Toward a Deeper Moral-Theological Continuity: Benoît-Henri Merkelbach and Thomistic Moral Theology
This essay is the draft of a talk I delivered earlier this year at a symposium in Leuven, Belgium, celebrating the life and influence of Flemish (and other) Dominicans at the Priory and the University, as part of the university’s six-hundredth-anniversary festivities. I will be revising it for publication—removing some of its oral elements and adding a full footnote apparatus for the claims made throughout. However, because the topic is of such interest, I wanted to share this early version online for those who might be interested in the broader narrative I propose.
Briefly stated: a deeper engagement with early-twentieth-century scholastics reveals figures voicing many of the criticisms and developments most famously associated with Fr. Servais Pinckaers. Even more than Dominic Prümmer, Fr. Merkelbach exemplifies a robustly scholastic renewal of moral theology within the Dominican order. He was not alone: Labourdette, Garrigou-Lagrange, and Gardeil, among others, were similarly engaged in this renewal in their own ways.
As a Byzantine Catholic, my own approach to teaching moral theology differs somewhat from the purely scholastic method grounded directly in Thomas Aquinas’s Summa theologiae. Nonetheless, I find Merkelbach to be a fascinating resource for anyone wishing to deepen Catholic moral theology today. He stands as a liminal figure on the threshold between casuistry and a more robust theological approach to morals. Yet, as I discuss here, he is already firmly positioned on the “renewal” side of that divide. For the sake of continuity in Latin moral theology—and for the sake of sound Catholic theological thought more generally—he offers a valuable resource for deepening the historical self-understanding of the genuinely Catholic mind.
Allow a few basic biographical and bibliographical remarks about the subject of this talk, Fr. Benoît-Henri Merkelbach. He was born in Tongres in Belgian Limburg on January 6, 1871 and died in Leuven on July 25, 1942. He was ordained a priest for the diocese of Liège in 1894 and then earned a theological licentiate at the University of Leuven four years later. Prior to his teaching at the seminary, he spent seven years as a vicar only thereafter to serve as a professor of dogmatic theology from 1908 to 1917, when he entered the Dominican novitiate. During this time, he wrote a series of articles concerned with various topics of sacramental theology and Mariology, as well as volumes dedicated to topics related to scriptural inspiration and textual-historical questions related to Christological dogmas. These works attempted to thread the needle amid the contesting parties in the modernist crisis.
Upon making his first profession as a Dominican, he was immediately sent back to Leuven, where he completed his doctorate the next year and was tasked with teaching pastoral theology. Eventually, he was tasked with teaching moral theology, which began his gradual ascent toward recognition as an authority in moral matters. During this time, he would begin writing articles related to the question of conscience and the treatise on moral acts, as well as a series of volumes dedicated to particular subjects in morals, combining speculative, canonical, and casuistic elements, dedicated to chastity, beginning of life issues, and several works concerning the sacrament of confession. Likewise, he continued to publish works in Mariology, with important studies related to Mary’s role as mediatrix (these latter partly encouraged by Cardinal Mercier), culminating in his Tractatus de Beatissima Virgine Maria Matre Dei atque Deum inter et homines Mediatrice. It was also during this time that he began composing his magnum opus, his Summa theologia moralis.
In 1929, Fr. Stanislas Gillet (recently elected as Masterof the Dominican Order) called him to the Angelicum to fill a recently vacated position in pastoral and casuistic theology. It was during this time that he began to bring into publication the three volumes of the Summa theologia moralis (De principiis, De virtutibus moralibus, and De sacramentis). The text is clearly a development distancing itself from the methods of casuistry and toward a renewed appreciation for the theological methodology at work in the logic of the Secunda pars of Thomas Aquinas’s Summa theologiae. While teaching in Rome, Fr. Merkelbach was remembered warmly as a capable and gentle teacher, who, nonetheless, remained academically rigorous in both examination and in his duties when he served in the role of dean of theology. Because of declining health, he returned to Leuven in 1936, where he taught until the end of his life in 1942.
