25 August - Excursus on Saint Louis IX of France

25 August, the memorial of St. Louis IX of France. St. Louis (1215-1270) was a contemporary of St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Bonaventure, and, as a king, one of the better examples of medieval ideas of law and justice in practice. A short excursus into his life will perhaps help put some flesh to the ideas of law we’re getting from the Summa.

His mother, Blanche of Castile, one of the many grandchildren of the great Eleanor of Aquitaine, was worthy of her parentage. She was a very forceful person, an excellent organizer and administrator, and fierce in defending her family. When, in 1215-16 (remember the Magna Carta?), the English barons in revolt against King John offered the throne of England to Louis VIII, she organized the army and navy for the invasion of England to receive it, but in a land battle and a naval battle, the English forces loyal to John and his son Henry defeated them. She put down rebellions of French barons, and later defeated an English invasion of France in 1230. (The “English” and “French” barons tended to hold lands on both sides of the Channel; and the kings tended to be barons of each other, also, so the politics were rather convoluted; hence all the mutual “invasions” until the end of the Hundred Years War.) She protected and expanded the power of the French kings against the other great dukes and kings of England, France, and Germany. She was also a great papist in the various ecclesial politics of the day. She was, no surprise, chosen to be her son’s regent when Louis VIII died in 1226, and she continued to guide and support her son vigorously after his majority and marriage in 1234. She was regent again when St. Louis was crusading in Egypt, 1248-50.

St. Louis emulated these same qualities. He was politically astute and vigorous. But, he did not pursue royal power merely for the sake of accumulating more power. He was intent on using that power for the purposes everyone agreed he had it: to protect the poor and the Church against the abuses of the powerful; to govern with justice; to maintain peace as far as possible. He used diplomacy as much as he could, but he didn’t shy away from using force when necessary. He notably avoided a couple of “wars,” in France and in Sicily, that he could have pursued (and that someone like his grandfather, Philippe Auguste, would not have hesitated to pursue). He was not a great legislator, but he respected the laws and customs of his day, and extended the reach and the reliability of royal courts of justice. He himself sat as judge regularly, and his “king’s justice” was available even to the poorest peasants.

His own faith and devotion were very strong. As was the norm then, he used his power to curb abuses within the Church, and to fight against the Albigensian heresy (the “Albigensian crusade”). He built the fabulous Sainte Chappelle in Paris (pictures just don’t do it justice), and funded Robert of Sorbonne in founded the university that bears his name (originally as a theology school). His personal library numbered in the hundreds of books, and was one of the great collections of the day. He also pursued two extensive Crusades in Egypt, to defend the Holy Land by securing its approaches from the south. These were understood as wars of self-defense for Christendom. Both were ultimately unsuccessful.

If you read the Office of Readings this morning, you might have noted these ideas in the letter to his son which is the second reading for today. Faith comes first; from faith comes justice and right; and the king rules best when he serves as God’s instrument for the common good. “My dearest son, my first instruction to you is that you should love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your strength. Without this there is no salvation…. If the Lord has permitted you some trial, bear it willingly and with gratitude…. Listen to the divine office with pleasure and devotion…. Be kindhearted to the poor, the unfortunate, and the afflicted. Give them as much help and consolation as you can…. Be just to your subjects, swaying neither to right nor to left, but holding the line of justice. Always side with the poor rather than with the rich, until you are certain of the truth. See that all your subjects live in justice and peace…. Work to remove all sin from your land, particularly blasphemies and heresies.”

That core definition of justice as “remove all sin from your land” is the point where faith fundamentally shaped politics. This goal is not mere human justice, a crude measure of “approximately fair;” the absence of sin is the only true justice there can be. Of course, if Christ is the unique Savior, then the absence of sin can only be achieved by the conversion of everyone, and therefore, quite unlike today, the medieval standard of justice judged the use of the state’s coercive power to defend and support orthodoxy to be not only licit, but even required. As we mentioned in class last time, it was not until the Reformation, Counter-reformation, and the devastations of the Wars of Religion and the 30-Years’ War that this idea really changed. Basically, before then, the consequences of not using the coercive power of the state in this way were thought to be worse than using it; but afterwards, the costs of using it became obviously higher than the costs of not using it.

