De locis theologicis

Brother Francis of Vitoria, reader most worthy, whom Spain received by God’s singular gift as its supreme teacher of theology, used to say—I heard him after I left his school—that he took great delight in my talent, but feared that, elated and exuberant because of some excellence in it, I might boast immoderately and, grown too self-important, tread on my teacher’s footsteps not only freely and cheerfully but even rashly and licentiously. For he had heard that I did not approve one opinion of his, and then another. I wish that the things he said out of excessive indulgence toward a son were truly said of me. But if we cannot attain such excellence of talent by imitation, in our will at least we come very close and try to reproduce our teacher. Indeed, if anyone approves my teaching—which I wish were worthy of the learned!—if he approves my judgment in matters—which I wish were worthy of my surname!—or the polish of my style—which I usually employ more elegantly than scholastics are accustomed to in their books—then in this we are learned, prudent, and eloquent: that we follow this man as the best guide in all these matters and obey his precepts and admonitions. As for the moderation of spirit that this most modest man wished for in me, I took pains to disappoint his fear. Whether I succeeded, others will judge more impartially. Certainly, if there is any fault of rashness in me, I can scarcely excuse or conceal it by any other consideration

than knowing that however excellent and outstanding talent may be, it is of little value unless it is governed by the bridle of prudent understanding and a defined moderation of spirit. Yet I do not usually approve those who, as if bound by an oath or even by superstition—to use Fabius’s words—think it wrong to depart from a conviction once adopted. A theologian need not swear allegiance to anyone’s rules. The work toward which he himself strives is greater and more excellent than that he should always tread in his teacher’s footsteps, if indeed he is to attain distinction in theology. I remember hearing my own teacher say, when he began to explain the second part of the Second Part to us, that so great was the weight to be given to the opinion of St. Thomas that, if no better reason came to hand, the authority of so holy and learned a man would suffice for us. But he also warned that the holy Doctor’s words should not be accepted without discrimination and examination. Rather, if he said something too harsh or improbable, we should imitate his moderation and care in a similar matter: he neither withdraws trust from authors approved by the suffrage of antiquity, nor passes over to their opinion when reason calls him in the opposite direction. I observed this precept most diligently. For I have never submitted any opinion—not only of St. Thomas, but even of my teacher—to my own judgment, and yet it was never my intention to swear by my teacher’s words. For that man was naturally moderate, and at times he even disagreed with St. Thomas; in my judgment, he gained greater praise by disagreeing than by agreeing, so great was his reverence in dissent. But enough of this; we shall often say many things in praise of our teacher. Let us now return to the remaining parts of the work we proposed. I promised three books on the use of the theological loci: one in scholastic disputation, another in the exposition of Sacred Scripture, and the last specifically against each of the enemies of the Christian faith—heretics, pagans, Jews, and Saracens. For I assigned books 12, 13, and 14 to these matters. And, to return to my teacher, if he had wished to treat especially the use of the loci in school debate, he could have written most gravely and copiously. But since no monuments of his talent have been committed to writing, no work of erudition, no gift of learning survives, we have turned all our effort and care to writing on this subject. Since all theology is fruitful and productive, with no part of it uncultivated or neglected, there is no more fertile or abundant field in it than the use of the loci and the arguments drawn from the theological loci. Therefore, as much as I can strive in spirit and labor—if writing this is labor rather than pleasure—I shall do so to ensure that, since my teacher supplied me with all the first principles of these matters, I do not appear to have failed my teacher in turn. We publish the learning of this most illustrious man for memory and render him, though by no means equal to his talent, at least according to our own ability, due gratitude and thanks. Yet I ask those who take up these writings to imagine something greater of my teacher than I am able to express.

WHAT THEOLOGY IS, WHAT ITS OBJECT IS, AND WHAT ITS END IS

In this book we propose to discuss the use of the theological loci in scholastic disputation. To do this rightly and in due order, it will be best at the outset to define what theology is, what its subject matter is, so to speak, and what is the goal toward which a theologian must direct all his studies. Theology, if we translate the Greek word into Latin, is reasoning and discourse about God. Every discipline undertaken by reason and method concerning some subject investigates its essence, its powers, as they are called, and all the other things that are peculiarly and properly attributed to it. In theology, therefore, we understand a certain faculty that investigates God’s nature, power, and properties. Nor is it enough for a theologian, by the powers and rights of his faculty, to assign to God those things that absolutely belong to him in himself, unless he also claims those things that, as it were, accrue to God in relation to creatures. For he examines the conception of God in every respect. Theology’s treatment is therefore twofold: one part concerns God in himself, the other concerns him as the beginning and end of things. Yet the theologian does not mix the highest and lowest, divine and human, but joins these things to those and those to these so articulately, clearly, and skillfully that they not only bring no obscurity to one another but also shed light on each other. What is more, just as we cannot gaze at the sun, since our sight and senses are overcome by its rays, so the eyes of our mind falter and grow dim before the vision of the divine light. It is therefore necessary that we see God, invisible by nature, in his effects as in a shadow, mirror, image, signs, and traces. For his invisible things are understood and seen from the creation of the world through the things that have been made: his eternal power and divinity as well (Rom. 1). Since, among all things we perceive with our eyes, rational creatures are most like God—for man was made in the image of God—you will find nothing in which divine goodness, power, and wisdom shine more brightly. Therefore, although the discipline of theology is chiefly about God himself, it nevertheless deals extensively with human beings and human things, and seeks knowledge of the divine nature both from man and from the things that God did and brought about for man. If it is the proper task of theology to investigate and set forth God’s power, goodness, and providence, then the theologian’s lengthy discussion of the end God established for human beings—none other than himself—and of the means necessary to that end, namely virtues, laws, grace, incarnation, and sacraments, is not foreign to the purpose of theology. This is so not only for the reason St. Thomas rightly emphasized, lest theology—which is productive as well as contemplative—be left deficient and diminished by omitting this part, but much more because these matters strikingly and magnificently reveal and illustrate God’s goodness, justice, virtue, integrity, beneficence, generosity, mercy, and patience. Ignorance of this has caused some to think that this discipline was devised not for contemplation but for action. Let us see, then, what arguments they use. First, they say, the treatment of contemplation is far smaller than that of action. St. Thomas devoted the first part of his Summa to the former, and the second and third parts to the latter; each of these exceeds the first in volume. Again, to discuss the end and the means belongs without doubt to a faculty that undertakes and performs something. These matters are referred not to thought but to action. Since, then, the theologian spends most of his discussion on the end and means of human life, it seems that the force of theology lies chiefly not in seeing but in doing. 19. Moreover, theology and Sacred Scripture have the same end. For the principles and

conclusions have. But the end of all the Sacred Scriptures is love, as Augustine (1 doctr. Christ. c. 35 et 36) and Gregory (hom. 10 in Ezech.) testify. Theology therefore tends not chiefly toward contemplation but toward love. Further, any discipline that contemplates and investigates nature chiefly requires the eyes for seeing, not the strength for action; nor does it accuse those who are sluggish in action of foolishness, but those who are slow in contemplation. Yet all Scripture demands works of its disciples and reproves those sluggish in idleness as vain and idle. Therefore this discipline is handed down chiefly not for contemplation but for action. In addition, faith is directed toward charity, not charity conversely toward faith, as we gather from Matthew (cap. 22) and the Apostle (I Cor. 13). Knowledge of the principles of theology—which knowledge we take by the term “faith”—was therefore first given to the faithful for the sake of love. For the τελική cause (which we may translate as final) is itself the first and principal cause. If, then, knowledge of the principles of this discipline is practical—namely, faith working through love—it follows that the discipline itself also pertains first to morals and the conduct of life. Likewise, if faith is contemplation of some kind and not a moral discipline, whence comes “Faith without works is dead” (Iac. 2)? And again, “To give knowledge of salvation to his people for the remission of their sins” (Lc. 1). Knowledge of bodily health chiefly looks to practice, not contemplation. What of “He gave him knowledge of the holy things” (Sap. 10), “The knowledge of holy things is prudence” (Pro. 9), “All Scripture, divinely inspired, is useful, etc., that the man of God may be perfect, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3), “These things are written that you may believe … and that believing you may have life in his name” (Ioh. 20), and “He who says he knows God and does not keep his commandments is a liar” (1 Ioh. 2), besides six hundred other passages of this kind found throughout divine Scripture? From these it seems altogether to follow that theology is not contemplative but productive, and hence that its chief end is not contemplation but action. Some scholastic theologians, eminent and distinguished men, have indeed thought so. In this they perhaps follow the Master (I dist. 1), who divides this discipline according to use and enjoyment. These most learned men—for it is most modest of me to call them that—do not understand that the end of a discipline differs from the end of its teacher; or, to express nearly the same matter in different words, that the primary end of a discipline differs from its ultimate end. For example, we say that wine has two ends: one for drinking, another for healing. The charity of God who teaches, and thus of this discipline, is indeed its end, but not its first end; it is the second. For, as Cicero elegantly says, knowledge and contemplation of nature is in a certain way incomplete and inchoate if no action follows. “Vain are all men in whom there is not the knowledge of God,” etc. (Sap. 13); and again: “When they knew God, they did not glorify him as God … but became vain in their thoughts,” etc. (Rom. 1). Therefore, if you consider the nature of a discipline from its second end, Physics will then be counted among practical disciplines. Moreover, our first end, as St. Thomas most truly holds, is the clear and manifest vision of God. Since we attain that end by mind and will, knowledge and love, it follows not that knowledge in itself is directed to love, but that both are directed to vision. If knowledge of the way is in itself referred only to knowledge of the homeland, although it is not sufficient by itself unless affection and love are joined to it, and the vision of God, of which faith is the seedbed, is chiefly contemplation, not production, then it follows that theology

is most speculative, not practical (for, since we are speaking of scholastic disputation, let us use the language of the schools). Add that theology investigates God’s nature, power, and properties. God is therefore the proper object of this science, and it is consequently established for the sake of contemplation. Augustine (12 de Trin. c. 14 et 15) plainly teaches that the wisdom of which the Apostle speaks (I Corin. 12) is intellectual knowledge and contemplation of eternal things. Sacred doctrine is undoubtedly wisdom, and therefore it is established as speculative. 30. To say nothing of other considerations, the very name of theology proclaims this. For just as it is most foolish not only to assert but even to doubt whether physiology and astronomy are contemplative or productive disciplines, since their very names declare conspicuously and excellently that they concern contemplation of things, not morals and action—even though physicians, sailors, and others devoted and assigned to public affairs despise and shun an idle knowledge of nature and the stars, while they embrace and cultivate the practical one—so it is far removed even from ordinary and middling understanding to doubt whether theology is contemplative or productive, since it is nothing other than reasoning and discourse about God. Yet prudent men do not wish it to be idle and at rest, but adapted to the use and end of human life. Moreover, theology teaches every kind of knowledge about God, whether it is obtained by the light of nature or only by divine gift and illumination. Since it contemplates whatever human minds can know about God, it must be either speculative, or no knowledge of God can be speculative. Although some have conceded this point to the argument, it is so absurd that it should not need refuting. What is more, our theology is a kind of impression of divine wisdom, which has both the power of contemplation and of action. Nothing therefore prevents the same light of God’s countenance, which is marked upon us, from showing both what ought to be contemplated and what ought to be done. The rational soul, being the most excellent of all forms, has outstanding powers both of sensation and of life; yet in it the power of understanding is first and chief. Nor does it exercise its other powers except so that at last it may fulfill its proper function of understanding. In this way, therefore, St. Thomas wisely and skillfully said that theology performs both functions, contemplation and action, although it contemplates more than it acts. For it acts only because by acting it tends toward perfect knowledge of God. With these matters briefly explained, those three things that I undertook to set out at the beginning of this chapter are now clear and plain enough: namely, what is the proper conception and definition of theology, what is the subject matter about which it treats, and what is its end, both first and second. Theology is a science that teaches what the divine nature is and what its powers and properties are. God himself is the object and subject proposed for this discipline, and, as it were, the matter to be treated—for philosophers call a thing by these names when a faculty proposes it to the mind for consideration and understanding. Its primary end is knowledge and contemplation of the divine nature, explained through God’s powers, virtues, and properties; its ultimate end is the performance of those things necessary to morals and to living well and happily. I do not now undertake to discuss how the use of the theological loci is adapted to the conduct and actions of life, although it is exceedingly great and would provide us with a very useful and abundant subject for discussion. As I said above, I must now explain only that use which a theologian can derive from the loci when he employs and treats them in scholastic

in disputations, that is, when he is concerned to know as much as possible about God and divine things. I have not forgotten that I wrote in book 5, when speaking of the Church’s authority in judging morals, that there are two kinds of questions about theological matters: one concerns contemplation, the other is situated in morals and the practice of life. Some may understand this as though the subject I have now undertaken were different from the former. That is far from my intention. For it is one thing to teach a preacher the use of the loci in a sermon, where morals are discussed by exhorting or dissuading, and another to instruct a theologian in the use of the loci when a question of morals arises, whether it concerns matters that are necessary to know for salvation or even those that are advantageous. I have decided to pass over for now prescribing how preachers ought to use the theological loci. But since questions of faith and morals are treated by the theologian in the same way and by the same method when they come into theological disputation, there can be no doubt: whatever rules apply to the preceding questions also apply to those that follow. For these are altogether one matter, so that there is little difference between decrees of faith and judgments about morals, and they are to be treated from the same loci and in nearly the same form. Nor would I have anyone detain me again with so cold and barren a slander, namely, that I have now called theology simply and without qualification a science. As though I did not know that Aristotle requires clear and evident knowledge of a conclusion in science; since theology does not have knowledge of this kind in its principles, it cannot have it in its conclusions either. For it is contrary to reason to make a conclusion lucid, open, and evident if the things from which it is inferred are obscure, hidden, and enveloped. Yet if we do not speak as Aristotle does, we certainly speak as the sacred authors do, who called this discipline science without qualification. “To know how faith may assist the pious and be defended against the impious, the Apostle seems to call by the proper name ‘science’” (14 de Trin. c. 1), Augustine says. This is undoubtedly the proper function and office of theology. Jerome too, to omit others, repeatedly calls the teaching of Sacred Scripture, which we theologians profess, science and wisdom. Indeed, Sacred Scripture does not at all shrink from using the word “know” where the matter is certain. These passages are well known: “I know that my redeemer lives,” etc. (Iob 19); likewise, “I know that you will certainly reign,” etc. (1 Reg. 24); likewise, “He gave him knowledge of holy things” (Sap. 10); “You will find the knowledge of God, for the Lord gives wisdom, and from his mouth come prudence and knowledge” (Pru. 2). And the Apostle: “To one indeed, through the Spirit, is given the word of wisdom, to another the word of knowledge” (1 Cor. 12). Moreover, Aristotle demands evidence in the disciplines, so that knowledge of things can neither deceive nor change. For the term “science” requires a firm and unchangeable understanding. Since, therefore, the matters that fall under faith and theology, insofar as they fall under them, are stable and immovable, and the theologian cannot err, slip, or be deceived about them, it follows that theology may claim for itself the proper name of science even without perspicuity. The same reason allows this discipline to deal even with contingent matters—that is, matters not necessary by their nature—without loss or injury to its name. For Aristotle required necessity in a discipline because without it the stability and immutability of things and knowledge would not be apparent. But causes that occur by chance and their effects, though by their nature not very firm or constant, insofar as they fall under theology and faith are not shifting, such that they are transferred now here and

there, but remain certain and unchanging, as it were everlasting. Therefore God is rightly said to know both kinds of things: those that occur necessarily and those that for us are left to chance and fortune. We rightly call theology a science, then, in which there is immovable certainty, firm constancy, and, so to speak, infallibility of knowledge. What is more, many call music and astronomy sciences, and yet scarcely one or two people have examined by their own instrument or experiment the revolutions of the heavens and the wandering stars on which those disciplines now depend. Indeed, younger astrologers generally follow the experiments of the ancients as certain precedents concerning the matters they themselves undertake to treat and judge. Theology, then, will rightly also be called a science, especially since it happens that the principles of this discipline are obscurely known to us. For even if they were clear and plain to us, this discipline would nevertheless retain both its name and its character. And in truth, if Aristotle were alive, he would find no other name by which to call theology more aptly and fittingly. For it is absurd to call it faith when it rests immediately not on authority but on reason and syllogism. Otherwise, if the first premise is certain by faith, but the second is probable by natural reason, the conclusion will be an object of faith, not of opinion. This is plainly false. Therefore, when no better term presents itself, let us call theology a science. For it is a firm and stable perception and grasp of things that are joined by a clear connection from certain and stable principles. Nor can it truly be said that theology’s inferences are probable and obscure, not evident and firm. They offer a very dull, not at all sharp, argument for this claim: if the connection were certain and clear, the conclusions would pertain not to theology but to faith. But this reasoning is ridiculous, and is rightly criticized by most people. For the difference between faith and theology is easy and clear: faith rests immediately and, so to speak, directly on authority, whereas theology rests immediately and directly on reason. As I said above, faith and theology stand to one another as the habit of principles stands to the science of conclusions. And just as the light of nature produces knowledge of natural principles without the intermediary of reasoning, so the light of faith, without employing any argument of reason, produces conviction about those things to which we assent as believers, relying solely on divine authority. The evidence and firmness of inference therefore does not abolish theology but establishes it; it does not remove it but entails it. Although in this discipline, as in the others, certain opinions are mixed with matters known and established. And just as physical teaching, though naturally fitting and consistent, does not establish every conclusion with certainty but persuades us of some by probable argument, so the theologian speaks many things consistently, certainly, and confidently, yet in some matters he considers himself to have done well if he finds something plausible. He does not think he knows what he does not know; nor, as though all theological doctrines were certain, does he fear nothing or doubt nothing. Rather, he is careful and takes precautions lest, by rashly assenting to everything and asserting all things absolutely, he lose the authority even of those matters that are more certain and clear. But let us return to the point. When the inference is uncertain, or one premise joined to a principle of faith is uncertain, the conclusion will be an opinion, not theology properly speaking. But whether both premises of the syllogism are matters of faith, or one is certain by faith and the other evident by nature, the conclusion will pertain to theology, provided that the inference is either clear by the light of nature or known through the illumination of faith. For such knowledge of a conclusion is referred to faith in the same way (although I have said this, I shall say it often again), in the same way, I say, as it is referred to the habit of principles

in the natural disciplines. Since these matters are so obvious that they need no argument, let us pass over them and proceed to the rest.

WHAT THE PRINCIPLES OF THEOLOGY ARE

Indeed, since every discipline has certain sources that we call principles of knowledge, and then certain streams that, as it were, we call conclusions, the ends of knowledge, a theologian preparing to use the loci must first of all learn what the causes and principles of his faculty are, and what effects are connected with those causes and principles. The principles of theology must be known first, for once they are known we shall understand the conclusions much more easily. But since, after setting out ten kinds of loci, we added the causes of each kind and first established the things in which the force and nature of each are contained, perhaps someone will contend that this treatment is superfluous, indeed, that everything we intend to say about the use of the loci is superfluous. For he will argue that theology has no other sources and loci than the very ones we pointed out, and that we explained the force and nature of each so openly and clearly that, unless we are very dull, we can easily draw arguments from every locus. What is more (someone will say this too), did theologians before our art—if this is an art at all—not discover arguments and treat theological matters by method and reason, linking one argument to another? If St. Thomas, a perfect and complete theologian, had judged this part of theology necessary, would he have entirely left it untouched? It is not plausible that, when the other parts of theology have been well described, he neglected the final act as though he were an idle poet. Why, then, is there any need to labor, or in what should we rouse our care and thoughts, if by explaining the use of the loci we can produce or achieve nothing of this kind, nothing of great usefulness or necessity to theologians? Such sophistries, however, cannot dislodge my mind from its place and condition. For I am so persuaded and believe that these instructions of ours about the loci contain many things and are ready at hand wherever a theologian turns; no disputation can exclude them. For whether one seeks the firmest argument to prove theological doctrines, or the most suitable reason to explain Sacred Scripture, either this is the art by which to attain them, or there is no art at all. To say there is no art for the greatest matters, when no art is lacking for the least, is the mark of men who speak without due consideration and err in matters of the greatest importance. But the things by which we encourage the knowledge and use of the loci might perhaps deserve more careful discussion. We have done this in other books. (On the third argument) At this time, however, we had only to explain why St. Thomas, the most diligent and complete theologian, left this treatment of the loci aside, if it is as necessary to a theologian as we say. St. Thomas indeed (in I part. quaest. 1, arti. 8, ad secundum), in his customary concise and brief manner, indicated the theological loci, not all but most of them. And, so that I may dedicate myself to him as a man by no means ungrateful—to whom I owe so much—and bind myself to this duty of service by an everlasting testimony, St. Thomas was both the author and teacher who inspired me to compose this work.

But he explained the nature of the loci in a compressed and narrow way, and finally in his own manner. For he does not expand his argument, but makes what he proposes as if in points. As far as I know, neither St. Thomas nor anyone else tried to explain the method of treating the loci themselves. Aristotle had done the same in the Topics: he treated the loci themselves in various ways and at length, but did not show how to find anything from them or demonstrate their use, which in this matter was greatest and most important; instead, he wrote about a certain use for discovering probable and common arguments, which learned men can ignore without great loss to their learning. Although (I topi. Lib.)—perhaps more boastfully than truly—Aristotle himself claims that what he teaches in the Topics has four uses. What, then? If St. Thomas passed over the use of the loci in silence, would he have pursued it unless some accident or preoccupation had forestalled his intention? Or if he did not deliberately and with judgment set out to pursue these matters, perhaps either “not all of us can do everything,” or it was part of divine providence that our predecessors left something to those who came after, on which they too might labor and usefully exercise not only their memory but also their intellect. We shall therefore complete this neglected part with no one’s support but our own effort, as they say, by our own art. For nothing about the theological loci has been explained since St. Thomas, at least among the works that have come into our hands, that I approve. Just as in military affairs a commander does not think it enough to give weapons to his soldiers, but teaches them how to use them, trains their hands, arranges their ranks, orders when they should flee the enemy and when pursue, when to trust their strength and when to use skill, when to strike the enemy and when to evade his blow, and finally leads them into battle, prescribes their formation, and assigns them a position from which they may not depart without his order, so I seem to be acting in this way if I wish to form and instruct my students toward the likeness of complete learning. I should lay these matters down not only in words but also, having taken up weapons, enter into a mock battle as an example for posterity. Although these things seem to serve not for wounding but for show, they will nevertheless not be useless. For whatever in these matters is pleasing to the sight is likewise useful for actual battle, if it is ever fought against adversaries. (On the second argument) If someone has accomplished by no art what belongs to art, I beg that he allow me and those like me to use art and instruction. There are meadows infused inwardly with a natural and native moisture. There are others that cannot be irrigated unless moisture is applied from outside. Certain theologians before me have disputed with great success. First, they would have done the same more easily and certainly if they had tasted this kind of exercise of ours. However fertile a field may be, a farmer will make it more fertile if he cultivates it carefully and diligently. Thus, even if some men endowed with great talents have attained an abundance of theological discussion without art, art, as Tully says, is a surer guide than nature. For it is one thing to pile up arguments—or rather scatter and disperse them—and another to press them by the same method and art. For one who knows where each thing is placed and by what path he may reach it will always be able to dig it up, even if it has been buried, and will always be master of himself in disputation. Therefore, if there have been none who arranged the loci artfully and composed them by kind, none who glued together this part of theology after it had been loosened and torn apart, and by method

if they have been constrained, this little work of ours will immediately become superfluous—or rather, perhaps all the more necessary for the learned and gifted, and certainly so for the slow and less polished. Next, scholastic theologians do not seem to me—and I must admit what I think—to have divided theological discussions in a very well-composed or orderly way. I always make an exception for D. Thomas, whose arrangement of matters is remarkable, whose ordering of questions and articles is supreme, and whose construction of the discipline is astonishing. The ends correspond to the beginnings, the middle to both, and everything to everything else. What need is there to speak of the abundance of his arguments? On almost innumerable questions, he had such ease and abundance in arguing both sides that he did not always argue against everything, as Archesilas did, yet he expressed everything that could be said on either side of every matter. The other scholastic authors have grievously erred in arranging their reasoning and order. They followed the Master, in whose four books of Sententiae one certainly finds much reading of the saints and, for that time, no small erudition; but apart from the labels of the distinctions into which those books are divided, one finds almost nothing properly distinguished or arranged in a clear and orderly way. You would call it a heap of testimonies rather than an ordered and reasoned discipline. His first discussion is about the Trinity. He pursues matters mentioned earlier before completing them: he discussed God’s justice and mercy in Sentent. 4 almost in passing; virtues in the third book; and certain vices also in the fourth. There are countless matters of this kind which he treated confusedly and chaotically. Therefore, nearly everything among the scholastics who followed in his footsteps is also confused and disordered. I do not wish to deprive the Master of his ancient title, for he was certainly a great man for his age and one whom later generations rightly honored; nor do I wish to take anything from the praise of the scholastics, which the judgment of many centuries has established. But I will speak frankly and freely about what is lacking in them and what they would have accomplished, as men distinguished in talent and learning, if they had not neglected the art of discussion. For in the method of discovering arguments, they also seem to have been ignorant of certain sources, since they bring forward no arguments from some of them. How few argue from the traditions of Christ and the Apostles? They do so rarely from councils, not very often from Sacred Scripture, and scarcely once from history. In my judgment no theologian can be heaped with every praise unless he has gained knowledge of all these sources and prepared a ready and practiced use of them in argument. I admit that I have said enough above about the nature and force of the sources. (To the first argument.) But we will now turn to these same sources for good reason, as we teach what use they have and how arguments are to be drawn from them. This is not so easy for everyone that they need neither our precepts nor examples. But enough of this. Let us proceed with our subject. To avoid pursuing matters that are nearly innumerable, I will briefly set out the principles of theology. The distinction between natural and supernatural theology—for this is where we must begin—is straightforward and clear. I call natural theology Metaphysics, insofar as it investigates the nature of God by reasoning from nature. It is common to us, that is, Christians, and to pagan philosophers. I call supernatural theology the discipline that investigates both the nature and attributes of the same God through principles divinely revealed to human beings. Here I use “revelation” in the theologians’ sense: something that surpasses human capacity and intellect. For Paulus (Rom. 1) also attributes to God’s revelation and manifestation those things known by natural reason and light. This supernatural theology is proper to the faithful and

