Three Rogue Dominicans on Original Sin
Part Three: Ambrogio Catarino Politi
During Lent, I’ve been exploring the contributions of three “rogue” Dominicans to the theology of original sin. These theologians are “rogue” not in any negative sense—in fact, I’m highlighting them because I think they make positive contributions to our understanding of the doctrine of original sin—but simply because they depart in important ways from the theology of St. Thomas Aquinas, whose thought had the official backing of the Dominican Order beginning in the fourteenth century. Aquinas’s thought has likewise had a deep influence on Catholic thinking about original sin, and yet it is not the only way of thinking about the doctrine.
In the first article in the series, I considered the thought of Durandus of Saint-Pourçain, the early fourteenth-century theologian who rejected the Augustinian-Thomistic view that original sin is inherited during procreation via a corruption in the man’s sperm. In the second article, I explained how the later fourteenth-century Dominican Robert Holcot offered an alternative account of the original state of innocence experienced by Adam and Eve what was lost as a result of the Fall. Holcot believed that original sin had left humankind in a purely natural state in which the will and sensual appetites are disordered, creating a propensity to sin.
In this third and final article, I will consider the theology of Ambrogio Catarino Politi, a sixteenth-century Dominican theologian. Although building on the contributions of Durandus and especially Holcot, among others, Politi proposes an understanding of original sin radically different from that of the medieval scholastics that is nevertheless orthodox. As we will see, he argues that original sin is the consequence of a broken covenant between God and Adam.
Lancelotto Politi was born in Siena in 1484. Educated in civil and canon law, he became a lawyer for the Roman Curia. Relatively late in life, around the age of thirty, he joined the Dominican Order and took the religious name of Ambrogio Catarino (in homage to Blessed Ambrogio Sansedoni and St. Catherine of Siena, both Dominicans and religious icons in his native Siena). In part because of his age, his theological education was irregular, and he never completed his studies. Nevertheless, he was one of the earliest Catholic polemicists against Luther and his teachings, and he was among the first to recognize that developing a defense of the Catholic understanding of justification would be crucial to responding to Lutheranism. He published a number of works on justification and played a key role in drafting the Council of Trent’s Decree on Justification, which was completed in 1547.
Politi was also engaged in intra-Catholic theological debates, as well. For example, in 1532 he published a work in defense of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, bringing him into conflict with his own order, which rejected that devotion. Interestingly, Politi’s own dedication to the devotion was derived from the fact that the celebration of the Immaculate Conception was central to Sienese piety. Politi’s work in this area brought him into conflict with his fellow Dominican theologian Thomas de Vio Cajetan, perhaps the most prominent Catholic theologian of the early sixteenth century. Politi’s efforts to defend the doctrine led him to study the works of the Franciscans John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham, as well as that of Robert Holcot, among others, all of whom had defended the teaching. These studies would influence his broader theological approach.
Politi was appointed the bishop of Minori in 1546, as he was participating in the council’s proceedings, and later appointed archbishop of Conza in 1552. Politi became acquainted with the early Jesuits (particularly Diego Laynez and Alonso Salmerón) and had an influence on early Jesuit theology. A long-running dispute with the Spanish Dominican theologian Domingo Soto over the question of whether the faithful can have certainty they are in a state of grace unfairly diminished his reputation (his view that in certain circumstances such certainty could be attained was considered too Protestant), and he died in 1553.
While Politi appealed to the work of John Duns Scotus to help him defend the Immaculate Conception of Mary, he also drew from Scotus the notion that God had intended the Incarnation as the purpose of Creation, even if humankind had not fallen into sin. In other words, whereas most theologians taught that God willed Christ’s Incarnation as the means to redeem humankind from sin, Scotus, without denying Christ’s redemptive mission, argued that God’s original intention was always to bring about a union of the human and the divine.
Politi went further than Scotus, referring to this original desire to bring about the Incarnation as the First Covenant, a kind of primordial covenant between the divine and human united in the Incarnation that communicates God’s desire for Creation and gives Creation its telos or end. Politi further elaborates on this point, arguing that this First Covenant further entails the creation of Mary as the immaculate mother of Christ and the birth of the Church as the family of Christ. The historical covenants described in the Old and New Testaments are God’s means of realizing this primordial covenant in concrete history.
When discussing Robert Holcot’s theology of original sin, I noted that the notion of “covenant” was central to the work of Holcot and other theologians associated with the via moderna (often referred to as the nominalist school). For Holcot, covenants created a contingent order of salvation to which God bound Himself, even though, in absolute terms (i.e., according to God’s absolute power), God could have ordered Creation differently. Here Politi further develops this idea, suggesting that God orders Creation by means of the primordial covenant of the Incarnation and then realizes His intentions through historical covenants with humankind.