In this paper, I would like to focus on a point of high-level consideration regarding the structure of Fr. Merkelbach’s major pedagogical treatise. He represents a kind of liminal figure between two eras in moral theological pedagogy in Latin Catholicism. Looking backward, he remained a kind of exponent of Dominican probabiliorism, and his teaching posts were always connected to pastoral and casuistic theology. However, the structure of his Summa theologia moralis marked a profound departure from the moral theological instruction found in most seminaries of his day. As I will argue, he primarily finds himself on the side of the divide as an exponent of what was a renewal in his day—in point of fact, an approach that was much older, more founded not only in Thomism but in a more fully theological morality—that is, a morality in which supernatural beatitude, grace, and the virtues and gifts play a preponderant role. Nonetheless, it is instructive to consider his manual, in which we can still detect certain final remnants of the older methods and orderings of moral theological pedagogy, dependent upon St. Alphonsus and, through him, the shifts in theology which took place in the wake of the probabilist controversies. In what follows, I will begin by first registering several important clarifications regarding these two terms “manual” and “casuistry.” Following this, I will compare the overall structure of Fr. Merkelbach’s work to the reigning ordering of the casuist methods of his day. I will focus above all on his own structural accounts for the interrelations among the treatises in the works, while also observing certain particularities which emerge along the way. By so presenting him, I hope to invite scholars to begin the process of engaging with his thought as an indicia of significant progress in rigorously scholastic moral theological methodology already several decades prior to the Second Vatican Council.
“Manuals” and “Casuistry”
We should begin by considering this term, “manual.” The word is often bandied about as a point of contrast between pre-conciliar and post-conciliar texts. Etymologically, the term merely is descriptive, like the more Germanic term “handbook.” It indicates the size of the text, fitting easily within one’s hand. Of course, the form is linked to the content function that such small-form texts often fulfilled: works that are sufficiently summary or simple to warrant such smaller binding size.
Sociologically, in a Catholic context at least, the term has come to refer to several genres of texts. Most generically, it refers to those volumes (primarily, but not exclusively) written in Latin, which were dedicated to topics of philosophical and theological learning, most often for those in formation for the priesthood or for those who would teach such students. Whichever of these audiences was addressed, one can find text devoted to either specific divisions of philosophical and theological discourse, or to an entire cursus of studies. Thus, one can find specific treatises, written around one of the “treatises” of theology: Logica minor, Cosmologia, De locis theologicis, De inspiratione sacrae scripturae theologica, De ecclesia, De revelatione, De Verbo Incarnato, De virtutibus infusis, De ordine, etc. Or, texts would be written covering a full Cursus of studies. Thus, one would have various texts like those written by Cardinal Zigliara, Cardinal Mercier, Joseph Gredt, Édouard Hugon, Adolphe Tanquerey, Joseph Pohle, Jean-Marie Hervé, Emmanuel Doronzo, and many others. This division cuts across what we could consider “pedagogical texts” and that intend to present “the state of the art”—whether on a particular division of knowledge or of the whole discipline in question.
In general, most of the texts that are implicitly considered here are pedagogical in nature. Even if the technicality of such texts is significant, this is often due to the fact that Latin Catholic formation had become quite exacting on a number of theological topics, due to the development of the schools. For this reason, there is perhaps a porous border between those texts which are written for students and those which are written for the philosophical or theological master. A good example of this is an earlier text, the 18th century Summa sancti Thomae by Charles René Billuart. The work presents itself as a pedagogical course, an introduction to the main lines of the Thomist tradition which Billuart had inherited. Yet, it also does present, in a sufficiently technical manner the “state of the art” in Billuart’s day in his line of the Thomist school. But, by way of even clearer contrast, when one reads the sacramental or dogmatic texts of Emmanuel Doronzo, one is faced with texts that clearly present academic Thomism, in the midst of its debates, explicitly for consumption by professors of theology. Texts within these lines of writing will vary in style, some (perhaps most) being summary and propositional in nature, though others attempt to present their topics with a kind of living awareness of the scientific and, on a some occasions at least, historical reflection needed for understanding the principles, causes, properties, effects, and interconnections of the topics under consideration. In short, one must care to remember that the readership of a “manual” is a bit porous, as is its technicality as well.
