Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 5, No. 1 (2007): 1–16

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Hommage au Père Servais-Théodore Pinckaers, OP
The Significance of His Work
ROMANUS C ESSARIO, O. P.
St. John’s Seminary
Brighton, Massachusetts

Reverend Fathers, Distinguished Ladies and Gentleman:

I T IS CUSTOMARY for speakers in my position to express their
gratitude to those who invited them. I must acquit myself of a double
obligation. First, to Father Michael Sherwin and Professor Craig Titus,
who graciously arranged this tribute in honor of Father Pinckaers, and
to the Dominican Fathers at the Albertinum, and its other Swiss sponsors, whose customary largesse has made this celebratory gathering possible. In addition, I owe a debt of gratitude to the aforementioned persons,
both individual and corporate, because their generosity affords me an
occasion to return to my alma mater. Since October 1976, when as a
young priest I came here to study, Fribourg, the place and the school—
they are difficult to distinguish for those who love both—has done
admirably what one expects “dear mothers” to do, namely, to shape a
man’s life in significant ways.1 And so I say, simply, “Thank you!”
Who in my position, I now ask you, would not recollect what Aristotle, in the Nicomachean Ethics, affirms—admittedly to explain its inadequacy as the ultimate good for man—about honor: “Honor depends
more on those who confer than on him who receives it.”2 The person
whose merits we recognize today deserves great honor, and to be candid,
I consider myself unequal to the task of conferring it. So this evening, I
stand before you as a spokesman—a stand-in, if you will—for the many
1 For example, see my “Theology at Fribourg,” The Thomist 51 (1987): 325–66.
2 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, bk 1, ch. 5, 1095b25, trans. J. A. K. Thomson, The

Ethics of Aristotle, (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1955), 30.

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persons throughout the Catholic world and beyond who, better than I
am able, would fittingly confer honor on this university professor and
Dominican priest, Servais Pinckaers. During this weekend, his work, son
travail, gladly will occupy our attentions.3
I am sure that our honoree, who elucidates and exemplifies both the
Christian virtue and gift of piety, will pose no objection to my expressing
his appreciation to each of you, and especially to the Dominicans at
Fribourg. Since Father Pinckaers’s arrival here in 1973, his Dominican
brothers have supplied the spiritual and temporal support that have enabled
him to complete the better part of the labors for which we do rightly honor
him under the sign of Ephesians 1:10,“Making all things new in Christ.”4
The Roman historian and stylist Livy wrote,“Favor and honor sometimes
fall more fitly on those who do not desire them.”5 To whom does this classical adage better apply than to our dear friend, Servais Théodore Pinckaers,
revered theologian, holy priest, and exemplary Friar Preacher?
Friar Preacher
The Dominicans first arrived at Fribourg during a particularly stressful
period in their modern history: the last quarter of the nineteenth century.
The order’s numbers were in decline such that from 4,562 in 1844,
membership fell to 3,474 in 1876, the lowest it had been since the thirteenth century. Is it not paradoxical that after twenty-two years of reformminded leadership inspired by Henri-Dominic Lacordaire, the Dominican
Master Alexandre-Vincent Jandel (1850–1855–1872) left an almost extinct
order well-organized and vigorous.6 Moreover, the situation in Europe
made Dominican governance difficult to conduct until, in 1879, Joseph M.
Larroca (1879–91) was chosen by mail-in balloting to lead the order.7 He
3 Webster’s New Dictionary of Synonyms reports on the English cognate:“Travail carries

a stronger implication of painful effort or exertion than does labor; that connotation is often so strong that the term tends to denote suffering rather than labor.”
4 See Eph 1:10: “In dispensationem plenitudinis temporum instaurare omnia in
Christo quae in caelis et quae in terra sunt in ipso.”
5 Titus Livius, The History of Rome, Bk. 4, 57.
6 See William A. Hinnebusch, OP, The Dominicans:A Short History (New York:Alba
House, 1975), ch. 10. In 1850, Father Jandel was named vicar general of the order
directly by Pope Pius IX, and then in 1855, master general of the order. See
Catholicisme, vol. 6, 310.
7 Dominican historian Guy Bedouelle observes in a private communication with
the author: “[C]e n’est pas l’election de Larroca qui a rendu le gouvernement de
l’ordre plus facile. C’est le fait que Pie IX a aboli en 1872 la bulle de 1804 qui
soustrayait les provinces espagnoles de la juridiction du Maitre de l’Ordre, à la suite
de quoi Jandel a choisi Larroca comme socius, puis est venue l’election de Larroca,
comme espagnol, ce qui a en effet stabilisé l’unité de l’ordre.”

Hommage au Pére Servais-Theodore Pinckaers, OP

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was the first master general since before the French Revolution to be
elected by all of the Dominican provinces. It was under his leadership that
the Dominican general chapter of Louvain in 1885 launched the École
Biblique in Jerusalem and accepted the request of the government of
Fribourg to staff the theology faculty of its new university.Today, it is gratifying to discover mention, on the faculty of theology’s Web site, of the
international reputation of alma mater Fribourg that Dominicans since
1890 have helped to build.8 This weekend, we will discover additional
warrant for this claim as scholars from Switzerland and abroad describe the
contribution to this “rayonnement international” made by one of our
contemporaries, a certain Dominican from Belgium.
Belgium
The Dominicans were established in Ghent as early as 1228. It should
come as no surprise to learn that Flanders and Wallonia enjoy prominence in the history of the Dominican Order.And not only for Flemings
and Walloons. In 1658, the English Dominican Philip Thomas Howard
(who in 1675 became “Cardinal of Norfolk”) acquired the Convent of
the Holy Cross at Bornhem, a Flemish town situated a few miles southwest of Antwerp. He took this initiative for the purpose of giving new
life to the English province, which in the 1650s, the period of the
Commonwealth and the Protectorate governments in England
(1649–60), had come perilously close to extinction.9 This Bornhem
cloister originally built for, but never inhabited by, Franciscans would
serve for 167 years the needs of expatriate English Dominicans.10
8 University

of Fribourg Web site, Faculty of Theology, “L’Université de
Fribourg–Bref aperçu historique,” www.unifr.ch/theo/presentation/index.html.
9 The English Commonwealth and Protectorate were republican governments of
England introduced after the English Civil War during the Interregnum
(1649–60). The Commonwealth (1649–53) was founded on the execution of
Charles I in 1649, and was followed by the two Protectorates of Oliver Cromwell
(1653–58), and his son Richard Cromwell (1658–59). The Commonwealth was
briefly revived (1659–60), before the restoration of the monarchy in the person of
Charles II in May 1660. For more information on this work of Father Thomas
Howard, see C. F. Raymund Palmer, The Life of Philip Thomas Howard, OP, Cardinal
of Norfolk, Grand Almoner to Catherine of Braganza, Queen-Consort of King Charles II.,
and Restorer of the English Province of Friar-Preachers or Dominicans. Compiled from Original Manuscripts, with a Sketch of the Rise, Missions, and Influence of the Dominican Order,
and of Its Early History in England (London: Thomas Richardson and Son, 1867),
98–107.
10 For a good account of the English College at Bornhem, see Raymund Palmer, OP,
“Bygone Colleges: Bornhem and Carshalton,” Merry England 12 (1889): 310–24;
ibid., Merry England 12 (1889): 370–97.This article appears in this literary journal

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One of these expatriates was Thomas Williams, a native of Monmouthshire.11 This young Englishman made his way in 1685 to East Flanders,
and there when he was only seventeen took the Dominican habit at
Bornhem. In 1740, he died a bishop, having been consecrated by the
Dominican Pope Benedict XIII (1724–30) to serve as vicar-apostolic of
the northern district of England, a posting that reflects the gradualness of
the restoration that the Catholic hierarchy underwent in the British Isles.
Since the appointment of Thomas Williams involved Catholic affairs in
England, the Holy See sought to obtain the pleasure of the Old
Pretender, James Edward Stuart (1688–1766), who was recognized in
Rome as James III.This same James Stuart, it is said, lodged on his southward journey from France to Rome in the structure that today houses
the Albertinum. The significance of this event is left to the professional
historians to decipher, especially in light of the evolution of European
politics that required this Stuart prince to leave France after the Treaty of
Utrecht in 1713.
During the eighteenth century, the English Dominicans set up a study
house in Louvain, the “College of St. Thomas Aquinas of the English
Friar-Preachers,” located on the Krakenstraat. As a young priest,Thomas
Williams of Monmouthshire arrived there from Rome, where he had
been sent for studies, to organize the new project. While at Louvain, he
wrote and printed three scholastic theses: the first on God (1701), the
second on the Trinity and the Incarnation (1703), and the third, in 1705,
on a subject that occupies the energies of all intellectually alert Dominicans, especially after a papal cease-fire order in 1607 returned to theologians the discussion of issues left unsettled during the Congregatio de
Auxiliis:“Thomismus ex Thomistis assertus & contra Novos ejus impugnatores vindicatus, seu Theses Theologicæ de Scientiâ,Voluntate et Providentiâ Dei, Juxta inconcussa tutissimaque dogmata Angelici & Quinti
Ecclesiae Doctoris D. Thomae Aquinatis.”12 We find ourselves face-toface with the Thomism of the Late Baroque, an age that in Flanders falls
under the rubric, “The Collegian.” Also see, Godfrey Anstruther, OP, A Hundred
Homeless Years: English Dominicans 1558–1658 (London: Blackfriars Publications,
1958).
11 Information on Thomas Williams is drawn from another article by Raymund
Palmer, OP, “A Consecrated Life,” Merry England 10 (1887): 411–28; ibid., Merry
England 10 (1888): 480–95.
12 The inscription continues: “Quas Præside F. Dominico Williams, S. Theologiae
Præsentato, necnon Collegii et Studii FF. Prædicat.Anglorum Rectore, Defendet
F. Ambrosius Burgis, eiusd. Ord. Lovanii in Conventu Majori Ord. FF. Prædicatorum, die 12 Maii, horâ 9 ante merid. Lovanii, apud Ægidium Dènique. Anno
1705. In 4to, 18, num.”

Hommage au Pére Servais-Theodore Pinckaers, OP

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under the artistic shadow of Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) and his
successors, including Anthony Van Dyck (1599–1641), whose painting,
Charles I Dismounted, displays the ill-fated English king (1600–49) in a
posture of self-assurance that in retrospect evokes the political and religious instability that compelled English and Irish Catholics to seek a safe
haven in Flanders.13
Thomas Williams of Monmouthshire illustrates what English and other
Dominicans were doing in Flanders at the start of the eighteenth century.
They made the doctrine of St.Thomas Aquinas available to the many who
were prepared themselves to receive it. This apostolic work continued in
one way or another until the end of the eighteenth century. Indeed upon
the papal suppression of the Jesuits in 1773, the Belgic-Austrian authorities prevailed on the English Dominicans to take charge of the two colleges
conducted by the English Jesuits in Bruges—the former Jesuit teachers
themselves being led off as prisoners. When the Dominicans demurred
pleading scarcity of men in their ranks, down came an imperial edict from
Maria Theresa (d. 1780), Dowager Empress of the Austrian Netherlands:
“Vénérable, Cher, et Bien Aimé, . . . Nous vous ordonnons. . . .”14 Her
English guests acceded, of course. Friends of the Jesuits, meanwhile, acted
to facilitate the withdrawal from the “Great College” of students who
protested with unruliness its change of directors and, within a few days,
the Dominicans were absolved of responsibility for it. One Bornhem
Dominican, however, Father Augustine Noel, did take charge of the “Little
College” where younger boys studied. Within a few months, however,
these students also dwindled in number, and Father Noel returned to
teaching theology at Louvain, remaining there until 1792 when he moved
back to Bornhem.15 Shortly thereafter, forces other than and hostile
toward Thomism became startlingly active in Flanders.
In 1794, French revolutionary troops invaded the Antwerp region, and
eventually spread out into the countryside. Most English Dominicans
were forced to flee Bornhem and to seek passage across the English
Channel, where no commodious welcome was assured them. Among
those who remained to guard the college and convent buildings was a
young American from St. Mary’s County, Maryland (a colony named
after the queen consort of Charles I, the French princess Henrietta Maria
13 This oil on canvas, which dates from about 1635, now hangs in the Louvre in

Paris. For an account of the precarious status of the Dominicans in England from
the death of Queen Mary I in 1558 until the execution of Charles I in 1649, see
Palmer, The Life of Philip Thomas Howard, 70–78.
14 Palmer, “Bygone Colleges,” 375.
15 Ibid., 374–77.

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[1609–69]), who had been ordained a priest the year before.16 Although
briefly imprisoned by the French revolutionary forces, Father Fenwick was
released, I am happy to report, when he protested that he was a bona fide
citizen of the United States of America. Edward Fenwick (1768–1832) left
his native land when he was only sixteen and joined the Dominicans in
1790 at Bornhem, just as Thomas Williams of Monmouthshire had done a
century before. Like Williams, who took the name Dominic at his religious
profession, Edward Dominic Fenwick also died a bishop, the first of
Cincinnati in the state of Ohio.17 This missionary priest is recognized as
the founder of the Dominicans in the United States, specifically of the
province of St. Joseph, which celebrates its two-hundredth anniversary this
year [2005]. (Only Dominicans in California claim another beginning.)
Father Fenwick’s departure from England for the United States in 1804
preceded the sale of the English College at Bornhem in 1825, which never
recovered from the political disruptions of the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries.18
The United States
The province that Edward Dominic Fenwick founded eventually sent
members back to both Belgium and Fribourg. One of them, the
Louvain-trained Daniel Joseph Kennedy (d. 1930), formed part of the
early professorial corps at Fribourg. He did not remain long, however,
having taken exception to the policy that stipulates his salary belongs to
the Albertinum instead of his home province.19 To the present day, other
Dominicans from the United States have come to study and to teach at
alma mater Fribourg.They also returned to Belgium. In the 1950s,American Dominicans (unlike the French we have no adjectival form for the
United States) returned to study theology at the studium, Notre Dame de
la Sarte, which since 1929 had been the location of a house of philosophy, and since 1941, of a faculty of theology for the Belgian province.20
It was here at La Sarte, close to Huy, that two years after his ordination
our honoree began in 1953 his teaching of “moral theology in its entirety,”
16 Ibid., 382.
17 For a recent presentation of his life, see Loretta Petit, OP, Friar in the Wilderness,

Edward Dominic Fenwick, OP (Chicago, IL: Project OPUS, 1994).
18 The buildings fell into the possession of Cistercian monks, who turned them

into a parish school. For further information, see Benedictus van Doninck, Het
voormalig Engelsch Klooster te Bornhem (Leuven: Peeters, 1904, 1986).
19 See Reginald M. Coffey, OP, The American Dominicans (New York: Saint Martin
de Porres Guild, 1970), 510–11.
20 For information on this place of pilgrimage, see Corneille Antoine Halflants,
Histoire de Notre Dame de la Sarte lez-Huy (Liège: H. Dessain, 1864).

Hommage au Pére Servais-Theodore Pinckaers, OP

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as he recounts in an interview given in the year 2000.21 When, to respect
linguistic differences in Belgium, the Province of St.Thomas in Belgium
was established in 1958, the study house at La Sarte was recognized as a
studium generale, a designation then with special significance in the
Dominican Order.The suspension of theological teaching at La Sarte in
1964 providentially opened the way for Father Pinckaers’s arrival at
Fribourg in 1973.

Last month, The Tablet of London published Alasdair MacIntyre’s review
of a posthumous book by the English Dominican Herbert McCabe
(1926–2001) titled The Good Life: Ethics and the Pursuit of Happiness.22 At
the end of the review, Professor MacIntyre observes that “this introduction to philosophical ethics points us towards a theological ethics, in
which the narrative of our lives is understood in relation to the narrative
of God’s self-giving.”23 He further describes McCabe’s vision of theological ethics as follows: “The life of friendship with others, a life of
concern for their and our flourishing through growth in the virtues
needed for human happiness, becomes through grace a life in which God
shares his friendship with us.”24 There are very strong reasons to suppose
that Alasdair MacIntyre would not have composed such an appreciation
of Herbert McCabe and his English brand of Thomism—one, I should
add, that careful analysis would show to exhibit the same theological
underpinnings as those Thomas Williams of Monmouthshire defended
three hundred years ago at Louvain in 1705—unless the distinguished
Scottish philosopher had been introduced to and had come to appreciate deeply the moral theology of Father Pinckaers. One recent piece of
evidence that favors this opinion comes from what Alasdair MacIntyre
wrote in his preface to Father Michael Sherwin’s “impressive” translation
of La morale catholique published in 2001 as Morality:The Catholic View.25
“Father Servais Pinckaers, op, is an extraordinary author, and this is an
extraordinary book. The extraordinariness lies in Father Pinckaers’s rare
21 Interview with Carlo Leget, “Aquinas, a Revolutionary in Morality?” Newspage

(2000), the Thomas Instituut te Utrecht, www.thomasinstituut.org/thomasinstituut/
scripts/nws_show.php?id=35.
22 Alasdair MacIntyre,“Fully Alive, Informed by Virtue,” Tablet (September 10, 2005):
22.
23 Ibid.
24 Ibid.
25 The original French edition was published by Les Éditions du Cerf, Paris, 1991
and the English edition by Saint Augustine’s Press, South Bend, IN, 2001, with a
preface by Alasdair MacIntyre, vii–viii.

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ability to know precisely what needs to be said and when and how and
to whom to say it.”26 As you may be aware, Professor MacIntyre is not
given to glibness.
Whence comes this extraordinariness? In July 1999, Father Pinckaers
was invited to the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, and there he
gave an interview that later was published in the American edition of
Communio under the title “My Sources.”27 The man we honor tonight
tells us of two principal influences on his theological work:The Blessed
Eucharist and the Bible as the Word of God.
The Eucharist
Father Pinckaers offers testimony plain and straightforward: “I have felt
the attraction of the Eucharistic presence since my infancy.”28 He in part
attributes this grace to the mediation of the thirteenth-century Blessed
Juliana of Mont-Cornillon (1192–1258) and thus to his native city, Liège
on the Meuse. It is, furthermore, to the city of Liège that historians trace
the origins of the Feast of Corpus Christi.This pious and liturgical observance arose about the time St. Thomas Aquinas was living close by in
Cologne (1248–52), a student under St.Albert the Great.29 What is more
significant, the young Dominicans of Liège, so Father Pinckaers assures
us, rallied to the cause of introducing a special liturgical commemoration
in honor of the Blessed Eucharist, which the Prince-Bishop of Liège
authorized to be celebrated in his ecclesiastical state as early as 1246.The
practice became popular, and spread elsewhere. In 1264, Pope Urban IV
extended the solemnity to the universal Church and promulgated the
Officium de festo Corporis Christi, which, it is now agreed,Aquinas composed
during his period of service to the papal court in Orvieto (1261–65).30
The Bible
His discovery of the Bible as the Word of God, Father Pinckaers identifies
with the mediation of another religious person, Dom Olivier Rousseau
(1898–1984), Benedictine monk of Chevetogne, who in 1945 preached

26 Alasdair MacIntyre, preface to Servais Pinckaers, OP, Morality:The Catholic View,

trans. Michael Sherwin, OP (South Bend, IN: Saint Augustine’s Press, 2001), vii.
27 Servais Pinckaers, OP, “My Sources,” Communio 26 (1999): 913–15.
28 Ibid., 913.
29 For this dating see, Jean-Pierre Torrell, OP, Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol. 1, The Person

and His Work, trans. Robert Royal (Washington, DC: Catholic University of
America, 1996), 24–35.
30 Torrell, Thomas Aquinas, 357, and ch. 7.

Hommage au Pére Servais-Theodore Pinckaers, OP

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the novitiate retreat to the young Servais, now Brother Théodore, Pinckaers.
Again, his testimony is arresting for its simplicity:“The awareness that the
Word of God is superior to any human word was for a time . . . so strong
in me that I did not want to read anything other than the Bible.”31 Dom
Olivier Rousseau belonged to an innovative experiment in monasticism.
The monastery of Chevetogne was founded in 1925 by Dom Lambert
Beauduin (1873–1960), who resigned in 1928 after the Holy See sounded
a cautious note on ecumenical “enterprises.”32 The monks of Chevetogne
are liturgically organized in two groups, one celebrating according to the
Western tradition, the other according to the Eastern Byzantine tradition.
This arrangement has been in place from the beginning of the monastery,
the two rites having been adopted for ecumenical reasons, and in view of
the reconciliation between the Christian East and West.33 Within this
setting, Dom Olivier Rousseau produced the Sources chrétiennes edition of
Origen’s homilies on the Song of Songs.34 The early exposure to the
theological accents of Chevetogne helps to explain why Father Pinckaers,
following the practice of the Fathers of the Church, privileges the “spiritual” meaning of the Scriptures, one that develops out of a prayerful
beholding of the Word of God.
The monastery at Chevetogne occupies a place in both the ecumenical and the liturgical movements that, along with biblical studies, dominated the work of theology during the period between the two world
wars.35 The then-Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, upon being received into
31 Pinckaers, “My Sources,” 913.
32 Pope Pius XI’s 1928 encyclical letter, Mortalium Animos, “On Religious Unity,”

was the occasion for this initiative; see especially, no. 8.
the Web site for the Monastère de Chevetogne at www.monaster
echevetogne.com.
34 Origéne, Homélies sur le Cantique des Cantiques, 2nd ed., trans. Dom Olivier
Rousseau, OSB (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1966).
35 The same year that Dom Olivier was giving his retreat to novice-brother Servais
Théodore Pinckaers, this Benedictine monk also published Histoire du mouvement
liturgique; esquisse historique depuis la début du XIXe siècle jusqu’au pontificat de Pie X
(Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1945).An English translation appeared six years later:
The Progress of the Liturgy; an Historical Sketch from the Beginning of the Nineteenth
Century to the Pontificate of Pius X, trans. Benedictines of Westminster Priory,
Vancouver, B.C., (Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1951). The work offers a
point of view on the development of the liturgical movement until 1903 that is
respectfully critical of the styles of worship fostered by the nineteenth-century
Solesmes Benedictine, Dom Prosper Guéranger (1805–75). For a different view
of the legacy of Dom Guéranger judged from the present moment of liturgical
practices, see Jonathan Gaspar and Romanus Cessario, OP, “ ‘Worthy of the
Temple’: Liturgical Music and Theological Faith,” Nova et Vetera (English) 3
33 See

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the Pontifical Academy of Sciences during its plenary session November
8–11, 2002, remarked: “I did my philosophical and theological studies
immediately after the war, from 1946 to 1951. In this period, theological
formation in the faculty of Munich was essentially determined by the
biblical, liturgical and ecumenical movement of the time between the
two world wars.”36 Father Pinckaers, it is clear, finds himself formed
within the same theological currents as those that shaped the current
Roman Pontiff. At the same time, whereas Pope Benedict XVI devoted
his early intellectual labors to the Franciscan tradition, our young
Dominican from Belgium took up the intellectual tradition of his order,
which had flourished in the region of Liège since 1232. I refer of course
to Thomism, and to the distinctively Dominican mandate to make the
doctrine of Aquinas available to the many.
Thomas Aquinas
From the references to Thomas Williams of Monmouthshire, one easily
could take away the impression that Thomism in Belgium awaited the
arrival of expatriate Englishmen to make a foothold there. On the
contrary.Think of Dominic of Flanders (d. 1479) and Peter Crockaert of
Brussels (d. 1514), to cite examples from the early modern period. In the
eighteenth century, European Dominicans in Belgium who published
scholarly texts explaining the doctrine of St. Thomas Aquinas numbered
seventeen.37 Among them is the celebrated theologian and apologist,
Charles René Billuart (1685–1757), whose Le thomisme vengé was published
in Brussels in 1720. Father Pinckaers inserted himself into a tradition that,
despite the diversity of interpretation on specific topics that it comprises,
remains capable of creating a fellowship of common discourse that still
sustains Dominican and Catholic intellectual life.38 (Dominicans who
eschew Thomist fellowship in favor of here-today-gone-tomorrow intellectual fads miss out on the graces that make them reliable witnesses in
(2005): 673–88. For some general observations on the present-day outcomes of
the modern liturgical movement, see my forthcoming article,“The Sacraments of
the Church in Sacrosanctum Concilium,” in Vatican II: Renewal within Tradition, ed.
Matthew L. Lamb and Matthew Levering (forthcoming).
36 For the complete text of his remarks, see Pontifical Academy of Sciences, The
Cultural Values of Science (Vatican City: Pontificia Academia Scientiarum, 2003),
50–52.
37 See Leonard A. Kennedy, CSB, A Catalogue of Thomists, 1270–1900 (Houston:
Center for Thomistic Studies, 1987), 133–34.
38 For further explanation, see my A Short History of Thomism (Washington, DC:The
Catholic University of America Press, 2005).

Hommage au Pére Servais-Theodore Pinckaers, OP

11

the Church.) Father Pinckaers expresses it best: “St. Thomas was my
principal initiator in theology during my formation as a Dominican and
especially later as I prepared courses based upon the texts of the Summa.”39
He claims as his own the style of historical Thomism that had been inherited by the studium at La Sarte from professors at Louvain.Those teachers
who transmitted the thought of Aquinas to Father Pinckaers include his
Dominican confreres: dogma professor (later cardinal of the Holy Roman
Church [1985]) Jean Jérôme Hamer (1916–96), the Saulchoir-trained
moralist Bernard Maximillian Olivier (1920–), and, at least indirectly, a
founding figure of the studium at La Sarte, Louis Charlier. (The latter’s
1938 L’Essai sur le problème théologique found its way onto the “Index”
because of certain untoward remarks on theological method, with the
result that Father Charlier was affected for a period of time by the Roman
sanctions of 1942.)40 Whoever may be tempted to conclude that Thomism
imposes a monochromatic view of reality, natural or supernatural, should
read more of the mainline Thomists.
To announce that Servais Pinckaers brings luster to the Thomism
practiced in the Order of St. Dominic is to do something that is obviously superfluous. It is like carrying coals to Newcastle, to borrow a
British expression. (Newcastle is a city in northeast England where coal
is mined.) Still, no commemoration of Servais Pinckaers would be
complete without mentioning the retrieval of St.Thomas’s moral theology that this Belgian Dominican undertook in the period after the
Second Vatican Council. His early essays published in the collection, Sein
und Ethos in 1963, and, the next year, his first book, Le renouveau de la
morale, demonstrate that he had escaped “from the prison of Kantian
rationality”—“Thanks to Saint Thomas,” adds Father Pinckaers almost
forty years later.41 St.Thomas also helped Servais Pinckaers escape from
a prison whose bars, by the mid-1960s, were soon to be sundered in any
event.Today, hardly a well-trained theology student in the United States
does not realize that the four-hundred-year reign of textbook casuistry
came to an abrupt end about 1965, and that the only credible replacement for this mode of moral argument unfolds from the moral theology
39 Pinckaers, “My Sources,” 914.
40 For a brief commentary, see Roger Aubert, “La théologie catholique. A. Durant

la première moitié du XXe,” in Bilan de la Théologie du XXe Siècle, eds. R.V. Gucht
and Herbert Vorgrimler, vol. 1 (Paris: Casterman, 1969), 443. For a more
extended treatment, see R. Guelluy, “Les antécédents de l’encyclique ‘Humani
generis’ dans les sanctions romaines de 1942: Chenu, Charlier, Draguet,” Revue
d’histoire ecclésiastique 81 (1986): 421–97.
41 Pinckaers, “My Sources.”

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Romanus Cessario, OP

of Thomas Aquinas.42 They learned this historical lesson from reading
Father Pinckaers, who himself best explains his program for renewal:
The theology of St. Thomas and that of the manuals constitute two
different moral systems, both of which have their own inner logic.
Consequently, the way to renew moral theology is by returning to St.
Thomas, as one who represents the best of the tradition nourished by
the Scriptures and the Fathers of the Church.43

We sense the shadow of Dom Olivier Rousseau. No wonder Alasdair
MacIntyre considers the work of Servais Pinckaers “extraordinary.”
It would be difficult to estimate the influence that Father Pinckaers
has exercised on the renewal of moral theology in the Catholic Church.
One thinks of the Catechism of the Catholic Church and of the 1993
encyclical letter Veritatis Splendor that followed the initial publication in
December 1992 of the Catechism. Those who have studied with Father
Pinckaers, or have read carefully his works, recognize that these magisterial documents bear indisputably the stamp of his moral theological
outlook.The same documents also set about to redress widespread errors
in moral theology that gained ascendancy in the immediate aftermath of
the Second Vatican Council, especially after the equally widespread negative reaction to the 1968 encyclical letter, Humanae Vitae, and which
perdured thereafter for a quarter century. Before I left Boston for Zurich,
I inquired of Father Pinckaers’s American publisher, Dr. David McGonagle at Catholic University of America Press, about the cumulative sales of
The Sources of Christian Ethics.44 He replied that since its publication in
1995, the book, which is a translation of the 1993 third French edition,
has sold more than 6,500 copies. “It remains,” wrote the publisher, “one
of our best-selling books each year.”45 At this juncture, it would be remiss
of me not to mention the work of Sister Mary Thomas Noble, Dominican nun of the Buffalo Monastery. More than any other person, Sister
Mary Thomas has labored selflessly to make Father Pinckaers’s work

42 The manuals of the Flemish Dominican Benedict Merkelbach (1871–1942)

represent this tradition, although they are thought to differ in important respects,
for example, by placing an emphasis on virtue, from the prevailing casuist paradigms of the first half of the twentieth century.
43 Pinckaers, “My Sources,” 914.
44 Servais Pinckaers, OP, The Sources of Christian Ethics, trans. Sr. Mary Thomas
Noble, OP, (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1995).
45 Private communication of October 3, 2005, from Mrs. Elizabeth Benevides to
the author.

Hommage au Pére Servais-Theodore Pinckaers, OP

13

available to the English-speaking world.46 Alasdair MacIntyre deems her
translation of Les sources “excellent.”47
For all his knowledge of and love for the Catholic tradition, Servais
Pinckaers is not a theological antiquarian. His is not the project of
restorationist theology that occupies the energies of some of our contemporaries, and that others are tempted to think provides the only way out
of the impasse that Catholic theology at the start of the twenty-first
century arguably finds itself bogged down in. Father Pinckaers supplies
commentary on Fides et Ratio as much as on Veritatis Splendor. His own
testimony speaks for itself: “Firm in my faith [from Eucharist, Bible,
Aquinas], I was able to undertake the study of ancient and modern
philosophers . . . a study that is necessary if one desires to be enriched by
experience and to acquire a mind that is open to all that is human.”48 His
broad reading in philosophy strengthened his practice of Thomism.“The
engagement with modern and contemporary authors,” he attests, “is
necessary in order to render the teaching of St. Thomas current for our
own time.”49 If due allowance is made for rhetorical differences, this
counsel displays a form of spiritual communion with Thomas Williams of
Monmouthshire:“Thomismus ex Thomistis assertus & contra Novos ejus
impugnatores vindicatus.”
In 1993 Father Pinckaers published an essay in the Revue Thomiste
which that indefatigable contemplative Dominican, Sister Mary Thomas
Noble, translated for The Pinckaers Reader, itself a work of piety by professors John Berkman and Craig Titus. “Dominican Moral Theology in the
20th Century” reports mainly on the moral theology taught in the European French-speaking Dominican Houses of Study and at Fribourg.50 In
this article, Father Pinckaers situates himself within the company of men
who contributed to the making of moral theology during the preceding
century. He tells his own story, as it were.The present encomium aims to
locate Father Pinckaers within the big picture of Catholic and Dominican intellectual life. It is clearly impossible to acknowledge every figure
46 In addition to numerous articles that Sister Mary Thomas has translated, she also

is responsible for Father Pinckaers’s The Pursuit of Happiness—God’s Way. Living
the Beatitudes (New York: Alba House, 1998).
47 MacIntyre, preface to Pinckaers, Morality, viii.
48 Pinckaers, “My Sources,” 915.
49 Ibid., 915.
50 Originally published as “L’Enseignement de la théologie morale à Fribourg”
Revue Thomiste 93 (1993): 430–42; the English translation appears in Servais
Pinckaers, OP, The Pinckaers Reader: Renewing Thomistic Moral Theology, eds. John
Berkman and Craig Steven Titus (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of
America Press, 2005), 73–89.

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Romanus Cessario, OP

in this long tradition—although you will allow me, for personal reasons,
to mention the exquisite contribution to moral theology made by the
Provençal Dominican Michel Labourdette. So I have constructed, citing
the historical warrants, a spiritual genealogy for Father Pinckaers that
favors my own linguistic background. Jingoism does not dictate taking
this tack. Rather I cite the huge success that Father Pinckaers has enjoyed
in the English-speaking world, and in particular the United States. I leave
it to other of his admirers to plot the course of his intellectual bilander
as it glides along the coasts of other regions, linguistic and national.
No easy way presents itself to bring to a conclusion this tribute to a
man whose accomplishments are so rich and diverse. I have said nothing
specific of Father Pinckaers’s regular contributions to journals such as
Nova et Vetera, Sources, and Kerit, nor of his preaching in Liège (1964–73)
and retreats given to laity and religious, nor indeed of his many other
priestly ministrations over more than half a century. I am persuaded,
however, that the man who has done so much to remind us of the telic
perfection that befalls those who await “our blessed hope, the appearing
of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ” (Tit 2:13) does not
mind. Measured against this divine Beatitude that, please God, will meet
us all, what significance do human words possess?
This Sunday marks Father Pinckaers’s eightieth birthday, October 30,
1925–2005. The best expression of our gratitude that we can offer him
will be effected around the altar of the Eucharist and the proclamation of
the Word of God. The graces that set Servais Pinckaers on his way to
scholarship and blessedness and which have sustained him over these four
score years are also the pledge of his reward for service to Christ’s
Church. Bible and sacraments express in a human mode the plan of
divine predestination that works itself out inexorably in the world. By a
double birthright from Dominic Guzman and Thomas Aquinas, Dominicans commit themselves to upholding the priority of this divine initiative in the drama of salvation.To my mind, all that Father Pinckaers has
taught us supplies a contemporary commentary on what Aquinas teaches
about the knowledge, the will, and the providence of God.What matters
in the Christian life above all, is that the believer comes to rely on the
intrinsic efficacy of divine grace. When this first principle of the moral
life is compromised (as Dominicans believe to happen in theories that
emphasize divine foreknowledge and human freedom), Christian life
loses its sweetness and all is lost.The doctrine of predestination is not easy
for students of theology to master. Happily, Father Pinckaers helps us to
learn about divine prevenient love from the bottom up, so to speak. His
return again and again to Beatitude lulls us into sound Thomist teaching

Hommage au Pére Servais-Theodore Pinckaers, OP

15

on predestination.That is why I chose Thomas Williams of Monmouthshire as a figure for this laudatio. In Louvain 300 years ago, this expatriate
Englishman taught the right theses. So today, does our brother Servais
Théodore Pinckaers. And I am willing to wager that our Belgian friend
N&V
does it better. Ad multos annos, dear Father Pinckaers!51

51 The author wishes to acknowledge his gratitude to Rev. Msgr. Laurence W.

McGrath, Rev. Dominic Langevin, OP, and Brother Thomas Joseph White, OP, for
reading a draft of this essay and offering many helpful corrections and suggestions.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 5, No. 1 (2007): 17–40

17

Aquinas at the Origins of Secular Humanism?
Sources and Innovation in Summa theologiae I,
Question 1, Article 1*
WAYNE J. H ANKEY
Dalhousie University
Halifax, Nova Scotia

Introduction
I N 1968, the influential American neo-Calvinist theologian and
cultural historian Francis Schaeffer published a small book, Escape from
Reason. He located the origin of this disastrous modern “escape” in the
division between nature and grace made by Thomas Aquinas, and in his
placing grace above nature. By this account, Thomas draws a horizontal
line and places grace above it and nature below.This hierarchical division
is what Schaeffer calls “the real birth of the humanistic Renaissance,” and
of the autonomy of the human intellect.The reader is told that “from the
basis of this autonomous principle, philosophy also became free and was
separated from revelation.” Establishing the reality and goodness of the
natural was a good thing, but by doing it as he did,“Aquinas had opened
the way to an autonomous Humanism, an autonomous philosophy, and
once the movement gained momentum, there was soon a flood.”1 This
was a bad thing. Schaeffer declares that “[a]ny autonomy is wrong” in
respect to Christ and the Scriptures.2 Humans, created in the image of
God to whom all belongs, demand by nature a rational whole. Once
Aquinas made the division, step by step the autonomous rational ate up
* This paper was delivered as a public lecture for the Institute of Medieval Philoso-

phy and Theology of Boston College, October 19, 2004. I am grateful to Stephen
Brown and Eileen Sweeney for their invitations and hospitality.
1 Francis Schaeffer, Escape from Reason (London: InterVarsity Press, 1968), 10, 11, 13.
2 Ibid., 84.

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Wayne J. Hankey

what was above the line, rendering it either empty or irrational. The
result is what Schaefer calls the Line of Despair; he tries to show, by way
of a dialectical somersault, how by traveling down that line we arrive at
a loss of confidence in reason—the escape from reason.
In 1998, Pope John Paul II published the encyclical Fides et Ratio,
whose purpose is indicated by the title of a book that translates, comments
on, and discusses it, namely Restoring Faith in Reason.3 Evidently, the pope,
like Schaeffer, is troubled by the despair about reason. He writes that:
philosophical research [now] wanders around in the uncertain soil of
universal skepticism, . . . everything is reduced to opinion. . . . Hence
not just some philosophers, but the men and women of our time have
been subject to an increasing distrust and lack of confidence in the
existence of the great cognitive capacities of the human mind.A certain
false modesty has made them content with partial and provisional
truths so that they no longer strive to pose radical questions about the
meaning and ultimate foundation of human life.4

However, the pope’s diagnosis of the cause of the disease is diametrically
opposed to that of Schaeffer; he writes: “[H]uman reason has its own
proper domain from where it can inquire and comprehend, being
restricted by nothing else except its own finite nature before the infinite
mystery of God.”5 For the pope, a separation of faith and revealed theology from philosophy and the work of human reason is good and necessary:“Faith does not interpose itself in order to destroy the autonomy of
reason [autonomiam rationis] or to reduce the area of its activity.”6
For the pope, in distinction from Schaeffer, from its beginnings, the
Christian proclamation of the gospel has been linked with philosophy. In
that history as the pope tells it, as also for Schaeffer’s account of history,
Aquinas has an important place, however, Thomas is praised by the pope
precisely for what the Calvinist lays to his blame. John Paul II writes that
Aquinas “had the great merit of bringing to the fore the harmony between
reason and faith.”7 For him, the Thomistic harmonization is connected to
the foundations of the university and involves the autonomy of both faith
and reason.The pope maintains that St.Thomas is “an authentic exemplar”
3 Laurence Paul Hemming and Susan Frank Parsons, eds. Restoring Faith in Reason:

A New Translation of the Encyclical Letter of Pope John Paul II Together With a Commentary and Discussion (London: SCM Press, 2002).
4 John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, no. 5; Hemming and Parsons, Restoring Faith, 11–13.
5 Ibid, no. 14; 26.
6 Ibid., no. 16; 33.
7 Ibid., no. 43; 71.

Aquinas at the Origins of Secular Humanism?

19

“precisely because he radically protected the particularity of Revelation,
without at the same time diminishing the proper course of reason.”8
According to him:“Although St. Albert the Great and St.Thomas insisted
on the existence of a close link between theology and philosophy, even so
they were the first learned men to admit the necessary autonomy that
philosophy and the sciences needed, so that each should depend upon
arguments belonging to their own sphere.”9 Moreover, the pope agrees
with Schaeffer that, having drawn this line of difference, Aquinas subordinates natural reason to the faith that perfects it: “Illumined by the light of
faith, reason is rescued from the frailty and limitation that arise from sin.”10
Nonetheless, John Paul insists again and again on the autonomy of philosophy:“[P]hilosophy rightly assumes its autonomy, acts according to its own
laws, and depends on its own strengths” and demands that respect must be
had for “a valid autonomy of thought.”11 In contradistinction from Schaeffer, for the pope, differentiation, hierarchy, and autonomy are good and
necessary.The problem arises not because of these, but because of too great
a separation. John Paul II writes:
[S]ome rationalists took such an entrenched position in pursuit of
certain arguments that they developed a philosophy that was separate
from and autonomous of the truths of faith. Among the different
consequences of this separation was the gradual existence of a greater
distrust of reason itself . . . [the profoundly unified] structure [created
by the Fathers and the medievals] was totally destroyed through teachings that favored the defense of a rational knowledge both separated
from faith and taking its place.12

The consumption of what is above the line by what is below it pointed to
by both theologians has much the same consequences for both men.
Although certainly not agreeing with Schaeffer that giving an autonomy
to philosophy, which he says has its own “proper object,” that is,“nature,”13
is either avoidable or evil, the pope is clear that it is dangerous, that it has
led to “the increasing separation of faith from philosophical reason,”14 and
that this has been destructive both of philosophy and of reason itself.

8 Ibid., no. 78; 127.
9 Ibid., nos. 43 & 45; 69 & 75.
10 Ibid., no. 43; 71.
11 Ibid., no. 75; 121.
12 Ibid., no. 45; 77.
13 Ibid., no. 43; 71.
14 Ibid., no. 48; 79.

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Wayne J. Hankey

Before going on to look at Summa theologiae I, q. 1, a. 1, in light of these
opposed evaluations of the structure it imposes on Sacred Doctrine and
gives to Christian intellectual and spiritual life, it is worth noting that the
pope’s characterization of what Aquinas did has been general in the
modern Catholic Church. Indeed, even if the dangers of Thomas’s treatment of the relations of philosophy and sacred doctrine were strongly felt
by the ecclesiastical authorities right from the beginning when it provoked
condemnation, his praise of precisely what Schaeffer finds destructive
echoes past positive judgments. Particularly important is the use made of
Aquinas’s division of the work of natural reason from what is given by the
light of faith by the great Jesuit Cardinal Bellarmine in the seventeenth
century and by Pope Leo XIII under Jesuit influence in the nineteenth.
Some scholars continue to defend what Bellarmine drew out of
Aquinas as Thomas’s own doctrine on the relation of the secular and the
priestly power.15 I side instead with those who maintain that this Jesuit
doctor of the Church either exploited a contradiction in Thomas’s texts
on the relation of the political and ecclesiastical powers, or used something implicit in his treatment of philosophy to draw a conclusion opposite to that actually drawn by St. Thomas. My view is that Aquinas
combined a logic derived from the pseudo-Dionysius, strongly modified
when transmitted by Hugh of St.Victor, with Aristotelian political notions
to produce a strongly papalist doctrine. His papalist centralism served the
interests of the mendicant orders in their struggles against the secular
clergy. However there is another side to Aquinas. His notion of an imperfect philosophical and moral happiness that humans can achieve by natural reason and the moral virtues in this present life is the “secular
humanism” that I think his thought contains.This notion of an imperfect
philosophical felicity is essential to Thomas’s thought and is part of what
made it revolutionary in the thirteenth century. It has, in fact, the potential to give an integrity to secular political authority. Bellarmine used it
350 years later to limit papal authority, maintaining that the pope had
only indirect, not direct, power in temporal matters.16
Earlier thinkers attempted to lead Thomas’s positions on the papal power
vis-à-vis the temporal power to Bellarmine’s judgment. I doubt that either
15 For example, Jean-Pierre Torrell, OP, Saint Thomas d’Aquinas maitre spirituel. Initi-

ation 2, Pensée antique et médiévale (Paris/Fribourg, Suisse: Cerf/Éditions Universitaires de Fribourg, 1996), 399.
16 See my “ ‘Dionysius dixit, Lex divinitatis est ultima per media reducere’:Aquinas,
hierocracy, and the ‘augustinisme politique,’ ” in Tommaso D’Aquino: proposte nuove
di letture. Festscrift Antonio Tognolo, ed. Ilario Tolomio (Padova: Editrice Antenore,
1992), 129, 142.

Aquinas at the Origins of Secular Humanism?

21

they or Bellarmine himself cited or interpreted Thomas’s texts accurately.
The developed doctrine of the mature Aquinas is that in order for humans
to obtain the supernatural end of eternal life, the royal priesthood of the
God-man Jesus Christ must have an earthly embodiment in a regale sacerdotium, ordering the earthly to the heavenly, the secular to the spiritual, and
thus all the kings of the Christian people are subject to the Roman Pontiff,
the Vicar of Christ, as to the Lord Jesus Christ himself. Moreover, this fullness of papal power extends throughout the whole Christian commonwealth although the priestly authority does not usually exercise the secular
power directly.17 Certainly both Bellarmine, and his predecessors who
found the doctrine of the potestas indirecta in Aquinas, earned papal displeasure for their efforts. It is significant both for understanding Thomas’s adversaries in the thirteenth century, and for understanding the present
discussion about Aquinas and secular humanism, that the doctrine opposed
to Bellarmine’s is known as “Political Augustinianism.” For “Political
Augustinianism,” natural reason and moral power are so weak or perverse
that the secular authority must function “at the nod (ad nutum)” of the
priestly authority.
Whatever Thomas’s position on the relations of the priestly and the
temporal powers may in fact have been, and, however disagreeable the
limitation of papal authority to the potestas indirecta by Bellarmine and his
predecessors may have been in earlier periods, 130 years ago, when the
papacy was losing direct power even over its Italian territories, it accepted
the Jesuit approach. In Fides et Ratio John Paul II quotes often the
encyclical Aeterni Patris of Pope Leo XIII, which mandated the revival of
Thomistic philosophy in the Catholic Church, and which was written
under close Jesuit influence. Leo’s purposes in Aeterni Patris were, in part,
the opposite of John Paul’s in Fides et Ratio, but there is much in
common. Leo’s most urgent concerns were political:The territorial existence of the papacy was threatened, and the Church continued to suffer
as a result of the totalitarian tendencies of the revolutionary and national
states of the nineteenth century. In respect to these, Leo wanted more to
limit philosophy than to lift it from false modesty and despair.18

17 See Aquinas, Contra Impugnantes (Leonine [1970], 41), pars 2, cap. 2, ad 10: patet

quod ordinare de studio pertinet ad eum qui praeest reipublicae, et praecipue ad auctoritatem apostolicae sedis, qua universalis Ecclesia gubernatur, cui per generale studium
providetur. See pars 2, cap. 3, co. et ad 6, ad 7, ad 8, ad 21, ad 23, ad 24.
18 See my “Pope Leo’s Purposes and St. Thomas’s Platonism,” in S. Tommaso nella
storia del pensiero, Atti dell’ VIII Congresso Tomistico Internazionale, vol. 8, ed. A.
Piolanti (Città del Vaticano: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1982), 40–41.

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Wayne J. Hankey

For him the problems that had befallen Church and State, and which
he was experiencing immediately, resulted from philosophical innovations at the origins of modernity: “It pleased,” he wrote, “the struggling
innovators of the sixteenth century to philosophize without any respect
for faith, the power of inventing in accordance with his own pleasure and
bent being asked and given in turn by each one.”19 Nonetheless, Leo also
worries about the collapse of the gigantic new edifices philosophy has
constructed for itself:
From a mass of conclusions men often come to wavering and doubt; and
who knows not how easily the mind slips from doubt to error? . . . For,
a multiform system of this kind, which depends on the authority and
choice of any professor, has a foundation open to change, and consequently gives us a philosophy not firm, and stable, and robust like that
of old, but tottering and feeble. And if, perchance, it sometimes finds
itself scarcely equal to sustain the shock of its foes, it should recognize
that the cause and the blame lie in itself.20

Thus Aeterni Patris, like Schaeffer and John Paul II, is troubled by philosophy separate from revelation both arrogantly consuming the whole
realm of knowledge and also falling into despair.
Leo sought from a renewed Thomism that by which the Church
could, on the one hand, speak to an intellectual world in which science
and philosophy were independent of and even opposed to ecclesiastical
theology, and, on the other hand, bring philosophy, and the political and
social life supposed to be based thereon, back within the control of and
subordination to sacred doctrine and ecclesiastical authority.The scholasticism that was to provide for these aims thus had the exact characteristics to which Schaeffer objects: Philosophy is separated from theology
and subordinated to it. In his most important quotation from Aeterni
Patris on the work of St.Thomas, John Paul II lays stress on the distinction, close association, and dignity, which, according to Leo,Aquinas gives
the two forms of knowledge: He “correctly distinguished reason from
faith, yet he also united them in friendship, and he protected the rights
and respected the dignity of both.”21 Although John Paul II is just as
insistent as Leo had been on the mutual need of reason and faith for each
19 Leo XIII, Aeterni Patris, “On the Restoration of Christian Philosophy,” no. 24,

www.vatican.va/holy_father/leo_xiii/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_
04081879_aeterni-patris_en.html.
20 Ibid.
21 Aeterni Patris, no. 18, quoted in John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, no. 57; Hemming and
Parsons, Restoring Faith, 97.

Aquinas at the Origins of Secular Humanism?

23

other, he is less insistent on the subordination of philosophy to theology
than was Leo, judging that at this moment it is better to put the stress on
the proper autonomy of philosophy.22
In the course of Aeterni Patris, Leo continually refers to the First Vatican Council, which had hurriedly finished its work just nine years before
this his first encyclical ( John Paul II also refers to it positively).23 Vatican
I also had established the work of philosophy as necessary, but the most
important passage in this regard in the Dogmatic Constitution On the
Catholic Faith, Dei Filius, occurs not in Chapter 4, “On Faith and
Reason,” but in the chapter “On Revelation,” which begins with this
affirmation based in a Thomistic interpretation of Romans 1:20:24
God, the source and end of all things, can be known with certainty
from the consideration of created things, by the natural power of
human reason: ever since the creation of the world, his invisible nature
has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made.25

This leads to an anathema:
If anyone says that the one, true God, our creator and lord, cannot be
known with certainty from the things that have been made, by the
natural light of human reason: let him be anathema.26

In the De Veritate,Aquinas tells us that “the study of philosophy for its own
sake, is both allowable and praiseworthy, because the truth which the
philosophers grasp, is revealed to them by God, as the epistle to the
Romans 1:20 says.”27 The same authority demands for him that the existence of God “is proved by the philosophers with unbreakable reasons.”28
Without this, he tells us at Summa theologiae I, q. 2, a. 2, Romans 1:20, which
22 John Paul II, Fides et ratio, no. 77; Hemming and Parsons, Restoring Faith, 125.
23 Ibid., no. 52ff., no. 55; 87.
24 See É. Zum Brunn,“La ‘métaphysique de l’Exode’ selon Thomas d’Aquin,” Dieu

et l’être, Exégèses d’Exode 3, 14 et de Coran 20, 11–24, ed. Centre d’Études des
Religious du Livre, CNRS (Paris: Études augustiniennes, 1978), 253.
25 Vatican I, Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith, Dei Filius, ch. 2, no. 1,
www.ewtn.com/library/COUNCILS/V1.htm.
26 Ibid.
27 Aquinas, Summa theologiae (Piana, Ottawa, 1941), II–II, q. 167, a. 1, ad 3:“Studium
philosophiae secundum se est licitum et laudibile, propter veritatem quam
philosophi perceperunt, Deo illis revelante, ut dicitur Ad Rom. 1.20.”
28 Aquinas, Questiones disputatae de veritate (Leonine [1972–75], 22/2), q. 10, a. 12,
co., 340, lines 137–39: “rationibus irrefragabilibus etiam a philosophis probatum”; and ST I, q. 2, a. 2, s.c.; see John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, no. 22.

Wayne J. Hankey

24

holds that the invisible things of God are understood from creation, would
be false because we cannot understand anything unless we can demonstrate
that it is.29
An interpretation of Aquinas that both understands him to recognize
philosophy as having a proper autonomy in respect to what humans can
come to know by their own power and can do by moral virtue, and also
embraces this as necessary and good for the life of faith, is well established
in the Catholic tradition. In contrast, let me add to the partisans of something like Schaeffer’s judgments, before drawing us to the text of St.
Thomas by way of a recently published book whose author is almost
certainly the most creative and influential present French scholar of
medieval philosophy, Alain de Libera.
Radical Orthodoxy is a movement in contemporary theology and
philosophy founded by three English thinkers at Cambridge University,
who describe themselves as High Church Anglicans. It has attracted some
Catholics, but Catholic criticism of the movement is very sharp indeed.30
More recently evangelicals on this side of the Atlantic have been attracted
by its trenchant antiphilosophical stance, notable among these is a young
member of the philosophy department at Calvin College, James K. A.
Smith, a Canadian who gained his Ph.D. at Villanova University under
John Caputo.31 The movement has made enough headway in the AngloAmerican world to get it a short piece in Time magazine reproducing a
claim that Radical Orthodoxy is the “biggest development in theology
since Martin Luther nailed his ninety-five theses to the church door.”32
Its founder John Milbank has fashioned what he called a “postmodern
critical Augustinianism.”33 Absolutely essential to its program, and enabling
it to overcome the oppositions and contradictions of modernity, is ridding
theology of all connection to an independent or autonomous philosophy.
Milbank writes:
29 ST I, q. 2, a. 2, s.c.
30 See L. P. Hemming, ed., Radical Orthodoxy? A Catholic Inquiry (Aldershot:Ashgate

Publishing, 2000).
31 James K. A. Smith, Speech and Theology: Language and the Logic of Incarnation

(London and New York, Routledge, 2002); for another evangelical with similar
views see Jens Zimmerman,“Radical Orthodoxy:A Reformed Appraisal,” Canadian Evangelical Review 26–27 (2004): 65–90; for trenchant criticism there is Paul
D. Janz, “Radical Orthodoxy and the New Culture of Obscurantism,” Modern
Theology 20 (2004): 362–405.
32 The Chronicle of Higher Education, quoted in “God as a Postmodern,” Time 158
(December 17, 2001): 61.
33 John Milbank,“ ‘Postmodern Critical Augustinianism’:A Short Summa in FortyTwo Responses to Unasked Questions,” Modern Theology 7 (1991): 225–37.

Aquinas at the Origins of Secular Humanism?

25

An independent phenomenology must be given up, along with the claim,
which would have seemed so bizarre to the Fathers, to be doing philosophy as well as theology. . . . [P]hilosophy as autonomous, as “about”
anything independently of its creaturely status is metaphysics or ontology
in the most precisely technical sense [a very bad thing, according to Radical Orthodoxy, whose judgments owe much to Heidegger in this regard].
Philosophy in fact began as a secularizing immanentism, an attempt to
regard a cosmos independently of a performed reception of the poetic
word. The pre-Socratics forgot both Being and the gift, while (contra
Heidegger) the later Plato made some attempt to recover the extracosmic vatic logos. Theology has always resumed this inheritance, along
with that of the Bible, and if it wishes to think again God’s love, then it
must entirely evacuate philosophy, which is metaphysics, leaving it nothing (outside imaginary worlds, logical implications or the isolation of aporias) to either do or see, which is not—manifestly, I judge—malicious.34

At the cost of a thoroughly tendentious reading,35 Truth in Aquinas by
Catherine Pickstock and Milbank dissolves Aquinas’s Aristotelian noetic
into intellectual intuition and Augustinian illumination in order to
reduce philosophy to what they call “theology proper.” Metaphysics is
collapsed into sacred doctrine.
What makes this new Augustinianism resemble that of those who
opposed, and were opposed by Aquinas, and who were victorious in the
condemnations of the 1270s and 1280s is that, by destroying the autonomy of philosophy, Radical Orthodoxy supposes that it will get philosophy back again but now identical with Christian theology. A strategy has
been discovered by which philosophy is reduced to nothing, and then
retrieved as a new ontology and a new metaphysics. This would be a
Christian neo-Platonism transformed by the Nietzschean critique of
Platonism. In the demand that philosophy be reduced to theology so that
its content is the same as that of faith, we recognize Bonaventure and the
so-called Augustinians of the late thirteenth century.36
Alain de Libera’s Raison et Foi:Archéologie d’une crise d’Albert le Grand à
Jean-Paul II is a complex and convoluted book. It spills a great deal of ink
34 John Milbank, “Only Theology Overcomes Metaphysics,” New Blackfriars 76

(1995): 340–41.
35 See N. Lash, “Where Does Holy Teaching Leave Philosophy? Questions on

Milbank’s Aquinas,” Modern Theology 15 (1999): 433–44; W. J. Hankey, “Why
Philosophy Abides for Aquinas,” Heythrop Journal 42 (2001): 336–45; and Wayne
J. Hankey and Douglas Hedley, eds., Deconstructing Radical Orthodoxy: Postmodern
Theology, Rhetoric, and Truth (Aldershot: Ashgate Press, 2005).
36 Alain de Libera, Raison et Foi: Archéologie d’une crise d’Albert le Grand à Jean-Paul
II (Paris: Seuil, 2003), 221–22.

Wayne J. Hankey

26

analyzing John Paul II’s encyclical and other papal pronouncements, but
it is by no means a work of piety. One of its principal aims is to drive a
wedge of difference between Aquinas and his teacher Albert the Great on
the question of the autonomy of philosophy. Their positions are treated
as the same by the pope in Fides et Ratio. De Libera contends that John
Paul II’s position is in fact that of Albert and not of Aquinas. He sums up
Thomas’s most disputed and most difficult to understand teaching in a
single remarkable sentence that distinguishes him from Averroes. I think
it to be correct and to be the heart of Summa theologiae I, q. 1, a. 1:
The paradoxical task which Thomas assigns ultimately to reason is the
mark of a rationalism very different from that of Averroes: to show by
the resources of reason that reason is not able by itself to attain the goal
which constitutes its ultimate end: the vision of God.Without contest
this opposes Thomas to Averroes, for whom the task is more to show
by means of the resources of the revealed text that Revelation is not
able without philosophy to attain the objective constituting its ultimate
end: the establishment of a universal human community founded in the
Koranic Revelation.37

In fact, the self-transcendence of man, as expressed in reason as well as in
faith, is a constant theme of Fides et Ratio, although the encyclical does
not attribute this doctrine specifically to Aquinas.38 Nonetheless, ultimately, de Libera embraces the pope’s purposes within his own.
This book is part of de Libera’s larger endeavor to use the study of the
religious and intellectual culture of the Middle Ages, a period in which
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam met through the medium of philosophy, to
illumine both their meeting with one another and the clash of secular institutions with them in our contemporary societies. His last chapter is titled
“Les enfants de Billy Graham et de Mecca-Cola.” De Libera sees an intolerance accompanying the religious revival that is taking place in the twentyfirst century. He judges that this intolerant religiosity is a threat both to what
the French call laïcité, “secularism,”39 and also to the university, which de
37 Ibid., 255.
38 John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, nos. 15, 17, 22, etc.
39 “Laïcité” has a widely varying group of meanings resulting from its long evolution

within Western Christendom generally and in France particularly; at its harshest it
is a notion that exceeds the American separation of church and state, being used
by the French republic at present to assert the absolute autonomy of the secular
power and excludes Catholic clergy and religious from teaching in the state
schools or universities and recently persons who display religious symbols from
state institutions. See “Laïc/laïcat,” Dictionnaire critique de théologie, dir. Jean-Yves

Aquinas at the Origins of Secular Humanism?

27

Libera calls, institution de chrétienté. He writes: “[T]he institution which has
made the autonomy of research and science its founding charter sees itself
reproached today because of its tolerance.”40 Les enfants de Billy Graham et de
Mecca-Cola are analogues of Bishop Tempier, and those who worked with
him to have the positions of the Masters of Arts in Paris, of Albert the Great,
and of Aquinas condemned.They threaten the university and laïcité in a way
analogous to the way the Bishop threatened the university in the thirteenth
century. He pictures the twenty-first century as “sleepwalking towards a
censure worse than any which the Middle Ages experienced.”41
In the course of this long book, besides the analysis of the pronouncements of John Paul II, de Libera exposits and compares Albert the Great,
Thomas Aquinas, and Averroes on faith and reason. He shows that the
conflict of Averroes with the Islamic Kalam
˜ had a entirely different problematic than the conflict of faith and reason within the thirteenthcentury Christian university. He argues that Aquinas’s polemic against the
Parisian Aristotelians invented the notion of Latin Averroism and the
doctrine of double truth with which its Parisian adherents came to be
associated and for which they were condemned. For him the condemnations, which ultimately encompassed the positions of Albert and Aquinas,
pushed scientific autonomy toward the separatism Pope Leo XIII and
Pope John Paul II find so destructive. He concludes:
The paradox is that the vision of John Paul II in regard to the relations
between faith and reason, philosophy and religion, erects as a model the
strategy and principles of autonomy condemned by the Magisterium in
1277 . . . the condemnations of 1277 have been the most formidable
measure of ideological control taken by the Church in respect to
philosophy.They forbad Albert the Great’s conception of the autonomy
of the sciences, inviting by the same act the movement of separation

Lacoste, 2nd ed. (Paris: Quadrige/Presses Universitaires de France, 2002), 639. For
its effects on the university and scholarship, see my One Hundred Years of Neoplatonism in France: A Brief Philosophical History, published with Levinas and the Greek
Heritage, by Jean-Marc Narbonne, Studies in Philosophical Theology (Leuven/
Paris/Dudley, MA: Peeters, 2006), 131–32. De Libera’s argument in Raison et foi
neither justifies, nor seems to intend to justify, the extreme exclusion and control
of religion currently associated with laïcité. In appropriating the teachings of John
Paul II, his interest does not seem to go further than the protection of the autonomy of research and teaching in the university from religious intolerance in a way
that the pope might well support.
40 De Libera, Raison et foi, 358.
41 Ibid., 359.

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28

which the Magisterium proposes today to arrest in making its own the
position condemned.42

Within this context, let us look at the text of Summa theologiae I, q. 1, a. 1.
Summa theologiae I, Question 1, Article 1
In my view the most radical and stunning feature of Summa theologiae I,
q. 1, a. 1, is the question itself:“Whether it is necessary besides the philosophical disciplines to have another teaching?” The question assumes a
true knowledge based in the natural powers of reason, asks whether this
is all humans should know or could know, and whether there is need, and
room, for any other knowledge.The question and the objections speak of
disciplina rather than “scientia.” Disciplina is the wider term and includes
the moral side of philosophical work as well as other parts of philosophy,
like logic, which are not sciences treating kinds of natural being.43 In
consequence, sacred doctrine here sets herself the task of finding a place
and a necessity for herself relative to human knowledge and virtues that
enable humans to construct a world aiming for and achieving the human
end of happiness.The arguments in the objections establish what Aquinas
assumes: what we might call a secular humanism provided by philosophy.
Theology as revealed doctrine must justify herself in the face of a philosophically constructed world.
Since we generally assume what at present corresponds to these philosophical disciplines, it is almost impossible for us to appreciate the shocking character of this question to the Western Christian in the thirteenth
century.Augustine had spoken of Christianity itself as “true philosophy.”44
Following him, when philosophy is identified with intellectus or wisdom,
an identification Eriugena explicitly made on Augustine’s authority, and
when fides gives us the same content but in a form inadequate to reason,
we arrive at Anselm’s fides quaerens intellectum, which is silently quoting
Augustine.45 Intellectus surpasses what we know on authority but, crucially,
it aims for identity with faith. When, in its inward and upward quest for
God, the soul finds its deiform rationality, it knows through the structure
of its own reasoning the content of faith according to rationes necessariae.
42 Ibid., 358.
43 See my God in Himself:Aquinas’s Doctrine of God as Expounded in the Summa theolo-

giae (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987, 2000), 25–26.
44 Augustine, Contra Julianum 4.14.72; see De vera religione 5.8.
45 Eriugena, De divina predestinatione I, PL 357–358 (Treatise on Divine Predestination,

trans. Mary Brennan [Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1998],
cap. 1, nos. 1, 7–8); and Anselm, Proslogion, cap. 1.

Aquinas at the Origins of Secular Humanism?