Aside from these kinds of historical differences, St. Louis was justly renowned for being a strong king, but not abusing his power; regulating his royal courts for the rule of law, and being accessible himself as a judge, even to the very poor; leading with diplomacy, resorting to war only when necessary; self-restraint in his governing; patronizing the arts, learning, and so on; supporting the clergy while curbing abuses; and loving the Church and the poor. These are the sorts of actions which St. Thomas is implying in his definition of law as a rational, objective, and universal “rule and measure” of acts, enacted and promulgated by the sovereign and accepted as legitimate, for the common good.

Moral Theology 3 - Aquinas on Law cont'd: Qu. 90, art 4

Aquinas finishes his qu. 90, on the nature or essence of law, with Article 4: “Whether promulgation is essential to a law?”

As usual, wrong answer first: “It seems promulgation is not essential to a law,” because:

Objection 1: natural law binds without formal promulgation;
Objection 2: law binds or obliges not only those to whom it is promulgated, but also others;
Objection 3: some of those others are future persons who will be subject to the law, but promulgation takes place only in the present.

On the contrary, from Gratian’s (“The Jurist”) Decretals (a major compilation of canon law in the 12th cent.), “laws are established when they are promulgated.”

Given what he’s said about the rational (and therefore objective and universal) nature of law, it follows that laws that remain unpromulgated can’t be objective, and therefore can’t be law. Gratian is correct, in other words. If law is a “rule and measure,” Aquinas argues, then it must be applied in some way in order to regulate and measure. The promulgation is the application of the yardstick to the situation. Without the promulgation, the yardstick is only leaning in the corner, not doing anything.

Aquinas goes on to note that promulgation is not only functionally necessary for law, it’s also part of the nature/essence/definition. He puts all these four articles together thus:

Law is nothing other than “an ordinance of reason for the common good, made by him who has care of the community, and promulgated.” That is, law is rational, implying also objective and universal; law is properly made by the sovereign, not by private interests; law is for the common good, implying that partisan laws are unjust, along with various forms of discriminatory laws; and law must be promulgated.

From this, his replies to the objections are fairly obvious.

Again, remember that his use of terms can be a bit different than ours, especially in things like “common good.”

Discussion: What do you think about this definition of law? Does it work today? If not, what would be a better definition? Do the laws we make at national, state, and local levels generally aim at this standard? If not, why not? What are the implications here for what we call “checks and balances”?

Moral Theology 2 - Aquinas on Law cont'd: Qu. 90, art 2-3

II-Ie.90.2: Whether law is always something directed to the common good?

Having offered in Article 1 a definition of law as a rational, objective “rule and measure of acts” which operates on the will to regulate and form, Aquinas now turns in Article 2 to another fundamental question. As usual, he starts with the wrong answer: “It would seem that the law is not always directed to the common good as to its end.”

Objection 1, from the difference between individual goods and the common good: concrete laws aim at some individual good, but not at the common good per se.

Objection 2, from the same, but with reference to the human actor: concrete human actions regulated by laws aim at particular goods, not the common good per se.

Objection 3, from authority: “Isidore [St. Isidore of Seville] says (Etym. v, 3): ‘If the law is based on reason, whatever is based on reason will be a law.’ But reason is the foundation not only of what is ordained to the common good, but also of that which is directed private good.” Therefore law might aim at either private or common good, and therefore not always the common good.

You might predict already that this difference between the private and the common good is going to be part of the answer as well. Specifically, how are they related? Is it possible to aim at the private good, without also implying a contribution to the common good? Modern notions of “the common good” and “the private good” generally allow that implication to be absent. But, remember that he’s not working with a modern definition of the “private good,” which opposes the private good of individuals against each other. He’s not Hobbes or Rousseau, positing a “zero-sum game.” To be good, even the private good must exclude real harm of others, and be compatible, not in competition, with the private good of others. The appearance of competition or exclusion comes rather from human imperfection and sin, than from the imperfection of law as such.

And indeed, this is the argument he deploys. Individual goods are related to the common good as parts to the whole, or as imperfect to perfect. Because individual laws aim at individual goods specifically as part of the common good, law as a whole must aim at the totality of individual goods, which is the common good.

