Church to "make up what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ" _ that is, to supply their own free ratification of the experience of the cross as the definitive historical shape of communion with the Father and the Holy Spirit in and through their Head. Union in and with the mind of Christ enables Christians to transform and shape human history by extending Christ's salvific work through culture and society. This openness, in short, helps us "to redeem the time."
ENDNOTES
1 We find the doctrinal grounds for this assertion in the dogmatic
constitution
2 Thus, Bernard J. F. Longergan, S.J. explains the heuristic
structure of a universal viewpoint, which, he tells us, remains
"concerned with the principal acts of meaning that lie in insights
and judgments, and it reaches these principal acts by directing
attention to the experience, the understanding and the critical
reflection of the interpreter." See his
3 The present
4 Addressing the medieval context, M. - D. Chenu, O.P. contrasts the
twelfth century theologians with those later thinkers, including
Aquinas, whom he refers to as the masters of theological science:
"The statues of Rheims would have been out of place in the tympanum
at Vezelay, no less than the masters would have been in monastic
cloisters. But the two Christendoms of feudal Vezelay and of urban
Rheims, each with its own understanding of faith and mode of
expression, formed part of a single church." See his
5 Edward Farley documents the balkanization of theology in his
6 More than any other Roman Catholic theologian in recent times, Karl
Rahner, S.J. has insisted on the significance of human transcendence
in theological investigation. As a result, many theologians
(sometimes, as ill luck would have it, without the proper nuance)
regard the human person as simply an unfinished and dynamic being,
thrusting toward a fulfillment, both individual and social, that lies
indefinitely ahead. For example, see the account given by John
Macquarrie, "The Anthropological Approach to Theology,"
7 The late Dominican theologian Colman E. O'Neill steadily developed
and defended this thesis, especially in his last work,
8 John Paul II, Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation
9 For a general study of this especially vexed question, see P.
Galtier, "Satisfaction,"
10 See Philips Brooks,
11 RP, 1. For a detailed study of Aquinas' personalist understanding
developed in the context of Christ's satisfaction, see Romanus
Cessario, O.P.,
12 For an analysis of Augustine's original doctrine concerning the
13
14In a key text for the biblical doctrine of satisfaction, Hebrews
2:9-10 actually mentions Christ's suffering which forms an integral
part of his mission to establish the Church of glory. "But we see
Jesus, who for a little while was made lower than the angels, crowned
with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by
the grace of God he might taste death for every one. For it was
fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing
many sons to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation
perfect through suffering." For further information on this point,
see Ceslas Spicq, O.P.,
15 The axiom represents the principal line of argument given by St.
Athanasius in his famous treatise,
16 See
17 See J. - H. Nicolas, O.P.,
18 See Rene Roques, ed.,
19 For a standard contemporary solution which draws, moreover, upon
the German idealist notion of solidarity, see Walter Kasper,
20 In short, the discovery of the personalist dimensions evident in
the patristic doctrine of divinization moved Aquinas to recognize the
fundamental inadequacy latent in a juridical or mercantile construal
of salvation. See James A. Weisheipl, O.P.,
21 For a good treatment which explains Aquinas' use of and reliance
upon the Fathers of the Church, see G. Geenen, "Thomas d'Aquin. VII.
Saint Thomas et les Peres,"
22
23 With almost poetic elegance, Aquinas elaborates this fundamental
truth of the Christian faith in a disputed question: "The ultimate
end is not the communication of goodness, but rather divine goodness
itself. It is from his love of this goodness that God wills it to be
communicated. In fact, when he acts because of his goodness, it is
not as if he were pursuing something that he does not have, but, as
it were, willing to communicate what he does have. For he does not
act from desire for the end, but from love of the end." See
24 St. Paul makes this remark in the context of the creature's transformation in Christ: "Therefore, if any one is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself. . . ." See II Corinthians 5:17-19.
25 The Council of Chalcedon (451) in fact complements the work of
Nicaea (325) which used the same expression, "consubstantial," to
identify the divine in Christ with the Trinity. For a theological
discussion of the Chalcedonian definition, see Aloys Grillmeier,
S.J.,
26 Aquinas puts it simply: "Person signifies what is noblest in the
whole of creation" in
27 For Aquinas, the Eternal Law, which he principally identifies with
the trinitarian Logos, remains the source of divine providence for
the rational creature. See
28 Colin Gunton points out the interest this topic holds for
contemporary theologians in "When the Gates of Hell Fall Down:
towards a modern theology of the justice of God,"
29 For a detailed analysis of Aquinas' notion of sin, see T. C.
O'Brien,
30 Unfortunately, we often find this view expressed by those who
propose to interpret the thought of Karl Rahner. His well-known
rejection of "supernaturalism" still leads some thinkers to make
ambiguous statements about the relationship of nature and grace,
thereby making it difficult to discern what in fact pertains only to
God's gratuity. For example, Lucien Richard writes: "Creation is
the establishment, by God, of what is other precisely as other. . . .
Because of the unity of nature and grace from the very beginning of
creation, the history of the world and salvation history are
materially identical and coextensive. . . ."
31 See
32 Aristotle wrote: "the [moral] end appears to each man in a form
answering to his character," Ethics III, 5. 1114a32-1114b2. But see
Aquinas' use of this axiom in
33
34 See
35 These propositions include the principal elements of the Council
of Trent's declaration that original sin remains "origine unum et
propagatione, non imitatione transfusum omnibus inest unicuique
proprium" (DS 1513). For a commentary on the Council's statement,
see Henri Rondet,
36 Remarks made upon the announcement of the publication in English
translation of
37 See
38 "[I]t has to be said that if children had been born in original
justice they would also have been born with grace. . . . Yet this
would not have made grace natural, because it would not have been
transmitted by any virtue in the seed, but would have been conferred
on man the moment he had a rational soul. Just as the moment a body
is ready for it God infuses a rational soul, which is not, for all
that, propagated." See
39 Sermon 2, On the Ascension, c. 11 (PL LIV:398).
40 "Si quis . . . paenitentiam non recte 'secundum post naufragium tabulam' apellari: an s." (DS 1702).
41RP 31.I. See the recent study on the history of penance by Joseph
A. Favazza,
42
43 See Ronald Knox,
44 See O'Neill,
45 Ibid., 175-77 for a brief discussion of Aquinas' position on the sacramentality of penance.
46 RP 31.III.
47 Aquinas actually makes this point in the context of the virtue of
penitence: "And it is thus that the penitent turns to God, with the
purpose of amendment as a servant to his master, . . . and as the son
to his father, . . . and as a wife to her husband. . . ."
48
49
50 Cf. Luke 15:11-32. Biblical commentators remark on this passage:
". . . through his sin, or better, through his fatherly pardon,
patterned on the sin, the prodigal, discovering paternal love,
retrieves _ or even perhaps experiences for the first time _ the
sentiments of a son." See Stanislaus Lyonnet, S.J. and Leopold
Sabourin, S.J.,
51
52 For an expert discussion of the trinitarian implications latent in
sacramental reconciliation, see William J. Hill, O.P.,
This article was taken from the Spring 1991 issue of "Faith & Reason". Subscriptions available from Christendom Press, 2101 Shenandoah Shores Road, Ft. Royal, VA 22630, 703-636-2900, Fax 703-636-1655. Published quarterly at $20.00 per year.
Romanus Cessario, O.P. received his doctorate in sacred theology from the University of Fribourg in Switzerland. He is currently Associate Professor of Systematic Theology at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, DC and exchange Professor at the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family. Father Cessario's writings include "The Godly Image: Studies in Historical Theology VI" (Petersham: St. Bede's Publications, 1990).
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