Christians and superior to the other disciplines to the extent that divine authority, on which it rests, is superior and prior to every human reason. D. Thomas therefore rightly teaches (I.1.8 ad 2) that arguing from authority is most proper to this teaching, because its principles are obtained through revelation and so we must believe the authority of those to whom revelation was made. This does not detract from the dignity of this discipline. Although an argument from authority based on human reason is weakest, an argument from authority based on divine revelation is most effective. That is all. Therefore, since all our discussion of theology concerns what is above nature, only the principles of this theology, and what and of what sort they are, need to be explained. To do this suitably for the schools, I think the knots that bind and obstruct the whole matter should be brought forward and resolved. The first is that D. Thomas seems to make several errors in a few words. One is that he contradicts himself: at one time he says that the articles of faith are the principles of theology (I.1.7–8), but elsewhere says that all the things contained in Sacred Scripture are its principles (I.1.8 ad 2; II-II.1.5 ad 2); sometimes he even includes everything divinely revealed (I.1.5 ad 2 and art. 8 ad 2), among which are certainly the traditions of the Apostles, although they are not written in the canonical books. Could he contradict himself more? A second error is that, although Paulus (Heb. 11) numbers these two among the things that must be believed—to believe that God exists and that he rewards those who seek him—D. Thomas (I.2.2 and IIII.1.5 ad 3) instead teaches that they are not included among the articles of faith but are presupposed by faith. These are not principles of theology for D. Thomas, then, if they are not revealed propositions that we believe by faith but are known by people through the light of nature and therefore precede faith, whose decrees alone we should have among the proper principles of theology. D. Thomas also seems opposed not only to the Apostle but to reason, which clearly proves that God’s existence is properly and primarily held to be the first principle of theology. As I said above, God is the subject proper to this discipline. Every discipline first posits both that its subject exists and what that subject is. God’s existence is therefore a proper principle of theology, since theology is speculative. Since it is also productive, its first principle is that God rewards those who seek him. A third error of D. Thomas, shared with most theologians, is that although God revealed many things not only to those who wrote the canonical books but also to other holy men of God—Martinus, Nicolaus, Benedictus, Dominicus, Franciscus—he says that faith and theology rest not on any revelations of God but only on those received by the authors of Sacred Scripture. Yet divine revelation in general is the formal ground of faith and theology, and faith assents to whatever God says. For faith is a virtue that believes God when he speaks. The first knot, then, is in the words of D. Thomas. The second binds not only D. Thomas but nearly everyone else. No discipline proves its own principles by reasoning but posits them; that is why they are called postulates or assumptions. But theology concludes by reasoning what faith holds. Therefore the principles of this discipline cannot be identical with the decrees of faith. There are many ways to show that theology proves the dogmas of faith by argument. 83. First, because by clear philosophical arguments

that God is one, immortal, and the governor of human affairs, and so forth. Then again, because God is creator is an article of faith, while natural reason also demonstrates this. 85. Add that the Apostle Petrus (1 Pet. 3) commands us to be ready to give a reason for the hope that is in us, and therefore for the faith that is in us. Add also that this science is credited with bringing about, nourishing, defending, and strengthening the most saving faith, as stated by D. Augustinus (De Trin. XIV.1) and repeated by all theologians. If knowledge of natural things, as Augustinus says, both produces, nourishes, and strengthens faith, theology plainly reveals the things of faith by natural reasoning. Faith, then, does not give principles to the theologian unless he proves its own principles; but this is so clearly recognized and understood to be entirely foreign to every discipline that I need not confirm it here. The third knot is also tied from the words of D. Thomas (I.32.4). He teaches that something pertains to faith in two ways. Directly, as things chiefly handed down to us by God; indirectly, as things whose denial entails something plainly contrary to the faith. For example, if someone denies that Samuel was the son of Helcana, it follows that divine Scripture is false. Thus far he has said this not in those exact words but with the same meaning. Elsewhere (II-II.2.5) he also asserts that all things handed down in Sacred Scripture, except those by which a person is made blessed, pertain to faith incidentally: for example, that Abraham had two sons and that David was the son of Isai. But if matters of this kind, although explicitly written in the sacred books, pertain to faith only indirectly and incidentally, then they are certainly not principles of theology. For the foundations of any discipline do not constitute its structure incidentally and indirectly. I could have entangled this question with other arguments, but I was afraid even these would seem too many to a delicate reader. These few arguments are nevertheless forceful and leave us no choice but to explain everything necessary for setting out the principles of theology. We will therefore first explain what the formal ground of this discipline is; then what its native and genuine principles are, and among these, which are primary and which are legitimate but secondary; finally, which principles are extraneous and foreign, that is, borrowed and summoned from other disciplines. The formal ground of theology—for this is the first matter I undertook to explain—is not single and simple but double and divided. For there is the formal ground of the subject matter, insofar as it is a thing; in this way divinity is called the ground of theology. There is also the ground of a thing insofar as it moves the mind to assent; in this way the First Truth revealing is considered the ground of theology. We understand the grounds of sight in this way: color in the first sense, and light in the second. Some call the first the “ground by which,” and the second the “ground under which.” (I think we should be allowed to use the language of the schools when Latin terms do not readily occur; indeed, Latin terms must sometimes be left behind, lest in scholastic disputation we seem to care more for words than to explain things.) Since there can be no controversy among learned men about the formal ground of the subject matter of this discipline, insofar as it is a thing, I lay down these conclusions about the formal ground on the side of the habit and power of knowing. (First conclusion.) First: the formal ground of faith is not the formal ground of theology. For even if the principles of theology were known by the light of prophecy or even by the light of the glory of the blessed, the conclusions would still pertain to theology. Christ the Lord was the foremost of all who ever lived in divine theology and knowledge of the divine nature, yet he assented to theological conclusions without faith. For it requires

faith, in its formal ground, requires something obscure and unseen, since it is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen; theology, however, can also be evident and clear. For it is reasoning and speech about God. 93. There is also a difference between prophecy and faith, if we believe D. Thomas, and the lights by which prophets are illuminated to prophesy and the faithful to believe are not the same. 94. But if a prophet, through his illumination, knows the principles of theology and by reasoning draws their consequences and what contradicts them, he will certainly be a theologian, even though the formal ground of this theology is not the light of faith but of prophecy. (Second conclusion.) The second conclusion is this: being revealed by God or a light divinely infused is the formal ground of theology, whether that light is faith, prophecy, or glory. For supernatural theology, which is what we now discuss, generally requires some light above nature itself in order to know its principles, but neither the name of theology nor its proper definition determines what that light will specifically be. Since theologians discuss not the theology of the blessed but that of wayfarers, and ask not what belongs to the discipline itself but what is suited to our nature, they usually assert that a theologian understands the principles of theology through faith. They think the light of prophecy does not hinder the general rule because it is rare, or because, like the light of faith, it is obscure and is generally understood under the light of faith. We do not depart from this custom; we have often said that the principles of our theology should be received through faith. (Third conclusion.) Hence arises this third conclusion: the formal ground of our theology is the same as that of faith, although it moves us to assent to principles in one way and to assent to conclusions in another: to principles, I say, without an intervening syllogism or reasoning, but to conclusions through reasoning and an intervening syllogism. By this distinction theology and faith are separated not merely in words and thought but in the whole reality and kind of thing, even though the formal ground of both is the same. 98. In many places D. Thomas seems to hold that the name “faith” extends very widely and applies to everything said and revealed by God, whether through the sacred and canonical authors or through any other people inspired by a divine spirit. If this is true, the formal ground of faith will extend much further and include not only revelations made to prophets and apostles but also those made to the other saints of God’s Church, and even those divinely given at times to wicked men, such as Balaam and Caiphas, whose predictions unquestionably pertain to faith. The same reason would therefore apply to all the other things God revealed to anyone whatsoever. But in I part., quaest. 1, artic. 8 ad 2, as we objected while arguing, he teaches in very clear words that our faith rests on no revelations other than those given through the Apostles and Prophets, that is, the authors of the canonical books. 101. Paulus confirms this when he says that the faithful are built upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, with Christ Iesu himself as the chief cornerstone. Therefore, only the teaching of the Prophets, Christ, and the Apostles founds the Church’s faith; no other teaching contains the principles of theology. For the principles of disciplines and their foundations are the same. Add that faith is a theological virtue joined and allied with the Church’s worship of God. Not everything revealed by God, then, pertains to the virtue of faith, but only what also pertains to the Church’s worship. Since it makes no difference to the Church whether we believe what appeared to Brigida or Catharina of Siena, then in no way do

these revelations pertain to faith. Add also that the faith discussed here is not a private virtue but a common one, for it is called catholic, that is, universal. Therefore, private revelations, whoever received them and whatever their kind, do not pertain to the Catholic faith or to the foundations and principles of ecclesiastical teaching, which is true and genuine theology. A further substantial argument for this is that the Catholic faith does not believe what is not proposed to the faithful through the Church and its public ministers. It was right, of course, that matters concerning the commonwealth in general should be referred to it not by any private individuals but by its common ministers. “Its foundations are in the holy mountains.” He immediately adds to explain this: “The Lord will tell it in the writings of peoples and of the princes who were in it.” The foundations of ecclesiastical faith are therefore not private writings but the writings of peoples, which the Church’s princes handed down to us. For this reason, among the principles of our theology we should not count what God privately and individually revealed to certain people, but what God spoke commonly and publicly to his Church. Since this seems reasonable, it necessarily follows that the formal ground of faith and theology is not as diffuse and broad as it appears to some, but much more restricted and limited: it is understood as the First Truth revealing to the Church those things that pertain to religion. This is undoubtedly required by the constancy, certainty, and firmness of faith. For faith would have no firm, stable, or fixed foundation if it followed private revelations. Let no one object to me that angels on their way to God have faith and religion, though we do not know whether God proposed to them the things they had to believe directly or through some higher angel serving as a public minister. I say that the angels too had a common faith and a common revelation, which belonged not to private appropriation but to public religion. The objection concerning the prophecies of Balaam and Caiphas is easily rejected: their words pertain to faith not because they spoke them but because the sacred authors wrote them down. I have explained briefly, but not carelessly, what the formal ground of theology is. It remains to explain what the proper and legitimate principles of this discipline are. I see no need for us to labor over this. From what has been established, it is easy to understand that everything divinely revealed through the Church’s sacred authors must be counted among the proper principles of theology. I mean not only what the sacred authors recorded in their writings but also what they entrusted orally to those who came after them. This was explained most carefully in the third book of this work. By sacred authors I mean not only those who wrote the canonical books but also Christ the Lord, the first author of both Catholic life and teaching, and the Apostles, who were ministers of the word. Even if the authority of councils and the Apostolic See makes the truth of Catholic dogma certain, or even if all the saints unanimously agree, we do not for that reason multiply the principles of theology or extend its formal ground. For, as we have often said elsewhere, neither councils nor the pontiff of the Apostolic See nor the saints as interpreters of Scripture issue new revelations to the faithful. They either pass on whole and unimpaired to later generations what the Church received from the Apostles, express and interpret it, or at least draw out what follows from it and is connected to it, and show what opposes and contradicts it. The number of principles of theology, then, is fully established by the sacred books and the traditions of the Apostles.

Therefore, everything that is to be counted among the true and genuine beginnings of theology is contained in the first two sources. The Church gives these beginnings like seeds: Christ gave them to the Apostles, and the Apostles gave them to the Church. All shepherds, teachers, and theologians water and cultivate them, bringing forth and showing the shoots and branches that grow from them. These are the foundations of theological and ecclesiastical teaching laid by Christ through the Apostles; everyone else, whether the fathers of councils, supreme pontiffs, or holy Doctors of the Church, builds upon them. For no one can lay another foundation besides the one already laid, which is that of the Apostles and Prophets, with Christ Iesu himself as the chief cornerstone. The principles of disciplines are not all placed at the same level. Some are simply primary and, by their general force, contain the rest, as in Metaphysics: “It is impossible to affirm and deny at the same time.” In theology, the corresponding principles are: “God exists” and “He rewards those who seek him”; all the articles of faith are implicitly contained in these as the first things to be believed, as D. Thomas also affirms in the same words (II-II.1.7). Other principles are indeed primary and immediate, but more restricted than the common principles that were, as it were, sources for everything else. In Physics these include that natural things consist of matter and form, and that nature is the principle of motion and rest. In theology they are the chief articles of faith which, as the same D. Thomas says, are first and directly proposed to the faithful for belief. For the articles about God, who is the subject matter of theology, state what either exists in God from all eternity or was arranged and dispensed in time for human salvation. We believe in the same God who is three and one, who created the world, who makes the impious just and the pious blessed; we also believe, I say, that he became human, was born, died, was buried, rose again, and ascended into heaven. These are rightly the first and proper propositions of theology, which we especially presuppose about the subject of our discipline. Without granting these principal beginnings, a theologian cannot advance even a finger’s breadth. The first are like what the Philosopher calls “axioms.” For whoever approaches God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. Anyone preparing to learn a supernatural discipline must therefore first grasp those two general preconceptions. This is the distinctive mark of axioms. The latter principles, however, may rightly be called the suppositions of theology. A theologian can persuade a student of them in some way, or at least explain them. Besides these two kinds of principles, there are others that are not chiefly sought for their own sake, but—as D. Thomas thinks—to explain the most important matters. Such are all things contained in Sacred Scripture beyond the articles of faith, which are assumed to explain either the nature and majesty of God or his benevolence toward people and his providential governance of all things useful and necessary to them. Although these are neither matters of faith nor the principal heads of theology, but are incidentally connected to them and are, as it were, secondary principles, the theologian accepts them as the philosopher accepts self-evident principles, without an intervening reason, just as he accepted the articles of faith. For the faithful have something like a natural and innate idea in their minds: they judge as true everything written and handed down by the Apostles. These are the legitimate and genuine principles of theology. For whatever clear and self-evident principles theology takes from Metaphysics, Physics, Mathematics, or finally the other disciplines of nature, it does not take from its own power

and nature, but borrows them for its own use from outside or claims them by a certain right of its own. Perhaps someone will say: will there not be many and various formal grounds of theology, since the principles of the many disciplines are also various? Certainly not. The formal ground of disciplines is not drawn from what is attached to them and attributed from outside, but from their own native principles. In theology there is one and the same formal ground for all these principles, namely, the supernatural light of faith. I think we have explained clearly and plainly what the principles of theology are, both its genuine and its foreign ones; which of these are primary and which secondary; and, among the primary ones, which are general and which are restricted to a particular kind. From this it is understood that among the ten sources, the first two contain the proper and legitimate principles of theology, while the final three contain external and foreign ones; the five intermediate sources either contain interpretations of its proper principles or the conclusions that arise and proceed from them. I will explain at once what sort of conclusions these are in theology, after first refuting the arguments I used above when asking about the principles of this theology. The points already made provide many answers to those same arguments, showing that they have no force against D. Thomas, whom they attack most of all. Truth has such power that it obscures the appearance of falsehood, provided that it has been brought to light and explained. Nevertheless, we wish to answer each argument in turn, to accommodate the understanding of less learned readers.

ARGUMENTS REFUTED FROM THE PRECEDING CHAPTER

The first argument therefore raises three false charges against D. Thomas, one of which has already been entirely removed. For how do these claims conflict: that the articles of faith are the primary principles of our theology, while Sacred Scripture also contains secondary ones? And since Scripture does not contain everything, but most things, this also agrees and fits very well: divine truth, even unwritten, is the formal ground of faith. For some matters are handed down orally to the Church and are counted among the true and genuine principles of theology. The first charge, then, has no force. The second charge presses more strongly. But if you pay close attention, you will see that we can speak of God in two ways, and then this charge too will be crushed. We must therefore understand that speech about God takes two forms: either because he is the beginning and end of nature, or because he is above nature and is its beginning and end. As long as we understand an excellent and eternal mind, separate from the body and free, detached from all mortal composition, which perceives and moves all things, sustains and governs heaven and earth, and toward which all things strive and exert themselves as far as they can, we understand God naturally and speak about him naturally. But if we consider God himself shown to us by a superior light, by which he appears threefold in one divinity, wondrous in his works above nature, the first efficient cause and ultimate end of all such supernatural works, and thus the one and highest happiness of rational creatures, then our understanding and speech about God are quite different. Since Paulus therefore numbers these two among the things that must be believed—to believe that God exists and that there is

a rewarder of those who seek him—he understands God not as he is seen by the eyes of nature but as the first principle and ultimate end of supernatural things, appearing through a higher illumination. In this sense D. Thomas says (II-II, quaest. 1, art. 7) that all the articles are contained in those first things to be believed, namely, that we believe God exists and exercises providence concerning human salvation. When he says elsewhere that these two are not among the articles of faith but are rather presupposed by faith, he is speaking of God according to the light of nature. For as grace presupposes nature, so supernatural knowledge presupposes natural knowledge, as the same D. Thomas says. It is useless to try to fill with the teaching of faith someone who lacks those two natural anticipations: that God exists and exercises providence over human beings. No nation is so savage, as Cicero says, that it does not know it must have a god, even if it does not know what kind of god is fitting. Anyone who does not first know that God is the governor of human affairs, and therefore their ruler and judge, is very far from our discipline. If God is ruler and judge of human beings, and can be understood in no other way than as endowed with supreme wisdom, justice, and power, it follows that he has rewards prepared for virtue and punishments for vices. For, as Solon most truly said, no commonwealth can be sustained without two things: reward and punishment. This led Plato to assert that, since he saw that the best men, despite their noble deeds, were often given no reward for virtue, no distinguished honor, and no memorial of praise in this life, immortal souls would someday receive the reward and fruit of their duty. For it would be absurd for true and just labor to lack honors, rewards, and glory, if there is piety in heaven, if there is a deity who cares for such things. Thus the Elysian fields, the rock of Sisyphus, the wheel of Ixion, and the thirst of Tantalus are not merely poetic fictions but signify realities. Although all these things were invented by poets, they were invented to signify the truth, so that this most useful and truthful judgment might be impressed on people’s minds: “Rewards are due for right actions, punishments for sins.” I am all the more surprised at Caietanus, who in his commentary on the epistle to the Hebrews has strayed far, or perhaps entirely, from the Apostle’s meaning and from the true teaching of nature. Some have followed him in this error, without carefully attending either to Paulus’s purpose or to the force of reason. But so that the reader can see where this whole error began, I will lay out the matter and quote the very words spoken by the originator and, as it were, architect of this opinion: “Whoever does not believe that God exists will never approach him,” he says. “But if you object that this does not fit those who know evidently by demonstrative science that God exists—for when they see that God exists, it is impossible for them to believe that God exists, since faith is the evidence of things not seen—the solution is that this teaching is given in general and therefore it is said generally that one must believe that he exists. It would be much better to know that he exists rather than believe it, but this is rare or very rare. The other point, that God rewards those who seek him, namely, in the future life, must be held by faith, because no speculative science can reach this, and without faith in this matter no one approaches God.” Thus far Caietanus. At this point I think my whole position must contend with his whole position. First, then, if it pleases you, let us consider what Caietanus said about the principle “God exists.” I knowingly and deliberately pass over the claim that knowing is much better than believing; that would be true if he were speaking about human faith. But faith, which rests on God’s word, is much more certain and superior than the knowledge grounded in the reasoning of our minds. Showing this, however, does not belong to the present place and time; what properly belongs to this discussion is whether

if we understand Paulus’s statement generally and as applying to what usually happens, then we evade his whole argument. The Apostle was trying in that chapter to show that all the ancients who were approved by God were approved by the testimony of faith. After including Enoch with the others in his list, he showed that Enoch was approved by faith only because, before his translation, he had received testimony that he pleased God. Having established this proposition from Sacred Scripture, he immediately added the minor premise: “Without faith it is impossible to please God. For whoever approaches God must believe,” and so forth. The Apostle’s argument for this minor premise is vain and weak if we grant that someone approaching God need not always believe that he exists, but only sometimes—and rarely—need know it. For we could refute the Apostle’s argument by answering that it is possible, and better, for someone to know that God exists; in that case, he would not need to believe that God exists. It would follow that pleasing God without faith is not impossible, and that Enoch was one of those who did not believe but knew that God exists. Therefore, just as when the Apostle says that without faith it is impossible to please God, he should be understood not to speak generally or for the most part, but always and about each person who lives in this world, so too, when he gives the reason for this and says, “For whoever approaches God must believe that he exists,” he should be understood in the same way to make no exception at all, but to speak of everyone and every time, if his argument is to have any force in producing belief. As for the next principle, Caietanus should be defended insofar as he said that no speculative science can clearly demonstrate that God rewards those who seek him, if he means supernatural reward. But Caietanus seems to assert generally that no science shows that any reward awaits just and wise men after death; this I must reject. Chrysostomus (hom. 4 de provi.) teaches that those who doubt the immortality of the soul might as well doubt whether it is daytime at noon. For, he says, if they deny that souls are immortal, they deny that punishments for the wicked and rewards for the just follow this life. Thus they deny God’s providence and therefore divinity, which cannot be understood without providence. For if those who rightly worship God depart after suffering injustice, while the impious enjoy unjust happiness, there is no justice in God, if he can reward his own with honors and gifts. If you take away God’s power, justice, or sight, the name of God is empty. For it follows by every kind of reasoning that if God rewards none of those who seek him, he does not exist at all, unless we regard God as blind, weak, or unjust: blind because he does not see his own; weak because he cannot grant rewards; unjust because he is unwilling. Therefore, whoever denies one of these must deny both, and if he does not have a rewarder of those who seek him, he cannot have God either. I scarcely understand what Caietanus means when he says that no speculative science can attain the truth that God rewards those who seek him, and concludes that we must hold it by faith. What if no speculative science can attain it? Is it not enough if a productive science can? I am convinced that just as speculative natural science declares that God, the first efficient cause, exists, so productive natural science also shows that God is the ultimate end of all things. It shows not only this but also that the laws of nature have some author and judge—unless perhaps this one law alone has been abandoned, which has no

legislator, or if someone has prescribed these laws to the world, he cares nothing about whether they are observed. If we speak, then, of God and divine reward insofar as they are shown by the light of nature, we recognize both in this light: that God exists and that he rewards those who seek him. But to please God, it is not enough to know that he is the principle and author of nature; we must be drawn toward God because he is a supernatural end, rising above and surpassing the powers of nature. Therefore the Apostle said most rightly in general that anyone approaching God, the supernatural end, must believe that he exists, and so forth. For knowing what natural reason teaches is not enough for this supernatural approach. “We have access to God through faith” (Rom. 5). That Paulus spoke of approaching a supernatural end and also of supernatural reward is plainly demonstrated by the following (Heb. 11): “He was waiting for the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.” And later: “Now they desire a better homeland, that is, a heavenly one; therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.” Again: “He looked to the reward,” and “as seeing the invisible one, he endured.” Finally: “They did not accept redemption, so that they might find a better resurrection,” and “all these were approved by the testimony of faith but did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us, so that they would not be made perfect without us.” The accusation brought against D. Thomas in the second place has now been adequately refuted, in my opinion. There is no need to clear him of the third error, since we have already explained that theological faith, which we now discuss, does not assent to anything whatsoever God has said but only to those things that pertain both to the common religion of the faithful and that the Church’s common ministers proclaim. We have indeed solved the first knot; the second will be resolved as follows. Matters of faith are of two kinds. Some are simply and universally matters of faith, such as those that surpass natural reason. Others are called matters of faith not in themselves but, as it were, incidentally: things divinely revealed for those who lack their demonstration and evidence, such as that God exists and is one, eternal, wise, and just. Although we see all these things in the light of nature, God providentially revealed them to an unlearned people, as D. Thomas explained (secunda secundae, quaestione I, artic. 5 et q. 2, artic. 4). We can also speak of God in two ways, as we used when resolving the first argument: either as the principle and end of nature or as the principle and end above nature. In the first sense, the natural light shows that God exists, is one, immortal, wise, and so forth; in the second, faith alone holds these same things. Thus D. Thomas (secunda secundae, quaestione I, articulo 8), when he objected in the first argument that God’s unity need not be counted among the articles of faith because it can be known by demonstration, replied that by faith we hold many things about God which philosophers could not investigate by natural reason, such as his providence and omnipotence and that he alone should be worshipped. All these things are included under the article of God’s unity. Thus far D. Thomas. He speaks of providence and omnipotence also concerning supernatural things. He also says (q. 2, arti. 2, ad 3): “To believe in God does not befit unbelievers in the sense in which it is taken as an act of faith,” and so forth.

