Elizabeth Johnson,the United States Bishops,and Thomas Aquinas: An evaluation

Introduction

Writing in Quest for the Living God, Elizabeth Johnson strikes a critical note concerning ‘contemporary Western society’s characteristically trivial image of God’. ¹ Conceptions of God as ‘a grand old man; or a resident policeman; or a tape of parental hang ups; or a consummate churchman; or a managing director; or a dictator; or a disappointing protector; or a spoilsport’ ² seem to abound in the West; a fact supported by both scholarly research and representations drawn from popular culture. For example, popular (mis)conceptions of what the Judeo-Christian tradition has meant to evoke by the word God, as well as (mis)representations of the central tenets of Christian belief, have combined with poor religious education to develop what Christian Smith, Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Society at the University of Notre Dame, calls Moralistic Therapeutic Deism; the ‘de facto creed’ of many US youth and adults. ³

It is precisely to counter such trivialities in relation to God-talk in the contemporary West that Johnson’s book is at least partly aimed. In her own words, Johnson hopes to advance ‘liberation from the worship of what in effect amounts to an idol, something less than the living God masquerading as ultimate’. ⁴ As has been well publicized in both the Catholic and the secular press, the Committee on Doctrine of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) judges Johnson’s project to be a failure. ⁵ According to the Committee, Johnson’s book ‘contains misrepresentations, ambiguities, and errors that bear upon the faith of the Catholic Church as found in Scripture, and as it is authentically taught by the Church’s universal magisterium’. ⁶

While there are many points over which the Committee disagrees with Johnson, my focus here is on the rather narrow issue of Johnson’s statement that ‘no expression for God can be taken literally’. ⁷ The Committee takes a special interest in this aspect of Johnson’s understanding of language regarding the divine, accusing her of maintaining that ‘human language is never adequate to express the reality of God’. ⁸ This criticism derives from the explicitly thomist perspective taken by the Committee. ⁹ Referring to ‘the traditional Catholic understanding of God’ as arising from ‘both revelation and reason’ and from ‘the Fathers and the Scholastics’, the Committee singles out Aquinas as an especially important figure in this history. ¹⁰

Aquinas’s authoritative status for the Committee’s evaluation of Johnson’s book is evidenced by the fact that all of the footnotes contained in the document are citations of Aquinas’s work. The Angelic Doctor’s influence is likewise attested to by the fact that the noted thomist, Fr. Thomas Weinandy, serves as the Executive Director of Secretariat for Doctrine and Pastoral Practices for the USCCB. Taken together with repeated references to Aquinas throughout the document in order to substantiate the claims made therein, it is not unreasonable to say that for the Committee the thought of Aquinas sets the boundaries for the legitimacy of God-talk.

In what follows, I evaluate the Committee’s own assessment of how and to what extent Johnson understands the literalness of God-talk. As the argument unfolds it will become evident that one of the key sources of tension between the Bishop’s Committee and Johnson revolves around the Committee’s interpretation of Johnson’s use of the word ‘literal’. The Committee interprets Johnson to be using literal as somehow equivalent to ‘real’ or ‘true’, an interpretation of Johnson that I judge to be wrong. Relying primarily on the work of Rudi Te Velde and W. Norris Clarke, ¹¹ I argue that both the Bishop’s Committee and Johnson experience trouble straddling the middle ground of the analogical language and thinking necessary for all God-talk, a middle ground which they both nevertheless advocate. Ultimately I contend that in their critique of Johnson, the Committee tends towards an objectivism that is explicitly eschewed by Aquinas. At the same time, Johnson’s defence of God’s mystery often marginalizes consideration of the analogical similarity between God and creatures.