Thank you for allowing this lengthy general parenthesis. It provides the necessary background, however, for another specific distinction within the domain of so-called moral “manuals.” Already, among the examples that I provided above, I indicated the fact that various scholastics would pen specific, stand-alone works dedicated to one or another of the “treatises” of theology (generally based on the lineaments found in Thomas’s Summa theologiae). The example I used above was De virtutibus infusis, but one can find various separate treatises: De actibus humanis, De conscientia, De iustitia, De virtute fidei, and so forth. However, in moral matters, another sort of specific text was also well known, texts dedicated to so-called “cases of conscience.” Such texts have a long history, going back at least to the Medieval penitential manuals and being found throughout the modern period in both Catholic and Protestant writings. Varying in content, such texts would consider in brief various specific cases of moral determination, often intermingled with questions of the application of canon law. Some texts would trace the lineaments of the more general treatises of moral theology, effectively providing specific cases of conscience that would parallel the more speculative content found in work dedicated to the general cursus of studies in moral theology.
This brings us, therefore, to another sense of “moral manual” applied to this era: the general treatise on morals. Here, one has the general overview text used primarily for seminary formation, providing the principles for evaluating human acts. I suspect that most of you are familiar with the criticisms that have been raised against this particular form of manual. Sequestered in isolation from a separated-off dogmatic theology, such texts are a kind of faint echo of the theological integration that one can find in a course of studies more closely bound to the structural format of Saint Thomas’s Summa theologiae. We have all heard elements of this story: in such a theology, we are presented with an ethical outlook that no longer considers beatitude, grace, or even much more than the most general outlines of virtue and the passions. The overriding structural motif is that of conscience and its discernment in view of law, often schematically presented in the form of the Ten Commandments, to which are annexed precepts of the Church and the moral requirements of sacramental administration and reception. Where virtue is considered, the context is that of precept and counsel, not an integrated theological presentation of this or that principle of human acts.
It is here that we have what is perhaps most essential to the moral theology presented during the modern era (16th to early-20th centuries) of Latin Catholic life, especially as the controversies over probabilism hardened into a specific theological form: casuist moral theology. But we must recognize precisely what I mean by “casuistry” here.
The term can have several meanings. We’ve already encountered two of them. In the most specific sense, it refers to those manuals which were dedicated to specific cases of conscience, viewed through the lens of the duty-centric moral theology of the day. In this sense, it refers to a very particular phenomenon, with artifacts, from the past written by members of the various moral schools (probabilists, probabiliorists, equiprobabilists). Related to this first sense of “casuistry” is a second, more general sense of the term which is not as closely connected to the logic of the probabilist debates. In other words, it can merely refer to the understandable and necessary task of considering particular cases of moral action when teaching and reflecting on topics in moral philosophy and moral theology. This is something that all of us who have taught morals have done. In fact, it’s impossible to do sound moral thinking without using particular cases, whether real or imagined, as an empirical basis for one’s abstraction. One could imagine such casuistry being integrated into the virtue framework found in Thomas Aquinas’s ST II-II, with a consideration of particular cases attached to each virtue and vice.
But what is most important is neither a particular historical manifestation of case analysis, nor the more general consideration of particular cases of moral agency. There is a third and most essential core to “casuistry,” one which runs through the moral texts written during this era. It can even be operative in a text that does not consider a single specific case of conscience. It is the aforementioned meeting of conscience with freedom and law. When a moral text is structured around these two principles as its main axis, no matter how abstract the text is, no matter how speculative it might even seem, nonetheless, it is a text of “casuistry” because it is written from the perspective of the very principles of the interplay of freedom and law. This is the framework within which the probabilist logic plays out, whether one is a probabilist, probabiliorist, or equiprobabilist. And, to stress the point again: the logic of such an outlook can structure an entire moral theology even when not a single specific case is addressed. Before naming the phenomenon of considering particularities, “casuistry” names a moral outlook structured around the conscience and law as the rules of human acts.