These claims may perhaps not escape the charge of slander unless we return to the rule of this distinction. Once these matters have been explained, D. Thomas plainly teaches that nothing that is properly and in itself a matter of faith can be made clear by natural argument. Indeed (I p. q.32, art. 1), he rebukes as enemies of faith and harmful to our religion those who try to demonstrate the things of faith by arguments from nature. If the holy Doctors bring forward arguments to prove the decrees of faith, those arguments are appropriate, not evident; probable, not necessary; persuasive, not compelling; they lead the mind, they do not prove the point. For natural light makes clear and illuminates what agrees and harmonizes with nature. Since faith, as we have often said, properly concerns things that surpass human nature and understanding, such things cannot be shown by the light of nature or established by natural reasoning. If faith is the substance of things hoped for, as the Apostle says in the epistle to the Hebrews, and hope that is seen is not hope, as he teaches in the epistle to the Romans, it necessarily follows that what faith believes—and hope hopes—cannot be seen by the eye, heard by the ear, or enter the human heart, and therefore cannot be demonstrated by human arguments. Unless human things support and sustain divine ones, or Paulus deceives and is deceived when he asserts that faith is the evidence of things not seen and that our wisdom is hidden in a mystery unknown to any ruler of this age. Philosophers can therefore show the principles of our discipline probabilistically, but cannot demonstrate them necessarily. No one need fear losing the merit of faith by using arguments to explain and adorn the truth of faith. However much he tries, he will not use arguments that provide the evidence of the senses, but arguments by which those who do not believe may be brought more gently to faith, and those who do believe may be kept in the faith more willingly. Faith does not fight against nature but agrees with it; human and divine reason do not disagree but cohere. Both are true, and truth does not oppose truth; both come from God, and God is not opposed to himself. People therefore overturn the foundations of nature when they separate it from faith. Rather, faith should guide natural reason, so that these two words do not seem to refer to things at odds. Since human and divine things are similar and related, the one who offers to God the service due from a human and makes nature serve grace properly fulfills the office of a theologian. D. Thomas often proves this very point, and we will discuss it at length elsewhere, in books 8, 9, 10, and 11, and especially in book 14. For now, however, we must refute the arguments that seemed to show that theology proves the decrees of faith. The first argument has been answered sufficiently. The second is refuted as follows: it is not an article of faith that the world came into existence from God, but that God created heaven and earth at the beginning of time. This is an article of faith that cannot be demonstrated by any reasoning, as D. Thomas discusses (I p. q. 46, ar. 2). As for the testimony of Petrus raised in the third place, it only shows that the Christian religion and discipline is not entirely like the Pythagorean school, whose pupils clung stubbornly to their teacher’s authority without any prior preparation by reason and without being given any explanation. That is the custom of the unlearned, and of Saracens, pagans, and heretics: they embrace blindly and rashly the dogmas of their sect without judgment, and accept without examination precisely the things that most require investigation. Believe me, they are not educated but constrained; they are not taught by reason and method but driven to madness, as if by spells and incantations.

For everything we are taught in the Gospel, although it moves our minds most strongly to take hold of supernatural things, is nevertheless framed by Christ himself in gentler reasoning from nature, so that he would not seem to have disciples devoid of reason. For although the wisdom of God reaches powerfully from end to end, it also orders all things gently; it instructs and educates people in a human way, that is, rational beings through reasons. God also wants his disciples to be composed to teach others in the same way as they themselves were taught by him. (Esai. 50): “He gave them an instructed tongue, so that they might know how to sustain the weary with a word; he also opened their ear so that they might hear like a teacher.” Just as we hear Christ’s disciples as teachers, not as enchanters chanting spells, so we have a tongue that is not carried here and there by a flow of words, but is trained and educated, knowing how to give the reasons and grounds of its teaching. Eusebius writes (Lib. 9, c. 6) that when Lucianus of Antioch was asked by the governor why, although he was a rational and prudent man, he followed a sect whose reasons he could not give, he answered in these words: “We Christians are not constrained, as you think, by an error of some human persuasion, nor are we deceived, like others, by our parents’ tradition without examination. God is our authority concerning God. For that lofty majesty could not enter the senses of the human mind unless it were conveyed by the power of his Spirit or made known through the explanations of his Word and Wisdom. I admit that we too once erred and thought that the idols we had fashioned were gods and authors of heaven and earth. But their fragile substance argued against them: we had consecrated them ourselves, and they had only as much reverence as the skill of their makers had put into their appearance. But that omnipotent God, not fashioned by our hands but whose handiwork we ought to be, took pity on human error and sent his Wisdom, clothed in flesh, into this world to teach us that the God who made heaven and earth should be sought not in things made by hands but in invisible things. He established for us the laws and precepts of life and discipline: to practice moderation, rejoice in poverty, cultivate gentleness, study, endure, embrace purity of heart, and preserve patience. He also foretold that all these things you now do against us would come. For he who was immortal himself submitted to death so that he might provide us an example of patience. He did not deceive us by his death; after three days he rose for us to conquer death by rising. What I say did not happen in some obscure place and needs no witnesses: almost the greater part of the world now bears witness to this truth. Or if anything in it seems suspect, even the unlearned common people attest to it, who know nothing of fabrication. If this still is not believed, I will also call upon the testimony of the place where the events happened. The place itself at Hierusalem and the rock of Golgotha, split under the weight of the cross, bear witness; as does the cave which, after the gates of hell were broken open, gave back the body alive again. If earthly things seem unworthy to you, accept also a faithful witness from heaven. I present the sun itself as your witness: when it saw these things done on earth by the impious, it hid its light in the sky at midday. Search your annals: you will find that in the time of Pilate, when Christ suffered, the sun fled and the day was interrupted by darkness. If you do not trust the earth, heaven, or the blood of the martyrs, how will you believe my words and arguments?” He had almost begun to persuade his hearers with these words when he was ordered to be seized and taken to prison, where he was killed without public commotion. Petrus therefore commands the teachers of the faithful to give reasons of this sort, which, when they precede faith, do not drag unbelievers but lead them; when they follow faith, they do not burden the faithful but add strength.

For Augustinus says in this sense that the understanding of natural things produces, nourishes, and strengthens faith. It also defends the truth of faith, since once natural things are carefully perceived and known it is immediately understood, first, that faith in no way fights against nature but wonderfully agrees with it, and second, that all the arguments that attack the truth of faith are deceptive and empty. But we have spent far too long resolving the second knot. Fortunately, the third and final knot needs no solution. What should we add that would be worth reading after the judgment of D. Thomas has been explained so clearly, carefully, and fully above? Enough, then, about the principles of theology.

WHAT THE QUESTIONS OR CONCLUSIONS OF THEOLOGY ARE

Having explained theology’s causes, we should next explain its effects, which, when called into question, are questions, and when established by reasoning, conclusions. We shall first explain what a theological question is and what its parts are, since every theologian’s labor concerns it; afterward we shall explain how it should be treated. To prevent anyone from being misled by the ambiguity of the name, understand that “theological question” is sometimes used for any proposition that some theologian has happened to doubt, even rashly. But if we extend the subject and question of theology so broadly, the theological question will be judged not by the nature of this discipline but by the whim of foolish people. Then we shall include among theological questions such things as: Can baptism be performed separately in matter or form if, by divine power, the form of water is separated from its matter? Can a donkey drink baptism? And other questions of the same kind, which I omit for brevity lest I weary the reader. I have no desire to include within theology’s bounds foolish and undisciplined questions, which the Apostle commands us to avoid (2 Tim. 2). By the bounds and limits of disciplines I mean their conclusions. As we briefly touched on at the beginning of this chapter, a question and a conclusion are the same thing: when a matter is put forward for debate in the form of a question, it is a question; when it is derived by reasoning, it is a conclusion. If a theologian establishes and proves through arguments the very matter that had been brought into question, those foolish things should neither be called theological questions nor can they be: they cannot be settled and resolved from the principles of theology, and so are not conclusions of that discipline either, but fictitious chimeras of ignorant people. What, then, do we understand by a theological question? I think it is one that plainly concerns the subject matter, that is, theology. Empty, foolish, and harmful questions do not concern it, but sound, fitting, and useful ones do. “I am your God, teaching you what is useful” (Isaiah 48). Theology, then, which is the teaching of God, draws no useless conclusions. Indeed, it builds upon the foundation of faith laid by the Apostles with gold, silver, and precious stones; those who build with wood, hay, and stubble (1 Cor. 3) do so not from theology but from error. Let it therefore stand that a conclusion properly called theological arises from the principles of theology as effects arise from their causes. Hence it follows that no question should be considered theological unless it can be referred to such principles and resolved from them by apt and coherent reasoning. ¹

Although some questions are like appendices, and may rightly and not absurdly be called theological by a kind of likeness, closeness, or even order, because they are aptly and seriously joined to the explanation of questions that are truly and properly theological, here and now we are speaking of the theological question according to the nature and order of the discipline. Sometimes, not only in theology but in nearly all the other human disciplines, things that are by their nature principles and therefore ought to be assumed by the student, if matters proceeded in their proper order, are brought into doubt and proved by argument, given the character of the human mind. Thus the order of things is disturbed and reversed: later causes are put first and earlier effects are assumed. This is why St. Thomas and the other theologians also include among theological questions such matters as whether God exists, along with others of the same kind. There is no doubt that first and certain principles are thereby called into question and, as though they were connections within this discipline, linked from other supposed principles. This also led Aristotle to introduce four kinds of questions into all the sciences: whether a thing exists, what it is, what kind it is, and for what cause it is so. The last two questions can be resolved rightly and in the natural order; the first two cannot, except when there are two definitions of the same thing, one explaining its nature through its material cause and the other through its final cause. Then the latter definition is demonstrated from the former in a way that preserves, in some sense, the reasoning and order of nature. Yet the definition that answers the second question is known, so to speak, from effects, which, although later by nature, come first for us—that is, in our knowledge. In theology, as in other fields, principles themselves may either be arranged and ordered among themselves, as causes are divided into four kinds and have an order of priority, or they may be connected and linked so that, once both are granted, we can reach conclusions about either of two disputed matters. Therefore, if an opponent admits some principles, even while denying others, we can derive what he denies from what he admits, especially when the principles are mutually linked. Thus the ancient theologians prove the Old Testament from the New, and conversely the New from the Old; they assert the Church’s authority from the sacred books, and in turn the authority of the sacred books from the Church. There is therefore no single principle in theology that theologians have not brought into question, so that if someone denies it while perhaps admitting other principles, we are ready to defeat him from what he grants and, as it were, strike him down with a drawn sword. This was carefully explained in book 2 and will be explained more carefully in the final book. Theologians raise questions about their principles not only for these reasons, but also to explain and expound them. As we learned as boys in rhetoric, everyone who discusses a matter has a question before him—not only one who tosses about disputed matters in debate, but historians and poets as well, who solve the questions before them by exposition rather than argument. Exposition often wins the hearer’s belief; argument establishes it. I have often laughed at some of our own people who work so hard to defend the arguments St. Thomas repeatedly offers as appropriate explanations of the faith, as though they were certain and obvious demonstrations. I also often laugh at his opponents, who attack him as if he were an enemy precisely where St. Thomas has shown himself an excellent servant of the faith. They do not understand, being more ready to fight than to teach, that questions of faith are raised with the utmost gravity and reverence not because we are trying to make a doubting hearer believe, but because we are trying to explain to a believer what he understands and perceives only imperfectly.

We have said enough about what a theological question is when defined according to the order and nature of the discipline, and what it is when judged according to our own intellectual habits; about which questions in theology are primary and which are appendices; and about which are resolved chiefly by argument and which chiefly by exposition. Now we must divide the question, so that what seems scattered and limitless can be brought together in one view through orderly classification. Theological questions, whatever their subject, belong to two kinds: one concerns knowledge, the other action. Questions of knowledge aim at scientific understanding. For example: Are the Father and Son one principle of the Holy Spirit or two? Are the divine Persons distinguished by relative or absolute properties? Questions of action include, for example: Is penance necessary for salvation as a means, or also as a precept? Do the sacraments of the New Law confer grace and virtues? Questions of knowledge, generally speaking, are divided into four kinds: whether God, an angel, or a rational soul exists; what it is; what kind it is; and why it is so. As we have said, the first two are explained according to the condition of our intellect, and the second and third according to the nature of things and the discipline itself. Questions of action also have two kinds: one concerns what is necessary for salvation, the other things that seem useful. Questions of the first kind include: if, for example, Christ’s honor or even a neighbor’s spiritual salvation is at risk, should a Christian die for these things or not? Is there a Gospel precept to receive baptism? Examples of the second kind include questions such as: Does holy water, as the scholastics call blessed water, by its own force and, as they say, ex opere operato, wash away venial sins and entirely remove the penalties of sin, or does it do so rather through the merit of the person acting? Does the sacrament of the Eucharist make a person who is attrite contrite? Likewise, does it take effect when the obstacle is removed, as baptism and penance do? The Summa of St. Thomas is full of such questions. A theologian does not always discuss necessities, but sometimes also matters without which salvation and religion remain intact. Since we are covering everything, we should also say that a theological question, whether it concerns contemplation or conduct, may be natural or supernatural. I think we may call a question supernatural if it is resolved only from supernatural principles; a natural question is one whose explanation can be given by the constant order of nature. There is also a middle kind, depending partly on a supernatural principle and partly on a natural one. An example of the first kind is: Have we all died? Paul resolves this question by the argument: “If Christ died for all, then all have died”; but Christ died for all. Likewise: Will we all rise? The Apostle settles it thus: Christ has risen, therefore we too shall rise. Examples of the second kind are: Is God everywhere? Is he immutable? Is the human soul immortal? Can it be divided and cut into parts? Although proofs of these matters may be drawn from Scripture, since they pertain to the faith, they are clear and evident in the light of nature and for that reason are not questions of faith in themselves, but, as we have said, so only by accident. Examples of the third kind include: Is Christ capable of laughter? Does he have two wills and two intellects, and likewise two operations of each power? These become clear from both kinds of principles. The first is established from these premises: Christ is a human being, and every human being is capable of laughter.

The remaining questions are established from these premises: Christ has two perfect natures, divine and human; but every perfect nature claims for itself its own operation and power. Finally, there is another division of the theological question, whatever its kind. Some questions of faith are such that, since they concern the faith, a theologian must risk even his life for their truth. Other questions can be either misunderstood or denied without loss of faith. Augustine recalls this distinction often, among other places in book 2 of De peccato originali contra Pelagium et Celestium, chapter 23. This division must be not only committed to memory but constantly kept before our eyes if we wish to be complete theologians. Here are examples of both kinds. The first kind includes: Did Christ’s soul see God clearly as soon as it was joined to the Word? Is there a purgatorial fire in the lower regions where the souls of the faithful pay the penalties for their sins? Augustine says that questions of the second kind are varied and countless, and difficult to gather and define under any one heading. His examples include questions about the nature or location of Paradise, where God placed the man he formed from dust, although Christian faith does not doubt that Paradise exists; where Elijah or Enoch is now, whether there or somewhere else, though we do not doubt that they live in the bodies in which they were born; whether the Apostle was caught up to the third heaven in or out of the body, although it is shameless for those who wish to know what the Apostle himself, to whom it was granted, testifies that he does not know—while his faith remains intact; how many heavens there are, to the third of which he says he was caught up; whether the elements of this visible world are four or more; what causes the sun or moon to be eclipsed in the ways astrologers are accustomed to predict by exact reckoning of time; why the ancient people lived as long as Holy Scripture attests, and whether, in proportion to their longer life, they began to beget children at a later age; where Methuselah could have lived, since he was not in the ark yet, according to the years counted in most Greek and Latin manuscripts, he seems to have survived the Flood—or whether one should rather believe the very few manuscripts in which the number of years is written so as to show that he died before the Flood. So much for Augustine’s examples. In this category St. Thomas (2 Contra gentiles, chapter 70) places the question whether heaven is animate, which Jerome lists among Origen’s other errors in his letter to Avitus; Augustine in Enchiridion, chapter 57, also seems to agree with St. Thomas. But lest I detain the reader any longer, I shall briefly explain my view of this whole class of questions and the precepts I think should be given about them. No firm and lasting precepts about theological questions can be given except by those who have long and extensively practiced in the schools. Such instruction therefore properly belongs to the scholastics. Those who think the schools should be neglected have no sound, precise, or distinguished discussion of theological questions; they are far from being teachers of matters they have never learned through practice. The matter prompts me here to lament the interruption, if not the destruction, of scholastic theology, but I fear that while complaining about other universities I might praise my own Spain excessively, where scholastic theology flourishes greatly in these times. Even among us, however, we see that when theologians have died, hope remains in very few and ability in even fewer, while boldness is found in many. I will say nothing about myself; I would gladly speak of my teacher, who so remarkably adorned the Spanish universities with his talent and learning, and made them so respected and beloved by our people that they flocked to them eagerly, indeed rushed to them. If he had written

for the French, Germans, and Italians, with the clarity, elegance, and charm he showed in debate, scholastic learning would not now be languishing among those nations. I think some people have come to hate the schools because they encountered crude and harsh treatments of poorly chosen questions, investigated badly and concluded even worse. But, setting that aside, let us pursue what we have undertaken. It is not necessary to set out separate theological precepts for easy questions, since their answers are plain. Nor is it worthwhile to lay down rules for questions that depart far from reason; they are obvious and require little warning or instruction. Difficult matters, which few can understand, require more careful teaching. I therefore consider the first duty of a theologian who is reasoning to be to examine often the question he is about to treat and repeatedly ask himself what kind it is. Questions that enter theology according to the order of nature and the discipline must be settled differently from those raised by the weakness or, perhaps, the malice of human reasoning. One must also reason differently about questions raised so that we may explain them and those raised so that we may prove them. A discussion of a natural question is very different from one of a supernatural question, and different theological topics are suited to each. Questions of knowledge and action, as we have said elsewhere, are generally handled and resolved in almost the same way and from the same topics. But besides carefully examining the kind of each question, we must pay particular attention to whether it lies outside the faith or pertains to faith and religion. With those who err in a question of faith we must, as the saying goes, fight with horse and lance; with those who debate matters about which people can be mistaken, err, or slip while keeping the faith intact, theologians may and sometimes should fight, as I have said elsewhere, but a bloody battle is absolutely forbidden. How ridiculous it is to strain every sinew of body and mind to resolve a question whose ignorance brings no danger and whose error carries no guilt! I have carefully explained in books 8 and 9 how much moderation a theologian should exercise throughout this latter class of questions. Here I say only what suits the present topic and the brevity of this outline; the rest can be found there. I do not wish to repeat the same things at this time and place. The theologian should avoid not only foolish questions, genealogies, disputes, and legal quarrels—which are sometimes harmful—but also every useless and empty question that cannot serve his pursuit of knowledge or action. Jerome counts among these questions (In commentario Epistolae ad Titum, chapter 3): How many years did Methuselah live? At what age did Solomon marry, lest someone suppose Rehoboam was born when Solomon was eleven? In his letter to Vitalis, after answering the latter question in two ways, Jerome concludes, “The Apostle forbids questions of this kind.” A little later he says, “Reread all the books of the Old and New Testaments, and you will find such disagreement in years, and such confusion of numbers between Judah and Israel—that is, between the two kingdoms—that to cling to such questions seems the work of an idle person, not a diligent one.” It is well that he said not to cling to them, not to touch them. For if it is idle and useless to linger over this kind of question, then not only I, who explained many such matters in the preceding book, but Augustine and Jerome himself would also be criticized. We should not linger over these unnecessary questions, even if they seem in some way to concern the truth of sacred history. But in every discussion, and especially in one that concerns—

When faith and salvation are not at stake, some flexibility is needed so that dwelling for a long time on these matters does not lead us into useless and tiresome stubbornness. St. Augustine considered it pointless to ask where and how Christ’s body is in heaven (De fide et symbolo, chapter 6). But although he was speaking about faith and the creed before the fathers of a synod, he was instructing new converts. Cajetan, however—whom I dare call the most outstanding in our order not only for talent and learning but also the most restrained in raising questions of this kind—was not afraid to ask about this and explain it briefly while interpreting Scripture. Yet Augustine allows no questions that he says arise from a sick mind (Confessiones, book 11, chapter 30): “What was God doing before he made heaven and earth? What came into his mind to make something, when he had never made anything before?” A person doing penance and confessing sins can scarcely endure necessary questions, still less questions that are less useful, curious, and intrusive. The rule of debate prescribed for a theologian should therefore not be the same when he contends in a lecture hall and when he mourns in his bedroom or even in a church. Here is a rule that accords especially well with reason and the authority of the saints: any theologian about to dispute a supernatural matter—for this is the kind of debate proper to him—should reflect on the name of theology, read his title, “theologian,” often, ask himself not once but repeatedly why he began the debate, and know that he should take up no question unless it concerns the true philosophy of Christ, the Apostles, and the Prophets, which is above nature. Some have forgotten this precept and have been excessively persistent and long-winded in explaining countless questions, especially dialectical, physical, and metaphysical ones. Yet no one is long-winded who stays with his subject, provided he brings in and draws upon something that fits and agrees with his purpose. Still, I do not think these questions, although not so necessary, should be banished. They provide exercise for the mind and intellect, full not only of sharpness but also very useful for theology in the schools. When Augustine says that it makes no difference whether the sky encloses the earth like a sphere, holding it balanced at the center of the world, or covers it from above on one side like a disk, or whether the sky stands still or moves (De genesi ad litteram, book 2, chapters 9 and 10), he says this either to provoke the hatred and resentment of the Manichees, who boasted of learning many such questions from their teacher, or certainly to criticize those who spent too much time raising and solving such questions, time that should be used for salutary matters—as we gladly put it in his own words. Yet, as if in passing, he himself solves this kind of question, although, as he says, neither he as bishop had enough time to take them up and discuss them nor did those whom he wished to instruct have time, since their concern was their own salvation and the necessary benefit of the holy Church. Augustine says something similar in condemning the excessively curious questions of Dioscorus (Epistula 56 [=118]), though he writes that he says this not because such subjects are learned but because they are learned for a vain purpose. He answered some of them briefly and others at length. If a friend asked me about such matters, I would either pass them over discreetly or refuse to answer openly. I would not think them worthy of giving even a little of my time. But Augustine was either more generous to his friends or more indulgent toward Dioscorus. Why say all this? So that those who continually stir up hatred of the schools may understand that controversies about Aristotle are not unworthy of a theologian’s inquiry, if Augustine did not disdain to explain matters that were disputed in Cicero. What is more, Augustine himself (De ordine, book 2— ^{2 3 4}

chapter 16) asserts that someone who does not know what nothing is, what unformed matter is, what an unensouled formed thing is, what a body is, what shape in a body is, what place is, what time is, what is in a place, what is in time, what motion according to place is, what motion not according to place is, what stable motion is, what eternity is, what it means to be neither in a place nor nowhere, to be beyond time and always exist, to be nowhere and not nowhere, never to exist and never not to exist—such a person, I say, can neither rightly ask nor debate anything about God or his own soul. These physical and metaphysical questions should not therefore be expelled from our schools, not even those that Erasmus and others like him considered curious and sophistical. But more on this elsewhere. Now I return to the question of faith. Unless this is first established for the theologian, he can teach nothing by reason or by method. Great effort must therefore be made here if we are to determine the degrees of truth and falsehood in theology. This is especially proper to theology and also the most difficult of all tasks. No one can accomplish it except a perfect and complete theologian. Someone may ask: Are there no signs by which questions of faith can be separated and distinguished from those that are not questions of faith? Certainly there are. But not everyone can reach Corinth, and these are not common, well-worn rules familiar to all. Every question of faith must indeed be established with such signs and with these markers of questions of faith ready at hand; yet this is a very great matter, requiring considerable learning and practice. We shall present them, if we can, shortly, but first a few things must be said. A question of faith is understood in two ways. One concerns faith directly, as do all things that God has revealed to his Church either by word or in writing. The other concerns faith indirectly, such as all conclusions that we can derive and define in the order of the discipline from those first truths. Since these conclusions are not themselves revealed by God but are revealed through other things as principles, they are said to concern faith indirectly; whoever denies them is in this sense said to deny the faith. I also observe that it may not be unreasonable to call questions of faith those matters closely connected with the Church’s teaching, as appendices to the faith because of their affinity with it. This is not because the faith depends on them or is entirely destroyed if they are removed, but because it becomes sick and impaired if the truth of matters attached to it is undermined. For sound teaching and sound speech must exist in the Church, as the Apostle says (1 Tim. 1 and 6; 2 Tim. 2 and 4; Titus 1 and 2). Just as some diseases are deadly while others do not kill a person but still affect his health, so some errors do not extinguish faith but obscure it, do not overturn it but weaken it, and bring sickness rather than death. Just as whatever harms one’s health also harms one’s life, so whatever opposes sound teaching is in some way opposed to faith as well. From this it follows that questions concerning the soundness of Church teaching pertain in a certain way to faith. But we say that controversies of this kind are not properly within the faith, but outside it; and we do not consider those who err in them to err in the faith, but outside the faith. Having now set out these matters simply at the start, we shall examine the rest in greater detail.

