Personal Receptivity and Act: A Thomistic Critique

PERSONAL RECEPTIVITY AND ACT: A THOMISTIC CRITIQUE STEVEN A. LONG Christendom College Front Royal, Virginia I. INTRODUCTION ECENT NEO-THOMISTIC WRITINGS on the nature f the human person have emphasized the metaphysics f spiritual being, and in particular the liberty of spiritual being from the passive potency that characterizes merely physical subsistents.1 The eminent Thomistic scholar Kenneth Schmitz seems to suggest that receptivity in spiritual being transcends the principles of act and potency altogether.2 Act and potency would then pertain primarily to subpersonal being. By contrast Norris Clarke infers that creaturely receptivity is defined more by act than by potency.' Thus viewed, receptivity becomes an analogous perfection that is possessed by God-a point made by a variety of authors4 attempting to unify under one notion creaturely and divine receptivity. 1 See W. Norris Clarke, Person and Being (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1993). In a different but allied vein, see Kenneth Schmitz, "The First Principle of Personal Becoming," The Review ofMetaphysics 47, no. 4 Oune 1994). 1 This is my reading of Schmitz's reflections in "Personal Becoming." .1 See W. Norris Clarke, "Response to Long's Comments," Communio (Spring, 1994)for instance, "But what I, with David Schindler and Hans Urs von Balthasar, am doing is precisely trying to expand the range of the concept, to call attention to the fact that at a certain level of being-the personal-the notion both can and should be detached from the limitations which ordinarily accompany it, so that it can turn into a sign of positive perfection rather than imperfection" (166). 4 See for example "The Person: Philosophy, Theology, and Receptivity" for diverse principled accounts of receptivity, Communio (Spring, 1994). In particular, note the approaches of Norris Clarke, S.J., and David Schindler, who each argue that the recep1 2 STEVEN A. LONG In this article I examine the root notion that personal activity transcends the ontological principles of act and potency. I also consider the effort to retain these ontological principles by christening receptivity a pure perfection of act. Both of these views seem to presuppose the inadequacy either of St. Thomas's philosophic anthropology or at least of its traditional interpretation; I shall argue that each implies the abandonment of Thomistic metaphysics. The teaching that act and potency pertain only to lower, subpersonal being and that these principles are utterly inadequate for philosophic analysis of the person contrasts markedly with the doctrine that all subjects of being reflect diverse rationes of subject and act, which as distinct but proportionately identical are bonded in a community of analogy. Likewise, the view of receptivity as pure act seems to imply that the human subject is self-actuating, thus negating the composite character of the human person. Hence the purpose of this essay is in a sense to argue for vindication of the community of analogy in response to arguments that implicitly terminate it within the domain of the subpersonal. What is at stake is whether one falls into the very error characteristic of modern philosophy as described by Kenneth Schmitz: "the loss of a more general and more generous metaphysical interiority and the reduction of the residue of interiority to the confines of the human consciousness."5 Is there a dichotomy between human nature and that of lesser beings, such that the principles of act and potency do not apply to it? Do human spirituality and subjectivity transcend such ontological principles as act and potency which permeate the field of subpersonal being? Should we, as Schmitz's remarks seem to do, distinguish "nonpassive receptivity" from activity and potency?6 Or should we tivity of the divine Word vis-a-vis the divine nature in Trinitarian theology is bonded in analogical community with creaturely receptivity. Skeptics about this project are represented in the discussion by George Blair, "On Esse and Relation," and by myself, "Divine and Creaturely Receptivity: The Search for a Middle Term." 5 Schmitz, "Personal Becoming," 766. 6 Ibid., 771: "Yet nonpassive receptivity is as much a mark of the human spirit as is its activity." Schmitz objects to the view that receptivity is "something less than a transcendent value." PERSONAL RECEPTIVITY AND ACT 3 follow Clarke...