Where does original sin fit into this covenantal theology? Politi takes the unusual, although not unprecedented, view that the first historical covenant took place between God and Adam. According to this theory, God promised Adam that He would maintain the latter in a state of original justice (symbolized by the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden) while prohibiting Adam from eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Over the generations, humankind would gradually progress in grace, growing ever closer to God, culminating in the Incarnation.
Adam, however, broke the covenant by eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (interestingly, Politi argues that the covenant was not broken when Eve at the fruit, but only when Adam took it from her). This resulted not only in the loss of original justice, that is, the state of inner harmony in which humankind had been created, but also rendered that original, historical covenant null and void for future generations, cutting them off from the promises God had originally made.
Therefore, as with Durandus, for Politi original sin is not passed on as a result of a corruption in the male semen. Original sin is rather the inheritance of the lack of original justice. What makes Politi’s theory particularly interesting, however, is that at least in an indirect sense, original sin is passed on through the biological propagation of new life, although not by biological means but rather by means of a social and legal reality. Through Adam, all future generations were bound to the covenant and are now in the shared condition of having violated it. As Aaron C. Denlinger insightfully points out his more extensive treatment of Politi’s theology of original sin, Politi is not only influenced here by Holcot’s covenantal theology, but also by his experience as a lawyer dealing with contracts and inheritances.
The subsequent covenants described in the Bible (e.g., those with Noah, Abraham, Moses, and David, and ultimately the New Covenant of Christ) are God’s merciful means of restoring humankind to the condition originally willed by God, the union of the human and the divine. As Holcot had likewise argued, each covenant provides the framework for the cooperation of the divine and the human in the work of salvation.
I think Politi’s theology of original sin is relevant for Catholics today because it proposes that original sin is a social reality (i.e., a broken covenant) rather than a biological one while still maintaining that original sin is passed on from one generation to the next as a result of the procreation of new life. In their fifth-century dispute with St. Augustine, Pelagius and his followers argued that human beings developed their sinful inclinations through imitation of those around them. In the aftermath of that controversy, however, the Catholic Church has insisted that original sin is passed on “by propagation, not by imitation,” as the Council of Trent puts it in its Decree on Original Sin. This teaching has posed a challenge to what we could call “social” theologies of original sin, and modern social theologies of original sin, such as those propose by Karl Rahner, SJ and more recently James Alison arguably do not go far enough in adhering to Trent’s teaching. Politi’s theory, however, seems to possess the advantages of such a “social” approach to the doctrine while clearly explaining how original sin is passed on through propagation.
In the earlier article on Holcot, I noted that his conception of humankind’s original state and the implications of the Fall are arguably more compatible with contemporary biological accounts of human origins than the Augustinian-Thomistic approach. Similarly, Politi’s theology of original sin does not seem to depend on reading the creation narratives of Genesis as literal accounts of human origins. For example, the narrative of Adam, Eve, and the serpent in Genesis 2-3 can be read as a symbolic account of an original relationship between humankind and God, broken by sin, while recognizing that the exact details of what occurred are lost to history.
On the other hand, Politi’s contemporaries (particularly the previously mentioned Domingo Soto) disputed whether the biblical narrative recounted an actual covenant between God and Adam, and contemporaries might raise the same criticism. Likewise, Politi’s theology of original sin might be viewed as too legalistic, leading in turn to a legalistic understanding of salvation.
Even so, I think his theological ideas are worth considering. They not only enrich our understanding of the historical development of the doctrine of original sin, but can also contribute to contemporary theologies of original sin that take into consideration our contemporary scientific understanding of human origins, for example, and the insights into social life provided by the modern social sciences.
I’ve done more extensive background research for this series than usual, so I want to make sure I acknowledge my sources:
Caravale, Giorgio. Beyond the Inquisition: Ambrogio Catarino Politi and the Origins of the Counter-Reformation. Translated by Don Weinstein. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2017.
Denlinger, Aaron C. Omnes in Adam ex pacto Dei: Ambrogio Catarino's Doctrine of Covenantal Solidarity and Its Influence on Post-Reformation Reformed Theologians. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011.
Coming Soon…
I’m on the road and therefore I haven’t had the chance to keep up with what’s going on in the Catholic and theological worlds as I usually do, so I’m not including the “Of Interest” section this week. Similarly, I’m running a little behind schedule on articles, so please forgive me.
That being said, I’m still planning an article on February’s Los Angeles Religious Education Congress.
I also hope to write a follow-up to my recent article on Bishop Robert Barron and his attitudes toward the Trump administration. There are some important considerations that didn’t make it into the earlier article that I want to take on.
An edifying series and excellent subject matter, Matthew :D Thank you!