Per Caritatem

Scotus begins by making a distinction between a proposition about the possible in a divided sense verses a proposition about the possible in a composite sense.  In the latter case, such a proposition is false, as it is not possible that at the same time I both sit and do not sit.  However, in the divided sense, such a proposition is possible, valid and in no way contradictory.  For example, while I am sitting, it is possible that I could not be sitting.[1]  Scotus goes on to provide more refined version of his view in the following passage. 

To put the matter in another way, one could say that when the will is in a certain state of volition, it is in that state contingently, and that its present volition stems from it contingently, for if it does not do so then, it will never do so, since at no other time does it proceed from the will.  And just as this particular volition is contingently in the will, at that very same moment the will is a potency with power over the opposite; and this holds for that moment in the divided sense.  Not that it could will the opposite at the same time as it wills this, but in the sense that it has the power to will the contrary at that very instant, by not willing the other at that instant.  For at this very instant it could, nevertheless, posit the other, in a divided sense, and do so not necessarily but contingently.[2]

Here we see Scotus’ insistence on the spontaneity and contingency inherent to the will as a free, active power.  Likewise, Scotus wants to emphasize that even when the agent wills x rather than y, she still possesses the capacity or potency-in light of what the will itself is and the contingency involved in all of its volitions-for the opposite.  Scotus is in no way advocating a contradictory state of affairs, rather he is stressing the self-determining nature of the will to act in a way such that it retains the “power to will that contrary at that very instant, by not willing the other at that instant.” In other words, the unactualized possibility is always present as a genuine (or real) possible reality. 

This brings us to the second objection, which in effect says that if a power stood before opposites and was equally open to both (i.e., undetermined to either), it would not act.  Consequently, an indeterminate power seems to require external determination in order to act.   In Scotus’ reply to this second objection, he gives two possible responses depending upon which active power one has in mind. If one has the will in mind, given what Scotus has already said about the nature of the will as a self-determining active power, then according to Scotus, “it is able to do what it does with no conceivable predetermination to act,” as that simply is what it is to be a will that is free.  However, if the power that is in view happens to be the intellect, we have a different situation.  As Scotus explains:

if the argument refers to the intellect knowing opposites, then it is true that the intellect can accomplish nothing externally unless it be determined from some other source, because it knows contraries after the manner of nature, and is unable to determine itself towards any one of these opposites.  Hence, it will either act towards both or not act at all. And if one concludes from this that the intellect does not suffice to qualify as a rational potency, it follows from what has been said that this is true.[3]

Paradoxically, Scotus provocatively claims that given what the intellect is and how it functions (i.e., “it knows contraries after the manner of nature”), one must conclude that the intellect is not a rational potency.  Moreover, if the situation was such that wills did not exist, then the deterministic conclusion seems inescapable. 

Notes

---

[1] The difference between the composed and divided sense might be more clearly explained as follows:  (1) The composed sense:   It is possible that X who wills y at T₁ could at that same moment not will y [<> (X_Wy T₁ & ~ X_Wy T₁)].  (2) The divided sense:  X wills y.  And it is possible that X will not will y at that same moment [X_Wy T₁ & <>~ X_Wy T₁)].  Scotus of course is arguing for the divided sense.[2] Duns Scotus on the Will and Morality, p. 148. [3] Ibid., pp. 148-149. 