29

The existence and attributes of God, the Trinity, and the Incarnation
become a series of intelligibilia known independently of faith.46 For the
Augustinianism world to which the Aristotelian philosophical science
came in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, there was no question of an
account of reality established independently of Christian faith, which
might have a content different from faith, and relative to which faith
would have to find a place and a justification for itself.
The first objection, the first argument in the whole system, proposes
that whatever is not above reason is fully (sufficienter) treated in the philosophical disciplines. “Therefore, besides them, there is no need of any
further knowledge.”47 The philosophical sciences providing this
complete account are usually attributed to Aristotle, and indeed, the
“Philosopher” is spoken of in the second objection where significantly
his Metaphysics is cited to the effect that there is a philosophical science
of God. In fact, it is because of the systematization of philosophical
sciences in the Peripatetic and neo-Platonic schools of later Antiquity, on
the one hand, and, because of the Islamic Arabic mediation of Aristotle
to the Latins, on the other, that the philosophical world is established as
a totality over against what is made known by religious revelation. As
Alain de Libera puts it, the Arabs mediated the texts of Aristotle to the
Latins as “a total philosophic corpus, into which the whole of Hellenistic thought, profoundly Neoplatonized, had surreptitiously crept.”48
Within the Islamic Arabic world the greatest defender of the need for and
totality of this philosophical knowledge of all things was Averroes, so,
even if the problematic within which Averroes functioned was quite
different from that of Aquinas, he must come to mind at this point.
That Aquinas not only accepts as established a philosophical account
of reality, but also wishes to see it established, is suggested by the text
quoted in the first objection. We are told that Ecclesiasticus warns us not
to inquire into things that are too high for us.Aristotle also confronts this
objection from the inspired theologians (in his case poets) when he is
introducing his liberal science of wisdom in the second chapter of the
Metaphysics. This wisdom is God’s knowledge; it is too high for us; the
46 See Anselm, Proslogion, cap. 4, in respect to the existence of God; the Monologion

deduces the Trinity and the Cur Deus Homo the Incarnation. For method, see the
Prooemium of the Monologion; in the Prooemium of the Proslogion the requirement
of deiformity is made.
47 ST I, q. 1, a. 1, obj. 1; for th\e significance of this beginning within Thomas’s world,
see Fergus Kerr, After Aquinas:Versions of Thomism (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), 12–14.
48 Alain de Libera, Penser au Moyen Âge (Paris: Seuil, 1991), 20. For brief description of this Aristotelianism, see idem, La querelle des universaux: De Platon à la fin
du Moyen Age (Paris: Seuil, 1996), 117 and 68–124.

Wayne J. Hankey

30

poets warn that seeking it will provoke the divine jealousy and bring
misfortune. In his commentary on Metaphysics, Aquinas sides entirely
with Aristotle against this error of Simonides and other poets. He says
that the root of their argument is falsissima. Thomas supplies from Plato
what Aristotle would have needed in order to demonstrate his position
from the notion of divine perfection.49
That Aquinas accepts and wills the existence of a complete philosophical account of reality, including philosophical theology or metaphysics, is
confirmed by the second objection, which argues, citing Aristotle silently
(verum quod cum ente convertitur) or explicitly, that all the parts of being,
including God, have philosophical disciplines that treat them. The
response to this objection does provide for another teaching; it does so,
however, not only without negating the truth and completeness of the
human sciences as human, but also by further establishing them. First, it
grants that the same things can be treated from two different perspectives
without one negating the other; thus there can be two different sciences
of God. Second, it provides the basis for the two sciences: One functions
through the power of the light of natural reason, the other through the
light of divine revelation. Moreover, they can, at least to some extent, keep
out of each other’s way because they differ secundum genus; sacred doctrine
is fundamentally different from the theology that is part of philosophy.
Most interesting and powerful about Thomas’s treatment of sacred
doctrine in this article is that, after granting all this territory to philosophy,
he refuses to solve the problem he has set for sacred doctrine by establishing the room and necessity for another kind of teaching with the surrender of the field of knowledge and reason to philosophy. Attending to this
aspect of Thomas’s respondeo, I shall avoid speaking about that aspect de
Libera calls Aquinas’s paradoxical rationalism.50 Seven hundred years of
often increasing controversy about how nature and grace are related when
Aquinas made reason seek, and in some way apprehend, a perfect end it
could not attain, does not encourage attempting to deal with this subject
briefly. I have attempted to demonstrate elsewhere, against Pierre Hadot,
that, for Aquinas, although nature must be perfected by grace, philosophy

49 Aquinas, In duodecim libros metaphysicorum Aristotelis expositio, liber 1, lect. 3 (Turin:

Marietti, 1964), nos. 61–63.
50 For the grave problems involved in this paradox and why it is central to the

impossibility of constructing a Thomistic philosophical ethics, see Denis J. M.
Bradley, Aquinas on the Twofold Human Good: Reason and Human Happiness in
Aquinas’s Moral Science (Washington, DC: The Catholic University Press, 1997);
Kerr, After Aquinas, 119–20 (a summary of Bradley).

Aquinas at the Origins of Secular Humanism?

31

continues to be a way of life for Christians.51 Essential to my argument is
that Aquinas places moral virtue and philosophical reason within systematic structures derived from Porphyry and Iamblichus. I concluded that,
even when contained within theological and religious structures which
enable what philosophy cannot attain, for Thomas as well as for pagan neoPlatonists, philosophy “is still a way of life which transforms us towards
deiformity.”52 It is not, however, Thomas’s connections to neo-Platonism
that I want us to consider but those to Moses Maimonides (while noting
my judgment that many of the same differences that separate Maimonides
and Aquinas from Aristotle and that are usually credited to what they derive
from biblical revelation are in fact derived for them from neo-Platonism).53
A moment’s attention to the respondeo shows the debt of Aquinas to the
Jewish theologian who shared life in the city of Cordoba (and much else)
with Averroes. The debt is most obvious when Aquinas writes of the
reasons we are in need of instruction by divine revelation “even in respect
to those things about God which human reason is able to investigate”: that
is, its being known to a few, after long study, etc.54 Aquinas does not tell us
either here or in the Summa contra Gentiles (I, 4) from where he gets this
list. However, in the Disputed Questions de Veritate, when he is considering
whether it is necessary to have faith, he acknowledges his debt to “the five
reasons which Rabbi Moses gives” and which we can find in the Guide of
the Perplexed.55 The De veritate shows the necessity of faith by an argument
which is a fuller version of what is found in ST I, q. 1, a. 1. It speaks not
only of the ordering of humans to the perfect cognition of God, but also
of a difference between that of which we cannot have perfect cognition in
this life because it totally exceeds the power of reason, and that at which
we can arrive with perfect knowledge now,“because they are things about
God which we can prove demonstratively (sicut illa quae de Deo demonstrative probari possunt).”56
51 W. J. Hankey,“Philosophy as Way of Life for Christians? Iamblichan and Porphyr-

ian Reflections on Religion,Virtue, and Philosophy in Thomas Aquinas,” Laval
Théologique et Philosophique 59 (2003): 193–224.
52 Ibid., 223.
53 See on this in respect to Maimonides, Marvin Fox, Interpreting Maimonides: Studies in Methodology, Metaphysics, and Moral Philosophy (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 122, 244, 245, 310; for an instance in respect to
Aquinas, see my God in Himself, 5–6.
54 ST I, q. 1, a. 1, co.
55 De Veritate, q. 14, a. 10 (Leonine 22/2, 467, lines 188–201); Moses Maimonides,
The Guide of the Perplexed, trans. S. Pines (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1963), liber I, cap. 34.
56 Ibid., lines 186–187: sicut illa quae de Deo demonstrative probari possunt.

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Wayne J. Hankey

In their judgments about the difficulty of theology and about the
necessity of keeping it from all except mature students who have had a
long period of preparation both moral and intellectual, Aquinas and
Maimonides were following Plato, Aristotle, and the curricula of the neoPlatonic schools. The abstractness of philosophy generally, and of metaphysics particularly, the weakness of our minds which must be strengthened
by mathematical and other studies, the extent of the ground which must
be covered to reach it, the length of time traversing this takes, the need for
developed moral virtues and the proper temperament, are all reasons why
we require the gift of faith.57 These reasons do not make philosophy any
less necessary to the true understanding of Revelation, even if, by itself it
is insufficient for the knowledge that leads to salvation. Moses Maimonides
follows the Arabic Islamic philosophers in teaching that philosophy is
necessary for the restoration of the knowledge of the unity and incorporeality of God possessed by those through whom we were given revelation.
This knowledge was subsequently lost by the faithful.Thus, for him,Abraham only broke away from the idolatry of his time by means of profound
scientific and metaphysical study.58 Marvin Fox judges, correctly I think,
that in the Guide of the Perplexed, and elsewhere, “Maimonides’s greatest
concern is to eliminate every vestige of the belief that God has corporeal
properties” and that he is aware (as were the Arabic Islam philosophers) that
“a problem is caused by the language of Scripture in which God is
frequently spoken of in corporeal terms.”59 When bringing philosophy to
Scripture, Fox concludes that Maimonides “is casting himself as the Abraham of his generation.”60 In a similar way, Aquinas, while also agreeing
with Maimonides that philosophy is acquired with much difficulty, makes
it subordinately necessary for sacred doctrine.
Aquinas never tires of reminding us that the knowledge of sensible
particulars is natural to us. It belongs to our “natural perfection” not to
know God except ex creatura and so by abstraction from sensible things.61
He asks how, with a form of knowing the complete contrary of God’s
own, shall we understand his speech to us? How shall we understand
speech from and about separate simple incorporeal substance? He answers
57 See also Aquinas, Sententia Libri Ethicorum, liber 6, lect. 7 (Leonine [1969], 47/2,

358–359); Super Boetium de Trinitate, q. 3, a. 1 (Leonine [1992], 50, 108); ST I, q.
1, a. 1; Super librum de Causis Expositio, ed. H.D. Saffrey, OP, 2nd ed. (Paris:Vrin,
1954), prooemium, 2.
58 Fox, Interpreting Maimonides, 261; and Maimonides, Guide, liber III, cap. 29.
59 Fox, Interpreting Maimonides, 157.
60 Ibid., 264.
61 De Veritate, q. 18, a. 2.

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33

that revealed theology needs philosophy, not because of what God’s
knowledge lacks, but because of our human deficiency. Like his neoPlatonic predecessors, Thomas is always aware that our theology, though
valid because it participates in higher forms of knowledge, belongs to
human reason. By its labor of abstraction, human science exercises our
minds in the necessary knowledge for theology of intellectual objects
separated from matter. In the fifth article of question 1, Aquinas tells us
that despite its limits, without philosophy, we would not understand
divine speech.62 When arguing against Anselm and Franciscan Augustinians in the thirteenth century that God’s existence is not self-evident, he
reminds us that humans have even thought that God was a body.63 It is
significant that question 3, De simplicitate Dei, begins with the question
Utrum Deus sit corpus and starts its answer by reference to God as primum
movens immobile.64 Aquinas is close to Moses Maimonides not only about
the limits and difficulty of philosophy, but also about its necessity for us,
and by following the Aristotelian way in philosophy. However, Moses
Maimonides contributes still more than this to ST I, q. 1, a. 1.
Essential to Thomas’s teaching is that faith knows truths which philosophical reason unaided by grace cannot know. As he writes in ST I, q.
1, a. 1, “We must know an end before we direct our intentions and
actions toward that end.Therefore, it is necessary for human salvation that
some truths which exceed human reason be known through divine revelation.” His system involves a fundamental quid pro quo: in return for
giving philosophy an autonomy, as also with Moses Maimonides, faith for
Aquinas now knew things philosophy could never reach. In making this
division between philosophical and revealed truths, Aquinas is exactly
following the criticism by Moses Maimonides of the Kalam.
˜ Against the
so-called Augustinians of his time, he is equally refusing to allow that
what philosophy and what faith teach are identical.
Maimonides praises the intentions of those who use the method of
dialectical philosophical theology called Kalam,
˜ but he finds their solutions radically flawed. They are atomists of the divine will who, as
Maimonides puts it, “abolish the nature of that which exists” (Guide, II,
19). Maimonides represents Aristotle as fighting opponents of the same
kind: “those of his predecessors who believed that the world has
happened to come about by chance and spontaneously” (Guide, II, 20).
With Kalam,
˜ against positions he represents as Aristotelian, for example,
that the world is eternal, and that creation proceeds by a necessary
62 ST I, q. 1, a. 5, ad 2.
63 ST I, q. 2, a. 1, ad 2.
64 ST I, q. 3, a. 1. See De Veritate, q. 10, a. 12.

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emanation of a chain of single intellectual substances as much alike one
another as possible, Maimonides asserts particular acts of the divine will
by which the world had a real temporal beginning, variety enters
creation, and miracles occur. Emanation and its law (“from the one and
simple comes nothing but unity”)65 need to be supplemented. Because
even with “thousands of degrees [of emanation], the last intellect would
indubitably still be simple” (Guide, II, 22), another cause is required,
namely, “a purpose and a will directed toward this particular thing”
(Guide, II, 21),“the will of the one who wills” (Guide, II, 22).66 Nonetheless, Maimonides wants no reduction to will alone. He also strongly
opposes the notion of Kalam
˜ that the temporal creation of the world can
be proved by reason, and thus the assimilation of revelation to reason or
reason to revelation.
Following the argument of Maimonides exactly—even if his list of
differences in content differs from that of Maimonides—Aquinas maintains
that the demand of his Augustinian adversaries that things only faith could
know—the temporal beginning of the world; the Trinity; a universal, individual, and immediate providence; the Incarnation—be rationally proved
was not only impossible to satisfy but destructive. Like the arguments about
the limits of philosophy, he found this argument in Maimonides and indicates this in his very early Commentary on the Sentences. When refusing to
ascribe rational necessity to the doctrine that creation has a temporal beginning, Thomas reproduces, in both reasoning and content, the position of
Maimonides on this point. Aquinas shares his judgment that the endeavor
of theologians to claim necessity for what cannot be demonstrated only
serves to bring contempt on theology and to undermine trust in the
rational demonstrations on which divine science does and must rely.67 On
this basis, can we regard Thomas as simply having taken over his strategy for
relating philosophy and revelation from Rabbi Moses? I think not.
65 Maimonides, Guide, liber II, cap. 19, and following; liber III, cap. 13.
66 See A. Hyman, “From What Is One and Simple only What Is One and Simple

Can Come,” Neoplatonism and Jewish Thought, ed. L. E. Goodman (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1992), 117; L. E. Goodman, Jewish and Islamic
Philosophy: Crosspollinations in the Classic Age (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press, 1999), 97–98.
67 Maimonides, Guide, lib. 2, cap. 15ff.; Aquinas, Scriptum super Sententiis, lib. 2, dist.
1, q. 1, a. 5, c., and ad s.c. 6.The editors of the Leonine edition of the De aeternitate mundi judge that Aquinas follows the exact position of Maimonides whom
he cites twice in the article but “semble bien présenter une thèse de théologiens
latins, appuyée, dit-il, sur un texte de saint Grégoire”: De aeternitate mundi
(Leonine [1976], 43), 55. See T. B. Noone,“The Originality of St.Thomas’s Position on the Philosophers and Creation,” The Thomist 60 (1996): 295–99.

Aquinas at the Origins of Secular Humanism?

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For Aquinas, knowledge of God is what faith possesses so as to enable
it to seek its end, namely union with God by the vision of his essence. I
sometime think that too much is made of Thomas’s doctrine of analogy,
but it cannot be doubted that his conviction on its basis that we rightly
make affirmative and proper predications of God, is essential to his system.
He reasons that our predications are true because God possesses the qualities predicated most properly, and in this he sets himself against both
Maimonides and Dionysius for whom the qualities are ascribed to God
only as the cause of what is in creatures.68 The Divine Names refers the
unknowability of God to the fact that God is “beyond being” and thus
“above and beyond speech, mind and being itself.” Union beyond illumination, and in contrast to knowledge—not union by intellectual activity—is what enables theology, and this union is the perfection theology
seeks.69 Although Maimonides is central to the transformation of Judaism
in the Middle Ages, which makes it more a doctrinal religion than it was
previously, he unites the Jewish judgment that God is unnamable with
neo-Platonic negative theology to arrive at a position that Aquinas
regards as far too apophatic. According to Aquinas, for Maimonides
human language about God is equivocal.70 Furthermore, for Aquinas,
knowledge of God is for the sake of union, and the union it brings is so
intimate that he is required to take measures to prevent the dissolution of
the human into the divine essence.71 His understanding of our end in
terms of union comes to him most strongly from Dionysius.
There is a great deal of Dionysian negative theology in Aquinas. He
asserts that it is better to say that we know of God what he is not than
what he is (ST I, q. 3, prol.), and he teaches that “in this present life our
intellect is not so joined to God as to see his essence but so that it knows
of God what he is not.”72 Nonetheless, Aquinas is far along in a tradition
of the interpretation of Dionysius that assimilates union and knowing,
something neither Dionysius nor Plotinus, who is the source for Dionysius on this, will do.73 In fact, Thomas will not allow that for Dionysius
68 ST I, q. 12, a. 4; ST I, q. 13, a. 1, co, ad 2, and ad 3; ST I, q. 13, aa. 2, 3, 5, 6, and

12; see Hankey, God in Himself, 88–95.
69 Dionysius, Divine Names, I, 1 [588A].
70 On Maimonides, see Fox, Interpreting Maimonides, 306–21. For how Aquinas

understood him, see ST I, q. 13, a. 2; I, q. 13, a. 5.
71 This is how I understand the ST I, q. 12, a. 5, ad 3; see Hankey, “Philosophy as

Way of Life,” 223.
72 Aquinas, In librum Beati Dionysii de divinis nominibus expositio, cap. 13, lect. 3

(Marietti [1950]), no. 996.
73 See A Thirteenth-Century Textbook of Mystical Theology at the University of Paris:The

Mystical Theology of Dionysius the Areopagite in Eriugena's Translation with the Scholia

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God is beyond esse.74 Explaining why essentia Deitatis est occulta for Dionysius,Aquinas separates him from the Platonici.Their causa prima is unknowable because it “exceeds even ipsum ens separatum.” In contrast, secundum rei
veritatem, a position which always includes Dionysius, “the first cause is
above being insofar as it is ipsum esse infinitum.”75 For Aquinas, despite the
Dionysian negative theology, his first is a form of esse.
In fact, the ultimate account of human knowing for Aquinas comes
not from Dionysius but from Augustine and the doctrine of the beatific
vision he bequeathed the Latin church. Aquinas argues that both philosophy and faith demand human vision of the essence of God. Without
face-to-face knowledge, faith would be nullified because its purpose is
human beatitude: “Since the final happiness of man consists in his highest activity, reasoning, if no created intellect could see God, either it
would never achieve happiness, or its happiness would consist in something other than God.This is foreign to faith.”76 Reason, in turn, would
be denied. It is fulfilled in the knowledge of the principles and causes.
This frustrated, man’s natural desire would be vain. Both faith and reason
require that “the blessed see the essence of God.” Thomas’s doctrine of
created grace explains how we can have the demanded knowledge of
God’s essence. It is determined by Thomas’s desire to preserve the
integrity of human nature, even when we are united to God. Just as
angels have a natural capacity for knowing God as the subsistent act of
being, humans have some capacity for knowing separate substance, and to
this a gracious addition can be made:
Since the created intellect has an innate natural capacity for apprehending individualized form and the concrete act of being in abstraction by means of a certain power to separate out, it is able through
grace to be raised so that it can know subsisting separated substance and
the separated subsistent act of being.77
Translated by Anastasius the Librarian and Excerpts from Eriugena's Periphyseon, ed. and
trans. L. Michael Harrington (Paris/Leuven/Dudley, MA: Peeters, 2004), 12–26.
Eriugena is an early member of this intellectualist tradition, although Aquinas
misses this because Eriugena's inferior angels do not see the essence of God, see
Aquinas, Super Epistolam ad Hebraeos Lectura, in Super Epistolas S. Pauli Lectura, vol.
2 (Marietti [1953]), cap. 1, lect. 6, no. 85.
74 See Hankey, “Aquinas and the Platonists,” in The Platonic Tradition in the Middle
Ages: A Doxographic Approach, eds. Stephen Gersh and Maarten J. F. M. Hoenen
(Berlin/New York:Walter de Gruyter, 2002), 317–19.
75 Aquinas, Super librum de Causis, prop. 6, 47, lines 8–22.
76 ST I, q. 12, a. 1. For a complete treatment of the issues involved in the relation
of faith and reason here, see Bradley, Aquinas on the Twofold Human Good.
77 ST I, q. 12, a. 4, ad 3.

Aquinas at the Origins of Secular Humanism?

37

Divine grace gives a power to the creature in order, by an addition, to
raise its natural created capacity beyond its natural limit. Grace continues,
even at this absolute limit of creaturely existence, to conform itself to the
specific nature of the rational creature and to strengthen its intellect. In
asserting the necessity of direct vision of God’s essence for human happiness, Aquinas sets Augustine against Dionysius.
If philosophical science draws us toward deiformity, theology as sacra
doctrina returns the gift by strengthening reason. Sacred doctrine has its
origin in a light added to our lumen naturalis rationis, the lumen divinae revelationis.78 The reception of this additional light—not inherent but conferred
by grace from outside—increases ratio by giving to it what lies beyond its
scope.Aquinas does not save sacred doctrine from the scientific completeness of philosophy, by placing her in the sphere of affectivity and charity.
This is where Franciscans, who belong in the tradition of Dionysian interpretation that makes union with God experiential—the alternative to the
intellectualist tradition where Aquinas is situated—typically place it.79
Rather, he makes her a science which addresses a knowledge to human
reason and will in order that we can direct ourselves with rational freedom
toward the end which both exceeds our natural knowledge and power and
also assimilates union to intellection.
We are related to an end beyond reason in such a way as to strengthen
our reason and will by giving to them truths to know and goods to love
higher than their natural capacities reach. As Thomas writes, the infusion
of grace perfects the rational power: “The gifts of grace are added to
nature in such a way that nature is not destroyed but is greatly perfected.
Hence, even the light of faith, which flows into us by grace, does not
destroy the light of the natural reason divinely bestowed on us.”80 The
light of nature is divinely given to us.The whole massive pars secunda of
the Summa theologiae, which describes the human in its desire for happiness, both in terms of what nature understands, seeks, and does, and also
in terms of what grace might give, is set under the idea of the human as
suorum operum principium because it is imago Dei.

78 ST I, q. 1, a. 1, ad 2.
79 See ch. 7 of Bonaventure's Itinerarium mentis in Deum; and Harrington's intro-

duction, in Harrington, A Thirteenth-Century Textbook of Mystical Theology, 15.
80 Super Boetium de Trinitate, q. 2, a. 3, c., 98, lines 114–18: “Dicendum, quod dona

gratiarum hoc modo nature adduntur, quod eam non tollunt set magis perficiunt; unde et lumen fidei, quod nobis gratis infunditur, non destruit lumen naturalis rationis diuinitus nobis inditum.”

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Having introduced my discussion of ST I, q. 1, a. 1, in terms of secular humanism by reference to the pope’s justification of the good of an
autonomous philosophy, and of Alain de Libera’s endeavor to learn something from the development of the autonomy of philosophy in the
Middle Ages that might be applied to the present conflicts between Jews,
Christians, and Muslims, and having brought out in my commentary
what Aquinas owes to Averroes and Moses Maimonides, it is appropriate
to conclude with a description of an ideal moment in the Middle Ages.
In his essay “Mediaeval Jewry in the World of Islam,” Mark R. Cohen
shows how Greek philosophy provided a space within which religious
groups could both preserve their differences and find community:
Philosophy was studied by Jews, Muslims, and Christians in interdenominational settings, where the particularities of each religion hardly
made a difference. In fact, the Jews . . . participated in this as well as
other intellectual endeavors as near-equals with Muslims in what has
long been called “the Renaissance of Islam” in the tenth century. In the
words of Joel Kraemer, “[c]osmopolitanism, tolerance, reason, and
friendship made possible the convocation of these societies [of learning], devoted to a common pursuit of the truth and preservation of
ancient wisdom, by surmounting particular religious ties in favor of a
shared human experience.”. . . This world of shared intellectual
discourse could exist because, in origin and content, much of it was
neither Islamic nor Jewish nor Christian: it was Greek. Moreover,
Arabic was not just the language of the dominant, and hostile, majority religion, but also the linguistic medium of mathematics, logic, and
medicine, subjects that we call (and they felt were) secular.81

In the light of this picture of the Middle Ages and in light of the problematic of our present situation, I conclude that a foundation for secular
humanism can be found in Aquinas and that it is a good thing.
Of course, locating a foundation in Aquinas for human powers of
reason and will to seek the human good in this present life, and thus for
the secular state, does not justify regimes, theories, and actions that actually destroy the human good.That much contemporary humanism is selfcontradictory in this way cannot be doubted. Human freedom is asserted
in such a way as to destroy not only the human good but also human

81 Mark R. Cohen, “Medieval Jewry in the World of Islam,” in The Oxford Hand-

book of Jewish Studies, ed. Martin Goodman (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2002), 204.

Aquinas at the Origins of Secular Humanism?

39

nature itself.This problem John Paul II has also confronted.82 The moral
and intellectual dilemmas of secular humanism press urgently upon us
N&V
but are beyond my reach.

82 See Veritatis Splendor (Vatican City: Liberia Editrice Vaticana, 1993), no. 46:

“Human nature . . . could be reduced to and treated as a readily available biological or social material. This ultimately means making freedom self-defining and
a phenomenon creative of itself and its values. Indeed, when all is said and done
man would not even have a nature, he would be his own personal life-project.
Man would be nothing more than his own freedom!”

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 5, No. 1 (2007): 41–66

41

The Vision of Virtue and Knowledge
of the Natural Law in Thomas Aquinas
K EVIN E. O’R EILLY
Milltown Institute
Ireland

I N THIS article I wish to offer an interpretation of Thomas Aquinas’s
natural law theory that at once respects the fact of its historical development while arguing that such respect does not negate the claims of natural law to universality.1 Central to my argument is a correct understanding
of the role emotion plays in practical judgment for Thomas, a role that is
not that of a mere psychological support or prop but rather is integral to
the process of reasoning itself.This point is quite easily missed if one reads
Thomas’s treatment of law in isolation from the rest of his ethical teaching. In order to facilitate an appreciation of this connection, I have chosen
to concentrate primarily on the Summa theologiae, a work in which he
offers a systematic treatment of all aspects of his ethical teaching, along
1 The limitations of this essay require that I prescind from the wider theological

context in which Aquinas develops his natural law theory, concentrating instead
on purely philosophical issues. While the view presented here is incomplete, it
nevertheless constitutes a necessary propaedeutic to any adequate theological
discussion of the subject, for as any student of Thomas knows, grace does not
abolish nature, but rather perfects it. In the conclusion I will indicate the significance of this basic tenet for further theological reflection on the themes that I
discuss throughout the course of this article.
For a discussion of the natural law as a participation in the eternal law, see
Pauline C.Westerman, The Disintegration of Natural Law Theory: Aquinas to Finnis
(New York: Brill, 1998), 21–47. For a treatment of the Old Law as a restatement
of the natural law—a restatement required because of the obscuring effects of sin
on human perception of the natural law—as well as of the insufficiency of the
Old Law and of the necessity for the New Law, as the law that enables union
with God, see Pamela M. Hall, Narrative and the Natural Law: An Interpretation of
Thomistic Ethics (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994).

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with all the necessary ontological supports. Indeed, as Pamela M. Hall
correctly points out,“the very structure of the Summa itself, dialectical in
nature, hinges on the relationship and interdependence of its many
parts.”2 The same could be said of Thomas’s entire intellectual edifice.
Failure to appreciate this fact inevitably leads to a distortion of Thomas’s
teaching on the natural law.3
The role that the emotions/passions4 play in reason’s constitution of
the natural law is a case in point as I have already stated. In contrast to the
conception of Thomas’s thought as predominantly intellectualist, a careful
reading of his work reveals a sensitive appreciation of the role our
emotions play both in our perception of moral reality and in our reasoning about the same. The following words of Martha Nussbaum would, I
believe, receive approbation from Thomas:“Emotions are not just the fuel
that powers the psychological mechanism of a reasoning creature, they are
parts, highly complex and messy parts, of this creature’s reasoning itself.”5
2 Hall, Narrative and the Natural Law, 23.
3 On this point, see also Daniel Mark Nelson, The Priority of Prudence: Virtue and

Natural Law in Thomas Aquinas and the Implications for Modern Ethics (University
Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992), 27–28. This distortion of
Thomas’s teaching on natural law, arising from a failure to situate it in the context
of his overall system of thought, is quite widespread in contemporary Catholic
moral theology. Obviously lacking familiarity with the philosophical anthropology
that undergirds his thought, Charles Curran, for example, notes in Thomas “a definite tendency to identify the demands of natural law with physical and biological
processes,” Directions in Fundamental Moral Theology (Notre Dame, IN: University of
Notre Dame Press, 1985), 127. Curran believes that Thomas relies too much on
Ulpian, who thought of humanity as being layered on top of animality (ibid., 130).
A critique of this kind of misunderstanding of Thomas’s natural law theory would
lead us far away from the concerns of this article. It will nevertheless become clear
as the arguments presented here unfold that the notion of humanity as being
layered on top of animality is completely alien to Thomas. He in fact regards the
human person as a unitary composite being. It is precisely this view of human
nature that explains the dynamic of reciprocity that obtains between reason and
the emotions, a dynamic we are at pains to elucidate in this essay.
4 Throughout this essay I employ both “emotion” and “passion” as translations of
the Latin passio. It ought to be borne in mind, however, that the term “passion”
does not connote the same degree of intensity as it does in contemporary
English. For a brief discussion of the problems in translating passio into contemporary languages, see Paul Gondreau, The Passions of Christ’s Soul in the Theology
of St.Thomas Aquinas (Münster: Aschendorff, 2002), 30–33.
5 Martha C. Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought:The Intelligence of Emotions (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2001), 3. It must be admitted nevertheless that
Thomas’s conception of the precise nature of the relationship obtaining between
reason and emotion differs from that of Nussbaum. It does not however fall within
the scope of this article to discuss these differences.

Virtue and Natural Law

43

If this assertion is true then the implications for ethical theory in general,
and natural law theory in particular, are quite obvious. In short, they
cannot be ignored in the manner in which they have been by philosophy
for so long, since they color in a fundamental way our perception of reality and, consequently, our moral deliberations concerning the same. In
particular I argue here that for Thomas affectivity is integral to the perception of what constitutes the human good, which perception provides the
starting point for the practical reason as it deliberates about the means to
attain this good.6 It ought to become clear in the course of this essay that
in Thomas’s scheme of things perception of the natural law can never be
divorced from the agent’s affective constitution. As such this perception is
intrinsically bound up with habit and therefore inevitably narrative in
structure. Hence the fluctuations in appreciation of the various natural law
precepts throughout the course of history, a phenomenon I attempt to
account for in the case of one particular group mentioned by Thomas,
namely the Germans, among whom “formerly, theft, although it is
expressly contrary to the natural law, was not considered wrong.”7
Natural Law
Reason is central to Thomas’s definition of law. He describes law as “an
ordinance of reason for the common good, made by him who has care of
the community, and promulgated.”8 After explaining the different elements
of his definition of law, Thomas proceeds to show how this definition is
worked out in the case of eternal law, natural law, human law, and divine
law. Eternal law is clearly the core form of law for Thomas, from which the
other forms are derived.9 Given that the world is ruled by divine providence, as Thomas has shown elsewhere,10 we can say that it is governed by
divine reason. It follows therefore that “the very Idea of the government of
things in God the Ruler of the universe, has the nature of a law.”11 Indeed,
since the divine reason’s conception of things is not subject to time, but is
6 Nussbaum would, I suspect, be surprised to see the view that emotions are inte-

gral to the process of reasoning itself applied in support of Thomas’s natural law
theory. For in her estimation any system that advocates rule following (“deductivism”) understands reasonable and moral action to be independent of desires; in
such systems, according to her, reason is taken to be self-motivating. See her “Practical Syllogisms and Practical Science,” in Aristotle’s De Motu Animalium, trans.
Martha C. Nussbaum (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), 165–220.
7 Summa theologiae I–II, q. 94, a. 4.
8 ST I–II, q. 90, a. 4.
9 ST I–II, q. 93, a. 3.
10 ST I, q. 22, aa. 1 and 2.
11 ST I–II, q. 91, a. 1.

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rather eternal, this kind of law must also be eternal.All things are ruled and
measured by the eternal law in that they receive their respective inclinations to their proper acts and ends from its being imprinted on them.They
may therefore be said to partake of the eternal law.
Human beings however enjoy a unique position in material creation,
for they partake in divine providence by being provident both for themselves and for others because of their sharing in the divine reason,
whereby they have a natural inclination to their proper act and end. It is
precisely this participation of the eternal law in the rational creature that
is called the natural law. Thomas underscores the centrality of reason in
the natural law when he states that, because the rational creature shares
in eternal reason in an intellectual and rational manner,“the participation
of the eternal law in the rational creature is properly called a law, since
law is something pertaining to reason.”12 Nussbaum’s contention that any
ethical system that is characterized by rule-following necessarily deems
moral action to be independent of desires seems initially, at least, to have
some validity in the case of Thomas’s natural law theory, for emotions
have a role to play only insofar as they are ruled by reason, in which case
they too belong to the natural law.13
When we proceed to examine the determination of natural law, which
determination we call human law, the force of reason does not flag.
Indeed, the analogy between practical reason and speculative reason
further emphasizes the role of reason in natural law. Just as speculative
reason, on the basis of naturally known indemonstrable principles, draws
the conclusions of the various sciences, so too practical reason, on the
basis of the precepts of the natural law—which are general and indemonstrable principles in the practical domain—proceeds to the more particular determination of matters.14 Thomas is, however, aware that practical
reason is concerned with singular and contingent matters, unlike speculative reason, which deals with necessary things. Human laws, consequently, do not enjoy the kind of inerrancy that belongs to the
demonstrated conclusions of the sciences.15 The usefulness of a law does
nevertheless extend beyond a single act, for “if there were as many rules
or measures as there are things measured or ruled, they would cease to be
of use, since their use consists in being applicable to many things.”16
12 ST I–II, q. 91, a. 2, ad 3.
13 ST I–II, q. 94, a. 2, ad 2.
14 ST I–II, q. 91, a. 3.
15 ST I, q. 91, a. 3, ad 3.
16 ST I–II, q. 96, a. 1, ad 2.

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These assertions concerning human law mirror what Thomas states elsewhere concerning natural law.The natural law is the same in all men with
regard to general principles,“both as to rectitude and as to knowledge.”Yet
when one descends into those details “which are the conclusions, as it
were, of those general principles,” the natural law, although “it is the same
for all in the majority of cases, both as to rectitude and as to knowledge,”
may in some few cases fail. It may fail “as to rectitude, by reason of certain
obstacles (just as natures subject to generation and corruption fail in some
few cases on account of some obstacle),” while it may fail “as to knowledge, since in some the reason is perverted by passion, or evil habit, or an
evil disposition of nature.”17 As a concrete illustration of this point,Thomas
cites the example of the Germans who formerly, according to Julius Caesar
(De Bello Gall. vi), did not consider theft to be wrong. Elsewhere Thomas
tells us that the secondary precepts, which are derived by practical reason
from first principles, “can be blotted out from the human heart . . . by
vicious customs and corrupt habits, as among some men, theft, and even
unnatural vices, as the Apostle states (Rom 1) were not esteemed sinful.”18
Practical Reason as Constitutive of the Natural Law
The foregoing brief account serves to highlight the centrality of reason
to Thomas’s conception of natural law.The natural law can be understood
only in relation to what he terms the “order of reason” (ordo rationalis).19
It is important however to offer some clarification here, for Thomas
distinguishes between the theoretical intellect and the practical intellect.
By this distinction,Thomas does not mean that we possess two intellects,
one theoretical and the other practical. Stated very simply, there is one
mind that operates theoretically when it is a question of attaining to the
truth of a particular reality—or indeed of reality itself—and operates
practically when the subject seeks to realize his desired ends in action.
While paradigm cases of purely theoretical or purely practical intellectual
activity doubtless exist, most of our thinking is a mixture of both kinds.20
17 ST I–II, q. 94, a. 4.
18 ST I–II, q. 94, a. 6.
19 See Frank J.Yartz,“Order and Right Reason in Aquinas’ Ethics,” Mediaeval Studies

37 (1975): 407–18.
20 See John Finnis, Fundamentals of Ethics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), 11. The

reader will note that the understanding of the relationship obtaining between the
practical reason to the speculative reason presented in this present article differs
radically from that espoused by Finnis, Grisez, and others who follow their cue.
Among the various problems that the natural law theory developed by these
authors presents is that of intuitionism, for they argue not only that it is self-evident
that certain things are good, but also that some goods are basic while others are

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In the words of Ralph McInerny,“as often as not we are interested in the
truth because of some practical aim we have.”21
Apart from whatever motivation we may have for acquiring theoretical knowledge, however, it is clear that for Thomas a relationship obtains
between the theoretical reason and the practical reason, which goes
beyond simply crossing over into one another’s territory. In Thomas’s
understanding the practical reason includes and asserts the theoretical.
The former is an extension of the latter: intellectus speculativus per extensionem fit practicus (theoretic reason becomes practical).22 The practical
reason presupposes the theoretical and is rooted in it. It becomes clear,
therefore, that Aquinas’s conception of the intellect is profoundly unitary.
The intellect is a single faculty that manifests two different modes, theoretical and practical, but which are so related that the practical is an
extension of the theoretical.This understanding of the intellect is crucial
in Thomas’s ethical realism, for the practical reason is the measure of right
action precisely because it has received this measure from objective reality by way of the speculative intellect of which it is an extension. For
Thomas ethical imperatives are founded upon ontological indicatives,
that is to say, upon the way things are. Because of the ontological unity
of the intellect, there can be no disjunction between “is” and “ought.”
not.The fact that many dispute these claims certainly calls into question their selfevidence. Their method, moreover, fails to offer any guidance beyond personal
experience and social conventions on how one can judge whether something is
only apparently good or is indeed truly so.The position that I outline with regard
to the Germans later in this article requires the presence of theoretical knowledge,
that is to say, it demands a grasp of the facts. For, as Ralph McInerny states, “The
judgment that something is good presupposes and depends upon theoretical
knowledge of the thing judged to be good and of the one for whom it is judged
to be good” (Aquinas on Human Action: A Theory of Practice [Washington, DC:The
Catholic University of America, 1992], 192).This assertion does not preclude the
fact that theoretical knowledge can more often than not be “confused, vague, and
susceptible to all but endless refinement and addition” (ibid.). If I have a headache
I do not have to be a medical doctor in order to take appropriate steps to deal with
it. If I need to get better immediately I can administer some medication to myself
in the full knowledge that it will relieve my pain; I most certainly do not require
the expertise that a pharmacist or a chemist has concerning pain relievers. If I so
choose, however, I can try to acquire that kind of expertise. For a concise and
insightful critique of the position taken by Grisez and Finnis, see Russell Hittinger,
“After MacIntyre: Natural Law Theory,Virtue Ethics, and Eudaimonia,” International Philosophical Quarterly 29 (1989): 449–61. See also McInerny, Aquinas on
Human Action, 184–206.
21 McInerny, Aquinas on Human Action, 185.
22 ST I, q. 79, a. 11, s.c.

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47

The practical reason simply translates the knowledge of being, gained by
the theoretical reason, into the realm of action.23 The penetrating insight
of Goethe thus becomes more intelligible to us, namely that “in our
doing and acting everything depends on this, that we comprehend
objects clearly and treat them according to their nature.”24
Having delayed briefly on the relationship between the theoretical and
the practical intellect, it is necessary at this point to highlight a fundamental aspect of the constitution of the latter, an aspect central to the
argument of this essay: Unlike speculative reason, practical reason is
appetitive in its condition, that is to say, the principle of practical reason
is the “desirable” (appetibile). As St. Thomas states, “the practical intellect
is said to move because the starting point of its deliberations, namely the
object desired, moves.”25 We can agree with Rhonheimer’s description of
practical reason: It is, he states, “embedded” in “seeking” and depends
upon it.26 For, as Thomas notes,“good is the first thing that falls under the
apprehension of the practical reason, which is directed to action: since
every agent acts for an end under the aspect of good.”27 In the words of
Pamela M. Hall, “one cannot act intelligibly, that is, deliberately and
23 This analysis differs from that of those who argue that the question of “ought”

does not arise from the experience of being but rather from the subjective experience of our goal-directed nature that manifests itself in seeking, choosing, and
doing. It is this experience, they opine, that provides the foundation for the
systematic reflection that is proper to moral philosophy proper. Hence Martin
Rhonheimer maintains that “such judgments as ‘All striving is guided to some
goal’ and ‘That toward which everything strives we call the good,’ are not derived
from metaphysics, but represent an original experience that is sui generis”
(Rhonheimer, Natural Law and Practical Reason:A Thomist View of Moral Autonomy,
trans. Gerald Malsbary [Bronx: Fordham University Press, 2000], 23). Here we
witness the influence of John Finnis who asserts that the good that guides ethical reflection is not preceded by—in fact is independent of—any theoretical
knowledge, Fundamentals of Ethics (Washington, DC: Georgetown University
Press, 1983).
24 Quoted in Josef Pieper, Living the Truth, trans. Lothar Krauth and Stella Lange
(San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989), 108. Pieper offers an analysis of the structure of the extension of reason from the sight of the good to the command that
is directed toward action (ibid., 145–51). He does not, however, deal with the
problem of bad choice or with the aporia of the apparent good. For a very fine
treatment of the same, see Rafael-Tomás Caldera, Le jugement par inclination chez
saint Thomas d’Aquin (Paris:Vrin, 1980).
25 “Propter hoc dicitur intellectus practicus movere, quia scilicet eius principium,
quod est appetibile, movet.” In III De anima, in Opera omnia, vol. 24, ed. Stanislas
Eduardus Fretté (Paris:Vivès, 1875), lect. 15. My translation.
26 Rhonheimer, Natural Law and Practical Reason, 27.
27 ST I–II, q. 94, a. 2.

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rationally, without acting purposively, for the sake of some end understood
as good.”28 Indeed, it is precisely because of its appetitive condition that
the acts of the practical reason are necessarily experienced as preceptive:
Good is to be done and pursued and evil is to be avoided.29 This precept refers
of course to goodness under its formal aspect, the ratio boni.
As we will see, however, it is possible to be mistaken at the level of this
first principle about the true nature of the particular good that confronts
one, for at this level all the force of subjectivity comes to bear on the
perception of reality.This contention is of course at odds with an understanding that treats the rules of natural law as if they were intuitively
knowable or evident a priori to reason. Our position does seem to cohere
much more with common experience and the testimony of human
history. Knowledge of self-evident truths is attained by laborious acquisition through reflection on human experience30; and the formulation of
rules on the basis of this experience is meant to facilitate us in securing
the goods of human life—although it is very possible to misinterpret
experience and to formulate erroneous rules on this basis, thereby actually undermining the attainment of these goods. Notwithstanding this
possibility, however, the natural law can be said to be teleological in its
very nature, that is to say, it has as its end or purpose human flourishing
or fulfillment.31 Human fulfillment is of course nothing other than the
fruit of a life lived virtuously, and so it becomes clear that natural law
theory and virtue theory do not constitute two completely disparate
approaches to moral reality; they are rather intimately connected with
each other.The arguments offered here aim to substantiate this claim. In
this regard, I seek to show that a life of virtue does not so much lead to
a discovery of the rules that truly conduce to a flourishing existence as
being the very process of discovery itself, while these rules in turn guide
us in our efforts to fulfill ourselves as human beings and thus they culti28 Hall, Narrative and the Natural Law, 30.
29 ST I–II, q. 94, a. 2.
30 This assertion may seem confused, but we must bear in mind Thomas’s distinc-

tion between truths that are self-evident secundum se (“in themselves”) and those
that are self-evident quoad nos (“in relation to us”). Thus, he states that “certain
axioms or propositions are universally self-evident to all; and such are the propositions whose terms are known to all, as Every whole is greater than its part, and,
Things equal to one and the same are equal to one another. But some propositions are
self-evident only to the wise, who understand the meaning of the terms of such
propositions: thus to one who understands that an angel is not a body, it is selfevident that an angel is not circumscriptively in a place: but this is not evident
to the unlearned, for they cannot grasp it,” ST I–II, q. 94, a. 2.
31 See ST I–II, q. 90, a. 2.

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49

vate a life of virtue.32 On the one hand, moral perception is a function
of virtue; on the other hand, one’s store of moral knowledge furnishes the
matrix within which consequent virtuous activity unfolds.This dynamic,
which obtains between virtue and law, means however that the natural
law is not something given once and for all to human beings; it is rather
something that stands in constant need of reappropriation by means of
rational reflection and virtuous living.33 In the remainder of this article,
evidence is adduced to support these claims.
It is important to bear in mind that it is only by the reflection of practical reason on its own act that we attain the linguistic formulation of this
experience of practical judgment “good is to be done and pursued and
evil to be avoided.” It is quite possible that one might never adequately
succeed in formulating it—or indeed any of the basic and self-evident
32 This view is clearly opposed to that of those who argue either for the primacy

of law or for that of virtue in the ethical doctrine of Thomas. In this regard
Nelson, who argues for the primacy of prudence over natural law in Thomas’s
ethical theory, has surely got it wrong. He is right, nevertheless, when he argues
that the standard account of Thomas’s natural law theory, “which begins with
intuited moral knowledge and then proceeds to the virtues,” is an erroneous
interpretation (Nelson, The Priority of Prudence, 37).What is required is a synthesis of these two misinterpretations in the manner that Hall proposes: “[F]or
prudence to operate effectively, the inclinationes must come into play—those
specific directednesses which are the core of natural law for Aquinas. Without
acknowledgement of this teleology, one cannot locate in Aquinas any notion of
natural human flourishing” (Hall, Narrative and the Natural Law, 20).
For a succinct portrayal of some versions of the standard (erroneous) account
of Thomas’s natural law theory, see Nelson, The Priority of Prudence, 8–11. Nelson
is himself, however, guilty of misinterpretations of Thomas.The scope of this article does not permit a treatment of these misunderstandings, but I might perhaps
be allowed to quote one instance: “Thomas’s perspective, therefore, leaves very
little room for a full-fledged ethics of natural law. The foundations of such a
theory seem to have been drastically undermined by Thomas’s portrayal of a
human nature created in such a way that it is oriented by nature only to its final
end and is unavoidably free to direct itself to more particular ends.” What, one
might therefore ask, are we to make of the basic inclinations listed in ST I–II, q.
94, a. 2, inclinations that constitute the core of the natural law for Thomas? On
this point, see Hall, Narrative and the Natural Law, 23–44.
33 Pamela M. Hall makes a similar point in stressing the narrative nature of the
natural law: “We discover the natural law through a process of reflection on the
goods of our nature and on what conduces to those goods. This reflection is
characterized as a kind of practical reasoning within experience; we reason about
our actions and, more comprehensively, our lives as proceeding towards those
goods which constitute our flourishing. In doing this, we appropriate more and
more the directednesses which are the core of the natural law,” Narrative and the
Natural Law, 50.

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principles of practical reason. As Clifford G. Kossel puts it, however,“one
knows well enough to employ them in rational discourse and in practical life.”34 What we encounter here is in effect, as Thomas Ryan points
out, an instance of affective knowing in “the form of primordial moral
awareness.”35 The judgment “good is to be done and pursued and evil to
be avoided” itself cannot be derived from a prior judgment; it is
absolutely primary. The first principle of practical reason conditions
everything else that is recognized in a universal sense as good or that is
to be concretely realized hic et nunc in action by way of prudence. The
recognition of universal goods expresses itself in the precepts of natural
law, while those goods to be realized concretely here and now are
expressed by the precepts of prudence.36
The Truth of the Practical Intellect
We have emphasized the appetitive condition of the practical reason. For
St. Thomas, indeed, “the truth of the practical intellect depends on
conformity with right appetite.”37 This conformity does not of course
concern necessary matters that can in no way be affected by human will;
it pertains rather to contingent matters, for such matters alone can be
effected by us, whether these be matters of interior action or the products of external work. Hence, concludes Thomas,“it is only about contingent matters that an intellectual virtue is assigned to the practical
intellect, namely, art, as regards things to be made, and prudence, as
regards things to be done.”38
Here it is human action, namely, the things to be done, that is in question.The relevant virtue in this domain is prudence, the subject of which
is the practical intellect in its relation to the right will. Thomas describes
prudence as “the right reason of things to be done.”39 Just as man is rightly
disposed to the principles of speculative truth (such as the principle of
contradiction) by the natural light of the active intellect, so too is he rightly
disposed to the principles of the reason of things to be done—principles
that are provided by the ends to which man is rightly disposed—by the
34 Clifford G. Kossel, SJ,“Natural Law and Human Law (Ia IIae, qq. 90–97),” in The

Ethics of Aquinas, ed. Stephen J. Pope (Washington, DC: Georgetown University
Press, 2002), 173.
35 Thomas Ryan, S.M., “Revisiting Affective Knowledge and Connaturality in
Aquinas,” Theological Studies 66 (2005): 52.
36 Rhonheimer, Natural Law and Practical Reason, 32.
37 ST I–II, q. 57, a. 5, ad 3.
38 Ibid.
39 ST I–II, q. 56, a. 3.

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rectitude of the will.40 Thus the principles of the reason of things to be
done, that is to say, of prudence, are fundamentally determined by the
constitution of a person’s will. For a person’s affective condition either
facilitates or impedes his prudential reasoning, dictating the degree to
which the latter is in conformity with truth.This dynamic obtains regardless of which species of prudence is in question: that which is directed to
one’s own good (prudence simply so called), that which is directed to the
common good of the home (domestic prudence), or that which is directed to
the common good of the state or kingdom (political prudence).41
I argue that the impact of the affective constitution of an individual on
the operation of his practical reason is fundamental in Thomas’s ethical
thought and in his natural law theory in particular, a claim that I hope to
substantiate in the remainder of this essay and one central to appreciating the dynamic which, I posit, obtains between virtue and law.As already
stated, this dynamic means that the natural law is not something given
once and for all to human beings, but is rather something that stands in
constant need of reappropriation by means of rational reflection and
virtuous living.
Affectivity and the Perception of Moral Truth
The important place that the passions occupy in the moral life for St.
Thomas is indicated by the fact that he foregoes any systematic treatment
of them in the treatise on the soul in the Summa theologiae, I, questions
75–79, choosing instead to devote a treatise to them in the secunda pars,
that part of the Summa theologiae that deals with moral concerns. He
adopts this course of action in spite of his assertion in the prologue to the
treatise on the soul that he intends to discuss the operations of the soul,
which operations include the passions.42 The choice to defer any inquiry
into the passions until the secunda pars bears witness, according to Paul
Gondreau to “the wholly integral role that affectivity plays in the moral
life.”43 This role cannot be understated.As Gondreau remarks, the passions
are for Thomas “integral and indispensable features of the moral life, since
40 Ibid.
41 ST II–II, q. 47, a. 11.Thomas’s assertion that there are three species of prudence

points to his understanding that our knowledge of human nature and of what
contributes to its flourishing is acquired on both an individual plane and a
communal plane. The latter plane leads us to human law, a kind of law from
which the natural law can never be wholly separated. See Hall, Narrative and the
Natural Law, 41–42.
42 ST I, q. 75, prol.
43 Gondreau, The Passions of Christ’s Soul, 108.

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one’s emotional disposition figures largely in determining whether the
human thrust for the good has indeed been attained.”44 Although the
passions furnish the necessary first step in the moral life, however, the
fulfillment of the human desire for perfection requires, as we shall see, the
overseeing command of reason—or imperium, to employ Thomas’s term.
At the beginning of the secunda secundae pars, Thomas observes that
“General remarks about moral matters are of little use because human
actions are about particular things.”45 When the moralist comes to discuss
particular concrete cases, he encounters the fact that human beings are
moved by passions.As Gilson points out,“the study of the passions, therefore, must precede any discussion of moral problems.”46 In adopting this
approach,Thomas displays his moral realism; as Gondreau points out,“the
moral quality of human life begins for him in the most concrete of
human experiences: the movements of sensitive affectivity, the
passions.”47 For Thomas our choices and intentions do not exist in the
realm of abstraction; rather, a man desires this object, he fears that
outcome, and so on.
One of the principal reasons Thomas views human affectivity in such
a positive light is because of his hylomorphism, that is to say, the theory of
form and matter that he inherited from Aristotle, albeit adapting it according to his own purposes.According to Thomas’s hylomorphic metaphysics
of human nature, the human person is a unitary composite being,
comprising both body and soul. In keeping with this view, he recognizes
that one cannot separate the sensible dimension of human life from the
psychic. Thus, as Judith A. Barad comments, “the psychic and corporeal
elements of emotional experience are not characteristic of two entities;
together they make up one affective experience.”48 Sensibility therefore is
integral to affectivity and cannot be ignored in any treatment of the moral
life, for just as emotion has both psychic and physical components, so too
moral judgment includes rational and emotional elements. The intrinsic
connection between the various dimensions of the human person will be
illustrated in the following summary of Thomas’s account of the emotions
insofar as they have an impact on the life of reason. It will become evident
that a hylomorphic metaphysics of human nature requires that any affec44 Ibid., 264.
45 ST II–II, prol. My translation.
46 E. Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of St.Thomas, trans. L. K. Shook (New York:

Random House, 1956), 271.
47 Gondreau, The Passions of Christ’s Soul, 108.
48 Judith A. Barad, “Aquinas on the Role of Emotion in Moral Judgment and

Activity,” The Thomist 55 (1991): 399.

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tive movement be informed by and integrated into the life of reason; a
synergy therefore obtains between affectivity and the life of reason. The
moral life engages the entire human person.49
According to Thomas, all the soul’s powers are rooted in the one
essence of the soul; in other words, they emanate from one and the same
spiritual principle, although it must be emphasized that they remain
distinct from one another, having different formal objects.50 This connection between the soul’s powers means that when the exercise of one
power becomes more intense, that of another is weakened or perhaps
even altogether impeded.There obtains among the various powers of the
soul a spiritual equivalent of the principle of conservation of energy; “in
the operations of the soul,” therefore,“a certain attention is requisite, and
if this be closely fixed on one thing, less attention is given to another.”51
The rational appetite or will is not immune from the dynamism we have
just described for, as Thomas states, “by a kind of distraction, when the
movement of the sensitive appetite is enforced in respect of any passion
whatever, the proper movement of the rational appetite of will must, of
necessity, become remiss or altogether impeded.”52
More pertinent to our discussion is the second way in which Thomas
argues that a passion of the sensitive appetite can move the will indirectly.
This influence has its source in the will’s object, namely the good apprehended by reason. It is clear that the judgment and apprehension of
reason in those who are deranged is impeded on account of “a vehement
and inordinate apprehension of the imagination and judgment of the
estimative power.”53 Just as the judgment of the sense of taste is conditioned by the disposition of the tongue—the disposition of the tongue
of one affected by illness might, for example, make even perfectly good
food seem bitter to the sense of taste—so too “the apprehension of the
imagination and judgment of the estimative power follow the passion of
the sensitive appetite.”54 Consequently, the imagination of one overtaken
by a fit of passion is consumed with the object of his emotion, finding it
difficult to divert his attention elsewhere.As a result,Thomas tells us,“the
49 See Servais Pinckaers, “Les passions et la morale,” Revue de sciences philosophiques

et théologiques 74 (1990): 381–86.
50 Thus sight has color as its object; hearing, sound; and so on.
51 ST I–II, q. 77, a. 1.
52 Ibid.
53 Ibid. For Aquinas imagination “is as it were a storehouse of forms received

through the senses” (ST I, q. 78, a. 4).The estimative power apprehends “intentions that are not received through the senses” (ibid.)—that something is good
or harmful, for example, or that something is useful.
54 ST I–II, q. 77, a. 1.

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judgment of the reason often follows the passion of the sensitive appetite,
and consequently the will’s movement follows it also, since it has a natural inclination always to follow the judgment of reason.”55 In other
words, the passion of the sensitive appetite informs the judgment of
reason, which in turn gives a certain direction to the movement of the
will. It is not difficult to see how a person’s ability to engage in moral
reasoning is impaired when he is in the grips of emotion.As Barad points
out,“being overtaken by a strong emotion, our reasoning ability becomes
centered on the object of the emotion to such a degree that we do not
consider the advantages of alternative courses of action.”56
In this regard it ought to be noted that whether the object of the will be
a true good or merely an apparent good, there is always an affective influence on reason, an influence that issues from the sensitive appetite. Given
the ontologically unitary nature of the human being there can be no such
thing as pure, detached reason in the sense of reason that prescinds
completely from emotion.The question on any particular occasion is: Given
the appetitive condition of the practical reason that we have already noted,
to what extent does affectivity facilitate or impede an objective perception
of reality on the part of reason? To what extent is the affective response in
accord with the very constitution of the reality at hand and therefore allow
reason to accomplish its work in fidelity to the demands of truth?
Aquinas himself notes that “the fact that something appears good in
particular to reason, whereas it is not good, is due to a passion.”57 This
influence of passion on reason can even lead to a situation in which a
man fails to consider in particular what he knows in general; passion in
effect fetters the reason and hinders it from arguing from the appropriate
premise. An incontinent man, for example, may well know that fornication is wrong, but on account of passion fails to see that this particular
act is one of fornication and therefore immoral.This state of affairs arises
because, instead of reasoning from the universal premise “No fornication
is lawful,” the incontinent man employs the premise “Pleasure is to be
pursued.” Man in effect reasons about the universal proposition that is
“suggested by his the inclination of the passion,”58 and reasons to his
55 Ibid.
56 Barad, “Aquinas on the Role of Emotion,” 406.
57 ST I–II, q. 77, a. 2, ad 2. Elsewhere he states that “a man is changed as to his

disposition according to the passions of the sense appetite. Hence something
seems fitting to man when experiencing a certain passion which would not seem
so with the passion absent; for example, something seems good to a man when
angry which does not seem so when he is calm. In this way, on the part of the
object, the sense appetite moves the will,” ST I–II, q. 9, a. 2.
58 ST I–II, q. 77, a. 2, ad 4.

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conclusion accordingly.Thomas explicitly refers to this argument, which
occurs in his treatise on the passions, when he comes to expound his
theory of the natural law. Although the general principles of the natural
law, in the abstract, can in no way be blotted out from human hearts, they
can be blotted out in the case of a particular action, “in so far as reason
is hindered from applying the general principle to a particular point of
practice, on account of concupiscence or some other passion.”59 In order
that the conclusion of his practical reason may in fact be in accord with
the objective reality confronting him, a man must enjoy “a right appetite
of the end” so that reason “may hold itself aright in respect of principles,
that is, the ends, on which it builds its argument.”60
It ought to be borne in mind with regard to all that we have said thus
far that reason always remains the first principle of human acts; all other
principles of human acts are subordinate to reason, but in various ways.
Some, such as healthy members, obey reason without resistance,“for as soon
as reason commands, the hand or the foot proceeds to action.”61 In contrast
to healthy limbs, “the appetitive faculty obeys the reason, not blindly, but
with a certain power of opposition.”62 Referring to Aristotle,Thomas cites
the analogy of the exercise of political power, whereby a man rules over free
subjects who enjoy a certain right of opposition, in order to elucidate the
relationship obtaining between reason and the passions. Reason, for example, might demand that one adhere to a special diet in order to regain or to
maintain one’s health; this demand, however, will have no effect unless the
sensitive appetite approves of it and translates it into actual practice.
Insofar as the passions do not obey the lead of reason, therefore, but rather
lead an unruly existence, they impede the judgment of reason. Or, as
Thomas expresses it elsewhere, they “drag the reason down with them.”63
59 ST I–II, q. 94, a. 6. This idea is echoed in Thomas’s treatment of the Old Law.

Thus in ST I–II, q. 99, a. 2, ad 2, he states: “Now human reason could not go
astray in the abstract, as to the universal principles of the natural law; but through
being habituated to sin, it became obscured in the point of things to be done in
detail.With regard in fact to the other moral precepts, which are like conclusions
drawn from the universal principles of the natural law, the reason of many went
astray so that it judged certain things to be good which in themselves are bad.”
(My translation.) Thomas maintains that the habit of sinning gave rise to a
progressive ignorance of the natural law; hence the necessity for the Old Law,
which clarified the natural law, knowledge of which habitual sin had obscured.
60 ST I–II, q. 58, a. 3, ad 2.
61 ST I–II, q. 58,a. 2.
62 Ibid.
63 ST III, q. 15, a. 4.The translation is from Gondreau, The Passions of Christ’s Soul.
The original Latin reads “trahunt rationem.”The Blackfriars translation is “deflect
the reason.”

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When however they do follow the judgment of reason, as though
commanded thereby, they facilitate the execution of its command since they
are inclined to the good that is in accord with reason. Moreover, as Mark D.
Jordan puts it, “so far as the passions are brought under right reason, they
increase the exercise of reason and so nearness to the good.”64 It is precisely
this inclination of the appetitive faculty to the good that is in accord with
reason, which constitutes moral virtue. Moral virtue is not simply the appetitive condition that inclines a man to what is in accord with right reason; in
order to count as moral virtue it must be joined with right reason. Moral
habits are “to be considered as virtues in so far as they are in conformity
with reason.”65 The movements of passion constitute the matter of moral
virtue, while moral virtue itself is effected by the habitus of choosing
informed by the rule of right reason. In the words of Gondreau, “reason’s
penetration into sensibility helps the concupiscible and irascible powers
engage actively in the work of virtue, whereby they desire themselves the good
of reason and where they exercise their proper activity within the arena of
virtuous duty.”66
Virtue and Habit
The notion of moral virtue necessitates a brief examination of habitus, for
Thomas’s treatment of virtue must be understood in relation to the
preceding treatise on habit.Virtue itself denotes a certain perfection of a
power.Thus, for example, the ability to see with 20/20 vision can be said
to be the perfection of the power of sight in human beings. The active
natural powers, such as sight, are however determinate to their acts; thus
sight is determinate to the act of seeing. In contrast the rational powers
proper to man alone are not determinate to one action, but are rather
inclined indifferently to many. In order to determine the acts of the
rational powers habits are required. Thus, concludes Thomas, “human
virtues are habits,”67 for as we have just seen, an appetitive inclination
must be joined with right reason in order to constitute a virtue.
Further specifying what he means by human virtue, St.Thomas points
out that it “cannot belong to the body, but belongs only to that which is
proper to the soul.”68 In other words, human virtue does not refer to the
body, which man shares in common with other animals; neither does it
64 Mark D. Jordan, “Aquinas’s Construction of a Moral Account of the Passions,”

Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie 33 (1986): 92.
65 ST I–II, q. 58, a. 2. See I–II, q. 61, a. 2; also, II–II, q. 141, a. 6.
66 Gondreau, The Passions of Christ’s Soul, 281.
67 ST I–II, q. 55, a. 1.
68 ST I–II, q. 55, a. 2.

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pertain to the forces common to the soul and body for the same reason.
Since the soul is related to the body as form to matter, the former being the
act of the latter, it becomes evident why Aquinas refers to human virtue as
an operative habit. For form is the principle of action,“since everything acts
in so far as it is in act,”69 and human virtue implies reference to act. In addition to being an operative habit, human virtue is also a good habit. If we
take any power whatsoever if it either fails to reach or exceeds the limits of
its power, it is defective.Thus, for example, in human beings short-sightedness is a defect, while to possess the eyesight of an eagle is also defective. In
a like manner,“moral virtue observes the mean,”70 this mean being established by the rule of reason. In establishing its rule, reason resists the lower
powers exerting themselves in opposition, for the perfection of a lower
power entails a falling away from reason.71 In contrast,“reason is shown to
be so much the more perfect, according as it is able to overcome or endure
more easily the weakness of the body and of the lower powers.”72
In his commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics,Thomas explains
that the virtuous man is a sort of living rule and measure of human
actions because on each occasion he correctly discerns that which is
good and that which is bad. His virtue puts him in harmony with the
true good since virtue consists in this harmony. In each case therefore he
sees what is truly good because that which is proper to each habit, that
is to say, that which is in agreement with it, naturally appears to it as
delightful. In other words, the proper objects of the virtues naturally seem
delightful to the virtuous man on account of habit.73 We encounter the
same doctrine in the Summa theologiae.There Thomas tells us that in the
same way the sense of taste discerns tastes according to its habitual disposition, so too man judges the object of his actions according to his habitual disposition. This is so because habit makes what is agreeable to him
seem good, and what is repugnant to him seem bad.This fruit of habituation is what Aristotle is referring to, Thomas states, when he says,
“according as someone is, so does the end appear to him.”74
69 Ibid.
70 ST I–II, q. 64, a. 1.
71 ST I–II, q. 55, a. 3, ad 2.
72 ST I–II, q. 55, a. 3, ad 3.
73 Aquinas, In Ethic., III, lectio X (no. 494).
74 ST II–II, q. 24, a. 11. In response to the charge of relativism—that is really good

that seems to me to be good—I direct the reader to the metaphysical account of
the good offered in Rafael-Tomas Caldera, Le jugement par inclination chez saint
Thomas d’Aquin (Paris:Vrin, 1980), 31–58. As always, Aquinas steers a via media
between objectivism and subjectivism.The ontological constitution of an object
is such that it is good insofar as it is perfect, and this is so independently of human

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Habit therefore makes that which is in agreement with itself seem
good.This is so even in the case of evil, when the habit of the subject is a
vice and not a virtue.Thus, for example, injustice “may spring from a gust
of passion, namely anger or lust.”When however it proceeds from choice
and the doing of wrong affords pleasure, it issues from a corresponding
habit, “for whatever befits a habit is, of itself, pleasing to the one who possesses
it.”75 This experience of an appetitive inclination that does not participate
in the life of reason, an experience with which we are all familiar, is one
that has perhaps not received as much attention as it merits, given that it
results in an all-too-common human experience, namely immoral action.
The mediation of habit in the discernment of good is a constant in
Aquinas’s doctrine concerning judgment in moral matters. Correct
discernment in matters of virtuous action is a direct function of the habit
of virtue; thus, for example, a chaste person decides aright on issues affecting chastity.76 Thomas constantly describes the manner of this discernment as an intuitive judgment analogous to the judgment of the senses or,
again, analogous to the intellect’s discernment of the first principles of
speculative reason: “Just as a person assents to the first principles through
the inborn light of natural reason, so also a virtuous person, through the
disposition given by virtue, has a right judgment about what is in keeping
with his virtue.”77 Thus, whatever is in agreement with a person’s habit
appears spontaneously to him as good, and whatever is repugnant to it
appears spontaneously to him as bad. Discernment is spontaneous because
the individual’s habit is in consonance (or dissonance) with the objects of
perception.These objects therefore, when apprehended by perception, are
immediately grasped as delightful (or repugnant).
The Germans and Theft
The same observations can be made, mutatis mutandis, concerning erroneous perceptions of the good on the part of the vicious.The barbarian
apprehension. A habit will incline a faculty to that which is truly good in so far
as the habit itself is proportioned to the good; it will incline the faculty to that
which is lacking in goodness in so far as it lacks due proportion to the good: qualis
unusquisque est, talis finis videtur ei. The objective ontological constitution of the
object, however, remains unaffected by human apprehension. The goal of the
moral life, when viewed in these terms, is to achieve a right proportion between
our internal subjective constitution and the objective constitution of external
reality.
75 ST II–II, q. 59, a. 2, emphasis added.The translation offered here departs slightly
from that in the Blackfriars edition of the Summa theologiae.
76 ST II–II, q. 60, a. 1.
77 ST II–II, q. 2, a. 3, ad 2.