BY WHAT SIGNS QUESTIONS OF FAITH CAN BE JUDGED

We must now explain carefully and thoroughly by what principles we can acquire the ability to judge, so that we do not err in establishing matters of faith. Cardinal Torquemada (book 4, Summa ecclesiastica, part 2, chapter 9) sets out in order seven levels of Catholic propositions, which, when they are brought into dispute and debate, are called questions of faith. The first level consists of propositions stated explicitly in the sacred books. The second consists of those that follow from them by a certain and necessary consequence. The third consists of things handed down orally by Christ to the Apostles and by the Apostles to the Church. The fourth consists of those defined in general councils. The fifth consists of those proposed by the Apostolic See for the faithful to believe. The sixth consists of what the holy Doctors taught with one mind and one voice about the faith and the refutation of heresies. The seventh consists of propositions necessarily and firmly derived from the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth levels. In the next chapter he also distinguishes seven kinds of heretical propositions that oppose these seven kinds of propositions of faith. But these rules have been laid down in the manner of jurists, whose categories may be divided into excessively fine parts. Since we profess to teach in a concise way, we must reduce everything to a smaller number and a complete formulation of the discipline. As we said a little earlier, the truth of faith is divided in two: one kind concerns faith indirectly and the other directly. We must therefore begin by setting out two general levels of propositions of faith. The first consists of the legitimate principles of theology, whatever their kind, primary or secondary—that is, everything God has revealed to the Church as such. The second consists of propositions necessarily drawn from those first principles. This kind of conclusion, because it is connected to matters of faith, also pertains to faith. For the logic of a connection forces you, once you have granted the prior proposition, to grant the one that follows; and if you deny the latter, it also forces you to deny the former. Again, within that first level we recognize two kinds: propositions of faith that the sacred authors left written in the canonical books, and propositions that Christ and the Apostles handed down orally and that the Church received for belief. Likewise, there are two kinds in the second level: conclusions that arise from the principles of faith alone, and conclusions that faith does not establish on its own without the aid of other disciplines, but that require one or more principles known by natural reason. Although these do not all occupy the same place and level, they may nevertheless be called simply and without qualification questions of faith, since the truth of faith depends on both kinds and is connected and joined to both. Those other questions that are, as I recently said—what do I mean, recently? I mean just a moment ago—appendices to faith are questions of faith in a certain respect, but not without qualification. They do not adhere to faith in such a way that they cannot be separated from it. When people err about them, faith is sick, so to speak, but does not perish. Since the natural and genuine meanings of sacred Scripture are sometimes obscure and intricate, and it is not always clear and known what the Apostles handed down from memory without writing, it is often difficult and as if shrouded in darkness to determine whether a disputed conclusion necessarily follows from matters of faith. We therefore wish to clarify and explain now by what signs and marks the truth of faith can be recognized and distinguished: both the truth written in sacred books, that handed down orally by the Apostles, and that established from either or both of these.

We undertake this task all the more earnestly because we understand it to be not only very useful to theologians in the schools but also most necessary to those whom the Apostolic See has charged with judging matters of faith. A sure and settled art of theological discussion has great value in itself; without it, one cannot consistently identify the errors of those who depart from the faith of Christ and the Church’s ancient teaching. As the philosophers rightly say, the same discipline applies to opposites. Thus, if we establish the truths of the Catholic faith, we also identify the errors opposed to them. Come, then, let us take up our position, as the saying goes, and approach the matter more closely. As I said, obvious matters need no rules. If a passage of divine Scripture, to begin there, has a plain and clear meaning from its context, from another passage in the same Scripture, or from the clear force of the words themselves, we have no rule to add. The plain meaning of Scripture itself presents a sure sign of Catholic truth. A theologian only moderately versed in the meaning of divine Scripture can therefore easily identify most Lutheran heresies. It is no task to brand as errors those things that plainly contradict Scripture, such as the claims that the universal Church can err in faith, that all human actions are sinful, or that sorrow for sins is unnecessary and useless—and many others that would take too long to list. But we mean this of sacred Scripture that the Church has consistently defined as canonical. As we taught in book 2, the Church did not place the little book of Baruch among the sacred books with such certainty and firmness that it is beyond question, as a truth of the Catholic faith, that it is sacred, or, as a clear heresy, that it is not sacred. Therefore, this book, or any other that may be questioned without the charge of heresy, cannot by itself establish certain and settled truths of the Catholic faith, however clear and plain its meaning may be. But let us move on, and in judging more difficult matters gather the chief points from the preceding books. We have worked on this subject since establishing the firmness of the theological topics. Here, then, is the first rule: When the meaning of divine Scripture is obscure, the Church’s understanding is the very genuine meaning of Scripture. From it we obtain, even if a heretic protests, both a sure mark of Catholic truth and the certain choice of the argument we seek to prove theological conclusions. For if the Church has the surest right to distinguish the words of God from the words of human beings, as we established in book 2, she has the same right to distinguish God’s meaning from human meaning within those very words. Otherwise, we might as well believe that Scripture was entrusted to the Church as it was entrusted to Ptolemy and the Egyptians, or as it is now entrusted to the Jews, whom Augustine aptly called “the librarians of the Church of Christ” (Contra Faustum). We know that both things were entrusted to the Church, so that with unfailing fidelity she might preserve and hand down both what she received: Scripture and the understanding of Scripture. “My spirit,” God says, “which is in you, and my words, which I have placed in your mouth, will not depart from your mouth, nor from the mouth of your offspring, from now and forever” (Isaiah 59). Christ’s Church therefore guards and will always guard both the word and the spirit of the word. Christ also promised the Church the Spirit of truth, who would remain with her forever and remind her of all that Christ had said to her (John 14, 15, and 16). Further, since, as Jerome elegantly says (In epistolam ad Galatas, chapter 1), the true Gospel of God is “not in the Scriptures but in their meaning, not on the surface but in the marrow, not in the leaves of words but in the root of reason,” if the Church had Scripture but not its proper meaning, she would not have the true Gospel of God, and therefore would not have the faith of Christ, which cannot exist without God’s true Gospel. For faith concerns meanings, not words. ¹

Otherwise, heretics speak the words of Scripture without understanding, and even the devil quotes Scripture; but with a false interpretation they have a false Gospel—not divine but human, or worse, diabolical. Since Catholics and heretics dispute far more about the meaning than about Scripture itself, if the Church’s interpretation is not a certain rule for understanding, who will judge such a dispute? Everyone will defend his own interpretation as best he can. If the Church has no sure authority to examine the meaning of Scripture, I dare say no political community was ever more foolishly constituted (see book 3, chapters 2 and 3, foundation 4). There would be no end to dissension, no agreement among the faithful, and no unity of faith. Once that is removed, not only charity and peace but faith itself is utterly destroyed, and even the very name of Church. When Christ opened the Apostles’ minds so that they understood the Scriptures (Luke 24), he did so not only for their sake but even more for the Church. From this we understand that Christ permanently opened the sealed book for his Church. The Apostles also handed on the understanding of Scripture to the churches. If they had transmitted only the words and not the meaning, they would never have preached the Gospel to every creature or taught all nations to keep whatever Christ had entrusted to them. What kind of preaching or teaching of the Gospel would there be without understanding? Surely the kind given and received by children or parrots, who make and take sounds without a mind. But there is no more reliable witness to Apostolic tradition than the Church. Who could testify more clearly and convincingly to what was received than the very Church that received it? The meaning of Scripture, then, which the Apostles handed down to the Church, belongs to the Church. Moreover, the Church is the pillar and foundation of truth; truth properly and truly resides in the understanding of Scripture, while it resides in Scripture only figuratively, as in a sign. Urine, for example, is figuratively called healthy, whereas the animal is what is properly healthy. If the Church is the foundation of truth, then, she surely possesses a firm and certain knowledge of the truths contained in sacred Scripture. But why say more? The preceding fourth book has already established every true and faithful claim about the Church’s authority. It has been shown by many testimonies and arguments that the Church cannot err in faith. Yet nothing pertains more to faith than true knowledge and understanding of God’s words. The established understanding of Scripture therefore resides in the Church, and from it we can ascertain the sign of Catholic faith and use the same sign to identify contrary errors. A very clear example of this first rule is found in the earthly Paradise, in the formation of Adam from the clay of the earth, in the formation of Eve from Adam’s rib, and finally in the serpent’s temptation (see book 6, chapter 3, conclusion 5). The Origenists perverted all these accounts through allegorical and figurative interpretations. But since the Church has always accepted them as literal history and not as figurative speech, the Sixth Synod rightly rejected those men in its eleventh session. Second rule: By “the Church” we understand not only the assembly of all the faithful but also the Church’s pastors and teachers, especially when gathered in a council. This was shown in book 4, chapter 4, conclusion 4, and book 5, chapter 4, conclusion 3. There are many examples of this rule, but we shall offer a few. In the Lord’s command, “Do this in memory of me” (Luke 22), the priests of the Church have always understood that they were ordered to do what Jesus Christ himself was doing at the time, namely, to offer the sacrifice of the Eucharist. For after those words spoken in the person of Christ, they say: “And mindful, therefore, we your servants … offer to your majesty from your gifts and grants a holy sacrifice,” and so on.

The Wycliffites, then, who said that it is not founded in the Gospel that Christ instituted the Mass, and likewise the Lutherans—and all the more those who deny that the sacrifice of the Eucharist exists in the Church—are rightly considered heretics by us. But we shall discuss this matter later in this same book. Again, the Lateran Council understood the Father and the Son to be truly and properly one and the same reality, from the passage (as the Council of Ephesus likewise cited): “I and the Father are one.” Thus Abbot Joachim was condemned for referring this passage not to the unity of one reality and nature but to a unity of will and agreement. He interpreted another passage with the same error: “The glory that you gave me I have given them, that they may be one as we are one” (John 17). Further, the Council of Ephesus understood that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son from this passage of Scripture: “He will take from what is mine” (John 16), and also from this one: “Whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth,” and so on (John 15). Finally, the Council of Vienne, as I understand it, drew from the passage “He breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul” (Genesis 2) that the rational soul is a subsistent form that essentially, truly, and of itself informs the human body. The Fathers interpreted the statement that God breathed the soul into the human being to mean that the soul came from outside, as a breath comes from outside. The human spirit is therefore not produced from matter or dependent on matter but subsists entirely in itself. From the statement that through this same spirit the human being became a living soul, they understood that it truly makes the body alive and is therefore the substantial form of the human body. They also drew this from the passage: “He did not take hold of angels, but of the seed of Abraham” (Hebrews 2). For if the human soul were not the true form of the body and a part of human nature, but were attached to the body as a sailor is to a ship, according to the view of Plato and Origen, it would undoubtedly be a separate substance in the order of nature, which we call an angel. In assuming a rational soul, God would therefore have assumed an angelic nature. Although these and similar matters are more obscurely contained in Scripture, the Church rightly explains them and sets them before the faithful for belief. When she does so, her decree must not only be held as true but also as stable, fixed, and settled, just as if it appeared more plainly in the sacred books. When Church pastors—whom we commonly understand by the voice of the Church—lay down the certain and settled understanding of Scripture, they provide both a complete formulation of Catholic truth and sure signs by which opposing heresies can be judged. Third rule: If the Apostolic See has definitively established a meaning of Scripture, that meaning must be held to be Catholic truth. This rule, if I am not mistaken, we demonstrated most carefully in the preceding sixth book. There we established with many necessary arguments that the Apostolic See cannot err in judging matters of faith. The interpretation of Scripture, when it is disputed, is a judgment concerning faith; therefore the Apostolic See does not err in understanding Scripture when it interprets it by a settled ruling. But if it explains Scripture not with a settled judgment and fixed decree but as a passing opinion, as we have often said elsewhere, it establishes nothing at all as certain and established. So if it then errs by interpreting Scripture ineptly or twisting it to an alien meaning, this does not contradict the present rule. The rule does not apply to every meaning popes have drawn from sacred Scripture to persuade others about matters under discussion; it teaches that those meanings definitively prescribed by the Apostolic See for the faithful must be firmly held. ²

by the Apostolic See for the faithful to hold. The signs by which the firm judgments of the Apostolic See and the councils can be recognized were explained in book 5 (chapter 5, question 4). Certainly, it is now so clearly defined in Clement. uni. De summa trinitate et fide Catholica that judgments of this kind, which concern the interpretation of Scripture, belong especially to the Apostolic See, that there can be no doubt that the judgment of the Pontiff and that of the Council of Vienne are one and the same. What of the fact that Peter has the keys to open the closed book? What of the fact that whatever he unbinds on earth will be unbound in heaven? What of the fact that from the beginning it was ordained that nations should hear and believe the word of the Gospel from his mouth? What of the fact that not even the gates of hell can prevail against this rock? What of the fact that Christ prayed for him, that his faith would not fail and that he would strengthen the wavering and faltering faith of his brothers? But why, fool that I am, do I act against the old proverb and prick the reader with sharp, petty questions, as if with little barbs, and present as if newly born those matters whose roots were planted so deep in book 6 and which were so firmly established that they can never be shaken by any force? An example of this rule is found in the extrav. of Benedict XI, beginning Benedictus Deus in donis suis. There the Pontiff declares that those who deny that the souls of the just, as soon as they depart from the body, clearly see the divine essence are heretics—provided they have nothing first to expiate through the punishments of purgatory. He undoubtedly drew this from the passage: “Our momentary and light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory” (2 Cor. 4). Lest anyone, led by a false error, think that this production of eternal glory should be referred either to the present time of mortal life or to the future universal judgment, Paul immediately adds (2 Cor. 5): “We know that if the earthly house of this dwelling is dissolved, we have a building from God, a house not made by hand, eternal in the heavens.” And lest anyone again interpret that eternal glory as coming to a person in any other way than through the clear vision of the divine essence, Paul soon explains the same point more openly, adding: “Knowing that while we are in this body, we are away from the Lord; for we walk by faith and not by sight. We are confident, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord.” St. Thomas presses this passage closely in book 4 of Adversum gentes (chapter 91). Although he also cites other scriptural testimonies there, in my judgment—or rather, on a sincere and careful assessment—none is more powerful than this one for proving that truth of faith and refuting the contrary heresy. I therefore think I am right to conclude that the Supreme Pontiff drew this dogma of faith from these very words of Paul. To twist those words to a false and foreign meaning is therefore the work of heretics. Fourth rule: The unanimous and harmonious understanding of Scripture by all the saints is the very truth of the Catholic faith. This rule was explained so fully and broadly in book 7, chapter 3, conclusion 5, and confirmed with examples, arguments, and testimonies, that I would be foolish to add anything here. Fifth rule: If the common practice of the Church, based on the Apostles’ Tradition, has consistently presented one interpretation of Scripture, that interpretation must be held as the truth of faith. Thus the Church’s perpetual custom has expressed that the power to unbind vows and release oaths was given to Peter and his successors in these words: “Whatever you unbind on earth will be unbound in heaven.” Whoever has denied this power of the Church is truly and

will rightly be judged a heretic. I need neither prove this precept by arguments nor illustrate it with examples, because in book 3 I made it clear by both means. Sixth precept: Whatever doctrine of faith the Church has held, or a Council has confirmed with the authority of the Pontiff, or the Supreme Pontiff himself has prescribed to the faithful, or all the Saints have held with complete agreement and constancy, we must regard as Catholic truth, and consider the contrary view heretical, even if it is contained neither plainly nor obscurely in Sacred Scripture. I have shown at greater length in book 3 that doctrines of faith must be drawn not from Scripture alone but also from Apostolic Tradition. I have explained more than once above that no better way or method exists for investigating which traditions come from Christ and the Apostles than to follow the Church as our guide and teacher. I have also, I think, explained carefully enough in the earlier books that the Church’s authority consists not only in the assembly of all the faithful, but also in the decrees of Councils, the judgment of the Apostolic See, and the consensus of the holy Doctors. I have often shown, and at greater length in book 3, that Christ’s and the Apostles’ teaching came down to the Church partly in writing and partly by word of mouth. I have also shown many times that nothing pertains in itself to the faith of the Church except what she received through the revelation of Christ and the Apostles. Since neither the Church, nor a Council, nor the Apostolic See, nor all the Saints together can err in a judgment of faith, as has been shown in the appropriate places, whatever doctrine of faith they have handed down to us, if it is not found in Sacred Scripture, came into the Church through the teaching of Christ and the Apostles. It must therefore be held at the same level as if Scripture plainly taught it. I will omit the many examples of well-known heresies branded with this precept. There are almost innumerable examples in book 3. Seventh precept: If the Church, a Council, the Apostolic See, or even the Saints, all of one mind and voice, have established a theological conclusion and prescribed it to the faithful, it will be considered Catholic truth as though revealed by Christ himself; whoever opposes it will be as much a heretic as if he opposed Sacred Scripture and Apostolic Traditions. By “theological conclusion” here I mean specifically one drawn from the principles of this discipline by a certain and firm inference. Many examples are readily available. The Sixth General Council concluded that Christ has two wills and likewise two operations, both from “Not as I will, but as you will,” and from the fact that Christ is God and perfect man. The Council of Lugdunum under Gregorius X also demonstrated by a firm theological argument that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son not as from two principles but as from one, not by two processions but by one. For according to the faith, the Father and the Son are one God, one power, one wisdom—in brief, one in all respects where the opposition of relation does not prevent it. For otherwise the unity of the divine nature could not be preserved in two persons. Since, then, in the act of breathing forth, the Son is not distinct from the Father, it follows that the Father and the Son are not two principles of the Holy Spirit but one, just as they are not two principles of creation but one. From this we understand that both Erasmus and Ambrosius Catharinus were gravely mistaken: Erasmus, who thought this conclusion had nothing to do with the faith; Catharinus, who counted it, though properly a theological conclusion, among the first principles, that is, the articles of faith.

Likewise, the Lateran Council under Innocentius III proved by theological reasoning against Ioachimus that the divine essence is neither begotten nor begets: namely, that what is begotten and what begets must be really distinct; therefore, if the divine essence begot the divine essence, it would be distinct from itself not only in thought but in reality. Likewise, the Fathers unanimously reasoned from the principle “This is my body” that the bread is changed into Christ’s body, without which they could neither understand the truth of those words nor the other things Catholic faith confesses about the true inclusion of Christ’s body under the appearance of bread. Thus the Lateran Council, with the agreement of the ancient Fathers, established that bread is transubstantiated into the body and wine into the blood (for this is the Council’s own word). Once this was established, those consequences followed which the Council of Constantia decreed: that after consecration the bread does not remain and its accidents therefore remain without a subject. For in any change or conversion, the term from which the change and conversion begins does not remain. Therefore, if by the words of consecration bread passes into the body, the bread itself does not persist, but its accidents do. Likewise, the Complutensian synod, confirmed by Sixtus IV in his Extravagantes, established by a certain theological argument from the testimony of Ioannes, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you... Whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you retain, they are retained,” not only the institution of the sacrament of penance but also the precept of confession. We demonstrated this most clearly in our Relectio de Poenitentia. That is where the proof of this example should be sought. We merely touch on the remaining matters with our fingertips, as they say, which we treated at length and much more fully in our daily lectures of old. Eighth precept: If all Scholastic Theologians likewise establish some conclusion as firm and stable, and constantly and perpetually teach the faithful to embrace it as a certain theological decree, then the faithful should embrace it as Catholic truth. I believe we firmly and necessarily established this precept in book 8, not merely as my opinion but as the truth itself. It may be that in others’ judgment I am mistaken, but that is truly what I think. All Scholastic theologians most confidently teach that Christ’s soul, as soon as it was enclosed in the body, clearly saw God. Not everyone can readily explain what persuaded them of this, but there is no doubt that it is so, unless we follow Erasmus, who calls it into question; the reasons and testimonies on which this conclusion was established will be explained later. For now, we lay down that all theologians of the Schools are unable to err in establishing certain and stable theological decrees, just as they cannot err in matters of faith. For their error would be an error of the Church, since the Church has no other eyes than those of theologians for discerning matters of this kind; if those eyes were mistaken, the whole body of the Church would share their error. But, as I said, after what was discussed in book 8, there is no need to work hard to establish this point. Yet no one should be surprised that, although nearly all theologians agree, and I myself have often affirmed, that conclusions which derive by an explained inference from faith are properly theological and not matters of faith, I now seem to confuse the two as though theology and faith were the same virtue. For if an error in a theological conclusion is an error of faith—as it really is—and denying it is heresy, it follows that faith and theology belong to the same virtue, since errors opposed to either faculty belong to the same vice. For both are heresies. But anyone who rereads what came before can easily demolish and crush this slander. For we said that faith, although not immediately, nevertheless concerns those conclusions...

that are gathered by evident and necessary consequence from the articles of faith. Therefore, unbelief must also indirectly concern conclusions contrary to theology. Since such opposing errors bring not only sickness but also corruption of faith, they are indirectly and consequently, yet truly and naturally, opposed to it. Thus, although the Church understands that such conclusions depend not only on faith but also on principles of nature, she nevertheless does not think a rational person would deny what is evident to reason, and judges one who denies them to be a heretic. She assumes—and with the greatest justification—that he falters not in a natural principle that was evident, but in faith. But if someone were ignorant either of an otherwise evident inference or even of a natural principle used together with an article of faith to draw a theological conclusion, he would certainly not be a heretic. For example, suppose an unlearned man thought this proposition false: “Every human being is capable of laughter.” Even if he believed Christ to be human, he would not therefore think Christ could laugh. Such a man would certainly not be properly an unbeliever but a fool, one who opposed not the supernatural light in itself but natural reason. Yet because such foolishness, though accidentally and indirectly, consequently corrupts and distorts the judgment of faith, the Church rightly treats it as a crime, not as foolishness. These, then, seem to me to be the leading and best precepts, in which the distinctive marks of Catholic truths and their contrary heresies appear. If anyone offers more certain and better ones, I will be greatly obliged to him. There may be people who criticize all the views in these books that depart from their own, and separately criticize particular passages where I depart either from common opinion or from the appearance of leniency and gentleness. The judgments in the third and final precepts may seem harsh and severe to some. But first, I ask that they consider the reasons we used in books 6 and 8 to support these two precepts, and also the modesty and restraint with which, if our judgment does not deceive us, we have gently softened the harshness of this ruling. Next, if they want to be so indulgent toward the reckless insolence of this age that stricter correction of discipline displeases them, I beg them to see whether, by drawing the minds of ecclesiastical judges from severity and force toward leniency and indulgence, they may not loosen the Church’s court and even open it up into an entrance for shameless and intolerable license. “Censure vexes the doves”—that is cruel, I admit; but “It pardons the ravens” is also lax. I would not readily say which of these is more harmful in this time and age. But since in many places I have briefly touched upon the different degrees of error among those who think wrongly about the Church’s doctrine—not all errors being of the same degree—let us also say a little about these grades of error. For we have learned, especially from the Council of Constantia, that some propositions are heretical, others erroneous, others savoring of heresy, others rash, others scandalous, and others offensive to pious ears.