As Hannah Arendt brings to our attention, the concept of the will has a history, and its history was decisively shaped by Christian theologians and philosophers.[1]  As Arendt so aptly puts it, “[f]reedom becomes a problem, and the Will as an independent autonomous faculty is discovered, only when men begin to doubt the coincidence of the Thou-shalt and the I-can, when the question arises:  Are things that concern me only within my power?”[2]  The Greeks of course spoke a great deal about natures, desire, and with Aristotle, we see the emergence of the faculty of choice (proairesis).  However, the idea of a distinct faculty of the will as a source of its own movement is decisively absent in ancient thought. Such a suggestion in fact would have been considered contradictory, for it challenges a deeply held Greek assumption, viz., that which is moved is moved by another.  In this paper, I discuss Scotus’ understanding of will (in contradistinction to a nature) as a distinct, active power, which entails his concept of the will as self-determined.   The discussion of the will as self-determined logically leads to another unique contribution of Scotus’, viz., his notion of superabundant sufficiency, which I shall likewise engage albeit briefly.    In order to gain clarity as to Scotus’ view of the will as an active power, let us turn to Scotus’ discussion of the will as a rational faculty, as found in Questions on the Metaphysics IX, q. 15.[3]  Because the first two objections raise what seem to me the most crucial questions, I have chosen to focus solely on them.  Following my discussion of these objections,  I engage Scotus’ own opinion. As was mentioned in the opening paragraph, for a Greek philosopher such as Aristotle, self-motion was considered incoherent, as it violated the generally accepted principle that everything that is moved is moved by another.  Scotus, however, against the majority view both classical and medieval, argued that the will is self-moving.  Scotus opens his discussion in Questions on the Metaphysics IX, q. 15, by asking, “[i]s the difference Aristotle assigns between rational and irrational potencies appropriate, namely, that the former are capable of contrary effects but the latter produce but one effect?”[4]  In typical fashion, Scotus replies with two answers: (1) Aristotle’s answer fails and (2) Aristotle’s schema is correct.  After these opening replies, we find two articles, which address respectively: how Aristotle’s distinction is to be understood, and what is the rationale for Aristotle’s distinction.  Scotus then lays out three objections to Aristotle’s view, gives his own opinion, and then tests his own opinion by offering two possible objections followed by two corresponding replies.  The final section closes with Scotus’ replies to the initial arguments. 

The first objection (Scotus’ objection) leveled against Aristotle’s view with regard to rational potencies producing contrary effects is as follows:  if a potency is capable of producing contrary effects, then it should be able to produce simultaneously contrary effects.   Having already elucidated his own understanding of the distinction between nature and will and having argued for the will as a self-determining, active potency,[5] Scotus says the following:

As for the initial argument at the beginning, it is clear that a rational potency, such as the will is said to be, does not have to perform opposites simultaneously, but can determine itself to either alternative, which is something the intellect cannot do.[6]

In other words, Scotus claims that the will because of its self-determining ability not only falls in line with Aristotle’s criteria for what it is to be a rational power, but it also surpasses Aristotle’s demands, and hence, is more rational than the active power of the intellect.  In order to make this move, Scotus introduces what is now commonly referred to as synchronic contingency, which involves a distinctive understanding of possibility.  In part II, I offer a brief sketch of Scotus’ innovative notion.

Notes

---

[1] For a detailed discussion of the history of the concept of the will, see H. Arendt, The Life of the Mind [Vol. II:  Willing]:  One-Volume Edition. (San Diego:  Harcourt Brace & Co., 1978), pp. 55-146. [2] Ibid., p. 63. [3] All citations from Scotus’ text are from Wolter’s translation as found in Duns Scotus on the Will and Morality, ed., William A. Frank.  (Washington, D.C.:  Catholic Univ. of America Press, 1997).  [4] Duns Scotus on the Will and Morality, p. 136. 

[5] I shall discuss in more detail Scotus’ understanding of the will as an active potency in a subsequent section. 

[6] Duns Scotus on the Will and Morality, p. 148. 

Joel at sacra doctrina has a nice (not to mention funny) post on rational animality that interacts with the Denys Turner series that I posted not long ago.  While you’re visiting his blog, check out his post on all souls–provocative, thoughtful, and as always irenic. 

By Daniel W. McClain

IV. Creation as Gift: moving forward with nature and grace

If de Lubac proposes a recovery of Thomas’ teaching on the desiderium naturale that is sensitive to the concern to maintain an intrinsic end to human nature, he is also aware of the concern presented by those who initially adopted the pure nature hypothesis. We need a way now to move beyond the dead weight of pure nature that is also able to address its substantial concerns. We have to be able to talk about the supernatural finality of this human nature without either lessening the gratuity of the supernatural or the integrity of human nature in receiving that finality. We need to be able to hold both that “grace perfects nature” and “the total transcendence of the gift.”[1]