The ground rules

The Committee begins its discussion of Johnson’s views by attending to what she describes as her ‘Ground Rules for the Journey’. ¹² Intended to ‘equip the reader for the exploration that lies ahead’, Johnson outlines three rules of engagement that she claims are ‘drawn from early Christian and medieval theology’. ¹³ The first and most basic of Johnson’s rules is that ‘the reality of the living God is an ineffable mystery beyond all telling’. ¹⁴ The Committee passes over this rule without comment, perhaps because Johnson seems to be completely in line with Aquinas on this point. If we read ‘the reality’ of the living God as complementary to what Aquinas understands as God’s essence, that is, ‘what God is – his essence or nature’ (1a.3.4.), then Aquinas’s assertion that ‘[God’s] essence is beyond what we understand of him and the meaning of the names we use’ (1a.13.1.) ¹⁵ is roughly equivalent to Johnson’s statement that God’s reality is ‘beyond all telling’. ¹⁶

The second of Johnson’s ground rules stems from the first: ‘no expression for God can be taken literally’. ¹⁷ As a pedagogical illustration of this rule, Johnson cites the ancient simile comparing the supposedly mistaken notion that language can adequately capture reality itself to the idea that a finger pointing at the moon is the moon itself:

Our language is like a finger pointing to the moon, not the moon itself. To equate the finger with the moon or to look at the finger and not perceive the moon is to fall into error. Never to be taken literally, human words about God proceed by way of indirection. They set off from the spare, original, strange perfections of this world and turn our face toward the source and future of it all without capturing the essence of the mystery. ¹⁸

The issue here rests on the distinction that the Committee makes between language’s inability to express the reality of God while nevertheless being able to attain to that reality. Their concerns, in other words, have to do with safeguarding the possibility that language can say something true or real about God even if it is not able to do so in the fullest sense of those terms. The Committee is in this way concerned with Johnson’s use of the word ‘literal’, which they equate with meaning ‘real’ or ‘true’.

Aquinas and the triplex via

Aquinas himself takes up this issue in Question 13, Article 3 of the Summa Theologiae, asking, ‘Can we say anything literally of God?’ (1a.). This Article rests on the understanding that ‘we know God from the perfections that flow from him to creatures, and these perfections certainly exist in him in a more excellent way than they do in them’ (1a.13.3). Here Aquinas alludes to his metaphysics of participation, described succinctly by W. Norris Clarke as:

Because the perfections found in creatures are received from God, they are in this very way able to speak to us of God. As Aquinas notes in Question 13, Article 2, ‘we speak of God as we know him, and since we know him from creatures we can only speak of him as they represent him’ (1a.). As evidenced in the quote above, Johnson herself follows this line of reasoning, stating that our words for God ‘set off from the spare, original, strange perfections of this world and turn our face toward the source and future of it all without capturing the essence of the mystery’. ²¹

Key here is the use of analogical language and understanding. Aquinas indirectly references analogy in noting that, because human language for God stems from the fact of the creature’s participation in God’s perfections, ‘some of the words that signify what has come forth from God to creatures do so in such a way that part of the meaning of the word is the imperfect way in which creatures share God’s perfection’ (1a.13.3). In other words, even as we are similar to God in terms of sharing in God’s perfections, we only share in these perfections imperfectly, and thus there is also dissimilarity. This structure of participation necessitates a language that can express both similarity and dissimilarity at the same time, that is, it necessitates analogy as a way of speaking that tries to maintain and clarify the proper proportion of similarity and dissimilarity between God and creatures. Rudi Te Velde describes this kind of discursive manoeuvring as that of the triplex via:

What we are allowed to know of God, ascending … from the sensible effects to their transcendent cause, is: first, that he is the cause of all things; second, that creatures differ from him inasmuch as he is not one of his effects and, third, that God differs, not by reason of lacking some perfection, but because he exceeds all his effects in perfection. ²²

Stated more succinctly as the movements of ‘causality, remotion, and eminence’, ²³ this process basically consists in: acknowledging a likeness between God and creatures as that between cause and effect (causality), followed by an acknowledgement of the proper proportional dissimilarity between God and creatures (remotion), which is itself based on the fact that God is the infinitely perfect source of all finite perfections (eminence). Thus when Aquinas says that ‘part of the meaning of the word [signifying God] is the imperfect way in which creatures share God’s perfection’ (1a.13.3), he is acknowledging that the perfection shared (causality) is shared imperfectly (remotion) because God is the infinite source of that perfection (eminence).