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Germans’ ignorance of certain precepts of natural law is a case in point.
Because of their long-standing practice of raiding other communities
they lost an awareness of the wrongness of this custom.78 Instead, this
practice afforded them a certain pleasure, a pleasure that fettered both
their communal and individual reason. Instead of reasoning from the
premise “One ought not to steal,” they employed some other premise—
perhaps “Material comfort ought to be pursued.”79 The starting point for
deliberation about human action, namely, the end, was therefore defective. Prudence was consequently also vitiated, for it cannot exist without
moral virtue that rectifies the appetite—which in turn has due regard for
the end of human action.80 The affective pleasure afforded by reaping the
material benefits furnished by the time, labor, and skill of others gradually blinded them to the wrongness of stealing and led them to adopt the
second premise as the normal point of departure in their practical reasoning. Reason, in the course of this moral decline, retreated increasingly
from its exercise of political dominion over the passions; and there
prevailed the dual ignorance of which Thomas S. Hibbs speaks: “ignorance of the good and ignorance of one’s own ignorance.”81
One can imagine young men being educated in this environment.
Growing up in a society in which raiding the possessions of other communities was accepted to some degree or other, the youngest generation of
such men would naturally have regarded it in the same light.The impression they formed could then easily be translated into a premise in a practical syllogism, stating in effect that raiding the possessions of other
communities is a legitimate way of sustaining life and pursuing material
comfort.The sense that this stealing was a morally legitimate pursuit would
have grown gradually stronger over a period of time; it did not happen
78 As E. A. Goerner points out, the Germans obviously did not think that all

robbery was just.“They only thought it good if practiced against people outside
the community of the raiders, as is clear from the passage in Caesar to which
Thomas referred,” Goerner, “On Thomistic Natural Law: The Bad Man’s View
of Thomistic Natural Right,” in Political Theory 7 (1979): 114–15.The passage in
question is as follows: “Latrocinia nullam habent infamiam quae extra finis
cuiusque civitatis fiunt,” De Bello Gallico (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1951), vi, 23.
79 According to Caesar’s interpretation, the Germans valued raiding because it
“exercised the youth and diminished sloth,” De Bello Gallico, vi, 23.
80 Thomas would say that the Germans at this stage possessed false prudence: “For
since a prudent man is one who disposes well of the things that have to be done
for a good end, whoever disposes well of such things as are fitting for an evil end,
has false prudence, in so far as that which he takes for an end, is good, not in
truth but in appearance,” ST II–II, q. 47, a. 13.
81 Thomas S. Hibbs, “Divine Irony and the Natural Law: Speculation and Edification in Aquinas,” International Philosophical Quarterly 30 (1990): 426.

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overnight.The demise of a sense of right and wrong surrounding the practice of theft could therefore be described as narrative in character. Expressing this notion otherwise, we could say that it was the result of habituation:
Long-standing practice over several generations led to an impairment of
the functioning of practical reason and to an eclipse of a sense of right and
wrong in relation to stealing from neighboring societies. The more the
Germans failed to enact the natural law, the more stunted became their
prudential ability to discern and to apply it.Any attempt at reasoning with
them would have doubtless been in vain for, as Nancy Sherman points out
in commenting on Aristotle’s theory of virtue, for “those who have already
been corrupted by a life of pleasure and immoderate feeling, rational
persuasion and dialogue are no longer viable means of effecting reform.”82
Their reason having been fettered by unruly passion explains why this
would have been so. Indeed, the Germans would have come to regard their
activity as an almost “natural” part of their life because, as Thomas notes,
“custom (consuetudo) becomes a second nature, and produces an inclination
similar to a natural one.”83 In making this assertion,Thomas recognizes that
reason cannot escape the influence of the social practices that furnish the
context in which it necessarily operates. Such practices as that of the
Germans can therefore stifle knowledge of the natural law.We witness here,
from a negative perspective, the importance of community and tradition.
The depletion of the surrounding communities’ resources led to a reversal of the dynamic just outlined for, no longer in a position to live parasitically at their expense, the Germans themselves were forced to adopt a more
self-sustaining mode of existence.84 In so doing, one might reasonably speculate that they experienced life in a more stable community along with the
virtues that such a life necessarily entails. In its early phase this radical change
in organization and conduct of German society no doubt occasioned widespread discomfort—emotional discomfort predicated upon the deliverances
of the speculative intellect with regard to attendant circumstances.85 Once
82 Nancy Sherman, The Fabric of Character:Aristotle’s Theory of Virtue (Oxford: Claren-

don Press, 1989), 165.
83 ST I–II, q. 58, a. 1. As Kossel notes, we witness here a progression from consue-

tudo to habitus. See “Natural Law and Human Law,” 188, note 51.
84 See Goerner, “On Thomistic Natural Law,” 115, for a brief account of how this

process might have worked itself out.
85 See note 19 above.The observation of Goerner is pertinent here: “The kind of

training through punishment that the natural law imposes would seem to be just
the sort of slow social process whereby Germanic, northern Europeans, who
liked nothing better than a good raid, had been painfully and imperfectly learning for a millennium that robbery, as a way of life, doesn’t pay for technically
developed societies living together,” Goerner,“On Thomistic Natural Law,” 116.

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again, however, time allowed them to become habituated to the new state
of affairs.The pleasure that attended this habituation allowed them to appreciate in a new light not only the fruits of their labor but also the virtues that
were necessary in order to produce these fruits.They would have come to
understand how the advantages that life in a well-ordered society, in which
justice reigned supreme, could be completely destroyed by the kind of activity in which they themselves had once engaged. Such a realization might
well have occasioned a certain horror on their part with regard to their past
activity, activity that was incompatible with the good of human nature
considered as a totality; their affective reaction would certainly have resulted
in an unfettering of their reason so that they were once again capable of
proceeding from the premise “One ought not to steal” in their practical
deliberations concerning their dealings with other communities. Doubtless,
too, many other premises that had previously been cast into oblivion were
now reactivated because of the relocation of spiritual energy effected by
their newfound life of virtue, that is to say, because of the transition from a
life characterized by the prevalence of unruly passion to one in which the
effective political exercise of reason predominated.
Being forced to live a life that happened to be in accord with right
reason led, by way of habituation, to an existence actively informed by
right reason; in other words experience of the benefits of their new way
of life—experience, needless to say, informed by an attendant affective
pleasure—provided the necessary conditions for reason to be able to see
the connection between this new way of behaving and the fact that they
were now flourishing to a greater degree as human beings both on an
individual and a communal basis.86 A rectified appetite, albeit helped
initially by coercive conditions, facilitated prudence in reasoning on the
basis of correct premises to appropriate means (practical conclusions)
ordered toward acquiring the goods of human existence. Now, if faced
with depleted resources, the Germans would size up the situation in the
light of past experience, a sizing up that would, of course, be informed
by an appropriate imaginative and affective feel for how this experience
was related to what was at hand and their response would be more in
accord with the objective demands of the natural law than previously had
been the case.
Once again we must emphasize that growth in appreciation of the natural law among the Germans would necessarily have been a gradual affair:
86 Here there is a recognition that desires are preceded and prepared by perception.

If this were not so it would not be possible to progress from a state of affairs in
which desires were in accord with right reason to one in which they were joined
with it.

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Growth in virtue would have resulted in greater pleasure in fulfilling the
demands of the natural law, while this increase in pleasure would itself have
facilitated rational appreciation of the demands of the natural law. In turn
a heightened awareness of the demands of the natural law, when accompanied by actions fulfilling these demands—actions chosen for their own
sakes and performed from a firm and unchanging character87—would have
produced an experience of even more intense pleasure, thereby facilitating
further progress in rational understanding of the natural law.And so on.The
fact that that neighbors’ resources had been completely depleted and that
there was, therefore, nothing material to be gained from raiding them could
not automatically evoke actions performed for their own sakes and from an
unchanging character.The passage of time and the habituation to action in
accord with right reason which it allowed was necessary for all the conditions for virtuous action to be actualized, action that was the fruit of a
personal appropriation of the demands of the natural law. The Germans
became ever more a living rule and measure of virtuous actions because
they themselves were increasingly conformed to the demands inherent in
the very constitution of reality itself—a reality of which their own human
nature and circumstances were a part—as expressed in the natural law.
Conclusion
It seems reasonable to argue that the forms of community in which we
participate condition in a fundamental way (speculative) reason’s perception of what constitutes the human good. Given that the natural law is an
opus rationis, a work of reason, it cannot escape the influence of particular
cultural forms and social practices that furnish the context in which the
life of reason unfolds; knowledge of the natural law is in fact nurtured or
stifled through such forms and practices.88 Nobody can argue with the
87 The astute reader will have noticed that here I have drawn on Aristotle’s condi-

tions for actions performed from mature virtue:“The agent . . . must be in certain
conditions when he does them; in the first place he must have knowledge,
secondly he must choose the acts, and choose them for their own sakes, and
thirdly his action must proceed from a firm and unchangeable character,”
Niomachean Ethics 1105a30–4.
88 Recent work in epistemology has devoted attention to the social dimensions of
knowledge. See, for example, Frederick Schmitt, ed., Socializing Epistemology:The
Social Dimensions of Knowledge (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1994).W.
Jay Wood summarizes well the influence of the attendant societal context on our
careers as intellectual and moral agents: “Family, friends and social institutions
contribute mightily toward shaping the framework within which our development takes place.What goals are worth pursuing, what goals should be subordinated to others, what practices ought to be avoided and which pursued, and what

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fact that the goods of family, friendship, intellectual inquiry, and so forth
are sought in different ways in different societies; indeed, a variety of ways
of pursuing any one of these goods may exist within a particular social
community. These social expressions of the fundamental inclinationes are,
however, open to revision if they do not promote human flourishing.
Natural law theory is therefore not an unchanging body of moral knowledge that is mediated from one generation to another—in the sense that
it is up to each generation to attempt to reach conclusions concerning
which cultural forms and social practices are conducive to human flourishing and which ones impede or even destroy it.
Our delineation of the way in which habit and passion affect human
functioning for either good or bad precludes any charge of relativism
being leveled against us. The objective conditions required for human
flourishing do not change over the course of time, although the manner
in which they are fulfilled is of course subject to the conditioning of
social, political, and cultural context.What can fluctuate, however, is our
ability to perceive these conditions and to mold our choices accordingly.
This fluctuation is a function of the subjective factors we have discussed,
namely habit and passion. These factors can either help or hinder right
perception of what constitutes suitable means to the attainment of the
goods of human life.
The example of the Germans’ practice of raiding serves as an illustration of how accepted norms of behavior in a particular society can
impede perception of the human good and of the most suitable means to
the realization of this good. Moral obscurity is occasioned by habituation—with its attendant affective constitution—to modes of conduct that
do not conduce to human flourishing.Thus while social practices express
a community’s understanding of what constitutes human flourishing, this
understanding may be distorted because of the epistemic impact of
accepted norms of conduct that serve to undermine rather than to
promote human well-being. For a reciprocity of influence obtains
between understanding what promotes human flourishing and accepted
mores: A particular society’s understanding of flourishing expresses itself
in particular norms of behavior, while concrete expressions of these
resources are available to assist us in moral and intellectual growth are matters
shaped in large measure within families, churches, schools and other social frameworks. Imagine how the complexion of your intellectual life might vary as you
were alternately a part of traditions whose chief goals were world economic
domination, the biblical concept of shalom, aesthetic sensitivity, the dissolution of
the self and union with God,” Epistemology: Becoming Intellectually Virtuous (Leicester: Apollos, 1998), 20.

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norms reinforce the common perception of flourishing. Unfortunately, as
the example of the Germans indicates, the only way out of moral obscurity is furnished by the disastrous effects it occasions.This fact, however,
ought to be a source of encouragement for those who despair at the
moral fabric of contemporary western society, as also should the anthropological explanation offered by Thomas as to why improvement is
always possible. To Thomas’s understanding of how we (re)discover the
natural law may be applied the following words that Nancy Sherman
employs with regard to learning virtue: It is “neither a mindless nor a
purely intellectual matter, and . . . the process requires practical reason and
desire working in tandem throughout.”89
It thus becomes clear that virtue theory and natural law theory cannot
be two alternative and mutually exclusive approaches to ethics; they are,
rather, mutually implicative and depend upon one another for their
elucidation. What I have termed the “vision of virtue” can never stand
outside the conditioning context of society and culture. (A fundamental
flaw of modern conceptions of practical reason is to think that it can do
so, it being sufficient that agents be armed with rules for right conduct.)
Aquinas would certainly agree with Russell Hittinger’s contention that
“deliberations and judgments are shaped by character and virtue, or lack
thereof.”90 Indeed this dynamic is clearly operative in Thomas’s ethical
thought, as I hope to have clearly shown in this paper. Nevertheless, he
would also commend Hittinger for his realization that “deliberations and
judgments not only flow from character, but are made in the light of
universals. And by universals we mean not only propositions about
conduct, but a knowledge of the world and other human beings.”91
Viewing virtue and law as twin components in a dialectical process
enables us to transcend the limiting perspectives of particular societies
and epochs in the light of what is good for man while, on the other hand,
preventing us from doing violence to what are legitimate particular
expressions of universal precepts of the natural law.
In this essay I have confined myself to the realm of philosophical
reflection on the epistemic impact of the life of virtue—or lack thereof—
on our ability to know the natural law.What I have argued does, however,
89 Sherman, The Fabric of Character, 199.
90 Russell Hittinger, “After MacIntyre,” 455. Hittinger adds that “by universals we

mean not only propositions about conduct, but a knowledge of the world and
other human beings.” Unfortunately, to explicate what this contention would
mean in the context of Aquinas’s thought would take us well beyond the
confines of this article.
91 Ibid.

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have great significance for any adequate theological treatment of the relationship obtaining between virtue and law, for grace builds on nature.
Man enjoys the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity as a result
of the life of grace that is operative in him, the very grace that heals the
obscuring effects of sin occasioned by the Fall. By grace the nature of the
soul is transformed so as to “participate in the Divine Nature, after a
manner of likeness, through a certain regeneration or re-creation,”92
enabling him in his intellective power to participate in the divine knowledge through the virtue of faith and in his power of will to participate in
the divine love through the virtue of charity. Of course the illuminating
effects of grace are often undermined because of the same kind of factors
discussed throughout the course of this article: Human nature is not
destroyed by grace, but rather is perfected; as such, it always remains ontologically unitary in its constitution. Nevertheless, given the sanitary effect
of grace on the life of reason, it is not difficult to appreciate how ultimately the most exalted grasp of the natural law is reserved for those who
are animated by a living faith. A substantiation of this assertion however
must await treatment in a future article.
N&V

92 ST I–II, q. 110, a. 4.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 5, No. 1 (2007): 67–80

67

Book Symposium
The Natural Desire to See God According to
St. Thomas Aquinas and His Interpreters
by Lawrence Feingold
(Rome: Apollinare Studi, 2001)

Steering Clear of Charybdis:
Some Directions for Avoiding
“Grace Extrinsicism” in Aquinas
H ARM G ORIS
Catholic Theological University/Thomas Institute
Utrecht, the Netherlands

I N HIS masterful, very clearly written study on the Thomistic doctrine
of the natural desire to see God, Lawrence Feingold offers us a wealth of
textual evidence and conceptual analyses, covering the entire history of
the interpretation of Aquinas’s view on the relation between nature and
grace, ranging from Aquinas himself to Henri de Lubac. One if its major
achievements, I think, is that it revives the somewhat dormant debate
over nature and grace. The heart of this debate has always been to find
the right balance between, on the one hand, the axiom that “grace
perfects nature,” which suggests some intrinsic connection between
nature and grace, and, on the other hand, the gratuity and novelty of
grace. In the past decades the scale tipped in the direction of the first
alternative, that is, grace perfecting nature, but Feingold’s work adds more
weight to the other side. Or to put it negatively: The debate has been
about avoiding the Charybdis of “grace extrinsicism” and the Scylla of
naturalizing grace (or supernaturalizing nature). Feingold warns us
rightly that the course has been too much in the direction of Scylla.
In this essay I shall first give a brief sketch—which also reflects my
personal experiences as a student—of the basic sentiments evident in

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theological anthropology since the 1960s. Next I will summarize the
core of Feingold’s position. Finally I will make suggestions as to how
Aquinas’s theology may help to avoid falling prey to Charybdis.
The Nature–Grace Debate Since the 1970s
Feingold’s study raises very serious questions about some deeply felt
convictions in mainstream (late-) modern theological anthropology. For
me and many of my colleagues, who received their training in theology
during the 1970s and 1980s, the topic of nature versus grace was no
longer the issue it had been in the previous decades (and centuries). De
Lubac’s sharp criticisms on Cajetan’s merely obediential potency for
grace and on Suárez’s construct of a “state of pure nature” (status naturae
purae), his own alternative view that our very being is created for union
with God, and its modified version of Karl Rahner’s “supernatural existential,” were already so deeply ingrained in the mind of our professors,
that as students we could only shake our heads at those sixteenth-century
debates and the rearguard actions fought by old-fashioned neo-Thomists.
Had not the nouvelle théologie, Rahner, Edward Schillebeeckx, and many
others shown that the theology of Thomas Aquinas had been distorted
from Cajetan onward? In fact, Cajetan bashing had become more or less
something de rigueur, whether it concerned his classification of analogy,
his metaphysical interpretation of analogia entis, or his insistence on a
merely obediential potency for grace. Furthermore, the view of de Lubac
and Rahner that each human being actually longs to see God, offered a
more fruitful basis for interreligious dialogue and, allegedly, it influenced
the fathers of the Second Vatican Council.1 Also with the Second Vatican
Council, the salvation history perspective had become dominant, and this
did not foster a climate favorable for speculative theology about possible
worlds in which possible rational beings were not called by God; neither
did existentialist philosophy with its profound criticism of an essentialist
conception of human being, implied by the very notion of “the human
nature.” The same went for social constructivism (in whatever form),
which so prevailed in the social sciences (for example, the nature vs.
nurture debate) that it made us theology students even more reluctant to
talk—or even think—about something like human nature or human
essence. And last, but certainly not least, many Roman Catholic theologians—at least in Germany and in the Netherlands—were impressed by
the dialectical theology of Karl Barth, who scorned any consideration of
1 Cf. Ilaria Morali, La Salvezza dei non cristiani. L’influsso di Henri de Lubac sulla dottrina

del Vaticano II (Bologna: Editrice Missionaria Italiana, 1999).

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humanity apart from the salvific works and person of Christ and labeled
such considerations as idolatry.
Against the background of all these developments, the only possibility
for a truly theological anthropology seemed to be a reflection on
concrete human existence in its historical relation of salvation to God.
This allegedly was the formal object of theological anthropology—if not
of theology tout court.When the relation to God was left out, theology
had as little to say about human beings or human nature as it has to say
about the periodic system of the elements: It would be none of its business. In consequence, any speculation about a “pure nature” was considered beyond the scope and competence of theology.
Declaring “pure nature” not to belong to the subject matter of theology
was also the remedy against what Maurice Blondel labeled an “extrinsicist”
view of grace, or what we as students referred to as “Suárez’s cream cake.”
It is the well-known picture of nature and grace as two tiers, one on top
of the other, without an intrinsic connection between the two. Human
nature is complete in itself, and it might very well do without grace, that
is, without a personal relation to God.Without the cream of grace, it would
be a little dry and less tasty, but the cake of nature is not really affected by
the cream topping. However, from a religious, and hence also from a theological perspective, such a view was completely unacceptable. It alienated
grace and faith from our personal, concrete, everyday life and from the
larger reality of society and the world by promoting a flight into a distinct
spiritual realm. It domesticated and isolated theology, confining it to the
little, sheltered niche of the supernatural, fully disconnected from the
humanities and sciences. The only way out from this imprisonment and
trivialization of theology seemed to be to reclaim a specifically theological
interpretation of human nature, such as offered by de Lubac or Rahner.
That is, to reclaim an approach of the human being as actually created by
God and destined for participating in the inner life of the Triune God.
Faith teaches that God made us for the supernatural end of the beatific
vision. He intended our existence to be perfected by sharing his own
divine life. If the supernatural is to be our perfection, the perfection of us
human beings, then it seems to be obvious that our humanity must be
constituted in such a way that it somehow “fits” this destination: There
must be some kind of coherence or continuity between “our nature” and
“God’s grace,” otherwise we could not be intrinsically perfected by it.
Precisely such an internal affinity seems to be denied by assuming a merely
obediential potency for grace or by accepting the possibility of a state of
pure nature having its own natural destination and beatitude and not in
need of any further perfection. The conclusion looked inevitable. The

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classical interpretation of the Thomistic commentators had to be abandoned: it created fatal problems and offered no way out.
Feingold: The Classical Thomistic Position
Contrary to the general impression sketched above, it becomes clear from
Feingold’s study that it was precisely for internal theological reasons that
Cajetan applied the notion of the potentia oboedientialis to the reception
of grace and that Suárez developed his theory of the status naturae purae.
Both Cajetan and Suárez were trying to further explicate and spell out
the consequences of what Aquinas had said about the natural desire to see
God but had not really elaborated in unambiguous terms. It would take
me too far to summarize the whole of Feingold’s presentation, but the
key question in interpreting Aquinas’s texts on the natural desire to see
God is this: Granted, Aquinas speaks about an elicited and conditional
natural desire of the human will to see God, but does that desire also
correspond with an innate and absolute desire of human nature for this
supernatural vision of God? The classical interpretation is that human
will has a natural desire to see the divine essence, but that this desire is
only a consequence of three other things.
First, it originates from the underlying innate orientation the will has
toward the perfection, not only of itself, but also of all other human
powers and of the human being as a whole. Just as heavy objects are
pulled down to the earth by the force of gravity, the will has an innate
tendency (also called pondus naturae) to its goal, that is, beatitude in
general, and, on top of that, also to the natural perfections of other human
powers: to knowledge, as the perfection of the intellect, to health as the
perfection of the body, and so on. Having an innate tendency as such is
not yet something proper or peculiar to the human will (though the goal
itself is specific to the will).The pondus naturae the will has is an instance
of the general Aristotelian–Thomistic principle that each nature or natural power has its goal; in other words, the innate tendency is just the way
in which the will exemplifies the appetitus naturalis, the universal teleological structure of “nature” in general. It is situated on a potential, preintentional, and preconscious level; it is an orientation that does not
change and is always there, as long as the will as a natural power exists
(whether it is in act or not).
However—and this is the second presupposition to the natural desire
for the beatific vision—when we consider the will not only as “a nature,”
but precisely as “will,” that is, as appetitus intellectualis, we move to the level
of actuality, of knowledge, and of intentionality. For peculiar to the will

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as appetitus intellectualis is its own mode of actually striving toward its goal;
it strives to something that has been understood or apprehended by the
intellect as a good, and has been presented as such to the will.These acts
of the will in response to what the intellect presents as a good are called
“elicited” acts.
Thirdly, elicited acts can occur in two ways.The elicited act may regard
the desired object as a good just in and by itself, taken in isolation or
abstractly.Technical Thomistic terminology for this kind of elicited act is
abundant: It is called the “antecedent will” or, somewhat confusingly,
“will as nature” (voluntas ut natura; not to be identified with the pondus
naturae of the will), velleitas, “conditional,” “inefficacious,” “imperfect,” or
“incomplete willing”. This means that if something is presented to the
will as good by itself in all respects, then necessarily the will wills it, but
as yet only “conditionally”. Next, the elicited act may also desire the
object as it concretely exists in reality, that is, by taking into account what
my intellect knows about the object’s relation to other goods, all its relevant circumstances, and its feasibility.This is the full-blown act of the will,
called “consequent will” or “will as reason” (voluntas ut ratio), “unconditional,” “efficacious,” “perfect,” or “complete willing”.
Now, we may desire something by our antecedent will without desiring it by our consequent will.This can happen for several reasons. Something may be understood as a good in itself and in itself be desired, but in
a concrete, given situation may be forsaken for a greater good. For example, when I am sick, I may give up the good of carnal pleasure, which in
itself I desire, and take a bitter medicine for I think my physical health to
be a greater good. Martyrs may even forsake the good of life for the
greater good of testifying to the faith. Likewise, I may wish for something
that in itself is desirable, but when my intellect reasons that it is not feasible, I shall not desire it fully and pursue it. I can think of how desirable it
would be to fly like a bird, or to know intuitively like an angel, but as these
things cannot actually be realized (neither by myself, nor by someone else
on my behalf), they will remain merely as a dream wish (velleitas).
The classical interpretation of Aquinas’s teaching, that a human being
has a natural desire for the supernatural end of seeing God, is that this
desire is neither an innate appetite (pondus naturae), nor a perfect, unconditional elicited act, but only an imperfect, conditional elicited act. The
argument goes like this. Our intellect can present to the will the vision of
God as a desirable good.The act of apprehending the beatific vision as a
good and of presenting it as such to the will is the result of the intellect’s
natural tendency for its own perfection. By its very nature, the intellect
aims at knowledge of essences and causes. Having reasonably established

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the existence of a First Cause from observed effects by way of some kind
of proof of God’s existence, the intellect can conclude that knowing the
essence of this First Cause (which is the beatific vision) is a good, even that
it is the highest good imaginable. And the intellect can propose this
absolutely perfect good to the will. Next, by its very nature, the will cannot
not desire the perfect good of seeing God: Upon the proposal of the beatific
vision by the intellect, the will necessarily and naturally has an elicited act
of desiring it. But the human intellect also knows that essential knowledge
of God is not feasible or attainable by humans. Seeing God is beyond what
can be realized by any creature—even the angels. Therefore, we shall not
have a perfect, unconditional desire for the supernatural end:The condition
that the end can be realized by natural powers is not fulfilled.This means
that the desire itself for this end remains at the level of velleitas, of a mere
dream wish that does not really affect our actual striving or our efforts. In
other words: the beatific vision is not a goal that is proportionate to our
nature, and therefore our natural desire for it remains imperfect.
The crucial point of the classical Thomistic reading is that the natural
desire to see God does not belong to the pre-intentional “innate appetite”
(pondus naturae). The latter position is the one taken by Duns Scotus,
Domingo de Soto, and Henri de Lubac, among others. As Feingold points
out, there is some textual evidence in the writings of Aquinas for this position, but it is not convincing. However, apart from the question of what is
the correct interpretation of Aquinas’s texts, there is a more pressing theological problem for the view that we have an innate appetite for the beatific
vision. It runs the risk of falling prey to Scylla: how to account for the gratuity and for the novelty of grace—not only with regard to the means of realizing the end, but also with regard to desiring the very end, telos, itself. If we
have a positive orientation or unconditional desire toward the supernatural
end by our very nature, then grace seems to be a debitum naturae, something
that belongs and is due to our nature: Grace is no longer a completely
gratuitous gift from God.At the same time, grace seems to be merely a kind
of prolongation or continuation of our own nature, with which we are so
familiar: Grace is no longer something novel and unprecedented.
De Lubac and Rahner try to meet these problems either by stating that
we naturally desire the supernatural vision precisely as a gift (de Lubac) or
by introducing a kind of constant, but not natural, freely bestowed attraction toward the supernatural good (the “supernatural existential” of
Rahner). Feingold argues that neither solution is satisfying.2 It seems to
2 Cf. Lawrence Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God According to St. Thomas

Aquinas and His Interpreters (Rome:Apollinare Studi, 2001), 618–20, on de Lubac
and note 311 on pp. 623–24 on Rahner.

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me that his criticism of de Lubac is convincing, but that his discussion of
Rahner is too succinct to make a well-balanced assessment of the Rahnerian position.3 However, it would be beyond the scope of this essay, which
focuses in particular on Thomas Aquinas, to give a detailed account and
interpretation of Rahner’s texts.
Avoiding Grace Extrinsicism in Aquinas
In order to avoid the Charybdis of “grace extrinsicism,” de Lubac and
Rahner want to redefine the distinction between nature and grace.4 But
for both the result seems to be that the very distinction tends to be
blurred or to disappear. Joel Garver characterizes the two positions
“roughly and schematically” as follows:“[W]hile Rahner’s thought tends
to naturalize the supernatural, de Lubac tends to supernaturalize the
natural.” 5 One might then draw the conclusion that in avoiding “grace
extrinsicism” we will find ourselves confessing “tout est grâce” (or “tout
est nature”) or with accepting the radical consequence of abandoning the
very expressions and concepts of “nature” and “grace” altogether in theological anthropology.After all, the distinction as such is not found in Holy
Scripture (unlike, for example, the distinction “law” and “grace”), and
one could argue that it is given only within a specific, historically conditioned, philosophical context, namely, of an Aristotelian–Thomistic
substance metaphysics. However, I think that each of these two “ways
out” is too easy and that discriminating between the concepts of nature
and grace remains a very valuable means for expressing fundamental data
of faith concerning the relation of us, human beings, to God.
3 Feingold characterizes Rahner’s notoriously vague “supernatural existential” as a

disposition (with or without quotation marks, like Rahner himself who speaks of
Anlage) on 624, note 311. However, Stephen Duffy, following William Shepherd,
interprets it not as a disposition for the offer of grace but as the enduring offer
itself of justifying grace: Stephen Duffy, The Grace Horizon: Nature and Grace in
Modern Catholic Thought (Collegeville, MN: Health Policy Advisory Center,
1992), 206–18. But on this interpretation the question is how the offer of grace
can become something human prior to and independent from its actually being
accepted by the human person.
4 Hans Urs von Balthasar and Max Seckler are two other influential theologians
who proposed similar redefinitions of the distinction between nature and grace.
Edward Schillebeeckx has an excellent critical review of Seckler’s Instinkt und
Glaubenswille nach Thomas von Aquin, in “Het niet-begrippelijke kenmoment in de
geloofsdaad,” pt. III, ch. 3 of Openbaring en theologie (Bilthoven: H. Nelissen, 1964),
233–61. As far as I know, this text of Schillebeeckx has never been translated.
5 Joel Garver,“Rahner and de Lubac on Nature and Grace,” www.joelgarver.com/
writ/theo/naturegrace.htm.

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Leaving aside the easy ways out, there are several possible strategies.
One could continue criticizing the opposite position: the classical Thomist
warning de Lubac and Rahner that they are heading for Scylla, and vice
versa the Rahnerian telling the Thomist that she is falling into the
clutches of Charybdis. But instead of criticizing the other party, I think
it will be more fruitful to listen to their warnings. So we could try to
show that the Rahnerian position (maybe in a modified form) is both
coherent and keeps a clear distinction between nature and grace. Or one
should try to argue that the Thomistic position—in its classical interpretation—does not necessarily entail an extrinsic conception of grace.The
latter is the course I will take here by presenting some basic lines of
thought from Aquinas that could help us to steer away from Charybdis,
that is, from grace extrinsicism.
First we have to keep in mind that for Aquinas “human nature” is a
double abstraction. It is not only a universal concept, abstracted from
concretely existent, individual human beings, but it also abstracts from
the actual history of salvation of this world, in which all humans are
gratuitously called by God to share in his life—a call that may or may not
be answered. Every human being stands in a relation of grace—or its
opposite, the broken relation of (original) sin—to God, and we cannot be
in a neutral position toward God’s call to the supernatural end. A state of
pure nature (status naturae purae) does not exist in reality.6 This does not
mean that the notion of a pure nature would not concern the existent
human beings in this concrete economy of salvation and would only
apply to hypothetical intelligent beings in some possible but not actualized world, as de Lubac stated.7 The concept of a pure nature remains
very useful and maybe even indispensable for articulating the gratuity of
the gift of grace we have received, but it remains a concept that is
abstracted from the ontologically prior concrete human being in the state
of grace or of sin. Both de Lubac and Rahner are correct in insisting that
we should start our theological reflection with the concrete human
beings in this actual history of salvation.
The ontological priority of the graced (or sinful) human being in
historical reality is mirrored by the intentional priority in the divine mind
of our supernatural end. Talking about the “order of divine decrees” is a
tricky business, but at least we should not think of God first deciding to
create intelligent beings and next ordering them to the supernatural end.

6 Apart maybe from the souls in limbo, but I shall not go into this.
7 Cf. Feingold, Natural Desire, 393–95, 620–25.

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Sharing his own inner life is what God intends first and foremost.8 Intelligent beings, both humans and angels, are only and uniquely created for
this supernatural beatitude. Free, intelligent beings having their own nature
and natural powers are so to say a necessary condition of possibility for God
to share his life. In this sense the order of Quesnel’s infamous statement
should rather be reversed: natura est sequela glorificationis.9 Because God
wants to elevate free creatures to participate in the uncreated life of the
Three Persons, He “has to” endow them with their own nature. It is logically impossible for God to create intelligent beings that by nature would
share the divine life.Then God would create gods, and God is by definition unique and uncreated. Only the divine Persons share the divine life by
their own nature.
Keeping in mind the priority of grace, the first important question is
how to describe or characterize theologically the nature of intelligent
creatures without invoking directly the category of grace. For that would
blur, if not annul, the very distinction between nature and grace. Aquinas
describes nature, in particular the substantial form, as what constitutes
something in its own being. According to that form, each nature has its
natural potencies (both active and passive) and corresponding natural
desires or goals. In the case of human beings, the distinctive natural
powers are the rational intellect and will; while the corresponding goals
that fulfill these powers are their formal objects: truth, in which reason
comes to rest, and the good, which puts an end to the striving of the will.
Knowing truth and loving the good is what fulfills human nature and
what makes a person happy.
Equally important is the question of how to describe grace, but this can
only be done with reference to nature. For if we do not relate grace
directly to nature, we shall keep a clear distinction between nature and
grace, but we shall push it too far into a separation of the two, that is, into
grace extrinsicism.Apart from this theological motive, there is also a metaphysical reason why a definition of grace implies a relation to nature. Sanctification is not a creation de novo; it is a transformation of an existing
subject. It is a change, a movement, not on the level of the natural, substantial form of the subject (generatio), but on level of the accidents (alteratio).10
8 This is associated with the Pseudo-Dionysian axiom “bonum est diffusivum sui,”

cf. In III Sent. d. 24, q. 1, a. 3, qc. 1, ad 2.
9 Cf. Quesnel’s proposition, condemned in the constitution Unigenitus of Septem-

ber 1713, Denz. no. 2435: “Gratia Adami est sequela creationis et erat debita
naturae sanae et integrae.”
10 Aquinas, Summa theologiae I–II, q. 110, a. 2.

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It is therefore misleading to speak about “supernature,” for there is only the
“supernatural” as a qualification of a subsisting nature.11
In what way do grace and the consequent theological virtues change or
qualify human nature? According to Thomas, grace and the theological
virtues make us participate directly in the divine life. In the Summa theologiae I–II, question 110, article 4, he states:
For through his intellective potency, the human being participates in
divine knowledge by the virtue of faith; and according to the potency of
his will, [he participates in] divine love by the virtue of charity; likewise
through the nature of the soul, [he participates] according to a certain
similitude in the divine nature by a certain regeneration or recreation.12

Aquinas is somewhat reluctant to speak of a direct participation in the
divine nature through grace, and he prefers more cautious formulations
about a participation “according to a certain similitude in the divine
nature” or a participation “in a certain similitude of the divine being”.13
It is likely he wants to avoid the suggestions of a substantial change and
of an essential deification of creatures—even when they are sanctified.
But with regard to the supernatural virtues of faith and of charity,
Aquinas is more straightforward. In his view, it is rather by operating,
namely, by knowing and loving God supernaturally, than by being, that
we reach God himself directly.14 The (formal) object of faith is God as
the Highest or First Truth (veritas prima), while charity regards God as the
Highest Good (summum bonum).15 And it is in knowing and loving the
divine essence that human beings find the perfect happiness.
11 The expression “supernature” seems to have been introduced in the nineteenth

century. Cf. Michael Figura, Der Anruf der Gnade. Über die Beziehung des Menschen
zu Gott nach Henri de Lubac (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verl, 1979), 13, note 1.
12 “Sicut enim per potentiam intellectivam homo participat cognitionem divinam
per virtutem fidei; et secundum potentiam voluntatis amorem divinum, per
virtutem caritatis; ita etiam per naturam animae participat, secundum quandam
similitudinem, naturam divinam, per quandam regenerationem sive recreationem.”
13 ST III, q. 62 a. 2: “gratia, secundum se considerata, perficit essentiam animae,
inquantum participat quandam similitudinem divini esse.”
14 Cf. In II Sent. d. 1, q. 2, a. 2, ad 4: “Creatura autem intellectualis non attingit ad
eam secundum suum esse ut ipsa sit summum bonum, sed secundum operationem intelligendo et amando eam.” Cf. also Summa contra Gentiles II, c. 46, no.
3; ST I, q. 8, a. 3; and q. 43, a. 3.
15 In III Sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 3, qc. 1, ad 1: “Ad primum ergo dicendum, quod idem
secundum rem est objectum omnium virtutum theologicarum, sed differt secundum rationem: quia inquantum est primum verum, est objectum fidei; inquantum est summum bonum, est objectum caritatis.” See ST II–II, q. 1, a. 1, for
veritas prima as the formal object of faith.

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In comparing the Thomistic description of nature with the one of
grace, we find that the same words occur: being, happiness, truth and the
good. However, what I would like to suggest is that, in accordance with
a basic feature of Thomistic theology, these terms should not be interpreted univocally.
Speaking about “perfect” happiness, “first” truth, and “highest” good
might suggest that there is only a quantitative difference with happiness,
truth, and good, or that perfect happiness, first truth, and the highest
good are but instances or exemplifications of happiness, truth, and good
in general. But that is not the case. Our natural life and desire for truth,
goodness, and happiness do not by themselves include a participation in
the divine life and a desire for the First Truth, the Highest Good, and
perfect happiness. But, on the other hand, neither do they contradict the
very possibility of these supernatural perfections. Or in other words:
Human nature insofar as it is a rational nature has an intentional directedness toward the transcendentals of truth and goodness, but the transcendentals are not to be understood univocally and they do not include
God as the First Truth and Highest Good—yet they do not exclude God
and the supernatural perfections either.
The human spirit has a kind of natural openness or “natural aptitude”
for knowing and loving God supernaturally.This is what being imago Dei
means, according to Thomas.16 Thomas never speaks of a potentia oboedientialis for grace, but only of a natural capacitas, aptitudo, habilitas, and the
like.17 However, Thomas does not identify this capacitas with any natural
(active or corresponding passive) human potency. An interesting illustration of Thomas’s view that the capacitas Dei is not a natural human potency
can be found in his discussion whether men are more “image of God”
than women. Recently, Klaus Krämer has argued that while in his earlier
works Thomas locates the imago Dei in the rational potency of the human
soul with the consequence that men are more an image of God than
women—because naturally man’s reasoning power exceeds that of
woman—he abandons this idea in his mature works. Endorsing a more
16 ST I, q. 93, a. 4. Cf. also ST III, q. 9, a. 2, ad 3.
17 However, other thirteenth-century theologians, including Albert the Great and

the authors of the Summa Halensis, used the expression potentia oboedientialis or
potentia oboedientiae in relation to grace: cf. Feingold, Natural Desire, 214–15. In
the twentieth century the distinction between a “generic” and a “specific” potentia oboedientialis was introduced: ibid., 216–20. “Generic” potentia oboedientialis
concerns miracles like changing stones into bread, where stones lose their
substantial form. The “specific” potentia oboedientialis of intelligent creatures for
grace does not imply a loss of their substantial form.

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radical, Augustinian view on grace, Thomas identifies the imago Dei no
longer with an active (or corresponding passive) natural potency, but with
the mere natural openness or aptitude for grace; as a consequence man is
no longer more imago Dei than woman, although Aquinas does hold on to
the Aristotelian idea that by nature men reason better than women.18
It may be clear then that in Aquinas’s theological language “happiness”—“perfect happiness,” “truth”—“First Truth,” “good”—“Highest
Good” are not to be considered as cases of univocal use of identical terms.
But neither are the terms used purely equivocally. It is more in accordance
with Aquinas’s general theological framework to interpret them as terms
that are used analogically. Like “wisdom” is said analogically of God and
of creatures, so “truth” is called analogically the object of our intellect in
its natural state (“truth in general”) and of our intellect in the state of
grace, that is, of faith, whose object is the First Truth.The same goes for
“good,” used analogically for both the object of natural human will
(“good in general”) and the object of our supernaturally perfected will,
charity, whose object is the Highest Good.The same interpretation applies
to the relation between our natural desire for happiness in general and our
supernatural desire for perfect happiness.19
It is beyond the scope of this paper to elaborate on Aquinas’s theory of
the analogy of divine names.20 Taken together with Pseudo-Dionysius’s
threefold way of knowing God, namely, through affirmation, negation, and
eminence, Aquinas’s view on and his use of analogy in theology permit a
balanced usage of both positive and negative theological language, which
reflects our understanding of the incomprehensible mystery of God—an
understanding that is grounded in a similarity of creatures with God that
entails an even greater dissimilarity. God is truly wise, but he is not wise in
18 Cf. Klaus Krämer, Imago Trinitatis. Die Gottebenbildlichkeit des Menschen in der

Theologie des Thomas von Aquin (Freiburg: Herder, 2000), 305–8.
19 For “being” it may be more complicated. As noted above Aquinas seems reluc-

tant to correlate the being we have through our natural form with the being we
have through grace (“through a certain similitude”) in exactly the same way he
correlates truth as object of our intellect in its natural state and the first truth as
object of faith.
20 An excellent study of analogy in Aquinas is Gregory Rocca, Speaking the Incomprehensible God:Thomas Aquinas on the Interplay Between Positive and Negative Theology (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2004). The
similarity or continuation between nature and grace that includes an even
greater dissimilarity or discontinuation is to be seen along the same lines as
Sokolowski’s “Christian distinction” between Creator and creature: Robert
Sokolowski, The God of Faith and Reason: Foundations of Christian Theology (Notre
Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982).

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the way of a creature. God’s wisdom differs not just in degree, but in mode.
In creatures wisdom is only an accident, not a subsistent reality, and, moreover, wisdom in creatures is really distinct from other perfections like
power or love. God’s wisdom, on the other hand, is identical with his being
and with all the divine perfections. He is wise supereminenter, in a way we
cannot express or understand.What I am suggesting is that the supernatural realities of the “First Truth,” “Highest Good,” and “perfect happiness”
constitute real modes of truth, goodness, and happiness, but modes that we
can no longer comprehend.
Interpreting the relation between nature and grace with the help of the
doctrine of the analogy of divine names offers a way to allow for a certain
similarity, continuation, or intrinsic relation between nature and supernatural grace, while at the same time maintaining a radical dissimilarity and
discontinuity between the two. Grace perfects our nature, our natural
desire for truth and goodness, but in a way we could never have imagined.
Grace transforms our natural life into a participation in the divine life, our
desire for truth into a desire for the First Truth, our desire for the good
into desire for the Highest Good, our desire for happiness into the desire
for perfect happiness. That is a radical transformation, a regeneration, a
N&V
recreation into “what no eye has seen and no ear has heard.”

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 5, No. 1 (2007): 81–132

81

Desiderium Naturale Visionis Dei—
Est autem duplex hominis beatitudo sive felicitas:
Some Observations about Lawrence Feingold’s
and John Milbank’s Recent Interventions in the
Debate over the Natural Desire to See God
R EINHARD H ÜTTER
Duke University Divinity School
Durham, North Carolina

M AN IS PERFECTED by virtue, for those actions whereby he is
directed to happiness, as was explained above (q. 5, a. 7). Now man’s
happiness is twofold [Est autem duplex hominis beatitudo sive felicitas], as was
also stated above (ibid., a. 5). One is proportionate to human nature, a
happiness, to wit, which man can obtain by means of his natural principles.The other is a happiness surpassing man’s nature, and which man can
obtain by the power of God alone, by a kind of participation of the
Godhead, about which it is written (2 Pt 1:4) that by Christ we are made
partakers of the Divine nature. And because such happiness surpasses the
capacity of human nature, man’s natural principles which enable him to
act well according to his capacity, do not suffice to direct man to this
same happiness. Hence it is necessary for man to receive from God some
additional principles, whereby he may be directed to supernatural happiness, even as he is directed to his connatural end, by means of his natural
principles, albeit not without Divine assistance.1
1 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I–II, q. 62, a. 1, c.“Per virtutem perficitur homo

ad actus quibus in beatitudinem ordinatur, ut ex supradictis patet. Est autem duplex
hominis beatitudo sive felicitas, ut supra dictum est. Una quidem proportionata
humanae naturae, ad quam scilicet homo pervenire potest per principia suae naturae.Alia autem est beatitudo naturam hominis excedens, ad quam homo sola divina
virtute pervenire potest, secundum quandam divinitatis participationem; secundum
quod dicitur 2 Petr. 1, [4], quod per Christum facti sumus consortes divinae naturae.
Et quia huiusmodi beatitudo proportionem humanae naturae excedit, principia
naturalia hominis, ex quibus procedit ad bene agendum secundum suam proportionem, non sufficiunt ad ordinandum hominem in beatitudinem praedictam.

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The reason and will are naturally directed to God, inasmuch as He
is the beginning and end of nature, but in proportion to nature. But the
reason and will, according to their nature, are not sufficiently directed
to Him in so far as He is the object of supernatural happiness.2
Others destroy the gratuity of the supernatural order, since God,
they say, cannot create intellectual beings without ordering and calling
them to the beatific vision.3

Introduction: “What Is the Human Being?”—
The Two Types of Answers
One might propose that the fulcrum on which theology is balanced is an
answer to the question, or some version of it,What is the human being?
Or, in more precise theological terms, What is the ultimate end of the
human being, and in which way and to what degree is this end constitutive of human nature? The answers theologians offer to this question
belong largely to one of two overarching types.
One type of answer begins with a statement, for some of almost canonical status, from Augustine’s Confessions:“Inquietum est cor nostrum, donec
requiescat in te.”4 Resting in God is the ultimate end of humanity and,
short of reaching this end, human life will remain essentially unfulfilled

Unde oportet quod superaddantur homini divinitus aliqua principia, per quae ita
ordinetur ad beatitudinem supernaturalem, sicut per principia naturalia ordinatur ad
finem connaturalem, non tamen absque adiutorio divino.” For consistency’s sake, all
citations from the Summa theologiae (ST) in English are taken from the translation of
the Fathers of the English Dominican Province, St.Thomas Aquinas Summa theologica (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1948).The Latin original offered in the notes is
taken from Sancti Thomae de Aquino, Summa theologiae, 3rd ed. (Turin: Edizioni San
Paolo, 1999), which offers an improved version of the Leonine edition.
2 Ibid., q. 62, a. 1, ad 3.“Ad Deum naturaliter ratio et voluntas ordinatur, prout est
naturae principium et finis, secundum tamen proportionem naturae. Sed ad
ipsum secundum quod est obiectum beatitudinis supernaturalis, ratio et voluntas
secundum suam naturam non ordinantur sufficienter.”
3 Pope Pius XI, encyclical Humani Generis [August 12, 1950], no. 26. “Alii veram
‘gratuitatem’ ordinis supernaturalis corrumpunt, cum autument Deum entia intellectu
praedita condere non posse, quin eadem ad beatificam visionem ordinet et vocet.”
Heinrich Denzinger, Enchiridion symbolorum definitionum et declarationum de rebus
fidei et morum. Kompendium der Glaubensbekenntnisse und kirchlichen Lehrentscheidungen. Lateinisch-Deutsch. Ed. Peter Hünermann, 40th ed. (Freiburg/Basle/Vienna:
Herder, 2005), no. 3891; this latest edition will subsequently be cited as DHfollowed by the section number.The 1975 edition, edited by Adolf Schönmetzer, will
be cited as DS followed by the section number.
4 St. Augustine, The Confessions, trans. Maria Boulding, OSB (Hyde Park, NY: New
City Press, 1997), 39: “Our heart is unquiet until it rests in you.”

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and, in the end, pointless. For rational creatures such a resting in God can
be nothing short of “seeing God face to face,” that is, contemplating the
infinite ocean of God’s essence forever, which constitutes the rational creature’s perfect felicity. Hence for some theologians human beings are creatures hardwired by God for communion with God such that theology has
to stipulate a fundamental obligation for God to fulfill this destiny which
human beings as creatures, by definition, cannot reach on their own. But
such an exigency placed by creation on the Creator might very well go too
far—and indeed, such a problematic version of Augustinianism as
contended by the sixteenth-century Louvain theologian Michael Bajus
was condemned by the Church’s magisterium.5 If, however, the Augustinianism of Bajus went too far in stipulating a divine obligation, might it at
least be the case that the ultimate end of human fulfillment in the beatific
vision is anticipated in the form of an inmost desire for this end, a desire
rooted deeper in human nature than intellect and will? Might it be the case
that this very desire is ontologically constitutive of what it means to be
human in all respects, that is, constitutive of the human being as rational
soul or spirit (Geistseele) and thus constitutive of the inner dynamic of intellect and will? Might this desire, without entailing any exigency for God to
fulfill it, form the essential human élan for transcendence, the profundity of
which can only be grasped in the inchoate moments of a completely
gratuitous fulfillment, when the desired end begins to inform the human
being from above as faith, hope, and love? Is the human being always made
essentially for communion with God, such that the incarnate Son, the eternal God-Man, not only represents the prototype of the ultimate end of
humanity, of genuine human fulfillment in the beatific vision, but also
anticipates the destiny of indeed all creatures, the universal apokatastasis? Is
human nature, due to its constitutive end being genuinely transcendent,
already originally graced in a way such that the inchoate dynamic fulfillment of this end must be understood as an intensification—albeit an infinite intensification—of this original grace to its eventual fulfillment and
vice versa, the original grace as nothing else than the very anticipation of
the eventual fulfillment? In short, isn’t it all a matter of fundamentally the
same grace, just of gradations in intensity? Isn’t human nature itself most
fundamentally but a function of grace? This type of answer, which takes its

5 One of the theses condemned in Pope Pius V’s bull “Ex omnibus afflictionibus”

(1567) claims: “Humanae naturae sublimatio et exaltatio in consortium divinae
naturae debita fuit integritati primae condicionis, et proinde naturalis dicenda
est, et non supernaturalis.” DH, no. 1921.

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patronage from Origen of Alexandria and Gregory of Nyssa, finds its most
brilliant Eastern-Orthodox voice in the twentieth century in Sergei
Bulgakov, is most prominently represented in the Western Catholic tradition
in a highly nuanced form in the theology of Henri de Lubac, and has been
recently radicalized by the Anglican theologian John Milbank in his Bulgakovian reading of Henri de Lubac’s theology.
Another type of answer, however, begins with Psalm 8: “What is man
that thou art mindful of him and the son of man that thou dost care for
him?” (Ps 8:4 RSV) The human being is a fragile creature with a limited
life span, prone to all kinds of deficiencies of a physical, moral, and intellectual kind, surely a rational creature, but one whose intellect even in its highest flights of abstraction and speculation remains earthbound, limited by the
exigencies of space, time, the deliverances of the senses, and the corruptibility of the body. Moreover, human beings are creatures whose nature is
deeply wounded by original sin and whose concrete life is burdened and
diminished by a dense web of personal and systemic sin. According to this
type of answer, Christ became incarnate first and foremost because of and
in response to human sin, for the sake of salvation and not primarily to
perfect creation by inchoately ushering in its transcendent end.
And what about a natural desire for the vision of God? Like Abraham
having not the slightest inkling about his eventual calling and surely no
desire for it, but being unexpectedly and inexplicably called and following the call, like Israel being created out of the “nothingness” of Egyptian
slavery and being called to something for which it had no antecedent
desire whatsoever of its own (Lv 19:2),“the many” (Mk 10:45) from Israel
and the nations are called to a supernatural destiny categorically transcending the range of human imagination and hence desire, a destiny that
grants its own supernatural desire with the call to it, and a fulfillment of
the destiny in a glory of such utter transcendence that human nature can
only be elevated by God to such a state. “ ‘What no eye has seen, nor ear
heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those
who love him,’ God has revealed to us through the Spirit” (1 Cor 2:9–10a
RSV). Because the human being has been made capable for this end
(capax Dei) by God, human nature is in no way transmuted into something
else by such an end. However, since this end so utterly transcends every
aspect of created human nature, there can be no innate natural desire
whatsoever in the human being for this end. Heavenly beatitude is as categorically different from earthly felicity as is God from creation. Hence the
desire for the former cannot be innate in human nature (whereas desire
for the latter indeed is) but must be in and of itself a gift from above.
However, in order to perfect human nature instead of transmuting it, this

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gift from above must indeed be met by a corresponding conditional
desire, hence a desire not innate to human nature itself, but elicited. This
unique, conditional openness to the supernatural, the attainment of God,
has been understood as a specific obediential potency, specific because of
the very constitution of the human rational soul and its intellective and
volitional faculties. This type of answer finds its patronage in the late
Augustine, was deepened and nuanced by Thomas Aquinas, was developed
variously as well as controversially by the Thomist commentatorial tradition
(partially in reaction to Bajanism as well as Jansenism), and has deeply
informed Catholic theology until the middle of the twentieth century.
The Controversy over la nouvelle théologie
These variant types of answers to the question concerning the “nature and
destiny of man” informed the most significant and intense theological
battle among Catholic theologians in the middle of the twentieth century.
The argument erupted between what was at the time a dominant neoscholastic Thomism (predominantly the French Dominican Thomism of
Marie-Michel Labourdette6 and the “Thomism of the strict observance,”
represented at the Angelicum in Rome first and foremost by Reginald
Garrigou-Lagrange)7 and an emerging movement, dubbed very early on
by its adversaries as la nouvelle théologie, which after a period of marginalization in the wake of the encyclical Humani generis (August 12, 1950)
became the avant-garde and eventually with and after Vatican II the dominant theological movement.8 Arguably, the very center of the debate, the
eye of the storm, was formed by the collision of two variant overall theological visions, the one informed by Gregory of Nyssa’s reception of
Origen, and the other by Thomas Aquinas’s reception of the late Augustine. However, many other complex issues informed the controversy and
contributed to its acrimonious nature.A tightly interconnected set of questions were (and continue to be) involved, including:

6 For a commemorative volume of his largely forgotten contribution, see “Un maître

en théologie: Le Père Marie-Michel Labourdette, OP,” Revue Thomiste 92 (1992).
7 See now for a very accessible introduction to the person and work, Richard

Peddicord, OP, The Sacred Monster of Thomism:An Introduction to the Life and Legacy
of Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, OP (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine Press, 2005).
8 For a helpfully nuanced account of this historically as well as theologically
complex controversy, see Aidan Nichols, OP, “Thomism and the Nouvelle
Théologie,” The Thomist 64 (2000): 1–19.

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1. the nature and method of theology and its proper discourse;
2. the role of metaphysics (Thomistic, Scotist, or Suarezian) in the
constitution of theological arguments and
a. the philosophical question of a natural teleology and its theological interpretation, as well as
b. the relationship between philosophical and theological knowledge;
3. the role and method of the interpretation of Scripture as informing
theological discourse;
4. the role of the patristic Western and especially Eastern theological
tradition for contemporary theology;
5. the interpretation of the genesis of “modernity,” its subtle influence
on Baroque scholasticism and hence also on neo-scholastic theology;
6. the place and role of the nouvelle théologie in general and Henri de
Lubac’s theology in particular before, during, and after Vatican II, as
well as the specific issue whether Pope Pius XII’s encyclical Humani
generis indeed aimed at Henri de Lubac’s early work;9 and, underlying all of the previous questions,
7. the correct method of interpreting and receiving the theological as
well as philosophical thought of Thomas Aquinas.10
This struggle had its root and beginning in pre-WWII France and
focused initially on two projects launched by the French Jesuits, the two
series Sources Chrétiennes and Théologie. Both series, each in its own particular way, were seen to question and challenge more or less directly the principles and methods of neo-scholastic theology.The book, however, around

9 Feingold and Milbank agree in the judgment that the encyclical indeed did,

while Henri de Lubac and many de Lubac scholars think the encyclical, as a
matter of fact, did not aim at his work. See on this question the instructive introduction by David L. Schindler to the 1998 edition of the English translation of
Henri de Lubac’s The Mystery of the Supernatural, trans. Rosemary Sheed (New
York: Herder & Herder/The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1998), esp. xxi ff,
as well as Henri de Lubac himself in his At the Service of the Church: Henri de Lubac
Reflects on the Circumstances That Occasioned His Writings, trans. Anne Elisabeth
Englund (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), 60–79, 89–90.
10 There was indeed also a political context to this conflict accounting in part for
its particularly acrimonious nature. See Nichols, “Thomism and the Nouvelle
Théologie,” 8ff.

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which the theological conflict became most intense, was Henri de Lubac’s
monograph Surnaturel,11 which appeared in 1946 in the series Théologie.
The contended issues that came to a head with the publication of Surnaturel and the subsequent theological conflict are far from dead and bygone.
That they remain quaestiones disputatae is plainly documented by numerous
noteworthy publications, including two from 2001, one from 2002, and
another from 2005: Surnaturel: Une controverse au coeur du thomisme au XXe
siècle [Actes du colloque organisé par l’Institute Saint-Thomas-d’Aquin les
26–27 mai 2000 a Toulouse] (Toulouse: Revue Thomiste, 2001); Lawrence
Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God According to St.Thomas Aquinas and
His Interpreters (Rome:Apollinare Studi, 2001); Georges Cottier, Le Désir de
Dieu: Sur les Traces de Saint Thomas (Paris: Éditions Parole et Silence, 2002);
and John Milbank, The Suspended Middle: Henri de Lubac and the Debate
concerning the Supernatural (Grand Rapids, IN: Eerdmans, 2005).
The following remarks are as fragmentary as they are preliminary in
their refusal, in such a limited space, even to gesture toward a conclusive
interpretation of Thomas Aquinas, a detailed reconstruction of the debate
elicited by de Lubac’s Surnaturel, or a comprehensive engagement of de
Lubac’s own work.To do justice to any one of these worthy goals would
require nothing less than an extensive monograph.12 Rather, I shall have
to confine myself to submitting some observations about the most recent
interventions into this debate.
Observation 1: Lawrence Feingold’s Provocations, or Why Feingold Is
Not Feinberg and Why the Former Should Receive a Serious Hearing
The present symposium has been elicited by the recent work of Lawrence
Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God According to St.Thomas Aquinas and
His Interpreters (Rome: Apollinare Studi, 2001). His study constitutes a
contribution of rather far-reaching historical and doctrinal implications,
sufficiently controversial to amount to a serious scholarly provocation. To
put it in the briefest way: Feingold, in a study more extensive in scope than
Surnaturel itself, substantially challenges the charge of Henri de Lubac—now

11 Henri de Lubac, Surnaturel: Études historiques. Nouvelle édition avec la traducion inté-

grale des citations latines et grecques (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1991). For a very
instructive introduction to Surnaturel and the ensuing conflict, see Bernard
Sesboüé, SJ, “Le Surnaturel chez Henri de Lubac,” Recherches de Science Religieuse
80 (1992): 373–408.
12 See the recent extensive study by Éric de Moulins-Beaufort, Anthropologie et
Mystique selon Henri de Lubac: “L’esprit de l’homme” ou la présence de Dieu en
l’homme (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 2003).

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widely accepted—that much of the Thomistic commentatorial tradition,
first and foremost Cajetan, introduced “renaissance distortions” into their
interpretation of Thomas Aquinas and so rather profoundly obfuscated the
authentic teaching of the doctor communis, especially regarding the relation
between human nature and the vision of God. For de Lubac and his Jesuit
confrères, as Aidan Nichols aptly put it, “the true ‘nouvelle théologie’ was
the late Scholasticism defended à l’outrance by Garrigou and with much
more nuance by Labourdette. This was the upstart theology alien not only
to the Fathers but the Golden Age of the thirteenth century itself.”13
Feingold’s challenge of this widely received and settled notion is
indeed not a minor provocation. In his recent opuscule, The Suspended
Middle: Henri de Lubac and the Debate concerning the Supernatural, John
Milbank characterizes Feingold’s work as “arch-reactionary,” “written to
reinstate a Garrigou-Lagrange type position,” and his exegetical method
as “much like that of the proof-texting of a Protestant fundamentalist,”
hence representing the “die-hard,” “palaeolithic” neo-Thomism. Moreover, in a less than subtle form of invective, Milbank denies his interlocutor the honor of being named correctly by consistently misnaming
him throughout as “Feinberg.”14 The readers of Milbank’s treatise—most
of whom in all likelihood are neither experts in the thought of Thomas
Aquinas, Henri de Lubac, or Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange in particular
nor of Catholic theology in general—are thus invited to entertain the
suspicion of some sinister right-wing ecclesiastical conspiracy. And since
Feingold’s tome is, quite unfortunately, virtually impossible to lay hands
on as well as (should one succeed in getting hold of it) a much more
demanding read than Milbank’s opuscule, very few of Milbank’s readers
will be able to double-check the all too quick dismissal of a serious piece
of theological scholarship the implications of which are, however, unsurprisingly, less than supportive of Milbank’s own project. But why should
anyone care about the truth of the charge if one of the presently leading
opinion formers of contemporary Anglo-American Protestant theology
has sent out such weighty signals as “arch-reactionary, die-hard, palaeolithic neo-Thomism”? The associations seem to be all too clear to leave
any doubt about the purpose of such antecedent rhetorical disqualification. Anyone willing seriously to consider Feingold’s arguments (and for
13 Nichols, “Thomism and the Nouvelle Théologie,” 17.
14 Milbank, Suspended, 26, 79, 84.The possibility, however, that the consistent use of

the misnomer “Feinberg” simply reflects a neglect of contingent details, cannot be
definitively excluded, since, after all, the reader has to recognize behind “Jacques
Maintain” the Thomist philosopher Jacques Maritain (25, note 9).