Part of de Lubac’s brilliance rests in his use of the analogy of gift over and against the hypothesis of pure nature. He begins with the two parallel movements in the creation of human being: first, the gift of “me to myself;” and second, the “imprint[ing] on my being a supernatural finality.”[2] These two movements, which de Lubac calls “formulas,” do much more to demonstrate divine gratuity than “pure nature.” The first moment shows the paradoxical and gratuitous beginning of human existence, that there is no phrase that can ever really get at the act of instantiating a me in order to receive the gift of myself. This movement helps to demonstrate the distinct character of both essence and existence. For the human being, God’s gratuity goes to the bottommost depth of human nature, so much so that it escapes any and all systematic explanations inasmuch as they imply a subject that is first created and, only after creation, given a supernatural finality. All such explanations that would ontologically separate my being from my supernatural finality are erected upon a “fictitious presupposition.”[3] In fact, we ought to affirm these explanations, yet in the same breath refuse to rest on them as if they were adequate. Rather, all of our postulations on nature and grace need to guard against any reification of an hypothetical order, of conceiving of the human relation to God only from analogies within nature.[4] De Lubac sees the solution to this error in a better understanding of the gift of grace which holds together the “twofold ontological passage” of existence and supernatural finality. The donum perfectum illuminates both the impassable distance between God and creation and the fact that “this gift constitutes for nature a real sublimation… a real deification” although “there is not… the least supernatural element in [nature].”[5] Thus, God’s call to being, the awakening of the desire for the end in Him, and the grace which instantiates both requires that we hold fast to both the “heterogeneity” of nature and that the connection which “the spiritual creature has… to God… comes from its origin.”[6]

The gift of the desire for the supernatural finality is unique. De Lubac argues that it cannot be explained by resorting to any kind of analogy to natural relationships. It demands the clear distinction between “the gifts of grace” and “the gifts of nature.”[7] The mystery of grace requires us to hold in tension the distinction between nature and supernatural with the natural desire for the donum perfectum, which, quoting Pascal, de Lubac calls the “new world” we receive in Christ when we behold God as he is.[8]

V. The Paradox of “the completely free gift”

What is important to keep in mind is that the desire for a supernatural finality neither enables the human to achieve that finality by natural impetus nor gives ownership of that finality.[9] The desire for the beatific vision is not the same as knowing what will be entailed in that vision or possessing the vision itself. Nor does the desire entail that we are owed the vision: “It is the free will of the giver which awakens the desire. This is incontestable.”[10] The mystery of this is only problematic to those that have accepted a rational univocity. The Word itself presents a mystery, that

“is baffling to a philosophy of pure rationality but not to a philosophy which recognizes in the human mind both that potential absolute that makes it declare the truth, and that abyss of darkness in which it remains by that fact of being both created and bodily.[11]

But even bound to mystery and its own limits, human reason is unbounded. It can criticize itself and the concepts it has accepted. Some are too quick to accept solutions, analogies, “clear cut harmonies and explanations” in theology where a sense of mystery should have been retained.[12] Because of a lack of historical and doctrinal knowledge of the desiderium naturale, many theologians adopted positions that seemed the “safest” but which actually “lessened” the gratuity of the supernatural, making it “superficial.”[13]

De Lubac offers a corrective to the apparent contradiction in the call to supernatural finality by correlating “the offer of grace… in the sphere of moral liberty… [to] the call to the supernatural… in the ontological sphere.” Insofar as the offer of grace enables moral freedom, a formula already accepted in moral theology, de Lubac argues that simultaneously the call to the supernatural finality enables the natural desire for that end. The difference between the two is only logical. By dialectically maintaining divine initiative in both cases via his form of intrinsicism, de Lubac holds the supposedly opposed orders of nature and gratuity together in a way that neither compromises nature nor lessens gratuity.[14]

Whereas de Lubac argues that God, of his own good will, orders within us a supernatural finality toward which we desire, others have gone so far as to assert that this supernatural finality, as opposed to a natural finality, would be tantamount to making our natures themselves supernatural. The consequences of this would indeed be contrary to Thomas’ teaching. However, need a supernatural finality entail a supernatural human nature, an idea as obviously illogical as it is heterodox? To the extent that Augustine, Thomas, Bonaventure, and Scotus – to name a few – contribute to the trajectory and consensus of the first fifteen centuries of the Tradition, it has certainly not been foreign or untenable to the Tradition to hold that natural human wonder and desire reaches beyond itself. Further, we have also seen in St. Thomas that true happiness for humanity only consists in the ultimate rest in God of that wonder and desire in the after life. In this regard, Feingold’s premise is dubious: “According to St. Thomas, the natural inclination of our will is directed to the end that is proportionate to our nature…”[15] At stake here is not necessarily the notion of proportionality, but what he means by nature and natural. Has he already accepted the premises of pure nature? Besides, Feingold is also misguided by his own equivocations in his criticisms of de Lubac. Consider the following: “the addition of a supernatural principle….”; “…determined by a supernatural finality…”; and “…a supernatural finality inscribed upon it…”[16] His very terminology is constrained by his extrinsicism. He seems to miss the point of de Lubac’s recovery of not only the natural desire, but also his emphasis upon and recovery of an intrinsic finality, and therefore anthropology.

