Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 9, No. 3 (2011): 539–547

539

Catholic Theology in America: Quo Vadis?
R EINHARD H ÜTTER
Duke University Divinity School
Durham, North Carolina

O N * September 19, 2010, at Crofton Park in Birmingham, England,
Pope Benedict XVI beatified John Henry Newman. Soon afterwards, on
October 9, 2010, the Catholic Church in England for the first time
commemorated Blessed John Henry Newman. For that day, the Office of
Readings of the Liturgy of the Hours provided a well-chosen passage
from the Apologia Pro Vita Sua, Newman’s most famous work.
“I believe the whole revealed dogma as taught by the Apostles, as
committed by the Apostles to the Church, and as declared by the Church
to me,” wrote Newman, referring to his faith as a Catholic. “I receive it,
as it is infallibly interpreted by the authority to whom it is thus committed, and (implicitly) as it shall be, in like manner, further interpreted by
that same authority till the end of time.” In itself this affirmation of the
magisterium of the Church is unexceptional, but Newman goes on,
emphasizing his docility: “I submit, moreover, to the universally received
traditions of the Church, in which lies the matter of those new dogmatic
definitions which are from time to time made, and which in all times are
the clothing and the illustration of the Catholic dogma as already
defined. And I submit myself to those other decisions of the Holy See,
theological or not, through the organs which it has itself appointed,
which, waiving the question of their infallibility, on the lowest ground
come to me with a claim to be accepted and obeyed.”
Had I been presented with Newman’s affirmations on the feast of the
Holy Innocents, 2004, when my wife and I were received into the full
communion of the Catholic Church, I could have made his word my
* The present article is a slightly more expansive version of “The Ruins of Discon-

tinuity,” published in First Things 209 ( January 2011): 37–41.

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own, not only without qualification but also with a real sense of joy. For
my experience has been like Newman’s, who expressed it better than I
can:“It was like coming into port after a rough sea; and my happiness on
that score remains to this day without interruption.”
As I was to learn, however, becoming Catholic is one thing; becoming a
Catholic theologian is quite another.The former entails the loving assent to
the Church’s faith; the latter involves the arduous acquisition of theological
wisdom. As a result, while I could see that the former requires catechetical
instruction—one needs to know what the Church teaches—I came to see
that the latter requires a deeper spiritual and theological formation.
This formation is not easy to acquire. Catholic theologians in the
making must negotiate a difficult and often treacherous landscape in America, for our late modern times are all too absorbing. Where do “young”
Catholic theologians—whether still in graduate programs, or in their first
teaching positions, or “late born” like myself—find the kind of intellectual
and spiritual guidance and formation that allows them to pursue a vision
other than that of simply being functionaries of their academic guild?
The problem was not unknown to me. As a Lutheran theologian I
recognized that the general pattern of modernity has pushed theological
analysis and reflection to the margins of the intellectual life and the universities.To survive, theology departments have steadily adopted theologically
extraneous perspectives of self-understanding and standards of self-evaluation that ever so subtly estrange theologians from their subject matter. For
the up-and-coming young theologian who seeks advancement, and who
wishes to be globally marketable to any institution that offers a job, it
becomes nearly impossible to resist the pressure to embrace the attitudes
and behaviors expected by the secular university. So where can Catholic
theologians in the making be theologically and spiritually formed today so
that they may aspire to the most intellectually rigorous understanding of
the revealed truth? Where will they be instructed with the greatest fidelity
to the Church? What will help them resist the one-sided and exaggerated
contemporaneous academic emphasis on originality and productivity?
The unity and coherence of theology can be accounted for only if we
explicitly conceive of it as an ecclesial intellectual practice of the Church,
arising from the Church’s nature and mission.This was the burden of the
argument in my 1999 book, Suffering Divine Things: Theology as Church
Practice. The book was intended as an implicit challenge to certain forms
of liberal Protestant theology that, uprooted from any ecclesial setting and
accountability, rapidly had come to endorse a historicist relativism and
subjectivism and eventually ended up embracing and celebrating individual arbitration in all matters of faith and morals.To me this conclusion felt

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like a new discovery, but of course I had only reproduced, in an “evangelical catholic” key, what then-cardinal Joseph Ratzinger already had argued
in his small but important book, The Nature and Mission of Theology: Essays
to Orient Theology in Today’s Debates: that theology is essentially ecclesial,
and theologians have an essentially ecclesial vocation.
And so, with a firm sense that becoming a Catholic theologian required
me to enter into a specifically church-oriented tradition of intellectual and
spiritual formation, I gladly became, once again, a student of theology, this
time Catholic instead of Lutheran. Some sobering surprises lay ahead.As I
looked for well-developed and intellectually continuous Catholic modes of
theological inquiry—the very conditions for the possibility of a spiritually
sound and intellectually rigorous formation in Catholic theology—I found
myself challenged in a rather unexpected way.The Church welcomed me
as a believer, but her theological life seemed less hospitable.
From the outset I sensed a troubling fragmentation, and Alasdair
MacIntyre’s famous image from After Virtue of a scientific discourse in
ruins came to haunt me again and again. Reading around in the current
theological literature, I found that important concepts often were ripped
from the original contexts only to be revised, reenvisioned, and recombined.Various theologies du jour seemed quickly to replace each other,
and the imperative of immediate impact and relevance haunted all too
many publications.
Newman himself saw the danger in fragmentation, which ends up
tempting us to build our theological vocations on a personal source
synthesis. When he became a Catholic, he wanted to submit himself to
the Church’s theological tradition rather than pick and choose on his
own. As he wrote,“Gradually and in the course of ages, Catholic inquiry
has taken certain definite shapes, and has thrown itself into the form of a
science, with a method and a phraseology of its own, under the intellectual handling of great minds, such as St. Athanasius, St. Augustine, and St.
Thomas; and I feel no temptation at all to break in pieces the great legacy
of thought thus committed to us for these latter days.” In my efforts to
allow my mind to be formed by the Catholic theological tradition, my
own sensibilities moved in the same direction. I did not want to inhabit
a theological world that had been broken into pieces, for that would
involve an approach that required me to reassemble the fragments myself,
and the danger would be that my old Lutheran sensibilities—or, worse,
my secular academic sensibilities—would do the reconstructing.
Although it is possible to employ the term too simplistically, I think the
situation of fragmentation arises from what Pope Benedict XVI has envisaged under the rubric of a “hermeneutic of discontinuity,” an approach to

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theology that draws a sharp line between pre–Vatican II Catholicism and
the new and different spiritual and intellectual atmosphere supposedly
mandated by the council. As a Lutheran I experienced the dangers of a
modern, liberal Protestant theology insufficiently rooted in ecclesial tradition, in part because of a similar hermeneutics of discontinuity—in this
case, one that spoke of the vast difference between premodern and modern
worldviews. By this way of thinking, older Protestant dogmatic theology
was no longer viable, and Protestantism needed to be put on a new footing that would be relevant to “modern man.” In both the more recent
Catholic talk of discontinuity and the older Protestant habit of doing the
same, the rich and sophisticated theologies of the past are cut off from the
present, depriving theological students of the pedagogy of tradition.
The notion of discontinuity has been reinforced by the pervasive adoption of the parliamentary political geography of left and right, progressive
and conservative. These labels create the illusion that the Church’s theological culture involves taking sides, either on behalf of the past or for the
sake of the future, when the contrary is true.As Newman understood, the
future of the Church is best served by a submission to her past modes of
reflection—modes that educate us to meet future challenges with a faithful intelligence.As long as categories of secular politics dominate the theological imagination of the Church, an intellectually rigorous and spiritually
alive Catholic inquiry in Newman’s sense and a correlative formation of
future Catholic theologians hardly seem possible.
In view of the poverty of a hermeneutics of discontinuity, I have found
myself regularly drawn into a form of contemporary Catholic thought
that has flourished in the modern era and that provides a nuanced vision
of continuity: historical theology. I consistently encounter profound work
being done in patristic and medieval studies and in studies of the early
modern and modern periods—work that is historically rich, intellectually sophisticated, and ecclesially relevant. This remarkable work would
have been inconceivable without some significant institutional initiatives
undertaken in the last century: the intentional development of centers of
patristic and medieval studies at leading Catholic universities in America.
These institutional efforts were flanked by renewed study of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation periods, and, more recently, by the
noteworthy initiatives undertaken by younger scholars investigating
Catholicism’s varied responses to the Enlightenment.
The same fruitful renewal of already existing dimensions of the Catholic
tradition strikes me as the case for philosophy as well. Whether Catholic
philosophers in America continue to draw on the philosophia perennis (as,
fortunately, many still do), or on phenomenology, or on the analytic tradi-

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543

tion, or whether they work by way of meticulous interpretations of such
classical figures as Plato,Aristotle,Aquinas, Scotus, Ockham, or Suarez, there
is at work a consistently rigorous mode of inquiry that serves as a great
inspiration and model for the intellectual formation of a late-born Catholic
theologian like me. In instances when I found myself comparing the
philosophy and theology departments of Catholic universities, the philosophy departments struck me most often as superior, not only in intellectual rigor but also in Catholic substance. When Catholic theology in
America is again able, across the board, to match or surpass the intellectual
rigor and Catholic substance of the best Catholic philosophy departments,
we can call it a new day in Catholic theology in this country.
What will bring about this new day? My previous Lutheran theological education, received at two German universities, taught me the
importance of an intellectually demanding theological formation in a
reasonably coherent curriculum. In the years of my training, Lutheran
theological formation in Germany was still characterized by a tangible
inner coherence among all subdisciplines and by an accountability to a
shared theological inquiry that always was larger than the sum of its parts.
There also still existed distinct theological schools (or remnants thereof)
that facilitated and intensified theological formation—schools that had
formed around such eminent theological figures as Friedrich Schleiermacher, Albrecht Ritschl, Martin Luther (of the Luther Renaissance of
the early twentieth century), Karl Barth, and Rudolf Bultmann.
Something similar is necessary in contemporary Catholicism, both to
combat fragmentation and to provide a means for students to achieve a
theological synthesis that is communal rather than merely personal.
Indeed, the decades after Vatican II provide important evidence of this
necessity. Most of the dogmatic theologians who at present serve as points
of reference, orientation, or departure for Catholic theology in America
were trained before Vatican II, at a time when dogmatic theology not
only was an intellectually robust and rigorous intellectual discipline but
also was dominated by theological schools, the most influential of which
were schools of various forms of Thomism (broadly conceived) or of
Suarezianism (an attempt at a synthesis of Thomis, Scotism, and Nominalism). This is true of Karl Rahner, Bernard Lonergan, Hans Urs von
Balthasar, Henri de Lubac, and others.These theological schools provided
the intellectual horizon for the important innovations and insights these
figures brought to the Catholic tradition.
Soon after the council, and in the wake of rather precipitous curriculum reforms, the unity of dogmatic theology rapidly disappeared; at the
same time, its intellectual rigor tangibly declined. Interestingly, this decline

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coincided in complex ways with Karl Rahner’s unparalleled influence on
the discipline. Rahner’s early work goes under the label of Transcendental
Thomism. It is conceptually rigorous and had the potential for forming a
theological school, the first beginnings of which could be seen in the
American context in the years immediately following Vatican II. Rahner
himself, however, developed in ways that led him to read Vatican II more
and more through a hermeneutics of discontinuity and rupture, and this
mentality came to define the work of most of his American disciples.
Faithful to the hermeneutics of discontinuity, they ceased to regard as
relevant the basic thrust of Transcendental Thomism—to revise and renew
a continuous theological tradition. As a result, the third generation of
American Rahnerians has merged with those who understand systematic
theology exclusively as critical reflection on the role of religion in political and cultural contexts, usually in service of a program of liberation, selfrealization, and social justice. Today, post-post-Rahnerians—always in
pursuit of the paradigmatic modern Protestant goal of relevance—treat
revision of the Catholic faith and morals as the main task of contemporary Catholic theology. Where the hermeneutics of discontinuity and
rupture dominates, Catholic systematic theology is shaped by revision and
construction in service of social, cultural, and political ends.
In addition to Karl Rahner, Bernard Lonergan has had an important
influence on Catholic systematic theology in America, again with the
potential of forming a theological school, of which there were indeed
tangible beginnings. But Lonergan is difficult to understand and, hence,
hard to teach. Today the efforts to communicate Lonergan’s important
insights have born fruit in a remarkable edition of Lonergan’s works. But
there is no ongoing school of Lonergan, either here or in Europe.
Rahner and Lonergan do not exhaust the options today. Avery Cardinal Dulles was, for better or worse, a one-man school. Over the course
of several decades, his fairness, objectivity, and aversion to polemical
discourse won the respect of the whole field. But his influence was
largely personal. He was the embodiment of the learned, ecclesially
formed theologian. Since his death no theologian has been able to
assume this position and role, perhaps because Dulles, like the other influential theologians in the decades after Vatican II, was trained before the
council and thus within the reigning school theologies of the era.
Because these schools were set aside by the hermeneutics of discontinuity, they have been unavailable to the generations trained after the council. Only now are they being revived.
One can point, first, to the relatively small but active Communio movement, which was inspired by an important group of conciliar and postc-

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onciliar theologians, first and foremost among them Henri de Lubac, Hans
Urs von Balthasar, and Joseph Ratzinger. This theological movement is
characterized by a sweeping theological vision, a renewal of theological
biblical exegesis by way of a sustained recovery of the theologians of the
patristic and early medieval periods, an authentic and profound fidelity to
the magisterium, and a consistent and sustained engagement with the
wider culture. Without doubt, the Communio movement will remain
important, but it is not conducive to forming a theological school. Unlike
Rahner and Lonergan’s theological syntheses, both of which undertook to
infuse modern, post-Kantian concepts into a modified, but still identifiably Thomistic frame of reference, the Communio movement is diverse.
It is unified by a shared vision, a shared intuition, and a shared approach
of patristic ressourcement rather than by a shared conceptual vocabulary. For
a theological student already formed in proper ways, the great Communio theologians provide the occasion for a profound spiritual illumination
and theological edification, in large part because they are exemplary
soloists.Yet today we have a greater need, perhaps, for basic training; this
requires a disciplined school of inquiry that may not soar to the heights
one finds in the best of the Communio movement but nonetheless reliably provides the basis for an intelligent appreciation of its achievements.
As I immersed myself in the treasures of the Communio movement, I
continued to search for a Catholic inquiry that, in Newman’s words,“has
taken certain definite shapes, and has thrown itself into the form of a
science, with a method and a phraseology of its own.” I eventually found
what few observers of the Catholic theological scene would have
expected thirty years ago: a small band of theologians who might best be
called Ressourcement Thomists. These are students of the doctor
communis,Thomas Aquinas, who seek a coherent and rigorous Catholic
theological inquiry that has the intellectually and spiritually formative
power of a school. They are in conversation with biblical exegesis and
intentional about receiving the documents of Vatican II in a hermeneutics of renewal and development. Moreover, this emerging Thomist
Ressourcement is aware of a certain tendency in all schools to become
narrow, and it seeks to avoid this danger by pursing its work in dialogue
with Protestant theology and with Jewish and Muslim thought. Rooted
in the synthetic vision of Thomas Aquinas, this Thomist Ressourcement
is abidingly committed to a search for a coherent but expansive Catholic
inquiry and uncompromisingly insistent on high intellectual standards as
well as the communicability of theology.
Catholic theology in America: Quo vadis? What kind of Catholic
inquiry will welcome, orient, guide, and instruct young theologians in the

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years to come? Not a few of them will have been inspired by the works of
an Augustine, a Bonaventure, an Aquinas, a Newman, a Scheeben, a de
Lubac, a Maritain, a von Balthasar, a Ratzinger. Where will they find a
coherent Catholic inquiry that comprehensively draws them in and equips
them intellectually and spiritually in ways that will enable them to
continue this grand tradition? The Communio movement and the Thomist
Ressourcement are squarely rooted in the Church’s doctrinal and intellectual tradition, and both are eager to engage and resist an increasingly obvious cultural and political context of sovereign secularism. As de Lubac
emphasized, we embrace the gospel not as isolated individuals ensconced
in the competitions of the academy, but under the tutelage of what de
Lubac called la maternité de l’église—the motherhood of the Church.
Catholic theology in America stands at a crossroads. Some Catholic
theologians seem already to have anticipated what Walker Percy
described as the split-off “American Catholic Church.”The Church these
theologians seem to have on their minds is an ideal construct, a specious
amalgam of current political ideals. A more difficult labor awaits those
who wish to stand on the shoulders of the doctors and councils of the
Church to learn, even now, the fullness of the mysteries of Jesus Christ.
This labor can begin only with the acknowledgment that, in Newman’s
words, Catholic theology “has taken certain definite shapes, and has
thrown itself into the form of a science, with a method and a phraseology of its own, under the intellectual handling of great minds, such as St.
Athanasius, St. Augustine, and St. Thomas.” Through a patient labor in
pedagogy that trains theological students within these “definite shapes,”
the handing on and development of Catholic faith can be accomplished.
Ultimately, what is at stake—as Augustine realized during his own
lengthy struggle with the trendy theologies of his day—is our heart’s
desire. We will not find what we seek in Jesus Christ unless we put
ourselves under the tutelage of the “church of the living God, the pillar
and bulwark of the truth” (1 Tim 3:15), for “great indeed, we confess, is
the mystery of our religion” (1 Tim 3:16). As Newman reminds us again
and again, “private judgment” cannot reliably interpret the Holy Spirit’s
work in Christ’s Body.And so Catholic theology cannot establish itself as
a de facto counter-magisterium, remaining in a splendid isolation from
the Church. Nor should it seek to win a lasting standing in the secular
academy that provides it a career path like that of any other academic
profession. Nor, finally, will Catholic theology flourish if it is transmuted
into “religious studies” to market its remnants in a post-Christian society.
Whatever one thinks about the best way to give coherent and even
sophisticated shape to Catholic theology, we must acknowledge that the

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Church herself gives us our theological task: to assist the bishops in
communicating, explaining, defending, and understanding the faith that
comes from the apostles—a faith that is to be shared and witnessed to, in
season and out of season.
N&V

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549

Redeemable Suffering? St. Thomas Aquinas
on the Meaning of Human Suffering
and the Passion of Christ
T HOMAS J OSEPH W HITE , O.P.
Dominican House of Studies
Washington, DC

N EAR the end of his famous work the Summa theologiae (ST III, q. 69,
a. 3), St. Thomas Aquinas asks an interesting question in his treatise on
baptism:Why is it that the baptized are subject to death?1 Why is it that
people who are baptized still suffer and die? The question could sound
like a skeptical cajole. Do you mean to tell me that people who are
Christian die? Employed this way, the question would be a rhetorical
taunt, not meant to seek an answer, but to end a conversation. Christianity should not be considered as a serious possibility because the problem
of evil it diagnoses, it seems itself unable to remedy.
But Aquinas in fact means business in asking this question, and he is
thinking on a deeper and more challenging level. He is letting the question lead him not only into a consideration of the mystery of redemption in Christ, and the character of human suffering, but also into a
consideration of the very structure of things. To what does God give
priority in the way he governs the world? How does suffering fit into the
order of things? Aquinas is asking the question of what suffering ultimately means. For that is in fact what is at stake in speaking about
“redeemable suffering”: does suffering mean anything, or could it? Can
it be meaningful to suffer, or perhaps we should say, can there be ultimate
meaning in life, despite suffering?
1 This essay originally was presented as a talk in the Merton Lecture Series of the

Catholic Chaplaincy at Columbia University, February 16, 2011.

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Thomas Joseph White, O.P.

He gives three answers to the question, which I will briefly paraphrase,
in the inverse order in which he himself presents them: First, it is suitable
that the baptized die, despite baptism into the life of Christ, for were this
not the case “human beings might seek to be baptized for the sake of
freedom from suffering in the present life, and not for the sake of the
glory of eternal life. Wherefore the Apostle Paul says in I Cor. 15:19: ‘If
in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most miserable.’ ” Aquinas here is employing an argument from Augustine in the
City of God: baptism is not about the stakes of remedying our life in this
world only, and if it were then the whole of the Christian religion would
be misconceived and delusional. Rather, the claim that baptism is about
freedom from suffering and death is precisely a claim about what is ultimate and what is not, and whether we live for this life only, or whether
we do not.The claim that through baptism we can attain to eternal life,
then, provides the ultimate interpretive light on our understanding of
suffering and death, and not the inverse, as if we were to say:“because we
do die, Christianity must not be true.” In fact, the skeptic refuses the
claim that baptism saves, not because of the reality human suffering, but
because he or she judges the stakes of human existence in terms that are
too restricted. In short, her or his view of salvation is materialistic. It
pertains to this world only, and thus is too limited.
Second,Aquinas claims that the fact that we are subject even to suffering in baptism is fitting for our spiritual training. “Namely, in order that
by fighting against the vices of our fallen nature and other defects to
which humanity is subject, such as passibility, the human person may
receive the crown of victory.” Temptation and suffering can lead the
human spirit to fall into nihilism, or despair, but they are also the opportunity for growth and inner development of virtue. We have in and
through the mystery of suffering the possibility to come to a deeper realization of what is more ultimately real, and to gain purchase on those
virtues that last, in the face of a world where evil certainly does exist but
may not yield the ultimate verdict on the meaning of life. In short, suffering invites us to choose sides in a world torn dramatically between the
struggles of moral good and evil, and it can be in some cases the invitation to move toward our best selves and our highest destinations.
Evidently if we were to absolutize this point of view in a simplistic
manner we’d end up instrumentalizing suffering artificially: suffering is
beneficial because it gives us the opportunity to become good people.
Suffice it to say, Aquinas does not advocate such an un-nuanced view.
Last, he claims that baptism works in us by conforming us through the
course of our lives to the paschal mystery of Jesus Christ. Just as Christ

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suffered and died, and rose physically from the dead, so too the grace of
God conforms us to Christ, inwardly.We are given the graces of baptism
to unite our minds and hearts to Christ in this life, by spiritual habits of
faith, hope, and charity, so that we might live through suffering and death
in union with Christ and with God, so as to attain to eternal life (which
consists in the beatification of the soul) and eventually to the resurrection from the dead. “Wherefore a Christian receives grace in Baptism, as
to his soul, but he retains a passible body, so that he may suffer for Christ
therein: yet at length he will be raised up to a life of impassibility. . . . So
the Apostle Paul says in Romans 8:17: ‘We are heirs indeed of God, and
joint heirs with Christ; yet so, if we suffer with Him, that we may also be
glorified with Him.’ ”
In short, Aquinas has given us three themes to consider: free will and
its importance in understanding the meaning of suffering; the place of
the development of character and the discernment of ultimate values in
the face of suffering; and the mystery of conformity to Christ—who
himself suffered as God made man—so that united to him we might be
delivered from the power of moral evil and death. Three points of
inquiry, to which we return below. But let’s take a detour and look for a
moment at the other option, the more contemporary point of view: the
idea that suffering is meaningless.
II
Albert Camus was born in 1913 in Algeria, the son of a French workingclass couple in the Northern African colony. Educated at the University of
Algiers,Albert moved to France only after he turned 27 in 1940 amidst the
onset of the Second World War. Despite his colonial origins and the fact
that he never held an academic university post, Camus is in some ways the
archetypical modern French intellectual. In Paris, he joined the resistance
movement against German National Socialism, and was an active communist, who wrote regularly in the liberal free press under Nietzscheaninspired pseudonyms (Caligula, Caesar Borgia). After the war, he and
Jean-Paul Sartre would come to symbolize in different ways the advocacy
of secular socialist European humanism in the 1950s (Camus, though, was
always ambivalent about the theoretical aspirations of humanism or what it
might genuinely represent). Camus’s first wife was a morphine addict, and
he passed through a series of affairs, for decades, amidst serial marriages.
Sexuality seemed to amount to a kind of psychological anesthetic to his
existentialist qualms. (The exploration of sensualism in the face of the
threat of nihilism is a well-known theme in his famous 1944 play Caligula.)
He wrote essays of political and philosophical tonality, but also plays and

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novels, from around the time he was thirty, through the course of his life;
for these latter he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957.
He is said to have claimed that the most absurd way in which one might
die would be in an auto accident, and fittingly enough, he perished in a
car driven by a friend, in 1960, at the age of 47. It does not seem that his
death was a suicide.
I am referring to Camus in this context not because of the peculiarly
French melodrama that characterized his life, but rather because of a
theme in his writing that characterizes well a dilemma of modern secular human beings: the theme of the absurdity of suffering. Who says
“absurd” in fact designates that which lacks any true purpose, or that
which is purposeless. In other words, that which has no final cause, no
teleology. In his 1942 essay The Myth of Sisyphus Camus takes as his image
for the absurdity of human existence the condition of a character from
an ancient Greek legend. Sisyphus, a mere mortal man, tried to overcome
the power of death and in doing so strove against the gods. As a punishment, they condemned him to perpetually push a heavy boulder up a
hill, only to see the boulder each time returned by gravity to the place
from which he had originally moved it. The cycle permits no improvement and yet it must continually be taken up anew.The struggle of Sisyphus, then, is simultaneously pointless and painful. Like life, no
discernable meaning can be found in this activity, and it is accompanied
by existential disincentives. The image is like Nietzsche’s eternal return,
but instead of being filled with the existential triumph of the superman,
or the wisdom of Zarathustra, Camus’s conundrum lacks the vigor of
confidence. How should we live with the absurd, or should we? Thus the
claim of this particular book is famous: Camus says that the only real
philosophical question is whether one should kill oneself or not. A terrible question and perhaps quite an immature and adolescent one in some
ways, but of course the deeper revolt or issue that is at stake concerns the
reason to live. Not for a salvation that transcends this world, and not
because there is a deeper discernable meaning inscribed in things, but
only for the modest joys of being in a world marked by suffering, despite
that suffering. And in view of a hope that is not salvific, but only for the
modest changes that a humanistic political ethic can afford.
Perhaps this seems a world away from the reflections of Aquinas we
considered a few minutes ago. However, it is not entirely so, for surprising
reasons. In fact, at age twenty-three, in 1936, a few years before he came
to Paris, Camus wrote his master’s thesis in Algiers, “Neo-Platonism and
Christian Thought,” a study of the human condition according to Plotinus and Augustine of Hippo. Camus was particularly marked by Augus-

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tine’s conception of the fallen human being, and Augustine’s account of
the effects of original sin, which include the tendency toward selfishness,
the tenacity of lust, and the inevitability of mortality.While he could not
see clear to the redemptive side of Augustine’s anthropology—his study of
grace and the mysteries of salvation (which nonetheless continually
haunted Camus)—the Frenchman was sensitive to the darker side of this
vision of the human plight.We find undergirding some of his restless existentialist reflections a frustrated desire for salvation, for the infinite, for the
heroic—a desire knowingly refused and purposely suppressed, and then
intentionally re-channeled into political activism. But the vision of the
human person characterized by the inevitability of finitude and weaknesses of moral compromise has been retained: the human being naturally
desires liberation from suffering and a higher purpose or horizon, but
none can be found. And given that we cannot attain to God, no transcendent purpose is available, and thus an absurdity results.
This is not the moral optimism of Rousseau or the political optimism
of Hegel. Camus wants to find purposefulness in the midst of a universe
of the absurd, and to elevate the human spirit and the human community above the fray of mere interests of survival in view of a life of
humane politics, arts, and philosophy: a kind of secular ecclesiality, where
the primacy of the human thrives in a world that is not evidently friendly
to the human, and where the human being has evolved arbitrarily and for
no real reason. Meaning is sought, in other words, despite the absurd
conditions in which human consciousness and freedom have arisen.
It would be a short trip from this vision of man to the vision we
encounter today in English-speaking secularism. We would need to add
the study of the modern sciences to the equation. In a post-religious
world, we are in the slightly absurd situation of having to make meaning
freely out of the gratuitous evolution of a consciousness capable of selfawareness and analysis.Through the modern sciences and technology we
can pursue a humanism that would seek to liberate us progressively from
the conditions of pain that characterize suffering humanity. This suffering is in itself purposeless, or meaningless, but with the advent of a
human drive to lessen the powers of such an evil, humankind can push
forward in the humanization of the physical universe by technology,
making it more successfully habitable and less painful. Liberalism seeks to
expand this modest goal by political models of inclusivity. Death is
inevitable, and does not entail any meaning as such. It is for this life alone
that we can live, by moments of joy and human achievement, despite the
fact that there is no transcendental value to ascribe to this life. Like Sisyphus, we find our meaning “merely in the present moment of being,” as

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we push against the weight of a purposeless cosmos.Against the backdrop
of a sometimes hostile universe, the acceptance of our unique humanity
in its fragile, momentary goodness and finite glory is our highest value,
an acceptance without any recourse to salvific agency, or any life of grace,
that would save us in the midst of our plight of suffering.
III
Let us pass from Camus and our contemporaries to a different consideration: the ontology of love. Catholic Christianity affirms a different metaphysics, of course, from that of the absurdists. It holds that the core
meaning of human existence stems from love: not romantic or emotional
love, though not excluding these, but a deeper spiritual and personal love.
Behind being, and within being, is the mystery of love. By which we
mean what? Well, love is analogous, and has multiple realizations, which
are like and unlike one another, in different degrees and running through
all things, but in different ways.
According to the first letter of John, God is love. Consequently, love is
first and foremost something utterly transcendent of the world, and
incomprehensible, coextensive with the being of God itself.We know this
transcendent love as we know of God, that is to say: not in itself but only
by its effects. There is a relative intelligibility, beauty, and goodness
inscribed in the existent world that we inhabit. However, what we
perceive to be good in itself—the world around us, ourselves—is also
being in flux, dependent, and derivative, and so it leaves an inevitable trace
of a hidden origin from a transcendent source. We are invited then to
think transcendentally or metaphysically, in view of the uncreated, underived love that created the world. However emotionally or existentially
trying it is to think this, yet it is a firm truth of reason:There is a hidden
goodness from before the foundations of the world who is uncreated love,
who has given us existence gratuitously, in the munificence of his bounty.
Analogically speaking, love also characterizes creatures, even those
which are inanimate or irrational. Things are characterized by intrinsic
qualities, by which they tend toward purposes: from the brilliance of light
to the solubility of water, to the sprouting form of plants, to the reproduction of animals, the physical world is characterized by the goodness
and beauty of things as they tend toward perfections inherent in them.
Analogically speaking, they “love,” so to speak, in their very beings, by way
of these innate inclinations to natural perfection that characterize them
from within. Modern sciences depend implicitly upon concepts of teleology for the study of the “laws” of nature.We presuppose these truths when
we study the formal characteristics of material realities and their patterns

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of behavior, or when we delight in them or take interest in their intelligibility and orderliness.
But more properly speaking, love especially characterizes rational creatures, or persons. Persons have spiritual souls, which make them capable,
unlike other animals, of rational and conceptual knowledge and spiritual,
voluntary love.To love freely and intelligently is human, to be human is
to love in such a way. For the human being is before all things marked by
an insatiable spiritual desire for love at the core of the soul, and this desire
craves satisfaction by the unique fulfillment of happiness. We desire to
love and to be loved and to find happiness thus, and this appetite
inevitably and necessarily works itself out in all the pathways trod by
human freedom, which is this restless seeking of happiness.The desire for
happiness is a tortuous desire that we cannot escape, but which we can
shape from within by reason and habitual choice, seeking freely to love
more or less well, more or less nobly and realistically, or in base and delusional ways, in accord with reason or with irrationality, and in accord
with falsehood or the truth.
Love in fact also characterizes the life of reason itself: there is a spiritual
inclination in us that desires the truth, such that we can learn to love the
truth.The pursuit of the truth consequently can also and perhaps especially
make us happy and free us: We can be freed by the love of the truth. To
become happy, then, is to love well and to be loved, but it is also to find the
truth concerning that which is ultimate and affords perspective, to see all
things in the light of this truth, wherein the mind alone can rest.To seek
the truth, and to discover stable and noble forms of love that abide: this is
the purpose-filled vocation of the human being who is bound to love.
If this is our starting point, then the problem of suffering is immediately more complicated, for we are obliged from the beginning to make
a crucial distinction between moral suffering—which stems from the
inner conundrums of our spiritual life, in its implacable desires for love
and for the truth—and physical or emotional suffering, which is rooted
in the body and its material and emotional pathos.There is a hierarchy of
suffering, then, not because we need to say that mental anguish or spiritual heartbreak is worse than physical suffering, or vice versa, but because
there is a distinction of kinds, a duality, by which we are characterized.
Suffering from a sense of meaninglessness is different from suffering from
cancer. The two can overlap or interpenetrate (and often do), but they
still are utterly distinguishable, and Christianity takes them both utterly
seriously, because it takes seriously the suffering of the whole person.
Let’s return now to Aquinas’s first reason for the suffering and mortality of baptized Christians: the argument from free will. Baptism is not

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chosen freely in order to take away mere physical pains or to reach a material accommodation with the cosmos.What, after all, would unending life
in this world as we know it be like spiritually? Would we want it? Why is
it that most people would answer “no” to this latter question, even while
they simultaneously feel a deep instinctual (truly natural) wish not to die?
Analogously, then, baptism is most fundamentally motivated not by a
desire for perpetual life in this world, but by a spiritual desire for a higher,
eternal life, by an inclination to be united to God by love and to love the
truth concerning God in a way that transcends the sorrows of this world.
One of the places we suffer most is inwardly in our capacity to love,
and so our happiness depends above all on our gaining perspective and
wisdom and fortitude in our very capacity to love rightly. Baptism is a
remedy to suffering, then, above all because it invites us to choose in
grace, by virtue of the charity that is poured into our hearts by Christ, to
love the triune God above all things, in and through everything, and to
acknowledge ourselves loved in Christ.The deepest fortitude of the soul
in the face of sufferings comes from loving and being loved—in the
truth—and this is possible in a most ultimate way only by grace, a grace
that alleviates our deepest spiritual suffering.
But what about the physical suffering, and the psychological and
mental agony it can engender, that so characterize our existence? We
could give a thousand vivid and diverse examples, a hypnotizing tableau
both fascinating and terrible. Recall that St. Thomas appealed in his
second argument to the possibility of growth in virtue even in this life,
in the midst of our suffering, by way of the moral virtues and the theological virtues, of faith, hope, and love. Is this just Pollyanna? Is Christianity motivated by the misguided pursuit of wish fulfillment in the
midst of unavoidable moral tragedy? Given the witness of saints, it is not
clear that it is. Suffering can and does become the occasion for human
beings to grow inwardly—morally, spiritually—and to be more generous
toward others, sometimes in astonishing ways. We think of the life of
Teresa of Calcutta, who made a thousand acts of beauty and spiritual love
blossom amidst a desert of suffering in the ghettos of Calcutta, or of
Thérèse of Liseaux, the Carmelite saint, whose excruciating battle with
tuberculosis was the occasion for a heroic but also utterly beautiful act of
offering of her life to God in excruciating pain, an act she made in faith
and wished to make on behalf of those who do not believe in God. Or
of Maximillian Kolbe, the Polish Franciscan, who died in Auschwitz
giving thanks to God—even at the moment of his execution by lethal
injection—that he had been permitted to give witness to his faith. Maybe
it is not fanaticism. Maybe it is the triumph of love.

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And yet we are not all saints, you might say.Yes, but the passivity of suffering works also in the ordinary person, and even the weak person, to push
him or her toward the consciousness of the absolute, and a more deliberate
choice of the good, and sometimes a reluctant martyrdom.There is no one
on a cancer ward who is not in some way seeking the truth.The work of
living with our mortality and with the mystery of evil is also the work of
discerning the deeper meaning of things. And this is something St. Augustine spells out as well. He says in the City of God that God permitted the
first death, mortality, so as possibly to spare us the second death, eternal separation from God.We are brought by mercy around to the consideration of
the last things, and of the journey back to God as our ultimate resting place.
Even in suffering, and in a certain sense, especially in it, we can find the
peace that God alone can give and that the world cannot procure. In short,
suffering can lead to purification, by which we attain to our deeper selves
and to a new-found hope in God alone. Suffering can purify us of the spiritual dilettante in us, and it may push us toward more ultimate forms of
inward resolution and truthfulness. This is a form of wisdom procured
through the crucible, but it is wisdom the world requires—and, in truth, a
wisdom we require, if we are to rejoin the wisdom of God.
IV
Let us speak finally then about the suffering of God in the passion of
Christ. This was the third of Aquinas’s “reasons” regarding baptism and
mortality. In fact it is, of course, fundamental.The Catholic faith teaches
that in Christ, God became human and lived an ordinary and extraordinary human life among us, to eventually bear witness to his own identity
through his death, by way of crucifixion. And this same person, the Son
of God made man, also rose physically from the dead in his human
nature, in a transformed, or glorified, state of body and soul.This state of
Christ’s resurrected humanity is itself a new creation, a new beginning or
recreation of humanity, that foreshadows the end times, the life of the
world to come. Thus Christian baptism is an invitation to union with
Christ, not only in this world, through love and fidelity to God even
through suffering, but also through death unto the beatification of the
soul in glory and the eventual resurrection of the body from the dead.
Is the effectuation of bodily resurrection impossible for God? Well, it
is as easy or as difficult to raise the dead to eternal corporeal life as it is
to create the world from nothing in the first place. That is to say, it is
absolutely impossible for whoever is not God, but it is in truth mere
child’s play for God. If God exists, then God can raise the dead. And God
does exist and he has raised the dead, in Jesus Christ.

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The claim that God suffered in Christ then is mysterious. God did not
assuredly have to become incarnate and human to save us, nor did he have
to suffer to do so. But, as Aquinas notes, by his incarnation and his paschal
mystery God makes love the victorious inward form of our human life in
this world, even after we have fallen into sin and the power of death. He
does not restore us back to a state in which we are free from the power of
evil (simply hitting the reset button of human creation, as it were), but
rather, in the midst of the fallen state that currently characterizes humanity,
in which the power of evil has some real reign over us and within us, God
has come among us as a liberator, to whom we can be joined, a power of
love to transform and heal, to whom we can be united by grace.The passion
of Christ then does work by love, but it is a love that renders humanity
righteous, from within so to speak: Christ is now our righteousness, through
his own human charity and justice, his moral purity and his grace, against
the backdrop of a human race that is compromised or marred by evil, or just
banality and indifference.And it is his righteousness that he in turn offers to
us, his members, by a participation in his grace. He takes on the form of
suffering Adam in love, so that we the children of Adam who suffer might
become united to the love of Christ that can conquer sin and death.
On this account of things, our suffering now in this world, despite its
potential absurdity or its horror or its sheer existential trial, is not meaningless, but meaningful, because we can take up the life of Christ into
ourselves, his life of grace. Our intellects and wills—which innately desire
to love and to find the truth—can now be strengthened from within to
live by Christ in the truth about God, and to love, even in the midst of
suffering, in union with God and for the good of others. The Catholic
theological tradition here speaks of meriting in Christ, of suffering with
him and in him, not only for our own purification of sins, but even for
the redemption of others, for their good, so that God might in turn offer
grace and consolation to others, as a result of our union with Christ.The
mystical body of the Church in this world is seen as the Church suffering, or the community of human beings who live by the grace that draws
us in by love toward God, but also toward the radical offering of our lives
on behalf of the neighbor, and even the enemy. On this view, the burden
we shoulder in daily life is not the absurd stone of Sisyphus, but the Cross
of Jesus: if we take up our cross daily in him, we grow in life, and we are
able to communicate that life to others, in a hidden but real way.That is
the victory of the truth and of love that can be inscribed on our souls,
even sometimes with radiant beauty, often in hidden ways known only
to God. But it is a victory which can bear us through trial and pain, and
even seemingly inexplicable suffering, into the life of God.

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Let us conclude by asking: Is this reasonable to believe? We should
respond by saying: It is a gift to believe. Only by faith is it possible to
believe in the ultimate salutary purposes of suffering, by faith which is
itself a grace given by God. This grace, however, is offered to all, if we
wish to accept it, to seek it, and to cooperate with it.
Note that we are left with this great difficulty: how to deal with the
irreducible duality of man.We are body and spirit, and we suffer in both,
for different reasons. A culture that absolutizes the body makes the spirit
suffer from the suppression of its desire for transcendence and encases it
in meaningless commercialistic and sensual banter. The greatness of the
self is suppressed and the absolutization of the body is preferred.A culture
that glorifies the spiritual, however, has to contend with the frailty of our
corporeality and its transience.The temptation in that case is the inverse:
to deny the inherent goodness of this material world, or its meaningfulness, and to absolutize spirit to the denigration of flesh. Everything
around us is ashes, illusion, samsara, and the only thing that transcends all
is sensibly unknown.The spiritual life is attained by the ascetic denial of
the corporeal.
Camus wanted to find a way out of this dilemma through a purely intraworldly humanism, which accepts that the infinite desires of our spiritual
life cannot be met, but which wishes nonetheless for some kind of political and artisitic nobility that will exist in the moment, hovering over the
abyss, without purchase in the very fabric of things, a fleeting if absurd
meaning. Christianity, however, posits that the Word became flesh and
dwelt among us. God took upon himself the form of a servant and became
obedient, even unto death on the Cross, so that the human world, and even
the physical world, might be illumined by a higher spiritual meaning, and
by the giving of divine life.The crucifixion illuminates the world: It is the
presence of the absolute Logos, or transcendent reason of God, present in
the sensible, the bodily, present even in suffering and death.The Cross is the
reconciliation of the spiritual and the corporeal, the victory of love in the
midst of suffering, and the claim of ultimate and perennial meaning, even
in a world of alteration and change.This mystery of wholistic unification,
of God and man, and body and soul, and suffering and death with resurrection and eternal life—it terminates in the glory of the resurrected life of
Christ, where God has delivered us definitively from the power of evil and
the power of death.The resurrection of Jesus Christ, then, is the hope of all
humanity, the implicit unique hope of every human person, whether
recognized or not. In the resurrected Lord we can perceive the term of our
personal pilgrimage and that of the collective history of suffering humanity. How can we set out in that direction? In faith. It is not an impossible

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pathway to walk, for it begins in prayer, and if we ask God, He will help us
to pray, and to believe in the resurrected life of Jesus. He will open the eyes
of our heart to perceive this mystery. He will illuminate our minds to
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follow after the Risen Lord.

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561

Euthanasia and the Fragility of Living a Burdensome Life
N ICHOLAS TONTI -F ILIPPINI
John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family
Melbourne, Australia

A Personal Perspective
I N several Australian jurisdictions there are proposals to permit mercy
killing or assisted suicide.This article began as a letter I wrote to members
of Parliament, as a person whose protected status would be likely to be
affected were the law to permit euthanasia.
I am dealing with my own terminal illness (combination of renal failure, advanced ischaemic heart disease and rheumatoid auto-immune
disease) and am dependant on haemodialysis and palliative care. I have
undergone fifteen angioplasty procedures and the placement of eight
stents to attempt to recover some blood flow after the failure of coronary
bypass surgery. The last such procedure was unsuccessful, as the blocked
artery could not be accessed. The rheumatoid disease causes chronic
pleuropericarditis. I mention these matters only to establish that I am no
stranger to suffering and disability and am well aware of the limitations
of palliative care. It is particularly difficult to control chronic pain because
the effectiveness of most forms of pain relief is of limited duration, given
the development of therapeutic tolerance. I have reached the limits of
what palliative care can offer.
I cannot speak for all people who suffer from illness and disability, but
think I can speak more credibly about suffering, illness, and disability than
those people who advocate for euthanasia and present an ideological view of
suffering and disability. Facing illness and disability takes courage, and we do
not need those euthanasia advocates telling us that we are so lacking dignity
and have such a poor quality of life that our lives are not worth living.
Professionally, I have been involved with issues to do with the care of
the terminally ill for many years, having been Australia’s first hospital

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ethicist, twenty-nine years ago, at St. Vincent’s Hospital, Melbourne,
where I was also Director of Bioethics for a period of eight years. Since
then I have been a consultant ethicist in private practice and have taught
ethics in the medical faculties of the University of Melbourne and
Monash University, before taking my current position at the John Paul II
Institute.The Institute is associated with the Lateran University in Rome
and is a registered Higher Education Provider in Australia, offering
accredited specialist graduate courses in Bioethics and in Theological
Studies in Marriage and Family.
Also relevant is that recently I had the experience of chairing a Working
Committee of the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), which prepared guidelines for the care of people in an unresponsive state or a minimally responsive state, and of receiving a large
number of public submissions on that topic.The topic is closely related to
this issue. The strength of submissions from people who care daily for
Australia’s most dependent and needy individuals was overwhelming, and I
highly recommend reading the public submissions on the NHMRC’s
website or at least the NHMRC’s Ethical Guidelines for the Care of People in
an Unresponsive State or a Minimally Responsive State (2008). Importantly, the
guidelines provide a careful analysis of the way in which care decisions may
be made so as to preserve respect for the dignity and worth of people who
are so profoundly disabled and to provide care for the families and others
who care for people with post coma unresponsiveness (PCU) or minimally
responsive state (MRS). Note that PCU is the preferred term and more
accurate than “permanent vegetative state” (PVS) because the reality is, all
that we can observe is unresponsiveness and we do not know what level of
brain activity may occur in that state.
I have also had a long-term association with a home hospice service
that serves the eastern area of Melbourne. I would like to record my own
view that it would not benefit seriously ill people, particularly those who
are terminally ill and suffering intractably, if the current law that prohibits
euthanasia were rescinded.The current legal situation, while not perfect,
does provide a measure of protection against the terminally ill being
regarded as a burden.As a chronically ill person, I know well what it is to
feel that one is a burden to others, to both family and community, how
isolating illness and disability can be, and how difficult it is to maintain
hope in the circumstances of illness, disability, and severe pain, especially
chronic pain.
For several years, until I objected, I received from my health insurer an
annual letter informing me how much it costs the fund to maintain my
health care. I dreaded receiving that letter and the psychological reason-

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ing that would seem to have motivated it. Each year I was reminded how
much of a burden I am to my community.
The Dignity of the Chronically Ill
The fear of being a burden is a major risk to the survival of those who
are chronically ill. If euthanasia were lawful, that sense of burden would
be greatly increased, for there would be even greater moral pressure to
relinquish one’s hold on a burdensome life. Seriously ill people do not
need euthanasia. We need better provision of palliative care services
aimed at managing symptoms and maximizing function, especially as we
approach death.The dignity of people who are chronically or terminally
ill would be better protected and supported if, rather than being assisted
to die, people were given more help in their attempt to live more fully
with the dying process.
If euthanasia or assisted suicide were to become a legitimate option
with a determined structure, such as was the case in the Australian
Northern Territory for a brief period and is the situation in Switzerland,
Belgium, the Netherlands, and Oregon, then life for the chronically seriously ill would become contingent upon maintaining a desire to
continue in the face of being classified as a burden to others. Essentially
such legislation or guidelines involve isolating a category for people
whose lives may be deliberately ended. Their protected status as a
member of their communities depends on a contingency. Passage of such
legislation would imply that our community considers that our continued survival depends on us not succumbing to the effects of pain and
suffering, depends on us not losing hope.
Chronically ill people need the unequivocal protection of their lives.
We need protection and encouragement from our community; we do
not need this form of discrimination. Far from protecting the dignity of
those who are seriously ill and suffering, a law to facilitate euthanasia
would undermine dignity by undermining our sense of individual worth
as a person, no matter our suffering and disability.
It should be noted that of the seven deaths that happened under the
terms of the Rights of the Terminally Ill Act in the Northern Territory
of Australia—which, before it was overridden by Commonwealth legislation, permitted euthanasia—four did not actually meet the criteria.1
The legislation was manifestly unsafe, and I would argue that legislation
that permits euthanasia could never be made safe for those of us who
1 David W. Kissane,Annette Street, and Philip Nitschke,“Seven Deaths in Darwin:

Case Studies under the Rights of the Terminally Ill Act, Northern Territory,
Australia,” The Lancet 352 (1998): 1097–1102.

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have serious chronic illnesses, because the essence of such legislation is to
make respect for our lives contingent upon the strength of our will to
survive. Such legislation depends on each of us, who have a serious illness
and are suffering, not losing hope. If euthanasia is lawful, then the question about whether our lives are overly burdensome will be in not only
our minds, but the minds of those health professionals and those family
members on whose support and encouragement we depend. The mere
existence of the option will affect attitudes to our care, and hence our
own willingness to continue.
That desire to live is often tenuous in the face of suffering and in the
face of the burden our illnesses impose on others, our families and the
wider community. Politicians would gain nothing worthwhile for us by
supporting the legalization of deliberately ending the life of those who
request death. Such requests warrant a response in solidarity from our
community, a response that seeks to give us more support and better care,
rather than termination of both life and care. Further, if euthanasia were
lawful, then health professionals would be obliged to mention the possibility, and that would dramatically change their vocational role in which
they encourage us to live as well as we can with our illnesses.
Christian Care of the Dying
The unqualified protection of their lives is important for people who are
chronically ill. However it is also important there be an acceptance of the
human condition and our mortality so that the chronically ill are not
subjected to inappropriate efforts to prolong life.
When a person is considered to be in the last phase of life, then more
than ever, it seems, issues to do with the meaning of life and the purpose
for our existence become evident. Dying is a most important phase of a
person’s life, as we are led through growing disability to surrender the
things of this life and to prepare for the life to come. Christians believe
that it is not an end but a transition to a new beginning.
In the dying process, not only the dying person but those around them
become acutely aware of the human condition. Christians believe that we
are made in the image and likeness of God, for the purpose of communion with him, and we have free will. We accept the biblical story of
mankind which tells us that we are affected by sin and that that fallen
nature is characterized by suffering, war, oppression, poverty, vain striving, disappointment, and death. Death is part of the human condition: we
are born dying—“the wages of sin” (Rom 6:23; cf. Gn 2:17).At the same
time, however, we believe that we are redeemed by Christ’s life, death,
and resurrection and are called to communion with Him.

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That belief in resurrection humanizes the dying process by giving us
hope. It humanizes the dying process by allowing us to accept that life is
in transition, that we are called to be with God, and therefore death is
both tragedy and gain. Before us we have Christ’s example, in which, at
Gethsemane and in prospect of his own death, he expressed his complete
and free submission to the will of the Father. His death transformed us
through the sacrifice he made for our sins. For us, then, death is the end
of our earthly pilgrimage; through death, we look forward to life in
complete communion with Him. For that reason, we are not obliged to
use every possible means to prolong life but can accepts death’s inevitability in prospect of the life to come.
Christ’s suffering, death, and resurrection also provide insight into the
mystery of suffering. We know from experience and from the biblical
account of the Fall that suffering is an inescapable burden of human existence. Christ has also shown that suffering in others provides the opportunity to love as he did in response to those he encountered. Christ’s own
suffering also shows us how best to respond in acceptance of the divine
will for us. His suffering, especially his cry of abandonment on the Cross,
also indicates the human reality of extreme suffering both in its effect on
us (as it disables rational function) and in our need for the support of
others. Empathy diminishes suffering.
The experience of suffering is for us thus a factor of personal growth,
as we find that our love of others increases our capacity to suffer and,
further, that love responds effectively to suffering through empathy. We
also come to realize that though suffering dehumanizes, love humanizes,
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both the victim and those who love him.

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567

De Lubac on Natural Desire:
Difficulties and Antitheses
C HRISTOPHER J. M ALLOY
University of Dallas
Irving,Texas

H ENRI Cardinal de Lubac (1896–1991), learned, profound, and noble,
challenges godless readings of the world grounded proximately in modernity. De Lubac’s diagnosis is that modernity’s godless readings had roots in
the “hypothesis of pure nature” developed especially from Thomas de Vio,
a.k.a. Cajetan (1469–1534), to Francisco Suárez (1548–1617). According
to the hypothesis, there corresponds to human nature a naturally obtainable and fulfilling natural end. Positing such an end, de Lubac maintains,
renders God irrelevant in the natural order and consequently impertinent
when he calls. In fact, de Lubac insists, man as he is concretely constituted
has an innate and unconditional desire for supernatural union with God.1
This desire marks concrete human nature as such; it is not the result of
actual or habitual graces. Consequently, concrete man can achieve no
genuine rest in a purely natural end.
Recently, de Lubac’s thesis, which won wide support for decades, has
been challenged. This article seeks to contribute to the renewed debate,
focusing chiefly on the theological issues at stake. The article will, first,
expound de Lubac’s thought, his diagnosis of the problem of then contemporary theology and his proposed solution. Second, it will offer an evaluation, tracing two implications of his solution and identifying two
presuppositions of his diagnosis.
I assume the following: A meaningful world is one in which a rational
being—that which alone can be created for its own sake—is able to obtain
an end that, even if not ultimate, brings genuinely finalizing rest and joy.
1 See Joseph A. Komonchak,“Theology and Culture at Mid-Century:The Exam-

ple of Henri de Lubac,” Theological Studies 51 (1990): 585.

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This assumption does not forestall the debate, for one may still ask
whether any world that is not meaningful is possible.As to the first implication of de Lubac’s solution, if the assumption is true, we must countenance the following dilemma. Either (a) since no world that is not
meaningful is possible, should God create beings identical with us in
nature, he is bound to grant the grace whereby the beatific vision may be
obtained, or (b) God can create beings identical with us in nature and not
offer them grace, since the divine freedom is such that there can be a
world without meaning. The former horn of the dilemma destroys the
gratuity of grace.The latter horn portrays a meaningless world as possible,
thus presupposing the divine freedom as possibly arbitrary, all the while, of
course, unwittingly omitting to countenance this meaninglessness. I say
“unwittingly” because de Lubac is immersed in a (proper) consideration
of God’s actual supernatural benevolence, and this immersion is to his
credit. Still, if the gratuity of grace rests on possible arbitrariness, one may
reasonably object to the thesis, especially since de Lubac identifies earlier
roots of modernity’s problems in voluntarism.As to the second, de Lubac’s
solution also implies that moral rectitude would be impossible for
concrete man without entitatively supernatural grace.
De Lubac’s solution is the outcome of his diagnosis, which is grounded
in insufficient appreciation of the divine traces that would be present in man
in a purely natural state. This deficit is displayed both through de Lubac’s
conception that man in a purely natural state would be autonomous and
also through his correlative denial that human nature as such could be
meaningfully called if its appetite could find genuine rest in a purely natural end. I turn now to the exposition.
Exposition of de Lubac’s Thought
De Lubac’s Diagnosis
De Lubac perceived two speculative problems in mid-century: an
assumed autonomy of man vis-à-vis God and the separation of grace
from nature.The more obvious problem was the widespread conception
of man as being radically autonomous from God. Enlightenment thinkers
and Nietzsche had seen the God depicted by tradition as a heteronymous, extrinsic tyrant condemning depraved man. Understandably,
modern and post-modern thinkers threw off the shackles of religion and
theism and defended godless readings of the world.
The second problem, the hidden root of the first, involved trends in
Catholic theology, before and after the Enlightenment. Catholic theology
was marked by the urge to separate grace from nature and theology from

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philosophy.2 Though this theology rejected the Enlightenment divorce
between God and the world, it implicitly accepted a thesis that, becoming a worldview, led to the secularism it rejected.This thesis was the socalled “hypothesis of pure nature.” Sundry were the versions and sub-theses
of the hypothesis. I shall suggest an articulated version of the hypothesis
in the Evaluation section. It should suffice here to state the thesis in a
generic way: There corresponds to human nature a naturally attainable
and fulfilling natural end.
De Lubac levels three charges against this hypothesis. First, portrayed as
self-sufficient for the attainment of a connatural end, human nature is
erroneously conceived as independent of the divine power:“In that economy, as they present it, all of man’s moral life would depend exclusively on
his own innate powers, exercised in full autonomy, ‘almost as understood
by Aristotle.’ ”3 Again, “If we begin by dissociating the two orders
completely, in order to establish the existence of a natural order that could
be fully and finally self-sufficient, we are all too likely to end up by seeing
not so much a distinction as a complete divorce.”4 De Lubac drives home
the point by noting that thinkers as far apart as Michael Baius (1513–89)
and Augustine could agree that under any conditions, man requires divine
help. De Lubac summarizes their agreement on this point:
man is so made that on any hypothesis to fulfill his destiny he has need
of God’s external help. For both of them, a state in which man would
be left to his own wisdom and powers, in which he would have to
develop and perfect himself unaided, is quite out of the question. In this
sense neither of them has any room for the idea of ‘pure nature.’5
2 See Henri Cardinal de Lubac, Surnaturel: Études historiques (Paris:Aubier, 1946), 174f.

[hereafter, Surnaturel]. Unless otherwise stated, translations of Surnaturel are mine.
3 Henri Cardinal de Lubac, The Mystery of the Supernatural, trans. Rosemary Sheed

(New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1998), 47 [hereafter, Mystery],
citing Guy de Broglie,“De gratuitate ordinis supernaturalis ad quem homo elevatus est,” Gregorianum 29 (1948): 463. See also Surnaturel, 153f. See, briefly treating
this claim, Lawrence Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God According to St.Thomas
Aquinas and His Interpreters (Ave Maria, FL: Sapientia Press, 2010), 314–15. The
“closed-in” view is commonly traced to Denis the Carthusian and Cajetan, but
these readings are arguably mistaken (Feingold, 78 and 102–20). Echoing de
Lubac is Nicholas Healy,“Henri de Lubac on Nature and Grace:A Note on Some
Recent Contributions to the Debate,” Communio 35 (2008): 542ff.
4 Mystery, 35. See also Henri de Lubac, “Le mystère du surnaturel,” Recherches de
science religieuse 35 (1949): 89 [hereafter, “Le mystère”].
5 Henri Cardinal de Lubac, Augustinianism and Modern Theology, trans. Lancelot
Sheppard (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2000), 1 [hereafter,
Augustinianism ].

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570

Even though their agreement is only superficial when contrasted with
their crucial differences, neither Augustine nor Baius could brook a
system in which man is conceived as not needing God’s aid. So, in spite
of the sometime de facto and ad hoc utility of the hypothesis of pure
nature in defense of the gratuity of grace,
was not the relative autonomy which [the hypothesis] granted to
nature, as it defined it, a temptation to independence? Did it not
encourage in this way the ‘secularization’ let loose at the Renaissance
and already anticipated in the preceding centuries by the Averroist
movement? . . .Was it not too wide a concession to opponents to admit
the hypothesis of a state—and as a result to acknowledge in us a whole
sphere of activity—in which it was not the principles of sovereign charity and unconditional submission that reigned, but those of commutative justice?6

Of a kind with this illusion of autonomy is a deceptive mirroring of the
supernatural in the natural. Proponents of the hypothetical state spoke of
natural graces and of friendship with God, of “a disinterested love of
God, a love that is ‘most excellent’ [excellentissimus ] and ‘above all things’
[super omnia ], directed towards ‘the author of nature,’ and existing as a
fruit of ‘pure nature.’ ” Consequently, de Lubac maintains, grace (supernatural grace) is rendered an irrelevant repetition.7
Second, connected with this flip side of the illusion of autonomy is the
presupposition that God would owe a purely natural man a proportionate
end. De Lubac considers this presupposition patently false: God is thereby
conceived as man’s debtor. Supposedly, to man in the state of integral
nature there would be an end proportionate and due, just as to man in the
state of grace there is, supposedly, an end proportionate and due.8 De
Lubac links this erroneous conception with the errors of “Pelagianism, or
Baianism.”9 The systems of both Pelagius and Baius are “naturalizing.”
That is, both make union with God something proportionate to man;
consequently, union with God is naturally “owed.” Pelagius contends that
one can perform good works by one’s own power, without an inward
grace, and thus, merit union with God. Baius affirms the necessity of
grace, on account of nature’s impotence, but he conceives of union with
God as being the end to which man is entitled. Since man is entitled to
6 Augustinianism, 233.
7 Mystery, 40. See also “Le mystère du surnaturel,” 88; and Surnaturel, 247–57, in

the context of the entire chapter. De Lubac rejects this inclusion.
8 See Mystery, 62.
9 Mystery, 48; see also Surnaturel, 488.

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571

this end, grace is owed him: “The integrity ensured by this gift of the
Spirit was in no way something gratuitous for it was not a better good,
but something whose absence would properly have constituted an evil, an
evil against nature.”10 Such errors are echoed in various ways in the
hypothesis of pure nature, which proffers
a “beatitude” which the creature requires and which God owes him. In
the “purely natural world” where this creature lives, all idea of God’s free
gift is lost. How can one say that such a picture, in either possible form,
is in harmony with any idea we could have (no matter whether from
reason or revelation) of the one true God? Is there any justification for
formulating as possible a hypothesis by whose terms God must in justice
assure man of any beatitude, however “natural”? Is there any justification
for proposing in this way a possible order in which God would, in the
strict and proper sense of the word, owe man something?11

De Lubac urges this critical observation vehemently, as we shall see.The
hypothesis of pure nature, as construed above, makes God man’s debtor
because, de Lubac insists, it involves the claim that it would be against the
divine wisdom and justice to establish an order in which it is per se
impossible, in that order, for a creature to attain a proportionate end.12
Third, de Lubac charges that in the hypothesis of pure nature, the
character of created spirit as such is betrayed, being said to have no aspirations beyond a limited ambit, to be self-enclosed, to be uninterested in
10 Augustinianism, 4. See also ibid., chaps. 1 and 2. On the other hand, there is

Cornelius Jansen (1585–1638), who subjects fallen man to strict predestination.
Despite the apparent opposition between Jansenism and Baianism, both are
fundamentally agreed on this: Innocent man would be owed grace and, when
offered it, would control it of his own accord (see ibid., 36–38, 64, and 67–68).
According to de Lubac, even some pious persons subscribed to the possibility of
an autonomous exercise of human agency. One senses in the background
William of Ockham (Quod. I, q. 16 [Opera theologica, vol. 9 (St. Bonaventure, NY:
1980), 87:11–15 and 88:22–28]). In contrast to this conception of a somewhat
autonomous self-actualization, see ST I, q. 105, aa. 3–5.
11 Mystery, 48.
12 I say “per se impossible” instead of saying, with the commentatorial tradition, that
such an order must have at least some (rational beings) who attain the natural
end. For examples of this tradition, see the commentary of Sylvester of Ferrara
(1474–1528) on ScG III, chap. 51, par. 1; and Cajetan’s commentary on ST III,
q. 9, a. 2, par. 1. A similar description, though not approval, of this tradition is
found in S. Dockx,“Du désir naturel de voir l’essence divine selon saint Thomas
d’Aquin,” Archives de philosophie 27 (1964): 91f. In my opinion, saying simply “If
such were per se impossible, God’s justice and wisdom would be threatened”
aims at the principle involved:To such-and-such a nature, such-and-such an end
ought not (sin aside) for the most part be impossible of attainment.

Christopher J. Malloy

572

God. The reason for the charge is this: Man in the state of pure nature
would, according to proponents, have only an “obediential potency,” that
is, a non-repugnance, to grace. Now, the primary instance of “obediential
potency” is, de Lubac submits, the “miracle,”13 wherein God by his
absolute power can effect whatever is possible in any given thing, even
though there be in that thing no inclination to such an effect.14 Constricting the natural desire to a case of obediential potency for a miracle,
Suarez and others ended up describing it as a mere “velleity,” an impossible wish.15 In effect, the dualist theory denies “all natural desire to see
God.”16 As de Lubac implies, a spiritual being in the purely natural state
would be “called to close itself definitively within itself.”17 De Lubac challenges this limitation of spiritual aspirations:“It is a mark of that spiritual
creature not to have its destiny circumscribed within the cosmos.”18 St.
Thomas, he says, “could recognize in the human spirit something else
than a totality closed in upon itself or upon this world.”19 Though flittingly mirroring the supernatural, the hypothesis leads, ultimately, to a
morality without religion and tears20 and to the death of personal relationships,21 tempting man to independence from God.22 How little the
difference between man thus conceived and the atheistic and deistic
detours of Enlightenment humanism!
Does [this thesis] not lead us to suppose a being similar to that so often
presented by rationalist philosophies—both ancient and modern: a
being sufficient to himself, and wishing to be so; a being who does not
pray, who expects no graces, who relies on no Providence; a being who,
depending on one’s point of view, either wants only to continue as he
is, or seeks to transcend himself, but in either case stands boldly before
13 See Mystery, 140–43; Augustinianism, 127 (n. 109), 191–92, 199–205, and 212–13.

See also Komonchak, “Theology and Culture at Mid-Century,” 586.
14 See De potentia, q. 6, a. 1, ad 18.
15 See Augustinianism, 162f., esp. n. 55; see also Surnaturel, 433.
16 Mystery, 10.
17 Henri de Lubac, Le mystère du surnaturel (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2000), 55,

emphasis mine (hereafter, Le mystère. Unless otherwise indicated, translations referencing Le mystère are mine).
18 Mystery, 110.
19 Augustinianism, 174. See also ibid., 158–63, 169, 174, 190–91, and 214–15;
Mystery, 28–29, 31f., 60 (n. 16), 108–9, 115, 128f.;“Le mystère du surnaturel,” 87;
and L. Malevez, “La gratuité du surnaturel,” Nouvelle revue théologique 75 (1953):
562 (both parts of this two-part essay are contained in the same volume).
20 See Mystery, 47.
21 See Mystery, 48, and above, note 6.
22 See Surnaturel, 153–55.

De Lubac on Natural Desire

573

God—if he does not actually divinize himself—in a proud and jealous
determination to be happy in himself and by his own powers?23

Given these terrific weaknesses, the hypothesis is objectionable in
itself. Of course, de Lubac here and there avows, God could have created
such a purely natural order.24 Moreover, de Lubac admits the hypothesis
once had utility, when it was deemed necessary for the protection of the
gratuity of grace and the freedom of God, for an equitable solution to the
fate of deceased, unbaptized infants, and in defense against a certain
excessive pessimism about human nature.25 In its chief use, however, to
identify the gratuity of the supernatural, the thesis is in fact entirely irrelevant. In the concrete order, man by nature desires a supernatural end.26
So, to suggest that some “purely natural man” does not desire this end in
no way establishes the actual gratuity of grace. Indeed, the hypothetical
order of pure nature involves some other man, an abstract man,“a different ‘me.’ ”27 “What have I to do with him?”28 Between these two men,
placed in these two orders with different finalities, there can be no identity of acting subject because no identity of nature: “The difference
between the one and the other does not affect solely their individuality;
it cannot but affect the nature itself.”29 As a result, the “pure nature” theorists utterly fail to accomplish their chief end.
Since the thesis is incapable of identifying the gratuity of grace in the
present order, one need not hold it. Given the divorce of religion and reason
it occasions, it ought not to be held. For in fact, a man persuaded that this
pure nature prolegomenon underpins the Gospel of Christ is confronted
with a dilemma: (1) renounce himself totally, only to find an unrelated self
in grace, or (2) renounce the offer of grace as superfluous to his ownmost
concerns.The markings of this alternative constitute a sad Wirkungsgeschichte:
A ghetto Christianity impotent to transform culture pitted against an
Enlightenment ideology that at bottom rejects the faith. Paradoxically, these
three agree: Catholic proponents of “pure nature,” Enlightenment deists and
atheists, and Christian defenders of “total depravity.” Together they hold that
23 Mystery, 47.
24 See Augustinianism, 106, and Mystery, 14, 54, 74, 75, etc.
25 See Augustinianism, 107–16, and 231–32, and n. 66. See also Surnaturel, 103 and

180.
26 See Mystery, 31.
27 Mystery, 59.
28 Mystery, 62.
29 Henri de Lubac, Le mystère, 87. See also ibid., n. 1, and Mystery, 59 and 101–2.

The position taken here is at least rhetorically firmer than that in “Le mystère du
surnaturel,” 91–94.

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Christopher J. Malloy

the principles of human nature do not incline man to supernatural union
with God.30
De Lubac’s Solution
Against these drawbacks, de Lubac underscores the relevance of grace,
defends its gratuity, and articulates the depths of human dependence
upon God. Central to the accomplishment of these aims is his famous
thesis: Man in the present order has an innate, unconditional, and inefficacious desire for the supernatural vision of God.31 How does this thesis
achieve these aims?
First, since the desire is innate and concerns the ultimate, grace
answers the inmost human exigence.32 As innate, the natural desire does
not first arise at the provocation of experience; it is neither accidental nor
alterable.33 De Lubac hereby parts with those who insist the desire is
“elicited,” brought on by experience. He grants that an “elicited” desire
30 See Henri Cardinal de Lubac, A Brief Catechesis on Nature and Grace, trans. Br.

Richard Arnandez (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1984), 122 (hereafter, Brief
Catechesis ).
31 Dockx (“Du désir naturel de voir l’essence divine”) also holds this thesis, presenting to my mind the best exegetical argument of Thomas’s texts in its favor.
Dockx’s claim is that created intelligence as intelligent nature has subsistent being
(God) and thus union with him as its ultimate perfective object. Hence, created
intellect naturally desires the vision of God. Note: for Dockx, the desire is not an
elicited act of the will triggered in light of a judgment of convenience; it is not
the intellect’s desire as moved or movable by the agent intellect; it is not an obediential potency to the universal divine causality. Rather, this desire is proper to the
intellect, just as any form has a relation to its proper object. As a result, the intellect innately tends towards beatific union with God (see 55–81). This tendency,
however, is not an operation but a relation (habitudo; rapport) or proportion of the
perfectible to the perfection, of matter to form (see 61f. and 64f.). Dockx explains:
In precision from its mode of operation and in consideration solely of its adequate
object, intelligence has being as its object. Now, there is an innate appetite for the
proper object of a power as form. So, created intellect has an innate appetite for
being itself subsisting.Yet, no created intellect can attain subsistent being; it can
attain it only indirectly, by “abstracting” from a consideration of particular beings.
There arises in the intellect a “drive” ( poussée) to see God (63), and no act of intelligence short of the vision will ever appease this appetite (64). More recently
developing the notion of the intellect’s distinctive appetite, but not concurring
with the thesis of a natural desire for the supernatural, is Reinhard Hütter,
“Aquinas on the Natural Desire for the Vision of God: A Relecture of Summa
contra Gentiles III, c. 25 après Henri de Lubac,” The Thomist 73 (2009): 573–79,
working from an article by Marie-Joseph Le Guillou.
32 See Mystery, 136–37. The desire must, of course, run even deeper than that
weight of selfishness that so characterizes us (see Augustinianism, 69).
33 See Mystery, 54f.

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arises, but the elicited desire signifies a more profound, ontological desire.34
One might not discover the innate desire consciously, but that does not
tell against its profoundly determining effects.35
Not only innate, the desire is also unconditional; it is so absolute that
its eternal non-fulfillment would cause the pain of damnation:
In me, a real and personal human being, in my concrete nature—that
nature I have in common with all real men, to judge by what my faith
teaches me, and regardless of what is or is not revealed to me either by
reflective analysis or by reasoning—the “desire to see God” cannot be
permanently frustrated without an essential suffering.To deny this is to
undermine my entire Credo. For is not this, in effect, the definition of
the “pain of the damned”?36

The “pain of damnation” would strike anyone who, sharing our human
nature, is confronted by the permanent frustration of this desire. Some wish
to entertain the thought of a limbus puerorum, wherein “metaphysical” suffering does not take place, but to do so involves missing the mark of human
psychology.37 Since the desire for God concretely present in man is innate
and unconditional, its everlasting frustration must constitute suffering.38
34 It could be called “the ontological appetite of intellectual substance, practically

identical with its finality” (Augustinianism, 125). See also ibid., 124–25 and 141–42;
Mystery, 136f.; and Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God, 301–3, and Feingold’s
evaluation in ibid., 324–29. Here, de Lubac considers that he is following Scotus.
Of course, for the latter, this “innate appetite” is, actually, “nothing more than an
ontological relationship towards whatever perfects a thing” (Scotus on the Will and
Morality, selected and trans. by Allan B.Wolter, ed. by William A. Frank [Washington, DC:The Catholic University of America Press, 1997], 43). Dockx’s approach
seems mixed: He describes the desire as a simple relation, on the one hand, and as
a drive and a (divine) movement on the other hand (see “Du désir naturel de voir
l’essence divine,” 80). If it were simply a relation to that which can most perfect
the desirer, the desire would not be a “weight” of nature, and the portrait would
resemble Scotus’s (see Feingold, 35f., n. 17). Yet, Scotus denies that the souls of
unbaptized, deceased infants are afflicted (for references, see Feingold, 56, n. 30; and
Serge-Thomas Bonino,“The Theory of Limbo and the Mystery of the Supernatural in St. Thomas Aquinas,” in Surnaturel: A Controversy at the Heart of TwentiethCentury Thomistic Thought, ed. Serge-Thomas Bonino, trans. Robert Williams and
revised by Matthew Levering [Ave Maria, FL: Sapientia Press, 2009], 148f.).Would
Dockx find this acceptable?
35 See Mystery, 54 and 136–37.
36 Mystery, 54; see also ibid., 54–57, and “Le mystère du surnaturel,” 91f.
37 De Lubac nevertheless appears sympathetic to an extent with the thought of
Francis Toletus (1532–96) on the limbus peurorum (see Augustinianism, 141–42 and
n. 169).
38 See de Lubac, Mystery, 203f.

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Christopher J. Malloy

At times, de Lubac indicates or implies that this desire would necessarily obtain for any created spirit as such, that no created spirit could
have any other genuinely finalizing end than the vision of God; a purely
natural finality is impossible.39 According to this line of thought, any
created spirit that failed to obtain the vision of God would suffer the
aforesaid affliction.
De Lubac’s second achievement, identifying the gratuity of grace, can
now be set in relief.Though innate and unconditional, the desire is inefficacious.40 It is “no kind of divine seed” of glory; it cannot achieve its
39 For direct statements to this effect, see Mystery, 55, 110, and 198–200;“Le mystère

du surnaturel,” 106–8 and 116; Henri de Lubac, “Duplex Hominis Beatitudo,”
Recherche de science religieuse 35 (1948): 297; and Surnaturel, passim. See also the references in note 62. In addition to these direct statements, there are indirect ones.
First, de Lubac remarks,“For St.Thomas, the end of created spirit ‘in every hypothesis is God himself, in other words the supernatural’ ” (Mystery, 67, n. 41, citing
Dom M. Capuyns, Review of Surnatuel, in Bulletin de théologie ancienne et médiévale
5 [1947]: 252).With this favorable citation of Capuyns, de Lubac goes well beyond
those who deny merely that Thomas ever speaks of the “concrete possibility” of a
purely natural end (see Mystery, 12, emphasis mine). Second, there is de Lubac’s
remark on a contention by Thomas that the soul, being created immediately by
God, has as its end an immediate re-union with God (see De unione Verbi incarnati,
a. 1; see also De virtutibus, q. 1, a. 10):“Whatever weight we attach to his argument,
whatever its exact significance, how could anyone maintain that for him, in a
‘purely natural universe,’ the human soul would not have been directly created by
God?” (Mystery, 67). Third, in his early work, there is a more emphatic denial of
the intelligibility of a purely natural finality (see Surnaturel, 456 and 468–71, and
also Michael Figura, Der Anruf der Gnade: Über die Beziehung des Menschen zu Gott
nach Henri de Lubac, no. 13, Sammlung Horizonte [Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag,
1979], 199f. and 374). It should be noted, however, that de Lubac offers qualifications in later texts:“Even if one went on to say that any natural finality has become
concretely impossible for that created spirit, that existing being, it could never be
an absolute judgment, but only one from supposition [ex suppositione]” (Mystery,
101; see also “Le mystère du surnaturel,” 105). Some object that, because of de
Lubac’s insistence that created spirit can have no other end than the vision, this
supposition must boil down to a “supposition of creation.” To this contention,
Figura answers that de Lubac is thinking “from above down”; that is, it is not that
the existing world exacts what is due from God; rather, it is that God wills this end,
and thus makes what is fit for it (Der Anruf der Gnade, 364f.; see also Malevez,“La
gratuité du surnaturel,” 576–78; and Healy, “Henri de Lubac on Nature and
Grace,” 541). Healy correctly insists that de Lubac speaks of a twofold beatitude.
Healy also faithfully displays de Lubac’s pronouncement on the character of natural beatitude, on that aspect of beatitude that corresponds to the capacity of nature:
It is terrestrial, unstable, transitory, mixed, and immanent (see 553–55).
40 “The supernatural is the object of an absolute though inefficacious desire, without ceasing to be absolutely gratuitous” (Surnaturel, 438; see also ibid., 453f;
Augustinianism, pp. 171f; and Mystery, 85f., 111, and 137).

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end.41 Moreover, this desire in no way entitles man to its end:The desire “of
itself achieves nothing, since it indicates no kind of debt or requirement.”42
De Lubac thus identifies the gratuity of grace in a radical manner and in any
order. Even in Surnaturel (1946), he presents the following remarkable citation from William of Ockham (1285–1347):“God is a debtor to no one in
any way.”43 It should be noted that although Thomas, following Augustine,
recognizes that God is debtor to no one, Ockham has added the phrase
quocumque modo.44 In turn, de Lubac augments Ockham’s addition: “In no
sense and according to no title—neither natural nor moral—do we have
rights over God. ‘God is debtor to no one in any way.’ These words of
Ockham are the refrain throughout the tradition.”45 Since God is sovereign
and free, in no sense is any creature on a par with him; the “two” are not
comparable as those who confront each other within a larger context of
justice. God is the measure.
Seeing that some failed to take cognizance of his categorical denial of
any creaturely claim or entitlement, de Lubac later stressed a “double
gratuity”: creation ex nihilo and call ex gratia. Admitting the possibility of
a purely natural order, he accepted Pius XII’s warning in Humani Generis
(1950):“Others destroy the true ‘gratuity’ of the supernatural order when
they say that God is not able to establish beings gifted with intellect without ordering and calling them to the beatific vision.”46
De Lubac sides with Augustine against Pelagius and his unwitting disciple, Baius: “All, rightly speaking, is grace (although a distinction is to be
made between one grace and another).”47 With Augustine, he admits that
in some sense there is a reward for works; it is but God’s crowning of his
own gifts.48 In truth, however, there can be no question of any created
nature having as its due the supernatural:“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.”49 There is neither a juridical claim nor
41 Mystery, 84. See also note 94.
42 Mystery, 137.
43 “Deus nulli est debitor quocumque modo” (William of Ockham, In I Sent., d.

41, q. 1 [Opera theologica, vol. 4 (St. Bonaventure, NY: 1979), 608:16f.]).
44 See Augustine, De libero arbitrio, III, chap. 16; and Feingold, The Natural Desire to

See God, 309 and 380–82.
45 Surnaturel, 487–88. See also Surnaturel, 489; Augustinianism, 12; Mystery, chaps. 5

and 12; and Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God, 309–12.
46 Pius XII, Humani Generis, 26 (DS 3891).
47 Augustinianism, 2.
48 See Augustinianism, 16.
49 Augustinianism, 29. See also de Lubac Mystery, 207.

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an ontological claim: “Every demand must be banished.”50 It is erroneous
to admit any debt in either order, even if men were without sin.51 It cannot
be emphasized enough how frequently de Lubac insists upon the point:
God could have refused to give himself to his creatures, just as he could
have, and has, given himself.The gratuitousness of the supernatural order
is true individually and totally. It is gratuitous in itself. It is gratuitous as
far as each one of us is concerned. It is gratuitous in regard to what we
see as preceding it, whether in time or in logic. Further—and this is
what some of the explanations I have contested seem to me not to make
clear—its gratuitousness remains always complete. It remains gratuitous
in every hypothesis. It is for ever new. It remains gratuitous at every stage
of preparation for the gift, and at every stage of the giving of it. No
“disposition” in the creature can ever, in any way, bind the Creator.52

Since de Lubac has identified the radical gratuity of grace in any order,
he has identified it for concrete man, whose “supernatural finality is not
hypothetical but a fact.”53
At this point, we can appreciate de Lubac’s third accomplishment:
Innately and unconditionally drawn to the vision, unable to achieve it or
to claim it, man is radically dependent upon God. He must approach God
as a humble recipient. As Nicholas Healy nicely puts it, the natural desire
constitutes “a kind of created infrastructure that opens nature from within
to receive and participate in the new and unimagined gift of deification,”54
desired “only in the context of a friendship that is gratuitous.”55 Created
spirit is, as indicated above, radically unlike anything else; non-rational
things may be able to achieve their ends by the powers given them, but
man depends on the free offer of grace, since he is made to be dependent.
This poverty marks his grandeur: “There can be no question here of any
kind of debitum naturae, anything owed to nature, no suggestion of anything
resembling a demand. Man’s longing for God is in a category of its own.”56
It is a paradox: “Man cannot live except by the vision of God—and that
vision of God depends totally on God’s good pleasure.”57
50 Henri Cardinal de Lubac, Augustinisme et théologie moderne, no. 63, Théologie

(Aubier, 1965), 47.
51 See Mystery, 183f.
52 Mystery, 236f. See also Augustinianism, 233; and Mystery, 84–86 and 130.
53 Mystery, 62. See also “Le mystère du surnaturel,” 91–99.
54 Healy, “Henri de Lubac on Nature and Grace,” 561.
55 Healy, “Henri de Lubac on Nature and Grace,” 548.
56 Mystery, 88.
57 Mystery, 179; see also ibid., 58, and “Le mystère du surnaturel,” 116.

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A spirit who understood and accepted his dignity would not grow
fearful in the face of this need.58 He would not have it any other way, for
union with God is not only beatitude and rest but leitourgia, love, and
adoration.59 A holy soul will bear itself before God humbly, stating that
its wish is “Only yourself, oh Lord.”60 Here, de Lubac places his finger
on the pulse of the mystical life. He adds that such humility must be
coupled with a renunciation of merit: The holy soul wishes to receive
God only as a gift and not as a reward.61
In sum, theologies based on the “pure nature” hypothesis show little
understanding of the dynamism and dignity of created spirit. Unlike all
natural things, even animate, the intellectual being rises above itself spontaneously. It is not satisfied with that which it can grasp.The hypothesis of
pure nature thus betrays created spirit, mechanically applying the axiom
“every form has its proper and proportionate end” to created spirit.Yet,
the axiom can apply only to non-intellectual beings.62 De Lubac identifies the relevance of grace by pointing to an innate and unconditional
desire for the vision of God, yet, he maintains, despite man’s indigence
owing to this exigence, grace is wholly gratuitous.

58 See “Le mystère du surnaturel,” 110.
59 See the conclusion to Surnaturel, and Mystery, chap. 12.
60 In my opinion, this point holds good for both the natural and the supernatural

orders. Of course, the “ecstasis” in the natural order would be infinitely inferior
to that of charity. So, in either order, God would be loved for his own sake. Since
this ecstatic love would be the ruling appetite, the very character of the desire for
knowledge of him would bear this mark. On this, see Servais Pinckaers, “The
Natural Desire to See God,” Nova et Vetera 8 (2010): 627–46.
61 See, e.g., Figura, Der Anruf der Gnade, 319, 324, and 375–77, pointing especially
to the conclusion of Surnaturel, to “Le mystère du surnaturel,” and to the
concluding chapter of Mystery.This is undoubtedly the horizon within which to
understand the imprecise remarks of Pope Benedict XVI on merit (see Spe Salvi,
35). Healy’s entire piece is bedewed with this precious insight.
62 De Lubac teaches that created spirit, as such, is open to something more than that
which it can attain by natural powers, implying that anything short of realization
of this openness would end in frustration. See Augustinianism, pp. 22, 169–79; and
Mystery, pp. 31–32, 102–18, 130, and 136f; see also Healy, “Henri de Lubac on
Nature and Grace,” passim. For his part, Dockx argues in effect that created spirit
forms the single exception to the above-cited axiom because of the proportion,
in the order of formal causality, of created intellect to the divine intellect: The
intellect as intelligence, capable of the intelligible, is proportionate to the First
Intelligible. Of course, its active power is entirely disproportionate, and in respect
of this power, created spirit can be said to have its proportionate end.

