Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 2, No.

2 (2004): 26778 267

Imago DeiImago Christi:
The Theological Foundations
of Christian Humanism
1
J. AUGUSTINE DI NOIA, OP
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
Vatican City
IT HAS BEEN widely recognized that the documents of the Second
Vatican Council represent a notable reafrmation of the theology of the
imago Dei.
2
For a variety of reasons, in some traditions of Catholic theol-
ogy after the Reformation and Enlightenment periods, this element of
classical theological anthropology had not received the attention it prop-
erly deserved. But in the rst half of the twentieth century, both in neo-
Thomistic and ressourcement circles, the theology of the imago Dei enjoyed
a signicant revival. Inspired in part by this retrieval of classical theolog-
ical anthropology, the Council Fathers sought to recover the Christolog-
ical and eschatological contexts that had been essential in the theology of
the imago Dei of the best patristic and scholastic authors. Among the
conciliar documents, none was more complete in its articulation of the
theology of the imago Dei than Gaudium et Spes.
3
The importance of the connection between anthropology and Chris-
tology both for a correct interpretation of Gaudium et Spes and for an
authentic Christian humanism was noted early on. Over thirty years ago,
1
Presented to the International Congress of the Pontical Academy of St.Thomas
Aquinas, Rome, 2125 September 2003.
2
See Luis Ladaria, SJ, Humanity in the Light of Christ in the Second Vatican
Council, in Ren Latourelle, ed., Vatican II: Assessment and Perspectives, Vol. II
(New York: Paulist Press, 1989), 386401.
3
See the comprehensive treatment in George Karakunnel, The Christian Vision of
Man:A Study of the Theological Anthropology in Gaudium et Spesof Vatican II (Banga-
lore: Asian Trading Association, 1984).
in one of the rst theological commentaries on Gaudium et Spes, the now
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger argued that it is essential to take into account
the intrinsic linking of anthropology with Christology (and thus with
eschatology) that unfolds across the entire text and that in his view
constitutes its crucial insight. Any properly comprehensive interpretation
of the theology of the imago Dei in Gaudium et Spes would need to
balance passages that speak of man as created in the image of God (such
as no. 12) with those that speak of Christ as key to the mystery of man
(such as no. 22). The perfect image of God is the incarnate Word who is
both the exemplar of the created of God in man and the pattern for its
graced transformation.
4
The concrete human person who is created in
the image of God is always in via, always being drawn to the Father, but
partly impeded by sin; he is redeemed by Christ, yet still undergoing a
lifelong transformation in the power of the Holy Spirit, with a view to
the nal consummation of a life of communion with the Blessed Trinity
and the saints.The image of God is always, as it were, a work in progress.
From the moment of creation, the perfection of the image of God
more simply, holinessis already intimated as the end of human life. A
Christian theology of creation is only intelligible in eschatology; the
Alpha is only truly to be understood in the Omega.
5
Thus, according to
Cardinal Ratzingers early essay, Gaudium et Spes presents Christ as the
eschatological Adam to whom the rst Adam already pointed; as the true
image of God that transforms man once more into likeness to God.
6
Subsequently, as is well-known, Pope John Paul II made this cluster of
themes the hallmark of his ponticate. The dominant interest in anthro-
pology, which had characterized his entire career as a philosopher and
theologian, now in his papal Magisterium blossomed prodigiously into
the full-blown reafrmation of an authentic Christian humanism.
7
A
distinctive element in Pope John Pauls teaching about the imago Dei has
268 J. Augustine Di Noia, OP
4
Joseph Ratzinger,The Dignity of the Human Person, in Herbert Vorgrimler et
al., eds., Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, Vol.V (New York: Herder and
Herder, 1969), 11563.
5
Ibid., 121.
6
Ibid., 159. See the discussion of these issues in Walter Kasper, The Theological
Anthropology of Gaudium et Spes, and David L. Schindler,Christology and the
imago Dei: Interpreting Gaudium et Spes, Communio 23 (1996), 12941 and
15684.