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that matter Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange’s interpretation of Thomas
Aquinas), by the sheer dynamic of the connotations entailed, must be a
supporter of the Spanish Inquisition, a defender of the Papal States, and
an admirer of the Franco-, Vichy, and Pinochet regimes in addition to
anything else implied by association as arch-reactionary. It is sad to see
such an astute and critical mind as Milbank’s submit in such an unnuanced and uncritical way to the thoroughly modern political geography
of “left” and “right” in order to situate and prejudice matters doctrinal
and theological, a habit, surely by now as widespread in contemporary
theology as it is thoughtless, and achieving nothing else than comfortably
condemning matters of theological enquiry and discourse to the
Procrustean bed of a policing political correctness and hence of the final
domestication of matters ecclesial and theological under the extrinsically
superimposed rubrics of political liberalism.
Because of this unfavorable treatment, if not to say simply unjustified
dismissal of Feingold’s work in Milbank’s footnotes, in the following I will
give generous space to Feingold’s own voice, probably more than should be
regarded as useful, were the book easily available.What has elicited Milbank’s
ire? Three questions are indicative of a larger dispute: (1) whether de Lubac’s
critique of key Thomist commentators, especially Cajetan, obtains; (2) the
correct interpretation of Thomas Aquinas’s thought on the exceedingly
complex subject of the desiderium naturale visionis Dei; and (3) how theology
itself is to be done and how it relates to philosophy. Milbank has a high stake
in all three questions insofar as he is interested in presenting de Lubac as
“along with Sergei Bulgakov, one of the two truly great theologians of the
twentieth century,”15 (the former’s Surnaturel is “arguably the key text of the
twentieth century”)16 and in drafting both for his own particular project—
in marked contrast to Hans Urs von Balthasar17—into a vision that, like

15 Ibid., 104.
16 Ibid., 3.
17 The student, close friend, and translator of de Lubac’s works into German who,

according to Milbank’s intimations, never fully understood de Lubac’s vision, and
therefore—again for Milbank a regrettable theological deficiency—made more
substantive concessions to the encyclical Humani Generis than his mentor de Lubac
was ever willing to do. According to Milbank, von Balthasar’s capitulation to
Humani Generis can be clearly discerned “in the way von Balthasar’s dogmatics
seems to float free of ontological conceptualizations into a ‘mythical’ realm that is
highly voluntarist and personalist, and in the end at times only tendentiously
orthodox” (13). One not only wonders what the normative point of reference of
Milbank’s use of the term “orthodox” is (“Radical Orthodoxy”?), but also whether
the deep and explicitly acknowledged indebtedness of Hans Urs von Balthasar to

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Sergei Bulgakov’s,18 is ultimately indebted to Origen of Alexandria, a vision
“at once more strictly orthodox and more radically humanist.” In short, de
Lubac is assigned the role of forerunner to the self-proclaimed movement
of Radical Orthodoxy and its continuation of “Origen’s vision of apokatastasis: the universal Christological salvation of spirits and through this, the
eternal re-establishment of all things.”19
It is precisely Milbank’s consistently Bulgakovian reading of Henri de
Lubac and his tendency to receive Aquinas’s thought in as neo-platonic or
Dionysian a way as possible that makes Feingold’s book so irritating for
him. While Milbank’s project is neither guided nor framed by the norms
and criteria of Catholic theology, his reaction is nevertheless indicative of
how not a few contemporary Catholic theologians might react to Feingold’s book as well. For Feingold indeed challenges numerous assumptions
received and settled in the first three decades after Vatican II. The first is
methodological: In the wake of neo-Marxist sociology, the linguistic turn
in Anglo-Saxon philosophy, and the hermeneutical and poststructuralist
developments in continental philosophy, theology for many a contemporary Catholic theologian can only be conceived as defensible and intelligible in a thoroughly historical-contextualist and constructivist mode. Every
theological claim must needs be advanced, read, and assessed in light of the
historical, communal, and political context in which it is produced and to
which it is addressed. The only way to forward arguments is by situating
and out-narrating opponents as well as offering rhetorical and aesthetic
appeals leading to the volitional as well as conceptual conversion of the
interlocutor. Propositional discourse as informed by metaphysical realism
and discursive, conceptual argumentation is therefore at present widely
dismissed as a suspiciously disembodied and philosophically outdated mode
of speculative theology, oblivious to the historical, pragmatic, and practiceoriented nature of theology itself and thus vulnerable to being constantly
the metaphysics of being as advanced by the two twentieth-century, Thomist
philosophers Gustav Siewerth and Ferdinand Ulrich, must have been a form of
subtle self-deception, not to mention the form of self-deception exercised in his
small, but weighty book on de Lubac. For a critique as concise as devastating of
Milbank’s reading of von Balthasar’s theology, see the instructive review essay by
Edward T. Oakes, SJ,“On Milbank’s The Suspended Middle,” Nova et Vetera (English)
4 (2006): 667–96, esp. 682ff.
18 Bulgakov’s theological vision—thoroughly impressive in its systematic coherence, comprehensive scope, and speculative penetration—can possibly be best
appreciated in his late work, The Bride of the Lamb, trans. Boris Jakim (Grand
Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002).
19 Milbank, Suspended, 108.

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co-opted by deeply entrenched as well as concealed discourses of power
and interest. This wholesale rejection of what was seen as the ossified
discourse of textbook neo-scholasticism was accompanied—in the wake of
Heidegger as well as Wittgenstein—by hailing the “end of metaphysics” in
general and the Aristotelian Thomist metaphysics in particular.And since—
on the basis of Leo XIII’s encyclical Aeterni Patris—Thomas Aquinas had
again been instantiated as the loadstar of a renewed Catholic philosophy,
according to an understanding that interpreted Vatican II as the license to
break with that very tradition, he had to be put aside as outmoded too.
Yet in recent years, there has occurred a remarkable revival of interest in
Thomas Aquinas’s thought (a revival to which Milbank himself has
contributed). However, this revival, for the most part, is eager not to steer
again a course of confrontation with the meanwhile well-established
nouvelle théologie. Rather, this Thomist renewal—in the wake of Chenu and
Torrell—characteristically draws on the very best of the historical reconstruction of an authentic Thomas behind the interpretative discourse of the
once greatly esteemed, but now equally widely despised Thomist
commentatorial tradition, a Thomas whose theology is properly foregrounded and again linked to its original “Sitz im Leben” in the contemplative tradition of Dominican spirituality. At the same time, an increasing
philosophical interest in Aquinas has reemerged, but one much more attentive to the historical and social embeddedness of philosophical discourse
(Alasdair MacIntyre), in dialogue with analytic philosophy of religion
(Norman Kretzmann, Eleonore Stump, et al.) as well as post-Wittgensteinian philosophy of language (Victor Preller, Cornelius Ernst, Herbert
McCabe, Fergus Kerr, David Burrell).
A large part of Feingold’s provocation rests in the fact that he advances
his enquiry and arguments as if none of the above had ever happened.
There are no nods of even the slightest acknowledgment into the directions of any of these more recent forms of Thomism. Rather, he concentrates exclusively on Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus (as well as some
Scotists), the Thomist commentators (including Suárez) up to GarrigouLagrange and Henri de Lubac. The reason for what seems to be a
narrow-minded obsession with the “Thomism of the strict observance,”
its interlocutors, and critics is that the scope of his enquiry corresponds
with quite appropriate precision to the one in which de Lubac advances
his critique of most of the Thomist commentatorial tradition on the
question of nature and the supernatural.
Moreover and possibly more importantly, Feingold provokes by operating in a mode of discourse very unfamiliar to theological readers by now
largely unaccustomed to the conceptual precision and rigor once cultivated

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by the “schoolmen.” Differently put, Feingold’s mode of discourse is highly
mimetic of the virtually forgotten tradition of Thomist commentators.
Hence his modus operandi can arguably be understood, precisely by way of
his eventual engagement of de Lubac, to continue and thereby help reinstate a particular tradition of discourse (MacIntyre), a move that can be
described as “arch-reactionary” or as “prophetically proleptic” or even as
“radically orthodox” depending on what one thinks to be at stake in the
very recovery of such a discourse of scholastic enquiry and argumentation.
Surely the macro-issue ultimately is whether to interpret what is properly
Augustinian and properly Thomist by way of an Origenist and Bulgakovian vision (like Milbank) of the eternal God-Man (entailing, by a Bulgakovian “necessity” of love, that is, of ultimately irresistable sophianization,
the apokatastasis ton panton),20 or whether to receive what is properly
Augustinian and properly Thomist on the predestination of the saints as
well as on gratuitous, efficient grace by way of the theology of the late
Augustine as received by the Second Synod of Orange (529),21 as
confirmed in the late theology of grace in Thomas Aquinas, and as reconfirmed by the Council of Trent.22
The more proximate, but also more implicit dispute between Feingold
and de Lubac, however, is over how to access and interpret the interpretation of the Thomist commentators itself. What makes Feingold so
provocative is that the form of his discourse—in stark contrast to de
Lubac’s way of reading the commentators—is shaped not by a historical
hermeneutic but by reconstructing and thus entering their own way of
conducting a speculative theological enquiry, a mimetic exercise reconstructing and thus continuing the commentators’ discursive mimesis of
Aquinas. In his own very attempt of retrieving an even older form of
20 Bulgakov, in logical consequence, applies what he calls “the necessary principles

of universal salvation” (518) to Satan: “Satan’s very being, his createdness by the
omniscient God, is, so to speak, an ontological proof of the inevitability of his
future salvation. Even Satan in his madness does not have the power to overcome
the fact of his own being, its divine foundation, that is, the sophianicity of all
creation, by virtue of which ‘God will be all in all.’ Satan cannot fail to be
convinced by his own nature of the insanity of seeking freedom in self-willfulness rather than in knowledge of truth, which alone can give true freedom.‘Liar
and the father of lies’ who ‘abode not in the truth’ ( Jn 8:44), he will end up by
subordinating himself to the truth, and evil will thereby disappear completely
from God’s creation.” Bulgakov, The Bride of the Lamb, 517.
21 See DH, nos. 370–400.
22 “Hoc concilium, utpote solummodo provinciale plurimis ignotum et mox per
saecula oblivioni traditum, disputationibus demum Concilii Tridentini memoriae
redditum est.” Denzinger-Schönmetzer, Enchiridion Symbolorum, 36th ed., 131.

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theology, de Lubac, on the contrary, transposes the speculative theological discourse of the commentators into a historical-hermeneutical frame
of inquiry (this transposition ironically forming nothing but a quite characteristic move of critical scholarship in a genuinely modern sense, and
as such completely extrinsic and foreign to the modus operandi of the
commentators). Hence what might look to a reader uninitiated into the
discursive habits of the commentators like the equivalent of “Protestant
fundamentalism” and its propositionalist proof-texting (a charge that the
modern liberal Protestant theologians in the Enlightenment tradition
liked to place onto the threshold of the scholasticism of Lutheran and
Reformed Orthodoxy) represents in Feingold’s case his way of entering
the commentatorial tradition with its propositional-discursive mode of
operation and, moreover, turning this mode of operation consistently and
cogently against de Lubac’s interpretation of the commentators as well as
his interpretation of Aquinas. In other words, Feingold refuses to engage
de Lubac in the discursive mode by way of which the latter chose to
critique the commentators, that is, by way of a primarily historical exegesis of theological language, its development and use, and the related
development and flux of theological ideas.23 Rather, Feingold insists on
engaging de Lubac’s own account by way of the metaphysical realism
(which makes his work a “Garrigou-Langrange type position”)24 and its
rigorous discourse in which the Thomist commentators conducted their
interpretation and enquiry.25
This particular conflict opens up wide-ranging questions on the nature
of the relationship between thought and language and more specifically
on what the relationship between the broadly historical (of ideas,
concepts, motives) and the strictly speculative and discursive should be in
the interpretation of the oeuvre of Thomas Aquinas. Feingold provokes by
returning to and, by implication, rehabilitating an older discursive tradition (albeit, and here the nouvelle théologie is unquestionably right, not the
23 One of the most paradigmatic studies in which this approach comes clearest to

the fore is de Lubac’s Corpus Mysticum: L’Eucharistie et L’Eglise au Moyen Age
(Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1949).
24 Milbank, Suspended, 26, note 10.
25 Most recently the Aristotelian Thomist realism of how world, concepts, and
language relate (implicitly shared by Feingold with the Thomist commentators
and a set of assumptions to which indeed de Lubac’s work is submitted in Feingold’s engagement of it) has been very ably reconstrued and defended in relation
to philosophy’s “linguistic turn” by John P. O’Callaghan, Thomist Realism and the
Linguistic Turn:Toward a More Perfect Form of Existence (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003).

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oldest way of doing theology) and submitting de Lubac’s theology to the
conceptual rigor of this tradition. Feingold is so irritating because he picks
up the ball where it was dropped—with the broad acceptance of the theological approach advanced by Henri de Lubac and other representatives of
the nouvelle théologie—without signaling awareness of what has happened
in Catholic theology since. For a doctoral dissertation this is a forgivable
sin; if Feingold ever were to consider publishing a version of this work in
the form of a book for a wider audience, he would do well to find a way
to acknowledge, if not engage, at the least the reemergence of a Thomism
in many instances significantly different from the one Reginald GarrigouLagrange represented.
However, although Feingold’s approach is for sure “untimely,” I can see
no prima facie reason simply to dismiss him as intellectually unworthy of
anything but less than subtle forms of scorn and contempt. On the
contrary, in light of the fact that Pope John Paul II’s encyclical Fides et
Ratio has pointed out that the historical-hermeneutical approach is not
sufficient for the full task of Catholic theology, but that Catholic theology’s commitment to the truth requires a genuine speculative mode of
operation,26 Feingold’s approach might not be exactly as untimely as it
could seem at firsthand to those deeply shaped by the intellectual conventions of the last forty years. Moreover, it should be noted that, one might
say, ironically, Feingold displays a historical consciousness sui generis, one
present in Milbank (in significant contrast to de Lubac’s de facto operation)
only in form of its negation. Both de Lubac and Feingold, in their very
dispute over the right interpretation of the Thomist tradition, are highly
aware of the conceptual as well as speculative exigencies caused by
Bajanism as well as Jansenism and their condemnation, in addition to other
developments up to and including the encyclical Humani Generis. De
Lubac and Feingold occupy the same ecclesial ground, with a shared, even
if variously interpreted, set of doctrinal norms and magisterial decisions.
26 “With regard to the intellectus fidei, a prime consideration must be that the divine

Truth ‘proposed to us in the Sacred Scriptures and rightly interpreted by the
Church’s teaching [Aquinas, ST II–II, q. 5, a. 3, ad 2] enjoys an innate intelligibility, so logically consistent that it stands as an authentic body of knowledge.The
intellectus fidei expounds this truth, not only in grasping the logical and conceptual structure of the propositions, in which the Church’s teaching is framed, but
also, indeed primarily, in bringing to light the salvific meaning of these propositions for the individual and for humanity. . . . For its part, dogmatic theology must
be able to articulate the universal meaning of the mystery of the One and Triune
God and of the economy of salvation, both as a narrative and, above all, in the
form of argument.” Pope John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, no. 66; cf. also nos. 95–98.

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Milbank’s interpretation of de Lubac is, on the contrary, to say the least,
notably unencumbered by the normative doctrinal commitments that
inform the horizon shared by de Lubac and Feingold, unencumbered to
the degree that he interprets de Lubac’s modification, in light of the
concerns expressed in the encyclical Humani Generis, of his early Surnaturel in the later two volumes The Mystery of the Supernatural 27 and Augustinianism and Modern Theology 28 as a purely extrinsic form of deference to
magisterial pressure.29 Simultaneously, Milbank’s dismissal of von
Balthasar’s theological project is largely fueled by the impression that,
allegedly unlike de Lubac, the former took the encyclical Humani Generis
too seriously to heart by presumably submitting to some version of
nature-grace extrinsicism.30 However, it might never have really occurred
to Milbank that neither Henri de Lubac nor Hans Urs von Balthasar nor
Lawrence Feingold, nor for that matter any of the Catholic theologians
and philosophers adverted to in his small book, would want to take the
stance that a happily unencumbered oppositionalism to the Church’s
magisterium and the normative dogmatic tradition is intrinsic to the role
and vocation of the Catholic theologian. (In the case of Milbank’s own
criteriology, it remains utterly unclear by what normative criteria Hans
Urs von Balthasar should be understood as only marginally orthodox,
Henri de Lubac fully, or even radically, orthodox, and Reginald GarrigouLagrange, by implication, heterodox—other than those subjectively entertained by the author.) The struggle between the sets of concerns that de
Lubac stands for and the ones Feingold represents, however, only become
fully visible and truly weighty in a theological context in which the First
Vatican Council as well as the Second Vatican Council matter normatively
and in which the encyclicals Aeterni Patris, Humani Generis, and Fides et
Ratio as expressions of the pope’s ordinary magisterium continue to
inform the work of theology, its methods and modes of discourse. Hence,
the wider question, not only but especially for Catholic theology, which
Milbank’s situating of Henri de Lubac in his own project and his all too
facile dismissal of Feingold’s defense of the commentatorial tradition
opens up, is the question in which way and to what degree theology’s

27 The Mystery of the Supernatural, trans. Rosemary Sheed (New York: Herder and

Herder, 1965) [Le mystère du surnaturel (Paris: Aubier, 1965)]. See the instructive
introduction by David L. Schindler in the new 1998 edition.
28 Augustinianism and Modern Theology, trans. Lancelot Sheppard (New York: Herder
and Herder, 1969) [Augustinisme et théologie moderne (Paris: Aubier, 1965)].
29 Milbank, Suspended, 35ff.
30 See Edward T. Oakes’s trenchant critique of this aspect of Milbank’s construal.

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formal object is deeply informed by the normative dogmatic tradition as
well as the pope’s magisterium. Theologians who operate under the
presupposition that the dogmatic tradition as well as the living magisterium
constitutively inform theology’s formal object will indeed assume that the
concerns expressed in the encyclical Humani Generis about the enduring
importance of maintaining a hypothetical state of pure nature, and hence
the theonomic principle of nature, are of ongoing relevance for the task
of theology and will indeed assume that the magisterial rejection of
Bajanism and Jansenism has lasting implications for the way the gratuity
of the supernatural order is theologically conceived. If there is indeed an
ongoing, legitimate difference possible about the above questions, a
productive theological conflict and tension, the mode of discourse in
which such an engagement takes place might lean more to the historicalhermeneutical mode as advanced by the nouvelle théologie or more to the
speculative-discursive mode as advanced by the Dominican Thomism that
engaged and criticized the nouvelle théologie, but in either mode it will want
to take account of the Church’s doctrinal tradition as well as the living
ordinary magisterium. It seems that Henri de Lubac and Hans Urs von
Balthasar occupy a terrain of normative doctrinal and theological commitments shared with Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange and Lawrence Feingold
that Milbank can only dismiss as the regrettable submission to the purely
extrinsic pressures of dogma and magisterium, the truth claims of which
consequently make little if any difference in his reconstruction of Henri
de Lubac’s theological project.
Observation 2: The Aquinas of Milbank’s Radicalized Bulgakovian
Lubacianism Made Strange, or Aquinas the “Other”
The question whether, and if so, to what degree Milbank’s intensification
of de Lubac’s theology along Bulgakovian lines is legitimate cannot be
pursued at this point. However, some remarks are in order pertaining to the
reading of Thomas Aquinas he advances to foster such an intensification.
Appealing to recent French philosophers of religion and philosophical
theologians Courtine, Boulnois, Marion, Schutz, and Lacoste, Milbank
stresses three motives, which in their combined force presumably give
Thomas Aquinas himself a rather Bulgakovian appearance: “first, spirit as
intrinsically linked to grace, second, the entire cosmos as drawn through
humanity to beatitude; third, grace as gratuitous because a gift can be a gift
without contrast to gift.”31 A bit further on, a fourth moment emerges, this

31 Milbank, Suspended, 88.

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time unequivocally negative:“the regime of pure nature.”32 While Milbank
rightly emphasizes that, according to Aquinas,“Adam was created from the
outset with the reception of grace,”33 the very rendition “regime of pure
nature” signals a profound misunderstanding: For Aquinas as much as for
any other of the scholastic theologians there could never have been some
“regime” that would not simply be identical with the execution of divine
providence, that is, divine governance. Hence, either the state of pure
nature is assumed (as it is not in Aquinas) to belong—even as an instance—
to the extant providential order as it coincides with the economy of salvation, or “pure nature” is assumed as hypothetically obtaining in another
order of divine providence (as it is in Aquinas). Because of frequent confusions regarding this latter topic, I will take it up first. Next, I shall turn to
the question of the fundamental and indispensable difference between
nature and grace, the ensuing double gratuity, and finally, by drawing upon
St.Thomas’s teaching on predestination, address the Bulgakovian dynamic
of the entire cosmos being drawn through humanity to beatitude. Finally,
I will briefly address the question whether the rational creature is “intrinsically linked to grace.”
In the course of my remarks I am going to consider texts primarily of
the later Aquinas, that is, of his Roman period and of his second Parisian
regency in order to make strange the Aquinas proposed by Milbank’s radicalized Bulgakovian Lubacianism. During his Roman period St. Thomas,
for the first time, had direct access to the full text of such important treatises of the late Augustine as De gratia et libero arbitrio, De correptione et gratia,
De dono perseverantiae, and De praedestinatione sanctorum, and possibly came
across echoes of the widely lost and forgotten canons of the Second Synod
of Orange—an encounter with a salutary impact on his late theology of
grace that ever so subtly promotes the new, contingent, and supernatural
gratuity of grace above and beyond the ontological thrust of the exitusreditus scheme.34 These texts from Aquinas serve as pointers to a significant strand of thought in his later theology on the specific gratuity of grace,
texts that strongly suggest that the commentators first and foremost

32 Ibid., 89.
33 Ibid.
34 For detailed accounts of this rather complex matter, see Henri Bouillard, Conver-

sion et Grace chez S.Thomas d’Aquin (Paris: Aubier, 1944), 97–102; Max Seckler,
Instinkt und Glaubenswille nach Thomas von Aquin (Mainz: Matthias Grünewald,
1961), 90–98; Joseph P.Wawrykow, God’s Grace and Human Action: “Merit” in the
Theology of Thomas Aquinas (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press,
1995), 266–76.

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continue conceptually to unfold the implications of his theology of grace.
Moreover, these texts paradigmatically represent central strands in Aquinas’s
theology that strongly resist an adoption of the doctor communis into an overarching theological scheme shaped by the visions of Origen and Bulgakov.
1.The hypothetical state of pure nature as entailed in the notion of
differing orders of divine providence: De malo, q. 5, a. 1, ad 15
While St. Thomas never assumed an extant state of pure nature, he
explicitly entertained as a legitimate thought the possibility of a state of
pure nature in a different order of divine providence. Such an assumption, however, presupposes the relative integrity of the principle of
nature, both ontologically as well as epistemically. We find these matters
quite instructively addressed by St.Thomas in De malo, q. 5, a. 1, ad 15.
In De malo, q. 5, a. 1,35 St.Thomas treats the question “Is Privation of
the Vision of God a Fitting Punishment for Original Sin?” and defends
the position that indeed the privation of the vision of God is a fitting
punishment for original sin. He does so by arguing that if two things
belong to something’s perfection—the first being capable of a great good
but with significant external help, the second needing no or little help
but being a small good—then the first is still far better than the second.
Hence it is much better to attain a great good with much help than to
attain a little good with little or no help at all. “Therefore, rational creatures surpass every other kind of creature in being capable of the highest
good in beholding and enjoying God, although the sources from their
own nature do not suffice to attain it, and they need the help of God’s
grace to attain it.”36
Thomas emphasizes up front that to attain the perfect end of the beatific
vision, every rational creature—be it angel or human—is in need of a
particular divine help, sanctifying grace. However, due to the particular
constitution of the human nature, it being an essentially composite nature
of soul and body, an additional help is necessary, namely original justice:
35 As is often the case so also here, Aquinas addresses in the first article of a partic-

ular question the most central issue and lays it out in such a way that it provides
the basic structure of how the rest of the articles tackling other aspects of the
question are ordered.
36 De malo, q. 5 a. 1, c.: “Creatura ergo rationalis in hoc preeminet omni creature,
quod capax est summi boni per diuinam uisionem et fruitionem, licet ad hoc
consequendum nature proprie principia non sufficiant, sed ad hoc indigeat
auxilio diuine gratie.” The De malo of Thomas Aquinas, trans. Richard Regan
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 408. In the following, this edition will
be refered to as De malo, Davies edition.

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If the body and the senses be left to their nature, as it were, they burden
and hinder the intellect from being able freely to attain the highest reaches
of contemplation. And this help was original justice, by which the mind
of human beings would be so subject to God that their lower powers and
their very bodies would be completely subject to them, nor would their
reason impede them from being able to tend toward God. . . . [T]his help,
whereby the body is under the control of the soul, and sense powers
under the control of the intellect, is almost a disposition for the help
whereby the human mind is ordained to see and enjoy God.37

Original justice, being gratuitously given to what has been created and
hence to be distinguished from human nature per se, is a quasi-disposition for the help of sanctifying grace. Hence, sanctifying grace acts upon
a human nature readily fit for such an operation, the one being neither
intrinsic nor extrinsic to the other, but of a perfect and perfectly gratuitous fittingness (convenientia). Original sin, however, destroys this quasidisposition, the help of original justice, as the result of which sanctifying
grace—that is,“the help, whereby the human mind is ordained to see and
enjoy God”—is withdrawn as the fitting punishment.
And when persons by sinning cast away the means whereby they were
disposed to obtain a good, they deserve that the good that they were
disposed to obtain be taken away.And the very taking away of the good
is a fitting punishment for the sin. And so the fitting punishment of
original sin is the taking away of grace and thereby of the vision of God
for which grace ordains human beings.38

Thomas clearly distinguishes in this question among (1) a composite nature,
that is, a reality to be intellectually grasped according to its proper
constituents, that is, as species, irrespective of the particular state—original
justice—this composite nature is to be found in at the beginning, (2) the
specific gratuitous help of original justice, being not integral to human
nature, but rather constitutive of the particular state in which created
humanity originally existed according to the given providential order, this
original justice being the disposition for (3) the help of sanctifying grace,
both helps being categorically different from the created nature and also
different in kind from each other.
Let us consider now objection 15. This important objection denies
that the privation of the vision of God is a fitting punishment for original sin, which goes like this: If human beings had been endowed with just
37 Ibid., 409.
38 Ibid.

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natural powers (homo naturalibus constitutus) and had never sinned, they
would have been indeed without the vision of God (which in any case
can only be attained by grace). But since punishment is rightly owed for
sin, the deprival of the vision of God cannot be called punishment for
original sin. Thomas responds to this objection that humans endowed
with only natural powers (homo in solis naturalibus constitutus) would indeed
be without the divine vision if they were to die in such a supposed state
(precluding hence any further divine agency before the separation of body
and soul); however, this lack of the divine vision would in no way be punitive, since “the debt of not having it” would not apply to them: “For it is
one thing, not to be bound to have, which does not have the nature of
punishment but of defect only, and it is another thing to be bound not to
have, which does have the nature of punishment.”39
Aquinas is unquestionably entertaining here the concept of a hypothetical state of pure nature, hypothetical because under the present order of
providence such a state clearly never obtained.40 The obtaining order of
providence, on the contrary, coincides with the economy of salvation,
according to which the human being, as created, was originally gifted
with the help of original justice and elevated by sanctifying grace.To put
it differently, according to Aquinas—and as Milbank rightly emphasizes—humanity was originally created immediately in a state of grace.
However, another order of providence seems for St. Thomas hypothetically entertainable in a perfectly legitimate way, and under such an order
the non-attainability of the divine vision seems also to be perfectly thinkable. What seems, by entailment, also to be perfectly conceivable in his
answer to the objection is the continuity of the self-same human nature
under different orders of providence. Consequently, the state of graced
nature presupposes an anterior created nature, the latter never de facto
39 This translation, which I prefer to the one offered by Richard Regan in the

Davies edition is to be found in St. Thomas Aquinas, On Evil, trans. John A.
Oesterle and Jean T. Oesterle (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press,
1995), 214. “Aliud est enim non debere habere, quod non habet rationem pene
set defectus tantum, et aliud debere non habere, quod habet rationem pene.” De
malo, q. 5, a. 1, ad 15; De malo, Davies edition, 412.
40 De malo, q. 5, a. 1, ad 1: “Human beings would have been created uselessly and
in vain if they were to be unable to attain happiness, as would be the case with
anything that cannot obtain its ultimate end. And so, lest human beings begotten with original sin be created uselessly and in vain, God from the beginning
of the human race intended a remedy for them by which they would be freed
from such frustration, namely, Jesus Christ, the very mediator between God and
human beings. And the impediment of original sin could be removed through
faith in him.” Davies edition, 409.

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obtaining without the former, however being an ontological principle
with its own integrity, the two being related to each other by way of a
supreme fittingness, but without any intrinsic continuity between each
other. For different orders of providence do not entail an ontological
transmutation of the human being, nor is the rational soul—while capax
Dei—becoming something else in a hypothetical order in which the
human being is ordered to a lesser felicity than the vision of God. Hence,
for Aquinas, the creation of a rational soul, capable of the vision of God,
yet destined to a lesser felicity does not seem to be a contradiction in the
very created nature itself, nor to constitute a punishment per se. However,
in comparison to the de facto obtaining providential order, such a lesser
felicity can still be characterized by Aquinas as a defectus, to be understood
rather neutrally as the absence of that which simply was never supposed
to be there in the first place.
Reflection about a hypothetical state of pure nature seems rather clearly
to have its root in Aquinas’s own thought rather than to be a retrospective projection of the Thomist commentators. Such reflection, however,
entails that God’s creative activity insofar as it results in a subsistent reality, in distinct species, obtains ontologically and is hence epistemically
accessible as well as intelligible in a multitude of created “natures,”
including the human nature, quite independently from superadded divine
helps and gifts to that nature.This is the case even though in the de facto
obtaining providential order these helps and gifts were indeed given,
according to Aquinas, from the first instance of human existence; one of
which (original justice) was destroyed by the fall and the other (sanctifying grace) withdrawn in consequence of it.While human nature remains
a constant, subsistent reality under a variety of hypothetical divine providential orders, the superadded divine helps and gifts belong to the de facto
economy of grace known solely by divine revelation.
Moreover, it is indeed important to emphasize that for Aquinas human
nature under the condition of sin in the present order of providence is
emphatically not to be understood as the result of a fall into some state
of “pure nature.” Rather, original sin has affected human nature in such
a way that in the present order of providence, after the loss of original
justice, human nature is wounded.That is, because of the first sin, human
nature is now continuously marked by the deficiency of a disordered
disposition (peccatum naturae), which antecedes the free exercise of the will
(ST I–II, qq. 82–83). Hence, St. Thomas consistently differentiates
between the concrete historical condition of human nature sub conditione
peccati, which belongs to the extant order of providence as it coincides
with the economy of salvation on the one hand, and on the other hand

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a hypothetical state of pure nature.What is presupposed by such a nuanced
and theologically indispensable differentiation is the relative integrity of
the principle of nature, ontologically as well as epistemically. Put differently, the relative integrity of the principle (or the order) of nature is the
necessary condition for the possibility of differentiating properly between
the realities of creation, creation sub conditione peccati, and redemption.
Failing to do so would inevitably lead to deficient theological positions,
such as doctrines denying sin’s impact on human nature, or doctrines
defending the essential corruption (allegedly due to original sin) or the
essential transmutation (presumably due to deification) of human nature.
Hence, it is not accidental at all that St.Thomas defends the necessity of
the sacraments as a healing remedy after sin based on this principle:
“Man’s nature is the same before and after sin, but the state of his nature
is not the same. Because after sin, the soul, even in its higher part, needs
to receive something from corporeal things in order that it may be
perfected: whereas man had no need of this in that state.”41
2. Desiderium naturae versus desiderium gratiae:
St.Thomas on 2 Corinthians 5, 5–10
For Aquinas, as for all Christian theology, everything that is, is God’s gift
(creatio ex nihilo). However, there is—in the present order of providence
as coinciding with the economy of salvation—a second gift. Because God
is the giver of both gifts and because the second (sanctifying grace) has
to come by way of the first (being), there indeed cannot obtain an essential heterogeneity between them in respect of their origin. At the same
time, however, what we might arguably call the donum primum and the
donum ultimum do not simply represent two aspects of the self-same gift.
Rather, there obtains a significant difference between both gifts: While
God is the omnipotent first cause of both gifts, God, being the sole cause
of the first gift, creation, grants the rational creature proper secondary
causality in the comprehensive realization of the second gift, beatitude.
While the first gift brings about free will by constituting it via God’s
exclusive creative agency, the second gift involves the proper actualization
of free will in the realization of the gift (not, however, in a constitutive,

41 ST III, q. 61, a. 2, ad 2, emphasis added: “Ad secundum dicendum quod eadem

est natura hominis ante peccatum et post peccatum, non tamen est idem naturae status. Nam post peccatum anima, etiam quantum ad superiorem partem,
indiget accipere aliquid a corporalibus rebus ad sui perfectionem: quod in illo
statu homini necesse non erat.”

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but in an appropriately accompanying way).42 Moreover, the second gift
is to be differentiated from the first gift in that (1) the second gift necessarily presupposes the first gift (not in the chronological order, but in the
logical as well as ontological orders) while the second gift is not necessarily entailed by the first; (2) the second gift brings the first gift, in the
case of the human being, to a gratuitous, ultimate supernatural perfection
and fulfillment; (3) the second gift discloses in the case of the rational
creature—by initially ordering the first gift, created human nature, to the
supernatural end and secondly perfecting it—the intrinsic ontological
openness of the first for the second gift as well as the former’s surpassing
fittingness for such a supernatural perfection; and (4) the second gift is all
of this without canceling out the connatural, proportionate end that
comes with the prior gift, created human nature.
A quite remarkable instance of how St. Thomas distinguishes such a
connatural end and the respective desire directed to it from an end that is
infinitely disproportionate to human nature and hence requires the distinct
supernatural desire that corresponds to such an end, can be found in one
of Aquinas’s commentaries on the Pauline corpus of letters: 2 Corinthians
5:5–1043. In lectures 1 and 2 of his commentary on 2 Corinthians 5,
Aquinas distinguishes between a desiderium naturae and a desiderium gratiae,44
and displays the subtle dynamic between the two in this difficult passage of
St. Paul’s text. St.Thomas begins his second lecture (on vv. 5–10) with the

42 I regard Bernard Lonergan’s early study Grace and Freedom: Operative Grace in the

Thought of St.Thomas Aquinas, ed. Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran, vol.
1 of Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
2000) still to be the benchmark analysis of Aquinas’s profound treatment of this
utterly complex topic.
43 2 Cor 5, 1–10 RSV:“(1) For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed,
we have a building from God, as house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. (2) Here indeed we groan, and long to put on our heavenly dwelling, (3) so
that by putting it on we may not be found naked. (4) For while we are still in this
tent, we sigh with anxiety; not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be
further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. (5) He who has
prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.
(6) So we are always of good courage; we know that while we are at home in the
body we are away from the Lord, (7) for we walk by faith, not by sight. (8) We are
of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with
the Lord. (9) So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please
him. (10) For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each
one may receive good or evil, according to what he has done in the body.”
44 In order to make the same distinction, he also uses the pair naturalia desideria
versus supernaturalia desideria.

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observation that in this section of his letter the apostle shows us that the
author of the desire for the heavenly habitation is, in a very specific way,
God, and that this desire is quite different from, indeed in contradiction to,
the desiderium naturae:
Hic ostendit auctorem supernaturalis desiderii de habitatione caelesti.
Causa enim naturalis desiderii quod nolumus expoliari est, quia sc. anima
naturaliter unitur corpori, et e converso. Sed hoc, quod caelestem inhabitationem superindui cupiamus, non est ex natura, sed ex Deo.45

Since the human being is a composite nature, the soul is naturally united
with the body (being the sole substantial form) such that there is a natural desire to abhor the separation of the two, which is natural death.
Hence, the desiderium naturae is an innate, necessary desire for the ongoing
integrity of the human composite nature. It is a desire that reflects the
very constitution of human nature per se in its relative integrity as an
ontological principle with perfect epistemic intelligibility. However, the
desire “to put on our heavenly dwelling” does not come from our nature,
but from God in a distinct and quite specific way. Most interesting here
is the contrasting use of ex natura and ex Deo. Ex natura is, of course, nothing else than the singular effect of God’s creative agency (creatio ex nihilo
as well as creatio continuans). In contrast, ex Deo must refer here to an act
(1) categorically distinct from the former, (2) in no way in any prospective intrinsic continuity with it, (3) but rather in a surprising, newly gratuitous relationship with and hence in clear distinction from the former:
Cuius ratio est, quia quamlibet naturam consequitur appetitus conveniens
fini suae naturae, sicut grave naturaliter tendit deorsum, et appetit ibi
quiescere. Si autem sit appetitus alicujus rei supra naturam suam, illa res
non movetur ad illum finem naturaliter, sed ab alio quod est supra naturam suam. Constat autem quod perfrui caelesti gloria, et videre Deum
per essentiam, licet sit rationalis creaturae, est tamen supra naturam ipsius,
non ergo movetur rationalis creatura ad hoc desiderandum a natura, sed
ab ipso Deo, qui in hoc ipsum efficit nos, etc. Sed quomodo hoc efficit
subdit, dicens: Qui dedit pignus, etc. Circa quod sciendum est, quod Deus
efficit in nobis naturalia desideria et supernaturalia. Naturalia quidem

45 S.Thomae Aquinatis in omnes S. Pauli Apostoli epistolas commentaria, vol. 1, (Turin:

Marietti, 1929), 449.“Here he discloses the author of the supernatural desire for
a heavenly dwelling. For the cause of a natural desire that we be not despoiled is
that the soul is naturally united to the body, and vice versa. But the desire to be
clothed upon with a heavenly dwelling is not from nature but from God.”
(Translation by Fabian R. Larcher, OP)

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quando dat nobis spiritum naturalem convenientem naturae humanae.
Inspiravit in faciem ejus, etc. [Gen 1]. Supernaturalia vero dat quando infundit in nobis supernaturalem spiritum, sc. Spiritum Sanctum. Et ideo dicit:
Dedit nobis pignus spiritus, id est, Spiritum Sanctum causantem in nobis
certitudinem hujus rei qua desideramus impleri. Signati estis Spiritu
promissionis Sancto, etc. [Eph 1].46

This text speaks for itself. According to Aquinas, God effects in us natural as well as supernatural desires: Deus efficit in nobis naturalia desideria et
supernaturalia. The former are understood in this context strictly per se
(as integral to a distinct species in its natural constitution), that is, not
exclusively as desires as they might characterize the human being extant
sub conditione peccati, but as desires of a composite, mortal nature irrespective of the providential order in which it is found. Because of their natural spirit (spiritus naturalis), as it is fitting for human nature, human beings
are endowed with naturalia desideria. The supernatural desires are, on the
contrary, given by God, ab ipso Deo over and above the naturalia desideria.
Categorically different from the former, the supernatural desires are the
distinct effect of the Holy Spirit’s mission, desires that indeed are the very
pledge of the Spirit himself.
Most decisive, however, is the explicit statement:
Si autem sit appetitus alicujus rei supra naturam suam, illa res non
movetur ad illum finem naturaliter, sed ab alio quod est supra naturam
suam. Constat autem quod perfrui caelesti gloria, et videre Deum per
essentiam, licet sit rationalis creaturae, est tamen supra naturam ipsius,

46 Ibid. “The reason for this is that upon every nature follows a desire suited to the

end of that nature, as something heavy naturally tends downward and seeks to rest
there. But if a thing’s desire is above its nature, that thing is not moved to that end
naturally, but by something else, which is above its nature. Now it is evident that
to enjoy eternal glory and to see God by his essence, although it is appropriate to
a rational creature, is above its nature.Therefore, the rational creature is not moved
to desire this by nature, but by God himself,‘who prepared us for this very thing.’
How this is accomplished he adds, saying, ‘who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee [pledge].’ In regard to this it should be noted that God produces natural
desires and supernatural desires in us: the natural, when he gives us a natural spirit
suited to human nature:‘God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life’ [Gn 2:7];
but he gives the supernatural desires when he infuses in us the supernatural spirit,
that is, the Holy Spirit.Therefore he says, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee, that is, the Holy Spirit producing in us the certainty of this thing, with which
we desire to be filled:‘You were sealed with the Holy Spirit, which is the guarantee of our inheritance’ [Eph 1:13–14]” (Translation by Fabian R. Larcher, OP).

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non ergo movetur rationalis creatura ad hoc desiderandum a natura, sed
ab ipso Deo.47

Aquinas operates here very clearly with the distinction between an appetite
or desire proportionate and connatural to human nature and being capable
of directing human beings toward their connatural end, and a supernatural
desire, given from above, directing human beings to their ultimate, supernatural end. Although the fruition of heavenly glory and the vision of
God’s essence is a permitted end (licet!) for the rational creature, because it
utterly transcends human nature the rational creature cannot be moved
naturally to this end but must be moved to this end by God by way of a
supernatural desire given by the Holy Spirit.
Hence it hardly amounts to a retrospective projection of a deplorable
Baroque severance between nature and grace back into Aquinas when
the seventeenth-century French Dominican theologian and Thomist
commentator Jean Baptiste Gonet claims that “innate appetite is from
God as Author of nature, and as the Creator of natural forms. However,
the desire for the clear vision of God cannot be from the Author of
nature.Therefore, there cannot be an innate appetite for it.”48 In order to
confirm Gonet’s thesis, Feingold rightly draws upon Aquinas’s commentary on 2 Corinthians 5 and states:
According to this text, nature herself does not give a natural desire for
an end that is above the nature of the creature. Such a desire directly
for a supernatural end must be infused directly by God, working above
the natural order, through the gift of grace. De Lubac claims that this
distinction between “God as Author of the natural order” and “God as
Author of the supernatural order,” or between “God as the object of
natural beatitude” and “God as the object of supernatural beatitude,” is
not found in St.Thomas.49

47 Ibid.“But if a thing’s desire is above its nature, that thing is not moved to that end

naturally, but by something else, which is above its nature. Now it is evident that to
enjoy eternal glory and to see God by his essence, although it is appropriate to a
rational creature, is above its nature.Therefore, the rational creature is not moved to
desire this by nature, but by God himself ” (Translation by Fabian R. Larcher, OP).
48 Feingold’s translation from Gonet, Clypeus theologiae thomisticae contra novos ejus
impugnatores, 6 vols. (Bordeaux 1659–69; Lyons 1681; Paris 1875) vol. 1 in I, q.
12, disp. 1, a. 5, §2, n. 86, 224, cited in Lawrence Feingold, The Natural Desire to
See God According to St. Thomas Aquinas and His Interpreters (Rome: Apollinare
Studi, 2001), 655.
49 Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God, 656f.

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Feingold displays a significant number of texts by Aquinas that prove the
contrary.50 He concludes:
Thus it is clear that for St. Thomas, the natural love of God above all,
which man has in common with all creatures, is not directed to God insofar as He can be seen in the beatific vision. Instead it is directed to God
as the source and end of natural perfections, which generates a ‘natural
friendship’ with God (In I Cor, c. 13, v. 13, lect. 4).The love or desire for
God (or conversion to God) insofar as He can be participated in through
grace, and seen face to face, is spoken of by St.Thomas as charity, a love
which is exclusively the product of grace. . . .Therefore, it is clear that for
St.Thomas, it would be very wrong to say that there is an innate natural
desire or love for God insofar as He can be participated in only through
grace. Such a love or inclination directed towards God as He can be
possessed supernaturally in the beatific vision must itself be the product of
a supernatural intervention of God, infusing the theological virtues.51

Feingold’s correct emphasis on the sole efficient causality of God’s supernatural intervention in eliciting the supernatural desire, however, does not
per se invalidate the insistence upon a natural desire for the vision of God.
We find in this text two clearly distinguished operations of God—and
corresponding gifts from God—one being the very constitution of human
nature as a subsistent reality (with an end proportionate to this nature and
its corresponding natural desires), the other being God’s sovereign salvific
operation in relationship to extant human beings, a second gift drawing
the first beyond the confines of its original giftedness and thus not
destroying but perfecting it in a way prospectively as inconceivable as
unanticipatable, yet retrospectively to be understood as perfectly fitting the
first gift as it has been created for and is intrinsically open to the reception of the second gift.The necessary precondition for the fitting reception of the second gift, however, must be a readiness in the first gift for the
second, a potential in the first gift that allows for a transnatural expansion
(elevation), an expansion infinitely disproportionate to human nature.
However, because it is a genuine potential of the first gift, its infinitely
disproportionate expansion does not transmute the particular constitution
50 Ibid., 658f, note 72: ST I, q. 60, a. 5, ad 4; ST I, q. 62, a. 2, ad 1; ST I, q. 63, a. 1,

ad 3; ST I–II, q. 62, a. 1, ad 3; ST I–II, q. 109, a. 3, ad 1; ST II–II, q. 26, a. 3;
Quodl., I, q. 4, a. 3 [8], ad 1; De car., q. un., a. 2, ad 16; De spe, q. un., a. 1, ad 9;
In I Cor., c. 13, v. 13, lect. 4; De malo, q. 16, a. 4, ad 14 and 15; De malo, q. 5, a. 3,
ad 4; Comp. theol., I, q. 174, n. 2; In II Sent., d. 3, q. 4, ad 1; In II Sent., d. 33, q.
2, a. 2, ad 5; In III Sent., d. 27, q. 2, a. 2, ad 4.
51 Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God, 659f.

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of the first gift, its specific nature, into another nature. That is, in the
beatific vision, human beings remain human beings. (They are not, in an
Eckhartian sense, “melted” into the divine essence itself.) Would such a
specific natural potential of the first gift (the technical term in the Thomist
tradition became “specific obediential potency”),52 however, not require
a corresponding, proper natural desire? While such a desire would need to
correspond in potency to the second gift (hence a desire for the vision of
God), it could not be a desire innate to human nature itself (that is, a
desiderium naturae), because such a desire would necessarily reflect the
connatural end of the composite human nature. Rather, this natural desire
for the ultimate supernatural end would need to be elicited by the same
faculties by way of which the second gift is received: intellect and will.
And precisely in the vicinity of this elicited desire, quasi-preparing and
undergirding it, we find the proper instantiation of that ontological élan
so often emphasized by Milbank as the comprehensive dynamic of the
creation’s reditus to God. Such an élan indeed plays a fundamental and
indispensable role in the thought of the doctor communis.
This élan, however, is treated by Aquinas in a highly nuanced way that
Milbank fails to recognize. For it falls, first and foremost, under the category
of “natural love” and, more precisely, comprises the equivalent of what
Jacques Maritain, in his brilliant analysis of the four necessary loves (developed by Aquinas in the treatise on the angels in his Summa theologiae) has
identified as the first and the second love.The first is a love, by which
every creature naturally loves the supreme Whole more than itself with
a radical élan consubstantial with its essence. . . . It naturally exists in
every creature, with or without sense or reason, and is not free. It is inamissible; a being cannot lose it except by losing its nature and ceasing to
exist. It continues to exist in the sinner and in the demon.53

The second love is a version of the first, namely the love
through which every creature capable of knowledge loves the supreme Whole
more than itself, instinctively or by a spontaneous élan and not because
it knows Him, due solely to the fact that it loves necessarily, and with
an elicited love, whatever is its good of nature. . . . Here there is no knowl-

52 See Steven A. Long’s astute treatment and defense of this concept in his contri-

bution to this volume.
53 Jacques Maritain, The Sin of the Angel:An Essay on a Re-Interpretation of Some Thomistic

Positions, trans.William L. Rossner, SJ (Westminster: Newman Press, 1959), 20.

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edge of God properly speaking, no idea of God from which an elicited
love for God might proceed.54

These first two loves, according to Thomas, cannot fail; they endure even
in hell. Not so the next two.The third is the
“elicited love of nature” which, before any option or election, arises at
once in every intellectual creature as a spontaneous, immediate movement of the rational appetite at the instant and by the mere fact that
the intellect knows the existence of the Principle of all good, the Selfsubsisting Good which is the common good of all.55

While a movement necessary in itself, this love depends indirectly on the
free will,“insofar as it can be prevented by free will, like any other indeliberate motion of the elicited appetite.”56 Finally, “in every intelligent
creature there exists a natural inclination . . . to love the supreme Whole
more than himself with an elicited love of free option.The intelligent creature is inclined by his nature to this love which is essentially free in its
very mode of emanation.”57
Hence, de Lubac’s famous dictum from Surnaturel that “the spirit is the
desire for God”58 is indeed correct—on the ontological level of natural
love.As will become sufficiently clear later, for Aquinas neither the innate
ontological love pure and simple, nor the intra-elicited ontological love of
God above all, translates into an innate natural desire for the vision of God.
For, as Maritain rightly stresses, according to Aquinas, the human being, as
composite nature fundamentally different from the angel, receives all
knowledge by way of the senses. Hence, since there is no innate knowledge of God,59 the human being’s natural desire for the vision of God, if
it is an intellective desire (which, according to Aquinas, it is), must be called
forth via the senses by the first gift, creation, as it points, by way of its
causal order, not ineluctably, but consistently, to its primal origin, the Giver
of the gift. It must, hence, be an elicited desire, intending a transnatural and
ultimately infinitely disproportionate end that, however, because of the

54 Ibid., 20–22.
55 Ibid., 23.
56 Ibid., 24.
57 Ibid., 26.
58 Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God, 500 (“L’esprit est donc désir de Dieu,”

Surnaturel, 483).
59 The intellectus agens, pace Milbank, does not provide such a knowledge, even most

implicitly.

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nature of the intellect, remains integral to the connatural human end as
proportionate to human nature—short of the gift of sanctifying grace.60
3. Double Gratuity
Milbank, in his Bulgakovian radicalization of de Lubac and by entailment
of Aquinas argues that the two gifts, the second in a unique way perfecting
the first, are to be seen in a continuum, a seamless dynamic of varying
intensity, reflecting a fundamental ontological élan drawing the entire
cosmos through humanity to beatitude. Can St. Thomas’s theology be
drafted for a project that assumes a single non-contrastive gratuity, seamlessly connecting creation and deification in a comprehensive unitary and
universalistic vision? On the contrary, Aquinas’s theology of grace entails a
clear double gratuity; moreover, his doctrine of predestination forestalls any
attempt to claim his patronage for such a theological project.
In his profound and, in light of the widespread contemporary theological confusions about Christology, highly relevant treatise on the
hypostatic union in the tertia pars of the Summa theologiae, questions 1–15,
Aquinas dedicates the second quaestio to the problem of the precise mode
of the union of the Incarnate Word with the human nature. Relevant for
our particular problem is article 10 of question 2, where he asks whether
the union of the incarnation took place by grace. In his response,Aquinas
first offers a crisp summary of his definition of grace originally submitted in question 110, article 1 of the prima secundae:“Grace is taken in two

60 This elicited desire indeed needs to be satisfied supernaturally for an absolutely

perfect human felicity to occur.The Thomist who, according to my lights, got the
matter exactly right ad mentem S.Thomae is Jacques Maritain—and Feingold’s long
analysis is in substantive agreement with Maritain on this point:“Beatitude signifies perfect felicity, ultima perfectio rationalis seu intellectualis creaturae (the ultimate
perfection of the rational or intellectual creature) [ST I, q. 62, a. 1]. And the very
notion of perfect felicity might well be understood in various senses which are
more or less strict, from the eudaimonia of the sage of antiquity, to the joy which
surpasses all that the mind of man has ever conceived. As far as I am concerned,
I do not much like the expression ‘natural beatitude,’ for I do not think that there
is any absolutely perfect felicity as long as the natural (trans-natural) desire to see
God (a desire which in the Angel must be still much more profound than in man)
is not supernaturally satisfied. Nevertheless, I shall use the expression ‘natural beatitude’ . . . because quarrels over words are uninteresting, and because St.Thomas
himself does not hesitate to use the word beatitude [‘Quodammodo beatitudo . . .
dicitur,’ ST I, q. 62, a. 1] in order to designate the state of pure natural happiness
. . . in which the Angel was created.” Maritain, The Sin of the Angel, 97.

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ways: first as the will of God bestowing something; secondly, as the free
gift of God.”61
First, according to this definition, one might want to assume that St.
Thomas regards creation itself as the first grace, since it surely is the first
and foremost of all gifts.62 However, quite interestingly, St.Thomas does
not mention creation in this context at all. Rather, he immediately relates
grace to human nature, a principle of relative but distinct ontological
integrity and hence relative but distinct epistemic accessibility: “Now
human nature stands in need of the gratuitous will of God in order to be
lifted up [elevetur] to God, since this is above its natural capability.”
Second, a crucial term—if not the crucial term—in the above quote is
the verb “to be lifted up,” in the Latin passive elevari (active: elevare; noun:
elevatio). Human nature—notice that Thomas does not say here, the “human
person”—stands in a passive relationship to a specific agency of God, an
agency fundamentally distinct from creatio ex nihilo and creatio continuans, in
that it is an agency that presupposes human nature (notice, however, not a
subsistent “state of pure nature”) as a distinct species, sufficiently conceptually penetrable in its distinction from other natures in order to make relevant ontological claims about it and in relationship to which grace operates
qua elevatio, because hoc sit supra facultatem naturae suae.
Third, St. Thomas distinguishes between two ways of elevatio, one per
operationem, another per esse personale. The first, by operation, occurs “as the
saints know and love God.”The second, by personal being, occurs only in
Christ, “in Whom human nature is assumed so as to be in the Person of
the Son of God.”As St.Thomas reminds his readers in the tertia pars of the
Summa theologiae, question 4, article 1, ad 2, the elevation bringing about
a union by operation is indeed possible because of “the likeness of image
[. . .] found in human nature.”This likeness consists in human nature being
capax Dei, namely, “by attaining to Him through its own operation of
knowledge and love,” which are the essential characteristics of the intellectual soul. And it is precisely this capax Dei, this inherent potentiality in
human nature that grace reduces to act, to unitive knowledge and love,
whereby human nature is elevated to God per operationem. Both ways of

61 “Respondeo dicendum quod, sicut in Secunda Parte dictum est, gratia dupliciter

dicitur: uno modo, ipsa voluntas Dei gratis aliquid dantis; alio modo, ipsum
gratuitum donum Dei.”
62 For a profound metaphysical meditation of creation as gift (long before the
presently as fashionable and as tiring debate over whether a gift can be given set
in), see Kenneth L. Schmitz, The Gift: Creation (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1982).

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elevation presuppose the integrity of the prior gift, even sub conditione
peccati, and by entailment the supplementary nature of the second gift. It
is not explicitly denied by Aquinas in this place that the second gift, quasi
by infinite intensification of the first, extends efficaciously and hence
infallibly to all rational creatures. However, it is by no means accidental
that Aquinas chose his sed contra in question 2, article 10, preparing his
response in light of the objections, from St. Augustine’s late work De
praedestinatione sanctorum, where Augustine argues that it is a mystery why
faith is given to some and not to others and that the elect are not called
because they believe, but that they may believe. The quote from the sed
contra itself is taken from book 15 in which Augustine argues that the
incarnation provides the supreme example of grace’s specific gratuity, for
Christ’s human nature could have done nothing to deserve to be united
to the Word.63 What is clearly presupposed in this article, namely a distinct
double gratuity, is constitutive of the whole architecture of Aquinas’s
mature theology of grace.
The clear and categorical distinction between the first gift of creation
and the grace of elevation is rooted deeply in Aquinas’s doctrine of God,
and especially in his Trinitarian reflections. In his discussion of the
missions of the Son and Spirit in the prima pars of the Summa theologiae,
question 43, article 3, he starts with the axiomatic distinction between
two kinds of God’s presence: First, “God is in all things by his essence,
power, and presence, according to his one common mode, as the cause
existing in the effects which participate in his goodness.” There is,
however, a second, special, and superior mode according to which God
is present, a mode characterized by Aquinas with the terms “above and
beyond” (super) and “in a new way” (novo modo):
Above and beyond this common mode, however, there is one special
mode belonging to the rational nature wherein God is said to be present as the object known is in the knower, and the beloved in the lover.
And since the rational creature by its own operation of knowledge and
love attains to God Himself, according to this special mode God is said
not only to exist in the rational creature, but also to dwell therein as in
his own temple (ST I, q. 43, a. 3).

And the latter, St.Thomas states, happens by sanctifying grace:“The Holy
Ghost is possessed by man, and dwells within him, in the very gift itself
63 “Ea gratia fit ab initio fidei suae homo quicumque Christianus, qua gratia homo

ille ab initio suo factus est Christus” (cap. 10; Patrologia latina 44, 982). Thomas
continues: “Sed homo ille factus est Christus per unionem ad divinam naturam.
Ergo unio illa fuit per gratiam.”

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of sanctifying grace.” It is the latter claim, that the Holy Spirit dwells
within the human being in the gift of sanctifying grace (in ipso dono gratiae
gratum facientis) that perfectly justifies that, while human nature qua
rational soul is surely capable of it, this “indwelling” of the Spirit by way
of elevating human nature through sanctifying grace is infinitely beyond
and categorically different from God’s presence in the first mode, the
presence of the Creator in the creation. If one turns to St. Thomas’s
discussion of the mission of the divine persons, it might indeed be
perfectly defensible to call the very indwelling in the mind of the Trinity by sanctifying grace (ST I, q. 43, a. 5) a donum ultimum since by this
very gift “the soul is made like to God” (ST I, q. 43, a. 5, ad 2: anima per
gratiam conformatur Deo), resulting in an ultimate beatitude to be obtained
“by the power of God alone, by a kind of participation of the Godhead,
about which it is written (2 Pt 1:4) that by Christ we are made partakers
of the Divine nature” (ST I–II, q. 62, a. 1). Different from this donum ultimum, the gift of union with God by the indwelling of the Trinity by
sanctifying grace, is the very precondition for it, a first and fundamental
gift, which we might want to call the donum primum, creation as the gift
of a relation to God that issues in a procession of creatures caused and
upheld by the triune God’s exemplar, efficient, formal, and final causality,
a relation, however, that subsists in its own relative, but proper integrity:
For God is in all things by his essence, power, and presence, according
to his one common mode, as the cause existing in the effects which
participate in his goodness. Above and beyond this common mode,
however, there is one special mode belonging to the rational nature
wherein God is said to be present as the object known is in the knower,
and the beloved in the lover.And since the rational creature by its operation of knowledge and love attains to God Himself, according to this
special mode God is said not only to exist in the rational creature, but
also to dwell therein as in his own temple. So no other effect can be
put down as the reason why the divine person is in the rational creature in a new mode, except sanctifying grace.64

64 ST I, q. 43, a. 3, emphasis added:“Est enim unus communis modus quo Deus est

in omnibus rebus per essentiam, potentiam et praesentiam, sicut causa in effectibus
participantibus bonitatem ipsius. Super istum modum autem communem, est unus
specialis, qui convenit creaturae rationali, in qua Deus dicitur esse sicut cognitum
in cognoscente et amatum in amante. Et quia, cognoscendo et amando, creatura
rationalis sua operatione attingit ad ipsum Deum, secundum istum specialem modum
Deus non solum dicitur esse in creatura rationali, sed etiam habitare in ea sicut in
templo suo. Sic igitur nullus alius effectus potest esse ratio quod divina Persona sit
novo modo in rationali creatura, nisi gratia gratum faciens.”

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Let us now move further back in Aquinas’s doctrine of the Trinity in the
prima pars of the Summa theologiae, question 38, article 1, where St.Thomas
asks whether “gift” is a personal name. For here again we encounter the
sheer absence of a simple seamless continuity of infinite intensification
between the two forms of divine presence as well as of some kind of intrinsic dynamic leading from the one to the other in a way already “inscribed
in” or “anticipated by” the first. Rather, we encounter a twofold differentiation, the first by now being quite familiar:There obtains a crucial difference between the nature of the rational creature, on the one hand, and all
other creatures, on the other hand. For only rational creatures can enjoy a
divine person by being united to God.“Other creatures can be moved by
a divine person, not, however, in such a way as to be able to enjoy the
divine person, and to use the effect thereof.” There is, however, a second
crucial differentiation to be made regarding the donum ultimum, now
pertaining specifically and exclusively to the rational creature. For “the
rational creature does sometimes [quandoque] attain thereto; as when it is
made partaker of the divine Word and the Love proceeding, so as freely to
know God truly and to love God rightly.”65 The rational creature qua
rational is endowed with the albeit purely passive capability of being united
to God by way of its own powers acting according to their proper secondary causality; this capability is reduced to act by the Holy Spirit himself,
who is given from above by way of sanctifying grace that simultaneously
elevates human nature for the reception of such an infinitely disproportionate gift. However, unlike the gift of creation that is perfectly universal
and by way of which God is present by essence, power, and presence, the
enjoyment of the divine persons occurs quandoque, sometimes.
That the qualification quandoque is far from being a casual side remark
finds its possibly clearest expression in St.Thomas’s treatment of predestination in the prima pars of the Summa theologiae, question 23, wherein he
answers affirmatively the question whether human beings are predestined
by God, resting his response to the objections on a sed contra in which he
cites Romans 8:30 (RSV): “And those whom he predestined he also
called.” The opening sentence of his response is crucial: Deo conveniens est
homines praedestinare. It is fitting for God to predestine human beings.The
convenientia or fittingness refers to the end to which predestination pertains.
As Aquinas argued in the preceding question 22, divine providence directs
all things to their proper ends (ST I, q. 22, a. 1 and 2). However, regarding
the human being Aquinas distinguishes between a twofold (duplex) end,
65 “Ad quod quandoque pertingit rationalis creatura; ut puta cum sic fit particeps

divini Verbi et procedentis Amoris, ut possit libere Deum vere cognoscere et recte
amare.”

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one which exceeds all proportion and faculty of created nature; and this
end is life eternal, that consists in seeing God which is above the nature
of every creature. . . . The other end, however, is proportionate to
created nature, to which end created being can attain according to the
power of its nature. . . . Hence, properly speaking, a rational creature,
capable of eternal life, is led towards it, directed, as it were, by God.

Here again we have the clear distinction between an end proportionate to
created nature (something that must be perceptible in its own right and
makes sense ontologically as a subsistent principle with a respective end
proportionate to it) and an end “which exceeds all proportion and faculty
of created nature” (qui excedit proportionem naturae creatae et facultatem).
Moreover, the use of the term convenientia signals that the relationship
between the two ends cannot be captured by the all too simple alternatives “intrinsic” or “extrinsic.” There is no continuity from the first end
to the second, a continuity that might suggest some kind of innate and
inchoate anticipation of the second in the first; nor is the first “closed up”
to the second, such that it can only be “opened up” for the second gift by
being miraculously transformed by the latter into something essentially
foreign to its specific natural constitution. Convenientia rejects these alternatives by referring the matter to the mystery of God’s goodness, which is
identical with God’s justice as well as mercy, utterly unfathomable in the
glorious simplicity of the divine perfection. The ineradicable difference,
however, between the first gift and the grace of predestination is marked
by an echo of the oblique quandoque in two other instances. First, in question 23, article 2 (with a sed contra from Augustine’s De dono perseverantiae,
chapter 14) Aquinas returns to Rm 8:30 in his response to the question
whether predestination places anything in the predestined. Denying the
question he emphasizes that
providence is not anything in the things provided for; but is a type in
the mind of the provider, as was proved above (22,1). But the execution of providence which is called government, is in a passive way in
the thing governed, and in an active way in the governor.Whence it is
clear that predestination is a kind of type of the ordering of some
persons [aliquorum] towards eternal salvation, existing in the divine
mind. The execution, however, of this order is in a passive way in the
predestined, but actively in God.66
66 ST I, q. 23, a. 2, c.:“Providentia autem non est in rebus provisis; sed est quaedam

ratio in intellectu provisoris, ut supra dictum est. Sed executio providentiae, quae
gubernatio dicitur, passive quidem est in gubernatis; active autem in gubernante.
Unde manifestum est quod praedestinatio est quaedam ratio ordinis aliquorum
in salutem aeternam, in mente divina existens.”

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Second, in question 23, article 7, where on this particular matter St.Thomas
stands in clear agreement with the late St. Augustine:“The number of the
predestined is certain . . . not only by reason of his knowledge, because, that
is to say, He knows how many will be saved . . . ; but by reason of his deliberate choice and determination.”67 The reason for the quandoque as well as
the aliqui is the mystery of God’s principal preordination.68 And it is at this
particular place where the irresolvable differentiation between God’s loves
becomes most pertinent. In his treatise on grace, Summa theologiae I–II,
question 110, article 1, St. Thomas distinguishes between two aspects of
God’s love to the creature:
For one is common [dilectio generalis], whereby He loves all things that
are (Wis 11:25), and thereby gives things their natural being. But the
second is a special love [dilectio specialis], whereby He draws the rational
creature above the condition of its nature to a participation of the
Divine good; and according to this love He is said to love anyone
simply, since it is by this love that God simply wishes the eternal good,
which is Himself, for the creature.69

67 That this account is far from some type of “blue print” statically and quasi-mech-

anistically imposed upon thing-like rational creatures is implicitly addressed in q.
8, ad 3, where he makes the crucial metaphysical distinction between the first
universal cause and secondary causes:“Secondary causes cannot escape the order
of the first universal cause . . . , indeed, they execute that order. And therefore
predestination can be furthered by creatures, but it cannot be impeded by them.”
68 Thomas does not avoid the difficult question of reprobation either. It is important,
however, to note that he implicitly follows the canons of the Second Synod of
Orange in rejecting any notion of an active divine reprobation. Rather, God
permits some [aliquos] to fall away from the ultimate end (which entails the reality
of sufficient grace); (“Unde, cum per divinam providentiam homines in vitam
aeternam, ordinentur, pertinet etiam ad divinam providentiam, ut permittat aliquos
ab isto fine deficere. Et hoc dicitur reprobare.” ST I q. 23, a. 3, c.). However, as divine
providence entails both the divine intellect (providence in the narrow sense) and
the divine will (divine governance as the execution of providence), the divine
permission not only entails the divine knowledge of such a falling away but
includes the will to permit a person to fall into sin: “Sicut enim praedestinatio
includit voluntatem conferendi gratiam et gloriam, ita reprobatio includit voluntatem permittendi aliquem cadere in culpam, et inferendi damnationis poenam pro
culpa” (ibid.).
69 ST I–II, q. 110, a. 1, c.: “Una quidem communis, secundum quam diligit omnia
quae sunt, ut dicitur Sap. 11, [25]; secundum quam esse naturale rebus creatis
largitur. Alia autem est dilectio specialis, secundum quam trahit creaturam rationalem supra conditionem naturae, ad participationem divini boni. Et secundum
hanc dilectionem dicitur aliquem diligere simpliciter: quia secundum hanc dilectionem vult Deus simpliciter creaturae bonum aeternum, quod est ipse.”