When the task of moral theology is laid out along these lines, it becomes quite difficult to escape the competitive dialectic between freedom and law. The logic is very clear in a work like St. Alphonsus’ Theologia moralis or Gury’s Compendium theologiae moralis. Human acts are treated in order to set up the discussion of conscience, with a clear eye to establishing the particular probabilist-era system of analysis which will then face the various laws and sins to be considered first in general, and then in more particular detail. In Gury, the logic of the system will show itself quite clearly in its lengthy discussion of matters of justice and contracts: external duties, most readily adjudicated in the external forum, the native soil for the calculus of probabilism. The intellectual-theological milieu created by this structure is well summarized by Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange thus: “Some modern manuals of moral theology contain almost nothing other than casuistic theology, and in them moral theology appears like a science of grave and minor sins to be avoided rather than a science concerning virtues to be perfected.” That is, by foregrounding negative precepts and sins, the moral theology based upon a casuist logic—in the third sense of “casuist” mentioned earlier—will tend to define morality in terms of the infraction of the law, as though to define light (right deeds) in terms of darkness (sinful deeds).
But it is here that we return to the Summa theologia moralis of Fr. Merkelbach. What should be made of his own structure, of the way that he organizes the matter of his massive three volumes? Clearly, his lengthy inclusion of the sacraments is, broadly, akin to what is found in manuals like Gury’s, likely inspired in part by the curricular requirements of his era. He justifies the inclusion of the sacraments within moral theology by noting that the sacraments are first and foremost realities that are meant to be received. Thus, he presents them under a kind of practico-moral aspect. A comparison with someone like Gury will yield interesting observations which show that the latter’s presentation is much more marked by the legalism of the casuistic framework than is Fr. Merkelbach’s much fuller and theological consideration of the nature and activity of the sacraments in relation to the moral life.
However, I would like to spend our time focusing on some themes drawn from the first two volumes of the work. It is here that it becomes quite clear that the intellectual space in which we are moving about is quite different from the tradition descending from Busenbaum and St. Alphonus. In the matters dedicated to “specific” moral theology, the high-level structural lineaments in Fr. Merkelbach are those of St. Thomas: the three theological virtues and the four moral virtues, with their various species. And at the level of general principles, it would seem that Fr. Merkelbach has effectively “turned the corner” regarding the appropriate treatises to be covered. In fact, I remember my first interaction with the text, thinking: Ah, beatitude is placed at the head here; the world is aright. Admittedly, his discussion of human acts includes a lengthy discussion of conscience, but I thought (and still think): there can be development in moral matters. It is not surprising that the several articles in the Summa theologiae dedicated to conscience—ST I, q. 79, a. 13 (Is conscience a power in the intellectual part of the soul?), ST I-II, q. 19, a. 5 (Does erring reason bind?), and a. 6 (Is the will evil if it follows erring reason against the law of God?)—would find some development given the many debates that arose over the years. Even someone who is purely “Thomasian”—that is, oriented towardsthe historical Thomas—would agree that it is legitimate to clarify the open questions raised by these texts.
However, there is something telling in the text itself, which is not as minor as it might appear at first glance. Already, I have emphasized the fact that just as much as material content, the ordering of treatises can tell quite a bit about the structural principles of a given theological outlook. The order of treatises indicates something about which truths function as principles for explaining other truths in a given synthesis.
To this end, it is telling if one contrasts the order and length of treatises in the Summa theologiae, Gury’s Compendium, Alphonsus’s Theologia Moralis, and Merkelbach’s Summa theologia moralis. (Eventually, this chart will be updated to reflect approximate word counts in Thomas, given that a listing of questions alone does not capture the length of each treatise.)
Quantity obviously does not tell the whole story, so we will need to make some observations regarding each of these treatises in their particular details as well. However, before doing that, nonetheless, it is useful to see what has taken place here and what differs. First and foremost, it is important to note that, in Fr. Merkelbach, the treatise on beatitude is reinstated, in the form of a commentary on Saint Thomas and the later Scholastic disputations. Therefore, at the center of the initial exposition, we have a clear statement of the supernatural end of human destiny, presented as a clear context for all that follows.
