Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth

A New Conversation

Jeffrey Skaff

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781032073071
• eBook ISBN: 9781000510911
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

This book argues for substantial and pervasive convergence between Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth with regards to God's relation to history and to the Christocentric orientation of that history. In short, it contends that Thomas can affirm what Barth calls "the humanity of God." The argument has great ecumenical potential, finding fundamental agreement between two of the most important figures in the Reformed and Roman Catholic traditions. It also contributes to contemporary theology by demonstrating the fruitfulness of exchanging metaphysical vocabularies for normative. Specifically, it shows how an account of God's mercy and justice can resolve theological debates most assume require metaphysical speculation.

1Justice and mercy, human and divine

DOI: 10.4324/9781003207177-2

Because my new conversation between Thomas and Barth relies on an analysis of their descriptions of mercy and justice in God's rule, one must first know something about what mercy and justice are. Often in this book, I will be drawing attention to passages in the Summa Theologiae and Church Dogmatics in which Thomas and Barth deploy language of justice and mercy to develop their claims. They do not, however, always announce they are doing so. Therefore, one needs to know what to look for and how to make sense of it when one finds it. In addition to the interpretative service Chapter 1 provides, it clarifies some conceptual difficulties involved with considering mercy and justice together. One cannot take for granted that mercy and justice can coincide in the same act, whether human or divine. It may be that mercy does away with justice, that true justice leaves no room for mercy. Chapter 1 addresses these concerns.

The conceptual analysis of justice and mercy in Chapter 1 relies heavily on Thomas. Subsequent chapters use this analysis to understand divine rule in, especially, the Questions on Law in the Summa, but also in particular texts in the Church Dogmatics. Relying on Thomas to define the terms might seem to stack the deck in Thomas's favor. One could accuse me of intending to read Thomas onto Barth. There's little way to respond to the charge at the outset. One can determine whether I do so only in the close reading of specific texts in the Church Dogmatics in the chapters that follow. I ask readers to give me the benefit of the doubt until then.

One can imagine Barth pressing a more material criticism against the decision to begin with a general account of justice and mercy: Are we devising a philosophical standard and then measuring God and God's activity against it? By beginning here, will he force to conform to an alien account of justice and mercy? As Barth says, God's gracious judgment in Christ is a “strange judgment.”¹ The sinful human could not have expected it: “Everything is against any such judgment being even conceivable.”²

Certainly the specificity of how God judges in the grace of Jesus Christ could not be anticipated. And certainly one should not try to let one's understanding of salvation in Christ be overdetermined by what one thinks justice and mercy require. Christians have always or often confessed that God is both just and merciful. At the same time, Christian theology must clarify how God is both just and merciful. Doing so benefits from precision about the difference between just and unjust actions and between just and merciful actions. If God's activity as ruler resembled a tyrant who acts without care for the community and whose decrees are entirely inscrutable and arbitrary, the integrity of Christian proclamation would be threatened. Confessing God as just would lose meaning.

In short, beginning with analysis of justice, mercy, and their relationship aims to serve theology as Thomas recommends non-theological knowledge should, a recommendation with which Barth would undoubtedly agree. “[Sacra doctrina] can in a sense depend upon the philosophical sciences, not as though it stood in need of them, but only in order to make its teaching clearer. For it accepts its principles not from other sciences, but immediately from God, by revelation. Therefore it does not depend upon other sciences as upon the higher, but makes use of them as of the lesser, and as handmaidens.”³ That said, if one worries that by beginning with general accounts of justice and mercy understanding seeks faith, the argument for the reverse can best be shown in the actual exposition of Christian confession in later chapters.

Chapter 1 begins by presenting Thomas's understanding of justice, then, more briefly, mercy. Especially by focusing on what Thomas says about just pardons, it then considers how it is possible that a single act can be considered as both merciful and just. Next, it elaborates Thomas's general understanding of God's justice and mercy in Question 22 of the Prima Pars. I will show how Thomas tweaks his own descriptions of human justice and mercy when applying them to God, thus, perhaps, easing Barth's concern about Thomas's ordering of faith and understanding. I'll then present Barth's own treatment of God's righteousness and mercy among God's perfections, highlighting the similarities to Thomas's. In particular, I'll draw attention to how Barth, like Thomas, speaks of (1) justice in terms of social relationships and roles and (2) God's justice as including obligations to Godself. Both ideas will be decisive in subsequent chapters.

Thomas on justice and mercy

I will not give a comprehensive overview of Thomas's account of justice. Most significantly, I will not consider the sense in which justice is a virtue and so only indirectly consider issues one would normally expect to find in discussing one of the virtues, such as how one becomes just or the relationship between justice and the other moral virtues, between acquired and infused justice, and between the moral and theological virtues. I address only those topics required to describe God's acts as just. Also, I will spend little time comparing or contrasting Thomas's understanding of justice with alternatives, particularly modern alternatives.⁴ While I do largely agree with Thomas's account, I do not intend a comprehensive defense of it. I merely present the tools needed for constructive theological engagement with Thomas and Barth in subsequent chapters.