7
See Kenneth Schmitz, At the Center of the Human Drama:The Philosophical Anthro-
pology of Karol Wojtyla/Pope John Paul II (Washington, DC:The Catholic Univer-
sity of America Press, 1993), and Jaroslav Kupczak, OP, Destined for Liberty: The
Human Person in the Philosophy of Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II (Washington, DC:
Catholic University of America Press, 2000).
been his stress on the relational character of the image: Creation in the
image of God is the basis for and is realized precisely in the communion
of persons. In addition, the Holy Father has made his own the distinctive
blend of anthropology and Christology, which is the mark of conciliar
teaching. Pope John Paul II frequently invokes the words of Gaudium et
Spes no. 22, which state that it is only in the mystery of the Word made
esh that the mystery of man truly becomes clear. Beginning with his
programmatic rst encyclical, anthropology and Christology are always
to be found interwoven in the relational theology of the imago Dei
expounded by the Holy Father.
The juxtaposition of imago Dei and imago Christi in the title of my essay
is meant to capsulize the Christocentric anthropology that is characteristic
of patristic and scholastic theology of the image of God and that has been
expressed anew by the Second Vatican Council, by Pope John Paul II, and
by Cardinal Ratzinger and other theologians. It can truly be said that,
according to this vision, the human person is created in the image of God
(imago Dei) in order to grow into the image of Christ (imago Christi). This
Christocentric vision of the human person is the foundation of authentic
Christian humanism.What is more, Gaudium et Spes and the Magisterium
of Pope John Paul II testify to the immense relevance of this vision for the
new evangelization and for theology today as the Church confronts a wide
range of challenges in her proclamation of the truth about man.
The challenges to authentic Christian humanism today are of at least
two kinds, though the rst arises from within the Christian theological
tradition itself and is represented by the lingering inuence of nominal-
ist patterns of thought in moral theology and in the anthropology that it
implies. A second kind of challenge has sources largely external to the
Christian tradition, and is represented by the variety of secular human-
isms and anti-humanisms that advance alternative accounts of the mean-
ing (or lack of it) in human existence. Another important kind of
challenge arises from the distinctive religious visions of the human
espoused by Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam, but I shall not be consid-
ering it here. The two kinds of challenge I do want to consider can be
seen to be convergent in their nal outcomes, and I want to suggest that
the theology of the imago Dei of St.Thomas Aquinas can be of particular
assistance in facing them.
We have seen that the Christocentric anthropology of Pope John II
and the Second Vatican Council highlights the intrinsic link between
what human beings are as such and what they can hope to become.
Implicit in this anthropology is the conviction that human fulllment
and religious consummation are themselves intimately connected. The
Imago DeiImago Christi 269
holiness (or religious consummation) that is Christs gift in the Holy Spirit
constitutes the perfection of the image of God (integral human fulll-
ment). Created in the image of God, human persons are meant to grow
into the image of Christ. As they become increasingly conformed to the
perfect man, Jesus Christ, the fullness of their humanity is realized.There
is thus a nality built into human nature as such and, although its real-
ization is possible only with the assistance of divine grace, this realization
is in a real sense continuous with the tendencies and even aspirations
essential to human nature as such. The cultivation and fulllment of the
human person through seeking the good in a graced moral life enables
one to enjoy the Good that is beyond life.
It is precisely this identication of human fulllment with religious
perfection that is, in different ways, severed or negated by the lingering
nominalism of some Catholic moral theology and by the competing secu-
lar humanisms and anti-humanisms of Western modernity. The result in
both cases is a spiritual crisis in which the goods of human life are disen-
gaged from the desire for transcendence. Nominalism divorces human
moral fulllment from the possibility of the enjoyment of a transcendent
good, while secular humanisms and anti-humanisms declare the desire for
this transcendence to be itself irrelevant and even injurious to integral
human fulllment. Let us consider these challenges in turn.