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Evaluation
De Lubac rightly saw that the modern crisis was rooted, in no small part,
in the expulsion of the divine from nature. For all the good associated
with his work in this regard, which is not to be denied (as, much less, is
the splendid quality of his works on sundry other topics), it seems a
number of questions can be raised as to the accuracy of the diagnosis and
the efficacy of the solution. I contend that de Lubac’s solution implies two
problems and that his diagnosis is premised upon two weaknesses. But
first, a statement of my own thesis and two critical notes on de Lubac.
The “hypothesis of pure nature” usually involves more than one claim.
My proposal involves the following four claims. (1) In accordance with
the principles of his nature, man (as man) has a connatural, attainable,
adequate though not perfect, end. (2) This end does not share the formality of the object of graced desire. (3) In any divinely instituted order
inclusive of man, there remains a role for this natural (though not necessarily ultimate) end, precisely in virtue of which (that is, in virtue of the
backdrop of this in itself meaning-sustaining end) the call to grace and
glory can be seen as gratuitous. (4) In an order in which God intends the
deification of rational beings, the stuff of the natural end would obtain in
the realization of the ultimate end, there being a twofold, hierarchically
differentiated attainment of God, one generic and the other specific, one
imperfect and the other perfect, the former subsumed by the latter,
neither attainable without the other by any agent that has acted freely.
Next, a critical remark. De Lubac’s insistence that no created spirit can
be adequately satisfied with a proportionate end63 is in tension64 with his
explicit admission, several times stated, of the legitimacy of the hypothesis
of a purely natural state. That is, these positions are inconsistent—unless
one swallows the implication that any purely natural state would be bereft
of meaningful finality, which is to say, intelligibility.
Finally, a critical observation.There is “a fundamental ambiguity” in de
Lubac’s corpus with respect to the relation between the natural desire and
human nature.65 The relation is characterized in more than one way. At
times, as indicated above, the desire is identified with the finality of this
human nature or even with human nature itself.66 At other times, this
63 See note 39 above.
64 See Malevez, “La gratuité du surnaturel,” 563f., 681, n. 64, and 682f.
65 Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God, 329.
66 “The desire to see Him is in us; it is we ourselves; yet, it is fulfilled (comblé) only

by pure favor” (Le mystère, 209; see also Mystery, 62f.; Augustinianism, 142; “Le
mystère du surnaturel,” 111; Surnaturel, 483 and 488; and also Figura, Der Anruf
der Gnade, 272f.).

De Lubac on Natural Desire

581

human nature is distinguished from the desire that God impresses upon
it.67 In his later work, de Lubac draws a threefold ontological (not
temporal) distinction to underscore the double (we could say triple)
gratuity: the creation of human persons, the imprinting of the desire for
the supernatural, and the actual offer of grace and glory.According to this
conception, (a) from the existence of God, no created thing follows of
necessity; (b) from the creation of rational beings, the imprinting of the
desire for the supernatural does not follow as something in any way
necessary or due; and (c) from the imprinting of this desire, the offer of
grace does not follow as something in any way necessary or due.68 Of
course, if the difference between two men with two different finalities is
indeed a difference of species, then the gratuitous “movement” in stage
(b) is not to the point.69 David Braine helpfully steers us away from reading de Lubac as speaking with philosophical precision here. We should
read him instead as presenting us with human persons in this concrete
order of divine wisdom.70 If we do this, we are left with the relevant
double gratuity: the creation of a man with an innate, unconditional, and
inefficacious desire for the supernatural and the divine call to grace and
glory.These observations lead me to my questions regarding the implications of de Lubac’s solution.
67 See Surnaturel, 486–87. Here, the desire could not be unless God intended to

meet it.
68 See Mystery, 80–81, 84–86, 102; see also Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God,

332–35; and David Braine,“The Debate between Henri de Lubac and His Critics,” Nova et Vetera 6 (2008): 583.
69 Curiously, de Lubac seems to have recognized this in 1949 (see “Le mystère du
surnaturel,” 101–3). Further, to the “three elements” to which he refers here
(ibid., 103) he adds, in Mystery, a fourth, a really existent “me” who has not been
endowed with a natural desire for the supernatural. On the mature distinction,
see Figura, Der Anruf der Gnade, 358–61.
70 Thoughtfully representing de Lubac’s instincts and insights, Braine contends that
whereas human nature is not specifically different under different orders of providence, yet human persons are radically different under different orders of providence. In virtue of what are they different? Feingold would maintain that they
could be different only in virtue of having different essential or accidental principles. Not the former; therefore, the latter. Braine points not to either but to relation: Such persons have/are relations to God that are fundamentally different in
this order of providence than they would have/be in a possible, purely natural
one (see “The Debate,” 547–57 and 559–72). In fact, we could not be dealing
with the same persons, since it is “ontologically impossible” to jump from one
order to another (see Braine, “The Debate,” 571, 583, and 588). (Healy gets at
the same thing [“desire of the human heart” (“Henri de Lubac on Nature and
Grace,” 546)] but maintains de Lubac’s terms [see, e.g., 542, 547, and 552].) For
a response to this suggestion, see note 114 below.

582

Christopher J. Malloy

Implications of de Lubac’s Solution
Purely Natural Man Miserable?
Given the recourse he takes to shore up the gratuity of grace—his
employment of Ockham’s statement—does not Lubac imply that we by
nature, even without sin, would be beings toward misery ?71 The thrust of
Ockham’s passage, at least as de Lubac wields it, is that God in no way
pays any debt.72 De Lubac in practice follows Ockham’s denial that any
creaturely exigence is such that it would be repugnant to the divine
justice for God not to meet it. For Ockham, “If the finite goodness of a
created nature does not constitute a decisive reason for God to love it
enough to create it, the fact that certain conditions are required for its
finite flourishing does not combine with divine self-love to generate an
overriding reason to situate the nature in advantageous circumstances
either.”73 Ockham takes his principle to its conclusion: God could in
justice refuse eternal life to one whom he has made deiform through
charity. Moreover, God could damn such a one, even though he has actually kept God’s precepts:
Punishment is owed [to the sinner] because God has thus ordained it.
For, as God creates any creature by his mere will, so by his mere will
he can do with his creature whatever pleases him. For, just as, if someone were always to love God and do all the works acceptable to God,
God could annihilate that person without injury [to his justice], so after
all those works God could give him, not eternal life but eternal punishment, without injury [to his justice]. And the reason is that God is no
one’s debtor, but whatever he does to us, he does out of mere grace.
71 Here, there is some similarity between Baius’s position and de Lubac’s, except that

Baius responds by destroying the gratuity of grace. De Lubac’s twofold response
will appear in what follows.
72 For his part, Augustine scrupulously grounds pain in sin, whether original or
actual, and he supposes a “middle” state between actual sin and righteousness,
whereby those who die before the use of reason may be neither rewarded nor
punished: “But that defect would not be worthy of condemnation unless it were
voluntary” (Augustine, On Free Choice of the Will, chap. 15, trans.Thomas Williams
[Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1993], 100). For the grounding of blame in
sin, see ibid., chaps. 15–22. For the affirmation both of a life “intermediate
between sin and right action” and also of a judgment “intermediate between
punishment and reward” see ibid., chap. 22, p. 116. Though it is reasonably said
that man in the state of integral nature would not be free from suffering, yet (and
this is my point), his final end would not be per se impossible of attainment.
73 Marilyn McCord Adams, “Ockham on Will, Nature, and Morality” in The
Cambridge Companion to Ockham, ed. Paul Vincent Spade (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1999), 264.

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Therefore, by the fact that God does something, he has done it justly.
For it is obvious that Christ never sinned, yet he was punished most
vehemently unto death.”74

It is unthinkable that de Lubac would wish to go as far as this.75 Still, he
articulates no other viable way, given his positive thesis, of identifying the
gratuity of grace.76
1. The Implication. So, de Lubac’s answer to the question concerning
the gratuity of grace is that God owes nothing to anyone in any way.
74 William of Ockham, In IV Sent. (Reportatio ), q. 5 (Opera theologica, vol. 7 [St.

Bonaventure, NY: 1984], 55:11–21). See also William of Ockham, In I Sent., d.
17, q. 1 (Opera theologica, vol. 3 [St. Bonaventure, NY: 1977], 452:1–5, 453:11–22,
454:12–17). One must hold this thesis “so that God may be necessitated by nothing to confer eternal life on anyone. Thus, this opinion greatly diverges from
Pelagius’s error” (In I Sent., d. 17, q. 1 [Opera theologica, vol. 3, 454:26–455:2]). For
Feingold’s criticism of de Lubac on this point, see Feingold, The Natural Desire to
See God, 377–84.
75 See Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God, 381f.
76 Figura adverts to this solution to the difficulty presented by a natural desire for
the supernatural (see Der Anruf der Gnade, 378f; see also 363 and 368). Still, he
prefers to consider de Lubac as approaching the question from the top down (see
note 39 above). Paradoxically, de Lubac criticizes the theory of pure nature as
having its genesis in voluntarism (see Augustinianism, 109 and 111; Surnaturel,
169f.; and Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God, 297–99 and 339–43). Henri
Rondet, to whom de Lubac refers, also ascribes the “separation” of glory from
nature to the birth of voluntarism. However, significantly, Rondet locates the key
to this story in the loss of the place of debitum:The connection between grace and
glory was gradually attenuated, until William of Ockham sundered it (see
William of Ockham, In I Sent., d. 17, q. 1 [Opera theologica, vol. 3, pp. 452–56],
and In IV Sent., q. 11 [Opera theologica, vol. 7, 207:11–22]; see Henri Rondet,
Gratia Christi: Essai d’historire du dogme et de théologie dogmatique [Paris: Beauchesne, 1948], 240–46; and Armand Maurer, The Philosophy of William of Ockham in
the Light of Its Principles, no. 133, Studies and Texts [Toronto: Pontifical Institute
of Medieval Studies, 1999], 261f.). Contrary to what I am proposing here,
Laurence Renault argues that it was Ockham who first introduced into theology the philosophical principle that one can have a natural desire only for that
for which one has a capacity (see Laurence Renault, “William of Ockham and
the Distinction between Nature and Supernature,” in Surnaturel: A Controversy,
ed. Bonino, 191–202). Lawrence Feingold, in his review of the collection edited
by Bonino (The Thomist 74 [2010]: 632–36), points out a number of deficits in
Renault’s analysis, such as his failure to draw an adequate distinction between
Scotus and Thomas. I would note, further, that Renault’s presentation of Thomas
lacks contour. Most importantly, it is Ockham’s denial of any debitum whatsoever
that really represents the innovation, and this denial is in spirit diametrically
opposed to the thesis of a proportion between desire and capacity which
Renault traces to Ockham as to its font.

Christopher J. Malloy

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Now, if this answer is viable, there is a possible order in which the
following obtain: (1) created persons have an innate, unconditional,
and inefficacious desire for the supernatural vision of God; (2) the
everlasting frustration of their desire is identical to that which constitutes the suffering of the damned; (3) these persons actually do obey
the natural law; yet (4) God without injustice or failure in wisdom
never meets this desire.The net result of such a situation would be an
innocent human being suffering the pain of the damned. It is of some
solace that de Lubac avows that truly innocent suffering would not be
a “penalty.”77 Still, would it not be ontological frustration of an
absolute desire?78 Thomas, by contrast, teaches, “That which is
according to nature can be called neither punishment nor evil, for that
which is natural for each thing is in every case fitting for it.”79 Hence,
for Aquinas, the lack of vision for one who died in a purely natural
state would not constitute a punishment: “It is one thing not to be
bound to have something [i.e., not to be bound to be in some condition, namely, the condition of not having the beatific vision], which
does not have the character of punishment but of defect only; it is
another thing to be bound not to have it [i.e., to be bound not to have
the beatific vision], which has the character of punishment.”80 We
should be precise about what Thomas means:The lack of vision for a
man in a purely natural state (a) would not be “inflicted” by judicial
order on account of guilt, as is absence of vision for the damned, and
also (b) would not “afflict.” How, on de Lubac’s principles, could one
establish the non-afflicting character of the loss of vision for any innocent human, short of taking recourse in grace, which is not owed, or
in some ad hoc solution?
Turning to the concrete order, one may ask how de Lubac’s thesis
could, without demanding grace, establish the non-afflicting character of the loss of vision for someone in our order who died before
acting freely.81 Before pursuing this question, I must acknowledge a
few things. (a1) The actual fate of unbaptized, deceased infants is one
thing; (a2) the longstanding doctrinal permissibility of limbus puerorum is another; and (a3) its intellectual integrity is yet another.
77 See Surnaturel, 456.
78 On the absolute desire, see Surnaturel, 484. On the ontological frustration, see

Steven Long,“On the Loss, and the Recovery, of Nature as a Theonomic Principle: Reflections on the Nature/Grace Controversy,” Nova et Vetera 5 (2007): 138.
79 ST I–II, q. 85, a. 6, sc 2.
80 De malo, q. 5, a. 1, ad 15.
81 Hence, the precipitous movement to forbid theories of Limbo.

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Regarding (a1), the contemporary solution favors a hidden communication of grace, constituting a respectable and hope-filled solution
provided it preserves the gratuity of grace and does not neglect the
ordinary means of its communication. All should recognize the
second (a2) unless some magisterial statement to the contrary settles
the matter.With Thomas, I will be arguing for the third (a3). (b) The
theological labor towards the theory of limbus puerorum was convoluted and controverted. One who would assess these labor pains
cannot ignore the generally agreed historical observation that the
distinction between the natural and supernatural realms was not
conceptually established until Philip the Chancellor (†1236).
The difficulty facing us is this. Some humans die before being
capable of actual fault, though, as we know by faith, each is culpable
of original guilt upon ensoulment. Clearly, participation in original
guilt merits loss of vision, loss of that exceeding good in no way due
to nature. However, would it be fitting for beings innocent as to
personal fault to be tormented? And would they not be tormented if
they suffered either pain of sense or anguish at the pain of loss?
In his career, Thomas offered two ways of resolving the difficulty
concerning the fate of infants who die without baptism. In his early
work, he contended that infants in limbo are not afflicted because their
desire to see God remains an imperfect will or velleitas.82 Being just and
wise, such separated souls virtuously moderate their desire according to
that true insight in the Stoic ethic.83 Further, they share in divine
goods in a natural way, and in this sharing they even rejoice.84 Though
not described as “beatitude,” the end causative of such joy would be
tantamount to a post-terrestrial heightening of what Thomas elsewhere describes as the beatitude proportionate to human capacity.
Here in his commentary on Lombard’s Sentences,Thomas situates this
natural rest within a horizon of wonder emerging from a crowning
human desire for knowledge of the essence of God.
In De malo, q. 5, a. 3, Thomas presents a different solution. The
souls of departed, unbaptized infants do not desire the supernatural
82 See In II Sent., d. 33, q. 2, a. 2, obj. 2 and ad 2. For some of Feingold’s remarks

on the limbus puerorum, see his The Natural Desire to See God, 203, 213, 228,
247–50, 350–53, and 368. Maritain dislikes the term “velleity” but regards the
desire as conditional (see Jacques Maritain, Approaches to God, trans. Peter
O’Reilly [New York:The Macmillan Company, 1954], 98f.). On velleitas in this
connection, see Bonino, “Theory of Limbo,” 135–37.
83 See Bonino,“The Theory of Limbo,” 132–34. Cf. Mystery, 128, 195f.; and Surnaturel, 484–91.
84 See In II Sent., d. 33, q. 2, a. 2 and ad 5.

Christopher J. Malloy

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vision of God because they have no idea of God under this formality. Although punished, they would not be afflicted.85 They “do not
lack the natural knowledge that the separated soul by its nature
deserves.”And what is such knowledge? “It belongs to natural cognition that the soul know that it is created for happiness, and that
happiness consists in the attainment of the perfect good.” Yet, of
course, that good is not identical with God unveiled in vision; of this,
the deceased infants have no clue.86 Thomas makes no appeal, even
in the concrete order, to preternatural gifts preserving such infants
from possible awareness of such a surpassing end.87
Clearly,Thomas’s opinion has developed. How shall we understand
this development? I would suggest that key features of both solutions
can stand together, the former being taken up and nuanced by the
latter. My contention here rests upon another claim, namely, that
Aquinas’s principles lead one to distinguish the species of the natural
end from the species of the supernatural end.88 (Towards the end of
85 See De malo, q. 5, a. 3.
86 De malo, q. 5, a. 3 (Thomas Aquinas, On Evil, trans. Richard Regan [New York:

Oxford University Press, 2003], 241).Aquinas is indeed describing such infants (a)
not only as punished and unfortunate in light of their call, but (b) as not afflicted
by this punishment because of their ignorance of their de facto end, and also (c)
by implication, even naturally blessed. By contrast, see Braine,“The Debate,” 561.
There is a crucial distinction between actual and original sin at stake here. Bonino
stresses that this natural beatitude is not a separate beatitude from supernatural
beatitude. It is a generic, unspecified form of fulfillment, objectively intermediate
between the pilgrim state and ultimate beatitude, the supernatural vision (Bonino,
“Theory of Limbo,” 142f.). I would stress a distinction of formal objects as a way
of precising the distinction Bonino rightly draws here. Bonino makes a good case
for his reading in light of De malo, q. 5, a. 3, ad 3, which implicitly locates the
“penal” character of the loss of vision in its contrareity to the natural desire.
Whereas de Lubac reads such desire as an urgent pressure immediately directed
towards the supernatural, Bonino by contrast upholds the relative sufficiency of
the “stuff ” naturally attainable (the ‘certain imperfect beatitude’) and denies that
we are immediately ordered to the vision (see Bonino,“Theory of Limbo,” 145).
87 Bonino describes such solutions as “extrinsicist” (Bonino, “Theory of Limbo,”
131f.). By contrast, Braine seems to teach the necessity of such gifts even in a
purely natural order (see Braine, “The Debate,” 566).
88 One can also discern this in Thomas’s corpus. The formal object of the utmost
yearning of the human heart—an understanding of the essence of the first
cause—is different from that of the desire rooted in grace.Thomas alludes to the
distinction of formal objects in various places (see, e.g., ST I–II, q. 5, a. 5, ad 3; De
caritate, a. 2, ad 16, and a. 9; see also Long, “On the Loss, and the Recovery, of
Nature,” 138, 140–41, 145–47, 154).The ground of this distinction is the principle that different species have different ends, each species having its connatural
end (see In II Sent., d. 3, q. 1, a. 6, ad 5; De veritate, q. 27, a. 2; Quaestio disputata De

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this essay, I will discuss the integral unity of both in the concrete
order.) The De malo references this distinction: These souls can have
no clue about God as he is disclosed through faith and vision, for
these disclosures are of a different kind (formality) than that to which
nature gives them access. So, the second solution stands. On the other
hand, knowledge of the essence of the first cause is a desideratum,
although it must be justly moderated while allowed to inspire a
wonder guiding the dynamic progression of natural beatitude’s “felicity in motion.”Thus, the first solution stands.89
Aquinas has his ways out of the horrible test case posed above. De
Lubac, however, is reticent to grapple with it: “If it were absolutely
anima, a. 7, obj. 10 and ad 10; ScG III, chap. 150, par. 5; ST I, q. 62, a. 6, ad 3; and
ST I q. 75, a. 7, obj. 1 and ad 1).The finis proximus is not called proximus because
any order must have direction to the finis ultimus supernaturalis but because in the
present order the two are in play in a hierarchically ordered manner that allows
the asymmetrical compenetration of both without confusion (see note 216
below). Now, since human reason cannot fathom the formality of supernatural
beatitude, faith is necessary, so that one may be made aware of the goods of grace
and glory (see ST II–II, q. 4, a. 7). Since the supernatural good is arduous of attainment, because of sin and because of its infinitely surpassing character, hope also is
required for there to be a completed, unconditioned movement of the appetite
(see In III Sent., d. 23, q. 1, a. 5; ibid., d. 26, q. 2, a. 3, qla 1; ScG III, chap. 153, par.
5; and ST I–II, q. 40, a. 1, ad 3; recently treating this topic with relevance to the
concrete order, and so treating not natural but divine hope, is Hütter, “Natural
Desire,” 573–77). So, without hope, even faith would not beget a movement of
man towards the vision (In III Sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 5, qla 4, ad 2 [Mandonnet, p.
847, par. 163]). Of course, there can be an inchoate desire for what is possible or
not possible (see De virtutibus, q. 4, a. 1, and Compendium theologiae II, chap. 7).Yet,
one can choose to love only that which is possible of attainment (see In IV Sent.,
d. 14, q. 1, a. 2, qla 2), for choice regards a completed appetitive act. Desire for
what is impossible remains incomplete or conditioned; it is a velleitas (see In II
Sent., d. 22, q. 1, a. 3, ad 1) but not necessarily a “superficial” one (cf. Surnaturel,
433). Since the appetite is not inclined naturally to a good that is out of proportion with it, the supernatural end is not naturally desired (see De veritate, q. 22, a.
7). Finally, if one is to tend to the supernatural good as is befitting a citizen, just
as by nature one tends to the finis ultimus cui (see note 177 below), one requires
charity (see De caritate, a. 2). In certain texts, Thomas compactly treats these
considerations together (see In III Sent., d. 23, q. 1, a. 4, qla 3, ad 1; De veritate, q.
14, a. 2; ibid., q. 27, a. 2; ScG III, chap. 150, par. 5; Super I Cor, chap. 13, lect. 4, par.
806; Super II Cor, chap. 5, lect. 2, par. 160; De spe, a. 8, ad 8; ST I, q. 62, aa. 1–2;
ST I–II, q. 62, aa. 1–3). For a brief discussion of de Lubac’s handling of these texts,
see note 95 below.
89 Maritain marvelously describes the desire (see Maritain, Approaches, 97–100).
Showing the theologically scientific relevance of the theory of limbus puerorum is
M.-R. Gagnebet,“L’amour naturel de Dieu chez saint Thomas et ses contemporains II,” Revue thomiste 49 (1949): 68–70.

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necessary—though the attentive reader will have grasped by now
that I do not think it so—to try to imagine the essential activity of a
created spirit to whom God did not will to give any access to his
own joy . . . ”90 Without counting the cost to his theory, de Lubac
laments that the only “end” attainable by such a being would be
incessant “circling” around an unknown God. Yet, since any man
with our concrete natural desire could have only a supernatural finality,91 this “not attractive” circling would be vanity.92 “There must of
necessity be some ultimate goal when one will finally be wholly in
act. Otherwise the journey can only be one of despair. The spirit
which never reaches its goal, the vision of God, has failed to achieve
its destiny.”93 Despair!
It must be kept squarely in mind that de Lubac is speaking not
merely of sinful men but of any man that would share our nature
without grace. Indeed, if he remains consistent to his teaching on
created spirit as such, he is speaking of any possible created spirit, for
he often insists that created spirit can have no natural and theo-centric
end,94 that to it there corresponds no natural finality.95 Consequently,
90 Mystery, 203. For his earlier consideration of this terrible end, see Surnaturel, 459f.
91 See note 39 above.
92 See Mystery, 204.
93 Mystery, 204. Elsewhere, de Lubac charges that to fear the spirit’s natural and

inevitable restlessness is to lack faith (“Le mystère du surnaturel,” 110).
94 See Surnaturel, 240–57 (in the context of the chapter), and 451–60. See also notes

16–19.
95 See note 39 above. Thomas’s numerous texts on the duplex hominis beatitudo seem

ripe material for a rejoinder (see Long,“On the Loss, and the Recovery, of Nature,”
137 and 141; and Dockx,“Du désir naturel de voir l’essence divine,” 51).Yet, has the
second set of texts been neglected? It has not. (1) Dockx, approaching the matter
with speculative vigor, aims to deal with the principles underlying any and all of these
texts (see note 31 above). (2) Laporta also treats the “two sets” of texts:“The entire
effort of this work was to show that Thomas, by using the terms ‘natural appetite’,
‘natural desire’, etc., does not usually speak of a conscious, psychological activity but
of the unalterable finality of every created nature” ( Jorge Laporta,“Pour trouver le
sens exact des termes appetitus naturalis, desiderium naturale, amor naturalis, etc. chez
Thomas d’Aquin,” Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen âge 40 [1973]: 92).
Laporta specifies, with regard to humans, that Thomas speaks now of natural desire
according to the one true ultimate end of any man (beatific vision) and now of the
natural desire from the point of view of what is attainable by natural powers (the
end proportionate to the agent intellect, ultimately intellectual activity when freed
from the need for phantasms—contemplation of separate substances). (3) Finally, de
Lubac also addresses these texts, as Healy rightly notes (see “Henri de Lubac on
Nature and Grace,” 553–57). One way in which de Lubac treats these texts is that
he
discerns
therein
three
different
comparisons
between

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589

de Lubac must choose one of the following strained readings of Pius
XII’s teaching. Either (a) the Pope’s teaching affirms the possibility of
some order of intellectual creatures without an innate desire for vision;
thus read, the teaching would be (for de Lubac) totally irrelevant for
identifying gratuity in the concrete order.96 But, to the contrary, the
Pope’s teaching includes the causal reason:Those destroy the gratuity
of grace when/since they thus deny this possibility. Or (b) Pius affirms
that God could create intellectual creatures with such a desire yet
without efficaciously ordering them to the vision. Read thus, Humani
Generis implies as really possible a meaningless world. Is either of these
readings conveniens?
It is instructive, in relation to Pius’s teaching, to observe the difference between de Lubac and Rahner on the question of what is “due.”
In Mystery, de Lubac calls Rahner to witness for him a couple of
times. De Lubac refers to the desire ever evoked by the supernatural
existential as similar to what he means by natural desire.97 He then
cites approvingly Rahner’s conclusion regarding this existential:“The
loss of a good which is possible but not the object of an ontological
ordination prior to free endeavor (voluntas ut res) can only be felt as a
painful evil when the loser wills it freely.”98 For both theologians, this
taut passage is to be interpreted as not descriptive of our desire for
God. Both claim that man as he presently exists would feel everlasting
perfect and imperfect beatitude: evening knowledge—morning knowledge; that
natural knowledge that one will also enjoy while glorified—vision of God; and
merely terrestrial knowledge of God—vision of God. For this breakdown, see
Surnaturel, 451–65, and “Duplex,” 290–99. It is to be admitted that Thomas quite
often pits a pilgrim beatitude—whether natural or supernatural or both—against
the heavenly beatitude. It is not valid to conclude that therefore his principles do not
admit a natural, adequate but imperfect, post-terrestrial, and theo-centric end (see note
177 below). However much one points to the space de Lubac leaves for the traces
of natural beatitude in the one true beatitude (see, e.g., Healy, 553ff. and 562–64),
these do not amount to an intelligibility-constituting admission. Another way de
Lubac resolves the difficulty imposed by these texts is having recourse to the notion
of an “inefficacious” desire (which he understands to be absolute) for the supernatural (for references to de Lubac, see note 40 above; for a response, see note 153
below).
96 See, e.g., Healy, “Henri de Lubac on Nature and Grace,” 551f.; and Mansini,
“The Abiding Theological Significance of Henri de Lubac’s Surnaturel,” The
Thomist 73 (2009): 605.
97 See Mystery, 55, n. 4.
98 Mystery, 57; citing Karl Rahner,“The Relationship Between Nature and Grace,”
Theological Investigations, vol. 1, 312, n. 1. Rahner’s essay is a development of his
initial response to the following anonymous article: D.“Ein Weg zur Bestimmng
des Verhaltnisses von Natur und Gnade,” Orientierung 14 (1950): 138–41.

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deprivation of vision as painful, even should the loss not be occasioned by a conscious, free act.99 Still, the thesis de Lubac hopes to
exact from this passage in Mystery is quite other than Rahner’s meaning. Rahner roundly criticizes the description of the desire for the
supernatural as being natural or constitutive, since such a characteristic would make grace due to concrete man.100 Why? Presumably,
Rahner finds a meaningless universe impossible. On at least three
counts do these theologians differ. (1) For Rahner, the abiding supernatural existential, being neither grace nor an essential human principle, could not touch a race of innocent people without the divine
commitment actually to offer grace.These would be two aspects of a
single gratuity (ontologically) additional to the gratuity of creation.101
For de Lubac, the desire belongs to nature. (2) Rahner holds that the
silent waiting that man as man would live would constitute a meaningful existence, genuine fulfillment within a horizon of wonder.102
So, for Rahner, man as such (prescinding from sin) would be intelligible and not vain without grace.103 As is implied by de Lubac’s thesis,
99 The actual fate of infants dying without baptism is tangential to the point I am

making.
100 See Rahner, “Relationship,” 303–15. Malevez sums up the trenchant critique

well: “Without doubt, here as well, one can say that God owes it to himself to
grant [grace] to us, but this does not remove the necessity of admitting that he
also owes it to us to grant us this grace. Once his decree to create is supposed,
he must grant to man himself a destiny without which his nature is neither intelligible, nor definable, nor possible” (“La gratuité du surnaturel,” 576). For an
excellent treatment, see David Coffey,“The Whole Rahner on the Supernatural
Existential,” Theological Studies 65 (2004): 98–104 and 111–14.
101 As Coffey argues, the existential is the beginning of the offer of grace. Grounded
in God’s intention to give himself to man, it can be said to constitute the penultimate material disposition in man for divine indwelling, sanctifying grace being
the ultimate disposition already aligned with the quasi-formal causality of
indwelling (see Coffey, “The Whole Rahner,” 115).
102 “Perceiving God’s silence is also an answer that makes the listening meaningful”
(Karl Rahner, Hearer of the Word, trans. Joseph Donceel [New York: Continuum,
1994], 151; see also 69–73). Coffey elaborates this underdeveloped but discernible
element in Rahner’s thought (see Coffey,“The Whole Rahner,” 111–13).
103 Of course, one may ask two questions regarding Rahner’s thought about the
state of pure nature. First, need we be as skeptical as he about arriving at some
knowledge of what man would be like were he in that state (see Malevez, “La
gratuité du surnaturel,” 687–89)? Second, does what Rahner allows himself, by
transcendental analysis, to describe man to be correspond to an intelligible form
of existence? Rahner (see Hearer, chap. 2) to a certain extent makes man simply
an embodied spirit who is waiting for a possible, historically delivered “word”
from God.The indication that the human texture is (also) historical is well taken,

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man as such (prescinding from sin) would be utterly meaningless and
vain without grace. (3) Granted, for both Rahner and de Lubac, the
vision is, in the concrete order, the object of an ontological ordination that marks every single spirit prior to free endeavor. For both, the
permanent lack of the vision could not but be felt as the pain of the
damned, unless one took refuge in ad hoc solutions, which both theologians seem to eschew. Notwithstanding this agreement, for Rahner, any
person afflicted by the permanent lack of supernatural beatitude
would have to be guilty of at least original sin. For de Lubac, a person
so afflicted could be entirely innocent.
There is thus a terrible poignancy in de Lubac’s Pascalian exclamation, “The inborn grandeur and wretchedness of the spiritual
creature!”104 Although sin and grace magnify it, this exclamation
stands apart from sin, for man’s condition is a “mysterious lameness,
due not merely to sin, but primarily and more fundamentally to being a
creature made out of nothing which, astoundingly, touches God.”105
The lameness of which he speaks is not reducible to the absolute
dependence of every created being upon God, both directly and
through the mediation of interactive secondary causes pertinent to
that order. It is a lameness vis-à-vis an end specifically supernatural,
the only end one desires by nature and the very one unattainable
except by a divine condescension of a specifically different sort than
that pertinent to the order “already” constituted.106 Precisely insofar
as de Lubac insists on the radically special character of spiritual
“nature”—that which has no proportionate end—he unwittingly
conjures up this specter of a naturally miserable man, describing it as
“the paradox itself of human nature (or, rather, of created spirit).”107
yet the vector of ultimate human inquiry, it seems to me, is rather vertical than
horizontal.The eros towards the universal ultimately discovers (in principle, that
is) angelic substances, spiritual persons. Further, this eros drives towards the
discovery and contemplation of the divine being, which must most of all be
personal. Hence, the movement towards the universal transcends into a movement towards non-material individuals and ultimately the infinite individual.The
natural human telos is quasi-angelic. Both the inquiry and the life requisite
thereto require friendship, as does the full flowering of that end.
104 Augustinianism, 174.
105 Mystery, 113–14, emphases mine.
106 The implications of de Lubac’s thought match his own description of Gregory
of Valencia’s thought (see Augustinianism, 111).
107 Surnaturel, 456. Dockx, it seems, would also leave any innocent and non-predestinate persons in this pickle (see Dockx,“Du désir naturel de voir l’essence divine,”
93). De Lubac, however, finds the situation “healthy” (“Le mystère du surnaturel,”
110). Alasdair MacIntyre describes Aquinas’s reading of Aristotle in similar terms

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2. Alternative Redeeming Strategies for de Lubac. The irrationality
of the above implication appears to have moved de Lubac, at times,
to discover alternative solutions. First, he sometimes entertains an
opposite extreme, stepping out from his voluntaristic shelter for the
gratuity of grace and approaching the logic of neo-Platonic emanation and return:“As a result—at least so it seems—how could the just
and good God frustrate me, if it were not I who by my own fault
turned myself away from him freely?”108
Second, sometimes he finds shelter by conceiving the gratuity
“from above down.”109 It is not the desire that binds God, but God
who freely decides to call man, and thus creates him with this innate
desire: “If there is in our nature a desire to see God, this cannot be
except because God wants for us this supernatural end which consists
in the vision.” Because God wills the vision for us unceasingly, he
unceasingly gives us this desire so that “this desire is nothing else than
his call.”110 This line of thought from Surnaturel is later made more
circumspect. The desire may cautiously be read as a sign of grace:
“But, one may perhaps say, it remains true none the less that once
such a desire exists in the creature it becomes the sign, not merely of
(see Alasdair MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Inquiry: Encyclopaedia, Genealogy, and Tradition [Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990], 137f.).
MacIntyre, as Aquinas, is interested in the actual order of things. His contention is
thus accurate that one who discovers the inadequacy of any humanly attainable
end must wash ashore in a Hobbesian dispersement of soul and quest for power.
My point is that if this description is taken to be an accurate description of homo
sapiens, then any divine institution of rational nature without grace must be unintelligible.
108 Le mystère, 80. See also “Le mystère du surnaturel,” 91. On the neo-Platonic association, see Mansini, “Surnaturel,” 608f.
109 See Figura, Der Anruf der Gnade, 318–19, 323–27, 364–66, and 373f.; and
Malevez, “La gratuité du surnaturel,” 563 and 569–71. Balthasar once exercised
this strategy: see Hans Urs von Balthasar,“Who Is Man?” in Spirit and Institution,
trans. Edward T. Oakes (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1995), vol. 4 of Explorations
in Theology, 25f.
110 Surnaturel, 486f.; see the entire Conclusion. See also “Le mystère du surnaturel,”
117. S. Dockx’s solution to the dilemma is the same: It is not that God is obliged
but that he is wise in all his works (see Dockx,“Du désir naturel de voir l’essence
divine,” 87). The question is begged. Utilizing De malo, q. 5, a. 1, ad 1, Dockx
contends that even when considered as sinner, “Man cannot be made in vain”
(88).Thomas does not say that sinful man cannot be made in vain. He says, “In
order that he not be made frustrated and in vain,” God intended a redeemer. God
could, however, have left all men in sin forever; it would be they who were in
vain, not he who was unwise. Rahner’s critique of D. (“Ein Weg zur Bestimmng
des Verhaltnisses”) is applicable to Dockx’s article as well (see note 100 above).

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a possible gift from God, but of a certain gift. It is the evidence of a
promise, inscribed and recognized in the being’s very self.”111 The
certainty of the sign’s reference remains, even though recognition of
this desire and its reference requires revelation.112
As has been abundantly noted by de Lubac’s critics, the first strategy undermines the gratuity of grace.113 Neither does the “from
above down” approach constitute an answer. Effectively, the “above
down” approach identifies only a single gratuity, the divine freedom
to create or not to create a world in which intellectual creatures
innately desire him and by grace can attain him. The approach is
praiseworthy in its focus on the concrete. And in the concrete order,
nature is for grace just as the end is first in the order of intention.
Notwithstanding, we have here no identification of a double gratuity
because we have here no discerning metaphysical gaze on the principles responsible for created effects.114 Thus, the approach begs the
111 Mystery, 207. See also Mystery, 25, and Le mystère, 81: “Ma finalité, dont ce désir

est l’expression. . . .” Again, it is a certain sign but only because God determines in
advance to give himself freely (see “Le mystère du surnaturel,” 117). See also
Surnaturel, 467, 469, and 486–88; and Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God,
301f. and 305–7. When arguing thus, de Lubac avows not to say, with Edmund
Brisbois,“There is naturally in the human will a desire for the divine vision, independent of man’s vocation to his supernatural destiny” (Edmund Brisbois, “Le
désir de voir Dieu et la métaphysique du vouloir selon saint Thomas,” Nouvelle
revue théologique 63 [1936]: 1113). Rather, for de Lubac, the desire is radically
grounded in the elevation of man, as inchoately supernatural (see Mystery, 101–2).
In the context of de Lubac’s argument, this passage from Brisbois affirms an innate
and overwhelming desire, conscious or no, regardless of the call to deification.
Brisbois in fact presents a subtle thesis:There is an ontological élan to the beatific
vision, short of the call to deification, but such an élan would be compatible with
a psychological rest short of the vision, for, in order that it may come to act, it
must be awoken by the divine call (see Brisbois,“Le désir de voir Dieu,” 1108f.).
112 This change in de Lubac’s thought concerning the demonstrative value of the
desire does not touch the issue of gratuity (see Surnaturel, 468–71; “Le mystère
du surnaturel,” 117–19; and Mystery, 208).
113 Texts such as these have worried some of his critics (see, e.g., Rahner, “Relationship,” 304–13; Malevez, “La gratuité du surnaturel,” 681f.; Feingold, The
Natural Desire to See God, 369f., 383f., 389–92, and 428; and Mansini, “Surnaturel,” 605–7). I include Rahner because he recognized de Lubac’s thesis as what
is at stake in the article by “D.” cited in note 98 above (see Coffey, “The Whole
Rahner”). Malevez (see 673–75) criticizes Hans Urs von Balthasar for begging
the question as well. These criticisms are pertinent to certain drifts in contemporary theology that seek support in some elements of de Lubac’s thesis.
114 I think Braine’s thoughtful intervention that de Lubac meant to speak of persons
and not of natures (see note 70 above) also falls prey to this neglect. The intervention cannot here be given a response sufficient to do it justice. I would simply

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question: Could God constitute a man with this innate and inefficacious desire and yet not call him to glory?115 Clearly, this approach
cannot identify the requisite gratuity of grace.116
raise one question. On what is the relation founded? There must always be a
foundation of a relation that is real. In the persons of the Trinity, this “foundation” is the opposed relations themselves, which subsist.The real relation that is
the status “created” arises on account of the real subsistence of dependent being.
So, does not the mere claim that relation pertains to “person” as providentially
ordered by God beg the question? Why does not Braine intelligibly trace this
relation to a distinct intrinsic foundation? For, if the essential and accidental
principles in two persons are identically the same (specifically), but the orders of
providence are supposedly distinct, of what is one speaking when one appeals to
“relation”? Clearly, the category “created” would belong to each person. So,
what is the foundation of the distinctive relation in the special order? (The
mandate to find a foundation is not merely Thomistic; see Augustine, De Trinitate,V, chaps. 3 and 4.) So it would seem, Braine is speaking of a radical divine
tempering of the existential situation. But if we follow this thought out, are we
not led back either to Rahner’s tracks (see text below) or to de Lubac’s (imprecise but at least intelligibly grounded ) tracks? For his part, Mansini also brings the
distinction between nature and person into play here.We are utterly different as
persons, although we are the same as having the same human nature. So far, he
would seem to be in agreement with Braine. I strongly suspect, however, that
Mansini would not be reluctant to trace that difference metaphysically to superadded principles, for he does not hesitate to indicate as principles of the differences our own human actions. These indeed make us radically different: Two
roads diverged . . . (see “Surnaturel,” 606f.).
115 This is the response necessary to accusations of “essentialism,” etc. (see Malevez,
“La gratuité du surnaturel,”567f. and 682f.). A frequent critic of essentialism,
Lonergan offered a reflection on the natural desire in 1949 (Bernard Lonergan,
“The Natural Desire to See God,” in Collection, vol. 4, Collected Works of Bernard
Lonergan [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988], 81–91). Here, Lonergan
contends for the priority of world order to distinct essences. Essences, he maintains, function as quiddities of parts of possible world orders; what comes first is
world order; in light of some world order, certain essences would be fitting.This
view of things in mind, Lonergan dismisses the premises of what he labels “essentialism” and “closed conceptualism.” Essentialists assume that possible world orders
emerge only in light of possible essences, world order consisting in various possible and contingent nexuses among the selection of possible essences.Thus, essentialists determine certain limits of world orders in light of preconceived notions
of essences. Accept these assumptions, Lonergan maintains, and one can argue (a)
for the possibility of an order without grace and (b) that the location of the dual
gratuity of grace rests against the backdrop of a possibly satisfying natural beatitude. Reject these assumptions and one can still argue for (a) but not for (b). In
rejecting (b), Lonergan begs the question of how to establish the special gratuity
of grace. Of course, the divine will is constituted by one act. The issue is that if
grace is to be doubly gratuitous it must be possible for God not to offer grace to
men such as we (even prescinding from sin). Further, we might ask Lonergan

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Still, for both difficulties, we should consider what de Lubac more
deeply wishes to affirm.117 Various lines of his thought offer the
elements for three irreducibly distinct scenarios one might deduce
from his principles: (1) The desire cannot be in man except as
inchoately supernatural, instilled only with the view to deification; (2)
The desire can be instilled without such a view; and (3) The desire is
entirely natural but, because a meaningless world seems repugnant to
God’s justice, God owes it to himself to deify man. If (1), the desire
must be a certain sign of the call, cannot be entirely natural, and is the
what is “ordered” if “order” is intelligibly first? And if we ask this question, we run
into the question of finality, since essence and finality are necessarily correlative.
On the other hand, Lonergan recognizes a natural beatitude that, albeit
imperfect,“excludes all sorrow, all regret, all wishing that things were otherwise”
(“Natural Desire,” 87). One grants Lonergan the intellect’s desire to know, but
the requirements for the intelligibility of a world order and the gratuity of grace
seem to make of natural beatitude something other than sheer “paradox.”
Instructive is his later thought. Still holding the thesis of a natural desire to see
God, Lonergan produced the following in 1955.This piece is remotely similar to
Dockx’s 1964 piece, though it seems sustainable in those of its elements that
leave in tact the stability of a purely natural end: Bernard Lonergan, “Excursus:
The Natural Desire of the Intellect,” in The Triune God: Systematics, vol. 12,
Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007),
645–59. In this piece, he calls on (b) to identify the gratuity of grace (see “Excursus,” 653).Apparently, unlike de Lubac, Lonergan saw Humani Generis as apropos.
In addition, in this piece, he denies that the lack of satisfaction of the full scope
of the desire to know must result in no imperfect beatitude. Indeed, he states,
“We deny that naturally speaking the blessed would not have everything they
want.We concede, however, that they would not have everything that the divine
omnipotence could bestow upon them” (ibid., 657). For a good treatment of the
difficulties of Lonergan’s several forays into this question, see Guy Mansini,
“Lonergan on the Natural Desire in the Light of Feingold,” Nova et Vetera 5
(2007): 185–98.
116 See Bishop André-Mutien Léonard, “The Theological Necessity of the Pure
Nature Concept,” in Surnaturel: A Controversy, ed. Bonino, 325f.
117 In what follows, I agree with Braine and Healy that the common criticism of de
Lubac (see note 113 above) involves failure to appreciate de Lubac’s meaning (see
Braine, “The Debate,” 573f. and 583f.; and Healy, “Henri de Lubac on Nature
and Grace,” 536, 540–42, 547f., 553, and 561–64). As I see it, his critics find the
possible world (enunciated in the text above) to be so unintelligible (see Healy,
544) that they suppose de Lubac could not have held it to be possible; thus, they
conclude, he implicitly held that grace must be given. In truth, for de Lubac,
insofar as God is covenantally beneficent, yes; insofar as he is simply just, no. De
Lubac, and also Braine and Healy, thus identify the gratuity of grace, but de
Lubac, and also Braine and Healy, do this at the cost (1) of failing to specify the
specific gratuity of grace and (2) of losing the intelligibility of the natural order.
See also note 175 below.

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beginning of the end. De Lubac sometimes says as much. If (2), the
desire is no infallible sign, and there is a possible order in which man
is naturally miserable. De Lubac implies and sometimes states as
much.118 If (3), grace must be given to one who commits no fault. De
Lubac sometimes says as much. He holds distinctly each of these positions in concert with his laudable aim. In my opinion, he holds the first
and the third positions for reasons he finds conveniens,119 while his
default doctrinal position is the second, which implies as possible a
naturally miserable order in which everything is so completely “grace”
that one cannot account for the special entitative gratuity of deification.120 Required for such precision would be taking cognizance of
what is due to some creature (debitum) on the presupposition of a
given order.121 I now proceed to sketch this proposal.
3. Thomas on debitum naturae (what is due to nature). Concerning the
debitum naturae, there is a via media between naturalism and voluntarism,122 one that avoids the Scylla of God as debtor and the Charybdis of the divine as absolutely arbitrary (howsoever actually beneficent):
“Although God is not a debtor to any creature, yet there can be something due to the creature, that, namely, which is required for it to imitate
the exemplar of divine wisdom.”123 It is the very character of justice
that implies debt,124 and debt implies “a certain order of exigence or
necessity of something to that to which it is ordered.”125 God renders
118 See Mystery, 31, 84, 179, 183, and 203f.
119 I thus disagree with the common diagnosis (see note 113 above) and agree with

Braine (see note 117 above). If he sticks to his logic, de Lubac would have no
difficulty describing the possible world taught by Pius XII as either totally irrelevant or, if relevant to us, lacking “intelligibility.” The early de Lubac would have
no difficulty finding such a world also to be lacking “goodness” (cf. Malevez,“La
gratuité du surnaturel,” 682).
120 See Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God, 381f. That the gratuity regards the
utmost exigence is less significant than that it regards a specification of the natural
élan (see Rahner, “Relationship,” 307–9 and 312f.; Malevez, “La gratuité du
surnaturel,” 576f. and 683–85; and Reinhard Hütter, “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,” Nova et Vetera 5 [2007]: 131).
121 Lawrence Feingold’s impressive dissertation demonstrates the importance of this
topic. I am grateful to him and to Steven Long for helping me clarify the following argument.
122 See De veritate, q. 6, a. 2.
123 In IV Sent., d. 46, q. 1, a. 2, qla 1, ad 4.
124 See De veritate, q. 23, a. 6, ad 3.
125 ST I, q. 21, a. 1, ad 3.

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what is due not according to commutative justice, which regards those
who have mutual, real relations and who encounter each other within
a wider context of justice. God is the distributor of all perfections: He
gives or provides a thing its substantial being, all the perfections
supposed by that substance, the perfections ordered to that substance,
the end to which that substance is ordered, and the attainment of that
end. Hence, only distributive justice pertains to his relationship with the
world, for he is the measure of all.
God renders what is due according to a twofold order: Everything
is ordered to God as to the ultimate end, and some created things are
ordered to other created things, both subsisting things and accidents.
So, something is owed to God and something is owed to created
beings. As regards the first, it is God who renders to himself what is
due, for it is due that the order he establishes be fulfilled.The second
order of debt depends on the first, for God creates according to a
pattern of his wisdom.126 He renders what is due in the second way
in order that the truth of some divine idea be preserved in that of
which it is an exemplar.127 God necessarily creates wisely but is
debtor to none, for all things are ordered to him, he to none, and any
order including created exigencies hangs on his (ever wise) mercy.128
The debt that concerns us pertains to this second kind, which can
be divided into what pertains to the condition of nature and what is
due to meritorious activity.129 The former is distinguishable into what
pertains to subsistence and what pertains to operation or wellbeing.130 According to subsistence, that is due a thing which pertains
to its existence, essence, and proper principles.According to operation
and well-being, that is due to a thing which befits its condition and
conduces to its good operation. It befits the condition of a man in the
state of integral nature to be in an upright condition, to have natural
justice.131 To provide such pertains to the divine justice.132 It pertains
to divine liberality vis-à-vis any terrestrial man to offer grace and
supernatural justice. Moreover, this liberality is so perfect with respect
126 In addition to ST I, q. 21, a. 1, see De veritate, q. 6, a. 2, and q. 23, a. 6.
127 See De veritate, q. 23, a. 6, ad 3.
128 See ST I, q. 21, a. 1 and, esp., a. 4. See also In IV Sent., d. 46, q. 1, a. 2, qla 1.
129 See ST I–II, q. 111, a. 1, ad 2.
130 See Dockx, “Du désir naturel de voir l’essence divine,” 83f. Sundry texts in

Aquinas include De veritate, q. 12, a. 3, ad 17; In Boet. De Trinitate, q. 3, a. 1, ad 2;
De Divinis nominibus, chap. 8, lect. 4, pars. 775–77; and ST I, q. 25, a. 5.
131 This is political, not despotic, order; hence, a certain concupiscence is compatible with natural justice.
132 See De malo, q. 16, a. 2, ad 17.

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to man that—at least during the pilgrim state—God could withdraw
supernatural justice and reduce a man to a naturally good state, without threat to the divine justice.133 (Observe that this supposition
depends for its intelligibility on an identity of nature and hypostasis
between the man supernaturally elevated and the same person so
reduced.)134 Yet, God could not, except on account of sin, withdraw
natural justice without an infringement of his divine justice, which
infringement would be an affront to the first sense of debitum.135
Pertinent to the good operation of something is its specific operation,
that perfection which is its end, the finis quo (the end by which),136 to
which there corresponds a proper object and with respect to which the
intelligibility of its nature derives. Now, to each species there is a distinct,
connatural end.137 Hence, men and angels, who as to their proximate
133 See De malo, q. 16, a. 2, ad 17. In this careful and differentiated response,Thomas,

reflecting on what pertains to divine justice, indicates that, although God could
withdraw supernatural righteousness without injustice, he could not withdraw
natural righteousness from a human being.And Thomas also affirms, elsewhere (De
malo, q. 5, a. 3), that to a separated soul in the state of natural righteousness natural
knowledge is due. Of what could this be knowledge other than of God as first
cause? On this, see also Hütter,“Desiderium,” 100f. Cf. Mystery, 71;“Le mystère du
surnaturel,” 93–98; and Malevez,“La gratuité du surnaturel,” 565 and 572.
134 I would note, further, that although Thomas contends that men and angels were
created in the state of grace, he describes the contrary position not as impossible
but as less fitting and less probable (see ST I, q. 62, a. 3, and the surprising expressions, no doubt slips but revealing ones nonetheless, in ST I–II, q. 109, a. 2, and
ST I–II, q. 114, a. 2; see also Jean-Pierre Torrell, “Nature and Grace in Thomas
Aquinas,” in Surnaturel: A Controversy, ed. Bonino, 185). De Lubac’s contention
that we would be dealing with two essentially different men, and thus two
persons, is not consonant with Thomas’s thought. More importantly, “nature” of
its nature is a universal, applicable to many; thus, its very character is “abstract”
although the essential principle in a man is concrete. So, to disparage as “abstract”
someone’s notion of nature is to disparage the very category “nature.” On this, see
Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God, 335f. Of course, if a man in the state of
pure nature is of a different essence than I, then Pius XII’s teaching is as pointless
a defense of gratuity as de Lubac claims the hypothesis of pure nature to be.
135 See De potentia, q. 6, a. 1, ad 3.
136 See ST I, q. 105, a. 5. Things are for their operations. The proposition that the
imperfect is ordered to the perfect obtains with respect to an identify of formal
object (see note 88 above).
137 Long peppers his essay with this claim (see “On the Loss, and the Recovery, of
Nature,” 143; 146, n. 16; 148, n. 18; 151; 152; 155f.; 159; and 174).To be precise,
Thomas teaches that a species is derived from its end taken formally, not materially. That is, if we would indicate that end which specifies a species, we must
take account not only of the thing but of the formality under which we attain it
(see note 88 above). One may also indicate the following text: “Each thing is

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end attain God under different formalities, are of different species,
though they are gratuitously directed to an ultimate end.138 This
connatural operation pertains to the debitum ex conditione naturae (what is
due according to the condition of nature).139
Actual attainment of the ultimate end, however, is not in the power
of any creature, even one deified by grace. Hence, a creature can be
said only to merit attainment of the ultimate end, on the promise of
God who predestines and calls a man to this end and infuses his grace
as the assistance whereby it may be merited condignly.140 Condign
merit involves a true title to eternal life and so pertains to the ratio of
debitum.141 This debt respects the internal relations of the effects of the
ordered to the end fitting for it according to the character of its form (secundum
rationem suae formae ): for different ends belong to different species” (ScG III, chap.
150, par. 5). Thomas is not speaking here of “operation” and “beatitude” but of
“form” and “end.” See also Super II Ad Corinth., chap. 5, lect. 2, pars. 160f. The
point made here is, in part, a response to Dockx.
138 See Quaestio disputata De anima, a. 7, obj. 10 and ad 10. Feingold drives this
crucial distinction home (see Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God, 254,
297–99, 319–22, 332, 336–37, and 382–85). See also Malevez, “La gratuité du
surnaturel,” 688. For an excellent treatment of the continuing place of nature and
its proportionate end for persons endowed with or called by grace, see Hütter,
“Desiderium,” 98–117.
139 See ST I–II, q. 110, a. 1, circa finem; see also Dockx, “Du désir naturel de voir
l’essence divine,” 84f. Natural things achieve their proximate ends and in this
achievement they attain the divine similitude to which they are proportionate
(ScG, III, chaps. 17–18). Hence, God remains the ultimate end by way of the
proximate end.
140 See ST I, q. 62, a. 4; ST I–II, q. 114, a. 3; and Super Epist. Ad Rom., chap. 8, lect.
4, par. 655.
141 In his commentary on Romans, Thomas raises a difficulty. Paul states, “To one
who works, his wages are not reckoned as a gift but as his due” (Rom 4:4, RSV).
The statement has had a twofold exposition.Thomas judges, correctly in my estimation, that the literal sense is that a to-be-justified person does not work, since
justification cannot be condignly merited (for this point, see Super Epist. Ad
Rom., chap. 6, lect. 4, par. 517). What is interesting is Thomas’s iteration of
another, then entertained, exegesis. Some read the statement as true and applicable of one who is already graced.While Thomas will not agree that Paul has such
a person in mind here, yet, what Thomas says of this person he holds to be truth.
Read in this way, the statement requires a word of precision (I stress it): “not
reckoned as a gift alone but as something due (secundum debitum ).” Such a claim
raises a difficulty, however, apparently conflicting with Paul’s statement in Rom
8:18: “The sufferings of this time are not worthy of future glory” (Vulg.). The
latter passage seems to make one conclude,“Accordingly, that recompense is not
rendered according to debt but according to grace.”Thomas solves the apparent
contradiction with his standard distinction of two ways of considering the works
of the justified: (1) simply as products of free will, or (2) as produced by the free

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supernatural order. Because of this order, to which all freely acting
persons are at least called and for which all are freely bought by
Christ, certain persons are blessed with the power to become sons ( Jn
will insofar as it is moved by its principle, God predestining. Although considered in the first way, such works “do not have anything condign, that the reward
of eternal life may be given them,” yet in the second way, “the aforesaid reward
is owed them as something due,” for they have become sons (Rom 8:14). In
connection with this non-literal reading, Paul’s “who does not work” is understood with regard to external works, which, because some might not have occasion to perform them, are not in all cases required (Super Epist. Ad Rom., chap.
4, lect. 1, par. 329–30). For the literal exposition, which regards the man to-bejustified, see ibid., par. 331.
In earlier texts,Thomas states that, by meriting, which presupposes election and
grace, we make something our due (see In III Sent., d. 18, q. 1, a. 4, qla 1, ad 1), as
by sinning Adam made death our due (see In III Sent., d. 19, q. 1, a. 1, qla 1). See
also In II Sent., d. 38, q. 1, a. 2.This latter text gives evidence of a proportionate
proximate end being due to a thing of a given nature, for the end proper to each
thing is its proper operation. The ultimate end, God, to which each thing is
ordained as to its end, is not obtained except through the medium of this proximate operation. Here, we encounter the desirable precision: It is not God whom
one makes due to oneself through acts of charity but rather the consummate
operation (glory) by which one is united to God, himself the end to which one
is referred. Now, that this text identifies the ultimate operation of man as the
beatific vision should be read as follows: The perfection naturally attainable by
man remains ineffably less than the perfection of the beatific vision, though sufficiently terminative to bring adequate rest to the appetite (on this, see Hütter,
“Natural Desire,” 570, 573–79, and 586f.). Therefore, natural perfection is not ultimate. Further, on account of its less than perfect character, natural perfection is
per se specifiable by the supernatural end (see Malevez,“La gratuité du surnaturel,”
683–85, and Hütter,“Desiderium,” 101). Clearly, the supernatural end is not “due”
to human nature, though Thomas in this article speaks of the proper end as being
due. Again,Thomas writes,“Mereri, sicut dictum est, est facere aliquid sibi debitum. Hoc autem contingit tribus modis. Uno modo quando aliquis facit de non
debito debitum; sicut aliquis primo motu caritatis meretur vitam aeternam,
faciens eam debitam sibi, quae prius ei debita non erat” (In III Sent., d. 18, q. 1,
and 5; see also ibid., a. 2). Earlier, he had specified that the natural “vision” of God
(“vision” here is to be understood quite analogously) is naturally due to the
angels (In II Sent., d. 4, q. 1, a. 1). Again, he writes, “Dupliciter autem aliquid
debitum existit: uno quidem modo secundum naturam, alio modo secundum
operationem. . . . Secundum operationem autem, sicut merces operanti debetur.
Illa ergo dona sunt hominibus divinitus gratis data quae et ordinem naturae
excedunt, et meritis non acquiruntur, quamvis et ea quae pro meritis divinitus
dantur, interdum gratiae nomen vel rationem non amittant: tum quia principium
merendi fuit a gratia, tum etiam quia superabundantius dantur quam merita
humana requirant” (Compendium theologiae I, chap. 214). Implied here is that what
is rendered according to merits is due on the supposition of its principles, grace
and the virtues, and the call according to which these are infused. Indeed, as

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1:12), heirs of the promise (Gal 4:7 and Rom 8:17) whose good
works God promises to reward. Those who die in divine grace are
heirs to eternal life.142 This point is not hindered by the fact that, on
account of the infinitely tender mercy of God, just as punishment will
be lighter than guilt, so the reward rendered will exceed merit.143 To
work something greater than justice (according to a certain equality
of proportion)144 is one thing; to work something less is another.145
Borrowing Paul’s image of “clay” in the hands of the potter,Thomas
mercy founds the natural order and the justice pertinent to orders of exigence
established therein, so mercy founds the supernatural order and the justice of
orders of exigence promised therein.The teaching continues in Thomas’s mature
works. See ST I–II, q. 111, a. 1, ad 2, wherein Thomas links merit with that
which is due.As is clear to anyone with a remote understanding of Thomas, dona
supernaturalia are not due to man. Dona supernaturalia, as the very question indicates, regard the following: grace, infused virtues, gifts, etc. Significantly, vita
aeterna does not fall under the dona supernaturalia simply as a principle of action.
Grace, infused virtues, gifts, etc., are principles of action and, as such, they are not
merited. Vita aeterna, though the supreme gift, also constitutes an object attained
by proportionate action. Since grace and the theological virtues and infused
moral virtues, etc., render human action capable of attaining it, vita aeterna is also
something condignly merited.Thomas clarifies, in ST I–II, q. 112, a. 2, ad 1, that
whereas grace is not merited, glory is. Similarly, he makes clear in ST I–II, q. 114,
a. 3, sc, that the reward is rendered according to (covenantally established) justice.
142 See ST I–II, q. 114, a. 3, and Super Epist. Ad Rom., chap. 8, lect. 4, pars. 652–55.
This title, supreme, packs compositely other gifts. On account of the dignity of
deification with which God initially constituted men, they were “naturally” (i.e.,
supernaturally) immortal. On account of this gift of immortality, “it was due to
[man] to receive an incorruptible body” (debebatur sibi incorruptiblile corpus [Super
Epist. Ad Rom., chap. 5, lect. 3, par. 416]).
143 See, e.g., In Psalm 35, par. 4; ST I, q. 21, a. 4; and Compendium theologiae I, chap. 214.
144 See Super II Ad Corinth., chap. 4, lect. 5, par. 150.
145 See In IV Sent., d. 46, q. 1, a. 2, qla 2.This quaestiuncula is quite significant. It will be
pointed out that Thomas twice states that he is “speaking of the ordinary [divine]
power.”There are no grounds that I see for interpreting this to mean that God could
by his absolute power withhold what is due. Rather, in drawing the distinction
between the ordinary or ordained power and the absolute power of God,Thomas
maintains that God could have created other things and could have ordered creation
otherwise than he has.To us, some other order of things might appear inconveniens,
but it would not in fact be unjust (see, e.g., ST I, q. 25, a. 5, ad 3).Any order would
be patterned upon divine wisdom. In the quaestiuncula,Thomas says that God could
not act against the just order established, speaking of his ordinary power, just as he
could not make something without it imitating him, insofar as it participates being.
But in no order could any created thing not imitate God!
One may also urge that the common assertion that William of Ockham invented
the distinction between the powers of God is erroneous; it is.Yet, Ockham’s innovation by “his association of God’s absolute power with the ontological singular”

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draws an analogy between natural debt and supernatural debt:Whereas
it is not due to unformed clay that it be formed this way or that, yet
it is due to clay formed nobly that it be put to noble use; so, as it is
not due to nature to receive grace, yet it is due to one deified to
receive glory.146 Further, per impossibile (supposing the impossible),
were damned persons to convert to God by grace,“it would be unjust
(iniquum) for them to be punished perpetually after they had gained
a good will.”147 Similarly, God would violate his own justice if he
were to deprive an already beatified creature of the vision of God.148
As the debitum naturae does not make God debtor to the creature
but to himself, neither does Christian merit make God a debtor to
us.149 God brings to completion that which he initiates, for he is
faithful to himself. The heart of the matter, therefore, is that since God
(Mary Anne Pernoud, “The Theory of the Potentia Dei According to Aquinas,
Scotus and Ockham,” Antonianum 47 [1972]: 92) is most significant indeed. Each
“thing” is considered chiefly as a singular, and formal causality is minimized because
both conceived as plural in individuals (see André Goddu, “Ockham’s Philosophy
of Nature,” in The Cambridge Companion to Ockham, 148f., and Marilyn McCord
Adams, William Ockham, 2 vols., no. 26, Publications in Medieval Studies, ed. Ralph
McInerny [Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1987], chap. 15) and
considered an individual in relation to prime matter (see Maurer, Philosophy of
William of Ockham, 399f.), which is said to have its own being and intelligibility (see
Adams, Ockham, 646f.). For Ockham, the forma totius is an empty concept (see
Maurer, 393f.).What remains to be appreciated in the causal relations among things
is chiefly efficient causality. Hence, different kinds of motion are reduced to local
“motions of the parts” (Goddu, 149). Ockham’s emphasis on freedom of indifference, moreover, eclipses final causality, since it is the agent’s willing X that establishes
X as end. In such a framework, talk of the due order of one thing to another loses
traction; accidents proper to certain ways of being are too easily dismissed as nonnecessary instrumental efficient causes. And of course God can do without these
(see William of Ockham, Quodl. 6, q. 6 [Opera theologica, vol. 9, 604f.: 18–20]).Advertence to the profound difference between Aquinas’s thought and these notes of
Ockham’s metaphysics should caution one from concluding that their readings of
potentia absoluta were not significantly different (cf. Pernoud, 91).Whereas Ockham
teaches that God can both absolve someone from sin and save him without the
infusion of created grace (see William of Ockham, Quodl. 3, q. 10, a. 2 [Opera theologica, vol. 9, 241:35–43]; idem, In I Sent., d. 17, q. 1 [Opera theologica, vol. 3, 452–56];
and Maurer, 261–63), Aquinas holds grace to be the formal cause of deification,
without the infusion of which “the remission of sins cannot be understood” (ST
I–II, q. 113, a. 2).
146 See In IV Sent., d. 46, q. 1, a. 2, qla 1, ad 2; see also Feingold, The Natural Desire
to See God, 225.
147 ScG IV, chap. 93, par. 2.
148 See ST I–II, q. 5, a. 4.
149 See ST I–II, q. 114, a. 1, ad 3.

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is faithful to himself, there is a proper place for debt.This means that
we are speaking, ultimately, of the intelligibility of the divinely willed
motions in creation. For Thomas, no motion is intelligible without
respect to its end. To deny either debitum naturae or Christian merit
thus strikes either at the very intelligibility or at the “efficacity” of the
divine motions in creatures. In willing some order, God wills the
attainment of the intrinsic end of that order—the manifestation of his
glory through creatures’ attainments of their ends. Although not each
thing must needs achieve its end in every case, yet, I would argue, the
very intelligibility of the order as a whole requires the non-impossibility in that order of the attainment of the end of the order, which
attainment will involve, ultimately, the chief things in that order.
Indeed, the very inclination each thing has for its proportionate end
is instilled in it by the author of nature150 who in authoring an order
promulgates a law that corresponds thereto.151
To say, then, that there is an innate natural inclination to an end surpassing
both the resources within the natural order and the divine providential solicitude
formally pertinent thereto is to say that God, as author of nature, creates to no
end, that he instills a motion that has no aim.152 It is here that we discover
a theo-logical rebuttal to de Lubac’s appeal to Ockham’s statement in
defense of an absolute, innate, yet inefficacious desire: Since God is
debtor to himself, the order he establishes must be possible of
fruition.153 The to my mind self-evident assumption that undergirds
150 See ST I, q. 105, a. 4, and Sententia libri Ethicorum I, lect. 2, par. 21.
151 ST I–II, q. 93, a. 6. If law is ordered to an end, just what “end” could God ever have

in mind by the natural law of reason if there were no relatively sufficient finality?
152 See Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God, 227–29 and 370–72. Cf. Dockx,“Du

désir naturel de voir l’essence divine,” 91.
153 Two points in response to de Lubac’s anthem of an absolute and inefficacious

desire are in order. First,Thomas nowhere, to my knowledge, states unequivocally
that there is a real albeit insufficient order to or desire for the supernatural end.
There is one apparent exception: In Boet. De Trinitate, q. 6, a. 4, ad 5. Indeed, one
might take this text as a genuine exception. Or, one might take it, as one can take
ibid., q. 1, a. 3, ad 4, as inconclusive. (On Sylvester of Ferrara’s interpretation of
the former text and texts similar thereto, see Feingold, The Natural Desire to See
God, 184–88 and 399, n. 6.) Even in the midst of texts stressing the natural desire
to see God,Thomas can, as Long notes, express himself more precisely:“Intellectus igitur quantumcumque modicum posit de divina cognitione percipere, illud
erit sibi pro ultimo fine, magis quam perfecta cognitio inferiorum intelligibilium”
(ScG III, chap. 25, par. 6; see Long, “On the Loss, and the Recovery, of Nature,”
144). Relevant to a full analysis of the entire argument in ScG III, chaps. 25–51,
is a well-rounded reading of Thomas that appreciates nuance and complexity.
Aquinas himself invites this nuance in key places; see, for instance, ScG I, chap. 11,

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my evaluation is thus dialectically validated:To hold as possible a meaningless world is simply absurd.154
4. A Final Lubacian Strategy. I consider that the above reflections also
undercut the viability of de Lubac’s final strategy to identify the gratuity of grace, namely, his appeal to our desire to receive the gift as
something gratuitous and unexpected.155 Guy Mansini has raised the
objection that to desire something with a “precisive qua, [a] specifying as” is to have a consciously molded desire.156 Such a desire could
not be innate; it would have to be elicited; thus, it need not be unconditional. If Mansini’s argument holds, it cuts off the effectiveness of
this final appeal. However, further elaboration seems to me desirable.
I find three difficulties with the Lubacian appeal. A person depicted
as one who desires beatific union with God but remains not-expectant,
one “holding-[himself]-in-readiness,”157 appears to me both unfittingly
par. 5 (sic enim homo). For a recent and contextualized exegesis of ScG III, chap.
25, see Hütter, “Natural Desire.” Second, when Thomas claims that natural principles do not suffice, he does not mean that they really and innately but insufficiently incline. In each case, he draws an analogy between principle and finality:
As natural principles order or incline to connatural ends, so supernatural principles order or incline to supernatural ends. The latter principles are therefore
necessary for there to be said inclination (see note 88 above). I would point to the
following text: “The end towards which the divine generosity directs or predestines man, namely, the fruition of himself, is in every way elevated above the
faculty of created nature. . . .Therefore, by his natural principles alone, man does
not sufficiently have an inclination to that end.” De Lubac concludes that Thomas
holds he does have an insufficient inclination.Thomas intends nothing of the sort:
“Therefore, it is necessary that there be superadded to man something by which
he may have an inclination to that end, as by his natural principles he has an inclination to the end that is connatural to him. . . . For as that end is ordained for us
by God not through our nature, so the inclination to the end is worked in us
solely by God” (In III Sent., d. 23, q. 1, a. 4, qla 3).Thomas manifests the principle underlying this point elsewhere:“The act of anything is not divinely ordered
to something exceeding the proportion of the power which is the principle of
the act.” It is a matter of divine institution “that nothing act beyond its power”
(ST I–II, q. 114, a. 2).Thomas’s diction “not sufficient” or “insufficiently” need not
imply “a real but insufficient”; it certainly implies nothing of the sort when he
states,“Free will is not a sufficient cause of [read ‘condign’] merit” (ST I, q 62, a.
4). Has Thomas become semi-Pelagian? In short,Thomas means that nature and
natural principles incline to the supernatural end only when moved by grace,
actual and/or habitual.
154 See Léonard, “The Theological Necessity,” in Surnaturel: A Controversy, ed.
Bonino, 328.
155 Healy (“Henri de Lubac on Nature and Grace”) sets this strategy in relief.
156 See Mansini, “Surnaturel,” 605f.
157 Healy, “Henri de Lubac on Nature and Grace,” 547 (see also 548 and 561f.).

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heroic and tragic. (a) Such a one seems oriented towards God as Father
before God has become his Father, that is, before God has adopted him
as son. His disponibility renders him already gracious towards God. But
one cannot present oneself to God graciously with a graciousness that
is not received (1 Cor 4:7).There can be no son who has no father ( Jn
5:19f.), just as no son can “contribute” to his own generation,158 unless
we are speaking of acts of free will preparatory to justification. But since
such acts do not produce justifying grace but only dispose one
thereto—whether because enabled by actual graces (Dominican thesis)
or because recognized graciously by God (Franciscan thesis)—even in
this light no one is made a child of God even by the will of man ( Jn
1:13f.). Mansini’s remark that de Lubac here turns apologetics into
mystagogical catechesis targets this difficulty.159 (b) Appearing tragic,
such a person exhibits the root difficulty, for it is an absurd world that
constitutes the condition for the possibility of such remarkable patience.
That absurdity renders the patience nihilistic. It is tantamount to a
meaningless holding oneself, as some post-modernists say,“in a mature
proximity to absence.”160 (c) Granted, I cannot place particular
demands upon my friend, and God is an ultimate friend, truly through
charity and in some respect even in a purely natural order. Still, we must
draw distinctions.Two unrelated men who encounter one another may
or may not engage in actual friendship; their resources are limited.
Neither has a claim of friendship on the other.Yet, if one is son to the
other, if they are brothers, if they dwell in the same city, if they share a
nature (!), we can begin to speak of claims of justice that are not
destroyed but protected by any friendship that might develop. Further,
should one approach the other in an offer of friendship, the other is not
wrong to take this offer as a gesture of intended friendship and to base
his decisions in accordance with that judgment.That is, friendship is
also a state, not a kind of existential stringing-out of possibly continuing affection—not a tease made delightful only through surprising
renewals. Now, in establishing a created order, God takes that initiative.
He already gestures. Thus, there is a lack of parity in our comparison
158 Cf., Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Last Act, trans. Graham Harrison, vol. 5, Theo-

Drama:Theological Dramatic Theory (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1998), 86:“This
‘passive actio’ is a condition [Mitbedingung] of the ‘active actio’ and imparts to
the latter a certain quality of ‘letting go.’ ”
159 See Mansini, “Surnaturel,” 616 in the context of 612–17.
160 Louis-Marie Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament:A Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian Existence, trans. Patrick Madigan and Madeleine Beaumont (Collegeville,
MN:The Liturgical Press, 1995), 58–81.

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between two unrelated (!) men and between the human being and
God.The very creative act signals a real commitment on God’s part to
a dynamically coherent order.The human response of pursuing hopefully (in a natural sense) the fulfillment of natural inclinations would
thus only wrongly be conceived as placing demands upon God. Such
hopeful pursuits flower organically. But what meaning can Lubacians
find in any world without grace?161
Finally, of course, one must grant the precious insight that de Lubac
(and Healy and others) offer:The greatest saints wish to love without
conditions, and so, they (more and more frequently) stress that their
desire is to love, not to “merit.”Their heaven does not rest with vision
but beats with ecstatic love.Who can gainsay them? Notwithstanding,
it would be a mistake to interpret (and then pit) the saints’ wishes
against dogmas—for instance, that we “truly merit” eternal life (Trent,
Session VI, Canon 32). Saints are awakened to this love that shines
upon them.The trajectory of their love is the trajectory of ever more
purified intentionality, beginning with a desire for their own good
and reaching the point at which only the beloved counts and therefore
union with him. The saints do not transgress the teachings of Trent
with their minds but transcend them with their hearts.162
In connection with this concern about a meaningless world, one can
ask whether de Lubac implies the moral wretchedness of created spirit.163
Purely Natural Man Morally Wretched or Sub-personal?
First, the naturally realized despair, outlined above, seems to point in the
direction of natural wretchedness. Unless somehow such innocent creatures were supernaturally or preternaturally (i.e., with an ad hoc solution)
preserved from awareness of their awful state, they would despair.164 Such
a state, even if it could not be theological despair, would seem to hinder
161 Pinckaers importantly contends that the human person who awaits God non-

expectantly would attain an “imperfect yet real ” beatitude (“The Natural Desire
to See God,” 642, emphasis mine). In good Franciscan (!) fashion, he even
describes the situation as involving “a very pure joy that could, in principle,
constitute a real bliss, though imperfect” (644).
162 This transcendence is the hermeneutical key to oblations such as St. Thérèse’s
and to total consecrations to Mary Immaculate, the sacrificial characters of which
are premised upon the teachings of the Church (see Trent, Session VI, chap. 16,
and canons 26 and 32).
163 It ought to go without saying that such wretchedness could be only of a completely
different order than that of offense against the intimate advance of the Trinity.
164 It seems to me entirely contrary to the spirit of de Lubac to think of such odd
possibilities; see only Mystery, 203f.

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virtuous action.Would, then, preventative graces be “due”? But nothing
can be due! So, natural and innocent man would be unable to live a
virtuous life. But if this were the case, grace would not perfect but destroy
what is natural.165
Second, natural moral wretchedness is found in the early de Lubac’s
examination of a pair of disputed texts regarding angelic sin. (Though
Thomas’s texts concern angels, they have implications for features of
human life, and de Lubac seems willing to draw them.)166 The dispute:
According to some,Thomas implies (from prima pars on) that, were angels
created in the state of pure nature, they could not sin.These interpreters
point to texts in which Thomas teaches that purely natural angels would
enjoy all natural goods pertinent to them upon their creation. Thus, it
could be only with respect to supernatural goods, to which alone they as
separated substances would be in potency, that they could sin. So, they
could sin only if God were to offer grace.167 They would sin only if they
refused it. This reading is disputed by others who point to Thomas’s
consistent teaching that no created thing can by nature be impeccable.168
165 See ST I, q. 60, a. 5.
166 Gagnebet makes a reasonable case that what de Lubac teaches regarding the

angels applies, mutatis mutandis, to his views regarding man (see M.-R. Gagnebet,
“L’amour naturel de Dieu chez saint Thomas et ses contemporains,” Revue
thomiste 48 [1948]: 396, referring to de Lubac, Surnaturel, 432, and 247, n. 2). De
Lubac’s note makes reference, approvingly, to Jean Mouroux, Sens chrétien de
l’homme (Paris:Aubler, 1945), 176–81; in English translation: The Meaning of Man,
trans. A. H. G. Downes (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1961), 182–86.
167 See De malo, q. 16, a. 3; ST I, q. 63, a. 1, ad 3, and ibid., a. 3. One can add whatever one wishes concerning the interrelations of these angels (the higher teaching the lower); all such interrelations would not, it seems to me, interfere with
Thomas’s basic point that separated substances naturally attain their natural ends
instantly.There may be another pertinent difficulty, however. Although the issue
is enormously tricky, I venture a question: Might such readings be differently
construed were they more grounded in advertence to a distinction between (a)
love of one’s own beatitude and (b) an ordering of self to God as finis cui, not,
indeed as to one who benefits from our action (see ScG III, chap. 18, n. 5) but
as to one to whom we dedicate ourselves, to whom we will the good? On the
other hand, Gagnebet’s analysis in favor of such readings is impressive and difficult to contest (see “L’amour II,” 1949, 72–86).
168 See De veritate, q. 24, a. 7; ScG III, chap. 109; and ST I, q. 63, a. 1. Is this implicit
in ScG III, chap. 1, n. 5 (see also Hütter, “Natural Desire,” 539f.)? Of course, the
first group agrees that no creature is “naturally impeccable” since by this phrase
is meant only “that which has in its nature certain principles such that sin is
absolutely repugnant to it” in any order (see the following fine article: C.
Courtès, “La peccabilité de l’ange chez saint Thomas,” Revue thomiste 53 [1953]:
158, n. 5). After all, ST I, q. 63, a. 1 houses the ‘ad 3’ just noted.

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So, this second group concludes, by “goods pertaining to the natural
order”—with reference to which Thomas says no angel can sin—Thomas
signifies those goods “within the reach” of an angelic nature. Such goods
exclude both supernatural goods and also that good which is the angel’s
natural but theo-centric end. (Goods within an angel’s reach would
include self-knowledge, knowledge of some natures lower that that angel,
acts of will dependent upon such knowledge, etc.) Inasmuch as he rejects
the former group, de Lubac is closer to the latter group.169 Now, if the
reading by the first group is accurate (and about this I am uncertain), these
texts bear unmistakable witness to the intelligibility of a natural finality.
At any rate, whereas the champions of the second group do not hold that
such angels would of necessity sin, de Lubac’s early work implies that the
angels would. There, he holds that angels can have no natural and theocentric end.170 Thus, they can have no natural, elected “turning to the
Creator.”Their only possible natural love of God above all would be preelective and pre-moral. Such love is the natural love present even in the
demons.171 The love necessary for a free love of God—and here, de Lubac
appears to include any rational spirit—is the “amor gratuitus, alone meritorious because in it alone is morality completed.”172 “[C]ompleted”
does not mean “further perfected” but “actually achieved,” and such
achievement requires grace: “A spirit . . . must come to its ‘conversion,’
that is to a choice, and this makes it necessarily enter into the supernatural or exclude itself therefrom.”173 Here, de Lubac is speaking about any
169 See Augustinianism, 169; and Surnaturel, 231–60. For a treatment of the tacit

dialogue between Maritain and de Lubac, see René Mougel, “The Position of
Jacques Maritain Regarding Surnaturel : The Sin of the Angel, or ‘Spirit and
Liberty,’ ” in Surnaturel: A Controversy, ed. Bonino, 59–83.
170 See references in note 94, especially Surnaturel, 240–41. Long’s diagnosis is on the
mark (see Long,“On the Loss, and the Recovery, of Nature,” 134f., n. 3, and 151).
171 It is analogically present in all created things, for God is the end of all things (see
ST I, q. 60, a. 5, ad 5, and note 139 above).
172 Surnaturel, 250.
173 Surnaturel, 256f. For a brief exposition of de Lubac’s explicit claims and the
apparent scope thereof, see Gagnebet, “L’amour,” 1948, 394–97 and idem,
“L’amour II,” 1949, 48–54 and 72f. For Thomas’s thought to the contrary, see,
e.g., ST I, q. 60 and De caritate, a. 2, ad 15.The discussion in ST I, q. 60, is highly
nuanced and relates “natural love” to various other loves—supernatural, rational,
elected, etc. Although Thomas holds that there remains a “natural love” of God
in the demons—one that could not be elected—such a love is not the only one
that he calls “natural” in this question. Again, in ST I–II, q. 109, a. 3, Thomas
simply cannot be asking about a natural, non-elected love (see Gagnebet,
“L’amour II,” 1949, 45.The nub of the problem is stated well on ibid., 92).

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spirit.174 Consistently, de Lubac adds that natural love reaches God only
as principle of being but not as object.175
Thomas, to the contrary, describes natural rational love (dilectio) as reaching God as the principle and end in the state of integral nature.176 Further,
for Thomas there is not only a non-elected natural rational love of God but
also a freely elected, natural rational love of God.177 M.-R. Gagnebet has
174 Was the early de Lubac in agreement with the nominalist John Bockingham,

who claimed that any soul God can create must be either in mortal sin or worthy
of the beatific vision (see Augustinianism, 109)?
175 See Surnaturel, 251 and 255. Although Braine does not state the matter thus, he
implies that a virtuously lived life in the state of pure nature would not be possible without certain preternatural gifts (see “The Debate,” 565). That Braine
implies a natural misery is evident from the references given in note 120. Besides
these references, I would indicate Braine’s clear definition of “extrinsicism”: that
conception according to which “the gift of grace when given comes as something entirely unnecessary to the good life as such—necessary only to give
mankind the means to a higher end, a greater beatitude” (571; see also 575). If
one allows for a possibly softened sense of “entirely unnecessary”—which
allowance I believe would still allow the spirit of the point Braine wishes to
make—one can object to the description of this conception as “extrinsicist.”
First, the objection. By simply turning the tables, I would submit that if grace is
absolutely necessary to the intelligibility of created man, then grace is necessary.
And grace would be so necessary should created man have no proportionate end
that could meaningfully satisfy his appetite. Second, the softening. Of course,
certain preternatural gifts and certain determinations of natural law could be
described as highly fitting, though probably not as “absolutely necessary.”Aquinas
walks a delicate tightrope on this matter, offering diverse arguments for the
giving of divine law (see ST I–II, q. 91, a. 4). Only the first reason in the responsio indicates necessary grounds for divine law even for those without sin—that
God ordains men to a supernatural end. For an exposition of Aquinas on this
matter and for criticisms of de Lubac’s Surnaturel also relevant to Braine’s thesis,
see Gagnebet, “L’amour II,” 1949, 50–72. Gagnebet maintains both that man in
a natural state would be capable of a fully moral life and that his end would not
be obtained terrestrially but only post-terrestrially (see 61–72). (Gagnebet’s
analysis is profound and, in my opinion, accurate.) To be sure, Braine does call to
mind the actual order of grace, human freedom, and sin as concretely grounding
the gratuity (see, esp., 584f. and 589). Sin no doubt makes grace triply gratuitous.
Human freedom—if not simply nominally conceived—does render the effects
of grace (but not the divine will, as Lonergan reminds us, refusing to ascribe to
any created motion any divine attributes) contingent. But to render the effects
of grace contingent is not to identify the gratuity of grace.
176 See ST I–II, q. 62, a. 1, ad 3; De virtutibus, q. 4, a. 1, ad 9; Super I Ad Corinth., chap.
13, lect. 4, par. 806; and ST I–II, q. 109, a. 3, ad 1.
177 A person in a purely natural state can love God above himself naturally and freely.
See In III Sent., d. 29, a. 3; De divinis nominibus, chap. 4, lect. 9 and 10; ST I, q. 60,
a. 5; ST I–II, q. 109, a. 3; Quodl. I, q. 4, a. 3; and ST II–II, q. 26, a. 3. Especially

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amply demonstrated this claim.178 (Of course, according to Aquinas, sin so
dampens human nature’s vigor that it is not possible for postlapsarian man
to elicit a free act of love for God without grace.)179 Since turning to the
Source and End of being is the acme of what natural law calls for, were one
unable to turn to the first cause freely even in the state of integral nature,
one would be, in any order without supernatural grace, both naturally
miserable and also naturally wretched (or sub-personal).180
noteworthy is Thomas’s affirmation that this natural love could be used “more or
less” by a rational creature (in the state of integral nature) in preparation for grace
(see Quodl. I, q. 4, a. 3, ad 2). For a good, recent presentation, see Thomas Osborne,
Love of Self and Love of God in Thirteenth Century Ethics (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), 70–86. For references concerning de Lubac’s
rhetorical criticism of the possibility of a free, natural, and God-centered love, see
note 7 above.
178 See M.-R. Gagnebet, “L’amour,” 1948, 424–46, and idem, “L’amour II,” 1949,
31–102.
179 See ST I–II, q. 109, a. 3. Thomas describe the human condition after sin, the
condition into which we are born (antecedent to our experience of immoral
neighbors), as one in which we spontaneously prefer our limited, private good
to the true common good. The explanation he gives is that nature, though not
altered in its principles, is wounded, so that a man cannot without grace achieve
the most important things for which he is naturally constituted, things he could
achieve were he in a state of integral nature. A static image of this wound could
be a fractured plate that has not fallen asunder. A dynamic image might be a car
whose engine, though intact, has suffered harm: It can putter at 35 MPH but it
cannot do its factory-advertised maximum. Just why this is so, or how, is difficult
to discern. That Adam has not only lost gifts but acquired disorder is clear, but
why does the generative act produce other than a man intrinsically in a natural
state, whose concupiscence is materially natural, and only extrinsically in a state
of sin (in virtue of the divine judgment)? Might another explanation be the
ubiquity of God’s condescension to man and the concrete determination of free
man’s sole ultimate end? In short, man is confronted by God’s offer of himself.
Thus, one cannot lovingly choose to love God in a purely natural way; one
cannot lovingly choose to have a purely natural relationship with the God who
calls, for to do so would be to offend seriously that very God, exposing the truth
that one never in fact loved him (that is, freely) at all.Whoever loves a friend is
ready to respond to that friend, and whereas finite friends can advance intimacy
unfittingly or immoderately or in an untimely or imprudent manner, the Uncreated Friend’s every move is fitting. For a fine account of the vitiation of the natural inclination in fallen man, see Jacques Maritain,“La dialectique immanente du
premier acte de liberté,” Raison et raisons (Paris: Egloff, 1947), 139–46.
180 To explain Thomas’s texts on angelic sin, one can attend to Thomas’s teachings
on the radical freedom of the will with regard to specification of the object and
formation of practical judgments. Also, one can heed Thomas’s teaching on love
of the finis cui. For a list of texts in the commentatorial tradition defending the
view that angels could not sin unless called to the beatific vision and that their

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Because de Lubac seems driven to his positive thesis in virtue of his
presuppositions concerning a purely natural order, I now turn to consider these.
Presuppositions of de Lubac’s Diagnosis
Purely Natural Man Autonomous?
De Lubac considers that were man not to have an absolute and inefficacious desire for the supernatural, he would not be radically dependent
upon God. But on the contrary, neither Thomas nor reliable defenders of
the theory of “pure nature” leave space for autonomous self-actuation.181
It must be granted that there have been some deviations.182 However,
even “average” theological approaches avoid such deviations.183 In any
case, we may dismiss deviations as irrelevant.
When Thomas entertains the powers of the integral state of human
nature, he adds the cautious reminder: Man can do nothing “without the
divine help.”This divine help is not the auxilium of entitatively supernatural grace; it is the natural providential help, requisite in the natural order,
just as the auxilium of grace is uniquely requisite in the supernatural
order.184 Were man created in a purely natural state, God, transcendently
causing every reduction of potency to act,185 would sustain him in a
good state of being, moving him to his fitting end interiorly and by the
instrumental agency of an unspeakably vast array of interconnected
secondary causes.186 The divine causality would be all encompassing efficiently, exemplarily, and with respect to finality. Further, a being’s
achievement of its end, a return to the First Being according to its own
“being not impeccable” is a predicate ascribed to them because there is possible
a world in which they are peccable, that of the call to glory, see Surnaturel, 315ff.
For a classic defense that the predicate “peccable” applies to any but the glorified angels, see Jacques Maritain, The Sin of the Angel: An Essay on a Re-Interpretation of Some Thomistic Positions, trans. William Rossner (Westminster, MD: The
Newman Press, 1959). For a lucid treatment of Thomas’s appreciation of created
freedom, see Tobias Hoffmann,“Aquinas and Intellectual Determinism:The Test
Case of Angelic Sin,” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 89 (2007): 122–56.
181 See, e.g., ST I–II, q. 109, aa. 1–3; see also Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God,
224, n. 44, and 314, n. 69.
182 Healy points to some examples (see “Henri de Lubac on Nature and Grace,”
545f.).
183 See, e.g., the following work of a professor of letters: Louis Mercier, American
Humanism and the New Age (Milwaukee:The Bruce Publishing Company, 1943),
72–77.
184 See ST I–II, q. 109, a. 1.
185 See ST I, q. 44, a. 1 and ST I, q. 105, a. 5.
186 See, e.g., ST I–II, q. 98, a. 4, ad 3.

