Concupiscence

CONCUPISCENCE WHEN a mind of the stature of Saint Thomas Aquinas slightly shifts the metaphysical foundation of a traditional theological teaching, its implications to the rest of theology and spirituality may take centuries to become apparent. Aquinas started such a gigantic shift of position from the center-line of Augustine's theology of concupiscence, when by a simple distinction he assigned to concupiscence a material and not a formal role in original sin.1 The rich implications of this theological insight should have flowed from it gradually and continuously in the course of theological reflection. But this organic process was hindered by the theological reversal of the Reformation. The relation of sin and concupiscence became a burning issue. In response to the teaching of the Reformers the Council of Trent gave certain dogmatic definitions to preserve the Catholic tradition. The mechanism of challenge and defense had clouded the issue. Only today, as the dust of the Reformation is settling, are Catholic theologians coming to recognize that the theology of concupiscence still needs readjustment to make it consistant with the definite requirements of dogmatic definition and a long theological development. The first of these recent theologians to point out the serious difficulties of the traditional manuals' presentation of concupiscence is Franz Lakner.2 After studying the various definitions of concupiscence in recent textbooks, he observes that concupiscence is frequently conceived as an evil and disordered inclination , and integrity takes on the connotation of being freedom from evil concupiscence. Lakner points out that this distortion 1 M.-D. Chenu, Toward Understanding Saint Thomas (Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1963) 175 citing St. Thomas, I-II, q. 82, art. 3. 2 ZKT LXI (1937) 437-41. CONCUPISCENCE arises from a failure to distinguish precisely the dogmatic and the ascetico-moral concepts of concupiscence. L. Lercher 3 follows up Lakner's lead. He carefully distinguishes between concupiscence in the moral sense (concupiscentia prava) and in the dogmatic sense (appetite whose motion anticipates the judgment of reason and perdures against the command of the will) . Karl Rahner takes up the same problem in greater detail in his study on the " Theological Concept of Concupiscentia " in Theological Investigations.4 He agrees with the difficulties pointed out by Lakner and Lercher. He shows the additional difficulty of treating concupiscence as purely a sensitive power}; This, he says, is inconsistant with the Thomistic metaphysics of human knowledge and the relationship between the sensitive and spiritual cognitive powers. Every human cognitive and conative act is necessarily, in virtue of man's very nature, sensitive-spiritual or spiritual-sensitive. . . . Thus where there exists a concupiscence in the theological sense as an involuntary concupiscence anticipating free decision and resisting it, this is spiritual too.6 Why, then, asks Raimer, should concupiscence be conceived as a "rebellion " of the ontologically lower against the higher? St. Augustine's interpretation of St. Paul's concept of" flesh" and "spirit" as an opposition of man's sensibility (in the metaphysical sense) to his intellectuality Rahner sees to be the influence of Gnostic and Neoplatonic tendencies.7 The question is: have we today freed ourselves completely from such tendencies? The second service K. Rahner renders is to carefully point out the limits placed on theological speculation by the demands of doctrinal definition. The process of theological development through history has revealed two sides to this complex question which are not easily brought together. Rahner deliniates these demands. 3 Institutiones theol. dogm. 113 (Innsbruck, 1940) nn. 608-10. • Karl Rahner, Theological Investigation, I (Baltimore: Helicon Press, 1961) 345-89l. • Ibid., 352. • Ibid., 353. 7 Ibid., 354-57. 280 CONAN GALLAGHER The Council of Trent (Denz. 792) to some extent confirms the notion that concupiscence be called sin at least improperly speaking (quia ex peccato est, ad peccatum inclinat) . But theology, while being faithful to this universal teaching, must be consistant with the defined doctrine stating that integrity or freedom from concupiscence of the first creation was an undeserved exaltation of human nature and not its natural condition (Denz. 1026, 1078, 1516) . Rahner, after pointing out the difficulties that face modern theology in attempting to make precise the notion of concupiscence within the area delimited by the demands of...