The features of nominalist thought that are crucial to my argument here
will be familiar to students of the history of late medieval philosophy and
theology.
8
Nominalist thinkers famously sought to preserve the divine
freedom by stressing the unlimited possibilities available to the absolute
power of God (the potentia absoluta) that cannot be regarded as in any way
constrained by the existing order of things in creation and redemption
established by the divine potentia ordinata.To a certain extent under the inu-
ence of Scotus, who had already made Aquinas the target of his criticism,
9
nominalists explicitly denied that which Aquinas had afrmed, namely, the
270 J. Augustine Di Noia, OP
8
For details, see Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy, vol. 3 (New York:
Doubleday, 1963), 43122, and Paul Vincent Spade, ed., The Cambridge Compan-
ion to Ockham (Cambridge: Cambrige University Press, 1999), especially the essays
by Peter King, Marilyn McCord Adams, A. S. McGrade, and Alfred J. Freddoso.
9
See Thomas Williams, How Scotus Separates Morality from Happiness, Ameri-
can Philosophical Quarterly 69 (1995), 42545. See Copleston, A History of Philoso-
phy, vol. 2, 476551, and Thomas Williams, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Scotus
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), especially the essays by James Ross
and Todd Bates, William E. Mann, Hans Mhle, Thomas Miller and Bonnie Kent.
For the contrast between Scotus and Aquinas, and the links between nominalism
and Scotus on these issues, see especially Anthony Levi, Renaissance and Reformation:
The Intellectual Genesis (New Haven, CT:Yale University Press, 2002), 3067.
existence of a rationally ordered universe reecting the divine wisdom and
accessible to human experience and knowledge.Whereas for Aquinas there
is a congruence between the knowable divine law inscribed in human
nature (natural law) and human aspirations for fulllment, on the one hand,
and the enjoyment of supernatural beatitude, on the other, for nominalism
God is completely unconstrained in enjoining moral laws. The moral law
imposes obligations that reect neither the rational character of Gods activ-
ity nor the inbuilt nalities of human nature. Moreover, since absolutely
free, Gods decision to save or damn particular individuals could not be in
any way dependent on their fulllment, or lack of it, of these obligations.
Rather than being the intrinsic principle of the moral life, as in Aquinas,
beatitude becomes an external reward whose enjoyment may or may not
reect the moral character of a particular human life. Since moral law is the
expression of the divine will and thus ceases to depend upon the ontologi-
cal constitution of human nature, moral theology is detached from theolog-
ical anthropology and from any exemplary Christology.Yielding its place in
theological anthropology and moral theology, Christocentrism in the form
of intense devotion to Christ became a persistent feature of the spirituality
of the devotio moderna, which was itself a religious strategy designed to bypass
the troublesome philosophical and theological perplexities of nominalist via
moderna. In an important recent book, Anthony Levi has argued that nomi-
nalist theology gave rise to an intolerable spiritual tension, deriving from
the separation of moral achievement from religious fulllment, principally
because individuals could not know what unalterable fate God had decreed
for them without reference to the exercise of autonomously self-determin-
ing powers during life.
10
With the divorce of moral achievement from reli-
gious perfection, religious practices and observances served to allay this
tension independently of the moral state of the individual.
Father Servais Pinckaers has convincingly demonstrated that certain
fundamental presuppositions of nominalist theology are embedded in the
casusitic moral theology of the manuals in use from the seventeenth
century to the eve of the Second Vatican Council.
11
Among these, perhaps
the most important for our theme are the centrality accorded to obliga-
tion in the moral life and the eclipse of beatitude as an intrinsic principle
Imago DeiImago Christi 271
10
Levi, 64.