He continues in Article 3 with the same thrust: Whether the reason of any man is competent to make laws? In other words, how is law in its nature related to the individual?

Wrong answer first: “It seems the reason of any man is competent to make laws.”

Objection 1, from Paul: Gentiles don’t have the OT Law, so they are “a law unto themselves.” (Rom 2:14). He means this generally, and so man’s reason can make laws.

Objection 2, from Aristotle: the intention of lawmaking is to lead men to virtue (by forming good habits and inhibiting the formation of vices), which (at least in a natural sense) any person can in theory do for another.

Objection 3, from analogy: the governor of a state makes laws for a state; the head of a household makes laws for the household in the same way.

These objections are pretty forceful. For us in the modern world, the analogy argument is particularly potent, because who wouldn’t agree with the basic justice of a “rule of law” and accountability of the lawmakers to their subjects? And to have that kind of basic structure of justice, you need the human competence to make law. You assume it, in fact, because without it the whole modern project of classical liberalism (democracy, no legally-privileged aristocracy, parliamentary rule, religious freedom, personal freedom for the sake of the common good, and so on) just falls apart.

So how does Aquinas respond to these objections? He starts with his “on the contrary,” another interesting quote from the same Isidore: “A law is an ordinance of the people [the sovereign], whereby something is sanctioned by the Elders [the governing elite, whether they form a class or not] together with the Commonalty [the citizen-voters].” In other words, a law must be accepted to be law; it must be agreed to, as part of the shared vision of the common good and how to get there.

This is a fundamental point, even to the objections. Even if you argue for a basic human competence to make laws, you’re still presuming that this understanding of law includes its legitimacy, along with its rationality and its goodness.

But what this means, he argues in his “I answer that,” is that the only “person” competent to make legitimate (and therefore just) laws is the sovereign. And the sovereign is not a human person at all, but a “body politic.” Even in the case of monarchy, when the sovereign is reduced to one in the person of the king, one still distinguishes between the king as a person, and the king as sovereign. (This is why the power of monarchical kingship can in fact be shared, as by Diocletian, or as by crowning an heir even before the king’s death, for example in order to prevent a civil war.) This was a basic point of medieval political theory, and its echoes in our familiar system of representative democracy surprise us only in the antiquity of their origins.

In saying, then, that any man’s reason is not competent to make laws, Aquinas is not saying that only God may make laws – he’ll get to the relationship between human and divine law in qu. 91 – but rather that laws made by just any man are necessarily arbitrary, rather than sovereign and legitimate; and if they are arbitrary, then they are neither rational, nor aimed at the common good, and therefore not truly law at all.

Moral Theology 1 - Aquinas on Law

Starting your reading of the Summa Theologica with this question (II-Ie.90.1, if you’re keeping score) is not a terribly painful place to begin. His first question on the law is: “Whether law is something pertaining to reason?” In other words, is there something inherently rational and objective about the law, or is it arbitrary, or is it merely self-referential?

Remember, here, Plato’s insistence that justice (we’ll come back to how justice relates to law) can’t only be the limited, somewhat erratic, merely human kind of justice we strive for at our best – much less the “might makes right” kind of justice so often actually acted on. Remember also the status of “Law” in the Scriptures, as revealed by God for a certain end. This is the foundational heritage Aquinas receives, and he has no interest at all in changing it. What he’s trying to do is define it, using an Aristotelian language and framework.

First, the objections: “It seems that law is not something pertaining to reason.” (This is the wrong answer, but he tries to establish it first, as I explained about his method in class.)

Objection 1, from St. Paul: “I see another law in my members, etc.” He takes this quite literally: if law is “in” the members, it can’t be inherently rational, since reason is not anything “in” any bodily organ.

Objection 2, from the nature of reason: reason is composed of power, habit, and act (he’s taking this from Aristotle, of course). But law is not any of power, habit, or act, for the reasons he lists. So it’s not inherently related to reason.

Objection 3, from the nature of law: law moves its subjects to right action, that is to say, in their will. Therefore law pertains to will, not to reason.