Another way of looking at the issue is to ask with de Lubac if it is contradictory to assume that man could have a purely natural finality which was at some later time replaced with a supernatural one. What is wrong with the notion that God’s grace is imparted to human nature in the act of giving a different finality? Does not this notion bind God to the natural law of a hypothetical order? “God is in no way governed by ‘prototypes’… In the Word all is ‘reason’; all the ‘intelligible world’ is concentrated in Him…”[17] As such, it is rather illogical to talk about humanity having two ends without losing the integrity of the creature as God knows the creature. “My destiny is an ontological thing, which I can not change as an object changes in destination.”[18] Although it must be maintained that he could have indeed done this, God’s love as Creator for his creatures would imply that God would not divert the end of his creation after creating it, as if it were a channel of water. Diverting the end of the created order would, in de Lubac’s analysis, essentially and ontologically change the identity of the created order. In other words, one could ask: if my ontological being has to be swapped for another, then is it really me experiencing the beatific vision?

Furthermore and more importantly, this second act of ordering to the beatific vision restricts God’s love. “It is… important to get rid of any idea of a God who, though free in theory, is basically morally determined by the perfection of a certain possible universe to create that universe.”[19]  Drawing from Romano Guardini and von Balthasar, de Lubac declares that freedom in the divine life needs to be radically reinterpreted in the light of love. God’s love is both the object of his freedom but is also the entirety of the divine life. Inasmuch as that divine life is everything, there is nothing external to God’s life that constrains him. Thus, the all-encompassing Love is also that which encompasses and redefines liberty.[20] Love, thus understood, loosens the tight grip we are often tempted to have of notions which otherwise seem stable and from which we might put any constraint, restriction, or demand on God.[21]

It is fitting, then, that de Lubac ends with a reflection on Ephesians 1:3-6 in which love is the principle that call us to our destiny, a destiny which no longer serves our purposes but a new doxological purpose. God calls us to love him as a lover calls the beloved. Both God and humanity desire love that is freely given, love which is subject to no demand or claim, but is given and received as a free gift. Yet, so great is His love that, to His praise, he freely gives us His grace in both the very origin of human nature and then “chose us in [Christ]” to be his sons. Thus, the very advent of Christ frames the meaning of human nature and finality in a radical light that can only lead to a profound sense of mystery.[22] Eventually, however, this mystery must give way to worship: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ… to the praise of his glorious grace…”

Notes

---

[1]    The Mystery of the Supernatural, 23.[2]    “The Mystery of the Supernatural.”, 300.[3]    The Mystery of the Supernatural, 79.

[4]    “The Mystery of the Supernatural,” 304: “Hence their habit of thinking strictly of the relation of the spiritual creature to God by means of analogies draw from what happens within nature… Thus one comes to lay down as law that all being must have its connatural end, proportioned to its nature and of the same order as it.”

[5]    Ibid., 302-303.

[6]    Ibid., 304.

[7]    The Mystery of the Supernatural, 89.

[8]    Ibid., 91.

[9]    Ibid., 96; cf. 99: “His sovereign liberty encloses, surpasses and causes all the bonds of intelligibility that we discover between the creature and its destiny;” cf. 155-156, against Cajetan, de Lubac argues (with Matthew of Aquasparta, Soto, Bonaventure, Alexander of Hales, Gregory of Velencia, and Scotus) that it is man’s desire for that which is higher than himself which he can not attain on his own that “it is a mark of superiority.”

[10]  Ibid., 207.

[11]  Ibid., 171.