11
Servais Pinckaers, OP, La nature de la moralit: morale casuistique at morale
thomiste, in Somme theologique: Les actes humains, vol. 2, trans. S. Pinckaers (Paris:
Descle & Cie, 1966), 21576. See his The Sources of Christian Ethics (Washington,
DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1995), 32753. For a helpful summary
of Pinckaerss argument, see Romanus Cessario, OP, Introduction to Moral Theology
(Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2001), 22942.
of moral action. In this tradition of moral theology, the categories of the
obliged and the forbidden are prior to the categories of good and evil in
actions. Actions are bad or wrong because they are forbidden, rather than
vice versa. Actions that are bad or wrong merit punishment, while those
that are good or right merit reward. But there is no intrinsic connection
between these actions as such and the punishment or reward they merit.
Since nominalist philosophical theology does not survive in the casuist
worldview, the predestinating deity has vanished. God is now understood
to confer reward or punishment in view of an individuals success or fail-
ure in meeting moral obligations. Under the inuence of nominalism,
casuist moral theology has no need for an account of how moral agents
become good by seeking the good. It is signicant, as Father Pinckaers
has pointed out, that the treatise on beatitude disappeared from manual-
ist moral theology while the treatise on the virtues was consigned to the
realm of spiritual theology.
Although I cannot pursue the point here, the prevalence of this kind
of moral theology gave rise to the intolerable tensions experienced by
many Catholics in the face of the moral teaching of Humanae Vitaeand
eventually the entirety of Christian teaching about human sexuality
which seemed to impose an outdated moral obligation whose connec-
tion with the human good was either denied or dismissed or, more
commonly, simply not apparent.The proportionalist and consequentialist
moral theories devised with a view to allaying these tensions failed to
question, and indeed often presupposed, the very edice of casuistic
moral theology that had made these tensions almost inevitable.
The fundamental difculty hereechoing Levi, one might speak of
an intolerable spiritual tensionis that many people can no longer
discern an intrinsic link between the moral law and their good, and,
furthermore, no longer view religious achievement (the reward of happi-
ness) as intrinsically connected with moral or human fulllment. Reli-
gious practicesoften in the form of eclectic spiritualitiesare now
often seen as unconnected from moral obligations, whose specic
content is in any case exiguous. Morality, even when faithfully observed,
is viewed as disengaged from, and indeed is often regarded as in conict
with, basic human aspirations for a good and happy life. In addition, a
good and happy life here is not seen as continuous with the life of beat-
itude as such. Heaven is inevitable in any case, while hell is unthinkable
and purgatory unintelligible.
In accounting for the revolution that came with modernity and saw the
emergence of secular humanism and, more recently, of neo-Nietzschean
anti-humanisms, one can certainly point to the spiritual mentality fostered
272 J. Augustine Di Noia, OP
by casuist moral theology as among the likely contributing factors.
Certainly, Charles Taylor is right in seeing affective and spiritual factors as
crucial in fostering this revolution and maintaining the West in what he
terms a post-revolutionary climate.
12
It is not simply the loss of belief
in God and in other central Christian dogmas that contributed to this
revolution, but possibly, in the terms of the argument of this essay, the
long-term insupportability of the edice of casuist moral theology with
its divorce of human and moral fulllment from religious perfection. Be
that as it may, according to Taylor, secular humanisms and postmodern
anti-humanisms agree in afrming a good to human life without the
need to invoke any good beyond life.What distinguishes them is the anti-
humanist insistence that a comprehensive afrmation of human life must
embrace (and even celebrate) suffering and death. But both secular
humanism and postmodern anti-humanism simply deny that religious
aspirations have any relevance for human and moral fulllment. The
desire for transcendence is a kind of human and moral dead end.
Immortal longings, to use Fergus Kerrs felicitous phrase, may not be
good for ones moral health nor, indeed, for ones humanity.
13
For Taylor,
the horizon of assumptions that shapes the pervasive outlook toward
religion in our culture includes the view that for us life, ourishing,
driving back the frontiers of death and suffering, are of supreme value
and that what prevented people from seeing this sooner and more widely
was precisely a sense, inculcated by religion, that there were higher
goals, a good beyond life. In the post-revolutionary climate, to speak of
aiming beyond life is to appear to undermine the supreme concern with
life in our humanitarian, civilized, world.