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modality, would manifest the splendor of being-itself-subsisting.187 In
fact, the Thomistic view on the ubiquity of divine causality continues to
raise consternated eyebrows.188 It is thus difficult to fathom on what
grounds de Lubac and others could content themselves, on this point,
with a critique of a strawman.
Purely Natural Man Incurious?
Finally, does not de Lubac presuppose the irrelevance of grace to a man
in a purely natural state when he describes such a one as not being
dynamically open to God?189 Apparently, de Lubac finds the only relevance of grace in the coupling of his positive and negative theses: “It is
precisely because the ultimate finality of this human nature is supernatural that it can receive sanctifying grace.There is in it not only an ‘obediential potency’ [ potentia obedientiae], but a certain ‘natural order’ [ordo
naturalis] to the receiving of that grace, whereas in the case of miracle
such ‘ordo naturalis’ does not exist.”190 But on the contrary, human
beings qua human (that is, conceived apart from grace) are uniquely fit
for a divine self-disclosure.
187 See ScG III, chap. 25, par. 1.
188 Scathing

remarks have been made about a recent, rather straightforward,
Thomistic defense of the ubiquity of providence. See Long, “On the Loss, and
the Recovery, of Nature,” 167–72, and his earlier essay (Steven Long, “Providence, Freedom, and Natural Law,” Nova et Vetera 4 [2006]: 557–605). Long’s
diagnosis is profound: Modern man accepts from Molina an “aseity of the will.”
Also apathetic towards the supernatural, modern man thus considers himself allsufficient (see 171). Notwithstanding these remarks, I find Lonergan’s solution
more attentive to the analogy of faith than either the two-lane highway Long
seems to espouse or the four-lane highway Molina embraces (see Bernard
Lonergan, Grace and Freedom: Operative Grace in the Thought of St.Thomas Aquinas,
vol. 1, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan [Toronto: 2000]). Further, I sympathize
with Braine’s criticisms of a certain monergism (see “The Debate,” 587–89).
However, perhaps here I have fallen prey to the medicinalism I shall charge
against Lubacians (see the end of this essay).
189 See note 94 above. In addition, de Lubac at times describes the natural end, as
conceived in this hypothesis, as though it were thought to be equally alternative
to the supernatural (see Surnaturel, 453).At other times, he admits the legitimacy
of holding two ends, one subordinated to the other (see ibid, 452), yet he
describes the subordinated one as not theo-centric. Incidentally, Braine helpfully
asks us to follow Thomas’s expression: a twofold end, not two ends (see “The
Debate,” 560). However, Braine also conceives of a purely natural order as implying “nothing beyond a mundane kind of existence,” making it true from a certain
perspective that man would thus be placed “back among the brutes” (“The
Debate,” 565).
190 Mystery, 141–42 (emphases mine).

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1. Wonder within Imperfect Beatitude. Were man created in a purely
natural state, he would come profoundly to wonder about and love
the first cause.191 One could even trace philosophical and mystical
dimensions of this human desire.192 The origin of the speculative
191 The considerations to follow in the text are not antithetical to the work of Karl

Rahner, different epistemological frameworks notwithstanding. For Rahner,
rational man is self-transcending: In any particular act of cognition, man gathers
a glimmer of the horizon, which recedes before him the more he seeks it. But
in this receding of the horizon, man actually approaches it asymptotically. It
would be false to ascribe to Rahner an “asymptotic” approach that blurred the
distinction between the formality of the supernatural desire and the formality of
the natural desire (Braine ascribes such a blurring to von Balthasar [see “The
Debate,” 565 and 585]; Coffey rightly denies it of Rahner [see “The Whole
Rahner,” 104f.]). This ever-transcending character of human knowing makes
man uniquely fit for a divine self-disclosure, although we must, in an effort to
consider this character, not color it too much with the tints and hues of concrete
life, which is imbued already with the supernatural existential and with grace (see
Rahner, Hearer; and Malevez, “La gratuité du surnaturel,” 579f.). God in fact
seizes everyone by creating each with an abiding ordination to grace, the “supernatural existential,” by which all that is in us is polarized by a “new,” inmost
determination of our being, though one not identical to us in our natural being.
Again, on the supernatural existential, see Coffey, 95–118.
I would take issue with Rahner’s theory insofar as it (a) appears paradoxically to
make “machinelike” the personal and particular movements of grace in man and (b)
seems to beg the question as to how it may be an “inmost determination” while not
being either constitutive of natural being or itself the habitus gratiae. Still, might we
find some parallels between aspects of the supernatural existential and the traditional
notion of “actual graces”? I propose this as a furthering of Coffey’s suggestion (see
note 101 above) that the supernatural existential might be seen, on the order of
material causality, as the penultimate preparation for indwelling. (Sanctifying grace
would be the ultimate disposition for indwelling.) Paramount for my suggestion is
the insistence that God is absolutely immutable. Consequently, an “offer of selfcommunication,” if it is to constitute neither essential human principles nor habitual grace would seem to have to have some other ontological status. I suggest it may
be a single term for the resultant existential complexity of the human condition due
to the multifarious sets of actual graces by which God “hounds” after souls, thereby
coloring the human condition (see Malevez, 678f.). Should man in a free, particular decision—and here, I would wish to part with Rahner’s sequestration of the
decision to an athematic realm, however true it is that no man can with certainty
judge his own heart—abandon this divine play, he would do violence to himself as
concretely realized, turning God’s loving approaches into coarse whips (Mal 4:1–2).
If we attend, with a metaphysical gaze, to the “principles by which” our condition
is colored, we come to actual graces and not to principles of human existence. See,
as an example of such effort, Brisbois,“Le désir de voir Dieu,” 1104ff.
192 Georges Cardinal Cottier, following Maritain’s reflections, has sketched the
contours admirably in his essay “On Natural Mysticism,” in Surnaturel:A Controversy, ed. Bonino, 273–94.

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wonder would be the natural desire to know, which, upon encounter
with things, would blossom into a desire to know their quiddities,
their causes, and the quiddities of their causes.193 In all his movements, moreover, a natural man would be drawn to whatever is good
and true and beautiful. He would explore the heights of “natural
mysticism.”194 Philosophically, as he came rightly to grasp that there
must be an ultimate cause of all things—whether he were a philosopher or a lucid human being (Wis 13; Rom 1; Acts 17)—he would
desire to know the essence of this cause.195 Further, he would recognize this cause—by way of affirmation, negation, and supereminence—to be personal, since “person” describes what is most perfect
in being. Although this notion of “person” would be quite different
from that unveiled through faith (whether to Abraham or through our
Lord), it would be nonetheless genuine if plumbed.196 But this philosophical approach could not but be coupled, in an upright man of
flesh and blood, with a mystical desire. Indeed, these “two” approaches
went hand in hand with the great neo-Platonists. Certain features of
Plotinus’s mystical experience—and that of the great Hindu and
Islamic mystics—could be found here, features all of which need not
be traced simply to grace.197 (While critiquing one aspect of neo193 See Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God, 38. See also, for an elaboration of the

profound structural roots of the elicited desire, Hütter, “Natural Desire,” 561,
565f., and 585–91. Hütter weaves a delicate path in his contextualized exegesis of
ScG, III, chap. 25. On the one hand, he holds, Aquinas affirms that man is capax
visionis; man has an inclination by which he naturally reaches out to this vision.
On the other hand, he stresses the difference between the simple motion of desire
and the firm desire of what is possible (see “Natural Desire,” 573–77).This latter
line of thought seems to pick up a theme otherwise apparently dropped, that the
desire for knowledge of God is a desire “for knowledge itself of God” and not for
“knowledge of God himself ” (“Natural Desire,” 561, 565f., and 585–91). I raise
the same question to Hütter that I raise to Feingold: Ought we not render this
more precise by advertence to a distinction of formal objects? The natural
wonder, rooted structurally in the essence of intellect, arises through knowledge
of effects and arrives at the question, “What is this first cause?” The question
cannot be answered except by the gratuitously offered vision of God, although
the formality under which knowledge of God is desired by the grace leading
towards vision is different from that of this strictly natural question.
194 See Cottier, “On Natural Mysticism,” passim.
195 Among the classic texts are the following: ScG III, chaps. 25 and 50; ST I, q. 12,
a. 1; and ST I–II, q. 3, a. 8.
196 See ST I, q. 29, a. 3. Lonergan maintains that one cannot show the impossibility
of a natural religious worship of a personal God (“Natural Desire,” 88f.).
197 See, for instance,Augustine, Confessions,VII.Although one has reason to contend
against Augustine that a personal, distinct Logos cannot be found by human

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Platonism, one need not critique all aspects.) Consequently, the vector
of this twofold pursuit, speculative and mystical, would be eminently
vertical as to its telos.
In an upright person, the desire to know and to be united with
the first cause would be the crown of desires, but it would be
contoured.198 One would desire without qualification what could be
naturally attained and would find rest in this loving contemplation of
him through creatures.199 Still, recognizing that one could not penetrate to the essence of the first cause either philosophically or mystically, one would be in a state of loving wonder. However, recognizing
such penetration to be beyond one’s capacity, one would not pine
away with an unconditional desire but virtuously direct it towards
fuller development of what is attainable. Further, the formal object of
this desire would be distinct from that of the believer’s desire.200 With
such contours, about which more would necessarily obtain than can
experience, has one any reason to deny that there can be a “para-conceptual”
approach to the divine by way of human ascesis? Again, see Cottier,“On Natural
Mysticism,” passim.
198 Long captures this contour (see “On the Loss, and the Recovery, of Nature,”
149f., and n. 20). Towards the end of Surnaturel, de Lubac describes three irreducibly distinct “thomistic” takes on the natural desire, as though it was not
thought to have any contour (see Surnaturel, 478f.).The fact is that various positions are not incompatible. One can say that in some text Thomas is speaking of
a natural desire, qua “modalized” by grace, to know the Holy Trinity. This does
not exclude the fact that the natural desire, short of such modalization, would
have the knowledge of the essence of the first cause as its object.Again, one may
say that the desire remains a “velleity” in the sense that its non-realization would
not cause suffering, though it would cause wonder, and yet deny that the formal
species of the object of the velleity is the supernatural vision of God.
199 See Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God, 416–21.
200 This point is in partial response to both Lonergan and Dockx: Although in truth
the beatific vision alone completely perfects the human mind (it is what Lonergan
calls the “transcendental” or “adequate” object [“Natural Desire,” 82f.]), it does not
follow that the latter has the former as its natural end or formal object.The human
mind is made to know being, but being is analogical, not univocal (according to
Aquinas). So, although God is Ipsum Esse Subsistens, he does not fall within the
range of the human (or angelic) mind’s formal object. In fact, Aquinas maintains
that the passive intellect is in natural passive potency only to those things of which
it is capable in virtue of the agent intellect (see De veritate, q. 18, a. 2). See Super II
Ad Corinth., chap. 5, lect. 2, par. 160. Maritain says it best: “[It] is a desire which
does not know what it asks” (Approaches, 97). I would illustrate the matter thus: A
rational animal without eyes that wished to know the cause of periodic heat on
earth, would want to know the cause of heat, but this cause actually is the luminous sun. On this remove, see note 88 above; see also Long,“On the Loss, and the
Recovery, of Nature,” 149; cf. Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God, 42 and 423.

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judiciously be said, one finds the “both/and” that de Lubac rejects:
Both a proportionate end and recognition of something desirable
beyond this—a genuine but not ultimate beatitude.
2. Specific Obediential Potency. Thus we encounter the tertium quid
between the caricature of non-repugnance201 and the projection of
an absolute but inefficacious desire—the horizon of wonder, what
came to be called “specific obediential potency” for grace.202 (De
Lubac employs this term but only with reference to his thesis; so, if
one grasps the argument, one will see no parity of conception.) The
term “specific obediential potency” indicates the “greatest dignity of an
intellectual nature created in the image of God: its unique capacity to receive
the grace of God in order to be elevated to a supernatural end.”203
The term can be articulated as follows. A “potency” is the capacity for some perfection or act.204 Potencies are distinguished as active
and passive. An active potency is the capacity to bring about some
act: A potter has the active potency to make of clay a vessel, and a
healthy man has the active potency to get up and walk. A passive
potency is the capacity to be brought to some perfection. Passive
potencies are of two types: natural and non-natural.205 A natural
passive potency for some act or perfection (T ) is the capacity something (F ) has for T, to which F can bring itself in virtue of its natural active potency.A non-natural passive potency is the capacity F has
for T, to which F cannot bring itself because F lacks the natural
active potency. So, Thomas holds with Averroes, if F has no natural
active potency for T, neither can it have for T any natural passive
potency properly so called.There is no natural passive potency where
there is no natural active potency.206 (Of course, one could make
201 See Hütter,“Desiderium,” 107–17. Cf. Figura, Der Anruf der Gnade, 157. De Lubac

is aware of the caricature (see “Le mystère du surnaturel,” 89).
202 See Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God, 117–20, 339–43, and 413f.; and

Long, “On the Loss, and the Recovery, of Nature,” 150f. and 157–66. For de
Lubac, the only “specific obediential potency” is the natural desire for the supernatural (see Mystery, 60 and 142f.).
203 Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God, 159.
204 See Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God, 149–54.
205 See Compendium theologiae I, chap. 104; see also Feingold,The Natural Desire to See
God, 149f.
206 See In II Sent., d. 12, q. 1, a. 1; In III Sent., d. 2, q. 1, a. 1, qla 1; ibid., d. 26, q. 1,
a. 2; De veritate, q. 18, aa. 2 and 5; ScG III, chap. 156, par. 7; De virtutibus, q. 1, a.
10, ad 13. For texts pertinent to the obediential potency, from which texts principles may be gathered and an argument formed—if one submits experience and
medicinally minded judgments to the discipline of theological science—see De

De Lubac on Natural Desire

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further nuances with respect to ordinations differently experienced
within a species: For example, the male and the female with respect
to generation.207 ) For sake of precision, we can distinguish nonnatural potencies in view of the different agents that possess the relevant active potency. If the agent is created, the potency can be
described generically as non-natural. If the agent can only be divine,
the potency can be called obediential.
We can unpack “obediential potency” as follows, beginning with
its description as generic. God can do all things that can be done,
anything makeable, that is, anything not per se impossible.208
Anything that he does do, however, will be ordered in accordance
with some wise plan.209 Because of God’s omnipotence, even though
a given order of things has no active potency for X, if X is neither
impossible nor repugnant to the order, God can realize it. Let us
restrict the analysis to possible things. Although in some given order
wherein there is no natural active potency for Q, there is nonetheless a potency for Q, an obediential potency vis-à-vis divine power.
Let Q stand for generic obediential potency vis-à-vis the divine
power.210 There is a more precise obediential potency than that
which is generic. Whereas Q indicates a potency common to many
kinds, let Z stand for that which is possible only for a certain kind of
thing (yet never with respect to any natural active cause). All Z are
Q, but not all Q are Z. The limited conditions for Z being possible
indicate specific obediential potency. The specification is on the part
of the recipient: Only this kind can receive the perfection. Now, since
only created intellect can be elevated to grace and glory, created
intellect has a “specific obediential potency” to grace and glory. We
veritate, q. 8, a. 12, ad 4; De virtutibus, q. 1, a. 10, ad 13; and Compendium theologiae
I, chap. 104; for a thorough discussion, see Feingold, The Natural Desire to See
God, 136–54.
207 I am grateful to graduate student Christopher Kellerman for challenging me
toward this nuance.
208 In this respect, Ockham’s formulation (see Maurer, Philosophy of William of
Ockham, 247, and Adams, Ockham, 1155) is a precision, leaving ample latitude;
it is perfectly amenable to Aquinas’s thought.
209 There can be, according to Aquinas and also Ockham, no exercise of God’s
power describable as absolute and not ordered. See note 145 above and Maurer,
Philosophy of William of Ockham, 255–59. As Adams states, there is simply no
medieval that understood the “two powers” of the divine will to signify “two
distinct powers” in God; it is God’s only will that is considered in two lights (see
Adams, Ockham, 1186f.). However, when we consider the details, crucial differences emerge.
210 For Thomas on this, see De virtutibus, q. 1, a. 10, ad 13.

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have pegged the specificity generically. The stuff of this specificity is
found in the natural wonder adumbrated above.
The development of the category “specific obediential potency”
and its dynamic realization in man at the crest of his desires makes it
possible to identify both the unique fittingness of the call to glory
and the intelligibility of a world with created intellects not called to
glory.211 Upholding the goodness of a purely natural order does not
put man and God on a par as contractual partners. Rather, it supports
intelligibly a conception of the life of grace as entirely gratuitous, ever
upheld by the gratuitous offer of grace. Earthen vessels are we, and
not only because of sin.The gratuity of grace rests against the backdrop of the intelligibility of the same rational hypostasis without a
divine call.212
3. Does the Appeal to Obediential Potency Imply Dualism or Extrinsicism? The standard objection to the attempt to identify the gratuity of grace in the theory of obediential potency is that it leads to a
dualistic, two-tier conception of nature and grace. It must be granted
that even some great theologians have invited the charge by their
phraseology. Matthias Scheeben comes to mind.213 However, appreciation of Scheeben’s theology disposes of this concern. At any rate,
a true grasp of the meaning of scholastic expressions should at least
dispose of caricatures.
An explanation that grace neatly develops nature ought to be given.
One might take a certain loose conception of Hegelian sublation as a
model of the way in which grace builds upon nature according to the
formula gratia non destruit sed perficit naturam (grace does not destroy but
perfects nature).214 What is the difference between man in the state of
pure nature and a man called and divinized? One could reply: the latter
has certain superadded forms: sanctifying grace, theological virtues, and
gifts of the Spirit. Nevertheless, because of the way too many a reader
receives formulas such as this, it is better to indicate the one overarching difference between the two men.The second man is a man whom
211 Braine’s criticism that the category is “thoroughly unspecific” seems to me off

the mark (see “The Debate,” 557). Only intellectual creatures have this potency,
and they have it in virtue of the wonder about God that they would have even in
a purely natural order.
212 Coffey (“The Whole Rahner,” 100 and 111–13); Hütter (“Natural Desire,” 569);
and Léonard (“The Theological Necessity,” 325–30) maintain this thesis as well.
213 See Matthias Scheeben, Nature and Grace, trans. Cyril Vollert (St. Louis: B. Herder,
1954).
214 I take the Hegelian image from Brugger through Coffey,“The Whole Rahner,” 112.

De Lubac on Natural Desire

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God is drawing to himself.The causal analysis (superadded forms, etc.)
helps indicate the various means whereby this personal calling is
executed and achieved.215 The elements of this divine drawing, featured
in the Abrahamic life of those called by grace, hardly “sit upon” an at
bottom natural man.To the contrary, these elements engage him in an
unspeakably more radical dependence than that which a purely natural man would experience. He now subsists upon the words and graces
coming down from God. As a reading of the secunda pars exhibits, the
Abrahamic life discloses the tension between the pondus of human
nature considered in itself and life in the Spirit. Of course, Abraham’s
life also discloses our de facto alienated condition due to sin. I simply
wish to highlight the former disclosure, for not everything can be said
at once.Within this focus, it can be said that everything pertaining to
Abraham goes with him, yet everything is put to a higher service.
When God calls a man to himself in intimacy, he galvanizes all properly human dynamisms for an all-embracing end inclusive of every
other licit and practicable end. However, this inclusion is not merely
some external yoke; it indicates the formatio of what without that inclusion would have its sights set lower. Put in loosely Hegelian terms, the
divine call affirms the goodness of what is natural in life, cancels natural life’s limitation of scope (a limitation able to be appreciated only
hazily by reason—since the formal object of faith would be off the
radar—but distinctly by faith), and employs the whole of that life with
greater clarity and on a higher plane. An intramundane example can
exemplify the sublation: Mozart introduces the two dimensional
melody of Ah! vous dirai-je Maman into a three-dimensional flowering.
Putting it another way, Long remarks that when grace is offered,
nature become “modalized.”216 Henceforth, nothing within man can
remain neutral with respect to the ultimate end.217 The Friend who
discloses himself can no longer be treated with as an acquaintance.
Therefore, our fall through Adam’s sin not only deprives all human
persons of a just relation to God, not only merits the loss of grace, but
215 This sketch aims to point the way towards addressing legitimate concerns of de

Lubac, Braine (see “The Debate,” 575), and Healy (“Henri de Lubac on Nature
and Grace,” passim). One finds a very suggestive indication of the biblical spirit
of this narration of the pure nature hypothesis in Mansini, “Surnaturel,” 606f.
216 Long,“On the Loss, and the Recovery, of Nature,” 146; see also 147–50 and 153.
217 The entire movement of the Summa theologiae may be read along the lines of
Irenaeus’s exegesis of Paul: From animal man to rational man, from rational man
to justified man, from justified man to spiritual man.There is a radical tension—
what de Lubac would call a “death to self ”—inscribed in this escalating, Abrahamic call.

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620

also vitiates human nature’s order to its connatural end.218 In this
light, de Lubac seems justly critical of the notion that original sin
simply leaves us with a purely natural man.219 Nevertheless, is he not
wrong to charge that human nature as such—bereft of both grace and
sin—would be tempted to rest in a purely mundane end?220
Conclusion
Effectively, de Lubac bade his readers abandon the then-regnant hypothesis of pure nature since, as he perceived, no purely natural order could
be “theonomic.”221 Further, he bade them subscribe to a natural desire
for the supernatural.
His strategy may be framed as an anthropological question: What is
created spirit like? The options de Lubac presents are these: Either it is
totally uninterested in higher things or it deeply yearns for the beatific
vision. Given these options, who would not choose the latter?
Having chosen the latter, however, one encounters theological and
anthropological difficulties.Theologically, there is the following insoluble
alternative: Either (a) because any world must be meaningful, God must
offer grace should he create a spirit that does not sin; or (b) because the
divine freedom is such that nothing is due to any creature in any way, a
meaningless world is possible. Either a conception of grace as necessary or
a conception of divine liberty as absolutely arbitrary even if contingently
benevolent.Anthropologically, one countenances a naturally miserable and
wretched or sub-personal man, a pure “vacuole” for grace.222
Going to the root of the matter, one can ask whether de Lubac sufficiently dealt with the Enlightenment threat at its roots. Or, rather, did he
presuppose as non-theonomous and autonomous what “pure human
nature” with a natural finality would be? This would be to concur not
with the thomistic tradition but with key problematic features of the
218 See note 179 above.
219 See Surnaturel, 375, and A Brief Catechesis, 41–53 and 81–87. Rahner and Hans

urs von Balthasar are also rightly critical thereof (see Malevez, “La gratuité du
surnaturel,” 575 and 581). Long’s response is apropos: Grace really can order
nature to a higher end (Long, “On the Loss, and the Recovery, of Nature,” 153,
155, n. 29).
220 See, esp., Malevez, “La gratuité du surnaturel,” 685f.
221 Long,“On the Loss, and the Recovery, of Nature,” 152f. and 167–83, and Hütter,
“Desiderium,” 112–13.
222 Long,“On the Loss, and the Recovery, of Nature,” 151; see also 152 and 175; see
also Michel Bastit,“Is Thomism an Aristotelian System?” in Surnaturel:A Controversy, ed. Bonino, 87–101. Cf. Figura, Der Anruf der Gnade, 226, n. 55, and 372.

De Lubac on Natural Desire

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Enlightenment. The premise that led to the unhappy alternative need not
stand. As Gagnebet lucidly states:
Saint Thomas had no need to suppose in our nature a chimerical ‘innate,
absolute natural desire’ for the beatific vision in order not to conceive of
grace as a purely extrinsic gift. He was content to recognize the openness of our spiritual faculties to the plenitude of being and of good.223

A remedy for the illusion of conceiving the creaturely order qua natural
as turned inward, self-sufficient, wretched, and miserable might be found
with a change of approach to the physical and moral worlds.We could, as
Long suggests, aim to rediscover—naturally anterior to the travail of sin
and despair—the world as disclosive of God’s power, deity, and wisdom
(Rom 1:19f.;Wis 13:3–5).224 This rediscovery could bring us, in harmony
with the spirit of de Lubac, to reject a godless interpretation of natural
dynamisms: Rather than judging things to be blindly moving hither and
thither, rather than judging human inclination to be inertial “conatus” or
chance happening or will to power, rather, also, than following the
pessimism of certain reformers, we might discern within a contemplative
outlook that natural dynamisms have their order to an end (and ultimately
to the end), the human being naturally bearing the melody of this
symphony of ends.225 Here, there is something marvelous to ponder
beneath the outrages of sin—the multifarious yet harmonious dialogue
of finalities in the world.226 This is not a prescription to ignore sin and
its devastation or to promote the heretical notion that a merely natural
end is actually attainable by any son of Adam who acts freely; it is an
effort to distinguish causally so as to unite fruitfully. If we approach such
a gaze, we may discover not the wretchedness of concrete man qua
human but the unique dignity of the rational being qua rational.227
Of course, difficulties and oddities present themselves for my thesis.
These are of two sorts. (1) There is a first set of oddities or difficulties that
223 Gagnebet, “L’amour II,” 1949, 95.
224 Although there is no unstained child of Adam, our Lord and our Lady excepting,

there is yet the nature itself, its powers, and its primal dynamisms to good.Without grace, these peter out for lack of vigor and thus significantly miss their mark.
225 It carries these naturally, yet, on account of sin, it does not carry them electively
unless healed by grace.
226 I say beneath in the genetic order, not in some spatial order. Sin is a deprivation
of the due good in rational beings. It is not that we find a realm untouched by
sin. It is that we still find the powers with their fundamental dynamisms to the
good. Sin is appalling because of its contradiction to these dynamisms.
227 I find an excellent example of this approach in Cottier,“On Natural Mysticism,”
273–94.

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are central, closer to matters of principle. (a) How can my thesis account
for the pain of the damned? (b) How can it account for the devastation of
original sin and the de facto reality that any human person is either in the
state of grace or in the state of sin?228 (c) Since despotic control over one’s
passions is a modally, albeit not entitatively, supernatural gift (i.e., a preternatural gift), concupiscence would naturally arise. But Aquinas argues
from the existence of concupiscence to the impossibility of long obeying
the moral law, even though any particular mortal sin can be avoided.229
Does this oddity not constitute a troubling scenario, the very one I find
in de Lubac? (2) Ancillary perplexities arise when one examines portraits
of hypothetical orders, even those that are not venturous. (a) Given the
necessarily communal texture of the human enterprise, already exercised
human freedom affects that which is to be exercised. Likely, in a purely
natural order, some would miss the moral mark. If they did, might not
external pressures on the morally upright develop to the point of making
virtuous activity practically impossible?230 Would the divine providence
be bound to answer with additional helps? (b) Would (non-glorious)
bodily resurrection be due, or would it be completely gratuitous?
To these and questions like these I think two different but not incompatible sets of responses can be given. On the one hand, they (or some of
them) can be utilized by theological wisdom in conversation with
rational inquirers who do not believe by way of a “protreptic” wooing
towards the faith, along the lines of Aquinas’s own approach throughout
the Summa contra Gentiles.231 As I would argue, this precise kind of
protreptic wooing would suggest to non-believers the relatively inconveniens character of a purely natural explanation of the given order. Even
though the effects of sin and grace must constitute the real point of
departure for discussion with non-believers, the protreptic I suggest
simply contributes to our appreciation of the concrete order God has
chosen, an order absolutely more fitting than a purely natural one.232 Such
wooing would be guided by a higher wisdom and indebted to what is
disclosed to faith, but it might lead some unbelievers by appealing to the
228 See Braine, “The Debate,” 546–50 and 576–80.
229 On this nuance, see Lonergan, Grace and Freedom.
230 Braine, MacIntyre, and many others could raise this question.
231 See Thomas Hibbs, Dialectic and Narrative in Aquinas: An Interpretation of the

Summa Contra Gentiles (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press,
1995); and Mark Jordan, “The Protreptic Structure of the Summa Contra
Gentiles,” The Thomist 50 (1986):173–209.
232 See, for instance, ScG IV, chap. 52. The argument is not necessary but highly
fitting, nor do the arguments conclude to the utter irrationality of any world
with men without grace.

De Lubac on Natural Desire

623

vector of that which comes under the formal object of natural inquiry.
Still, such wooing need not premise as utterly unintelligible a purely
natural order. Would not a critical thinker find such an apologetic irrational and so flee the ghetto? Consequently, another set of responses—
attempted answers to these thousand difficulties—is in order.
The first set of questions is the more pressing. What follow are not
definitive answers but sketches offered in the hope that such difficulties
need not obscure the intelligibility of the core of my thesis, which is that,
whereas the hypothesis of pure nature presents difficulties, de Lubac’s
thesis presents absurdities.
For his part, Rahner could answer (1a) with reference to the supernatural existential:The “sun of righteousness” is received by the malicious
as an affliction. But if it is unfitting that grace be found in hell, one might
appeal to the modalization of the natural desire by grace and to the
malice that would ensue upon the pronouncement, “I never knew
you.”233 (1a) remains a difficulty calling for meditation on the ramifcations of the natural love of God with respect to its modalization by
grace.234 With regard to (1b), some may rely on the fact that various positions have been taken on original sin and its effects, some of which,
though to many Pelagian, the Church has not (yet) seen fit to
condemn.235 The position to which I allude is that fallen man as such is
in the state of nature. I on the other hand would suggest that the havoc
Adam wreaked upon himself included not only the sheer loss of original
justice, a compact endowment of supernatural grace and preternatural
gifts, but thereby also the loss of that good state of nature (natural justice)
which he could have enjoyed as debitum naturae apart from grace and sin.
Accordingly, we inherit a nature identical in species to Adam’s but vitiated in state, as the difficulty in executing acts of virtue, for which nature
is in principle a seed, exhibits.236 As to (1c), does it not seem, to the
contrary, that it could not be impossible to obey the natural law in a
purely natural order?237 If so, perhaps one should distinguish the kind of
concupiscence we suffer by inheritance from the kind that would afflict
233 Cajetan provides a thoughtful reflection: The damned suffer over their punish-

ment—their share in certain evils—and not over the evil of fault. But the saints
delight over the good of God more than over their share in good. See his
commentary on ST II–II, q. 17, a. 5 (Leonine ed., vol. 8, 131a).
234 See Gagnebet, “L’amour II,” 1949, 92.
235 I am thinking of certain opinions espoused by Gregory Biel (see Heiko Augustinus Oberman, The Harvest of Medieval Theology: Gabriel Biel and Late Medieval
Nominalism [Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2000]).
236 See Torrell, “Nature and Grace,” in Surnaturel: A Controversy, 172–79.
237 On this, see Gagnebet, “L’amour II,” 1949, 45–68.

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a rational animal without preternatural gifts. Or, if such a distinction is
not possible and if it were thus true that it would be impossible long to
obey the natural law in a purely natural order, would not certain preternatural gifts seem to be due?
As to the second set, I take it that similar questions could arise about
contingencies possible under de Lubac’s hypothesis, for, if a natural desire
for the supernatural were possible, surely there would be many possible
scenarios, some quite odd to our minds.
Neither less significant nor more profound difficulties ought to derail
scientific projects of theology, which ought primarily to work from and
towards central principles. Short of a theology based in principles and
worked out scientifically, one is tempted to direct the theological compass
by medicinal considerations. Such considerations and their outcome may
have practical utility, yet the diagnosis may labor under a misapprehension of the real causal situation. If diagnoses are badly made, so will be the
corresponding prescriptions. Difficulties are not absurdities, but are absurdities affirmable? A reductionistic theological anthropology is what one
risks theoretically. Practically, one risks ill-equipped moral theologies
needlessly battling ill-framed questions.238 Rhetorically, one risks alienating rational dialogue partners and retreating into the ghetto.
Perhaps Fr. Gilbert Narcisse states it best: In moving forward we need a
theology anchored in metaphysical wisdom yet attentive to the existential
sphere in which we live and move and have our being. Advertence to a
theologically differentiated consciousness—one that exercises an ontological approach on the one hand and recognizes on the other hand existential considerations (and messiness)—will thus be necessary if we are to save
the truth of the phenomena while retaining a rightly ordered compass.239
Without neglecting questions and difficulties, one does not go astray—in
fact, all disputants in this discussion can happily join—in pressing the ear to
N&V
the concrete hope intoned by the deacon’s chant: Felix culpa!240
238 See Benedict Ashley’s fine essay on these problems: “What is the End of the

Human Person? The Vision of God and Integral Human Fulfillment,” in Moral
Truth and Moral Tradition: Essays in Honour of Peter Geach and Elizabeth Anscombe
(Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1994), 68–96. Upon reading his essay, I was happy to
note that my portrait resembles Ashley’s (see 79–81).
239 I find balanced and to the point the features of a possible future path for theology sketched by Gilbert Narcisse (see the conclusion of his essay, “The Supernatural in Contemporary Theology,” in Surnaturel: A Controversy, 307–9).
240 I owe enormous thanks to Lawrence Feingold and Steven Long for their assistance on matters pertinent to this article. In addition, I am grateful to an anonymous peer reviewer for many helpful suggestions.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 9, No. 3 (2011): 625–656

625

The Surnaturel Controversy: A Survey
and a Response
E DWARD T. OAKES, S.J.
Mundelein Seminary
Mundelein, Illinois

A LTHOUGH the Second Vatican Council left in its wake a host of
disputes about its meaning and impact (disputes that live on to this day),
no result of the council seems more secure than this conviction: that in
the clash between neo-scholasticism and ressourcement theology, the latter
had decisively won. In that famous preconciliar struggle over how to
understand the relation of nature to grace, the battle lines were drawn
between a school of neo-Thomism centered in the Roman universities
(and represented most effectively by Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P.)
and the so-called nouvelle théologie headquartered at the French Jesuit
theologate at Fourvière (near Lyons, where Henri de Lubac, S.J. was in
the vanguard). The former side posited a two-fold end for the human
species, one natural and the other supernatural; while the latter held that
God had aboriginally intended the human race for only one end, a
specifically and exclusively supernatural one. But by the time the council had completed its last session on December 8, 1965, nearly everyone
agreed: the prior reigning synthesis, as bequeathed by the manual
Thomists and anti-Modernists, was over and done with.1
1 So Walter Kasper:“There is no doubt that the outstanding event in the Catholic

theology of our century is the surmounting of neo-scholasticism,” which Kasper
defines as “the attempt to solve the modern crisis of theology by picking up the
thread of the high scholastic tradition of medieval times.The aim was to establish a timeless, unified theology that would provide a norm for the universal
church. It is impossible to deny this attempt a certain grandeur. But in the long
run a restoration was bound to fail.” Walter Kasper, Theology and Church, trans.
Margaret Kohl (New York: Crossroad, 1989), 1.This view, it bears recalling, was

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Edward T. Oakes, S.J.

Recently, however, this same neo-scholasticism—which had been
thought moribund these past four and a half decades, and whose obituary has been written so many times—has shown surprising signs of life.
Not just noted experts long familiar with this debate, but also young
scholars who have investigated this issue with fresh eyes, claim that de
Lubac can hardly be regarded as having spoken the last word. Indeed,
they go further and claim that he fundamentally misunderstood both
Thomas Aquinas and the Thomist tradition generally. Finally, they even
charge that many of the woes now afflicting the Church in the wake of
Vatican II—declining vocations, a confused moral theology, a revitalized
secular hostility to the Christian religion—can all be traced to an overhasty adoption of his thesis.
In what follows, I wish first to outline the Lubacian consensus that
obtained for most of the postconciliar period; then in the second section I
will try to survey, as much as the space of an article permits, the recent
attacks on the viability of that consensus; and finally I will conclude with
some reflections of my own.Throughout these three sections, we must keep
in mind two separate issues: (1) Did de Lubac misinterpret Thomas’s teaching on nature and grace? This question is fundamentally exegetical and
belongs under the rubric of historical theology. (2) Even if de Lubac
successfully showed that Thomas’s Renaissance and Baroque commentators
diverged from the position of the Common Doctor, does that mean that
they were wrong on the issue itself? That is, might not the commentary
tradition represent a legitimate development of St. Thomas’s more fundamental insights? In other words, even if de Lubac was correct on the exegetical point of Thomas’s historical position, maybe Catholic theologians
should adopt the (newly minted) position of the commentators anyway, as
being the most logical and consistent in light of new developments.2 After
also endorsed by no less an authority than Joseph Ratzinger (a cardinal at the
time when he penned these lines): “It is my view that the neoscholastic rationalism that was trying to reconstruct the praeambula fidei . . . with pure rational
certainty, by means of rational argument that was strictly independent of any
faith, has failed; and it cannot be otherwise for any such attempts to do that kind
of thing. In that sense, Karl Barth was right when he rejected philosophy as a
basis for faith that is independent of faith itself.” Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Truth
and Tolerance: Christian Belief and World Religions, trans. Henry Taylor (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1994), 136; emphasis added.
2 This distinction seems to form the basis of Garrigou-Lagrange’s concession that
“one cannot follow St. Thomas by falling into a material literalism.” P. R.
Garrigou-Lagrange, “La possibilité de la grâce est-elle rigoureusement démonstrable?” Revue thomiste 94 (1936): 214, note 20: “il ne faut pas, pour suivre saint
Thomas, tomber dans un littéralisme matériel.” Ironically, John Henry Newman
would agree, at least formally.

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all, is that not what development of doctrine means? Why should the same
not hold true of the Thomist tradition? But to understand how that position of the commentators has come to the fore once more in revitalized
form, one must first see how de Lubac convinced the vast majority of twentieth-century theologians of the rightness of his thesis that man has only
one, supernatural end.
I
Perhaps the best way of getting a sense of how much the postconciliar
consensus was taken for granted would be to look at the reminiscences
of those trained in theology at that time and who now look back on their
training from our more unsettled times. Prior to Vatican II most seminarians were taught that in order to preserve the sheer gratuity of grace
(that is, the teaching that grace is not “owed” to nature, that nature cannot
therefore make a claim on grace for its proper fulfillment), there must be
something, at least hypothetically, called “pure nature” that could get
along without grace. For if it could not, that is, if grace were truly indispensable to nature, that would mean that grace must be an “exigency” of
nature, which then God would “owe” that nature, and its gratuity would
thereby be undermined. But then, if nature can be fulfilled without grace,
why should nature bother with grace at all, if it can get by just fine using
only its own powers of self-fulfillment? Such a devastating rhetorical
question then led to this “obvious” conclusion: banish all talk of that
figment “pure nature” from theology! And from this axiom came all that
followed, as described in this vivid memoir:
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 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.3
3 Harm Goris,“Steering Clear of Charybdis: Some Directions for Avoiding ‘Grace

Extrinsicism’ in Aquinas,” Nova et Vetera 5 (2007): 67–79; here 69.

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Edward T. Oakes, S.J.

Those who were professionally trained in theology during that time,
whether as seminarians or as aspiring professors, can easily recognize the
truth being described here, both as to how the issue seemed at the time
and how students were struck by the perfect obviousness of de Lubac’s
attacks on the hypothesis of natura pura. Karl Rahner, who received his
training in theology much earlier, and thus knew well the theology
against which he battled, of course did not take for granted the victory
over the neo-scholastic account of pure nature.Yet he too speaks of that
tradition as inherently untenable, which thus now deserves to lose its
hold on the theological world:
[T]he orientation of “nature” to grace is conceived of in as negative a
way as possible. Grace is, it is true, an unsurpassable perfectioning of
nature; God as the Lord of this nature can command man to submit to
his de facto will and to be receptive to his grace, which directs man to a
supernatural life and end. But of itself nature has only a “potentia oboedientialis” to such an end, and this capacity is thought of as negatively
as possible. It is no more than non-repugnance to such an elevation. Of
itself, nature would find its perfection just as readily and harmoniously
in its own proper realm, in a purely natural end, without an immediate
intuition of God in the beatific vision.When it finds itself in immediate possession of itself—as part of the essence of the spirit, reditio
completa in seipsum —it meets itself as though it were “pure nature.”4

Of course what Goris and Rahner are describing here is the new attitude and position adopted in de Lubac’s wake, which rejects out of hand
the utility of the concept of pure nature, but not the argument that led to
the new consensus. For that argument one must go to de Lubac’s epochal
Surnaturel,5 together with the later clarificatory tomes that expatiate on
this thesis in more detail, Augustinianism and Modern Theology 6 and The
4 Karl Rahner, S.J.,“Nature and Grace,” in Theological Investigations IV, trans. Kevin

Smyth (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1966), 165–88; here 165.Against this
view Rahner proposes his own, one based entirely in the empirical order of
salvation history as currently established by God: “Our actual nature is never
‘pure’ nature. It is a nature installed in a supernatural order which man can never
leave, even as a sinner and unbeliever. It is a nature which is continually being
determined (which does not mean justified) by the supernatural grace of salvation offered to it” (ibid., 183; emphasis in the original).
5 Henri de Lubac, S.J., Surnaturel: Etudes historiques, nouvelle edition preparée et
préfacée par Michael Sales (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1991); first edition
published in 1946.
6 Henri de Lubac, S.J., Augustinianism and Modern Theology, trans. Lancelot Sheppard (New York: Crossroad, 2000), first published in English in 1969; abbreviated
henceforth as Augustinianism.

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629

Mystery of the Supernatural.7 The impact of these three works, both on
Vatican II itself and above all on the postconciliar consensus, can scarcely
be exaggerated, as the citations above from Goris and Rahner vividly
show. But what was his argument?
As we noted at the outset, there is a historical component to his argument and a more directly theological one.The first tack argues that Thomas
never countenanced a theory of pure nature in any of his writings, and that
when his later commentators did so, they inevitably distorted the views of
the Common Doctor.The second argues that, even if traces of what would
later become the pure-nature tradition can be found in Aquinas, the thesis
should still be rejected for a host of reasons: the concept of pure nature, so
goes the claim, creates a “fortress mentality” against the wider culture, is
harmful to the Church’s sacramental life, and damages the Church’s
missionary commission to make converts of all nations.
De Lubac’s first line of argument rests on the common medieval
axiom that Thomas repeats throughout his writings: grace perfects
nature.8 Obviously, if grace perfects nature (that is, brings it to completion), it must belong in some intimate way to nature. Another favorite
passage from the Common Doctor says: “All knowing beings implicitly
know God in everything they know,”9 an axiom repeated on other
7 Henri de Lubac, S.J.,The Mystery of the Supernatural, trans. Rosemary Sheed (New

York: Crossroad, 1998); first published in English in 1967; cited henceforth as
Mystery.The latest edition translates all the Latin quotations. Surnaturel was never
translated, perhaps because Augustianism and Mystery were meant to supersede it.
8 It would be tedious to cite every mention of this axiom in the Thomist corpus,
but here are a few:“Since therefore grace does not destroy nature but perfects it,
natural reason should minister to faith as the natural bent of the will ministers to
charity” (ST I, q. 1 a. 8, ad 2);“Final and perfect happiness can consist in nothing
else than the vision of the Divine Essence.To make this clear, two points must be
observed: first, that man is not perfectly happy so long as something remains for
him to desire and seek; second, that the perfection of any power is determined by
the nature of its object” (ST I–II, q. 3, a. 8, resp.);“Grace is proportionate to nature
as perfection is to the perfectible” (De veritate, q. 27, a. 5, obj. 17);“Nature is anterior to grace. . . .The gifts of graces are added to nature in such a way that they
do not raise it but rather perfect it” (In Boetium de Trinitate, q. 2, a. 3). Of course
Thomas is not remotely innovating here but draws on a common medieval legacy.
9 De veritate, q. 22, a. 1, ad 1.This passage was especially favored by the Transcendental
Thomists like Joseph Maréchal and Karl Rahner, because they held it justified their
attention to Immanuel Kant’s transcendental method of attending to the inherent
dynamism of the human intellect.Thus Rahner: “For Thomas the concept of God
is that which comes last in all our knowledge. But the outreach [Vorgriff ] toward the
infinite being is the previous condition of our very first conceptual knowledge, so
that in every such knowledge God is already implicitly known.” Karl Rahner, S.J.,
Hearer of the Word, trans. Joseph Donceel (New York: Continuum,

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Edward T. Oakes, S.J.

occasions.10 If all knowing beings actually know God, albeit implicitly, in
every act of knowledge, then obviously this must be an endowment of
their nature. But by far the most significant texts justifying de Lubac’s
thesis are those passages in which Thomas speaks of the human intellect
as endowed with an innate desire to attain ultimate felicity by gazing on
the divine essence, the so-called “natural desire for God.”11 Most of these
passages come from Thomas’s extended treatment of this very question in
Part III of his Summa contra Gentiles, where he says quite explicitly:
Since it is impossible for a natural desire to be incapable of fulfillment,
and since it would be so frustrated if it were impossible to reach an
understanding of divine substance such as all minds naturally desire, we
must say that it is possible for the substance of God to be seen intellectually, both by separate intellectual substances [angels] and by our
[human] souls.12

So much for de Lubac’s textual justification (citations which of course
could be extended further). But he also has a more directly theological argument to make, or rather and more specifically, an eschatological one: if there
1994/1941), 52. De Lubac, however, was diffident of the project of the Transcendental Thomists, so their use of de Lubac’s Surnaturel need not be considered here.
10 “Every intellect naturally desires the vision of the divine substance” (ScG III,
chap. 57).
11 This phrase, “the natural desire to see God,” will become the flashpoint in this
debate. For how can God endow a creature with a natural desire for something
and not fulfill it? For one side of the debate, it would be like God creating a
rational animal without the ability to reason, a logical contradiction. Since
Thomas clearly holds that rational creatures (both human and angelic) have that
natural desire, while other passages hold that grace is necessary to achieve a
supernatural end, the debate gets quite complex. For a good overview, see
William R. O’Connor, The Eternal Quest: The Teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas on
the Natural Desire for God (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1947) and
Reinhard Hütter, “Aquinas on the Natural Desire for the Vision of God: A
Relecture of Summa contra Gentiles iii., c. 25 Après Henri de Lubac,” The Thomist
73 (October, 2009): 523–91.
12 ScG III chap. 51, 1; emphasis added. Space does not allow any more citations, but
the chapter headings of the ScG give a good indication of the gist of the argument: “That the ultimate felicity of man consists in the contemplation of God”
(chap. 37); “That the ultimate felicity does not consist in the knowledge of God
gained through demonstration” (chap. 39); “That in this life we cannot see God
through his essence” (chap. 47), etc.To be sure, this set of chapters is also paired
with other chapters asserting the necessity of grace for that natural desire to be
fulfilled: “That no created substance can, by its own natural power, attain the
vision of God in his essence” (chap. 52). How to reconcile those two contrasting
positions is of course the problem that constitutes this debate.

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631

were such a thing as a de facto pure nature currently now obtaining in the
created world and operating inside the context of salvation history, then that
same pure nature would have to be reflected in the eschaton as well, a point
refuted by Scripture:“He [Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and
on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rules or authorities; all things were created through him and for him” (Col 1:15–16;
emphases added). From which de Lubac draws this conclusion:
It is said that a universe might have existed in which man, though without necessarily excluding any other desire, would have his rational
ambitions limited to some lower, purely human, beatitude. Certainly I
do not deny it. But having said that, one is obliged to admit—indeed
one is automatically affirming—that in our world as it is this is not the
case. . . . In me, a real and personal human being, in my concrete
nature—that nature I have in common with all real men, to judge by
what my faith teaches me, and regardless of what is or is not revealed
to me either by reflective analysis or by reasoning—the “desire to see
God” cannot be permanently frustrated without an essential suffering.
To deny this is to undermine my entire Credo. For is not this, in effect,
the definition of the “pain of the damned”? And consequently—at least
in appearance—a good and just God could hardly frustrate me, unless
I, through my own fault, turn away from him by choice. The infinite
importance of the desire implanted in me by my Creator is what
constitutes the infinite importance of the drama of human existence.13

Although de Lubac does not mention the issue directly, this passage
obviously has a bearing on the topic of limbo, specifically the limbus infantium, where it was held that unbaptized infants go who die before reaching the age of reason. The trouble with that hypothesis (now almost
universally abandoned)14 is that limbo becomes, as it were, the place where
the hypothesis of pure nature takes on reality, even though it is admitted by
all hands that God in fact never created anything outside of Christ,
anything in a state of actual pure nature.15 From this concession, admitted
by all sides, de Lubac comes to the most vivid expression of his thesis:
13 De Lubac, Mystery, 54.
14 See

Edward T. Oakes, S.J., “Catholic Eschatology and the Development of
Doctrine,” Nova et Vetera 6 (2008): 419–46 for details on the abandonment of this
hypothesis by Pope Benedict XVI and the papally convened International Theological Commission.
15 “All theologians agree that this state of pure nature never existed. Baius and
Jansenius [erred by denying] its possibility.” Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Grace:
Commentary on the Summa theologica of St. Thomas, IaIIae, q. 109–14, trans.
Dominican Nuns of Corpus Christi Monastery (St. Louis: B. Herder, 1952), 23;

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Edward T. Oakes, S.J.
For this desire is not some “accident” in me. It does not result from some
peculiarity, possibly alterable, of my individual being, or from some
historical contingency whose effects are more or less transitory. . . . It is
in me as a result of my belonging to humanity as it is, that humanity
which is, as we say,“called.” For God’s call is constitutive. My finality, which
is expressed by this desire, is inscribed upon my very being as it has been
put into this universe by God. And, by God’s will, I now have no other
genuine end, no end really assigned to my nature or presented for my
free acceptance under any guise, except that of “seeing God.”16

This position, so boldly stated, of course raises again the problem of
the gratuity of grace: if God has so constituted us that we desire the
beatific vision by nature, yet we can attain that end only by a freely
bestowed gift of grace, which we are given not because it is owed to us but
because God freely (“gratuitously”) gives it to us, does that then not
mean that God has created us for an end naturally and inherently desired
but only to be attained by something beyond nature? What does that say
about God? Why would God create a nature subject to such futility?
This conundrum is indeed a knotty one, and de Lubac’s proposal for
solving it came under heavy attack at the first appearance of Surnaturel,
an attack recently renewed, as we shall see in the next section, where his
proposed solution will be subjected to closer analysis by setting it against
its perceived weaknesses. It must be conceded by all hands, however, that
it was always at least de Lubac’s intent to preserve the gratuity of grace.
Here, in nutshell, is his position:
However, whether one adopts or rejects [pure nature], if one succeeds
in making clear—as at all costs we must—that the supernatural end can
in no case be the object of any requirement or debt, even by a being
who here and now has no other end, then there will no longer be any
need to refer to this indirect consideration of an order that is purely
natural even as to its finality. We have seen that it is not an adequate
emphasis added.This position is commonly held in the Dominican commentary
tradition:“Dominican tradition continually opposed the notion of a pure nature
created without being in a state of grace, or of a fallen nature that could be
equated with a pure nature left to its own resources without grace. . . . Consequently, there never has existed a state of pure nature, and the capacities of fallen
human nature are more diminished (due to the historical rejection of grace and
the concrete consequences of sin) than they would be had something like a state
of pure nature ever existed.” Thomas Joseph White, O.P., “The ‘Pure Nature’ of
Christology: Human Nature and Gaudium et Spes 22,” Nova et Vetera 8 (2010):
283–322; here 292. We will take up the impact of the condemnation of Baius
and Jansenius in the next section of this article.
16 De Lubac, Mystery, 54–55; emphasis added.

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consideration. Perhaps we may now go so far as to admit that it is not
a necessary one either.17

In other words, if the gratuity of grace can be preserved without the
hypothesis of pure nature, then the hypothesis has lost its viability. Now
whether this passage just quoted represents a true solution to, or is just a
restatement of, the problem, merely recast in different words, is precisely
the issue and will largely constitute the terms of the debate set in motion
by de Lubac’s work. Obviously, as he formulates the issue, the paradox
remains a paradox: (1) we are made for God, and our hearts are restless
until they reach final union with God in the beatific vision; yet (2) we
cannot attain that vision by means of our natural powers alone. But for
de Lubac, that is precisely the point! Consider an analogy: all infants and
children need the love of their parents, without which they wither. And
yet love is not love unless it is freely given.18
De Lubac has long been known as a theologian who insists that Christian revelation is inherently paradoxical, from the God-man Jesus Christ,
to the juxtaposition of free will and predestination.19 But of course
theology has never contented itself with merely conceding the paradox
and going no further; otherwise Christology would never have arisen,
and the debate over nature and grace would not have been so heated. So
let us now get a better idea of the exact contours of de Lubac’s views by
17 De Lubac, Mystery, 73; emphasis in the original. Note also that a page later de

Lubac covers his right flank by conceding that the concept of pure nature might
still hold utility under other presuppositions : “And if there are those who feel that
it is impossible to preserve that divine truth except by reference to the system of
‘pure nature,’ I would be the first to tell them that not merely have they every
right to maintain it, but that they would be wrong to reject it” (ibid.,74). Far
from being a concession granted to his critics after the promulgation of Humani
Generis, de Lubac made this same point in Surnaturel : “Le nouveau système [of
pure nature] ne fut donc point sans rendre d’éminents services.” De Lubac,
Surnaturel, 153.
18 Victorian fiction is filled with descriptions of children raised by prosperous
parents who take care of their every physical need but deprive them of love (“the
poor little rich boy”). For an example in real life, the philosopher Bertrand
Russell recounts in his autobiography that he was given every material comfort
as a child born to the ruling classes, but the lack of love in the household withered his personality.
19 See Henri de Lubac, The Church: Paradox and Mystery, trans. James R. Dunne
(Staten Island, NY: Alba House, 1969) and Paradoxes of Faith, trans. Paule Simon,
Sadie Kreilkamp, and Ernest Beaumont (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987). For
a lucid account of this important dimension of de Lubac’s thought, see Rudolf
Voderholzer, Meet Henri de Lubac, trans. Michael J. Miller (San Francisco: Ignatius
Press, 2008), 117–21.

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Edward T. Oakes, S.J.

seeing how they measure up to recent challenges thrown up by revisionist theologians who think that the tradition attacked by de Lubac has
more viability than he realized.
II
The challenge to de Lubac’s theology of the supernatural comes from
several quarters. In the United States, a young scholar, Lawrence Feingold, has recently published a revised version of his doctoral dissertation,
The Natural Desire to See God According to St.Thomas and His Interpreters,20
which defends (most of) the classic commentators of Thomas down
through the centuries; and Steven Long, building on Feingold, argues the
same point from a more analytic and conceptual perspective in his recent
book Natura Pura.21 In France, the Dominicans of the Toulouse Province
sponsored a symposium in 2000 in which several scholars, both lay and
clerical (with the clerics coming both from the secular presbyterate and
from several different orders—including the Jesuits), criticized de Lubac
from numerous angles.22
One thing must be said at the outset of these works (and also of the
journal articles generated by these books): they all adopt a tone of
reasoned criticism.There is no tone of heresy-hunting among de Lubac’s
recent critics, no instance of unfair characterization or overheated rhetoric.23 Moreover, historical claims are always backed up with texts, most
of which were either ignored by or not cited in de Lubac; and finally, the
specifically theological arguments adduce many relevant considerations
that must be taken into account if de Lubac is to be adequately defended
in the future.
20 Lawrence Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God According to St. Thomas and His

Interpreters, second edition (Naples, FL: Sapientia Press, 2010). The dissertation
carries the same title (Rome: Apollinare Studi, 2001). Besides being more accessible, the second edition has translated all the texts that the dissertation had cited in
the original language; and many of the arguments have been made clearer and more
cohesive.The 2010 version will be the edition quoted throughout in this article.
21 Steven A. Long, Natura Pura: On the Recovery of Nature in the Doctrine of Grace
(New York: Fordham University Press, 2010).
22 All contributions were published in Surnaturel:A Controversy at the Heart of Twentieth-Century Thomistic Thought, ed. Serge-Thomas Bonino, O.P., trans. Robert
Williams and Matthew Levering (Naples, FL: Sapientia Press, 2009).
23 “It must be borne in mind that my criticism of de Lubac’s positions does not
mean to imply any unorthodox intention on de Lubac’s part, for it is clear that
his intention was always to think with the Church. Secondly, I do not mean to
imply any global criticism of de Lubac’s other theological views, which I respect.
The question under dispute is limited to the concrete issue of the interpretation
of the natural desire to see God.” Feingold, Natural Desire, 317, note 2.

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635

Before getting into the specifics of the case raised against the thesis of
de Lubac’s Surnaturel and his later books, however, perhaps it would prove
helpful to summarize the anti-Lubacian case in more generic terms.
Although the challenge raised against de Lubac is too new to have
filtered down into the classroom long enough to have generated reminiscences like the one cited above from Harm Goris, nonetheless perhaps
we can anticipate what some future memoirist might say in the next
generation. For the climate of opinion affecting the reception of de
Lubac’s work has definitely shifted. Here is one possible formulation of
how that reassessment might be written at some future date:
When the Jesuit theologian Henri de Lubac published Surnaturel in
1946, he irrevocably altered the Thomist understanding of grace. Even
more, he changed Thomism itself, which now gives Thomas priority of
place over his later commentators by embedding him in the patristic
tradition he knew so well. Finally, and most crucially, man is now seen
as inherently open to the supernatural. No longer is grace seen as
“topping out” nature, like icing atop a layer cake. Unfortunately, de
Lubac had made his case so convincingly that problems soon followed
in his overpowering wake. After Vatican II, grace came to be seen as so
intrinsic to man that the supernatural gifts of revelation, the Church,
and the sacraments seemed, at best, merely symbolic reminders of an
already realized redemption. Clearly the time has come for a reassessment of Surnaturel.24

Just as de Lubac challenged neo-scholasticism on two main points—
that it misunderstood Thomas from the ground up, and that the reigning
consensus boxed the Church into a ghetto of irrelevancy—so too the
challenge to him disputes him at both these points: he is the one, his critics say, who has distorted the true doctrine of the Doctor Angelicus ; and,
far from giving the Church new relevance to the secular world, the
acceptance of his position has caused the Church’s true supernatural
identity to become obscured, especially among believers. The charges
might sound extraordinarily sweeping; but so too, after all, were de
Lubac’s attacks on the prior consensus that had reigned in the preconciliar decades immediately after the First World War and continued to be
taught in seminaries up to the eve of Vatican II. So if de Lubac is wrong,
then his error must be as sweeping as were his attacks.
At all events, the case against de Lubac is both exegetical (did he get
Thomas right?) and theological (is his position, whether reliant on the “real”
Thomas or not, coherent?). As mentioned, Feingold’s case is primarily
24 Adapted from the publisher’s blurb to Bonino, ed., Surnaturel: A Controversy.

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Edward T. Oakes, S.J.

historical and exegetical, so to him we first turn, after which we will look
at Long’s.
II.1
Feingold’s thesis against de Lubac depends on a crucial distinction, which
he believes de Lubac has elided: that between an innate natural desire and
an elicited natural desire for God. According to Feingold, if God had
planted in us an innate natural desire for celestial beatitude, then God
would be “bound” to give us the means to fulfill that desire, just as God
is “bound” to give us the gift of reason if he is to make us specifically
rational animals. But the gratuity of grace is preserved, maintains Feingold,
if that fully natural desire of which St.Thomas so often speaks is elicited :
St. Thomas, when dealing with the natural desire to know God’s
essence, is plainly speaking of an elicited natural desire: a desire spontaneously aroused on the basis of prior knowledge of God’s effects in the
world. However, the real question is deeper and more difficult. Does
this natural elicited desire correspond to an underlying innate appetite for
the vision of God? . . . In fact, if one conceives the natural desire to see
God as an innate appetite or inclination, then it follows that it will be
absolute rather than conditional, for a conditional desire is possible only
on the basis of knowledge.25

So which view does Thomas hold? Early on, Feingold concedes that
Thomas never directly addressed this question,26 and this omission might,
it seems to me, undermine his thesis from the outset. Later on he will show
that the commentary tradition legitimately developed Thomas’s doctrine
by introducing important distinctions in order to counteract Baius and
25 Feingold, Natural Desire, 15, 20; emphasis in the original.
26 “The texts of St. Thomas concerning the natural desire to see God do not

directly address or explicitly determine the question of whether the natural
desire in question is elicited or innate, which explains the divergence of views
which have existed and which still exist in this matter.” Feingold, Natural Desire,
xxxiii. Further: “St.Thomas seems to contradict what he frequently asserts elsewhere. Indeed, he has said: ‘There can be no natural desire except for things which can
naturally be possessed.’ [Feingold’s footnote: III Sent., d. 27, q. 2, a. 2, ad 4; see also
De veritate, d. 2, q. 27, a. 2.] How can there be a natural desire to see God’s essence
if created intellects have no natural power to see it? If the created intellect has
no natural passive potency, properly speaking, to see God, how can it have a natural desire for that vision? . . . A resolution of this doubt will have to show that at
least in a certain respect there can be a natural desire for something which natural
active forces are unable to obtain” (ibid., 168; emphases in the original). But what
Feingold concedes here is precisely de Lubac’s point: man is a paradoxical animal.

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Jansenius, who denied not just the existence of pure nature but also (and
most crucially) its very possibility.27
But of course it would never have occurred to the commentators that
they were introducing these distinctions—either between pure nature
and unmerited grace, or between innate and elicited natural desires—out
of thin air. Later distinctions became necessary because of other distinctions definitely present in the texts of Thomas, such as this key one:
Man by his nature is proportioned to a certain end for which he has a
natural appetite, and which he can work to achieve by his natural
powers.This end is a certain contemplation of the divine attributes, in
the measure in which this is possible for man through his natural powers ; and
in this end even the philosophers placed the final happiness of man. But
God has prepared man for another end, one that exceeds the proportionality of human nature.This end is eternal life, which consists in the
vision of God in his essence, an end which exceeds the proportionality
of any created nature, being connatural to God alone.28

Admittedly, this passage does not explicitly assert that this latter end,
one that exceeds the proportionality of human nature, is not a part of
27 It would take this analysis too far afield to discuss the differences between

Michael Baius (or Michel de Bay, 1513–89), a delegate at the Council of Trent,
and Cornelius Jansenius (1585–1638), bishop of Ypres, Belgium. However, what
they have in common is what is crucial in this context. Baius anticipated
Jansenism in that he held that in Eden innocence (original justice) was not a
supernatural gift to Adam and Eve but a necessary component of human nature
itself; that is, that God was tautologically unable to withhold from Adam the gifts
of original justice, so that original sin reverses this order: now nature is inherently
sinful.Without grace, man necessarily sins in all that he does, even in striving after
virtue for its own sake; and now even involuntary concupiscence is sinful,
including in infants. Building on these positions, Jansenius held that grace was
due to Adam by right. For that same reason, original sin utterly vitiated human
nature, such that pagan virtues are in reality vices before God. Both Baius and
Jansenius were condemned by a series of popes, not least because they ran afoul
of Trent’s condemnation of Luther’s assertion that concupiscence is itself a sin.
In the context of these condemnations, it becomes obvious why theology had to
distinguish, at least conceptually, nature from grace, a point that de Lubac is willing to concede, albeit diffidently: “But without for the moment going back any
further than the time of Baius, it is possible, I believe, to show that this idea of
pure nature, as it is understood by modern theology, is a systematic idea, quite
legitimate no doubt and perhaps useful, but recent.” De Lubac, Augustinianism, 106;
emphasis added. But why should the “recent” provenance of the doctrine tell
against it necessarily? Is not de Lubac here implicitly invoking a kind of “originalism” or “primitivism” that goes against Newman’s Essay on Development ?
28 De veritate, q. 27, a. 2; emphases added.

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man’s nature. However, elsewhere Thomas, almost anticipating the later
condemnations of Baius and Jansenius, says: “Reason and will are naturally directed to God, inasmuch as He is the beginning and end of nature,
but in proportion to nature. But reason and will, according to their
nature, are not sufficiently directed to God as the object of supernatural
happiness.”29 Elsewhere Thomas makes these crucial distinctions:“There
can be no inclination except to that which is similar and fitting.”30 Even
more telling is this axiom of his thought: “Now it is evident that whatever tends to an end has, in the first place, an aptitude or proportion to
that end, for nothing tends to a disproportionate end.”31 Thus the transition from the texts of the Angelic Doctor to his commentators is, if not
absolutely seamless, nonetheless smooth and unproblematic.32
The only way to reconcile the earlier-cited statements in the Thomist
corpus that de Lubac favors with these just-cited ones used by Feingold
is, the latter claims, to make a distinction between innate and elicited
desires, which is just what the famous and nearly canonical Dominican
commentator Thomas de Vio Cajetan (1469–1534), for example, does in
his commentary on the Summa: “Note that natural appetite is generally
used in two senses. First, with regard to an inclination implanted by
nature. . . . Second, it is taken for a second act, by which one tends to
something previously known.”33
29 ST I–II, q. 62, a. 1, ad 3.
30 ST I–II, q. 8, a. 1.
31 ST I–II, q. 25, a. 2.
32 James Healey makes the fascinating observation that both classical scholastics and

Jansenius failed to notice the essential paradoxicality of their respective positions
when set over against each other:“Despite these deficiencies, however, Jansenius’s
critique of pure nature is not without value. . . . In stressing this sanating [healing]
role of charity Jansenius therefore emphasizes a link between goodness and grace
which had perhaps been neglected by the Scholastics in their concern to protect
the supernaturality of grace and the possibility of a naturally good act. . . . Finally,
there is perhaps some merit in Jansenius’s insistence that for Augustine nature too
is grace. For if the assertion that ‘all is grace’ shows theological carelessness and
exposes one to the risk of neglecting the extraordinary gift of God which is theologically expressed as ‘supernatural,’ it is nonetheless true that nature too is God’s
gift. . . . If anything, Jansenius seems to have missed the full significance of this
understanding of nature. For what is ‘natural’ rather than ‘supernatural’ is not
‘man’s’ rather than ‘God’s’ but, in its own way, a manifestation of the generosity of
God which is even more extraordinarily manifested in ‘supernatural’ grace.” James
G. Healey, S.J., Jansenius’ Critique of Pure Nature (Rome: Gregorian University
Press, 1964), 76–77.
33 Commenting on ST I, q. 78, a. 1, notation 5, in the Leonine edition at Vol. 5,
252; full citation in Feingold, Natural Desire, 19, note 35.

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Only the second can be properly called a natural desire for God. That
is, inclinations “implanted by nature” pertain to hunger for food and the
like, and the failure to attain them leads to death. But the second kind of
natural desire, one that follows on philosophical reflections of the world
leading to a realization that there is a First Cause, that kind of desire can
be adequately fulfilled by using one’s natural powers of reasoning independent of supernatural grace (Aristotle serves as the test case here).
Therefore, say most of the commentators, supernatural grace gives not
just the means to reach the supernatural destiny that God intends for
rational creatures, it gives a new end as well; that is, it gives a quite different—an entirely unexpected—kind of fulfillment, precisely because a new
end first comes into view with the bestowal of grace.34
The trouble with this distinction between innate and elicited natural
desires is that the second depends, in Cajetan’s words, on “something previously known,” which means that an elicited desire can be elicited only
from someone who has already reached the age of reason, a concession
which brings us back to the old specter of limbo. At least one must give
Feingold credit here for not flinching from the issue, even if it damages his
case, since the hypothesis of limbo has almost completely disappeared—and
not just from the common opinion (the sententia communis) of theologians
either, but from magisterial documents as well, as even critics of de Lubac
concede.35 Still, there can be no question that Feingold’s attack on de
Lubac, as well as his defense of the commentary tradition, directly entails,
at least for him, the existence of limbo, as he unflinchingly concedes:
With regard to the text of St.Augustine [Confessions 1.1] and the great
theme of man as imago Dei, analogical distinctions also need to be
34 Whenever Thomas quotes St. Paul to the effect that “Eye hath not seen, nor ear

heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things which God hath
prepared for them that love him” (1 Cor 2:9), this is a reliable indicator that he
is speaking of a twofold end for man, a natural one that man expects, since it is
born out of his natural (albeit elicited) desire and thus set vividly before his
imagination in the wake of philosophical contemplation; and a supernatural one
that, if granted, comes utterly without anticipation.
35 “Ever since Jacques Maritain and his inseparable friend, Charles Journet, the
doctrine of limbo has been hard put to find defenders. . . . Even more, The Catechism of the Catholic Church makes no mention of limbo in regard to infants who
die unbaptized (see no. 1261).This silence is eloquent when we consider that up
until the middle of the twentieth century this doctrine was commonly held as a
certain theological truth and was diffused widely among the Christian people by
catechesis.” Serge-Thomas Bonino, O.P.,“The Theory of Limbo and the Mystery
of the Supernatural in St.Thomas Aquinas,” in Bonino, ed., Surnaturel:A Controversy, 117–54; here 117, note 1.

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640

made. There is a restlessness of the heart that comes from nature, and another
far higher restlessness that is the product of grace. Likewise, resting in God
can have a natural as well as a supernatural realization for St. Thomas,
for he recognizes limbo as a state of natural happiness in which the
souls of the unbaptized who died before the age of reason rejoice in a
natural contemplation of God and do not experience interior restlessness of dissatisfaction.36

One can readily see how Feingold got himself enticed into this culde-sac. For he rightly notes not just that de Lubac’s version of the natural desire to see God undermines the thesis of limbo, but also that any
attack on him must entail the existence of limbo:
The fact that the deprivation of the vision of God causes no suffering
for the souls in limbo can only be either because they experience no
natural desire to see God, or because their natural desire to see God is
only a conditional one whose frustration causes no suffering.The first
possibility must be discarded because St. Thomas had already demonstrated in ScG III ch 50–51 that all intellectual creatures naturally desire
to see God, once they consider His existence. It follows, therefore, that
the natural desire to see God in those without knowledge of Revelation can only be a conditional desire. . . . Furthermore, these articles of
St. Thomas on the lack of spiritual suffering in limbo reveal a fundamental incompatibility with de Lubac’s interpretation of the natural
desire to see God. Precisely because de Lubac holds the desire to see
God to be the most absolute of all desires, he cannot admit that it could
be frustrated or unfulfilled without causing an essential suffering. This
certainly seems to imply a significant form of spiritual suffering, which
is precisely what St.Thomas emphatically excludes from limbo.37

Feingold errs, however, when he implies that limbo was first mooted
as a defense of elicited natural desire. Admittedly, he never asserts the
historical connection, but the implication is there because of the way he
ties the two together logically. But in fact limbo was first introduced to
get around Augustine’s teaching that unbaptized infants go directly to
36 Feingold, Natural

Desire, 203; emphases in the original. This entailment is
mentioned frequently in Feingold’s text, as here:“Furthermore, it is precisely for
this reason that St.Thomas, followed by the vast majority of Catholic theologians
for seven centuries, held that limbo would be a state of natural joy without any
spiritual suffering for many individuals of our concretely existing human race”
(ibid., 391). Here again Feingold elides the hypothesis of pure nature with the
concrete reality of limbo. Worse, he relies on a consensus that no longer obtains.
The large listing of page numbers under “Limbo” in his Index is another indication of how much his argument relies on this jejune theologoumenon.
37 Feingold, Natural Desire, 352; emphasis in the original.

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hell.38 Of course, once that hypothesis began to win over the majority of
theologians, the concept of natura pura gained a new purchase on the
theological imagination; and from that point on, the assertion of limbo
marched pari passu with continued theological reflection on the meaning
of a nature not endowed with grace. Unfortunately for Feingold’s thesis,
once the hypothesis of limbo is abandoned for other reasons, it only begs
the question to appeal to the authority of the medieval doctors for its
restitution, as Feingold clearly does here:
Third, an unconditional natural desire for the vision of God would
contradict St. Thomas’s well-known teaching concerning the lack of
spiritual suffering in limbo, since the lack of realization of an unconditional natural desire would necessarily cause spiritual suffering and an
essential frustration of the spiritual creature.39

The trouble with this argument, besides its sheer reliance on authority, is that it ignores the shift in logic that has taken place in the twentieth century. St. Augustine was driven to his version of an infantile hell
because of this syllogism:
1. Our hearts are restless until they rest in God.
2. Baptism is necessary for salvation, that is, for the attainment of the
beatific vision, without which our hearts remain inherently restless.
3. Therefore, unbaptized infants suffer the restless torments of hell,
eternally.
The medieval advocates of an infantile limbo, on the other hand, used
a different syllogism:
1. Baptism is necessary if the human rational creature is to be given both
the supernatural desire for the beatific vision and its actual attainment.
2. However, there are two ends in every rational creature: the contemplation of God as First Cause, which can be attained using reason’s
natural powers; and the contemplation of the divine essence, a gift of
supernatural grace given in baptism.

38 See Augustine’s Opus incompletum contra Julianum and Sermon 294 for especially

gruesome depictions of infantile suffering in hell.
39 Feingold, Natural Desire, 428. But Thomas clearly holds that “demonstration from

authority is the weakest form of proof ” (ST I, q. 1, a. 8, ad 2).

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Edward T. Oakes, S.J.

3. Therefore, infants who die without baptism can still enjoy the felicity of natural contemplation in limbo, since the attainment of that
end remains possible without grace and would be unaffected by its
deprivation.
The modern view, endorsed by Vatican II40 and Pope John Paul II’s
encyclical Redemptor Hominis,41 says there is only one end for rational
creatures, a supernatural end. Of course, no magisterial document has
ever denied that baptism still remains necessary for salvation. So how can
the dilemma—that baptism is necessary for salvation and yet all human
beings are called to one divine end—be solved without lapsing into St.
Augustine’s assertion of an infantile hell? The paradox is resolved by
introducing a new premise, the notion of solidarity, the key word for
interpreting Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclical Spe Salvi.42 In other words,
not only is the idea of felicity in limbo rendered impossible, since every
human being has been inscribed by Christ and is destined for him (Col
1:16b), so that eternal separation from him would entail eternal suffering;

40 “In reality it is only in the mystery of the Word made flesh that the mystery of

man truly becomes clear. . . . For since Christ died for all, and since all men are
in fact called to one and the same destiny, which is divine, we must hold that the
Holy Spirit offers to all the possibility of being made partners, in a way known
to God, in the paschal mystery.” Gaudium et Spes §22.
41 “Christ, the Redeemer of the world, is the one who penetrated in a unique, unrepeatable way into the mystery of man and entered his ‘heart.’ ” Redemptor Hominis
§8; the rest of this same paragraph goes on to endorse Gaudium et Spes §22.
42 “[W]e should recall that no man is an island, entire of itself. Our lives are
involved with one another, through innumerable interactions they are linked
together. No one lives alone. No one sins alone. No one is saved alone.The lives
of others continually spill over into mine: in what I think, say, do and achieve.
And conversely, my life spills over into that of others: for better and for worse.
So my prayer for another is not something extraneous to that person, something
external, not even after death. . . . It is never too late to touch the heart of another,
nor is it ever in vain. In this way we further clarify an important element of the
Christian concept of hope. Our hope is always essentially also hope for others;
only thus is it truly hope for me too. As Christians we should never limit
ourselves to asking: how can I save myself? We should also ask: what can I do in
order that others may be saved and that for them too the star of hope may rise?
Then I will have done my utmost for my own personal salvation as well.” Spe
Salvi §48; emphasis added. Note also this encyclical’s endorsement of de Lubac’s
book Catholicism: Christ and the Common Destiny of Mankind at §§13–14, especially here: “Against this, drawing upon the vast range of patristic theology, de
Lubac was able to demonstrate that salvation has always been considered a ‘social’
reality” (§14).

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but also the absence of some souls from heaven supposedly languishing in
limbo would affect the felicity of souls in heaven too.43
The introduction of the notion of solidarity has obvious implications
for the theology of baptism. It still remains necessary for salvation, and
still remains inherently efficacious ex opere operato. But now this sacrament, pace St.Augustine and the medieval doctors, is seen—as St. Paul saw
it—as a sacramental plunge into the death and resurrection of Jesus, sacramentally incorpor ating the new Christian into the Body of Christ, the
Church, which is obviously and quintessentially a social reality.44
Given all of these developments (to which de Lubac of course made
his own contribution),45 but considering also and above all the fact that
these developments have been taught by both councils and popes, we can
now conclude that any theology of nature and grace that entails the
43 “This real life, towards which we try to reach out again and again, is linked to a

lived union with a ‘people,’ and for each individual it can only be attained within
this ‘we’. It presupposes that we escape from the prison of our ‘I,’ because only
in the openness of this universal subject does our gaze open out to the source of
joy, to love itself—to God.” Spe Salvi §14.
44 It would take us too far afield to analyze in detail Paul’s theology of baptism, but
this at least can be noted:“One could say without exaggeration that the concept
of the body forms the keystone of Paul’s theology. In its closely interconnected
meanings, the word soma knits together all his great themes. It is from the body
of sin and death that we are delivered; it is through the body of Christ on the
Cross that we are saved; it is into His body the Church that we are incorporated;
it is by His body in the Eucharist that this Community is sustained; it is in our
body that its new life has to be manifested; it is to a resurrection of this body to
the likeness of His glorious body that we are destined. Here, with the exception
of the doctrine of God, are represented all the main tenets of the Christian
Faith—the doctrines of Man, Sin, the Incarnation and Atonement, the Church,
the Sacraments, Sanctification, and Eschatology. To trace the subtle links and
interaction between the different senses of this word soma is to grasp the thread
that leads through the maze of Pauline thought.” J. A.T. Robinson, The Body: A
Study in Pauline Theology (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1952), 9. At a
minimum we can conclude from this passage that baptism entails much more
than an individual’s ticket of admission to heaven. Rather, it involves a sacerdotal (1 Pt 2:9) responsibility to make the Church more and more the universal
sacrament of salvation that she declares herself to be (Lumen Gentium §1).
45 It has long been recognized that Gaudium et Spes §22 is directly reliant on de
Lubac:“By revealing the Father and by being revealed by him, Christ completes
the revelation of man to himself. . . . It is through Christ that the person reaches
maturity, that man emerges definitively from the universe and becomes
conscious of his own being.” Henri de Lubac, Catholicism: Christ and the Common
Destiny of Man, trans. Lancelot Sheppard (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989),
339. See Paul McPartlan, Sacrament of Salvation:An Introduction to Eucharistic Ecclesiology (Edinburgh:T & T Clark, 1995), 74.

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necessary conclusion that the limbus infantium actually exists, will have
undermined its case irreparably. But perhaps the hypothesis of pure
nature (as a purely hypothetical possibility, if not as an actually obtaining
reality in salvation history) can still be rescued using other arguments, as
Long tries to do; and so to him we now turn.
II.2
Although Steven Long has nothing but praise for Feingold’s work,46 he
wisely refrains from resorting to that pis aller of medieval eschatology, an
infantile limbo. But he does adopt and make his own several other
features of Feingold’s work, and at times sharpens them with more
directly theological arguments, which means less reliance on the argument from mere authority. Like Feingold, Long readily concedes de
Lubac’s orthodox intentions;47 and like Feingold, he admits that one
reason the debate has remained so intractable down through the ages is
because of an inherent ambiguity in Thomas’s original texts:
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. . . .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
46 The first chapter of Natura Pura is a republication of his article “On the Loss, and

the Recovery, of Nature as a Theonomic Principle: Reflections on the
Nature/Grace Controversy,” Nova et Vetera 5 (2007): 133–83; all citations will be
from the pagination in the book version. Chapter 2 of Natura Pura focuses its
polemics against Hans Urs von Balthasar’s (alleged) endorsement of de Lubac in
his influential monograph, The Theology of Karl Barth. But a treatment of this part
of his argument would take this article beyond its proper focus and so will not
be discussed here. The same must apply a fortiori to any critique leveled by Long
against Etienne Gilson, Jacques Maritain, Jean Porter,Tracy Rowland, or Joseph
Ratzinger. One does wish to salute, however, Long’s courage in taking on this
“cloud of witnesses.”
47 “[D]e Lubac’s account of the natural desire for God, despite what I shall argue
to be its doctrinal deficiency, is rooted in a genuinely profound theological need
to overcome the loss of natural order as a theonomic principle.” Long, Natura
Pura, 11.