Johnson, the Committee and the triplex via

Johnson herself is completely aware of the import of analogy and the triplex via for God-talk. For example, examining the word ‘good’ as ascribed to God she writes, ‘inevitably, our understanding of what “good” means arises from our experience of goodness in the world … [f]rom these we derive a concept of goodness that we then affirm of God who created all these good things [emphasis in original]’. ²⁴ This is the step of causality, acknowledging a similarity between God and creatures as cause and effect, or, as Johnson puts it, ‘God who created all these good things’. ²⁵ Johnson continues, noting that because ‘God is infinite … we need to remove anything that smacks of restriction … thus we negate the finite way goodness exists in the world [emphasis in original]’. ²⁶ Here we find the step of remotion. Finally, Johnson avers, ‘but still we think God is good, so we negate that particular negation and judge that God is good in a supremely excellent way that surpasses all understanding’. ²⁷ Again, this follows the triplex via in its final movement of eminence. Johnson sums up her example by writing:

According to analogy, when we attribute goodness to God the theological meaning is this: God is good; but God is not good in the way creatures are good; but God is good in a supereminent way as Source of all that is good. ²⁸

The literal difference

Up to this point Aquinas, Johnson and the Bishop’s Committee seem to be in agreement. The difference between Johnson and the Bishop’s Committee, however, lies in Johnson’s contention that the significance of analogy and the triplex via for God-talk is that we can say nothing of God ‘literally’. Indeed the Committee seems to interpret Johnson’s use of the word literally to mean real or true; as if she were saying that we cannot speak anything of God that is based in reality or truth. The Committee zeroes in on their perception of Johnson’s weakness by quoting her appraisal of the word good as applying to God in a super-eminent way. As they write, ‘For her, the meaning of the concept “good” derived from our knowledge of creatures is “lost” when it is applied to God.’ ³³ Declaring their disagreement with Johnson, the Committee states:

While God is a mystery that cannot be fully comprehended and thus fully articulated, nonetheless, according to Catholic theological tradition it is possible to make statements about God that are true even if they do not express the fullness of the mystery. ³⁴

Hinging on what is meant by the word ‘literal’, and given that Question 13, Article 3 of the Summa states that ‘we do not use all words of God metaphorically … We use some of them literally’ (1a.), it would seem appropriate to place Aquinas on the side of the Bishop’s Committee. Rudi Te Velde, however, provides a reason for caution in referring to the translation of Aquinas’s original word proprie as equivalent to our contemporary understanding of the word ‘literal’:

One must be careful as regards the use of the word ‘proprie’ in this connection [that is, as opposed to metaphorical], since it may cause some misunderstanding. Thomas’ use of it does not wholly correspond with the ordinary distinction between ‘literal’ and ‘figurative.’ He does not mean to say that some terms apply literally to God in the sense that their corresponding concepts are found truly instantiated in God. ³⁵

Because our mode of signifying God’s perfections originates from our experience of those perfections in creatures, ‘the names cannot be said of God other than in an improper and derivative manner’. ³⁶ Looked at ‘from the perspective of what the names signify, that is, the perfections themselves’, however, ‘they belong properly to God’. ³⁷ Thus when Thomas asserts that certain things can be literally said of God, he is referring to the order of creation in which ‘the perfections flow from God into creatures’, ³⁸ rather than in the mode of signification in which the perfections are ‘said in the first place of creatures, and only secondarily of God’. ³⁹ If by equating the word ‘literal’ with real or true the Bishop’s Committee intended to mean ‘that some terms apply literally to God in the sense that their corresponding concepts are found truly instantiated in God’, ⁴⁰ it would seem that at least in Te Velde’s reading of Aquinas the Committee’s claim to be following Thomas is misleading. Is this, however, what the Committee means?