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Hence,Thomas explains,“grace” can signify something that is bestowed by
God on the human being.Then he emphasizes again the logic of the quandoque: “Nevertheless the grace of God sometimes signifies God’s eternal
love, as we say the grace of predestination, inasmuch as God gratuitously
and not from merits predestines or elects some.”70
The very fact that St. Thomas describes the efficacious elevation of
some to the beatific vision as the grace of predestination is a clear indication that in his theology there obtains an explicit and distinctive double
gratuity such that the first gift, created human nature, originally gifted with
the help of original justice and through sanctifying grace ordained for the
vision of God differs categorically from the ontological élan reflected in
the four necessary loves, according to Maritain’s analysis, as mentioned
above.These four necessary loves, however, indicate an antecedent fittingness of the first for the second gift, as becomes increasingly clear by
reflecting upon the first gift, the rational creature qua particular nature in
its proper integrity, in light of the second gift, the elevation of human
nature per operationem to personal communion with the triune God.
Passages like the above suggest that St.Thomas was intent upon preserving the strict gratuity of the grace of predestination by operating with the
logic of a double gratuity, first the gift that constitutes its own reception
(creation), then the gift that infallibly, though entailing the proper
secondary causality of free will, constitutes communion with God, the
Giver of both gifts.
In the course of this brief excursion we encounter an Aquinas who
thoroughly resists Milbank’s attempt of assimilating his theology into the
latter’s radicalized Bulgakovian Lubacianism for at least two reasons: First,
while St.Thomas never assumed a state of pure nature in the present order
of providence, he clearly assumes the principle of nature—and hence a
hypothetical state of pure nature—with its own relative but proper integrity
as an entailment of creation that ontologically obtains and is accessible to
the intellect. Second, Aquinas’s doctrine of the grace of predestination
makes it impossible—despite the very prominent role of the ontological
exitus-reditus scheme in the overall architectonic of his thought—to press
his theology into the service of an overarching Origenist-Bulgakovian
vision of universal apokatastasis. The ontology of the exitus-reditus is a
necessary precondition entailed in the first gift in order for grace “to

70 ST I–II, q. 110, a. 1, c.: “Quandoque tamen gratia Dei dicitur ipsa aeterna Dei

dilectio: secundum quod dicitur etiam gratia praedestinationis, inquantum Deus
gratuito, et non ex meritis, aliquos praedestinavit sive elegit.”

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come on the way of being,”71 that is, to elevate human nature to a supernatural perfection without its transmutation into another species. The
complexity of this position (ontological élan as well as grace of predestination) is precisely reflected in the question of the rational creature and its
natural desire for the vision of God to which we now turn.
Observation 3: Is the rational creature “intrinsically linked to grace”?
Or, What is ultimately at stake in Feingold’s Thomist engagement
of Henri de Lubac’s position?
For a detailed discussion of the crucial texts in Aquinas regarding the natural desire of the vision of God72 I happily refer to the excellent and cogent
discussion in Steven A. Long’s contribution to this symposium. I could at
best only reproduce his precise argumentation, which I regard as a correct
interpretation of Aquinas and the Thomist commentators. Moreover, his
interpretation convincingly invalidates the critique raised by Milbank that
Feingold only cites paragraphs 11–13 of Summa contra Gentiles, book III,
question 25, while “the ontological and neoplatonizing prelude is omitted
from his discussion entirely!”73 Long’s precise interpretation of Aquinas
shows plainly that even without an explicit treatment of Summa contra
Gentiles III, question 25, articles 1–10—which indeed should have been
explicitly treated—Feingold’s overall analysis of the broad coherence
between Aquinas and the Thomist commentators obtains.
Rather than repeating Long’s excellent analysis, I regard this as the
opportune place to give voice to Feingold himself. As mentioned earlier,
I choose this approach because Feingold’s book is very hard to track
down, and therefore the subsequent extended quotations may be the only
way to gain an initial appreciation of the utterly serious and substantive
nature of Feingold’s engagement of Henri de Lubac’s position.
1. Feingold’s reconstruction of Henri de Lubac’s position
on the desiderium naturale visionis Dei
a. De Lubac’s fundamental concern:The intrinsic nature of a spiritual creature’s finality
De Lubac argues that the finality of a spiritual creature is intrinsic and cannot be changed without changing the nature. . . .

71 Ferdinand Ulrich, Homo Abyssus: Das Wagnis der Seinsfrage, 2nd ed., ed. Martin

Bieler and Florian Pitschl (Freiburg: Johannes Verlag, 1998), 333.
72 De Veritate, 14; Summa contra Gentiles III, 25; Compendium Theologiae, 103–7 et al.
73 Milbank, Suspended, 26, fn. 10.

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De Lubac’s fundamental concern is to remove an “extrinsicist” view of man’s relation to his supernatural end, which he
thinks is inherently linked with the theory of the possibility of
a state of pure nature, as put forward by Suárez, and with the
way the natural desire to see God was interpreted by authors
such as Cajetan, Báñez, Suárez, and those who followed them.
For de Lubac, the “essential finality” of man is the vision of
God. This finality cannot be changed without changing our
nature. Man as he is today has only one end that is in harmony
with his nature as it now exists—the vision of God.This end,
therefore, is “inscribed” or “imprinted” on man’s nature as he
concretely exists (prior to any gift of grace) (491).

b. De Lubac’s central philosophical argument: The actual final end
of a concrete nature
This conception is based on a fundamental philosophical notion,
central to de Lubac’s position, according to which the actual
final end of a thing is necessarily something which determines
its nature ontologically, from within. Since we know by faith that
we have been destined to a supernatural end, it follows that even
before we receive the gift of grace, our nature must be intrinsically determined by our destination to this supernatural end.
One and the same “concrete nature” cannot have two distinct
possible finalities, one natural and the other supernatural, which
God could assign by an external decree, without changing the
nature itself. Such a notion implies a “watered-down idea of
what finality is.” Rather, two different finalities determine two
different natures (or two different “concrete natures” or “historic
natures”). In other words, the actual finality of a thing is always the
“essential finality” of a thing, postulated by its very essence.
Thus de Lubac opposes the idea that our supernatural end is
something “superadded” by God on top of and distinct from a “natural end,” to which our nature would be directed in virtue of its own
intrinsic principles. . . .
It is precisely this possibility of a divergence between actual
finality and natural (or essential) finality, with regard to the
spiritual creature, which de Lubac rejects, as a notion that is
philosophically and religiously unacceptable, contrary to the
authentic notion of finality (493ff, emphasis added).

c. The finality of the spiritual creature expressed in the natural
desire to see God, understood as the innate inclination for the
actual final end
De Lubac’s interpretation of the natural desire to see God is
intimately connected with his understanding of finality in the

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spiritual creature. Natural desire is understood as the innate
inclination of a being for its actual final end, or as the “expression” of the finality of a thing. This corresponds with the
notion of appetitus naturalis or inclinatio naturalis in St.Thomas
as applied to inanimate creatures and the faculties of the soul.
According to St.Thomas, this natural appetite is “determined
to one” by nature. The natural end of a thing always determines a natural appetite for that end.
Therefore, the fact that man actually has a supernatural
finality necessarily determines a natural desire for that supernatural end, according to de Lubac. The natural desire to see
God, therefore, is nothing other than the necessary attraction
of spiritual beings to the end imprinted on their nature by
God. It is precisely the presence in us of our finality, inscribed
within us, for the vision of God. . . . [see the important section
from The Mystery of the Supernatural, 70–72, cited at this point.]
De Lubac is affirming here a natural appetite for beatitude
in the particular object in which it actually consists, and not
just for beatitude in general. Since the end for which God has
ordained us is quite determinate in the mind of God, consisting in the beatific vision, de Lubac concludes that our natural
desire must be equally determinate, since natural desire and
final end are correlative terms.We must have a concrete natural
desire for our concrete final end, as it has been actually determined in the mind of God. Since we are actually destined for
the vision of God, we must have a specific natural desire for
this vision.This natural desire will be the desire of our nature
(desiderium naturae) for its true and specific finality, in the actual
plan of God’s providence (495ff).
Therefore, de Lubac can assert both (a) that a state of pure
nature is impossible for human nature as we now possess it (that
is, for man as we know him, who possesses a natural desire to
see God), and (b) that God could perhaps create other rational
creatures without ordering them to the vision of God (and
without giving them a natural desire for that vision).Thus the
possibility of a state of pure nature for other rational beings is left
open, neither being asserted nor denied. However, the possibility of a state of pure nature is clearly denied with regard to men
possessing the same (concrete) nature as ourselves (507).

2. Feingold’s characterization of the central metaphysical issue at stake
between Thomas Aquinas (and the commentators) and Henri de Lubac
a. Thomas Aquinas: The metaphysical principle “form determines
end” and the supernatural finality superadded by the principle of
grace and the supernatural virtues

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For St. Thomas, the possession of a certain form determines a
relation to a given natural end that is called for by that form. In
CG, III, c. 150, n.5, St.Thomas states that “each thing is ordered
to the end that is fitting to it according to its form: to different
species there belong different ends.” From this he concludes
that a new supernatural form—grace—must be “super-added”
to human nature so that it can be ordered to an end that is “above
human nature”: “Sed finis in quem homo dirigitur per auxilium divinae gratiae, est supra naturam humanam. Ergo oportet
quod homini superaddatur aliqua supernaturalis forma et perfectio, per quam convenienter ordinetur in finem praedictum.”
[“But the end to which man is directed by the help of divine
grace is above human nature. Therefore, some supernatural
form and perfection must be superadded to man whereby he
may be ordered suitably to the aforesaid end.”] 74
This clearly implies that human nature in itself without grace
is not naturally or essentially ordered (and cannot be fittingly
ordered) to an end that is above human nature, precisely because
“each thing is ordered to the end that is fitting to it according
to its form,” proportionate to its nature (521f).

b. Henri de Lubac:The imprinting of a supernatural finality upon
human nature prior to the gift of grace
For de Lubac, on the contrary, the “imprinting of a supernatural
finality” upon our nature is prior to the gift of grace, and is
involved in the very constitution of our nature, as it concretely
exists in us.The first fundamental problem with de Lubac’s position is how the denial that our nature is ordered to the vision of
God prior to grace can be reconciled with his repeated assertion
that a supernatural finality has been imprinted on our nature,
prior to grace. Being ordered to an end according to one’s
nature, and having a finality imprinted on one’s nature seem to
be equivalent notions. It seems therefore that de Lubac’s position
entails a fundamental contradiction, and that he must logically
choose between (a) his repeated affirmation that our nature itself
is intrinsically determined by having received a supernatural
finality (also referred to as an “essential finality”), prior to the
reception of grace, and (b) the affirmation (which is the constant
teaching of St.Thomas) that our nature itself is not ordered to a
supernatural end without grace (523f).
De Lubac presupposes that the actual or de facto end must
necessarily be the end “essential” to the nature, or inscribed
upon that nature, as it concretely exists.
74 Translation from Summa contra Gentiles. Book Three: Providence, Part II, trans.

Vernon J. Bourke (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975), 232.

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However, we cannot conclude that because God has destined
man for an end that is above his nature, transcending the natural inclination of his faculties, that such an end is therefore
necessarily a finality “imprinted on the nature” itself, or an
“intrinsic” or “ontological” end, or an “essential finality.”All that
we can conclude is that if God destines us to a supernatural end,
it is fitting that He give a new form, added to our nature (superadditur), by which we are fittingly ordered to that supernatural
end. This new (accidental) form must necessarily be above our
nature (sanctifying grace), so as to make us proportionate to an
end which is above our nature, connatural only to God.
If this new form which determines us to a supernatural
end is above our nature, then this supernatural finality cannot
be said to be “imprinted in our nature itself.” Nor can the
finality that is generated by this supernatural form be considered to be an “essential finality.” It is ultimately contradictory
to suppose that our nature itself—without the addition of a
supernatural principle—could be intrinsically determined by
a supernatural finality, or have a supernatural finality inscribed
upon it, or have an “essential finality” that is supernatural. If
this were the case, our nature itself would be in some sense supernatural, in virtue of St. Thomas’s axiom that everything is
ordered to its end in virtue of its form, as well as the principle invoked by de Lubac that “finality is something intrinsic,
affecting the depths of the being.” However, a “supernatural
nature” is a contradictory notion. An end that is actually
imprinted on our nature itself (an “essential finality”) can
never truly be “supernatural.” If the end is supernatural, it
cannot be imprinted on our nature prior to our reception of
grace, for grace alone is sufficient to order the intellectual
creature to a supernatural end (526–29).

c. The different meanings of “grace superadded” in de Lubac and in
Aquinas
[F]or de Lubac, grace should be conceived as “super-added” to
our nature only insofar as it renders us properly disposed and
capable of achieving the end which was already inscribed in
our nature prior to the gift of grace. It should not be conceived
as “super-added” in the sense of giving us a “new finality.”
However, for St. Thomas, grace is not conceived only as a
necessary means to achieve an end to which our nature is already
essentially ordered. On the contrary, grace is necessary first for us
to have a being and dignity such that the vision of God is a
fitting and proportionate end for us.The infused moral virtues
are necessary so that we may operate for that supernatural end,
but grace is situated by St.Thomas on a different level. It makes

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present within us a supernatural finality by giving us a mysterious proportionality with the divine nature. Thus it can be said
that for St. Thomas, our supernatural finality is “imprinted on
our being” first by sanctifying grace (529ff).

3. Feingold’s characterization of the central tension in Henri de Lubac’s
account of the desiderium naturale: the created spirit
a. The innate appetite or natural inclination being necessarily directed
to the actual final end
The vision of God is certainly not “proportionate” to human
nature without grace, as de Lubac also recognizes. [The Mystery
of the Supernatural, 111–12: “However profound, however lofty
it may be, created spiritual nature is in no way ‘proportionate’—
except ‘as the effect to the cause, or the potency to the act’—to
what infinitely surpasses it.”] However, de Lubac fails to draw
the necessary conclusion from this. According to St. Thomas,
the natural inclination of our will is directed to the end that is
proportionate to our nature, and not to the actual end to which
God has destined us, which is supernatural. This is a direct
consequence of the fact that our actual end is supernatural. A
supernatural end necessarily exceeds the proportionality of the
nature which has been elevated to it, by definition.Therefore, it
necessarily also exceeds the natural inclination (or innate
appetite) of the faculties of that nature, since natural inclination
is based on proportionality and similarity. De Lubac’s fundamental deviation from St. Thomas in this matter consists in
supposing that natural inclination or innate appetite is necessarily directed to the actual final end to which God has destined a
creature, and not rather to the end proportionate to the nature of
the creature (534).

b. The natural inclination or innate appetite generated by the natural form according to Thomas Aquinas
Natural inclination or innate appetite must be based on the
nature of the creature, since, being prior to knowledge, it can
only be generated by the natural form that is possessed.
However, it is clear that there is nothing in the natural form
of the creature, prior to the gift of grace, such that it could
generate a natural inclination or innate appetite for the vision
of God. A natural desire for the vision of God, prior to grace,
can only be an elicited desire caused by some knowledge of
God’s effects, and thus it will be directed to a knowledge of
God’s essence as First Cause, according to the profound interpretation of Sylvester of Ferrara. The presence of sanctifying

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grace, on the other hand, generates a new “super-added” precognitional inclination directly for the vision of God, as the
object of our supernatural beatitude. This new inclination
follows on grace, “per modum naturae.”
In short, there is no basis for the thesis that the end to
which God actually destines a creature—if that end is supernatural—necessarily generates a corresponding innate appetite
or natural inclination for that end (and only for that end) in
the creature, prior to the reception of grace (535f ).

c. The unresolved tension in de Lubac’s account:The natural desire
to see God—purely natural, or also somewhat divine?
There is an unresolved tension, in fact, in de Lubac’s thought
as to whether the natural desire to see God should be
conceived as purely natural, or as also somehow divine.
According to the logic of his system, there are strong reasons
for both affirmations. It must be considered as natural, on the
one hand, insofar as it is identified either with the nature itself,
or with its foundation and depths. On the other hand, however
it must be considered to be somehow divine or supernatural
for it to accomplish the role that de Lubac assigns to it. The
imprinting of a supernatural finality on our nature, creating an
innate inclination to our supernatural end, understood as
God’s “call,” can only be the result of the gift of a supernatural
form added to our nature (539f ).75
If our nature can make no claim to the supernatural finality
that has been imprinted on it, and does not in itself imply that
finality, then the imprinting of that finality cannot properly be
understood to belong to the nature itself, for otherwise my
nature would “claim” it and “imply” it, as an essential constituent
element. For example, our nature itself “claims” and “implies”
the presence of reason, hands and feet, ordination to a fitting
final end, etc. St. Thomas expresses this through the notion of
debitum naturae.Therefore, this finality, if it is truly not claimed by
the nature, must logically be something added to our nature (at
least insofar as the nature is considered “abstractly”).
This implies that what de Lubac refers to as our “concrete”
or “historical” nature should really be conceived—in order to

75 Page 540 note 68: “It is basically for this reason that Karl Rahner introduces his

‘supernatural existential,’ for he reasons that a principle which intrinsically orders
us to a supernatural end must itself be supernatural. In this he is quite coherent.
St. Thomas agrees that we are ordered to our supernatural end by supernatural
principles: grace and the supernatural virtues. However, for Rahner, this principle is not grace, but something prior to the reception of grace.”

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be coherent—as a composite formed by two elements: (a) our
nature itself, as such (referred to by de Lubac as our “abstract”
or “generic nature”), with the addition of (b) a supernatural
finality imprinted on that nature which determines in us a
natural desire to see God (an “imprint” which would logically
itself be a supernatural element). [note 78: This is essentially
the solution of K. Rahner] (542f ).

4.The resolution of the tension in de Lubac’s account:
Either Thomist or Bulgakovian/Milbankian
One ironic outcome of Feingold’s critique and Milbank’s modification of de Lubac’s position is that Milbank’s radicalized Bulgakovian
Lubacianism constitutes precisely the other side of Feingold’s Aristotelian Thomism. Both Feingold and Milbank agree that (a) the
concern expressed in Humani Generis was indeed aimed at de Lubac,
and (b) that the later de Lubac’s way of responding to the encyclical’s
concern was not fully satisfying—for both because de Lubac never
jettisoned the fundamental assumption about the constitution of the
created spirit for a single supernatural end expressed in the innate
natural desire for the vision of God.
a. The tension summarized
In order to coherently hold that our supernatural finality is
“essential” to us, de Lubac would logically have had to eliminate the distinction of abstract and concrete human nature altogether, and maintain that human nature as such is necessarily
determined by a supernatural finality, which thus is essential to
it and would be included in man’s definition itself, in any
hypothesis or economy of salvation.According to this solution,
an “uncalled” rational nature (if it is possible) would not be
human nature at all, but would be a completely different nature
or species, having a different definition, with a different essential finality. This would mean discarding the possibility of an
abstract human nature different from our concrete human
nature in not containing a supernatural finality imprinted on it.
Although this solution would be philosophically more coherent in certain respects, and is supported by several passages of
Chapter 4 of The Mystery of the Supernatural (in which de Lubac
implies that members of a hypothetical “uncalled” humanity
would really have a different nature), such a solution poses great
theological problems, defining a created nature, as such, by a
supernatural end. In any case, the mature de Lubac did not wish
to take this step in an unambiguous way, so as not to turn our
supernatural end into a mere sequela creationis, and also perhaps

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so as not to be in conflict with the teaching of Humani generis.
In fact, such a solution would render impossible de Lubac’s
threefold distinction, seen above, between (1) the creation of a
spiritual nature, (2) the imprinting of a supernatural finality, and
(3) the offer of grace, so that the first does not imply the second,
and the second does not imply the third (546ff).

b. The alternative resolutions
In conclusion, de Lubac is in perfect harmony with St.Thomas
and with the Christian tradition in denying that our nature
itself, as it actually exists, has the slightest supernatural element.
However, this cannot be reconciled with his interpretation of
the natural desire to see God as the expression of a supernatural finality imprinted on our nature in creation itself, prior to
the reception of grace, determining us to an inevitably supernatural end. A choice must be made. Either the supernatural finality imprinted on our nature must be recognized to flow from
a supernatural element given with our constitution itself (as K.
Rahner affirms); or one must reject altogether the thesis that a
supernatural finality has been imprinted on our nature, prior
to grace, opting instead for the thesis that an ordination to our
supernatural end is impressed on our being first by sanctifying
grace. Clearly the principles of St. Thomas and the Christian
tradition demand the latter option (550).

c. Feingold’s rejection of “grace extrinsicism”: the specific obediential
potency of the rational creature, that is, the rational creature’s natural openness to the supernatural
For St.Thomas, the existence of an elicited natural desire to know the
essence of God shows that a call by God to the beatific vision is tremendously fitting, since it is the only end in which we can find perfect beatitude and in which all natural desire can come to rest (emphasis added)
In addition, St.Thomas combats a certain type of “extrinsicism” by showing that our ordering to a supernatural end is
realized through principles which are truly possessed by us in
a continuous way in the form of supernatural habits which
generate a new inclination, so that our supernatural end is
attained in a way that is “connatural” in a certain sense.
Although these principles ordering us to the vision of God
remain extrinsic to our nature (for they are supernatural and
thus “super-added” to the nature), they are not extrinsic to the
person who possesses these supernatural habits.
The difference is that for St. Thomas, this intrinsic ordering and inclination comes through “super-added” (supernatural) principles, whereas for de Lubac, it comes through the

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nature itself, as it is historically realized in us, bearing an innate
and absolute natural desire for its actual end (551f ).
It is certainly true, as de Lubac emphasizes, that rational creatures
constitute a special case with regard to their finality. St. Thomas
notes that a great dignity of the rational creature lies in the fact that
it can be raised to an end exceeding its natural faculties and proportionality; it alone is naturally open to the supernatural, in virtue of
the very nature of the faculties of intellect and will.Thus it can be
elevated through the gift of grace to receive a new finality to which
its nature itself is not ordered. This has been analyzed above as a
specific obediential potency of the rational creature (553).

d. The novelty or paradox of de Lubac’s position: The idea of an
innate natural desire for the vision of God
The novelty or paradox of de Lubac’s position lies in his claim
that a desire can be absolute or unconditional, and at the same
time still remain inefficacious and imperfect (558).
[On the contrary, St. Thomas’s] position is based on the
axiom that innate appetite, since it derives directly from the
natural form possessed, is always directed to an object proportionate to the nature of the creature. . . .An elicited (imperfect)
natural desire, on the other hand, is not limited by the proportionality of the creature, because it is based on knowledge, and
something can be known to be desirable even though it
exceeds the proportionality of the creature, as is manifestly the
case with regard to the vision of God.
I hold that the latter line of interpretation, represented by
Suárez, is correct, and that the former line of interpretation,
represented most prominently by de Lubac, contradicts many
texts and principles of St.Thomas.The idea of an innate natural desire for the vision of God—although it may appear plausible at first sight—is fundamentally incompatible with the
Thomistic synthesis (636).

e. Avoiding the paradox; or, the philosophical and theological
necessity of the possibility of a state of pure nature
[T]he existence of an innate appetite for the vision of God
logically implies the impossibility of a state of pure nature.
However, the possibility of a state of pure nature is necessary
for both philosophical and theological reasons, and has been
taught by the Church’s Magisterium. It is philosophically
necessary for the coherence of the natural order, and theologically necessary to preserve the full gratuitousness of grace.
If there is only one final end (or only one beatitude) that
is possible for man’s nature as such—the vision of God—then

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that end, together with the means necessary to obtain it, will
be due to human nature. In such a case, the vision of God,
together with grace and the theological virtues, would no
longer be gratuitous in the sense in which St.Thomas understands these gifts to be gratuitous (666f ).

5. St.Thomas transcending the alternatives of the
“extrinsicism” and “intrincisism” of grace
Finally, it must be noted that Feingold captures with admirable nuance
the intriguingly complex as well as precise position of St.Thomas and the
Thomist tradition over against the rather crude alternatives of the alleged
Thomist submission to a “grace-extrinsicism” on the one hand and the
proposed panacea of the intrinsicism of a “grace-continuum of infinite
intensification” on the other hand:
It should be noted that the assertion of the “possibility of a state of pure
nature,” (which should be understood as the possibility or non-absurdity
for an intellectual nature to be created, and yet not to be called to a
supernatural end) does not imply that it would be equally fitting for God
to elevate an intellectual creature, as not to elevate him. On the contrary,
St. Thomas shows that it is more fitting to our nature and its natural
(elicited) aspirations, for God to elevate us to the supernatural end of the
vision of God.This is shown by means of the natural desire to see God.
Perfect beatitude is possible only in the vision of God, for only this can
bring to rest all natural desire.
Nevertheless, despite the fittingness of our elevation, it is very
important to assert that it would not be absurd or incoherent (that is, it
would not be impossible with regard to the order of God’s providence)
for human nature to exist without being elevated to a supernatural end,
in which case it could only attain an imperfect beatitude. However, the
existence of a truly innate natural appetite for the vision of God (which
thus would be absolute), would make it not merely less fitting for
human nature to exist without being elevated to a supernatural end, but
also ultimately absurd, as was affirmed by Jansenius and his followers,
together with the Augustinian theologians Noris, Bellelli and Berti, and
finally by de Lubac and those who follow him.
Therefore, in order to coherently affirm the possibility of a state of
pure nature, one must reject the existence of an innate appetite for the
vision of God, as Suárez maintained in opposition to the earlier solution of St. Robert Bellarmine, Toledo and Soto (as well as Scotus),
which maintained an innate appetite for the vision of God without
rejecting the possibility of a state of pure nature (667).

The subtle and nuanced argumentation of this last section gives the lie to
Milbank’s characterization that Feingold resurrects an “arch-reactionary,”

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“die-hard,”“palaeolithic” neo-Thomism intent on defending a “regime of
pure nature.” Moreover, Feingold himself advances at this very point the
kind of aesthetic argument of ontological fittingness, based on convenientia, that Milbank hails as the latest achievement of what he characterizes
as only a very recent Fribourg-Toulouse Thomism, presumably chastened
by the nouvelle théologie. Hence it is not really surprising that Milbank fails
to recognize that for Feingold, convenientia in this section has nothing
whatsoever to do with the mere “epistemological likelihood,” which
according to Milbank is Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange’s (and by implication Feingold’s) understanding of convenientia.76 Finally, in light of this
particular passage, it becomes clear that the question of whether there
exists in the human being an innate natural desire for the vision of God is
a question debated in highly nuanced ways long before the days of Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, OP, and Henri de Lubac, SJ, and hence in all likelihood a question that will continue to be debated long after them, though
now in light of the concern expressed in Humani Generis.
Coda
It has become clear, first, that how the question of nature and grace is
resolved has in at least some cases a subtle, but nevertheless immediate,
impact on resolutions to the question of the nature and scope of salvation.
In other words, if, as the early de Lubac states in Surnaturel and as Milbank
likes to take him, spirit indeed is the desire for God, then Bulgakov’s universal apokatastasis is indeed the logical explication of a fundamental entailment
of de Lubac’s theological vision of a Christian humanist universalism.
It has become furthermore clear that it is ultimately unconvincing on
the question of nature and grace to drive a consistent and comprehensive
wedge between the thought of Thomas Aquinas on the one hand and the
tradition of the Thomist commentators on the other hand. In other words,
the Thomist position that the natural desire to see God is an elicited natural
desire is by no means a Renaissance or Baroque distortion of a presumably
“original,” more or less Areopagite Aquinas, but a faithful and consistent
interpretation of the comprehensive position of the doctor communis.
Finally, it has become clear that the reading of St.Thomas’s theology of
grace as exclusively reconstructed in light of an Areopagite ontology of
participation, in order to help warrant the vision of a Bulgakovian Lubacianism, simply is untenable.The humanism St.Thomas advances is integrally united with an Augustinian theological position on predestination

76 Milbank, Suspended, 84ff.

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and grace as stated in the Second Synod of Orange and reconfirmed at
the Council of Trent.
I should add, nevertheless, that while the universal apokatastasis was
never adopted as a comprehensive dogmatic position by East or West,77
universal human salvation remains a legitimate theological expression of
the infused, supernatural virtues of hope and charity and hence a matter
of fervent prayers of intercession, as consistently argued by Hans Urs von
Balthasar.78 Transposing universal salvation, however, from the scope of
Christian hope and prayer to the core of Christian doctrine and theology would at the very least be a grave mistake of categories, if not the
unwarranted anticipation of divine judgment in the form of theological
speculation, even be it a Christological speculation as brilliant and gospelcentered as in the case of Karl Barth’s doctrine of election.79
Hence, to return to the beginning of these observations, the first type
of answer to the question,What is the human being?, in all its profound
humanist attraction suffers from the speculative excess of a premature
systematic closure, precisely at the point where theology has to practice
the askesis of leaving the end to God. Although, obviously, the second
77 Indeed, it was explicitly rejected by the Fifth Ecumenical Council, that is, the

Second Council of Constantinople, 553, in a first, formally preconciliar, anathema,
a statement issued by the assembly of bishops, in which they confirmed in an elaborated version the anti-Origenean canon promulgated by the Synod of Constantinople in 543. (For the anti-Origenean canon of 553, see Acta Conciliorum
Oecumenicorum [Berlin, 1914ff], vol. IV/1, 248ff.) The statement can be interpreted
minimalistically as a rejection of the idea that one can know certainly that no one
will be eternally damned; more straightforwardly and less minimalistically read, it
seems simply to condemn any position that would want to deny the concrete
possibility of eternal damnation for some, as argued already by Augustine in De
Civitate Dei XXI, 17.
78 See for a discussion more accessible than the sprawling Theo-Drama, Hans Urs
von Balthasar, Dare We Hope “That All Men Be Saved”? with a Short Discussion on
Hell (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988); and the insightful discussion of von
Balthasar’s nuanced position by Geoffrey Wainwright, “Eschatology,” in The
Cambridge Companion to Hans Urs von Balthasar, ed. Edward T. Oakes and David
Moss (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 113–27.
79 Karl Barth, Die kirchliche Dogmatik II/2 (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag, 1942),
1–563.The remarkable sophistication of Barth’s speculative Christological anticipation consists in the very fact that he stops short of stating explicitly what is
clearly entailed by the logic of the argument itself for, as Barth himself acknowledges, there indeed is no explicit biblical warrant for universalism. To which
degree Barth’s restraint at this point remains a merely dialectical, rather than
eschatological, reserve, however, depends on whether one reads the long concluding exegetical excursus on Judas Iscariot (508–63; esp. 551 and 563!) as a question
mark or rather as an exclamation mark to his whole doctrine of election!

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type of answer does not follow by necessity from the argument thus far
advanced80—an argument primarily pertaining to the correct interpretation of Thomas Aquinas—I shall nevertheless insist upon submitting
that it is indeed in the second type of answer where we find such askesis most properly practiced. And in order to sustain the proper theological askesis this side of the eschaton, it strikes me to be indispensable as
well as of eminent convenientia not only to acknowledge the proper
difference that obtains realiter between nature and grace, in order to do
justice to the specific gratuity of the grace of predestination, the donum
ultimum, but moreover, and presently more importantly, to develop a
coherent account of the relative and limited integrity of the principle of
nature, which preserves the proper gratuity of the first gift, the donum
primum, and hence does justice to the ineluctable double gratuity
entailed in the economy of salvation. Where everything is grace all the
way down in one and the same way, albeit of infinitely differing intensity, everything that has been brought into being, must have its end in
God, by necessary ontological entailment. While undoubtedly a
grandiose speculative vision, it, however, is neither the teaching of the
Scriptures nor of the Church.81
N&V

80 Moreover, the two types of answers do not cover all, albeit by far the most, posi-

tions taken by Christian theologians. One such answer not addressed by the two
types submitted—a nuanced form of Augustinianism—indeed combines two
particular features of both types by defending the possibility of a divinely permitted ontological self-annihilation of the persistently evil rational soul.This answer
does indeed entail neither the apokatastasis ton panton nor the doctrine of the
eternal punishment of souls as defended by St.Augustine in De Civitate Dei XXI,
17. For a forceful and brilliant defense of a version of this third type of answer,
see Paul J. Griffiths,“Self-Annihilation or Damnation? A Disputable Question in
Christian Eschatology,” forthcoming in Pro Ecclesia 16 (Fall 2007).
81 I am indebted to Kent Dunnington and Nancy Heitzenrater Hütter for attending to the prose of this essay and to Paul J. Griffiths and Bruce Marshall for pressing me in most incisive ways regarding the fundamental conceptual, logical, and
normative question underlying this particular effort as well as the larger theological question itself. Only by way of a subsequent essay can I hope to do at least
some initial justice to their questions and concerns.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 5, No. 1 (2007): 133–184

133

On the Loss, and the Recovery, of Nature
as a Theonomic Principle: Reflections on
the Nature/Grace Controversy*
S TEVEN A. L ONG
Ave Maria University
Naples, Florida

Introduction
D R . L AWRENCE F EINGOLD is to be thanked for the comprehensive, instructive, and irenic character of his work The Natural Desire to
See God According to St.Thomas Aquinas and His Interpreters.1 The doctrinal
and historical intricacy, the sympathy, indeed, the sheer largeness of intent
of this book, merits extensive consideration. Hence insofar as mastery of
a teaching implies critical command of the contrary case, the publishing
of this book marks a potent challenge for those who assume—on the
warrant of de Lubac’s claim—that most of St. Thomas’s commentators
have preferred “Renaissance corruptions” to the genuine teaching of
Aquinas. Considering this claim in detail, this volume establishes both
systematically and exegetically that the case is otherwise. The Natural
* In what follows I have liberally availed myself of the Corpus Thomisticum, S.
Thomae de Aquino opera omnia, made available online by the University of Navarre
(www.unav.es/filosofia/alarcon/amicis/ctopera.html#OM), although rarely I
have preferred to use either the Ottawa edition of the Summa theologiae, or a
different edition (as indicated). Also, I would like, from the start of this essay, to
enter a demurrer to the view that to criticize de Lubac’s controversial thesis
regarding nature and grace is by that fact alone to traduce his considerable merits
as a lover and servant of the Church. One would have thought that no one would
be inclined to question these. Nor should criticism of his approach to the
nature/grace issue imply derogation of the contemplative profundity of his wider
body of work. The neuralgia of past disputes need not be our own whereas the
light one may find in them should be.Yet, all this being said, there is much at stake
doctrinally in this issue, which is the reason why its reconsideration is exigent.
1 Lawrence Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God According to St.Thomas Aquinas
and His Interpreters (Rome: Apollinare Studi, 2001).

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Desire to See God According to St.Thomas Aquinas and His Interpreters merits
careful attention for this historical, exegetic, and doctrinal contribution,
as also for helping a generation of theologians and philosophers to appreciate the importance of this controversy and the profundity of the
Thomistic commentatorial tradition.
Likewise, this essay is penned with one eye focused on John Milbank’s
recent work The Suspended Middle.2 This work—which rightly discerns
the profundity of the questions pursued by de Lubac and the importance
of their implications for theology—nonetheless fails to discern the larger
stage on which the loss of nature as a theonomic principle has been
played, and the distortive results it has both in prejudicing the
nature/grace question, and for theology as a whole. As the third section
of this present essay is devoted to articulating, the relative and limited
integrity of nature within the actual teaching of St.Thomas has been the
casualty of a deific view of freedom.This view of freedom was bound to
separate God from the natural world of human action, and equally bound
to suggest efforts at retrieval by dissolving nature into supernature and
contradicting Thomas’s clear teaching that there is a proximate natural
end inferior to the supernatural end.3
2 John Milbank, The Suspended Middle (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005).
3 To be quite clear, Milbank argues (The Suspended Middle, 63) that “[i]ndeed, it can

now be seen that the Surnaturel of 1946 was almost as important an event of
cultural revision as Being and Time or the Philosophical Investigations.”With this judgment one may wholly concur, save that one might think it even more important
than these.Yet, his explanation of how this is so fails. In the ensuing lines he writes:
“For it revealed that the space of modern philosophy and culture was paradoxically
created by a dubious scholastic theology, which reinvigorated the primitive pagan
ontological assumption that ‘capacity’ or ‘power’ rather than ‘desire’ will disclose
reality to us.” But, to the contrary, the space of modern philosophy and culture
have been created by erroneous notions of will in Scotus and ensuing philosophers, and most critically and foundationally by Molina, whose implicit removal of
will and human agency from Divine Providence evacuated the scholastic theology
of its profound theocentricity, and destroyed natural order as theonomic.To these
innovative errors commentators such as Cajetan stood opposed. Radicalizing
created will to hotwire it to the Trinity is hardly the way beyond this impasse, but
is understandably inspired by what happens to natural order—including the order
of volition—once it is no longer seen as participating by efficient causality the
ordering wisdom of God.What is lost to the metaphysical dependence of creature
to Creator must then be regained by the triumph of the will—a nature whose
theocentricity has been denied, must then be dissolved into supernature to regain
it. But however tempting such a solution may be, it is not Thomistic, and even
more vitally, it is not true. In short, Milbank has identified the wrong “dubious
scholastic theology.”The “pure nature” of the possibility that man might have been
created “in puris naturalibus” as Thomas puts it (Quod. I, q. 4, a. 3, resp.) is wholly

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In this essay, it is my intent to contribute to the project of facilitating a
renewed appreciation of St. Thomas’s profound teaching—explored so
rigorously by the commentators—on the character of the relation between
the natural and the supernatural. I shall try to achieve three things. First,
this essay will survey the general speculative dimensions of the controversy
about the character of the natural desire for God, so closely related to the
question of the natural end; second, it will explore in particular the
contours of what I take to be the common error of de Lubac and Gilson
respecting the obediential potency for grace and glory; third, it will argue
that despite what I shall argue to be its doctrinal deficiency, that de Lubac’s
account of the natural desire for God is rooted in a genuinely profound
theological need to overcome the loss of natural order as a theonomic
principle. I will conclude by observing the protean implications of these
issues for the effort to understand, and to transcend, an invertebrate postmodern theological pluralism that itself presupposes the loss of natural
order as a theonomic principle.
While the first objective of this essay speaks for itself, the second and
third considerations require a preliminary gloss. St. Thomas’s clear and
classical teaching is that human nature is defined in its species in relation
to the natural and proximate end as distinct from the supernatural beatific
end. Further, he teaches that man possesses a purely passive obediential
potency for grace—a potency that exists only in relation to the active
agency of God—a teaching that explicates how supernatural acts are
simultaneously our own yet enacted only through the grace of God.Yet
a unilateral stress upon certain aspects of St.Thomas’s teaching about the
natural desire for God led de Lubac to deny the existence of a proportionate natural end as opposed to the supernatural finis ultimus. And both
de Lubac and Gilson4 came to think of obediential potency as a mere
theocentric and in no way compatible with “a debased autonomous humanism.”
A better candidate for meriting this dubious distinction is found in those who
separate the will from Divine Providence and their voluntarist progenitors. The
metaphysics of the total dependence in being and act of the ens creatum cannot be
rejected in part, without gradually rejecting the whole teaching of St. Thomas.
Regarding Thomas’s affirmation of the proximate natural end as definitive of
species and distinct from the supernatural end, see ST I, q. 75, a. 7, ad 1; and Quaestiones de Anima, a. 7, ad 10, the second quoted in detail in note 5 below.
4 For example, see Henri de Lubac, Surnaturel Étude historiques (Paris: Aubier,
1946); idem, Augustinisme et theologie modern (Paris: Aubier, 1965), 242–51; idem,
Le Mystère du surnaturel (Paris:Aubier, 1965), 87–88, 142, 179–89 (noteworthy for
its criticism of the Dominican commentator tradition). Along similar lines, note
also J. Laporta, La destinée de la nature humane selon Thomas d’Aquin (Paris: J.Vrin,
1965). Laporta devotes an appendix to arguing that St.Thomas does not use the

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generic susceptibility to miracle, denying the distinct, specific sense of
obediential potency as applied by St. Thomas Aquinas to the relation of
nature to grace. The motivating reason for these departures from the
teaching of St.Thomas appears to repose in a wider theological concern
springing from the loss of nature as a theonomic principle and from a
creative yet defective strategy for recovery of this loss.This wider concern
is of course not irrelevant to the present situation of theology (and of
philosophy as well).
Before turning to these points, however, a rather extensive word is
owed to the general consideration of the nature/grace problematic, and
simultaneously to the synthesis of St. Thomas’s actual texts, inclusive of
those which, given the profundity of de Lubac’s influence, it has become
customary to pass over in silence. Only after this extensive general treatment will the focus narrow, first, to address the decisive loss for theological anthropology of the classical conception of obediential potency; and,
second, to consider the defective theological problematic faced by de
Lubac—a problematic for whose loss of nature as a theonomic principle
a “natural desire” for supernatural beatitude could seem to be—while yet
not being—a sufficient cure.
At the start of this essay, I beg the privilege of an author to request that
those for whom the first two sections of this argument may be uncongenial consider the wider treatment of the third section before assessing
its success or failure. For only the third section of the essay offers an interpretation of the strategic derailment of theology—rooted in the loss of
natural order as a theonomic principle—to which de Lubac’s nature/grace
thesis constituted a creative but flawed response. Because this loss persists
through much contemporary thought, it becomes all the more vital to correct it at
its root rather than merely to extemporize responses to effects that occur further on
in the chain of implications.
Dimensions of the Controversy
The distinction between nature and grace is a foundational distinction for
Christian life.This distinction is helpfully approached through the interpretative schools that, prior to la nouvelle théologie, successfully articulated
and indeed safeguarded this vital distinction.The doctrinal analysis of this
language of obediential potency in his account of the supernatural destiny of
man (133–46). See also Gilson’s letter to Henri de Lubac, dated June 20, 1965,
in which he indicates complete unawareness of the very idea of specific obediential potency, saying of obediential potency that “strictly speaking, it is applicable
only to miracles.” Etienne Gilson, Letters of Etienne Gilson to Henri de Lubac (San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988), 81.

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distinction is rich with implications both for the contemplative and the
practical life, and indeed systematically inflects theology such that a wrong
emphasis on this question will generally lead to the symbiotic evils on the
one hand of fideism, and on the other, of rationalism: twin aberrations.
Yet weighty theological considerations motivated great scholars and
lovers of the Church such as Henri de Lubac to read St. Thomas’s texts
with an exclusory eye, neglecting texts which clearly rendered his own
account problematic.These considerations remain with us today—all the
more so inasmuch as the texts overlooked by de Lubac, and the antecedent
commentatorial tradition, are little known.
It helps to put to rest the exegetic difficulty. It is without doubt true
that there is a problem in the very texts of Aquinas, and a problem which
seemingly does not allow much room for maneuver with respect to its
solution: because the doctrinal points which constitute the elements of
the problem—one is almost tempted to say “constitute the contradiction”—are starkly and clearly stated in St.Thomas’s text.Yet the realization that there are indeed two sets of texts, one of which was not merely
an interposed corruption, itself marks a decisive advance toward correct
interpretation of Thomas’s teaching.
So, there are two sets of texts. On the one hand, we have St.Thomas’s
arguments that to know God is the end of every intelligent substance
(Summa contra Gentiles III, 25); that there is indeed a natural desire for God
(ScG III, 25; and Summa theologiae I–II, q. 3, a. 8); and that no natural desire
may be in vain (ST I, q. 75, a. 6; Compendium 104). On the other hand, we
have his clear affirmation that human and angelic nature are distinguished
based upon their differing natural and proximate ends whereas their supernatural beatific end is the same (ST I, q. 75, a. 7, ad 1; Quaestiones de anima,
a. 7, ad 10:“Those beings whose proximate and natural end is one and the
same are one in species. However, eternal beatitude is a final and supernatural end.”);5 further, that “in the very beginning of creation human nature
was ordained to beatitude, not as to an end proper to man by reason of his
5 Quaestiones de Anima, a. 7, ad 10:“Ad decimum dicendum quod ea quorum unus

est finis proximus et naturalis, sunt unum secundum speciem. Beatitudo autem
aeterna est finis ultimus et supernaturalis.” So much for the claim that the natural end—whence the human species is derived—is one and the same with the
supernatural end. Obviously there cannot be at once two ultimate finalities, but
God need not have elevated man to the supernatural finis ultimus, but could have
ordered man exclusively to his natural end whence the species of human nature
is derived (see note 7 below). In the present order, this natural end is retained
while the entire order of nature is causally further ordered in grace to supernatural beatitude.

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nature, but given him solely by divine liberality”;6 that man could have
been created in a state of pure nature lacking any supernatural aid of grace;7
and that had man been created by God in such a state, that the absence of
the beatific vision would not have been a punishment, because there is a
difference between “necessarily not to have” and “not necessarily to have,”
and that it is the second of these that would apply had man been created
outside of sanctifying grace (De malo, q. 5, a. 1, ad 15). Regarding this last,
if the natural desire for God were formally a desire for supernaturally
beatific vision, it would follow that to be perpetually deprived of this end
proper to nature would be a punishment.Yet St.Thomas teaches exactly the
contrary.8 Finally, among this second set of texts, one finds that St.Thomas
clearly argues in Summa theologiae I, question 62, article 2, that only grace
can direct the movement of the will toward beatitude:
6 Quaestiones Disputatae de Veritate, q. 14, a. 10, ad 2: “Ad secundum dicendum,

quod ab ipsa prima institutione natura humana est ordinata in finem beatitudinis, non quasi in finem debitum homini secundum naturam eius, sed ex sola
divina liberalitate. Et ideo non oportet quod principia naturae sufficiant ad finem
illum consequendum, nisi fuerint adiuta donis superadditis ex divina liberalitate.”
7 Quod. I, q. 4, a. 3, resp.: “But because it was possible for God to have made man
in a state of pure nature, it is useful to consider how far natural love could be
extended” (“Sed quia possibile fuit Deo ut hominem faceret in puris naturalibus,
utile est considerare ad quantum se dilectio naturalis extendere posit”). Note that
this refers to the state of nature, while nature is present in any case, and natural
order is impressed upon man even when he is further ordered in and by grace
from the first moment of his creation: Something which de Lubac thought not
possible. Cf. ch. 4 of The Mystery of the Supernatural, trans. Rosemary Sheed (New
York: Herder and Herder, 1967), where de Lubac writes of natural order that “To
convince me that I might really have had this humbler destiny—humbler, but
note also less onerous—you need only show it to me, even momentarily, as
something really imprinted upon me, in my nature as it is. Most people would
agree that this is precisely what is, by hypothesis, impossible.” But it is possible:
What is impossible in this given order of Providence is for the natural order to
be in a state wherein it is not either fallen from grace or elevated within it. But
ends proportionate to human nature still are recognizably distinct from ends
proportionate only to God.
8 This last point from De malo, q. 5, a. 1, ad 15, is arresting: “Man endowed with
only natural powers would be without the divine vision if he were to die in this
state, but nevertheless the debt of not having it would not be applicable to him.
For it is one thing not to be bound to have, which does not have the nature of
punishment but of defect only, and it is another thing to be bound not to have,
which does have the nature of punishment” (“Ad decimumquintum dicendum,
quod homo in solis naturalibus constitutus careret quidem visione divina, si sic
decederet; sed tamen non competeret ei debitum non habendi. Aliud est enim
non debere habere, quod non habet rationem poenae, sed defectus tantum; et
aliud debere non habere, quod habet rationem poenae”).

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The angels needed grace to turn toward God insofar as He is the object
of beatitude. For as was explained above [q. 60, a. 2], the will’s natural
movement is the source [principium] of all the things we will. But the
will’s natural inclination is toward what is naturally fitting for it.And so
if something is beyond its nature, then the will cannot be moved toward
it without the assistance of some other principle that lies beyond its
nature [ab aliquo alio principio supernaturali]. For instance, it is clear
that fire has a natural inclination to produce heat and to generate fire;
however, it lies beyond fire’s natural power to generate flesh, and so fire
does not have an inclination toward generating flesh except insofar as
it is moved as an instrument by the nutritive soul. Now it was shown
above, in the discussion of our knowledge of God [q. 12, a. 4], that to
see God through his essence—which is what the ultimate beatitude of
a rational creature consists in—lies beyond the nature of any created
intellect. Hence, no rational creature can have a movement of will that
is ordered to this sort of beatitude unless he is moved by a supernatural agent; this is what we call the assistance of grace. And so one has to
claim that an angel could not have turned with his will toward this sort
of beatitude except through the assistance of grace.9

The second set of texts hedges about, and delimits, the possible signification of the first set, and vice versa.That is, on the supposition that we
do not wish to suppose St. Thomas’s texts to exhibit raw incoherence,
then we need to read these texts in relation one to another.
This is clear, for example, with texts such as that of the Summa theologiae I–II, question 3, article 8, which addresses the question “Whether
man’s happiness consists in the vision of the divine essence?” In this article St.Thomas affirms that man naturally desires to know the essence of
any cause once he knows it to be, and that only knowing the essence of
God can bring to rest the natural desire of the intellect to know the
9 ST I, q. 62, a. 2:“Dicendum quod angeli indiguerunt gratia ad hoc quod convert-

erentur in Deum, prout est obiectum beatitudinis. Sicut enim superius dictum est,
naturalist motus voluntatis est principium omnium eorum quae volumus. Naturalis autem inclinatio voluntatis est ad id quod est conveniens secundum naturam.
Et ideo si aliquid sit supra naturam, voluntas in id ferri non potest, nisi ab aliquo
alio supernaturali principio adiuta. Sicut patet quod ignis habet naturalem inclinationem adcalefaciendum et ad generandum ignem, sed geerare carnem est supra
naturalem virtutem ignis, unde ignis ad hoc nullam inclinationem habet, nisi
secundum quod movetur ut instrumentum ab anima nutritiva. Ostensum est
autem supra, cum de Dei cognitione ageretur, quod videre Deum per essentiam,
in quo ultima beatitudo rationalis creaturae consistit, est supra naturam cuiuslibet
intellectus creati. Unde nulla creatura rationalis potest habere motum voluntatis
ordinatum ad illam beatitudinem, nisi nota a supernaturali agente. Et hoc dicimus
auxilium gratiae. Et ideo dicendum est quod angelus in illam beatitudinem voluntate converti non potuit, nisi per auxilium gratiae.”

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essence of the cause of finite things. So, he affirms with respect to perfect
happiness that it can be brought about only by the vision of God.
One observes, however, that the desire in question is elicited (it is
compared with desiring to know the cause of an eclipse, which clearly
presupposes prior knowledge). Note also that the question concerns that
in which, simpliciter and absolutely speaking, perfect happiness consists.There
is no reference to whether this is possible, or not possible, although St.
Thomas seems to be writing with the theological assurance of its possibility (a possibility that as Feingold reminds us10 St. Thomas elsewhere
identifies as flowing from divine faith, as in Summa contra Gentiles III, question 153: “Fides autem, quae causatur ex gratia, declarat possibilem esse
unionem hominis ad Deum secundum perfectam fruitionem, in qua beatitudo consistit”). Nor does St.Thomas deploy here any argument regarding the impossibility of natural desire being in vain.11 He seeks only to
determine what constitutes perfect happiness. Likewise, whether there is a
lesser felicity proportioned to human nature as such he does not here
address, and certainly does not here deny. Since St.Thomas does affirm it
elsewhere, for example in contradistinguishing human and angelic natural
10 See pp. 102–6 of Natural Desire for Feingold’s helpful early treatment of this arti-

cle, in particular p. 104.
11 Of course, elsewhere there is seemingly such argument: for example, ST I, q. 12,

a. 1; or ScG, III, 51, which last argues that “Since it is impossible that a natural
desire be frustrated, which would happen if we could not arrive at the understanding of the divine substance that all minds naturally desire, it is therefore
necessary to affirm that it is possible to see the divine substance by way of the
intelligence.” But apart from all other interpretative issues—which here abound—
one must point out that even were this taken in the strongest and most prima facie
sense, and as unlimited by other ad extra textual considerations, it would indicate
only the possibility of such a vision, and is indeed perfectly compatible with
considering the natural desire, as such, both to be a velleity and to be radically
disproportionate to the divine essence as such in precision from grace. Such a
reading is perfectly in accord with Cajetan’s proposition that this teaching is
offered from the vantage point of the theologian: For only through Revelation do
we know that through the active agency of God the beatific vision is proximatelypossible for the believer (and one might think this is also true even of the purely
abstract possibility or mere “thinkability” of seeing God, again on the grounds that
St.Thomas writes in ScG, III, 51, as a theologian—but even if this were not true
there would remain an enormously important distinction between proximate
possibility and mere abstract possibility). It is of course a further question whether
the steep gradient between mere abstract possibility and what is, with divine aid,
proximate obediential potency mirrors the distinction between simple logical or
conceptual possibility and real possibility. But in any case, only Revelation seems
to assure the possibility of the divine vision in the second sense of proximate
possibility, such that the natural desire becomes unconditional.

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ends (every end has the nature of the good—so one is speaking of some
measure of felicity) as opposed to the unity of the supernatural finis
ultimus; or in distinguishing imperfect from perfect felicity (ST I–II, q. 5,
a. 5), it is clearly not a text establishing that seeing God is the properly
natural end of man. Indeed, in the Summa theologiae I–II, question 5, article 5, ad 3, St. Thomas insists that the species of the imperfect operation
subject to man’s natural power is distinct from the species of the perfect
operation which is man’s happiness (“Imperfecta autem operatio, quae
subiacet naturali hominis potestati, non est eiusdem speciei cum operatione illa perefecta quae est hominis beatitudo, cum operationis species
dependeat ex obiecto”).
Thus, while there is more to be said about this text, the Summa theologiae
I–II, question 3, article 8, establishes precisely what it set out to establish: that
perfect beatitude for man can be found only in the vision of God. Manifestly,
reading such texts within their precisely delimited reference, and refusing to
extend them beyond, requires a knowledge of the text, an understanding of
the reasoning of St.Thomas, and an intellectual asceticism that refuses to lose
sight of the whole for the sake of exuberance with the part.
De Lubac’s argument stresses the first set of texts, and more or less passes
by the second (save when generically suggesting that these and other
sources of Thomist reservation regarding his thesis are Renaissance corruptions concocted by Cajetan). I do not recollect de Lubac anywhere
commenting extensively upon the second set of texts—in particular either
with regard to the teaching of Aquinas that the absence of beatific vision
for man in a state of pure nature would not constitute a punishment or in
relation to St.Thomas’s clear teaching that human nature is defined by its
natural and proximate end, which he says is distinct from the supernatural finis
ultimus.The error of the historian who treats speculative propositions from
without, thus failing theoretically to reconcile component parts of the
doctrine to which they belong, forms part of this story, as does also the
unfortunate mistrust of the scientia required to distill the meaning of these
texts. That the pedagogic and heuristic limits of the scholastic project to
which he was exposed may accidentally have contributed to kindling such
mistrust in a mind as cultured and learned as de Lubac’s constitutes a
tragedy within the twentieth-century history of Thomism.Yet, the omission
to which this mistrust led is, with the distance of time, difficult to deny.12
12 Those who argue on the force of numerous other speculative assertions of St.

Thomas that he cannot have meant what the face value of some propositions may
suggest are gently—and sometimes not so gently—mocked by de Lubac, as witness
his commentary on Gilson’s letters. In this and other respects the Letters of Etienne
Gilson to Henri de Lubac proves a helpful source, as de Lubac’s notes establish that at

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The rediscovery of the needed scientia is a necessity for contemplating
the distinctions in Thomas’s texts and articulated by the commentators to
enable a felicitous contemplation of the Gospel.As an illustration one notes
the distinction between the mode of being and the mode of realization of
a divinely caused effect—as visible for example, in the distinction between
raising a body from the dead (restoring its natural life) by miracle, and
achieving an effect whose being is intrinsically supernatural (for example,
supernatural charity, the lumen gloria, the Incarnation of Christ). Perhaps
equally helpful is the realization that the putative Renaissance corruptions13
the end of his career his position, despite varied refinements, had not fundamentally changed. Owing perhaps to overriding issues of perspective, Thomas’s fully
theological use of the doctrine of specific obediential potency is never fully
engaged by the great churchman.Yet this coincides with a proliferate citation of
authors to assert that on this point, as de Lubac quotes Canon Balthazar from the
1928 Criterion 4:473:“One asks oneself how Cajetan had the nerve to propose his
exegesis, and why it was, in point of fact, taken seriously for such a long time”
(110), or as he cites Francisco Tolet, that Cajetan’s reading of obediential potency
in relation to grace and nature “destruit testum” (103). But, St.Thomas himselfdirectly denies that man’s nature is actually in itself ordered to beatific vision (and
surely it should not be averred that natural desire for supernatural beatitude is other
than a “natural ordering”—natural desire is a sign of natural order). Quoth St.
Thomas (Quaestiones Disputatae de Veritate, q. 14, a. 10, ad 2):“In the very beginning
of creation, human nature was ordained to beatitude, not as to an end proper to
man by reason of his nature, but given him solely by divine liberality. Therefore,
there is no need for the principles of nature to have sufficient power to achieve
that end without the aid of special gifts with which God in his generosity supplements them.” Further, Thomas expressly affirms a natural and proximate end
distinct from the supernatural end that distinguishes man from the angel even
though both are called to supernatural beatitude (cf. Quaestiones de Anima, a. 7, ad
10):“Those beings whose proximate and natural end is one and the same are one
in species. However, eternal beatitude is a final and supernatural end.”This point is
of special pertinence for those critics who suppose that only lower, physical beings
possess a natural end, for here Thomas is clearly distinguishing any angelic species
from the human species by their different natural ends, which are distinct from
supernatural beatitude. Add to this Thomas’s teaching that man might have been
created without any supernatural aid—in short, with nothing but nature and the
natural order to the natural end (Quaestiones quodlibetales I, q. 4, a. 3, resp.: “it was
possible for God to make man with purely natural endowments”)—and the theological difficulties caused by such speculative omission in the historical insight of
the scholars of la nouvelle théologie becomes conspicuous.
13 De Lubac notes (Gilson, Letters, 31, note 4) about Cajetan, citing his earlier work
for emphasis, that “There is no doubt that the ‘commentator’ assigned another
orientation to his master’s work.” Cf. H. de Lubac, Augustinism et théologie moderne
(Paris:Aubier, 1965). Further (Gilson, Letters, 101, note 3) while de Lubac notes his
own efforts to soften Gilson’s description of Cajetan’s work as “corruptorium
Thomae,” he nonetheless takes great pains to relay several other charges of this sort

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interposed by allegedly rationalizing scholastic interpreters exist within the
very texts of St.Thomas himself—something that the astute critic may be
disinclined to perceive as evidence for time travel.After all, if human nature
has its species in relation to its natural end, which is distinct from the supernatural end, then this teaching of Thomas alone destroys the proposition
that for Thomas supernatural beatific vision is the natural end (and this
formulation that beatific vision is the natural end by contrast occurs
nowhere in Thomas’s text: Yes, God is the natural end, but God as First
Cause of these effects, not God precisely as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit).
Likewise, if supernatural beatitude were the natural end of man, then to
be perpetually deprived of it by God would necessarily constitute a punishment:While according to Thomas (and in a different way also according to
de Lubac, who with all believers admitted the gratuity of grace and of the
call to beatitude—it is the compatibility of this belief with his thesis that
poses the difficulty), were man to die in the hypothetical state of pure
nature and so not attain to the beatific vision, the inaccessibility of this
vision would not be a punishment. Failure to attend to such texts naturally
inclines one to read the first set of texts about natural desire for God as
in the lines that follow, for example, from Soto (whose Scotistic treatment of the
will in terms of pondus naturae is famed, but noting that would hardly have dignified Soto’s quoted remark about Cajetan’s account that “Haec glossa destruit
textam, est tortuosa”). In general, the identification of Cajetan as imposing a
“modern” reading of St.Thomas’s texts that is somehow distant from its original
sense would carry more conviction if the actual texts of St. Thomas that seem to
contradict the idea of supernatural beatitude as natural end had been cited and critically engaged. No historical scruples here, however: For is not (as Gilson, for
example, tended to express it) a historian always and necessarily the better philosopher? Insofar as a priori this is held necessarily to be so, the commentators—whose
emphasis is principally scientific and systematic as was their master’s—come to be
instinctually distrusted.Yet Henri de Lubac knew he was arguing for an account,
and in this respect—although fully capable of waxing poetic about the superiority
of the historical habitus—seems never to have assumed the on-again/off-again pose
of superior and dominating indifference to speculative contradiction within theology achieved by Gilson. Granted that the element of mystery must prevail in theology, contradiction is contradiction—something that when Gilson wished to note he
would note, and when he did not, he would cast aspersions of “fanaticism.” Cf.
Gilson (Gilson, Letters, 40):“[I]t’s perfectly all right to cling to another system as long
as you don’t use your pet theology to oppose Saint Thomas’s. They all do it. And
they themselves, no less than certain people who call themselves Thomists, are fanatics, too.” But perhaps such figures, whether Thomist or not, consider certain divergences amongst teachings to be of greater speculative weight than did
Gilson—hardly a ground for the aspersion of fanaticism. A gifted and profound
historian and reader of St.Thomas, his own particular combination of habitus could
veil from his sight the validity of other combinations of the same.

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straightforward and unproblematic, whereas in Thomas they exist within a
wider philosophic and theological context necessary to their interpretation: A context of scientia that requires actual mastery of a body of natural
distinctions. Hence those whose theology rests exclusively within a broadly
theistic, historicized, cultural hermeneutic will tend to lack the metaphysical entry capital to commence interpretation of Aquinas on these points,
and so tend to make scant sense of the controversy that so divided de Lubac
from the consensus of the Thomistic commentatorial tradition.
The truth is that any full regard for the complexity of St. Thomas’s
teaching would suggest at the very least a certain reluctance to import
into the first set of texts conclusions, which are incompatible with many
unimpeachably clear and unquestionable formulations of Thomas elsewhere. For instance, the teaching that to know God is the end of every
intelligent substance, apart from St. Thomas’s wider teaching might be
read as suggesting that man lacks a proportionate natural finality (something Thomas expressly denies), and so in the absence of other texts
might seem to suggest that the beatific finality is indeed properly speaking the natural end of man. The difference between an ontologically
imperfect end proportionate to nature, and the perfect beatific end
achieved solely through divine aid, requires advertence not alone to more
texts, but to distinct aspects of the real.
Yet as regards texts, even if one ignores the second set of texts, what
should one make of those such as the following from the Summa contra
Gentiles, III, chapter 25, titled “That to Know God Is the End of Every
Intellectual Substance” (rather a different title than “intrinsically supernatural beatitude is the end of every intelligent substance” one should note):
“Thus however slight may be the knowledge of God to which the intellect can attain, this will be the intellect’s last end, rather than a perfect
knowledge of lower intelligibles.” What function does the “however
slight” play, save to accommodate the manifest difference between a natural end perfect in its order with all the ensuing natural limits, and the supernatural end, which is absolutely ontologically perfect and transcendent of all natural
limit? Natural understanding of God—if taken seriously and straightforwardly—is necessarily limited with respect to God because conditioned
by finite evidence.Yet this natural desire and natural understanding constitutes a purely passive obediential potency, which under the active agency
of God renders man capable of the supernatural vision of God.
Nonetheless the first set of texts emphasized by de Lubac raises
genuine problems of prime importance. Without doubt the question of
natural desire is profound. What is the natural desire for God, and what
is its object? Is this desire equivalently a natural desire for supernatural beat-

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itude? And how could the natural desire for God not target supernatural
beatitude—for is not the object of supernatural beatitude God in his
essence, and is not the natural desire for God a desire to know God in his
essence? That this desire reaches God only as cause of finite nature and
under a formality infinitely inferior to supernatural beatitude—attaining
God as a function of the natural desire to know the essence of any cause
once it is known to exist, rather than as specified directly by the inner
being of God14—requires insight into the requisites of natural teleology.
Likewise, when we speak of “natural” desire for God, what is the sense
of “natural”? Do we mean to refer to the voluntas ut natura or to what is
the naturally befitting object of the will as such, and so to claim that the
hidden reality of God is the natural befitting object of the will? Is the will as
nature (voluntas ut natura) and in precision from grace naturally proportioned to the hidden substance of God—is it expressly and explicitly a
deific faculty ordered apart from grace to the intrinsically supernatural
vision of God? Or is the befitting natural object of the will not instead
good in general, the universal good? The natural inclination clearly is for
Thomas that toward which the thing naturally tends, which involves
action and movement. Surely Thomas teaches that “the natural movement
of the will is the principle of all things that we will. But the will’s natural
inclination is directed towards what is in keeping with its nature” (ST I,
q. 62, a. 2, emphasis added). Hence the will cannot be moved toward
something beyond its nature such as supernatural beatitude without
14 See the Summa contra Gentiles III, 25, wherein St.Thomas expressly refers to the

natural desire for God as a desire to know the cause of whatever one sees, and to
know the cause of any effect including the cause of the effect of universal being.
Clearly both these are elicited desires and both formally a function of the natural
desire to know causes rather than of a desire whose formal object is supernatural
beatitude as such. Further, to desire God as cause of universal being is to desire
God under an infinitely lesser denomination than as he is in himself intrinsically
independent of finite being: as though one were to desire to know God as “First
Cause of goldfish.” That this natural desire may be elevated within the graced
desire for essentially supernatural beatitude does not establish its formal identity
with graced desire for God. Further, that contemplation of God is definitive of
man’s natural end does not equate with this contemplation of God occurring
through free and gratuitous supernatural Revelation.There is an intrinsic disproportion between a desire sparked by God’s own direct self-revelation in Christ,
and a desire sparked by finite nature to know the Cause of this nature—as there
is a formal difference between merely wanting to meet the man in the raincoat,
and wanting to meet the same man in the raincoat because he is Einstein and has
invited you to discuss physics with him. Materially the object is the same, but the
formal specification of the desire is quite different. Clearly, also, the second
includes the first, the greater includes the lesser, but not the other way around.