14
One can readily see, in the terms of Taylors persuasive analysis of the
rejection or marginalization of religion in Western modernity, that in
order to seek the good of human life, one must give up pursuing a good
beyond life or, at least, one must dene the good beyond life in non-reli-
gious terms. Religious perfection is seen not only as irrelevant to human
fulllment but as an actual obstacle to it. We can also readily see, if we
recall the fundamental features of the Christocentric anthropology of
Pope John Paul II and the Second Vatican Council, how radical a chal-
lenge is posed both by moral theology in the nominalist-casuist vein and
Imago DeiImago Christi 273
12
Charles Taylor, Iris Murdoch and Moral Philosophy, in Maria Antonaccio and
Michael Schweiker, eds., Iris Murdoch and the Search for Human Goodness (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1996), 328.
13
Fergus Kerr, OP, Immortal Longings (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame
Press, 1997).
14
Taylor, 23.
in its current variants, and by the secular humanisms and anti-humanisms
of Western modernity.
According to the Christocentric anthropology sketched earlier, there is
an intrinsic link between what human beings are as such and what they can
hope to become.There is a link, not a contradiction, between human fulll-
ment and religious consummation. Holiness (religious consummation) is
the perfection of the created image of God (human fulllment).The legacy
of nominalism in casuistry and in the moral theories that sought to correct
it is such as to make it very difcult to grasp the terms of an authentic
Christian humanism even when they are forcefully presented. (Consider, in
this connection, the cool reception still accorded to Veritatis Splendor in
some quarters.) Without a moral theology that is thoroughly integrated
with anthropology and Christology, it will be difcult to withstand the vari-
ety of secular humanisms and anti-humanisms of Western modernity.
Indeed, in the climate of contemporary culture, there is a powerful tempta-
tion for some religious people, including Catholics, tacitly to accept the
horizon of assumptions of Western modernity and to promote precisely
(and sometimes chiey) those aspects of their faith that can be seen as
contributing to the good of human life.The documents of the SecondVati-
can Council have themselves sometimes been subjected to readings
employing this strategy with an eye to well-meaning programs of renewal
that, without denying the good beyond life, do not always leave much room
for it in practice. It may well be that the divorce between human/moral
fulllment and religious perfection, embedded in prevailing forms of
Catholic moral reection, makes it difcult for Catholics inuenced by
them to respond to the challenges posed by non-religious or anti-religious
humanisms for which the presumption of this divorce is axiomatic.
I am convinced that a recovery of Aquinass theology of the imago Dei
can and has already begun to make a signicant contribution to the
Catholic response to these challenges. Here I can only sketch briey the
possibilities as I see them. That Aquinass theology affords such resources
may not be obvious to everyone. Certainly, many will readily admit that,
in linking anthropology, Christology, and eschatology in its theology of
the imago Dei, Gaudium et Spes had recovered important strands in the
patristic doctrine of the imago Dei. Perhaps less widely known is how
thoroughly Christological and eschatological is the theology of the imago
Dei advanced in the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas. One of the more
refreshing aspects of recent scholarship on Aquinas is the emergence of a
broad appreciation of this central element of his theology.
15
274 J. Augustine Di Noia, OP
15
For an orientation to the literature on this topic, see Jean-Pierre Torrell, OP, St.
Thomas Aquinas:Vol. II: Spiritual Master, translated by Robert Royal (Washington,
A crucial feature of this more comprehensive appraisal of Aquinass
theology of the imago Dei has involved the recognition that his explicit
consideration of the matter as part of the theology of creation in ques-
tion 93 of the prima pars cannot be treated in isolation but must be
located within the broader context of the overall argument of the Summa
theologiae.
16
It is well-known that the structure of this argument is framed
in terms of Aquinass distinctive appropriation of the exitus-reditus
scheme. This structure has immense signicance for his theology of the
imago Dei: The human being created in the image of God is by the very
fact of his human nature and from the very rst moment of his existence
directed toward God as his ultimate end.