The discussion of human acts and, in particular, conscience is unique here because of certain interpretive decisions that Merkelbach has made, in line with certain later Thomists (e.g., John of St. Thomas, Contenson, Gotti, Billuart, and others), namely to connect questions of conscience to the virtue of prudence. In fact, he believed that much of modern moral theology was failing to correctly treat the questions raised during the probabilist controversy precisely because it had abstracted the desired discernment from the context of the various virtues connected with prudence. Therefore, in addition to his brief treatise on conscience in general, he established a sub-treatise “On the Virtues Connected to Prudence Considered in Relation to the Formation of Conscience.” Of the 130 pages dedicated to prudence, 100 pages are dedicated to this topic. If he retains the casuist focus on conscience, he nonetheless does so within a very different (i.e., virtue-centered) framework.
The reader will be surprised by the excision of the treatise on grace and that dedicated to the passions. As we will soon see, he refers the reader respectively to works in dogmatics and philosophical psychology. Many elements relevant to the treatise on grace find their way into his discussion of the virtues in general and throughout his treatment of the theological virtues. However, it was not solely a casuist reduction of moral theology which led him to remove grace from moral theology. The repositioning of grace to the treatise De deo creante et elevante was due to a post-Tridentine concern with anti-Jansenist errors regarding the supernaturality of grace and the deepening of concern for exactness related to questions of divine providence and causality debated during the Congregatio de auxiliis. This reorganization is not per se connected to the logic of casuistry, even though it is consonant with the theological minimalizing that attend upon casuist methods. Similarly, the complete theological treatment of human acts is impoverished when the passions are delegated to philosophical psychology. (In fact, the moral consideration of the passions thereby risks being underemphasized by treatment solely in the context of a speculative science.) It seems arguable to me that Fr. Merkelbach made these choices in view of the curricular practices of his day, indeed sometimes against the grain of his own preferences, as expressed in articles that he penned over the years.
Nonetheless, whatever might have been his preferences, as is clear from the chart above, certain points of structure retain the savor of the casuist ordering, especially the series of treatises running Conscience—Law—Sin. Concerning the implications of this ordering, it is useful to read the introductions that Merkelbach himself provides, following him through to the transition into his discussion of the virtues, where his macro-structure loses the casuist savor and returns to that of a more classical Thomist ordering. Thus, as he transitions from conscience to law, he writes:
After the consideration of human acts in themselves and their proximate, immediate, and intrinsic rule (conscience), there logically follows a treatise concerning the remote and extrinsic rule (as the extrinsic principle which rules conscience itself) according to which acts must be directed towards an end, namely, the law, which conscience must apply in each of our actions, and thus must be conformed and subordinated to it (no. 220).
There are several things to note in this passage. We see that the notion of “rule” and “measure” remains very important here. Fr. Merkelbach is strengthened in his affirmation that conscience is the rule of morality because he holds that right and certain conscience is prudence. And he will say as much, even, in the prologue to the treatise on sins. Structurally, in any case, conscience remains high in order, because it provides the proximate rule of human acts. Thus, the other measure-rule becomes necessary: law. The explanatory warp and woof at this stage is that of conscience and law. Therefore, at least at this level of structural explanation, things remain casuist in inspiration.
However, whenever one consults the content of this treatise, we find a significant change in method. In Gury, following upon a very brief summary of Thomas’s definition of law, the reader is presented with texts that clearly inclined one to think of the law primarily in terms of canonical and ecclesiastical law. The lawgivers, under consideration are popes, councils, and bishops, and this external forum remains structurally present throughout the remaining text. More space is spent on questions of dispensation from legal requirements than on the natural law, and the eternal law receives no treatment, whereas divine positive law (a perspective which lacks the theological depth of Thomas’s treatment of the New and Old Laws) and, especially, ecclesiastical law are signaled out for lengthy specific discussion among the various species of law. (The structure is not the same, but one can observe a similar spirit in Alphonsus Liguori, Theologia moralis, tract. 2 De legibus.)