None of these objections, probably, will strike us as particularly forceful or concrete. Frankly, I think he’s fishing for objections here, because, given what he’s already established all through the first part and most of the first-of-the-second part, it should be pretty obvious that law, taken as an ideal or type, is derived from the Logos, therefore it is indeed something pertaining to reason. Indeed, his “on the contrary” doesn’t even need to cite a more authoritative source than the Summa itself! But he’s trying to be completely consistent in his method, so he proceeds as usual.

In fact, Objection 2 is not that weak a counter-argument. If the nature of reason does not overlap with the nature of law at all, then how can they pertain to each other in any way? But of course, the rebuttal is also fairly self-evident: law acts on the subject through reason’s power (law limits it), habit (law forms it), and act (law regulates it).

His “I answer that” always introduces the meat of the argument. “Law is a rule and measure of acts, whereby man is induced to act or is restrained from acting…” with respect to some end (toward a good, away from an evil). But the nature of man is reason, and the end of man is toward perfect reason (he doesn’t say so here, but of course we know this is the Logos). So reason itself is the fundamental “rule and measure” of all man’s acts; therefore law, as part of that “rule and measure,” pertains to reason.

Then he replies to the objections. To objection 1, he distinguishes the literal “in” versus the metaphorical “in.” To objection 2, he rebuts as above, laying out with considerable precision exactly what parts of the rational faculties are involved, and how. This is pretty meaty, itself. To objection 3, he notes the rational nature of the will itself.

So we conclude, then, not only that the law pertains to reason, but also have an idea of how it pertains. It is referential to the Logos; that is, law is, in its own nature, divine, and we know it by means of “natural law” and “revealed law,” exactly parallel to “natural revelation” and “special revelation” of other aspects of the divine Will and Persons. Law is non-arbitrary, therefore, and has an objective content that can be known. (He’ll get into that much more in question 91.) Law acts on the will of the subject, both directing (“Hey, there, Will, you should eat vegetables before dessert.”) and limiting (“Will, if you grab that cookie, you’ll get 5 lashes!”).

Ultimately, all of this hangs on his definitions of what reason is (the Logos, and its reflections in the created world, both personally, in my reason, and impersonally, in the intelligibility of stuff), and what law is ("a rule and measure of acts"). His definition of reason is pretty secure. But do you agree with his definition of law? What other definitions are possible, and do they still lead to the same conclusion, or to a different one?

Fr. Barron on why we believe in God

This is relevant to what we've been thinking about revelation. It's also relevant to the Philosophy you second years are about to have, and to Christology later in the year for the 4th-years. It rests on an idea of natural theology, which is, I would repeat, an eminently reasonable assumption.



Maniple wave to Aggie Catholics.

St. Lawrence, Deacon and Martyr

"[T]he wicked persecutor’s wrath was vented on Laurentius the deacon, who was pre-eminent not only in the performance of the sacred rites, but also in the management of the church’s property, promising himself double spoil from one man’s capture: for if he forced him to surrender the sacred treasures, he would also drive him out of the pale of true religion. And so this man, so greedy of money and such a foe to the truth, arms himself with double weapon: with avarice to plunder the gold; with impiety to carry off Christ. He demands of the guileless guardian of the sanctuary that the church wealth on which his greedy mind was set should be brought to him. But the holy deacon showed him where he had them stored, by pointing to the many troops of poor saints, in the feeding and clothing of whom he had a store of riches which he could not lose, and which were the more entirely safe that the money had been spent on so holy a cause. The baffled plunderer, therefore, frets, and blazing out into hatred of a religion, which had put riches to such a use… "(Pope St. Leo the Great, Sermon 85, 2-3).

St. Lawrence witnessed with his death what he lived with his life: that boundless love for our Lord Jesus Christ which chooses the good of others above one's own good. St. Leo instructs us with the antithesis between the prefect, "so greedy of money and such a foe of the truth," and St. Lawrence, "pre-eminent in the sacred rites and in managing the Church's property," -- managed not by conserving material goods, but by transforming material goods into imperishable heavenly goods.

