Christ's Fulfillment of Torah and Temple

Salvation according to Thomas Aquinas

Matthew Levering

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Year: 2002
• ISBN:
  9780268161248
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Christ's Fulfillment of Torah and Temple is a concise introduction to the Christian theology of salvation in light of the contributions of Thomas Aquinas. In this cogent study, Matthew Levering identifies six important aspects of soteriology, each of which corresponds to an individual chapter in the book. Levering focuses on human history understood in light of the divine law and covenants, Jesus the Incarnate Son of God and Messiah of Israel, Jesus' cross, transformation in the image of God, the Mystical Body of Christ into which all human beings are called, and eternal life.

Taking the doctrines of faith as his starting point, Levering's objective is to answer the questions of both Christians and non-Christians who desire to learn how and for what end Jesus "saves" humankind. Levering's work also speaks directly to contemporary systematic theologians. In contrast to widespread assumptions that Aquinas's theology of salvation is overly abstract or juridical, Levering demonstrates that Aquinas's theology of salvation flows from his reading of Scripture and deserves a central place in contemporary discussions.

Thomas Aquinas's theology of salvation employs and develops the concepts of satisfaction and merit in light of his theology of the Old Testament. For Aquinas, Christ fulfills Israel's Torah and Temple, law and liturgy. These two aspects of Israel's religion provide the central categories for understanding salvation. The Torah expresses God's Wisdom, incarnated in Jesus Christ. Christ's passion, then, fulfills and transforms the moral, juridical, and ceremonial precepts of the Torah, which correspond to the three "offices" of ancient Israel—prophet, king, and priest. The New Law in Christ Jesus is also the fulfillment of the Temple, Israel's worship. Christ offers the Father the perfect worship, participated in by all members of his Mystical Body through faith, charity, and the sacraments. Old Law and New Law are fulfilled in the perfect knowing and loving (perfect law and liturgy) of eternal life, the Heavenly Jerusalem.

As a Thomistic contribution to contemporary theology, this fruitful study develops a theology of salvation in accord with contemporary canonical readings of Scripture and with the teachings of the Second Vatican Council on the fulfillment and permanence of God's covenants.

PART 1

The Fulfillment
of Israel’s Torah

1 Divine Law and Divine Pedagogy

What significance does the Mosaic Law have for Christians? Is the Old Law (Torah) merely a preparation for the New Law in Christ Jesus, whose passion, death, and resurrection revoke the Old Law? Christian theologians today often try to answer such questions. The medieval period, however, is generally not the place where contemporary theologians look for answers. A challenging exception is the work of the Jewish theologian Michael Wyschogrod. Because of his interest in Aquinas’s work and his nuanced rendering of a paramount question for any contemporary Christian theology of salvation—namely the question of supersessionism—I will begin this study of how Christ fulfills Israel’s Torah by seeking to enter into dialogue with the concerns posed by Wyschogrod.

The April 1995 issue of Modern Theology presents a symposium centered on a “letter” written by Wyschogrod and addressed to an unnamed Jewish convert to Roman Catholicism. The symposium includes the responses of seven theologians, Jewish and Christian.¹ In the letter, Wyschogrod proposes that from both a Jewish and a Christian perspective, Jewish Christians should continue to observe the Mosaic Law.² Wyschogrod first makes the claim from the side of Judaism: “Because you are a Jew, you are obligated, like all Jews, to obey the mitzvoth (e.g., tefilin [phylacteries] in the morning, kashrut, sabbath, etc.).”³ He then seeks to explore the status of a Jewish convert from the side of Christian theology. He begins by pointing out that the Catholic Church, in the Second Vatican Council, has affirmed that God’s covenant with Israel “has never been revoked.”⁴ Jewish converts, however, are not allowed to continue practicing the mitzvoth, so they are generally assimilated within a generation. How then can the Church claim to recognize God’s continuing covenant with Israel, which would quickly disappear as a visible reality if all Jews heeded the Church’s evangelical call? The covenant remains a reality today, in Wyschogrod’s view, only because there are still Jews who obey the Mosaic Law.

