While research on Peter Lombard’s Book of Sentences, and on the tradition of Sentences commentaries, has advanced considerably since 1994, when the late Marcia Colish published her monumental two-volume study, [1] few, if any, authors of recent scholarship have taken the Master of the Sentences seriously as a theologian. There has been no attempt to create a Lombardian theology, comparable to the way in which fresh interpretations of Thomas Aquinas’s thought gave rise to Neothomism or the ressourcement movement entered into creative dialogue with the Church Fathers. The reason for this lack of interest in Peter Lombard as a thinker in his own right was never articulated; doubtless it had to do with the nature of the Book of Sentences as a transitional work, a bridge between the old way of what Henri de Lubac called “symbolic” thinking and the new dialectical approach to theology that established itself in the schools of the twelfth century. Thus, while modern scholarship recognized the Book of Sentences for its role in laying the foundations of scholasticism, it did not consider it as one of its greatest speculative achievements.
The book reviewed here, Tobias Völkl’s study of Peter Lombard’s theology of the Eucharist, is markedly different. Its author--a theologian trained at the Jesuit Philosophisch-Theologische Hochschule Sankt Georgen in Frankfurt and now working in Rome--proffers a spirited defense of the Lombard’s theology as a coherent system, one in which the Eucharist occupies a central place. In the process, Völkl manages to make sense of some of Peter Lombard’s most controversial theses, such as the identification of charity with the Holy Spirit or the habitus theory of the Incarnation (according to which, in becoming man, the Son of God took on human nature much like a garment).
His systematic focus does not mean that Völkl eschews careful historical research. Indeed, large portions of his book are devoted to establishing the historical context in which Peter Lombard developed his ideas, especially canon law, the school of Laon, Peter Abelard, Hugh of Saint-Victor, and Gilbert de la Porrée. As Völkl writes, constructive theologizing cannot occur separately from study of the history of theology: “Rather, the self-understanding of Christian theology starts from the assumption that the history of theological reflection becomes itself a site of knowledge for the understanding of revelation” (15). [2] A further notable aspect of the author’s methodology is his close, often almost microscopic attention to the text of the Sentences: an intriguing technique he employs is to unfold his interpretation of the overall structure of the work, as well as the principal aspects of its Eucharistic theology, from a couple of dense paragraphs. One of these is the allegorical closing sentence (which has attracted scholarly attention before):
It suffices for the writer, if not for the listener, to have
remembered these things concerning the feet of the One who
sits upon a high throne, which feet the Seraphim veiled with
the two veils. Under the guidance of him who is the Way, the
writer began from the face of the One sitting upon the throne
and, proceeding by way of the middle things, has now come to
the feet. [3]
The Latin title of Völkl’s book, Via Duce (“under the guidance of the Way”) is derived from this paragraph.
Völkl sets out to defend two main theses. First, he argues that Peter Lombard’s theology of the Eucharist is best read in the larger context of his understanding of the Trinitarian missions: “The Trinitarian missions of the Son and the Spirit can be recognized, in Peter Lombard’s theology, concretely as the starting and end point of the reality of the Eucharist (within God’s work of salvation as a whole)” (35). Secondly, “there is a clear existential element in the Sentences” (35). Appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, the work, far from being a dry and abstract manual, is animated by a “quest for a living encounter with God” (310). It seeks to draw its reader into the dynamism of the Way.
Via Duce falls into three parts. The first is devoted to the overall structure of the Book of Sentences, against the backdrop of other twelfth-century attempts to present the content of the Christian faith as a theological system. At the beginning of Book I, Peter Lombard announces that “the study of the sacred page is principally concerned with things or with signs.” [4] The latter, the signa, he understands more narrowly than his source, Augustine’s treatise De doctrina christiana, for he identifies them solely with the sacraments. The Lombard then proceeds to add a second Augustinian distinction to the first, namely, the distinction between things to be used (uti) and things to be enjoyed (frui). This conceptual apparatus furnishes the author of the Sentences with the principles to divide his work into four books: Book I is devoted to God in his Trinitarian constitution, the only object of enjoyment. Book II deals with the created order, those things that are to be used on the way to the goal of enjoyment, but also with the human being, who cannot be reduced to a mere object of use. [5] Then, in Book III, Christology is treated, before in Book IV the Lombard turns to signs, that is, the sacraments.