Last Sunday we heard the Gospel, "Where your treasure is, there is your heart." St. Lawrence makes the choice for Christ, for the Church, for virtue in serving "in the diaconia of liturgy, word, and charity." We make the same choice in thousands of little ways. How we make those choices, though they seem unimportant, shapes how we can make the Big Choice, when push comes to shove. That "Big Choice" we may have to face only once or twice in a lifetime. But if we're not practicing for it with the daily choices, we won't make it well.

May God give us the grace to grow daily in serving Him and His little ones.

Models of Revelation 14

We’re still in Ch 9, on Dulles’s idea of “symbolic mediation.” Dulles argues that revelation occurs primarily in symbols – special kinds of signs that become deeply embedded in Tradition, that carry multiple, powerful layers of meaning, and that ultimately become definitive for that Tradition. I have agreed with much of what Dulles is arguing here about how symbols work in Tradition and in carrying the content of revelation symbolically. But I have argued in rebuttal that the primary (as in original and bedrock) form of revelation needs to be something more than a symbol. The Tradition cannot take a single, coherent direction only from a multi-valent symbol. I have suggested that historical fact, direct propositional revelation, direct ritual or liturgical revelation, and symbolic revelation all coincide to establish the baseline of meaning, from which further symbols take their meanings. The two most critical of these nexus are Exodus, and the Incarnation and Passion of Christ.

Having seen how his symbols work in reference to the propositional model, he works through the other four in the same way. I believe my rejoinder holds up in each case: symbols cannot define themselves, ultimately; something more must be given to be definitive, to establish the Tradition.

In reference to the historical model, Dulles takes the historical events themselves as symbols. “Just as a literary text discloses to the literate reader a meaning which is really there, so a revelatory sign-event, to the religiously disposed observer, can convey a divine meaning that truly belongs to the event” (p. 146). Dulles briefly addresses the two problems of subjectivity – that is, maintaining a fixed meaning in the sign-event if it can’t be accurately expressed propositionally, but only narratively – and of distinguishing in history special divine causation (an “act of God”), and therefore dealing with miracles.

In reference to the experiential model, the symbols must mediate the experience of divine presence, and shape the revealed meaning of that presence. “[T]he experience of grace cannot be rightly interpreted, or recognized for what it is, without the help of symbols derived from the known world through sensory experience” (149). The mystical experience also emphasizes the “gap” between symbol and divine reality.

In reference to the dialectical model, the Word itself is taken as the predominant symbol. There is a risk here of taking Christ only as “a” symbol, rather than as unique Savior. Here, Dulles must in fact take my position on his argument, to avoid this: “The word, as the sign [broad sense, not narrow “symbol”] which articulates meaning, is a necessary complement to revelation through any other kind of symbol. The grosser symbolism of nature, deed, or artifact [including ritual], potent though it may be, is too ambiguous to be the sole mediator of revealed religion. The symbol becomes revelation only when interpreted…. For public revelation, moreover, there must be external words, capable of being heard or seen. Such attesting words are necessarily symbolic, for otherwise they could not be conducive to a salvific union with the divine.” (p. 152).

Dulles and I would seem to disagree on the priority of this last sentence. For him, as I understand his argument, the symbols are primary, and the words are human words being used as further, derived symbols to reveal divine truth. I would argue in contrast that the Word, the Logos, is primary to the use of words as symbols.

Finally, in reference to the new consciousness model, symbols do shape and affect our experience, but Dulles insists on the objectiveness of the symbols’ meaning. He also distinguishes (for the first time, here) between primary symbols that carry objective revealed meaning, and “mutable secondary symbols” (153-4; he those symbols such as those in art or liturgy – though he doesn’t here, as I wish he had, note that some of those liturgical symbols are in fact primary) which are more flexible over time.

At this point in my analysis of his argument, I add a second objection. In his desire to retrieve what he sees as the benefits of the different models, he does not distinguish adequately between the giving of the symbol, and our reception and response to it.

The giving of the symbol (if revelation is indeed in the form of symbols) must be accompanied with defining, irreducible propositional, historical, and probably liturgical elements, just like I have argued in reference to Exodus and the Incarnation and Passion. But, the giving of the symbols does not first and foremost involve our inner experience, dialectical submission, or conversion (“new awareness”). These are not the form of revelation, but our response to revelation. What is true in these models is true about our reception of revelation, not about revelation per se. Dulles does yeoman work to show the continuity between 1 and 2 as giving revelation, and 3, 4, and 5 as receiving it. My insistence on the primacy of a Logical nexus of word, sign, and act helps us to separate out these two modes from each other.