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extrinsic supernatural assistance—about which last he states that “this is
what we call the assistance of grace” (ST I, q. 62, a. 2). If the natural desire
of the will in the sense of voluntas ut natura is not ordered to supernatural
beatitude, must it not then be the case that the natural desire for God is a
desire elicited by prior knowledge of the existence of God?15
Cajetan’s “hypothesis” of pure nature is often scorned as suggesting a
“layer cake” of nature and grace.Yet his famed commentatorial treatment
seems to suggest that the natural desire for God is modalized by the state in
which nature exists, so that this desire would be found in one way had God
not created man from the beginning within the privileged life of sanctifying grace, and is found in another in the context of man’s creation in the
state of grace and of the data of supernatural Revelation. Conjoinedly, the
scholastic consensus quo ante—that the natural desire for God is of itself
an inefficacious desire within the ambit of the general desire for knowledge of being, and is a conditional desire save in relation to the promises
of Revelation—seems enhanced in a remarkably subtle way by Cajetan’s
contextualizing of natural order within the life of grace.16
15 It should be added that a similar analysis pertains to the intellect as nature, or in

other words to the issue of what the befitting object of the intellect is. For this is
the true in general, and perhaps more particularly the truth of quiddity in corporeal matter that is the proper object of the intellect of man as a composite knower,
rather than specifically the divine truth. As we have seen, there is a proximate
natural end from which the species is derived, and this proximate natural end
clearly is not the inner reality of God—the human intellect is not simply and of
itself proportionate to the infinitely transcendent God, but to the true in general.
16 Of course, Cajetan did not hold that the hypothetical state of pure nature had
ever existed, knowing full well St.Thomas’s teaching that man is created in sanctifying grace. This does not mean that nature never existed, but that it never
existed outside an order of Providence in which it was causally further ordered
by grace: that is, from the very beginning nature is called to a higher destiny than
the natural end whence the species is derived.The Fall of Man is indeed a sign
of this further ordering, because man does not rebound to the order of pure
nature, but rather nature is wounded: having been causally further ordered, its
motion toward the purpose of that ordering cannot be stopped without harm.
Of course, it also is true that the idea of defining the doctrine of the Incarnation
without the conception of pure nature is impossible: What is it that would be
assumed? This is of course too simple an observation for those who paint with
broad strokes, but broad strokes often fail to depict intricate scenes. It is also
inconsistent with the cottage industry of Cajetan-vilification, which devolves
from a failure to consider all the pertinent texts in Aquinas, much less to entertain the idea that Cajetan was (as is manifest) a brilliant and subtle reader of St.
Thomas: perhaps not always correct, but rather more positively engaged with the
doctrine (and the implications of the doctrine) of St.Thomas than suggested by
de Lubac in Augustinianism and Modern Theology and elsewhere.

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The following points articulate St. Thomas’s teaching regarding the
natural desire for God:
• The arc of natural desire for God (viewed in itself and apart from
grace and Revelation) is specified by natural knowledge, and so
cannot formally reach to the essence of God as such howsoever
much it reaches it materially. 17
17 Cf. St.Thomas Aquinas, Super Sent., lib. 3, dist. 23, q. 1 a. 4, qc 3 co., a passage of

whose full extent I was reminded by Christopher Malloy of the University of
Dallas, and about which I have also profited from the erudition of Prof. John
Boyle, of the University of St.Thomas:“To the third question it must be said that
in all things which act for an end there must be an inclination to the end, a certain
‘inchoation’ of the end, otherwise, they would never do something for an end.
But the end towards which the divine generosity has ordained and predestined
man, namely, the fruition of himself [of God], is in every way elevated above the
faculty of created nature, for “neither has the eye seen, nor the ear heard, nor has
there arisen in the heart of man what things God has prepared for those who love
him” (1 Cor 2:9). Therefore, by his natural powers alone, man does not have a
sufficient inclination to this end, and thus it is necessary that something be superadded to man through which he would have the inclination to that end, as by his
natural powers he does have an inclination to the end that is connatural to him.
And those things that are superadded are called the theological virtues for three
reasons. First, as to the object: For, since that end to which we are ordained is God
himself, the inclination that is prerequisite [to this end] consists in an operation
that regards God himself. Second, as to the cause: For as that end is ordained for
us by God not by our nature, so the inclination to the end is worked in us solely
by God; thus it is that these virtues are called theological, as though created in us
by God alone.Third, as to knowledge:“The inclination to this end is not able to
be known by natural reason but rather by divine revelation; therefore, the virtues
are called theological since by the divine word they are manifest to us, for the
philosophers knew nothing of them.”—“Ad tertiam quaestionem dicendum,
quod in omnibus quae agunt propter finem oportet esse inclinationem ad finem,
et quamdam inchoationem finis: alias nunquam operarentur propter finem. Finis
autem ad quem divina largitas hominem ordinavit vel praedestinavit, scilicet
fruitio sui ipsius, est omnino supra facultatem naturae creatae elevatus: quia nec
oculus vidit, nec auris audivit, nec in cor hominis ascendit, quae praeparavit deus
diligentibus se, ut dicitur 1 corinth., 2, 9. Unde per naturalia tantum homo non
habet sufficienter inclinationem ad illum finem; et ideo oportet quod superaddatur homini aliquid per quod habeat inclinationem in finem illum, sicut per
naturalia habet inclinationem in finem sibi connaturalem: et ista superaddita
dicuntur virtutes theologicae ex tribus. Primo quantum ad objectum: quia cum
finis ad quem ordinati sumus, sit ipse deus, inclinatio quae praeexigitur, consistit
in operatione quae est circa ipsum deum. Secundo quantum ad causam: quia sicut
ille finis est a deo nobis ordinatus non per naturam nostram, ita inclinationem in
finem operatur in nobis solus deus: et sic dicuntur virtutes theologicae, quasi a
solo deo in nobis creatae.Tertio quantum ad cognitionem, inclinatio in finem non

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• The natural desire for God is a desire consequent on the natural ordination of intellect to being, a desire to know the essence of a cause
once that cause is known to exist.
• This desire is elicited by the acquired knowledge that God is, rather than
being equivalent to the voluntas ut natura (or for that matter the intellectus ut natura)—because what the will naturally desires as its befitting
object is the good in general and not specifically the essence of God
(howsoever much it be true that God is the subsisting universal good).18
potest per naturalem rationem cognosci, sed per revelationem divinam: et ideo
dicuntur theologicae, quia divino sermone sunt nobis manifestatae: unde
philosophi nihil de eis cognoverunt.”
18 This is of course one of the most longstanding confusions affecting the entire question of the natural desire for God.Thomas writes of the will as nature or voluntas
ut natura that “each power desires by the natural appetite that object which is suitable to itself ” (ST I, q. 80, a. 1, ad 3: “Unde unaquaeque appetit obiectum sibi
conveniens naturali appetitu”). This is distinguished from animal appetite and
likened to “sight for seeing or sound for hearing” (“utpote visio ad videndum et
auditio ad audiendum”). But what is suitable to the will by its nature in this sense
is intelligible good in general. It must be noted that what the nature is ordered
toward and suitable for simply by its nature is that from which Thomas maintains
the creature derives its species. But in this sense human nature is not defined by its
capacity to be uplifted by God’s grace to supernatural beatific vision—which is
shared also by the innumerable species of angels—but by what St.Thomas calls the
proximate and natural end, the end that might have been the end simpliciter had
God created man in a state of pure nature and not gratuitously ordered man to the
beatific vision.To say that by nature the human will directly aspires to the hidden
life of God is to define it as the divine will alone may be defined. All creation is
ordered to God as End, but through the medium of the proportionate natural end for
each creature, which is nothing other than a mode of being like unto God. In the
human case, of course, this is constituted by the most exalted contemplation of
God within the ambit of natural capacity. But, as Thomas points out, the beatific
vision exceeds every purely natural capacity whether of man or angel (cf. ScG III,
ch. 52), exceeding all natural capacity to know. Since the desire for God is specified by natural knowledge of God (for the will is—cf. Quaestiones quadlibetales,
quodlibet VI, q. 2, a. 2—nothing other than inclinatio sequens formam intellectam), it
follows that natural desire for God does not truly know what it desires, whereas
graced desire (even while man yet is remote from the beatific vision) is rooted in
the reality of God itself (and hence one can know more of God by grace than by
nature, even in this life). One notes the words of Jacques Maritain from his work
Approaches to God, trans. Peter O’Reilly (New York: Harper, 1954), 109–10: “But
this desire to know the First Cause through its essence is a desire which does not
know what it asks, like the sons of Zebedee when they asked to sit on the right
and on the left of the Son of Man.‘Ye know not what ye ask,’ Jesus replied to them.
For to know the First Cause in its essence, or without the intermediary of any
other thing, is to know the First Cause otherwise than as First Cause; it is to know
it by ceasing to attain it by the very means by which we attain it, by ceasing to

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• The natural desire for God is not of itself efficacious.That is, we have
no natural capacity to know the essence of the First Cause quidditatively.Although we do indeed naturally move toward contemplation of
God as First Cause, this motion cannot reach the divine essence.
Indeed, this desire is thoroughly conditioned by the finite evidence
whence it arises, such that it is not proportioned to God, but rather is
proportioned to the intellective desire to understand the world in
general which gives rise to it.19 But to desire to know God in himself
under the ratio of “cause of the world” is somewhat like the desire to
know Einstein under the ratio of “man wearing a raincoat.” As “man
wearing a raincoat” is an accidental denomination vis-à-vis Einstein, so
to desire God as cause of the world is strictly speaking not truly to
desire God, who is infinitely more than cause of the world. Indeed, for
God to be cause of the world signifies something in the world, whereas
God infinitely transcends the world. Whether the hypothetical but
immutable divine will should will the universe to be, or not, does not
alter the infinite goodness of God. Creation is an utterly free and
gratuitous act of divine generosity.
• There are diverse ways in which this natural desire for God can exist.
For example, the natural desire would exist in one way had man
never been assisted with supernatural aid;20 it exists in another way
exercise the very act which bears us up to it.” See also p. 112:“It is necessary that
there be in man an “obediential potency” which, answering to the divine omnipotence, renders him apt to receive a life which surpasses infinitely the capacities of
his nature.”This “neo”-Thomist earned the adverse adjective by conforming to the
actual teaching of St.Thomas—a paradox he savored.
19 Some authors have supposed that, had God created man in a state of pure nature,
the separated soul would have enjoyed a knowledge of the universe both
comprehensive in itself and reflective of all that can be known through the
universe of God as in a mirror, by way of infused divine species. But St.Thomas
is silent about such reflections inasmuch as his focus is upon the actual providential synthesis—wherein grace moves us to the infinitely higher goal of
personal union with God transcending all created species—rather than upon the
mere hypothesis of pure nature.
20 Within this zone of the purely natural, the natural desire to know God as Cause
of finite being, as this knowledge principally defines purely natural felicity, is to
be distinguished from the natural quasi-velleity to know God as he would be
known through himself were this to be attainable. For the former is proportionate
to nature and naturally attainable, whereas that which the latter confusedly seeks
is disproportionate to any finite nature and attainable only insofar as God elevates
us to a share in divine life: It knows not what it asks, and naturally speaking
amounts simply to a desire for more and higher knowledge were this possible
(while yet still being conceived on the pattern of a knowing infinitely lesser than

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in the actual order of Providence wherein man is created in sanctifying grace and where the real possibility of the beatific vision is
divinely revealed. Where Revelation makes the real possibility of
beatific vision known, this renders the otherwise conditional desire
to know God to become unconditional. Apart from Revelation the
desire would be conditional—“were it possible” one would will it.
Just as one might wish to live forever, or never to make a mistake—
both logically but seemingly not really possible—so one would wish
to know the essence of the First Cause, save that in this case one
genuinely would not know what one is wishing for. After Revelation, the desire becomes unconditional. Once God reveals himself
and his gift of divine life, the natural desire thus elevated and supernaturalized in grace inclines toward it absolutely by inclining toward
the infinitely higher end of union with the Uncreated Persons of the
Holy Trinity. For the object of the natural desire for God under the
ratio of “Cause of these effects” is incorporated within the graced
desire of God as God. This idea of the modalization of the natural
desire according to the states in which it may be found contextualizes it in relation to grace. Because St. Thomas’s focus is upon the
given providential synthesis, his principal treatment of the natural
desire is a treatment that takes it up as it actually is to be found in
this present order, and not merely as it would be found in the hypothetical state of pure nature (although the phrase from ScG III, q.
25—“however slight may be the knowledge of God to which the
intellect can attain this will be the intellect’s last end”—seems a nod
of the head to the state of the natural desire apart from Revelation,
since it expressly considers a state in which the last end of the intellect is the wisdom about God as First Cause which does not reach
the divine essence: “however slight”).
• Finally, specific obediential potency is not a mere susceptibility to
miracle but represents what a nature is capable of with the assistance of
the active power of God. Hence while it remains true that grace is an
extrinsic principle vis-à-vis human nature—human nature is not
grace, nor is it law, which is why St. Thomas in the prologue to his
treatise on law in the Summa theologiae identifies grace and law as
extrinsic principles—nonetheless, grace does work within human
nature as such whose rational character makes it with divine assistance to be elevable to supernatural life, action, and merit. Grace thus
elevates human nature and works within it, enabling the Christian to
perform genuinely supernaturalized acts meritorious of beatitude.

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The convergence of both Dominican and Jesuit commentatorial
authors—Sylvester of Ferrara, Cajetan, Báñez, John of St.Thomas, Suárez—
around themes such as these within St. Thomas’s work is all the more
remarkable for having fallen off the map of a generation of theologians.
Of course, these commentators do not all agree (and some would dissent
from certain of the elements above): yet, for none of them is the natural desire
for God a desire for intrinsically supernatural beatitude.21 This is an arresting
theological consensus, whose density and ascetic rigor contrasts markedly
with the loss of awareness of texts, contexts, and doctrinal implications
that has come to dominate accounts of the relations of nature and grace,
or—for that matter—of theology and philosophy.
Correct doctrine with respect to the relation of grace to nature is of
the greatest strategic import for theology, by reason of the theological
synthesis it sustains. By contrast, a teaching that renders human nature to
be a vacuole or pure nought lacking proportionate created integrity and
unknowable apart from the beatific vision seems to make the doctrine of
Nicea to be unintelligible. For what is assumed in the Word is defined in
precision from the datum of its assumption. One does not say, “The
Person of the Word assumed the nature that is defined by its being
assumed by the Person of the Word”—for that would render hypostatic
union a necessary function of finite human nature. The idea that the
natural end of man—the end from which human nature derives its
species—is that divine good directly known and loved by God alone
seems to imply that man is naturally deific. But the connatural and direct
knowledge and love of God is verified in God alone, howsoever much it
is the case that all creation is indirectly ordered to God as End.22

that of beatific vision). The status of this confused, conditional, elicited desire
clearly changes when elevated in grace and ordered to the supernatural beatific
vision that revelation instructs us to be proximately attainable with divine aid.
21 For the map of this convergence, as of the differences among these commentators, we now have no better compendium than Feingold’s book.Whereas he stresses
the central and formative contributions to the tradition of Sylvester of Ferrara,
and of Suárez, the emphasis above, stressing Cajetan’s contribution, is my own.
While there are other readings of Cajetan, it seems to me that the one which most
keeps the intelligible sense of his account is that which I suggest above.
22 Cf. ScG III, 17, whose title is “That All Things Are Directed to One End,Which
Is God.” One notes that this reasoning is based upon the order of agents toward
God as the Supreme and Common good of the universe, and naturally pertains
to “all things” for “there can be nothing that has not its being from Him” (Omnia
autem entia sunt huiusmodi: nam, sicut in secundo probatur, nihil esse potest
quod ab ipso non habeat esse. Omnia igitur ordinantur in Deum sicut in finem).

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What defines human nature, as St.Thomas Aquinas expressly and everywhere affirms, is the proximate and natural end rather than the supernatural end.23 Hence, for example, these words of Fr. Brian Shanley regarding
the text of Aquinas are simply false:“It needs to be emphasized at the outset
that Aquinas holds that man has one and only one end or telos: the beatific
vision of God.There are not two human ends, one natural and the other
supernatural, as was thought in older, erroneous versions of two-tiered
Thomism.”24 If he had written that for Thomas there is but one finis
ultimus, which is beatific vision, or that there are not two “coequal” ends,
this would be true. But while there is only one finis ultimus, which is supernatural, this does not rule out an end proportionate to nature that is further
ordered in grace to the ultimate supernatural finality. Already we have
cited, above, the words of St.Thomas:“Those beings whose proximate and
natural end is one and the same are one in species. However, eternal beatitude is a final and supernatural end.”25 Clearly, then, for St.Thomas there
is a proximate and natural end, definitory of the species, which is distinct from
and inferior to the final end of supernatural beatitude.
Further, nature is the preamble to grace and not merely its postscript.
Yet lacking natural finality distinct from supernatural beatitude, nature
does indeed become merely a placeholder for grace, as though the manifestation of what man is capable of with divine grace did not presuppose
nature; or, as though in order to be theocentric, nature must already be
ordered to supernatural beatitude apart from grace. Speech about nature
anticipating grace is utterly vain in a context within which the order of
nature is not distinguished from the order of grace. Since powers are
distinguished by acts, and acts by objects, and objects by ends, to distinguish the two orders is to acknowledge that the natural end is distinct
from, and less perfect than, the supernatural end.
Nor is this to free nature from God, because natural order is theonomic,
the impress of the ordering wisdom of God. Indeed, natural law obligates
man to receive whatsoever God deigns to reveal. Further, man’s creation in
sanctifying grace orders nature to a higher end—it is causally efficacious—such
that sin itself does not put man into a state of “pure nature” but rather does
harm to nature (not, of course, substantially, but accidentally, in lessening
23 Quaestiones de Anima, a. 7, ad 10.
24 See p. 555 of Fr. Brian Shanley’s “Pagan Virtue,” The Thomist 63 (1999): 553–77.
25 Again, see Quaestiones de Anima, a. 7, ad 10, quoted in full in note 3 above, or ST

I, q. 75, a. 7, ad 1, with respect to human nature being defined by the proximate
and natural end as distinct from the supernatural end. Human nature is not
defined by a non-existent natural end, albeit the natural end is not, from the very
creation of man in grace, man’s final end.

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the strength of the motion toward the end). Just as a man who climbs up
the Empire State Building and then jumps loses something more than the
height he had attained (namely, his life), so nature as concretely further
ordered in grace is profoundly harmed when grace is lost (although, again,
accidentally, in regard to the vigor of its motion to the end, and not essentially: Fallen man is yet human) precisely because it has itself been ordered
through grace toward the more exalted beatific end. But the very idea of
the supernatural is not the idea of a merely natural completion.
The attempt to argue that if nature and grace are distinct that therefore no natural harm should ensue upon the loss of grace is an argument
that implicitly fails to accept the causal efficacy of grace. Once ordered
in and by grace at creation, thereinafter human nature will be vain and
frustrated apart from the supernatural end. That is, human nature, as
created in sanctifying grace, is as such remotely ordered to the supernatural end by this fact—the very reason why St. Thomas, in the Summa
theologiae I–II, question 89, article 6, will argue that the first morally
significant act of a boy who has not been baptized is either damnific or
salvific (because, implicitly, he either seeks the due good as such—which
requires grace—or does not, which is damnific).26 That the two orders
are distinct hardly voids the causal efficacy of grace. Nor is the causal efficacy of grace transmutative of species, because the natural end remains in
its integrity as further ordered to the supernatural end—just as knowledge of and desire for God merely as cause of finite creation is in grace
ordered to knowledge of and desire for God as he is in himself. Further,
human nature is such that with divine aid it is capable of supernatural
beatitude—the nature itself need not be transmuted, but rather only
aided and elevated by the active agency of God.While Scotus implies that
the appetite for supernatural beatitude is in substance natural, Aquinas
pronouncedly and clearly denies this proposition.27
26 ST I–II, q. 89, a. 6:“Now the first thing that occurs to a man to think about then,

is to deliberate about himself. And if he then direct himself to the due end, he
will, by means of grace, receive the remission of original sin: whereas if he does
not then direct himself to the due end, and as far as he is capable of discretion at
that particular age, he will sin mortally, for through not doing that which is in
his power to do.”
27 Note the teaching of Scotus on this matter (Ordinatio I [Vatican ed.], distinction 3,
113–14; III, 70–71) arguing that if grace were to elevate the human intellect beyond
its natural capacity this would mutate the intellect, whereas in his view an accidental quality can perfect the capacity of an already existing power but not change its
nature. Thomas by contrast (ScG, III, 53–54) holds that the divine elevation and
emendation of the ontological limits of the human intellect via the lumen gloriae does
indeed transcend the natural use of the intellect, rendering it capable of an

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With St. Thomas one may hold that the way in which the higher
creation of man and angel is naturally ordered to God as End is infinitely
lesser than the way in which supernatural grace, elevating and redirecting nature and enabling it to participate in the very love of God, orders
the creature to God as End.The ontological reditus incorporates a natural element (and its epistemic requisites) within the life of grace. Human
and angelic nature are indeed ordered to God in precision from grace,
but along an infinitely lower trajectory than that of supernatural grace, so
that only with divine aid may these natures be elevated within the higher
arc that passes into the very mystery of God himself. Further, the natural
is not an arena of autonomy from God: All created being and action
derive from God as First Cause.
Thus what frequently is presented as unhistorical novelty is paradoxically the teaching not only of Aquinas but of the consensus of the Catholic
theological tradition.This is not merely a historically curious vindication
of great commentators become obscure, but a rediscovery of the genuine
synthesis of St.Thomas: a synthesis wherein the natural mode of participation in eternal law is transcended by the nobler participation of the
eternal law in supernatural grace.That the teloi of these participations are
distinct, are materially but not formally the same—God as principle of
created nature as opposed to God revealed in himself (for there is infinitely more in God than merely being “principle of created nature,” just
as there is more in Einstein than being a “man wearing a raincoat”)—is
essential to the integrity of St.Thomas’s teaching.
Likewise, that the natural desire for God represents an obediential
potency whereby the active agency of God may elevate man to achieve
distinctive supernatural friendship indicates that the lower participation
of the eternal law is presupposed to the higher. Nonexistent natures obviously are not elevated by grace, and a nature lacking a proportionate end
would be a nature lacking any actual natural tendency whatsoever: for
actual motion is only known in relation to the end to which it tends.
Now, every orthodox Catholic—as de Lubac insisted—considers that
nature has no claim on grace (as de Lubac put it,“in my view, which is that
of every Catholic, any idea of a claim of created nature in relation to the
supernatural should be absolutely excluded”)28 and that man cannot really

intrinsically supernatural act while not altering or annulling its nature.That is, nature
is elevated to a supernatural capacity by a supernatural grace.
28 Henri de Lubac, Augustinianism and Modern Theology (Paris: Aubier, 1965), at the
close of the first chapter regarding Baius.

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move toward supernatural beatitude without grace. It follows that since
man cannot under any circumstances move toward supernatural beatitude
without grace that no purely natural motion toward such an end apart
from grace and Revelation is possible. This is true quite apart from sin:
Even had man been created without the supernatural aid of grace and had
done no evil, he still would not be able to actually move toward intrinsically supernatural beatitude inasmuch as this infinitely transcends finite
nature29 (which is not to deny that man naturally would have been able to
move asymptotically toward God as causal principle of created nature).
But in the absence of natural motion (howsoever accidentally impeded) toward
X, X is not said to be the natural end. One recollects the words of Summa
theologiae I, question 62, article 2: “But the will’s natural inclination is
toward what is naturally fitting for it. And so if something is beyond its
nature, then the will cannot be moved toward it without the assistance of
some other principle that lies beyond its nature [ab aliquo alio principio
supernaturali].” Just as reading Shakespeare does not finalize the motion
of the Tulip because the Tulip naturally exhibits no actual tendency or
motion toward reading Shakespeare, and the Tulip is defined not by reading Shakespeare but by the end toward which it actually moves; so human
nature is defined in relation to the end proportionate to that nature and
toward which it actually moves as from its natural inclination. As he puts
it in Summa contra Gentiles IIIb, question 150:
Also. Everything is directed to a suitable end in proportion to its form:
since different species have different ends. Now, the end whereto man
is directed by the assistance of divine grace is above human nature.
Therefore man needs, over and above, a supernatural form and perfection, so as to be suitably directed to that same end.
Besides. It behooves man to reach his last end by means of his own
actions. Now, everything acts in proportion to its form. Therefore, in
order that man may be brought to his last end by means of his own

29 It must be remembered, however, that man is created in sanctifying grace, and

that natural law itself dictates that whatever God reveals be received and obeyed.
What is proper to nature as such is not simply tantamount to what remains
within this order of Providence when grace is lost. But the very idea of the
supernatural is not the idea of a merely natural completion.The attempt to argue
that if nature and grace are distinct therefore no natural harm should ensue upon
the loss of grace is an argument that implicitly fails to accept the efficacy of grace
in further ordering nature. But that the two orders are distinct hardly voids the
causal efficacy of grace.

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actions, he needs to receive an additional form, whereby his actions
may be rendered effective in meriting his last end.30

There is simply no doubt that this is Thomas’s teaching.31
Perhaps the understanding of the natural desire for and motion toward God as
distinct from the graced desire for and motion toward God has lapsed so very much
precisely because theologians no longer consider themselves in need of understanding
natural motion and natural teleology.32 Yet if ever there were a question that
30 ScG IIIb, ch. 150, nn. 5 and 6: “Amplius. Unumquodque ordinatur in finem sibi

convenientem secundum rationem suae formae: diversarum enim specierum
diversi sunt fines. Sed finis in quem homo dirigitur per auxilium divinae gratiae,
est supra naturam humanam. Ergo oportet quod homini superaddatur aliqua
supernaturalis forma et perfectio, per quam convenienter ordinetur in finem
praedictum.
Item. Oportet quod homo ad ultimum finem per proprias operationes perveniat. Unumquodque autem operatur secundum propriam formam. Oportet
igitur, ad hoc quod homo perducatur in ultimum finem per proprias operationes, quod superaddatur ei aliqua forma, ex qua eius operationes efficaciam
aliquam accipiant promerendi ultimum finem.”
31 Note, again, Quaestiones de Anima, a. 7, ad 10; and ST I, q. 62, a. 2.
32 Indeed, this may be widened to include understanding of the whole ontology of
nature, and of the distinct discipline of metaphysics. Hence one finds many authors
today advancing the old, and radically erroneous, view according to which there
are strictly speaking no “demonstrations” of the existence of God.This unfortunate
inversion of Thomas’s teaching—in truth a hoary old misreading and stock answer
perpetually recycled by fideist authors—is unfortunately resuscitated in the work
of Milbank and Pickstock (cf. John Milbank and Catherine Pickstock, Truth in
Aquinas [London: Routledge, 2001], 28: “ ‘demonstrations’ of God’s existence can
only be meant to offer weakly probable modes of argument and very attenuated
‘showings’ ”). One may agree that the “showing” is attenuated (one does not
demonstrate the existence of God in the manner that one demonstrates one’s battle
scar) without implying that the demonstration is only “weakly probable”—an
expression contrary to Thomas’s teaching regarding the nature of demonstration.
Of course,Thomas holds not only that the truth of the proposition that “God is”
is demonstrable: He also holds (Scriptum on the Sentences, II, dist. 1, q. 1, a. 2) that
the truth of creation is demonstrable: “I answer that not only does faith hold that
there is creation but reason also demonstrates it.”The present author has heard it
said more than once by theologians that natural theology “makes atheism possible”—as though, if only we pretend that the existence of God is self-evident to
everyone, we can avoid the need to contemplate the evidence of creation’s
dependence upon its transfinite Cause. One supposes in the same way that the
principle of non-contradiction makes falsity possible—but one trusts that the fact
that truth may be contradicted hardly constitutes sufficient reason for abandoning
truth.The degree of unaffected innocence of the knowledge of natural ontology
and metaphysics among contemporary theologians is perhaps rivaled only by the
singular remotion of many contemporary analytic philosophers from the theoretic

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requires natural teleology—of the sort that Thomas develops with exquisite
philosophic care—surely it is the question of the natural desire for God.
Further, there is no reductionist aspect to this consideration. It is
because human nature in its spiritual character is such as to be able to be
further aided by God to enjoy divine friendship—further aided to know
God not merely as principle of nature but as he is in himself—that
human nature is said to manifest an obediential potency for grace and
glory in relation to the active agency of God.This is indeed not a natural potency, but a purely passive potency of a given nature in relation to
the active agency of God. The obediential potency enables the creature
to receive from God an actuation radically disproportionate to its unassisted nature and natural potencies. Here again the truth is manifest that
only those who discern the profundity of the gift of created nature see
how far grace and Revelation transcend it: Far from naturalism, it is the
exaltation of the supernatural order that follows from these considerations.
These reflections, while dispensing in principle with the conundrums
of a created nature putatively hotwired into supernatural beatitude, imply
and indeed invite a complementary project. That complementary project
consists in seeing how it is that the theological intention of de Lubac
might most fittingly have been fulfilled not by the hypothesis of a creature whose natural desire is deific, but by the very notion of obediential
potency itself. Further, this complementary project needs to explain the
historical and doctrinal elements that remotely but really condition the
theological stage, leaving Henri de Lubac and others such as LaPorta with
only the narrowest apparent interpretative margins for safeguarding and
developing a certain legitimate Christian intention which that antecedent
theological problem-situation seemed to endanger. This complementary
consideration constitutes a veritable Rosetta stone in deciphering the
intelligible causes and narrative of postmodern, pluralist theological fragmentation: the loss of the sacramentality of the Word, the evisceration of
anthropology and moral theology, and the dangerous proliferation of
historicist fideisms and ideologized rationalist modes of thought.
This complementary project, to which I should now like to turn, pursues
not only a deeper awareness of the context that molded de Lubac’s creativity in the directions in which it flowed—largely positive, but in this
significant point regarding nature and grace, deeply problematic—but
also seeks a strategic viewpoint for understanding the problem situation
canon of two millennia of Catholic philosophy for the sake of the theoretic canon
of the past seventy-five years. Interesting years, it is true: but perhaps not quite that
interesting? In any case, it is within such circumstances that fideist and rationalist
impulses may begin to run amuck.

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of theology, and the impediments and challenges to Catholic thought, at
the start of the new millenium. For the contrapositions that defined the
horizon of theology for de Lubac and called forth his teaching have not
been corrected as he hoped.These contrapositions persist today in structuring theological contemplation apart from the requisites of Catholic
doctrine and culture.To these points I shall now turn. First I will address
the misconstrual of St. Thomas’s doctrine of obediential potency by de
Lubac and Gilson, and their consequent loss of the idea of specific obediential potency as thematized in St. Thomas’s account of nature and
grace.33 Then I will try to identify the critical deprivations within the
theological situation as he inherited it that tempted so profound a
Catholic intelligence to the solution he adopted in Surnaturel.
The Immediate and Proximate Context:
Error Regarding Obediential Potency
The immediate context for assessing de Lubac’s thought about nature and
grace is of course that of the loss to theological anthropology represented
by the misconstrual and rejection of the classical conception of specific
obediential potency. Insofar as de Lubac refers to obediential potency, he
seems to depict it chiefly as susceptibility to miracle, and as in any case not
pertinent to the fundamental question of the relation of nature to grace.
This is a view, of course, largely associated with the Franciscan school. It
demarcates a common if erroneous judgment, which has been shared by
such notable Thomistic figures in the twentieth century as Etienne Gilson
(in his later work), for whom obediential potency in relation to grace was
tantamount to the idea of a mere extrinsic and miraculous transmutation of
nature. As noted above, de Lubac did not significantly advert to the texts
that militate against his reading of the natural desire and obediential
potency, and tended more and more to attribute opposition to his account

33 It must be noted that de Lubac’s orthodoxy, profound love for the Church, and

desire to resolve the impasse suggested by the horizon defining his vision, all
make his treatment of this issue a more favorable place to confront the distortion
of the understanding of the relation of nature to grace than that of others. For
example, one thinks of authors such as Rahner, whose conclusion is in this
respect nonetheless quite close to de Lubac’s in excoriating the antecedent
consensus (as he once put it, the purpose of his work was to make “scholasticism” to be impossible in the future). But for Rahner this required invention of
an overgeneric and unclear conception of a “supernatural existential” to replace
the intelligible principles of nature and grace, whereas de Lubac aims to retain
these principles as properly foundational.

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merely to “fanatical Suarezians and intransigent Thomists.”34 He was
inclined to conflate insistence upon the distinction between the end
proportionate to nature and the supernatural finis ultimus with a naive naturalism, as these remarks indicate:
The great traditional texts on man’s destiny and blessedness were to be
systematically refuted in favor of a natural plan that distorts them.They
were to be understood from this point on as nothing but affirmations
of purely natural philosophy. The “perfection” of human nature to
which these very texts apply . . . was itself going to be, in the same way,
a fully natural perfection; pure philosophy was supposed to furnish the
concept of natural perfection, etc.

This concern lest the idea of “natural perfection” enter Christian
thought is paradoxical, inasmuch as human nature in its integrity is
precisely a perfection, and one without which the mystery of the Incarnation is impossible. Further, how would God himself distinguish nature
and supernature were it not the case that between the divine nature and
the nature of the created person there are naturally diverse ends? A natural end is that toward which a being naturally tends as to the perfection
proportionate to it and from which its species is distinguished:35 And
34 Gilson, Letters, 102, note 3 (carried on from p. 101). An interesting conjunction,

which should have served as a warning: How could all the interpreters of St.
Thomas on this point be completely in error? Of course, such is not impossible. But
it is not a likely supposition, nor is it reasonable to discard generations of theological and philosophic work on the force of such a supposition. Both Thomists
and Suarezians read the Angelic Doctor as holding for obediential potency as
pertaining to the relation of nature to grace.Their in-house disputation about the
sense of “obediential potency” cannot obscure the datum that, at bottom, each
views it as a passive potency of a very particular sort, the sort involving a specific
range of actuation to which a nature is amenable solely through the active agency
of an extrinsic cause. Today, many persons who have read neither Thomas, nor
Thomistic commentators, nor Suárez, nor Suarezians, are equally convinced that
all are incorrect on this point, and also are convinced that the scholastics were
ahistorical. But sed contra: It seems that they were correct, and that however ahistorical their work, at least they did not judge authors without first reading them.
35 One directs the attention once more to Quaestiones de Anima, a. 7, ad 10, which
is of course duplicated in ST I, q. 75, a. 7, ad 1, and elsewhere. Bluntly:There is
precisely no doubt in Thomas’s text that what defines human nature is precisely
the natural end as distinct from the supernaturally beatific end. Recollect the text from
De Anima:“Those beings whose proximate and natural end is one and the same
are one in species. However, eternal beatitude is a final and supernatural end.”
This—absolutely in itself—would be sufficient to destroy the thesis of Surnaturel
and Augustinianism and Modern Theology with respect to the actual teaching of
Aquinas. It is also enough to indicate that Cajetan did not invent this teaching.

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clearly this definition does not describe the supernatural beatific vision
(for only the divine nature is defined by intrinsically supernatural and
deific felicity—even in beatitude, the creature’s knowledge does not
comprehend God but rather is measured by God). It follows that the philosophic
definition of “end” was to be surmounted with a different conception, for which the
only justification was its putative efficacy in saving the Christian intellect from the
danger of naturalism. But it is precisely in relation to the end proportionate to human nature that the supernatural end comes properly into view:
The Triune God who moves us to himself in beatific vision is not merely
the maraschino cherry on a purely natural sundae.36 Why should specific
obediential potency be equated with mere miraculous transmutation? In
one of his letters Gilson well articulates the position he came to share
with de Lubac:
Yet in fairness, the animating quest was perhaps less to engage St.Thomas’s teaching than to achieve a symbiosis of certain aspects of the teaching of the Angelic
Doctor—perhaps “corrected” of certain of its actual traits—with non-scientific
conceptions of theology.This suggests a parallel between de Lubac and Heidegger. As Heidegger identifies the font of metaphysics and ontology as scientia in
the work of Aristotle, and accuses this Aristotelian understanding of science with
being the origin of the positivist and reductionist spirit regarding being; so de
Lubac seems to consider the ideal of scientia assimilated by St. Thomas to theological purpose, as naturalist and intrinsically prone to rationalist desiccation and
the flight from mystery. Of course, de Lubac separates out from Thomas’s work
elements that he prefers, a speculative reconstruction that loses what Thomas says
about nature and natural end.Yet one may argue that genuine mystery does not
entail the evisceration of the natural, and that obediential potency does not, for
Thomas, reduce to its most generic meaning of mere susceptibility to miracle. If
Thomas’s teaching offers a hermeneutical principle for the reading of the
Fathers, this suggests the presence in his work of a supervening excellence. Ironically, the genius of de Lubac—his profound gift for appreciating the Fathers in
their own terms—may partially account for his misdoubts regarding basic
elements of St.Thomas’s stress on theology as science.
36 It should not be forgotten that the position of Henri de Lubac bears some comparison to that of Scotus insofar as the capacity for beatific vision is a natural capacity
aided by grace, as opposed to being what it is for Aquinas: a strictly supernatural
capacity that requires the supernatural strengthening of the lumen gloriae to render
the human creature even capable of receiving the supernatural vision of God.
Hence it transpires that while the concern is avoiding Aristotelian “naturalism” that
this concern seems likely to give way precisely to a species of naturalism that
Aquinas directly and unwaveringly opposed through his texts and for all his life:
that naturalism that would claim that there is a strictly natural desire and natural capacity for supernatural beatific vision that requires merely extrinsic supernatural aid
for its accomplishment, rather than seeing that the desire and capacity for supernatural beatific vision is as such itself an effect of supernatural grace.

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I don’t think either of us has ever found a set of terms adequate to define
the Thomist position, and that’s quite to be expected, since he himself
could not find one either. In fact, his terminology is somewhat loose,
because he never throws away an expression if it is possible to justify it
in some sense. Potentiality subject to obedience is an instructive example
of what I’m talking about. He came upon the term ready-made; strictly
speaking, it is applicable only to miracles, where nothing in matter either prepares
for, expects, or makes the phenomenon possible [emphasis added]; in general
(your excellent quotes on page 244), all nature is in a state of potentiality subject to obedience to whatever it may please God to do with it,
provided that this is not, in itself, contradictory or impossible.37

Henri de Lubac of course thought the same:
In the order of finality itself, so as to avoid any confusion between the
supernatural gift and the mere fulfillment a nature receives from some
natural agent, we may join some of the moderns—without in any way
departing from the spirit of the past—in specifying that the “passive
potentiality” which characterizes human nature in relation to that
supernatural gift can be called “specific obediential power”—“potentia
obedientialis specifica hominis”—or “passive obediential power.” But it
remains quite clear, from the explanations he has given us, that for St.
Thomas particularly, the simple idea of potentia obedientialis conceived
not “to express the condition in which God’s gift places us of being
able to become children of God,” but to account for the possibility of
miracle, is not adequate as a definition of the relationship of human
nature to the supernatural. It does not lay sufficient stress on the
“absolutely special case of spirit.”38

Of course, it is true that obediential potency conceived as mere susceptibility to miracle is insufficient with respect to the fittingness of human
nature to receive the divine aid (human nature is such that it may be
uplifted by grace to the supernatural knowledge and love of God, whereas
irrational natures cannot, insofar as irrational, be so aided).Yet it is clear that
the common view of de Lubac and Gilson that for Thomas “obediential
potency” refers only to the generic susceptibility to divine miracle falls
short of Thomas’s text: Only the well-merited reputation of Gilson with
respect to other aspects of Thomas’s synthesis, and the incredible depth of
de Lubac’s knowledge and love of the Church Fathers, could impart some
semblance of life to it. In fact, de Lubac’s above-cited reasoning should
37 Gilson, Letters, 81–82.
38 Henri de Lubac, The Mystery of the Supernatural, trans. Rosemary Sheed (New

York: Herder and Herder, 1967), 184–85.

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have led him to the realization that “obediential potency” was not to be
confined to the case of mere generic transmutability.This discovery—to
which he is so close in the above-cited text—would necessarily have
realigned his account of nature and grace with the commentatorial
consensus. For in what would the obediential potency for grace and
glory consist, if not in the rational character and in the natural desire for
God as distinct from this same desire as supernaturally elevated within the
graced desire for beatific vision?
In fact, the most conspicuous “modern” defender of the view that
Thomas’s notion of obediential potency is not confined to mere transmutability but also extends to “specific obediential power” is Suárez.
Compare de Lubac’s contrary view with the express teaching of St.
Thomas—the very words to which Gilson supposed the historically
inclined were more sensitively disposed than the mere philosophers with
their “superficial” and “scholastic” preoccupations (critics of Gilson, too,
were waved off by de Lubac as symptomatic of “superficial philosophizing endemic to the Church from the beginning but which has infested
Scholasticism since the thirteenth century”).39 St.Thomas writes:
When a passive subject is by nature constituted to receive various perfections from diversely ordered agents, the diversity and order of the passive
powers in the patient will correspond to the diversity and order of the
active powers in the agents, for an active power will correspond to each
passive potency. For example, water or earth have some potency whereby
they are naturally apt to be changed by fire; and another potency whereby
they are naturally apt to be changed by a heavenly body; and still another,
whereby they are naturally apt to be moved or changed by God. Just as
from water or from earth something can be made by the power of a heavenly body which cannot be made by the power of fire; so, from the same
elements something can be formed by the power of a supernatural agent
which no natural agent can produce. For this reason we say that in the
whole of creation there is a certain obediential potency whereby every
creature obeys God by receiving into itself whatsoever God wills.40
39 Gilson, Letters, 110–11, note 10.
40 De Virtutibus, q. 1, a. 10, ad 13: “Ad decimumtertium dicendum, quod quando

aliquod passivum natum est consequi diversas perfectiones a diversis agentibus
ordinatis, secundum differentiam et ordinem potentiarum activarum in agentibus,
est differentia et ordo potentiarum passivarum in passivo; quia potentiae passivae
respondet potentia activa: sicut patet quod aqua vel terra habet aliquam potentiam
secundum quam nata est moveri ab igne; et aliam secundum quam nata est moveri
a corpore caelesti; et ulterius aliam secundum quam nata est moveri a Deo. Sicut
enim ex aqua vel terra potest aliquid fieri virtute corporis caelestis, quod non
potest fieri virtute ignis; ita ex eis potest aliquid fieri virtute supernaturalis agentis quod non potest fieri virtute alicuius naturalis agentis; et secundum hoc

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Here one observes St. Thomas affirming that a diverse range of actuation corresponds to the purely passive potency of each nature in relation to
a distinct, active agency—including the active agency of God. Hence
human nature may be aided by God to act in a fashion that a stone may
not be aided. This is the very notion of specific obediential potency—whatever
terminology be used to articulate it—and clearly it is neither a Renaissance
corruption nor “modern” (unless the middle ages are “modern”). Moreover,
this passage manifests that St. Thomas’s well-articulated conception of
obediential potency is decidedly not reducible merely to a susceptibility to
miraculous transmutation. Susceptibility to miraculous transmutation (as
water may be changed to wine by divine agency) may, however, perhaps be
described as the most generic and lowest sense of obediential potency: the
floor, rather than the ceiling, of the concept. But the specific sense of
obediential potency with regard to grace is an aptness of human nature—
an aptness that exists only in relation to the active power of God and is simply
speaking disproportionate to finite nature—whereby, with divine aid, man
may be elevated to supernatural life and to agency meritorious of Heaven.
Hence man may be elevated to the higher life of grace and divine
friendship, because the spiritual nature is such that with divine aid it may
be so uplifted, whereas a rock cannot be uplifted to acts of supernatural
knowledge and love precisely because it lacks rational nature. If a rock
were uplifted to the divine friendship in knowledge and love of God, it
would by that fact cease to be a rock (although there is a wide sense of
“love” in which we may say that all creation loves God: But here we are
speaking specifically of love as it pertains to rational will).
Just as earth and water have diverse passive potencies in relation to
different active agencies, so human nature possesses a passive potency for
that which can only be achieved in it through the active agency of God.
It is this conception of obediential potency that expounds acts of infused virtue as
truly acts of the human agent, without thereby implying that human nature can
perform supernaturalized acts apart from divine aid. Indeed, properly understood, this doctrine of obediential potency involves the realization that
human nature is itself elevated and perfected by God, while the perfection
is in substance supernatural and human nature is not even capable of this
perfection save in relation to God.
Had they but seen, Gilson and de Lubac would have realized that St.
Thomas and his commentators were, in their exposition of obediential
potency, describing the contours of the very mystery that they themselves
dicimus, quod in tota creatura est quaedam obedientialis potentia, prout tota creatura obedit Deo ad suscipiendum in se quidquid Deus voluerit.”

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sought to understand. For man’s nature is not transmuted but elevated,
and so must first be elevable by divine grace: the very meaning of specific
obediential potency as opposed to generic obediential potency. Here
again one discerns the need not alone for historical erudition, but for
scientific penetration of natural distinctions—a cautionary tale for those
for whom theology and philosophy have become mere ancillary functions of historical erudition.
It is also this conception of obediential potency that most profoundly
answers to the language of Vatican II with regard to God “revealing man
to himself ” (Gaudium et Spes, note 22). For the higher capacities of man
aided by grace are not knowable apart from the gift of grace, yet it is these
capacities to which man is called: Human nature is created in sanctifying
grace, and the order of nature is efficaciously further ordered in grace
(and so if man sins he rebounds, not into a purely natural order, but into
an order of nature as accidentally wounded).As I have elsewhere attempted
to express this point:
The similitude of the stained-glass window illumined by the sun’s rays
well bespeaks the character of the doctrine of obediential potency as
applied to the relation of nature and grace. The stained-glass window,
were it cognizant, could not “know what it was missing” were it never
to irradiate its bright colors under the influence of the sun. It would be
a window, still, and function as part of the structure—though it would,
in a given respect, not be fulfilled. It would be what it is, not fail to be
part of the whole structure of which it would form an integral part, nor
lack its own participation in the good of the whole as a specific perfection. Yet its nature stands properly revealed only under the extrinsic
causality of the sun’s illumination: seeing it so illumined, we know what
stained glass truly is for.41

Yet, were one to adopt the more generic conception of obediential
potency as its exclusive sense, missing the more specific sense of obediential potency as revealed in passages such as that of St. Thomas from De
Virtutibus above, then it would be necessary to reject obediential potency
and to deem it wholly inapplicable to man’s elevation in grace and achievement of supernatural beatitude. For just as water transmuted to wine is no
longer water, so if obediential potency “in the strict sense” is taken to refer
only to miraculous transmutation of nature, it follows that fulfillment of the
obediential potency for supernatural life is the transmutation and loss of
human nature. Thus would it follow that no human person would be
redeemed (for to be redeemed would then mean to lose human nature).
41 “On the Possibility of a Purely Natural End for Man,” The Thomist 64 (2000): 236.

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This would indeed be an extrinsic and odd conception of grace as destructive of human nature rather than uplifting and redeeming it.
Given such a reading of “obediential potency” it follows as a matter of
course that one must reject the application of obediential potency to the
nature/grace relation. De Lubac and Gilson must be given credit—as
manifesting integrity of theological intention—for opposing this sort of
monstrosity. They were right that the specter of a generic obediential
potency, as though grace came to man not only extrinsically but through
supernatural transmutation (like the changing of water to wine), needed to
yield to a sense that God’s first creation of human nature made it such as
with divine aid to be able to attain to supernatural life and action.Yet these
latter words properly describe the conception of specific obediential
potency as Thomas applies it to the relation of nature to grace: the very
idea that they failed to acknowledge.
A good theological intention is not enough: Because everything
moves to its end according to its form, the formal account must be
adequate. On this score de Lubac and Gilson’s reading of obediential
potency appears not only exegetically but theologically erroneous. It is
after all St. Thomas Aquinas who writes of supernatural beatitude that
“[t]here is another good of man that exceeds the proportion of human
nature because the natural powers are not sufficient for attaining, or
thinking, or desiring it.”42 If natural powers are of themselves insufficient
for desiring the supernatural good that exceeds the proportion of human
nature, might not this mean that the natural desire for God is in itself a
desire specified not by uncreated nature—which is literally unknowable
apart from Revelation—but by that created nature in relation to whose
existential dependence the reality of God is discovered? A natural desire
for God not qua God but qua Cause of finite being, whereas there is infinitely more in God than being the cause of finite being?
A rock cannot know and love God without ceasing to be a rock—it
cannot even be “helped” to know and love because it lacks any such faculties that might so be helped.43 By contrast while a human person cannot
know and love God in direct vision and embrace without supernatural
aid, with such aid the human person may partake in intrinsically supernatural divine friendship: and this is the specific notion of obediential
potency as applied to the relation of grace to nature. It is a wholly passive
potency that yet presupposes as its subject some determinate nature that
42 De Veritate, q. 14, a. 2.
43 Perhaps there is some way in which the nature of a rock can be distinctively aided

by God to radiate glory—but it surely cannot achieve knowledge without an intellective power, nor love in a proper spiritual sense without the rational power of will.

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is such that when aided by the active agency of God it may achieve a
certain specific range of actuation. It is because of man’s essentially spiritual nature that he has an obediential potency to the supernatural life.
Thomas even uses the language of a “twofold capacity”—one of nature
simply, and one of nature “according to the order of divine power”—to
explain the incarnation,“the grace of union which is the greatest grace.”44
Clearly then, the overgeneric and extrinsicist account of obediential
potency—which reduces it to the lowest instance of mere capacity for natural transmutation and does not acknowledge specific obediential potency—
misses something essential.The fear of extrinsicism harbored by Gilson and
de Lubac indifferently targeted both a legitimate object of aversion (the
proposition that nothing in man is truly elevated and perfected by grace, so
that grace would become a vermiform appendage) and an illegitimate
object of aversion (the proposition that supernatural beatitude cannot as
such be targeted by a purely natural desire). This fear obstructed their
reading of St. Thomas’s text. Yet, since virtually all commentators of St.
Thomas’s work preceding them did acknowledge the specific sense of
obediential potency applicable to the nature/grace question, it seems that
other factors should be discerned as moving them to this undifferentiated
preoccupation with the avoidance of extrinsicism (whereas it is not grace
as extrinsic principle—for that is what grace is, since grace is not nature—
but grace as transmutative principle, that constitutes a deformation of
Christian teaching). Clearly, the decisive points were not missed from any
ordinary nescience nor from bad will, but rather from a diverted attention
preoccupied with profound and necessary theological purpose. It is to the
nature of this diversion and that purpose that we now turn.
44 ST III, q. 1, a. 3, ad 3:“A double capability may be remarked in human nature: one,

in respect of the order of natural power, and this is always fulfilled by God,Who
apportions to each according to its natural capability; the other in respect to the
order of the Divine power, which all creatures implicitly obey; and the capability
we speak of pertains to this. But God does not fulfill all such capabilities, otherwise
God could do only what He has done in creatures, and this is false, as stated above
(I, q. 105, a. 6). But there is no reason why human nature should not have been
raised to something greater after sin. For God allows evils to happen in order to
bring a greater good therefrom; hence it is written (Rm 5:20): ‘Where sin
abounded, grace did more abound.’ Hence, too, in the blessing of the Paschal
candle, we say:‘O happy fault, that merited such and so great a Redeemer!’ ”While
the specific phrase “obediential potency” is not used here, clearly the general idea
is congruent with that articulated in De Virtutibus, cf. note 34 above, which undeniably expresses the conception of specific obediential potency.The idea is that of
a potency in relation to the divine power “which all creatures implicitly obey”—
what is this, but obediential potency?

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Behind It All: The Loss of Natural Order
as a Theonomic Principle
It is clear that de Lubac’s reading of Aquinas with respect to obediential
potency is erroneous, and that indeed time has only deepened and intensified the consequent divorce of theological formation and method from
natural truth (although Pope John Paul II’s Fides et Ratio stands in marked
contradiction to this tendency). But likewise it is clear that de Lubac—a
great scholar and lover of the Church, blessed with a subtle and powerful intellect—misprised this teaching neither from any common nescience
nor from malice. Rather, the need to safeguard a profound theological
intention in an inhospitable intellectual climate seemed to point toward
the argument that the object of the natural desire for God must be intrinsically supernatural beatific vision.The nature of this animating intention
requires greater consideration.
No theologian worthy of the name should fail to affirm the theocentric character of reality as such.Yet, from the Enlightenment period on,
the view that nature constitutes a separate jurisdiction from divine authority and governance—one utterly separable from the theistic account, and
only dubiously related to the truth of the Gospels—gained in influence
and prestige.The Enlightenment spawned secular theories of progress, and
a reductive naturalism that happily banished the very knowledge of God
from the realm of natural truth to one of (at best) a shadowy noumenal
existence. Indeed, this tendency is discernibly present today in the insistence of many philosophers and commentators on science that the realm
of physical causes must be considered to be “causally closed” and so putatively impermeable to any immaterial cause whatsoever, including God.
Kant, Hume, Comte, and in the twentieth century the movements of
scientism and positivism, all tended to reduce natural knowledge in such
a way as to minimize or seemingly render impossible the project of metaphysical scientia and knowledge of God. Ethics, too, was to be confined
within the realm of a secular and non-metaphysical reason alone. Even
when theories maintained speculative trajectory or theistic nomenclature, too often the trajectory was immanentist or the terms merely placeholders within doctrines remote from theism and more distant still from
traditional Christianity. In this light, one thinks, of course, of Hegel.
To make matters worse, however, within Catholic life itself, there had
been a gradual but nonetheless crucial disengagement of Catholic theology from the metaphysical realism of St.Thomas Aquinas.The history of
this unfortunate and retrograde motion together with the tracing of its
speculative influence remains to be written. But it is here that we need

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pause to recollect the role of Molina in this story. For it is manifest that
beginning with Molina’s teaching in the sixteenth century it became
acceptable to view free human action as standing outside of divine governance and causality: and this idea is incompatible with the understanding
of nature as a theonomic principle.This tendency has only intensified and
grown, such that it is frequently the case that when a theologian speaks
of “freedom” it is assumed that the proper definition of a cause as contingent or necessary is a function of that cause’s relation to God.That is, it is
assumed that to be free a cause must possess liberty of indifference with
respect to divine causality. Yet it is the teaching of St. Thomas that no
created cause possesses a liberty of indifference with respect to divine
causality, and that a cause is denominated as contingent rather than necessary solely owing to its proportion to the contingency of its terrestrial
effects. In short, created liberty is not defined in relation to God, but in relation
to the nature of the proximate cause. Thus Thomas writes in De malo:
And therefore necessity and contingency in things are distinguished not
in relation to the divine will, which is a universal cause, but in relation
to created causes which the divine will has ordered proportionately to
the effects, namely in such a way that the causes of necessary effects are
unchangeable, and of contingent effects changeable.45

St.Thomas further articulates the dependence of the created human will
on God when he writes:
It should be said that when it is said that God left man to himself, this
does not mean to exclude man from Divine Providence, but merely
that he has not a prefixed operating power determined to one as with
natural things; because they are only acted upon as though directed by
another towards an end—for they do not act of themselves, directing
45 De malo, q. 16, a. 7, ad 15 (Leonine ed.): “Et hoc quidem quantum ad scientiam

patet ex his que supra dicta sunt: sic enim se habet diuina scientia ad futura contingentia sicut se habet oculus noster ad contingentia aue in presenti sunt, ut dictum
est; unde sicut certissime uidemus Sortem sedere dumsedet, nec tamen proper hoc
sit simpliciter necessarium, ita etiam ex hoc quod Deus uidet omnia que eueniunt
in se ipsis, non tollitur contingentia rerum. Ex parte autem uoluntatis considerandum est quod uoluntas diuina est uniuersaliter causa entis et uniuersaliter omnium
que consequntur <ipsum>, unde et necessitatis et contingentie; ipsa autem est
supra ordinem necessarii et contingentis sicut est supra totum esse creatum. Et ideo
necessitas et contingentia in rebus distinguitur non per habitudinem ad uoluntatem
diuinam que est causa communis, set per comparationem ad causas creatas, quas
proportionaliter diuina uoluntas ad effectus ordinauit, ut scilicet necessariorum
effectuum sint cause intransmutabiles, contingentium autem trnasmutabiles.”

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themselves towards an end, as do rational creatures through free choice
whereby these take counsel and make choices. Hence it is significantly
said: In the hand of his own counsel. But because the same act of free
choice is reduced to God as to a cause, it is necessary that whatsoever
happens from the exercise of free choice be subject to Divine Providence. For the providence of man is contained under the providence of
God, as a particular cause under a universal cause.46

And, even more clearly: “When anything moves itself, this does not
exclude its being moved by another, from which it has even this that it
moves itself.Thus it is not repugnant to liberty that God is the cause of
the free act of the will.”47
Whereas Molina strove with all his power to do justice to freedom and
Providence—falling as it were by accident into the error whereby freedom is defined with respect to God rather than with respect to its finite
and contingent effects—it is without doubt true today that the libertarian
account of freedom as an absolute capacity outside of the governance of
the omnipotent God is prevalent even among believers.Whereas Thomas
held that no terrestrial finite good could coerce the will, so that the
rational will is free,48 it is common today to suppose that the creature
must somehow also be able to stand outside the divine causality for it to be
free.Yet this view treats the divine causality like that of a creature, neglecting the dependence of all created reality in being and action upon God.
46 ST I, q. 22, a. 2, ad 4 (Ottawa ed.): “Dicendum quod in hoc quod dicitur Deum

hominem sibi reliquisse, non excluditur homo a divina providentia; sed ostenditur
quod non praefigitur ei virtus operativa determinata ad unum, sicut rebus naturalibus; quae aguntur tantum, quasi ab altero directae in finem, non autem seipsa
agunt, quasi se dirigentia in finem, ut creaturae rationales per liberum arbitrium,
quo consiliantur et eligunt. Unde signanter dicit: “In manu consilii sui.” Sed quia
ipse actus liberi arbitrii reducitur in Deum sicut in causam, necesse est ut ea quae
ex libero arbitrio fiunt, divinae providentiae subdantur; providentia enim hominis
continetur sub providentia Dei, sicut causa particularis sub causa universali.”
47 De malo, q. 3, a. 2, ad 4 (Leonine ed.): “Similiter cum aliquid mouet se ipsum,
non excluditur quin ab alio moueatur a quo habet hoc ipsum quo se ipsum
mouet. Et sic non repugnat libertati quod Deus est causa actus liberi arbitrii.”
48 St.Thomas teaches that the object of the will as a rational appetite is the universal good, the good in general. Since every finite good is a limited good, no finite
good is universally good or good in every respect (were it so, it would not be a
finite or limited good). It follows that no finite good may coerce the will. Even
at the very moment of choice, the intellect presents the finite good to the will
as finite, as limited and hence not universally good—as, in some respect, really
not good, even if it be not the respect pertinent to our moral fulfillment.Thus,
even at the moment of choice, the rational will retains a dominating indifference
with respect to any finite good. Cf. ST I, q. 82, a. 2, ad 2.

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The formulation of Molina has sadly outlived the profound Christian
context of his work, which limited the ill effect of this formulation and
prevented its worst implications from being drawn. It is certainly true as
Molina writes in the Concordia, “that the will is free only when, all
requirements being retained, the will could indeed act otherwise”49—
provided we refer solely to terrestrial requirements. But if we include the
hypothetical but immutable divine will as a requirement, then this proposition is impossible. For, owing to the divine simplicity, it is not God who
changes but rather only the world: If God ordains from all eternity that
the creature shall freely (in the sense of not coerced by any terrestrial
good) choose X, and the creature is moved freely to choose X, what
changes is not God but the creature.
The creature is really related to, and dependent upon, God, but not
vice versa. Between God efficaciously willing a created effect and God
not efficaciously willing some created effect, the sole difference is that the
efficaciously willed effect actually is.Thus one cannot retain the requirement that God cause the creature freely to act while the creature is not
caused freely to act because this is a contradiction in terms.
The Molinist account unwittingly carries the implication that the
domain of human action is outside Divine Providence insofar as outside
divine causality.Thomas makes the connection quite patent in the Summa
theologiae I–II, question 91, article 2, teaching that
since all things subject to Divine Providence are ruled and measured by
the eternal law, as was stated above (I–II, a. 90, q. 1); it is evident that all
things partake somewhat of the eternal law, in so far as, namely, from its
being imprinted on them, they derive their respective inclinations to
their proper acts and ends.

The implication here is not that there is some recondite class of things
which are not subject to Divine Providence while still being ruled and
measured by eternal law. Rather, if the human will is not subject to
Divine Providence, then it is not ruled and measured by the eternal law.
As Thomas teaches, providence extends so far as power:50 he will cannot
be subject to Divine Providence if it lies outside divine causality. Hence,
if we affirm a theonomic conception of natural law, we need also to
affirm that the human will is autonomous neither in being nor in action,
but is moved to its act from without, yet in such a manner that this
motion is truly its own motion: which is to say that the very motion that
49 Cf. Molina’s Concordia, q. 14, a. 13, disp. II.
50 See ST I, q. 22, a. 2.