[12]  Ibid., 177; “Longing for a clear solution on the immediate level of understanding, they have allowed themselves to be guided uncritically by analogies drawn from social relationships or even from the material universe” (176); “It is in any case certainly true that theology is not, or ought not to be, a buildup of concepts by which the believer tries to make the divine mystery less mysterious, and in some cases to eliminate it altogether” (178).

[13]  Ibid., 178.

[14]  Ibid., 183; cf. Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory: The Action, vol. IV (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1994), 145: “[M]an’s inner, Faustian restlessness is resolves at its real, destined goal, that is, in the God who has taken the initiative in revealing, proclaiming, disclosing and giving himself. For man, fashioned by the Logos, is essentially constructed along dia-logical lines: any mono-logical interpretation is bound to destroy him.”

[15]  Lawrence Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God According to St. Thomas and His Interpreters (Rome: Apollinare Studi, 2001), 534.

[16]  Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God, 534 (emphasis mine).

[17]  The Mystery of the Supernatural, 230-231.

[18]  “The Mystery of the Supernatural,” 294.

[19]  The Mystery of the Supernatural, 230; cf. 232: “For such philosophy will no more allow the slightest moral necessity to influence God’s action that it will any metaphysical necessity…”

[20]  Ibid., 228-229.

[21]  Ibid., 235: “God is Love in person, love which freely, and not because of any law or inner determination, creates the being to whom he wills to give himself, and gives himself freely”; cf. 236: “He is a God of whom it would be blasphemy and madness to suppose that any demand of any order whatsoever could be forced upon him, in whatever hypothetical situation one may mentally place oneself, or whatever concrete situation one may imagine creatures to be in… The gratuitousness of the supernatural order… remains gratuitous in every hypothesis. It is forever new.”

[22]  This may what von Balthasar is getting at when he says, “no man will ever hit upon the solution God has in store, that is, the Incarnation of the Logos and his atoning death upon the Cross on our behalf” (Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory: The Action, vol. IV, 143.

By Daniel W. McClain

III. De Lubac: the Loss of Man’s Natural Desire for a Supernatural Finality

Henri de Lubac writes in the first chapter of The Mystery of the Supernatural that despite Thomas’ clarity that humanity naturally longs for one end – that it is a supernatural one, without so much a reference to a “hypothetical necessity” – commentators have managed to confuse the issue.”[1] While they have accepted Thomas’ two principles, they have rejected the synthesis as such.[2] Instead of affirming the natural desire, they often posited a pure nature, free of any non-natural end, which (following Pius XII), demonstrates God’s freedom in giving the desire for the Beatific vision. Apropos to this, de Lubac charged in 1942 that there had been a distinct evacuation of the Sacred in church teaching, manifesting itself in both the laity and the theological faculty. To some extent it was the initial loss in theology that resulted in confusion over Thomas’ teaching about humanity’s supernatural end. De Lubac aptly sums Thomas:

[F]or Saint Thomas, there is in human nature as such, because it is spiritual, a desire, a natural appetite, a sign of an ontological ordination, which could not remain ever unsatisfied without the work of the Creator having failed and which could be satisfied in no way but through the very vision of God, face to face.[3]

Not only does de Lubac say this is Thomas’ teaching; indeed, “One could say that the unanimous Tradition, for fifteen centuries, is summed up on this important subject by the famous exclamation of Saint Augustine…”[4] The natural desire for a supernatural finality is thus an ineluctable aspect of the Tradition. Despite its rightful place, however, it is replaced by a dualism between the natural and supernatural orders. This dualism, de Lubac observes, tragically underwrites secularism, the desacralization of the world,[5] the demystification of revelation,[6] and a “shriveled rationalism.”[7]

His 1949 article, “The Mystery of the Supernatural,” and monograph The Mystery of the Supernatural (1965) both continue the recovery began in the 1942 article and Surnaturel (1946) but with a greater emphasis upon the theological implications.[8] While maintaining the continuity of the desiderium naturale in the Tradition, “the idea that the ancients have transmitted to us about our basic relation to our supernatural end,” he begins both the article and the book by stressing the Augustinian and Thomist aspect.[9] Whereas St. Albert criticized St. Augustine’s understanding of natures, de Lubac and St. Thomas both stress Augustine’s interest in beatitude. Thomas sees, however, that the supernatural is best guaranteed by a thorough “respect” for the natural. As such, de Lubac adopts Thomas’ approach in order to elucidate the end of human nature in such a way that does not obliterate nature, but rather grants the supernatural to the natural as a “transforming union.”[10]

