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Thomas Aquinas's and Herbert McCabe's Relational/Friendship Understanding of Christ's Passion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
Abstract
In this essay, I argue that Thomas Aquinas's and Herbert McCabe's soteriological paradigms are immensely compatible with one another. In contrast to the presuppositions held by certain interpreters of Thomas, I contend that Aquinas, like McCabe, rejects a primarily juridical/transactional understanding of Christ's Passion, and, in light of this fact, it is a mistake to assert that his soteriology is a precursor to later penal-substitutionary conceptions of the atonement. Once Aquinas's and McCabe's teachings are correctly situated within a relational/friendship rather than juridical context, their similarities and mutual aversion to penal-substitutionary atonement becomes explicit. Likewise, after appropriately identifying McCabe's indebtedness to Aquinas's thought, one can perceive his unique and substantial contribution to the Church's understanding of Christ's salvific work. The comparison between Aquinas and McCabe, in particular, provides clarity to a proper conception of the intrinsic disordering of sin and the essential character of Christ's meritorious love and obedience offered to God the Father.
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References
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4 O'Collins, Gerald, Jesus Our Redeemer: A Christian Approach to Salvation (Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 137CrossRefGoogle Scholar. O'Collins is explicit that Thomas did not adhere to a penal-substitutionary notion of the atonement, because, as he states, ‘[Thomas] denied that Christ's work of reconciliation meant that God began to love us again only after the punishment was effected and the ransom paid. God's love for us, he insisted, is everlasting; it is we who are changed by the washing away of sin and the offering of a suitable compensation.’ Even with this caveat, O'Collins concludes that Thomas shifted Anselm's theory in the direction that made Christ the substitute and bearer of God's punishment for humanity's sin.
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10 McCabe would not have identified as a Thomist, in a strict sense, but Aquinas was clearly the most influential thinker on his philosophy and theology.
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21 Cessario, The Godly Image, p. 146.
22 ST. I-II, q. 87, a. 2, ad. 1.
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31 ST. III, q. 48, a. 2, ad. 2.
32 Hütter, ‘The Debt of Sin and the Sacrifice in Charity’, p. 147.
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34 ST. III, q. 60, a. 1, ad. 3.
35 ST. III, q. 62., a. 5, co.
36 Cessario, The Godly Image, p. 212.
37 Cessario, The Godly Image, p. 226.
38 ST. I-II, q. 3, a. 8, co.
39 ST. III, q. 84, a. 5, ad. 2.
40 ST. III, q. 90., a. 2, co. Thomas notes, ‘Because, in vindictive justice the atonement is made according to the judge's decision, and not according to the discretion of the offender or of the person offended; whereas, in penance, the offense is atoned according to the will of the sinner, and the judgment of God against Whom the sin was committed, because in the latter case we seek not only the restoration of the equality of justice, as in vindictive justice, but also and still more the reconciliation of friendship, which is accomplished by the offender making atonement according to the will of the person offended.’
41 Bauerschmidt, Frederick, ‘Theological Cool: The McCabe Reader’, Modern Theology 34, no. 4 (2018), p. 673CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
42 McCabe, God Matters, p. 92. McCabe is explicit that he is not attempting to offer an exhaustive account of the meaning of the cross or work within the more theory-based mode of discourse about Christ's atonement; instead, he is ‘offering…one way of seeing the significance of the cross’.
43 McCabe, God Matters, pp. 91-92. It is important to add the caveat that not all juridical accounts of the atonement are the same, and McCabe seems to be more critical of those that resemble penal-substitutionary atonement. With that said, he is also concerned with any ‘theory’ that emphasizes the problem of sin as taking place primarily extrinsically from lives of human beings.
44 McCabe, God Matters, 91.
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46 Cessario, The Godly Image, p. 146.
47 McCabe, Faith within Reason, p. 99.
48 McCabe, Faith within Reason, p. 99. McCabe reveals the way in which the nature of sin as a privation distorts the beautiful created character in human beings; he maintains, ‘If I am sinful it is because I am failing to live up to what my humanity demands of me. I am failing to be just, kind, gentle, or loving. I am failing to have that intense, passionate love for God's creation and God himself that would make me a fully developed human being.’
49 McCabe, God Matters, p. 94.
50 McCabe, God Still Matters, p. 173. McCabe believes that fear is the root of the inability of fallen humanity to have the capacity to embrace the genuine love of God and others. He maintains, paraphrasing the first epistle of John, ‘The opposite of love is fear; the first characteristic of people deprived of love is that they are afraid, and the first effect of love is to cast out fear.’
51 McCabe, God Matters, p. 97.
52 McCabe, God Matters, p. 95.
53 McCabe, God Matters, p. 95. McCabe explains that ‘we [human beings] cannot live without love and yet we are afraid of the destructive creative power of love. We need and deeply want to be loved and to love, and yet when that happens it seems a threat, because we are asked to give ourselves up, to abandon ourselves; and so when we meet love we kill.’
54 McCabe, God Still Matters, pp. 96-97.
55 McCabe, God Matters, p. 93.
56 For a succinct account of McCabe's understanding of obedience see McCabe, God Matters, pp. 226-234. The aim of obedience, according to him, is that obedience is not properly understood as an authority causing his/her subordinates into submission against their wills; instead, ‘obedience only becomes perfect when the one who commands and the one who obeys come to share one mind’ (229). This is the perfect obedience that the Son shares with the Father. McCabe writes, ‘The obedience of Christ just is the eternal dependence of the Son of the Father, the procession of the Son from the Father, of true God from true God, projected into history, so we have the obedience of an equal.’
57 McCabe, God Matters, p. 99.
58 McCabe, God Matters, p. 93.
59 McCabe, God Matters, p. 90.
60 ST. III, q. 47, a. 3, co.
61 ST. III, q. 47, a. 3, ad. 1.
62 ST. III, q. 47, a. 3, ad. 3.
63 McCabe, God Matters, p. 98.
64 McCabe, Herbert, Law, Love and Language (London, England: Continuum, 2009), p. 132Google Scholar.
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66 McCabe, Herbert, God, Christ and Us (London, England: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018), pp. 148-49Google Scholar.
67 McCabe, God, Christ and Us, p. 149.
68 McCabe, Law, Love and Language, p. 133.
69 McCabe, Law, Love and Language, p. 142.
70 McCabe, Law, Love and Language, p. 143
71 McCabe, Herbert, The New Creation (London, England: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2010), p. 3Google Scholar. McCabe explains that ‘besides creating us as the highest kind of material creature, God has called us to share in his own uncreated life. This share in the life of God Himself is what we call grace…Grace does not make man a better kind of creature, it raises him beyond creaturehood, it makes him share in divinity.’
72 McCabe, Law, Love and Language, p. 145.
73 McCabe, The New Creation, p. xii.
74 McCabe, God Matters, p. 100.
75 McCabe, The New Creation, ‘The first symbolism of the eucharistic meal is friendship; we eat and drink together to show that we are united in love. We share a divine food because we share a divine life.’ McCabe's insistence that Christians ‘share a divine life’ make it explicit that the Eucharist is no mere symbol for him.
76 McCabe, God Still Matters, pp. 134-35