ON THE VARIOUS DEGREES OF ERROR, AND FIRST ON HERESY AND THE HERETICAL PROPOSITION

Before I define the kinds and marks of such propositions, we must explain whether everything required to constitute a heretic is also required for heresy. For there are distinguished authors who think that every proposition opposed to the truth of faith is heresy, even if it is defended by someone ignorant and without any obstinacy; but a heretic, they say, cannot be understood in any way unless he is obstinate. They try to give many reasons for this view. The first is that, unless it were so, a proposition affirmed by one person would be heresy but not by another. For example, if an educated man, knowing that the opposite is contained in the sacred books, asserted that Moyses was not a Iudaean but an Egyptian, no one could doubt that the proposition was heretical. But if the same thing were asserted unknowingly by some rustic and uneducated person, it would not be heretical. It would follow that a proposition depended on the person asserting it, which, as they say, is plainly erroneous even to someone moderately educated. For if a proposition is false, it will always be false whoever says it; therefore, if it is a heretical proposition, it will always be heretical whoever asserts it. They give a second reason: Catholic truth does not depend on the person asserting it in order to be Catholic truth. For whether a Iudaean, pagan, or Christian affirms that God is one and triune, that assertion is certainly Catholic. Therefore, the contrary falsehood does not derive its name or character of heresy from the person who asserts it, but is heretical absolutely and in itself, since it absolutely and in itself conflicts with Catholic truth. I either do not understand their other reasons or judge them unworthy of being reported by us. A stronger reason, which they omit, seems to be that theologians, when asked whether some proposition is heretical, simply answer yes or no, without considering who asserted it. It would be a new and unheard-of thing if theologians refused to identify propositions whose marks they are asked to determine unless they first knew the character, condition, learning, and fault of those who assert them. From this they infer that every proposition which is heretical now has always been heretical, and that the Church does not make something nonheretical into something heretical by her definition, but declares what was already so in reality, though unknown and hidden. This was the view of Ocham (I par. dialogor. li. 2 c. 11), Cardinal Turrecremata (lib. 4 par. 2 cap. 3), Adrianus (4 Senten. q. 1 De confess.), and Alphonsus Castro Zamorensis (libr. I De iusta haereti. puni. cap. I). Other authors, no worse—in my view, though many consider them better—differ greatly from these; among them are Caietanus (2.2. q. art. 1) and even Divus Thomas (prioris ad Corin. c. II lect. 4). They bring many arguments to confirm this view. First, the Council of Constantia distinguishes heretical propositions from erroneous ones and ones that savor of heresy. It would be very difficult to distinguish these things if every error in a matter of faith were heresy even before it was defined by the Church. Next (24 q. 1 ca. Quod autem et cap. Achatius, et 24 quaest. 3 cap. Notandum), some heresies are said to be new and some old. Therefore, heresy cannot be called such absolutely, without any regard to the person asserting it. Moreover, obstinacy is required to constitute a heretic as a heretic; therefore, obstinacy belongs to the character of heresy. Just as if we understand having dinner to mean only in the evening, dinner too will be understood as occurring only in the evening. And certainly, just as “white” is named from whiteness, so “heretic” is named from heresy; therefore, whoever asserts heresy is a heretic, as one who has

whiteness is white. What could be more absurd than saying there is true fornication in someone who is not a fornicator, or true and proper homicide in someone who is not a murderer? It is therefore absurd to say that heresy truly and properly exists in someone who is not a heretic. Moreover, heresy is a vice not only of the intellect but also of the will; it is a crime that cannot be understood without the will’s consent. Where, then, there is no crime and no opposition of the heart to faith, there is no heresy either. Add that an act of Catholic faith occurs only when we assent to a Catholic proposition defined by the Church. For as long as the matter is ambiguous and the Church has not determined either side of the controversy, assent to neither opinion is an act of Catholic faith. From this it is understood that there is no heresy unless someone opposes a Catholic truth that the Church has certainly prescribed. Add also that it seems foreign even to the name “Catholic truth” to call something Catholic truth which the Church has not proposed for belief and which the faithful do not believe through infused faith, but which each person holds by a probable opinion. No one would dare call heresy the opinion that denied the divine persons are distinguished by relations, before this was defined by the Church; nor would anyone dare call Catholic truth the view defending the contrary position. I have always made it my practice either to avoid disputes over terms entirely or to explain them briefly. Thus, if we are speaking properly of heresy, I do not doubt that the more widely received and common view is the truer one: namely, that nothing more is required to constitute a heretic than what constitutes heresy; for heresy is a crime in a person and gives its name to the person in whom it is found. Therefore, anyone who can truly and justly be branded with heresy will truly and justly be a heretic. Some of the arguments just given plainly prove this. But just as urine is improperly called healthy because it is a sign of health, even though the sign can sometimes be misleading, so a proposition spoken or written is called heretical because it is usually a sign of heresy, even though the person who said it is sometimes excused from heresy because he was ignorant. In this sense the view is true of those who think that a proposition can be heretical even when the person asserting it is not a heretic. Or they are speaking of heresy by kind and object. For example, someone might call Iacob’s first intercourse with Lia fornication, not because it really was fornication but because it is so by kind and nature, even though ignorance intervened. But Scholastic theologians, who take the meaning of words more precisely, say neither that Iacob’s intercourse with Lia was fornication, nor that taking another’s property was theft, nor that killing a person was homicide, unless another’s property is wrongfully taken by injustice and a person is unlawfully killed. Therefore, let this remain settled and permanent: if we follow the true and proper meaning of the word, there is no heresy without obstinacy and all the other things without which the crime of heresy is not truly and properly constituted. Even if those things pertain in themselves to faith which God revealed to the Church, although we may perhaps be ignorant of them, we will not immediately judge contrary errors to be heresy. For just because a color is contrary to white, it is not at once black; nor does everything opposed to generosity at once take the name of avarice. Thus it can happen, as we will show shortly, that a Christian has an error somehow opposed to faith, yet it is not heresy, even though it is perhaps the greatest among the vices opposed to faith. Just as yellowish, bluish, and pale colors are contrary to white, though imperfectly (for this example should be pressed again and again), there are also errors among Christians which, because they are incomplete and undeveloped, do not reach the character of heresy, although they come very close to it.

Since heresy not only conflicts with faith but conflicts with it most strongly, it follows that an error is properly heresy when it is opposed to faith formally, not materially (I would like to borrow the Schoolmen’s words here, but I will try to say it better, if I can). If a believer errs through ignorance in matters of faith and even culpably ignores some Catholic truth, then according to the rules of dialectic he contradicts the faith and, according to the moral law, is guilty of mortal sin. But unless he dies, as the saying goes, with his eyes open—that is, unless he knowingly and willingly separates himself from Catholic dogma—he neither forms a sect nor commits heresy. For he does not yet conflict with the form of faith simply and absolutely, if we are speaking of moral opposition; we are not now concerned with dialectical opposition. Such errors are nevertheless forms and beginnings of heretical depravity, indirectly reduced to its character as the imperfect is to the perfect, just as the embryo of a human being is something shapeless and undeveloped, but is not simply a human being, only in a qualified sense. Therefore, if an error opposed to faith creeps into a believer through ignorance or blameworthy negligence, it will not immediately be called heresy, which is a supreme species of unbelief and an error opposed to Catholic faith not in any way whatsoever, but perfectly, absolutely, and formally. Since this perfect, absolute, and formal opposition is also moral, not merely dialectical, it is not considered separately by its object and kind without also considering the person and the human will. For who does not know that moral acts, from differences in people’s status, condition, disposition, and knowledge, likewise receive different names and kinds? Thus, the error “Christ is not true God,” although it conflicts with faith in a person of any condition, is Iudaean unbelief in a Iudaean, pagan unbelief in a pagan, and heresy in a Christian—unless we are so unskilled in speech as to call the guilt of such an error in a pagan heresy. Therefore, among us, who distinguish many different kinds of unbelief according to people’s varied forms of worship and profession, nothing prevents such kinds of things and words from depending on those who assert them. Once these points have been explained, it is easy, I think, to see that the definition of heresy is defective when it says that heresy is an error opposed to Catholic truth, since that definition applies equally to every error of Iudaeans, Saracens, pagans, and heretics. But the Scholastic theologians, experts in defining, put it very clearly: “Heresy is the obstinate error of someone who has professed the faith, plainly contrary to a truth that is certainly Catholic.”

SOME ARGUMENTS AGAINST THE DEFINITION OF HERESY

But for this definition to be clearer, it should be examined through some arguments. First, as Philo testifies in his little book De vita theoretica supplicum (apud Euseb. lib. histo. eccles. 2 cap. 17), the Christian doctrine and way of life is a heresy; but it is not an error, but rather Catholic truth itself, and so on. Next, an apostate from the Christian Catholic faith and religion plainly opposes the Catholic truth he once professed, yet he is not a heretic. Moreover, as Hieronymus says, “From words spoken without order, one falls into heresy”; therefore this crime occurs without error and obstinacy. Further, “One who doubts in the faith is an unbeliever” (De haereti. ca. I); if so, then someone who was previously a Christian through such doubt will become

a heretic. For there is nothing in a genus that is not contained in some species of that genus. But if that hesitation is heresy, and one who hesitates remains suspended and uncertain in mind, assenting to nothing at all, it follows that sometimes there is heresy without error. For error, which opposes truth, includes assent. Moreover, Divus Thomas (I p. q. 32 art. 4) teaches that to hold a false opinion about matters chiefly handed down to us from faith itself entails heresy, especially if obstinacy is added. Therefore, heresy can exist without obstinacy. This is confirmed by the Church’s practice: from a single act of worshipping idols or circumcising a child, it judges someone to be virtually a heretic; it would not do so if obstinacy and that excessive persistence in error were required for heresy. Add that unbelief and hardness of heart cannot exist without obstinacy. Therefore, the eleven disciples, whose unbelief and hardness of heart the Lord rebuked, persisted obstinately in their error. But their error concerning the article of the Resurrection, which the Lord himself had plainly foretold, was openly contrary to Catholic faith. Therefore, if that definition is true and complete, the disciples incurred the crime of heresy. If this is quite absurd, let us say instead that something both exceeds and is missing from that definition. We will explain these arguments as briefly as we can. For our purpose here is not to undertake a treatment of heresy, which could not be completed without a very long discourse, but to explain briefly and concisely, as we pass by, what heresy properly is, from which the meaning of “heretic” becomes clear, and what a heretical proposition is, which no educated person can fail to recognize as a spoken or written sign of heretical error. (Ad I arg.) First, then, as Hieronymus testifies (24 q. 3 ca. Haeresis; in 5 ca. epist. ad Gala. et in c. 3 epist. ad Titum), Isidorus (lib. 8 etymolog. c. 3), and D. Thomas (2.2 quaest. 11 artic. 1 et in 3 cap. episto. ad Titum), the Greek word “heresy” comes from “choice.” The Latin translator of the New Testament sometimes preserves this Greek word (1 Cor. 11), and at other times renders it as “sect,” as at Galat. 5, where our edition has “sects” among the works of the flesh, while the Greek reads “heresies”; and at Acto. 28, where the Iudaeans say to Paulus, “For concerning this sect we know that it is everywhere spoken against”—Lucas used the Greek word for “heresy.” “Sect” and “heresy” therefore denote the same thing; but just as sect is named from following, so heresy is named from choosing: από τoυ αιρέoμαι, which means “I choose” (Isidorus 8 Etymol.; Thomas II-II.11.1 ad 3). Next, we should observe that among ancient Greek and Latin authors the word “heresy” is general and designates any sect, such as the Platonic, Stoic, or Peripatetic. But Christian writers use the contracted term “heresy” for a sect and division by which someone separates himself from the common faith of the Church, choosing a private opinion and departing from Catholic teaching. Moreover, although this is obvious and often said, it should still be mentioned that the teaching of the Gospel properly should be called neither heresy nor sect. First, we do not follow it by our own choice, for it is not our invention or discovery; rather, we have it from divine Tradition, so that we are not free to choose one opinion or another, but must follow God wherever he leads and draws us back. Also, the Gospel’s teaching has always been Catholic and universal: it concerned all equally, and all who rightly held the truth about God maintained it at every time. Since “heresy” and “sect” mean a private teaching that each person chooses and follows at will, the Catholic teaching, handed down by God to all people without exception, is surely to be called neither sect nor heresy, although people call philosophers’ doctrines heresies. The authorities are Hieronymus (in tertium caput epist. ad Tit.), Isidorus (8 lib. etymolog. cap. 3), Theophilactus (in 2 cap.

epist. ad Colossen.), Tertulianus (in lib. De praescriptionibus haereticorum). Therefore, when Philo calls our religion a heresy, he does so in the customary manner of his age, not in a bad sense; for that is how people generally called it. (Ad 2 argum.) But whether apostasy is heresy is disputed with great disagreement among the most learned. Sylvester (in ver. Haeresis, I quaest. 2) says that an apostate is not properly a heretic; but in ver. Aposta., 1 et 2, he seems to contradict himself. Caietanus (II-II quaest. 11 artic. 1) teaches that apostates truly are heretics because, although they do not believe in Christ by an elicited act, as he says, they profess him through the Christian character; they therefore fall into heresy when they depart from the Catholic faith they held by profession. But in the Summa, in ver. Apostata, he seems to think otherwise, saying: “Apostasy is worse than heresy, since it surpasses it by taking away the faith entirely.” Cardinal Turrecremata (in lib. 4 part. 2 cap. 13) plainly confirms that an apostate is not a heretic. This is also the view of D. Thomas (II-II q. 11, art. 1 et q. 12 art. 1 ad tertium), where he explicitly says that apostasy does not entail any determinate kind of unbelief, but takes its kind from the end toward which the person who departs from the faith moves. And certainly, according to the usage and manner of speaking of the Saints, a heretic is only someone who, after professing the Christian faith, resists Christ’s teaching under the Christian name, as Augustinus says (18 De Ciui. Dei c. 51); and in 16 lib. cap. 2 he teaches that Cham, the middle son of Noe, who stood apart from both the first fruits of the Israelites and the fullness of the Gentiles, remaining between the two, was a type of heretics. Origenes says (in tertium cap. epist. ad Tit.): “A heretic is someone who professes belief in Christ but believes something about the truth of the Christian faith other than what is contained in the tradition of the Church’s definition.” To avoid being long-winded and tedious in reporting each person’s words, Ambrosius (in 3 cap. epist. ad Tit.), Gregorius (5 mora. ca. 11), and Beda (in Lucae c. 17) agree with Divus Thomas and Augustinus. None of the ancient writers, in their lengthy disputes against Iulianus, called him a heretic; they called him an apostate. The reasoning of Divus Thomas is not at all poor: someone who rejects the whole doctrine of Christ seems to choose nothing, but to depart from the faith completely. Apostasy also entails the movement of someone departing from the faith; but movement takes its kind from its term, not from its starting point. Therefore, when an apostate turns to the superstition and error of the Iudaeans, he incurs Iudaean unbelief; when he turns to paganism, he incurs the guilt of pagan unbelief. It would follow that if apostasy were heresy, it would be placed under two species of the same proximate genus. Divus Thomas therefore reasons more correctly when he says that apostasy has no determinate kind of unbelief in itself, but is reduced to the kind to which the apostate has turned. For by departing from the Christian faith, apostasy does not have a kind of its own, but rather a certain aggravating circumstance, as in the saying: “It would have been better for them not to know the way of justice than, after knowing it, to turn back” (2 Petr. 2). I am all the more amazed by those who twist the words and arguments of D. Thomas to the opposite view. But let us consider their arguments. One is that a person would cease to be a heretic by multiplying heresies. For if he fell daily into one heresy after another until he abandoned the whole Catholic faith, he would then become an apostate, having lost his former name through the growth of heresies. A second argument is that the penalties decreed by law against heretics also include apostates; this would not be so if they were not heretics, since no canon law punishes such apostates unless they are included among heretics. The final argument is much stronger than the others: Bonifatius VIII defined apostates to be heretics in these words:

“Christians who have passed over to the rite of the Iudaeans are to be proceeded against as if they were heretics” (De haereti. in 6). The first argument, however, is not hard to refute. No matter how many heresies a person accumulates, if he generally professes Christ and attacks his faith under the Christian name, he will always be a heretic, not an apostate. But as soon as he sets out to abandon both the name of Christ and the whole religion entirely, he becomes an apostate and loses the name “heresy”—not through a further heresy added to the earlier ones, but through a new apostasy, which is not heresy but something greater than heresy. Who would doubt that lesser things are abolished by greater ones and that, as names change, earlier things pass into later ones? Dispositions are changed into habits, and the name “disposition” ceases. The knowledge of a wayfarer is changed into the knowledge of one who has attained the goal, and that earlier knowledge, faith, and the name of faith are washed away. An incontinent person becomes wicked through repeatedly acting incontinently, and the old name disappears or is changed into another, more serious one. So there is nothing surprising in our saying that a heretic loses the old name and acquires a new one through apostasy, which is a new crime, separate from heresy and much more serious than heresy. Especially since, among the ancient Saints, a heretic is not an open enemy but a false prophet who comes in sheep’s clothing, a leper who mixes crooked things with straight and stains a healthy color with spots, Pharaoh’s magician who presents an image of truth while resisting the truth, and finally a spring and cloud without water, an autumn tree, a wandering star—all things that put forward the appearance of water, fruit, or light. Since, then, the name “heretic” implies a general profession of Christ, it is not absurd that when this implication is absent, the name “heretic” should also be absent. Likewise, if someone prolonged supper into the following day with as many drinks and as much conversation as possible, once the time had changed, supper would turn into breakfast or even lunch, and would no longer properly retain its former name. The second argument is refuted as follows. There is no doubt that apostates incur the penalties for heretics. This has been consistently observed from the beginning of the Church, as is especially clear from the works of Cyprianus. Many people are mistaken in thinking that all the Church’s laws must be sought in the legal compilations, into which Raymundus, Gratianus, or someone else collected very many decrees. Thus Caietanus could scarcely establish the precept of Lenten fasting, since it does not appear in the commonly circulated papal decrees; and he was almost exhausted by the same labor while searching for a law that would bind clerics who professed monastic religion to perform the prescribed divine prayers. Believe me, many laws of the Church have been introduced not by writing but by custom. Nor do the compiled legal volumes contain all the writings of Councils and Pontiffs. Therefore, before Bonifatius VIII, the Church’s custom had prescribed penalties for apostates. But because someone had doubted this, the Pontiff resolved the doubt in that chapter, defining that proceedings against apostates should be conducted in the same way as against heretics. Yet the Pontiff’s words and definition do not establish that apostates are heretics. For the particle tanquam sometimes expresses similarity, but not always the truth of the thing. There is no need to give examples here, since many occur in sacred and secular writings. But enough has been said about this argument, which also involves a dispute over terminology. (Ad 3 arg.) Furthermore, the testimony that Scholastic theologians and legal experts even now repeat under the name of Hieronymus is not Hieronymus’s; D. Thomas and those after him took it from the Magister Sententiarum and used it, as they often do. But if that passage of Hieronymus in his letter to

Damasus, on the term “three hypostases,” is read more carefully, D. Hieronymus is rather of the view that heresy must be judged from meaning, not from words. What else does he mean when he speaks in this way? “The leader of the Arians and the Campenses demand from me, a Roman, the novel term ‘three hypostases’.... We ask what they think ‘three hypostases’ can mean. ‘Three subsisting persons,’ they say. We reply that this is what we believe. The meaning is not enough; they demand the very term, because I do not know what poison lies hidden in its syllables.... And because we do not pronounce the terms, we are judged heretics.” And many other statements of this kind follow, from which you can understand that Hieronymus feared no charge of heresy for a correct and sound understanding, but did fear a new expression in which he suspected poison might lie hidden under honey. Otherwise, Hieronymus had read this statement of Hilarius: “Heresy arose from understanding, not from Scripture, and it is meaning, not wording, that becomes a crime.” Thus, by words spoken without order, we may perhaps incur suspicion of heresy; but if there is no error in faith, we cannot incur heresy itself. Since faith is in the intellect, unbelief—which includes heresy as one of its kinds—must also be in the intellect. Likewise, nothing is contrary to truth except error; therefore, since heresy opposes the truth of faith, it is undoubtedly error. But because legislators and legal judges sometimes prosecute crimes in the external forum by legal fiction and presumption, they call external words and deeds that usually testify to heresy “heresies” and punish them as heresies. Thus they also punish those who outwardly abandon the faith or perform worship to an idol by an external act, even if they do so out of fear, just as if they had inwardly departed from faith and religion. But as for words, I do not care. For just as an outward declaration and profession of faith is sometimes called “faith,” an outward declaration of heresy also receives the same name. Signs and images of things are often called by the names of the things themselves. Thus the old and celebrated proverb to which I have scarcely ever agreed is true in ordinary speech: “From words spoken without order, one falls into heresy.” But properly speaking, as we said, among Christians heresy is the error of someone who professes to have Christ’s faith in general but does not truly have it. I thought I should warn those who judge matters of faith and religion to judge words and deeds differently. In deeds that are in themselves foul and wicked, there is no danger in punishing as heretics those who circumcise in the Iudaean rite or offer sacred rites to an idol or demon. Still, I know that men very learned in theology and law have held—and I do not disagree—that since such people are neither heretics nor apostates except by legal fiction and probable presumption, judges of the faith should carefully and diligently investigate whether such external crimes truly proceed from inward unbelief. If it is established that such crimes were committed and carried out not through an error of the intellect but from desire, fear, or some other disturbance of the mind, then they should be punished less severely, not as heresies. But since words, however disorderly, often escape the crime of heresy and sometimes are entirely free of any crime, a judge should apply the greatest diligence in investigating their meaning and the speaker’s intention. If a sound meaning and pure faith appear in the speaker’s corrupt and polluted words, he should be warned, corrected, and even frightened, but punished with clemency and restraint. Sometimes the whole penalty should instead be discreetly pardoned, for the ignorance and weakness of mortals; yet the freer speech of frivolous people should be firmly restrained, even when it does not contain an error, if it may sometimes bring harm to those who hear it. ¹

But we have offered the foregoing only as a taste, as it were from our fingertips, since it is foreign to our present purpose. What follows is our own and pertains specifically to this time and place. Therefore, to explain it briefly but clearly, I will use as much intelligence as I can and almost more effort than I can manage. (Ad 4 arg.) Legal experts and theologians dispute whether someone doubtful in faith is a heretic; likewise—and it is the same question—whether doubting any Catholic truth is itself heresy. The first argument seems to show that it is. There is also that testimony of Augustinus (In Enchi. c. 17 et 19): “To err is to think true what is false and false what is true, or to regard the certain as uncertain and the uncertain as certain, whether false or true.” But one who doubts any truth of faith regards certain things as uncertain; therefore, he errs against the faith. For, as Bernardus says, faith admits no doubt; if it does, it is not faith. Such hesitation, then, is an error opposed to faith. Therefore, if obstinacy is added, it is undoubtedly heresy. Moreover, the Council of Vienna condemns as erroneous and hostile to the truth of Catholic faith every doctrine either rashly asserting or calling into doubt that the substance of the rational soul is not the form of the human body. Therefore, not only does the person who asserts a heretical proposition err against the faith and oppose it, but so does the person who calls Catholic truth into doubt. Why else would the chapter “Dubius in fide infidelis est” be placed at the head of the title De haereticis, before all the other chapters, unless to make us understand that such people must be regarded as heretics and punished as heretics? Moreover, the person who doubts loses the faith, otherwise he would not be an unbeliever; but faith received in baptism is lost only through heresy. Add that constancy and certain firmness belong to the nature of faith; wavering and obstinate doubt corrupt faith’s firmness. Therefore, doubt is at least indirectly contrary to faith, and so is heresy. For that is why an error opposed to a theological conclusion is heresy: it indirectly corrupts faith. These arguments are used by those who consider someone who doubts in faith to be a heretic if he is obstinate in doubting. For if he wavers and falters through weakness, not obstinacy, everyone agrees that he is not a heretic: “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?” (Matth. 14). The doubt of a weak person does not therefore destroy faith entirely; the Lord says that the faith of the weak is little, not nonexistent. Other authors, themselves most learned, hold the contrary: doubt in matters of faith is opposed to faith privatively, not contrarily, while heresy is positively contrary to faith, as the Schoolmen put it. Therefore, doubt is not properly heresy, even if a person doubts knowingly and with full awareness. They too try to persuade us of this view with many arguments. The first is the testimony of D. Thomas (prioris ad Corinth. 11 lect. 4), where he teaches that heresy requires someone to adhere obstinately to a private doctrine. For, he says, choice implies firm adherence. Hence he infers that a person is a heretic only if he scorns the divinely handed-down doctrine of faith and obstinately follows his own error. Hieronymus holds the same view in the fifth chapter of his epistle to the Galatians and in the third chapter of his epistle to Titus, saying (24, q. 3, ca. Haeresis): “Heresy is named from choice, since a heretic chooses for himself the doctrine he thinks best.” Augustinus likewise says in lib. de utilita. creden. ad Honora. cap. primo (24, q. 3, ca. Haereticus): “A heretic is one who either generates or follows false opinions.” But one who doubts has no firm adherence, chooses neither side of the question, and neither generates nor follows a false opinion; therefore, he is not a heretic.

Again, heresy is contrary to faith, not opposed to it by negation or privation. But doubt, since it involves neither assent nor dissent, is not contrary to faith, for faith implies assent; therefore, doubt is not heresy. Moreover, heresy is an error contrary to Catholic truth, while error is false assent or dissent. Since hesitation is neither assent nor dissent, it is not heresy. Besides, doubt is a kind of middle position between the two extreme sides of a dispute, whereas faith and heresy are two extremes that conflict with each other most strongly. Therefore, doubt, which lies between heretical dogma and Catholic truth, is not heresy but shares in and is close to it. These are the reasons that quite distinguished authors usually find persuasive for holding this view. Nor do the arguments of their opponents compel them to abandon their position. When they are first challenged with the claim that someone doubtful in faith is an unbeliever, they answer as follows. Unbelief, they say, can be understood in three ways. First, as simple and pure negation: someone is called an unbeliever solely because he lacks faith. In this sense, as Sanctus Thomas says (2.2. q. 10 articu. 1), it is not a matter of guilt in those who have heard nothing about the faith, but rather of punishment. Second, unbelief is understood as contrary to faith: that is, when someone opposes the faith he has heard or even scorns it. In this sense, as Divus Thomas affirms in the same place, the character of unbelief is properly realized. The third kind of unbelief is intermediate between the two preceding kinds: it is a wavering between two sides, adhering to neither. This is the sense in which Pope Stephanus speaks in that first chapter De haereticis. But the three kinds of unbelief are understood to be kinds of that unbelief which is properly contrary to faith—that is, not the first or third kind but the second. They interpret the claim that those who regard certainties as uncertain err in this way: it applies only if they assert that things which are certain are uncertain, or even deny that they are certain. For an error is a false proposition, whether affirmed or denied. One who neither affirms nor denies anything does not properly err—unless, perhaps, we also call someone mistaken who misses the target despite never having shot an arrow, though he would have aimed at it if he had shot. In this sense all sinners generally err, not only those who do evil but also those who fail to do good. But this is an improper use of “err.” Otherwise, returning to the point, if someone is in error simply because faith must be certain and he is uncertain, then someone who opines that Christ is God would also properly err and be a heretic, since he lacks the firmness required by the truth of faith. For just as doubt drives faith out, so does opinion. The fear accompanying opinion is as opposed to the certain assent of faith as is the uncertainty of someone who doubts. But is anyone so mistaken as to think that a true opinion is an error, because it cannot coexist with the certain assent required by faith? Therefore, one who regards certainties as uncertain, neither asserting nor denying anything, but remaining undecided and choosing neither Catholic truth nor the contrary dogma, may be a heretic by a legal fiction, but certainly is not one by the proper meaning of the word, since he is not positively contrary in unbelief, although he is an unbeliever negatively or even privatively, because faith is understood to be true without any error and with all fear and hesitation cast aside; if it has fear or hesitation, it is not faith. The testimony raised from the Council of Vienna is not only no objection to these authors, but strongly confirms their cause and view. For when the synod condemned as erroneous and hostile to Catholic faith every doctrine either asserting or calling into doubt that the substance of the rational soul is not the form of the human body, it did so lest anyone think doubt and assertion should be held at the same degree and in the same place,

The council adds: “We define that whoever from now on presumes to assert, defend, or obstinately hold that the rational soul is not the form of the human body is to be considered a heretic.” These words make it clear that the council did not condemn as heretics those who called the matter into question, but only those who stubbornly asserted the contrary. We should not think the council omitted those who raised the question without reason. The teaching that calls Catholic truths into question is therefore hostile to the Christian faith not completely and absolutely, but imperfectly and incipiently; intermediate colors are in their own way opposed and contrary to white, not only the extreme color, black. From this it is clear enough that mere hesitation, without assent or dissent, is neither properly an error nor in every respect hostile to the faith. The fact that the saying “A doubter in the faith is an unbeliever” is placed before the others under the heading De haereticis does not prove that a doubter in the faith is truly a heretic; it proves that he is so by a legal fiction. The second chapter of that title shows this: “Leo says that whoever does not bring others back from error when he can shows himself to be in error.” But those who favor heretics and connive at their error through an inclination of the affections, not an error of the intellect, are heretics only by a legal presumption, not truly and properly. “An error that is not resisted is approved, and truth, when it is not defended, is suppressed,” says Innocent (83 dist., chapter Error). Why? For a person who fails to oppose an evident crime is not free from suspicion of secret complicity. Gregory also says, “He seems to agree with one in error who fails to correct what ought to be corrected” (same distinction, chapter Consentire). Pope Stephen, whose decree this is said to be, does not interpret himself differently. He wished to teach what kind of witnesses should be believed and, among others, rejects from the trustworthiness of testimony those who either do not know the truth of the faith or are doubtful about it. The Pontiff rightly assumes that such people are unbelievers and liars in giving testimony. Accordingly, that first chapter perhaps does not mean that people should be judged heretics on the basis of its statement, but rather that judges in a case of faith should know which witnesses are legitimate: it would be absurd for unbelievers to testify about faith against Christians, whether they are unbelievers through ignorance or doubt about the truth—or, all the more, through contrary error. I consider it highly probable that a person who doubts out of obstinacy rather than weakness loses the habit of faith. For any act of faith is removed by either a stubborn or a weak doubt. There is no ambiguity in an act of faith; if there is, it is no act of faith. Those who hold this view easily deny that the faith received in baptism can be lost except through heresy. White is driven away not only by black but also by yellow, blue-gray, and all the other intermediate colors. Likewise, faith is excluded not only by unbelief but also by the clear vision of God: “When what is perfect comes, what is partial will be brought to an end.” Nothing therefore prevents faith itself from being removed both by heresy, which is perfectly contrary to it, and by doubt or opinion, which are partly opposed to it. The final argument added is very easy to answer. An error contrary to theology has both false assent and obstinacy in falsehood, and so it is opposed to faith in every way, indirectly, through both intellect and will. Obstinate doubt, however, is perfectly opposed to faith in the will but not in the intellect, since a person who doubts has no error or assent as long as he continues to doubt. Anyone who wonders or doubts how, in this respect, the nature of contraries can be incomplete should admit that he does not know what a learned man is.