They do seem to tend in this direction. They accuse Johnson of a Kantian-like approach to God in which ‘human knowledge and concepts do not attain to the reality of things in themselves, but only express how things appear to our minds’. ⁴¹ This, they claim, leads to a state in which ‘metaphors for God are to be evaluated not on the basis of their accuracy with regard to the nature of God, but primarily in how they function in human society’. ⁴² Presumed here is that the opposite position would claim human knowledge and concepts are such that they do actually attain to the reality of God and are therefore more or less accurate in representing God’s nature. As Te Velde notes, however, ‘according to Thomas, no name signifying God adequately expresses what He is. Any conceptual expression of a perfection attributed to God falls short with respect to how that perfection is realized in God.’ ⁴³

In speaking of the nature of God in such close proximity to a statement about human knowledge attaining to the reality of things in themselves, the Committee comes perilously close to claiming that there are significations that accurately express what God is. It is almost as if, in attempting to defend their version of realism vis-à-vis God-talk, the Committee moves towards the extreme of objectivism. In fact, one of their criticisms of Johnson is that ‘there appears to be no objective means for judging among metaphors for God as to which are closer to the truth’. ⁴⁴ Not only is this criticism unfair to Johnson, who, for example, clearly understands scripture as one such objective means for arriving at truth claims regarding the divine, ⁴⁵ the criticism stands in contrast to the appropriateness of analogy for God-talk in the first place. As W. Norris Clarke notes, analogy is useful for God-talk precisely because it is ‘a flexible or “stretch” concept, not limited in its application to one rigidly fixed and narrowly predetermined meaning’. ⁴⁶ Even further, Clarke writes:

[A]lthough metaphysicians can indeed discover universal metaphysical truths transcending all times and cultures, the conceptual-linguistic expression of what they have discovered will always have to resign itself to being incomplete, falling short of the fullness of the real, in a word, perspectival, seen from within the resources of thinking, speaking, imagining, and feeling of the metaphysician’s own culture in and situation in human history. Hence no definitive, exhaustively adequate expression of metaphysics for all times and cultures is humanly possible. ⁴⁷

In a similar vein, I suggest Johnson’s assertion that nothing can ever be said of God literally must be balanced by the rest of her book. Johnson proceeds to make many statements about God, for example, that God is Gracious Mystery, Compassion, Life, Liberator etc. ⁴⁹ None of these names are used as if they are not really true, and in fact it would be preposterous for her to do so in a book dedicated to liberation from the worship of contemporary idols; ⁵⁰ a kind of liberation that specifically requires being able to distinguish the true from the false. By literal, in other words, Johnson does not intend to signify what is real or true, but, rather, what is completely comprehensive.

When Johnson claims that ultimately our knowledge becomes lost when referring to God, she means ‘lost’ in terms of ‘human comprehension of the meaning’. ⁵¹ It is not that nothing real can be said of God but rather that these things are said ‘without capturing the essence of the mystery’, ⁵² that is, without complete comprehension or exhaustion of what God is, of God’s nature. Even so, just as the Bishop’s Committee err on the side of objectivism, Johnson errs on the side of agnosticism. Writing of this tendency, W. Norris Clarke states that ‘God must be understood analogously to avoid … agnosticism … [that] there is nothing at all we can say meaningfully about God, nothing at all similar between God and creatures.’ ⁵³ While Johnson never actually advocates this extreme, her care for protecting the mystery of God often leads her to downplay the similarity between God and creatures while overemphasizing the difference.

Conclusion

It would seem, at least from this reading, that both Johnson and the Committee find difficulty maintaining the proper balance required by analogical thought and signification. Te Velde identifies this same difficulty with those who, in his view, overemphasize the role of negation in Aquinas: ‘It seems to me that the “negative reading” of Thomas tends to overemphasize the radical distinction between God and the world at the cost of their relationship as cause and effect.’ ⁵⁴ This is a problem precisely because ‘creatures must be in some respect like God, otherwise it would be unintelligible that they are creatures of God’. ⁵⁵ Of course, this similarity must also be reckoned as ‘a likeness which includes radical difference’. ⁵⁶ In the end, as Aquinas is so clear in acknowledging, all our language comes from our experience as created beings in the world. This experience leads us to tend naturally towards a conceptual and linguistic categorization of the world. When it comes to that which cannot be categorized, it is no surprise that our tendency is to do so again and again. Thus Clarke’s admonition that ‘a metaphysics … done by human beings like ourselves must be humble’. ⁵⁷