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suppose St.Thomas’s texts to exhibit raw incoherence, then we need to
read these texts in relation one to another.48

Given this duality of texts, Long (along with Feingold) accuses de
Lubac of a tendentious selection of texts from the Thomist/Thomistic
corpus, highlighting the first set while ignoring the second; this obviously
only “solves” the problem by ignoring it. Of course, de Lubac would
reply that the same might be said of St. Thomas’s commentators, only
from the opposite side. But since both Feingold and Long concede that
the first set of texts in Thomas shows him to be, at the least, more
nuanced than the neo-scholastic tradition had noticed, we are now finally
in the position to take the inadequacies of both neo-scholasticism and de
Lubac into account, in order to forge a stronger synthesis.49
One of the great merits in Long’s book is the way he transposes this
debate to a discussion of the moral law, both natural and divinely promulgated, a dimension long missing from this debate. As is conceded by all
sides, St. Thomas recognizes both forms of law; but rarely has it been
noted that his discussion of the interrelationship of these two versions of
law has direct bearing on the nature-grace relationship. Consider this
passage from the prima secundae :
48 Long, Natura Pura, 13, 15; emphasis in the original. He gives samples here: “On

the one hand, we have St. Thomas’s argument 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, c. 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 natures 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).” Long, Natura Pura, 13.
49 Guy Mansini makes the perfectly correct observation that this dilemma goes
back to the New Testament and is not some tiresome piece of theological
arcanum bequeathed to us by the Angelic Doctor: on the one hand, Scripture
speaks of everything being made through Christ and for Christ ( Jn 1:1–3; Col
1:15–16), while on the other it speaks of our elevation to grace on the analogy
of adopted sons (Rom. 8:14–17). It is of course the whole point of adoption that
it is not owed to the natural child (one thinks of Charles Dickens’s novel David
Copperfield here). So the paradox is rooted in revelation. See Guy Mansini,
O.S.B., “The Abiding Significance of Henri de Lubac’s Surnaturel,” The Thomist
73 (2009): 593–619.Thomas Joseph White sees this same tension in Gaudium et
Spes, supposedly the document where de Lubac has been most univocally vindicated: “Gaudium et Spes is, after all, replete with moral exhortations that are
meant to inspire or appeal to the conscience of modern human beings of all
backgrounds (including non-Christians and the areligious). . . . In other words,
the document is replete with appeal to principles of natural law.”White, “ ‘Pure
Nature’ of Christology,” 285.

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Edward T. Oakes, S.J.
If man were ordained to no other end than that which is proportionate to his natural faculty, there would be no need for man to have any
further direction on the part of his reason besides the natural law and
human [positive] law, the latter of which is derived from the former.
But since man is ordained to an end of eternal happiness, which
exceeds the proportion of man’s natural faculty, as stated above, therefore it was necessary that, besides the natural and the human law, man
should be directed to his end by a law given by God. . . . But to his
supernatural end man needs to be directed in a yet higher way. Hence,
the additional law given by God, whereby man shares more perfectly
in the eternal law.50

Now, since no one has ever claimed that St. Thomas considered the
natural law to be a mere “hypothesis,” meant only to guarantee the gratuity of the divine law, Long is able to draw this inexorable conclusion:
“The proportionate capacity of human nature is not a fiction, it is not a
limit concept, it is not merely ideational; rather, it is something created
by God.”51 Or, as he earlier puts it in a felicitous image, nature is not a
vacuole (a biological term referring to a cavity or vesicle in the cytoplasm
of a cell), by which he means: “Created nature in all its ontological density is
not the theologian’s posit; it is God’s effect.”52 Of course that effect is permeated with signs of God’s involvement in salvation history. But those
effects do not obliterate nature; rather they presuppose it in its integrity,
however difficult it may be to sort out one from the other:
Of course, the concept of pure nature can be exactly specified [through
abstraction].What cannot be exactly specified are circumstantial aspects
of divine providence that we could only know in relation to their
actual promulgation through God creating nature apart from grace,
which He has not done. But any further ordering of nature in and by
grace cannot efface the primordial ordering of nature that is presupposed
50 ST I–II, q. 91, a. 4, resp. and ad 1.
51 Long, Natura Pura, 201. Further:“Human nature is a real principle in the human

person, and its species is derived, not from the ultimate supernatural end of
beatific vision, but from its proportionate natural end” (ibid., 200). But far from
cordoning off the natural law into a separate realm independent of the drama of
salvation history, Long fully admits their mutual interpenetration: “Nothing in
this, however, is to suggest that the natural end in its proper integrity and
completeness may be attained apart from grace in the actually existing providential order. Nor can the ultimate supernatural end be attained by one who
rejects the impress of the divine wisdom in the natural law and its dominion over
his actions. For both natural law and the lex nova are participations in the eternal law” (ibid., 200–201).
52 Long, Natura Pura, 64; emphasis in the original.

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by grace, and on the basis of which man is defined and placed in an intelligible species: the contrary is simply irrationalism, denying that we can
know human nature in its essential teleological structures because these
are further ordered in grace.To be further ordered is not not to be, nor
is it to be naturally unknowable.53

Even when one concedes these trenchant arguments (as I do), problems still lurk in Long’s analysis. For example, in a lengthy footnote, he
seems to concede more than he realizes when he is addressing the great
conundrum in this debate, the place where Thomas says: “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.”54 This quotation
clearly belongs in the first set of statements, the ones that support de
Lubac’s thesis.
Long recognizes the difficulty and handles it by claiming that Thomas
is speaking as a theologian, that is, from the point of view of revelation,
which alone can tell us that the desire to see the divine essence is proximately possible, whereas a philosopher can only deduce that it is abstractly
possible. From which Long concludes: “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.”55 But of course, that
was precisely de Lubac’s thesis: that our natural desire for God is unconditional and that its eschatological frustration entails hell; and he always
53 Long, Natura Pura, 72–73; all emphases in the original.This passage happens to be

directed against Balthasar but has obvious relevance to de Lubac, although he is
willing to concede a greater debt to the pure-nature tradition in Balthasar than in
de Lubac: “Balthasar will argue, correctly, that the nature confronting our intelligence does not exist in a separated or ‘pure’ fashion (‘separated’ or ‘pure’ in the
sense of being unaffected by its mode of being and its relation to God’s grace):
‘God’s real world order [says Balthasar] is the de facto unity of two materially distinguishable and distinct orders that can be differentiated in analysis but are still not
separate in reality.’ No Thomist could say it better.” Long, Natura Pura, 66; quoting from Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Theology of Karl Barth: Exposition and Interpretation, trans. Edward T. Oakes, S.J. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992), 280;
emphases in the original. One recalls here as well Balthasar’s famous criticism of
what he called Barth’s “christological bottleneck,” by which he meant that Barth’s
theology was so relentlessly christocentric that it could make no room for
creation (or even the Church) as self-subsistent realities. In my opinion (although
the point cannot be argued here), Balthasar is more nuanced on this issue of
nature’s self-subsistence vis-à-vis Chirst than de Lubac.
54 ScG III, chap. 5.
55 Long, Natura Pura, 226, note 11; emphasis added.

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considered himself a theologian (a historical theologian, to be sure). So
Long seems to have brought us right back to the starting point with
nothing resolved.
Finally, there is the pesky issue of limbo again.Although, as I said above,
Long wisely avoids making his case for natura pura rely on that jejune theologoumenon, he comes close at one point to insisting on the reality of an
infantile limbo, and—as with Feingold—does so merely on the authority
of the Common Doctor: “[I]f the natural desire for God were formally a
desire for supernatural 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.”56
What I have attempted to do in this section is to present as fairly as I
can the case against de Lubac as lodged by Feingold and Long, together
56 Long, Natura Pura, 14. Again, I would like to register my bafflement at the way

the question of limbo keeps getting dragged into the debate. It is supposed to be
conceded on all sides that the concept of pure nature serves merely as a hypothetical possibility to preserve the gratuity of grace and to block the way to Baianism and Jansenism.Yet, obviously, if limbo did exist, that is, if infants (or Aristotle,
or Averroes, or even, of all people, Suleiman the Magnificent, as Dante held) really
were enjoying right now a natural bliss outside of the precincts of heaven, then
there would be in the actual order a pure nature, that is, a pocket of reality
untouched by Christ, a clear contradiction of the Prologue to John’s Gospel and
of the christological hymns in Colossians. Plus, limbo presupposes that baptism
cannot be seen as a sacrament of salvation unless the non-baptized are denied
salvation. But to subscribe to that binary conclusion (a legacy of St. Augustine’s
lingering Manicheeism) means the establishment of an insidious temptation in the
minds of the baptized, such as to make them resent the idea of the non-baptized
“sneaking into” heaven by the backdoor, so to speak. One cannot imagine an attitude more antithetical to Spe Salvi—or of Ratzingerian theology more generally:
“We cannot start to set limits on God’s behalf; the very heart of the faith has been lost
to anyone who supposes that it is only worthwhile, if it is, so to say, made worthwhile by
the damnation of others. Such a way of thinking, which finds the punishment of
other people necessary, springs from not having inwardly accepted the faith; from
loving only oneself and not God the Creator, to whom his creatures belong.That
way of thinking would be like the attitude of those people who could not bear
the workers who came last being paid a denarius like the rest; like the attitude of
people who feel properly rewarded only if others have received less.This would
be the attitude of the son who stayed at home, who could not bear the reconciling kindness of his father. It would be a hardening of our hearts, in which it would
become clear that we were only looking out for ourselves and not looking for
God; in which it would be clear that we did not love our faith, but merely bore
it like a burden. . . . It is a basic element of the biblical message that the Lord died
for all—being jealous of salvation is not Christian.” Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger,
God Is Near Us:The Eucharist, the Heart of Life, trans. Henry Taylor (San Francisco:
Ignatius Press, 2003), 35–36; emphasis added.

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with possible critiques of them that arise solely from within the presuppositions of their own respective analyses. In the next and final section, I
would like to step back from the debate as currently conducted to see if
there might be a way of more directly unraveling this Gordian knot by
the introduction of other considerations.
III
III.1
Although the previous analysis might make it sound like this debate has
reached a standstill, there are in fact more convergences between supporters and critics of de Lubac than are at first apparent.Toward the end of his
book, Feingold shares one of his great worries about the long-term effects
of de Lubac’s interpretation of the natural desire for God: “[O]ne of the
great pastoral problems of our time is that so many people, Catholics and
non-Catholics alike, take Heaven for granted as something somehow due
simply to natural goodness.This view debases Heaven by naturalizing it.”57
Actually, de Lubac agrees! Most secondary scholarship on de Lubac,
both pro and con, largely ignores his criticism of liberal Catholicism in
the wake of Vatican II.58 Even as early as 1969 he was attacking the liberal
57 Feingold, Natural Desire, 443. Anyone who has been to a postconciliar funeral will

readily commiserate with Feingold here and join in singing his keen. Say the
deceased was an avid golfer—in that case you can be sure someone at the wake or
during the eulogy will speak of the late, much-lamented Uncle Wilbur as now
enjoying himself in the Great Golf Course in the Sky.When the aged senator from
West Virginia, ninety-two-year-old Robert Byrd (known as the King of Pork for
all the federal largesse he poured into his state), died in the summer of 2010, the
Catholic (!) bishop of Charleston (the capital of West Virginia) chirruped that the
Senator was surely now in heaven. One wonders if the burdened taxpayers from
other states agreed, whose children will be saddled for generations to come with
paying off the federal debt that was used to fund all that Appalachian bacon.
58 An exception is Voderholzer:“For de Lubac, the seventies were also overshadowed
by many disappointments. He had helped in so many ways to prepare for the
Second Vatican Council and only a few years before had had to defend himself
against the accusation that he was an innovator, yet now he was suddenly considered the proponent of an old, supposedly obsolete theology. For his eightieth
birthday, on February 20, 1976, de Lubac received a handwritten letter from Pope
Paul VI. He showed it to the superior of the house, but he did not even want to
look at it, and his Provincial would not read it either.”Voderholzer, Meet de Lubac,
95. See also Christopher J. Walsh, “De Lubac’s Critique of the Postconciliar
Church,” Communio: International Catholic Review 19 (1992): 404–32.According to
Walsh, there was evidently a complete breakdown of trust at that time between
de Lubac and his Jesuit superiors.At one point, an article that de Lubac had written was rejected for publication in a Jesuit organ for its criticisms of liberal
Catholicism (oh, the irony!), which prompted de Lubac to call the episode “a final

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partisans who were appealing to that vapid fata morgana called “the spirit
of the council” to justify their deviations from both the council itself and
core Christian teachings. In an address delivered at Saint Louis University on the occasion of its sesquicentennial, where he received an
honorary doctorate, de Lubac addressed the perhaps surprised assembly
in words that can only be described as a jeremiad:
The Christian thinkers of the past are looked down upon as if they no
longer had anything to say; the traditional formulations of faith are
stated in such a way as to appear ridiculous, so as to hasten their
replacement. And under the pretext of merely changing this or that
word or phrase, it is the very essence of our faith which runs the risk
of being sifted away. . . .Whatever is recriminatory, whatever excites, is
declared prophetic, even if it is evident that it stems from ignorance, or
from concessions made to what is currently in vogue—and this is the
exact opposite of what we mean by prophetic! . . .We must not be afraid
to say so: there is nothing in all of this that is promising. A faith which
dissolves itself is unable to engender anything whatever. A community
which breaks up is incapable of radiating or of attracting others. Agitation is not synonymous with life.That last hatched slogan is not necessarily a new thought.The noisiest critics are frequently the most sterile.59

Furthermore, he explicitly links the pathology here described with a
loss of the sense of the supernatural, precisely the gravamen of the
concerns about de Lubac’s theology in both Feingold and Long. In other
words, just because de Lubac is most famous for his criticisms of “extrinsicism,” that does not make him an advocate of “intrinsicism,” at least if
that term is defined to mean that man has any claim, by virtue of his
natural desire for God, on divine grace, or still less that he can entirely
dispense with the supernatural merely by, say, working to reform “unjust
social structures.” On the contrary, for de Lubac, Gaudium et Spes sought
for an openness to the world precisely in order to announce the salvation
that comes from Christ:
But [de Lubac continues] is it not just the opposite for some? Does not
such an “openness” become a forgetfulness of salvation and of the
gospel, a tending toward secularism, a loosening of faith and morals?
Finally, this “openness” becomes for others a loss of identity, in a word,
example of police methods practiced by certain intelligentsia reigning at that time
in France in the Society of Jesus” (as cited in Walsh,“De Lubac’s Critique,” 411).
59 Henri de Lubac,“The Church in Crisis,” Theology Digest 17 (1969): 312–25; here
317. A revised version of this address was published in Nouvelle Revue Théologique
91 (1969): 580–96.

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651

the betrayal of our obligation toward the world. Because the Council,
following the desire of John XXIII, did not wish either to define new
dogmas or to pronounce anathemas, many conclude that the church no
longer has the right to judge anything or anyone; they recommend a
“pluralism” which is not the pluralism of the theological schools but
that of entirely different beliefs from those of the normative faith. . . .
The word “renewal” can cover a multitude of abuses!60

De Lubac continued these critiques until his last book, published in
1989, Mémoire sur l’occasion de mes écrits.61 (After the appearance of this
book, he suffered a series of strokes and died on September 4, 1991, in the
care of the Little Sisters of the Poor.) Perhaps nowhere was he both more
poignant and more succinct than in this passage from an earlier book:
“People nowadays speak about the Church more than they experience
her.They discuss questions of faith more than they live its mystery. From
this comes the expected result: a somnolence, a lassitude, a refusal to
react—indeed a secret complacency—in the face of destructive forces.”62
Needless to say, all these citations manifesting de Lubac’s cri de coeur can
be readily taken by his critics as confirming their critique, and perhaps
they are right; it would have to be conceded, though, that de Lubac
himself never abandoned his prior writings on nature and grace.63 But at
60 De Lubac, “Church in Crisis,” 319.
61 Translated as At the Service of the Church: Henri de Lubac Reflects on the Circum-

stances that Occasioned his Writings, trans. Anne Elizabeth Englund (San Francisco:
Ignatius Press, 1993). See also Henri de Lubac, Entretien autour de Vatican II (Paris:
Editions du Cerf, 1985); an abridged translation of this book-length interview
appeared as De Lubac: A Theologian Speaks (Los Angeles:Twin Circle, 1985).
62 Henri de Lubac, L’Église dans la crise actuelle (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1969), 18.
63 This refusal to back down can be seen most clearly in a work de Lubac wrote
for the International Theological Commission, to which he had been appointed
by Pope Paul VI: Henri de Lubac, A Brief Catechism on Nature and Grace, trans.
Richard Arnandez, F.S.C. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1984).Also, this anecdote
from Voderholzer is telling:“Whereas de Lubac was regarded by proponents of a
self-styled progressive trend as a theologian who had meanwhile become hopelessly obsolete, there was, on the other hand, no lack of critics who claimed that
he was primarily responsible for the onset of the crisis in the Church. In 1975
someone mailed de Lubac photocopied excerpts from the book entitled Gethsemane by the Archbishop of Genoa, [Giuseppe] Cardinal Siri. The cardinal
denounced ‘the historical conscience,’ ‘hermeneutics’ and the ‘existential reference’ as hallmarks of a theology leading to destruction, for which de Lubac was
chiefly to blame, along with Karl Rahner and Jacques Maritain. De Lubac
resolutely defended himself against these charges in a letter dated November 15,
1975. . . .Without entering into a discussion with Siri, de Lubac referred to the
approval of his work by Pope Pius XII and to the favorable judgment of Étienne
Gilson.”Voderholzer, Meet de Lubac, 97.

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Edward T. Oakes, S.J.

least Feingold and Long are on the same page with de Lubac on this issue:
all theologies on the nature/grace dialectic must always serve this thoroughly biblical injunction:
So we do not lose heart.Though our outer nature is wasting away, our
inner nature is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary
affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, because we look not to the things that are seen but to the things
that are unseen. For what is seen is transitory, but the things that are
unseen are eternal. . . . So from now on we regard no one from a human
point of view; even though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do
so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The
old has gone; behold, the new has come! (2 Cor 4:16–18; 5:16–17;
RSV, emphases added).64

III.2
Given the fact that both de Lubac and his critics Feingold and Long want
to preserve the gratuity of grace in the face of the secularist onslaught,
but also considering their different approaches to attaining that
commonly held aim, might there be another way of reconciling their
differences? Here I would like to pick up on one line in de Lubac’s
lament against liberal Catholicism cited above: his plaint that a loss of the
sense of the supernatural had led to “a loosening of faith and morals.”65
If we tie this together with Long’s remarks about the natural law cited
above in section II.2 of this article, I think we can find a possible
rapprochement on the horizon.
In my opinion, Long scored a bull’s-eye when he showed that the existence of natural law and its continued validity ( pace Barth) even after the
promulgation of divine law entails this already-cited conclusion:“Created
nature in all its ontological density is not the theologian’s posit; it is God’s effect.”66
But perhaps this insight can be taken further: can we say something about
the place of desire inside the framework of natural law? That is, since law
implies choice, and since choice entails the possibility of disobedience
(otherwise there would be no freedom), then what one desires, when set
against the moral law, is of obvious relevance.
What strikes me, in other words, in this debate is that the term “desire”
is still spoken of too abstractly, without a due allowance being made to
64 Oddly, both Feingold/Long and de Lubac could find in this passage validation

for their respective views, although to establish that would require both careful
exegesis of this passage and an account of how they make different use of this
passage, something that cannot be attempted here.
65 De Lubac, “Crisis in the Church,” 319.
66 Long, Natura Pura, 64; emphasis in the original.

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the phenomenology of desire in the light of original sin—with its legacy
of the fomes peccati, that is, of temptation and concupiscence. But the only
way to distinguish proper desires sensu stricto for innately necessary goods
(the hunger for food, the instinct for self-preservation and the like) from
improper desires that deflect a person from either his natural or his supernatural end (temptation properly speaking), is to view actions and desires
in the light of philosophical ethics and/or moral theology.67
For that project, one may perhaps best begin with an important observation from the always brilliant pen of Blaise Pascal, who said: “If man is
not made for God, why is he happy only with God? If man is made for
God, why is he so hostile to God?”68 In my opinion, debate on the
Surnaturel controversy has focused too much on Pascal’s first rhetorical
question but not enough on the second.
It is, after all, relatively uncontroversial to say that man cannot find his
happiness in health, money, sex, or worldly ambition—a point on which
the pagan moralists were also agreed (except maybe the Epicureans), and
as Aristotle makes clear in Book X of his Nicomachean Ethics. But after the
coming of Christ, a new reality entered the world, one that provokes a
different kind of “desire,” best summed up in Lucifer’s non serviam. Thus
enters, for the first time in history, the chance for human beings to make
a definitive No to God’s definitive Yes (2 Cor 1:18–20). Moreover,
according to Balthasar, this No continues to become more obstreperous,
what he calls a crescendoing No, as he explains in this important passage:
Human reason, in its secularizing role in world history, prevents those
who reject Jesus’ provocation from returning to a “numinous” worldview in which the divine and worldly commingle, unseparated. . . .This
leaves the field clear for what must be called “post-Christian atheism.”
For when nature is deprived of divinity, the presence of the Creator
within it fades. To the observer who sees matters only in terms of the
utile, God disappears into the background.This is a natural process, and
over against it is heard the claim of Jesus to be “the way, the truth, and
the life” ( John 14:6)—a claim that attracts to itself and concentrates all
the religious aspirations of mankind. He goes on to say that “no one
comes to the Father except through me.”This is not to deny the ultimate salvation of all who do not know him and adhere to other religions; he is saying that the latter religions do not mediate salvation: he
67 I must wonder aloud here whether the sex-abuse crisis now roiling the Catholic

Church is not due, at least in part, to the failure to distinguish various species of
desire, very much including sexual desire. Desires are, after all, inherently enddirected. But without an analysis of the morality of a particular end in view,
moral confusion and even chaos will ensue.
68 Blaise Pascal, Pensées, trans. Honor Levi (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 8.

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Edward T. Oakes, S.J.
alone does. Once this has become sufficiently well known to mankind,
the other religions (those that still remain) are bound to acquire a
certain anti-Christian slant.They will try to appropriate all the features
of the religion of Jesus that seem to commend it to mankind. . . . The
only exceptions are those religions that are directly or indirectly
dependent on the biblical revelation, first of all Judaism, and then Islam.
They constitute a very strange kind of exception, however, for both of
them—first of all Judaism, and then Islam—reject the full claim made
by Jesus and so will be particularly susceptible to militant atheism
( Judaism) or to an emphatically anti-Christian theism (Islam).69

Therefore, when theologians speak of “natural desire,” they must carefully attend to the deep, post-Incarnation ambiguity of that phrase. Under
that rubric, future debate will have to revisit, among other issues, the
common medieval axiom that “it is impossible for a natural desire to be
incapable of fulfillment” (ScG III, chap. 51, 1). One hardly needs to be a
doctrinaire Darwinian to see how often natural desires go unfulfilled.
Indeed, this axiom represents insuperable hurdles for theodicy in a world
where natural, innate desires often go unfulfilled, such as in the widespread episodes of starvation in modern history, caused both by nature
(the Irish potato famine in the nineteenth century, although that was also
abetted by the British government’s laissez-faire economic policies) and
by man (the Soviet-engineered famine in the Ukraine in the 1930s).Well
before the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species in 1859,Alfred
Lord Tennyson penned these lines, which were first published in 1850:
Are God and Nature then at strife,
That Nature lends us evil dreams?
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life. . . .
“So careful of the type?” But no.
From scarped cliff and quarried stone
She cries, “A thousand types are gone:
I care for nothing, all shall go.” (In Memoriam, stanzas 55–56)

But leaving aside biology and even theodicy, surely this axiom must
yield in any event to the Bible’s assertion that creation is subject to futility, and not (just) because of sin but because of something inherent in its
identity as a created reality:

69 Balthasar, Theo-Drama IV, 438–39; emphases in the original.

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For creation was subjected to futility, not of its own accord but by the will
of him who subjected it in hope, because creation itself will be set free from
its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of
God.We know that the whole of creation has been groaning in travail
together until now; and not only creation, but we ourselves. (Rom
8:20–23a; emphasis added).

Of course all men desire by nature to be happy, an almost tautological
truth on which Aristotle, St. Thomas, the signers of the Declaration of
Independence, and even Nietzsche are agreed. In that sense, this innate
desire cannot be frustrated, since an innate and frustrated desire is selfcontradictory.70 But other, more spiritual forces are at work for which
the word “desire” (under any rubric) can hardly serve. Rather, because of
the coming of Christ onto the stage of history, efforts to build the terrestrial city take on an inevitable Promethean motivation, one which the
Church refutes by her very presence in history. Again Balthasar:
We must not be afraid to utter the harsh truth. In making his provocative claim to have reconciled the world in God, Jesus never suggested
that he was creating an earthly paradise. The kingdom of God will
never be externally demonstrable (Luke 17:21); it grows, invisibly,
perpendicular to world history, and the latter’s fruits are already in
God’s barns. Man responds to this provocation by attempting to manufacture the kingdom of God on earth, with increasing means and methods of power; logically this power that resists the powerlessness of the
Cross is bound to destroy itself, for it bears the principle of self-annihilation within it by saying No to the claim of Christ. And so we are
brought to the following formulation, extravagant though it may seem:
mankind’s self-destruction is the only foreseeable end to the world, left to itself,
and the only end it deserves, insofar as it prefers to hoard what is its own
(that is, power, Mammon) rather than gather with Christ. It has already
decided its own fate.71
70 As many philosophers (above all, Arthur Schopenhauer) have pointed out, a

suicide kills himself to put an end to a situation of current misery, in which of
course he is motivated by the desire to be happy, not miserable.
71 Balthasar, Theo-Drama IV, 442; emphasis added. Moreover, just as de Lubac, Feingold, and Long do, Balthasar worries that this same attitude has infected Christians: “Further—and this is something that even more clearly unveils the
apocalyptic situation—this fascination so weakens the Christian organism that
the alien wasp is able to inject its anesthetizing sting and lay its eggs right inside
it, with the result that the body, now hollowed out from inside, serves as welcome
food for the enemy.” Balthasar, Theo-Drama IV, 441. He knows well the voice that
animates this spirit and mocks them with their own voice here: “Why, if we are
serious about God’s incarnation in Jesus, [say these secularizing Christians]
should we not salute ‘atheism in Christianity’? For the latter’s norm now resides

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Edward T. Oakes, S.J.

The perspective offered here represents, of course, only a first step in
bringing de Lubac’s supporters and critics to a new synthesis. But at least
we can say this: based on Christ’s overthrow of the principalities and
powers of this world by his entry into history as God’s definitive revelation, grace crowns and completes human efforts and human nature only
N&V
because it first of all turns them upside down.72

in this divine impulse in man, not in the alienating spell case by a tyrant in
heaven” (ibid.).
72 “Looked at in this way, it is not the battle between the two cities of Jerusalem
and Babylon that forms the theological heart of history, but a deeper, more hardfought, more crucial struggle. It is the ‘Babylon within us’ which we must throw
to the ground at whatever cost.” Hans Urs von Balthasar, A Theology of History
(New York: Sheed & Ward, 1963), 146. Nonetheless, Balthasar hastens to add that
nature still has its own self-subsistent reality, even when grace turns our expectations upside down and even when we overthrow the “Babylon within.” Indeed,
the last sentence of A Theology of History says: “If we miss out the level at which
creation has a content proper to itself, then everything dissolves into pan-Christism, reducing the grace-given event of God’s becoming man to the dead level
of a cosmological, gnostic process” (ibid., 148).

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The Situation of Natural Law in Catholic Theology
RUSSELL H ITTINGER
University of Tulsa
Tulsa, Oklahoma

I N Catholic theology, discussion of natural law can lean in one of two
different directions. When natural law is used as one of the resources for
inquiry about practical matters, inquiry moves toward particular actions,
cases, and classes of actions. This is moral theology in its fully practical
office. When we ask how natural law stands within the economies of
creation and redemption our inquiry points toward the foundations of
theology.The question “Is divorce licit under the natural law?” corresponds
to the first; the question “Does the sacrament of marriage include natural
law requirements of marriage?” corresponds to the second. Debates about
natural law can arise either way. Not infrequently debates begin in one line
only to jump into the other. The sexual questions which have captivated
moral theologians for the past half century alternated between issues of
precepts and deeper issues of anthropology.This is exactly what we ought
to expect for any tradition that takes natural law seriously.
The two documents I shall consider in this essay lean more toward the
sources than toward practical argument. Neither intends to solve a particular moral question. Veritatis Splendor (1993) is the first papal encyclical
devoted exclusively to moral theology. As its subtitle indicates, the encyclical treats foundational issues—one of which is the natural law component
of moral theology.1 The International Theological Commission’s study, The
Search for a Universal Ethics:A New Look at the Natural Law, considers natural
law as a common component of the great “wisdom traditions.”The exposition is heavily weighted toward perennial anthropological and metaphysical themes. Veritatis is in every respect the stronger account because it looks
1 De Quibusdam Quaestionibus Fundamentalibus Doctrinae Moralis Ecclesiae, On Certain

Fundamental Questions Concerning the Church’s Moral Teachings.

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ad intra to the coherence of moral theology. The Search aims at dialogue with
extra-ecclesial parties for purposes, and under terms of dialogue, that are not
always clear. But the two documents—one pontifical, the other a curial
paper—give us an interesting picture of how natural law is situated in
Catholic theology at the half-century mark from Vatican Council II.
First, I want to put the two documents in a specific historical and
political context. After the collapse of political christendom—marked in
the Catholic world at 1870, when the Roman communion ceased being
a de facto arrangement of national churches superintended in many ways
by temporal sovereigns—the magisterium had to develop a Catholic
position on a wide array of moral issues and social problems: economic
justice, associational liberties, church-state relations, and of course, marriage,
which from the beginning was the most intense skirmish line along
which Catholic moral teachings conflicted with the laws and public policies of the secular regimes.Addressing these broad issues, encyclicals went
beyond the more narrowly tailored decrees about moral conduct in canonical and confessional cases.The older division of labor in Catholic christendom that informally distinguished between authority in public policy
and authority in ecclesiastical order, corresponding to the competence of
royal courts on the one hand and ecclesial tribunals on the other, had
become defunct.
Rome now had to speak about the moral dimensions of public policy
across the board. Leo XIII used natural law as an appeal (and sometimes
as an argument) to resituate the problems of society and authority. His
use of natural law was elegantly neo-Thomist, and it won the admiration
of the Catholic world because Leo succeeded in balancing the disputed
moral or political question with the deeper questions about the nature
and end of man and the origin of authority. In the twentieth century,
however, the list of disputed issues treated at least partially in terms of
natural law multiplied, and came to include the “life” issues such as war
and peace, abortion, contraception, and sexual conduct generally, as well
as the ever-burgeoning sector of problems that spun out of the post-war
human rights project (1948). John XXIII’s Pacem in Terris (1963) enumerated some two dozen human rights grounded in natural law.To accommodate the expanding field of social doctrine, the revised Code of Canon
Law (1983) states: “The Church has the right always and everywhere to
proclaim moral principles, even in respect of the social order, and to make
judgments about any human matter in so far as this is required by fundamental human rights or the salvation of souls.”2
2 CIC (1983) can. 747, §2.

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The cumulative effect of a century of teachings in the arena of moral
theology and social doctrine left the subject of natural law feeling rather
cluttered at the practical end of the spectrum. It was easy to lose sight of
the coherence that ought to obtain between this bevy of particular moral
teachings and the principal sources of moral theology. Thus, the problem
of coherence needed to be reconsidered and repaired where it was found
wanting. This is the context in which we should read Veritatis Splendor,
which addressed the coherence of moral theology precisely as theology.
But knowledge of this history also helps us to understand the ITC paper,
which keeps in view a human rights movement that has gone awry, multiplying and changing the content of rights to such extent that only an
apophatic universal remains—a “negative anthropology.”3 That is to say, we
can affirm what man is not, but not what he is prior to self-defining liberty.
Veritatis turned to the question of what kind of component natural law
is in moral theology, and how it relates to the other sources of doctrine:
sacred scripture, christology, theological anthropology, ascetical theology, and
ecclesiology. Because it addressed (according to the subtitle) “fundamental
questions” rather than fully practical ones, the encyclical was free to make
more explicit and to give a more nuanced account of the assumptions that
govern the magisterium’s use of natural law theory (or pieces thereof). I shall
make no effort to summarize this very rich encyclical. Instead, I call attention to one of the assumptions that Veritatis was at pains to clarify. Namely,
that natural law forms an organic part of moral theology.
Why shouldn’t the Church concern itself only with the habits and
actions immediately ordained to salvation—for example, the theological
virtues, the gifts of the Spirit, the Beatitudes, the works of mercy, and sacramental actions? Some theologians raised the question from a slightly different angle.Why shouldn’t the things belonging proximately to the natural
law fall within the magisterium of scholars and experts whose expertise
pertains to temporal matters? In effect, the two concerns held together
rather tersely in the Code of Canon Law (“in so far as this is required by
fundamental human rights or the salvation of souls”) were being pulled
from either end, philosophical and pastoral.The encyclical notes:
In their desire, however, to keep the moral life in a Christian context,
certain moral theologians have introduced a sharp distinction, contrary
to Catholic doctrine, between an “ethical order” which would be
human in origin and of value for “this world” alone, and an “order of
salvation” for which only certain intentions and interior attitudes
3 The term “negative anthropology” is taken from Rocco Buttiglione, Karol Wojtyla

(Grand Rapids, MI:William B. Eerdmans, 1997), 53.

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regarding God and neighbor would be significant.This has then led to
an actual denial that there exists, in Divine Revelation, a specific and
determined moral content, universally valid and permanent. (§37)

The encyclical explains that moral truths—in principle accessible to
human reason (§29)—not only constitute a “preparation for the Gospel,”
but are also situated within it (§3). The moral law, thus understood, is
presupposed in two ways by moral theology: first, as principles of moral
order are derived from human nature; second, as those very same principles
are clarified and integrated in the teachings of Christ. “[T]he Magisterium
does not bring to the Christian conscience truths which are extraneous to
it; rather it brings to light the truths which it ought already to possess, developing them from the starting point of the primordial act of faith” (§64).
Thus, the encyclical’s lengthy exegesis of Matthew 19 on the query of
the rich young man. Jesus’s exhortation to discipleship explicitly presupposes knowledge of moral law. Keeping the commandments, beginning
with the negative precepts, is a “basic condition” for justice, love of
neighbor, and for moral maturity and freedom.This module of morality
is not unique to either Jewish law or Christian doctrine. As St. Paul
contends in Romans 2:14–16, the “conflicting thoughts of the gentiles”
give witness to the law as the norm of conscience, according to which
“God will judge the secrets of men” (§59).This same law is also explicitly presupposed by Christ when he teaches what is necessary to live a
life ordered to the kingdom. From this latter perspective, the moral law
is incorporated within another starting point—the life of faith. According to the encyclical, the moral theologian cannot leave behind the natural law component for the purpose of a morality of “salvation” without
subverting Scripture and “the living tradition.”
To be clear, this is not a fideist position.The encyclical is not saying that
there is a “universally valid and permanent” body of moral truths because,
according to Matthew 19, Jesus says so or because the Church says so. Nor
does it suggest that our only access to moral truth is Scripture or tradition
(§3). Rather, the encyclical contends that the moral law, as something
proportionate to human reason, forms an organic part of Jesus’ teaching,
and therefore it is already internal to moral action in the light of faith.
Alasdair MacIntyre has astutely noticed the importance of at least one
prong of this position:
It is not just that the natural law can be known by the exercise of the
powers of reason, independently of revelation, but also that the knowledge of divine law afforded by revelation presupposes a prior knowledge
of the precepts of the natural law. It is a revealed truth, that is to say, that

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the truths of the natural law can be known prior to and independently
of any revealed truths, including this particular revealed truth.4

MacIntyre assures the reader, “that in holding this I am not being
theologically eccentric.” He is not at all.5 MacIntyre, however, is more
immediately interested in the purely philosophical aspects of debate over
natural law, and therefore he does not draw out all of the implications for
moral theology. One of these would surely be the following. Even if the
institutions of a given culture—universities, courts, the media, other
churches and religions—had no further use of natural law either as a
supposition or as an explanatory framework, the Church nevertheless
would be bound to teach and affirm the natural law.
Furthermore, it would need to affirm it precisely as the natural, created
measure of human acts; that is to say, as truths that conscience “ought
already to possess.”When we hear the words of Matthew 19:8 “From the
beginning . . . ” we can grasp both prongs of the commitment to natural
law. For the natural sign of the sacrament of marriage is nothing other
than marriage “from the beginning.” With respect to this sacrament at
least, to erase the natural law would erase the sacrament of the New
Covenant. The double commitment therefore is embedded in Catholic
theology at levels deeper than what come under the concerns of moral
theology or philosophy. Indeed, the theological affirmation of natural law
in Veritatis makes the moral theologian more responsible to the natural law
than the moral philosopher, and by extension makes the systematic
(sacramental) theologian more responsible than the moral theologian.
Admittedly, this does not make the work of moral theology easier.
Interestingly, according to the Scripture, the rich young man hesitates but
does not offer a serious objection to the proposition that moral rectitude
is a necessary condition for pursuing eternal life. He declines radical
discipleship. Veritatis, on the other hand, deals with the situation in which
4 Alasdair MacIntyre,“From Answers to Questions,” in Intractable Disputes about the

Natural Law: Alasdair MacIntyre and Critics, ed. Lawrence S. Cunningham (Notre
Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009), 341.
5 Indeed, his brief treatment of Romans 2:14–15 is virtually the same as that of
Veritatis Splendor (§59).“It is also a revealed truth that we human beings all of us
stand accused before God of our violations of and rebellion against his law. But
we could not be rightly held responsible for those violations and that rebellion
if we were not aware of God’s law, simply qua human beings, and not only aware
of the precepts that comprise God’s law, but aware of the compelling character
of their authority.” Ibid., 344. Put in this way, MacIntyre is suggesting that some
precepts are not only known but also known in their compelling authority.This
puts the issue in the foyer of law, if not higher law.

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the moral prerequisites are the stumbling block “for the Christian
conscience.” Put in this way, the moral of the story has been transposed.
What was the easy matter now appears difficult and controversial. This
surprising transposition is implied but is not made explicit in the encyclical. Nevertheless, it is an important symptom that needs to be carefully
discerned by moral theologians. The proposal that there exist moral
norms prior to human construction, consent, and choice is a rather
alarming message in our culture. In proof of which, we only need to
consider the fact that questions of human nature and moral conduct are
much more likely to be church-dividing issues than questions concerning justification, predestination, and the function of sacraments. From
one point of view, the “natural” morality presupposed by the Gospel is
the easier thing, objectively speaking; from another point of view, it is just
the opposite.
The double commitment also makes it necessary for moral theologians to reckon more seriously with philosophy than what they have
been prepared or inclined to do over the past several decades. When it
was issued, Veritatis was received in some parts of the Catholic world as a
rebuke of progressive-leaning moral theologians. Not very much imagination is required to see that it also cuts the other way—moderating
quasi-Barthian currents in Catholic theology that would have nature
disappear into grace. If the natural law component is not sustainable
without philosophy, it is a daunting responsibility for theologians. For in
the institutions of late modernity (not only universities but also in the far
greater domain of political, jurisprudential, and corporate life), the major
schools of ethics do not explicitly share the same starting points or
explanatory framework; indeed, none can be put in any useful way into
the category of natural law.6 Therefore, either theologians need to leave
the natural law component without philosophical articulation or they
will have to do much of that work themselves. In effect, they will have
to wear two hats.
Thomas Aquinas investigated natural law in his dual role as philosopher
and theologian, for which there is no equivalent office or craft in our
secular institutions, and increasingly less so in ecclesiastical ones. As Fergus
Kerr puts it: “[Thomas] is a philosopher and a theologian, and we are
never going to agree on where to put the emphasis.”7 But the problem of
emphasis and ongoing debates about it in interpreting Thomas are set
6 MacIntyre, “From Answers to Questions,” 51.
7 See Fergus Kerr, After Aquinas: Versions of Thomism (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002),

chap. 6, “Natural Law: Incommensurable Readings.”

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within, and can arise only within, a tradition that is doubly articulate. Veritatis requires the natural law component to be treated in just that fashion.8
The Search for a Universal Ethics: A New Look at Natural Law (2009)
differs from Veritatis not only in its curial pedigree and magisterial weight
(a study paper allowed to be published by the Cardinal Prefect of the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (hereafter CDF), but more
relevantly, for our purposes, in the questions as well as the audience it
addresses. The Search aims to orient and enrich a dialogue outside of the
immediate environs of moral theology:“[I]n this document we intend to
invite all who ask themselves about the ultimate foundations of ethics
and of the juridical and political order, to consider the resources that a
renewed presentation of the teaching of the natural law contains” (§9).
However, in shifting from sources of moral theology to the resources for
dialogue, ITC moves to even more difficult terrain than the one occupied by Veritatis. Of course Veritatis too worries about negative anthropology and exaggerated notions of individual autonomy which disorient
the natural law that theology presupposes. But it has the signal advantage
of correcting and moderating claims of autonomy, as well as the array of
different understandings of natural law, within the landscape of its own
tradition. The Search appears to tackle the issues on an open field with
recourse only to natural law. It claims no more authority than being one
wisdom tradition among others—albeit a tradition with centuries of
experience in this field of inquiry.9
The subtitle indicates something “new.” But in its treatment of the
anthropological and cosmological assumptions, The Search differs very little
from Veritatis.10 For example, the authors do not equate natural law with
8 One

cannot ignore the fact that the encyclical is shaped by a high, neoThomistic rendering of both natural law and the sources of moral theology.“The
Church has often made reference to the Thomistic doctrine of natural law,
including it in her own teaching on morality.” VS §44.
9 The Search treats natural law in the light of what the Catholic tradition has cumulatively discovered and formulated over the centuries, including what it has
learned from shortcomings in its own experience. On the latter score, the authors
note recurring problems of emphasizing too strongly biological nature at the
expense of freedom; of having in other ways emphasized too strongly reason, with
the inevitable pitfall of rationalism; of having made anthropological assumptions
which needed to be adjusted in view of historical and cultural contexts; of
suggesting that the precepts of natural law are an already-assembled system, even
down to the most proximate level of precepts governing a problem or case; and
not always making sufficiently clear the processes of formation needed for a
mature appropriation of the natural law (§§10, 38, 52, 56, 59, 99).
10 Including what we have termed the double commitment. Christianity treats the
natural law both a preparation for faith and as a teaching within it: “The new

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purely immanent laws of nature (§10); nor do they suggest that natural
rights are terms of obligation without natural law (§88).They contend that
the relative autonomy of moral truth, and freedom of choice regarding finite
goods, already imply a transcendent, though not necessarily a supernatural,
end (§§42, 63, 77). Faithful to the Thomistic tradition, they contend that the
good of knowing the truth about God is not merely a theoretical, explanatory addendum to natural law, but is contained seedlike in the foundations
and experience of moral truth as one of the first precepts (§50).
Apropos of Yves Simon’s suggestion that natural law can be discussed
in terms of three foci—reason, nature, and god11—The Search recognizes
that while reason, nature, and God each has its own salience, the price
paid for hiving off one, to the exclusion of the others, will be a doctrine
of natural law that is not open to reality as a whole.
The vision of the world within which the doctrine of natural law
developed and still finds its meaning today, involves therefore the
reasoned conviction that there exists a harmony between the three
substances [sic—bad translation of ces trois instances ] which are God,
man, and nature. In this perspective, the world was perceived as an
intelligible whole, united by the common reference of the beings that
compose it to a divine founding principle, to a Logos. (§69)

The authors are surely correct that a discussion of natural law that puts
reason, nature, and God into competition (§§74–75), or that refuses to
give to each foci the salience that experience and reason will allow, if not
demand, falls short of the Catholic tradition.
Interestingly, the ITC does not situate its presentation and its understanding of dialogue in the fashion of a model United Nations plenary
session. Rather, it puts its discussion of moral universals in the context of
“great wisdom traditions, both religious and philosophical.”
Offering our contribution to the search for a universal ethics, and
proposing a rationally justifiable foundation, we desire to invite experts
and the spokespersons of the great religious, sapiential and philosophical traditions of humanity to proceed to an analogous work, beginning
from their sources, to reach a common recognition of the universal
moral norms based on a rational approach to reality. (§116)
Law of the Gospel includes, takes up and brings to fulfillment the requirements
of the natural law.The orientations of the natural law are not therefore external
normative demands with respect to the new Law” (§112). These two are
mentioned several times: §§12, 23–24, 26–27, 69–71, and 101.
11 Yves R. Simon, Tradition of Natural Law, ed.Vukan Kuic, intro. Russell Hittinger
(New York: Fordham University Press, 1992 reprint; orig. 1965), 129.

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Wisdom traditions, on this view, recognize and make explicit (in different
ways and in various degrees) (1) that there is a “common patrimony” of
moral values, (2) that certain moral actions are required by human nature
itself, and (3) that the human person stands in a “creative and harmonious
manner in a cosmic or metaphysical order that surpasses it and gives meaning to his life.” (§11, 12). Wisdom traditions, in other words, are open to
reality as a whole, even if their vision is partial in this or that aspect.Appeal
to sapiential traditions is reminiscent of John Paul II’s encyclical Fides et
Ratio (1998).12 As The Search recalls, Catholic theology fed upon the bread
of sapiential traditions as a praeparatio evangelicae, and once assimilated to
theology, the two “form a whole” in the Catholic mind (§26).
ITC does not mean by dialogue either the Habermasian or Rawlsian
methods for reaching norms mutually acceptable to the parties of the
discussion (§8). It also eschews dialogue that is “a purely inductive search,
on the parliamentary model, of a minimal already-existing consent.”This
is a dialogue, in fact, without a “search.” As the authors remark, the
dialogue has not proven adequate either to secure foundations for the
post-1948 human rights project or to win support of religions and
wisdom traditions, which need more than a “minimal ethic” (§6).Apparently, The Search envisages a dialogue rather different from what is usually
meant by “public reason.” Rather than holding back one’s best considered reasons, it puts the mature line of reasons on the table, inviting
others to do the same. Appropriation of the “evidences” of natural law
either by the individual or by a culture is a slow process, requiring action
and reflection—in a wisdom tradition, an “apprenticeship” (§53, §38).
This certainly has the aura of an inter-religious rather than a legal or
political dialogue. One is reminded of C. S. Lewis’s illustrations of the Tao in
The Abolition of Man, albeit with Thomistic glosses.The idea is very attractive. Let those who have non-reductive anthropologies (open to reality as a
whole) put their best understanding of human good and flourishing in
common view, and then let us see where they “converge.”The hope will be
that this kind of discussion will achieve more than the “minimal ethic” in a
very narrow and completely practical grounding, such as the one stipulated
in the U.N. Declaration of 1948.13 Even if we are not so naïve as to believe
that a dialogue of wisdom traditions could reform, much less replace, the
legal and political conventions governing human rights, it would still be of
12 Although it is not quoted or cited, see Fides et Ratio (1998), particularly §§81–82:

“Philosophy lacks its sapiential function if it is addressed only to ‘particular and
subordinate aspects of reality—function, formal or utilitarian.’ ”
13 The Search notes with alarm the fragmentation of the human rights project since
1948 (§§5–6, 115, and note 42).

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value. A few strong convergences in the fashion of Lewis’s Tao would speak
more effectively to human conscience than the dubiously abstract and
highly politicized lists of rights that are continually multiplied and revised.
There is nothing more disappointing and demoralizing than false universals
in what pertains to human life.
But there are two aspects of the ITC paper that I find disappointing.
First, while the document affirms clearly enough, even insistently, the
importance of prudence in judgments that make the natural law effective, its depiction of universal moral norms prior to prudence is not very
clear. Second, it leaves out of the picture what kind of dialogue can be
conducted with secular modernity.
Regarding universal moral norms, The Search is understandably reluctant to put a system of precepts in front of its proposals about human
nature. For one thing, on anthropological grounds alone it rejects the
notion of pure practical reason that can generate a priori such a system
of norms. Quite reasonably, the authors also want to acknowledge
contingencies of culture and history and the effects of sin—“ideology
and insidious propaganda, generalized relativism, structures of sin, etc”
(§52). Furthermore, they are at pains to emphasize that a mature understanding of moral truth is an achievement dependent upon the agent’s
formation in sound social institutions and acquisition of moral virtue.All
of this reflects the paper’s strategic decision to discuss natural law within
and among time-tested wisdom traditions.
When we ask, however, what precepts of natural law are universally
binding in a normative sense of the term, the document wobbles somewhat.The paper quotes St. Jerome’s remark on the Golden Rule: “Who
of us does not know that homicide, adultery, theft and every kind of
greed is evil, since we do not want them done to ourselves. If we did not
know that these things are bad, we would not ever lament if they are
inflicted on us” (§51). Accordingly, there is no prudence, just as such,
about whether to commit adultery. Provided that one can pick out the
relevant facts (this is my neighbor’s spouse), the negative precept suffices.
Granting that negative precepts need to be completed within a larger
moral project (§24), it is very important to emphasize that sound moral
reasoning of the more complete kind depends upon what agents can
know at this simpler level.
To be sure, The Search says strongly enough that there are “precepts and
values that, at least in their general formulation, can be considered as
universal, since they apply to all humanity” precisely because they are
derived from anthropological constants (§52). Here, it is the anthropological constant that is immutable, for it is the ground for values and

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precepts that “can be considered” universal in their “generality.” But this
doesn’t quite capture what Jerome and others wanted to say about the
negative precepts.We also read that we must safeguard “the fundamental
data expressed by the precepts of the natural law that remain the same
throughout cultural variation” (§54). It’s difficult to know exactly what
the paper means, but on my reading the “data” are the anthropological
constants, while the precepts seems to be a kind of sign or expression of
a good or value. It is less clear that a precept is a sign of a command or
obligation. At §59, the paper states:
There is here a perspective which, within a pluralist society such as our
own, has an importance that cannot be underestimated without suffering significant loss. Indeed, it stems from the fact that moral science
cannot furnish an agent subject with a norm that may be applied
adequately and almost automatically to concrete situations; only the
conscience of the subject, the judgment of his practical reason, can
formulate the immediate norm of action. But at the same time it can
never abandon the conscience to mere subjectivity: the subject needs
to acquire the intellectual and affective dispositions that permit it to
open itself to moral truth in such a way that its judgment may be
adequate. Natural law cannot, therefore, be presented as an already
established set of rules that impose themselves a priori on the moral
subject, but is a source of objective inspiration for his process, eminently
personal, of making a decision.

At least some readers will sense that a step is missing in this very
condensed account. Assuming that the paper is correct that natural law
should not be presented as an already assembled system of moral precepts,
it does not necessarily follow that the natural law is only “a source of
objective inspiration for his [the agent’s] process, eminently personal, of
making a decision” [mais elle est une source d’inspiration objective ] (§59). In
what precise sense are the inspirations precepts ? Are they just objective
indicators en route to the discovery of adequate moral norms? These
paragraphs seem to suggest the latter. “[O]nly the conscience of the
subject, the judgment of his practical reason, can formulate the immediate norm of action” (§59). “Prudence” the ITC insists, “is a necessary
passageway to authentic moral obligation” (§58).
The quotation taken from St. Jerome however suggests an intermediate step—a small one, and rather thin, but important nevertheless.
Between our grasp of the human good (anthropological constants) and
fully practical judgments perfected by prudence, there are some moral
norms of the natural law upon which even prudence must rely. Precisely
in this zone we might expect some initial but sturdy convergence of

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moral judgment among wisdom traditions regarding the negative
precepts of the moral law.Without such convergence, the dialogue is apt
to remain in the anthropological sphere of “objective inspirations” that
perhaps intimate, without explicitly reaching, specific precepts. If this
were true, we would be agreeing about human values, so to speak, but
not about morality.
Another conspicuous problem is that the secularized institutions of the
West are not organized within a wisdom tradition; nor do they constitute
one.Whereas a wisdom tradition is open to reality as a whole—a natural
transcendence so to speak (§97)—the modern, western mind does not
view nature or the “natural” as “impregnated with an immanent wisdom,”
but rather, to use The Search’s own language, it is “deprived of immanent
teleology or finality” (§72). This is only to acknowledge that prior to
choice and prior to satisfying procedures of consent,“the natural” is merely
immanent, along the lines of what Charles Taylor has called “closed world
structures.”14 Purpose is assigned rather than discovered within the ordinary frame of things.
By shifting the problem of authority from an internal structure of a
theological tradition to the moral authority of a “common patrimony”
implicit in many wisdom traditions, The Search does not relieve the problem—at least not for secular interlocuters. For example, when it proposes
that there are moral “messages” in the nature of things and that natural
law is not imposed on creatures from without but is inscribed in their
very nature (§§11–12, 63), it summons a quite different meaning of the
“immanent” than what will be obvious to most agents formed in the
institutions of western secular culture. For them, nature is not obviously
a semiotic (a book, or a ladder) in the sense that we have inherited from
Paul, Bonaventure, or Thomas.The immanent rather is a domain of freedom just for the reason that it does not require transcendent messages,
much less messages that arrive so intimately with authority.15 The immanent, for all practical purposes, is nothing other than what is bereft of, or
perhaps still waiting for, authority. This is why the sciences and contemporary institutions of civic formation, education, and economic activity
are deemed useful, and indeed legitimate. Precisely by not requiring a
sapiential philosophy or religion to interpret transcendent “messages,”
freedom is protected.When the ITC expresses the “urgent” need to reach
common foundations (of a natural law sort) for the human rights proj14 Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2007), 551.
15 Again,Taylor (544):“The immanent order can thus slough off the transcendent.

But it doesn’t necessarily do so. . . . It is something that permits closure, without
demanding it.”

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ect, it will have to anticipate a response that, on its view, is terribly inadequate if not irrational. Namely, the renewed claim of rights to liberty
within this indeterminate “immanent” condition. These rights will be
invoked against customs, positive laws, and the natural law insofar as they
are norms antecedent to choice and consent.16
While the problem of liberty unseated from nature is more likely to be
bridged in dialogue with wisdom traditions, it remains the tougher problem in the familiar world of secular modernity. In one place, The Search
remarks: “In order that the notion of natural law may serve the elaboration of a universal ethics in a secularized and pluralistic society such as
ours, it is therefore necessary to avoid presenting it in the rigid form that
it assumed, particularly in modern rationalism” (§33). This prescription
strikes me as a good way to facilitate dialogue among wisdom traditions,
at least those that already regard modern rationalism as a dead end. In
dialogue with Eastern Orthodox Christians, for example, keeping natural
law at arm’s length from rationalism would count as a sine qua non. The
same holds for dialogue with the great religious traditions, which tend to
have a greater affinity for what we in the West would call the intellectualist rather than rationalist anthropology. It is much harder to see how the
prescription has medicinal value for dialogue with a “secularized” society.
Its denizens are not bothered by rationalism so much as by appeals in the
public order to transcendent values—not only the supernatural, but also
what ITC means by natural law (§97). Not surprisingly, C. S. Lewis’s illustrations of the Tao in The Abolition of Man include quotations from only
two modern, western authors, Hooker and Locke, and only the latter is a
modern in the relevant sense of the term. For its part, The Search makes
clear enough that the Church often invokes natural law (moral truths
antecedent to faith) defensively, against a belligerent secularism that
dismisses a natural law foundation of moral choice and conscience as a
purely confessional subversion of civic dialogue.17 The ITC authors are
anything but naïve about who is their main antagonist on questions of
natural law.
ITC is faithful to untutored common sense and to its own tradition in
affirming that “independently of the theoretical justifications of the concept
of natural law, it is possible to discover the fundamental elements of the
awareness of which it wants to give an account” (§37). Some rudiments of
moral truth are so close to human experience that they are available to
16 The authors touch upon, but do not adequately grapple with, the problem of

natural rights at §§88–90.
17 In §35, of the “four principal contexts” in which the Catholic Church invokes

natural law today, three are clearly defensive.

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anyone. One can interpret and appropriate these “evidences” even against
the grain of one’s inherited explanatory frameworks and the institutions
which go along with them.Yet the dialogue that an individual person can
conduct in what Gaudium et Spes calls the “sanctuary” of his own conscience
is not a sufficient condition for the broader and more difficult dialogue
envisaged by ITC.18 By grasping the first precepts of natural law one has
already crossed the threshold into a world of social and intellectual formation, and, for good or ill, into informal and formal explanatory frameworks.
We return, as we must, to the question of what to do or to say to the
modern antagonist.We are speaking of an antagonist who is an apostate
from the Catholic wisdom tradition. This is the issue around which The
Search maneuvers all too carefully, and understandably, but disappointingly.
In a press conference during a recent trip to Portugal, Benedict XVI
expressed hope for a dialogue between religion and modern rationality.
Today we see that this very dialectic represents an opportunity and that
we need to develop a synthesis and a forward-looking and profound
dialogue. In the multicultural situation in which we all find ourselves,
we see that if European culture were merely rationalist, it would lack a
transcendent religious dimension, and not be able to enter into dialogue
with the great cultures of humanity all of which have this transcendent
religious dimension—which is a dimension of man himself. So to think
that there exists a pure, anti-historical reason, solely self-existent, which
is “reason” itself, is a mistake; we are finding more and more that it affects
only part of man, it expresses a certain historical situation but it is not
reason as such. Reason as such is open to transcendence and only in the
encounter between transcendent reality and faith and reason does man
find himself. So I think that the precise task and mission of Europe in
this situation is to create this dialogue, to integrate faith and modern
rationality in a single anthropological vision which approaches the
human being as a whole and thus also makes human cultures communicable. (Pope to Press, papal flight to Portugal, 11 May 2010)

Pope Benedict’s obiter dicta are quite good. The “single anthropological
vision” entertained by the Pope requires the secular civilization either to
develop a wisdom tradition or to reattach itself to the one it abandoned.
The Pope surely has the latter option in mind.This hope moves the question beyond the specific problem of natural law groundings for a common
morality to the prospects of what would have to be a profound intellectual,
moral, and spiritual conversion. The moral precepts presupposed by the
Gospel do not necessarily constitute the easiest step. The urgency of the
N&V
dialogue will have to be moderated by the virtue of patience.
18 Gaudium et Spes, §16.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 9, No. 3 (2011): 671–706

671

Natural Law, the Understanding of Principles,
and Universal Good
S TEPHEN L. B ROCK
Pontifical University of the Holy Cross
Rome, Italy

A LA recherche d’une ethique universelle is a rich and profound reflection on
the doctrine of natural law.1 As one would expect from a group of professional theologians, it is a very scholarly document. But its motive is quite
practical. The aim is to find a “common ethical language,” a moral
discourse that can express universally recognized goals and principles, so
as to foster worldwide collaboration in the causes of peace, justice, and
human flourishing.
The title speaks of a recherche —a search, an investigation. Fortunately,
however, the document is not a detective story, in which everything is
supposed to become clear at the end. I say this because its Conclusion,
especially in the first paragraph, is really rather misleading.
. . .We call natural law the foundation of a universal ethic that we seek
to gather from the observation of and reflection on our common
human condition. It is the moral law inscribed in the heart of men and
of which humanity becomes more and more aware as it advances in
history. This law has nothing static in its expression. It does not consist in a
list of definitive and immutable precepts. It is an ever-flowing source of
inspiration in the search for an objective foundation of a universal
ethic. (A la recherche, §113; my emphasis)
1 International Theological Commission, A la recherche d’une ethique universelle:

nouveau regard sur la loi naturelle (2009); hereafter A la recherche. For the English I
have used Joseph Bolin’s translation, with some changes (http://www.pathsoflove.com/universal-ethics-natural-law.html).Translations of St.Thomas herein
are mine. I thank Kevin Flannery, S.J., Steven Jensen, and Christopher Malloy for
very helpful remarks on the paper.

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The italicized sentences cannot, I think, be squared with the rest of the
document. It is quite explicit about the fact that natural law consists in a
set of definitive, immutable precepts.2 Granted, the set is not closed.3
Being very general, the precepts are apt to be supplemented by more
particular norms and judgments. But they cannot be abrogated, and the
primary ones admit of no exceptions. In this sense, natural law certainly
is “static.” It stands still.
Nevertheless it is also “dynamic,” in the sense that it is “powerful,” an
origin or principle of action and change. Change and action always
depend on relatively unchanging things. To walk on a treadmill is to go
nowhere. Natural law functions as a principle of action and change by
directing us toward the end that constitutes the fulfillment of our nature;
that is, our fulfillment, the end we are “cut out for” by the very fact of
being human.This does not change, because human nature, in the sense
of what is strictly essential to being human, does not change.4 Whatever
§113 means, the document as a whole is very clear about all this.
It is true of course that natural law is “inscribed in the heart of men.”
Also true is that it is not written there as a “list,” as though one could
simply look inside oneself and read off its precepts.Their typical way of
coming to mind is in the course of thinking about matters they
concern—now one, now another—and with a view to the conditions of
their fulfillment in this or that situation. That is, the normal way of
considering them is a practical way. To pull them out from particular
practical issues and treat them together, as a sort of list, would pertain to
the theoretical reflection proper to the philosopher or the theologian.
But if natural law is not written in the heart of men as an abstract list,
exactly how is it written there? The document gives prominence to this
question, dedicating to it the whole of Chapter 2, under the heading
“The perception of common moral values.” The question is fundamental, because it is bound up with the very idea of a “natural” law. This
means a law that human nature itself brings us to know, through a kind
of spontaneous development of our minds—as opposed to what we may
know through special training or investigation or study. This is why the
knowledge of it would be so universal or common.As natural, it is apt to
be known by everyone, whether wise or simple, erudite or unlettered,
virtuous or even vicious.
Near the beginning of Chapter 2 special importance is assigned to
Thomas Aquinas’s teaching on natural law (§37). The chapter draws
2 See, for example, §9, §52.
3 See §11, §27, §59.
4 See §64.

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673

extensively upon him. In this essay what I mainly want to consider is
Thomas’s understanding of that precept of natural law which he holds to
be the very first to enter the human mind: “the good is to be done and
pursued, and the bad is to be avoided.”5 Chapter 2 does discuss this
precept briefly (2.2, §39–43), and I think that what it says about it agrees
well with Thomas. But it seems to me that the first precept deserves a
good deal more attention, both with respect to its own content and with
respect to its relation to the other primary precepts of natural law.6
Regarding these others, which I shall call the “lower” precepts, the chapter’s rather lengthy treatment of them does seem to have Thomas’s teaching in view. But it begins with a passage that I find not to sit easily with
his teaching, and I think that this can be traced, at least in part, to a failure to consider exactly how these precepts are related to the first precept.
I shall begin with this passage and work back to the first precept. My
overall aim is to underscore the genuinely intellectual character of the
common knowledge of natural law and the highly universal scope of its
dominant concept, that of the good.
I. Natural Law, Concepts, and Knowledge of Human Nature
The document’s discussion of the “lower” precepts of natural law begins
as follows:
Once we posit the basic affirmation that introduces us to the moral
order—“One must do the good and avoid the bad”—we see how there
arises in the subject the recognition of the fundamental laws that should
govern human action. Such recognition does not consist in an abstract
consideration of human nature, nor in the effort of conceptualization
that would be proper to philosophical and theological theorization.The
perception of the fundamental moral goods is immediate, vital, based
on the mind’s connaturality with values and engaging affectivity as well
as intellect, the heart as well as the mind. It is an often imperfect grasp,
still obscure and dim, but which has the depth of immediacy. It is a
matter of the simplest and most common givens of experience that are
implicit in the concrete action of persons. (§44)

This passage seems to reflect the position on the common knowledge of
natural law proposed half a century ago by Jacques Maritain.The document
does not cite Maritain, and indeed I think that in part the resemblance is
only apparent. But it may still be a source of confusion.
5 Summa theologiae (hereafter ST ), I–II, q. 94, a. 2 (hereafter 94.2).
6 Thomas calls “primary” those general precepts that are naturally understood by

all. He also posits “secondary” natural law precepts, which are more specific and
like conclusions from the primary; see ST I–II, q. 94, aa. 4–6.

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Maritain develops his view with reference to 94.2. On his reading, the
way in which the lower precepts of natural law are naturally and
commonly known must be what Thomas elsewhere calls knowledge “by
connaturality” or “through inclination.” According to 94.2, all of these
precepts regard goods that are objects of natural human inclinations.
According to Maritain, reason’s natural apprehension of these goods as
good would be a very direct effect of the inclinations. It is not that reason
consciously reflects on the inclinations and then goes on to judge their
objects good. Nor does reason start from a consideration of the various
dimensions of human nature to which the inclinations correspond.
Rather, the very presence of the inclinations casts a kind of light upon
the things that are their objects, and reason spontaneously judges the
things in this light, seeing them as desirable—as good. Maritain holds that
such judgments involve no rational formulation or conceptualization.
The common apprehension of the precepts of natural law would be, in
his metaphorical language, an apprehension “in which the intellect, in
order to bear judgment, consults and listens to the inner melody that the
vibrating strings of abiding tendencies make present to the subject.”7
Section 44 of A la recherche does seem to propose a similar view. It
speaks of the perception of the fundamental moral goods as based on the
“the mind’s connaturality with values.” It also denies that this consists in
an “abstract consideration of human nature” or in the “effort of conceptualization” that is proper to philosophical and theological theorizing.
Now, I do not think that A la recherche really means to present the
common knowledge of natural law as an entirely non-conceptual affair,
or even as involving no concept of human nature. Other places in the
document show this clearly enough. In the rest of this section I shall look
at some of these, and I shall also consider Thomas’s view on these points.
In the next section I shall consider whether the knowledge consists in
judgment by connaturality.
One very strong indication that the document views the common
knowledge of natural law as somehow conceptual is its repeatedly speaking of this knowledge as a matter of “formulation”—the formulation of
precepts.8 It is very difficult to imagine how the mind could formulate
precepts without employing concepts. The document also indicates that
the concepts involved in this knowledge are universal, and so in some sense
7 Jacques Maritain, Man and the State (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951),

92. See also his “On Knowledge through Connaturality,” The Review of Metaphysics
4 ( June 1951): 473–81 (esp. 477–80); and “Du savoir moral,” Revue Thomiste 82
(1982): 533–49.
8 See the very next section (§45); also §11, §52.

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675

abstract. It describes the precepts themselves as very “general” (§46, §47).
Moreover, if it denies that the common knowledge of natural law involves
“theoretical conceptualization,” it also denies this of the expressions of
moral wisdom that have been passed down in the various cultural traditions (§12). And yet it is obvious that the document’s examples of such
expressions involve universal concepts (§12–17). One of them even refers
directly to man’s “essence”; that is, to human nature (§13). So the exclusion
of theoretical conceptualization from the common knowledge of the
precepts need not be taken as an exclusion of universal concepts altogether.
There can be no doubt that for Thomas the common knowledge of
natural law involves universal concepts. Natural law, as naturally known, is
a law in the proper sense of the term (ST I–II, q. 91, a. 2, ad 3). Law consists
of precepts, which he describes as “universal propositions of practical reason
ordered to actions.”9 A proposition is a combination of the concepts of the
subject and the predicate.Thomas also characterizes the knowledge of the
precepts of natural law as knowledge of truths (ST I–II, q. 93, a. 2, corp. &
ad 3).The act by which the mind apprehends truth is judgment, or what
he calls “composition and division.” This, he says, results from comparing
some thing (the subject) with some concept (the predicate) that is proposed
about it (ST I, q. 16, a. 2; I, q. 85, a. 2, ad 3). And he says quite generally that
whatever the mind understands, it forms a concept of (ST I, q. 27, a. 1).To
say that the knowledge of natural law involves concepts is simply to say that
it is genuinely rational or intellectual knowledge.
Does it involve a concept of human nature? §44 of A la recherche says
that the common knowledge of natural law is not the result of an
“abstract consideration of human nature.”Whatever this means, I do not
think it can be that the common knowledge of natural law includes no
understanding or no concept of human nature at all. The document
certainly presents human nature as something “to be fulfilled,” and natural law as directing toward this fulfillment.10 And it speaks of the
common knowledge of natural law in these same terms, as knowledge of
what is in conformity with human nature, as such.11
That for Thomas the common knowledge of natural law involves
knowledge of human nature is implicit in the very way in which he
introduces the “lower” precepts of natural law in 94.2:“all those things to
be done or avoided that practical reason naturally apprehends to be
HUMAN goods pertain to the precepts of the law of nature.”Apprehending something to be human means apprehending it to be connected with
9 ST I–II, q. 90, a. 1, ad 2; on natural law in relation to this, see I, q. 94, a. 1.
10 See §36, §40.
11 See the immediately preceding section (§43); also §9, together with §64.

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man; that is, with what has human nature. Any intellectual apprehension
of man involves some grasp of man’s nature. The intellect’s very object,
the feature according to which anything is intelligible, is “what the thing
is,” the nature of the thing understood.12 It may be grasped more or less
perfectly. But to have no understanding of a thing’s nature is to have no
understanding of the thing at all.
In order to understand the goods that Thomas connects with the
lower precepts in 94.2, clearly one must know the corresponding dimensions of human nature.13 We could not understand that it is good for man
to preserve his being according to his kind if we had no grasp of what it
is to be a subject of being of some kind (though it may take a philosopher to assign an expression to this, such as “hoc aliquid ” or “substance”).
We could not understand the good of the generative act or of nurturing
offspring if we had no concept of animal. If we had no concept of reason,
we could not understand the good of knowing the truth about God, or
that of life in society (fundamental for which is speech); and we certainly
could not know the good of acting according to reason, which is also the
basis of a primary precept (94.3). In fact, as we shall see, some grasp of
reason and of its practical operation is involved in the sheer grasp of the
good, which is the basis of the very first precept of natural law.14
When §44 of A la recherche excludes the “abstract consideration of
human nature” from the common knowledge of natural law, I think that
this is just another way of saying that the knowledge does not depend on
“theoretical conceptualization” about human nature. It is not the result of
what Thomas calls the “speculative mode” of considering a thing. This
mode consists in “defining and dividing and considering its universal
predicates,” or in other words,“resolving into universal formal principles”
12 See, e.g., ST I, q. 17, a. 3, ad 1; I, q. 85, a. 6.
13 In 94.2 Thomas says that to one who is ignorant of what man is, the proposition

“man is rational” is not per se nota. However, he does not say that this proposition is not per se nota omnibus or that the concepts involved in it are not “known
to all.” They could be, even if some people do not know them. For in this
context, “known to all” does not mean known by absolutely everyone. If it did,
then there would be nothing of this sort, since our minds begin as tabulae rasae.
It means something that everyone is naturally apt to know, requiring no special
training or study or reasoning. See section III below.
14 See below, at n. 38. It has been argued that the common knowledge of natural
law cannot rest on knowledge of human nature, because (a) human nature
includes practical reason, (b) knowing something requires seeing it operate, and
(c) if one’s practical reason is operating, one already knows natural law, since it
consists of practical reason’s first principles. But if some grasp of practical reason’s
operation is involved in the very grasp of the good, then all the knowledge of
the principles themselves actually presupposes it.

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677

(ST I, q. 14, a. 16).Thomas contrasts this with the “practical” mode, which
consists in the “application of form to matter.”15 It is clear that both of
these modes presuppose some knowledge of the thing. The speculative
mode takes the thing known and analyzes it into its formal principles; the
practical mode applies the thing’s form to matter. Both modes, in fact,
presuppose knowledge of the thing’s form,“what it is.”And in a way, even
the practical mode starts from “abstract” knowledge of the thing, in the
sense of universal knowledge. For it proceeds toward the concrete, applying the form to matter.
What the practical mode does not presuppose is an analysis of the thing
into its “formal principles.”These would be the parts of its definition.The
practical mode requires only a “confused” conception of the thing. Even
the confused conception, however, involves some grasp of the parts of the
definition. These are just what the “confusion,” the blend, is a blend of.
They must be known first, because they are simpler and more universal
than the thing defined. The more universal is known prior to the less
universal (ST I, q. 85, a. 3). First the parts of the definition are known, in
themselves; then the thing itself is known, confusedly; and finally the parts
of the definition are distinguished, seen as parts of the definition.
The defining terms, considered absolutely, are known before the thing
defined; otherwise the thing defined would not be made known by
them. But insofar as they are parts of the definition, they are known
afterwards; for we know man by a certain confused cognition before we
know how to distinguish all the things that belong to the concept of
man. (ST I, q. 85, a. 3, ad 3)

It is the last step that is proper to the speculative mode: formulating the
definition, resolving into an orderly “list” the defining parts of what has
already been grasped confusedly as an intelligible whole.We may say that
knowing natural law does not require a scientific grasp of man. But it does
require an “abstract” grasp, in the sense of a universal one, and one that
does somehow contain the parts of man’s definition, the various dimensions of his nature.
It might be objected that human nature is a purely speculative matter. It
is not something devised or constructed by human reason, as practical
things are. The knowledge of natural law is practical knowledge. So even if
the confused grasp of human nature does not depend on the speculative
15 ST I, q. 14, a. 6. Evidently “matter” here is to be taken very broadly, for what-

ever the particular subject is to which the form is applied. The thought is that
whereas a form considered by itself or absolutely is something common or
universal, actions and their effects are in singulars; see ST II–II, q. 47, a. 3.

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mode of considering the nature, how can that grasp pertain to the knowledge of natural law?
Clearly Thomas’s distinction between speculative and practical modes
does not strictly line up with the distinction between speculative and
practical matters. Both modes can apply to the same thing, for instance
house (ST I, q. 14, a. 16). Of course house is a practical matter. But he also
indicates that things that one cannot effect can enter into one’s practical
consideration, insofar as they have a bearing on what one can effect.16
Our reason does not produce its effects out of nothing. In its practical
work it “uses” natural things. (To use a thing is “to apply it to some operation”: ST I–II, q. 16, a. 4.) It even uses human nature.
Just as a man exists by nature, so do all of his per se attributes, such as
being capable of laughter and capable of mental discipline. If then some
cause does not make a man absolutely, but rather makes a man such, it
will not belong to that cause to constitute the things that are a man’s
per se attributes, but only to use them.Thus the statesman makes a man
civil; but he does not make him capable of mental discipline, but rather
uses this property of a man so that he become civil.17

II. Natural Inclination, Synderesis, and Knowing
the Goods As Good
So it seems clear that A la recherche is not adopting Maritain’s view that
the common knowledge of the precepts of natural law does not involve
a conception of human nature or any other conceptual knowledge.This
however does not rule out the possibility that it is treating the common
understanding as a case of judgment “by connaturality.” Nor does what
we have seen so far about Thomas rule it out of his view. For pace Maritain,Thomas never says that judgment by connaturality is a non-conceptual mode of knowing.What he says is that it does not involve a “perfect
use of reason” (ST II–II, q. 45, a. 2). By this he seems to mean that it does
not require scientific consideration of the matter being judged. And it
seems clear that for him the common knowledge of natural law does not
require scientific consideration.
16 See ST I, q. 14, a. 16, end of the corpus, on God’s practical consideration of evils;

also ST I–II, q. 14, a. 6.
17 Thomas Aquinas, In XII libros Metaphysicorum expositio, ed. M. R. Cathala and R.

M. Spiazzi (Marietti: Turin, 1950), Lib.VI, lect. 3, §1219. In a way, A la recherche
is aiming at this very thing, the application of people’s natural aptitude for mental
discipline to a “civilizing” process—one that would be worldwide. Part of this
aptitude is a natural understanding of principles, and part of this is the common
knowledge of natural law.

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On this question I find it difficult to determine the document’s position.
The mere use of the word ‘connaturality’ in §44 does not decide the question. As we shall see, at least in Thomas the word does not always refer to
judgment by inclination. Some passages in A la recherche do suggest that it
is treating the knowledge of natural law as a case of judgment by connaturality. For example, the paragraph immediately after §44 echoes Maritain’s
metaphor of listening to the inner melody of abiding tendencies.
In his search for the moral good, the human person sets himself to
listening to what he is and becomes aware of the fundamental inclinations of his nature, which are quite different from simple blind impulses
of desire. Perceiving that the goods to which he tends by nature are
necessary for his moral fulfillment, he formulates to himself, under the
form of practical injunctions, the moral duty of carrying them out in
his own life. He expresses to himself a certain number of very general
precepts that he shares with all human beings and that constitute the
content of that which we call natural law. (§45)18

Here some role is certainly being assigned to the natural inclinations.
However, it also says that these inclinations are not at all “mere blind
impulses of desire.”This suggests that perhaps the inclinations are to be seen
as rooted in the understanding of the goodness of the things that are their
objects.That understanding would not itself depend on the inclinations.
This, I believe, is definitely Thomas’s view. Elsewhere I have called
attention to the fact that not only Maritain, but also several other recent
interpreters of 94.2, simply assume that the natural inclinations to which
the precepts of natural law correspond are pre-rational. That is, they
would exist independently of, and prior to, the intellect’s apprehension of
their objects as good, and that apprehension would somehow depend
upon them.19 I have argued that 94.2 does not justify this assumption,
and that it is quite incompatible with many other things that Thomas says
about natural law. The natural inclinations that Thomas has in mind in
94.2 are inclinations of the will—the rational appetite. The will’s movement always follows some rational apprehension of its object as good.
Even the inclinations cited in 94.2 that are toward goods which are
according to natures that man shares with irrational creatures should be
seen as inclinations of the will. For this community in the objects of
18 Other passages suggesting that it is knowledge by connaturality are §46, §52, and

perhaps most strongly, §63.
19 See my “Natural Inclination and the Intelligibility of the Good in Thomistic

Natural Law,” Vera Lex 6.1–2 (Winter 2005): 57–78 (hereafter “Natural Inclination . . .”).

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inclination does not exclude diversity in its modes.20 Man’s inclination
toward these goods is in the rational or intellectual mode. Consider, for
example, what Thomas says earlier in the Summa about the inclination
common to all substances toward their conservation in being:
[E]ach thing naturally desires to be in its own way. Now in things that
have cognition, desire follows apprehension. But the senses do not
apprehend being except under the aspect of here and now, whereas
intellect apprehends being absolutely and according to all time. Hence
every possessor of intellect naturally desires to be forever. (ST I, q. 75,
a. 6; my emphasis)

I will not repeat here all of my earlier arguments for this way of reading 94.2. But one that I did not previously take up can be drawn from the
very mode of knowing that Thomas associates with the precepts of natural law.This is the mode characteristic of the type of intellectual virtue that
he calls intellectus principiorum, the understanding of principles.
Following Aristotle, Thomas distinguishes five groups of virtues by
which the intellect attains truth in a sure and stable way (ST I–II, q. 57).
Two of these are practical.They regard the truth about things that are in
our power to bring about, which are always particular and contingent
things. Art regards products, and prudence regards actions. The other
three groups regard the truth about universal and necessary matters. Such
matters are not in our power, and the virtues in these groups are called
speculative virtues.This is so even though two of them, scientia and intellectus principiorum, include virtues that regard the practical domain: scientia
includes moral science, and intellectus principiorum includes synderesis, which
is the habit of the precepts of natural law. For even practical matters have
necessary features that can be considered in a universal way and that are
not, as such, in our power.
Moreover, unlike prudence, neither moral science nor synderesis
presupposes right appetite. The truth of prudence, like all truth, consists
in conformity with the matter being judged, the “res” (ST I–II, q. 64, a.
3). But in addition to this, the truth of prudence also entails conformity
with right appetite. This is because the res of prudence is a particular
action, judged as to its choiceworthiness. An action’s choiceworthiness is
judged in light of the end, and right appetite is needed for the right
apprehension of the “particular end,” the end as existing under the conditions of the concrete situation (ST I–II, q. 57, a. 5, corp. & ad 3). But
20 See ST I, q. 60, a. 1, together with aa. 3–5. Of course I do not mean to deny that

our pre-rational inclinations have “moral significance” (see A la recherche, §79–80).

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synderesis does not presuppose right appetite, because it apprehends the
end universally.This apprehension is the very source of the appetite’s first
rectitude, which is the rectitude of the will’s natural inclination.21 The
truth of synderesis, like that which regards speculative matters, is simply its
conformity with its res.
So although the truths pertaining to synderesis regard the practical
domain, its way of knowing them is the same as that of any other intellectus principiorum.This way, Thomas says, is by a kind of “immediate perception.”22 Its immediacy consists in the fact that truths fall under it insofar
as they are apt to be considered as per se notae, known by dint of themselves.Thomas makes no distinction between what per se nota means in the
case of truth about speculative things and what it means in the case of
truth about practical things.
One of his fullest accounts of its meaning is found precisely in 94.2.
As usual, the account is in terms of propositions and their components.
A proposition is per se nota insofar as its predicate belongs to its subject’s
very ratio or concept. Insofar as this is so, the perception of the proposition’s truth follows immediately upon its formation. Now, this does not
mean that the truth of such a proposition is perceived by everyone. For
perhaps not everyone grasps the concepts involved. Some concepts are
grasped only by “the wise,” those whose minds have received special
cultivation. But many concepts are acquired spontaneously, through ordinary experience, without any special instruction or study. The truths that
rest on these concepts are known “naturally” and “to all.”The knowledge
of them is not innate, but the sufficient aptitude for knowing them is.
Even the most uncultivated people are apt to know them, and if their
faculties are not stunted, they will know them. The precepts of natural
law are known in this way, through the natural habit of synderesis.
In calling this mode of knowing truth a “perception,” as it were a sort
of seeing, Thomas is not making it something entirely passive. For the
light by which the mind sees these truths is primarily the mind’s own. It
is the light of the “agent intellect,” which is the soul’s power to abstract
the intelligible forms of things from the matter represented in their sensible images.The abstracted forms themselves also “illumine”; it is through
them that the mind discerns the truth about the things that they are the
forms of.23 But it is only by the agent intellect’s abstracting the forms
from matter that the illuminating power of the forms is actualized. And
21 See ST I–II, q. 62, a. 3, quoted below, at n. 25.
22 ST I–II, q. 57, a. 2. Notice that §44 of A la recherche also speaks in terms of

“perception” and “immediacy.”
23 See ST I, q. 84, a. 5, together with I–II, q. 3, a. 6.

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so Thomas says,“From the very nature of the intellectual soul, it belongs
to man that, having grasped what a whole is and what a part is, he immediately grasps that every whole is greater than its part; and likewise with
the others.”24 He is saying that all the truths pertaining to the natural
intellectus principiorum are known in this way.
Thomas insists that the agent intellect is a power of the human soul.
In the article of the Summa in which he argues for this, he cites the fourth
Psalm:“The light of Thy countenance, O Lord, is signed upon us” (ST I,
q. 79, a. 4). It is worth recalling that later, in the place where he argues
for the existence of natural law, Thomas cites this same Psalm, this time
glossing it:
[T]he Psalmist, after saying, “Offer up the sacrifice of justice,” adds,
“Many say, Who showeth us good things?,” as though someone had
asked what the works of justice are; in answer to which question he
says, “The light of Thy countenance, O Lord, is signed upon us”; as
though to say that the light of natural reason, whereby we discern what
is good and what is bad, which pertains to natural law, is nothing else
than an imprint on us of the divine light. (ST I–II, q. 91, a. 2)

Thomas does say that the practical principles are in a way “more”
connatural to man than the speculative ones (ST II–II, q. 47, a. 15). But
he is not there talking about “judgment by connaturality.” He is talking
about the fact that the practical life is more common, more typically
human, than the speculative. Both sets of principles are known in the
same way: by the natural light of the agent intellect, which brings out the
intelligibilities of sensible things and displays their truth.
Now, A la recherche does allude to the mode of knowing that characterizes intellectus principiorum, at the beginning of its discussion of the very
first precept of natural law.
Every human being who reaches conscience and responsibility experiences an interior call to do good. He discovers that he is fundamentally
a moral being, capable of perceiving and expressing the call that, as we
saw, is found within all cultures:“One must do the good and avoid the
bad.” On this precept are based all the other precepts of natural law.This
first precept is known naturally, immediately, by practical reason, just as
the principle of non-contradiction (the intellect cannot simultaneously
and in the same respect affirm and deny the same thing of a subject),
which is at the basis of all speculative reasoning, is grasped intuitively,
24 ST I–II, q. 51, a. 1.The “others” are the other truths pertaining to the intellectus

principiorum, whether speculative or practical. In this article he refers to the latter
as “principles of common justice.”

