Per Caritatem

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]

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[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…”