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is received by the will from God is that whereby it moves itself in free
self-determination. Like existence itself, the positive substance of my
action is most my own, yet also most a gift.
In Molina the emphasis is upon scientia media or middle knowledge—
the doctrine that God knows all the varied circumstances in the light of
which the creature will act or not act—a teaching that some critics speak
of as a determinism of circumstance.51 For why should circumstances
alter how one would be inclined to act unless they exercise some causality, a causality seemingly denied to God by the Molinist account. Why
then should what is denied to God be attributed to finite circumstances?
But it is in any case not this aspect of his teaching that has prevailed.
What is arresting about the Molinist account is not the emphasis on
circumstance, which is but an ineffective brake placed on the turning of
the wheel, but the logic of the turning of the wheel itself, in the direction of separating human agency from divine causality. And indeed, this
is the effect that Molinism seems concretely to have had—not to move
people to accept scientia media, which seems fraught with contradiction,
but to move toward the rejection of the subjection of human agency to
divine causality.Apart from the question of Molina’s full theological position, his negative treatment of the dependence of human freedom on
divine causality seems in historical terms to be one large stride in the
direction of undifferentiated libertarianism of a sort that implies that the
created will is a being a se.
What thus ensues in the common imagination as well as in ensuing
academic interpretations is an immense and insupportable freedom—as
though the finite creature were characterized by a divine aseity of will. A
separate jurisdiction of human liberty is thus created that is literally beyond
divine governance, so that it becomes difficult to imagine what difference
even divine Revelation could make to the situation—for why should a will
whose act is a se to require or seek aid of any kind? If its act is a se, it follows
that its being is a se (operatio sequitur esse). And a being a se is intrinsically
independent of every other being—the very logic whereby God is
affirmed to be intrinsically independent of any created cause.52
51 In the twentieth century, one thinks of the extensive criticism offered by Norbert

del Prado, De Gratia et Libero Arbitrio, 3 vols. (Friburgi Helvetiorum: Ex Typis
Consociationis Sancti Pauli, 1907) and Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, God: His Existence and His Nature, 2 vols., trans. Dom Bede Rose (St. Louis: Herder, 1934).
52 The idea that the separation of freedom from providential government could be
accepted without its implications being harvested has proven deficient. Granted
that the idea of the directive authority of natural law is chiefly cognitive, still for
such directive authority to be even potentially effective it is a necessary condition that the finite agent be susceptible of direction. But if the finite agent’s will is

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Hence intra-Catholic meditations on freedom as well as philosophic
tendencies rooted in the Enlightenment each carved out a dominion for
natural human agency as absolutely independent of God.The convergent
effect is that of secular and intra-Catholic tendencies of thought each of
which tend toward making the natural realm—and particularly the natural realm of human agency—an utterly separate jurisdiction sealed off from
Providence. In this light, the continued insistence upon the nature/grace
distinction could seem to be an insistence upon maintaining an artificial
and destructive divorce between God and the world, and a fortiori between
God and the human world. Within such a world, natural law, far from
being what it was for St.Thomas—namely, nothing other than the rational
participation of the eternal law—becomes instead the demarcation of a
realm outside the governance of the eternal law. Natural law becomes, as it
were, the “stalking horse” of secularism and naturalist reductionism. A
more complete inversion of the character of the doctrine of the natural
law cannot be imagined—indeed a transvaluation of all values.
Even more arresting is that these two complementary motions retreating from the theonomic character of nature and natural order end by
insisting on similar judgments. The advocate of absolute autonomy for
the rational creature must deny the subjection of man’s will to divine
causality and Providence—ruling out the “interference” of God with a
will either supposed to be purely in act or else mysteriously able to move
itself from potency to act without first receiving this motion from God.
Likewise, the contemporary physicalist or materialist advocate of “causal
closure” amongst physical causes must deny the subjection of any physical agency whatsoever to the higher causality of God. Hence the physicalist or materialist also must rule out the “interference” of God with the
natural world and with the nature of human agency. In one case the motive
is the preservation of absolute freedom; in the other case, the motive is the
preservation of causal closure (and, for some authors, absolute necessity)
not only independent vis-à-vis all merely terrestrial causality but stands outside
of divine causality as well, then it follows that the finite agent’s willing is a se and
so not susceptible to governance by any extrinsic agent. Thus we end with the
temper tantrum construed as a metaphysical principle, with an incapacity on the
part of the modern and postmodern to receive directive governance in the
moral, social, and political orders, and with a fixed strategic resistance of governance with respect to the supernatural life itself.This shows itself not merely in
antinomian glosses on natural law (for example, one notes Bernard Häring and
Josef Füchs), but in the supposition that the Church must, herself, accommodate
the absolute requisites of ecclesial communion to the a priori supremacy of
pluralism and autonomy: an insistence in reason impossible yet socially widespread and hardly unknown even within the Church.

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amongst exclusively physical causes. One may well note that it seems that
for Kant both of these motivations simultaneously hold sway—the categories of phenomenal necessitation just as much as the nature of human
freedom require the denial of any knowable providential government of
world and will. But in either case, the effect is the same: the banishing of
God from the natural world and especially from the natural world of
human agency.53
What was to be Henri de Lubac’s response to the distinction of nature
from grace as it functioned within the anomalous context of the exile of
God from the natural world and from the nature of human agency? Reading the de Lubac of The Drama of Atheist Humanism, it becomes perfectly
clear that he was well acquainted with antitheism and the banishing of
God from history through the unreasoning exaltation of matter, or will,
or reason. He was also intimately aware of the dilemma of human freedom in a world that, like a mausoleum, enclosed its inhabitants in a lofty
and impenetrable solitude or, alternately, offered release solely through
alienating extroversion. To a Christian man of such profound vision and
cultural sensitivity as well as historical awareness, it cannot have been other
than ravishingly tempting utterly to contradict the naturalist reduction
with one working in a different and Christian direction, asserting a natural desire for intrinsically supernatural beatitude. The dynamism of man,
himself, would be taken not only as pointed ad Deo but as aspirationally
projected within the Triune life of God Himself.54 Neither positivism nor
53 It is also possibly pertinent that Molina strongly influenced the thought of many

of his brethren within the Society of Jesus, which historically has been associated
with some measure of support for the Molinist account. It may not be wholly
accidental that the effort to reinstate the theonomic character of nature by supernaturalizing the natural telos should derive from a gifted and creative theologian
formed within this order and sensitive to the onset of naturalism.
54 Of course, de Lubac would have denied that the natural desire for God—which
he took to be a desire for supernatural beatitude—had any psychological corollary whatsoever. Nonetheless, if to aspire is to seek to attain a goal, then quite
literally de Lubac’s position must countenance that the voluntas ut natura aspires to
supernatural beatitude whether this has a psychological correlate or not. It is this
position itself that, the Thomist will discern, defines the created nature as deific
by skipping over the proximate and natural end altogether. Of course, there is also
the question whether it makes sense that so profound a metaphysical orientation
as de Lubac claimed for the will can be intelligible in the absence of any psychological correlate—especially inasmuch as movement of the will is depicted as
follows by St. Thomas (Quaestiones Quadlibetales, quodlibet VI, q. 2, a. 2): “motus
voluntatis est inclinatio sequens formam intellectam.”That is, it is impossible that
there be any natural volition that is not first specified by intellect, and this natural specification is necessarily infinitely less than that which specifies the intellect

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scientism nor any of the other “isms” seeking to confine man within the
terrestrial cage and to reduce the human mystery to a problem of naturalist flow-dynamics would gain any purchase over this starting point for
the Christian apologetic, for this apologetic would be nothing other than
the answer to the question “What is man?”
In the face of such crushing cultural, ideological, and philosophic
adversity, the distinctions contemplated and honed within baroque
scholasticism—that Revelation reveals man to himself with respect to his
deeper destiny in grace, but not primarily or properly with respect to
human nature as such (of which one has connatural awareness and potential natural wisdom) but rather medicinally—could hardly seem decisive.
Against the antitheists—Marx, Nietzsche, and the rest—de Lubac would
rely upon teleology. Almost alone amidst contemporaries for whom teleology defined nothing, de Lubac would overstress teleology, making of
the finis ultimus of intrinsically supernatural beatific vision the very natural end of man, and denying that human nature is placed in its species—
as Aquinas expressly asserts that it is—by its natural and proportionate end as
distinct from the supernatural beatific end.55
The convergent implication of secular and Molinist thought seems
indeed to be the loss of nature and natural order as theonomic principles,
and the loss of natural law as nothing else than a participation of eternal
law. Once this theonomic character of natural order and natural law are lost, then
sustaining the distinction of nature and grace simply formalizes the boundaries
consequent upon the loss of God. One may say safely, from this repose of
distance in time, that de Lubac was correct in seeking the answer in teleology, and correct again in seeking an answer that would once more
establish the theonomic character of natural order. While he was incor-

in beatific vision. It follows that all natural willing is only distributively rather than
simultaneously universal, and that likewise all natural willing is specified by
created realities. God ineluctably is then to be known and desired as “Cause of
finite effects”; and while for St. Thomas “each power desires by the natural
appetite that object which is suitable to itself ” (ST I, q. 80, a. 1, ad 3), what is suitable to the will is the intelligible good in general.The universal good is the aspect
under which the will desires whatever it seeks, but it is no more to be identified
with the universal subsistent Good in God than the befitting adequate object of
the intellect as universal being is to be confused with the being of God: as though
the metaphysician seeking to study being qua being were, by that fact and in
precision from grace, naturally seeking the beatific vision.
55 Once again, one notes texts such as Quaestiones de anima, a. 7, ad 10; and ST I, q.
75, a. 7, ad 1, remembering such texts of de Lubac, for example, as the fourth
chapter of The Mystery of the Supernatural (see note 7 above).

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rect in supposing that natural teleology in itself could be shoehorned into
or equated with a supernatural trajectory, it was precisely his instinct that
the theonomic character of nature needed to be preserved that led him
to attempt this defense in a manner that unwittingly falsifies nature itself.
This turning of nature into a vacuole fit only for supernatural beatitude
even apart from grace and Revelation paradoxically completed the ontological evacuation of nature to which de Lubac was in part responding.
Perhaps this is the clearest theological instance of “destroying the village
in order to save it”—but it still does not constitute a sufficient answer to
the negation of the theonomic character of natural law and, more widely,
of natural order. It also manifests a lack of that radical providentialist trust
in the specifically natural that demarcates the theological vision of St.
Thomas from those who are prone to assume that the natural in its own
right must be a zone without the divine governance and so needing to
be as theologically minimized as possible. That is, it manifests despair in
seeking to reachieve the theonomic character of natural order by draining the natural of its own distinctive finality and intelligibility. It is not
the first time that a physician unintentionally has communicated the
plague he nobly sought to resist.
The persistent refusal to see the limited but dignified fashion in which
not only all creation, but man specifically, is naturally ordered to God, is
explicable only within a context wherein it has already been decided as
an initial postulate that sublunary natural order has no efficacy or essential role within theological method. But all of creation is ordered ad Deo,
and man naturally desires God as Cause and Principle of finite nature—a
natural desire that is not by its essence formally a desire for supernatural
beatific vision. Rather it is a real but limited created dynamism toward
God as Cause of finite being, reflective of that spiritual dignity in man
that constitutes a potency of obedience for what God may bring forth
through his grace. Nonetheless, if one’s project is to cut short the very
possibility of rationalist misconstrual of nature as a separate and absolutely
autonomous jurisdiction; if one is wary of the distinct character of the
natural within the theological synthesis; and if one stands historically
downstream from the abandonment of St. Thomas’s doctrine of providence, then the hotwiring of nature to grace becomes all too alluring.
That a correct judgment of the relation of nature to God is required by
theology itself—such that error here is liable thoroughly and in multifarious ways to denature theology—may quickly appear of secondary
importance by comparison with safeguarding the pertinence of Revelation in an increasingly naturalist world. It is ironic that the very medicine
actually required for this latter purpose—the purpose of safeguarding the

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pertinence of Revelation from the irrelevance to which naturalism would
consign it—is itself principally a function of the truth regarding the relation of nature and grace.
One grants that at the moment of the composition of Surnaturel, it
must have seemed—for contingent yet pressing reasons—unlikely that
Thomism would prove up to the challenge posed by the cultural confluence of Catholic and secular tendencies promoting the autonomy of
nature and of human agency from God. In fact, insofar as elements of
Thomas’s synthesis persisted in riding the waves long after the strategic
rejections of divine providential governance of human agency and of
theistic metaphysics had occurred, these might appear as of merely residual importance.Worse, the distinction of nature and grace might then be
construed simply as formalizing the evacuation of God from creation: a
wall of demarcation excluding God from the world.
But the evisceration of the richness of created human nature guarantees an eviscerated theology. A small error in the beginning is a large one
in the end. And the loss of the theonomic character of natural order and
law in its own right and not merely by analogy of attribution with supernatural order is an error of decisive importance. Far from natural truth constituting a metaphysical Berlin Wall keeping man in, and God out, of man’s
world, such truth is by its own character essentially ordered toward God.
By its own character, that is, as naturally ordered toward God with all the
limits this suggests—that is, nature is essentially ordered toward God, but
is not of itself ordered toward supernatural beatitude. It is against these
natural limits that the sublimity of the supernatural becomes manifest.
The grandeur of man’s supernatural calling reveals the higher end and
acts of which human nature is capable with the assistance of grace, revealing these loftiest capacities and perfections of man so aided to himself.
Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor is wrong in picturing human natural
desire as essentially antagonistic to God in Christ, albeit this famous literary image is compelling as a depiction of sinful nature. But distinct from
supernatural charity is natural love, and Thomas rightly affirms that man
by natural love loves God above himself insofar as natural love—with
which man is created—is not perverse:
The good we receive from God is twofold, the good of nature, and the
good of grace. Now the fellowship of natural goods bestowed on us by
God is the foundation of natural love, in virtue of which not only man,
so long as his nature remains unimpaired, loves God above all things
and more than himself, but also every single creature, each in its own
way, that is either by an intellectual, or by a rational, or by an animal,

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or at least by a natural love, as stones do, for instance, and other things
bereft of knowledge, because each part naturally loves the common
good of the whole more than its own particular good.This is evidenced
by its operation, since the principal inclination of each part is towards
common action conducive to the good of the whole. It may also be
seen in civic virtues whereby sometimes the citizens suffer damage
even to their own property and persons for the sake of the common
good.Wherefore much more is this realized with regard to the friendship of charity which is based on the fellowship of the gifts of grace.56

Natural love is not perverse, it prefers God to self, and it is essentially inferior to supernatural charity.To cite St.Thomas again to this effect, he writes:
Accordingly, since God is the universal good, and under this good both
man and angel and all creatures are comprised because every creature
in regard to its entire being naturally belongs to God, it follows that
from natural love angel and man alike love God before themselves and
with greater love. Otherwise, if either of them loved self more than
God, it would follow that natural love would be perverse, and that it
would not be perfected but destroyed by charity.57

Elsewhere St.Thomas makes clear that the restoration of natural love
after sin requires grace:
in the state of integral nature man did not need the gift of grace added
to his natural endowments in order to love God above all things naturally, although he needed God’s help moving him to it; but in the state
56 ST II–II, q. 26, a. 3: “Respondeo dicendum quod a Deo duplex bonum accipere

possumus, scilicet bonum naturae, et bonum gratiae. Super communicatione autem
bonorum naturalium nobis a Deo facta fundatur amor naturalis, quo non solum
homo in suae integritate naturae super omnia diligit Deum et plus quam seipsum,
sed etiam quaelibet creatura suo modo, idest vel intellectuali vel rationali vel
animali, vel saltem naturali amore, sicut lapides et alia quae cognitione carent, quia
unaquaeque pars naturaliter plus amat commune bonum totius quam particulare
bonum proprium. Quod manifestatur ex opere, quaelibet enim pars habet inclinationem principalem ad actionem communem utilitati totius.Apparet etiam hoc in
politicis virtutibus, secundum quas cives pro bono communi et dispendia propriarum rerum et personarum interdum sustinent. Unde multo magis hoc verificatur
in amicitia caritatis, quae fundatur super communicatione donorum gratiae.”
57 ST I, q. 60, a. 5: “Quia igitur bonum universale est ipse Deus, et sub hoc bono
continetur etiam Angelus et homo et omnis creatura, quia omnis creatura naturaliter, secundum id quod est, Dei est; sequitur quod naturali dilectione etiam
Angelus et homo plus et principalius diligat Deum quam seipsum. Alioquin, si
naturaliter plus seipsum diligeret quam Deum, sequeretur quod naturalis dilectio
esset perversa; et quod non perficeretur per caritatem, sed destrueretur.”

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of corrupted nature, man needs, even for this, the help of grace healing
his nature.58

Yet the significant point here is that sin itself is defined as deprivation visà-vis the theonomic role of nature, and that restoration of the natural love
is only part—and the lesser part—of the effect of the redemption. Indeed,
paradoxically, the attainment of the natural end will require medicinal
grace, but not because it is itself supernatural, but because nature is itself
further ordered in grace from its creation and is thus harmed by the loss
of grace. For the restoration of natural integrity and rectitude forms part
of a loftier motion that rises past the merely natural proximate end to the
finis ultimus of supernatural beatitude. And thus—because to desire, know,
and love God as principle of all being is something quite different than to desire,
know, and love God as object of supernatural beatitude—Thomas writes that:
“[I]t must therefore be said that to love God as the principle of all being
pertains to natural love, but to love God as the object of beatitude
pertains to the gratuitous love in which merit consists.”59
Conclusion: The Protean Implications
If our aim is countering the loss of the normativity of nature as a theonomic principle, the first impulse of de Lubac—the prime resort to teleology—is condign, but this resort must be to genuinely natural teleology as
conditioning our reception of Revelation. For this natural conditioning,
like the preparation of Israel by the prophets, is part of the divine economy itself and not something alien or extrinsic to the divine governance.
Yet this in itself will not avail for so long as the realm of nature—and
especially the realm of human agency—is supposed to be a separate jurisdiction immunized and utterly independent from providential government. For the loss of natural order as a theonomic concept that transpires
upon the subtraction of human agency from divine order is an irreplaceable loss. Consequently, the greatest need of contemporary thought is to
rediscover the theonomic character of natural law, and more extendedly
of natural order as such—which will require a vigorous return to meta58 ST I–II, q. 109, a. 3:“Et ideo dicendum est quod homo in statu naturae integrae

non indigebat dono gratiae superadditae naturalibus bonis ad diligendum Deum
naturaliter super omnia; licet indigeret auxilio Dei ad hoc eum moventis. Sed in
statu naturae corruptae indiget homo etiam ad hoc auxilio gratiae naturam
sanantis.”
59 Quod. I, q. 4, a. 3, ad 1: “Ad primum ergo dicendum, quod diligere Deum prout
est principium totius esse, ad naturalem dilectionem pertinet; sed diligere Deum
prout est obiectum beatitudinis, est gratuitae dilectionis, in qua meritum consistit.”

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physics, natural theology, and ontology of nature. The natural character
of—and need for—metaphysics as sapiential science is thus exhibited.
Such a project is in all frankness a great and perhaps overmastering challenge for an age in which philosophers have preponderantly retreated to
logical and linguistic preoccupations remote from nature, whilst many
theologians drift in historicist or textual currents seemingly permanently
outside the orbit of reference to natural order or, alternately, dwell within
intricate dialectical fictions. The perhaps unintended radicalization of de
Lubac’s position itself by prominent and distinguished theological minds;60
60 One notes the work of David Schindler, who has at least on occasion suggested

that nature is objectively undefinable apart from grace. This is rather a different
proposition than to say that medicinal grace is needed—owing to the Fall—in
order to attain the proximate natural end that is indeed naturally knowable, or
even than the proposition that medicinal grace may be needed by some to
cognize that which is nonetheless objectively defined in precision from grace.
Cf. David Schindler, “Christology, Public Theology, and Thomism: de Lubac,
Balthasar, and Murray,” in The Future of Thomism, ed. Deal W. Hudson and Dennis
W. Moran (Notre Dame, IN: American Maritain Association, 1992), 253–54,
note 9.Yet one also notes this author’s arguments stressing the metaphysical principle of form with respect to the dangers of reductionism in genetic engineering, in which he strongly affirms the proportionate natural principles without
that objective reference to revelation that one would think necessary were it true
that nature is indefinable apart from grace. See his “A Response to the Joint
Statement ‘Production of Pluripotent Stem Cells by Oocyte Assisted Reprogramming,’ ” Communio 32 (2005). With respect to the radicalization of de
Lubac’s position, one also thinks of theologians in the East. For example, see the
work of John D. Zizioulas, whose bibliography includes two books and some
sixty articles published in a variety of languages. His main publication, L’Etre
ecclésial (Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1981), is a collection of six previously published
articles; the English edition, Being as Communion (London: Darton, Longmann
and Todd, 1985), is somewhat modified to include later materials. Zizioulas now
serves as an Orthodox bishop. In his theology, being and history outside of Christ
are so unintelligible that philosophy as a purely rational investigation seems capable of holding little of worth for the Christian believer. Paul McPartlan wrote a
thesis, The Eucharist Makes the Church: Henri de Lubac and John Zizioulas in
Dialogue (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1993), comparing Zizioulas’s theology of the
Church with that of Henri de Lubac, noting a certain degree of convergence.
Zizioulas argues that Latin theology as manifest in the teaching of popes, councils, and bishops, fails to appreciate the radically relational and existential character of creation renewed in Christ, causing consequent deformations with respect
to participation in the Eucharist and understanding of the mystery of the
Church.The similarity of such reasoning with the radical view that the creature
is a subsistent relation—something properly predicable of the Divine Persons of
the Trinity alone, but which certain eminent scholars assert with respect to the
created human person—is doctrinally remarkable. See, for example, the work of
W. Norris Clarke, Person and Being (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press,1993),

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the widespread despair of natural truth regarding God, the soul, and the
moral life, proceeding from the distinct sources of nihilism, fideism, and
rationalism; the substitution of ungrounded and relativized dialectics,
historicist reflections, textualism, or logicism for metaphysics, natural teleology, and ontology of nature; and the danger (to which the Church has
responded in Dominus Iesus) that the relativized dialectical context may go
so far as to infect the concrete affirmation of the mysteries of faith itself;
the radical miscasting of the doctrine of natural law outside of its proper
theistic context; and the more or less ideologized movements resulting
from the vacuum of teaching: All this constitutes an enormous welter of
danger and confusion.
It is tempting to outline the most conspicuous errors and challenges—
proceeding from the evacuation of natural norms within theology—within
each of the component disciplines of theology and philosophy itself, as well
as within the more general life of the Church and of society. Such an
undertaking would constitute a project to itself, and doubtless one worthy
of the effort in detailing the disorientations consequent on the theological
retreat from nature. Such a list might include: a causal role in engendering
fideist, rationalist, and nihilist impulses; excessive autonomism in ethics
(and, implicitly, in philosophic anthropology); the divorce of the practical
from the speculative to which it is naturally wedded (for naturally speaking, all knowing has a speculative component, with practical knowing
adding only a relation to action and so a distinct end);61 the loss of unified
teleology and of the material continuity of natural proximate end with the
supernatural end (God as principle and cause of nature as distinct from
as alike his essay “Person, Being, and St. Thomas” in Communio 19 (1992); and
Kenneth Schmitz, “The First Principle of Personal Becoming,” Review of Metaphysics 47 (1994), together with my criticism, Steven Long, “Personal Receptivity and Act: A Thomistic Critique,” The Thomist 61 (1997); and his answer
“Created Receptivity,” 339–72, published with my brief “Reply,” 373–76, alongside in The Thomist 61 (1997).
61 One notes the following illustrative lines about this from De Veritate, q. 2, a. 8,
which also track Aquinas’s more forthright definitions of the speculative and
practical elsewhere—but the formulation here is arresting: “But the knowledge
that an artist has about something that can be made is of two kinds: speculative
and practical. He has speculative or theoretical knowledge when he knows the
intimate nature of a work but does not have the intention of applying the principles to the production of the work. His knowledge is practical, properly speaking, when by his intention he ordains the principles of the work to operation as
an end. In this way, as Avicenna says, medicine is divided into theoretical and
practical. It is clear that the practical knowledge of an artist follows his speculative knowledge, since it is made practical by applying the speculative to a work. But when the practical is absent, the speculative remains.” [Emphasis added.]

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God as revealing himself in supernatural beatitude); the denial that God is
necessary to the doctrine of natural law; a certain desacramentalization of
nature; the epistemic radicalization of de Lubac’s position represented by
the claim that nature is utterly unknowable in precision from Revelation;62
and the kindred claim that the treatise De Deo uno is not presupposed by
and necessary to the treatise De Deo trino.
This last thesis—that the treatise on the One God is not presupposed
by and necessary to the treatise on the Triune God—is embraced by many
genuinely Catholic scholars. Nonetheless it truly represents theology
walking off into thin air: as though the Revelation of God in Christ does
not invite and presuppose a natural doctrine of God as a condition for the
intelligibility of the truth that Christ is God.When we affirm that Christ
is God and man, the obvious question is, Quid sit Deus? The effort either
to resituate this query, or—at the worst—to suppress it, seems not to be a
theological effort, albeit it might be construed as theoplastic: yet another sign
of the loss of nature as a normative principle within theology. That no
theologian would wish to stop with natural theology, or to lose the sense
of its continuity with the mysteries of faith within the providential
synthesis of Revelation and grace, is perfectly reasonable. But that one
should wish to subtract the natural ordering of creation to God from the
inception of theology, or to treat the doctrine of God this implies as
though it were not methodically presupposed by and necessary to revealed
theology, indicates misalignment in one’s understanding of nature and
grace, and perhaps also with respect to the humble epistemic roots of
man’s contact with the real.The first creation is presupposed by and taken
up within the contemplation of the new creation in grace: It is not a separate dead residue from which revealed theology can happily detach itself
without losing both divine and human nature.To use a hallowed but valid
formula (De Veritate II, q. 14, a. 9, ad 8):“grace presupposes nature.”
One might also include in the list of consequences of the loss of natural order as a theonomic principle the loss of regard for principled
conformity to the moral teaching of the Church as necessary for ecclesial
communion and participation in the sacramental life of the Church. For
the moral law dissociate from eternal law is construed as a zone of absolute
personal autonomy, and nature so dissociate no longer yields connatural
certitudes but merely more or less provisional “points of view.” Here the
evacuation of nature and the dissociation of natural from eternal law keep
pace, pari passu, yielding a conclusion so antinomian as to leave nothing
standing of the Catholic sense of the moral life. Even the most crass and
62 Cf. note 60 above.

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destructive type of autonomy often is defended as compatible with
communion with the Church (witness those for whom no degree of
dissent—even regarding the wrongful homicide of millions of innocent
unborn children—is sufficient to warrant exclusion from the sacraments).
Yet the supernatural unity of the Church is not the unity of mere wellwishing and social fellowship, it is a supernatural society, participation in
whose source and summit—the eucharistic sacrifice—presupposes
conformity to the teaching of the Church and places one within an order
of governance (and that not merely canonic, but substantive). Indifference
to the Church’s doctrine of faith and morals displayed by persons and
groups who then elevate and honor contingent issues of social prudence
and party politics to the same level argues both a grotesque lack of assimilation to the supernatural life in Christ and a serious confusion between
natural social assimilation to a secular group and abandonment to God
and his Church.
Yet doubtless the path to transcend these doctrinal difficulties and
errors, so as to achieve an organic development of Catholic life and
doctrine, is illumined by the instruction of papal encyclicals such as Pope
John Paul II’s Fides et Ratio and Veritatis Splendor. This same path is also
highlighted by works of retrieving scholarship such as Dr. Feingold has
given us in The Natural Desire to See God According to St.Thomas Aquinas
and His Interpreters. It is profoundly highlighted in the work of de Lubac
himself, the whole purpose of whose controversial account of nature and
grace was to affirm the theonomic character of natural order albeit at the
cost of a certain confusedly volatile conflation of supernatural and natural dynamisms.The judgment that this path is erroneous because it denies
the distinct manner in which created natural order is theonomic does
nothing whatsoever to negate the ineluctability of the prior judgment:
the judgment that the theonomic character of natural order needs
strongly and effectively to be reaffirmed. In this sense, the most important element of the teleology of de Lubac’s own account truly is achieved
(to be sure, in a radically distinct way) in the doctrine of St. Thomas
Aquinas and of the Thomistic commentatorial tradition that de Lubac
critically misapprehended.
It is of course true that the medicinal grace that restores natural
integrity also to some degree enables the assent of faith to compensate for
the absence of the knowledge of natural truths.Yet clearly what may be
known in service to theological contemplation, ought to be known.The
tendencies that elsewise may be expected to hold sway and fill the vacuum
in the realm of thought, culture, and sensibility are either unhelpful or
positively harmful to the task of explicating and promoting Christian life.

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It is perhaps the final salute that a Thomist owes to the efforts of de
Lubac on this score to see to it that the chief effect of emending his error
about the natural desire for God is not merely to throw us back to the
status quo ante. For that status quo ante already was deeply marred and
impaired by the grievous attrition of the tradition’s emphasis upon nature
as a normative principle in theology—a theonomic principle—and the consequent harboring in germinus of the praxeological obsessions and autonomist tendencies that became the chief divagations of the postconciliar
era. Rather—if truth is holographic—the task is to see to it that the
shards of right reason are reunited within a rich and realistic metaphysic
translucent to the further ordering of grace and Revelation, and at the
service of sacra doctrina. Such a treatment—clarifying the manner in
which human nature with divine aid may achieve supernatural friendship
and beatific fruition, and bringing all creation into the service and under
the dominion of Christ—is a fitting response to an error whose doubtless genuine and profound theological motivation it more truly fathoms
N&V
and fulfills.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 5, No. 1 (2007): 185–198

185

Lonergan on the Natural Desire
in the Light of Feingold
G UY M ANSINI , OSB
Saint Meinrad Seminary
Saint Meinrad, Indiana

T HIS ESSAY will measure Bernard Lonergan’s understanding of the
natural desire to see God asserted by St.Thomas against that provided by
Lawrence Feingold.1 Feingold does not refer to Lonergan. Fr. Lonergan’s
treatment of the natural desire has been important for many North
American theologians, however.2 Moreover, it has recently received
renewed and detailed attention from Michael Stebbins.3
Feingold finds the structure of the issues surrounding the natural
desire to see God in three questions, where the answer to the first governs
the answer to the second, and the answer to the second that of the third.
First, is the desire to see God innate or elicited? Second, is it a conditional
or an unconditional desire? Third, is it probative of the possibility of
seeing God, and even of the actual offer by God of that end, or not?

1 Lawrence Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God According to St.Thomas Aquinas

and His Interpreters (Rome: Apollinare Studi, 2001).
2 See principally (1) Bernard Lonergan, SJ, De Ente Supernaturali. Supplementum

schematicum, ed. Frederick E. Crowe (Toronto: Regis College, 1973), thesis IV,
scholion I, “De naturali desiderio videndi Deum per essentiam,” 35–42, which
first appeared in 1946 and without knowledge of the Surnaturel; (2) in the appendix to the De ente, note to section 83, 84–85, added 1951–52; (3) idem, “The
Natural Desire to See God,” in Collection, ed. Frederick E. Crowe (New York:
Herder, 1967), 84–95, first published in 1949; and (4) two short book reviews,
the first, idem, review of The Eternal Quest by William R. O’Connor, Theological
Studies 9 (1948): 125–27; and the second, idem, review of Man’s Last End by
Joseph Buckley, Theological Studies 10 (1949): 578–80.
3 J. Michael Stebbins, The Divine Initiative: Grace,World-Order, and Human Freedom
in the Early Writings of Bernard Lonergan (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1995), 142–82.

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Answers are related as follows. If the desire is innate, an inclination of the
will or the nature itself, a preconscious inclining and tending to quidditative
knowledge of God that is prior to knowledge, then the desire is also unconditional and absolute.4 Further, if the desire is unconditional, an absolute
inclination of the nature itself, then the vision of God will certainly be
possible and more, it will be the actual destiny to which humanity is
ordered, for it will be debitum naturae.5
On the other hand, if the desire is not innate but elicited, a conscious
desire of the will that follows upon the knowledge that God exists, then
although naturally following from the innate desire of intellect to know the
causes and principles of reality, it will, apart from faith, be an imperfect
desire, as for an object beyond the proportion of the human way of knowing, and so a conditional desire, as for something impossible to attain by our
own active powers. Further, if the desire is elicited and conditional, it can
at most indicate the fittingness that man see God, but not demonstrate its
possibility and much less its actuality as the destiny God ordains for us.
Let us turn to Lonergan, and begin with the third question, the probative value of the desire to see God.A very quick reading of his texts would
tell us that the natural desire to see God is not probative of the possibility
of vision, much less of its actual offer.6 As for the second question, we
would gather that the fulfillment of the desire is conditioned on freely
given supernatural helps of grace and the supernatural virtues, not to speak
of the light of glory.7 Further, the potency for fulfillment of the desire is
obediential, and so by definition is conditioned on the divine will to
elevate man to the supernatural order.8 Should we expect to read in Lonergan and in conformity with Feingold’s analysis that therefore the desire to
see God is an elicited and imperfect desire, however, we will be disappointed. Rather, according to Lonergan, the desire is very explicitly not an
elicited desire but an innate desire, an innate tendency, and one moreover
not of the will, but of the intellect.9 It is the desire or inclination or
4 Feingold, Natural Desire, 23.
5 Ibid., 25.
6 Lonergan, De Ente, 40, no. 78.
7 Lonergan, “Natural Desire,” 86.
8 Lonergan, De Ente, 36, nos. 69–70; 38–38, no. 75.
9 Stebbins, Divine Initiative, 151–52: For Lonergan, the “natural” of the “natural

desire,” in addition to being set off from the supernatural, “conveys the notion of
something that ‘is opposed not to the supernatural but to the elicited: that is, it is
not an act elicited in an appetitive potency but is the very order of the potency to
act, the natural tendency of the potency itself.’ ” Stebbins here translates De Ente,
35, no. 67.According to Feingold, by contrast, the “natural” of the “natural desire”
is to be set off not from the elicited (and not only from the supernatural), but from

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tendency of the intellect just as such.10 “There exists a natural desire to
understand. . . .This natural desire extends to understanding God.”11
So for the second and third questions, we must have read Lonergan
too rapidly. Let us go more slowly. For the third question, no, the natural
desire for the vision of God is not probative of the possibility of vision,
but more, the desire cannot even be known unless we know the actual
ordination of man to vision by faith.12 The conclusion that there is a
natural desire of the intellect to see God, Lonergan says, “is theological,”
and “can be thought only because one has the faith, knows the fact of the
beatific vision, and so must accept its possibility.”13 According to Feingold’s Thomas, to the contrary, the desire is known because elicited, and
so available to our consciousness of our own acts, as soon as we know the
existence of the First Cause.14
To be sure, Lonergan reports Summa theologiae I, question 12, article 8,
according to which St. Thomas teaches us that, knowing the existence of
God, we want naturally to know what he is. But this conscious and elicited
desire to know the essence of God is for Lonergan but a “corollary” of what
the “natural desire” really refers to, namely, the inclination of intellect itself.15
the deliberated; it is a desire elicited necessarily, immediately, and without discursive
reasoning upon the knowledge that God exists, as opposed to an elicited desire that
does follow upon a process of reasoning; see Feingold, Natural Desire, chs. 2 and 3,
esp. 63, and 319–21 (Sylvester of Ferrara).
10 Lonergan, De Ente, 36, nos. 68–69; 37, no. 71: the natural desire of the intellect is
the “tendentia intellectus in quaerendum et sciendum,” but “antecedit haec tendentia omnem explicitam quaestionem”; ibid., 37, no. 72:“exsistit tendentia intellectus
humani in quidditatem Dei cognoscendam, in ipsum Deum intelligendum.”
11 Lonergan, “Natural Desire,” 87. It was Durandus of St. Pourçain who first characterized the desire to see God as an innate tendency of the intellect; see Feingold, Natural Desire, 147, 321, and see 634–35, note 8, for moderns who embrace
this position. Remember, for Scotus the natural desire to see God is an innate
desire of the will, not the intellect. See Lonergan’s review of O’Connor, 125,
praising him for making the desire a desire of intellect, not of will.
12 Lonergan, De Ente, 42, no. 83:“Naturale desiderium visionis cognoscitur postquam
theologus factum visionis cognovit et inquantum eius convenientiam explicare
conatur.” In speaking of the desire, St. Thomas speaks as a theologian, Lonergan
says, De Ente, 40–41, nos. 79–80, and this holds for the argument from reason in
ST I, q. 12, a. 1, c.
13 Lonergan, “Natural Desire,” 87.
14 See Feingold, Natural Desire, 109, and 143, where he points out that the appeal
to the natural desire loses its apologetic value if, as an innate desire, it cannot be
known independently of revelation.
15 Lonergan here reads as does Henri de Lubac and Domingo Soto, taking the
elicited desire as a sign of an innate desire to see God, a reading Feingold, Natural
Desire, 335–36, shows wanting.

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He writes: “the [conscious] question quid sit Deus, expresses a desire that
arises naturally as soon as one knows the existence of God [and so, is an
elicited desire].” And he continues: “This is but a corollary of the twofold
affirmation that the desire to understand is natural [innate] and transcendental.”16 Evidently, we do not need revelation to know the existence of the
elicited desire that “arises naturally” once we know the existence of God.
No, but we do need revelation to know the existence of the innate desire
of intellect, the tendency of intellect itself, unto the vision of God.Why does
not the elicited desire, the conscious and wakeful desire to know what God
is once we recognize the existence of a first cause, tell us all by itself of the
innate desire of the intellect? Why does not the elicited desire—itself something “natural”—tell us of the inclination of nature to the vision of God?
Presumably, because whatever the natural desire of the intellect may be, it is
something constitutive of the intellect. Innate desires are, as it were, structural. And therefore the innate desire to see God must be of something
possible, else the very nature of intellect is self-contradictory and badly
constructed. So, unless we know that quidditative knowledge of God is
possible, we do not know whether there really is an innate natural tendency
toward it constitutive of the intellect. And we do not know it is possible
apart from Revelation.There can be no desire of nature, innate, for something impossible where the author of natures is the infinitely wise and good
God. Human natural and innate appetite, although it does not proceed from
human knowledge yet proceeds from some knowledge, namely God’s.17
Only with Revelation do we know the fact of our supernatural end,
however, and so the real possibility of seeing God; and so only with Revelation could we know that the natural desire, the innate tendency, of the
intellect were to such an object. Apart from Revelation, Lonergan says, the
philosopher must be content with “paradox,” not knowing what the (“naturally” arising) elicited desire really indicates about our innate natural
desire.18 We can have the elicited desire, whether or not the thing is possible, and just as Feingold points out, following Suárez, but we could not have
the innate desire unless the thing were possible.19

16 Lonergan, “Natural Desire,” 86.
17 See the text in Feingold, Natural Desire, 641.
18 See similarly Francisco de Toledo, in Feingold, Natural Desire, 343.
19 Ibid., 436. This elicited desire is conditional, not perfect or efficacious; perfect

elicited desire depends on knowing the object possible, and this knowledge here
depends on Revelation.The elicited and imperfect desire manifests, not an innate
desire for vision, but an innate desire for knowledge, for truth—in short, for the
universal object of the faculty, ibid., 338–440.

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As to the second question, the fulfillment of the desire remains conditional, but that does not mean for Lonergan that the desire itself is conditional, and certainly not in the way an elicited desire for an object
impossible of attainment is conditional because dependent on a knowledge of the conditions of fulfillment. Lonergan grants that the elicited
desire, as expressed by some such words as “I would like to know what
God is,” and as spoken prior to faith, is not efficacious, for he holds that
the meritorious and efficacious desire to see God is an act of supernatural charity or hope.20 Still, the innate desire, the preconscious tendency
of the intellect is absolute. “There is an inclination of the human intellect to know the quiddity of God.”21
The fulfillment is conditioned on grace and glory, but the desire is not
conditioned. It is a natural desire; and natural desires, natural tendencies, are
“on” under any condition in which the nature exists, and so are “unconditioned,” absolute. They are structural, built-in to the edifice as long as it
stands. In other words, the natural desire of the power cannot be conditioned
as is a velleity or some imperfect act of will, where the desire is elicited. As
a natural desire, a tendency of the faculty, it is unconditional in the sense that
it really and truly is a tendency—full, complete, perfect as such, and in its
own order—to quidditative knowledge of God. Innate appetite is always
absolute.22 Even so, Lonergan thinks it need not be fulfilled.
Feingold shows that (1) natural desire, or inclination, or tendency, and
(2) the principles by which to attain the end, and (3) ordination to the
end all belong together.23 If we are not ordered to vision except by grace,
and if the principles of attainment are grace and the theological virtues,
then there is no natural desire for vision, no innate inclination to it. So
also inclination, finality, and ordination all belong together.24
For St.Thomas, vision exceeds natural inclination, innate inclination, as
witness the many texts that Feingold assembles.25 There is therefore no
natural inclination of the intellect to vision.26 There can be a natural inclination only to what is proportionate, and the natural inclination of the
intellect to its proportionate object works through naturally given first
principles; therefore, if the intellect is to be inclined to a supernatural end,
20 Lonergan, “Natural Desire,” 90.
21 Lonergan, De Ente, 37, no. 72: “exsistit tendentia intellectus humani in quiddi-

tatem Dei cognoscendam.”
22 Feingold, Natural Desire, 563.
23 Ibid., 305, apropos of Sylvester of Ferrara.
24 Ibid., 524.
25 Ibid., 299–300.
26 Ibid., 357–58.

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it must be enhanced by a supernatural gift, another set of first principles,
namely, the articles of faith. So Summa theologiae I–II, question 62, article 3:
The theological virtues order man to supernatural beatitude in the way
that man is ordered to the end connatural to him through natural inclination.This happens in two respects, however: first, according to reason
or intellect, insofar as it contains the first universal principles known to
us by the natural light of the intellect, from which reason sets forth in
both the speculative and the practical orders; second, by the rectitude
of the will naturally tending to the good of reason.
But these two are not sufficient for the order of supernatural beatitude, according to 1 Corinthians 2:9,“Eye has not seen nor ear heard nor
has it entered into the heart of man what God has prepared for those
who love him.” Whence it is necessary that in both respects something
be added to man supernaturally so that he be ordered to a supernatural
end. And first, indeed, as to the intellect, certain supernatural principles
are added to man, which are received by divine light, and these are the
articles of faith [credibilia] about which is faith. Second, however, the will
is ordered to that end both as to the motion of intention, tending to it as
to what is possible to attain, which pertains to hope, and as to a kind of
spiritual union, through which it is in some way transformed unto that
end, which occurs through charity. For the appetite of each and every
thing is naturally moved and tends unto the end connatural to it, and this
motion proceeds from some conformity of the thing to its end.27

Just as de Lubac makes an innate desire of the will do the job for which
St.Thomas says charity or habitual grace are necessary, giving man a real
inclination to a supernatural end, so Lonergan has an innate desire of
intellect doing the job for which St.Thomas says the articles of faith are
necessary, inclining the intellect to the vision of God.28
This problem with the innate and so absolute character of the desire
can be seen from another point of view. For notwithstanding its innate
character, Lonergan characterizes the potency for its fulfillment, as has
been indicated, as obediential. So, what St.Thomas keeps together, namely
(1) a natural inclination, (2) of a natural passive potency, (3) the fulfillment
of which is debitum, Lonergan breaks up: He wants a natural inclination,
but in an obediential potency, whose fulfillment is not owed.29 To make
the potency obediential fits with his denying that the desire constitutes an
27 See Feingold’s use of this text in the important concluding section, ibid., 641–43,

and also 305 and 532.
28 Ibid., 549–50. Since it functions as does charity, the very status of the desire as

“natural” thus comes into question, as Feingold points out in this section of his
book; see esp. 538, 548–49.
29 Ibid., 207, 229, 234, 241, 647–48.

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“exigence” for fulfillment, but not with saying the desire is innate.30 It is
Scotus and de Lubac, of course, who want an inclination to vision; but
also, more congruently with Thomas’s usage, they want the potency to be
characterized, not as obediential, or only as obediential, but as natural.31
For Lonergan, the natural desire is an innate natural desire for a supernatural state of affairs, a natural appetite for a supernatural fulfillment.32
Like Scotus, Lonergan asserts a non-exigent inclination of intellect to all
intelligible objects, not just those it has the natural active power to make
inform the possible intellect.33 Lonergan, holding to a natural and innate
inclination to vision, and holding also that man’s nature is defined by
God on the supposition of his being called to a supernatural end (about
which, see below), is therefore much closer to Henri de Lubac than to
St.Thomas as Feingold gives us to understand him.
If Feingold is correct, therefore, Lonergan’s position is misleading as an
expression of the thought of St.Thomas, and the remark Lonergan made
apropos of William O’Connor’s work could be made about Lonergan’s
work:“I do not think that the author has evaluated adequately the significance of Aquinas’s views on natural desire.”34
Lonergan’s position is difficult to evaluate, however, and this is because
of two ambiguities that push it in the direction of what Feingold would
recognize as a correct exposition of St.Thomas.
First, in the discussion of a desire that he explicitly denies is elicited,
he sometimes nevertheless slides quite unmistakably into a discussion of
what can be nothing but an elicited desire to see God. So, he writes:“The
natural desire is to know what God is.That natural desire neither includes
nor excludes the Blessed Trinity. It supposes knowledge that God is.”35
Therefore, it is an elicited desire. And just here, Lonergan invokes the
solution of Sylvester of Ferrara to remove the paradox of having a natural desire for a supernatural state of affairs: The naturally elicited desire
has for its object to know the essence of God and nothing else; it is not the
desire for this knowledge as constituting our happiness; that desire is the
30 The desire, Lonergan says, indicates a “capacity,” not an “exigence”; see his review

of Buckley, Man’s Last End, 580.
31 Feingold, Natural Desire, 242, points out that for Scotus a natural potency with a

natural inclination for a perfection can also be obediential, if only God can supply
the perfection; and see his concluding remarks on this matter, ibid., 280–81.
32 See Feingold’s exposition of the position of Jansenius and Arnauld, ibid., 460.
33 Ibid., 228–29.
34 Lonergan, review of O’Connor, The Eternal Quest, 126.
35 Lonergan, “Natural Desire,” 90, emphasis added.

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desire of vision as supernaturally beatifying, and that elicited (and perfect)
desire depends on revelation and grace.36 It is just this distinction for
which Lonergan praises O’Connor.37
Second, there is another ambiguity about exactly what Lonergan refers
to in speaking of “natural desire.” If the desire is not elicited, it is innate.
But is it really an innate desire for the vision of God as the perfective act
of the intellect, as for Scotus the desire is the innate pondus of the will
toward vision as constituting beatitude? Lonergan speaks of the natural
desire to see God—which seems determinate enough—as in fact something rather more indeterminate. So, he tells us, the desire and its fulfillment have the same material object, but not the same formal object:
“[T]hus, the object of the natural desire is transcendental; but the object
of the fulfilling vision is supernatural.”38 Again, the knowledge of God is
presented, not as a determinate object to which there is an innate inclination, but as simply included within the scope of an intellect whose
adequate object is the transcendental ens.39 Writing in this context, the
elicited desire to know God is just a “corollary” of a natural and transcendental desire to understand whatever there is.40 Again, the natural
and innate desire to understand is said to “extend” to understanding
God.41 In this way, we seem very close indeed to Feingold’s presentation,
and perhaps it is useful to recall Lonergan’s remark to the effect that the
natural desire to see God is rather ill-named.42 Indeed it is if, as innate, it
is really the natural and transcendental desire “to understand.”
It is understandable that one so concentrated on the natural and transcendental desire to understand, so alive to the virtualities of the pure and
unrestricted desire to know in understanding ourselves, God, and the
world—it is understandable, I say, that such a one would find there a
central element in understanding St.Thomas’s assertion of a natural desire
to see God.43 In this regard, Fr. Lonergan cannot be faulted.
36 See Feingold, Natural Desire, 310, 313–14.
37 Lonergan, review of O’Connor, The Eternal Quest, 125.
38 Lonergan, “Natural Desire,” 90.
39 Ibid., 86. See also idem, De Ente, 84–85, where the natural and innate desire to

know “extends” to the quiddity of God.
40 Lonergan, “Natural Desire,” 86.
41 Ibid., 87; also idem, De Ente, 84–85, where the natural and innate desire to know

“extends” to the quiddity of God.
42 Lonergan, De Ente, 36, no. 68.
43 In this respect, what Lonergan expressly says about the natural desire to see God

can be found in quite another form in Insight: A Study of Human Understanding
(New York: Philosophical Library, 1957, 1970), ch. 19, “General Transcendent
Knowledge.”

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Notwithstanding the invitation latent in Lonergan’s text to distinguish the
natural desire to know the truth, the natural desire whence naturally arises
the elicited desire to know God once we know he exists, from a determinately characterized desire to know the essence of God, there remains
a last matter which is not, it would seem, amenable to such a negotiation.
To be sure, this is the issue of “pure nature.” Lonergan thinks its possibility a “marginal theorem.” It is a marginal theorem if it cannot be strictly
demonstrated from the gratuity of grace.44 Feingold, evidently, adheres to
the view that it is to be demonstrated from the gratuity of grace and so is
not marginal at all. For the gratuity of grace implies that there can be no
innate and natural desire for vision;45 it is just such a desire, however, that
implies the impossibility of a state of pure nature.46 So, the impossibility
of such a desire, following from the gratuity of grace, means that a state of
pure nature is possible. For an innate appetite, Feingold reminds us, is
determined to one end; if the end is natural, there is no innate desire for
vision, and if there is a desire for vision, there is no innate desire for a natural end.47 No innate desire for vision means innate desire is for a natural
end, and this implies the possibility of “pure nature.”
Lonergan inclines to the possibility of a world and a humanity without
grace, but thinks the affirmation of such possibility unimportant.This view,
that the affirmation of the possibility of a purely natural world is marginal
to Catholic dogmatics, he thinks follows from what he calls the priority of
world order to individual natures.As it were, the controlling element of the
divine ordering wisdom is the order of all things in the world and their
ordination to him. Granted the determination of this order and how things
are ordered to him, there follows the determination of the specific natures
of the things of the world, together with the natural desires that constitute
these natures.48 Nature, and so natural desire, is a function of world order.
In fact, world order is supernatural, and we are destined to see God as the
perfecting beatitude of our natures.Therefore, we are given the nature we
have, together with its natural desire, in view of this end. Lonergan does not
say in so many words that the natural desire to see God is a function of our
44 Lonergan, “Natural Desire,” 94.
45 Feingold, Natural Desire, 668.
46 Ibid., 666.
47 Ibid., 662; and see 620–25.
48 Lonergan, “Natural Desire,” 88, 93.The question of the priority of world order

arises also for Lonergan from the fact that while the natural law is naturally
knowable, it cannot be kept without grace; ibid., 90. Note that the distinction
between world order and finite natures does not occur in the De Ente of 1946.

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being called to a supernatural end, of the supernatural character of the
existing “world order.” But if it means anything in the context of discussing
the natural desire to see God, his emphasis on the priority of world order
to nature means that because we are ordered to a supernatural end, therefore God has built into us the desire of nature, the innate and natural
tendency (absolute, in fact) to see God. This is exactly like de Lubac, it
seems: I am what I am only because God has called me to himself.49
Moreover, it seems to follow for Lonergan that some “concrete possibility” relative to this, that, or the other nature and its end is determinable
only according as a world order is “concretely” determined, which is to
say “complete down to its least historical detail.”50 In the absence of our
being able to think out a world order to that degree of concreteness—
which in fact is possible only for the divine mind—we cannot say with
certainty whether man as we know him could exist puris in naturalibus.
If this is the upshot, and I say “if ” because Lonergan moves very fast here
and his text is very compressed, I can think of four problems. First, it seems
to imply that not every created intellect, just as such, would have the “transcendental” scope our intellects do in fact have. For the natural desire to see
God is strictly a function for Lonergan of that transcendental scope. This
would mean that it is really possible to have an intellect whose adequate
object is not being, an intellect that would not include the First Cause in
its scope, an intellect that would not naturally ask “What is God?” upon the
knowledge that God exists. For recall, the conscious question manifests the
natural desire; if there is no natural desire to see God, then there is no manifestation of it. I do not believe this could be countenanced by one for
whom “the pure notion of being is the detached, disinterested, unrestricted
desire to know,” the idea of being “the content of an act of understanding
that grasps everything about everything,” the primary component of which
is “identical with the unrestricted act” itself of understanding everything
about everything, and for whom “it is one and the same thing to understand what being is and to understand what God is.” 51
Second, and following on this first problem, we are led by Lonergan’s
argument to determine a quite “concrete possibility” on the supposition that
a world without a supernatural ordination is possible, namely the possibility
of an intellect whose scope does not extend to wondering what God is.This
is not the certain knowledge that man might exist puris in naturalibus, which
knowledge as certain Lonergan forbids us. But it is the certain knowledge
49 Henri de Lubac, The Mystery of the Supernatural, trans. Rosemary Sheed (New

York: Crossroad, 1967, 1998), 64, 77–81.
50 Lonergan, “Natural Desire,” 93.
51 Lonergan, Insight, 642, 644, 646, 658.

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that some intellectual or rational creature might so exist, and it seems to be
a knowledge such as he forbids us to have, that is, a certain knowledge of a
nature in the absence of the knowledge of the concrete world order,
complete down to its last atom, in which such an intellect would exist.
Third, and following on the last, the conception of such an intellect is
in fact impossible. If the questions for judgment and understanding—Is
it? What is it?—really do define the intellect and tell us what it is, what
its scope is, what its end is, then an intellect for which there could be a
reality of which we would not ask “What is it?” is an impossibility and
an impossibility most certainly according to Fr. Lonergan’s lights.52
These considerations by no means imply that Lonergan’s point about
the priority of world order to the exact shapes of natural kinds in the
world is to be gainsaid. We may well grant that the divine practical
wisdom, as John Wright puts it, is “first concerned with the divine goodness itself: in which of the many possible ways open to Him was it to be
shared.”53 But the above considerations appeal to the sort of, shall we say,
transcendental analysis of intellect that Lonergan was himself so adept at.
In any possible world, intellect, under whatever specifying determinations, must be such as to have as its adequate object just what Lonergan
says it does. From this it will necessarily follow that, knowing God exists,
such persons will naturally want to know what he is. In other words, the
“principal parts of the universe,” those intellectual or rational creatures to
whom the divine goodness is to be manifested and in which manifestation the end of the universe is to be found, have a sort of density of
generic nature according to which some things must be true of them in
any possible arrangement of creation.This in fact Lonergan seems almost
to envisage. He says that for the argument from a finite nature and the
necessarily finite character of its proportionate end to be sound, we
should have to assume “that the parts in question [men and angels] determine the whole, that finite natures are prior to and determine world
order.”54 The argument here so far is to the effect that, while the generic
nature of created mind need not be taken to determine everything about
world order, it does indeed determine some things about world order. For
instance, the existence of rational creatures would seem to require that
non-rational creatures serve them.55 For St. Thomas, and on Feingold’s
52 Cf. Feingold, Natural Desire, 576; and for Lonergan, the immediately preceding note.
53 John H.Wright, SJ, The Order of the Universe in the Theology of St.Thomas (Rome:

Gregorian University Press, 1957), 191–92, note 2.This dissertation was directed
by Lonergan.
54 Lonergan, “Natural Desire,” 93.
55 Wright, Order, 156ff., 193.

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showing, because intellectual and rational natures must naturally desire to
know God, once his existence is known, these natures also indicate the
supreme and most beautiful fittingness that the order of the world be a
supernatural one, the order of this world.56
Fourth and last, prior to idea of world order there is the idea of world
itself, that is, creation.That whatever is created, moreover, cannot have an
exigence for or be owed what is proper to the uncreated would seem to
be a principle for whatever world order there is. Therefore, there can be
no innate desire for the vision of God that belongs to any created nature
in any order of things. Is whatever glitter such an argument has a function
of vicious abstraction? “Concrete possibility” is not to be asserted from a
simple consideration of nature and its exigencies, Lonergan writes. Feingold agrees and notes that every consideration of natures is “abstract.”The
“concrete” belongs to individuals in history.57 Even so, the concrete and
the historical are functions of the material and the accidental, and do not
determine innate natural desires, which are part of the “abstract” nature
itself.58 Therefore, they cannot determine what is debitum naturae or destroy
the possibility of a beatitude proportionate to the nature.
I am concerned in pointing out this fourth problem, however, to put
things in terms of creation itself.The possibility of a purely natural order,
inscribed in the idea of nature, is inscribed also in the idea of creation,
and rests squarely on the adequacy of the distinction between uncreated
and created reality, or, to put it otherwise, on the assertion of the transcendence of God.
As Feingold abundantly shows, what is innately and naturally desired is
owed.This thought can be developed.What is owed, we might say, belongs
to the thing, and what belongs to a thing is a sort of part of the thing.59
Therefore, to say that God’s own understanding of himself or his own
happiness is innately desired by a creature, is tantamount to saying that it
is a part of the created order, just as such. It is to say, as it were, that God
can create some world order of which he is a part.Which is to say that just
by the act of creation, just by the act of distinguishing what is not him
from himself, he makes himself a part of what is not him. The distinguishing is not therefore successful; and he is both a part of creation
(because owed to the desire of the creature) and not a part of it (because
56 Feingold, Natural Desire, 607.
57 Ibid., 545.
58 Ibid., 545–46.
59 Cf. St. Thomas, In librum beati Dionysii de Divinis Nominibus expositio, IV, lect. 9,

no. 406 (Marietti). So to speak, God would be owing to human nature as are
hands, parts of the nature.

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transcendent Creator).The act of creation seems as it were to self-destruct.
But no. What is owing to a created nature is of the earth, earthly, and
cannot be anything proper to heaven, however characterized—whether
the divine love or the divine understanding or the divine happiness, all of
which things are the divine nature itself.Therefore, the very transcendence
of God, or otherwise expressed, the very adequacy of the distinction
between creature and Creator, requires that vision be gratuitous, and
therefore an innate natural desire for vision be impossible, and therefore
that whatever created order there be comprise a natural beatitude proportionate to rational and intellectual creatures.
This point can be put in a different way. Suppose with Plotinus one
thinks the world and the human soul necessarily proceed from God, the
One-Good, as it were, by necessity of nature.60 Then, whatever one may
say about the transcendence and unknowability and unnameability of
God, it will be true to say also and paradoxically that there is a sort of
continuity of nature between God and the world, such that the soul’s
ascent to God and its union with God will be just as “natural” as its
procession from God.Therefore, if the soul proceeds from the One-Good
by necessity of nature, so its end will be by nature—which is to say, by its
origin and by the content it brings from that origin—union with God.
For Plotinus, after all, the higher part of the soul remains in some fashion
always with the Divine Mind.61 In the very establishment of what is not
the One, there is established both the desire and the power of return.62
To the contrary, “it must be said that, since the creature proceeds from
God in diversity of nature, God is outside the order of the whole of
creation, nor is it from his nature that he has a relation to creatures. For he
60 There is still justice in this formulation, even if the world follows from what the

One is only because the One has first (eternally) willed himself to be what he is,
the undiminished source of the world. See John Rist, Plotinus:The Road to Reality
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 82–83; and earlier, Jean Trouillard,
La Procession Plotinienne (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1955), 76–80. An
especially good treatment of the freedom and necessity of Plotinian procession is
A. Hilary Armstrong’s “Two Views of Freedom:A Christian Objection in Plotinus,
EnneadsVI.8 [39] 7, 11–15?” in Studia Patristica, vol. 17, pt. 1 (New York: Pergamon
Press, 1982), 397–406.
61 A. Hilary Armstrong, “Salvation, Plotinian and Christian,” Downside Review 75
(1957): 132–34. More, that the soul know and desire God supposes an already
established likeness to God; see René Arnou, Le Désir de Dieu dans la philosophie
de Plotin (Rome: Gregorian University Press, 1921, 1967), 148–53. Note in St.
Thomas, ST I–II, q. 62, a. 3, c, quoted above, where just such a likeness, correlative with ordination unto God, is likewise posited, but is supernatural, and see
Feingold, Natural Desire, 650–53.
62 Armstrong,” Salvation,” 128.

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does not produce creatures from necessity of his nature, but by intellect and
will.”63 So, St.Thomas further concludes, there is no real relation of God
to the creature. Furthermore and from the other side, while this diversity
of nature does not of course exclude a real relation of dependence of the
creature on God, it does mean that what belongs to the divine nature as
such cannot belong to the creature, and that the creature can have no natural operation that naturally possesses it of what belongs to God.
The gratuity of creation, then, a part of the Christian adjustment of
neo-Platonism, just of itself implies also the distinct and so double gratuity of sharing the beatitude of God. The One is hardly to be conceived
apart from what (willingly) flows from him, but the doctrine of creation
requires us to think the possibility that the world might not exist.64 The
liberality of the One is such as of itself to bring to pass the overflow of
being and the world, and of itself to install into what overflows the capacity to return. It must be (not by chance, but neither by coercion) that
God create, and likewise it must be that we return. Neither of these
necessities, however, survives the first article of the creed.65
So, if gratuity of grace shows the possibility of pure nature as Feingold
argues, and if it as tied to the transcendence of God and the very meaning and gratuity of creation as I have tried briefly to indicate, it is no
marginal theorem.
Writing in 1949 on the question of man’s end and the question of
pure nature, Lonergan said:
If the history of the matter is becoming clearer, the speculative issues
are so complex that a generous lapse of time will have to be granted, I
suspect, before all concealed suppositions have been detected and a
sound judgment can be passed upon the relative merits of the medieval
and the Renaissance positions.66

A very just prediction of Fr. Lonergan, very justly fulfilled by Lawrence
N&V
Feingold.

63 ST I, q. 28, a. 1, ad 3.
64 Robert Sokolowski, The God of Faith and Reason (Notre Dame, IN: University of

Notre Dame Press, 1982), 31–33.
65 Trouillard expressly likens the neo-Platonist view of the relation of the natural

and the supernatural to that of Blondel (and so of de Lubac); see his “Procession
néoplatonicienne et création judeo-chrétienne,” in Néoplatonisme: mélanges offerts
à Jean Trouillard, Cahiers de Fontenay 19–22 (Fontenay-aux-Roses, 1981), 13–15.
66 Lonergan, review of Buckley, Man’s Last End, 579.

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199

Book Reviews
Faith, Reason and the Existence of God by Denys Turner (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2004), 292 pp.
F OR T HOMAS AQUINAS, the limitations of ancient philosophy—limitations to its views on, say, the eternity of the world, the state and activity of the intellectual soul apart from the body, the nature of divine life
and God’s relationship to the created order, and the account of human
happiness—are most evident in the greatest achievements of pagan
philosophy.To see the limits clearly, we must see the successes. Although
he does not speak in detail about the role of ancient philosophy in
Aquinas’s writings, Denys Turner, in his book Faith, Reason and the Existence of God, aims to explicate and defend Aquinas’s account of natural
reason, particularly his assertion that natural reason can reach the existence of God.
Not one to shy away from controversy,Turner wants to defend not just
Aquinas but the precise teaching of Vatican I on the demonstrability of the
existence of God by natural reason. In the opening,Turner apologizes for
what he calls the “intentionally narrow” focus of the book (ix), but the
book is in fact remarkably, at times frustratingly, diffuse in its treatment of
topics.The breadth of treatment is at once a vice and virtue of the book.
It makes it difficult at times to discern the continuing thread in the argument, but it also allows the reader to make connections between the
underlying issue of faith and reason and a number of other discussions, for
example, concerning language in contemporary continental thought and
the nature of musical expression. Turner’s book thus offers more than
simply a persuasive case for the significance of proofs for the existence of
God; it points us in the direction of a rehabilitation of the role of philosophy in Aquinas’s life and thought that contemporary theology, as Turner
amply demonstrates, is in danger of forgetting.
From the beginning,Turner wants to be clear about precisely what the
teaching of Vatican I is and what it is not.The Church does not claim that
we currently possess a valid proof from natural reason for the existence of

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God. It does not advocate on behalf of a particular proof. (Turner himself
does not offer a fully worked out proof, although he devotes a good bit of
time to clearing a path for such a proof.) One might wonder: If we cannot
point to a precise proof, what is the point of the teaching? On Turner’s
reading, the teaching itself is a deliverance of faith, not reason:The possibility of such a proof is not to be denied on the grounds of faith.Turner’s
most succinct way of putting the issue is this. The proof is something of
which “reason must be capable of in its terms if it is to serve its purpose
within faith’s self-exploration as quaerens intellectum” (5).
What is striking and instructive about Turner’s approach is the way it
meets the opponents of natural theology on their own terms.There is not
even the slightest suggestion in Turner that defending natural theology
entails abandoning or bracketing faith or adopting a neutral standpoint of
pure reason. Of course, that description of the practice of natural theology
owes as much to the postmedieval conception of natural theology as it does
to the Barthian critique of rational proof. At various points in the book,
Turner is preoccupied with the Barthian critique and with the recent revival
of neo-Barthianism in the popular theological movement known as Radical Orthodoxy.With the Barthian objection that natural theology involves
adopting the standpoint of creation in utter independence from our election in Christ, Turner teases out the key issue—whether the approach to
God through natural reason must in every case entail a normalization of the
relation between creature and Creator.Turner argues that, in the case of the
approach of Aquinas at least, it does not.
Aquinas’s ways to God underscore the poverty of human reason in the
face of the divine. But human reason is, as Plato puts it in the Symposium,
the offspring not just of poverty, but of plenty.Thus, the claim, universally
affirmed by Aquinas, that we do not know what God is does not entail
that we know no truths about God or that we have no way of removing
falsehoods from our understanding of God. One of the most significant
philosophical and theological consequences of the proofs is that they
make palpable the distance that separates our intellect from the divine.
Under the influence of Derrida, a certain trend in contemporary theology celebrates otherness and detects idolatry in any attempt to reach God
by reason. One of the unusual features of Turner’s defense of natural theology is the way it engages this trend.Turner dismisses as nonsense Derrida’s
statement that “every other is totally other”—a claim that would undercut not just metaphysics but ethics as well, unless ethics is to be founded
on “blank anonymity.”Yet Turner’s discussion here is not just critical or
simply negative. He finds grounds for engagement with continental
thought on the topic of music, a topic he takes up as a basis for an analy-

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sis of absence and presence in Eucharistic theology. Music signifies the
“body in the condition of ecstasy” (115) and is symbolic of the limits of
reason.The sadness that typically attends great music,Turner thinks, arises
from our experience in it of “what one has caught some glimpse of but
cannot yet possess” (116). In this and other contexts, reason itself points to
an otherness that it cannot know. Here Turner identifies both the key
insight concerning the limits of reason and the potential self-destruction
of reason in the post-Nietzschean epoch. On this view, there is nothing to
guarantee that beyond reason there is anything but a “vacuous, empty
nothingness, an endless prolongation of postponements” (119). The only
way out of this nihilism is for reason to be able to “name the otherness,”
to justify the existence of God as that to which it points (see 119).
The way natural reason points beyond itself and the way we are to
distinguish the pointing toward God in philosophy from the pointing
done in theology are important issues for Turner’s project. Setting aside
as a later accretion to the reading of Thomas the contrast between the
formal and material objects of knowledge, Turner holds that Aquinas’s
way of distinguishing the philosophical from the theological knowledge
of God is to speak, in Aristotelian terms, of the same object less and more
distinctively known. Seen from afar, we might discern only that what is
approaching is a human being; as we come closer, we realize that the
human being is Peter.Turner here touches upon, but does not develop, a
pervasive principle of method in Aquinas, both in philosophy and in
theology: dialectical engagement of received opinions. How is that
germane to the debate over natural theology?
From Aristotle,Aquinas inherits a conception of dialectic as providing a
path to the principles, a sorting through of received opinions and salient
examples from ordinary experience in order to reach insights about the
nature of things. The dialectical method involves, in part, the appraisal of
the strengths and weaknesses, the truth and falsity, of various opinions.
Without being naïvely irenic, the approach involves crediting, wherever
possible, one’s interlocutors with a partial apprehension of truth. Aquinas,
of course, stresses that the philosophers reached these truths about God
only after much effort and with an admixture of error. But Aquinas is characteristically modest in his assessment both of the achievement and of the
limitations or failures.“Admixture of error” does not mean utterly riddled
with falsehood. Indeed, the critics of natural theology replace Aquinas’s
sense of degree and scale with an all-or-nothing dichotomy more characteristic of later Christian thinkers such as Pascal or Kierkegaard, who, it is
important to add, were reacting to a very different and much more audacious conception of the power and scope of natural reason.