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naturally, by theoretical reason, as soon as the subject grasps the meaning of the terms used. Traditionally this knowledge of the first principle of the moral life is attributed to an innate intellectual disposition
called synderesis. (§39)

I have quoted the passage in full because I shall want to return to it later.
But for the moment what is of interest is the fourth sentence, where the
first precept of natural law is likened to the principle of non-contradiction,
just as it is in 94.2. Both are understood naturally and immediately, being
per se notae truths resting on concepts that we naturally acquire.
What is not so clear in A la recherche, however, is that according to
94.2, all the primary precepts of natural law are understood in this way.
They are all “naturally known.” The first precept, which rests on the
concept of the good, says that the good is to be done and sought, and the
bad avoided. The other precepts rest on concepts of certain particular
good things. As goods, these things share in the truth of the first precept.
They are things to be done or sought, and their contraries are bad and to
be avoided. And the precepts regarding these things are naturally known
and pertain to natural law, because our mind naturally understands them
and their goodness. “All those things to be done or avoided that practical reason naturally apprehends to be human goods pertain to the
precepts of the law of nature” (94.2).
After making this assertion, Thomas goes on to lay out the order in
which these goods and the precepts regarding them fall into the human
intellect. It is here that he associates the goods with man’s natural inclinations: “all the things to which man is naturally inclined, reason naturally apprehends as good.” However, he does not actually say that the
natural inclinations to these things are the source of the apprehension of
their goodness. In 94.2 he does not really say anything about the apprehension’s source, except that it is “natural.” But after all, 94.2 is not a
stand-alone treatise. In 91.2 he had been very clear that the source is the
natural light of reason. Through this, the rational creature—unlike
others—shares in the eternal ratio,“by which he is naturally inclined to his
due act and end.” The only inclination that 91.2 connects with natural
law is that of the will, its desire of the last end (ad 2).
But perhaps even clearer than 91.2 is an earlier passage in the Prima
secundae.The topic is the theological virtues, which order us to a supernatural end. Thomas draws a comparison with our order toward our
“connatural” end, which is through a certain “natural inclination.”
But this [inclination] comes about in function of two factors. First, in
function of reason or intellect, insofar as it [intellect] contains first

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universal principles known to us by the natural light of the intellect,
from which reason proceeds both in speculable and in practical matters.
Second, through the rectitude of the will naturally tending toward the
good of reason.25

Here it is very definitely the understanding of principles that is the source
of the inclination to the end, not the other way round. The end itself is
“connatural,” but the understanding is not at all “judgment by connaturality.” It is an understanding of per se notae truths, wherein the predicate
pertains to the very concept of the subject. Practical reason’s natural
apprehension of certain things as human goods does not depend on the
voice of inclination persuading it to combine subject and predicate. Once
rendered intelligible by the mind’s light, subject and predicate combine
themselves.We can really see that these things are human goods.26
Or at least, there can be little doubt that this is Thomas’s view. In the
next two sections I shall raise and try to resolve two issues about it. In the
course of this it should become clear why I say that A la recherche could
have given more attention to the very first precept.
III. The Good Is What All Desire
The first issue concerns the origin of the very concept of the good. In 91.2
Thomas traces natural law to the light by which we discern what the good
is and what the bad is, and in 94.2 he makes the very first precept to be
founded on the concept of the good, the ratio boni. His formulation of it is
that of the Nicomachean Ethics, I.1, 1094a3:“the good is what all desire.”
The concept of the good, then, is inseparable from the concept of
desire. But where do we get this concept? Must it not be drawn from
some experience of desire? And if so, must not pre-rational desire or inclination play a role after all in the genesis of the knowledge of natural law?
From very early in our development, we all do experience pre-rational
desires, those of the sense-appetite. Even if the natural inclinations that
Thomas has in mind in 94.2 belong to the will, and follow upon reason’s
apprehension of their objects as good, must not reason’s very grasp of the
concept of the good originate in the experience of sense-desire?
On the other hand, although for Thomas the concept of the good is
inseparable from the concept of desire, he certainly does not think that
25 ST I–II, q. 62, a. 3; cf. De veritate, q. 14, a. 2, c. (from Nihil autem potest . . . through

the next sentence).
26 The “seeing” is not merely being “certain” of them. Faith too is certain.Yet “faith

implies only assent to what is proposed. But understanding implies a certain
perception of truth”: ST II–II, q. 8, a. 5, ad 3.

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what we primarily mean by ‘good’ is what the sense-appetite desires.To
be sure, this is one meaning of ‘good’: the delectabile. But it is not the
primary meaning.The primary meaning refers to what is “good in itself,”
what “has in itself that whence it is desired” (ST I, q. 5, a. 6)—what is
intrinsically fit to be desired.What the sense-appetite desires is not always
of this sort. It does not always even seem to be of this sort. “What is
desired according to concupiscence seems good because it is desired. For
concupiscence perverts the judgment of reason, such that what is pleasant seems good to it. But what is desired with intellectual appetite is
desired because it seems good in itself.”27 So sense-desire does not seem
to be a sufficient basis for forming the concept of the good.
Before seeking for the origin of a concept, we need to make sure that
we are clear about its content. What does “desire” mean? My dictionary
calls it a type of “feeling.” Perhaps that does not quite fit the kind of desire
called “will.” Nevertheless it is probably right that by “desire” we usually
mean some type of “psychological” act or disposition, something that only
beings with “inner awareness” have. Descartes calls all desires “thoughts”;
Hume calls even will an “impression.” But taken generally, this is not at all
what Thomas means by desire—desiderium or appetitus.The very formula
of the good that he uses in 94.2 is an indication of this. Bonum est quod
omnia appetunt.The good is what all desire.As is clear both from the neuter
omnia and from other passages, what Thomas means by “all” in this
formula is not just all men. Nor is it just all animals. It is all beings.28 Not
all beings have will or sense-desire, or any sort of “psychological” activity
at all. But all do have desire. If for us this word inevitably conveys something psychological, then we can speak instead of “inclination.” We are
supposed to see this as an inseparable feature of absolutely everything.
For Thomas, desire or inclination is simply a certain sort of tendency,
or effective order, toward something. Not every tendency is an inclination. Some tendencies are merely imposed upon a thing by something
else and are incidental or even contrary to the thing’s inclination. An
inclination is a tendency rooted in the thing itself—ultimately in its
nature, in what it is. It is somehow the thing’s “own.” This is not found
only in animals. Plants are inclined to grow, to reproduce, and so on.
Inanimate things have inclinations toward their proper activities.Thomas
ascribes inclination or desire even to prime matter (ST I, q. 5, a. 3, ad 3).
Of course Thomas’s views of the constitution of these beings differ in
many ways from those of modern natural science. Has modern science
entirely dispensed with the notion of inclination? I doubt it. But for our
27 Thomas Aquinas, In XII libros Metaphysicorum expositio, Lib. XII, lect. vii, §2522.
28 See ST I, q. 5, a. 1.

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purposes, the question is incidental. We are not talking about the scientific account of things, but about the common experience from which
the common concept of the good originates. Our experience is of a
world made up of things that all have inclinations—toward states, activities, and movements of various sorts.We find ourselves quite surrounded
by desire. And we observe it in things.We do so all the time. It would be
silly to say that you see a dog chasing a rabbit, but that you cannot tell
whether the dog desires the rabbit—that only the dog can tell this (and
he keeps it to himself). Of course desire is not observable in the way that,
say, color or sound is. It is “underneath” the sensible objects. But then, so
are many kinds of action, such as “chasing.” It is the very business of intellect to get underneath the sensible objects, to under-stand them.29 If we
cannot see a dog desiring a rabbit, then neither can we see a dog chasing
a rabbit.We cannot even see a dog.
And to call something a dog, or even a tree or a rock, is already to
attribute a host of inclinations to it. It is mostly in light of their regular
activities and movements that we form our conceptions of what the
things around us are.What they are, and what they are inclined to be and
to do, enter our minds together.This is “a nature”: an inner principle of
both the existence and the activity of a thing. Even if, as with “a
substance” (a subject of existence and activity), it takes a philosopher to
formulate the general definition of “a nature,” some confused concept of
what a nature is comes quite naturally to us.30
It is desire understood in this very broad sense, then, that for Thomas
goes hand in hand with the notion of the good. Rather than with feelings, what we should associate desire with is movement and action. A
desire is a tendency toward something, toward really possessing something,
and so it is typically a tendency toward bringing the thing about, or
conserving it, or in some other way acting to promote its real existence.
This association of desire with action is just what the first precept of
natural law expresses: the good, as “what all desire,” is “to be done and
sought.” And its contrary, the bad, which would be “what all shun,” is “to
be avoided.” Desire pertains to the very concept of the good, and action
and movement pertain to the very concept of desire. This is why the first
precept is a per se nota proposition.
Sense-desire, we said, does not seem to be a sufficient basis for the
concept of the good. Its object does not always even seem truly fit for us
to desire. It might explain the concept of “the desired,” but it does not
explain the concept of “the desirable.” By contrast, in Thomas’s view
29 See ST I, q. 18, a. 2; II–II, q. 8, a. 1.
30 See A la recherche, §64–65.

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there is indeed a sense in which “what all desire” can be identified with
the intrinsically desirable. For even if some desires are disordered, it is
common to all things to desire their proper perfection.This for Thomas
is the “nature” of the good, what desirability primarily “consists” in:
perfection.31 Of course, like desire itself, perfection comes in many
different forms or modes. And one thing’s perfection is not another’s.32
Nevertheless Thomas sees it as a genuine nature that is common to all
perfect things, just as he sees “being” as a nature that is common to all
beings. In fact they are almost the same nature. For an unqualifiedly
“perfect” thing is a thing that is fully “in act,” and this is a thing that has
“fullness of being” (ST I, q. 5, a. 1; I–II, q. 18, a. 1).
This notion of “fullness of being” is also closely associated with that of
action. “Every agent effects its like,” Thomas is fond of saying. To act is
somehow to “influence” things, to “pour” one’s being into them. What
acts, to the extent that it acts, is “full” of being, so full as to be apt to
“overflow.”The notion of “fullness of being” is thus readily conveyed to
us by the actions of things.And so is the fact that they desire this fullness.
For as a general rule, to the extent that a thing is fully in act and can act,
can pour forth its being, it will do so. “Each thing, insofar as it is in act,
acts, and tends toward what suits it according to its form” (ST I, q. 5, a.
5). Quite generally, things are disposed to promote their being and their
perfection.They are inclined to it, desire its continuance and its diffusion.
And everyone knows this.
We also see here a close connection between the notion of the good
and that of the nature or the form of a thing, “what it is.” Likeness is
communication in form.What acts causes something to be like it, to have
something of its own being, the being that is according to its own form.
Its “fullness” of being is the completeness of the being that is proportioned to its form.33 It is measured by the form, as the fullness of a bottle
is measured by its inner shape.
The order toward perfection is what makes desire intelligible. Perfection is desirable per se. If we observe a desire for something—say, a desire
for food, perhaps our own desire for it—but we do not see how the
object desired perfects the desirer, we wonder why the desire exists. But
when we see that the object enhances or favors the desirer’s own being,
31 See ST I, q. 5, a. 1; Summa contra gentiles, Lib. I, c. 37 (“Amplius. Communicatio . . .”).
32 Thomas says that “the good is what all desire” does not mean that what all desire

is one single thing; it means that all objects of desire share somehow in the nature
of the good: ST I, q. 6, a. 2, ad 2. And clearly, as with being, they do not all share
in it equally or in the same mode. It is not said of them univocally, but analogically.
33 ST I, q. 5, a. 5. On likeness as communication in form, see ST I, q. 4, a. 3.

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we no longer wonder. We do not ask: why does it desire to enhance its
being—what good is that? Rather, now its desire makes sense. We have
traced the desire to something desirable per se.
So in a way it is right to say that our concept of the good presupposes
the experience of “pre-rational” desire. But this is not solely or even
primarily our own sense-desire. It is the desire, the inclination to perfection, that we see commonly in the things around us.34
It should be noticed that the thought is not that the notion of the
good is “implied” in that of perfection, or fullness of being, or “conformity with nature,” as though it were “derivable” from these by some kind
of conceptual analysis. Rather, these notions are included in that of the
good.35 The notion of the good does add something new to them. It adds
the relation to desire.This is a causal relation. Desire is the effect of goodness.36 To understand the good is to understand a form of explanation;
that is, a kind of cause, the final cause. The goodness of a thing explains
the desire of it and the movement toward it that the desire is apt to give
rise to.That perfection makes a thing intrinsically apt to be desired, and
that it is actually desired because it is apt to be, are shown by the very fact
that for the most part, this is what things do desire. On the whole, desire
presents itself as a function of perfection.
Regarding the origin of the concept of the good, however, this is not
for Thomas the whole story. In understanding that perfection or fullness
of being is desirable, we are not merely seeing that it makes sense for a
thing to desire its perfection.We find this, the existence of a perfect thing,
to be something that is fit to desire, not just for the thing itself, but
absolutely, without qualification. We see perfection as something simply
to be approved of, something that simply ought to be. And this consideration gives rise to a desire of its own. Thomas does after all make the
34 Really even our sense-desire is normally for things that do somehow perfect us,

according to some dimension of our nature. If these things are not always (nor
always even seem) unqualifiedly “good in themselves,” it is because they may be
repugnant to our last end. This end pertains primarily to our rational nature. A
sign of this is that our primary desire, the one that controls our action, is the
desire of the will, the rational appetite. For the most part, sense-desire does not
induce us to act without the consent of the will. On the need to regulate the
“pre-rational” desires of our various “parts,” including that of reason itself, in
view of the last end, see below, n. 60.
35 See my “Natural Inclination . . . ,” 71–73. I develop this point more fully in “The
Primacy of the Common Good and the Foundations of Natural Law in St.
Thomas,” in Ressourcement Thomism, ed. Reinhard Hütter and Matthew Levering
(Washington:The Catholic University of America Press, 2010), 241–50.
36 “Just as the causality of the efficient cause is taken according to influence, the
causality of the end is taken according to appetite”: ST I–II, q. 2, a. 5, ad 3.

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general concept of the good (still taken as “what all desire”) go hand in
hand with the apprehension of a “psychological” desire—not sensual,
however, but intellectual. First, he says, the intellect understands “a being”
(ens ); then it apprehends itself understanding a being, which goes with
the apprehension of “a true”; and then it—intellect—apprehends itself
desiring a being, this apprehension being inseparable from apprehension
of “a good.”37 Even if the desire “in the things themselves” is what first
leads us to see the connection between desire and perfection, in seeing
perfection to be intrinsically desirable we are also calling for desire of it,
as it were issuing a directive that it be desired.38 And we are naturally so
constituted as to respond to such a directive.That is, we have the natural
capacity and aptitude to desire what the intellect judges desirable, the
power of will.
This is why, in explaining the good—the universal good, the good as
“what all desire”—Thomas sometimes relates it to no desire other than
that of the intellectual appetite.39 In a way the good as “what all desire” and
the good as “what the will desires” are the same. For the intellectual soul
in a way is “all things,” and it has a special affinity or “connaturality” with
the whole of reality.40 In a way its desire reflects the desires of all things.
But only in a way. It is not that the mind simply mimics the desires
that it observes.41 The desires in non-rational things are for particular,
limited modes of the good, and the desires themselves are limited, conditioned. But from the experience of particular modes of being, the mind
37 ST I, q. 16, a. 4.The corpus of the article reminds us that on the side of “reality,”

the apprehension of something as “good” requires the apprehension of it not
only as “a being” but also as “perfect.”
38 On this see my “Natural Inclination . . . ,” 68–70.This apprehension of the intellect’s own desire—the desire of the will—is a practical apprehension, one that
directs toward and causes that desire.The intellect grasps the will’s act, not only
by the act’s intelligible presence, but also and even first of all by grasping itself as
the act’s principle (see ST I, q. 87, a. 4, ad 3).Thus some apprehension of practical intellect’s operation is present in the very grasp of the good, and so at the very
root of the knowledge of natural law; see above, n. 14.
39 See, for example, De veritate, q. 1, a. 1.
40 See Summa contra gentiles, Lib. III, c. 112 (“Praeterea. Manifestum est . . .”). I say
“special” because there is an affinity with all things that is common to every
being;“a being, as a being, does not have the character of something repugnant,
but rather of something agreeable, because all agree in being”: ST I–II, q. 29, a.
1, ad 1.
41 Still,Thomas stresses the idea that practical reason somehow “imitates” nature. See,
e.g., In Politicorum, proem.; ST I, q. 60, a. 5; I–II, q. 87, a. 1; II–II, q. 31, a. 3; q. 50,
a. 4; q. 130, a. 1. A la recherche speaks of “a universal ethical message immanent in
nature . . . which men are capable of deciphering” (§11; see §69–70, §78).

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forms a universal conception of being, not contracted to any particular
mode—the sheer “form” of being, taken absolutely. And it does the same
with the perfect and the good. It conceives goodness, as a sort of nature or
form, the form by which good things are good.This conception is what
enables us to appreciate and to be moved by the good in all its universality, as pertaining to all things. It serves as principle of a desire that
relates to the good, not merely in a determinate or particular mode, but
absolutely—a desire that responds and inclines toward good things just
insofar as they are good.42 In a way, the very “abstractness” of the mind’s
grasp of the good makes this grasp the principle of the most perfect form
of appetite, the fullest “engagement of affectivity” (§44).43 Think of the
difference we saw between the way in which rational beings desire existence and the way other beings do.
In all of this, we are talking about the mind’s natural understanding of
the nature of the good, the understanding that is common to all. To be
sure, it is a highly “confused” understanding. It belongs to the metaphysician to resolve this understanding back into the simpler “formal
principles” that it presupposes and implies:“a being,”“a perfect,”“a true,”
etc. And the understanding is “abstract” also in the sense in which this
signifies an imperfection: it is “sketchy,” needs “filling in.” The natural
understanding of the good does not express the myriad modes that pertain
to the good as it is found in reality. But it is by no means so abstract as
to be utterly empty.
This special relation to the good that the mind’s universal apprehension generates is the root of our freedom.44 It is bound up with our very
status as persons. I would say that its special character is itself something
42 See ST I, q. 59, a. 1.
43 On appetites as more or less “perfect,” see ST I, q. 80, a. 1. On intellect as “more

noble” than will, absolutely speaking, because its object is “more abstract,” see ST
I, q. 82, a. 3.
44 See, e.g., Thomas Aquinas, Sententia libri Ethicorum Aristotelis, Lib. III, lect. 13
(Marietti §517–518):“something can seem good to someone in two ways. In one
way, taken universally, as by a certain speculative consideration. And this sort of
judgment of a good does not follow any particular disposition, but the universal
power of reason syllogizing in matters of action just as in the things that are by
nature. But because matters of action are contingent, reason is not bound to
assent to this or that, as happens in matters of demonstration; but a man has it in
his power to assent to one part or the other of a contradiction; as happens in all
opinionable matters, and especially about matters of action in which many
aspects are considered, according to any of which something can be judged good
or not good.” (The other way is “as though by a practical consideration, with a
view to action”: ibid., §519. It is here that the person’s appetitive dispositions play
a crucial role—though not quite a necessitating one; see ST I, q. 83, a. 1, ad 5.)

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we naturally perceive. For even if everything good can be loved in some
way, it takes no special training to understand that only rational beings
can be loved as friends. In a way this is just what Thomas is saying in 94.2,
when he makes “life in society” a good that pertains to the nature proper
to man, the nature of reason. It is a good that we naturally apprehend,
and naturally apprehend as proper to reason.
Thomas also offers the metaphysical analysis of this.To love someone
with love of friendship, Thomas observes, involves wishing him well,
wanting him to “have” the good.
But we cannot, properly speaking, wish the good for an irrational creature, because it is not properly capable of having the good, this being
proper to the rational creature, which, through free choice, is master of
its disposal of the good that it has. Hence the Philosopher says in Book
2 of the Physics that we do not speak of good or bad befalling such
things, except by a likeness.45

But however special our relation to the good is, it is still a relation to
universal good. There is goodness in irrational things.46 And our own
desire naturally extends to that too.According to Thomas, even charity in
a way extends to irrational things.We might call this Thomas the conservationist: “irrational creatures can be loved out of charity, as good things
that we wish for others; insofar, to wit, as we want them to be conserved
for God’s honor and man’s use” (ST II–II, q. 25, a. 3). Irrational creatures
serve the honor of God because they are His effects, and they are good—
good in themselves, perfect, full of being. As for their utility to men, we
saw that this is not only bodily but also spiritual. They furnish us with
“intelligible light,” light that neither speculative nor practical intellect can
do without.
What I am stressing is the universality of the form or nature that serves
as the foundation of the first precept of natural law. Goodness, as we naturally understand it, is not something that belongs only to man, let alone
only to human action. It is by no means confined to the “human” good.
45 ST II–II, q. 25, a. 3. In Physics II.6, 197a36–b22, Aristotle says that things like

happiness and good fortune and their opposites are properly ascribed only to
beings endowed with choice, beings that deliberately adopt “practical proposals,”
such that it makes sense to say that things may “turn out well” (or badly) for
them.We do not say that things are going well or badly for a tree or a horse, but
only for a person.The connection of the first precept of natural law with happiness will be central in the next section.
46 It is right there in Physics II (see previous note) that Aristotle argues at greatest
length for the existence of final causality, the causality of the good, in nature.

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I shall return to this point in the final section. But first I want to address
another problem, which has more to do with the specifically human good.
IV. Particular Human Goods and the Whole Human Good
The problem centers on the relation between the notion of the good and
the “lower” precepts of natural law.These all regard things that “practical
reason naturally apprehends to be human goods.” I argued that for Thomas,
this apprehension does not consist in judgment “by connaturality” or “by
inclination,” but rather in a knowledge of truths as per se notae.These are
propositions in which the predicate pertains to the very concept of the
subject. The problem is that this seems to mean that the notion of
“human good” enters into the concepts of the things that the lower
precepts concern: the conservation of our existence according to our
kind, basic familial and social relationships, knowledge of the truth about
God, etc. Each of these, it seems, would have “human good” somehow
written into its concept, and that would be why its being a human good
is a naturally understood per se nota truth. Yet this seems to run afoul of
Hume’s argument (invoked by several recent writers on natural law) that
“ought” cannot be derived from “is.” And in the previous section we
suggested that for Thomas himself, the notion of the good adds something to the notions of being, nature, perfection, etc.47 They are
contained in its concept, not it in theirs.The goodness of a thing cannot
be gathered from the mere analysis of what the thing is.
Now, this objection rests on the supposition that in the propositions in
question, “human good” plays the role of the predicate. I would like to
suggest that this is not the case, and that instead, what plays the role of
the subject is “human good.”What is per se nota would not be, for example, “the conservation of human life is a human good.” (I am not saying
that this proposition is not true, but that the predicate does not pertain
to the very concept of the subject.) It would rather be “the human good
includes the conservation of human life.” If we want a proposition with
the copula, we can say “the human good is in part the conservation of
human life.” Taken as a unit, the human good is a certain whole. The
goods that the lower precepts regard are parts of it.They are parts whose
belonging to it is immediately evident. They belong to its very concept
or definition.48 It is like the way in which it is evident that a line is part
47 A la recherche says the precepts are not “deduced” from the definition of man; that

is “rationalism” (§33).
48 Not all human goods do.There are other things that are parts of the human good

but do not belong to its very concept; say, some vitamin D in one’s diet. “The
human good includes vitamin D” is true, but it is not per se nota.

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of a triangle. Being part of a triangle does not belong to the definition of
a line. But as Thomas says, having parts that are lines does belong to the
definition of a triangle.49
This claim makes sense, of course, only if the human good, taken as a
certain whole, has already been somehow apprehended—at least in some
confused way—even prior to the understanding of the lower precepts of
natural law.The apprehension of it must somehow enter into the understanding of the very first precept. I wish to argue that this is indeed so.
We may be tempted to see the first precept as empty or vacuous,
providing no genuine practical direction. What it tells us to do and to
seek is just the good, without specification.This may seem too general or
indefinite to guide action.The good, after all, is “convertible with being.”
There is nothing that does not have some goodness in it. If a thing had
no goodness at all—no perfection, no being—it would be nothing. It
would not even be bad.
But the answer to this is right here, in the fact that there are bad things.
The first precept is founded on the concept of the good, but it does not
49 “The first way of saying per se is when that which is attributed to something

pertains to its form. And since the definition signifies the form and essence of
the thing, the first mode of per se is when the definition or something placed in
the definition is predicated of something, . . . whether it be placed directly or
obliquely. As in the definition of triangle is placed line, whence line belongs per se
to triangle; and likewise in the definition of line is placed point, whence point
belongs per se to line. And he goes on to give the reason why these are placed in
the definition, saying that the substance, i.e., the essence, which the definition of
them—i.e., of triangle and line—signifies, is made from these, i.e., from line and
points. . . . And he says this so as to exclude those things that are parts of the
matter and not of the species, which are not placed in the definition, as semicircle
is not placed in the definition of circle, nor finger in the definition of man, as is said
in Metaphysics VII”: Expositio libri Posteriorum analyticorum, ed. R. M. Spiazzi
(Marietti:Turin, 1955), Lib. 1, lect. 10, §84 (on Post. an. I.4, 73a35–37; the Metaphysics reference is to VII.10–11, 1034b20 ff.).The phrase “whether it be placed
directly or obliquely” is referring to the fact that some parts of a thing’s definition are said directly of the thing, because they express what the whole thing is,
e.g., “man is an animal”; while other parts of the definition are said of the thing
by way of an “oblique case” or a preposition or some other expression. This
would be how those parts of the definition that are also parts of the thing itself
would be said of the thing.Although we cannot say “a triangle is a line,” line does
belong to the definition of triangle, and we can say “a triangle is made from a
line.” And although we cannot say simply that the human good is the conservation of human life, we can say that the human good is in part the conservation
of human life. As for the examples of semicircle and finger, they would be like
the example of vitamin D in note 48; they are parts of the thing, but not parts
of its definition.

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speak only of the good. If we reduced the first precept to “the good is to
be done and sought,” cutting out what it says about the bad, then indeed
it would provide no direction for action; just as if we took the principle
of non-contradiction, which is founded on the concept of a being, and
cut out what it says about non-being, it would provide no direction for
thought. It would be no principle at all.
To understand a thing is also to understand its proper opposite. The
principle that is founded on the concept of a being refers not only to
being but also to its intelligible opposite, non-being. And similarly the
principle founded on the concept of the good also refers to the bad.
Hence what the principle means by “the good” cannot be merely whatever has some goodness in it. For even the bad has some goodness in it,
and yet the very same principle says that the bad is to be avoided. The
principle can hardly be saying that some of what is to be done and sought
is to be avoided.What “the good” refers to, in the first precept of natural
law, is not whatever has some goodness in it. It is what is unqualifiedly
good.Thus,
each thing has as much of good as it has of being, for good and being are
convertible. . . . But only God has the entire fullness of His being through
something one and simple. Every other thing has the fullness of being
suited to it through diverse factors. Hence in some things it happens that
they have being up to a point, and yet they lack something of the fullness of being due to them. . . . So however much it has of being, it has
that much of good, while insofar as it lacks something of the fullness of
being, to that extent it lacks goodness, and is called bad. . . . But because
fullness of being itself pertains to the concept of the good, if a thing lacks
something of its due fullness of being, it will not be called good unqualifiedly, but only in some respect, insofar as it is a being.50

This is what all desire: not just some perfection or some being, but their
total perfection, their fullness of being. Whatever is repugnant to that,
even if it has some perfection and goodness in it, is to be shunned and
avoided. So the first precept does provide genuine direction.And the very
concept of what it directs toward is that of a kind of whole, something
complete and “full.” It is a whole with many really distinct parts, many
“diverse factors.”51
50 ST I–II, q. 18, a. 1. See ST I, q. 5, a. 1, ad 1.
51 By contrast, God’s “fullness of being” is an utterly simple reality. Nevertheless it

is something that others can “take part in” to a greater or lesser degree, according to some likeness. Even His goodness has to be understood in the manner of
a whole, as “wholly” in act and as “containing” all perfections. See ST I, q. 4, aa.
1 & 2; q. 6, aa. 1 & 2.

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Now, as Thomas formulates it, the first precept of natural law does not
explicitly refer to the human good. It speaks of the good absolutely, as what
all desire.And indeed it is not only the human good that is to be done and
sought, or only the human bad that is to be avoided. For anything whatsoever, it is true that it ought to do and seek its good and to avoid its bad.
In this sense, the first precept, considered simply as a certain truth, seems
to apply to absolutely everything. I shall return to this point in the last
section. But in 94.2 Thomas is considering the first precept as something
practical, the very first principle of practical reason. It is the truth by which
human reason first offers any direction to action. So considered, it can
only refer to human good; that is, the good that can be done or sought by
human action. For the only action that reason can direct is human action.
This I think is why, after setting out the first precept, Thomas can say at
once that all other precepts of natural law are founded upon it,“such that
all those things to be done or avoided that practical reason naturally apprehends to be HUMAN goods pertain to the precepts of natural law.”
As the first practical principle, then, the first precept is referring to and
directing toward the specifically human good. But it is directing toward
the human good as a whole. For it is also directing away from whatever
detracts from the human good or renders it defective, whatever is a human
bad. To be sure, the precept presents this whole in a quite unarticulated
and confused way. But then, that is what one would expect in the merely
natural knowledge of it, the knowledge that is common to all—just as the
common knowledge of human nature is a confused knowledge, acquired
prior to any analysis of it into its various dimensions.
Yet, as we saw, even the common knowledge of human nature does
somehow include knowledge of its various dimensions.These pertain to
its very concept, albeit confusedly. And in the same way, there are particular goods, fulfillments of the various dimensions of human nature, that
pertain to the very concept of the human good. For each, its belonging
to the human good is a truth that is per se nota omnibus. Each is naturally
apprehended to be a human good. This apprehension does not present
the goods in an abstract list. But it is such that when any of them is
considered, by practical reason, it is immediately understood as a human
good and as something for man to do or pursue, and anything seen to be
repugnant to it is immediately understood as bad and as something to be
avoided. For practical reason always has the whole human good somehow in view and sees everything else in relation to it.This is because the
first precept is its very first principle, always included in its consideration.
Of course a particular, concrete instance of one of these goods can also
be considered in other respects, and according to these, one might judge

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it not to be done or pursued. And a particular instance of something
repugnant to one of the goods, and so to the human good as a whole,
might be judged not to be avoided. This only means that it is after all
possible to judge, and to choose and act, contrary to our better judgment
and contrary to natural law.52
In effect, I am saying that what the first precept of natural law directs
us toward is our last end, happiness.53 In 91.2 Thomas calls natural law
“the first direction of our acts to the last end.”54 In 94.2 the main thesis
is that although its precepts are many, there is one precept in which the
others are rooted and to which they are referred. The others regard
particular or partial goods. Surely then the first precept must regard the
last end itself, man’s whole perfection and good, which excludes all
defect, all that is bad. The other precepts belong to natural law because
they regard things that are naturally understood to be parts of this whole.
Obviously the first precept presents this whole only in a very
“sketchy” way. It does not express exactly what our happiness consists in.
Nor of course does it simply prescribe happiness. As Aristotle says, even
if being happy depends chiefly on what we do, it also depends on good
fortune, which cannot be prescribed. But if someone’s conduct complied
fully with the first precept, and if his conduct succeeded fully in achieving its aim—in fully accomplishing and attaining the good, and in fully
avoiding the bad—then indeed he or she would be happy. What the first
precept sets before us is a goal of complete possession of the good and
complete deliverance from the bad. It answers perfectly to what Thomas
52 A la recherche is surely right to speak of the first precept as a “moral” principle

(§39). However, it might give the impression that what the first precept means
by “good” is solely the “moral” good, the goodness inherent in morally good
acts. For the document’s formulation of the precept is “one must do the good
and avoid the bad” (§44); it leaves out “pursue.” It sounds as though the good is
entirely something we “do” or effect, not also something we receive or share in
(partly through what we do). The last end, happiness, involves both. The moral
rule is the rule directing to the last end: see ST I–II, q. 21, a. 1, ad 2, together
with a. 2, ad 2 (. . .“the common end of human life”).The properly moral good
is only part of the whole human good, and the dictate pertaining to it—the
dictate to “act according to reason”—is a “lower” precept (ST I–II, q. 94, a. 3).
53 Despite the possible confusion signaled in n. 52, A la recherche does associate the first
precept with happiness (see §41). On the first precept as ordering to happiness and
as moral, see Giuseppe Butera,“The Moral Status of the First Principle of Practical
Reason in Thomas’s Natural-Law Theory,” The Thomist 71 (2007): 609–31.
54 ST I–II, q. 91, a. 2, ad 2. Pertinent is what he had said earlier about law in general:
“the first principle in matters of action, which practical reason concerns, is the
last end. Now the last end of human life is happiness or beatitude. Hence law
must regard most of all the order that is toward beatitude”: ST I–II, q. 90, a. 2.

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calls the “common concept” of happiness:“a perfect overall good” (bonum
commune perfectum ).55
A passage from the discussion of happiness in the Prima secundae offers
confirmation of this reading. In this passage Thomas is trying to show that
it is not possible for someone to have more than one last end at the same
time. One of his arguments is this:
[S]ince voluntary actions take their species from the end . . . it must be
from the last end, which is common, that they take the nature of their
genus; just as natural things are placed in a genus according to some
common formal nature. So, since all the desirable objects of the will, as
such, are of one genus, the last end must be one. And [this is clear]
above all because in any genus there is one first principle, and the last
end has the nature of a first principle. (ST I–II, q. 1, a. 5)

When we call the things that the lower precepts concern “human goods,”
we are seeing them as “desirable objects of the human will.”We are treating “human good” as a sort of genus to which they all belong.56 Things
are placed in a common genus insofar as they are somehow referred to a
common first principle, as natural substances are placed in the genus
“body” because they have the same first intrinsic principle, bodily matter.
The principle by reference to which things are placed in the genus of
human goods is man’s last end. This is the chief human good—“the”
human good, taken unqualifiedly.“Human good” is said of things per prius
et posterius, and what it is first said of is the last end. It is said of anything
else by reference to that.To be “a” human good, a member of this genus,
is either to be the last end itself, or else to contribute somehow to the last
end.This is what “a human good” means.57
55 “It is the common notion of beatitude that it be a perfect overall good; and this

[Boethius] signified when he said that it is ‘a state that is perfect in the gathering
of all goods,’ by which is signified nothing other than that the blessed person is
in the state of perfect good”: ST I–II, q. 3, a. 2, ad 2. Notice that whereas
Boethius’s formulation speaks of a “gathering of goods,”Thomas’s gloss presents
happiness as more of a genuine unity,“perfect good.”We do not start from various specific “basic goods” and only subsequently see the need to “integrate”
them. We start from the good as a whole, although we immediately see that it
has various parts.
56 Here “genus” is taken in the broad sense of something predicated commonly of
different kinds of things. It need not be univocal. Nor need it enter into the
essential definitions of the things that belong to it. Human life, for example, is a
human good, but its definition does not include its goodness.
57 It is no objection that the last end itself is a human good, whereas matter is not
a body but only potency for one. This only shows that “human good” is not
univocal in the way that “body” is.

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To be sure, as the same article indicates, “last end” can itself be said in
many ways. For instance, it may mean that in which man’s last end truly
consists, the vision of God. Not all are seeking this. Or it may mean the
end that a given individual is seeking. This may differ from what others
are seeking, and even from what he seeks at another time. But we can also
speak of the last end as naturally understood, its “common notion.”This
is the same for all, “because all desire to fulfill their perfection.”58 And
there are some perfections that we naturally understand to be included in
the last end. These are the particular goods that pertain to natural law.
They are intrinsic to the last end, not just instrumental to it. But they
need to be seen in subordination to it.59 And this is how practical reason
naturally does see them.
Returning to the theme of inclination, this way of understanding the
first precept of natural law and its relation to the other precepts makes
94.2 line up closely with the account of the will’s natural inclination in
ST I–II, q. 10, a. 1.The inclination reflects the precepts.
. . . [T]he principles of intellectual cognition are naturally known. And
likewise the principle of voluntary movements must be something
naturally willed. Now this is the good in general, to which the will
naturally tends, as indeed any power tends to its object; and also the last
end itself, which stands to appetible things as the first principles of
demonstration stand to intelligible things; and universally all the things
that suit the willing subject according to his nature. For by the will we
desire not only those things that pertain to the power of the will, but
also those things that pertain to each of the powers and to the whole
man. Hence man naturally wants not only the object of the will, but
also other things suited to other powers, such as the knowledge of the
true, which suits the intellect; and being and life and other such things
that regard natural continuance; all of which are comprehended under
the object of the will, as certain particular goods.

First he cites the existence of naturally known principles of intellectual
cognition, arguing that there must likewise be something naturally willed
that serves as principle of voluntary movements. Then he considers what
this is, distinguishing three aspects of it. I think we can see a correlation
between these and what he says about the knowledge of natural law in 94.2.
58 “We can speak of the last end in two ways: in one way, according to the very

notion of last end; in the other, according to that in which the notion of the last
end is found. And so with respect to the notion of the last end, all agree in the
desire of the last end, because all desire to fulfill their perfection, which is the
notion of the last end, as has been said”: ST I–II, q. 1, a. 7 (the reference is to a. 5).
59 See A la recherche, §79.

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The first aspect is the good in general, which is the will’s proper object.
This means that whatever the will wills is willed under the concept of
good.To this corresponds the fact that the first precept of natural law, and
hence natural law as a whole, is founded on the concept of the good.
Everything in the law has to do with the good. Of course not everything
that the will can will fits the law; even the bad has some good in it, and
as such it may be willed. The law, after all, is supposed to direct the will.
The second aspect is the last end, the complete or perfect good. Its place
among appetibles is like that of the first principles of demonstration
among intelligibles.The last end is the will’s primary object, the primary
good. To this, I have suggested, corresponds the first precept of natural
law. Finally come all the things that suit the will’s subject according to his
nature, taken universally. These are particular goods falling under the
will’s object, goods to which our will naturally tends, not simply because
it is will, but because it is human will. These “fill in” the common concept
of the last end as the perfect good.To them would correspond the lower
primary precepts of natural law.60
Thomas calls all of these—the good in general, the last end, and the
things that suit man’s nature—“something naturally willed.” He is seeing
them as a package.Any desire for a good as good, under the universal ratio
boni, implies desire of the last end, the whole or perfect good. And the
desire for the whole good is a desire for whatever particular goods are
immediately understood to be essential parts of it. Even though a man’s
particular choice can run contrary to these goods, he cannot altogether
lose the desire for them, taken universally.
V. The Universal Good and Wisdom
Earlier we noted that Thomas’s formulation of the first precept of natural law does not speak explicitly of the human good, but simply of the
60 He says that these goods include both what suits man’s various powers and what

suits the whole man.The goods cited in the corpus of 94.2 as pertaining to the
lower precepts all seem to regard the whole man, according to the various
dimensions of his whole nature. It is the whole man that is a substance, an
animal, and rational.The “parts” of human nature, such as the sense-appetites, are
mentioned in the second objection and reply.The inclinations of these parts, he
says, pertain to natural law insofar as they are ruled by reason. Actually even
reason’s own innate inclination to truth in general has to be regulated and
ordered to the last end (see ST II–II, q. 167, a. 1, ad 1, on the vice of curiositas )—
though it would be reason itself that does the regulating. Reason is man’s dominant part, and to it belongs the work of ordering toward the good of man as a
whole. This suggests again that the inclinations cited in the corpus of 94.2,
pertaining to man as a whole, proceed from reason itself.

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good, which he had formulated as what all desire. I suggested that insofar as the first precept is apprehended by practical reason, the good that
it regards is the human good. But taken simply as a truth, its scope is
broader. It applies to all beings. For each thing, it is true that it ought to
do and pursue the good and to avoid the bad, in the way proper to it.
Natural law, we should recall, is “a certain irradiation and participation of
the eternal law, which is the immutable truth” (ST I–II, q. 93, a. 2).The
eternal law is the law “by which it is just that all things be perfectly
ordered.”61 All true order is toward the good and away from the bad.That
all things fall under the order expressed in the first precept is shown by
the very fact that all things do tend to do and pursue their good and to
avoid their bad, each in its own way.62
The obvious objection to this is that it blurs the distinction between
speculative and practical principles. But now, we have already seen that
knowledge of speculative matters, such as human nature, can play a role
in practical reasoning. In 94.2, Thomas says that being is what falls first
into our apprehension “absolutely,” and that it is included in everything
whatsoever that one understands. So it is included in practical understanding too.63 Certainly practical thought has to respect the principle of
non-contradiction. The other common principles that Thomas cites in
94.2 also play obvious roles in practical thought. That “the whole is
greater than the part” is implicit in the understanding that the common
good is a greater good than the private.And that “things that are equal to
one same thing are equal to each other” has application in matters of
justice; the equal distribution of goods is often achieved by measuring
them against a single measure.
If only some principles are called practical, it must be because only
they are intrinsically apt to direct action.They alone are rules of action,
61 ST I–II, q. 93, a. 2, obj. 2; cf. ST I–II, q. 93, aa. 4 & 5.
62 I think a similar point holds for those “lower” precepts that regard goods pertain-

ing to the natures that man has in common with other things. The orders to
these goods are naturally seen as common. We see that all substances tend to
preserve their being according to their kind.We see the order between male and
female, parents and offspring, as something that “nature has taught all animals”
(94.2). (We also see the order to the goods proper to man as just that, proper to
man ; that is, common to all men.) As for the first precept, I think it can be said
to regard the inclination pertaining to the nature that we share, and see that we
share, with all beings : the inclination to the good. Of course, unlike natural law,
the participation in the eternal law that belongs to irrational things is not properly called “law” (ST I–II, q. 91, a. 2, ad 3).
63 A la recherche only sees the principle of non-contradiction “at the base of all speculative reasoning” (§39, my emphasis).

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precepts. But must their truth be confined to the sphere of human
action? If so, how can Thomas see fit to correlate many of them with
inclinations that man shares with non-human things? It may be that the
precepts do not serve as principles, for reasoning about such things, because
we do not reason about such things practically.We all see that reasoning
practically about things not in our power is otiose. So perhaps the first
precept of natural law serves as a principle only for practical thought. But
I would still suggest that the concept upon which it is based, the universal concept of the good, is at work from the very start in the understanding of both speculative and practical matters.64
Thomas says that the good is the first thing to fall in the apprehension
of practical reason. He does not say, however, that what the good first falls
into is the apprehension of practical reason. Reason first becomes practical through the apprehension of the good; through this it immediately
becomes practical, because as we saw, right then it begins to know and to
direct the will.65 But this does not entail that the apprehension of the
good is only practical, not also speculative.We saw too that the apprehension of the good involves the perception of desires and actions that do not
arise from our knowledge, those of the things around us. Taken on the
whole, as “what all desire,” the good is a speculative notion.Thomas says
that the “rule of human reason”—natural law—is “gathered from the
created things that man naturally knows” (ST I–II, q. 74, a. 7). He says this
quite generally. He certainly does not except the first precept.
Of course I do not mean that we naturally understand the good in the
speculative “mode” that we discussed early on. The natural understanding of it does not consist in “defining and dividing and considering its
universal predicates.”That would be the metaphysician’s job. Most people
reason about the good only in a practical way. But such reasoning
64 Here I am correcting something I said in “Natural Inclination . . . ”: that “our

original apprehension of the good is practical, not speculative” (74). In part, I was
simply assuming that it could not be both. But I had no good reason for this
assumption. I was also thinking that we are not originally in a position to judge
whether the generation of an entire species proceeds from some inclination toward
the species’ good. But this is incidental.We do, quite naturally, explain the typical activities of the members of a species as functions of the species’ good.We see
the members as belonging to the species “by nature,” according to what they
essentially are, and as having genuine inclination to the good of the species.We
see this good as defining their inclination, as its “formal principle,” and we see
their very existence as depending on this inclination.That we may subsequently
call this view into question, as Empedocles did and more recent thinkers have
done, is also quite incidental.
65 What moves the will is practical reason: ST I–II, q. 9, a. 1, ad 2.

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supposes at least a confused grasp of what the good is. And on the other
hand, neither do I mean only that some of the things that we naturally
understand to be good are speculative things, while others are practical
things. I am talking about the good itself, this universal intelligible “form,”
according to which whatever has it is “apt to be desired.”As we naturally
grasp it, this form functions both in a practical way, as that by which our
own understanding gives rise to certain things, and in a speculative way,
as a principle for explaining certain things that we merely observe.What
it gives rise to is our own desire and, through that, our own action.What
it explains are the desires in the natural things around us, together with
the effects of these desires—the movements and actions of these things,
and even their very existence, insofar as this too is an effect of natural
movement, action, and desire.A tree that is growing is doing what is good
for it, doing what it ought to do. And since for the most part what trees
do is what is good for them, we are naturally led to judge that they do it
because it is good for them, that it constitutes a true object and cause—a
formal principle —of their inclination.66
In both cases—in both the speculative and the practical function of the
concept of the good—what is at work is the good as good; that is, as a form
of causality, final causality. Final causality has this double function.We speak
of an end as a “cause” in the sense of that on account of which something
observed is done, that which it is done for; and we also speak of an end as
a “cause” in the sense of that which something is to be done about—a
“cause to pursue,” a “cause for rejoicing,” etc. A la recherche is aimed at
promoting the “causes” of peace, justice, and so forth.The intellectual grasp
of the good as what all desire is at once an explanation of what we observe
and the origin of the intellect’s own desire, that of the will.
I think it is far from otiose to consider that we naturally understand our
own good, and the order of action regarding it, in light of the universal
good.This has practical importance.We see the good generally as a nature
whose sway extends to all things.We see the good of any particular thing,
including our own, as a “participation” in this nature.We also see that for
each thing, what its perfect good consists in depends not only on the
thing’s own nature, but also on the natures of other things. What the
healthy activity of a tree consists in, for example, depends not only on
what the tree is, but also on what many other things are—the earth, the
air, the sun, and so forth. Now, a tree is so constituted as to act spontaneously in a way that is for the most part well-coordinated with the other
66 It requires further consideration, though perhaps not a great deal, to reach the

judgment that some mind is at the origin of this inclination—the sort of consideration that Thomas lays out in his Fifth Way (ST I, q. 2, a. 3).

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factors. But we are not. In order to attain our end, and even in order to
know what our end is with sufficient precision to move ourselves toward
it, it is not enough to have grasped the general concept of the good.67 Nor
is it enough to have grasped also the essential dimensions of our own
nature.We need to know about the rest of reality too—a good deal more
about it than what we “naturally” know. This fact too is something we
naturally grasp.We all see the need to learn the “facts of life.”
To put it another way, we naturally want to share in the good as much
as we can.68 But what we naturally or immediately know about the good
as a whole is very sketchy.The concept of the good as “what all desire”
is some sort of grasp of the nature of the good, but it is very imperfect.
It does not present this nature in light of its own first principles. What
our end is, and what the due order to it is, depend ultimately on our relation to these. But since the good extends to everything, the inquiry into
its first principles is in effect an inquiry into the first principles of all reality. And in 94.2 itself Thomas indicates that this is something that we
naturally perceive. Cited first among the goods to which man is naturally
inclined according to the nature proper to him, the nature of reason, is
“to know the truth about God.”
Regarding this, we should also recall a famous article appearing just
prior to the Treatise on Law in the Summa theologiae.69 Here we are shown
the urgency with which the question of the end naturally presents itself.
The article is about whether a person can have venial sin together with
only original sin, without mortal sin.This is not possible, it says, because
until reaching the use of reason, he can have only original sin; and upon
reaching it, he is faced at once with a grave choice. It is a choice about
the very use of his reason. For “the first thing that then occurs to a man
to ponder is to deliberate about himself.”This means to inquire into his
end. If he takes the inquiry seriously, ordering himself as best he can to
his “due end,” he will “turn to God,” obtain grace and be quit of original sin. If not, he sins mortally.70
67 The question would be what the “common concept” of the end is “found in”:

ST I–II, q. 1, a. 7; cf. q. 5, a. 8.
68 Only that which is a “bonum universale” can fully satisfy the will: see ST I–II, q.

2, aa. 7 & 8; q. 5, a. 1.
69 ST I–II, q. 89, a. 6. See also In II Sent., d. 42, q. 1, a. 5, ad 7; De malo, q. 5, a. 2, ad

8, and q. 7, a. 10, ad 8 and ad 9.
70 “I am going to ask you a question, my dear brethren. . . . It is this:—‘Why were

you sent into the world?’ . . .There are those who recollect the first time, as it would
seem, when it came home to them.They were but little children, and they were
by themselves, and they spontaneously asked themselves, or rather God spake in
them, ‘Why am I here? How came I here? Who brought me here? What am I to

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Grace of course belongs to the supernatural order. But Thomas is also
talking about how reason naturally functions. In what he says I think we
can see three things.The first is the absolute primacy of the last end.This
is what first occurs to a person to think about when he reaches the use of
reason—the full capacity for deliberation and moral action.The second is
that our natural understanding of the last end is not only sketchy, but also
something whose sketchiness we naturally perceive.That is why we at once
see the need to deliberate about it, to bring it into better focus.The third
is that we naturally understand that what our true last end consists in somehow calls into play our relation to the whole world.71 Otherwise why
would serious inquiry into it necessarily lead to God? If one gives full due
priority to his own perfect good, then the very nature of the situation, as
he naturally perceives it, is such that his thought and his desire will be
oriented toward the source of all good, which is the source of all being.
A la recherche does have important things to say about the relation
between God and natural law. It calls attention to traditions of wisdom
that assert the existence of a divine order of goodness in things (§12ff.).
Against Grotius, it insists that in the doctrine of natural law, reference to
God is not an “option” (§32). It also says that “only taking into account
the metaphysics of the real can give to natural law its full and entire
philosophical justification” (§62). These points, however, only concern
God’s place in teachings about natural law. The document does not say
much about how God is involved in natural law as “naturally known.” It
does speak of a natural inclination “to know God,” but only after citing
the inclination to live in society, and entirely in the context of man’s
general need for “personal relationships.”
The person’s relational character also expresses itself in the tendency to
live in communion with God or the Absolute. It shows itself in the religious sentiment and in the desire to know God. Certainly it can be
denied by those who refuse to admit the existence of a personal God,
but it remains no less implicitly present in the search for truth and
meaning that dwells in every human being.To these tendencies specific
to man corresponds the need perceived by reason to realize in the
concrete this life of relations and to construct life in society on just
bases that correspond to natural right. (§50–51)
do here?’ Perhaps it was the first act of reason, the beginning of their real responsibility, the commencement of their trial; perhaps from that day they may date their
capacity, their awful power, of choosing between good and evil, and of committing
mortal sin”: John Henry Newman, “God’s Will the End of Life,” Discourses
Addressed to Mixed Congregations (London: Burns & Oates, 1881), 104.
71 Very pertinent here is A la recherche, §12.

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705

There is no further mention of a natural inclination regarding God. Nor
is there any mention of God’s being inevitably “on the horizon” at the
moment of reaching the use of reason.72
In 94.2, Thomas cites the inclination to know the truth about God
prior to the inclination to live in society. I do not think he is suggesting
that men naturally locate their end chiefly in this very knowledge. We
saw that he judges the active life “more connatural” to man than the
speculative. Not many are prone to be philosophers. But he is definitely
presenting the philosopher’s goal—wisdom—as something that everyone
naturally sees a strong need for. Wisdom is the chief intellectual virtue,
the one that “considers the highest cause, which is God” (ST I–II, q. 66,
a. 5).To know about the universal good “pertains to wisdom”; the good
is a feature of “universal being,” which is “a proper effect of the highest
cause, namely God” (ibid., ad 4). Even simply grasping the universal
concepts of good and being is already the basis for an “immediate order
to the universal principle of being” (ST II–II, q. 2, a. 3).
If people quite generally see the need to know the truth about God,
is it not because they see that without it they are very much more in the
dark about where life is headed, about what they can and cannot hope
for, and about how to pursue their hope? Surely it is not just part of a
generic need for personal relations (much less a “sentiment,” which
sounds “pre-rational”). Its bearing on our desire for “fullness of being” is
really quite global. Consider the desire for conservation in being. With
respect to it, the question of God is in a way even more pressing than the
need for society. Society is a powerful factor in our survival, but not even
the best social order can abolish death.“Every being with intellect naturally desires to be forever” (ST I, q. 75, a. 6). We all want to know the
truth about death, and we know that it is tied to the truth about God.
Atheists too can see that the question of God’s existence is a grave one.
And I strongly doubt whether Thomas would agree that some desire for
a God—understood as a supreme good —can ever be truly denied, even by
someone who denies that a God exists.
I am stressing the question about God and its universal practical import. It
is bound up with the question of our true end, which is the absolutely first
practical question. Natural law is what first directs us toward our end, and as
Thomas seems to see it, the first effect of this direction is to raise these very
questions. If this is right, then it signals some rather large issues for the project that A la recherche has in view. For instance, would a “universal ethical
language” not require general agreement that there is such a thing as
72 It does say that upon reaching the use of reason, one experiences “a call to

accomplish the good” (§39).

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mankind’s common end? To what extent would it require agreement about
what that end is? Might it even require a “universal language of the divine”?
What we have seen does suggest that from Thomas’s perspective, it would at
N&V
least require a universal language of “the natural.”

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707

Diplomacy and Theology in the Dialogue
on Universal Ethics
J. B UDZISZEWSKI
University of Texas
Austin,Texas

I. How to Read the Document
C ONSIDERING the International Theological Commission’s hope
of encouraging broad dialogue between the Church and other parties
about the natural law, there is a certain advantage in knowing how an
outsider might view its authors’ work.Allow me to try.Though Catholic,
I am a convert from Protestantism, and before that a convert from secularism. Though a natural law scholar, I have pursued the subject from
inside the Church for a smaller fraction of my life than I pursued it from
outside.Though I would hope to be considered in a small way a disciple
of Thomas Aquinas, I was not introduced to his thought in any of the
conventional Catholic ways. I am not “in” on the Church’s consultations;
the very diction of curial documents still seems a bit strange to me; and
the sheer mass of such documentation presents to me the aspect of a
labyrinth. Although all these are limitations, sometimes a limitation can
be of service, and perhaps this is one of those times.
Having learned the hard way, let me hazard the suggestion that anyone
who wishes to engage the documents of the Church—to enter into the
spirit of their deliberations and even, perhaps, respond—must keep two
points in mind. I apologize to insiders, to whom these points may seem
obvious. But others may bring different expectations, such as those
formed in Protestantism, other traditions, or secular academia.
The first and most important is that the documents of the Church are
not purely works of doctrine, but also works of religious diplomacy.This
is most plainly true when their audience lies partly or wholly outside the
Church, when they are addressed, for example, to the United Nations

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Assembly, to “representatives from the world of culture,” or simply to “all
men of good will.” But it is often just as true when they are addressed
from one body of the Church to another, as for example in the present
case, for the task of the International Theological Commission is to
advise the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. In making the
ITC statement public—hereafter I will call it simply the Statement—of
course the Church knew that the world was looking over her shoulder.
More than that, at least in this case she wanted the world to look. Even
if this fact could not have been guessed from the Statement’s text, it
would have become obvious as soon as she began to call the world’s
attention to it. Within a few months, for example, Cardinal Bertone, the
Vatican Secretary of State, mentioned it in an address to the Italian
Senate, wherein he declared that “it addresses topics of great importance
which I wish to point out and to recommend especially in this context
of the Senate, that is, an institution whose main function is legislative.”1
Because the imperatives of such a document are not only theological but
diplomatic as well, it may devote greater attention to some points than
one would expect, while others may be so delicately understated as to
seem almost not stated at all.
The other thing to keep in mind is that the most conspicuous feature
of the deliberations of the Church is not hierarchy, as popularly supposed,
but massively parallel, massively distributed discussion. Numerous bodies
and individuals in diverse places and times consider various facets of each
problem. Authority is exercised, but more sparingly than one might expect.
Even apart from the protective guidance of the Holy Spirit, this mode of
deliberation would be unlikely to produce irreversible mistakes in doctrine.
The gears turn too slowly for that. It is much more likely to produce gaffes
in diplomacy, gaffes, because history unfolds faster than doctrine. Like a
churning sea, the world is always tossing up new challenges to the teaching of the Church, and she reacts much better than she anticipates.When
the new war is at hand, she is still rethinking her strategy for the last one—
a point to which I will have occasion to return later on.
From what I have already said, it will come as no surprise when I suggest
that the Statement has two linked goals, one diplomatic, the other philosophical and theological. Consequently it must be read from both angles.
II. Diplomatic and Theological Aims
The diplomatic goal of the Statement is to encourage dialogue among the
various religions and wisdom traditions about the natural moral law.“The
1 Address of Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Secretary of State, During His Visit to the

Senate of the Italian Republic, 28 July 2009.

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search for a common ethical language concerns everyone,” it declares.
“Enlightened by the Gospel, engaged in a patient and respectful dialogue
with all men of good will, Christians partake in the common search for
human values to promote.”2 One reason to encourage dialogue is to help
the various religions and wisdom traditions come to share a deeper understanding and respect for the truth about the human person.These traditions
show significant convergence on many of the concrete ethical particulars
of this truth. However, they show great differences in the ways that they try
to explain these particulars, and this hinders further convergence.
Another reason to encourage dialogue is to reassert and secure the
place in public moral discourse of the Catholic Church herself, a place
which is presently threatened not only by secularist ideology but by the
hostility of some other religions. Yet in protecting her place in the
conversation, the Church is not just acting as another interest group, but
attempting to follow her vocation.The primary element in her vocation
is to be the witness and guardian of the gospel. But the gospel illuminates
and fulfills the natural law at the same time that it transcends it; Jesus
Christ restores the true nature of man as the image of God, an image
which for long was obscured by sin, and goes on to reveal that man’s
destiny is not merely natural but supernatural. Consequently, the Church
also understands herself as the authentic interpreter and guardian of the
natural law: “Certainly the natural law is accessible to human reason,
common to believers and nonbelievers, and the Church does not have it
exclusively, but since revelation takes up the requirements of the natural
law, the Magisterium of the Church has been established the guarantor
and interpreter of it.”3 On the one hand the natural law is “a fundamental link with the new law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus,” while on
the other it “offers a wider base for dialogue with persons of another
orientation or of another formation, in view of the search for the
common good.”4
The philosophical and theological goal of the Statement is to restate
the doctrine of natural law in such a way as to clear up points which may
obscure the hoped-for dialogue and to help it to advance. One of the aims
of restatement is to enable non-Catholics to recognize natural law for
what it is, as the truth about man, accessible to reason, rather than as a
teaching of purely Catholic interest, accessible only by revelation.Another
aim is to counsel the Church in her response to the confusions about
2 Statement, §3.
3 Statement, §34.
4 Statement, §112, quoting John Paul II, Papal Address to the Congregation for the

Doctrine of the Faith, 18 January 2002.

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natural law which circulate outside her boundaries, especially in the secular world.These confusions are manifold. Among the most prominent are
moral relativism and legal positivism. At a deeper level still, they include
ideologies which divide reason from truth, divide power from goodness,
divide nature from freedom, or deny transcendence, viewing man as a
purely material being or a creature of the state. In order to pull up these
errors at the root, the Church must see natural law clearly in the context
of all three phases of salvation history: Creation, Fall, and Redemption.
The philosophy and theology of the Statement do not contain any
obvious errors. In view of the scrutiny that they had already received
before publication, one would not expect them to. If its presentation may
be said to contain weaknesses, they lie more in overemphasis, underemphasis, and omission.When a document has dual purposes, however, small
faults in theoretical presentation may constitute large faults in diplomacy.
III. WHAT Is In and What Is Out
If the Church is serious about dialogue with other religions and wisdom
traditions, then she must find ways to show the prospective dialogue partners why dialogue is important. Why must we achieve a universal ethics?
It isn’t enough simply to say that today the human race confronts great
ethical problems; other religions may think they have the answers to these
problems already. Nor is it enough simply to assert that the global scale
of these problems requires consensus; other religions may view their solution as more likely to be found in imposing their answers on the rest of
us. What has to be done is to show that natural law is worth thinking
about even from their point of view.
This would seem to require showing adherents of other traditions that
the natural law doctrine begins from the same experiences that all humans
share, but provides deeper resources for understanding them, and this
seems to be the Statement’s intention. Prudently, though, it first tries to
foster hope that consensus about ethical norms is even possible. In order
to foster that hope, the Statement surveys the great religions and wisdom
traditions of the world, calling attention to how much consensus there is
already. Not only do the traditions agree that there are universal rules,5
they substantially agree about their particulars. In particular, the golden
rule is explicitly proposed almost everywhere, at least in its negative form,
“Do not do unto others what you would not wish them to do unto you.”
5 “[T]hey generally agree in the recognition that the great ethical rules are not

imposed by a determinate human group, but are universally valid for every individual and for all people.” Statement, §12.

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711

Moreover, the ethical precepts of two traditions, Hinduism and Islam, can
be brought into correspondence with the precepts of the Decalogue.6
Therein lies the first surprise. Just Hinduism and Islam? I am a little
surprised by the understatement. Catholic tradition has long considered
the Decalogue an unparalleled summary of the natural law written
universally on the hearts of man, even though universally obscured by the
evasions and subterfuges of men. Despite the prevalence of sin, don’t all
peoples reprobate murder and theft? Doesn’t every great wisdom tradition
approve honor to parents? Isn’t greed held universally in dishonor? Even
where devotion to the One High God is obscured by the cult of lesser
gods, isn’t reverence for deity commended everywhere?7 Pope Benedict
XVI had far more warmly emphasized the universality of the precepts of
the Decalogue in his address to the ITC three years previously:8
The contribution of the International Theological Commission, aimed
above all to justify and describe the foundations of a universal ethic that
is part of the great patrimony of human knowledge which in a certain
way constitutes the rational creature’s participation in the eternal law of
6 “Different precepts of the Hindu tradition can be put in parallel with the

requirements of the Decalogue” (Statement, Section 13).“From the prescriptions
of [the] positive divine law [of Islam] many persons regain the great elements of
the moral patrimony of humanity and they can be set in relation to the Decalogue” (Statement, §17).
7 As anthropologist Clyde Kluckhohn wrote during the previous generation’s
debate over relativism,“Every culture has a concept of murder, distinguishing this
from execution, killing in war, and other ‘justifiable homicides.’ The notions of
incest and other regulations upon sexual behavior, of prohibitions upon untruth
under defined circumstances, of restitution and reciprocity, of mutual obligations
between parents and children—these and many other moral concepts are altogether universal.” Still earlier John M. Cooper had spoken of a “universal moral
code” which “agrees rather closely with our own Decalogue taken in a strictly
literal sense.” Clyde Kluckhohn,“Ethical Relativity: Sic et Non,” Journal of Philosophy, 52 (1955): 663 (article reprinted in Ethical Relativism, ed. John Ladd
[Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1985], 78–95). John M. Cooper,“The
Relations Between Religion and Morality in Primitive Culture,” Primitive Man
[now Anthropological Quarterly] 4 (1931): 36. Interest in moral universals seems to
be increasing among contemporary anthropologists, albeit largely under the influence of evolutionary psychology rather than the doctrine of natural law.
8 Benedict XVI, papal address to the members of the International Theological
Commission, 5 October 2007. See also the remarks on natural law in his previous address to the ITC on 1 December 2005, and his address to the participants
in the International Congress on Natural Moral Law on 12 February 2007. See
also the papal addresses of John Paul II to the ITC on 7 October 2004, and to
the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on 18 January 2002. The relevant encyclical letters of John Paul II include Veritatis Splendor, 6 August 1993,
Evangelium Vitae, 25 March 1995, and Fides et Ratio, 14 September 1998.

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J. Budziszewski
God, is eagerly awaited. It is not, therefore, a theme of an exclusively or
mainly denominational kind, although the doctrine on natural moral
law is illuminated and developed to the full in the light of Christian
revelation and the fulfillment of man in the mystery of Christ.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church sums up well the central content
of the doctrine on natural moral law, pointing out that it “states the first
and essential precepts which govern the moral life. It hinges upon the
desire for God and submission to him, who is the source and judge of all
that is good, as well as upon the sense that the other is one’s equal. Its
principal precepts are expressed in the Decalogue.This law is called ‘natural,’ not in reference to the nature of irrational beings, but because reason
which decrees it properly belongs to human nature” [CCC 1955].With
this doctrine two essential goals are reached: on the one hand, it is understood that the ethical content of the Christian faith does not constitute
an imposition dictated to the human conscience from the outside but a
norm inherent in human nature itself; on the other hand, on the basis of
natural law, in itself accessible to any rational creature, with this doctrine
the foundations are laid to enter into dialogue with all people of good
will and more generally, with civil and secular society.

Compared with the Pope’s remarks about the Decalogue, the Statement’s
sparse references give a certain impression of retreat. I hope I am not
reading too much into them. If I am, my excuse must lie in the importance of the point in question. Concerning the Decalogue’s relationship
with the golden rule, two common misconceptions must be discouraged.
One is that its precepts are obscure—that although they may follow from
the golden rule, they are at best remote rather than proximate implications. On the contrary,“there are certain things which the natural reason
of every man, of its own accord and at once, judges to be done or not to
be done: e.g.‘Honor thy father and thy mother,’ and ‘Thou shalt not kill,
Thou shalt not steal: and these belong to the law of nature absolutely.”9
The opposite misconception is that the golden rule generates the
precepts of the Decalogue all by itself, without help, as though he who
said the former said the latter. But the golden rule concerns only the
second tablet of the Decalogue, duties to neighbor, and it generates these
9 Thomas Aquinas, ST I–II q. 100, a. 2. The point of St. Thomas’s apparently

contrary remark that “formerly, theft, although it is expressly contrary to the natural law, was not considered wrong among the Germans,” I–II, q. 94, a. 4, is not that
the Germans did not know the wrong of theft in the abstract, but that when they
raided other tribes they did not recognize this theft as wrong, because they did
not recognize it as theft. St. Thomas knew that the Germans punished private
theft. For discussion, see J. Budziszewski, The Line Through the Heart: Natural Law
as Fact,Theory, and Sign of Contradiction (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2009), 45–46.

Diplomacy and Theology

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duties only in the light of right desire. Imagine a man reasoning, “I
wouldn’t mind if that fellow slept with my wife; fidelity is boring, and
possessiveness is old-fashioned anyway.Therefore, he shouldn’t mind if I
sleep with his.” In fact, the Decalogue and golden rule co-illuminate each
other, and a certain perception of both is found universally.
IV. WHO Is In and Who Is Out
Surprises lie too in what is and is not included in the Statement’s survey
of religions. Separate sections are allotted to Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam,
African religions, and Taoism and Confucianism, the latter two treated
together. The weight given to African religions is surprising, because
although they are “traditional” in the sense of being passed on from
generation to generation, they do not constitute a “tradition” in the sense
of a self-conscious, developing, coherent inquiry into the truth with
which one might enter into dialogue. Rather we are speaking of various
animistic observances which happen to be widespread on the African
continent.The treatment of animism is surprising in another way too:
The human being, microcosm within the macrocosm, lives intensely
the drama of the clash between life and death.The task that falls to him,
of assuring the victory of life over death, orients and determines his
ethical action.Thus man should identify, in a consequent ethical horizon, the allies of life, gaining them to his cause and thus assuring his
own survival which is at the same time the victory of life. This is the
profound meaning of the traditional African religions.10

I think this language might startle African Christians, who would instantly
recognize phrases like “identifying the allies of life” as euphemisms for the
placation of good and evil spirits, both human and nonhuman, by means
of witchcraft and necromancy. Of course the authentically religious longings of all people should be treated with respect. Surely, though, it passes
beyond respect to describe soul-enslaving practices as though they were
somehow humanizing. If we are to speak so flatteringly about witchcraft in
the global South, then why should we not speak that way about, say, abortion in the global North? Radical feminists do. Ginette Paris writes,“Our
culture needs new rituals as well as laws to restore abortion to its sacred
dimension, which is both terrible and necessary.” She considers abortion “a
sacrament for the gift of life to remain pure.”11 But complicity with this
sort of speech in no way contributes to real dialogue.
10 Statement, §16.
11 Ginette Paris, The Sacrament of Abortion, trans. Joanna Mott (Dallas: Spring Publi-

cations, 1992), 92, 107.

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714

In charity, I do not think the authors of the Statement were trying to be
complicit with it. Perhaps they meant only that like other traditional
cultures, African cultures contain “cultural capital” which can serve as a
praeparatio evangelica 12 —such things as the cherishing of children, the
honoring of parents, and the veneration (I do not say propitiation and
worship) of ancestors.This is certainly true, but if that was their intention
then they should have written with greater attention to necessary distinctions. In speaking of animism and paganism, a better tone was struck by
then-Cardinal Ratzinger in his book Introduction to Christianity, where he
wrote that in ancient times,“in an environment teeming with gods,” when
Christians were asked to which god their God corresponded, “the answer
ran: to none of them. To none of the gods to whom you pray but solely
and alone to him to whom you do not pray, to that highest being of whom
your philosophers speak.” He rightly remarks, “The choice thus made
meant opting for the logos as against any kind of myth.”13 Surely this must
be the answer not only of Christians but of all who adhere to natural law.
Another odd thing about the survey of world wisdom traditions is that
it omits Judaism. To be sure, ancient Jewish writings are respectfully
discussed in a later section, in the context of Sacred Scripture. But they
appear in that section because they are part of Christian Scripture, not
because they make up Jewish Scripture. Certainly the Jewish and Christian religions grow from the same root. To Christianity, Judaism is an
older brother. But this does not make Judaism and Christianity the same
religion, and the omission of Judaism from the Statement’s survey of
wisdom traditions gives the disquieting impression that Jews are not partners in the intended dialogue, that they come into the picture only as
precursors to Christianity. I am sure that this impression was not
intended. No doubt the authors of the dialogue were trying to emphasize the very closeness of the bond between Jews and Christians, not to
shut them out. Nonetheless the impression is hard to resist, and it is a
diplomatic gaffe. Judaism has a natural law tradition of its own, the
rabbinical tradition of the Seven Commandments given to the “Sons” or
descendants of Noah, who include all humans now living. The fact that
the Statement relegates the tradition of Noahide Commandments to a
footnote is a scandal.

12 A point the Statement makes, not about cultures, but about wisdom traditions,

in §12.
13 Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity, trans. J. R. Foster (New

York: Herder and Herder, 1970), 94–95.

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715

V. What Happened to Protestantism?
Protestants are omitted from the survey too, probably for similar reasons.
The problem is not that they are too far away, but that they are too close;
in the eyes of the Church they are not exactly an independent tradition,
or even a disputatious family of traditions, but another group of separated
brothers.Yes, they have certain difficulties with natural law, but the diplomatic strategy seems to be to minimize these differences, as though the
differences were all a misunderstanding which is clearing itself up. Not
until later in the Statement, in an otherwise admirable discussion about
the damage sustained by natural law tradition in modern times, are
Protestants even mentioned.We meet in one section the observation that
“several factors led to the secularization of the notion of natural law.
Among these, one can recall the growing divorce between faith and
reason which characterizes the end of the Middle Ages, or some aspects
of the Reformation[.]”14 A footnote maintains that Protestant hostility to
natural law arose no earlier than the nineteenth century:
The position of the Reformers as regards the natural law was not monolithic. More than Martin Luther, John Calvin, basing himself on St. Paul,
recognizes the existence of the natural law as ethical norm, even if it is
radically incapable of justifying man.‘Nothing, indeed, is more common,
than for man to be sufficiently instructed in a right course of conduct by
natural law, of which the Apostle here speaks [. . .].The end of the natural law, therefore, is to render man inexcusable, and may be not improperly defined as: the judgment of conscience distinguishing sufficiently
between just and unjust, and by convicting men on their own testimony,
depriving them of all pretext for ignorance.’ In the three ages following
the Reformation, for the Protestants the natural law served as the foundation for jurisprudence. Only with the secularization of the natural law,
in the 19th century, has Protestant theology distanced itself from it. Only
from this period has there been opposition between Catholic and Protestant opinion on the question of the natural law. But today the Protestant
ethic seems to manifest a new interest in this notion.15

That’s all; no more is said.There is no greater scandal to Christian natural law tradition than that even some Christians reject it, and I wonder
why the Statement gives it so little attention.
Many Protestants do show greater interest in natural law today than
formerly; the Statement is not wrong about that. However, the multiplicity
of voices in Protestantism, some for the natural law and others against, makes
14 Statement, §31.
15 Statement, §36.

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J. Budziszewski

natural law diplomacy harder, not easier.The problem is not that there will
be no one on the other side to talk to, but that no one on the other side
speaks for the other side as such. Not only do some of the voices react
against the Catholic Church, they react against each other, so that the
Church may meet stumbling blocks even when she does everything right.
Consider for example the agreement on the doctrine of justification
achieved between the Church and the Lutheran World Federation in 1999,
one of the greatest triumphs of the Church’s interreligious diplomacy in
modern times.16 At the time, when I was still firmly Protestant, the Joint
Declaration struck me like a thunderclap. Reading it, recalling Luther’s
words that justification was the article on which the Church stands or falls,
I thought to myself, “The Reformation is over.” Reaction among wellinformed Protestants whom I knew was quite different. Most were simply
indifferent; intuitively if not theoretically congregationalist, they viewed all
faith as local. Among those who did take an interest, some held that the
agreement was merely verbal, a trick of ambiguous wording, signifying
nothing. Others held that it was real but unimportant, because the article on
which the Church stands or falls is really the sovereignty of God (what has
Wittenburg to do with Geneva?) Still others held that it was real, but that
the liberals in the Lutheran World Federation did not represent their views.
A sizable group conceded that the Declaration would be important if the
Catholic Church meant what she said, but this would have required renunciation of the Council of Trent, therefore the Church must have been lying.
My point is not that dialogue with such a fractured, multifarious world
as Protestantism is impossible—on natural law or any other topic—but
that it requires much greater energy and much more explicit attention
than the Statement gives to it. One must not simply assume that Protestants will come around on their own.
A still deeper complication of dialogue about natural law with Protestants is that even if it were true, as the Statement suggests, that Protestant
theology began to distance itself from natural law only in the nineteenth
century—a claim which is at least debatable—the roots of this hostility go
all the way back to the Reformers. They lie in suspicion of reason and
nature as such, the former a “whore,”17 the latter depraved beyond recognition.To be sure, not even Luther denied the reality of the natural law; in
16 Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification by the Lutheran World Feder-

ation and the Catholic Church, 31 October 1999.
17 “As a young man must resist lust and an old man avarice, so reason is by nature a

harmful whore. But she shall not harm me, if only I resist her. Ah, but she is so
comely and glittering.” Martin Luther, “Last Sermon in Wittenberg” (Second
Sunday in Epiphany, 17 January 1546), in Luther’s Works,Vol. 51, ed. and trans. John

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717

fact he insisted on it strongly, a point which cannot be emphasized enough.
The problem is that no such endorsement could continue to survive in the
soil of such awful qualms. Calvin’s theology is quite favorable to natural law
doctrine. In various works, he finds a basis in natural law for the ordinance
of marriage, the condemnation of fornication, the esteem due to the capable, the honor due to the old, the prohibition of incest, the help given to
the needy, the affection of fathers for their children, the duties of sons
toward their fathers (more generally of children toward their parents), and
the even greater duties of husbands toward their wives. More fundamentally, he understood—something Luther did not—that nature could not
actually be bad.What he held was that our good nature is in a bad condition, which is exactly correct. Nor, unlike some of his followers, did he hold
that no good is left in us; what he held was that each good is injured. But
the extremity of some of Calvin’s language, and his denial of free will, led
some of his would-be heirs to different conclusions, thinking that we have
altogether lost our nature and received in its place something else, a “sin
nature”—an idea Calvin himself would have viewed as Manichaean.18
Present-day hostility to natural law among Protestants comes in several
varieties, some of which are losing influence, but some of which are gaining.To speak just of the North American continent, the first branch—what
is left of it—is rooted in the liberal Protestantism of the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries. In reaction to the Reformers’ suspicion of unredeemed
reason, these liberals defended a certain understanding of reason, but a
diminished understanding which set itself against revelation; the Catholic
understanding of reason and revelation as complementary to each other was
as foreign to its thought as it was to Luther’s. Having relativized Scripture,
they have now gone on to relativize nature and reason as well, so that liberal
Protestantism looks more and more like secular relativism with a Christian
veneer.The second branch is a reaction to the reaction. In my country, its
strongest representatives are neo-Calvinist.19 They draw from a strong intellectual tradition, but this tradition is primarily exegetical.Viewing itself as
B. Doberstein, gen. ed. Helmut T. Lehmann (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press,
1959), 371–80, quoting from 376, emphasis added.
18 As Calvin wrote against the Manichees,“it is not admitted that there is any thing
naturally bad throughout the universe; the depravity and wickedness whether of
man or of the devil, and the sins thence resulting, being not from nature, but
from the corruption of nature; nor, at first, did anything whatever exist that did
not exhibit some manifestation of the divine wisdom and justice.” John Calvin,
Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 1, Chapter 14, Section 3, trans. Henry
Beveridge (public domain; online version at www.ccel.org).
19 Foundational to this school of thought is the work of the Dutch Reformed
thinker Abraham Kuyper. See especially “Calvinism and Politics,” one of the

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J. Budziszewski

rooted in Scripture rather than in autonomous reason, which it regards as
the wisdom of men in opposition to “the foolishness of God,”20 it is deeply
suspicious of philosophical articulations of natural law. The third branch, I
am tempted to say, is a reaction to this reaction to the reaction. Surprisingly,
its sources lie largely in the Anabaptist world, small in numbers but growing
in influence. Suspicious not only of philosophy but even of systematic theology, neo-Anabaptists—I will call them that—emphasize the necessity of
maintaining the purity and integrity of the Church against the powers
and principalities of the world, recalling St. Paul’s affirmation that “our
commonwealth is in heaven.”21 In their view these powers and principalities include not only human authorities, but even the dynamisms implanted
in Creation itself, so irredeemably damaged by the Fall that they are actually hostile to man.22
Although both neo-Calvinists and neo-Anabaptists are suspicious of
natural law (though for different reasons), neo-Calvinism has a certain
conflicted attraction to the doctrine. One might go so far as to say that while
pushing it out through the front door, neo-Calvinism invites it in again
through various back doors, such as the idea of “common” or “preserving”
grace, which sustains the structures of Creation even in the face of sin. Both
Lutheran and Reformed historians have lately rediscovered the natural law
theologies of such thinkers as Vermigli, Althusius, and Turretin.23 In the
meantime, interest in natural law has grown strongly among Evangelicals,24
despite their biblicist leanings, because as biblical literacy vanishes among the
Stone Foundation Lectures that Kuyper delivered at Princeton University in
1898. All six lectures are available at www.kuyper.org. For discussion, see J.
Budziszewski, Evangelicals in the Public Square (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006), 55–72.
20 1 Cor 1:25.
21 Phil 3:20. All scriptural quotations are from the RSV.
22 Illustrative of this tendency is the thought of the Mennonite theologian John
Howard Yoder, whose influence on American Protestants has been strong but
mostly indirect. For critical discussion of his views of natural law, focusing on his
book The Politics of Jesus:Vicit Agnus Noster, 2d ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans,
1994), see J. Budziszewski, Evangelicals in the Public Square, 87–119.
23 See, e.g., A Preserving Grace: Protestants, Catholics, and Natural Law, ed. Michael
Cromartie (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997) and Stephen J. Grabill, Rediscovering the Natural Law in Reformed Theological Ethics (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans,
2006).
24 In the U.S., the expression “Evangelical” has different connotations than in
Europe, having to do with the movement and culture—today the largest among
American Protestants—which descends from the Great Awakenings and preserves
some of its revivalistic characteristics. Evangelical historian Mark A. Noll observes
that the Evangelical style of communication is “direct,”“personal,” and “popular,”

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719

citizens, there no longer seems to be a common language in which Christians can address non-believers.25
To capitalize on these openings, I wish the Statement had said more
about what it means for nature to serve as a norm in the face of the Fall.
Natural law theorists do not imagine that nature is not fallen, but they seek
to view the Fall in right perspective.We have not ceased to be human and
become something else; we have not lost our nature and acquired a
wicked nature, as though there could be such a thing as an evil substance;
but our nature is disordered. Even though it preserves the same intelligibility, our vision of it is obscured and our power to follow it impaired; we
are at odds with ourselves. As Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger once remarked
in an interview, “[C]reation has been damaged. Human existence is no
longer what was produced at the hands of the Creator. It is burdened with
another element that produces, besides the innate tendency toward God,
the opposite tendency away from God. In this way man is torn between
the original impulse of creation and his own historical inheritance.”26
Such is the Church’s teaching. But let us be frank: Don’t some statements by officials of the Church seem to run from it? If Protestants sometimes dwell on the Fall so obsessively that natural law is obscured, don’t
Catholics at times seem afraid to speak of it at all, and isn’t this a diplomatic failing too? The deposit of faith is all one piece; the schism of 1517
did not divide the Christian patrimony; yet one of its tragic consequences
is that both sides sometimes speak as though it did. According to some
Protestants, the doctrine of the Fall belongs to them. According to some
Catholics (though not the Church herself), they can have it. I do not
think the authors of the Statement are running from the doctrine of the
Fall, but I wish they had said more about it.
One more point about Protestants—at any rate conservative Protestants.Although they accommodate themselves to the secular world much
more than they realize, they dreadfully fear a religious syncretism which
would sell the Christian birthright for a mess of pottage, obscuring the
Gospel merely to win agreement to glib platitudes, like the dictum of the
Parliament of the World’s Religions in 1993 that “[e]very human being
depending more than anything else on a speaker’s “ability to draw a crowd.” It
attempts to “simplify the essentials of religion in a way that gives them the widest
possible mass appeal.” The result is that Evangelicals are “intuitionist,” trusting
their “sanctified common sense,” but mistrusting the work of the intellect. Noll
offers these observations in the context of an internal critique in The Scandal of
the Evangelical Mind (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995).
25 For discussion, see J. Budziszewski, Evangelicals in the Public Square, 15–37, 119–21.
26 Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, God and the World: A Conversation with Peter Seewald
(San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2002), 51.

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720

must be treated humanely.” It must be conceded that the Statement’s
discussion of other religions and wisdom traditions does little to calm this
fear. Its authors do recognize the danger. For example, though guardedly
remarking that projects like the Parliament are “worthy of interest,” they
warn,“But can the purely inductive search, on the parliamentary model,
of a minimal already existing consent, satisfy the requirements to base law
on what is absolute? Further, does such a minimal ethic not perhaps lead
to the relativization of the strong ethical needs of every particular religion or wisdom tradition?”27 But there is a problem even here.
The first of the sentences just quoted is profoundly important, because
natural law is not universal in the sense of being a least common denominator.To put it another way, there are two universals, not one. Although
the law is written everywhere on the heart of man, it is everywhere
entangled with the evasions and subterfuges of men.Yet there is something odd about the second sentence. If the natural law doctrine is
correct, then people of different religions and traditions do not have
authentically different “ethical needs”; as human beings they have the
same ethical needs, albeit differently interpreted by their traditions. Of
course differences of interpretation must be respected. Even so, some
interpretations must be more adequate than others, for if not, then why
bother to have a dialogue? Strangely, then, the language of the Statement
seems to make room for ethical relativism even while criticizing ethical
“relativization.” I am sure this was not the intention of the authors, but
many Protestants who share its concern about relativism will find such
language unsettling.
One must not be ungenerous, for the authors of the Statement were
threading the eye of a needle.They had to be open enough to other traditions to encourage a genuine conversation in which each could hear all
the others, yet not so open as to plaster over divisions and forget what they
had to say. It is so hard to strike the right balance. The very attempt to
avoid offense in one quarter may give offense in another. Even so, if the
diplomacy of natural law is so much more difficult than the authors of the
Statement seem to realize even as regards Protestants, who are “separated
brethren,” then how much more difficult will it be among the adherents
to other religions and wisdom traditions? Consider just the response to
the Holy Father’s lecture in Regensburg,28 in which Islamic mobs in various parts of the world turned to violence to prove that their religion was
27 Statement, §6.
28 Benedict XVI, “Faith, Reason and the University: Memories and Reflections.”

Papal Address to representatives of science at University of Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany, 12 September 2006.