Having identified this apparent tension in the Church’s teaching, Wyschogrod briefly describes the theological grounds on which converted Jews have been prevented from obeying the Mosaic Law. He selects Aquinas as a notable representative of the traditional view. Following Gal 5:2 (“If you receive circumcision Christ will do you no good at all”), Aquinas concludes that obeying the “ceremonial” precepts of the Mosaic Law after Christ would be a mortal sin for Jewish Christians, although the “moral” precepts have permanent validity. Wyschogrod challenges this position on two grounds. First, he argues that Aquinas’s distinction between “ceremonial” and “moral” precepts ignores the unity of the Mosaic Law, which God gave to Israel as a single entity to be obeyed. Second, he points out that the original Jewish Christians, as depicted in the book of Acts, either continued to follow the entire Mosaic Law or at least did not consider doing so to be a mortal sin. Along the same lines, he notes that many of the original Jewish Christians held that the Gentiles, too, were obligated to follow the entire law. He concludes by suggesting that observant Jewish Christians should once more find a place in the Church. Were this to happen, “a profound clarification of the Church’s attitude to the Hebrew bible and its Jewish roots will have taken place.”⁵ The Church, in short, would be recognizing in practice what it affirmed theoretically at Vatican II: the existence of a perpetual covenant between God and the Jews that is not superseded by the new covenant in Christ.

Although many of the responses to Wyschogrod’s letter were insightful, none of the theologians selected by Modern Theology took the occasion to explore in depth the view that Wyschogrod attributes to Aquinas. This oversight is unfortunate because Wyschogrod’s “letter” has its roots in an essay he wrote a few years earlier entitled “A Jewish Reading of St. Thomas Aquinas on the Old Law.”⁶ The essay reveals Wyschogrod as a perceptive reader of Aquinas, and it also presents in detail the concerns, noted briefly in the later “letter,” that Wyschogrod has about the “traditional Christian view.”⁷ Wyschogrod specifically seeks to bring Aquinas into the contemporary Jewish-Christian dialogue.⁸

The bulk of Wyschogrod’s essay surveys Aquinas’s treatment of the Old Law. On the basis of this survey, Wyschogrod offers some criticisms from his perspective as a Jewish theologian. First, he notes that St. Paul is notoriously difficult to understand on the issue of the Mosaic Law. Jesus claimed to observe the law but was accused (perhaps justly, Wyschogrod thinks) by a number of Pharisees of breaking it. Paul’s situation is even more ambiguous. In Wyschogrod’s view, Aquinas gets around the difficulties in Paul’s thought by dividing the one Mosaic Law into three aspects—moral, ceremonial, and judicial. This division enables Aquinas to separate the law into permanent and nonpermanent parts.

The permanent part is the “moral” law, which contains precepts (such as “honor your father and mother”) that are the foundation of right living and would have been known immediately by the rational creature had reason not been obscured by sin. The ceremonial and judicial precepts are related to this moral law. They constitute the way in which God, at a particular time, chose to arrange—in accordance with the general and universal precepts of the moral law—the specific details of divine worship (the ceremonial law) and of communal life (the judicial law). The ceremonial and judicial precepts come to an end in Christ.

Wyschogrod identifies two flaws in this position. First, even accepting (for the sake of argument) the threefold division, Wyschogrod cannot agree that the ceremonial precepts are not permanent, since to some of them the Old Testament attaches the phrase “it shall be a statute forever unto their generations.” Second, Wyschogrod argues that the ceremonial law should be accepted as valuable on its own terms. For Aquinas, the ceremonial law has significance in two ways: in relation to the moral or “natural” law, which it expresses (by divine decree) in a particular time and place; and as prefiguring Christ. Aquinas holds, therefore, that after Christ it would be a “mortal” sin for a person, professing that Christ has come, nonetheless to continue to observe the ceremonial law that God gave in preparation for Christ. Wyschogrod, in contrast, argues that the ceremonial law should be understood as the permanent way that God intended for Jews to worship God. Jewish Christians (among whom Wyschogrod does not, it should be noted, count himself) should then continue to obey the ceremonial law even after Christ, simply as a sign that the covenant of God with the Jewish nation remains in force and will remain in force (along with the new covenant in Christ) until the time of the “final fulfillment that both Jews and Christians await.”⁹