Since heresy is contrary to faith not partially but in every way, it follows that doubt is not properly heresy, however obstinate it may be. But is it enough for us to conclude that those who stubbornly doubt the truth of the faith do not seem to be heretics? I do not think so, although I approve one of these opinions according to metaphysical principles and do not reject the other according to moral philosophy. According to the rules of metaphysics and the laws of contraries laid down by dialecticians and natural philosophers, doubt has neither species nor form. It asserts and posits nothing that is either a thing or has the character of a form. Yet it is established that things properly contrary to each other are two forms that are maximally opposed. This sufficiently proves that doubt is neither heresy nor contrary to faith. But if we follow the rules of moral philosophy, which is concerned with what happens most often, it is quite unbelievable that a person who stubbornly doubts Catholic truth has no error at all truly contrary to faith. It is no wonder if someone has doubts about a particular conclusion or even one principle of theology. But it is scarcely plausible that a person should call into question not only certain conclusions in the Church but all the principles of Catholic teaching, assenting to none and dissenting from none—unless we imagine someone always hesitant and wavering about everything, for whom there is an endless question about every matter and no truth remains settled anywhere. Suppose, however, that such a person is found, always wavering between two positions. If he generally professes Christ, he also generally accepts Christ’s teaching. Assume, then, that he accepts the sacred Scriptures, or at least the authority of the Church. When he doubts any one doctrine found in Scripture or defined by the Church, if you show him either the Church’s definition or the plain teaching of Scripture, he must either abandon his doubt or believe that the testimony of the Church and Scripture is uncertain. For if he regards it as certain, he will banish all hesitation. The ecclesiastical judges, therefore, supported by the authority of theologians and jurists, rightly condemn as heretics all who obstinately doubt a Catholic doctrine. (This was sought especially in the fifth argument and its confirmations: what obstinacy is, and whether heresy can exist without it.) But now we must explain as briefly as possible what obstinacy is, since it is what most of all makes a person a heretic. It is not difficult to show that heresy cannot exist without obstinacy—which is the first question—both from the common agreement of all theologians and jurists and from the most weighty testimonies of the ancients. Among these are the famous passages attributed to Augustine (In epistolam ad Glorium et Eleusium; De civitate Dei, book 18, chapter 51; and Contra Manichaeos), as well as 24 quaestio 3, chapters Dixit Apostolus and Qui in ecclesia. The same point follows from chapter Damnamus, De summa Trinitate: no one is condemned as a heretic unless he presumes to defend a doctrine contrary to the faith; presumption—which common speech calls arrogance—is the root of obstinacy. And chapter Unica, De summa Trinitate, in 6: those are judged heretics who presume or rashly assert, and so forth. The Clementine, De summa Trinitate, states it more plainly: “Whoever presumes obstinately to assert,” and so forth. St. Thomas is so far from disagreeing with this view that he not only considers it impossible to find heresy without obstinacy but argues that obstinacy is included in the very nature of heresy (II-II, 2.6 ad 2; II-II, 11.2 ad 3; and In 1 ad Corinthios, lectio 4). He argues this first from the origin of the word: as has been explained, “heresy” comes from the Greek word for choice. A person is a heretic, then, only if he knowingly and deliberately chooses a doctrine contrary to the faith; this cannot happen without obstinacy. He next uses the Apostle’s testimony (1 Tim. 6): “If anyone teaches otherwise and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness—”

“—he resists the Church’s teaching and is therefore obstinate; only such a person should be considered a heretic.” Moreover, as we have said above, heresy is maximally and utterly opposed to the Catholic faith. Faith is not complete unless the intellect’s true assent is confirmed by the will’s right consent. Heresy, then, is not complete and consummate unless a false intellectual error is confirmed by the will’s perverse choice. Just as constancy in truth is required for faith, so obstinacy in falsehood is present in the contrary heresy. It is fortunate that we have no opponent on this point. Therefore, even if the arguments were neither probable nor adequate to establish the point, the common judgment of all would still confirm this part of the definition. For no one thinks a person is a heretic unless he is also obstinate in his error. But many have questioned what obstinacy is, while few have resolved the matter. Whether it is called obstinate because one clings too tightly, or because one presses on with more force than is proper—these fine distinctions, too finely drawn, I would rather omit—it is nevertheless clear that the person called obstinate persists excessively in error, clings to a false opinion tooth and nail, and defends it fiercely. Some define the term this way: “Obstinate is the person who insists on holding what he ought to abandon.” A definition that is the same or very close is: “Obstinate is the person who persists in an error he is bound to leave.” These definitions are easily stated—who would doubt that? But if this explains the obstinacy attached to error that makes a person a heretic, then many people who are not heretics will be counted among them. First, if an error is contrary to the faith, I must flee and avoid it whether I see that it is contrary to the faith or am unaware of it. Those who think ignorance removes the binding force of precepts are badly mistaken. Believe me, ignorance does not free us from obligation; it prevents a forbidden act from being imputed to us as a fault. Everyone, then, even if he is ignorant, must absolutely avoid errors contrary to the faith if he does not yet hold them, and abandon them if he does. So if he persists in them even in ignorance, he is holding what he was bound to give up. But let us leave aside these subtle arguments, too refined for everyone to grasp, and pursue points that even the unlearned can easily understand. If an unlearned person has been warned by his bishop, by judges of the faith, by theologians of some distinguished university, or even by learned and devout friends, and still does not abandon his error, he plainly persists in what he ought to give up. He is therefore truly obstinate, if the definition of the word contains nothing missing or superfluous. Nothing, then, is lacking that is required to establish heresy: this person has an error contrary to the faith and is obstinate in it. Yet it is beyond doubt that such a person, though certainly at fault, is not a heretic if he does not think his opinion is contrary to the Church, but thinks either the bishop, the inquisitors (as they are commonly called), or the university theologians are mistaken. It therefore does not yet seem that what has been said reveals the kind of obstinacy that constitutes heresy. Nor do the many signs that so many people have needlessly sweated to produce reveal this kind of obstinacy. It is commonly reported that some have offered seven signs for this matter (Gloss on extrau. Cum inter nonnullos), others twelve (John Gerson, part 1 of Alphabetum, 14), and still others twenty (Torquemada, book 4, part 2, chapter 16). Since some of these signs are uncertain, it may happen that a doubtful sign is accepted by the judges of faith as certain; then a person who is not truly a heretic will be judged obstinate and heretical. But since jurists treat these and similar matters differently from theologians—jurists as far as things that can be grasped by the hand, theologians as far as reason and understanding are concerned—let us first explain according to theological rules what kind of obstinacy completes heresy, and then, if possible, give jurists signs and marks of this obstinacy, not many, varied, and ambiguous ones, but a very few that are fixed and constant.

(The first confirmation of the fifth argument is refuted.) The reasoning of theology requires that obstinacy that makes heresy not be measured by length of time—that is, that a person be obstinate only if he persists in error for a long time. Certainly, if it were established that someone had sincerely defended for only one hour the view that God is not triune, the Church would judge him a heretic. The Church customarily judges people to be heretics for a single act, however brief, such as worshiping idols or circumcising a child; it would not do so if the crime of heresy required a long and extended period of time. Again, if someone knowingly and deliberately renounced the whole faith, however brief a pause he made, the Church would rightly judge him a true apostate. So too a person who opposes an evident article of faith will be judged a heretic, even if that opposition did not last a long time. Moreover, just as no long duration is needed for the act of faith to be complete in every respect, the contrary act of heresy does not claim or require that the error persist over time. (What kind of obstinacy heresy requires.) Theology also teaches that a heretic is someone who willingly assents to any dogma even when he understands it to be contrary to the faith of the Church. For example, if someone knows that the thing he believes conflicts with sacred Scripture or a clear definition of the Church, yet still maintains his own opinion and judgment, this is true heresy, complete in its kind. Cajetan demonstrated this with an excellent argument (II-II, question 11, article 2). Faith is completed by the intellect’s assent, together with the will’s consent, in a person who knows that what he believes is Catholic truth. Unbelief, then, is completed by the intellect’s dissent together with the will’s consent, in a person who knows that what he assents to is contrary to the common faith of the Church. For opposites must have opposite definitions. This is confirmed especially by Augustine’s striking testimony (book 4 of Contra Donatistas, chapter 6): “Suppose that someone holds about Christ what Photinus thought … believing it to be the Catholic faith. I do not yet call him a heretic, unless he prefers to resist the manifest teaching of the Catholic faith and chooses to hold what he had previously thought.” Moreover, a person who holds an error contrary to the faith in such a way that he is unwilling to be corrected by the Church is undoubtedly a heretic, as Augustine likewise asserts in his letter to Glorius and Eleusius (24 quaestio 3, chapter Dixit Apostolus). But someone who sees that his opinion is opposed to the Catholic faith and nevertheless persists in it is unwilling to be corrected by the Church, whose authority he rejects and scorns. He therefore commits the true crime of heresy. From this it follows that the obstinacy that makes a person a heretic is always and only found in someone who continues to hold a doctrine that he knows is opposed to the Catholic view. The very meaning of the word shows this. A person is called obstinate when he clings excessively to his own opinion. Someone who knows his opinion opposes the common judgment and faith of the Church, yet persists in it to excess, certainly remains fixed in a private opinion. He is therefore truly obstinate; indeed, this alone is complete obstinacy, the only kind that absolutely conflicts with constancy in the faith and thereby constitutes heresy without qualification. For just as faith is completed by a choice in which a person who wills to assent to the truth understands that it is Catholic truth, so contrary heresy is completed by the choice of someone who knowingly and willingly embraces his own opinion against the Catholic faith. Who could be more obstinate than a person who—

What force of the Church’s authority could drive someone from the opinion he has adopted and proposed? Jerome therefore interprets this well: a heretic has been overturned and condemned by his own judgment because, by his own choice, he departed from the Church’s institution; that departure seems to be a condemnation by his own conscience. From these points follow two consequences. First, if a dogma is not yet clearly and certainly established as pertaining to the Catholic faith, someone who opposes it commits a serious sin—even if most learned men think it has been revealed by God. He is also obstinate if he disregards the authority of many of the most learned men and rejects their opinion with stubborn resolve. But he is not a heretic, because that obstinacy, though shameless and blameworthy, is directed not against the Church but against those learned and devout men whom he arrogantly despises and considers worthless. The second consequence is this: if it is certain and established that some dogma is a truth of the faith, a person who does not know that it pertains to the Catholic faith, and who, despite being warned by a bishop and again by those entrusted with knowledge of the faith—finally, by learned and devout men—defends his own position too stubbornly and obstinately, may be called rash, insolent, reckless, presumptuous, heresy-wise, and by any similar names. Yet even now he does not bear the mark of heresy, because, as we must say repeatedly, his obstinacy is not yet opposed to the truth of the faith and the authority of the Church but to the opinions of people who can both deceive and be deceived. St. Thomas rightly asserted (In Titum, chapter 3, lectio 2) that someone who is ready to be corrected according to the Church’s ruling is not a heretic, because he errs through ignorance, not malice. I take him to mean even gross ignorance. Affected ignorance does not remove the sin; such a sin would be committed as if by someone who knew and saw what he was doing. Affected error arises from choice, and a person is not ready to be corrected if he deliberately avoids the Church’s warning and teaching. But someone who errs from ignorance that is not affected is, in a certain sense, unwilling and resisting, not willing and acting of his own accord. He does not choose the error and will not be reluctant to correct it when the Church corrects him. But this is the first objection raised against our teaching: this error, arising from blameworthy ignorance, is a mortal sin, especially after a warning from a learned bishop, prudent judges, or wise theologians. Mortal sin, however, falls only under the category of unbelief, and St. Thomas defines only three kinds of unbelief. Since this crime is neither paganism nor Judaism, it must surely be heresy. Add that if someone killed another person out of blameworthy and stubborn ignorance, he would truly and properly be a murderer and incur the penalties prescribed by law for murderers. The same applies to those who violently lay hands on clergy and to all other sacrilegious acts. Therefore anyone who, after receiving Christ’s baptism, holds an error contrary to the faith out of gross ignorance is truly a heretic. An act arising from such ignorance is, without qualification, an act of someone willing and consenting. He may be excused from being so gravely at fault, but not from the guilt of heresy; it is altogether the same kind of act as if it proceeded from someone who was not ignorant. Add St. Thomas’s testimony in these words (In 1 ad Corinthios, lectio 4): “Some cannot be excused from error about articles of faith on account of simplicity, so as not to be heretics, especially concerning matters the Church solemnizes and that are commonly on the lips of the faithful. But concerning other things that pertain indirectly to the teaching of faith, such as that Isaac was Abraham’s son, no one is judged a heretic unless he fails to abandon the error even

after seeing what follows from it.” So far St. Thomas. These words seem so plainly to conflict with our teaching that there is no need to argue the point. Chrysostom too seems to oppose us (Homilia 6 in epistolam ad Titum), interpreting Paul’s passage, “correcting those who resist the truth with gentleness,” and so on (2 Tim. 2), as referring to people who resist the truth not from a desire to oppose but from a wish to learn the truth. But Paul was speaking about heretics, whom he elsewhere (Titus 3) ordered to be admonished and corrected once and again, then avoided after a first and second correction. I answer these arguments briefly as follows. We have said above that a sin may be placed in a category and species in two ways: formally and directly, or materially and by reduction—I ask Latin speakers to forgive me if I have used words that are not quite Latin. We have learned from the dialecticians that matter is placed in the category of substance, a point in the genus of quantity, and an embryo in the species of the living thing toward which nature prepares it—not perfectly and properly, but accidentally and in a manner of speaking improperly. Likewise in conduct, some sins are complete in their species: people knowingly and deliberately commit them, and these belong properly, per se, and formally to their species. Other sins are imperfect: people commit them unknowingly and unintentionally, and these are reduced to a species and genus accidentally. An error contrary to Catholic truth, then, when accompanied by the fault of ignorance, is referred to the species of heresy, but it is not perfect heresy or perfect unbelief, which, as we have said, St. Thomas divides into three species. The first objection is easily dismissed. The second is more difficult: why is someone who unknowingly kills a person a true murderer and incurs the penalties for murder if his ignorance is blameworthy, while someone who, after receiving the faith in baptism, errs against the faith neither truly commits the crime of heresy nor incurs the penalties for heretics? The answer is this. Neither theologians nor jurists call a person who falls into imperfect heresy a heretic, and in common, ordinary speech imperfect heresy is not simply and without qualification heresy. Only the one who formally and by deliberate choice fights against the common faith is called a heretic. Therefore, unless we name as a heretic only the person guilty of perfect and complete heresy, we will fail to preserve the common and proper use of the word. Since we showed this a little earlier from the origin and meaning of the word, from the testimonies of the ancients, and from common judgment, there is no need to go over the same ground. Hence the decree says: “We excommunicate every heresy that raises itself against the Catholic faith” (De haereticis, chapter Excommunicamus). It does not say an error that raises itself against a bishop, against inquisitors, or against theologians from Paris, Salamanca, Complutense, or Bologna, but one that raises itself against the Catholic faith. Hence also the words (1 Tim. 6): “He does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness.” It does not say the sound words of his bishop, of those who investigate matters of faith, or even of many theologians, but of our Lord. If someone does not agree with the words of Scripture or the Church’s teaching, he is a heretic even if he has not been warned by friends, theologians, or judges of the faith. Conversely, if, despite rejecting all their warnings and instructions, he does not deliberately reject the words of God and the Church but does so from ignorance, he is not a heretic. The same reasoning does not apply to other faults: when they arise from gross and stubborn ignorance, they do not lose their name and species. A murderer is not only someone who kills another deliberately but also someone who kills unjustly, even if he does so in a fit of passion or unwittingly. The same applies to other crimes. St. Thomas either

prudently warns the judges of the faith and commands them to assume and hold what they should not merely suspect, or else thinks that none of the faithful can be ignorant of the teachings constantly on the lips of all Catholics unless he has embraced error; or he means imperfect heresy, which requires neither obstinacy nor makes a person heretical simply and absolutely, but only in a certain respect. The same answer applies to those words we quoted above from part 1. Chrysostom is on our side, not against us. No one, neither Chrysostom nor anyone else, would properly call a heretic someone who resists a doctrine not from a desire to contend but in order to learn the truth, provided he is ready to be taught. Yet no one can question that the people Paul addressed to Timothy committed a serious sin. Therefore, with Chrysostom as authority, there is an error contrary to the faith which, although blameworthy, is not heresy, because it is an error of ignorance, not malice. If we follow Chrysostom’s interpretation, Paul was not speaking about heretics, who are so obstinately contentious that they should be avoided rather than admonished. The judges of the faith seem to follow this understanding when, as a general rule, they order heretics to be denounced without first giving fraternal correction. This rule, given generally, is full of wisdom, although not all heretics—as some falsely think—are so closed to the truth that they cannot hear it from a friend, especially a learned and wise one. Unlearned people should not commonly entertain this hope for heretical friends. This confidence belongs only to a few, the wisest and most prudent and closest of friends, who wisely recognize whose salvation need not be despaired of and who can wisely and kindly bring their friends back to the faith of the Church. We can understand Paul to Timothy to have been speaking about people who are not greatly hardened (St. Thomas, II-II, question 33, article 7). I do not want any person, however learned and friendly, to use fraternal correction in this most dangerous age, when most or all heretics are extremely hardened, unless he firmly and certainly believes the heretic will be converted sincerely. He must not put so grave a matter at risk on the basis of conjectures that are merely plausible or probable, especially since experience has shown how much harm attempted correction in a charge of heresy has brought to our people. A learned and prudent man should remember that Paul advises a woman to remain with an unbelieving husband because, among the nations to whom he wrote, there was then hope that a wife could draw her husband to the faith. But when the Church learned that among the Jews, especially, wives were more likely to be corrupted by their husbands, she wisely decreed that a wife converted to the faith should not remain with an unbelieving husband. By that law she overturned Paul’s counsel? No, she confirmed it. Likewise, when the judges of the faith, after many and serious experiences, establish a law ordering that a heretic be denounced even if his heresy is concealed, they do not violate but establish the rule of fraternal correction prescribed by Christ. The lawgiver did not oppose the rights of nature when he wisely decreed: “If your brother, your son, or your daughter, or your wife who lies in your bosom, or your friend whom you love as your own soul, secretly tries to persuade you, saying, ‘Let us go and serve other gods, whom neither you nor your fathers have known’ … let your eye not spare him, have no pity or conceal him, but put him to death at once,” and so on (Deut. 13). The people must therefore carefully observe this law in the crime of heresy, lest by indulging a person through false mercy they act cruelly toward the commonwealth of Christ. (On the second confirmation of the fifth argument.) It is not worthwhile to debate here whether the Apostles were heretics. If someone admits this, what reproach—or rather, what abuse—could I use to turn him away from so great an error? Good God, what could be more absurd than to say that all the first ministers of the Gospel, without exception, were not only estranged from the faith but heretics? How much more truthful and modestly do those think who hold

that the Apostles of Christ sinned not from malice or deliberation but from mental disturbance and ignorance. The Lord plainly foretold his death and resurrection to them, yet they did not understand what was being said, as Luke says (Luke 18). Can we believe that after so many and such great disturbances among the disciples they doubted not from confusion of mind but from malice? The Evangelist explains the nature of their unbelief and hardness of heart: “Because they did not believe those who had seen him risen.” Yet those who had seen him were entirely worthy of belief, though they could still be deceived. Some of the Apostles, then, in not believing them, were hard and unbelieving toward many incorruptible witnesses, but toward human beings, not God. They were obstinate against people, not against God and his Christ. It is therefore manifestly foolish to accuse Christ’s disciples of heresy, if what we have said has been rightly set out and established in defining heresy. We have established that several things must come together for a person to be a heretic. First, he must have an error. Second, that error must be contrary to Catholic truth. Third, it must be certain and established that the error contradicts Catholic truth. Fourth, the error must be accompanied by obstinacy—not any obstinacy, but one that conflicts with the Church’s certain rule. Fifth, the error must occur after the profession of faith has been received, in someone who professes belief in Christ. Thus we have carefully and precisely defined for our theologians what heresy is, so that it may immediately be clear to them what a heretical proposition is. For in the mind the two things are exactly the same; in speech or writing, a proposition that expresses an inward heresy and is its sign is called heretical. But God alone knows the hearts and thoughts of human beings. No mortal can clearly know another person’s heresy, firmly conceived and grasped in his mind. Since speech, writing, and all other outward signs can sometimes deceive, it is not easy to express certain, fixed rules for judges of the faith by which they can judge heresies rightly and in proper order. Theologians, when they have established that some proposition is manifestly contrary to Catholic faith, may immediately call it heretical, because they sometimes speak of matters considered in themselves, according to their genus and nature, and sometimes neglect what they call the circumstances, or leave them to the judges’ trustworthiness and care. Thus they think they have done their duty properly if they have established only whether the error under examination plainly opposes the faith. But since, as we have said, other things are necessary for heresy to be complete under the law, it seems that the weakness and innocence of many people has not been adequately considered unless the judges of the faith are repeatedly warned to investigate the judgment, understanding, and mind of those who err with the utmost diligence—above all, whether they have the kind of obstinacy we have carefully and thoroughly defined. For this is the central hinge of ecclesiastical judgment in this matter. It is not enough, in order to pronounce a sentence of heresy rightly and justly, to have touched on heresy by suspicion; one needs a clear grasp of the matter, so that judgment about errors may itself be free from error. Unless a judge, as it were, holds these things in his hands, his judgment will almost always be rash and reckless. If civil laws prescribe, in a capital case, that the evidence be clearer than daylight, what ought Church judges to do when deciding cases in which not only the property, honor, reputation, and life of one person are at risk, but also the lasting and illustrious standing of an entire class and family? Come, then, let us set out rules by which Church judges can safely judge heresy.