Previous scholarship has noted the imperfect way in which Peter Lombard maps his four books onto the things/signs and enjoyment/use distinctions. Thus, for example, the prologue to Book III fails to mention the distinctions at all. Scholars used to attribute this incoherence to the fact that the Book of Sentences stands at the beginning of the project of theological systematization; perhaps--the assumption was--the Master of the Sentences was simply not yet able to articulate the entirety of his theology as a seamless whole. Völkl offers a different, and original, take on this question. Rather than positing a deficiency in the Master’s overall vision of the theological project, he argues that the Book of Sentences “is carried both by the external structure of res and signa and by the dynamism of a core that is shaped by salvation history” (93). Or, put in relation to the theological movement of the twelfth century, “The Master of the Sentences distinguishes himself from the authors mentioned so far by the fact that he incorporates the salvation-historical perspective which arises from the exegesis of Scripture into a comprehensive rational structure that articulates his work” (101). Among Völkl’s proofs of his thesis is the final paragraph of the Sentences, which, in looking back on the work, speaks the allegorical language of Scripture and salvation history without any mention of things and signs. Thus, rather than presenting evidence of intellectual or conceptual shortcomings, the “dual structure” (93) of the Sentences is a deliberate theological move aimed at synthesizing the two major currents of twelfth-century theology. Völkl certainly makes a compelling case for this intriguing interpretation.
Part two of the work, by contrast, is rather disappointing. Perhaps it could have been jettisoned. Devoted to the philosophical foundations of Peter Lombard’s theology, it arrives at the altogether predictable conclusion that any such foundations are thin. Peter Lombard did not develop a “distinctive position” (133) in the philosophical debates of his time. The author has to admit, then, that “the ontological elements investigated in the preceding section do not allow us to recognize outstanding characteristics in the philosophical thought of the Master of the Sentences” (143). Not surprisingly, part two is short (103-45).
So we move on to the heart of Via Duce, part three, which is entitled, “The Unfolding of the Theology of the Eucharist within the Overall Conception of the Sentences.” Apart from developing Völkl’s original interpretation of Peter Lombard’s theology of the Eucharist, this part also serves as a gentle refutation of the negative judgment at which Henri de Lubac arrived in Corpus Mysticum, one of the seminal works in the ressourcement movement. In telling the story of the transformation and impoverishment of the patristic theology of the Eucharist in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, de Lubac assigned the Master of the Sentences the role of an anti-hero. For, the great French theologian discovered, the expression caro mystica “cannot be found anywhere else with such clear ecclesial significance before the time of Peter Lombard.” [6] De Lubac’s point was that considering the Church as the mystical (as opposed to the real) body of Christ led to a marginalization of the ecclesial dimension of the sacrament while emphasizing the question of the real presence of the body of Christ on the altar. This shift, so de Lubac maintained, ended up reifying the sacrament of the Eucharist, ripping it out of the dynamism of God’s saving work in and through the Church--the “real” body of Christ, in the older terminology of the Church Fathers.
According to Völkl, de Lubac’s account rests on a misunderstanding of Peter Lombard’s Eucharistic theology. While there is no doubt that the Lombard defends the presence--true, entire, invisible--of Christ in the Eucharist, he does “not limit himself to the concept of presence to gain access to the reality of the Eucharist” (236 n. 5). Neither does Völkl believe that his distinction of a “twofold flesh,” that is to say, of caro propria versus caro mystica, destroys the unity of the supernatural reality of the Eucharist--its res, in the terminology of the Sentences. When Peter Lombard speaks of “perfection in the good” as one of the effects of the sacrament of the altar, [7] it is clear, Völkl submits, that such perfection is possible only in the “unity of the church” (220). Yet he has to admit, “The topic of the church in connection with the Eucharist is not developed in more detail by Peter Lombard” (221). So this part of Völkl’s argument is not especially strong.