Fr. Merkelbach’s treatise is quite different. He begins with a treatment of law in general, followed by its individual species (eternal, human and civil, the Old and New divine law, and then ecclesiastical law). His general methodology is scientific, considering the essence of each species, followed by its properties and causes (e.g., their authors, ends, formation, obligation, and so forth). The section dedicated to ecclesiastical law is admittedly the lengthiest, taking up approximately the final 44% of the treatise. However, the broader context of the treatise is quite different. For Merkelbach, the structural analysis is the essence of law (in all its species), its properties, etc. Thus, even in questions concerning ecclesiastical law, the abiding logic of the treatise is to understand the nature of ecclesiastical law, though solely as one particular kind of contingent law. For Gury, by contrast, the very “treatise” on law itself is polarized by understanding the human authorities, promulgation, and forensic adjudication of ecclesiastical law as the central concern in the entire question of law. In other words the external forum of ecclesiastical law is the dominating perspective for his treatment of law as a whole. The modernist George Tyrrell well critiqued the baleful effects of such a spirit, with biting words addressed to Cardinal Mericer:
Do you imagine that the coming world will listen to a Church that has identified itself not only with the philosophy and theology of a dead past, but with the moral standards and conceptions which the line of casuists represented by Gury have developed to their profoundly immoral consequences? Will men long be content to estimate human acts from the outside as separate atoms or entities torn from their living context in the personality that gives them their unique unclassifiable character? with the attempt to apply the forms and methods of the forum externum to the infinite complexity of the inward life? Will they go on admiring a casuistry of evasion whose pride it is to whittle away duty to its lowest and meanest terms? (Medievalism [1908], 172–3).
Merkelbach, yes, includes a great deal on ecclesiastical law. But he is writing for men who will interact with this particular species of human law, derived from divine right. His presentation—in contrast to Gury’s—is nothing other than a development is a natural extension of the scientific structure of Thomas’s own treatise on law. In other words, Merkelbach’s Thomism bears witness to the living vitality of a Thomism that engages with reality and organically develops. (This observation could be repeated in regard to many topics throughout the text.)
The next treatise, following upon Laws, is Sin in General, the placement of which he explains thus:
Moral theology treats of human acts, by which we reach the end, beatitude. Such acts are those that conform to the dictate of right conscience and the eternal law. However, there are also human acts that do not conform to the law of God or the dictate of right conscience. By such acts, called sins, we fail to reach our end. Therefore, after the treatises on the end, on human acts, and on their rules—namely conscience and the law—rightly do we come now to consider the topic of evil acts or sins (no. 410).
This treatise’s placement is explained in a way that makes it clear that one is reading a text which is still laboring to overcome the casuist remnants of seminary formation in his day. Here, beatitude and human acts are mentioned together as a kind of first principle: beatitude in human acts, one could say. However, more in line with the casuist framework, failure to reach the end that is beatitude is reflected in terms of conformity to law (whether remotely or proximately through right conscience).
Nonetheless, here as well, the content of the treatise bears witness to the fact that Fr. Merkelbach has in hand Thomas and the Thomist tradition much more so than the casuist approach. For Fr. Gury, the treatise is devoted to sins, both in general and in specific. In his treatment of the former, the majority of the discussion is devoted to the gravity of sins and their numeric distinction. Regarding the first, the primary questions raised reveal the spirit of the treatise: What conditions are required for mortal sin; what are required for venial sin; how sins can be recognized as being mortal because of their matter; how a sin that is mortal in its genus might become venial and vice-versa; whether someone gravely sins by only caring to avoid mortal sins but not caring much about venial sins; whether one commits a grave sin by deliberating about consenting to something that is gravely illicit, but does not in the end consent; whether one commits a grave sin by performing an action without sufficient reason, knowing that it will lead to disordered passions. In the second half, after a discussion of sins of thought, he then briefly discusses the capital sins, spending the preponderance of space (five of seven pages) on sins of drunkenness.
The method deployed by Father Merkelbach bespeaks a very different sort of analysis, recalling much more the scientific structure of the Summa theologiae: the essence, distinction, comparison and gravity, and subject of sins. Then, the causes of sins are considered both interiorly, exteriorly, and in relation to each other (i.e., in the way that the various capital sins influence each other). Finally, he considers the effects of sin, in particular guilt and punishment, only here coming to discuss mortal and venial sin in detail and in their interrelations. The method here is much more that of the scientific canons of the Posterior analytics, concerned with understanding the essence, properties, and effects of sin. While externally set within the casuist framework, the interior structure of the treatise harkens to the methods of St. Thomas.