As in “Letter to a Friend,” Wyschogrod next discusses the passages from the book of Acts (particularly Acts 15) that show that Jewish Christians did indeed continue to observe the Mosaic Law in the early Church. On this basis, he argues that Aquinas should have considered “the possibility that Jewish Christians ought to maintain a Jewish identity in the Church by continuing to live under the Mosaic Law, while sharing with Gentile Christians their faith in Christ.”¹⁰ This situation would not, Wyschogrod thinks, compromise the fundamental equality of Jews and Gentiles; rather, it would simply constitute a special task reserved in the Church for Jews, in the same way that the priesthood is reserved for men even though in Christ “there is neither male nor female” (Gal 3:28). Nor would it mean that Jewish Christians would be “justified” by the Mosaic Law. Wyschogrod argues that, from the Jewish perspective, only God justifies. The law simply sets forth God’s will for Jews. Observant Jewish Christians could still believe that they were justified by Christ (as God incarnate), not by the law.

It should be clear from this earlier essay that Wyschogrod’s later “Letter to a Friend” can be read as addressed not only to his Jewish friend but also to Catholic theologians, and in particular to those who study the theology of Aquinas. The central task of the present chapter will be to examine Aquinas’s views on the Mosaic Law. In interpreting Aquinas, I will seek to show more fully why he divided the law in the way that he did, why and in what sense he considered some of the law’s precepts to have been superseded, and why he (unlike some of his Christian predecessors and successors) placed the law within the heart of his theology of salvation. The chapter will proceed in two steps. Following the order of Aquinas’s treatise, I will begin by examining 1–2, qq.90–92, where Aquinas discusses law’s essence and effects and briefly sketches the various kinds of “law.” Here we will see how the Mosaic Law fits into the Summa Theologiae’s broader exitus-reditus pattern. Second, I will turn to a detailed examination of Aquinas’s extensive treatment of the Mosaic Law in 1–2, qq.98–105.

Aquinas on Law

In the code of law given to Israel, Aquinas recognizes the form and structure typical of law in all societies. Certainly the Mosaic Law is more than a mere human production, since it is composed and promulgated by God; but it is nonetheless recognizably “law.” Therefore, Aquinas begins his treatise on law, which culminates in his discussion of the Old (Mosaic) Law and the New Law, by asking what constitutes the essence of law.¹¹ He notes first that law pertains to the reason, not to the will. Law, properly speaking, is composed of precepts that guide and direct human acts toward the end recognized by right reason.¹² Aquinas argues that the ability of right reason to recognize this end is due to the participation of human reason in the divine reason. All creaturely being is a finite, created participation in infinite Divine Being, but as rational creatures human beings image God in a special way. By means of the rational soul, human beings are able to grasp the intelligible order that characterizes the universe. This ability constitutes the human being’s participation in the “eternal law,” the Creator’s idea of the government of things in the universe.¹³ The end fitting to human beings, as Aquinas has already shown, is happiness, which consists in the “common good” (which must be a rational good, a perfection fitted to the rational creature) of the whole community, to which each member is ordered as a part.¹⁴ Law, whose precepts direct human actions to this common good, thus seeks to make each person, and finally the whole community, good or virtuous.¹⁵ Since law is directed to the whole community, it must be promulgated or made known publicly, and it must be promulgated by someone, or some entity, who possesses the power to enforce it, so that it will truly be able to shape the community.¹⁶

For Aquinas, law is rational and positive, not arbitrary or constricting. Law is meant primarily to aid people in their quest to know and do the good, although certainly law also has the secondary role of restraining the wicked.¹⁷ From this understanding of law, it is easy to understand why God, in order to manifest his covenantal love for Israel, gave Israel a law. Aquinas identifies the Torah given to Moses as the center around which revolve the Old Testament’s historical, wisdom, and prophetic books, which either prepare for the law or describe Israel’s arduous effort to live out the law fully and to grasp its inner dynamic.