17
Contrary to a widespread
Imago DeiImago Christi 275
DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2003). See: Emile Bailleux,A limage
du Fils premier-n, Revue Thomiste 76 (1976): 181207; Romanus Cessario, OP,
Christian Faith and the Theological Life (Washington, DC: Catholic University of
America Press, 1996), 3848; Michael A. Dauphinais,Loving the Lord Your God:
The imago Dei in St. Thomas Aquinas, The Thomist 63 (1999): 24167; Ignatius
Eschamnn, OP, St. Thomas Aquinas, the Summary of Theology III: The Ethics
of the Image of God, in Edward A. Synan, ed., The Ethics of St.Thomas Aquinas:
Two Courses (Toronto: Pontical Institute of Medeival Studies, 1997), 159231; L.-
B. Gillon, OP, Cristo e la Teologia Morale (Roma: Edizioni Romane Mame, 1961);
Thomas Hibbs,Imitatio Christi and the Foundation of Aquinass Ethics, Commu-
nio 18 (1991): 55673, and Virtues Splendor:Wisdom, Prudence and the Human Good
(New York: Fordham University Press, 2001); Fergus Kerr, OP, After Aquinas:
Versions of Thomism (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002); Matthew Levering, Christs Fulll-
ment of Torah and Temple (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002),
83107; D. Juvenal Merriell, To the Image of the Trinity: A Study in the Development
of Aquinass Teaching (Toronto: Pontical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1990); Luc-
Thomas Somme, Fils adoptifs di Dieu par Jsus Christ (Paris: Vrins, 1997); Batista
Mondin, Il bene morale come perfezione della persona, in Pontical Academy
of St.Thomas, Atti della III Plenaria 2002, 12737.
16
See G. Lafont, Structures et mthode dans le Somme thologique de saint Thomas dAquin
(Paris: 1961), and, more recently, Servais Pinckaers, Le thme de limage de Dieu
en lhomme et lanthropologie,in P. Bhler, ed., Humain limage de Dieu (Geneva:
1989), 14763. See Thomas S. Hibbs, The Hierarchy of Moral Discourses in
Aquinas, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 64 (1990): 199214; and A. N.
Williams, Mystical Theology Redux: The Pattern of Aquinas Summa theologiae,
Modern Theology 13 (1997): 5374, and Deication in the Summa theologiae:A Struc-
tural Interpretation of the Prima Pars, The Thomist 61 (1997): 21955.
17
In this essay, I have not dealt with the controversy that has surrounded the nature
and grace of theological anthropology which originated in the work of Henri
de Lubac and has been sharpened lately in the writings of David Schindler and
others in the communio school. It will be evident to the careful reader that,
with Aquinas and many other Thomists, I both hold for the description of a natu-
ral end for human nature and deny a double order of nature and grace extrinsi-
cally related to one another. A teleological understanding of human nature is
crucial to maintaining the link between religious perfection and integral human
misrepresentation of his thought (which while losing much its currency
remains entrenched in certain quarters), for Aquinas the theology of the
imago Dei constitutes not a static and thus ahistorical conception of
human nature, but rather a fundamentally dynamic and active one.
18
This is already explicit in question 93. The dynamism is that of the
exitus-reditus, a movement rooted in the divine purposes in creation and
redemption, and inscribed in the created order by the very nalities of
human nature. In addition, Aquinass account of the imago Dei explicitly
asserts that it is primarily in acts of knowing and loving God through
faith, hope, and charity that the imaging of God is realized.
19
According
to Father Romanus Cessario, Aquinas contends that we should look for
the image of God, not primarily in the intellectual capacities of the soul,
but in the very acts of those operative capacities or habits.