Acts of justice

The subject, matter, and object of justice

I begin by clarifying a number of concepts in Thomas's account of justice. First, the subject of justice, that power out of which acts of justice arise, is the will. No one would describe someone as just simply because that person knew what justice entailed.⁵ Knowing how to act justly is certainly required for acting justly, but such knowledge belongs to prudence and thus resides most properly in the intellect.⁶ The one who called just is one who does something right, and so acts of justice must arise from the will.⁷

Justice's matter, the thing about which justice concerns, further specifies what kind of external act just is. An act of justice, unlike an act of the other virtues, “directs man in his relations with others” [ordinet hominem in his quae sunt ad alterum].⁸ The acts of the other moral virtues perfect one only in relation to oneself: Prudence concerns properly knowing how to act and temperance and fortitude concern the proper regulation of one's passions. But justice “besides its relation to the agent, is set up by its relation to others.”⁹

The object of a just action, that at which a just act aims, is the right (ius).¹⁰ Thomas does not endorse here “subjective rights,” if this understood as rights inhering in one apart from any social relationship.¹¹ Instead, the right is itself an objective state of affairs between two or more parties. A just action aims at securing a right relation between parties. This right relation persists when each party has their due.

The concept of equality determines what is due by one to another, and so what will set right their relationship.¹² Here too, Thomas's use of the term does not align with modern usage. For Thomas, equality does not refer to a baseline human dignity shared by every person. Instead, equality refers either (1) to a relationship between what one gives to another and what one has received from that other person or (2) to a relationship between what one gives to another and that other person's status.¹³

Simple business transactions illustrate the first kind of equality. Suppose I order a cheeseburger and pay the cashier $3.79. I am now due a cheeseburger from the cashier (assuming all ordinary circumstances apply). The cashier acts justly, secures a right relationship between us, when he or she gives me a cheeseburger. The equality between $3.79 and the cheeseburger determines what I am due. The same kind of equality determines justice in less precise situations. Think of crime and punishment. Thomas assumes there must be equality between the wrong committed and the punishment received. To the extent an equal exchange does not occur, the fullness of justice will be lacking.

Familial relationships illustrate the second kind of equality, in which personal status determines equality. What I owe to my toddler is not determined by anything he has given to me. I do not bathe, clothe, and feed him because he has provided goods and services of equal worth. No, instead he is due those things because he is my son. His status as my son and as a toddler determines what is due to him. There is an equality between what I give to him and that status.

Justice and social relationships and roles

In an example taken from ordinary commerce, one can straightforwardly determine what is due according to equality. But the example reveals elements of Thomas's account of justice that help in situations where what is due by one person to another is less clear. Social relationships and roles matter for determining even the justice of a cheeseburger purchase. If I were to knock on my neighbor's door, ask her for a cheeseburger and give her $3.79, no cheeseburger would be due to me. If I were to attempt the same exchange with one of my students in class, no cheeseburger would be due to me. Why not? It cannot simply be because my neighbor or my student does not have any cheeseburger. Maybe they do. But I would still have no claim upon them. On the flip side, if the burger stand were out of cheeseburgers and I order one, I would still have some sort of claim upon one, which is why they would need to offer a substitute or return my money. Were they to lack a cheeseburger, my neighbor or my student would not be required to accept my money in the first place or offer a substitute.

I am due a cheeseburger from the cashier at the burger stand and not from my neighbor or my student because of the cashier's role within a particular relationship. He occupies the role of cashier within a relationship of commerce. I am the customer. One of the duties of a cashier at the burger stand is to provide customers with the meal he or she orders. Customers have a claim upon the food for which they have paid. Within the relationship between neighbors or between a teacher and student, no such duty or claim exists.

Situations in which roles overlap further illuminate this. Perhaps my neighbor also works as an employee at the burger stand. Still, usually if I were to walk over to his house and try to buy a cheeseburger, he would have no duty to provide me one. While he is clocked-in and working the cash register, he occupies his role as cashier. While he is at home, he is my neighbor. The claims and duties of neighbors now then apply: I have to keep my dog in my own yard, not throw loud parties every night, etc. Similarly, if I encounter one of my students working behind the cash register at the burger stand, the claims that we have upon one another in the classroom do not apply. He does not need to raise his hand before asking a question and does not have to answer my questions about an assigned reading. For my part, I have no obligation to teach him anything about Christian theology during our interaction at the burger stand, or even to answer the questions that have been burning in his mind since class yesterday. Though of course I could.

For Thomas, all duties and obligations arise within social relationships and are determined by the particulars of those relationships.¹⁴ This insight makes possible the fine-grained analysis of particular virtues and vices attached to justice in Questions 62-122 of the Secunda Secundae. Consider, for example, Thomas' frequent example of the difference between striking a public figure (principem) and striking a private person.¹⁵ One is punished more for the former than for the...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Endorsements Page
• Half Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Texts and abbreviations
• Introduction: Changing the conversation between Thomas and Barth
• 1 Justice and mercy, human and divine
• 2 The humanity of God and the God-world relation
• 3 God's lordship over creation
• 4 The Old Law's preparation for Christ
• 5 God's mercy and justice in New Law and salvation
• Conclusion: A continuing conversation
• Index