God wishes Israel to become, through the gift of the law, a uniquely virtuous community. But why would not natural law (the law known by human reason) or human positive law suffice for this purpose? Aquinas’s answer derives from his understanding of history. As the narrative of Genesis relates, God made human beings to be in communion with him, but the first human beings turned away from him, cutting off this integral communion.¹⁸ Lacking this communion, human beings fell deeper and deeper into the disorder of sin. Overwhelmed by disordered desires, human beings no longer chose the good identified by reason, and indeed the light of reason itself became obscured.¹⁹ With reason obscured, human beings could no longer efficiently discern the natural law. Human positive law, which applies the general principles of the natural law to particular cases, was correspondingly affected.

Yet why did not God simply give Israel a perfect human law? By entering into a free covenant with Israel, God shows that he means to restore human beings to closer communion with him than would have been naturally possible. Natural and human law are therefore not enough, since they are not directed to the supernatural end that God reveals by entering into the covenant.²⁰ The uniqueness of the Mosaic Law is that its precepts, promulgated by God, direct human beings to this supernatural end. On the other hand, Aquinas thinks that the Mosaic Law does not fully direct human beings to this end (thus the promise of a “new” law). First, the end is not explicitly put forward by the Mosaic Law, which refers instead to temporal punishments and rewards that do not express the fullness of communion with God. Second, the Mosaic Law, like human law, regards exterior acts; the Mosaic Law instructs people on how to act justly, but it is not an inner law that guides and perfects the movements of the soul. As the prophet Jeremiah suggests, the Mosaic Law is dynamically ordered toward a new law (and new covenant) that will make explicit the communion that God has in store for us and that will interiorly guide and perfect our actuating powers so that they will cleave, entirely out of self-giving love, to the true and the good.

In summary, Aquinas in qq.90–92 argues that all laws, and especially the one that God establishes for Israel, direct human beings to acts that are perfective of human nature; in this sense, all true laws are connected with the rational “natural” law that enables us to identify what is good in matters of action. Second, Aquinas notes that all laws serve an end that the lawgiver has in mind. The divine lawgiver gives law to human beings with an end in mind that he has specifically chosen as perfective of the kind of creature that human beings are. Law itself is possible because it is grounded in God’s eternal law for the government of the universe (not merely the ordered arrangement of things but also their progression and development in time). Finally, by means of his covenant with Israel, God has revealed a hidden aspect of his eternal plan: the end of the rational creature will be a supernatural perfection—participation, through knowing and loving, in the divine life. God promulgates the twofold divine law to enable human beings to attain this supernatural aspect of his eternal law.²¹

Aquinas on the Old (Mosaic) Law

Aquinas begins his analysis of the Old Law by asking whether, in a technical sense, the Old Law was “good.” Something is good if it leads the person to the end of human being, namely, the perfection fitting to human nature.²² This perfection, as we have seen, is a supernatural one; still, it should be noted that in the state of supernatural perfection, human nature will not lack its “natural” perfection, since, as Aquinas says elsewhere, grace does not destroy nature but perfects and elevates it. On this basis, the Old Law is indeed good, since it leads Israel toward the supernatural perfection that God has ordained for human beings.

The Old Law conduced to this end by forbidding sinful acts and by restraining disordered desires, which are opposed to the perfection of the rational creature. On the other hand, Aquinas notes, the Old Law was not “sufficient in itself” to achieve the supernatural end, which perfects the rational creature by enabling him or her to share in the very life of God by means of knowing and loving. For this end to be achieved, not only must exterior acts be ordered, but also human beings must receive an interior principle that will be able to direct human acts, at their root, toward the supernatural end of knowing and loving the triune God. This interior principle, since it must have the power to give us a participation in God’s trinitarian life, must itself be divine. Aquinas explains that the divine law, to which the Old Law (as promulgated by God) belongs, “should make man altogether fit to partake of everlasting happiness. Now this cannot be done save by the grace of the Holy Spirit.”²³ Thus, in its end, the divine law is one. Yet it requires two parts, since the structure established by the Old Law (which forbids sin, those acts that draw human beings away from their perfection) must be completed and perfected by the i...