Diplomacy and Theology

721

not violent, this despite the fact that Pope Benedict had studiously avoided
saying that it was.
VI. Secularism and Freedom
I can imagine someone wondering why modern Western secularism is
not included in the survey of wisdom traditions. Certainly its intellectual
program has been running for quite a while, and one would find it difficult to deny that at least in its very early phases it constituted a seriously
reasoned inquiry into the truth about man.
Yet the Statement is right to leave secularism off the list, for secularism is no longer is what it was.Today it is less like a wisdom tradition than
an assault on the possibility of wisdom. During the course of several
centuries,Western reason finally became so convinced of its doubts that
it clipped its own wings, binding itself with fierce oaths not even to think
about flying. It tends to deny that there is a truth about man, or at least
that such a truth could be discovered.The Statement does not ignore it;
far from it. But instead of including it in the survey of wisdom traditions
it discusses it in other places—as a series of misadventures, such as voluntarism, which pushed the early modern doctrine of natural law in the
wrong direction; as a series of confusions, such as moral relativism and
legal positivism, which obscure clear thought today; and as the cause of
the crisis which makes the search for a universal ethics so crucial today.
Not that the Church has no interest in talking with secularists, and not
that she just wants to scold. On the contrary, the Statement takes secularist confusions about natural law with the greatest seriousness, especially
the mistaken view that freedom competes with the immanent law of our
nature and with the transcendent God in whom this law finds its source.
The true nature of freedom receives more intense and sustained attention
in the Statement than any other theme in the doctrine of natural law.
While admitting that the commands of God are authoritative, the
Statement is careful to avoid voluntarism, the view that He is an arbitrary
tyrant whose commands are right “just because He says so.”What voluntarism overlooks is that the will and power of God are united with His
goodness and wisdom. But the problem of arbitrariness has another face
too; showing that God’s commands are wise and good is not enough.
Even wise and good commands, if they were merely imposed from
outside, would seem to deprive us of our freedom. This is the problem
Kant called heteronomy. Its solution is not what he called autonomy,
which makes God and nature irrelevant, but participated theonomy.29
29 Statement, §63, quoting John Paul II, Encyclical Veritatis Splendor, §41.

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J. Budziszewski

God does not rule by jerking us around, but by drawing us as participants
into His own Providence.The way this works is that when we follow the
natural law by employing our powers of reason, we fulfill the inbuilt
potentialities of our own created nature more and more.30
Rather than seeing the sovereignty of God, and the dignity and freedom of man, as enemies, this way of thinking unites them. Man cannot
displace God, because he cannot reinvent his humanity.We already have
a nature; we already are as He created us. But God is not a tyrant, because
our freedom lies in becoming more fully what we are, and in order to
humanize ourselves, we must cooperate with the divine creative act, the
fiat by which God made us in His image.
I don’t disagree with the teaching that I have just paraphrased; I do
think the Statement could have explained it more clearly.The problem is
not theological but diplomatic. It lies in the placement of the accent.
Rather than giving equal emphasis to divine authority and human freedom, the Statement lays its stress on human freedom. If I were trying to
make a case for this difference in emphasis, I might argue as follows.
Those whom the Church would like to draw into dialogue include,
among others, both secularists and members of other monotheistic traditions. All too many in both categories see the sovereignty of God as
contradicting the liberty of man. Those in the former category need to
be reassured about freedom, because they see divine authority as endangering it. Those in the latter category need to be taught about freedom,
because they see it as a challenge to divine prerogatives. The point this
hypothetical argument misses is that the former group cannot be reassured about freedom unless they are also taught about authority, and the
latter cannot be taught about freedom unless they are also reassured about
authority. So greatly does the discussion of freedom emphasize immanence that it comes close to obscuring transcendence; so greatly does it
stress human freedom that some readers, both secularist and religious,
may be left wondering what God has to do with the matter at all—in
what sense His commands are really commands.
To be sure, even in the discussion of freedom, the note of transcendence
is not lost, and it rings more sonorously later in the Statement. But shouldn’t it be more resonant in this part too? Isn’t there something to be said
just for the trembling gladness of crying to God, “Command me”? Does
it make us voluntarists to obey Him, not “just because He says so,” but just
because He is the good and glorious God? To put it another way, doesn’t
it also belong to the law within ourselves that we are most ourselves when
30 The natural law is “nothing else than the rational creature’s participation in the

eternal law.”Thomas Aquinas, ST I–II, q. 94, a. 2.

Diplomacy and Theology

723

we get out of ourselves, when we forget ourselves in Him? He is greater
than we are; it is not as though when He poured good into creatures, He
somehow drained Himself of uncreated Good. Our freedom and glory are
to look up.We were made to sing with the hosts of heaven, “Worthy art
thou, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power.”31
In another sense, the Statement doesn’t say enough about human freedom. I said a few paragraphs above that we cannot displace the Creator
because we cannot reinvent our humanity. But the transhumanist asks:
Why can’t we? With help from nanotechnology, biotechnology, and the
cognitive and information sciences, why can’t we provide ourselves with
an improved human nature, not this old paleolithic hand-me-down, but
one we make for ourselves?32 The authors are at least partly aware of the
danger, remarking that “rapid developments in biotechnology,” such as
“genetic manipulation and cloning, “threaten the very identity of the
human being,” requiring an “ethical and political reflection of universal
breadth.” In the same vein, they warn against “accept[ing] as legitimate
everything that is doable in the sphere of biotechnology,” and insist that
“the legislator cannot give up the distinction between what is human and
what are extrinsic and superficial criteria.”33 But the problem is greater
than not knowing where to say “No” to biotechnological innovations.
We face a ramifying transhumanist ideology driven by a strange combination of industrial competition, military planning, scientific hubris, and
eschatological dreams. As in the days of Babylon on the plain of Shinar,
men have begun to murmur among themselves, “Come, let us build
ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make
a name for ourselves.”34
One version of the dream envisions adjusting people to their particular
lots in life in order to “enhance” their performance and satisfaction. We
could have soldiers who don’t need to sleep, file clerks who never get bored,
laborers who never go on strike, miners who prefer the heat and dark, abortionists who don’t have bad dreams. Perhaps it is not difficult to see that such
manipulations would not enhance but diminish us.Then again, some people
do find the point difficult.Why should anyone have to be a square peg in a
31 Rv 4:11a.
32 Such dreams are no longer limited to the readers and writers of science fiction:

See for example Mihail C. Roco and William Sims Bainbridge, eds., “Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance: Nanotechnology,
Biotechnology, Information Technology and Cognitive Science” (National
Science Foundation and U.S. Department of Commerce, June 2002), also called
the NBIC Report.This document is readily available on the internet.
33 Statement, §§1, 7.
34 Gn 11:4.

J. Budziszewski

724

round hole? I wish the Statement had taken more time to explain what
ought to be obvious but isn’t. Better to make the hole square. Better even
to be a square peg in a round hole, than to have all our corners cut off.
Another version of the dream is more difficult to answer. In this
version, which is more egalitarian, everyone is re-engineered the same
way (except perhaps the engineers), so that life is more to our liking.
Everyone could be smarter. Everyone could be stronger. Everyone could
be more musical. And why stop there? Everyone could live forever, even
if this meant putting an end to children, a point Europe has almost
reached anyway. No one need ever become depressed, even if he had
something to be depressed about. No one need ever suffer pangs of
conscience, no matter what he had done. No one need ever go mad from
not knowing the meaning of his life, for our minds could be readjusted
so we thought we knew already, or just didn’t need to know.War would
come to an end, because nations would peacefully submit to whatever
their programmers decided to have them submit to. My language may
seem tendentious, and I admit that I am painting the portrait of the Next
Man in the hues of the Last Man. But has the Next Man ever been more
than a mask for the desires of the Last?
The authors of the Statement know about transhumanist dreams but
seem to view them solely from the angle of the misconception that freedom and nature are opposed.35 Surely the authors are right that this
misconception has deep historical roots and has not yet run its course.
Indeed hostility to nature has entered a vicious and virulent phase.36
Even so, I wonder whether the ITC, like armies everywhere, is preparing
to fight the last war all over again. The next one will not be the same.
Having opposed nature for all these generations, we moderns or postmoderns have at last become so confused about what a nature is that we
have actually come to think that we can make one.
VII. Transhumanists and Freedom
I think a transhumanist challenged by the Church would carry the ball
to his opponent’s territory. I imagine him arguing like this:
You say freedom lies not in denying but in following our nature—in humanizing ourselves, becoming more what we are, fulfilling our inbuilt potentialities, our
35 Statement, esp. §71.
36 See for instance Warren M. Hern, M.D., “Is Pregnancy Really Normal?” Family

Planning Perspectives 3:1 ( January 1971), wherein the author argues that pregnancy “may be defined as an illness” which “may be treated by evacuation of the
uterine contents.”

Diplomacy and Theology

725

“immanent intelligibility.” 37 Very well, I concede—so it does! But what you
call a human being is just a sophisticated mechanism; what you call its nature
is its operating system; what you call its subjectivity or consciousness is its executive function; what you call its immanent intelligibility is the objectives built
into its program; and what you call desires are their internal representations.
Fulfilling our immanent intelligibility can therefore mean nothing more than
becoming more successful in attaining what our programming leads us most
strongly and persistently to desire.
What then is our longest and strongest desire? Preeminently, the increase of
our power, or the power of our descendants, with whom we are programmed to
identify. If so, then to act on this desire simply is to act freely, simply is to follow
nature, simply is to humanize ourselves.
Suppose the greatest step we could take to increase the power of our descendants were to make them something different than we are—to free them from
human limitations. You might say that by taking such a step, we would not
humanize ourselves but only abolish humanity.38 Say rather that in this case,
the highest expression of our freedom is also its terminal expression—that abolishing humanity is the most humanizing act we can perform. What parent
would not sacrifice himself for his children?
You might also object that even if we expressed our own freedom by reinventing humanity, we would destroy the freedom of our descendants—we would
be turning them into artifacts, treating them as things. Perhaps you imagine them
complaining that they didn’t ask to be transhuman! But I notice that you don’t
level the same accusation against the Creator, for after all, we didn’t didn’t ask
to be human. Well, our descendants haven’t asked to be human either. Why
should we force them to be? You say that created nature isn’t a limitation on our
freedom, but the divine gift that makes it possible. So be it! Then we will be as
gods to them—dying gods, burdened with our sins—and their reinvented nature
will be the gift from us that makes their freedom possible.
There are no two ways about it. If our freedom is following our nature, then
their freedom is following theirs.To go with their new nature, they will simply
have a new freedom. And wouldn’t it be a lot more fun?

Dialogue with transhumanists—and make no mistake, there will have to
be dialogue with transhumanists—will require considerably more equipment than the Statement provides, and will require it at several different
levels. At the level of discursive reason, the metaphysics lesson must be
prolonged. The differences between substances and mechanisms, between
natures and programs, between the immanent intelligibility of our nature
and what we strongly want, these things and others must be made more
37 Statement, §23.
38 Alluding to C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man: or Reflections on Education with Special

Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools (New York: Macmillan, 1947).

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J. Budziszewski

clear, or the dialogue will go nowhere.The whole ontology of modernity
must be called into question, a stupendously formidable task.At the level of
simple insight, the power of the mind by which it sees what it understands,
the matters we are discoursing about must be brought closer to the eye,
made accessible to intuition. One thing that needs to be “seen” before it can
be understood is the sheer horror of the transhumanist ambition. The
danger is not that proponents of this ideology could achieve what they
desire, but that they might do great damage by trying.An even more important thing to be “seen,” or at least glimpsed, is divine transcendence. If we
think that just because secular people are afraid of God, they must have no
longing to see Him, we are mistaken. Under every disguise, that desire
remains real and powerful, and must be offered the hope of satisfaction.
VIII. Politics
The Statement devotes an entire chapter to the implications of natural law
for policy and statecraft.The chapter contains much good. I am especially
glad to see its insistence that the common good is real and not just an
aggregate of private goods.Yet in other ways, the chapter underwhelms.
At a pivotal point in its exposition, the Statement declares that the
common good which society should pursue has four contours. “[T]hese
are: freedom, truth, justice, and solidarity.These four values correspond to
the requirements of an ethical order in conformity with the natural law.”
As a political and ethical theorist I must confess that such language makes
me cringe, not in the least because I disagree, for I don’t.The problem is
that the expressions look suspiciously like platitudes.The Church knows
quite well that no profit will be made from clichés. I mentioned earlier
that the Statement is critical of the minimalist, least-common-denominator approach to dialogue which leads to ponderous platitudes like the
principle of the Parliament of the World’s Religions in 1993 that “Every
human being must be treated humanely.”Yet at points like this, it gives
the strong appearance of following a similar approach.
The problem is not just that the language of freedom, truth, justice,
and solidarity is so vague, but that its vagueness makes it so perilously easy
to hijack. Secular precedents are innumerable. I cannot help but think of
the unholy trinity of values in contemporary secular bioethics, “autonomy, beneficence, and justice,” where all too often autonomy means that
the patient may kill himself, beneficence means that his caretakers may
kill him when doing so is judged to be “in the best interests of all
concerned,” and justice means that John Rawls would approve.
The Church’s invocations of freedom, truth, justice, and solidarity are
saved from platitudiny, if I may coin a word, by the fact that an immense

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depth of discussion lies behind each one, a deep, murmuring background
of thought and commentary. One who expects definitions to be provided
on the spot will usually be disappointed. Instead they are meant to serve
as placeholders for that vaster literature which is tucked away almost out
of sight.This fact excuses a great deal of writing which would otherwise
seem to mean nothing. In fact it means a great deal. On the other hand,
it cannot be said to make the doctrine of the Church clear to outsiders,
a diplomatic essential which I think she may underrate.
Considering each of these four bland expressions in turn, let us grade
the risk of hijacking. “Justice”—here the risk of hijack is very great,
because liberal theories of justice have almost completely obscured the
classical insights to which the natural law tradition is committed, and the
Statement says far too little about these errors. “Solidarity”—the intention of this term is to warn us against selfish individualism and remind us
that each bears responsibility for the common good. However, the Statement provides too little armament to guard against authoritarian and
collectivist distortions of the idea. Nor can it be protected merely by
invoking other generalities such as “human dignity” or “subsidiarity,”
because if not fully explained, these too can be hijacked. All claim to
believe in human dignity; they cannot all be right. The principle of
subsidiarity, one of the most profound contributions of Catholic social
doctrine, declares that the purpose of larger, stronger, more extensive
forms of association such as states and transnational organizations is not
to destroy or absorb smaller, weaker, more local forms of association, but
to help them. Yet in the administrative state, subsidiarity is commonly
invoked precisely to justify shoving smaller associations aside.“We are not
destroying or absorbing them, we are helping them,” say the bureaucrats,
as they take over their functions and deprive them of anything to do.
What about the other two expressions? “Truth”—one might think that
here the risk is small, because the secular world is less concerned to
capture the term “truth” than to deny that truth exists.The premise is true
but the conclusion does not follow. “Freedom”—here the risk is diminished by the Statement’s vigorous effort to restate what freedom means; as
I have explained, the thrust of its efforts is to rescue the term from its
previous hijackers and restore it to its proper meaning. Grave danger
persists, however, and not just for the reasons already discussed. Let me
explain. Every view of freedom is some view of freedom—some view of
what it is for, in what it consists, and what political and moral conditions
it requires. To safeguard freedom one must have true answers to these
questions. But this means that in order to exercise freedom, one must

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J. Budziszewski

already be confident about at least part of the truth, even if one is still in
search of the rest. Freedom and truth are intimately joined.
The authors of the Statement know all this. Unfortunately, they fail to
develop the political implications of denying it. This is a serious flaw,
because contemporary secular polities do deny it. It seems to them that the
only thing reason can tell us with confidence is that nothing else can be
known with confidence. If secularists reasoned coherently, then at this
point they would simply abandon the ideal of freedom; surely, if the faculty
of reason is too weak to find out what freedom is, then the idea of freedom is incoherent.That is not what happens. Instead, diminished reason is
set to work inventing rationalizations for the indulgence of whatever
passions and appetites men happen to have, and “freedom”—redefined—is
one of these rationalizations. Notice, though, that in order to ground the
polity on this sort of “freedom,” it is not enough to be agnostic and say “We
do not know the truth.” One must be antinoetic, one must say “We cannot
know the truth,” and one way or another, this must become a public creed.
The details are unimportant. Perhaps we will say that public policy must be
“ethically neutral”; perhaps we will say that legitimate, nonauthoritarian
dialogue requires “bracketing” the claims of conscience; perhaps we will say
that the state must be “political, not metaphysical.” Such notions never
mean that the state has no metaphysical commitments.What they mean is
that it has ardent metaphysical commitments, but they are all negative:Any
conception of reality which proposes that truth can be discovered must be
viewed as an enemy. In such a world, the Church itself is held in deep
suspicion, just because she does make this proposal. Never mind that she
believes in freedom; the freedom she proposes is a deeper freedom than
secularists desire, and threatens the foundations of their polity. Nor is only
the Church held in suspicion. Psychological training for secularist citizenship must begin in childhood; consequently, even the institution of the
family comes to be viewed as illiberal and dangerous. Parents inevitably
teach their children what they believe, but this forms children in such a way
that they may not be sufficiently antinoetic when they grow up.
A point in defense of the Church’s readiness to use overgeneral expressions is her view of how the human mind comes to know things. As I
hinted earlier, not only in her thought, but also in her mode of expression, she relies not just on discursive, logical reasoning, on abstraction and
inference, ratio, but also on purely receptive, intuitive understanding,“that
simple vision to which truth offers itself like a landscape to the eye,”39
intellectus. Discursive reasoning is the way of knowing most characteristic
39 Josef Pieper, Leisure: The Basis of Culture, trans. Alexander Dru (San Francisco:

Ignatius Press, 2009, orig. 1952), 28.

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of human beings. Direct vision is more properly angelic; today the secular world does not even believe in it.Yet in reality, the two processes interpenetrate and depend on each other, for mind does not live on definitions
alone. So, when the Church directs man’s attention to “human dignity” or
asks him to look into his “conscience,” she views herself as pointing to
realities into which anyone may see at least partly, if only he is willing to
look. Indeed, the fact that human beings have some small share in pure
receptive insight is the only reason we can improve a definition, for in the
end, each definition refers to a real thing, seen by the mind as the eye sees
the object of sight. For the same reason, even if the thing is not seen in
clear focus, nevertheless we can talk about it. Each eye can compare what
it seems to see with statements from all the other eyes in play.
This is a lofty hope but a right one, and the diplomacy of the Church
depends on it. It is also a chancy one, inasmuch as it depends on pure eyes
among all those who join in the seeing, and our age is not known for
purity. “When your eye is sound, your whole body is full of light; but
when it is not sound, your body is full of darkness.”40
One more point needs to be made about the Church’s engagement
with the world of politics. Governments must often base policy on the
advice of scientific experts. In order to protect the environment, for example, one must know what is happening to it. Is the global atmosphere
actually warming? If so, is such warming a cyclical event or a long-term
trend? Is it influenced by human activity, and can anything be done about
it? In the meantime, whatever may be happening to the climate of the
earth, the climate of debate passes through swings of its own; we tend to
forget that a scant two generations ago, the great concern among scientists was global cooling.
Although the Church speaks with authority about morals and doctrine,
she knows she has no special competence in science. In the popular view,
she is antiscientific. On the contrary, all too often Church officials jump
on the latest scientific bandwagon just because the scientists whom she
consults have jumped onboard already. At various times she has been
assured by penologists that prisons rehabilitate, by psychologists that
sexual abusers who have undergone therapy can be safely returned to
active ministry, by biologists that the hypothesis of natural selection explains
macroevolution, by political scientists that simple transfer of wealth to the
governments of poor nations will make poor nations richer, and by economists that forgiveness of debt on a huge scale would not cause moral
hazard. Each of these matters is at least open to question, but the Church
40 Luke 11:34.

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J. Budziszewski

too quickly accepts the confident pledges of her expert advisors that they
are beyond debate.
A case in point:The Statement goes beyond calling for the protection
of the environment. It takes planetary warming so much for granted as
to cite it as one of the reasons for the search for a universal ethics: “The
good of the species appears as one of the fundamental aspirations present
in the person. We are particularly conscious of it in our time, when
certain perspectives such as global warming revive our sense of responsibility for the planet as well as for the human species in particular.”41 This
incautious endorsement of the global warming scenario was composed
before the explosion of the “Climategate” scandal at the Climatic
Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, England, in which the
content of leaked email messages gave strong reason to believe that
researchers at the CRU had colluded to manipulate data, interfere with
the peer review process, and punish outside scientists who dissented from
their conclusions.Though official investigators drew milder conclusions,
even they criticized the University for a “culture of withholding information.”42 In the meantime it has become clear that the much-vaunted
“consensus” of the scientific community concerning the warming of the
planet is more like a powerful but contested opinion.
What actually happened at the CRU may take years to sort out, but the
event is a salutary reminder that communities of experts are much like little
polities, with their own gatekeepers, their own ways of withholding and
distributing resources, their own publicity machines, their own ways of
policing consensus, and their own ways of punishing dissent.This is especially true in fields like climatology, where the data are messy, the modelling methods highly sensitive to minute changes in assumptions, emotions
run high, and the distinction between scientific theory and political ideology is easily blurred. Scientists themselves—except when they hold minority opinions—are often remarkably oblivious to the possibility of bias and
runaway groupthink, viewing their disciplines as immune to the foibles of
the world, perfectly in harmony with the ideal of rational inquiry.
41 Statement, §49. In §1, the Statement more obscurely includes “the climate” among

the “pressing concerns, which call upon all humanity and whose solution goes
quite beyond national boundaries.” Insofar as this is listed in addition to “ecological
equilibrium,” “protection of the environment,” and “natural resources,” it is probably another endorsement of the hypothesis of worldwide climate change, but in
this case the intention is less clear.
42 James Randerson, “Climate Researchers ‘Secrecy’ Criticised—But MPs Say
Science Remains Intact: Leaked Emails from UK’s Climate Research Unit Show
Scientists Withheld Information—But Inquiry Blames University.” The Guardian,
31 March 2010, retrieved 29 July 2010.

Diplomacy and Theology

731

The members of the Church do well to remember that just as there
are fads, prejudices, and irrational convictions in the nonscientific world,
so there are in science. “[I]n the course of history,” the ITS remarks,
“Christian theology has too easily justified with the natural law anthropological positions which, consequently, have appeared conditioned by
their historical and cultural context.”43 Just so, but the error is not
confined to anthropology.
IX. Praeambula amicitiae cum natura
Natural law cannot be properly appreciated except in the context of
salvation history. The authors get this capital point exactly right when
they remark that although the pagans were already aware of natural law,
from the moment it was taken up by the Fathers it was “apprehended in
the environment of a history of salvation that leads one to distinguish
different states of nature (original nature, fallen nature, restored nature),
in which natural law is realized in different manners.”44 Thus natural law
must be viewed from three perspectives: Creation, Fall, and Redemption.
On Creation depends the inner coherence of the natural order,
including the nature of man. It is “the act by which God structures the
whole universe, giving it a law”45—not just bringing it into existence,
but making it reflect His wisdom.
From the Fall comes man’s difficulty in recognizing the work of
Creation, for he “has removed himself from the source of wisdom.Thus
acting, he has falsified the knowledge that he was able to have of the
objective order of things, even on the natural level. Men, knowing that
their works are bad, hate the light and elaborate false theories to justify
their sins. Thus the image of God in man has been gravely obscured.
Although their nature still refers them to a fulfillment in God beyond
themselves (the creature cannot pervert itself to the point of not recognizing any longer the testimonies that the Creator offers of himself in the
creation), in fact men are so gravely harmed by sin that they do not
recognize the profound meaning of the world and interpret it in terms
of pleasure, money or power.”46
By Redemption our nature is restored, and this in two ways. In the first
place, “Jesus Christ manifests in his own person . . . an exemplary human
life, fully conforming to the natural law. For that reason he is the ultimate
criterion for correctly deciphering the authentic natural desires of man
43 Statement, §10.
44 Statement, §26.
45 Statement, §22.
46 Statement, §104.

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J. Budziszewski

when they are not concealed by distortions introduced by sin and disordered passions.”47 In the second place, the Holy Spirit becomes for us the
principle of life, freeing us from the power of sin, so that we begin to have
not only the desire for good, but the ability to do it.Thus the New Law
“gives man the effective capability of overcoming egoism by fully actualizing the humanizing demands of the natural law.”48 In the third place, the
Holy Spirit reveals that we are ordained to a supernatural end, an end that
does not destroy our natural powers but exceeds them. Man is “called by
God to a destiny that transcends the finality of physical nature.”49
All this the Statement explains clearly and beautifully. One might only
wish that it had explained more fully how it all bears on the prospects and
conduct of dialogue about natural law with nonbelievers. Isn’t a certain
change required in the angle of vision? Traditionally the Church has
viewed the doctrine of natural law as one of the praeambula fidei,“preambles” of faith, and certainly it is. But if it is true that the natural law can be
clearly viewed only in the light of salvation history, then shouldn’t we also
call faith one of the praeambula amicitiae cum natura,“preambles” of friendship with nature? Declarations about natural law address themselves to
“men of good will,” but the gospel came to us “while we were yet
sinners.”50 These two addresses must cooperate.
I should not wish to be misunderstood, for I am far from suggesting
that faith is a preamble and the natural law is not. What I am suggesting
is that the relationship between the two preambles is, so to speak, dialectical.They co-illuminate each other; each becomes more clear when they
are seen together. Nor am I suggesting that dialogue about natural law is
futile before all of our dialogue partners have been converted; what I am
suggesting is that the dialogue is unlikely to achieve its ends unless we are
explicit not only about our philosophy but also about our theology.
How does failure to appreciate the difference among the created,
fallen, and redeemed states of nature impede dialogue? By way of analogy, suppose everyone was born with broken hands, and no one had ever
seen an unhurt hand. Hands would still have the purposes given to them
by the order of creation, but because the use of the hands to grasp, to
gesture, to caress would cause pain, it would be difficult for anatomists to
recognize these purposes. Some might even deny that hands do have
purposes.Though some of our powers are more broken than others, our
47 Ibid.
48 Statement, §102.
49 Statement, §66.
50 Rom 5:8.

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733

case is much the same. If I ask my students the purpose of the respiratory
powers, they answer without hesitation, “To take in oxygen”; of the
ingestive powers, “To nourish us”; of the visual powers, “To show us the
physical world.” But if I ask them the purpose of the sexual powers, they
become confused. By far the greatest number reply, “To give pleasure,”
ignoring the fact that the exercise of every voluntary power is pleasurable, and if the production of pleasure were the criterion of function, then
the purpose of breathing, eating, and seeing would be pleasure too. The
immanent intelligibility of sex is so obscured by concupiscence that we
imagine concupiscence to be its intelligibility.
Another result of the failure to distinguish the three states of nature is
despair.The Statement rightly declares:51
The search for a common ethical language is inseparable from a hope
of conversion, with which individuals and the community detach
themselves from the forces that seek to imprison the human being in
indifference or drive him to raise walls against others or against foreigners. The heart of stone—cold, inert and indifferent to the lot of one’s
neighbour or of the human race—must be transformed, under the
action of the Spirit, into a heart of flesh, sensible to the calls of wisdom,
to compassion, to the desire for peace and to hope for all.This conversion is the condition for a true dialogue.

But conversion requires grace, which we are helpless to supply to
ourselves. Our helplessness in the face of the disorders of fallen nature, our
inability to cure them by powers of our own, the chasm that divides us
from ourselves, all these things stun and dismay an honest mind and heart.
The hope of redemption gives us the confidence to be honest, to meet
the eye of conscience steadily without flinching. If we know nothing of
this hope, it is excruciatingly difficult to be honest. Whether by denying
the natural law, or by pretending that we fulfill it, we avert our gaze.
The final result of failure to view nature in the light of salvation is that
when the Godward impulse is denied, it turns elsewhere; when Christian
eschatology is denied, rather than evaporating, it spills. The Church has
had long experience with diverted spiritual longings and spilled eschatology. Some are mentioned in the Statement, such as the ideology by which
the State “raise[s] itself as the bearer of ultimate meaning.” But newer and
stranger manifestations are even now appearing on the horizon. Perhaps
the most bizarre example is the argument of Tulane University physicist
Frank J.Tipler that through the advance of science, intelligent species will
51 Statement, §4.

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J. Budziszewski

literally evolve into God.52 The idea that dependent being could turn into
absolute Being is so muddled that one hardly knows how to argue with
it, yet arguments of this sort are taken seriously by serious people.
In a dialogue about natural law, the introduction of salvation history
might seem to be an impudence. Shouldn’t it be left alone? As I read
them, the authors of the Statement hold a different view. They insist on
introducing salvation history, and I think they are right. It might be
objected that in the context of natural law, such matters cannot be raised
at all. After all, don’t they lie beyond the province of natural reason? Yes,
but that does not get us off the hook. Perhaps a contrast will be helpful.
One of the things embedded in human nature is the love of self; another
is the impulse toward transcendence, like a ghostly preparation for the
spiritual virtue of hope.Those who do not know what they truly are by
nature cannot love themselves properly, but at least the knowledge of
what they are by nature is accessible apart from revelation.Those who do
not know what the object of transcendence is cannot hope properly
either, but alas, that knowledge is not accessible apart from revelation.The
unfulfilled longing for such knowledge drives otherwise reasonable
people either to despair or to false objects of transcendence, bewitching
sirens, luring them to destruction.What is to be done?
The paradox is that not all of the questions that vex dialogue about
natural law are contained within natural law. On the one hand the reality of natural law can be grasped by every person of good will; on the
other hand, its contours will seem cloudy apart from the light of grace,
and the stirrings it awakens may madden us.About problems like this, we
scarcely yet know what to do.
X. Conclusion
As I close this response to the “The Search for Universal Ethics,” I am
painfully aware that although I have tried to address not only the philoso52 In several books, beginning with The Physics of Immortality (New York: Double-

day, 1994), Professor Tipler tries to prove that the laws of physics require the existence of God and the resurrection of the dead. What he means by these terms,
however, is not what they mean in the Creed. He expects intelligent species to
develop their scientific abilities at an exponentially increasing rate of growth, until
eventually they evolve an unlimited intelligence which uses all of the resources of
the universe. He identifies this intelligence with God. Because its computational
speed will increase faster than the universe can collapse, in “experiential” terms its
life will have infinite duration.This deathless intelligence would run simulations
of every intelligent being that has ever existed. Consequently, all the dead will all
live again forever in virtual reality, which will be indistinguishable from ordinary
reality.Tipler considers the argument a confirmation of Christianity, a supposition
about which, perhaps, nothing more need be said.

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735

phy and theology of the document, but also its diplomacy, my own diplomacy is maladroit. If, while trying to dance, I have succeeded only in bruising toes, I hope that my clumsiness will be pardoned.The more I study the
Statement, the more impressive it seems to me.Yet when I try to approach
it as an outsider might, I cannot help but feel that it should have been more
attractive on the first reading, perhaps even on the second.
The Church has immensely long experience in her diplomacy, and the
authors of the Statement are far better dancers than I will ever be.Yet in
the presentation of the doctrine of natural law, it seems to me that their
adroitness too could be improved. Insofar as nature and grace are the two
proper foundations of the Church’s entire approach to the world, perhaps
the discussion of this difficulty is important enough to risk the appearN&V
ance of an ingratitude which is far from my intention.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 9, No. 3 (2011): 737–762

737

St. Thomas, Natural Law, and Universal Ethics
L AWRENCE D EWAN, O.P.
Dominican University College
Ottawa, Canada

A RE there objective moral values capable of bringing people together
and securing peace and happiness for them? What are they? How are
they recognized? How are they realized in the life of individuals and of
the community? These questions about good and evil, questions which
always return, are today more urgent than ever, in as much as people
are more aware of forming a single community in the world.1

The Holy Father, Benedict XVI, in an address to the International
Theological Commission in October of 2007, spoke of the project of the
ITC concerning natural law as “aimed above all to justify and describe the
foundations of a universal ethics that is part of the great patrimony of
human knowledge which in a certain way constitutes the rational creature’s
participation in the eternal law of God.” In this respect he concluded:
1 This is from the Introduction to The Search for Universal Ethics: A New Look at

Natural Law, a document published by the International Theological Commission [henceforth “ITC”], in the translation published on the Web page:
www.pathsoflove.com by Joseph Bolin. (The Vatican web page presents the
document in French and in Italian.) A preliminary note at the beginning of the
footnotes tells us that the document was approved in December of 2008, and
names the members of the subcommission that produced it.
Let me say at the outset that I am very grateful to Joseph Bolin for having
translated for us all this important document; here and there I find reason to
substitute my own translation, but let that not indicate any lack of gratitude
towards him.
In this paper St. Thomas’s Summa theologiae will be indicated by “ST” (and
where helpful I sometimes include the pagination from the edition published by
the Collège Dominicain d’Ottawa, 1941); also, the reader will find considerable
use of italics; in the main, this is my own responsibility. Thanks are due to
Enrique Alarcon for making available the Opera omnia of St.Thomas online.

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Lawrence Dewan, O.P.
It is not, therefore, a theme of an exclusively or mainly denominational
kind, although the doctrine on natural moral law is illuminated and
developed to the full in the light of Christian revelation and the fulfillment of man in the mystery of Christ.2

Again, on January 15, 2010, Pope Benedict, speaking to the members
of the Congregation on the Faith on the occasion of their plenary assembly, recalled their 2008 publication of Dignitas Personae on certain bioethical questions. He said:
There are in fact specific contents of Christian revelation that cast light
on bioethical problems: the value of human life, the relational and social
dimension of the person, the connection between the unitive and the
procreative aspects of sexuality, and the centrality of the family founded
on the marriage of a man and a woman.These matters engraved in the
human heart are also rationally understandable as an element of natural moral law and can be accepted also by those who do not identify
with the Christian faith.
The natural moral law is neither exclusively nor mainly confessional, even if the Christian Revelation and the fulfillment of Man in
the mystery of Christ fully illumines and develops its doctrine. As the
Catechism of the Catholic Church says, it “states the first and essential
precepts which govern the moral life” (n. 1955). Established in human
nature itself and accessible to every rational creature, the natural moral
law thus determines the basis for initiating dialogue with all who seek
the truth and, more generally, with civil and secular society. This law,
engraved in every human being’s heart, touches on one of the essential
problems of reflection on law and likewise challenges the conscience
and responsibility of legislators.3

My contribution here is intended to underline certain features of
natural law as presented by St. Thomas Aquinas, features that discourage
any secularizing or Pelagian tendencies that the quest for “universality”
might occasion. Still by way of introduction I wish to recall the treatment
2 Address of his holiness Benedict XVI to members of the International Theolog-

ical Commission, Friday, 5 October 2007; to be found on the Vatican webpage.
Italics are his.
3 Address of his holiness Benedict XVI to members of the Congregation on the
Faith on the occasion of the Plenary Assembly, Friday, January 15, 2010 (from the
Vatican webpage).
In the last sentence quoted, the English word “law” as first used is given in
the French as “loi” but in its second occurrence is given as “droit;” so also, in
German, the first word is “Gesetz” and the second is “Rechtsauffassung.” The
meaning of the English would be clearer, I would say, if in the second place it
said: “(reflection on) what is just.”

Natural Law and Universal Ethics

739

by St. Thomas of the case of the gentiles, referred to by St. Paul, who
obeyed the law as written in their hearts:
. . . [Paul] commends in them the observance of the law, when he says:
“They naturally do what pertains to the law,” that is, what the law
commands, viz. as regards the moral precepts, which are prescribed by
natural reason, just as concerning Job4 it was said that he was just and
upright and fearing God and distancing himself from what is bad.
Hence, he himself said: “My feet have followed his tracks; I have kept
to his pathways.”
But that [Paul] says: “naturally” raises a question, for he seems to give
support to the Pelagians, who said that man through his natural wherewithal
could observe all the precepts of the law. Hence, one must explain: [1] “naturally”, i.e. through nature reformed by grace. For he is speaking of the
gentiles converted to the Faith, who through the grace of Christ began to
observe the moral [precepts] of the law. Or one can say: [2] “naturally”,
i.e. through the natural law showing them what is to be done; in accordance with Psalm 4: “The many say: who shows us what are good?
Signed etc.”; which is the natural light of reason in which there is the
image of God; and nevertheless it is not excluded that grace is necessary to
move the affections ; just as also through the law there is knowledge of sin,
and yet grace is further required to move the affections.5
4 Job is presented in the book of Job as a foreigner, indeed as a member of a people

detested by the Jews after the fall of Jerusalem. Cf. Le Livre de Job, traduit par le
R. P. Larcher, O.P., a separate volume of La Sainte Bible, traduite en français sous
la direction de l’École Biblique de Jérusalem (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1950),
Introduction, 7–8:“Job est précisément un étranger. On le fait vivre en dehors de
la Palestine, aux confins de l’Arabie et du pays d’Édom. Houz, sa patrie, est mis en
relation avec Édom dans Gen. 36.28 et dans Lam., 4.21. . . . Non seulement Job
est un étranger par rapport au peuple de l’Alliance, mais il appartient encore à une
race qui se rendit odieuse aux Juifs lors de la chute de Jérusalem (cf. Ez., 35; Abd.,
1; Ps., 137.7). S’il est présenté comme un serviteur modèle de Yahvé, on doit en
conclure qu’une tradition vénérable et indiscutable l’avait imposé en Israël.”
5 St. Thomas, In Ad Romanos, chap. 2, lect. 3, re verse 14 (my italics): “[Paulus]
commendat in eis legis observantiam, cum dicit: ‘Naturaliter faciunt quae sunt
legis,’ id est, quae lex mandat, scilicet quantum ad praecepta moralia, quae sunt
de dictamine rationis naturalis, sicut et de Job dicitur, quod erat iustus et rectus
ac timens deum et recedens a malo. Unde ipse dicit: vestigia eius secutus est pes
meus, vias eius custodivi.
“Sed quod dicit ‘naturaliter,’ dubitationem habet. Videtur enim patrocinari
Pelagianis, qui dicebant quod homo per sua naturalia poterat omnia praecepta
legis servare. Unde exponendum est: ‘naturaliter,’ id est per naturam gratia reformatam. Loquitur enim de gentilibus ad fidem conversis, qui auxilio gratiae christi
coeperant moralia legis servare.Vel potest dici:‘naturaliter,’ id est per legem naturalem ostendentem eis quid sit agendum, secundum illud Ps. IV, 7 s.:‘Multi dicunt:
quis ostendit nobis bona? signatum, etc.,’ quod est lumen rationis naturalis, in qua

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Lawrence Dewan, O.P.

Our topic, then, is universal ethics: how appropriate is the use of the
doctrine of natural law in the quest for such a universal ethics? Would it be
better to speak simply about “nature” and “reason” in ethics, leaving aside the
“law” dimension? I would say that it would be inadequate from the viewpoint of
reason itself. The punishment in another life is very important for morals.6 We
see this well in the presentation of natural law in Cicero’s De re publica 3.7
Notice that law as such brings with it the power of coercion, the menace of punishest imago Dei. Et tamen non excluditur quin necessaria sit gratia ad movendum
affectum, sicut etiam per legem est cognitio peccati, ut dicitur infra III, 20, et
tamen ulterius requiritur gratia ad movendum affectum.”
The references to Job are to 1:1 and 23:11.
6 On the need for fear as well as love regarding divine providence, cf. St.Thomas,
Commentary on Job, prologue: “. . . nothing calls men back from wickedness and
leads them toward good so much as fear of and love for God.” (Cf. Thomas
Aquinas, The Literal Exposition on Job: A Scriptural Commentary Concerning Providence, trans. Anthony Damico, Interpretive Essay and Notes by Martin D.Yaffe,
[Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989)], 68.)
I take it that this was the point of the line of thought presented as Ivan Karamazov’s in Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, trans. Constance
Garnett (New York: Random House, 1950), 78–79: Another character, Miusov,
speaking of Ivan Fyodorovitch Karamazov: “. . . Only five days ago, in a gathering here, principally of ladies, he solemnly declared in argument that there was
nothing in the whole world to make men love their neighbors. That there was
no law of nature that man should love mankind, and that, if there had been any
love on earth hitherto, it was not owing to a natural law, but simply because men
have believed in immortality. Ivan Fyodorovitch added in parenthesis that the
whole natural law lies in that faith, and that if you were to destroy in mankind
the belief in immortality, not only love but every living force maintaining the life
of the world would at once be dried up. Moreover, nothing then would be immoral,
everything would be lawful, even cannibalism.That’s not all. He ended by asserting
that for every individual, like ourselves, who do not believe in God or immortality, the moral law of nature must immediately be changed into the exact contrary
of the former religious law, and that egoism, even to crime, must become, not
only lawful but even recognized as the inevitable, the most rational, even
honourable outcome of his position” (italics mine).
7 Marcus Tullius Cicero, The Political Works of Marcus Tullius Cicero: Comprising his Treatise on the Commonwealth; and his Treatise on the Laws.Translated from the original,
with Dissertations and Notes in Two Volumes. By Francis Barham, Esq. (London:
Edmund Spettigue, 1841–42). Vol. 1. Chapter: Cicero’s Commonwealth: Book III.
(http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/546/83303; accessed on 2010-07-10): “[Lœlius
speaking] There is a true law, a right reason, conformable to nature, universal,
unchangeable, eternal, whose commands urge us to duty, and whose prohibitions
restrain us from evil.Whether it enjoins or forbids, the good respect its injunctions,
and the wicked treat them with indifference.This law cannot be contradicted by
any other law, and is not liable either to derogation or abrogation. Neither the
senate nor the people can give us any dispensation for not obeying this universal

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ment.8 To ignore the need for this feature is to set aside the difficulties
proper to human nature.9
Having “zeroed in” on natural law as our topic, I see three or four points
that need our attention. These are (1) natural law and human knowledge
law of justice. It needs no other expositor and interpreter than our own
conscience. It is not one thing at Rome and another at Athens; one thing to–day
and another to–morrow; but in all times and nations this universal law must for
ever reign, eternal and imperishable. It is the sovereign master and emperor of all
beings. God himself is its author,—its promulgator,—its enforcer. He who obeys it
not, flies from himself, and does violence to the very nature of man. For his crime
he must endure the severest penalties hereafter, even if he avoid the usual misfortunes of the
present life” (my italics).
8 Cf. ST I–II, q. 90, q. 3, ad 2; q. 92, a. 2 corp. [1217a33–36] and ad 3; q. 95, a. 1
corp. [1231a17–27]; q. 100, a. 9; II–II, q. 64, a. 3. Cf.Thomas regarding those same
gentiles spoken of by Paul, To the Romans, chap. 2, lect. 3: “he [Paul] shows their
dignity, in this, that, not having such law, they themselves are law for themselves,
inasmuch as they fulfill the office of law towards themselves, instructing themselves and inclining themselves towards the good; because, as the Philosopher says
[EN 10.9 (1180a21–24)], ‘law is a statement having compulsive power, issuing
from some prudence and understanding.’ ” [Super Ep. Ad Romanos, chap. 2, lect.
3:“Tertio ostendit eorum dignitatem, in hoc scilicet quod huiusmodi legem non
habentes, ipsi sibi sunt lex, inquantum scilicet funguntur officio legis ad seipsos,
instruendo se et inducendo ad bonum, quia, ut Philosophus dicit Ethic., ‘lex est
sermo coactionem habens ab aliqua prudentia et intellectu procedens.’ ”]
9 As I pointed out in my book Wisdom, Law and Virtue (New York: Fordham
University Press, 2008), chap. 17, p. 311, Thomas certainly uses the need to
provide coercion to approach the need for the political order, seen as the source
of law. The need for law is regularly argued by Thomas on the grounds of the
unruliness of youth (beyond what parents can deal with). Cf. especially ST I–II,
q. 95, a. 1. One might think that it is only the fallen human being who has need
of law and political government. However, in Thomas’s Sentences Commentary we
read: “At the beginning, when God fashioned man, he could have [poterat]
formed another man from the mud of the earth whom he might have left in the
condition of his own nature, as mortal and susceptible to injury and experiencing the
battle of concupiscence against reason ; in that person nothing of human nature would
have been missing, because this [condition] follows from the principles of the nature.
Nevertheless, this weakness would not have had in him the character of sin or
punishment, since this weakness would not have been caused by the will” (In II
Sent., d. 31, q. 1, a. 2, ad 3 [ed. Mandonnet, p. 810]).
Concerning the undesirable side of matter, cf. ST I, q. 91, a. 3; this is the
reason that a natural human being would have a battle with the side of passion
which is difficult to control rationally.Thus, it seems to me that the argument for
the necessity of human law, as based on the presence among us of unruly youth,
should not be taken as dependent on the theological premiss of fallen man, i.e.,
on original sin; it is an argument which considers what pertains to human nature
as such.

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of God; (2) Thomas’s conception of “natural inclination” as found in
rational creatures; (3) primacy of human natural friendly love for God
more than for ourselves; and (4) original sin and the weakening of that
natural inclination.
I begin with the conception of law presented by St.Thomas, a conception taken from our experience of law in human affairs. The definition
he proposes is:
. . . [law] is nothing other than an ordering by reason towards the
common good, promulgated by one who has responsibility for the
community.10

God as Origin and Promulgator of Natural Law
That all law has a divine origin is a doctrine not difficult to find in the
writings of Thomas Aquinas. At ST I–II, q. 93, a. 3 the explicit point is
that all law derives from the eternal law, eternal law which has already
been explained as “the plan of divine wisdom inasmuch as it is directive
of all acts and movements.”11
Prior to this, the particular location of the discussion on law within the
moral part of the ST already suggested this doctrine. The ST, and in
general the work of St. Thomas, is meta-philosophical. It is a study and
teaching of what has been revealed to us by God himself, and thus
surpasses mere human wisdom, that is, philosophy. However, revelation
presupposes the order of nature, and Thomas’s teaching envelops philosophy rather than excluding it.12
In the ST 1–2, the more summary overall picture of the moral order,13
the treatment begins with beatitude, the ultimate goal of human life, as
something whose attainment depends in some measure on human
action;14 it then speaks of (1) that action, (2) its principles within the
human agent, viz. the virtues, and finally (3) the extrinsic principles of that

10 ST I–II, q. 90, a. 4 (ed. Ottawa, 1209a3–7).The Latin runs: “potest colligi defin-

itio legis, quae nihil est aliud quam quaedam rationis ordinatio ad bonum
commune ab eo qui curam communitatis habet promulgata.”
11 ST I–II, q. 93, a. 1 (ed. Ottawa, 1218a48–50): “lex aeterna nihil aliud est quam
ratio divinae sapientiae, secundum quod est directiva omnium actuum et
motionum [eternal law is nothing else but the plan of the divine wisdom inasmuch as it is directive of all acts and movements].”
12 Cf. ST I, q. 1, a. 1 (ed. Ottawa, 2b9–20) and I, q. 2, a. 2, ad 1.
13 Concerning the division of the moral part of the ST into two parts, first more
universal and second more particular, cf. ST I–II, q. 6, prologue.
14 ST I–II, q. 5, a. 7.

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action, primarily God. So presented, God is seen as guide by virtue of law
and support by virtue of grace.15
Law thus is presented as a divine influence. One might think that this
means merely that some special sort of law, the “divine law” specially
revealed to us by God, is such a help.16 As the ST 1–2 carefully develops
the overall causal picture, one sees that the word “law” names a reality
found according to priority and posteriority, flowing from the divine
intellect and will, and remaining, wherever properly found, a rational
participation in that divine reality.17
Thomas begins the ex professo treatment of law with a general presentation of the essence of law, and does so, as I said, by considering primarily law as human beings make it. His general definition, I repeat, is: “ . .
. [law] is nothing other than an ordering by reason towards the common
good, promulgated by one who has responsibility for the community.”
Once this is done, he presents the variety of kinds of law: eternal, natural, human, and divinely revealed laws.18
Eternal law is the plan of direction of the universe, the plan present
within God himself. It is thus identical with God himself.19 This obliges
15 ST I–II, q. 90, prologue; the distinction between law and grace, guidance and

support, is not hard and fast: what is most truly the New Law is the grace of the
Holy Spirit: I–II, q. 106, a. 1.
God is “extrinsic” to created reality in the way that the efficient cause is other
than its effect; he is so present to every creature as to be most deeply within it,
because of the nature of his proper effect, the act of being; we may say that his
immanence flows from his transcendence: cf. ST I, q. 8, a. 1 in toto. On his
mastery as mover of created reality, cf. ST I, q. 105, aa. 3, 4, and 5.
16 It should be noted that, in the vocabulary of the ST, “divine law” [lex divina ]
refers to the divinely revealed law: cf. ST I–II, q. 91, a. 4; it is a higher mode of
participation in the eternal law than is the natural law: cf. ibid., ad 1. On the
other hand, the expression “eternal law” [lex aeterna ] signifies the plan within the
divine mind, thus identical with God himself: ST I–II, q. 93, a. 1.
17 Notice ST I–II, q. 100, a. 2 (ed. Ottawa 1260a47–49), speaking of the human
being’s being in a community with God through “divine law,” i.e., revealed law:
“Sed communitas ad quam ordinat lex divina, est hominum ad Deum, vel in
praesenti vel in futura vita. Et ideo lex divina praecepta proponit de omnibus illis
per quae homines bene ordinentur ad communicationem cum Deo. Homo
autem Deo coniungitur ratione, sive mente, in qua est Dei imago.” [But the
community towards which the divine law orders is of human beings toward
God, whether in the present or the future life. And therefore the divine law
proposes precepts concerning all those matters through which humans are well
ordered towards community with God. But man is conjoined to God by reason
or mind, in which there is the image of God.]
18 ST I–II, q. 91 in toto. For simplicity’s sake I omit the “law of sin” (cf. I–II, q. 91,
prologue) presented in a. 6.
19 ST I–II, q. 91, a. 1, ad 3.

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744

us to reflect on the sort of unified field the general term “law” names.
Early in the ST, that is, in question 13 of the first part,Thomas explained
the way in which human language bears upon divine things.20 This is the
doctrine of “the divine names.” What do we mean when we say the
words “good” or “wise” of God? We learn that it is through a sort of analogy that “good” is said of God.To say:“God is good” is not to say merely
that God is the cause of the goodness of creatures, or merely that God is
“not bad.” Rather, we mean that what we call “goodness” in creatures
exists by priority, in a higher way, in God.21 Thus, as regards the reality
named, it is found more truly in God than in creatures, whereas the name
applied is applied first to that which is found in creatures, and has the
mode of signifying appropriate for creatures.22
All this surely applies to “law” as well. It is a word invented to name
the human reality, but it is said properly of the eternal law which is in
God, and indeed that is what most of all deserves the name “law.”23
The presentation of eternal law gives the most dominating metaphysical vision of the domain of law.We then can see the way that, within the
life of the rational creature which is man, there is a root of all man’s lawmaking, a root in what is called “natural law,” this being the name of our
participation in the eternal law.24
Presenting eternal law, in ST I–II, q. 91, a. 1, St.Thomas immediately
recalls the presentation of divine providence in ST I:We read:
. . . law is nothing else than a dictate of practical reason in the leader who
governs some perfect community. Now, it is evident, given that the
world is ruled by divine providence, as was had in book 1, that the
whole community of the universe [communitas universi] is governed by
divine reason. And therefore the very plan [ratio] of the government of
things present in God as in the governor [ principe] of the universe has
the intelligible note [ratio] of law. And because divine reason [ratio]
conceives [concipit] nothing temporally, but rather has an eternal concept
20 Cf. my paper “St. Thomas and the Divine Names,” Science et Esprit 32 (1980):

19–33.
21 ST I, q. 13, a. 2 (ed. Ottawa, 77b42–47).
22 ST I, q. 13, a. 6 (82b15–30).
23 I have spoken here of “law” along the lines that Thomas teaches concerning the

positive, absolute names such as “goodness” and “wisdom.” It is true that the
word “law” indicates, when said of God, a relation to creatures. However, I take
it that it is the sort of relation to creatures that is involved in all divine acts of
understanding and willing of creatures. They are said of God as being in him
eternally (ST I, q. 13, a. 7, ad 3), and this is true of “law” also, as is clear in such
texts as ST I–II, q. 91, a. 1.
24 ST I–II, q. 91, a. 2; also cf. q. 93, a. 6.

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[habet aeternum conceptum], as is said in Proverbs 8.23,25 one ought to call
such law “eternal.”26

Providence was discussed in ST I, q. 22, and the full sapiential vision
of law must include that teaching. Here I wish to focus on one feature of
the doctrine of natural law. Natural law is properly called “law,” something
that cannot be said of the eternal law’s participation by lower, nonrational creatures. Natural law is properly law because of the human
being’s participation in providence, as rationally providing for himself in
some measure.27 We are not, of course, the source of the legislation; rather,
it is in us as in those who are ruled and measured by it.28
Natural law is possessed by the human being primarily through the
vision of what goodness is,29 a vision that attests to our immediate relation to the universal cause of being and goodness.30 What is primary in
25 The Vulgate, at Proverbs 8.22–24, has wisdom say: “[22] Dominus possedit me

ab initio viarum suarum,Antequam quidquam faceret a principio. [23] Ab aeterno
ordinata sum, et ex antiquis antequam terra fieret. [24] Nondum erant abyssi, et
ego iam concepta eram.” [The Lord possessed me from the beginning of his ways,
before he had made anything, from the beginning. From eternity I was ordered,
and from of old, before the earth was made.The depths were not yet, and I had
already been conceived.]
26 ST I–II, q. 91, a. 1. For Thomas’s conception of the universe as primarily a
community of persons ordered towards the divine personal being, cf. “St.
Thomas, the Common Good, and the Love of Persons,” chap. 16 in my book
Wisdom, Law, and Virtue.
27 ST I–II, q. 91, a. 2, ad 3.The participation by non-rational creatures in the eternal law “cannot be called ‘law’ save by likeness.”
28 ST I–II, q. 90, a. 3, ad 1 and I–II, q. 91, a. 2.
In this respect I do not like the language of para. 115 in the ITC document.
We read: “To be able to be recognized by all men and in all cultures, the norms
of behavior in society should have their source in the human person himself, in his
needs, in his inclinations. [Bolin trans.; italics mine.]
The French is:“Pour pouvoir être reconnues par tous les hommes, dans toutes
les cultures, les normes du comportement en société doivent avoir leur source dans
la personne humaine elle-même, ses besoins, ses inclinations.”
29 Intellect, as knowing what goodness is, is the very principle of will: cf. ST I, q.
59, a. 1.
30 ST II–II, q. 2, a. 3 (ed. Ottawa, 1416a6–17). So true is this that in some texts
Thomas identifies natural law simply with the natural light of reason whereby
we know the difference between the good and the bad. We read in a sermon
given in Lent of 1273, entitled Collationes de decem praeceptis, and sometimes De
duabus praeceptis caritatis et decem legis praeceptis, that the natural law just is the light
of the human intellect conferred by God on the human being at creation: “ . . .
lex naturae; et haec nihil aliud est nisi lumen intellectus insitum nobis a Deo, per quod
cognoscimus quid agendum et quid vitandum. Hoc lumen et hanc legem dedit

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Lawrence Dewan, O.P.

Thomas’s presentation of law is its being rational, an expression of
reason.31 The vision of that reasonableness is the source of the obligation it
presents to us.32
In so speaking I by no means wish to obscure the element of inclination
which the law includes. Such inclination is, intrinsically, a sort of loyalty to
the reasonable.Thus, in speaking, in ST I–II, q. 91, a. 2, of the eternal law as
regulating all of creation, St.Thomas speaks first of all things, inasmuch as
they participate in the impression coming from God, as having natural
inclinations towards their proper acts and goals; he goes right on to say that
inasmuch as the rational creature has a more excellent participation in
divine providence, as itself providing for itself and others, it too participates in the eternal law by having natural inclination to the due act and end.
Yet in concluding this very passage, what Thomas points to as natural law
in us is the light of natural reason by which we distinguish the good from
the bad.The properly human inclination is rooted in the light of natural knowl-

Deus homini in creatione.” [ . . . the law of nature; and this is nothing else but
the light of the intellect placed within us by God, through which we know what
is to be done and what is to be avoided. God gave man this light and this law in
creating [him].]
As described by James Weisheipl in Friar Thomas D’Aquino (Garden City, NY:
Doubleday, 1974): “ . . . the points in the vernacular sermon were jotted down
and later written out in Latin ‘after Thomas had preached’ ” (402) by one of
Thomas’s secretaries, Friar Peter d’Andria (319); and so one must be prepared for
a sort of “short-hand” way of speaking.
That the intellectual light spoken of here is to be identified with the agent
intellect we see in such a passage as the following, from the Disputed Questions on
Spiritual Creatures 10 (a work dated 1267 in Rome, according to the Leonine
editor, B.-C. Bazan): “ . . . we say that the light of the agent intellect about which
Aristotle speaks is immediately impressed on us by God, and in function of it we
distinguish the true from the false, and the good from the bad. And it is about that that
the Psalm says:‘The many say: who will show us good things? The light of your
countenance has been stamped upon us, O Lord,’ i.e. [the light] through which
what are good are shown to us.Thus, therefore, that which produces in us actual
intelligibles, in the mode of participated light, is something of the soul and is
rendered multiple in keeping with the multitude of souls and of human beings.”
It should be underlined that actual knowledge of the first intelligibles and first
truths is a product of abstraction from sensible experience, not something
inborn; the intellectual light or agent intellect must derive information from
sensible things even as regards the first notions and first truths: cf. Qq. de anima,
q. 5, De veritate, q. 11, a. 1, Quodlibet 10.4.1 [7].
31 ST I–II, q. 90, a. 1.
32 Reason as ordering towards the end is the principle of obligation here: cf. ST I–II,
q. 90, a. 1 and especially I–II, q. 99, a. 1.

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edge.33 Thus, the treatment of our human “natural inclination” used in
explaining the triad of the theological virtues reads:
. . . the theological virtues order the human being towards supernatural beatitude in the way that the human being is ordered to the end
connatural to him by natural inclination. Now this comes about in function of two items: firstly, in function of reason or intellect, inasmuch as
it contains the first universal principles known by us through the natural light of the intellect, from which reason proceeds both in things to
be considered and in things to be done. Secondly, through the rightness
of the will naturally tending towards the good of reason.34

However, as already touched upon, two essential features of law are (1)
that it be made by the one responsible for the common good of the
community for which it is law,35 and (2) that it be promulgated to those
subject to the law.36 I take this to mean that law appears in its adequate reasonableness only when it is so promulgated as to reveal its having its proper origin.
I was delighted to find this conception confirmed by the Catechism of
the Catholic Church in its presentation of natural law.37 We read:
33 Consider ST I, q. 60, a. 1 sed contra (of which St.Thomas obviously approves):

“. . . dilectio sequitur cognitionem, nihil enim amatur nisi cognitum, ut Augustinus dicit, X De Trin. Sed in Angelis est cognitio naturalis. Ergo et dilectio naturalis.” [. . . love follows upon cognition, for nothing is loved unless it is known, as
Augustine says in 10 On the Trinity. But in angels there is natural knowledge.
Therefore, there is also natural love.]
In the case of natural law, both its cognitive features and its inclinative features are
viewed as coming forth from the nature of the rational being, from the essence
of the intellective soul. However, each comes forth from that essence taken
precisely as apt to give rise to that sort of perfection. Hence, there does not seem
to be any reason to regard inclination as prior to and a cause of our natural
knowledge (and thus to speak of knowledge through inclination). Inclination is
rather viewed by St. Thomas as something that accompanies knowledge naturally. For the two aspects,“per modum cognitionis” and “per modum interioris principii
motivi,” cf. ST I–II, q. 93, a. 6.
34 ST I–II, q. 62, a. 3: “ . . . virtutes theologicae hoc modo ordinant hominem ad
beatitudinem supernaturalem, sicut per naturalem inclinationem ordinatur homo
in finem sibi connaturalem. Hoc autem contingit secundum duo. Primo quidem,
secundum rationem vel intellectum, inquantum continet prima principia universalia cognita nobis per naturale lumen intellectus, ex quibus procedit ratio tam in
speculandis quam in agendis. Secundo, per rectitudinem voluntatis naturaliter
tendentis in bonum rationis.” Cf. “Jacques Maritain and the Philosophy of Cooperation,” chap. 13 in my book Wisdom, Law, and Virtue.
35 ST I–II, q. 90, a. 3.
36 ST I–II, q. 90, a. 4.
37 I am using the English translation given on the Vatican website.

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Man participates in the wisdom and goodness of the Creator who gives
him mastery over his acts and the ability to govern himself with a view
to the true and the good.The natural law expresses the original moral
sense which enables man to discern by reason the good and the evil,
the truth and the lie:
The natural law is written and engraved in the soul of each and
every man, because it is human reason ordaining him to do good
and forbidding him to sin . . . BUT THIS COMMAND OF HUMAN
REASON WOULD NOT HAVE THE FORCE OF LAW IF IT WERE NOT
THE VOICE AND INTERPRETER OF A HIGHER REASON TO WHICH
OUR SPIRIT AND OUR FREEDOM MUST BE SUBMITTED.38

Here Leo XIII is presented as clearly teaching the need to recognize a higher
reason as the source of an authority rightly seen as legal.
The Adequacy of Natural Law’s Promulgation
This raises the question of natural law’s adequate promulgation. So much
is it an issue that in Thomas’s article on the necessity for promulgation of
law, in the question on the definition of law, an objection is based
precisely on the case of natural law. One finds what is essential to law maximally in natural law, says the objector, and yet it stands in no need of
promulgation! To this Thomas replies: “. . . it is to be said that the promulgation of the law of nature is from the very fact that God places it
38 Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 1954; my italics. The text quoted by

the Catechism here is from Libertas praestantissimum, 597, an encyclical letter of
Pope Leo XIII, published June 20, 1888. [The uppercase letters are from me.] An
English translation of Libertas praestantissimum can be found in The Church Speaks
to the Modern World:The Social Teachings of Leo XIII, edited, annotated, and with an
Introduction by Etienne Gilson (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1954), 55–85, and
entitled “On Human Liberty.” For the quoted passage, cf. para. 8 at p. 62 and the
notes i and j at p. 82.
Notice also the following passage from the same place in the encyclical, stressing the importance of the supernatural dimension [Para. 8]: “ . . .To this rule of
action and restraint of evil God has vouchsafed to give special and most suitable
aids for strengthening and ordering the human will.The first and most excellent
of these is the power of His divine grace, whereby the mind can be enlightened
and the will wholesomely invigorated and moved to the constant pursuit of
moral good, so that the use of our inborn liberty becomes at once less difficult
and less dangerous. Not that the divine assistance hinders in any way the free
movement of our will; just the contrary, for grace works inwardly in man and in
harmony with his natural inclinations, since it flows from the very Creator of his
mind and will, by whom all things are moved in conformity with their nature.
As the Angelic Doctor points out, it is because divine grace comes from the
Author of nature that it is so admirably adapted to be the safeguard of all natures,
and to maintain the character, efficiency, and operations of each.”

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within the minds of human beings so as to be naturally known.”39 Now,
for this reply to be sufficient, it surely requires that our knowledge of
natural law include an appreciation of divine providence as its source.
This is a point on which Suarez insisted in his presentation of natural
law.40 He explains that the issue is not: “does the natural law come from
God as author of natural reason?” It is rather:“does it come from him precisely
as a legislator?” He holds that it comes to us in such a way that we know
it is from God as from a legislator.41
The ultimate objection to this in Suarez’s discussion bears upon the need
for God to intimate to the human being what the law is. For law really to be
law, there must be, not only the will of the legislator in the matter, but also
the intimation or insinuation that that is his will. Here Suarez answers that
intimation of the will follows with the same necessity (as he had earlier
mentioned), viz. from the perfection of divine providence.And thus the very
judgment of right reason naturally inserted in man is the sufficient sign of that
divine will, nor is any other insinuation necessary. And he says:
The proof is, that the judgment of reason indicates, just by virtue of itself,
divine providence of a sort fitting for God, and morally necessary for his
full lordship and due subjection of man to him, in which providence this
legislation is contained. Furthermore, for this reason it is known through
natural reason that God is offended by sins which are done against natural law, and their punishment pertains to him, and judgment [in their
regard]: therefore, the natural light itself is, just by itself, the sufficient promulgation of natural law, not only because it manifests the intrinsic inappropriateness or appropriateness of acts, which the uncreated light of
39 The objection (ST I–II, q. 90, a. 4, obj. 1) reads: “Videtur quod promulgatio non

sit de ratione legis. Lex enim naturalis maxime habet rationem legis. Sed lex naturalis
non indiget promulgatione. Ergo non est de ratione legis quod promulgetur.” [It
seems that promulgation does not belong to the essence of law; for natural law has
the essence of law in the highest degree; yet natural law has no need of promulgation.Therefore, it does not belong to the essence of law that it be promulgated.]
And the reply (ST I–II, q. 90, a. 4, ad 1): “Ad primum ergo dicendum quod
promulgatio legis naturae est ex hoc ipso quod Deus eam mentibus hominum
inseruit naturaliter cognoscendam.”
40 On this, see especially Franciscus Suarez, S.J. [1548–1617], Tractatus de legibus et
legislatore Deo, in Opera Omnia, ed. Carolus Berton (Paris, 1856): apud Vivès, t.V.
Book II is De lege aeterna, et naturali, ac jure gentium. Cap.VI: An lex naturalis sit lex
divina praeceptiva (pp. 104–12).
The following three paragraphs in my main text are reproduced from
“Natural Law and the First Act of Freedom: Maritain Revisited,” chap. 14 in my
book Wisdom, Law, and Virtue, at 558–59.
41 This, of course, is precisely what Thomas shows in ST I–II, q. 91, aa. 1 and 2.
God as princeps of the universe is the supreme legislator, pronouncing the eternal
law (a. 1), and natural law is a participation in the eternal law (a. 2).

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God shows: but also because it intimates to man [hominis, sic; lege homini ]
that the contrary actions displease the author of the nature, as the
supreme Lord, and care-giver, and governor of that same nature: therefore, this is sufficient intimation of that law, as Thomas judges in I–II, q.
90, a. 4, ad 1 . . . 42

He is referring to Thomas’s saying that the promulgation of natural law
is sufficient, by virtue of God’s inserting it into our minds so that it is
naturally known. The point here seems to be that we have by natural
reason43 some knowledge of a perfect providence, and thus we see our natural knowledge as the expression of a law.44
Our Knowledge of Natural Law and Our Knowledge of God
Thus far, then, we must conclude that one’s knowledge of the morally right
has the quality, the status, the nobility, of natural law precisely inasmuch as
it is recognized as guidance provided by the author of natural reality.
This suggests a very “cognitive” encounter with natural law and its
author. That is, where Jacques Maritain’s conception of natural law stressed
non-conceptual knowledge,“knowledge through inclination” as the meaning of
natural law’s being “naturally known,”45 I believe that Thomas is conceiving of will as depending on intellect, inclination as flowing from cognition.46
42 Suarez, Tractatus de legibus, para. #24, p. 112A.
43 What I mean here by “natural reason” is a spontaneous reasoning process found

in all humans (as will emerge in what follows).
44 I think that in this matter Suarez is better than Maritain. Maritain, in the posthu-

mously published study La loi naturelle ou loi non écrite (Texte inédit, établi par
Georges Brazzola) (Fribourg: Éditions Universitaires, 1986), 105–11, takes the
position that the natural law depends on reason, “not on will”: “Loi naturelle
dépend de la Raison, non du vouloir.” Thus, in his table on p. 106, he has this
very explicitly.Thomas Aquinas’s position is portrayed as divine reason issuing in
the natural law which enters man through the natural inclinations, thus bringing
us to the precepts. This seems to me quite wrong, most of all in the expression
“not on will.” Obviously, law, for Thomas, is an expression of reason. However,
it is the work of the governor, and this providential role is presented by Thomas,
very explicitly, as “what pertains simultaneously to intellect and will”: cf. ST I, q.
22, prologue, and a. 1, ad 1, on God as giving precepts. Cf. also ST I–II, q. 97, a.
3, ad 1: “ . . . dicendum quod lex naturalis et divina procedit a voluntate divina”
(and cf. the entire article).Thus, also, Maritain’s criticism of Suarez (in the same
context) on this issue as non-Thomistic is wrong.
45 According to Maritain, only the absolutely first principle of natural law: “that we
must do good and avoid evil,” is known to all human beings just by virtue of the
concepts involved, and this, Maritain says (Man and the State [Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1951], 90), is not the law but rather its preamble and principle.
Quoting from “Jacques Maritain and the Philosophy of Cooperation,” which
is chap. 13 in my book Wisdom, Law, and Virtue, at 213: “Regarding the second

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Notice that Maritain excludes the first principle of the law from “the
law.” I would contrast this with Thomas who is ready to say that the very
light of the human intellect is “the law.”47 (Maritain is being affected by
his own view of natural law as “known through inclination.” Obviously, he
does not want to say this about the first principle of the law.)
Our cognitive encounter with natural law as properly promulgated
raises the question of the sort of knowledge we have of God at the very
outset of natural law.48 In fact, that is already an essential issue, even apart
from the promulgation question, when one recalls that the Ten
Commandments are presented as first principles of natural law,49 and that
the Ten Commandments themselves he presents as based on the law of
love! We read:
element, gnoseological, Maritain asserts that natural law is ‘known to human
reason not in terms of conceptual and rational knowledge’ (82–83), but ‘through
inclination’ (91). ‘That kind of knowledge is not clear knowledge through
concepts and conceptual judgments; it is obscure, unsystematic, vital knowledge
by connaturality or congeniality . . .’ (91–92). Only the absolutely first principle
of natural law:‘that we must do good and avoid evil’ (90) is known to all human
beings just by virtue of the concepts involved, and this, Maritain says (90), is not
the law but rather its preamble and principle.” (Numbers in the foregoing refer
to pagination of Maritain’s Man and the State.)
46 Cf. above, notes 33 and 34.
47 Cf. above, note 30.
48 This is a question I have discussed before in these pages in connection with
Kevin Flannery’s book Acts Amid Precepts: The Aristotelian Logical Structure of
Thomas Aquinas’s Moral Theory (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of
America Press, 2001). Cf. my review article in Nova et Vetera 5 (2007): 431–44.
49 I quote from “Jean Porter on Natural Law: Thomistic Notes,” which is chap. 15
in my book Wisdom, Law, and Virtue, at 245, speaking of the question whether the
multiplicity of precepts indicated in ST I–II, q. 94, a. 2 are presented as per se nota
propositions: “It is true that Thomas here does not give an exact list of precepts,
preferring to assign fields in accordance with the three levels of natural inclination he notes.And already, by the time we get to the particular applications which
are the Ten Commandments, we are said (in the prima secundae context, at any rate)
to be in the domain of conclusions, not per se nota principles. It should be noted,
however, that St.Thomas changed his view of the presence of the per se notum as
regards the precepts of natural law. Thus, while in the Prima Secundae the Ten
Commandments are presented as immediate conclusions from the first principles,
by the time he writes the secunda secundae Thomas has decided that they are most
manifest principles of natural law: thus, they are surely being considered as per se
nota. [ST II–II, q. 122, a. 1 (2034a3–6): Respondeo dicendum quod praecepta
Decalogi sunt prima praecepta [Piana: principia] legis, et quibus statim ratio naturalis assentit sicut manifestissimis principiis. [‘the precepts of the Decalogue are the
first principles [other reading: precepts] of the law, and to which natural reason
immediately assents as to most manifest principles’ (my italics)].”

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752

It seems that not all the moral precepts of the Old Law are reduced to
the ten precepts of the Decalogue; for the first and principal precepts
are:“you shall love the Lord your God,” and “you shall love your neighbour,” as is had in Matthew 22. But these two are not contained among
the precepts of the Decalogue.Therefore, not all the moral precepts are
contained in the precepts of the Decalogue.50

And the reply:
. . . it is to be said that those two precepts are the first and general
precepts of the law of nature, which are known by virtue of themselves
to human reason, either by nature or by faith. And therefore all the
precepts of the Decalogue are related to those two as conclusions to
general principles.51

While52 I do not agree with Maritain that the knowledge of natural
law is non-conceptual, I do agree that it is natural. St.Thomas teaches that
the human being has a spontaneous reasoning to the existence of God.We
see what I have in mind in Thomas’s answer to the question: does it
belong to natural law that the human being offer sacrifice? He says:
. . . Natural reason declares to man that he is subject to some higher being,
because of the deficiencies that he experiences in himself, with respect
to which he needs to be helped and directed by some higher being.And
whatever that is, it is that which everywhere is called “a god.”53
50 ST I–II, q. 100, a. 3, obj. 1: “Videtur quod non omnia praecepta moralia veteris

legis reducantur ad decem praecepta Decalogi. Prima enim et principalia legis
praecepta sunt, ‘Diliges dominum deum tuum, et, diliges proximum tuum,’ ut
habetur Matth. XXII. Sed ista duo non continentur in praeceptis Decalogi. Ergo
non omnia praecepta moralia continentur in praeceptis Decalogi.”
51 Ibid., ad 1:“ . . . dicendum quod illa duo praecepta sunt prima et communia praecepta legis naturae, quae sunt per se nota rationi humanae, vel per naturam vel per fidem.
Et ideo omnia praecepta Decalogi ad illa duo referuntur sicut conclusiones ad principia communia.”
The option, “by nature or by faith,” touches on the issue: Original Sin has
weakened natural inclination as regards the love of God more than our own
selves (cf. ST I–II, q. 109, a. 3 [1354b39–49]); as also on the need for revelation
even of the truths of reason knowable by philosophy yet pertaining to the faith:
ST I, q. 1, a. 1.
52 The following three paragraphs are from my paper “The Foundations of Human
Rights,” Science et Esprit 62 (2010): 227–36, at 235–36.
53 ST II–II, q. 85, a. 1 (1861b48–54): “Respondeo dicendum quod naturalis ratio
dictat homini quod alicui superiori subdatur, propter defectus quos in seipso
sentit, in quibus ab aliquo superiori eget adiuvari et dirigi. Et quidquid illud sit,
hoc est quod apud omnes dicitur ‘deus.’ ”

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Thomas is not presenting a scientific demonstration of the existence of
God, but is reporting and attempting to describe what is some universal
spontaneous natural inference. Man’s experience of himself is as a being
which cannot stand by itself, without aid, and which cannot survive
without steering, without direction, from some source of intelligent
direction, moving things along for man’s protection and welfare.
Here, then, we have a type of natural knowledge, that is, not the fruit of
deliberate study and method, but given in the way that eyes and ears are
given, and yet a knowledge which is not merely the intellectual insight
into starting points, whether of simple terms like “the good” or of propositions like “the good is to be done and promoted, and the bad avoided”,
but a naturally occurring, spontaneous reasoning process.54
This is to say that Maritain was right in speaking of natural law as the
last refuge of intellectual agreement among men, men who cannot agree
in theoretical matters at all. We are dealing with what is often a rather
implicit confidence that nature is a source of divine wisdom.
Since writing about such natural knowledge of God in my Flannery
review in these pages, I have noticed the relevance for the topic of what
St. Thomas taught concerning natural justice and “what is right among
the peoples” [ius gentium ]. I wish here to cite this most important consideration for the doctrine of natural law, as taught by Thomas in ST II–II,
q. 57, a. 3, the third article in Thomas’s question on the object of justice;
it asks about the difference, if any, between the naturally right and what is
right among the peoples [ius gentium ].
We read, in the body of the article:
I answer that it must be said, as has been said, that the naturally right or
just [ius aut iustum ] is that which by its own nature is adequate or
commensurate for the other person. Now, this can occur in two ways.
In one way, as regards the absolute consideration of it: as the male by
its nature [ratione ] has commensurateness relative to the female, that
from it [the female] it [the male] generates [something], and [similarly]
the parent [is so related] to the child, that it nourish it.
In another way, something is naturally commensurate to the other
person not as regards its absolute nature [rationem ], but in accordance
with something that follows from it: for example, the ownership of
possessions [ proprietas possessionum ]: for, if this field is considered
absolutely, it has nothing whereby it should belong more to this person
than to that one; but if it is considered as regards the convenience for
54 For more on this doctrine of spontaneous reasoning to the existence of God, see

my above-mentioned review article of Kevin Flannery’s book in Nova et Vetera 5
(2007): 431–44, at 433–38.

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Lawrence Dewan, O.P.
cultivating, and as regards the peaceful exploitation of the field, so taken
it has some rightness towards belonging to this one person and not to
this other: as is clear from Aristotle, in Politics 2 [chap. 5: 1263a21].
Now, to apprehend something absolutely belongs not merely to man,
but also to the other animals, and therefore the “right” which is called
“natural” in the first way is common to us and to the other animals.
But from the “naturally right,” so said, “that which is right among
the peoples” is separated, as the Jurisconsul says, because the former is
common to all animals, while the latter is common solely to human
beings among themselves. [This is because] to consider something by
comparing it to what follows from it is proper to reason, and therefore
this is natural for the human being, in accordance with natural reason which
decrees it.Thus, Gaius, the jurisconsul, says that what natural reason establishes among all human beings, this all peoples obey, and it is called “what
is right among the peoples.”55

We thus see here that Thomas makes personal ownership of property
something pertaining to the object of natural law for human beings. I
suggest that the same considerations apply to the general spontaneous
“sizing up” of the human condition, of which Thomas spoke in ST II–II,
q. 85, a. 1, on offering sacrifice to a God as pertaining to natural law.
Particular Remarks on the ITC Document
It hardly needs saying that it is the Church’s obligation to direct the
minds of all who will listen to the foundations of morals, that is, to natu55 ST II–II, q. 57, a. 3:“Respondeo dicendum quod, sicut dictum est, ius sive iustum

naturale est quod ex sui natura est adaequatum vel commensuratum alteri. Hoc
autem potest contingere dupliciter. Uno modo, secundum absolutam sui considerationem, sicut masculus ex sui ratione habet commensurationem ad feminam ut
ex ea generet, et parens ad filium ut eum nutriat.Alio modo aliquid est naturaliter
alteri commensuratum non secundum absolutam sui rationem, sed secundum
aliquid quod ex ipso consequitur, puta proprietas possessionum. Si enim consideretur iste ager absolute, non habet unde magis sit huius quam illius, sed si consideretur quantum ad opportunitatem colendi et ad pacificum usum agri, secundum
hoc habet quandam commensurationem ad hoc quod sit unius et non alterius, ut
patet per Philosophum, in II Polit. Absolute autem apprehendere aliquid non
solum convenit homini, sed etiam aliis animalibus. Et ideo ius quod dicitur naturale secundum primum modum, commune est nobis et aliis animalibus. A iure
autem naturali sic dicto recedit ius gentium, ut Iurisconsultus dicit, quia illud
omnibus animalibus, hoc solum hominibus inter se commune est. Considerare
autem aliquid comparando ad id quod ex ipso sequitur, est proprium rationis. Et
ideo hoc quidem est naturale homini secundum rationem naturalem, quae hoc dictat. Et ideo
dicit Gaius iurisconsultus, quod naturalis ratio inter omnes homines constituit, id
apud omnes gentes custoditur, vocaturque ‘ius gentium.’ ” For the vocabulary of
natural reason as source of a decree:“dictat,” cf. again ST II–II, q. 85, a. 1: offering
sacrifices is part of “natural law [lex]” and “natural right [ius].”

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ral law. It is ironic that contemporary society has given rise to a considerable global movement to protect nature, the “green” movement, while
at the same time abusing human nature in a way that undermines the
rational foundations of human life.
The document of the ITC argues soundly in pointing to the variety of
cultures that manifest awareness of universal principles. It is in the approach
through “experience” followed by “foundations” that I find tendencies that
trouble me.The doctrine of “natural law” is a doctrine of divine help. If one
does not have the view of divine instruction and the threat of punishment,
one is not in a doctrine of law.
This raises the question of the distinction between awareness of the
“morality” of certain courses of action and “theoretical justification in
terms of ‘natural law.’ ” Surely, the doctrine of natural law is a doctrine of
common awareness of a God and punishment (at least as it was presented
by Cicero).
An approach where one acknowledges “natural inclination” but does
not consider nature as the product of a providential supreme agent is not much
help in morals.
Thus, I question their distinction (not all distinction) between the
awareness and theoretical justification.
I compliment the ITC document for gathering in its notes a valuable
documentation for the history of natural law.
As I finish rereading the introduction of the ITC document, I ask
whether the distinction between “common experience” in chapter 2 and
that of “theory” in chapter 3 is such that the chapter 2 “precepts of the
natural law” are so called per se or per accidens.
Cf. note 37 in para. 32: quoting Hugo Grotius (b. 1583-d. 1645).This
also touches on the rejection by modern rationalism of the link to divine
wisdom. This is what I wish to avoid, that is, the picture without God as
required source.
In paragraph 36 we see the distinction between the “behavior” recommended by a variety of cultures and the “theoretical explanation” of the
type of behavior. ITC acknowledges the difficulty this involves, as to
dialogue on the foundation of the moral norms.
At paragraph 37 we read:
Still, independently of the theoretical justifications of the concept of natural law, it is possible to discover the immediate givens of consciousness56 of
which it wants to give an account.The object of this chapter is precisely
56 I substitute here a more literal translation than Bolin’s “the fundamental elements of

the awareness,” so as to retain what may be a Bergsonian echo.

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Lawrence Dewan, O.P.
to show how to gather together [comment sont saisies] the common moral
values that constitute natural law. We will then see how the concept of
natural law is based on an explanatory picture that founds and legitimizes moral values, in a manner that can be shared by many.57

My point is that we should not exclude from “the immediate givens of consciousness” in this matter the divinity of the source of the experience : otherwise, we
are not speaking of the experience of being subject to natural law as law.
My concern is about the way one distinguishes between moral awareness and
rational foundation. I do not like the restriction of “concept” to the realm
of “explanatory picture.” This smacks of the Maritainian “knowledge
through inclination” explanation of natural law.58
I notice the headline of paragraph 39:“moral experience: one must do
good.” I wonder about the word “experience” here; I would say that we
are already at the first “concept” and the first “moral truth.” I notice that
they speak of the experience of this moral “call”—“fait l’expérience d’un
appel intérieur à accomplir le bien” (“experiences an interior call to do
good”). I would bear down hard on this word “call”: Who is calling?
In paragraph 42 we read:
Thus it recognizes the eternal law, i.e., the plan of God regarding creation, and
participates in God’s providence in a particularly excellent manner,
guiding itself and guiding others.59

Are we in “experience” or “theoretical foundations”? Are we discovering “the immediate givens of consciousness”? Does it recognize the plan of God
as the plan of God?
At paragraph 43 we come to this:
57 French:“Pourtant, quoi qu’il en soit des justifications théoriques du concept de loi

naturelle, il est possible de mettre au jour les données immédiates de la conscience dont
il veut rendre compte. L’objet du présent chapitre est précisément de montrer
comment sont saisies les valeurs morales communes qui constituent la loi naturelle. C’est
seulement ensuite que nous verrons comment le concept de loi naturelle prend
appui sur un cadre explicatif qui fonde et légitime les valeurs morales d’une façon
susceptible d’être partagée par plusieurs.”
I added the French “comment sont saisies” in citing the English, because the
document is not merely speaking of “gathering together” the moral values, but
of their very “way of being grasped.”
The italics in certain words are mine.
58 Cf. above, at note 45.
59 French: “En cela, elle perçoit la loi éternelle, c’est-à-dire le plan de Dieu sur la création,
et elle participe à la providence de Dieu d’une manière particulièrement excellente en se dirigeant soi-même et en dirigeant les autres.”