Models of Revelation - Excursus on Faith and Reason

One of the greatest strengths of the "traditional" view of theology (Patristic and Scholastic) is how the category of knowing which is "faith" is intrinsically related to the category of knowing which is "reason." This is the gist of the famous line that theology means "faith seeking understanding." All truth leads to Truth, therefore, and Truth must necessarily be one and universal.

These ideas about truth, knowledge, and so forth are not merely unprovable assumptions, for which other (equally valid because equally unprovable) assumptions might be substituted. Rather, they rest on a long tradition of observation, analysis, testing of hypothesis, and synthesis. They are proven, at least at the level of plausibility and self-coherence. They have stood the test of time (despite the contempt that modernity's irrationality holds them in). They are, in effect, conclusions of "natural theology."

Take, for example, the problem of defining "life" in "living" objects, as opposed to non-living objects. Reason tells us that the stuff is the same - the same elements of hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen, merely arranged differently here than there. Reason tells us, however, that there is clearly something different between living and non-living things. If you've ever seen a person or an animal die, you know that the difference is clearly visible, but not clearly quantifiable. Metaphors like "the light in the eyes" must be employed. In fact, reason tells us that the difference between living and non-living is not really a question of the arrangement of stuff (atoms, molecules) at all. It's something different.

In other words, experience, observation, and reason clearly "prove" the existence of something non-material. Its effects are observable; it itself is not directly observable. In terms of living objects, this non-material element can be called "soul." It expresses the vitality, motion, and ultimately rationality of different kinds of living things. But it can never be reduced only to material properties.

Coming at the problem from the angle of faith works essentially the same, but in reverse. The same observations about the material world, and the visible effects of the spiritual world therein, describe different kinds of relationships with God. Here "soul" is not a property or set of properties related to the observable differences in categories of objects, but defining spiritual realities that separate those same categories of objects in how that relate to God.

But these two aspects of the idea of "soul," from reason and from faith, are not to be seen as unrelated to each other. Together, they tell us more about "soul" than simply the juxtaposition of the two ways of knowing.

But for this to be true, that spiritual knowledge must be expressible in the form of a proposition (or more likely, a set of propositions). Even if the set of propositions is not complete in an absolute sense, it still must be relatively complete (relative to the extent of our ability to know at all), and accurate to the same extent. If this is not true, then "faith" knowledge is not related to "reason" knowledge, since the rules of logic (that is, propositional relationships) don't work there.

This is the heart of the propositional model in Dulles's schema. Of the five, only this model holds the intrinsic relationship of faith-knowledge and reason-knowledge; that is, that revelation is ultimately reasonable in itself. The historical model, and Dulles's theory of symbolic mediation, hold an extrinsic relationship between faith and reason. This can, in practice, be fairly close to the intrinsic relationship, but it's not really the same idea. At root, the existential, dialectic, and transcendent models all separate faith and reason from each other in modernist ways; this is why they are less successful at grasping revelation.

This is why I insisted in the previous post that there must be some non-ambiguous "rule" - an act, a word, or a symbol; or a combination of these, as in Exodus and the Passion - at the bedrock of revelation, prior to the mediation of the symbol(s). This "rule" must be expressible (to the extent of human knowing) as complete and accurate propositions. Even if the propositions are derived, and not taken as the primary content of the revelation itself, still the propositions are equal to the revelation in its relationship to the faith community: the propositions carry the revelation. I mean this concretely, not abstractly, because the propositions are not simply abstract, but concretely embedded in the liturgical life of the community (Passover and Mass, etc.). They are still explicit, however: they are acts, words, and symbols expressible as propositions. Therefore the meaning is not ambiguous and subject to change, and not derived from human sources, but given by God.

It is precisely in the knowing by both faith and reason that the certitude of revelation exceeds that of science (reason alone) or of individual inspiration (faith alone). It is precisely in the being carried by Tradition that the meaning remains stable and non-arbitrary. And it is precisely in the "faith seeking understanding" that we accept the invitation into God's own life, which is what revelation really is.