THREE RULES FOR DIRECTING EXTERNAL JUDGMENTS OF FAITH

The first rule is ready to hand: a person’s testimony against himself when he errs is proof of an admitted crime in any court, especially if the accused testifies to his crime of his own accord and willingly. Even a confession that a judge extracts from the accused by questioning and torture is adequate to establish proof in an external court under both civil and canon law. But this whole subject of confession and questioning is more suitably discussed—not only by jurists but also in private conversation by some excellent men—than by any theologians in a school. I would not want anyone to interpret the words of this rule to mean that an accused person who perhaps does not know the nature and force of heresy should judge for himself whether he is a heretic, and the judges should follow his judgment. Rather, the accused should be a witness against himself both in his actions and words and in his own conscience and mind; judges should detect heresy from his actions, words, mind, and character, keeping before their eyes the definition they ought to apply in every judgment concerning faith and religion. My former teacher once encountered a man who vehemently declared himself a heretic. “Why so?” he asked. “Why do you think you are a heretic?” The man replied that he held a position contrary to the Catholic faith. The teacher pressed him: “Do you believe the Catholic faith is false?” “Certainly not,” the man replied. “That is why I consider myself a heretic—that is, in error and estranged from the truth—because my opinion is contrary to the Catholic faith.” My teacher could scarcely contain his laughter. “Go away, fool!” he said. “You are all the less a heretic the more you think yourself one. The matter is safe if you realize that you are in error when you oppose the Catholic faith.” The man’s folly was grasped not so much by theological arguments as by common sense. It once happened to me as well that judges of the faith asked me to identify certain errors. They were the errors of a man who, as I later discovered, had not come to the tribunal at the judges’ order or summons, but at the urging and advice of a priest he had as his confessor. Of his own accord and in his own judgment, he disclosed to the notary numerous heresies against himself—or so he thought. I was asked to mark the errors. When I saw that they were many and varied, I began to consider carefully what kind of author he might be. Whoever he was, he seemed to have drawn little streams from the sources of Arius, Macedonius, Wycliffe, and Luther alike. You would have thought he had spent all his time reading every heretic. If there had been any coherence and connection among the claims or any composition and joining together of the errors, I too would have suspected as much. But when I saw that in so great a mass of errors there was neither a combination nor a link, I thought rather of the man’s madness than of heresy. I therefore refused to judge the errors until I had examined the author’s mind and judgment. I asked the judges whether I could see the man. They said I could, for he had been taken into custody and thrown into prison. His bonds were removed and he was brought before us. I looked at him and saw with my mind that his was not a sound intellect. I tested the matter through present facts, which would take too long to recount, and confirmed that he was as I had suspected. Yet I could scarcely dislodge the opinion fixed in the judges’ minds. In the end, however, I prevailed and persuaded them. Being good men, they gave way and sent the man, who was mad and had confessed of his own accord and by his own judgment, back to his parents’ home, empty of brains but also free of every penalty.

Theologians need not lay down rules about such matters, but they must know them, since they concern the use jurists will make of theological topics, the subject of this book. Let us pursue the rest, for this rule was touched on only briefly. St. Thomas gave a second rule in Prima pars (question 32, article 4) and in his commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians (chapter 11, lectio 4). It is this: if an error contrary to the faith concerns matters that those who err could not plausibly fail to know certainly pertain to the Catholic faith, judges can safely pronounce it heresy. For example, if someone—even an ordinary person from the common crowd—denied that Christ was fastened to the cross, truly died, and truly rose from the dead, or said it was useless and vain to pray for the dead, that God rewards no just person with any reward and punishes no wicked person with any punishment, or similar things. The same is true if a man who has spent a long time in the school of theology argued that the Holy Spirit does not proceed from the Son, that the Father and Son are two principles of the same Spirit, that there are not three parts of penance, that Christians may never wage war on their enemies, that a bishop is not superior to a simple priest, or anything of this kind—matters it would be unbelievable for theologians not to know pertain to the Church’s common faith, especially if they have long and extensively studied in the schools. I do not doubt that judges have sometimes erred in this matter through excessive leniency or great ignorance. I do not want to suspect that the rules of faith have been yielded to the people’s fury or to the will of powerful men as a favor. A few days ago, certain theologians reputed to be very learned were found holding errors that anyone with even moderate theological education could not doubt were peculiar to Lutherans and opposed to the Church’s common faith. They were compelled to abjure heresies as suspects of heresy, not as convicted. Yet if these cases were not measured by the very strict standards of poets or musicians but by the straightedge of common law and ordinary reason, the judgment would have been easier and more straightforward. It was shameful for experts to doubt things that even laymen do not doubt: it is simply not plausible that people could be ignorant of matters they had studied for a long time. Who would believe that men considered highly theological by the common people were ignorant and unlearned in matters familiar and widely known to every theologian? I had intended to set down the errors of those theologians, so that through this example the rule might become clearer and future judges be warned to learn from another’s danger, not to mistake weakness and softness of mind for clemency and mercy. I feared that a harmful precedent had been made for both the accused and the judges. For people think that what is done by way of precedent is done by right. But since those men have now died and are free from all hatred and envy, I did not think these errors should be exposed. If I published them with attestation and documentation, preserving their disgrace for all time, I would seem to be attacking not only the dead accused but also the living judges. Perhaps, though, I fear where there is no cause for fear. In any event, I have warned jurists not to persuade themselves that no one is obstinate except those who have despised the judges’ admonitions and commands. Believe me, the true obstinacy of heretics is found before such warnings: it belongs to those who are fully aware that their opinions contradict the Church’s faith. The common voice and shared judgment of all the faithful is enough—not for one warning, I say, but for a thousand. Therefore whoever scorns the single voice of the Church is much more obstinate than someone who had scorned six hundred theologians or judges.

So much for the second rule. We shall have this as the third: if judges are uncertain about the obstinacy of someone in error, they must carefully address two matters, one proper to theologians and the other shared by theologians and jurists. The jurist must therefore borrow the first from the theologian and claim the second by his own right. First, judges must have the wisest theologians explain and define whether the error brought to trial plainly conflicts with the Catholic faith. For in one of two ways a judgment of heresy may be excluded: either it is uncertain that the dogma opposed by the error is a truth of the Catholic faith, or the conflict between the error and Catholic truth is obscure and a matter of opinion. For example, if someone once denied that the Letter to the Hebrews was written by Paul while being certain that it was canonical, and questioned its author but not its authority, some theologians would consider this heresy. I, however, unless the Church’s definition stood in the way, would not, because I think the faith of Christ is in no danger if we do not know the author of a canonical book, provided we know that the book is canonical. Therefore, whether someone says Paul, Luke, or Barnabas wrote that letter, as long as his belief in the authority of the letter is solid, fixed, and firm, he does not immediately overturn the faith of Christ. Since in the time of St. Jerome it was not yet clearly known as a certain truth of faith that Paul wrote the Letter to the Hebrews, if an opposing error had then been brought before a tribunal of the faith, it might have been judged a crime, but it would not have been judged heresy. Likewise, it is a very certain dogma of faith that we need God’s special help in order to believe, hope, and love as we ought. Those who deny that infused habits of hope and charity exist oppose this dogma, as some think. But although the conflict appears very probable, it is not established by clear reasoning. Their error should therefore be marked as rash and shameless; heresy should not even be suspected until the decrees of the sacred Council of Trent. This point, without anyone needing to mention it, reminds judges of the faith to obtain what they must borrow from theologians not from anyone they happen to find, but from learned, experienced, and practiced men. These men know which theological topics are certain and firm, which are only probable and not necessary, and, through their frequent and ready use of theological arguments, can easily detect any errors that clearly contradict Catholic faith. The second matter is that judges must diligently strive to uncover the obstinacy of the person in error. If it is in doubt and cannot be inferred from what he said or did earlier, or from his status, condition, and character, they will discover it best by showing him a clear sign of the Catholic truth his error contradicts. This might be an explicit passage of Scripture, a definition of a legitimate general council, a settled decree of the Apostolic See, or any other sure sign by which Catholic truths and opposing heresies are judged. If, when these signs and marks have been presented, he yields, that is the strongest probable evidence of ignorance; if he resists, it is the surest evidence of obstinacy, especially if he is not deficient in intelligence or learning. For if he is so crude and uneducated that he cannot understand these matters at all, I would not set out any certain rule or fixed prescription by which his obstinacy could be recognized.

Certainly, if there is any rule to be written with thick and clumsy Minerva, it will be this: the judgment of the Church and the unanimous, harmonious agreement of the faithful. If a person opposes them even when he sees that everyone is against him, he will be considered obstinate and therefore a heretic. It is not necessary to travel through the whole world and ask each of the faithful for his opinion. The beliefs of individual faithful are not assessed by any art or careful inquiry, but judged by a certain sense of prudence. For if someone denied that all fire gives heat, we would not need to prove through induction and demonstration of each individual fire that he was obstinate against nature; we would show the general proposition rather by signs and reasoning, since once some cases are demonstrated, the same reason applies to the rest. Likewise, in the faith of the Church, someone is obstinate if he opposes the judgment of faith held by all the faithful in his province or city. But let us leave this matter and concede it to our own laziness; we are clumsy and inexperienced when we attempt to bring such matters to rule and measure. All these things we have said in establishing this final rule may be right if measured by ordinary practical judgment; if you wish to assess them by the exact precepts of a more rigorous discipline, some may prove incorrect. What can we prescribe amid such unequal variety of things and minds that will be equally applicable to everyone and one rule for all? Especially since cases of this sort are almost conjectural: judges try to penetrate human hearts through certain signs and traces, and if they could know those hearts, they would need no straightedges, standards, or rules. What heresy is, what a heretical proposition is, and by what way and reasoning both a theologian and a jurist should recognize them—I think I have now said enough and more than enough.

ON A PROPOSITION THAT IS ERRONEOUS, HERESY-SAVORING, OFFENSIVE TO PIUS EARS, RASH, OR SCANDALOUS

Next, as we had planned, let us consider the erroneous proposition. Its meaning and definition are not the same for everyone; each has his own, so that here too you may see the truth of the saying: “So many people, so many opinions.” First, let it be firmly established that an erroneous proposition is distinguished from a heretical one not merely in thought but in reality. The Council of Constance, from which we received these various kinds of errors, does not use “erroneous proposition” in a general sense to mean a common genus for heretical error and all the other kinds, which seems to be the proper meaning of the name. For who would believe that an erroneous proposition is anything other than an error? But, as I said, the Council is far from using it this way. I shall make this plain at once if I quote the words of the Fathers: “It is evident from the articles mentioned above that some are notoriously heretical, others not Catholic but erroneous, others scandalous, some offensive to pious ears, and some rash.” This form of speech would be both false and absurd if “erroneous proposition” were used generally for any kind of error. For one might then also rightly say, after listing many arguments, that among them some are—

syllogisms, some inductions, and some arguments; everyone can see how inept that is. Therefore an erroneous proposition is undoubtedly distinguished from a heretical one, not as a genus from a species—which would be a distinction of reason—but as one species of error from another, which is a real distinction, not merely a distinction of words. We must then establish something that perhaps ought to have been said earlier—but a teaching that comes late is not to be censured—especially if it has been reserved for the appropriate time. We must therefore establish that Catholic truths are found not in one way alone but in two classes. For some Catholic truths pertain to faith in such a way that if they are removed, faith itself is removed as well. By common usage we have called these not only Catholic truths but truths of faith. Other truths are also Catholic and universal: the whole Church holds them. If these are overturned, faith is shaken, but it is not altogether overturned. I said above that errors contrary to truths of this sort obscure faith but do not extinguish it, weaken it but do not destroy it. I have never thought these should be called truths of faith, although they are truths of Christian teaching: that prayers specially applied by prelates or religious to one person benefit that person more than general prayers; that brothers are not bound to earn their livelihood by manual labor but may be mendicants; and many other similar propositions which all Catholics undoubtedly consider true, and which therefore can and should be called Catholic truths. Accordingly, propositions that contradict truths of this latter kind I call erroneous. Since they are opposed to Catholic teaching, they are errors close to heresy, but they are not heresies. This is not merely our way of speaking; it is also an established usage and a practice of our ancestors to give the name of a genus, without qualification, to the thing in that genus that is most imperfect. Thus Aristotle in the Categories separated disposition from habit, although disposition is in some way a genus of habit itself. For virtue, which everyone knows to be a habit, is a disposition of what is perfect toward what is best. Not to cite the nearly countless other examples, there is the familiar expression, worn smooth even in the mouths of ordinary people, by which they sometimes use the word “animal”—although it is common to all living beings—to refer only to those in which nothing but animal life is apparent. Paulus too followed this usage when he called a person “animal,” as though he were brutish and without reason. The Fathers of the Council of Constance also seem to have spoken in this sense, if we examine their words carefully. From this we readily understand that erroneous propositions were distinguished from Catholic ones and placed at a lower level than heretical propositions. An error, then, which is something less than open heresy yet remains contrary to Catholic teaching, is called an erroneous proposition. Finally, more moderate theologians, when in their disputations they do not dare call something contrary to sound doctrine heretical, confirm it with the temperate word “erroneous.” Since ordinary usage draws me to this meaning and philosophical reasoning compels me, I readily allow myself to be led to it and gladly wish to remain there. There is also another grade of erroneous proposition. When a truth is, in the strong opinion of learned people, a truth of faith, but has not been plainly defined by the Church or demonstrated by certain proof, then to oppose that truth is erroneous, not heretical. As we said above, heresy depends also on the will of those who err, not merely on their understanding. Error, however, like falsity, is judged from the things themselves that are signified, with no regard to the intention of the person asserting it. Thus, although that truth by its nature pertains to faith, because this is neither certain nor settled, heretical obstinacy is absent, but serious and dangerous error is not.

Similarly, an erroneous proposition may be called such in a third sense: it opposes a certain truth of the Catholic faith, not manifestly, but according to the opinion of all learned people, which is highly probable and almost necessary. The error is serious when someone obstinately defends what all learned men judge to entail great danger for the Catholic faith. Whoever plainly overturns either a doctrine that is an appendage of faith or faith itself, or brings faith into danger, is gravely in error in Christian teaching, and his statements are rightly called erroneous. But enough has been said about the erroneous proposition. Some define a proposition “savoring of heresy” as one whose meaning, on the face of the words, is heretical, although when understood piously it has some true sense; they give these examples: “The Father is greater than the Son,” “Christ is a creature,” “There are three gods.” This definition neither expresses the force of the term nor explains the nature and force of the thing defined, nor is it joined to that thing by any mutual connection. For who would doubt that the proposition “It is ridiculous to carry the sacrament of the Eucharist in solemn procession through public streets” savors of the heresy of the Lutherans, who deny that the true body of Christ is contained in the Eucharist? Yet it is not true in any pious sense. You will often read many such propositions in Erasmus, Ioannes Carion, and certain other writers of this age: they do not openly display heresies and have no sound sense, but because they bear a certain taste and odor of heresy, we rightly say that they savor of heresy, and that those who put them forward both have the taste of heretics and emit their odor. Nor do I approve the examples by which these writers illustrate their definition. I would prefer truer examples, better suited to the matter at hand, although nothing should be demanded in this area from those who think all these grades of propositions are mixed together and confused. The first example, however, is taken from the Gospel of Ioannes and the teaching of Christ. I would not dare write that the teaching of Christ and the Gospel savor of heresy. The second example is apt and fitting if we agree with those who think the statement “Christ is a creature” is simply true, but that theologians refuted it because it had contracted a certain foulness from Arius. Divus Thomas says much in this vein (III, q. 16, art. 8). Sophronius in the Sixth Synod (act. 11) plainly admits that Christ is created and uncreated, and Ioannes Damascenus says the same in Book III. Hieronymus too (In Isaiae 45 cap.) does not shrink from calling Christ a creature. I, however, have always been convinced that the statement is simply false and absolutely contrary to the Catholic faith. For the word “creature” contains within itself a negation that absolutely removes divinity from the supposit of Christ. Whoever says that something was made from nothing denies that it came from the substance of its begetter; this is the distinction separating what is truly and properly made from what is truly and properly begotten. Therefore, just as the statement “Christ began to exist” is contrary to faith, because it plainly follows from it that the Son of God began to exist and therefore at some time did not exist, so too the statement “Christ was made from nothing” is contrary to faith, because it implicitly denies that the Son of God is of the nature of the one from whom he came to be. Thus neither “to begin,” nor “to be made,” nor “to be a creature” can truly be predicated of the Son of God, since they contain a hidden and concealed denial that would remove from the Son of God—whose name is signified by “Christ”—either his eternal existence or his existence from the Father. Therefore, in my opinion, those propositions and others like them were condemned by the Nicene Fathers not as savoring of heresy but as heretical. But I, for my part, cannot believe that a heretical proposition and one savoring of heresy are the same; to me it does not seem

likely. For someone would be considered foolish if he said that something known to be wine “tastes of wine,” unless he were joking or speaking ironically. Now, to say that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three gods openly conflicts with the faith. For the sense said to be pious is impious. By the same reasoning, the proposition “The Godhead was crucified” would be said to savor of heresy, although the Fifth Synod plainly condemned it as heretical. Likewise the proposition “Essence begets essence” would be placed among propositions savoring of heresy, although the Lateran Council defined that it belongs among heretical propositions. What of these: “The divine essence is not the person of the Father,” “In the three persons there are three godheads,” and many others of this sort, which certain people declared true in a novel sense recently invented by themselves? Indeed, nothing so absurd can be said or imagined that, if twisted into some fabricated meaning, it could not be made true and consistent with both human and divine reason. But it is not fitting to call such contrived senses—alien to the usage of the saints and of the Church—pious, or to defend frivolous people by inventing such meanings. To say what I think, I believe the authors of these propositions have nothing of the flavor of heretics. If I detect some flavor in them, it is the flavor of ignorance, not heresy. Since I understand the force of speech and the customary use of words, I call the propositions we are discussing not propositions savoring of heresy, but propositions manifestly contrary to the faith. We can grasp these metaphorical expressions better by considering their meaning than by explaining them in a precise definition. Therefore, what does or does not savor of heresy is judged less by definition and speculative argument than by a certain perceptive taste of prudence. You may see a man trained to fight the doctrines of the Lutherans and discern their intent who, like a hunting dog, tracks heresies with extraordinary keenness by a certain odor of suspicion in a book he has undertaken to read, and sharply senses that the book’s author is corrupt. Another reader, perhaps a dullard without any perception, will read the same book and be unable to investigate anything, smell anything, or touch upon anything even by suspicion. Today there are many like this who keep in their hands and on their lips the writings of Baptistus Cremensis, Henricus Herpp, Ioannes Taulerus, and other authors of this sort, yet their minds and spirits do not catch their errors by any odor, tracks, or taste. Surely the Lord has taken from Iuda and Ierusalem the judge and prophet, the diviner and elder … and the wise architect and the prudent man, not only to judge mystical speech but also to discern hidden heresy. Why should mute dogs not be able to bark, when they have no keenness of scent left for tracking? Even when wolves reveal by so many signs what they are and want, what they seek and desire, dogs are nearly all overcome by stupor, while shepherds grow blind and deaf, somehow failing to hear what keen men warn them of or to see what wolves do—unless perhaps both shepherds and dogs have been struck dumb by fear. Whatever the cause of this stupidity, its effect is the same: the ruin of the Church. For wicked men can now safely whisper words that spread like cancer, and more openly scatter and spew the most deadly poison of their error. If our minds were not perverse, then with diligence, care, and grave, keen judgment we could separate and discern what is hidden and enclosed in the veins from healthy substance, just as white can be distinguished from black or a sweet taste from a bitter one. But it is not the place here to lament the Church’s calamity. For now the only question is that the flavors of propositions are to be distinguished more by the powers of sensing and tasting than by speculation. Their cause distinguishes them, not their nature. Therefore they are judged not by precepts and rules but by prudence and discernment. I will explain this briefly and make it clear with one example. Read the proposition “The Father is greater than I,” in

Gospel. You know and have examined the author of that teaching; you carefully attend to the words in the Gospel that come before and after; you remember the other principles of his teaching. Now you will discover, unless your taste is affected by some bad humor, that the proposition “The Father is greater than I” does not savor of heresy to you but of modesty. Athanasius read the same proposition in the books of the Arians. He knew their authors inside and out; he had examined the causes and effects, principles and connected doctrines of the Arian teaching. The proposition that in Christ’s Gospel was sweeter than honey and the honeycomb, when transferred to Arius’s books, tasted of heresy and was most bitter to his palate. The same wine tastes of pitch from one vessel and not from another; the same thing smells of the place it comes from—foully from a cesspool, pleasantly from a woman’s casket. So too one and the same speech breathes the most pleasing odor from one heart and mouth, and the foulest from another; it preserves a sweet taste from one and an unpleasant one from another. We also see that water takes on different smells and tastes from the roots and channels through which it passes. Therefore not every taste or odor is to be judged from the nature of things and speech themselves: both things and speeches sometimes acquire their taste and odor from the veins and paths through which they flow. As I said, then, the taste of propositions is judged by prudence more than by knowledge. Accordingly, not just any theologians but only the prudent and experienced can judge which propositions savor of heresy and which do not. I would say the same about a proposition that sounds bad, or offends pious ears. For just as the tongue and nose have their judgments, so too do the ears reject discordant and repellent sounds. Just as not only false and utterly absurd claims but also weighty and true statements expressed in crude language offend the ears, especially sharp and discerning ones, so the refined and religious ears of theologians recoil not only from false and heretical statements but also from those they intelligently perceive to sound bad and absurd, even when they detect no heretical falsehood in them. We can therefore speak of a proposition that sounds bad in two ways. In one sense, generally, every proposition contrary to the faith offends the ears of the faithful, and the more plainly they see it to oppose the Catholic faith, the more it offends them. In another sense, specifically, we establish a certain grade of propositions below the highest grade of heretical ones. In this sense we properly call propositions “bad-sounding” and offensive to pious ears: no evident error against the faith can be identified in them, but they contain something discordant and absurd that seems unworthy of pious and religious ears. In distinguishing such discordant and absurd propositions, I would not want to entrust the judgment to the uninstructed and imprudent crowd, whose hearing is very coarse. Certainly, although in some matters common to all the faithful, learned and unlearned alike receive from faith a judgment so correct and universal that propositions considered bad-sounding by popular opinion are generally bad-sounding to the judgment of the discerning as well, the ordinary crowd usually has duller hearing, and sometimes hearing that is too sensitive. It often takes in by ear and carries in its mind many things that practiced and discerning ears reject; conversely, it rejects some things as discordant that neither disturb nor even move skilled and wise theologians. I mean skilled and wise theologians. For in some people the sense of hearing is too fastidious, in others even too proud. Since certain theologians reject things that do not offend gentle and modest ears at all, we must have a refined, polished, subtle, and prudent ear if we wish to judge such matters correctly and wisely.