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The moral obligation that the subject recognizes does not come, therefore, from a law that would be exterior (as a heteronomy), but affirms
itself from within the subject itself. In fact, as indicated by the maxim
we have cited—“One must do good and avoid evil”—, the moral good
determined by reason “imposes itself ” on the subject. It “ought” to be
accomplished. It has a character of obligation and of law. But the term “law”
here does not refer to scientific laws, which limit themselves to describing the factual constants of the physical or social world, nor to an
imperative imposed on the moral subject arbitrarily from without. The
law designates here an orientation of the practical reason which indicates to the
moral subject what kind of action is conformed with its fundamental dynamism
and necessary for its being, which tends to its full realization.This law is normative in virtue of an internal requirement of the spirit. [Here, pace Bolin, I
would suggest the word: “mind”.] It is born in the very heart of our
being as an invitation to the realization and transcending of ourselves. It is
not therefore a matter of subjecting oneself to the law of another, but of
accepting the law of one’s own being.60

We see here a regretable tendency to justify the legal character of the
precept simply on the basis of nature in itself, rather than as coming from
the wise author of nature itself. This will not do !—There is not sufficient
attention to the appropriateness of the term “law” here. No one is a law
unto himself.61 And what has happened to the grasp of the eternal law,
mentioned above, in paragraph 42? Moreover, the French “appel”
[English “invitation”] implies a someone inviting: it can hardly be merely
our own self that is doing the calling or inviting.62
60 French [43]: L’obligation morale que perçoit le sujet ne vient donc pas d’une loi

qui lui serait extérieure (hétéronomie pure) mais elle s’affirme à partir de luimême. En effet, comme l’indique l’axiome que nous avons évoqué: “Il faut faire
le bien et éviter le mal”, le bien moral que la raison détermine “s’impose” au
sujet. Il “doit” être accompli. Il revêt un caractère d’obligation et de loi. Mais le
terme de “loi” ne renvoie ici ni aux lois scientifiques qui se contentent de décrire
les constantes factuelles du monde physique ou social, ni à un impératif imposé
arbitrairement de l’extérieur au sujet moral. La loi désigne ici une orientation de la
raison pratique qui indique au sujet moral quel type d’agir est conforme au dynamisme
foncier et nécessaire de son être qui tend à sa pleine réalisation. Cette loi est normative
en vertu d’une exigence interne à l’esprit. Elle jaillit du cœur même de notre être
comme un appel à l’accomplissement et au dépassement de soi. Il ne s’agit donc pas
tant de se soumettre à la loi d’un autre que d’accueillir la loi de son propre être.
In fairness to the ITC I will note that the last sentence could be translated:
“Thus, it is not so much a matter of subjecting oneself to the law of another as
rather a matter of accepting the law of one’s own being.”
61 Cf. ST I–II, q. 90, a. 3, ad 1, and again ST I–II, q. 91, a. 2. —One can be a “law
unto oneself ” but as receiving the law from a higher power.
62 Would it be relevant here to recall that St.Thomas presents law as pertaining to
the discussion of the external principles of human action? Cf. above, note 15.

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Paragraphs 44–47 are placed under a general heading: 2.3. La découverte
des préceptes de la loi naturelle: universalité de la loi naturelle. (Bolin: The
discovery of the precepts of natural law: universality of natural law.)
What we find here is a reading of ST I–II, q. 94, a. 2, but with considerations suggestive of the thinking of Jacques Maritain.We are told that the
knowledge is not “conceptual” (at least as this pertains to “philosophical
and theological theory”).There is much insistence on the role of affectivity (as if we could not have conceptual thinking as the source of affectivity).
After reading through to the beginning of paragraph 52, I am
convinced that it is worthwhile to offer my own reading of I–II, q. 94, a.
2. It is normal to understand later parts of the ST in the light of what Thomas
has already taught in the earlier parts. Thus, I base myself on the nature of
our “natural inclinations” as presented by St. Thomas already in I–II, q.
62, a. 3, with the natural knowledge preceding the natural movement of
the appetite (not “knowledge through inclination”). Then, secondly, I
would stress the point that for Thomas the first level of natural inclination, common to all substances, surely includes the natural love for God more
than for one’s own self, together with the natural inclination towards preservation, not only of the individual as an individual, but of the species: that
is, reproduction! (cf. ST I, q. 60, a. 5, ad 1 and ad 3).63 The second level
is not proper to “all living beings” (cf. paragraph 49) but to animals, in that
it speaks of the more particular mode of reproduction, viz. sexual relations
and the education of the young.The third is not about “the tendency to
living in communion with God or the Absolute” (cf. paragraph 50) but
to know the truth about God, and to live in society. The love of God pertains
to the first level of natural inclination (cf. ST I, q. 60, a. 5).
I will grant that we must have “imperfect”64 knowledge in these
matters, as distinct from philosophical demonstration.65 However, the
human being’s knowledge of God is fundamental for the doctrine of
natural law as such.66
63 Indeed, the inclination to reproduce one’s kind is found in all natural things, and is

used by St. Thomas as the approach to God’s willing things other than himself,
in ST I, q. 19, a. 2.
64 Cf. para. 44:“C’est une saisie souvent imparfaite, encore obscure et crépusculaire,
mais qui a la profondeur de l’immédiateté.”
English: “It is a grasp often imperfect, still obscure and dim, but it has the
profundity of immediacy.”
65 Cf. ScG chap. 3, par. 38 in toto.
66 Again, cf. ST II–II, q. 85, a. 1: that offering sacrifice to God pertains to natural
law. Let us recall also the doctrine of St. Thomas commenting on Psalm 8: the
natural instinct to find God in the universe. On all this I refer the reader to my
review of Flannery, cited in note 48 above.

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Coming now to chapter 3, with the move from “experience” to
“theories,” notice in paragraph 61 the note 60:
At this first level, the expression of the natural law sometimes abstracts
from an explicit reference to God. Certainly the openness to transcendence makes part of the virtuous behaviors that must be expected from
the fulfilled man [French: Certes, l’ouverture à la transcendance fait partie des
comportements vertueux qu’on est en droit d’attendre de l’homme accompli ; I
would translate: Certainly openness to transcendence constitutes part of the
virtuous behavior one has a right to expect in a mature human being ], but God
is not [I add the word: “yet,” French has “encore”] necessarily recognized
as the foundation and the source of the natural law, nor as the last end that
mobilizes and hierarchizes the different virtuous behaviors.The explicit
non-acknowledgment of God [French: “Cette non reconnaissance
explicite de Dieu” I would translate as: This absence of an explicit
recognition of God] as the ultimate moral norm seems to prevent the
“empirical” approach to the natural law from being constituted as
properly moral doctrine.67

My first question here would be: have they thus far given the reader
enough notice of the importance of knowledge of God in the fundamental awareness of natural law, such that he might appreciate this present judgment of theirs? Their words “sometimes abstracts” suggests that
natural law can be “experienced” with or without appreciation of the role
of God in its existence. I think there should have been more knowledge of God
present in their account of the “experience” of natural law.
As I begin rereading chapter 3, I notice their speaking of the harvest
obtained from the sort of experience they had in mind in chapter 2:
60. The spontaneous acquisition of fundamental ethical values, which are
expressed in the precepts of the natural law, constitutes the point of
departure of the process that then leads the moral subject to the judgment of conscience, in which it enunciates the moral requirements that
impose themselves on it in the concrete situation. It is the task of the
The ITC is certainly right to underline [paragraph 52] the possibility of
weakening or obliteration of some precepts; the problem of sin, etc.
67 French: “A ce premier niveau, l’expression de la loi naturelle fait parfois abstraction d’une référence explicite à Dieu. Certes, l’ouverture à la transcendance fait
partie des comportements vertueux qu’on est en droit d’attendre de l’homme
accompli, mais Dieu n’est pas encore nécessairement reconnu comme le fondement et la source de la loi naturelle ni comme la fin dernière qui mobilise et
hiérarchise les différents comportements vertueux. Cette non reconnaissance
explicite de Dieu comme norme morale ultime semble interdire à l’approche
‘empirique’ de la loi naturelle de se constituer en doctrine proprement morale.”

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theologian and of the philosopher to return to this experience of the
acquisition of the first principles of ethics, to demonstrate their validity
and to ground them in reason. The recognition of these philosophical
or theological foundations, however, does not in the least condition the
spontaneous adherence to common values. In fact the moral subject
can put into practice the orientations of natural law without being
capable, by reason of particular intellectual conditions, of explicitly
comprehending them and their ultimate theoretical foundations.68

It does not sound as though the “moral subject” has appreciated the
rationality of what he or she thinks is right. In short, I wonder if their split
between chapter 2 and chapter 3 is really good for a presentation of the
importance of natural law.
I do, of course, agree with paragraph 61 on the value of metaphysical
vision for an appreciation of natural law. However, I think that the embryonic metaphysics in the “experience” of natural law is underestimated by the
document. When they spoke earlier of the meaning of “law” they
mentioned the eternal law, but they gave no sense of the good person’s
appreciation of God as cause of law.
Already, before that, I had said: “Even as I finish rereading the introduction of the ITC document, I ask myself whether the distinction
between ‘common experience’ in chapter 2 and that of ‘theory’ in chapter 3 is such that the chapter 2 ‘precepts of the natural law’ are so called
per se or per accidens.” It is still a good question, I am afraid. Or should we
say that they themselves answered it in note 60? I repeat its conclusion:
This absence of an explicit recognition of God as the ultimate moral norm
seems to prevent the “empirical” approach to the natural law from
being constituted as properly moral doctrine.69
68 French: “[60] La saisie spontanée des valeurs éthiques fondamentales, qui s’expri-

ment dans les préceptes de la loi naturelle, constitue le point de départ du processus qui conduit ensuite le sujet moral jusqu’au jugement de conscience dans
lequel il énonce quelles sont les exigences morales qui s’imposent à lui dans sa
situation concrète. Il appartient au philosophe et au théologien d’opérer un
retour sur cette expérience de la saisie des premiers principes de l’éthique pour
en éprouver la valeur et la fonder en raison. La reconnaissance de ces fondements
philosophiques ou théologiques ne conditionne pas toutefois l’adhésion spontanée aux
valeurs communes. En effet, le sujet moral peut mettre en œuvre pratiquement les
orientations de la loi naturelle sans être capable, en raison de conditionnements
intellectuels particuliers, d’en discerner explicitement les fondements théoriques
ultimes” [italics mine].
69 French, note 60: “Cette non reconnaissance explicite de Dieu comme norme
morale ultime semble interdire à l’approche ‘empirique’ de la loi naturelle de se
constituer en doctrine proprement morale” [italics mine].

Natural Law and Universal Ethics

761

In paragraph 63, where they present natural law as a participation in
the eternal law, notice the way they put it:
The natural law is therefore defined as a participation in the eternal law.
It is mediated, on the one hand, by the inclinations of human nature,
expressions of the Creative Wisdom, and, on the other hand, by the light
of human reason which interprets them and which is itself a created participation in the light of divine intelligence. Ethics presents itself as a
“participated theonomy.”70

We must recall that this is an expression of their interpretation of ST I–II,
q. 94, a. 2 on the natural inclinations and their role in our formation of
natural law precepts. I favour a reading of “natural inclination” in the
rational creature which rather sees the appetitive dimension as flowing
from the intellective dimension (cf. I–II, q. 62, a. 3).
Note 64, attached to the expression “participated theonomy,” requires
our comment; we read:
John Paul II, Encyclical Veritatis splendor, n. 41—The teaching on natural law as the foundation of ethics is accessible by right to natural reason.
History attests to this. But in fact, this teaching reached its full maturity
only under the influence of Christian revelation. First of all, because the
comprehension of the natural law as a participation in the eternal law is
strictly linked with a metaphysics of creation. Now, although this is of
right accessible to philosophical reason, it was truly presented and
explained only under the influence of biblical monotheism. Secondly,
because revelation, e.g., through the Decalogue, explains, confirms, purifies, and completes the fundamental principles of the natural law.71

I certainly do not oppose the reference to revelation of the Decalogue.
This is especially true in that, as St.Thomas teaches (ST I–II, q. 109, a. 3),
70 French, note 64:“La loi naturelle se définit alors comme une participation à la loi

éternelle. Elle est médiatisée, d’une part, par les inclinations de la nature, expressions
de la sagesse créatrice, et, d’autre part, par la lumière de la raison humaine qui les interprète et qui est elle-même une participation créée à la lumière de l’Intelligence
divine. L’éthique se présente ainsi comme une ‘théonomie participée.’ ”
71 French:“L’enseignement sur la loi naturelle comme fondement de l’éthique est de
droit accessible à la raison naturelle. L’histoire l’atteste. Mais, de fait, cet enseignement n’a atteint sa pleine maturité que sous l’influence de la révélation chrétienne.
Tout d’abord, parce que la compréhension de la loi naturelle comme participation
à la loi éternelle est étroitement liée à une métaphysique de la création. Or, celleci, bien qu’elle soit de droit accessible à la raison philosophique, n’a été vraiment
mise au jour et explicitée que sous l’influence du monothéisme biblique. Ensuite,
parce que la Révélation, par exemple à travers le Décalogue, explicite, confirme, purifie et
accomplit les principes fondamentaux de la loi naturelle.”

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Lawrence Dewan, O.P.

after original sin we do not have an adequate natural love for God, and
that latter love is the basis for the conception of the Ten Commandments
(I–II, q. 100, a. 3, ad 1).
I would follow Thomas in seeing the divine causality which is creation
as appreciated by Aristotle. One should notice how much of the doctrine
of inclinations of nature is taken from Aristotle as imitation of the divine.72
Still, at this point we are touching on the issue I wish to highlight, namely
that natural law as law requires rational appreciation of adequate promulgation.
I wonder if the approach of the document is not too slanted towards
a “non-law” conception of the general “experience” of natural law.
Conclusion
In general, my complaint is that the use of the word “law” involves one
in our awareness of divine promulgation, whereas the line taken by the
ITC tends towards a “self-perfection” picture. One sees that in their paragraphs 43/44/45.
So also, the downplaying of conceptualizing, and their sort of stress on
connaturality depreciates the cognitive quality of natural inclination as
presented by St.Thomas.
Their point about the first level of inclination is, I believe, deceptive,
in that it obscures the role of the creature’s love for God more than for
oneself as primary in natural inclination of all substances. ST I–II, q. 94,
a. 2 should be read in the light of the earlier part of the ST, especially I,
q. 60, a. 5.
The question that remains is: how legitimate is my criticism of the
document of the ITC? Are my concerns relevant? I think so.They pertain
to Thomas’s insistence on the need for revelation even as regards what is
N&V
naturally knowable.73

72 Cf. my paper “St. Thomas Aquinas as an Example of the Importance of the

Hellenistic Legacy,” Doctor Communis (2008), fasc. 1–2 (Vatican City): 88–118.
73 ST I, q. 1, a. 1 (ed. Ottawa, 2b9–20).

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 9, No. 3 (2011): 763–773

763

Determinacy in Natural Law
K EVIN L. F LANNERY, S.J.
Pontifical Gregorian University
Rome, Italy

A DOCUMENT of the International Theological Commission is a
strange animal. It is not a magisterial document, although it is approved
for publication by the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith. It is not simply an academic publication (like an article in a journal
or a monograph), although it does put forward the ideas of a group of
academics speaking qua academics. It is also obviously the work of a
commission, and so does not pretend to be putting forward a position that
is internally coherent in all respects; it is rather an “agreed statement,” onto
which the members of the commission (including said Prefect), after
presumably lobbying for various sentences and formulations, are willing to
sign.Whatever the limitations of such documents, however, they are worth
producing and studying.They are a way for the Church in Rome to come
to understand better what respected Catholic scholars not in Rome are
thinking about important questions and to remain in contact with them.
They are also a way for Catholics in general to come to understand the
intellectual culture the Church’s magisterium is to some extent addressing
when it issues genuinely authoritative documents.
In 2009 the International Theological Commission presented to the
public a document on natural law entitled A la recherche d’une ethique
universelle: nouveau regard sur la loi naturelle (henceforth A la recherche).1 In this
article, I consider a number of remarks in A la recherche having to do (for the
most part) with the bearing of the primary precepts of the natural law upon
the moral characterization of particular human acts.Around the time of the
Second Vatican Council, one begins to encounter in the writings of certain
1 The document was composed in French and the French version is the basis of

the present article. English translations of A la recherche are my own.

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Kevin L. Flannery, S.J.

Catholic scholars the idea that the general precepts of the natural law are all
well and good, but they cannot speak in a determinate way to particular
situations and to particular acts that a person might perform.The motivation behind such theories is often—and often explicitly—a desire to allow
the use of contraceptives in marriage despite the Church’s exceptionless
proscription. But the theories invariably make claims about natural law itself
and about its principal exponents, especially Thomas Aquinas.
Regarding the more theoretical aspects of ethics, Thomas—in many
(but not in all) respects—follows Aristotle, who says in a number of places
that we cannot expect from ethics the same type of precision we find in
the sciences.What Aristotle says in this regard is perfectly true: the analysis of human acts is not like the analysis of the objects of mathematics or
even of biology, where it is important to fix these objects (numbers and
animals) by means of definitions so that they might play in their respective sciences predictable and determinate roles. A biologist, for instance,
has a problem if an animal he has placed within a particular bird species
shows up also, according to his own rules of taxonomy, in a species of
dogs. This sort of thing happens, however, all the time in ethics. An act
that might be described as a simple act of truth-telling (a member of that
“species”) turns out on closer analysis to be also an act of merciless
revenge; or an act of striking a match on an ill-lit street corner turns out
to be also the launching of an assassination attempt.
But none of this means that, according to Aristotle or Thomas, we
cannot make judgments about the morality of particular acts. Far from it.
As Francisco Suarez, with Thomas in mind, pointed out back in the seventeenth century (long before “the pill,” that is, but not before theoreticians
thought to seek ways to allow acts prohibited by exceptionless precepts),
ethics is about particular acts: that is where it begins and (in many ways)
finishes.2 Any attempt exhaustively to classify human acts as one does
species of animals will soon be recognized as futile and even ridiculous;
but (for instance) the man striking the match knows perfectly well what
he is doing and why, as can we know, if we are informed about the plot.
One sees (perhaps vestigial) traces of this philosophical controversy in
A la recherche’s translation and/or interpretation of a passage from
Thomas’s Summa theologiae I–II, q. 94, a. 4, which asks whether natural
law is the same everywhere. A la recherche §53 begins with the remark:
It is impossible to remain at the level of generality, which is that of the
first principles of the natural law. Moral reflection must in effect descend
2 Francisco Suarez, Tractatus de Legibus, ed. M. André and Carolus Berton (Paris: L.

Vivès, 1856), vol. 5 of Opera Omnia 2.7.7 (and, more generally, 2.13).

Determinacy in Natural Law

765

into the concreteness of action in order to shed there its light. But the
more it is faced with concrete and contingent situations, the more its
conclusions are affected by an element of variability and incertitude.

A few lines later comes the passage from Thomas:
Practical reason [writes Thomas in the Summa theologiae] is concerned
with contingent realities, in which human actions are performed.This is
why, even though in the general principles there is a certain necessity, the
more one confronts particular matters, the more indetermination there is.

A la recherche §53 then marks an ellipsis, after which it gives the reader
another sentence, which is taken from the same article of the Summa
theologiae and acknowledges that “there is not the same practical truth or
rectitude among all peoples with respect to proper but only general
matters” and that, even where “rectitude” is the same regarding proper
matters, it is not known equally to all.3 In Thomas, but not in A la
recherche, there then follows the example of a person who is “obliged” to
return a deposit left to him in trust but is actually obliged not to return
it, for to do so would be unjust.4 The section that contains this example
is marked in A la recherche §53 by another ellipsis; it then concludes with
a last bit from ST I–II, q. 94, a. 4:“And here, the more one descends into
detail, the more the indetermination increases.”5
3 The French of A la recherche, following the CERF translation (see note 6), speaks

of “applications particulières” where Thomas’s Latin has simply “propria.” Since
in Thomas’s account of natural law the distinction between general precepts
(“praecepta communia”) and proper precepts is so important, it is best to adhere
closely to Thomas’s choice of terms here. Things proper (proper precepts, for
instance) are not necessarily particulars. (See, for instance, ST I–II, q. 94, a. 6
corp.: “. . . ad legem naturalem pertinent primo quidem quaedam praecepta
communissima, quae sunt omnibus nota, quaedam autem secundaria praecepta
magis propria, quae sunt quasi conclusiones propinquae principiis.”)
4 A deposit is simply an object left to one in trust by its owner. See below, note 7.
5 Here is the whole of A la recherche §53:“Il est impossible de demeurer au niveau
de généralité qui est celui des principes premiers de la loi naturelle. La réflexion
morale, en effet, a besoin de descendre dans le concret de l’action pour y jeter sa
lumière. Mais plus elle affronte des situations concrètes et contingentes, plus ses
conclusions sont affectées d’une note de variabilité et d’incertitude. . . . Bien qu’il
vécût à une époque de chrétienté, un théologien comme saint Thomas d’Aquin
en avait une perception très nette. ‘La raison pratique, écrivait-il dans la Somme
de théologie, s’occupe de réalités contingentes, dans lesquelles s’exercent les
actions humaines. C’est pourquoi, bien que dans les principes généraux il y ait
quelque nécessité, plus on aborde les choses particulières, plus il y a d’indétermination . . . Dans le domaine de l’action, la vérité ou la rectitude pratique n’est

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Kevin L. Flannery, S.J.

One interesting thing about these various translations from ST I–II, q.
94, a. 4 is that they repeat almost word for word the standard French
translation,6 except where we read in A la recherche of “indetermination”
[“indétermination”]. In fact, in the relevant places, the standard French
translation renders Thomas’s “invenitur defectus” and “invenitur deficere”
much more accurately as “on rencontre de défaillances” (“one encounters defects”) and “les exceptions se multiplient” (“the exceptions are
more numerous”).
What does it mean to encounter failure or defect in the application of
a general principle? This is best understood by studying the larger passage
in the Summa theologiae to which the various bits given in A la recherche §53
belong. After saying (as we have seen) that practical truth or rectitude can
differ among peoples, although not with respect to general matters but
only proper matters, and that, even when the rectitude is the same, it is not
always known equally to all,Thomas says that there is much more regularity in speculative reason: it is true everywhere that the interior angles of a
triangle are equal to two right angles—although not everyone knows this.
He then continues:
But, with respect to the proper conclusions of practical reason, neither
[1] is truth or rectitude the same with everyone—nor [2], for those for
whom [the truth or rectitude] is the same, is it known equally. For
everywhere the following is right and true:‘one ought to act according
pas la même chez tous dans les applications particulières, mais uniquement dans
les principes généraux; et chez ceux pour lesquels la rectitude est identique dans
leurs actions propres, elle n’est pas également connue de tous. . . . Et ici, plus on
descend dans le détail, plus l’indétermination augmente.’ ” In the appended note,
it gives the bits taken from Thomas’s ST I–II, q. 94, a. 4: “Ratio practica negotiatur circa contingentia, in quibus sunt operationes humanae, et ideo, etsi in
communibus sit aliqua necessitas, quanto magis ad propria descenditur, tanto
magis invenitur defectus . . . In operativis autem non est eadem veritas vel rectitudo practica apud omnes quantum ad propria, sed solum quantum ad communia, et apud illos apud quos est eadem rectitudo in propriis, non est aequaliter
omnibus nota. . . . Et hoc tanto magis invenitur deficere, quanto magis ad particularia descenditur.” Reading A la recherche §53, one gets the impression that the
last piece of quotation, “Et ici, plus on descend dans le détail, plus l’indétermination augmente,” refers to the penultimate piece (about rectitude, etc.). It does
not; it refers rather to the general principle “deposits are to be returned”
[“deposita sunt reddenda”]. But this is not clear in the CERF translation either,
since it translates “Et hoc” as “Et ici.” If one follows the development of the argument of ST I–II, q. 94, a. 4 corp., one notices that Thomas twice introduces a
sentence with the words “Et hoc.” In both cases, he is referring to the same thing:
that (in general) deposits are to be returned.
6 Thomas d’Aquin: Somme Théologique (Paris: Les Éditions du CERF, 1984).

Determinacy in Natural Law

767

to reason.’ From this principle, however, there follows, as if a proper
conclusion, that deposits ought to be returned.And this indeed [1] is in
general true although in some case or another it can happen that it
would be injurious—and therefore irrational—for deposits to be
returned: for instance [a], someone asks [for the return of a deposit] in
order to attack the fatherland. And this [i.e., principle that deposits
ought to be returned] is found to be more likely to fail [deficere] the
more one descends into particulars, for instance [b], if it is declared that
deposits are to be returned “with this proviso” [cum tali cautione]7 or
“in this way”—for as the appended particular conditions increase in
number, so also increase the ways in which [the principle] can fail [deficere], so that rectitude would be found neither in returning nor in not
returning [deposits].
So then it needs to be said that the law of nature, with respect to the
first general principles, is the same with everyone both according to
rectitude and according to knowledge thereof. But with respect to
certain proper principles—which are quasi-conclusions of the general
principles—[the law of nature] is the same with everyone in general,
both according to rectitude and according to knowledge thereof, but in
a few cases it can fail [potest deficere] both [1] with respect to rectitude, because of certain particular impediments (just as also the generable and corruptible things of nature fail in particular cases on account
of impediments) and also [2] with respect to knowledge thereof. And
the explanation of this is that some individuals have a reason corrupted
due to passion or due to a bad custom or due to a bad habit of nature:
for instance [c], as Julius Caesar informs us in The Gallic Wars, at one
time among the German peoples robbery was not considered iniquitous, even though it is expressly against the law of nature.8
7 The question of whether a deposit (such as a weapon) ought to be returned to

a madman occurs as early as Plato’s Republic (see R. i, 331E5–332A2; see also ii,
382C7–10). In Roman law, a cautio is often a note appended to a contract, stating its terms. In Isidore of Seville’s Etymologiae 5.25.19, a depositum is described
in the following way: “Depositum est pignus commendatum ad tempus, quasi
‘diu positum.’ Deponere autem quis videtur, cum aliquid metu furti, incendii,
naufragii, apud alium custodiae causa deponit.”A few lines later (5.25.24), Isidore
defines a ‘hypotheca’ (originally a Greek term denoting a deposit): “Hypotheca
est, cum res commodatur sine depositione pignoris, pacto vel cautione sola interveniente.” Here a cautio is equivalent to a written or verbal specification of the
terms of a contract pertaining to a deposit.
8 “Sed quantum ad proprias conclusiones rationis practicae, nec [1] est eadem veritas seu rectitudo apud omnes; nec [2] etiam apud quos est eadem, est aequaliter
nota.Apud omnes enim hoc rectum est et verum, ut secundum rationem agatur.
Ex hoc autem principio sequitur quasi conclusio propria, quod deposita sint
reddenda. Et hoc quidem [1] ut in pluribus verum est, sed potest in aliquo casu
contingere quod sit damnosum, et per consequens irrationabile, si deposita
reddantur; puta [a] si aliquis petat ad impugnandam patriam. Et hoc tanto magis

768

Kevin L. Flannery, S.J.

I have attempted to make the structure of this argument more apparent by inserting bracketed numbers and letters. This structure is
announced in the first sentence: “with respect to the proper conclusions
of practical reason, neither [1] is truth or rectitude the same with everyone—nor [2], for those for whom [the truth or rectitude] is the same, is
it known equally.” This is basically Thomas’s response to the question
asked in the title of the article: “Whether the law of nature is one [the
same] with everyone.” He will first [1] explain how the rectitude [“rectitudo”] of even proper principles (which are “quasi conclusions” of the
general principles)9 can differ among different people—without, however,
a loss of rectitude in their application. He will then [2] show how difference of rectitude in application might not be an issue and yet, among
certain people, the rectitude be unknown. He gives three examples: the
first two [a] and [b] pertain to [1] (rectitude differently applied); the third
[c] pertains to [2] (ignorance even where rectitude differently applied is
not an issue). Most of the above passage is about [1]; failure with respect
to knowledge [2] is discussed only at the very end of the quotation.
“Failure” (or defect) is the subject of both sections [1] and [2]. The
word itself ought not to be understood as necessarily connoting a bad
situation. In section [1], it refers to the fact that the proper principle as
invenitur deficere, quanto magis ad particularia descenditur, puta [b] si dicatur
quod deposita sunt reddenda cum tali cautione, vel tali modo, quanto enim
plures conditiones particulares apponuntur, tanto pluribus modis poterit deficere,
ut non sit rectum vel in reddendo vel in non reddendo.
Sic igitur dicendum est quod lex naturae, quantum ad prima principia
communia, est eadem apud omnes et secundum rectitudinem, et secundum notitiam. Sed quantum ad quaedam propria, quae sunt quasi conclusiones principiorum communium, est eadem apud omnes ut in pluribus et secundum
rectitudinem et secundum notitiam, sed ut in paucioribus potest deficere et [1]
quantum ad rectitudinem, propter aliqua particularia impedimenta (sicut etiam
naturae generabiles et corruptibiles deficiunt ut in paucioribus, propter impedimenta), et etiam [2] quantum ad notitiam; et hoc propter hoc quod aliqui habent
depravatam rationem ex passione, seu ex mala consuetudine, seu ex mala habitudine naturae; sicut [c] apud Germanos olim latrocinium non reputabatur
iniquum, cum tamen sit expresse contra legem naturae, ut refert Iulius Caesar, in
libro De Bello Gallico.”
9 In Thomas, this concept of a “quasi-conclusion” is important. (See, for instance,
In IV Sent., d. 33, a. 2c and ST I–II, q. 94, aa. 4–6.) The proper principles (or
precepts) are not deduced from the general (or common) principles but are specifications of them. I discuss this more fully below. A la recherche appears to appreciate that the lower precepts of natural law are not deduced from higher precepts;
see, for instance, §54, where we read: “in morals pure deduction by syllogism is
not adequate” [“qu’en morale la pure déduction par syllogisme n’est pas
adéquate”]. But, as will be shown below, it occasionally loses hold of this truth.

Determinacy in Natural Law

769

originally formulated is simply not present—without, however, any loss of
rectitude. In example [a], there is no negative aspect whatsoever: the principle is absent but (and) justice is done.The holder is not obliged to return
the deposit to the owner who would use it in order to attack the fatherland; in fact, he is obliged not to return it and he does the right thing.
Reading example [b], one does get the impression that Thomas is not
much in favor of the accumulation of legal specifications (“as the
appended particular conditions increase in number, . . . rectitude would be
found neither in returning nor in not returning [deposits]”); but what he
apparently regards as not especially good is not the failure of the general
principle to make an appearance at the concrete level—it is left in the
background in order that the law might be more precise—but rather the
loss of a clear message regarding the natural law in that particular regard.
Section [2] does refer to a bad situation (a certain population is regularly committing theft), but the problem is not simply the absence of the
principle (for, as we have seen, absence is not per se a negative) but the
fact that the absence is due to the ignorance of the people of something
they ought to know.
So then, with respect to [1], the proper principle “deposits are to be
returned” sometimes either [a] fails to apply, as when returning a weapon
to a man would be irrational if he clearly intends to use it to attack the
fatherland,10 or [b] is so qualified in positive law that its original form for
that reason fails to be present at the level of concrete application. In this
latter case, instead of speaking of the general principle “deposits are to be
returned,” judges and lawyers speak of the qualified principle “deposits are
to be returned except when doing so might threaten the fatherland” (or
something similar).Thomas’s main point with respect to [1] is simply that,
at the level of application, a proper principle might be subject to variation
(without loss of rectitude) either because of particular circumstances
(impediments to its application) or because of the decisions of legislators.
With respect to [2] and the example [c] of the Germans who thought
that robbery was not iniquitous, it is important to note that Thomas
concludes that point with the remark “even though it is expressly against the
law of nature.” This connects the example to his original formulation of his
response, as contained in the first sentence of our quotation: (to repeat)
10 See ST II–II, q. 57, a. 2, ad 1. Note that in ST I–II, q. 94, a. 4 Thomas says that

the proper principle “deposita sint reddenda” is a quasi-conclusion of the general
principle “ut secundum rationem agatur.” He then says that returning the deposit
(the weapon) to the other person would be “damnosum, et per consequens irrationabile”; in other words, it would contradict the general principle from which
the proper principle is “derived.”

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Kevin L. Flannery, S.J.

“with respect to the proper conclusions of practical reason, neither [1] is
truth or rectitude the same with everyone—nor [2], for those for whom [the
truth or rectitude] is the same, is it known equally.” In example [c], he is assuming that neither of the issues identified in [1] (that is, in examples [a] and [b])
is involved.The rectitude of the law remains without variation: the Germans
just lack knowledge about its application in certain circumstances.11
What can we conclude from all this regarding the supposed “indetermination” of moral precepts as applied in concrete instances? Consider
the three examples that Thomas gives (which appear to exhaust the possible types of cases). In example [a], a weapon, for instance, is not to be
returned to the person who owns it but who wants to use it in order to
attack the fatherland.To return the weapon,Thomas maintains, would be
to go against the general principle (‘one ought to act according to
reason’) from which the proper principle (‘deposits are to be returned’)
is derived as a quasi-conclusion.There is no indeterminateness here: what
the law calls for is clear. In example [b], a deposit is to be returned with
a proviso (such as,‘unless doing so would threaten the fatherland’).Again,
no indeterminateness here: if anything, such a law might be faulted for
being too determinate in stating things that might just as well be left
implicit. In example [c], certain Germans believe that in some circumstances stealing is permitted (and, obviously, in the same circumstances,
they do not believe that deposits are to be returned). Again, according to
Thomas’s account, what natural law calls for is clear and determinate—
even if these individuals do not fully grasp the pertinent principle.
There is, therefore, no basis for A la recherche’s claim that ST I–II, q. 94,
a. 4 contains an argument for the indeterminateness of general practical
principles. Thomas holds no such thing. And one certainly finds no
support in ST I–II, q. 94, a. 4 for A la recherche’s (somewhat later) assertion that “only the conscience of the subject, the judgment of his practical reason, is capable of formulating the immediate norm of action” [A la
recherche §59].12 This is not to say that Thomas would not acknowledge
that there are instances when the application of a general precept is not
11 Thomas refers us explicitly to Caesar’s De bello gallico, where the Germans are not

said to countenance all stealing but “stealings” that occur beyond the confines of
the city: “Latrocinia nullam habent infamiam quae extra fines cuiusque civitatis
fiunt, atque ea iuventutis exercendae ac desidiae minuendae causa fieri praedicant” [Alfredus Klotz, ed., Commentarii belli gallici (Leipzig:Teubner, 1957), vol. 1
of C. Iuli Caesaris commentarii 6.23.6].
12 “[L]a science morale ne peut fournir au sujet agissant une norme qui s’appliquerait de façon adéquate et comme automatique à la situation concrète: seule
la conscience du sujet, le jugement de sa raison pratique, peut formuler la norme
immédiate de l’action” [A la recherche §59].

Determinacy in Natural Law

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clear;13 but neither would he assert that there is something in principle
indeterminate about the application of general principles to particular
cases. When, with a particular type of situation it is not obvious where
justice stands, a lawmaker must make a decision and his decision will
carry the weight of law—until replaced, in legitimate fashion, by another
and presumably better law.
It has to be acknowledged, however, that one does find in A la recherche
statements that go quite contrary to the idea that only personal conscience
is capable of applying general principles in concrete instances. Just after
making that statement in A la recherche §59, the document remarks that
moral science “does not abandon conscience to mere subjectivity: it aims
at the subject’s acquisition of intellectual and affective dispositions that
allow it to open itself to moral truth such that its judgment is adequate.”14
It mentions a number of “sins against nature,” including suicide and
“certain sexual practices . . . directly opposed to the reproductive finalities
inscribed in man’s sexual body.”15 It speaks of “murder, theft, lying, wrath,
greed, [and] avarice” as universally recognized “objects of reprobation.”16
Regarding lying, it cites in a positive way Augustine’s argument for its
intrinsically evil character [A la recherche §26, n. 30].
A la recherche also puts forward another purportedly Thomistic argument, intended apparently as support for the idea that natural law can
have a direct bearing upon positive law in certain regards; in fact,
however, it betrays considerable confusion regarding Thomas’s moral
theory and consequently presents something weaker than that theory.
The first two sentences of §91 read as follows:
Positive law must endeavor to put into practice the requirements of
natural law. It does this either by way of conclusion (the natural law
prohibits homicide, positive law prohibits abortion), or by way of determination (natural law requires that the guilty be punished, positive

13 See ST I–II, q. 96, a. 1, ad 3; ST II–II, q. 47, a. 9, ad 2 and q. 60, a. 3, ad 1. See

also Aristotle’s Politics iii, 15, 1286a9–31; 16, 1287a23–25, b15–25.
14 “Mais en même temps elle n’abandonne pas la conscience à la seule subjectivité

: elle vise à faire acquérir au sujet les dispositions intellectuelles et affectives qui
lui permettent de s’ouvrir à la vérité morale de telle sorte que son jugement soit
adéquat” [A la recherche §59].
15 “Ainsi certaines pratiques sexuelles s’opposent-elles directement aux finalités
reproductrices inscrites dans le corps sexué de l’homme” [A la recherche §80].
16 “Par ailleurs, certains comportements sont universellement perçus comme objets
de réprobation: meurtre, vol, mensonge, colère, convoitise, avarice . . .” [A la
recherche §36].

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Kevin L. Flannery, S.J.
penal law determines the punishments to be applied for each category
of crime).17

In a note appended at this point (n. 82), ST I–II, q. 95, a. 2 is cited. ST
I–II, q. 95, a. 2 does indeed make the important distinction between
conclusions—or, actually, quasi-conclusions—and determinations.18
Thomas says, that is, that, from the general principle of natural law “one
should do no evil to anyone,” one can derive, as “a sort of conclusion,” the
precept “one must not kill.” He then adds that (as A la recherche §91 accurately reports) natural law requires that the guilty be punished but leaves
to positive law, as “a sort of determination,” the specific punishment.
One notices, first of all, that A la recherche has replaced a primary
(general) precept of the natural law with a secondary precept: in fact,
with the fifth commandment. But that is not so important for present
purposes. It would appear that A la recherche is attempting to toughen up
the bond between natural law (which “prohibits homicide”) and positive
law (which “prohibits abortion”) by making it into straightforward
deduction. It is willing to concede that the relationship between the
precept ‘the guilty should be punished’ and the particular punishment is
merely that of determination—but at least (it seems to be saying) Catholic
legislators can insist that a ban on abortions is entailed logically by the
natural law precept prohibiting homicide.
Thomas, however, is in no need of such help; indeed, it undermines his
whole approach to the relationship between natural law and its particular
applications. In ST I–II, q. 94, a. 4, he calls attention to the parallel between
the principle of non-contradiction and the first precept of practical reason
(“good is to be done and pursued, evil avoided”). In the theoretical realm,
any proposition, whether it be one of the axioms of geometry or the
simple proposition that Socrates is seated, is a specification of the principle
17 “Le droit positif doit s’efforcer de mettre en oeuvre les exigences du droit

naturel. Il le fait soit par manière de conclusion (le droit naturel interdit l’homicide, le droit positif prohibe l’avortement), soit par manière de détermination (le
droit naturel prescrit de punir les coupables, le droit pénal positif détermine les
peines à appliquer pour chaque catégorie de crimes)” [A la recherche §91].
18 On quasi-conclusions, see above, note 9. That Thomas is speaking about quasiconclusions in ST I–II, q. 95, a. 2 is apparent in the “hedged” language he uses:
“Derivantur ergo quaedam a principiis communibus legis naturae per modum
conclusionum, sicut hoc quod est non esse occidendum, ut conclusio quaedam
derivari potest ab eo quod est nulli esse malum faciendum.” The argument
continues: “Quaedam vero per modum determinationis, sicut lex naturae habet
quod ille qui peccat, puniatur; sed quod tali poena puniatur, hoc est quaedam
determinatio legis naturae.”

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773

of non-contradiction in the sense that its truth excludes the truth of its
contradictory. It is cannot be denied that an axiom of geometry is, in a
sense, closer to the principle of non-contradiction on account of its necessity (and the other’s contingency); but in both propositions—the axiom
and the contingent proposition—we encounter the full force of the principle of non-contradiction.To say that Socrates is seated and not seated (at
the same time and in the same sense) is as much a violation of that principle as to say that the whole both is and is not greater than the part.
A similar thing can be said about the practical realm. An injurious and
spiteful remark is as much a turning away from the good as is a murder—
although, of course, the precept against murder is closer to the first precept
of practical reason than any precept against gossiping.To defraud an elderly
woman of her small investment is as much a violation of the precept
“deposits are to be returned” as is a billion-dollar ponzi scheme: the same
principle is immediately involved. So, for A la recherche to change Thomas’s
quasi-deduction into a simple deduction, with the (supposed) idea of
giving more force to natural law, is to miss the whole point of Thomas’s
very careful depiction—in ST I–II, q. 94, a. 4 and elsewhere—of the relationship between higher and lower precepts.That relationship is always one
of specification, whether as quasi-conclusion or as determination (as when
a determinate punishment is specified). Specification of a higher precept
(such as the first precept of practical reason) in either way does not weaken
its force or render the precept’s application at a lower level indeterminate.19
I conclude, therefore, that the claim on the part of A la recherche to be
representing the thought of Thomas Aquinas in its remarks about natural
law’s “indetermination” is unsustainable. I would further maintain (although
I have not argued explicitly for this thesis here) that Thomas’s understanding better represents the way in which law—including natural
N&V
law—works.

19 For helpful criticisms of this essay, my thanks to Fr. Stephen Brock and Prof. John

Finnis.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 9, No. 3 (2011): 775–789

775

Teleology, Divine Governance, and the Common Good—
Reflections on the ITC’s The Search for Universal Ethics:
A New Look at Natural Law
S TEVEN A. L ONG
Ave Maria University
Ave Maria, FL

T HE International Theological Commission’s document on natural
law—The Search for Universal Ethics:A New Look at Natural Law 1—manifests a rich awareness of the speculative and essentially teleological foundations of the natural law. It likewise displays awareness of the history of
metaphysical obscuration that has marginalized and distorted proper
understanding of the natural law, thus engendering a false ethos of the
absolute autonomy of the human moral agent vis à vis divine Providence:
an apotheosis of arbitrary will criticized in Veritatis Splendor.
In what follows below, I address three distinct foci of the ITC paper.
First I engage the document’s teaching inasmuch as it vindicates the
primacy of the speculative in relation to the practical—a judgment
focally articulated in its stress on the centrality of metaphysical wisdom
for moral judgment, and its corresponding judgment of the essential
moral import of natural teleology. Secondly, I will address the ITC document’s affirmation of the strategic importance of a non-competitive
account of divine and human causality for the understanding of natural
law as a mode of the divine providence.This is perhaps the most strategically important of the several speculative judgments that frame our
understanding of the eternal law in both its natural and its graced participations. Further, disorder with respect to it engenders a distinctively
1 This essay cites the translation of Joseph Bolin, revised March 25, 2010, and

available on the internet at www.pathsoflove.com/universal-ethics-naturallaw.html#2.3.

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erroneous superordination of the autonomy of the human agent in relation to natural and divine law. Thirdly, and finally, I will briefly offer
comment regarding the document’s treatment of the common good in
relation to just claims or “rights.”
I. The Primacy of the Speculative and the Normative
Role of Natural Teleology
The document unequivocally affirms the priority of the speculative vis à
vis the practical in moral theology and philosophy, chiefly through its
unremitting stress upon the definitory importance of metaphysical truth,
but also by its clear and unequivocal affirmation of the essential ethical
import of natural teleology. It observes (§61) “two levels of coherence
and depth” in the “philosophical justification of natural law.”Thus “[t]he
idea of a natural law is justified primarily on the basis of reflective observation of the anthropological constants that characterize a successful
humanization of the person and a harmonious social life.”Yet it continues to note (§62) that the defining character of the natural law is a function of metaphysical judgment:
Still, only by taking into account the metaphysical dimension of reality
can we give natural law its full and complete philosophical justification.
In fact metaphysics allows one to comprehend that the universe does
not have in itself its own ultimate reason for being, and manifests the
fundamental structure of reality: the distinction between God, subsistent being itself, and other beings placed by him in existence. God is
the Creator, the free and transcendent source of all other beings.

Thus, it continues (§63):
The Creator is not only the principle of creatures but also the transcendent end towards which they tend by their nature. Thus creatures are
animated by a dynamism that carries them to realize themselves, each in
its own way, in the union with God. This dynamism is transcendent,
insofar as it proceeds from the eternal law, i.e., from the divine plan of
providence that exists in the Spirit of the Creator. But it is also immanent, since it is not imposed on creatures from without, but is inscribed
in their very nature. Purely material creatures realize spontaneously the
law of their being, while spiritual creatures realize it in a personal
manner. They interiorize the dynamisms that define them and freely
orientate them towards their complete realization.They formulate them
for themselves, as fundamental norms of their moral action—the natural law in its proper sense—and they endeavor to realize them freely.The
natural law is therefore defined as a participation in the eternal law.

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The definition of a thing is not accidental but rather essential to it. As
St. Thomas teaches in Summa theologiae, q. 79, a. 11, the only difference
between acts of speculative and practical intelligence is that in the latter,
knowledge is further ordered to the good of an operation—something
accidental to knowledge as such, which is essentially defined by the
adequation or conformity of the mind to the real. For knowledge to be
ordained to the good of an operation, one must of course will the operation; as a human act, this presupposes rational desire—the motion of the
will—which presupposes knowledge that is prior to and that specifies the
motion of the will toward the desired good. Thus a speculative knowledge—a speculum—is implicitly and actually present in every practical
cognition. It could not be otherwise.Thus the nature of reality necessarily defines one’s moral vision—moral life cannot momentarily detach
from the nature of reality later to return. It is not a function of deriving
reasons for action from propositions lacking reasons for action: because
good—in all its analogical modalities, ethical as well as culinary, athletic,
technical, et alia—is nothing other (cf. ST I, q. 5, aa. 1–3) than being with
a conceptual relation to appetite as perfective.
Robert George, in measured response to criticisms of the new natural
law theory advocated by Germain Grisez, John Finnis, John Boyle, and
himself, has argued2 that “in the epistemological mode of inquiry, our (practical) knowledge of human good(s) is methodologically prior to our (speculative) knowledge of human nature.The latter presupposes the former: It
is not, as neo-scholastics suppose, the other way around.” He argues further
elsewhere3 that one may not derive a conclusion with a reason for action
from premises that do not contain reasons for action. This latter point is
incontrovertibly true.Yet the question is: does an adequate understanding of
being and nature contain no reasons for action for human beings? Or: is
knowledge of that to which man is naturally ordered not precisely a speculative knowledge of an order with practical implications (and thus, in the
real order, a knowledge containing reasons for action?)? Is man’s nature teleologically ordered, or is it not? Because insofar as it is, knowledge of that order
will therefore involve reasons for action and practical implications. Is there
an order to the good? What sort of reality is an “ought”?
2 Robert P. George, “Recent Criticism of Natural Law Theory” University of

Chicago Law Review 55 (1988): 1416.
3 Cf. Robert P. George,“Natural Law and Human Nature” in Natural Law Theory,

ed. Robert P. George (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 31–41, especially, for
example, 38: “We cannot deduce or infer reasons for action from premisses that
do not include reasons for action. We cannot deduce or infer basic reasons for
action from anything.”

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Before we desire an end, we must know something of it, and as this
knowledge precedes appetition, it precedes the practical cognition that
ordains truth to the good of an operation. Thus the dependence of the
practical upon the speculative is not a matter of logical derivation of
“value” from “fact,” but of the necessary inception of appetite in knowledge of reality. In order for there to be right appetite of the end, there must
first be knowledge of the end.4
Knowledge as such is essentially speculative—a matter of the conformity
of mind and thing: it is accidental to knowledge qua knowledge that it be
further ordered to the good of an operation.Whereas sciences are differentiated as speculative or practical by their objects, according as these objects
essentially concern doing or making, or do not, acts of the mind are differentiated by their ends. Either the end is simple knowledge, or that knowledge is
further ordered for the sake of the good of an operation.Thus, for example, there
may be speculative knowledge of practical science (I may contemplate the
structure of the good life not immediately to apply it to action, but simply
to understand it—yet ethical science is essentially practical).Whilst often the
speculative is thought of as merely tantamount to the theoretical, this is not
the case (although the speculative includes the theoretical): for example,
whether someone is, or is not, in the room with one, is speculative knowledge unless one is ordering that knowledge toward the good of an operation.
Although in practical knowing one orders the known truth to the
good of an operation, whether it is truth that is so ordered is a function of
conformity or nonconformity to the real: it is a speculative function. To be
clear, it is hardly the case that merely because I order some judgment to my operation that therefore that judgment is true: to the contrary, its truth is a function of
adequation to the real irrespective whether I wish to apply it to action or not. No
matter what I may wish to order my knowledge to practically, whether it
is true is not merely a function of what I plan to do. For example, whether
salt will or will not ease the pain of a wound is not merely a function of
my practical intention to order the application of salt to the good of the
operation of easing the pain of a wound (something that one would
swiftly discover has the opposite result).
This awareness of the primacy of being and of the speculative leads to the
realization of the normative moral role of unified teleology. The docu4 ST I–II, q. 19, a. 3, ad 2: “In his autem quae sunt ad finem, rectitudo rationis

consistit in conformitate ad appetitum finis debiti. Sed tamen et ipse appetitus
finis debiti praesupponit rectam apprehensionem de fine, quae est per rationem.”
Latin derived from the Corpus Thomisticum, S.Thomae de Aquino opera omnia, made
available online by the University of Navarre at www.unav.es/filosofia/alarcon/
amicis/ctopera.html#OM.

Theology, Divine Governance, and the Common Good

779

ment teaches (§69):“The concept of natural law presupposes the idea that
nature is for man the bearer of an ethical message and establishes an
implicit moral norm which human reason actualizes.” It comments on
the disastrous implications for ethics that ensue insofar as“the corporeal
world was identified with extension, certainly regulated by intelligible
mathematical laws, but deprived of any immanent teleology or finality.”
The point could not be clearer in the document’s affirmation that (§73):
In this context, in which nature no longer conceals any immanent teleological rationality and seems to have lost all affinity or kinship with the
world of spirit, the passage from knowledge of the structures of being to
moral duty which seems to derive from it became effectively impossible
and fell under the criticism of “sophism or naturalistic fallacy,”
denounced by David Hume and then by George Edward Moore in his
Principia Ethica (1903). In effect the good was disconnected from being
and from truth. Ethics was separated from metaphysics.

This is, of course, the description of a pathology of judgment: the good
cannot be separated from being, because outside of being there is nothing.The role of the speculative in practical affairs—of being, nature, and
natural teleology—is essential: the capacity to abstract from natural teleology does not establish its nonexistence or practical irrelevance. Knowledge of the ends for the sake of which human nature and action are
ordered cannot help but be foundational in understanding the human
good, and for achieving the corresponding prudential judgments regarding circumstances.5 Further, without the order of ends specifying the order
5 One must note that the precepts of the natural law, while perfected in application

to the singular, are not determined or formally promulgated by that application—
otherwise one has the Kantian ethic of the agent giving the law to himself rather
than the participation of the agent in a normative and ethically directive order
that is perfected in act through virtuous conduct: something that the first part of
the document clearly rejects. One does not prudentially judge whether it is good
or bad to betray one’s spouse or murder and cannibalize one’s neighbor—that is
already under precept. Reading §§52–59 as implying more than that adequate
prudence virtuously applies the norm of the law but rather that it determines it,
would be to view the whole ethical life as determinatio, whereas intelligible general
direction is not less direction for being more intelligible.Yet prudence does determine the agent in the application of precept such that the results of that application lie within the genus of the precept: hence there is determination, but it is of
the agent with respect to the application of the law, not of the law itself qua law,
whose author is God, but of the law qua this further perfection of instantiation
regarding particular circumstance.And on this divine authorship as essential to the
natural law, the document could not be more clear. Thus formulations such as
(§58) “Prudence is a necessary passageway to authentic moral obligation” could—

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of inclinations and the consequent order of precepts, individual goods in
their ethical role become disjunct, atomized, and potentially infinitized,
losing the ratio of the good, the distinctive normative place of each in a
good life. Thus the truth of the hierarchy of ends defining the ratio boni
is of foundational importance for our moral life.
Of course, were it true that efficiency did not presuppose teleology,
this would destroy the very possibility of all knowledge of order in the
world and accordingly render human action impossible—for if action
were not by its nature more ordered toward one effect than toward
another, rational choice would be impossible. As St.Thomas notes, without an end no reason either for determinate action or for the cessation
of action is assignable.6 Just as the universe is a cosmos, an ordered whole
of efficiencies ordained toward finalities which are ordered to the ultimate end, so is the ethical life a microcosm, an ordered whole whose order
is specified by the order of ends, inclinations, and precepts.This of course
stands opposed to the erroneous view that treats only positive science,
and chiefly the positive science most abstractively immersed in quantity,
as an adequate cognition of nature—a view that cannot even make sense
of the end of becoming a good hypothetico-deductive physicist. Correction of such error begins with recognition of the primacy of the speculative, and of the essential role of natural teleology in moral life.7
absent the requisite distinctions—be misleading. Virtuous determination of the
agent regarding singular circumstance is essential to the application of the law and
as such a passageway to it and further instantiation/actuation/determination of it;
but it is not a passageway to the law as in itself the very intelligible constitution
of the law.
6 Summa contra gentiles III, chap. 2.
7 On this score, one must observe that even reason is teleologically ordained to its
end prior to any act of reason: teleological order is the formal precondition of efficiency.There can be a tendency to suppose that, because man moves toward his
end as specified by reason, that therefore his inclinational ordering is a pure function of understanding. Whereas, reason itself is ordained to the true prior to the
understanding that reason is ordained to the true; and, further and more specifically, that understanding inform, incite, and specify volition is a function of the
teleological ordering of human nature as a whole (granted, under the form of
reason). One understands that water is good for one, but knowledge of one’s own
thirst plays a role in this understanding.
This does not mean that lower inclination trumps reason, but that reason
discriminates the ordering in lower inclinations and so moves us to a genuinely
rational appetite with respect to their objects, placing these in relation to the
whole universe of good.Yet that I am such a being as, ensuing upon knowledge of
a good, to be incited to desire for it, is a function of my entire nature and its teleology, and not merely of reason: granted that there must be rational apprehension
of the good in order for one’s will to be moved by it and toward it (which involves

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II. At the Heart of the Eclipse of the Metaphysics of Being:
The Absolutization of Human Autonomy
The ITC document’s insight into the roots of moral antinomianism in
the erroneous treatment of human and divine freedom as competitive—as
though the divine causality were no different than a finite causality, or other
also the rational grasp of one’s own subrational appetites and their objects in relation to the order of ends). For example, to say no more, such volition presupposes
the general natural rational volition of the end—of the good in general, happiness—which is prior to further specification of the desire for happiness.
Act is prior to potency, absolutely speaking. And to know the good precisely
as object of desire —under that ratio —one must first know the good, and be
moved to desire it. Hence our understanding of the objective good that ordains is
distinct from our understanding of the objective good precisely as ordaining, for
the first is prior to the motion of the will, while the latter is subsequent. The
knowledge of the good for man precisely as such includes reference to the motion
of the will, because the good for man implies the ordering of man to something
as an end, and potency is known only in relation to act: this is to say that the
perfection of the end is thus known as terminating a motio, as activating a
potency, even though in relation to act as such potency is accidental, because
potency is for the sake of act and is defined by it. Although action is essentially
ordained to end, it is accidental simply to the perfection specified by “end” that
it be terminus of the act: the end is an extrinsic cause, as Thomas teaches (ST
I–II q. 7, a. 3, resp.; also q. 7, a. 4, ad 2), even while it is “the most important cause
of the act insofar as it moves the agent to act” (ST I–II, q. 7, a. 4, ad 2:“Ad secundum dicendum quod finis, etsi non sit de substantia actus, est tamen causa actus
principalissima, inquantum movet ad agendum. Unde et maxime actus moralis
speciem habet ex fine”).The notion of the good for man includes the attainment
of that good through the motion of the will—this is the very reason why
Thomas distinguishes our attainment of happiness and the reality in which
happiness consists as both pertaining to beatitude. Yet it is potency that is ordered to
act and not the converse, and so our knowledge of some perfection can rationally direct the
will —we judge something worthy of desire; whereas it is only following upon actual
inclination that reflexive knowledge of the good as perfecting appetite occurs. In a way
similar to that in which, because one knows, one knows oneself to be a knower,
so likewise because one is volitionally moved by rational apprehension of the
nature of the good, one knows oneself to be ordered to the good.
Even if it be said that the knowledge of the good for man requires only the
knowledge of something as potentially moving the will, the understanding of this
potential motion can occur only on the basis of prior knowledge of act, because
potency is knowable only in relation to act.To know the will as potentially moveable relative to a judgment of reason about being as perfective seems to require
prior knowledge of the will as actually moveable, which is to say of the good as
actually moving the will; and for that prior knowledge to occur, we must have
known something about being, some objective aspect of a thing that actually
incited appetite: the will must have been moved. Hence in our knowledge of the
good, there is a first utterly speculative moment wherein our knowledge/judgment

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Steven A. Long

than the very cause of human free acts themselves—is strategically crucial.
It is subtle, and stated as cautiously and prudently as one can imagine—
because this issue was the core of the De auxiliis disputations before the
Holy See, the most difficult and profound set of disputations ever to be
taken up by the magisterium. Here the document’s teaching is wholly
correct. If one pursues the speculative etiology of the eclipse of metaphysics, one finds there a neuralgia that derives from the arguments regarding God and human freedom, from the Church’s failure to judge the
doctrine of Molina, and from a consequent skepticism about the role of
causal metaphysics within theological method.After all, consequent on the
failure to judge Molina’s teaching, causal metaphysics became associated
with what came widely to be viewed as a paralogism of speculative reason
regarding divine and human agency. But a direct implication of the Molinist account is that the agency of the human will stands without the divine
efficiency, and therefore stands without the divine causal providence.
Molina of course taught that the will is free only when, all requirements being retained, the will could will otherwise.8 But if among the
“requirements” is the divine causality, the result is that human free acts
must then be held to stand outside the divine causality.As St.Thomas puts
the matter expressly regarding the divine agent causality and providence (ST I,
q. 22, a. 2, resp.):
For since every agent acts for an end, the ordering of effects towards
that end extends as far as the causality of the first agent extends.
Whence it happens that in the effects of an agent something takes place
which has no reference towards the end, because the effect comes from
a cause other than, and outside the intention of the agent. But the
causality of God, Who is the first agent, extends to all being, not only
as to constituent principles of species, but also as to the individualizing
principles; not only of things incorruptible, but also of things corruptible. Hence all things that exist in whatsoever manner are necessarily
directed by God towards some end; as the Apostle says: “Those things
that are of God are well ordered (Romans 13:1).”
of being forms, specifies, defines, and attracts the motion of the will—the known
object ordains such motion, as it were.Thereupon we reflexively know the rationally
apprehended reality precisely under the formality of its attraction of the will’s
motion—not merely the good (that ordains), but precisely the good as ordaining.
Because of the universal extension of teleology as the very condition of all efficiency, it is important not to overstate the efficiency of reason with respect to the
motion of the will: the reason informs and specifies the will, but it is of the nature of
man that the teleological ordering of his nature be such that certain known goods
rationally attract.
8 Cf. Molina’s Concordia, q. 14, a. 13, disp. II.

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783

The ordering of effects toward the end extends as far as the causality of
the first agent extends, and it is quite clear that the causality in question
is agent causality. If human freedom is subtracted from the effect of divine
agency, then of course human freedom lies outside the divine providence,
and accordingly wholly outside the eternal law, outside the divine providential ordering.Thus natural law would be impossible, because natural
law is nothing other than the rational participation in eternal law, and
eternal law and divine governance generally extend only so far as divine
agency extends. As Thomas puts it in ST I–II, q. 91, a. 2, resp.:
Wherefore, since all things subject to Divine providence are ruled and
measured by the eternal law, as was stated above (Article 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.

Remove human freedom from the divine providential government,
and one has abolutized human freedom, rendering it a se, and rendered
the very idea of natural law an impossibility.This is the proximate effect
of defining human freedom in relation to God—who as cause of universal being is cause both of the necessary and the contingent—rather than
defining freedom by its rational nature. Yet it is such a freedom that is
articulated by the implied libertarian account of freedom that is in
seedling present within Molina’s formulation. To the contrary, however,
God is not merely a finite cause, but the source of all other causality,
which accordingly is as such inscribed within the effect of His agency.
Inasmuch as the proper object of God’s causality is being, to say that a
thing possesses “liberty of indifference” to the divine causality is to speak
of something as standing outside of being, to speak of it not existing. But
not existing is neither freedom nor any other real attribute.
The non-competitive view of divine and created agency and causality—
that is, that God’s causality is inclusive, not exclusive, of human freedom,
because human freedom is a providential divine gift—is essentially intellectualist as St. Thomas Aquinas develops it. The ITC document is wholly
correct in cleaving to this account (cf. §75 and §77). For St.Thomas, freedom of the will with respect to any finite object, inclusive of revealed truths,
follows from the very nature of intellect and will.The intellect is ordered to
the universal true, and the will is natively ordered toward the universal good,
good in general (universal because rationally specified). But no finite good
can compel the will, because no finite good is as such universal good.9
9 Cf. ST I, q. 82, a. 2, ad 2.

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Hence even grace, construed as an object of choice, cannot compel the will.
Only were man to see God would his will be wholly perfected and
fulfilled in such a manner that nothing save cleaving to God would be
possible. But regarding all terrestrial objects of volition, man is free. Freedom is thus defined by the will as a proximate cause in relation to its
terrestrial objects, and not by its relation to God, a doctrine upon which
Thomas strongly insists in De malo.10 Man’s freedom is defined, not by a
spurious liberty of indifference to divine causality that nothing real
possesses or could possess, but by the nature of the rational will in relation to its finite terrestrial objects.
Man is not a se.As the ITC document puts it (§77),“Freedom is therefore not an absolute self-creator of itself, but an eminent property of
every human subject.” As Thomas Aquinas puts it, just as one may be
cause of a thing without being the first cause, so one may cause one’s own
free act without being the first cause of one’s own free act.11 As nothing
moves itself from potency to act save by virtue of that which is first in
act, and man is not always proceeding to apply the natural motion of the
will to act, God moves us from potency to act with respect to our own
self-determination in freedom. Indeed, the divine simplicity is such that
God has no real determined relation to the creature, whereas the creature
is really determined toward and dependent upon God. The only difference between God willing X and God not willing X is the being of X,
for there is no change in God. Thus, while grace as an object of choice
is subject to our freedom—as we are free, say, to reject a grace calling us
to prayer, or worship, et alia—grace in relation to the divine simple will is
simply efficacious, because either God does or does not will the effect.
10 De malo q. 16, a. 7, ad 15:“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.”—“ Et ideo necessitas et
contingentia in rebus distinguuntur non per habitudinem ad voluntatem
divinam, quae est causa communis, sed per comparationem ad causas creatas, quas
proportionaliter divina voluntas ad effectus ordinavit; ut scilicet necessariorum
effectuum sint causae intransmutabiles, contingentium autem transmutabiles.”
11 ST I, q. 81, a. 1, ad 3: “Dicendum quod liberum arbitrium est causa sui motus;
quia homo per liberum arbitrium seipsum movet ad agendum. Non tamen hoc
est de necessitate libertatis, quod sit prima causa sui id quod liberum est; sicut nec
ad hoc quod aliquid sit causa alterius, requiritur quod sit prima causa eius. Deus
igitur est prima causa movens et naturales causas et voluntarias. Et sicut naturalibus causis, movendo eas, non aufert quin actus earum sint naturales; ita movendo
causas voluntarias, non aufert quin actiones earum sint voluntariae, sed potius hoc
in eis facit; operatur enim in unoquoque secundum eius proprietatem.”

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785

The perfection of our freedom in free acts is thus a gift, and even a gift
for which we may and should pray. Hence in the composite sense, insofar as God moves me freely to will, I am not not-freely moving to will,
because I cannot freely move and not freely move at the same time and
in the same respect, and freedom is not a denial of the law of noncontradiction.What makes the act free is that we are ourselves interiorly the
source of the act, and no finite object of our free choice can compel our
choice.Yet as an act the free choice stands within and not without the
divine causal providence.
Considered from the most formal and metaphysical perspective, the question
is whether God is genuinely the first cause of every perfection of being.
If so, then God must be the first cause of the perfection of our free acts
of self-determination, and this is indeed the teaching of Aquinas. Hence
he writes in De malo, q. 3, a. 2, ad 4:
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.12

Thomas famously argues (ST I–II, q. 109, a. 1, resp.) that no creature, no
matter how noble, can even proceed to its act unless it first be moved by
God, and that the action of any created being depends upon God in two
ways, “first inasmuch as it is from Him that it has the form whereby it
acts; secondly, inasmuch as it is moved by Him to act.”13
12 “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.” The antecedent text of this response to the
fourth objection is also very much to the purpose:“Ad quartum dicendum quod
cum dicitur aliquid mourere se ipsum, ponitur idem esse mouens et motum; cum
autem dicitur quod aliquid mouetur ab altero, ponitur aliud esse mouens et aliud
motum. Manifestum est autem quod cum aliquid mouet alterum, non ex hoc
ipso quod est mouens ponitur quod est primum mouens: unde non excluditur
quin ab altero moueatur et ab altero habeat hoc ipsum quod mouet.”—“To the
fourth it should be said that when it is said that something moves itself, that the
same thing is mover and moved. But when it is said that something is moved by
another, the moved is taken to be one thing and the mover another. But it is clear
that when something moves another, from this it is not taken to follow that it is
the first mover: wherefore it is not excluded that from another it is itself moved
and from this other it has even this, that it moves.”Thence the lines follow that
“when something moves itself, this does not exclude that it is moved by another
from which it has even this, that it moves itself. And thus it is not repugnant to
liberty that God is the cause of the free act of the will.”
13 ST I–II, q. 109, a. 1, resp.: Manifestum est autem quod sicut motus omnes corporales reducuntur in motum caelestis corporis sicut in primum movens corporale;

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If we remove the positive substance of man’s free acts from the transcendent divine causality, it will follow as a necessary corollary that the
positive substance of these free acts is alike removed from divine providence. And that which lies outside divine providence is not subject to the direction of eternal law. From this point onward, that which for St. Thomas
defines the natural law—namely, that it is a rational participation in the eternal law —will become something extraneous and alien.14 On this supposition, finite human creatures roam the earth creating ex nihilo the added
perfection or reality of their free determinations, entirely outside of the
divine causality, the divine providence, and the eternal law.15 The volitional agent is thus removed from the divine jurisdiction in being
removed from the divine causality. This directly implies a way of understandita omnes motus tam corporales quam spirituales reducuntur in primum movens
simpliciter, quod est Deus. Et ideo quantumcumque natura aliqua corporalis vel
spiritualis ponatur perfecta, non potest in suum actum procedere nisi moveatur
a Deo. Quae quidem motio est secundum suae providentiae rationem; non
secundum necessitatem naturae, sicut motio corporis caelestis. Non solum autem
a Deo est omnis motio sicut a primo movente, sed etiam ab ipso est omnis
formalis perfectio sicut a primo actu. Sic igitur actio intellectus et cuiuscumque
entis creati dependet a Deo inquantum ad duo: uno modo, inquantum ab ipso
habet perfectionem sine formam per quam agit; alio modo, inquantum ab ipso
movetur ad agendum.” I.e., “. . . all movements, both corporeal and spiritual, are
reduced to the absolutely First Mover,Who is God. And hence no matter how perfect
a corporeal or spiritual nature is supposed to be, it cannot proceed to its act unless it be
moved by God. Now this motion is according to the plan of His providence, and
not by a necessity of nature, as the motion of the body of the heavens. But not
only is every motion from God as from the First Mover, but all formal perfection is from
Him as from the First Act. Hence the action of the intellect, or of any created being whatsoever, depends upon God in two ways: first, inasmuch as it is from Him that it has the
form whereby it acts; secondly, inasmuch as it is moved by Him to act” (my emphasis).
14 If the volitional act is not subject to divine causality, it is alike not subject to
divine providence. This inference is absolute. St. Thomas does not, of course,
envision this causality as violent or external. Rather, the divine causality of the
acts of the will is precisely that whereby they are naturally constituted as volitional acts. God causes necessary things necessarily, and contingent things contingently, and the will is denominated as “free” because it is not an operative power
prefixed to only one effect, but has for its formal object the universal good as
specified by reason. Thomas holds that no finite good may compel the rational
will, so that the will is objectively free with respect to its natural finite objects.
Yet he also maintains that the rational will cannot proceed to its own act of free
self-determination unless moved from potency to act with respect to this act of
free self-determination by God.
15 The citations possible for this doctrine of St. Thomas are numerous. But, for
instance, see ScG IIIb, chaps. 89–90.The title of chapter 89, is quite clear:“That the
Movement of the Will, and Not Only the Power of the Will, is Caused by God.”

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ing the natural law that Thomas’s philosophy and theology prohibit—a way which
treats nature and natural law not as manifestations of divine government 16 but as
demarcating a zone of independence from divine governance.
Nature and reason go from being manifestations and expressions of
normative divine order to being antipodes of divine order to which one
may appeal in order to “safeguard” human freedom from divine authority. God moves from being the author and perfector of human liberty and
virtue to being a threat to authentic human freedom and an alien
distortive influence upon morality. The symmetry of these implications
with Kantian autonomism is arresting, yet this aspect of the Kantian
teaching is a late and secular effect of what is originatively an intraCatholic error. Practically speaking it is an error that removes both moral
law and grace from any authoritatively directive role in human life. It is
not difficult to see how, given the perspective of such an absolutization
of human freedom, the magisterium of the Church with respect to moral
life should be received with hostile skepticism as nothing other than an
inherently futile and falsifying exertion of raw power over an interiority
and freedom natively transcendent of such merely external exactions—
or as the ITC document puts it (§77):
Further, through the emergence of a metaphysical conception in which
human and divine action compete with one another, inasmuch as they
are understood univocally and placed, wrongly, on the same level, the
legitimate affirmation of the autonomy of the human subject implies
that God is excluded from the sphere of human subjectivity. Every
reference to something normative coming from God or from nature as
an expression of God’s wisdom, every “heteronomy,” is perceived as a
threat to the subject’s autonomy.The notion of natural law then appears
incompatible with the authentic dignity of the subject.

The magisterium’s directions thus come to be viewed in the same way
as a bowling league would be were it to issue pronouncements on correct
use of the generative powers: at best ultra vires and at worst comically
16 For St.Thomas, the rational creature both passively and actively participates the

eternal law. It passively participates this law because its very own nature, act,
object, and end are established by the eternal law and received from God as first
cause.Yet unlike the case of lower creatures who participate the divine government in a merely passive way—precisely because the rational creature is created,
sustained, and actuated as such—it actively participates the eternal law and shares
in its own government. Because its passive participation includes the possession
of reason, the rational creature receives its ordering from God not merely
passively but rationally and preceptively, as giving it reasons to do and not to do.
Cf. ST I–II, q. 91, a. 2.

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pathetic. Such an error at the root of the spiritual life is manifestly not
finally compatible with the Catholic ethos. Yet many, through concessions to modernity and postmodernity on this fundamental point, have
exposed the Catholic life to this foundational and destructive error.17
Eventually the project of mere rhetorical and irenic accomodation of
mutually exclusive propositions will require that the project of theology
as wish fulfillment give way to theology as scientia and sapientia.The ITC
document does well to prompt theologians toward the realization that
the first—scientia —is essential and necessary, and cannot be replaced by
even the most elevated rhetoric.
III. The Common Good
A brief concluding remark seems in order regarding the document’s
treatment of the common good. It speaks (§86) of the common good as
corresponding “to a requirement of the social nature of the person,” as
defining “the ensemble of values that appear as humanizing for a society”
and as expressing not a vague social agreement but based upon and
expressing “the requirements of their common humanity.” Surely this is
nothing other than the hierarchy of ends as defining the ratio boni, the
ends of human nature as a common good. The document states, “The
person is therefore prior to society, and society is humanized only if it
responds to the expectations inscribed in the person insofar as he is a
social being.” Importantly, the sense of this priority is that of the ex natura
perfections defining the hierarchy of ends—“the ensemble of values that
appear as humanizing for society”—and not any contractarian or autonomist superordination of the individual person to the goods perfective of
human nature. The document in addition teaches that natural right is
17 Some authors seem to suppose that the reality of human freedom as lying within

rather than without divine causal providence should absolutely require God to
overcome every defect of each and every created liberty. But God does not in
justice owe it to the defectible creature to overcome every defect even in the
proportionate natural order—any more than God owes it to every pear tree that it
yield perfect fruit—much less in the order of supernatural fruition whose attainment is the very reality of God Himself.Yet some are more willing implicitly and
actually to relativize and reduce to created proportions the exalted perfection of
the beatific vision—which is proportionate to no creature whatsoever—than to
stress to the wayward wills of men the absolute priority of divine grace and the
lesson of humility. It cannot be denied that this unfortunate tendency, articulated
in doctrinal terms, has real implications finally inconsistent with acknowledgement
of the governance of divine providence and eternal law, whether in the mode of
man’s rational participation (the natural law), or man’s graced participation (the life
of faith, hope, and charity, and finally of beatific vision).

Theology, Divine Governance, and the Common Good

789

derivative rather than foundational, since it is derived from justice in accord
with natural law (§89):“Right is not arbitrary: the requirement of justice,
which derives from natural law, is prior to every formulation and emancipation of right. It is not right which decides that something is just.”
Rights are derived and limited from above by the natural hierarchy of
ends, while being derived and limited, from below, by prudence in relation to circumstance:
Natural right is never a measure fixed once for all. It is the result of an
evaluation of the changing situations in which man lives. It enunciates
the judgment of practical reason assessing what is just. Natural right, the
juridical expression of the natural law in the political order, thus
appears as the measure of the just relations between the members of the
community.

One observes, however, the need to bring out as clearly as possible the
metaphysical dignity of the common good. Granted that there may be
certain methodological uses for conceptions of the common good as
purely instrumental, in reality the common good is not a mere instrument, but
rather a good that of its nature is more communicable to many, more intelligibly irradiant, more universal and rationally diffusive. Far from a mere utility, it represents a noble object of aspiration, striving, and service. Man does not live,
breathe, and die for a mere utility or instrumentality. Precisely because the
document offers a teleological and metaphysically realistic consideration
of the common good, it would be strengthened by a clearer affirmation of
N&V
the non-instrumental nature of the common good.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 9, No. 3 (2011): 791–824

791

On Nature, Freedom, and Person
in Aquinas and Beyond
J OHN M. M C D ERMOTT, S.J.
Sacred Heart Major Seminary
Detroit, Michigan

T HE following essay, particularly its analyis of Aquinas’s thought, was first
composed in rudimentary form when the author was a member of the
sub-committee of the International Theological Commission entrusted
with writing a document on the natural law, A la recherche d’une ethique
universelle: nouveau regard sur la loi naturelle. Although not all the members
agreed entirely with its presentation, it influenced the final composition of
the third section, “The Theoretical Foundations of the Natural Law.”
While the author might have “tweaked” a few phrases slightly differently,
he had no difficulty in approving the whole document and considers that
the ITC’s final document and his own views correspond.1 This essay,
however, has implications in philosophy and dogma far beyond morality.
The Problem
The relation between nature and person is quite complex.Various opinions
about the identity of each have proliferated in the history of philosophy. In
modern times the influence of Galilean-Newtonian physics has led many
to imagine “nature” as an inert mass subject to universally deterministic
laws. In contrast to that determinism the person is interpreted as a free
1 Besides the document’s foundations in Scripture, tradition, and magisterial docu-

ments an attentive reader will also discover the influence of Servais Pinckaers,
O.P., (compare his Les Sources de la Morale Chrétien, 3rd ed. [Fribourg: Editions
Universitaires, 1993], 406–62 with sections 2.3–4 in the ITC’s document) and
Jacques Maritain’s dynamic interpretation of the natural law (cf. Neuf leçons sur
les notions premières de la philosophie morale [Paris: Téqui, 1950] and Man and the
State [Chicago: U. of Chicago, 1951]).Yet these thinkers were scarcely mentioned
in the sub-committee’s discussion.

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center of activity removed from nature and capable of manipulating its
laws.2 This opposition between person and nature not only results in man’s
alienation from nature but also introduces irresolvable philosophical dilemmas. How can man influence his world if that world is predetermined by
physical laws? Why is man, living in a body, not himself determined by the
physical laws? Inversely, if man acts freely, does he not change the course of
events and natures off which “natural laws” are read? Does not freedom
precede and relativize laws? How is moral action to be determined if
nature no longer supplies norms? The breakdown of the Newtonian
synthesis in physics has opened the way to a reevaluation of the relation
between nature and person. Long before Galileo, St. Thomas offers good
guidance in contemplating the mysterious relation of person and nature.
Since Aquinas borrows his “natural” foundation from Aristotle, with his
“philosopher” our analysis should start.
Aristotelian Nature
The classical understanding of nature as a principle of motion and rest is
expressed well by Aristotle in Physics II, 1 (192b 14–15.21–23) and
repeated in Metaphysics V, 4: “Nature in the primary and proper sense is
the substance (ousia ) of what have in themselves as such a principle of
motion. . . . It is the principle of motion of natural objects inhering somehow, either potentially or really” (1015a 13–19).That definition, however,
contains various ambiguities, which are manifest in five previous explications that the definition attempts to summarize. First, nature is understood as “the genesis of growing things,” then as “the first inherent
principle from which a growing thing grows,” and, thirdly, as “the source
from which the primary movement in each natural being is present in it
insofar as it exists as itself ” (1014b 14–20). Already one notices a slight
oscillation between the nature itself and its internal principle of motion.
As the Physics says,“As many things as have such a principle [of motion],
have a nature. And all these are a substance; for there is some subject
(hypokeimenon ), and nature is always in a subject” (192b 32–34).Variability is accentuated in the subsequent understandings. Fourthly, “nature
2 For person as a free, self-conscious center of activity cf. Max Müller and Alois

Halder, “Person,” in Sacramentum Mundi (New York: Herder & Herder, 1968–70),
4:405; Karl Rahner, S.J.,“Jesus Christ,” in ibid., 3:206; Jacques Maritain, The Person
and the Common Good, trans. John Fitzgerald (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre
Dame, 1966), 39–41; Luigi Stefanini, “Persona,” in Encyclopedia Filosofica (Venice:
Istituto per la Collaborazione Culturale, 1957), 3:1297–1303. This is also the
emphasis of Kierkegaard, Barth, Heidegger, Jaspers, and Sartre: cf. Stefanini,“Personalismo,” in Encyclopedia Filosofica, 3:314–16. Of course this “modern” (Rahner)
notion of person fits perfectly with Boethius’s naturae rationalis individua substantia.

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793

means that out of which any of the beings by nature is or becomes; it is
that first which is unorganized (arrythmistos : not reducible to form) and
unchangeable from its own potency.” Here Aristotle is referring to the
“prime matter” into which forms are introduced in change (192b
27–35).Yet, fifthly, nature is the “substance of beings by nature.” Aristotle
specifies this by noting that “nature is the prime matter . . . and also the
form and substance; this is the end of the becoming ( genesis : generation)”
(Metaphy.V, 4, 1015a 7–11). In commenting on this passage St. Thomas
notes that the substantial form gives the name of the species and the
shape is the “sign of the species” insofar as the shape “follows the species.”
Explaining how the form can be designated “nature,” he observes that the
form can be not only the form of the part (forma partis ) but also the form
of the whole (forma totius ), or the species, “as if we say that man’s nature
is not only the soul but the humanity and the substance which the definition signifies.” Citing Boethius’s definition of nature as “the specific
difference informing each thing,”Thomas comments:
For the specific difference completes the reality’s substance and gives it
a species. As the form or matter is said to be nature because it is the
principle of generation, which is said to be nature according to the
name’s first application, so the species and substance are said to be
nature, which is generation’s goal. For generation is terminated at the
species of the one generated, and the species results from the union of
form and matter. (In V Metaphysicam, 820–22)

Thus one sees that matter, form, and their combination can all be
considered in turn “nature.” Furthermore, there is an inherent tension in
the form, which both informs the matter and provides the goal of the
nature’s becoming as it dynamically penetrates ever more the matter:
“since nature means two things: the matter and the form, of which the
latter is the end, and since all the rest is for the sake of the end, the form
must be the cause in the sense of a final cause (that for the sake of which)”
(Phy. II, 1, 193b 12–13; 8, 199a 30–32; Metaphy.V, 4, 1015a 17–19).Thus
“the nature understood as becoming ( genesis: origin, generation) is the
road toward nature” (Phy. II, 1, 193b 13–14) and “nature is the end and
the ‘for the sake of which’ ” (Phy. II, 2, 194a 28–29). Hence a final cause
is present in things that by nature come to be or are (Phy. II, 8, 198b
10–12; 199a 7–8); final and formal causes often coincide (Phy. II, 7, 198a
24–25). “Nature is a cause that acts for a end” (Phy. II, 8, 199b 32–33). It
joins the “already,” which impresses its form on a nature, to the “not yet”
of the goal to which the nature is inherently ordered.The Summa theologiae later summarizes these various tensions and oscillations within the

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John M. McDermott, S.J.

notion of nature understood as a principle of motion: “Because this type
of principle is formal or material, matter as well as form is commonly said
to be nature.And because the essence of any reality whatever is completed
through a form, which its definition signifies, it is called nature.” Indeed,
the specific difference, which completes the definition,“is taken from the
reality’s proper form” (ST I, q. 29, a. 1, ad 4).
Besides the oscillations between form and matter, formal and final
causes,“already” and “not yet,” the identity of nature with substance introduces another polarity into the study of natures. Aristotle recognizes the
distinction between first, or individual, substance and second substance,
which is the qualitative, or formal, part of first substance, to which definition corresponds. For substance, like nature, can apply to the underlying
matter, the form, and the combination of the two (Categories 5, 2a 11–3b
23; Metaphy.V, 8, 1017b 10–26;VII, 10, 1035a 1–2;VIII, 1, 1041a 13–b 7;
2, 1043a 26–28; XII, 3, 1070a 9–13). So Aristotle distinguishes substance
from substance, “The substance is the form (eidos: shape) present in the
reality; from this form and the matter the whole substance is said to be”
(Metaphy.VII, 11, 1037a 29–30). Since matter is the principle of diversity
among members of the same species while form assures their essential
likeness (Metaphy.VII, 8, 1034a 7–8;VIII, 1, 1042a 25–29; De generatione et
corruptione I, 3, 318b 15–17), the distinction between first and second
substance (nature) depends upon seeing the abstracted universal as somehow identical with the composite of matter and form, yet also diverse
from the same composite.
This unity in diversity of matter and form means that substance and
nature can be considered either universally or particularly. Indeed Aristotle’s considerations of substance and nature often slide back and forth from
the universal to the particular: “sometimes it escapes notice whether the
name signifies the composite substance or the act (energeia) and the form”
(Metaphy.VIII, 3, 1043a 29–30). If truth is to be attained, the form known
by abstraction must represent the concrete nature known, yet the abstraction in the mind is not the same as the concrete, material substance. So
nature and substance can be understood in terms of a universal form or of
a particular matter.Yet Aristotle realizes that all abstractions from material
instances are not identical with those instances; no universal definition or
demonstration can apply to individual substances, even though the universal forms actually exist in matter (Metaphy.VII, 11, 1036b 21–32; 1037a
5–10; 13, 1038b 8–16; 1039a 14–19). Aristotle sees that in universals like
“man” and “horse” it is impossible to abstract fully from matter; thus there
is no definition of a concrete, material whole (Metaphy. VII, 10, 1035b
27–31; 11, 1036a 2–6; 11, 1036b 2–7.21–30). For St. Thomas and later

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Scholastics such abstracted forms as “man” are known in relation to the
sensible phantasms from which they are abstracted and the matter remains
implicit in universal definitions as “common matter” in distinction from
individuating matter (ST I, q. 75, a. 4c; q. 85, a. 1, ad 2).3
Precisely because first substance contains matter, it can be identified
also as a nature. Insofar as motion is defined as “the act of the potency”
(Phy. III, 1, 201b 10–11; 2–3, 202a 6–15; Metaphy. XI, 9, 1065b 14–1066a
34), it involves both potency and act. Act is the equivalent of form as
potency is of matter (Metaphy. VIII, 6, 1045a 24–25; IX, 8, 1050b 2–3;
XIII, 10, 1087a 16–17). Matter is unlimited (aoriston: indefinite: Metaphy.
VII, 11, 1037a 27; XIII, 10, 1087a 16–17) or infinite (Phy. III, 7, 207b
34–208a 3) and equivalently “non-being” (cf. Metaphy. IX, 10, 1051a
34–1051b 1; XII, 2, 1069b 14–34; XIII, 10, 1087a 16–17; XIV, 2, 1089a
26–30), existing not in itself but only potentially in relation to a form,
which it “desires” (Phy. I, 9, 192a 20–23; II, 1, 194b 8–9; III, 6, 206b
14–16; De gen. et cor. I, 5, 320b 16–17; Metaphy.VIII, 6, 1045a 23–24; XII,
5, 1071a 10–11). “The infinite is the matter of the perfection of size, and
it is a whole in potency but not in act. . . .As infinite it is does not contain
but is contained.Therefore the infinite is also unknowable. For matter has
no form (eidos)” (Phy. III, 6, 207a 21–26). As non-being it cannot change
or be moved (Phy.V, 1, 225a 10–12.20–23; De gen. et cor. II, 1, 329a 26–27;
Metaphy. XI, 1067b 30); change needs limits and matter has no limits (Phy.
VI, 10, 240a 27–b 12); as a formless infinite, it can exist only within the
limits of form (Phy. III, 6 206b 12–16). Since it is unlimited, it also has no
directions (cf. Phy. IV, 8, 215a 7–9). As potency matter is not subject to
becoming;“for if it came to be, there would have to be some existing first
from which it came,” whereas matter is “for each thing the first subject
from which something comes to be and which exists not accidentally”
(Phy. I, 9, 192a 27–32). For its part a pure form would have nothing
toward which it might move, and it cannot be affected by other things
(Metaphy.VII, 8, 1033b 19–29; De gen. et cor. I, 7, 324b 15–16). “Neither
form nor matter comes to be” (Metaphy. XII, 3, 1069b 35).Yet “in everything that becomes, matter is present” (Metaphy.VII, 8, 1033b19–20). Only
3 Cf. John Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas (Washington, DC:

Catholic University, 2000), 330–33, where a corporeal essence includes matter as
well as form; also 351–75, for Thomas’s hesitations on designating the ultimate principle of individuality. Robert O’Donnell, C.S.P.,“Individuation:An Example of the
Development in the Thought of St.Thomas Aquinas,” New Scholasticism 33 (1959):
49–67, earlier noted the development but wound up rooting the individuality of
material composites in the substantial form instead of matter signed by quantity.
Paradoxically the form, the principle of universality, grounds individuality.