How, then, does he explain his transition back into the discussion of virtues? Here it is useful to consider both his discussion of habits and virtues in general and, then, his transition from the general treatises of moral theology to the specific treatises on the virtues. First, the introduction to the treatise on habits and virtues in general:
Moral theology considers those human acts by which man is moved towards God as the ultimate supernatural end. For it is the science of human acts in relation to God as the ultimate supernatural end, founded upon revealed principles. Hence, it deals with our ultimate end and the human acts by which we achieve this end or beatitude, and all that pertains to them. Now, actions require rules (exemplary principle) to which they must conform, namely the proximate rule or conscience, and the remote rule or laws. And if they do not conform, they are evil and called sins. Now, acts also have principles (efficient causes) by which they are produced: the external principle is God through grace; the internal principles are our powers and habits. Therefore, after the treatises on the end, on human acts in themselves, on conscience, on laws, and on sins—assuming the doctrine of grace from dogmatic theology and the doctrine of the powers of the soul from [philosophical] psychology—it is proper to consider habits, especially good ones, the chief of which are the virtues (no. 556).
And, then, as he transitions into his discussion of the specific virtues, he summarizes all of this as he, likewise, critiques the way that focus on the precepts had distorted the reigning moral theology of his day:
After general moral theology, which includes treatises on the ultimate end, human acts in themselves, their rules (namely conscience and laws), sins, and habits and virtues considered in general, we begin special moral theology which specifically deals with: (1) individual good acts, and the opposed evils or sins; (2) individual habits, virtues or gifts of the Holy Spirit, and the opposite vices; (3) individual precepts, whether affirmative (which pertain to good works and virtues) or negative (which pertain to sins and vices). Moreover, among all these, some matters pertain to the state of life to which all humans belong, others to given determinate states, namely, clerics, religious, bishops, etc.
Furthermore, all the aforementioned can be explained separately, or even many of them together, as many modern authors do, who, following St. Alphonsus, divide moral theology according to the precepts. However, St. Thomas’s methodology, which is scientific and more perfect, as well as more complete and concise, considers all these together so that in one and the same treatise we look at virtue with its acts, the opposed vices and sins, the gift of the Holy Spirit corresponding to this virtue, and the affirmative or negative precepts pertaining to all these…
Indeed, the order of precepts or commandments does not favor a scientific exposition, in which all things are logically connected and reduced to principles. Indeed:
a) Many acts are rather arbitrarily and very remotely reduced to precepts. For example, cursing, anger, and even gluttony and drunkenness (which are prone to lead to bodily harm) are related to the 5th commandment. And all the sacraments are reduced back to the 3rd commandment, the obligation of almsgiving to the 4th or 5th, and humility to the 8th.
b) There are acts or virtues that must be reduced to several precepts. For example, charity is reduced back to the 1st commandment regarding love of God, to the 5th for love of neighbor, and to the 4th or 5th for the duty of almsgiving. Similarly, restitution and justice, fortitude, and temperance pertain to different precepts as pertains to various matters. Thus, when the commandments are central, many things are mixed together even though their morality proceeds from very different formal reasons, and, conversely, those that pertain to one and the same virtue are separated.
c) Moreover, such a method gives rise to incomplete treatment of the topics at hand: those dealing expressly with acts prescribed by precepts omit those that are of counsel and pertain to perfection, leading one to consider primarily, or even exclusively, sins, not virtues. Hence, a division according to the virtues is entirely preferable.1
If the measure and norm of acts—conscience and law—exerted their structural influence up to this point, it is now the case that the principles of moral acts, the virtues, have wholly taken over the structure of the exposition. In what continues to follow for the remainder of volume one and the whole of volume two, one broadly finds content, page after page, which represents an updated development of Thomas’s own discussion of virtue, vice, sins, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Just as was the case for the “general” treatises, each topic is treated in terms of later scholastic and magisterial developments, as well as with a view to many contemporary authors. But the treatise structure here becomes wholly non-casuistic. Where precepts are discussed, they come only after the treatment of the virtues in a way that is reminiscent of the structure of St. Thomas’s text: essence, object, acts, causes, properties, etc. Such an ordering makes sense when one thinks in a way that follows the scientific canons of the Posterior analytics.