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Here is another way of putting this point. Without a commendation
or affirmation of the achievements of pagan philosophy, it is hard to see
how theology could have the status, which Aquinas attributes to it, of
architectonic science. The notion of an architectonic science or art that
rules over and directs other, subordinate sciences and arts is not a Christian invention. It comes from Aristotle. If there is no real learning, let
alone wisdom in ancient philosophy, then theology’s architectonic status
is earned by default.As theologian,Aquinas maintains a positive, ongoing
dialogue with reason and philosophy precisely because, as Turner nicely
puts it, “reason, in the exercise of its own native powers, in some way
‘replicates’ or ‘anticipates’ this shape of faith” (75).
Thomas calls the truths proffered by faith but available to reason preambles of the faith.These truths can be found in both the speculative and the
practical orders. In the former, the preambles inform us about the existence
of God and other truths immediately derived from God’s existence as
unmoved mover. In the latter, the natural law partially overlaps with the
Decalogue and gives human beings access to the starting points of the ethical life. Since Aquinas says explicitly that sin has a greater effect on the will
than on the intellect and he holds that sin has not made us completely
oblivious to the principles of the practical order, it would seem odd for him
to hold that we are utterly deprived of access through natural reason to the
great truths of the speculative order, such as God’s existence. Of course, the
latter truth is not a self-evident precept as are the founding principles of
the natural law. But the seeds of the knowledge of the existence of God
are, according to Aquinas, latent within ordinary experience, in our desire
for happiness and in our apprehension of order in the universe.
Of course, the comparison of the speculative and practical orders raises
an important question about natural knowledge of God, namely, whether
the knowledge is efficacious for a good life or for salvation. Sometimes the
objection to natural theology is that such knowledge is impossible apart
from faith; or that, even if such knowledge is available, it is not efficacious
for salvation; or that such knowledge does not reach the trinity of persons.
Aquinas would certainly concur with the last two, and, for the case of most
human beings, with the first as well. But this does not mean that, where it
is held as a valid argument, a proof for the existence of God provides no
knowledge. Indeed, on some versions of the objection, it would seem that
the Jews did not, and do not have, knowledge of God. Of course,Aquinas’s
account of the preambles reposes in part on the claim of a partial overlap
between what the philosophers were able to achieve and what God
revealed to the Jews in Exodus, concerning both our naming of God and
our conduct toward God and others in the commandments.The extreme

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anti natural theology position, which holds that there is no knowledge of
God apart from faith in Christ and the Trinity, would for Aquinas create
difficulties in our understanding of the Jewish faith.
That is one way of stating the problem for faith of the critique of
natural reason. Another way, one explicitly articulated by Turner, is this.
If we stress the apophatic to the exclusion of the cataphatic, silence to
speech, one wonders how we can give “due weight . . . [to] the positive
revelation of God in Jesus Christ” (50).The Word is speech, after all, not
silence. In contemporary theology, Turner worries, the “delicately
constructed tension between the apophatic and the cataphatic within
both reason and faith has been readjusted into a polarity between the
negative possibilities of reason and the positive possibilities of faith” (75).
Turner’s defense of reason on behalf, or from the perspective, of faith
does not mean that reason is simply instrumentalized. Indeed, that is one
of the dangers with the hasty and wholesale repudiation of natural theology; nothing is left of reason but to play an instrumental role.Turner objects
to the growing popularity in theology of a “generalized skeptical negativity concerning reason, combined with a theological positivism concerning
faith” (75). Reason loses the rich, ample significance that it had in antiquity and takes on a strikingly modern sense. In his concluding comments,
Turner captures Aquinas’s sense of reason both as partly constitutive of the
human and as crucial for faith: “The believer who . . . refuses to stand on
the ground of the atheists’ denials and to challenge them on shared rules of
contest concedes the territory of reason, and so of the human, at a price
which in the end will be paid in the quality of faith itself ” (262).
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Thomas Hibbs
Baylor University
Waco,Texas

Reason, Community and Religious Tradition: Anselm’s Argument
and the Friars by Scott Matthews (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing,
2001), ix + 238 pp.
Simon Tugwell nicely defined the difference between the early Franciscan and Dominican ideals. Dominicans sought to recover the apostolic life;
Franciscans the apostolic life. The Friars Preachers emphasized apostolic
mission; the Friars Minor, personal renewal.
Scott Matthews explores the difference in how the Friars approach
Anselm’s argument for the existence of God in the Proslogion. He begins
with Anselm’s monastic context. Anselm writes for monks and for his
female patrons, his purpose private and devotional, not evangelistic.

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Summarizing the Monologion and Proslogion chapter by chapter, Matthews
emphasizes a focus not on definition, but on the divine ineffability. The
reader is to recognize, as Anselm says, that “I was made for the purpose of
seeing you, and I have not yet been able to do that for which I was made.”
When Gaunilo translates the negative “that than which nothing greater” to
“a being greater than everything,” he exactly misses the point: Anselm
emphasizes that we do not know God. His aim is not philosophical proof,
but compunctio cordis, an upward spiral of knowledge and love. Following
Anton Pegis, Matthews emphasizes the role of participation, hierarchy, and
presence—rather than definition—in Anselm’s argument.
Matthews next reviews the history that separates Anselm from the
friars. The rise of wandering religious movements challenged Christendom to establish a greater unity ad intra: New schools provided literary
tools for centralized government, and the friars gave papal access to the
provinces. Ad extra, Christendom was challenged to show its vitality visà-vis Judaism and Islam, and above all vis-à-vis the Philosophy those religions had assimilated. These challenges fostered a theology “judicial
rather than contemplative, professional rather than aristocratic” (31). No
longer a text to be pondered in one’s cell, Anselm’s argument became a
weapon for debate.Thus Alexander Nequam used it to prove to the Jews
that God could become man, and William of Auxerre, teacher of the first
great scholastic friars, Alexander of Hales, and Hugh of St. Cher used it
to prove the necessity of faith for true philosophy.
The four central chapters of the book consider the transposition of
Anselm’s argument, first by the early Franciscan and Dominican schools,
and then by their greatest flowers, Bonaventure and Thomas. Summarizing manuscripts from Oxford, Paris, Bologna, and Assisi, Matthews details
the development of the two schools.
Again, he puts the Franciscan school in the context of challenges from
within and from without: the question of studies in the poverello’s order,
and the question of beggars in the schools. In Alexander of Hales, Odo
Rigaud, three disciples of Odo, and the Summa Minorum (fratris Alexandri), Matthews finds a consistent theology. St. Francis rediscovered the
primacy of conversion from sensual love to the love of Christ. For the
early Franciscan theologians, this conversion expressed itself intellectually
in the turn from contemplating creatures to contemplating the ground of
their existence. Anselm’s argument served to show that true thought
necessarily sees through creatures to their most perfect exemplar—only
the fool says there is no God. Reread in a new context, Anselm’s argument now showed both that theology is a part of Franciscan conversion
and that Franciscan conversion is necessary for theology.

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While Francis’s friars cultivated an experience of God’s presence,
Dominic’s battled heresy, emphasizing authority over interiority. Among
the early Dominicans, then, the first emphasis was on the authority of
Scripture, as with Hugh of St. Cher. Their first Summa, Roland of
Cremona’s, arose in the missionary battles of Toulouse. By the time of
Albert the Great, says Matthews, reason was clearly set out, not as a tool
within faith, but as a means of discourse with the infidel. Albert focused
on solid proofs of God’s existence and his unity. Anselm is significant
precisely for his absence:Though aware of his argument, the Dominicans
replaced this interior way with concrete arguments from causality.
The two orders toyed with various approaches, but it became clear that
there were distinctly Franciscan and Dominican ways of doing theology.
Before turning to the central characters of his book, Matthews devotes
half a chapter to the vicissitudes of Oxford. Here, Robert Grosseteste,
friend of the Franciscans, filled out their theory of illumination with a
greater emphasis on the senses, while the Dominican Richard Fishacre
gave greater space to an illuminationist reading of Anselm. In contrasting
the order of causality and the order of knowledge, the Franciscan Richard
Rufus sounds distinctly like a Dominican. But—and this seems to be the
point—Rufus’s confreres drove him from Oxford in shame. Experimentation with opposing viewpoints only proved the deepening commitments
of each school.
Early Franciscan thought culminates in Bonaventure’s exemplarism.
Matthews summarizes parts of Bonaventure’s Sentences commentary, the
De Trinitate, and the Itinerarium. Because God causes everything that is,
nothing is understood properly apart from him. Moreover, because God
causes knowledge itself, the mind can find him without venturing beyond
itself.Thus for Bonaventure, only willful malice, never ignorance, prevents
one from knowing God.Again,Anselm’s argument shows that all thought
is false and illogical unless it acknowledges God.The argument need not
pass as a proof; it shows that God’s existence is self-evident, beyond proof.
For Bonaventure, only Franciscan conversion reveals the existence and
presence of God.Theological argument is a way of ascent, not proof.
In contrast, for the great Dominican,Thomas Aquinas, theology works
not to edify, but to defend the faith. Matthews reviews Thomas’s commentary on Boethius’s De Trinitate and the De ente et essentia, but his primary
focus is on the Summa contra Gentiles.Thomas’s primary goal, he says, is to
establish an account of God’s unity that is totally acceptable to his primary
opponents, the Muslims, so that he can teach them the truth of the Trinity. The mission of preaching to the unconverted requires equal access to
the sources of knowledge; if only the converted can understand, then there

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is no reason to preach. Thus Thomas uses an Aristotelian proof for God’s
existence and discards the Franciscan reading of Anselm. In so doing,
Thomas has no interest in the historical Anselm and his monastic world.
His concern is to find a more accessible argument for preaching—and to
reject the Franciscan priority of the will over the intellect. Matthews shows
Thomas’s affinity with his confreres Peter of Tarentaise, Annibald d’Annibald, and the obscure and totally unconnected Bombolognous of Bologna.
In his final substantive chapter, Matthews reviews later intellectual
developments within the two orders.The Dominicans Robert Kilwardby,
Thomas Sutton, Robert D’Orford, and Bernard of Trilla continued to
discuss and debate the principles of Thomas and Dominican spirituality.
Ulrich of Strasbourg is particularly interesting for his German variations
on the Dominican theme—far from the missions and from scholastic
debate. Among the Friars Minor, John Peckham and Matthew of Acquasparta developed Bonaventure’s argument in response to Thomist critiques.
Richard of Middleton,William of Ware, and Duns Scotus, however, gradually shifted the Franciscan argument away from Bonaventure’s vulnerable illuminationism toward a greater emphasis on the will—a significant
move because it shows their commitment not to Bonaventure’s theology
but to a spirituality of conversion. Matthews draws two conclusions. First,
Thomas and Bonaventure are not the last word in Dominican and Franciscan theology. Second, the theological schools of thought that developed
within the two orders reflect not parochialism, but the fundamental religious interests of the two communities.
Matthews calls his book Reason, Community and Religious Tradition:
Anselm’s Argument and the Friars, and the title reveals the two levels on
which the book operates. On one level, the book is an essay in historical
theology: Anselm’s argument and the friars. On another level, it argues
that reason is necessarily contextualized in community and religious
tradition—a critique of modernity’s penchant for objectivity. This
critique seems to be Matthews’s primary concern.
To Matthews, the transformation of Anselm’s devotional argument in
the scholastic world of the friars, and the further opposition between
Franciscan and Dominican, reveals the importance of philosophical
context. The supposed rational objectivity of Anselm’s argument breaks
down under the weight of different presuppositions. Thus reason can
never be purely objective.
This argument addresses an important concern for students of scholastic theology. Lovers of Anselm know the significance of his monastic
context.They will appreciate Matthews’s critique of modern anthologies.
Those who read Bonaventure and Thomas appreciate certain irreducible

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contradictions: among others, the primacy of will versus intellect and
illumination versus knowledge of the senses. Matthews helps to clarify
these contradictions and their roots in religious commitments.
But Matthews does not seem to have theologians in mind. His opening remarks are about the philosophy of religion. Locke looms large in
the first few pages. In the wake of the wars of religion, says Matthews, the
seventeenth century strove to establish the “common core of religions”
through the pure objectivity of reason.“It is assumed [among Enlightenment thinkers] that rationality is everywhere the same, and that the issues
discussed by philosophers are ‘eternal questions’ ”; philosophy is “the
disinterested pursuit of truth separable from context.” (Aeterni Patris, he
says, falls into this camp.) Set in this context by its opening and concluding remarks, Matthews’s book is not about medieval theology at all. It is
rather a case study,“to illustrate the ways in which reason constructs itself
in the course of its operations.” Matthews believes he has proved that
“enquiry does not begin by removing difference and particularity, but
proceeds upon and creates it.” The goal of philosophy, he shows, is not
only rational consensus but also a greater understanding of difference.
Such an argument betrays, perhaps, the fundamental irony of postmodernism. Matthews is at pains to disprove the rational objectivity of
the Enlightenment, yet his enquiry retains the Enlightenment’s critical
distance. He contradicts Enlightenment hope, but wholeheartedly accepts
its sense of detached superiority.
The problem, perhaps, consists in putting ultimate questions at the service of secondary ones. Matthews’s historical erudition can illuminate vital
questions of conversion, knowledge, and God. Theologians of the last
century have gained much from a deeper appreciation of the fundamental
assumptions of great thinkers—das Ungesagte, says Josef Pieper. Seeing these
presuppositions helps us to appreciate the full value of a theology, and even
of contradicting theologies, like those of Bonaventure and Thomas.
The modern project, however, has often reduced ultimate questions to
historical curiosities, putting the master at the servant’s service. Thus
Matthews’s introduction and conclusion strive not to understand the
truth of things, but to prove reason’s inability to transcend commitments.
Significantly, this reversal clouds his full appreciation of the historical.
Arguing that religious commitments are prior to rational inquiry,
Matthews sides with the Franciscans, but relativizes their search for the
true God. He correctly shows the missionary impulse of the Dominicans,
but his eagerness to set them against the Franciscans neglects their
contemplative piety. Bernard Gui’s official Legenda remembers Thomas,
the great theologian of the missions, not for his missionary zeal, but for

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his prayer and simple charity. Fra Angelico shows his founder lost in
prayer beneath the cross.The preachers were first of all pious friars.
And so perhaps we best return to Tugwell’s distinction between the apostolic life and the apostolic life, a distinction that recognizes unity in difference—unity of friars caught up in the love of Christ. Only at the service
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of this fundamental commitment does history truly come to life.
Eric M. Johnston
The Catholic University of America
Washington, DC

Sexual Ethics:The Meaning and Foundations of Sexual Morality
by Aurel Kolnai, translated and edited by Francis Dunlop (Aldershot, UK:
Ashgate Publishing, 2005), xviii + 316 pp.
I N RECENT YEARS some theologians have promoted the image of the
exile as a model of Christian life.The image is meant to convey that the
Christian has no home save in Christ.This aspect of the image is wonderful, biblical, and true. Less positively, the image would have us separate
ourselves from earthly loyalties, perhaps even to contemn the world, but
certainly to nourish low expectations of the world. The world and its
secular polities are only the Bible’s “principalities,” and the order and
forms of life offered there are little better than thralldom. Defenders of
the Christian-as-exile idea believe the Church is better served by this
than the older (but not really old) idea of the Christian of national loyalties who has made accommodations with a particular ordering of secular
life.The personal story of Kolnai is a refutation of this claim.
Aurel Kolnai, later Aurel Thomas Kolnai upon his conversion to Catholicism, was an exile much of his life. Born Aurel Stein (1900–73) to a banking family of liberal Jews, Kolnai, a truly cosmopolitan man and eccentric
of the first order, fled Europe in his late thirties to live in poverty for the
rest of his life, landing occasional academic grants and university positions.
After living in America and Canada, he settled in England, a country he
loved. There he remained for the rest of his life teaching as an adjunct at
Bedford College, one of the colleges of the University of London.
Kolnai was not just brilliant, he was probably one of the greatest
Catholic minds of the last century. Any reader of his Sexual Ethics will
agree with this statement. Readers should not fear that a book on sexual
ethics written seventy-odd years ago will be laughably naïve. Kolnai lived
in the pluralistic Austro-Hungarian Empire before and after its cataclysmic
end in World War I. His book has philosophical explorations not merely
of marriage but a host of perversions and sexual pathologies.True, there is

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no mention of gay marriage nor had abortion yet been woven into European sex lives; but otherwise the sexual landscape is little different now
than when Kolnai wrote. Found in the book are fascinating analyses of
fetish, prostitution, masochism, homosexuality, and other perversions of
sex values.Yet why has the Church been deprived of the ideas of this book
for more than seventy years? As a personalist belonging to the school of
Scheler, Kolnai’s book ought to have earned a readership because of the
huge interest in John Paul II’s work. But it is only now, some thirty years
after his death, that Kolnai’s works are being edited and published: For the
first time Kolnai is gaining the readership he deserved all along. I suggest
that his living an impoverished exile not only forced constant disruptions
in his work,1 but robbed him of a stable national academic community
that could claim his work for itself. It is quite easy to be an intellectual
whose books are read when one has produced graduate students who
enter the academy and when one is able to build a network of colleagues
who ensure your books are published and promoted.And thank goodness
this is true! If the Church needs ideas then she also needs a stable secular
order with its academies and economic production and distribution
networks to disseminate those ideas.
The Church has not been well served by Kolnai’s exile. Let us rejoice,
however, that now his contributions can start to be felt. Enormous praise
must be given to Francis Dunlop who has been tireless in editing and translating Kolnai’s largest works.The Church must also be grateful to intellectuals who have no especial connection with her. Thinkers like David
Wiggins, Roger Scruton, and Bernard Williams, doyens of the English
philosophical world, have all supported or expressed great admiration for
Kolnai’s work. It is easy to see why despite the unfashionable quality of his
ideas. There is an “ethical precariousness” to sex, says Kolnai. Every civilization recognizes that there is an inherent tendency in sex toward evil, and
this because sexual pleasure destroys personal values. Sex is a depersonalizing power (49). Hence Kolnai’s comment, “the idea that the ‘infamous’
forms of sex should be treated as ‘imperfect’ forms of an ideally perfected
and ennobled form of Eros, is utterly mistaken” (90). Persons are spiritual
bearers of intrinsic value and will.As each person has intrinsic value so each
person is separate one from another, and the structure of value reality is a
protection of this distinctive distance.
However, whilst the intentionality of sexual pleasure, a topic handily
ignored by those who would valorize sex, is always an intending of the
1 Kolnai’s magnum opus, a work on phenomenological ethics, was delivered in

manuscript form to the German publisher around the time he fled Europe and
was probably destroyed in a bombing raid.The manuscript is lost at any rate.

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other sex, it is also an abandonment of the persons involved. Sex is an abandonment of the person because in orgasm the person becomes “all sex,”
and every sex act is structurally directed to orgasm. Stepping back into
human appetite is also removing oneself from the moral order, and John
Paul II’s later reflection on the strange intermingling of sex and homicide
is here structurally announced with great phenomenological precision.The
morally problematic center of sexual pleasure is not only that it opens and
then closes off access to the other but that there is a diminishment of the
self as well as the self is absorbed into the “matter” of sex.This “matter” is
voluptuousness, and its antipersonalist feature is its subjection of the person
to the homogeneity of vital bodiliness (45 & 65).Voluptuousness trivializes
the person:There is no engagement with a person but merely the use of a
person as an instrument of “diversion” (44).
Those familiar with Kolnai’s seminal essays in political theory from the
late 1940s will recognize the theme of privilege. The person is a site of
privilege ever threatened in sex by a tendency of appetite toward collectivism. Announced here are the lineaments of John Paul the Great’s
shocking claim in Evangelium Vitae (no. 20) that the sexual politics of
contemporary liberal democracy is a “form of totalitarianism,”
However, sex is also a good for “conjugal love is already anticipated in
all sexual love” (131).The intentionality of sexual pleasure might be inherently problematic but it is subtended by the intentionality of sexual love,
which aims at an overcoming of its own voluptuousness. Sexual love
imposes a limit on itself, for it has a peculiar devotional structure “radically
exalting” the beloved over others (131).That is, sexual love is selective and
privilege generating. There is thus a continuity—albeit problematic—
between sexual love and conjugal love. Moreover, voluptuousness interiorly ordered to orgasm is also interiorly ordered to the affirmation of
persons: persons created by sex. Marriage is the form of life that does
“justice to both nature and the person” (92). Marriage transforms the
human devotion of sexual love into “a principled conception of the partner as an ‘equal’ possessor of value and will” (123). Thus sex inside
marriage is taken up into a form of life that privileges persons: spouses and
children. If sexual pleasure is morally precarious because of its depersonalizing power marriage fosters the “more real presence” of persons (125).
Kolnai was not a moral theologian nor even a Thomist in any strict
sense. His work is a largely phenomenological reflection on sexuality and
so in a language of public reason.To Kolnai’s mind, the language we use
to describe the moral world closely tracks the natural order, or what he
liked to call “ordinary moral consciousness.”What might strike some as a
philosophical populism was, for Kolnai, an anchor for an exile and all his

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cosmopolitan credentials and many fluent languages (he wrote philosophy
in Hungarian, German, French, Spanish, and English!) never sundered his
conviction that a broad moral consensus existed; one that had to be
protected from ideological perversion.
Kolnai must, of course, be read for his intrinsic worth but it should be
obvious by now that his Sexual Ethics is essential reading alongside Wojtyla’s
work on the same subject. I have touched upon only a few of the riches of
this book. Even with the themes addressed here, I have not conveyed the
subtleties of the analyses nor their thoroughness. (The book’s 300 pages do
not convey just how long the book is:The typeface is very small.) There is
every reason to expect that this translation of Kolnai’s brilliant 1930 book
will help return the school of Scheler to some prominence in Catholic
ethical reflection.And perhaps there are grounds for a deeper hope. Could
a claim made in Roger Scruton’s preface to the text yet come true? Scruton says something rather remarkable. He speculates that had Kolnai’s
work been common currency in humanities departments around the time
of the Kinsey Report that document would have been rejected for the
obvious nonsense it is. Given the pernicious consequences that report
helped generate in American life we must hope that Kolnai may yet have
decisive influence. It is very frustrating that the book is so expensive,
making it impossible for classroom use! Still, this book should be read by
every serious Catholic intellectual.The Church and her mission would be
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well served were this to happen.
G. J. McAleer
Loyola College in Maryland
Baltimore, Maryland

The Nuptial Mystery by Angelo Cardinal Scola, translated by Michelle
K. Borras (Grand Rapids, MI:William B. Eerdmans, 2005), xi + 405 pp.
T HE ENCYCLICAL of Pope Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est has something in common with Angelo Cardinal Scola’s book, The Nuptial Mystery.
They both draw on the pioneering work of John Paul II, who was in turn
inspired by Vatican Council II (especially, Gaudium et Spes) to illuminate
human, especially spousal, love as a path to divine love and the fulfillment
of the commandment to love.The encyclical emphasizes the importance
of incarnating love in all aspects of the Church’s charitable activity. Scola
proposes the nuptial mystery of love, sexual difference, and procreation as
the analogatum princeps of all reality, both ascending and descending, and a
legitimate “key to the intellectus fidei of revelation” (393). It provides, in his
view, a basis for the renewal of philosophical and theological studies in

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seminaries (345), as well as a new, much needed perspective in systematic
theology. Such a bold claim alone from a papabile, currently patriarch of
Venice, merits a careful reading of this book.
Like the future Pope Benedict XVI, Scola collaborated in the founding
of the journal Communio, in the English edition of which several chapters
of this book originally appeared. He was educated in the Venegono seminary, where he came under the influence of Luigi Giussani, founder of the
ecclesial movement Communion and Liberation. Scola’s work is stamped
with the emphasis on foundations and experience that mark the Venegono
school of theology. His subsequent career combined pastoral work with
two periods teaching at the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage
and Family in Rome, becoming president in the 1990s. His most formative work flowed from this teaching. Scola’s background as a teacher, in
fact, dictates the style of The Nuptial Mystery. Several chapters were originally given as lectures or papers at conferences.
“Fundamental human experiences” are for Scola the inescapable ground
for exploring the nuptial mystery, which includes the inseparable and intertwining factors of sexual difference, love (a relation to the other as gift), and
fruitfulness. The dual unity of man and woman constitutes the starting
point and also the nuptial mystery’s horizontal dimension. Analogy allows
one to pass from the horizontal to the vertical dimension reaching ultimately to God himself in the Trinity. From this starting point the nuptial
mystery can find new depths in the Christian mysteries of Jesus Christ, the
Church, and the sacraments.Why this new articulation now? The culture,
from rejecting Humanae Vitae and the perennial doctrine of the inseparability of the unitive and procreative dimensions of conjugal intercourse, has
progressed to endorsing a form of androgyny that brings about a veritable
“anthropological mutation.” Scola posits that a return to the fundamental
human experience of marriage and family, which contains within itself the
original structure of being, can reinstate reasoned argument on the human
being and at the same time show how nuptiality is a constitutive part of
God’s plan revealed in Scripture.
Scola presents his argument in four parts with the first given to the dual
unity of man and woman and the meaning of sexual difference. The
second fleshes out the nuptial mystery from a theological perspective, and
the third looks at its implications in family and society.With the accent on
the word “mystery,” section four considers sacramental theology in light
of the nuptial mystery. The three chapters devoted to fatherhood and
motherhood in relation to God the Father, Christ as Bridegroom of the
Church, and the Holy Spirit as the “principle of nuptiality,” are particularly rich in new insights on both consecrated celibacy and the sacrament

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of marriage.The seven articles included in the appendices are by no means
marginal. In fact it is here in numbers 4 and 7 that Scola proposes that all
that has gone before constitutes a new perspective for systematic theology.
From the outset Scola makes clear that pontifical teaching is his point
of departure, not studies in theology, philosophy, or the human sciences.
To discover the meaning of identity and difference his primary texts are
John Paul II’s apostolic letter Mulieris Dignitatem and the Wednesday catecheses on the theology of the body, both of which draw heavily on Scripture. In the Genesis texts John Paul II identifies four essential features,
Man exists always as either masculine or feminine; sexual difference must
be understood ontologically, and their union is asymmetrical, not two
halves of a whole; sexual difference belongs to the image so that sexuality is neither purely animal nor spiritual. Finally “spousal love is the analogatum princeps of every kind of love” (9).
The foundation of their dual unity is the mystery of Christ (cf.
Gaudium et Spes, no. 22) whose incarnation is a spousal relation of his
divine and human natures and issues from the heart of the Trinity. Briefly,
difference is for the sake of unity, which is realized in reciprocity. The
unity of Christ and the Church is the fulfillment of the mystery and the
origin of the original man–woman pair, Adam and Eve.The union must
be fruitful; Mary’s motherhood corresponds to Eve’s with motherhood
itself tied to the woman’s very nature. The important innovation in all
this, proposed by the magisterium, is the raising of sexuality to the level
of the imago Dei (34). It means that either the gender difference has its
ultimate foundation in the Trinitarian, Christological, and ecclesial
mysteries of Revelation or it simply has reference to human reproduction and its moral requirements.
Chapter four takes up the way sexual love in marriage, far from being
debased by passion is the paradigmatic form of love. Scola draws on
Aquinas to show how amor naturalis, which depends on voluntas ut ratio, is
a constituent of all love, even the highest mystical union. The human
being’s potential for choosing does not take place from a tabula rasa but
from a specific inclination to the good. Love then is the fruit of a choice
arising from a desire already within the person.“If the love of desire is an
affective passio, the love of election is an effective choice.” In summary
the way lies open for eros to be assumed into agape, which John Paul II
describes in the theology of the body as eros and ethos meeting in the
human heart.With the redemption of the body the conjugal love of the
human spouses, instead of being a barrier to holiness in a Manichaean
interpretation of sexuality, is on a continuum with consecrated virginal
and divine love. Benedict XVI says in Deus caritas est, “eros and agape—

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ascending and descending love—can never be completely separated”
(Deus caritas est, no. 7). He takes this to its logical conclusion by positing
erotic love in God himself. “God loves, and his love may certainly be
called eros but it is also totally agape” (Deus caritas est, no. 9). Chapter five
then draws all these threads together to describe the nuptial mystery at
all its different levels analogically.
Even though modern man, as Scola says, takes a utilitarian approach to
sexual pleasure, it is easier to welcome the new emphasis on the goodness
of conjugal union than the Church’s insistence on the openness to procreation. Fruitfulness is central to the nuptial mystery. Procreation essentially
belongs to the conjugal act. “Sexual difference as difference (duality) in
unity, inscribing difference in the ‘I’ itself, shows that fruitfulness is the full ‘face’
of asymmetrical reciprocity.’ ” Conjugal union is not and can never be a search
for an androgynous union of two halves.That is to deny the internal difference of the masculine and feminine “I.”The other always remains other, and
it is only out of dual unity that a third “I” issues, in an analogy of the perfect
communio personarum, in the Trinity.The Son is begotten by the Father and
the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.The conjugal act is
a spiritual act because it brings forth a child who is an imago Dei.
Having outlined the nuptial mystery, Scola proceeds to engage the
culture. Here he finds a crisis of freedom and value. Freedom of choice
has become the whole of freedom detached from any relation to the
natural law. Modern man has lost the capacity for truth as adaequatio intellectus et rei. Scola shows brilliantly how freedom unhinged from the real
and from God ends in nihilism and relativism with disastrous consequences for the family, especially fatherhood and motherhood.
While theology and philosophy are not the point of departure for
Scola’s study, he states in chapter twelve, that the various aspects of the
nuptial mystery need to be explored with the criteria of the human
sciences, philosophy, and theology. He proceeds to critique contemporary
philosophical views, particularly “scientific universalism,” which subscribes
to an absolute subjectivism and at the same time claims to explain all
human reality from an empirically measurable perspective. No room
remains for the domain of “mystery,” which Scola defines not as something unknowable but rather as a place where the infinite somehow makes
itself present (85). In this sense sexual difference is a privileged place for
the domain of mystery. This section of the text is important for understanding Scola’s methodology. In explicating the insuperable sexual difference, he refers both to the Heideggerian theme of ontological difference and
Aquinas’s distinctio realis, which Scola shows overcomes the deficiency in
Heidegger. From this and other comments it is clear that Scola’s meta-

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physics are firmly based on Thomism (he wrote his doctoral dissertation
on Aquinas), although he does coin a new category,“symbolic ontology,”
to account for what he calls the dramatic nature of reality.
Truth has a “symbolic character.” Being itself cannot be encompassed
by man so that technically it is indeducible but it communicates itself in
a sign, which Scola calls an “e-vent.” Being discloses itself to the subject so
that the subject can cleave to it. In order for man to adhere to the being
that is disclosed in the sign, man must choose it in freedom.Yet he cannot
resolve the difference that lies at the heart of the being disclosed. The
other always remains a mystery. It is that difference that allows relationship. In the ontological difference there is a continuous interplay between
the gift and freedom. Sexual difference always presents itself to the other
as an invitation to form its identity, and it is always fruitful (226–27).
On the theological plane “the logic of the Incarnation,” says Scola,
“allows us to experience Jesus Christ as an event and not as an abstract
idea” (262).The ontological difference appears most fully in the God-man
relation. The difference allows for the gratuitous nature of the gift and
man’s freedom in responding. The Sacrament of the Eucharist underlines
both this difference and man’s response. The unity of body and soul,
indeed, calls for the logic of the sacrament, since the body is the “sacrament
of the person.”The relation between Christ and the Church is the form of
spousal love and possesses within it the ultimate significance of the relation
between man and woman. The Christ–Church union is actualized in a
unique way in marriage as an indissoluble communion of persons, which
becomes an efficacious sign and sacrament. At the same time consecrated
virginity is the summit of nuptiality in loving the other exclusively in
Christ (270). Through the concept of analogy Scola concludes that the
spousal analogy of sexual difference functions as a privileged path to explore
the nuptial mystery and the whole of reality as ordered to communion on
the basis of a prior gift.
Scola recognizes that the whole concept of analogy since St. Thomas
has undergone criticism as well as evolution. He holds that Von Balthasar’s
notion of the analogia libertatis is able to overcome the critical objections.
For those who read this book, the centrality of analogy as both a theological and a philosophical method is likely to influence their judgment
on its conclusions. For Scola every encounter with the nuptial mystery
both vertical and horizontal “must always pass through a new act of testimony on the part of the individual” calling to his freedom (403).Thought
must always become experience. He believes the very openness of the
perspective of the nuptial mystery as a foundation “offers a systematic
perspective—but one never to be taken for granted or possessed—for the

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intellectus fidei.”Whether one accepts the methodological premises or not,
Scola in The Nuptial Mystery has presented a compelling synthesis of the
truths of the faith and a Christian anthropology both inspiring and necessary to meet the challenges to the humanum today.
N&V
Mary Shivanandan
John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage & Family
at the Catholic University of America
Washington, DC

The Ontological and Psychological Constitution of Christ by
Bernard J. F. Lonergan, SJ, edited by Michael G. Shields and Frederick E.
Crowe, SJ (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002), 350 pp.
E VEN THOUGH the shiny white cover with gold and black type invites
one to open Bernard Lonergan’s The Ontological and Psychological Constitution of Christ, one might wonder what his 1964 Latin text and new English
translation by Michael Shields has to say for today. Plenty. First, as we seek
to construct a theological view of Christ that highlights the human and
the personal, we need to see the value of those first 600 years of tradition,
when the faithful, theologians, and emperors, each with his own agenda,
battled over how to speak about Christ. Lonergan does. He sees this tradition as a given of faith. Nonetheless he is aware that unless he shows the
possibility of Christ being human as well as divine, and of being a single
subject capable of growth and personality, he will likely hear the Athenians saying, “We’ll speak of this some other time”! To meet this challenge
Lonergan closely adheres to the methodological requirements of theology
and of philosophy to come to a creative understanding of Christ. He was
known to be human but one person with God. He had a consciousness
of himself and knowledge of God, yet lived an experiential life like our
own. In order to see how this is possible, it is necessary to trace Lonergan’s
thought as he moves between subjective and objective points of view,
between a theological and a scientific methodology, and between the
“what is” of consciousness and the “what is” of knowledge.
While Lonergan’s book is divided into six parts, his actual frame of
reference is twofold. Because psychological operations arise from a
person’s being, he first discusses the ontological constitution of Christ in
parts I to IV, before examining Jesus’ consciousness in parts V and VI.
Of Christ’s constitution Lonergan asks,“Why is the assumed nature of
Christ not a human person?”And, if he is not a human person, how then
can “Christ as God and as man” be “one and the same, divided only in
reflective thought, but one supposit, one being, one reality?(5)”

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Lonergan reveals his approach to this question in Part I. Holding that
knowing is by identity, he addresses the subject seeking to know before
addressing the object to be known. Anticipating his functional specialty
“foundations,” he examines the notion of “existenz,” that is, the subject
knowing (19ff). He holds that in order to know the being of Christ, who
as man is known by reason and as God known by faith, one’s own being
must have the same configuration. One must be conscious, knowing, and
committed in faith (31).
As for the object to be known, Christ is a person, the highest form of
being. Not only is “person” one, subsistent, and distinct, but it is intelligent, that is, capable of performing the highest of operations (31ff).
So, in Part II, before dealing with the person of Christ Lonergan
examines what constitutes a finite person. However, since “constitution”
refers to causality, Lonergan first discusses that which exerts “an influence
on the existence of something” (47). Using the principle that “things that
differ in intelligibility differ in reality,” Lonergan establishes that a thing
has distinct causes, extrinsic and intrinsic (53). If one said that “extrinsic
cause” is a mental construct, one would have to say that contingent
beings have no extrinsic cause, which is absurd.Also, just as to understand
what a thing is is distinct from judging that it is, that is, a reality born of
evidence and not a fantasy of the mind, so the being that is known is
constituted by distinct causes. One accounts for its essence and the other
for its existence! A finite being is that which has an essence that is not its
act of existence and has its existence from a self-existing extrinsic cause.
Lonergan then moves to discuss what constitutes a finite person. As it
is, a “distinct subsistent in an intellectual nature,” it needs the essence of
an intellectual nature, otherwise it would not be a being that is intelligent. It needs an act of existence, otherwise it would not be a subsistent
being. Its existence must be received by the human essence, otherwise
one is dealing with God whose essence is its existence. The act of existence must be proper to that essence, otherwise it would be another’s act
of existence, and thus not a human person (59–61).
In Part IV, Lonergan considers Christ. First he lays out what is of faith,
“the Dogma of the Incarnation” (107ff).Then to understand Christ, he uses
philosophical methodology to resolve his being as human into its “causes,”
and theological methodology to resolve his being as divine into its “reasons.”
Since the Incarnation refers to God, one’s deeper understanding of it
cannot be attained through resolving a thing into its causes, for God has
no causes. One must use reason to take what God reveals and formulate
principles of reason by which one can better understand it.Thus, of the
revelation that Christ is God, one can reason that as he has every power

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he is able to assume a contingent reality to himself, namely human nature
(83, 87).
As man, however, Christ has causes.To better understand him, therefore,
one resolves his being into its causes. These are two: One is the essential
human nature and the other is its act of existence. As essential human
nature is in potency for an act of existence, it can be either proportionate
to that nature or exceeding it. But as being God Christ’s act of existence
exceeds what is proportionate to human nature. He is, then, not a finite
person, as having a proportionate existence, but a human nature whose act
of existence belongs to another, God (113).
The problem is to explain how these truths of faith and reason come
together into a unity. Working with the notion that one can know the
being of God only analogously, Lonergan judiciously rejects “what we
naturally know about the composition of a finite being” and turns to
what “we naturally know about God” (131).We know that the being of
God is not “some kind of material principle that always acts the same way
by blind necessity” (133ff). Rather God’s existence acts the way God’s
understanding does. Just as God can think and will, that is, terminate in,
what is contingent as well as in what is necessary, so also can God’s act of
existence. First one can say that Christ’s human nature, known and willed
by God, can be related to God as term of God’s act of existence. Second
one can say that since God can think and will that this contingent reality of Christ’s human nature be related only to the Son, so it is related to
the Son and not to the Father and/or Holy Spirit.
Next, Lonergan discusses Christ’s consciousness. In Part VI, he considers human consciousness. Consciousness is of one’s self, the “subject,” and
of one’s acts. It is not introspection or knowledge about one’s self, as these
refer to the “object.” Consciousness is presence to one’s being and one’s
acts, but not the being of one’s self as it is an object of knowledge
(157–65).
To get this knowledge one must go beyond experience to acts of
understanding and judgment.Thus to come to a knowledge of one’s self
as sentient, one would have to experience one’s self as sensing, understand
what sensing is, and then judge whether one’s experience matches one’s
understanding. If there is a match, one knows one’s self as sentient. One
would have to go through a similar process regarding acts of understanding and judgment.
Lonergan’s theorem is that the way one understands consciousness
seriously affects the way one understands Christ. On the one hand, if one
understands consciousness as experience, one can say that Christ was
humanly conscious of his divine person, when he was seeing, under-

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standing, and willing various things. On the other hand, if one understands consciousness as perception, then one has to make the very odd
statement that when Christ did not have himself as an object of perception he was not humanly conscious of himself!
In Part VI, Lonergan examines the consciousness of Christ. First, how
is Christ, as God, conscious? To answer this question, Lonergan leads the
reader from understanding that God is conscious of himself through his
acts, to seeing that these acts can be shared in common by the persons of
the Trinity and then to seeing that there are notional acts that are proper
to each person (195ff).
Then Lonergan asks,“Are they conscious not just of their notional acts
but of themselves as distinct subjects?” More specifically,“Is the person of
Christ as person . . . conscious?” Yes. As the notional acts of each of the
three persons are different, so is the consciousness of these acts. As these
notional acts give rise to relations that are given subsistence through
God's act of existence, then what is constitutive of person is present. So
the Son, though his notional act of being begotten, is conscious of his
own person (201–3).
As to the human consciousness of Christ, Lonergan recalls that
consciousness is awareness of both one’s being and one’s acts. Since Christ
the man is constituted by his human nature and the act of existence of his
divine person, Christ is conscious of both his human nature and his
person, since his person is identified with his act of existence. He becomes
conscious of his person when he performs his human operations.
Consequently Christ, like us, was able to experience life in its complexity, seeking to understand that experience, checking that understanding
with further evidence, and making decisions. Should he stay in his Father’s
house talking and asking questions or leave in obedience to his mother
and father. Such operations are the basis for forming one’s personality.
Lonergan makes another assertion. Christ knows himself as the natural Son of God and true God. For this to happen, two things are required,
consciousness of self and beatific vision. One can only judge who one is
by grasping the match between what is known and what one is conscious
of.To know what God is in himself and to know what others are in God,
beatific vision of the divine essence is required.To be humanly conscious
of his divine person, Christ has to perform his human operations.When
these two requirements are met, Christ can match them and thus
conclude that he is natural Son of God and true God (215–19).
In such an analysis, it is possible to see that just as a concept of some
thing does not preclude a concept of another thing, so the concept of God’s
essence, which is beatific vision, does not preclude other self-concepts,

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those that Christ gained from his own reading of the Scriptures and his
own self-reflection.When the gift of vision was given, it gave a higher unity
to these other concepts, analogous to how the concepts of the Christological councils gave a higher unity to the scriptural designations of Christ.
Lonergan concludes his work by linking what is of faith with what one
says philosophically and theologically. One’s belief that the Son of God
became man and really experienced what it was to be a human being must
be connected with what one says theologically. If one understands
consciousness as experience,“this truth of the Catholic faith follows immediately.” However, if consciousness is understood as perception, this same
truth that Christ experienced what it is to be a human being “is overlooked
by those who . . . take for granted that consciousness is perception” (287).
From this, Lonergan draws two philosophical conclusions which show
how Christian faith can help philosophy. First, for faith reasons about
Christ, the notion of consciousness-as-perception must be abandoned.
Second, knowledge as some form of duality must be abandoned as well.
If one does not do this, then when one says God knows himself, one
would be saying there are two Gods!
Rather than Church teaching being a straightjacket for theology,
Lonergan shows that by a close attention to the methodologies proper to
what is of reason and what is of faith one’s Christology can be creative
and offer much to human thought.Whether one agrees with his ChrisN&V
tology or not, one has a fine example to follow.
W. Jerome Bracken, C.P.
Seton Hall University
South Orange, New Jersey

Aquinas’s Summa: Background, Structure, and Reception by
Jean–Pierre Torrell, OP, translated by Benedict M. Guevin, OSB (Washington, DC:The Catholic University of America Press, 2005), vii + 156 pp.
T HE WORK of Jean–Pierre Torrell, OP, displays a renewed understanding
of St. Thomas Aquinas that goes well beyond arguments for God’s existence or the atheological natural law theory that are all too often packaged as Thomism. In the concluding salvo, Torrell describes the “most
common and damaging error” in approaching the great Summa is to
“have considered Thomas first of all as a philosopher and to have believed
it possible to isolate certain parts of the Summa as ‘philosophical’ ” (133).
To overcome this defect in appreciating St.Thomas and his greatest work,
Torrell insists that his reader “give all of his attention to Thomas as a
theologian, a disciple of the Fathers of the Church and an interpreter of

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the Bible” (133).Torrell is a master at accentuating the theological impetus and structure of Aquinas’s greatest work—the Summa theologiae. This
book is dedicated to that task.
The book is structured around six chapters that present the biographical details of Thomas’s life, the structure, content, genre, and sources of
the Summa, and the history of its reception.
Torrell begins Aquinas’s Summa with a sketch of Aquinas’s life. He uses
this first chapter to unearth important elements of Thomas’s formation
that help one to better understand the various influences to which
Aquinas was exposed during his early education and Dominican formation. Torrell even delightfully attempts to reconstruct “with a minimum
of certainty” (6) what a normal day at St. Jacques would have been like
for a magister in sacra pagina during Aquinas’s first teaching tenure in Paris
from 1252–59. Perhaps the most important contribution in this biographical section is the way Torrell interweaves the major periods of
Aquinas’s life with his teaching assignments and the writings that he
produced at each stage. One can use this chapter as a reference point for
discovering what Aquinas wrote and when he wrote it, thus leaving a
genealogical means for situating any particular work of Aquinas within
his whole corpus.
In the second and third chapters,Torrell offers an analysis of the structure and content of the Summa. It is here that he is at his best.Torrell reads
the Summa and explains its content by adhering to the internal structure or
ordo established by Aquinas.“Thomas is clear on this,”Torrell explains,“he
will speak of God (I), then of the movement of the rational creature to God
(II), and finally, of Christ who, in his humanity, is the way that leads to
God” (18). Failing to recognize Thomas’s plan in organizing his great work
contributes, Torrell contends, to the difficulty that contemporary readers
have in understanding the Summa. For those of us who marvel at the socalled “novices” for whom Thomas is writing the text,Torrell assures us:
No doubt he [Thomas] was thinking less about the level of difficulty of
the material taught than about its organization into a body of doctrine
that would offer them not simply a series of questions juxtaposed
haphazardly, but rather an organic synthesis in which the internal
connections and coherence of these questions might be grasped. (19)

Crucial to understanding this internal coherence is Torrell’s attentive reading of the first question of the Summa, “a kind of discourse on method”
(19), in which Aquinas lays forth his theological intention. In this first question Aquinas defines the discipline of the Summa as sacra doctrina, which is

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broader than the modern understanding of theology because “the term
[sacra doctrina] includes all forms of Christian teaching, beginning with
what God says to us in Sacred Scripture” (19).The discipline of sacra doctrina is thus affirmed by Aquinas to be a science insofar as it advances “the
reasoned knowledge that we have of God by placing in relation the diverse
truths that we believe” (20). However, Torrell significantly adds that sacra
doctrina is not simply one discipline or science among many. Rather,
Aquinas sees this discipline in terms of its sapiential dimension: “[M]ore
than ‘science,’ ”Torrell clarifies,“sacred doctrine is ‘wisdom,’ that is, knowledge by the supreme cause” (20). Consequently, “God presents himself as
the first subject of theology, and it is with respect to him that all of the rest
is situated, not in the sense of being juxtaposed to him, but rather dependent on him and explained by him” (20).Torrell remains consistently mindful of the parameters that Thomas establishes in this first question, and he
draws on the concept of sacra doctrina in his explanation of each part of the
Summa, and in showing the contribution that each part makes to the project of sacra doctrina as a whole.
In Prima pars of the Summa, Aquinas presents God and the procession
of creatures from God. St.Thomas divides his treatment of God into two
parts: first, a consideration of the divine essence (qq. 2–26), and second, a
consideration of the distinction of persons (qq. 27–43).Torrell notes that
the first division is often referred to as a philosophical treatment of God,
but he quickly adds that the reduction of Aquinas’s treatment of the
divine essence to philosophy
is not in keeping with the intentions of the author. He is writing a
Summa of theology and the God about whom he speaks has nothing in
common with that spoken of by the deist philosophers but is instead the
living God of the Bible, who has revealed himself in salvation history.
Knowledge of him is not attained until he has been understood as a
trinity of persons. . . .The break between the two sections serves only a
pedagogical function; it should not be understood as a separation. (21)

As a segue between his treatment of the Prima and Secunda partes and
in his introduction to the third part,Torrell weighs in on the long debated
issue of the place of Christ within the plan of the Summa. St. Thomas’s
placement of the moral life between the Treatise on God in the Prima pars
and the Treatise on Christ in the Tertia pars has left thinkers pondering
the importance of Christ within the Summa’s overall structure. Following
a vast body of literature on this issue,Torrell identifies a circular plan that
governs the whole of the Summa. With this in mind, the reader is not
tempted to treat the Secunda pars independent of God or Christ, because

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the circular plan, starting from and returning to God, “is like a subterranean current that unifies, by tying together the three parts and their
multiple treatises” (27). Torrell, therefore, summarizes Aquinas’s exposition of the moral life in terms of the end—beatitude—and the means for
attaining beatitude, which include the vast content found in the whole
of the second part. Directly addressing the debate about the place of
Christ in the Summa,Torrell explains:
[T]he end will not be achieved without grace and without following
Christ who came to show us, in his humanity, the way to happiness. . . .
Between the study of human action described in the Second Part and
that of the happy life which concludes the Summa,Thomas will insert,
in the Third Part, a study of Christ—“the unique mediator between
God and humanity” (1 Tim 2.5)—and the sacraments which are part of
the “means” left to his followers to assist them in reaching their end. (29)

When Torrell begins his presentation of the Treatise on Christ in the
Tertia pars, he insightfully argues that the tripartite structure announced by
Aquinas at the beginning of the Summa “corresponds to real internal necessities” (48–49). However, standing above the three parts of the Summa:
God, Moral Theology, and Christology, is a “superimposed” “bipartite”
vision which “retrieves a distinction that is familiar to the Fathers of the
Church between ‘theology’—the consideration of God in himself. . . .—
and ‘economy’—the work of God as it is accomplished in time, that is,
salvation history” (49).This superimposed bipartite reading of the Summa’s
narrative brings to full relief the organic and irreplaceable role that Christ
has in Aquinas’s moral vision and in the ordering of the work as a whole.
For Aquinas, the rational creature returns to God only under the headship
of Christ, who “takes the lead in this movement for he alone is able to
bring it to completion” (49).
Torrell carries this theologico-Christological reading of the moral life
throughout his exposition of Aquinas’s position on human action and the
life of virtue, pointing out that since the happiness of beatitude cannot
be achieved through actions “on a purely human level” (33), God infuses
into man a means of acting proportionate to the end for which he was
created—namely, the gift of supernatural grace.Torrell gently reminds the
modern reader of Aquinas that the various branches of theological
specialization that we use to label the parts of the Summa: dogma for the
first and third parts; morals and spirituality for the second part, are not
labels that Aquinas would have recognized. “All of his theology,” Torrell
explains,“is, at one and the same time, concrete and speculative, dogmatic
and moral and, we might add, spiritual as well” (36).

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The study of Christ, therefore, taken up after the moral life in the third
part, is not some afterthought for Aquinas.“Christ,”Torrell points out,“is
the one who allows access to beatitude.Thomas cannot be more clear: the
study of Christ is necessary to achieve the goal of his theological enterprise”
(50). After a detailed examination of the mysteries of Christ’s life Thomas
offers a general treatment of the sacraments and a specific examination of
Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist, and Penance.Torrell keenly points out
that the sacraments are strategically placed by Aquinas immediately
following his treatment of Christ.The sacraments are part of God’s salvific
economy, and “their efficacy comes from the efficacy of the God-man.
Thomas’s study of the sacraments does not come, therefore, until after he
has dealt with Christ in his being and action as the ultimate form under
which comes to us the salvation begun by the earthly acts of Christ” (59).
Following his rich presentation of the Summa’s theological structure,
Torrell again draws upon his historical skills to offer a presentation of the
“literary and doctrinal milieu” in which the Summa was born. Torrell
begins the fourth chapter by noting that among the four primary literary
genres of medieval theological literature (biblical and other commentaries,
commentaries on the Sentences, disputed questions and quodlibets, and the
Summa), the Summa was the only genre not tied directly to oral teaching.
As a result, the Summa allowed the author to forge a synthesis of various
topics and sources that the other literary genres could not support. Drawing on quantitative research to support his theological reading of the
Summa, Torrell provides a summary of the major sources in Aquinas’s
work.Torrell points out that of the “38,000 explicit citations in the Summa
theologiae and the Summa contra Gentiles . . . 25,000 come from the Bible,
almost two-thirds” (72). Another “8,000 come from Christian authors”
while “4,300 are from the Philosopher, namely,Aristotle” (74).Torrell does
not downplay the importance of Aquinas’s use of Aristotle. He simply
wishes to “not overemphasize Aristotle’s contribution to such an extent as
to push into the background other sources that, statistically and doctrinally, are even more important” (74). Torrell then summarizes each of
Aquinas’s major non-Christian sources: Aristotle, Medieval Platonism, the
Stoics, Avicenna, Averroës, and Maimonides.This section does not do full
justice to each source, but Torrell does a balanced job of highlighting both
what Aquinas retained from each thinker and what he saw fit to correct.
He also briefly sketches how Aquinas’s use of each thinker evolved as his
life went on.
In the final two chapters, Torrell offers an analysis of the “Summa
through History,” treating the reception and polemics surrounding the
Summa as well as the history of Thomism vis-à-vis the vast tradition of

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commentators and the renewal associated with Leo XIII’s encyclical
letter Aeterni Patris.Those who wish to study specific thinkers, works, and
phases in the history of Thomism will find this rapid account a helpful
appetizer. Torrell’s balanced presentation of Cajetan, Vitoria and the
School of Salamanca, John of St. Thomas, the Jesuits and Carmelites,
while brief, pinpoints several areas of interest and needed research. The
reader will also find interesting Torrell’s identification of the various journals, publications—including the English edition of Nova et Vetera—and
institutions dedicated to the study of St.Thomas Aquinas.
However familiar one is with the work of Fr. Jean–Pierre Torrell, it is
certain that his warm contemplative approach to theology and to his
elder Dominican confrere will leave the reader with both an appreciation
for his continued contribution to Thomistic studies and a desire to read
N&V
or reread Aquinas—prayerfully and theologically.
Roger W. Nutt
Ave Maria University
Naples, Florida

Mary,“Mediatress of Grace.” Mary’s Universal Mediation of Grace
in the Theological and Pastoral Works of Cardinal Mercier.
Supplement of “Mary at the Foot of the Cross” IV by Manfred
Hauke (New Bedford, MA:Academy of the Immaculate, 2004), 183 pp.
M ANFRED H AUKE has produced a well-researched study of the Mariological thought and initiatives of the “Great Cardinal” of Malines, Belgium,
Désiré Joseph Cardinal Mercier (1851–1926). Cardinal Mercier is known
for his philosophical acumen and for his pastoral zeal, having hosted
ecumenical dialogues long before the Vatican encouraged them (the
“Malines Conversations”). Further, he founded an institute for experimental psychology. Surprisingly, he is almost unrecognized—in the general
scholarship—for what he took to be the very heart of his pastoral mission,
to promote a dogmatic definition of Mary as “Mediatrix (or Mediatress) of
all Graces.” In a letter to fellow prelate Cardinal Vico, he confides, “The
proclamation of the dogma must remain the goal of all our efforts” (76).
Despite both his theological and pastoral efforts in this regard, Mercier’s
thought has been much neglected. The entry for the latest edition of the
ODCC does not even mention his passion for Mary. Long overdue, then,
is this fine study of the Great Cardinal’s Mariological work.
The book is historical in approach, though the author brings his wellknown excellence in systematic theology to the task. Copiously documented in the notes while easily understood in the main text, it is available

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to educated readers and well-suited for historians, who, if enkindled with
Mercier’s love of Mary, may wish to follow up with studies of their own.
Such studies are needed, as the author himself attests, since not all materials are yet available, especially the archives of the so-called “Roman
Commission,” one of three commissions established to examine the theological background, systematic content, and practicality of a definition on
Mary as Mediatrix of all graces. Here, Hauke lays groundwork upon which
others can build. The book closes with an exhortation: One of the more
important virtues needed for those supportive of a dogmatic definition is—
patience. That, prayer, and hard theological work. A dogmatic definition
requires much painstaking discussion and clarification.
Any reader of Mary, Mediatress will benefit by learning about a number
of the major players, theological and hierarchical, in the early twentiethcentury debates, including such theologians in favor of a definition as
Garrigou-Lagrange and Lebon, as well as such theologians opposed to a
definition (for various reasons) as De la Taille and Billot. The careful
reader will encounter some of the subtleties of the issues at stake.There
is no demonizing at play here.
Further, readers unfamiliar with this issue will witness the wide palette
of Mercier’s approaches. For one, Mercier almost single-handedly
obtained permission for the celebration of the Feast of Mary, Mediatrix
of All Graces (May 31) in his diocese. Over 400 other dioceses soon
joined in this annual celebration. About the same number of bishops
(coincidence?) joined Mercier’s efforts to petition Rome on behalf of a
definition. Perhaps no small number of readers will be surprised to
discover that there was, in the early 1900s, a general consensus that Mary
was in fact the Mediatrix of all actual graces after her Assumption (a
doctrine, now defined, also universally held at the time). There were, of
course, numerous disputes:Was this physical dispensation or moral intercession; does her intercession include also habitual grace? Still, few
theologians disputed the basic kernel of what Mercier wanted defined:
Mary’s universal mediation.The sensus fidei was clear on this point.
Of great significance in this book, also, is the important role of Mary’s
cooperation with Jesus’ redemptive work. Hauke underlines Mercier’s
emphasis on the canonical unity between Jn 19:26 (Mary at the foot of
the Cross) and Gen 3:15, the Proto-Evangelium (the first “good news”
after the fall). In assenting to the Incarnation, Mary assented at least
implicitly to the crucifixion of her Son (later, for certain, explicitly). Her
assent gained merit congruously (fittingly, that is, not condignly or
according to strict right) for the redemption of the whole human race.
Garrigou-Lagrange, some of whose reflections Hauke translates here,

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underscores the effective character of Mary’s “congruous” merit, for God
is no exacting tyrant but a Father of “Gentle Providence.” There is a
tantalizingly passing reference to the opinion of Lebon (one of Mercier’s
theological collaborators) that Mary, having a right to prevent her Son’s
death, cooperated in giving him over to sinful men—hence the title, CoRedemptrix (feminine for Co-Redeemer). If shocked by this claim, the
reader might recall the words of Irenaeus, who said of Mary that she
became the “cause of salvation to herself and to the whole world.” Often
given to misunderstanding, the title “Co-Redemptrix” does not situate
Mary and Jesus on the same plane, as though she were “making up” for
what was essentially lacking in Christ’s sufferings. Rather, the title is
grounded in the participatory character of Mary’s sufferings in and with
her Son. She but participated (yet effectively!) in her Son’s sufferings,
being utterly without sin and, thus, rightfully exempt from any suffering.
In short, Mary became a genuine instrument within the mediation of the
one mediator between God and man, the man Jesus Christ (1 Tim 2:5).
Lebon’s opinion seems to me tenable at least, though as Hauke rightly
notes, Lebon’s excesses in some of his other opinions prevented fruition
of Mercier’s desire. Sharing this perspective on the Christo-centric character of Mary’s role but critical of a definition at the time, Grabmann
cautioned that the Church must first clarify and define Christ’s role in
mediation, particularly, his universal vicarious satisfaction.
A background theme, rhythmically coming to the fore as the book
progresses, is that of total consecration to Mary. By total consecration is
meant a complete surrender to Mary’s will for oneself, now and forever.
It rests on absolute trust in this humble woman who by grace was made
Mother of God and of all the Church. The Catholic practice of total
consecration, especially promoted by John Paul II, hinges on Mary’s
universal mediation of all graces. Mercier and his supporters understood
that. Does not the continued growth of this practice, indebted not only
to St. Louis-Marie de Montfort but also to St. Maximilian Kolbe (a
contemporary of Mercier) bode well for some future definition? Yet, will
sufficient theological labor and pastoral zeal prepare the way? Hauke
salutarily closes, Deus providebit.
This book is also available in the original German (2004) and, with a
small supplement, in Italian (2005). Finally, readers can look forward to
the completion of Fr. Hauke’s work in progress: a systematic text on
N&V
Mary’s maternal mediation of grace.
Christopher J. Malloy
University of Dallas
Irving,Texas

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St.Thomas Aquinas and the Natural Law Tradition edited by John
Goyette, Mark S. Latkovic, and Richard Myers (Washington, DC: The
Catholic University of America Press, 2004), xxiii + 307 pp.
T HIS COLLECTION provides perhaps the best introduction to contemporary discussions of natural law available. Its essays treat virtually all
major topics and areas of discussion in contemporary natural law scholarship, including the relationship of natural law to theology and specifically Christian belief, the philosophical debates about the exact sense in
which natural law is “natural” and the derivation of natural law, and the
plausibility and applicability of natural law to contemporary political and
philosophical debates. The book developed out of a conference by the
same name sponsored by Sacred Heart Major Seminary and Ave Maria
Law School in June of 2000, at which many of the most influential and
prominent advocates of natural law were participants.
The editors have divided the book into four parts.The first addresses the
philosophical foundations of natural law, in particular the meaning of
“nature” in natural law as explored in essays by Benedict Ashley, OP, Janet
Smith, and Ralph McInerny. The next section contains essays by David
Novak, Martin D. Yaffe, John Goyette, Romanus Cessario, OP, Robert
Fastiggi, and Earl Muller, SJ, and focuses on the theological context of St.
Thomas’s natural law teaching.The third part, in essays by William E. May,
Mark S. Latkovic, and Steven A. Long, discusses the new natural law theory
espoused by Germain Grisez and John Finnis and the hotly debated question as to whether the “new natural law” theory is genuinely Thomistic.
Finally, Christopher Wolfe,William Mathie, Robert P. George, and Russell
Hittinger discuss natural law and contemporary legal/political issues.
This volume will be useful for those seeking a snapshot of the ongoing discussion of numerous crucial issues among experts within the natural law tradition. A number of the essays explore the relationship of
theoretical and practical reasoning, of revelation (as interpreted in Christian and Jewish tradition) and ethical first principles, and of politics and
natural law. Although at times the various contributors appear to misunderstand one another, or confusing historical questions about fidelity to
the thought of St.Thomas with philosophical ones about the truth of the
matter, the discussion for the most part succeeds in a fruitful engagement.
Most essays tackle matters of inter-Thomistic interpretational dispute.
However, some essays (such as Ashley’s and George’s) tackle objections
and misunderstandings that a non-expert might have, objections against
the Thomistic project itself. Those who do not specialize in natural law
might also benefit especially from essays like that of Christopher Wolfe.

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In his contribution, “Thomistic Natural Law and the American Natural
Law Tradition,” Wolfe summarizes natural law in way that, with perhaps
a few quibbles, would be acceptable to all major parties in the disputes
over natural law. He then compares and contrasts this understanding with
the views of the American founding fathers as well as adding a section on
natural law in contemporary American life.
It is of course not possible, within the limits of a short review, to give an
overview of these 16 essays and responses, but most contributions are of
high quality. For both those well-schooled in natural law as well as the curious beginner, St. Thomas Aquinas and the Natural Law Tradition provides a
valuable take on the contemporary debates on this subject.
N&V
Christopher Kaczor
Loyola Marymount University
Los Angeles, California