He attributes the rise of pure nature to wrong interpretations of Thomas and, ironically, a zealous rush to aid the gratuity of God. He confirms that the radical otherness of the supernatural has, of course, been central to traditional teaching. However, pure nature goes too far in defending the supernatural, especially in its elevation from an hypothesis to a reified teaching, by asserting that, despite traditional church teaching, human nature qua natural has a purely natural end. Whereas he is willing to concede that it is tenable as a hypothesis vis-a-vis Pius XII’s Humani Generis, pure nature fails to account for this nature: it is “a big X that responds to nothing.”[11]

Two aspects, or “tendencies,” seem to crop up from the incorporation of the pure nature hypothesis. First, it exhibits hubris; it assumes more than what is rightfully due to it.[12] This is not a helpful notion because, strictly speaking, as hypothetical, it only really speaks about possible realities, and therefore fails to address this natural order.[13] Moreover, what it does to the supernatural is worse: gradually the supernatural shrinks into something just barely more than nature, no more than a superfluous order, a “double,” only realized in the beatific vision.[14] Nature and the supernatural become two species of the same genus.[15]

Secondly, and rather opposite in action to the first tendency, pure nature places a demand of justice on God to give the supernatural in order to complete man and bring him, out of his natural end, to “perfection.” Whereas the hypothesis of pure nature was posited in the first place to safeguard the heterogeneity of the two orders, in an ironic twist “man now becomes aware that he cannot completely eliminate God’s action if he is to perfect himself.”[16] Obviously, man  “demands” the supernatural, making “the supernatural… something ‘natural by requirement’.” In any event, “all idea of God’s free gift is lost.” [17] Man’s nature, under this second tendency, is regarded as changeable. As yet another consequence of that era’s loss of an inherent teleology, pure nature, under those like Baius, does less to protect the gratuity of God’s gift than it does to wrestle that grace from God for human nature. It is apparent that beatitude, articulated as that “which the creature requires and which God owes him,” fundamentally compromises any notion of gift in God’s constitution of human nature or the supernatural ordering.[18]

De Lubac charges that in this sterilized world, adrift of an inherent and stable end, there is no place for “gratuity.” For, in positing a hypothetical pure nature, we have forced ourselves into a corner of possible worlds where all relationships between the natural and supernatural orders can only ever be hypothetical. Similarly, insofar as the end of this hypothetical nature is posited post-creation, it follows that humans no longer necessarily share in the same end. It also follows that they no longer necessarily share in the same nature. Holding to an Aristo-Thomistic concept of nature, de Lubac sees this form of extrinsicism as disastrous and plainly illogical to the extent that a nature is known because of its end. Indeed, this is what is meant philosophically by an end. Theologically, humans qua spiritual creatures are known by their supernatural ordering. Such an ordering is “constitutive” of human nature.[19] There is but one human nature which was, analogically speaking, given at creation. Therefore, there was only one end given. In other words, following the Tradition, and especially Thomas, a being not ordered to the Beatific vision is, de facto, not human. The extrinsicist confusion over ends demonstrates how something like “pure nature” could only have arisen following the loss of teleology, where “[f]inality was considered only as a rather extrinsic thing… a destination received more or less from outside and after the fact.”[20] So, the assertion is made that man could have a “superadded” destiny other than his happiness as the end of his desire. Here the departure from Thomas, to whom such an extrinsic manner of imparting an end would be enough to talk about a completely different being, could not be more apparent.[21] Something more intrinsic is needed to secure human finality and the gratuity of God.

Notes

---

[1]   The Mystery of the Supernatural (New York: Herder and Herder, 1998), 6 f.25; Hans Urs von Balthasar,  The Theology of Karl Barth (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1992), 269.[2]   The Mystery of the Supernatural, 10: “Most people… have given up making St. Thomas responsible for the dualist theory which would deny all natural desire to see God – a theory which used commonly to be fathered upon him, owing to quite untenable interpretations.”[3]   ”Internal Causes of the Weakening and Disappearance of the Sense of the Sacred,” (henceforth “Disappearance of the Sense of the Sacred”) in Theology and History (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1996): 230.