Following the outlook that is clearly present in St. Alphonsus, Gury considers the theological virtues almost entirely in view of the precepts connected therewith. Thus, to take one example, in the case of the theological virtue of faith: the moral requirements relative to the eliciting of the internal or external act of faith, along with the material extent to which one is bound to explicit faith. By contrast, Fr. Merkelbach’s treatment considers the object of faith, even including discussions on its development and proposal by the Church (akin to St. Thomas’s own method in the treatise on faith). He likewise devotes a lengthy section (much longer than Gury’s entire chapter on faith) to the act of faith itself, thereafter considering faith as a habit, with its causes, effects, and the Gifts of the Holy Spirit connected thereto. Following this, he considers the vices and sins that are directly and indirectly opposed to faith, as well as blasphemy considered as a sin that is opposed to the confession of faith. He only briefly considers the precepts of faith from the perspective of both the “divine-natural law” and the divine positive law (which is less explicit in its requirements). The context for the negative precept to neither deny nor doubt the faith clearly finds its fuller explanation in the earlier discussion of sins and vices. And as regards the positive precepts, his interest is less in minimal requirements (the minimalism of most classic authors concerning this topic is striking and, in fact, quite scandalizing for the implicit low estimation of Christian life which it bespeaks) but, rather: “Indeed, it is absolutely necessary, even the greatest commandment, to strive towards the ultimate supernatural end; however, we do not do this except through the acts of faith, hope, and charity…. [Such acts should be performed, yes at the beginning of the use of reason and at the end of life, but also] frequently through the course of life. For it is not enough for one to strive towards God once or twice, but rather, throughout our entire life, we must acknowledge our dependence on God; therefore, these acts must be elicited frequently” (no. 790).
The contrast is significant, and it speaks to the fact that, although elements of the old casuist synthesis remained operative in the structure of Fr. Merkelbach’s work, nonetheless, his text ultimately, in its deepest theological commitments, marks out a clear renunciation of the minimalist dialectic of freedom and law. A very interesting story remains to be told regarding how his annexation of questions of conscience into the virtue of prudence—which ultimately remains wholly personal and not fully transposable to the casuist tally sheet—perhaps bears witness to this transition to a morality of virtue and beatitude as well. And, consideration of his treatment of the various virtues repeatedly confirms the fact that the conceptualization of the moral life presented in the Summa theologiae moralis indicates an important moment of change in Latin moral theology.
No doubt, much room remained after the 1930s for greater integration of dogmatic theological themes into moral theology, as well as an ampler and less proof-text use of Scripture and the Fathers. But nonetheless, Fr. Merkelbach is a liminal figure of great importance. When one begins to consider each topic treated in detail in his magnum opus, one will discover here a living text, representing a revivified appropriation of the later scholastic tradition into the warp and woof of a moral theology which, upon further amelioration, would follow the lineaments of Thomas himself and the project which many Thomist moralists today are attempting to articulate. To such contemporary voices, he brings perhaps what is best and can be saved from the casuist era (for he at least provides a guide for attempting such an integration), while also showing the way that a Thomism grounded in the later scholastic debates is not a dead exercise in hyper-commentary but, instead, a tradition which, in the words of Maritain, provides “very precious, optical instruments, which enable us to see much more clearly certain depths of St. Thomas’s thought” (Maritain, “A Letter on Philosophy at the Time of the Council,” in Untrammeled Approaches, 67).
I have refrained from including footnotes in this article, in order to preserve that level of technicality for the print version of this work. However, I would be remiss if I did not note a late-life article by Fr. Merkelbach, in which he makes these points and there clearly consolidates his thought in opposition to the older casuist-style ordering. See Benoit-Henri Merkelbach, "Moralis theologiae idonea methodus" in Miscellanea Vermeersch, Analecta Gregoriana, vol. 9 (Rome: Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 1935), 1–16. Thanks are owed to Fr. John-Martin Ruíz of the Dominican House of Studies for helping me to acquire this text.↩︎
