De locis theologicis

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