Models of Revelation 13

In the second half of Chapter 9, Dulles is testing three Christian symbols – light, the Cross, and the Eucharist – to see how they work in each of the five models he’s described. He quickly encounters some difficulties.

Propositional Model – “To theologians who view revelation as propositional, the symbolic approach seems to imperil the truth of revelation. The danger is not altogether imaginary” (141). In this counter-argument, a symbol’s absence of fixed meaning makes it unsuited for revealing objective, universal, unchanging Truth. Dulles cites one Gordon Clark on the example of the Cross (142), showing how the absence of fixed meaning denudes the Cross of the power to reveal. Dulles responds by noting how the symbol of the Cross needs to be re-expressed, through metaphor and simile, into propositions. These propositions “explicate” the symbol of the Cross in order to limit its ambiguity. “But the propositional explication, to the extent that it achieves literalness, leaves out things tacitly perceived through the symbol…” (143). However, Dulles again avoids the critical question of priority in meaning (in other words, of authority in interpretation of the symbol). Does the limitation of ambiguity by re-expressing into propositions, come before or after the symbol itself? In other words, do the limits inhere in the symbol, or must they be supplied? If the former, how is this a supernatural revelation? If the latter, whence do they come?

Dulles seems to argue for inherence: “Because of the cognitive content implicit in the originative symbols, revelatory symbolism is able not only to “give rise to thought” but also to shape the thought it arouses” (144). But then he equivocates: “Yet the influence travels in both directions. Doctrine enriches the meaning of symbols…. As the process of doctrinal development goes on, the Church tests new proposals through its grasp of the total symbol-system…” (144). He appeals to Tradition, in the form of “participation in the community of faith,” to limit the pliability of symbols’ meanings. “Interpreted against the background of the symbols and of Christian life, certain conceptual formulations can be put forward as bearing the authority of revelation” (145).

What he means, I think, is that the symbol is primary. In the ways in which the symbol is received by the community, its meaning becomes much more firmly fixed. Eventually, some of those meanings are clarified to the point of propositional formulation as dogma or doctrine. These formulations in turn operate on other symbols in the same limiting or specifying fashion, and can even become symbols themselves. The accumulation of symbols with fixed, received meanings by the community comprises Tradition.

The advantage of this argument is that it clearly relates the Christian community, in its origins, with its Jewish roots. Christianity begins, not in a vacuum, but within an existing revelatory tradition. However, I think Dulles makes a mistake, overstating the power of Tradition to define itself. His argument just pushes the problem of certainty and authority further backwards in time. If that ground cannot ultimately be found, then the peril to the truth of revelation remains. That is, if the tradition is built up in the very-distant past purely in reference to human culture (in this case, ancient Israel’s human culture) or human choices of possible meaning, can it be said with certainty, with the “authority of revelation,” that that tradition “got it right” with respect to its symbols? Why could they not have been (or now be) interpreted differently, even contradictorily?

Somewhere behind that tradition of traditions, I would argue, there must be a solid, unambiguous, revelation – either a proposition, or an event, or a symbol-with-only-one-possible-meaning – to provide the authority for tradition to accumulate upon.

Now, for ancient Israel, that was Exodus: the event as a whole, including as distinct items of revelation the propositional revelations – “I am who am;” the Ten Commandments; the terms of the Covenant with Moses – and the liturgical rituals of the Passover. These were not treated as primary symbols, but rather as secondary symbols. That is, their nature and usefulness as symbols derived from their unambiguous, divine, no-other-way-to-explain-it-as-it-actually-happened authority, and not the other way around. It’s only given this bedrock for the tradition, that other symbols can come to function in the manner Dulles describes here.

For Christians, the Passion-and-Resurrection of Christ functions in exactly the same way. The event, including its distinct propositional and liturgical revelations, is primary to all symbols. Christian symbols take it as their referent; it is definitive for the Tradition, and for the symbols in that Tradition. Only with this (now double) bedrock as primary revelation and authority, can other symbols (including the Cross) come to function in the way Dulles argues.