If the Church had placed the judgment of discordant and fitting propositions in the ears of the crowd, we would certainly judge that proposition “The Blessed Virgin contracted original sin from her first parent” to sound bad and offend pious ears. For when the crowd hears it, it is undoubtedly struck, wounded, and tormented. But to offend pious ears is a charge. To make a charge out of something the Church has judged free from every charge is rash insolence. Certain words of the Gospel, too, would have sounded bad and offended pious ears if the crowd were our law. For the Lord sometimes troubled the crowds with ambiguous and obscure words. Indeed, at times he struck the tender ears of his disciples sharply and harshly; he used to scrape the ears of the Pharisees with biting truth. The Pharisees took offense at Christ’s words; his speech was hard for many disciples; the crowds thought he had a demon. It is beyond doubt that there are Pharisees today, a foolish crowd and multitude dulled by false opinions, and also certain disciples to whom the word of truth is most harsh. If you condemn the many abuses in the making, worship, and adornment of images, in chapels, churches, monasteries, tombs, monuments, and memorials meant to last forever; if you affirm that in such things vanity sometimes—or rather, all too often—counts for more than religion, and the devil more than Christ, these people may say that you are possessed by Lutheran opinions and utter intolerable sounds. We must therefore pay no heed to the weak, troubled, imprudent crowd as a whole, but to the prudent, sincere, pious, and uncorrupted. Theology alone is not enough; piety and prudence are also needed, without which no ears can distinguish fitting sounds from repellent ones. To bring this to a conclusion, since not everyone can distinguish a proposition that sounds bad from one that sounds good, the most prudent theologians, as I have already said again and again, must be consulted by the Church’s judges unless they wish to err gravely in judging these matters. Although we have no comprehensive account or definition by which judges can assess each individual bad-sounding proposition, we can nevertheless point out specifically that there are two grades of such propositions. One consists of those we said above savor of heresy: the very propositions that taste bad to the palate of the faithful also sound bad to their hearing. But because taste is a coarser and duller sense, while hearing is subtler and sharper, there is a second grade of bad-sounding propositions: although they do not savor of heresy, they nevertheless have a certain discordant and strange sound that seems to differ from sound doctrine and the sincere, solid language of the Church. In this way they strike pious ears harshly and severely, although the reason why they do so is often most obscure. The most fitting examples of this kind seem to be those censured by the Council of Constance: “The degrees and masterships of universities were introduced by pagan vanity and benefit the Church as much as the devil”; “Sylvester and Constantine erred by endowing the Church”; “The Roman Church is the synagogue of Satan”; “The election of the pope by cardinals was introduced by the devil.” Also: “The pope should not be called most holy on account of his office; otherwise the devil would be called holy, because he is God’s official.” Also: “More people in Rome are now saved among the married than among the clergy.” Also: “Monastic life is not piety.” Also: “The monarchy of the Roman bishop arose after the time of Divus Hieronymus.” Also: “Phocas established that the Roman Church is the head of all churches.” And countless others, which I omit to avoid length. If someone’s palate is so delicate that he judges these propositions too to bear the taste of heresy, I would not argue very much with him, especially if one of these and ¹

another is under discussion. I confess that my own palate is sometimes dull and sluggish, while my ear is subtler and more alert. Thus I seem able to perceive propositions more readily by hearing than by taste. But, as I said, neither sense is trained by rules when prudence and a certain discerning spirit are absent; when they are present, a theologian’s judgment can be entirely correct without our precepts. So much for the proposition that sounds bad. A rash proposition, in turn, is commonly used in two ways: generally and properly. Generally, any proposition opposed to the faith is also called rash, even if it is manifestly heretical. What could be fuller of the most thoughtless and insane rashness than to contradict the Church of Christ? The word is used properly, however, when an assertion can be censured as rash but cannot be censured as heretical, erroneous, or savoring of heresy. In this sense, after the other grades of propositions, the rash proposition occupies the last place. Rashness, moreover, is understood in more than one simple way. We sometimes say that things are done rashly when they are done by chance rather than by design. In this way, rash are the things uttered in confusion and without thought. In this meaning, rashness—being led to judge without any choice or discrimination—is contrary to wisdom, in which reason and deliberation, not chance and fortune, prevail. Therefore someone who asserts things without being moved by reason or authority, but writes and declares rashly whatever comes into his head, is rightly censured as foolish and rash. For although he sometimes says what is true, it is not design and reason but chance and accident that make him say what is true. Such are some things certain pious men imagine rather than contemplate about the life and deeds of Christ our Lord; they write them not so much truthfully and wisely as devoutly and fervently. Their credulity in assenting and their readiness to assert are sometimes blind and indeed rash, yet this rashness is not of a kind that should be restrained by the judges of the faith. Those judges may rightly take up the censure of more serious errors, but not of this lesser imprudence or foolishness. For knowledge of the faith was entrusted to them, not prudence, especially the prudence that often fails pious men. We see that such meditations or contemplations, though published inconsiderately and imprudently without reason or weighty testimony, are generally joined to piety and even to holiness. It is therefore not fitting for the strict judgment of a tribunal to harass dove-like simplicity, however thoughtless and imprudent it may be. We also say that something is asserted rashly when it is asserted arrogantly and with excessive boldness. In every matter, rashness in asserting and boldness in pronouncing are shameful, but they are especially dangerous in matters concerning the Church’s teaching. Such conduct contains a proud contempt for ecclesiastical rule. Unless the judges of the faith restrain and suppress that contempt, no one can say how much danger all Church teaching will face. Assertions made not merely in thoughtless speech but, to use stronger words, with confident audacity, insolent defiance, shameless exultation, and proud boasting—not against the faith, I say, but against the rule of ecclesiastical modesty—are judged rash by theologians here and are placed among the grades of error that, as appendages of heresies, are to be censured by the judges of the faith. For example: “The Blessed Virgin was not assumed into heaven with her body”—although this is not contrary to the faith, it would be said with petulant rashness because it opposes the common consensus of the Church. Also: “In baptism, sanctifying grace and virtues are not infused into infants,” although the Council of Vienne chose the contrary opinion. Also:

“An angel was not created at the same time as the corporeal world,” or “An angel is not incorporeal”; the Lateran Council under Innocentius III taught us the contrary of both. Also: “The Day of Judgment will occur on some definite day, month, or year,” for example, five or six years from now. This was carefully guarded against and provided for by the Lateran Council under Leo X; it is no small rashness to claim foresight of something that the Father placed in his own power by divine decree and revealed neither to the Apostles nor to the angels. Also: “Ioannes the Evangelist was sanctified in the womb.” In short, all propositions in which someone exempts himself from the universal law of faith and Scripture without suitable testimony or probable reason are rash. Exceptions of this kind, although they do not remove the laws of faith, nevertheless cut them short. Finally, there is a rash proposition that conflicts with the common decree and definition of a celebrated university in the teaching of the faith. Although the Parisian Articles circulate and are not all articles of faith—for they do not even touch it remotely—the Church of Christ has nevertheless always respected that university’s firm and settled decrees about faith and religion. Those who despised them, considered them empty and trivial, and held them for nothing, have all without exception been endangered: those who openly departed from the Church, those who were suspect to the Church, and finally those who still lie hidden but will reveal themselves in their own time, like the others. Some confuse the scandalous proposition with one offensive to pious ears, so that the terms differ while the things are exactly the same. They give these examples: “Any subject of a tyrant may kill him,” “Fasting is irrelevant to Christian perfection,” and “There is no commandment to receive baptism.” But the grades of error have been so disturbed and confused by them that there is no first, second, third, or fourth grade. A scandalous proposition, then, is likewise commonly named in two ways. First, in ordinary usage, any statement that provides an occasion for ruin is called scandalous, even if it is openly heretical. In this sense, the Council of Constance condemned as heretical and scandalous that fifteenth proposition, “Any tyrant may lawfully be killed by any of his subjects,” and so forth. The other two propositions they offered as examples are of the same kind. A statement is properly called scandalous, however, when it can be censured for scandal but not for heresy. Such was Erasmus’s enumeration of the disadvantages of auricular confession, in which he engaged to Germany’s great scandal. Such are either invented tales or even true accounts in which the hidden vices of monks are fabricated or exposed. This cannot be done without offending the weak. For we do not use scandal here in the popular sense of something that offends the ears or horrifies the faithful people, but of something that gives the weak a cause for ruin and, placed before the feet of the faithful, makes them stumble, fall, and take offense. Thus to bring the abuses of the Roman Church before an uneducated crowd and spread them among the people is scandalous. These propositions are likewise scandalous: “A bad prelate is truly a thief and robber”; “Through ecclesiastical censures the clergy oppress the people and multiply avarice”; “Priests who live criminally pollute the power of the priesthood”; “Clerics who study the decretal letters are fools”; “Those who give alms to mendicant brothers are excommunicated”; “Confirmation of the young, ordination of clerics, and consecration of places are reserved to bishops because of greed for temporal profit and honor”; “Universities and colleges were introduced through human vanity”; “The belly swells and becomes bloated on legumes and fish, and so is made especially fit for

intercourse and sexual pleasures.” I do not deny that some of these savor of heresy, but even when they are bent toward a true meaning, they bring scandal to the ignorant and weak—not only error, but also this truth itself, whatever sort of truth may perhaps be found in these sayings. For not only falsehoods cause scandal; sometimes truths do as well. We have said nearly enough about the scandalous proposition. Why define a schismatic, seditious, abusive, or insulting proposition? Who does not clearly understand what some explain at length? I therefore deliberately pass over matters that are easy and sufficiently clear to everyone on their own. For this book of ours does not promise things commonly published and worn smooth through use; it tries to explain matters that are obscure and do not immediately occur to everyone or lie in plain sight. Nor are we producing an Amalthean horn or a library furnished with every subject. We aim at brevity—and I hope this very pursuit of brevity does not deceive us. It has deceived many: some, thinking themselves brief, turned out to be exceedingly long; others, striving to be brief, became exceedingly obscure. But enough of this; now let us proceed to what remains. ²

HOW THEOLOGY’S ARGUMENTS ARE TO BE FOUND AND DRAWN FROM THE LOCI

We have spoken of the signs both of Catholic truth and of the contrary error, and, as far as I could, we distinguished the errors themselves. It remains to seek a mark and a formula for each kind, and to teach the way and method. This will be the same art of discovering an argument and drawing it from the loci of theology. There are, however, more general rules for investigating and bringing to light a theological argument. For it is clear that the means of arguing on both sides of every question are supplied by the same loci. Therefore a heretic will draw arguments from the loci of theology no less than a theologian. But the heretic’s arguments will be uncertain, weak, and deceptively plausible; the theologian’s will be certain, firm, and steadfast, since he has grasped not a shadow but truth itself. Yet a theologian does not draw all his arguments with certainty from the loci; sometimes, indeed often, he draws probable ones as well. This is not only because some loci usually provide uncertain arguments, but because a firm locus sometimes provides an argument that is not firm. I would not want anyone to fall into the error of thinking that if a locus is firm, every argument drawn from it must be firm, or conversely that if a locus is weak, everything taken from it must be weak. For probable arguments are sometimes drawn from Sacred Scripture, as when they are drawn from the mystical sense or when the literal sense has not been clearly defined. Conversely, the authority of human history, though weak in itself, sometimes supplies certain arguments. Accordingly, when we have applied the art and rules by which arguments are brought from the theological loci, judgment is still needed to examine them. Without a method of judgment and discrimination, the ability to produce arguments will indeed be easy and ready, but it will have no value except among those who judge things by number and not by weight. A perfect and complete theologian will not merely gather varied arguments from the loci; he will also distinguish what conflicts from what agrees, and what is certain from what is uncertain. For just as

the skill of a complete dialectician is fulfilled by two things, discovery and judgment, so a theologian must be equipped both to discover and to judge, if his art of disputing in theology is to be complete; by that art, I mean, he can establish his own doctrines and refute contrary errors. I think I have equipped the theologian’s judgment by setting out the force and nature of the theological loci. I explained which of the ten parts into which I divided the scope and power of the theological loci contain firm arguments and which contain weak ones. Since the signs of Catholic truths are also the surest marks by which questions of faith are distinguished, and the surest arguments by which theological conclusions are proved, I thought that judging the arguments that prove our doctrines required no more work from me than the work I had just devoted to setting forth the signs that mark our truths. Therefore that part of judgment needs neither further warning nor rules after what we have said, and it does not properly belong to the treatment of the loci that our book promises in its title. Since this is clear, it follows that we should discuss what belongs to our present task: by what means we can acquire the use of argumentation that we seek from the theological loci. First comes a point that the order of the disciplines, and the connection and relation among things themselves, makes clear: anyone who wishes to discover arguments from the loci of theology must know the common rules that dialecticians have taught for finding arguments. To put it plainly and briefly, nearly the same rules by which arguments are drawn from dialectical loci are used to draw them from theological loci, although there is also another approach to the theological loci, so that arguments—especially those most necessary for a theologian’s use—may be drawn from them by a particular path and method. (First precept for discovering an argument) Of all rules of this sort, the chief is that a theologian should know and have worked through every locus of theology. I say, know and have worked through them. It is not enough to have them in memory; one must have them ready and at hand. First, then, one must learn the number and nature of the loci: what they are, how many there are, and the force and property of each. Whether we learn these things from me or from someone else who comes after me better prepared and more equipped to write about them makes little difference. Certainly I think I have taught in the preceding books, to a reasonable degree, what is needed to learn these matters thoroughly. So the first step is to have the number, force, and properties of the loci at hand, whether from this book or elsewhere—that is, to know them. The next step is to have surveyed and grasped all the loci themselves. For how will someone who has not read Sacred Scripture, or has not understood what he read, argue from the first locus? How will someone who has never observed the Traditions of Christ and the Apostles draw arguments from the second? What use in arguing will such loci provide someone who has not been devoted to the teaching of the Church, the Councils, and the Pontiffs? What arguments will he gather from the holy authors if he has not even touched their books? What power of disputation can he gain from the theologians of the schools if he has never exercised himself in the schools’ debates? Will someone reason from Physics, Metaphysics, Astronomy, and Geometry if he has never cultivated human reason through these disciplines? Finally, what benefit will philosophers and historians bring someone who has not been engaged in reading them? Therefore, when we seek an argument, we must embrace all these things in our mind, thought, and understanding. We must not merely know the loci; we must also have studied them with the greatest care.

But, you say, is anyone so puffed up with error as to persuade himself that he knows all these things? If a theologian has not attained them, I certainly do not blame him; I blame him if, without pursuing them, he assumes the title of theologian. The kind of argumentation properly drawn from all the loci is perfect and complete and has every requirement; no one but a consummate theologian can attain it. When something has been established by at least moderately strong arguments, it seems fully proved, because the general run of theologians scarcely understands what is missing from perfection and, insofar as they do understand, thinks nothing has been left out. This also happens, as Cicero says, with poems and paintings and many other things: untrained people take pleasure in and praise things that are not praiseworthy, because they think something good is present in them that captures the ignorant. Thus you may find some people who, unable to judge what is defective in each matter, are wonderfully pleased by certain little works of younger men, in which nothing is profound or exact and no arguments are drawn from their proper loci: everything is common, ordinary, incomplete, and almost entirely of the probable kind. Their whole disputation is so meager and dry that it is scarcely watered by a little common water from a single source, and that source is ordinary and well-worn. How much more abundant and forceful is Divus Thomas, who relies not merely on reason or authority but argues in every way and carefully reasons from every locus, disputing with testimonies and arguments gathered together. But certain things in Thomas’s works are obscure, while the works of these men are clear. Certainly. Yet they are not obscure because Thomas deliberately makes them so; the obscurity lies in the subject matter itself, not in his talent. Particular things are more obscure than general ones. Wine mixed with water is clearer, certainly, but it is also more diluted. Pure wine is harder to drink, but has much greater strength. So much for the first precept of discovery. Let us pursue the rest. (Second precept) It seems so easy to assign theologians’ arguments to their proper loci that perhaps it need not be prescribed. No one is so unskilled that he does not know at once to refer each theological argument to the source from which it was taken, whether Sacred Scripture, the Councils, and so on. Still, it is useful to assign each argument found in approved Doctors to its proper locus. In this way you will build a treasury from the discoveries of others; and when you understand which locus they failed to use, you will carefully seek out for yourself what they omitted. Thus, in the controversy between Catholics and Pelagians, after the testimonies of Sacred Scripture, the Councils, the Apostolic See, and the saints—which were more than enough for Augustine to win the case—Thomas added theological arguments that would give weight to the testimonies and clarity to the case. Recognizing the loci of arguments among the ancient theologians is therefore very useful: for understanding their strengths, discerning the variety in their methods of argument, and acquiring through this care and practice a store of arguments, so that we have at hand not only what they discovered but also similar arguments for similar matters whenever we seek them from the theological loci. In every art it is worthwhile to know both what must be done and how it must be done. We acquire both by imitating experts, and it is difficult to decide whether we gain more from rules or from examples. As far as discovery is concerned, examples of the ancients will help theologians more than rules—not only mine, but those of any other teacher. For the ancient theologians excelled in prudence as well as knowledge in arguing; they were no less learned than the recent writers, and were certainly more prudent and better men. No one can compete with the ancients in expertise in Sacred Scripture, in which the treasury of theological argument is chiefly contained. But not only in Scripture ¹

should understanding be sought; in many other matters, too, the younger writers are negligent, and especially in bringing out arguments proper to theology. I do not despise recent theologians, “many of whose works are quite clever, but, like things only just beginning to emerge, are over-painted and over-fine,” when compared with the old. The old works somehow seem to have more authority, more force, and greater strength—not only to move the affections but also to overcome the adversaries of the faith. Although this precept is easy, we must work at it if we seek not only an abundance but also the degrees of arguments. (Third precept) The theologian must work much harder to cast the question he wishes to handle into the theological loci, after learning and working through them. Once he has led the question through them all, he must consider more carefully what arguments can be made on either side from each locus. Then he must gather everything that seems to agree or disagree with the proposed case and, applying judgment, examine which side of the question the arguments support. As I said above, a theologian can scarcely separate discovery from judgment if he is committed to seeking and embracing the truth. Yet we will not always find suitable arguments for or against a matter in every locus. For even if a hunter or fisherman knows the places suitable for hunting or fishing, no matter how much care he takes, he will not immediately catch fish or hunt game. No art is so certain that it never sometimes lacks the fruit of its work. It is desirable, then, that all the loci converge in our disputation. If that does not happen, the greater number and weightier ones will count more. If no arguments are found, we must not disparage the art or lose heart, but keep seeking them again and again. Even when submerged, they will eventually emerge if we stir the sea, however vast, with our diligence, and with divine grace, which opens to those who knock and is never absent from those who seek. I would have this understood as said about questions of the probable kind. For all the dogmas of faith flow from loci that rest on authority. Hence no certain decree among us exists that does not likewise arise from the loci. We therefore need not fear that the loci will fail to provide arguments in a question of faith. In any case, the arguments will be there, although we do not all have the same ability and skill or investigate in the same way. Arguments for matters of this sort are always contained in the loci; a greater or smaller number will be brought out according to the learning, talent, and diligence of the person investigating. This is enough on the subject. The matter itself has been made clear, so it is not difficult to see what one must do to seek an argument. Many arguments also offer themselves without a search, especially to learned people long and deeply practiced in these matters. Nevertheless, we rightly prefer arguments inserted into a disputation after deliberate reflection, meditation, and preparation to those that arise from a sudden thought. Sudden thought, because it is swift and lasts only a very short time, can offer arguments but cannot weigh them. Therefore, so that we may investigate and discover arguments without error, we must establish a certain formula. If we follow it in theological disputation, we will never leave the right path. This formula will be thoroughly consonant with the reason and discipline of theologians. When a subject for disputation has been offered to a theologian, he must examine the question carefully and first determine which kind it is among the many kinds we explained above. Unless the theologian understands the nature of the question, he will not easily know what sort of arguments he should seek or from which loci he should obtain them. Although

all the loci are connected and intertwined with one another, certain kinds of arguments nevertheless arise from each; as I said at the very beginning of this work, not all of them are equally suited to every question. Once he has determined the kind of question—above all, the most difficult point, whether it concerns faith or not—he should lead it through every locus, especially those best suited to the question. If the question is supernatural, it should be brought above all to the loci that rest on God’s authority. If it is natural, it should be led chiefly through the loci that rest on the reasoning of nature. If the question is mixed and depends partly on nature and partly on revelation, it must be led through all the loci, for all of them may provide arguments equally. Indeed, there is no kind of question that cannot usefully be led through every locus. For Scripture often teaches matters of nature, and reason either commends or explains supernatural matters. Divine authority supports human authority, and human authority in turn serves the divine. Nor can truth, which must be simple, be mixed and blended from unlike things. But, as I have very often said, divine and human reason are not unlike; the one does not lead here and the other there, but both look to the same thing and are directed to the same end. We have therefore heard that our ancestors were accustomed to curse those who first separated by opinion things that are joined by nature. The theologians of the schools agreed with them so fully that they did not think themselves truly theologians unless they joined these two things in their disputations. After leading the question through every locus and gathering arguments from both sides, whether they seem to conflict or agree, let him dispute on either side, but finally determine what is true and what is false. First let him teach what the faith of Christ holds about the question and prove what it holds by suitable and certain testimonies; then let him teach what reason either prescribes or at least recommends. For if the question is natural, reason prescribes; if it is above nature, reason recommends. In this matter, to speak modestly, I have helped our school to a moderate degree. Before us it was not so well equipped with arguments from faith; theological matters were handled almost entirely with arguments drawn from reason. I changed the order of Divus Thomas. In the Summa adversum Gentes, he first gives reasons and then testimonies. But in my lectures I have always taught from the outset what faith determines about each question, and then what reason shows. The reason for this change is readily available and clear. Divus Thomas had to carry out the work of theology against the Gentiles by reason, because among them testimonies of Scripture rank second or even nowhere at all. But among us, who instruct Christian disciples, authority has the first place and reason the second. Augustine also approves this order of disputation as more consonant with our nature, although, accommodating himself to the Manichaeans, he sometimes does what he admits is faulty in disputation. “The order of nature,” he says, “is that when we learn something, authority precedes reason. (…) But since we are dealing with people who think and speak against the order of things and say nothing more than that reason must be given first, I will humor them and undertake what I admit is faulty in disputation” (De mori. eccle. cath. cap. 2). Thomas likewise adapted himself to the Gentiles in this example and followed the same method. For in the Summa theologiae authority almost prepares a person for reason, and reason then leads him to understanding and knowledge (August. de ver. relig. cap. 24).

In authority and in reasoning themselves there are levels of arguments, and it is easy to understand the force of each: first come those drawn from Scripture, second those drawn from the traditions of Christ and the Apostles, third those drawn from the decrees of the Church, and then, in order, the rest. Among theologians it is disputed whether the authority of Scripture or of the Church comes first. I did not think this matter, like other things that concern arrangement rather than discovery, needed to be pursued. If it should ever become a point of dispute, how it should be judged has, unless I am mistaken, already been sufficiently discussed above. This much is clear: if we look at the things themselves, the authority of the Holy Spirit is entirely the same in Scripture and in the Church. Therefore, in itself, neither authority is prior or greater, nor later or lesser. What, then, is it that sometimes gives rise to doubt at this point and seems to require consideration? I think that when a doubt arises, one should consider the character, learning, and training of the person with whom one is debating. For just as some place Scripture before the Church’s practice, you will find many for whom the Church’s custom and judgment seem greater. Since the Church is prior and more ancient, there can be no doubt that its authority is in a certain way greater, since it is established to be better known and more widespread. But, as I said, in everything one must take account of the person with whom one is speaking. Peter says as much to the Jews (2 Pe. 1): “We have the prophetic word made more sure,” although Peter’s own word is in no degree inferior to it for us. But this is a great matter, and I will discuss it at greater length elsewhere (book 14). Now back to the subject. In every question we must look at these and similar things, and acquire practice and experience so that we can reason well from arguments, adding and subtracting to see what their sum amounts to and thus understand how much weight is due to each question. Just as neither physicians, generals, nor orators, even after learning the rules of their art, can achieve anything worthy of great praise without practice and experience, so rules for finding theological arguments are indeed handed down for us to observe, but the importance of the task requires practice and experience. Since our words will be of little use unless they are applied to the matter and practice confirms the rules, it will be necessary to set out some theses for the sake of practice, as the Peripatetics generally did. Diogenes writes that Archelaus was the first to argue both sides; he may be trusted on this point, for Cicero says that Aristotle invented this kind of exercise. The theological schools rightly approved Aristotle’s practice of arguing both sides of every matter, since otherwise it is impossible to discover what is true and what is false in each case. Although, as Augustine says to Dioscorus (Epist. 56), knowledge of the truth can judge and overturn all falsehoods, if they are brought forward, even ones never heard before, yet the truth itself cannot shine forth in debate unless both sides have been argued. Nor can belief be established about anything unless the opponents’ persuasions have first been torn down. It is therefore most natural that before proving our own positions, we remove opposing ones and refute contrary opinions. Yet one will scarcely find anything so agreeable and fitting to every mind that it has no opponent. As Hilary says, every human utterance has always been liable to contradiction—not only because one person has nearly a different opinion in a different matter and mind, but because, as the impulses of the will differ, so too do the judgments of the mind. He therefore thinks that philosophers’ doctrines are so called because each person embraces almost what pleases his mind, not what reason prescribes; what his feelings dictate, not what reason dictates. Theologians must therefore exercise themselves in arguing different sides of a question as if in a practice battle—

—as St. Thomas did with the greatest care in his Quaestiones disputatae. Since in every art the imitation of the best practitioners is of great value, it is right to take examples of theological discussion from those who excelled in this art. Augustine and Thomas are easily the foremost: Augustine without question, Thomas by the judgment of experts. For not only in disputations where one may argue fully on both sides of an entire subject, but in every question whatsoever, Thomas is so rich and abundant on both sides that it is astonishing how he had ready such excellent arguments for each position on so many varied matters, often neither common nor well worn. I admit that he divided everything into many articles and, in nearly every article, prescribed a fixed number of arguments as if by law. His manner of disputation was also dry, and he treated questions in one monotonous form. Finally, he belonged to a school of authors that follows no rhetorical flourish, so that the body of disputation seems misshapen, its sinews visible without flesh, and entirely devoid of eloquent ornament. Thus curious and finicky people are put off by a very learned and serious man: they are sated by the length of his work, wearied by its sameness, and repelled by the roughness of his style. At the Council of Trent an eloquent and fluent man, though hardly a theologian, said that scholastic disputation was of little use against heretics, especially Lutherans, and urged that we argue with them rather in the oratorical style, since our style is thorny and tiresome. If that were true, however, better examples of theological disputation would not be found in the authors I mentioned earlier. Although I am well aware that I am speaking not merely of the schools’ manner of disputation but of all scholastic theology, which is hated by heretics, I think that scholastic argument is all the more effective at refuting heresies because heretics hate it. If Lutherans cannot be caught by the subtlety of the schools, neither will they be caught by an oration skillfully composed according to rhetorical rules. They have grown too large and too cunning to be trapped by the art of speech. Since they fear neither the subtle theologian nor the most eloquent orator, believe me, they must be struck not by a theologian’s sharpness or an orator’s eloquence—that is, not by words and disputation, but by force and whips. But if circumstances require me to fight Lutheran doctrines, let others choose a smooth style of speech to attract such people more gently and familiarly to the goodwill of the Church; I do not object, provided they leave me the bones and sinews of the schools and the compressed solidity of their reasoning. What Augustine argued against the opponents of the Church, though discovered more keenly and expressed more subtly than anyone can easily recognize, is all the more effective at refuting heretics because it cuts more finely to the quick. When speech rushes like a torrent in the manner of orators, even though it carries off many things of every kind, you scarcely retain or grasp anything. But when it is pressed into a fixed method and reason according to the rule of the schools, it is easier to contain and embrace. We have therefore received from St. Thomas an excellent manner of disputation, if we would keep to it. Let no one expect from this most serious man rhetorical delicacies, feminine ornament, or childish polish, but true and weighty judgments, solid and fitting arguments, and speech suited to the subject under discussion. St. Thomas achieved all this so excellently that, if there are a few faults in him that these people spitefully mention, he compensates for them with many and very great virtues. Still, as a modest and prudent man, he gave the small number of fine-grained articles and the uniform law of disputation to the less experienced and especially to the people of his own age—

—those of his own time. I believe that not only St. Thomas but certain other authors of the schools could have written with great distinction and splendor had they cultivated humane letters and wished to express what they had learned in the schools. Likewise, men devoted to eloquence could have spoken with great weight and fullness if they had not shunned the schools’ method but had learned and wished to practice this theology. Either each group took pleasure in its own study and scorned the others, or nothing is entirely perfect, so we are always left wanting something. But if we must choose one, I would prefer uneloquent learning to talkative ignorance. Only someone who joins eloquence to wisdom can supply examples of theological disputation complete in every respect. Come, then: whatever our examples may be, let us present them ourselves. Even if they are not better than the old ones, they may perhaps be better suited to the present time.