20
Looking beyond question 93, to the secunda and tertia pars, we can see
that the theology of the imago Dei within the overall argument of the
Summa theologiae secures the intrinsic link between moral theology,
anthropology, and Christology, and thus the connection between
human/moral fulllment and religious perfection, or beatitude. For one
thing, we nd that the entirety of the secunda parsAquinass expansive
treatise on the moral lifeunfolds as an explication of what it means for
man to made in the image of God. Here the dynamic character of the
imago Dei is clear: Human beings must be active in the grace-enabled
actualization of the image of God within them. Coming from God, they
are active participants in the movement of their return to him. What
draws them is their pursuit of the good of human life that is continually
276 J. Augustine Di Noia, OP
fulllment. For a perspective on this controversy touching on the issues raised in
this essay, see Romanus Cessario, OP, On Bad Actions, Good Intentions and
Loving God: Three Much Misunderstood Issues about the Happy Life that St.
Thomas Aquinas Claries for Us,Logos 1 (1997): 10022. On the broader issues,
see the comprehensive treatment of Schindlers position in Tracey Rowland,
Culture and the Thomist Tradition (London: Routledge, 2003). For a splendid survey
of the twentieth-century controversy, see Lawrence Feingold, The Natural Desire
to See God (Rome: Appolinare Studi, 2000). See: Benedict Ashley, OP, What is
the End of the Human Person? The Vision of God and Integral Human Fulll-
ment, in Luke Gormally, ed., Moral Truth and Moral Tradition (Dublin: Four
Courts Press, 1994), 6896; Steven A. Long, On the Possibility of a Purely
Natural End for Man, The Thomist 64 (2000): 21137; Peter A. Pagan-Aguilar,
St. Thomas Aquinas and Human Finality: Paradox or Mysterium Fidei? The
Thomist 64 (2000): 37499.
18
See Ian A. McFarland, When Time Is of the Essence: Aquinas and the Imago
Dei, New Blackfriars 82 (2001): 20823.
19
Summa theologiae, I, q. 93, a. 4.
20
Cessario, Christian Faith and the Theological Life, 43.
revealed as the Good beyond life. No one demonstrates better than
Aquinas the continuity between the inbuilt desire for the good and the
enjoyment of the Good beyond all limited goods, which is beatitude.
Hence the capital importance of the meditation on the nature of beati-
tude, which begins Aquinass treatise on moral theology: Only the super-
natural beatitude of communion actualizes the movement of the human
person toward his or her fulllment.
In the tertia pars, Aquinas arrives at the culmination of the theology of
the imago Dei when he shows how Christ, the perfect image of the
Father, is the principle and pattern of the restoration and the perfection
of the image of God in us.
21
All the mysteries of Christs life, but espe-
cially his passion, death, and resurrection, bring about the work of trans-
formation in us by which the image of God, damaged by original sin and
by our own personal sins, can be restored and perfected. Congured and
transigured in the imago Christi by the power of the Holy Spirit, we
return to the Father, and come to enjoy to the communion of Trinitar-
ian life that is the essence of beatitude.
In the terms of the argument of this essay, and contrary to both nomi-
nalist moral theology and to the secular humanisms and anti-humanisms
of Western modernity, Aquinas can be construed as advancing a theology
of the imago Dei that shows how in the gracious plan of divine provi-
dence religious perfection is central to human and moral fulllment.The
human person is created in the image of God in order to grow into the
image of Christ.This truth about man is the foundation of the authentic
Christian humanism central to the teaching of Vatican Council II and
John Paul II. A critical task of Christian anthropology in every age is
precisely to supply an adequate basis for moral theology.Among the most
signicant of Pope John Pauls encyclicals, Veritatis Splendor corrects the
unfortunate legacy of casuist moral theology and its contemporary prog-
eny and, more important, presses upon us the profound links between
anthropology and Christology that establish the basis of an authentic
Christian humanism.
Imago DeiImago Christi 277
21
In addition to the works by Torrell, Gillon, Hibbs, Levering, Somme, and
Williams cited in footnote 14 above, see Jean-Pierre Torrell, OP, Le Christ dans
la spiritualit de saint Thomas, in Kent Emery and Joseph P. Wawrykow, eds.,
Christ among the Medieval Dominicans (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University
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