More promising, and central to his argument, is the connection he establishes between the Trinitarian missions and the Eucharist--although this connection is based on a single remark in Book IV where, in discussing the power (virtus)of the sacrament of the altar, the Master speaks of “increase of virtue, namely of charity” as the reason for the sacrament’s institution. [8] Of course, Völkl is justified in connecting charity with the mission of the Holy Spirit since, according to the controversial theory in distinction 17 of Book I, charity is the Holy Spirit. Furthermore, the discussion of the power of the sacrament occurs in a context that treats the Eucharist as sacrifice. This suggests that the Eucharist’s power to increase charity is rooted in the liturgical rite insofar as this functions as a “sacramental sign (signum) that renders present a different reality in a new way--the res of the one and only sacrifice of the cross” (285). We are beginning to move far away from a static theory of the Eucharist that could be accused of ontotheological reification.
In the concluding chapter of Via Duce,Völkl completes his rereading of the Lombard’s theology of the Eucharist in connection with the Trinitarian missions. He posits “two parallel dynamisms” (305) in the sacrament of the altar, corresponding to missions of the Son and of the Spirit, and summarizes his account in the following terms: [9]
The first [part of the dynamism] leads from the Eucharistic
gifts through the conversio to the Eucharistic presence of
the duplex caro, in which both Christ’s own body and the
church, unified in Christ, become sacramental reality. The
other starts from the liturgical action, recognizing in it the
sacramental sign that renders the one sacrifice of the cross
present in the sacrament. (305) [10]
Both missions, taken together, have only one goal: to help the human being on the way to salvation, which is unity with the Trinitarian God, “enjoyment” (fruitio).
And this returns us to the dual structure of the Sentences: its incorporation of salvation history into the Augustinian schema of things and signs, enjoyment and use. In his final remarks, Völkl concedes that there may be a “partially unresolved tension” between rational schema and salvation history in the Sentences (311). But is this not the tension that characterizes every theological project, he asks, which is faced with the temptation of reducing God’s revelation in history to theoretical constructions? “The fact that Peter Lombard’s theology has sustained this original tension, and with it a constitutive openness, could then be regarded as an advantage”--perhaps even as an explanation for its enduring success (311).
Via Duce offers the reader a stimulating and fruitful rereading of Peter Lombard’s theology of the Eucharist. The author’s project goes beyond historical theology, encompassing a constructive dimension in which he “helps” Peter Lombard connect related ideas to form a more synthetic whole. What Tobias Völkl has developed in this book, then, is a Lombardian theology of the Eucharist for the twenty-first century. [11]
--------
Notes:
1. Marcia L. Colish, Peter Lombard, 2 vols., Brill Studies in Intellectual History, 41 (Leiden: Brill, 1994).
2. English translations of quotations from Völkl’s book are my own.
3. This is Giulio Silano’s translation: Peter Lombard, The Sentences, Book 4: On the Doctrine of Signs, Mediaeval Sources in Translation, 48 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2010), 276. The italicized words are quoted from Isaiah 6:1–2.
4. Peter Lombard, The Sentences, Book I: The Mystery of the Trinity, trans. Giulio Silano, Mediaeval Sources in Translation, 42 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2007), dist. 1, chap. 1, p. 5.
5. Here, there is an odd misunderstanding in Völkl’s presentation: neither in Augustine nor in Peter Lombard are human beings understood as those things “that enjoy other creatures and are able to use them (fruuntur et utuntur)” (87, also see 85). Rather, the idea is that the human being him- or herself must, to some extent at least, be treated as an end in itself, rather than as a mere means. (This Augustinian idea foreshadows a well-known Kantian principle.)
6. Henri de Lubac, Corpus Mysticum: The Eucharist and the Church in the Middle Ages, trans. Gemma Simmonds with Richard Price and Christopher Stephens, Faith in Reason (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006), 102.
7. As he does in the opening paragraph of his treatment of the Eucharist in Book IV (dist. 8, chap. 1).
8. Book IV, dist. 12, chap. 6, no. 1 (p. 65 in Silano’s translation).
9. There is also a helpful diagram on 302.
10. In a digression (261-73), Völkl offers a hypothesis as to why Peter Lombard prefers the terminology of conversio over that of transsubstantiatio, which came into use in the 1140s: the latter term “could be connected with an impoverishment of theology and a limitation to philosophically shaped discussions concerning the presence of the true body” (273).
11. A final note: the publishing house Aschendorff is one of the few that still manufacture actual books, as opposed to digitally produced monstrosities posing as such. With this volume, the reader gets text that is properly printed, in a pleasant font, on pages that have ample margins, are sewn together, and bound in buckram. There is a dust jacket as well.