[4]   ”Disappearance of the Sense of the Sacred,” 230.

[5]   Ibid., 232.

[6]   Ibid., 233.

[7]   Ibid., 236.

[8]  Both the article and book proceed along similar trajectories. As such, I will consider them together in this section.

[9]  ”The Mystery of the Supernatural,” in Theology and History (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1996): 287.

[10]  The Mystery of the Supernatural, 22 and 28.

[11] ”The Mystery of the Supernatural,” 289; cf. The Mystery of the Supernatural, 207: “[I]t ultimately neither explains nor justifies anything… that part of modern western theology which we have had to criticize… is grasping at shadows rather than the reality.”

[12]  Ibid., 289: “it is difficult, in fact, to press it at all without being led to transfer to it more and more, one after another, all the attributes and all the privileges which our present humanity enjoys in its relation to God;” also in The Mystery of the Supernatural, 35-36: “[It] can not help our thinking along very much, without our ending up by gradually attributing to it more and more of the qualities and privileges which attach to our present human nature in relation to God.”

[13]  Ibid., 291: “One can not, if one uses one’s mind… refuse to respond to the real problems in the form in which they present themselves.”

[14]  Ibid., 289.

[15]  The Mystery of the Supernatural, 37.

[16]  Ibid., 47.

[17]  Ibid.

[18]  Ibid., 48.

[19]  Ibid., 55: “For God’s call is constitutive.

[20]  “The Mystery of the Supernatural,” 296; The Mystery of the Supernatural, 68.

[21]  Ibid., 296-297.

By Daniel W. McClain

II. Thomas 2: The Vision of God in the Summa Theologica

Having demonstrated in the Summa Contra Gentiles that happiness is humanity’s end,[1] he  elaborates on the desiderium naturale in the Summa Theologica I-II. He launches into it by demonstrating the incoherence of a person having several “last ends.” The desire a person longs for is “his ultimate end, that which he desires as his perfect and crowing good.” It makes little sense to talk of a last end that does not comprehensively satisfy the appetite. Moreover, the “principle” of the last end is “that which is naturally desired. Now this must needs be one: since nature tends to one thing only.”[2] Thomas’ understanding of the end being one will be particularly relevant when we explore criticisms of de Lubac’s thesis below.

From the onset of question 3 (“What is Happiness”), Thomas declares that happiness, understood in both its senses as that which God gives the creature in the gift of himself and that which the creature derives from the attainment of its end, is the final end of human nature, thus it is both uncreated and created.[3] Nevertheless, by the end of question 3, Thomas determined that only the vision of the divine essence itself could satisfy the natural desire for happiness.  He reviews what he has thus said, that the end is only properly had when 1. the person’s desire is at rest (there is nothing left to seek), and 2. it has reached the object of desire in its essence. How is this tall order realized? “[I]t will have its perfection through union with God as with that object, in which alone man’s happiness consists…”[4]

Therefore, Thomas is unequivocal in his affirmation that humanity naturally desires happiness as the end of human nature.[5] He is equally as emphatic that this naturally desired happiness is one which is ultimately and finally fulfilled in the vision of and union with God.[6] In his response to the first objection stated in question 5, article 5, Thomas repeats that this happiness is only imparted gratuitously, that it therefore cannot be attained via human agency. However, through free will, a person may “turn to God, that He may make him happy.”[7] There is thus an opening in human nature to divine initiative, in and through the human desire for God and free will to act on that desire. There is also a corresponding dependence on God’s grace, without which the Divine Essence’s vision is impossible. Thomas’ teaching on the desiderium naturale visionis dei consists not only in an intellectual grasp of God as First Cause, but also something more profound, a desire beyond grasping the final cause that wishes to know the cause in its essence.[8]

---

[1]    SGC III.48.3[2]    ST I-II.1.5[3]    ST I-II.3.1[4]    ST I-II.3.8

[5]    ST I-II.1.5

[6]    SCG III.57.4

[7]    ST I-II.5.5

[8]    ST I-II.3.8: “[F]or perfect happiness the intellect needs to reach the very Essence of the First Cause…”