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in the conjunction of matter and form do becoming and motion occur,
and only in this composite understanding can matter be said to be that out
of which natural becomings come to be (Metaphy.VII, 7, 1032a 15–17).4
A final tension should be mentioned. Since every change involves
continuity and discontinuity, not annihilation and creation, nature and
substance can also be contrasted to each other. As “a principle of motion
and change” (Phy. III. 1, 200b 12), nature is clearly dynamic. But substance
can be understood as “the ultimate subject (hypokeimenon)” underlying
change (Metaphy. V, 8 1017b 23–24: VIII, 1, 1042a 32–b 5). Here it is
considered a more static element. Since, however, nature and substance can
be identified—Thomas notes,“As is clear from Metaphysics V, substance has
a double appellation: in one way it is essence or nature, in another way it
stands for supposite or hypostasis” (ST III, q. 2, a. 6, ad 3)—a paradoxical
oscillation or tension between its static and dynamic moments results.
Beyond these meanings Aristotle also extends the meaning of “nature”
to include all substances (Metaphy.V, 4, 1015a 11–13).This would apparently include inanimate substances since for Aristotle the basic elements
and the simple bodies move themselves to their natural places of rest
(Phy.VIII, 4, 255b 8–21; De caelo II, 13, 295b 20–23; III, 2, 300a 20–301b
32; IV, 1, 308a 23–33; 3, 310b 23–311a 7; 4, 311b 15–312a 8; De gen. et
cor. II, 2, 330b 31–34).5
Clearly “nature” is an analogous concept.This insight is important for
the acknowledgment of natural law. For there is a necessary connection
between a nature’s form and its end. As Thomas maintains, the form is a
reality’s principle of action: “Anything whatever acts according to the
exigency of its form, which is the principle of action and the norm for
the work” (In III Sent., d. 27, q. 1, a. 1c). Natural things, indeed all agents,
act by their form (ST I, q. 15, a. 1c; q. 42, a. 1, ad 1). Aristotle’s universe
has one final goal: the Prime Mover, or God (Metaphy. XIII, 4, 1070b
34–35; 7, 1072b 3–4; 10, 1075a 13–19; b 34–1076a 4). Since in an interconnected universe “all things are ordered toward one (end),” “God and
nature make nothing in vain,” and “there is a final cause in what happens
4 On the paradoxical notion of matter in Aristotle and Aquinas cf. John McDer-

mott, S.J., “The Mystery of Matter,” Angelicum 87 (2010): 993–1014.
5 Aristotle’s universe is almost alive. In Phy. VIII, 1, 250b 14 he describes the

universe’s eternal movement “as a sort of life” (oion zoe tis ) to all natural things
and accepts the comparison of the universe to an animal in ibid., 2, 252b 17–28
and 253a 7–20; for “motion is the natural state” (ibid., 3, 253b 9) and animals are
self-moving (ibid., 4, 254b 12–19).Yet Phy.VIII 4, 255a 1–19 denies to heavy and
light things the internal motion proper to living realities. A similarly organic,
living universe is postulated by Friedrich Schelling, System of Transcendental Idealism (1800), trans. Peter Heath (Charlottesville: U. of Virginia, 1978), 124–27.

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by nature” (Metaphy. XII, 1075a 19–20; XI, 8, 1065a 26–27; De caelo I, 4:
271a 34), one would expect natures to attain their end.That, however, is
not always the case. Aristotle acknowledges accidents (contingent events),
where the purpose of nature is not attained but monstrosities occur;
impediments to nature’s fulfillment can occur (Phy. II, 8, 199a 2–11.33–b
4). In accidental occurrences chance (or spontaneity) is recognized as an
accidental or “indefinite” cause, not a definite cause in the strict sense;
such a cause is “unclear to man” (Phy. II, 5, 197a 8–14; Metaphy. V, 30,
1025a 24–25). For chance, which is opposed to what is or becomes always
or usually, proceeds from matter, which is the “cause” equally of something’s existence or non-existence (De caelo I, 12, 283a 34–b 5). Hence in
contrast to chance, which is disorderly, nature produces its results “for the
most part” or “without exception” (Magna Moralia II, 8, 1207a 2; b 19).
The “for the most part” allows for failure in individual cases. Matter,
which is always capable of being otherwise, is the cause of the accidental
(Metaphy. VI, 2, 1027a 13–15; VII, 7, 1032a 20–22). Conversely, since
“matter is unknowable in itself ” (Metaphy.VII, 10, 1036a 8–9) and science
is of what is always or is for the most part, the contingent falls outside the
realm of science (Metaphy.VI, 2, 1027a 19–28). It is “something close to
non-being” (ibid. 1026b 21).
A principal paradoxical element in this understanding of nature derives
from the role of matter. On the one hand, unless matter were joined to
form, there would be no motion and hence no nature to be studied. On
the other, matter is unintelligible to man, and thus he is prevented from
fully understanding existing singular substances and motion itself. As a
combination of form and matter, act and potency, being neither act nor
potency but both, motion’s reality is incomplete; hence “it is difficult to
grasp what it is” (Metaphy. XI, 9, 1066a 17–31).
St. Thomas’s World
St.Thomas takes Aristotle’s basic understanding of nature and expands it to
fit his Christian Weltanschauung.Thomas’s God is more than Aristotle’s pure
form, or thought thinking himself: He is the infinite, omnipotent Creator
of heaven and earth, whose knowledge extends to every material singular
(ST I, q. 14, a. 11c et ad 1; q. 22, a. 2c).6 Hence nothing escapes His will (I,
q. 19, a. 6c).To allow for God’s infinity both transcending the finite order
and allowing Him to intervene freely in it,Thomas postulates an order of
esse alongside the order of Aristotelian essences.This existential order allows
6 All subsequent references to Thomas’s works in our main text are continuous,

i.e., unless otherwise noted, the numbers refer to the work previously cited or
referred to.

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him to distinguish angels from each other without appeal to Franciscan
“spiritual matter.” Furthermore it explains how the judgment in returning
to the phantasm can be man’s highest intellectual act, the act in which truth
is attained (I, q. 16, a. 2c); instead of affirming beyond form its juncture with
matter, which is unintelligible to man, now judgment affirms the act of
existence, the deeper intelligibility undergirding the form-matter composite. In addition to these enlarged philosophical insights Thomas knows that
through the Incarnation a supernatural order of redemption and grace has
been grafted into a fallen natural order. Man’s way of attaining God is no
longer principally by contemplation but by love, specifically by believing
and loving God’s only Son (I–II, q. 5, a. 7, ad 2; II–II, q. 23, a. 6c; III, prol.;
q. 1, a. 2c; q. 3, a. 9c). In an historical economy of salvation the accent falls
upon love beyond knowledge (I, q. 82, a. 3c). All of these expansions and
additions introduce further tensions into a basic Aristotelian understanding
of nature. Let us enumerate some of them.
First, nature is more than both a singular instance, understood statically
or dynamically, and an abstraction. In trying to explain original sin’s propagation, the Summa theologiae considers all Adam’s children as “one man insofar as they unite (convenient) in the nature which they receive from the first
parent”; since they are as many members of the one body moved freely by
the first parent, original sin appears as a “sin of nature” (I–II, q. 81, a. 1c).
Though the disorder in willing was due to the will of Adam, he moves by
generation all who derive from his origin.The basic principle is this:“what
pertain to the nature of the species are passed on by parents into children
unless there is a defect of nature.” Just as original justice was to be passed on
through generation, so the disorder of original sin, which corrupts nature, is
passed on (q. 81, a. 2c; 4c).The infection derives from the nature’s origin (q.
83, a. 4, ad 2).This aspect may have been implicit in Aristotle insofar as his
first understanding of nature recognized that “nature” (physis) derives from
“to beget or engender” (phyo) or the passive “to be born from” (phyesthai)
(Metaphy.V, 4, 1014b 16–18).Thomas recognizes this meaning on account
of the relation between natura and nascere (ST I, q. 29, a. 1, ad 4; III, q. 2, a.
1c). Certainly it shows an awareness that “nature” involves the concrete
whole of the species, not merely individuals who happen to possess a
common form.7
7 Thomas is not always consistent on this point; in ST I, q. 39, a. 4, ad 3 he writes:

“The unity or community of human nature corresponds not to reality, but to a
way of thinking (secundum considerationem ); hence the term “man” does not stand
for the common nature unless a modifier (additum ) requires it, as when one says,
‘man is a species.’ ”

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Second, given that God is a creator who works through efficient as well
as final causality (I, q. 2, a. 3), all of irrational creation is seen as an instrument directed by the principal Agent, moving it like an artist and directing
it to an end (I–II, q. 6, a. 1, ad 3).This universal nature need not be considered an inert mass, but has its own innate, active power (I–II, q. 85, a. 6c).
For God creates the natures with an innate tendency or appetite (I–II, q.
26, a. 1c). “Nature is nothing but the reasonable cause (ratio) of a certain
art, specifically God’s art, imparted to realities by which the realities themselves are moved to a determined end” (In II Phy. 14). Yet, because the
divine knowing is infinite, one with His will, and non-discursive, it cannot
be used as a middle term in deducing conclusions about finite results of His
knowledge (ST I, q. 14, a. 1c et ad 3; 2c; q. 3, a. 1; a. 7c; a. 8c et ad 1, 3; 14c
et ad 1, 2). Thus He can seek the good of nature as a whole by allowing
the corruption and defect of individual natures (I, q. 22, a. 2, ad 2).
Third, even though man cannot perceive the end intended by God,
Thomas does not wish to deny the intelligible finality impressed on every
creature. Without that finality the “way” to affirming God’s existence in
terms of final causality would be destroyed (I, q. 2, a. 3). “The natural
necessity inhering in realities that are determined to one (end) is a certain
impression of God who is directing them to the end” (I, q. 103, a. 1, ad 3).
This necessity is traced back to the form, whereas contingency is ascribed
to matter. Even the most contingent reality has something of necessity in
it.Thus the human mind by abstracting particular material instances attains
“universal and necessary reasons.” But Thomas realizes that even this
abstract necessity is relative to the particular instances from which it is
derived. “Hence if universal reasons for realities that can be known are
considered, all sciences concern what are necessary. If, however, the realities themselves are considered, some sciences deal with what are necessary,
others with what are contingent” (I, q. 86, a. 3c). So in all real material
beings there is an oscillation between necessity and contingency, reflecting their hylomorphic composition.This supports the oscillation of analogy between God’s and man’s knowledge of impressed ends.
Fourth, since human freedom is central to Christianity, the universe
cannot be rigidly determined.While it is true that “nature is determined
to one (end)” because of the single form informing the nature and, hence,
irrational creatures possess an “operative potency determined to one end,”
man on the basis of his free will is master of his own acts and thus directs
himself to his own end: “The will is not determined to one (end)”;
nonetheless it does not escape divine providence (I, q. 22, a. 2, ad 4; q. 41,
a. 2c; q. 83, a. 1c; q. 92, a. 2, ad 2; q. 103, a. 5c et ad 2, 3; I–II, q. 1, a. 2c).
(This accords with Aristotle’s position that rational beings can produce

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contrary effects: Metaphy. IX, 2, 1046b 4–5; 5, 1048a 8–9.) This indeterminacy in choice occurs even though the nature’s basic love or inclination
is not divorced from the will: “In an intellectual nature the natural inclination is found to be according to the will” (I, q. 60, a. 1c). The will is
recognized as a potency, or faculty, of the soul, which in union with the
body constitutes human nature and is the subject of the potencies that
function as its proximate principles of operation (I, q. 75, a. 1c et ad 1; a. 4c;
77, q. 1, aa. 3–5; a. 6c et ad 2; q. 78, aa. 1c, 4c).While it might be possible
to reconcile natural necessity with freedom by pointing out that nature’s
end-directedness need only be “for the most part” (I, q. 103, a. 1c), thus
allowing with Aristotle for the interference inherent in matter, Thomas
chooses a better way. Even though the will can be distinguished from and
even opposed to nature, it is ultimately rooted in nature:
The will is distinguished from (dividitur contra) nature as one cause from
another: for some things happen naturally, other voluntarily. However
there is a different manner of causing proper to the will, which is master
of its own act, beyond the manner which is appropriate to nature, which
is determined to one goal. But because the will is grounded in some
nature, the motion proper to nature necessarily participates in the will:
just as what is due to a prior cause is participated in by a subsequent
cause. For in every single reality esse itself, which is through nature, is
prior to willing, which is through the will. This explains why the will
naturally wills something. (I–II, q. 10, a. 1, ad 1)

Thomas balances the will as nature with the will as free by distinguishing the necessary object of the will, happiness, from the objects, or goods,
short of that end which are subject to free choice.The final end is given
by nature, the intermediate goods are subject to the will’s free choice (I,
q. 82, a. 1c et ad 1, 3; a. 2c et ad 1, 2; I–II, q. 5, a. 4, ad 2). Thomas also
distinguishes the former’s act as willing from the latter’s as choosing, the
former faculty as voluntas, or voluntas ut natura, from the latter as liberum
arbitrium, or voluntas ut ratio, but insists that they are one faculty (I, q. 83,
a. 4c et ad 1, 2; I–II, q. 6, a. 4c; III, q. 18, a. 3c).Thus he attempts to hold
human freedom within the bounds of nature and preserve his arguments
from finality. But underlying tensions remain.
Fifth, in his famous Surnaturel H. de Lubac shows how Thomas understands angelic freedom as something transcending the necessity of nature.
He has to allow the possibility of sin in a creature without matter, which
in man impedes insight. The problem is already identified by his predecessors: if, according to Aristotle, the intellect, whether theoretical or
practical, cannot err about its proper object, it surely does not err about

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the good and the true, especially about its own preeminent good. How
then can an angel sin? Thomas insists that a creature, created from nothing, cannot be impeccable—only God is impeccable by nature—even
though the creature has a natural love for his Creator.The very potency
implied in that love distinguishes him from God. Hence, according to de
Lubac,Thomas distinguishes: “The angel naturally moves himself toward
God insofar as God is the author of his natural being, but not insofar as
God is the author of his supernatural beatitude.” But the natural love
opens toward a greater, supernatural love whereby the angel has to
choose freely to accept God supernaturally or not.Thus two regions are
postulated, one natural, or necessary, the other free, or voluntary. There
has to be a choice or a “conversion” to enter into the supernatural order
to which the creature is called by nature. For the supernatural order is the
order of freedom. Hence the angel is naturally peccable but can only
attain his end in the supernatural vision of God.8
Sixth, even in the case of man there is a tension between his nature and
his actual supernatural calling. Insofar as God is man’s and the universe’s
final cause, there should be a proportion between man’s end and his nature
“because the end responds to the beginning ( principium: principle)” (I–II,
q. 2, a. 5, ad 3). But God’s infinity seems to destroy any proportion (cf. I,
q. 12, a. 2, obj. 4; I–II, q. 2, a. 8, obj. 3): “No created intellect can know
God infinitely” nullus autem intellectus creatus potest Deum infinite cognoscere
(I, q. 12, a. 7c et ad 1). Thomas oscillates in his characterization of man’s
final natural end, at times proposing “universal good” or “good in the
universal,” which can be understood as an abstract good grasped by the
intellect as parallel to the “universal true” or the “common true” (I–II, q.
1, a. 2, ad 3; q. 2, a. 7c; q. 5, a. 1c; a. 8c et ad 2; q. 10, a. 1, ad 3); at other
times the same end or universal good is identified with God Himself (I,
q. 105, a. 4c; q. 106, a. 2; I–II, q. 2, a. 3c; a. 8c et ad 1–3; q. 3, a. 1c; q. 5, a.
3c; q. 9, a. 6c).Yet the possession of God as supreme good in the beatific
vision is purely supernatural, surpassing every natural principle and power
(I–II, q. 5, a. 5c et ad 1).
Seventh, the previous oscillation is linked to Thomas’s distinction
between essence and existence. Since the concrete nature which knows is
an existential nature and its natural intellectual operation attains the truth
in a judgment, which affirms the existence of an object, the concrete man
is naturally more than an essence or nature. His active intellect, which ultimately produces the judgment, must refer to the existential order, which
8 Henri de Lubac, S.J., Surnaturel (Paris: Aubier, 1946), 219–60, esp. 246, 254. For

the development of this insight in his other works cf. John McDermott, S.J.,“De
Lubac and Rousselot,” Gregorianum 78 (1977): 740–58.

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John M. McDermott, S.J.

God, pure esse and First Truth (I, q. 3, a. 4c; q. 16, a. 5c; II–II, q. 4, a. 2, ad
3), grounds. So the agent intellect participates in the divine intellect, from
which it receives its light (I, q. 12, a. 2c). Since the divine intellect and the
divine esse are identical (I, q. 14, a. 4c), the agent intellect participates
already in God to whom it is referred. Insofar as the intellect’s judgment
is a motion, that is, a conversion to the phantasm involving composition
and division (I, q. 84, a. 7c; q. 85, a. 5c et ad 1–3), it refers to God as its
ultimate termination; thus it desires God as the fulfillment of its motion.
But the God so desired is not an abstract God; for a judgment goes beyond
the subject of the sentence, be it an abstract concept or a concrete indexical referent, to existence.9 The judgment refers to and seeks the one God
who is to be attained immediately in Himself. So there is a natural desire
to see God in Himself, a natural desire for the supernatural vision (I, q. 12,
a. 1c; I–II, q. 3, a. 8c; Summa contra Gentes III, cc. 50–57; Compendium theologiae I, cc. 3, 103–6; etc.). Nature at once is nature and strains beyond the
bounds of nature.10
Thomas can clearly distinguish natural and supernatural orders by their
end: the natural end is “proportionate to a created nature which the created
9 Karl. Rahner, S.J., Geist in Welt (Innsbruck: Rauch, 1938), 82–83, notes that there

cannot be an “it” without a universal concept, i.e., a judgment must have as its
subject a noun which is abstract (even if it has an internal reference to matter:
cf. John McDermott, S.J., “Dialectical Analogy: The Oscillating Center of
Rahner’s Thought,” Gregorianum 75 [1994]: 680–86), but the late Maritain,
“Réflections sur la nature blessée,” Approches sans entraves (Paris: Fayard, 1973),
264–72, esp. 270–72, allows for an existential basic judgment without and before
an abstraction. On this point Rahner seems to be correct, since an indeterminate
“it” or “that” refers ultimately to the prime matter, which as infinite cannot be
distinguished from existence. Maritain may have been trying to avoid the paradox that the concept of being is included implicitly as subject in the existential
judgment producing the concept of being; thus the concept of being would be
both a part and the totality of the judgment: cf. Existence and the Existent, trans.
Lewis Galantiere and Gerald Phelan (1948; rpt. Westport, CT: Greenwood,
1975), 22–35, esp. nn. 13 and 14.There can be no perception of matter without
a simultaneous perception of form.That insight seems clear from the experience
of Helen Keller as quoted and elucidated by Ernst Cassirer, An Essay on Man
(1944; rpt. New Haven:Yale, 196), 33–41.
10 William O’Connor, The Eternal Quest (New York: Longmans, Green, 1947), 7–23,
examines all Thomas’s texts about the natural desire for the supernatural. His own
interpretation that the desire is an imperfect act of tendency which arises in the
intellect after it has attained knowledge of God’s existence (181–83) does not quite
convince, since the intellect per se is not a desire. Moreover it seems more an elicited
than a natural desire.Transcendental Thomists place the natural desire for the supernatural at the foundation of their theologies, allowing an amalgamation of intellect
and will: cf. John McDermott, S.J.,“The Theology of John Paul II:A Response,” in

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reality can attain according to the power of its own nature,” whereas the
beatific vision “exceeds the proportion and capacity ( facultas) of a created
nature” (ST I, q. 23, a. 1c). Likewise, alongside the natural desire to see God
in Himself, he affirms that “the natural desire of a rational creature is to
know all those things which pertain to the intellect’s perfection; and these
are the species and genera of things and their reasons (rationes)” (I, q. 12, a.
8, ad 4). Correspondingly “the first and proper object of the [human] intellect” is identified as “the quiddity of the thing itself,” or, more precisely,“the
quiddity or nature existing in corporeal matter” (I, q. 85, a. 5c; q. 84, a. 7c).
For knowing its proper object, the essence of a thing, what it is, constitutes
the intellect’s perfection (I–II, q. 3, a. 8c).
Corresponding to the oscillation between God and finite natures as
the intellect’s proper object is Thomas’s oscillation on the meaning of
truth. On the one hand truth is seen as the con-form-ity of the intellect
with the object known (I, q. 16, a. 8c et ad 3).“Our intellect is true insofar as it is conformed to its principle, viz., the realities from which it
receives knowledge” (I, q. 16, a. 6).This apparently consists in the mind’s
possession of the form of the reality known:
Since every reality is true insofar as it has the proper form of its nature,
the intellect, insofar as it knows, is necessarily true insofar as it has the
likeness of the thing known, which is its form insofar as it knows.
Therefore truth is defined through the conformity of intellect and reality. (I, q. 16, a. 2c)

Yet, on the other hand,Thomas is well aware of Aristotle’s view that truth
is in judgment (ScG I, c. 59; Metaphy. IV, 7, 1011b 25–29, 1012a 1–29;VI,
4, 1027b 18–34). He allows for that in the passage immediately following
the previous quotation as he discusses how “the intellect can know its
conformity to the intelligible reality”: “Nevertheless it does not apprehend this [conformity] insofar as it knows about something what something
is, but when it judges that a reality is such as is the form which it apprehends about the reality; then it first knows and speaks what is true. And it
does this by composing and dividing.”That will lead to the conclusion:
Therefore truth can indeed be in sensation or in the intellect knowing
what something is, as in some true reality, but not as the known in the
knower, which bears the name of the true; for the perfection of the
The Thought of Pope John Paul II (Rome: Gregorian, 1993), 63–64, n. 36, for references to the basic “paradox” in Rousselot, Maréchal, Lonergan, Alfaro, Rahner, de
Lubac, von Balthasar, and Mouroux. But they never explain why the paradox is only
an apparent contradiction.

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intellect is the true as known.And therefore, properly speaking, truth is
in the intellect composing and dividing, but not in sensation nor in the
intellect knowing what something is. (Cf. also ST I, q. 16, a. 4, ad 2; De
veritate I, 3c)

The priority of judgment accords with Thomas’s emphasis on the existential order which is affirmed in judgment:“Truth is grounded more in
a reality’s esse than in the quiddity” (In I Sent., d. 19, q. 5, a. 1c).Yet the
“truths” of both concept and judgment are reconciled insofar as human
truth is based on the realities known and their truth consists in their
accord with the mind of the Creator (ST I, q. 16, a. 3, ad 2, 3; a. 5c et ad
2; q. 21, a. 2c).Thus all truth is grounded in God whose knowing is existential, yet insofar as His truth transcends judgment’s plurality it is more
like man’s simple apprehension (I, q. 16, a. 5c et ad 1). “God, according
to His simple intelligence, possesses that perfection of knowledge which
our intellect possesses through the knowledge of complex objects and the
knowledge of simple objects ( per utramque cognitionem et complexorum et
incomplexorum )” (ScG I, c. 59). In God the simplicity and unity of infinite
esse is reconciled with a plurality of ideas (ST I, q. 3, a. 7c; q. 11, a. 3c; a.
4c; q. 15, a. 1c et ad 3; a. 2c et ad 1, 2).11
On Freedom
Given the complexity of the understanding of “nature,” it is hardly surprising that the notion of freedom should be neither straightforward nor
simple.Two principal understandings can be readily identified.12 The first,
liberty of indifference or free choice, called in Latin liberum arbitrium (which
can refer to the faculty as well as the decision), has been mentioned above.
It presupposes a distinction between will and intellect, the will’s formal
object being the good (I, q. 19, a. 3c), which characterizes the end sought
(I, q. 6, a. 2, ad 2; q. 19, a. 1, ad 1), and the intellect’s formal object, the true
(I, q. 16, a. 3, ad 3; a. 4, ad 2; q. 59, a. 2, ad 2; I–II, q. 3, a. 7c). Since the will
is guided by the intellect, which knows the universal true as a universal
good (I, q. 59, a. 3c; q. 82, a. 3, ad 2; a. 4c et ad 1; q. 83, a. 3c et ad 2), the
will is not restricted to any particular finite good (I–II, q. 13, a. 2c). It has
power over its own acts and is thus capable of choosing opposites (I, q. 83,
11 Cf. Eileen Sweeney, “Thomas Aquinas’ Double Metaphysics of Simplicity and

Infinity,” International Philosophical Quarterly 33 (1993): 287–317, for Thomas’s
balance between transcendental oneness and plurality.
12 Other notions of freedom: independence, doing what one feels like doing, and
following reason, can also be found in Thomas’s thought, but they are subordinate to these two principal notions: cf. John McDermott, S.J., “The Mystery of
Freedom,” Lateranum 74 (2008): 493–542.

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a. 1c), even, it is said at times, choosing between good and evil: “Liberum
arbitrium maintains itself in indifference between choosing well or choosing badly” (I, q. 83, a. 2c; I–II, q. 114, a. 9c). In the actual choice the intellect acts like a form, the will like matter informed by the intellect (I–II, q.
13, a. 1c).The principal difficulty with this schema resides in its inability to
offer a reason for the actual choice. Since none of the finite goods
presented as possible objects of choice to the intellect can fill the whole
horizon of possible goods, the final choice of the intellect seems to be arbitrary. A secondary difficulty concerns the object of the will’s natural
appetite. Since the will’s object is not internal to the faculty, as the true is
to the intellect, but is an external good (I, q. 19, a. 1, ad 3; q. 82, a. 3c), that
is, a concrete actually existing good, it is hard to see how a “universal good”
can serve as the will’s object. If it is abstract, it is not exterior to the knowerlover; if it is concrete, it must be God Himself. Then the difficulty again
arises about a natural desire to possess God in Himself, a supernatural goal.
A third difficulty attaches to the reconciliation of divine omnipotence with
human freedom. Insofar as man is seen as master of his acts, an apparently
independent center of activity, how can that independence be reconciled
with God’s omnipotent providence? For the will is not sufficient to move
itself unless it be moved by God (I, q. 83, aa. 2–4). The debates between
Molinists and Bañezians mark the impossibility of resolving the question as
it is formulated.13 Perhaps the question has been improperly formulated.
A second understanding of freedom can be labeled Pauline or Augustinian. The will has been created to choose the good. The choice of evil
not only contradicts God’s intention (I, q. 63, a. 1c) but also is hard to
explain insofar as evil is nothing in itself ( per essentiam) but only the privation of a good, or the lack of a good which it should have (I, q. 49, a. 1c;
3c et ad 4; q. 65, a. 1, ad 2, 3). As such evil has no proper cause; it occurs
only by accident (I, q. 49, a. 1c; q. 3, a. 5; I–II, q. 75, a. 1c).A privation cannot
be directly chosen. It does not exist in itself but only in a good subject (I,
q. 48, a. 3c).When God frees a fallen will from its subjugation to sin, then
it becomes free in the choice of the good. This freedom is inherently
13 The sixteenth century’s end and the whole seventeenth century were filled with

the controversy de auxiliis between Bañezian and Molinist theologians, whom
successive popes had to interdict from accusing each other of heresy (DS 1997,
2008, 2170–71). In 1748 Benedict XIV again had to intervene to impose peace
and silence (DS 2564). Cf. Christian Pesch, S.J., Praelectiones Dogmaticae, V
(Freiburg: Herder, 1916), 346–63; Hermann Lange, S.J., De Gratia, 2nd ed.
(Valkenburg: St. Ignatius, 1926), 331–37. Also cf. John McDermott, S.J., “The
Neo-Scholastic Analysis of Freedom,” International Philosophical Quarterly 34
(1994): 149–65, and “Mystery of Freedom,” 517–25, for a longer explication of
the inherent difficulties of this analysis of freedom.

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dynamic.“Sin is contrary to natural reason; consequently freedom from sin
is a true freedom, which is joined to the servitude to justice since through
both man tends toward what is appropriate to him (quod est conveniens sibi)”
(II–II, q. 183, a. 4c). For Thomas there is no opposition between freedom
and the necessity of the end:“Of necessity the will inheres in the ultimate
end, which is beatitude” (I, q. 82, a. 1c).This holds not only with regard to
the end but also with regard to the means.To choose a disordered means
is not freedom but its lack:“It belongs to the perfection of its freedom that
liberum arbitrium can choose diverse things, if the order to the goal is
preserved; but to choose something by turning aside from the order to the
goal, which is to sin, belongs to freedom’s defect. Hence there is greater
liberum arbitrium in the angels who cannot sin than in us who can sin” (I,
q. 62, a. 8, ad 3).The blessed cannot not love God (I, q. 60, a. 5, ad 5), and
freedom of choice is not denied to them (III, q. 18, a. 4, ad 3). Likewise,
since God is free and cannot sin (I, q. 49, a. 2c; q. 63, a. 1c), the capacity to
sin does not essentially belong to freedom.“Just as inability to sin does not
diminish freedom, so also the necessity of a will rendered firm toward the
good does not diminish freedom: as this is clear in the case of God and the
blessed” (II–II, q. 88, a. 4, ad 1).That is why a vow does not limit freedom;
rather, Thomas quotes Augustine praising “the happy necessity which
compels to do the better.” Earlier Thomas notes how the possibility of
choosing evil is not really freedom:
Although liberum arbitrium can turn to good and evil, nonetheless of
itself it is ordered to the good; therefore what hinders it in doing good,
simply hinders and corrupts it; for that reason freedom from what
hinders is said simply to be freedom, and this is freedom from sin; what
hinders it from doing evil, which corrupts it, only accidentally (secundum quid ) impedes it. (In II Sent., d. 25, q. 3, a. 5, ad 2)

Such a schema, whereby man chooses goods insofar as they are participations in the Supreme Good, allows for the reconciliation of human
freedom and divine omnipotence: man chooses any good in the attraction of the Supreme Good, the source in which limited goods participate
and of which they are likenesses (ST I, q. 6, a. 1c et ad 2; a. 2c et ad 2; a.
4c; q. 44, a. 3c; q. 60, a. 5c).The obvious difficulty with such a view is that
it obviates the need for choice at all. It is impossible to explain how one
can choose evil, which is nothing positive. Since evil, as a privation of
good, only “exists in” a good, making it a lesser good, any choice would
involve the lesser good, which as good still participates in the Supreme
Good. Thus the choice of the good, though lesser, would still implicitly
involve the choice of God (I, q. 44, a. 4, ad 3). Moreover, if freedom

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consists ultimately in the choice of the good, God could have created
man free and impeccable, and the whole justification for God’s permission of sin in Paradise would fall away. Furthermore, impeccable man
would be like God; but it is impossible that a creature, who is not the
measure of the good, should be equated with the good itself. As long as
any intelligent creature is distant from God, the possibility of turning
from Him is real (I, q. 63, a. 1c).14
Clearly these two understandings of freedom balance each other off.
Liberty of indifference remains static, motionless and ineffective, unless the
actual movement of choice is applied to it.Augustinian liberty, which starts
with the will as a dynamic power oriented to its end, remains incapable of
changing direction, of actually making a choice, unless it can win a certain
distance from its own dynamism through the intellect’s abstractive power,
a power at the basis of freedom of indifference. Furthermore, these two
notions of freedom correspond to “nature” understood as dynamic and to
its equivalent “substance,” the persistent static substrate of change.15
A further point of juncture between “nature” and “freedom” can be
found in the underlying notion of matter. As we saw earlier, motion,
which is so difficult to grasp, happens because of matter, in itself unintelligible; only insofar as matter is joined to form can motion come about.
Matter also is responsible for the distinction between first and second
substance and the intellect’s oscillation between those two understandings.
Matter plays a similarly central role in human freedom. Its very unintelligibility prevents the world from being reduced to a determinist, rationalistic schema: the individual as such is not subject to science. Indeed, since
choice is a motion, going beyond static contemplation, matter is also at the
14 Admittedly Thomas attributes sin, on the one hand, to error or ignorance and,

on the other, to the choice of a good “without the order of an owed measure or
rule” insofar as there is “only the absence of consideration of what should be
considered” (ST I, q. 63, a. 1, ad 4). But ignorance and error excuse from sin
while mere lack of due consideration concerns the intellect alone, not the will
in which sin is located. Such an evasion presupposes a clear distinction of intellect and will. Cf. John McDermott, S.J.,“Metaphysical Conundrums at the Root
of Moral Disagreement,” Gregorianum 71 (1990): 717–32, 736–40, and “Mystery
of Freedom,” 525–31, for a criticism of the choice of evil and the transcendental Thomist understanding of freedom.
15 Romano Guardini, Der Gegensatz (Mainz: Grüünewald, 1925), 209–20, notes the
need of uniting in complementarity the double notion of freedom; this insight
finds its place within a universe of polar opposites. Similarly the complementarity of polar opposites is upheld by Erich Przywara, S.J., Analogia Entis, 2nd ed.
(Einsiedeln: Johannes, 1962) and Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theologic: I.The Truth of
the World, trans. Adrian Walker (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2000); both thus make
room for freedom.

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root of freedom’s choice.Yet matter alone suffices to explain freedom as
little as it explains motion. As for motion so also for freedom, form is
required. Man needs the abstract intelligibility of form in order to guide
his choice and win distance from the immediacy of his desires. Otherwise
he is blind in identifying the possible objects of choice.Thus the structures
of motion, substance, and freedom reflect the tension in man’s hylomorphic composition. To understand these mysteries man has to approach
reality from various perspectives. He must oscillate between formal and
material as well as static and dynamic aspects in order to approximate reality and leave himself open to the mystery of freedom.16
Before leaving the topic of freedom,Thomas’s treatment of God’s freedom should be mentioned. In God are found exemplified in a superlative way both types of freedom. As supreme Good immediately present
to Himself, God can be said to love Himself necessarily. He is joined to
His end since He is His end (I, q. 19, a. 3c). This is the perfection of
Augustinian freedom.Yet vis-à-vis creation He is free to choose to create
or not to create various finite entities. He possesses complete freedom of
choice (I, q. 19, a. 10c). This implies distinction not only between the
divine intellect and the divine will, in order to prevent the perfectly
simple God from having to create everything that He contemplates, but
also within His spiritual faculties. In His intellect “knowledge (scientia ) of
vision,” which comprehends all actual beings past, present, and future, is
distinguished from “knowledge of simple intelligence,” whereby all possible beings are known (I, q. 14, a. 9c). Analogously His antecedent will,
which “in a first consideration” regards good or evil “absolutely,” that is,
apart from particular circumstances, is distinguished from His consequent
will, which effects what it wills (I, q. 19, a. 6c). Why He chose this
creation instead of that remains a mystery, and Thomas can only assure his
readers that insofar as God’s will is one with His intellect, He chooses
everything in view of His own goodness, orders everything created to
His goodness, and in the resultant order of the universe wills means in
view of ends, His choice is “rational,” not arbitrary (I, q. 19, a. 1c; a. 2c; a.
3c; 4c; 5c et ad 1).
These assurances complete the circle of Thomas’s theological presentation.The beginning of the Summa theologiae argues to the existence of
God on the basis of the order in the universe: both the final causality
exhibited by things in motion and the purpose exhibited by the
universe’s unity point to God’s existence (I, q. 2, a. 3c). All freedom and
16 Cf. John McDermott, S.J., “Matter, Modern Science, and God,” forthcoming in

Angelicum for the oscillations in modern science’s relation to reality that leaves it
open to God. Matter thus fulfills the same role in modern as in ancient physics.

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all meaning are thus referred to God, in whose simplicity not only is His
intellect distinguished from His will but also knowledge of vision is
distinguished from knowledge of simple intelligence (I, q. 14, a. 9c) and
antecedent will is distinguished from subsequent will and will of sign (I,
q. 19, a. 6, ad 1; a. 11c). The plurality, attributable to matter, of earthly
creation, which nonetheless constitutes a single universe, is thus mirrored
in the “pluriunity” of God.
On Person
“Person” is a novel concept to the ancient world. Aristotle does not pay
any attention to it, and it is not until the Christological controversies of
the early Church that it comes to prominence. Although Tertullian hits
upon the fortunate terminology of two substances, God and man,
conjoined “in one person” (in una persona: Adversus Praxean 27), he never
explains what “person” means nor the relationship of the two terms
“person” and “substance.”17 But the phrases become embedded in the
Christian tradition of the West.Then for the Council of Chalcedon, striving, after decades of tumultuous controversy, to establish and clarify the
Church’s explicit unity of faith, St. Leo the Great proposes the Western
formulation involving two substances or natures in one person. Upon the
reading of Leo’s Tomus ad Flavianum the Chalcedonian Fathers immediately accept it as the faith of Peter and the Church.They define that the
two natures, human and divine, come together “into one person and one
subsistence” (DS 302). While the formulation marks the terminological
middle ground between Nestorius and Eutyches, Leo and the Fathers
neglect to render precise the exact meanings and relation of the terms
“nature” and “person.” Two more centuries of controversy are necessary
to attain those insights which St. Maximus Confessor wrings out of the
Monotheletic controversy.
Unfortunately St.Thomas has no access to Maximus’s texts.When the
greatest of Western doctors attempts to cast light upon the mysteries of the
Trinity and the Incarnation, the insights of the greatest of Eastern doctors
are denied him. Nonetheless his brilliant intellect, psychological sanity, and
fidelity to Church tradition enable him to approach the Trinitarian and
Christological notions of “person” in such a way that he sheds his own
light upon the mysteries. His starting point is anchored in the Western
tradition. Augustine understands the “three” within the one divinity as
17 Cf. Alois Grillmeier, S.J., Christ in Christian Tradition, vol. I, 2nd ed., trans. John

Bowden (Atlanta: Knox, 1975), 121–31. Grillmeier is a good guide to the patristic controversies; he implicitly refutes Harnack’s thesis about Christianity’s alleged
“Hellenization.”

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relations, even though he does not explicitly identify the three relations as
persons.18 Boethius offers a definition of person as “the individual substance
of a rational nature.” Of themselves these understandings are contradictory. Boethius apparently defines nothing more than an individual rational
nature (De persona et duabus naturis 3), a substantial in-se or per-se, an
“absolute,” while Augustine stresses the opposite of substance, “relation,”
which is ad aliquid (De Trinitate V, 6.12–15), and which Aristotle lists
among the accidents in Categories 7 (6a 36–8b 24).Thomas borrows from
Augustine the notion of relation, ad aliquid (ST I, q. 28, a. 1c; a. 2c; a. 4c),
and from Boethius his definition resting on the per se of substance (I, q.
29, a. 1c; a. 4c). Can the two definitions be reconciled?
In the prima pars, q. 29, Thomas commences his study of Trinitarian
person with Boethius’s definition and ends with an Augustinian “subsistent relation.” After noting that “individual” limits Boethius’s “substance”
to first substance, specifically to “rational [first] substances which have
mastery of their act” so that “they act per se” (a. 1), Thomas adds that
“individual” designates “the mode of subsisting which is proper to particular substances” (ad 3).This permits the distinction in article 2 of a reality’s essence from “the subject or supposite which subsists in the genus of
substance”; this latter, insofar as “it exists of itself ( per se ) and not in
another, is called subsistence.” The same subsistence, as underlying a
common nature, is called res naturae (a reality of nature), and, as underlying accidents, “a hypostasis or substance.” Deftly Thomas has distinguished subsistence, or person, from a common nature.Thus subsistence
is said to contain “individuating principles” beyond “common matter and
form” which make the matter-form composite “this man” (ad 3). One is
tempted to identify matter signed by quantity with subsistence, but
Thomas assures the reader that the substrate subsisting of itself as an individual does so by virtue of its form, which supplies the “actual esse to
matter.”Thus form is the “principle of subsisting” ( principium subsistendi )
whereas matter is the “principle of standing under” ( principium substandi:
ad 5).Thus esse as well as matter constitute the subsistent individual, who
is spiritual because he possesses a form, is rational, and exercises freedom.
Thomas is ready for his next step.
Since God neither supports accidents nor is individuated by matter,
individuating distinctions can be attributed to existence. Loosened from
substance and nature, person is redefined as “what is most perfect in all
of nature, viz., a subsistent in a rational nature” (a. 3). This perfection is
applied to God insofar as it designates a “subsisting reality (rem subsisten18 Luis Ladaria, S.J., “Person y Relacion en el De Trinitate de San Agustin,” Misce-

lanea Comillas 30 (1972): 271–83.

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tem )” (ad 3). Hence, “individual,” applied to God, denotes “incommunicability,” not materiality, and “subsistence” means “to exist per se” (ad 4).
Clearly Thomas has shifted the accent from the essential order of
Boethius’s “substance” to the existential order of “subsistence.” Hence in
article 4 “person” can be more easily distinguished from the divine nature
common to the three divine persons. Admitting that the word “person”
must be accommodated from its original meaning so as to avoid heresy,
Thomas uses “person” to indicate a “relative” reality (relativum) in God.
Likewise “individual” is understood as “what is distinguished not in itself,
but from others,” and “person” signifies “what is distinct in [the divine]
nature.” Because his previous analysis of processions in God has led him
to see that “a distinction in God only happens through relations of
origin” and person signifies “what is distinct in the divine nature,”
Thomas identifies divine person with “relation.” Since “relations” in God
cannot be accidents but are identified with the divine essence which
subsists, “divine person” means “relation as subsisting.”19
Thomistic Tensions
Thomas’s analysis of “person” contains some ambiguities. If “subsistence”
means “to exist per se,” one might expect every existing nature, especially
the divine nature, to be qualified as a “person” (cf. III, q. 3, a. 3, ad 1; De
potentia q. 8, a. 3c). For God is “self-subsisting esse” (ipsum esse per se subsistens: ST I, q. 44, a. 1c; q. 12, a. 4c; q. 7, a. 1, ad 3). Moreover, if person means
the ability to “act per se,” each person of the Trinity would be able to act
independently; that would dispute the understanding of God’s nature as a
single principle of activity (III, q. 3, a. 2c; a. 4c et obj. 1; q. 32, a. 1, ad 1).
In his sanity Thomas draws neither conclusion. But he is willing to stretch
the meaning of person from individual substance to subsistent relation
because he wishes to maintain the analogy between divine and human
persons (I, q. 29, a. 4, ad 4).That allows him to use Boethius’s definition in
his Christology, interpreting it as an individual subsisting in its nature (III,
q. 2, a. 2c).Thereafter a double understanding seems to develop, depending on whether Thomas places the emphasis upon the individual subsisting
or upon the subsisting individual. Initially emphasis is placed on the individuality of the supposite as opposed to the nature understood more
universally:“For nature signifies the essence of the species which the definition signifies.” Since accidents and individuating principles are added to
the formality of species (ratio speciei), it is possible to distinguish the nature
from the “supposite of the nature.” Though really (secundum rem) different,
19 Cf. our “Is the Blessed Trinity Naturally Knowable?” to appear in Gregorianum 93

(2012).

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they are not separated “since in the supposite the very nature of the species
is included.”The supposite is the totality (totum) which “has the nature as
the formal part perfecting it.” For that reason “in hylomorphic composites nature [viz., humanity] is not predicated of the supposite,” viz., “this
man” (III, q. 2, a. 2c). Here supposite, or person, seems to intend both the
first substance, the totality, and its material substrate. Like first substance, it
can be understood as either a part, the supposite distinct from the nature,
or the whole, the supposite embracing the nature.Thomas notes that this
distinction between nature and person, or supposite, is clear in beings
composed of form and matter, but less clear in beings, like God, in whom
there is nothing beyond the “formality (ratio) of species or nature.” In Him
the distinction of supposite from nature is not real (secundum rem) but
merely intentional (secundum rationem intelligendi). “For it is called nature
insofar as it is a certain essence, but the same thing is called a supposite
insofar as it is subsisting” (III, q. 2, a. 2c).Thus beyond material individuality a subsistence is recognized as distinct from nature in God and angels.
But is not God’s subsistence identical with His esse per se (I, q. 29, a. 2c)
and therefore with His essence, or nature (I, q. 3, a. 4c)?
What does Thomas here intend by “subsistence”? Subsistence again
seems to involve “existence per se.” For “only that which exists per se . . .
has the formality (ratio ) of a person.” Precisely because Christ’s human
nature exists, not in itself, but in the person of the Word, it does not have
its own personality (III, q. 2, a. 2c et ad 3; a. 5c; q. 16, a. 12, ad 2). How
is “person” then related to “existence”? Certainly “esse belongs to the
person’s very constitution” (III, q. 19, a. 1, ad 4). Further specification of
that relation, however, allows a variety of formulations. Christ’s human
nature “exists in the person of the Word” (III, q. 2, a. 2, ad 1), who, we
just saw, exists per se. “The hypostasis is previous to and higher than the
human nature” (III, q. 6, a. 1, ad 2), and the Word exists previous to and
independent of the nature assumed in the Incarnation (III, q. 2, a. 5, ad 1;
a. 6c; q. 3, a. 1, ad 3). For the Word has an uncreated esse according to His
divine nature (III, q. 16, a. 10, ad 3).Yet Thomas apparently reverses the
relation when he writes that “the Word subsists in it [the human nature]”
(III, q. 2, a. 2, ad 1; a. 5, ad 1; a. 8c). For “everything that subsists in a
human nature is a person” (III, q. 16, a. 12c et ad 1); it belongs to the
formality (ratio ) of the person “to subsist in some nature” (III, q. 2, a. 4c).
This corresponds with the earlier understanding whereby the person
subsists in a rational nature and the divine Word subsists in the divine
nature (I, q. 29, a. 3c; q. 30, a. 4c; q. 33, a. 2, ad 3).
Why does Thomas employ such variations? Here we run into one of
the greatest exegetical problems in the Thomistic tradition: what exactly

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does “subsistence” mean? At first sight it might be possible to distinguish
subsistence from existence insofar as the latter, esse, is only a part of the
total subsistence, which unites existence to essence and whatever “individuating principles” are added to them. So Jesus’ humanity “exists” only
with the “borrowed” existence of the Word, and the Word “subsists” in
the human nature because that nature is assumed into the whole that is
the incarnate Word. Although Jesus’ humanity is incomplete without its
existence, the Word is always a complete person in His existence, which
secondarily actuates the assumed humanity. In this sense the person
mediates esse to the human nature. Person is “what has esse,” while nature
is “that by which something has esse (id quo aliquid habet esse )”; thus the
Word has esse by His divine nature and this esse “becomes the esse of
man” (III, q. 17, a. 2c et ad 1–3).
While subsistence would include existence per se, it must be more than
that. It is an individual something or, better, someone that “has” a nature.
This subsistence must supply individuating principles beyond matter and
accidents; for the eternal Son, in whom no accident exists, “has deity
under a determined personal property”; indeed the Son “has” both
natures (III, q. 17, a. 1c et ad 2; q. 35, a. 1c et ad 2). In the Trinity the
incommunicability of personhood consists in the subsistent relation
resulting from the order of processions (cf. I, q. 29, a. 3, ad 3; a. 4, ad 3; q.
30, a. 4, ad 2; III, a. 3, q. 1, ad 2). But how does the Son as an individual
personal relation have the humanity?
Toward a Resolution
To identify more closely in man what has esse, exists per se, is individual,
and acts freely, one can have recourse to Thomas’s earlier disquisition
about the “essence of the soul” in the prima pars, q. 77, aa. 4–7.There he
seeks to explain the unity between the soul and its potencies. Given that
man’s hylomorphic unity is due to its form, or soul, there has to be a
unity in the soul and the potencies, or faculties, which perform its operations. Since knowing involves the unity in diversity of sensation,
abstraction, and judgment (conversio ad phantasma ), an internal spiritual
unity must underlie man’s diverse ways of knowing. Indeed man’s ways
of knowing correspond to his internal composition of body, form, and
existence.Thomas explains the unity in terms of the essence of the soul
from which as a principle emanate in a hierarchical resultatio man’s
diverse faculties, starting with intellect and will and proceeding to his
sensible and nutritive faculties.The essence of the soul functions as both
active and final cause. Thus, as the unity diversifies into multiplicity, the
diversity also returns to unity, bringing with it the stimulations from the

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outside world.The soul’s essence comprises an ontological unity, simultaneously diverse from the faculties and containing all of them virtually.
Like the person it can easily be understood as part and whole. It must also
be the ground of individuality, since not only is it one but also from it the
sensible faculties flow, yet it has to be spiritual, since it is ontologically higher
than the spiritual faculties of intellect and will. Finally, although this is not
mentioned by St. Thomas, it must be the point joining essential and existential orders, since in judgment existence is predicated of the affirmed
subject. Although existence is not perceived per se through the senses,
Thomas reminds his reader that ultimately in knowing it is not so much the
faculty that knows as the whole man who knows through the faculties (I,
q. 77, a. 5c; q. 75, a. 2, ad 3; q. 76, a. 1c).Thus there seems to be in man a
point of spiritual individuality; it can be identified with the whole person,
which embraces the concrete existential nature, yet is capable of distinction
from it as person from nature. Furthermore this point is at the juncture of
the essential and existential orders, for the person not only exists per se but
also has esse. At this point of spiritual individuality in a concrete humanity,
the spiritual individuality of the Son, who exists as an individuated relation,
can enter to substitute for a human person and take possession of a concrete
humanity. So the spiritual individuality of the second person of the Trinity
corresponds analogously with the spiritual individual person in a human
nature. Indeed, Thomas remarks, as the name “person,” applied to each of
the three Trinitarian persons, serves to designate a “vague individual,” so it
often functions among men: “Vague individual, as some man, signifies the
common nature with a determined mode of existing which coincides with
individuals so that he might be one subsisting per se distinct from others” (I,
q. 30, a. 4c). Leaving aside the difficulty of defining exactly what “mode”
means in Thomism, one sees that Thomas intends a correspondence
between what is most individual in the Trinity and what is most individual
in man.That correspondence allows the substitution of a Trinitarian person
for a human person at the point of greatest spiritual individuality.
Many advantages flow from such an interpretation. First it reconciles
various axioms about action that are otherwise contradictory. On the one
hand, “nature designates a principle of action,” or motion, and a thing’s
proper operation occurs “according to its form”: “operation follows
nature” (I, q. 2, a. 3; III, q. 19, a. 1c; a. 2, sed contra). On the other, actions
or acts are attributed to the person: actiones (actus ) suppositorum sunt (I, q.
39, a. 5, ad 1; q. 40, a. 1, ad 3; III, q. 7, a. 13c; q. 20, a. 1, ad 2) and “acting
belongs properly to the person” (III, q. 3, a. 1c). Insofar as natures do not
emit actions determined in their particularities but give a specific propulsion allowing leeway for further particularization (“for the most part”),

Nature, Freedom, and Person

815

the person can be seen as the one who determines the choice, or election, most concretely. For persons,“who have control of their acts, are not
only acted upon, as are other things, but they act through themselves ( per
se ); yet actions are in individuals” (I, q. 29, a. 1c). So a man recognizes that
his nature demands sleep, but the individual person can decide when,
where, how long, etc. “To operate belongs to a subsistent hypostasis, but
according to form and nature, from which the operation receives a
species” and “the operation is a certain effect of the person according to
some form or nature” (III, q. 19, a. 1, ad 3, 4). Second, by placing freedom in the person, the hesitancy inherent in freedom of indifference can
be overcome; whereas the interplay of intellectual and voluntary faculties
set the condition of possibility for choice, the actual choice depends upon
the person. A human child does not choose to be born from his parents;
he or she must react to the gift of life which comes from love. No
neutrality is permitted. As Blondel often writes, Nous sommes embarqués.
So much more urgent is the demand when a person is confronted with
Jesus Christ who died for him. Person calls to person as depth to depth.
In the person, knowing and loving come together to overcome the indifference of choice before rationally proposed alternatives.“To act is attributed not to the nature as agent, but to the person. . . . Action is, however,
attributed to the nature as to that according to which the person or
hypostasis acts” (III, q. 20, a. 1, ad 2).Third, such a view explains how Jesus
can be impeccable while subject to temptation: though His will is being
repulsed by His impending fate, death and the abolition of all that His
human nature naturally seeks in life, the ultimate choice depends upon
the divine person, who, being divine, cannot sin.“Father, if you wish, take
this cup from me, but let your will, not my will, be done” (Lk 22:42).
Fourth, because Jesus identifies Himself as the Father’s Son, His inmost
identity is relational. Insofar as freedom exists for love, the free person is
never closed within himself. Thus the substantial in-itself of Boethius’s
definition is reconciled with Thomas’s “subsistent relation.” “Relation” is
just as primordial as personal “in-se.” Indeed, alongside the modern
notion of person as free, self-conscious center of activity is an equally
modern notion of person as relation.20 Fifth, Christ’s direct knowledge
20 Cf. Martin Buber, I and Thou, 2nd ed., trans. Ronald Smith (New York: Scrib-

ner’s, 1958), 3–4 et passim; also Marcel, Mounier, Blondel, Nédoncelle, as noted
in Stefanini, “Personalismo,” 1313–14. Emmanuel Mounier, Le Personalisme
(Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1951), 8, starts with a substantialist view
of person but strongly rejects all closed individualism; person is for communication (35–50). Similarly Karl Rahner, S.J., “Person: C. Theological,” in Sacramentum Mundi, 3:418, insists that man‘s social orientation is equally primordial to

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of the Father would be personal, beyond the abstractions normally
provided by the intellect. This allows for growth in His explicit human
knowledge—that is, knowledge mediated by concepts—of Himself.Yet
His utterly personal knowledge of His Father lets Him—otherwise pure
audacity for a Jew—address His Father as Abba and communicate it to
those whom He taught to pray “Our Father” (cf. Gal 4:6; Rom 8:15).21
Sixth, such a spiritual individuality grounds personal immortality; what
survives death is no universal form but a person, and there is no need to
invoke esse as a second principle of individuality alongside matter.22
Difficulties
Unfortunately multiple difficulties beset this interpretation of Thomas.
First, the Angelic Doctor never identifies the essence of the soul with
person; indeed, it is called the soul’s essence and as such seems to belong to
the essential order; for “the essence of the soul is the act of the body” (III,
q, 46, a. 7, ad 1). Second, other texts do not support this interpretation.
Thomas holds that man’s substantial form per se has esse, communicates it
to the body, and causes esse actually in its subject; moreover, the soul
subsists per se and is therefore incorruptible (I, q. 75, a. 6c; q. 77, a. 6c; a.
7c; cf. q. 29, a. 2, ad 5; q. 42, a. 1, ad 1). Despite the language of subsistence,
the soul is not a person, since a person “has the complete nature of a
species” (I, q. 75, a. 4, ad 2). So our attempt to limit the language of subsistence to the person is not utterly persuasive. Distinctions might possibly
be constructed: for example, the soul as part of the composite does not
subsist per se since its totality depends upon the possession of a body (“the
form in [composite creatures] is not a complete subsistent”: I, q. 13, a. 1,
ad 2), but in a separated state it may be said to “subsist in its esse” insofar
as it retains the esse of the composite and thus possesses an esse totius (an
esse of the whole) and a perfectum esse (I–II, q. 4, a. 5, ad 2; I, q. 76, a. 1, ad
5). Yet, even while defending the separated soul’s essential beatitude,
Thomas admits that something is missing to the separated soul’s bene esse
(well being), since it still desires the “administration of the body” (I–II, q.
4, a. 5c et ad 5). More tellingly, he admits that the separated soul lacks “the
the free person: “Intercommunication and self-realization, self-possession, grow
in principle in like and not inverse proportion.”
21 On the significance of Abba cf. John McDermott, S.J.,“Jesus and the Son of God
Title,” Gregorianum 62 (1981): 227–317, esp. 278–81, 316–17.
22 Cf. John McDermott, S.J., “How Did Jesus Know He Was God? The Ontological Psychology of Mark 10:17–22,” Irish Theological Quarterly 74 (2009): 272–97.
For man’s immortality cf. ibid., “Faith, Reason, and Freedom,” Irish Theological
Quarterly 67 (2002): 328–31.

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817

perfect nature of the species” (I–II, q. 4, a. 5, ad 2), which apparently denies
its personhood. Thomas’s language may not be totally consistent on this
point as he searches for an answer to one of the most difficult problems of
theology. One might seek to preserve the language of “personal subsistence” by arguing for a development from the prima pars to the tertia pars:
the question of the hypostatic union forces Thomas to be more precise in
his use of language. But further difficulties remain.
Third, because esse stands to essence, or nature, as act to potency (I, q.
9, a. 2c; q. 50, a. 2, ad 3; q. 75, a. 5, ad 4), it seems superfluous to posit an
intermediate entity, the person, to join esse and essence. The form
possesses esse and is the “principle of being” (principium essendi: I, q. 76, a.
2c) and the “cause of being” (causa essendi ) to the matter (I, q. 75, a. 5, ad
3). Fourth, tied to the previous problem is the question of the number of
existences in Christ. The tertia pars holds that since the human nature is
personally united to the Son and esse pertains secundum se to the person
as the one who possesses esse, there is in Christ only one esse, the Son’s
divine esse, “because it is impossible that there not be one esse for one
reality” (III, q. 17, a. 2c et ad 2).With this affirmation, however, comes a
plethora of new problems. Since the divine esse belongs to the whole
Trinity (III, q. 17, a. 2, ad 3), would not the whole Trinity be actuating
Christ’s humanity? Furthermore, since “act is proportioned to that of
which it is the act” and “every reality has esse according to its form” (I,
q. 12, a. 3c; q. 42, a. 1, ad 1), where is the proportion between the infinite
divine esse and the human nature?23 Christ’s humanity must either
become divine or be overwhelmingly crushed or splintered through the
divine esse. Most probably in the face of such problems Thomas wavers
in formulating his position. Earlier the tertia pars asserts that since the
hypostatic union “has only one real esse in the created nature . . . consequently it has a created esse” (q. 2, a. 7, ad 2), and De Unione Verbi Incarnati, a. 1c et ad 10, written at approximately the same time as the tertia
pars, affirms a subordinate, secondary esse in Christ.24 Of course the
secondary esse raises equally troubling questions: How are both existences

23 ST I, q. 42, a. 1, ad 1 also states that “esse is the form’s first effect.”That may seem

at first paradoxical, given the identification of esse with act and form with
potency, but one allows for a mutual causality between form and esse, as between
matter and form, in producing the existing individual nature. For form mediates
“actual esse” to matter (I, q. 29, a. 2, ad 5).
24 Franz Pelster, S.J., “La Questio Disputata de Saint Thomas ‘De Unione Verbi
Incarnati,’ ” Archives de Philosophie 3 (1925): 198–245, has proven the authenticity and date of De Unione Verbi Incarnati.

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John M. McDermott, S.J.

joined? How does Thomas avoid his own principle that “for one reality
there can be only one esse”?25
A final difficulty with our exegesis is that Thomas does not draw
conclusions which seem to flow naturally from it.Whereas our interpretation would locate the actuation of the free act in the person beyond the
will, Thomas clearly maintains in Christ not only two wills, human and
divine, the former moved interiorly by the latter as with other holy men
(III, q. 18, a. 1c et ad 1–4), but also a liberum arbitrium in which the will
as ratio makes the election (III, q. 18, a. 4c et ad 1–3; q. 18, a. 5c et ad 2).
Freedom is not located in the person; “since the will belongs to the
nature, any type of willing (ipsum quod est aliqualiter velle ) also belongs to
the nature” (III, q. 18, a. 1, ad 4). Furthermore, the beatific vision is
ascribed to the “superior part” of Christ’s soul, not to the person (III, q.
46, a. 8c), while the lower part suffers, strange as it may be that the principle of man’s essential unity should itself be divided. Lastly, Jesus’ miracles are caused not by His acting person but by the divine nature (III, q.
19, a. 1 et ad 1, 2, 5; q. 43, a. 2c).26
Toward a Conclusion: Thomistic Disarray
Our analysis of Thomas’s doctrine on the relation of person and nature does
not lead to a pellucid conclusion.27 One suspects that Thomas himself is not
clairvoyant about the relation, but with his usual balanced breadth of vision
he wishes to keep together as many elements as are necessary to uphold the
Church’s dogmatic faith. Certainly the leading theologians of the twentieth
century fail to agree among themselves on how to interpret Thomas’s
25 While following Cajetan’s position, Shawn Colson, “Accrued Eyes and Sixth

Digits: Thomas Aquinas and Cardinal Cajetan on Christ’s Single Esse and the
Union of Natures,” Nova et Vetera 8 (2010): 55–87, ignores the disproportion
between the infinite divine esse and the human nature as well as the problem of
the whole Trinity assuming Christ’s humanity. As will become clear below from
the divergent views of modern Thomists, such are the main problems of Christ’s
ontological constitution.
26 While Thomas does not formulate the later axiom, omnia opera Trinitatis ad extra
sunt communia, he supplies a basis for it in his discussion of the Trinitarian
missions:“God’s creative power is common to the whole Trinity” (ST I, q. 32, a.
1; q. 43, a. 7, ad 3; q. 45, a. 6c).
27 This section restricts itself principally to the person-nature relation in Christology, where the problems are most obvious. Omitted is relation between Trinitarian and Christological “person,” which most thinkers do not analyze. Also
omitted is the problem concerning the relation of human and divine, personal
knowledge in Jesus, which underlies modern Christologies on account of
modern philosophy’s turn to the subject and historical-critical studies in biblical
exegesis. For an answer cf. McDermott, “How Did Jesus Know?” 272–97.

Nature, Freedom, and Person

819

Christology. The variety of their interpretations is astounding. Billot postulates one divine esse in Christ; since this is the esse of the Trinity, there have
to be three modes of possessing it; hence this one esse is joined to Christ’s
humanity “through the mode of filiation.” Moreover, on account of the lack
of proportion the divine esse actuates Christ’s human nature “quasiformally.”28 Garrigou-Lagrange and the early Maritain see personality as a
substantial mode terminating a nature; the mode thus renders the nature
capable of becoming the immediate subject of existence. GarrigouLagrange then constitutes the divine person the source of all activity,
whereas the nature becomes “that by which a thing is such as it is, in such a
species.”29 De la Taille interprets Christ’s secondary human esse along the
model of the beatific vision as a finite actuation created by God’s uncreated
act whereby the Word terminates the human nature, exercising a terminative, not an informative, act. Since the Word’s esse is received from and relative to the Father, when it actuates Christ’s humanity, the humanity has a
different relation to the Word than to the Father and the Spirit.30 Galtier
affirms two existences in Christ, but the secondary esse produces only an
incomplete being (ens quo), since the complete being is what is united to
the divine personal esse. He interprets person as an independent, rational,
free totality, adding to nature only “a total and exclusive possession”; since
Christ’s human nature is possessed by the Word, it is not a human person.
The divine person does not influence Christ’s humanity beyond the manner
in which God exercises His influence on any other human nature.31 Diepen
accepts two existences in Christ, since a nature specifies its act of existence
as its formal principle.The human existence is somehow integrated into the
divine, while the “person” possesses exclusively its nature, which is joined to
its proportionate existence.The person mediates esse to the nature, giving it
a subsistence so that the whole becomes autonomous and incommunicable.
28 Louis Billot, S.J., De Verbo Incarnato, 4th ed. (Rome: St. Joseph, 1904), 57, 132–33,

142, n. 1, 149, 157–58, 165; also Pietro Parente, L’Io di Cristo, 2nd ed. (Brescia:
Marcelliana, 1955), 213–19, 229, 231–33, 246, 340.
29 Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., De Christo Salvatore (Turin: Marietti, 1949),
87, 89, 116; Jacques Maritain, Degrees of Knowledge, 4th ed., trans. G. Phelan et alii
(New York: Scribner’s, 1959), 433.
30 Maurice de la Taille, S.J., “The Schoolmen,” The Incarnation, ed. C. Lattey
(Cambridge: Heffer, 1926), 183–86; idem, The Hypostatic Union and Created Actuation by Uncreated Act, trans. Cyril Vollert (West Baden Springs, IN: West Baden
College, 1952), 58, 62–63, 68, 72–74.
31 Paul Galtier, S.J., L’Unité du Christ (Paris: Beauchesne, 1939), 101, 132–36,
200–234, 247, 262, 319, 334, 348; idem, De Incarnatione et Redemptione (Paris:
Beauchesne, 1947), 175, 180–82, 185, 192–203, 209–12, 237. He admits a proximity to the Scotist position of Déodat de Basly, O.F.M., in L’Unité, 313–17.

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John M. McDermott, S.J.

The personal subsistence is “the crowning of individuation.” “The esse
humanum realizes the human nature in and with its hypostatic union with
the Word.” The person then exercises the act of existence so that Christ’s
humanity is seen as the divine person’s “created prolongation” or “temporal
annex” insofar as it is “a participation in the personal being of the Son of
God.”32 The middle Maritain deepens Diepen’s position, seeing the person,
or subsistence, as a state of active, autonomous exercise of an act of existence;
thus in Christ, not His human nature but the Word exercises the human esse
received in that nature.33
If there is a lack of consensus among earlier conceptualist theologians
in the twentieth century, later transcendental Thomists encounter similar
difficulties. Lonergan understands person as an individual subsistent in an
intellectual nature. A human person is a complete nature with its proportionate esse. But that proportion is lacking in the Incarnation for both the
created esse and the divine esse.The esse of Christ’s humanity is not proportionate, since it is supernatural on account of its assumption by the Word;
for it is assumed into unity with the Word’s divine esse, its extrinsic condition, just as contingent created being is intended by God along with His
infinite being. It follows the divine esse of the assuming Word “in the
manner of a simply posterior term, as the ultimate disposition for a form
is said to follow the form’s reception.” Ultimately unity is grounded in the
being by which something is, and “the incarnate Word is simply one.”
Christ’s immanent human operations are of the man Christ alone but the
humanity has a real relation to Word alone, who assumes it and is its
intrinsic cause.34 Rahner employs at least six different understandings of
“person,” according to need.A Trinitarian person is a mode of subsistence
or a mode of presence, depending on whether he is talking of the immanent or the economic Trinity; in Christology he defines person as a “self32 Herman Diepen, O.S.B.,“La Critique du Baslisme selon saint Thomas d’Aquin,”

Revue Thomiste 50 (1950): 97–98, 101–2, 104, 107–11, 115–16, 297, 303–18,
321–22, 324; idem, “L’unique Seigneur Jésus-Christ,” ibid. 53 (1953): 34–35,
37–39, 45, 47–51, 53, 55–57, 59, 61.
33 Maritain, Degrees, 436–43.
34 Bernard Lonergan, S.J., De Verbo Incarnato, 2nd ed. (Rome: Gregorian, 1961),
245–52; idem, De Constitutione Christi ontologica et psychologica, 4th ed. (Rome:
Gregorian, 1964), 9, 20–24, 33–34, 57–61, 69–79. For the Trinitarian person-nature
relation cf. John McDermott, S.J. “Person and Nature in Lonergan’s De Deo
Trino,” Angelicum 71 (1994): 153–85. Of all the theologians, Lonergan presents the
most consistent doctrine of person, analogously bridging Trinity and Christology.
Cf. Giovanni Rota, “Persona” e “Natura” nell’Itinerario speculativo di Bernard J.F.
Longergan (1904–1984) (Milan: Glossa, 1998), 175–282, for greater detail; Rota also
points out Lonergan’s double notion of “nature,” the dynamic existential subject
affirming truth as well as the Aristotelian principle of motion and rest.

Nature, Freedom, and Person

821

conscious, free center of activity” and, more closely applied to the hypostatic union, as the event of man’s self-transcendence into God.35 Because
in the hierarchy of being, greater union corresponds to greater independence, Mahlmberg allows for two existences and analogously two persons
in Christ integrated into one; the human esse and person are relatively
(secundum quid) such as not to oppose the divine person and esse.Though
Jesus is otherwise like other men, his human nature is entirely supernatural since it is constituted by the hypostatic union; moreover the term of
his transcendence is not the Trinity but the Son, who exercises a special
causality actuating the nature’s potency and brings about (setzt) all its
operations.36 Wiederkehr understands the hypostatic union as a communication of relations based on the parallelism of relations between the Son
and the Father in the Trinity and its reflection in Jesus’ man-God relation.
In this way Jesus’ human person and esse are integrated in a gradated analogy into the Word’s person and esse.“God relates Himself to Jesus exactly
as He relates Himself in Himself to His Son, and therefore Jesus is the eternal Son of God and the eternal Son is none other than Jesus.”“Man” and
“Son of God” are related in their turn as condition of possibility and realization.There exist a divine filiation and a filial divinity, and the subject of
both is not found outside Jesus’ human personality and subjectivity. This
gives meaning to Jesus’ history, as, under the Logos, Jesus becomes the
expression of who the Logos is; yet, to preserve this unity, Wiederkehr
identifies the Word’s will with Jesus’ will.37 Schoonenberg allows Jesus to
be a human person in whom the divine nature is “enhypostasized.”38
Indeed, many followers of Rahner allow Jesus to be a human person—his
concrete nature, like Boethius’s, fulfills the definition of person: free, selfconscious center of activity—in some unique relation with God.39 In
35 Cf. John McDermott, S.J., “Karl Rahner in Tradition: The One and the Many,”

Fides Quaerens Intellectum 3 (2003–7): 30–34, 36–45, 58–59, n. 112; for greater
detail cf. idem “The Christologies of Karl Rahner,” Gregorianum 67 (1986):
87–123, 297–327, but this earlier article overlooks Rahner’s insight of person as
event. In “Jesus Christus,” Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, 2nd ed., ed. Josef Höfer
and Karl Rahner (Freiburg: Herder, 1957–67), 5:959, Rahner introduces a different ontology into Galtier’s basic Christology.
36 Felix Malmberg, S.J., Über den Gottmenschen (Freiburg: Herder, 1960), 40–49,
60–61, 69–70, 80–86, 93–105.
37 Dietrich Wiederkehr, O.S.B., “Entwurf einer systematischen Christologie,”
Mysterium Salutis, ed. Johannes Feiner and Magnus Löhrer (Einsiedeln: Benziger,
1965–76), 3/1: 566–73, 576–77, 616–21.
38 Piet Schoonenberg, S.J., Ein Gott der Menschen, trans. H. Mertens (Zurich:
Benziger, 1969), 74–99.
39 E.g., John Dwyer, Son of Man and Son of God (New York: Paulist, 1983), 3, 79–80,
124, 131, 148;William Dych, S.J., Thy Kingdom Come: Jesus and the Reign of God

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John M. McDermott, S.J.

brief, modern Christologies manifest much confusion in failing to
explain the normative language of the Church’s doctrine (DS 424–26,
432, 516, 555, 558).
Conclusions
Another series of theologians from various schools converge upon a
different notion of person. Maximus Confessor, Maréchal, Rousselot,
Mouroux, the late Maritain, Clarke, and Wojtyla locate person in that
center of spiritual individuality, where knowing and willing are joined
and from whose unity the natural faculties devolve.40 They do not handle
the problems resulting from Thomas’s existential order; Maximus has no
essence-existence distinction, the others ignore the question on this
point. (Maritain stands at the threshold of identifying person with the
essence of the soul, but it is perhaps his commitment to the existential
order, distinct from the essential order, that makes him hesitate to pass
over the threshold.) In fact, since the order of freedom transcends the
essential order, there is no need to appeal to a separate existential order
to relativize nature and indicate how God is free to intervene in the
world while remaining transcendent. Substituting the order of freedom
for the existential order also dissolves all the problems regarding the rela(Herder & Herder, New York, 1999), 54–55; Roger Haight, S.J., Jesus Symbol of
God (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1999), 296, 439, 441–43, 461; on Jon Sobrino, S.J., cf.
John McDermott, S.J., “What Went Wrong with Catholic (NT) Exegesis and
Christology?” Angelicum 86 (2009): 815–19, esp. n. 66. Though from different
traditions both Leonardo Boff, O.F.M., Jesus Christ Liberator, trans. Patrick
Hughes (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1978), 181, 192–93, and Edward Schillebeeckx, O.P.,
Jesus: An Experiment in Christology, trans. Hubert Hoskins (New York: Seabury,
1979), 33, 601, 604, 655–56, 661, also consider Jesus a “human person.” On
Schillebeeckx cf. McDermott, “What Went Wrong,” 821–24.
40 Guido Bausenhart,“In allen uns gleich ausser der Sünde” (Mainz: Grünewald, 1992),
147–78; Daniele Moretto, Il Dinamismo intellettuale davanti al Mistero: La Questione
del Soprannaturale nel Percorso speculativo de J. Maréchal (Milan: Glossa, 2001),
325–64; John McDermott, S.J., Love and Understanding: The Relation of Will and
Intellect in Pierre Rousselot’s Christological Vision (Rome: Gregorian, 1983), 266–90;
idem, “The Theology of John Paul II: A Response,” in The Thought of Pope John
Paul II, ed. John McDermott (Rome: Gregorian, 1993), 55–68; John McDermott,
S.J., and Glenn Comandini,“The Problem of Person and Jean Mouroux,” Sapientia 52 (1997): 75–97; Benedikt Ritzler, Freiheit in der Umarmung des ewig Liebenden
(Bern: Lang, 2000), esp. 409–93 (on Maritain); W. Norris Clarke, S.J., Person and
Being (Milwaukee: Marquette, 1993), esp. 42–108. Joseph de Finance, S.J.,“L’Éclair
de la liberté,” in S.Tommaso Teologo, ed. Antonio Piolanti (Vatican: Pont. Accademia Romana di S.Tommaso, 1995), 35–49, also locates freedom beyond the natural will in the “spiritual subject,” or “the invisible center of personal
consciousness,” that stands before God.

Nature, Freedom, and Person

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tion of esse to the person. These thinkers see man primarily as created
freedom called to respond to God’s omnipotent love as mediated through
his fellow men and the finite structures of the world. In their view,
human nature is not merely an individual principle of activity but refers
to the entirety of the species, in which various polarities are held in
balanced yet dynamic tension.41 For the nature does not ground itself,
but in its limitations, which render it incapable of fulfilling itself, it is
always referred to its ground, God. In individuals nature gives a direction,
but the ultimate specification of that direction depends on freedom.
Personal freedom, though transcending nature, is not arbitrary. Rather,
it is called to respond to God through the structures of nature. Nature,
being a concrete whole containing all members of a species, reveals itself
as universal and particular, in itself and in relation, static and dynamic,
developing through time yet retaining intelligible continuity and giving
guidelines for action. For there can be no final opposition between
personal freedom and nature. A good God created both nature and freedom, and a constant opposition of nature and freedom would result in an
unhappy, destructive rendering of man, forced into perpetual opposition
to himself. As men are intended to live in solidarity, helping each other
to achieve a common end, so individual man is a unity of nature and
personal freedom. Freedom embraces nature as a condition of possibility
even while transcending it and expressing itself in it. Since human freedom is neither arbitrary nor autonomous but always dependent upon
God as its ultimate condition of possibility, human freedom shows that
the person, the “I” at the center of free decisions, is simultaneous inhimself and in-relation. Man is created as the image of God precisely in
his freedom. Since God is love, man is simultaneously loved and challenged to respond to love in the orders of creation and redemption. As
John Paul II repeated so often, man only finds himself and becomes free
in giving himself; man is created to sacrifice himself for God and his
fellows. In this he quotes Gaudium et Spes 24 and, of course, reaffirms the
41 This reference to a concrete nature embracing all men is explicit in Maximus (cf.

Hans Urs von Balthasar, Cosmic Liturgy, trans. Brian Daley [San Francisco: Ignatius,
2003], 155–57, 159–65, 216–18); Pierre Rousselot, S.J., L’intellectualisme de saint
Thomas, 2nd ed. (Paris: Beauchesne, 1924), 127, 130–31 (cf. McDermott, Love,
29–30, 276–77); and Jean Mouroux, The Meaning of Man, trans.A. Downes (1948;
repr. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1961), 119–26. Clarke, Person and Being, 6–24,
considers being as relational and communicative before he treats personal relationality, and Karol Wojtyl/a, The Acting Person, trans. Andrzej Potocki (Dordrecht:
Reidel, 1979), 275, 278, 283, 284–85, 292–96, presupposes the concrete natural
unity of mankind as the basis for interpersonal solidarity.

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John M. McDermott, S.J.

truth of Sacred Scripture (Mk 8:34–37; Lk 17:33; Jn 12:24–25; 15:13).42
Such an understanding of person unites not only Thomas’s Trinitarian
and Christological applications but also the main currents of modern
personalism, some of which emphasize the relational aspects of the
person (I-Thou), others the individual possession of freedom.43
This understanding upholds the natural law on two principal counts.
First, at the beginning “nature” was employed by moral thinkers to indicate an objective, intelligible basis for morality; moral conduct was thus
liberated from arbitrary subjectivity, mere custom, or civil law. The affirmation of a basic structure of freedom oriented to self-sacrificial love
prevents irrational arbitrariness from ruling.The structure of love is “natural” in the sense of “objective.” Second, even with the contrast between
person and nature, nature and natural operations provide norms for moral
action insofar as they are meant to harmonize with the structure of love.
Just as the structure of nature points beyond itself to God’s existence, so
also it provides an objective orientation for the fulfillment of natural
tendencies which correspond with the demands of love. There exists an
intelligible finite order in the world.Though love alone is absolute, alone
providing the norm for all human morality, natures enable reason to idenN&V
tify the specific norms of love’s correctly ordered action.44

42 E.g., John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis 21; Veritatis Splendor 85–87; Centesimus

Annus 41; Gratissimum sane 11–12.14; Ut Umum Sint 28.
43 Having three centers of free activity in the Trinity does not deny monotheism

since the three persons, being love, give themselves fully to each other.There is
no division of will among them. They act in complete concord. Insofar as a
nature is a principle of activity and they act as one principle, “nature” can be
predicated of them. Certainly the analogy of nature applied to God’s “nature”
must be very tenuous, since His nature is not only pure freedom, not bound by
laws of development, but also infinite mystery.
44 Cf. John McDermott, S.J., “Faith, Reason and Freedom,” 307–32, for a metaphysics of freedom; “Science, Sexual Morality, and Church Teaching: Another
Look at Humanae Vitae,” Irish Theological Quarterly 70 (2005): 237–61, for an
example of the correspondence between personal and natural aspects in morality; and our forthcoming “The International Theological Commission and the
Natural Law,” in St. Paul, the Natural Law, and Contemporary Legal Theory, ed. Jane
Adolphe and Robert Fastiggi (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books), for a personalist grounding of the natural law.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 9, No. 3 (2011): 825–841

825

Evidence, Lost and Found: A Concluding
Unscientific Postscript
RUSSELL H ITTINGER
University of Tulsa
Tulsa, Oklahoma

Introduction
I N 1988, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger traveled to England to give the
annual Fischer Lecture for the Catholic Chaplaincy at Cambridge
University.1 With a paper entitled “Consumer Materialism and Christian
Hope,” he came prepared to speak about the “characteristic signs of the
times.”The most troubling sign, he averred, is that “what is moral has lost
its evidence.”
Only a small number of people in modern society will believe in the
existence of commandments come from God; and still fewer are
convinced that these commandments—if there are such—are handed
down without error through the Church, through the religious
community. The idea that another’s will, the Creator’s will, has a call
upon us and that our being becomes as it should be through the
harmony of our will with his will is a concept foreign to a great part
of mankind. In any case . . . [t]he idea of his being active in our midst
or of man being under his will seems to most to be a naïvely anthropomorphic image of the divine by which man himself is over-rated.
Now the concept of a personal relationship between God and Creator
and each individual person is certainly not missing from the religious
and moral history of humanity; but it is limited in its pure form to the
realm of biblical religion. What was first of all common to all of pre-modern
1 Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, “Consumer Materialism and Christian Hope,” Teach-

ers of the Faith: Speeches and Lectures by Catholic Bishops, Foreword by Cardinal
Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, ed.Tom Horwood (Catholic Bishop’s Conference
of England and Wales, 2002), 78–94.

Russell Hittinger

826

mankind, however, lies really along the self-same line: the conviction
that in man’s being there lies an imperative, the conviction that man
does not devise morality itself by calculating expediencies; rather he
comes upon it in the being of things.2

The Cardinal’s speech is an important documentary antecedent to the
International Theological Commission’s report, The Search for a Universal
Ethics: A New Look at Natural Law (2009). He put the question of
“evidence” into a context where it once received an answer—the common
patrimony and primeval testimony of wisdom traditions which, in different ways and with different emphases, affirmed “the necessity for harmony
between human existence and the message of nature.”3 He quoted C. S.
Lewis’s discussion in The Abolition of Man (1943) of the Chinese Tao.The
Tao, Lewis said, is the “way, the road” which every man “should read in
imitation of that cosmic and supercosmic progression, conforming all
activities to that great exemplar.”4
Cardinal Ratzinger pointed out that among wisdom traditions Christianity has the advantage both in the complexity and the intensity of the
“evidence”:The incarnate word, the scriptural word, the liturgical word,
and the cosmological word. Christianity is not Gnosticism, and therefore
there is no Christian theological evidence “cut off ” from the primeval
testimony of nature.“The impossibility of a human existence cut off from
this,” he proposes, “is indirect proof for the truth of the Christian faith and its
hope.”5 Just as the eternal Logos engenders signs in created nature, so too
the incarnate Logos uses these evidences in order to institute signs for the
mysteries of redemption.
The key point is reached at the conclusion of the Cardinal’s prepared
remarks. Referring to wisdom traditions in general, he proposed that
“Morality is not man’s prison; it is rather the divine in him.”6 This
conviction implies that the whole man is open to reality as a whole.Were
this not true, the order of nature would amount to a mere aggregation of
“details,” and man’s own interpretation of these details would amount to
partial constructions of his own subjectivity—or, what is more likely, the
constructions of social, political, and legal forces. Morality, then, would be
a “prison.” Perhaps we should go even further to say that whatever is
“divine” in man demands that the individual be emancipated from this
prison of mere partialities which can force but only pretend to bind his
2 Ibid., 87. Emphasis added.
3 Ibid., 89.
4 Ibid., 88, quoting C. S. Lewis.
5 Ibid., 94.
6 Ibid., 92.

Concluding Unscientific Postscript

827

conduct.7 Thus, for the modern person, “morality has lost its evidence.”
He can “see through” all things but not “see.”8
That “seeing through” is not the same as “seeing” is a problem that
Augustine raised in connection with natural law.
Is not this appearance of the universe evident to all whose senses are
not deranged: Then why does it not give the same answer to all?
Animals, small and great, see it, but cannot ask the question. They are
not gifted with reason to sit in judgment on the evidence brought in
by the senses. But men can ask the question, so that the invisible things
of God are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made ; but by
loving these things, they become subject to them, and subjects cannot
judge.And these things will only answer the questions of those who are
prepared to judge. . . .They look just the same to both, but to one man
they say nothing and to the other they speak. O it would be truer to
say that they speak to everyone, but are only understood by those who
compare the voice which comes to them from outside with the truth
that is within. (Conf. X.6)9

What could be more human than to “see through” but not “see”? It is
not only a modern problem. Surely, all wisdom traditions are familiar
with this phenomenon, and, each in its own way, offers counsel and discipline to correct such inattentiveness. To be at this point is already to be
fairly well along the path.
If we begin a dialogue or a “search,” as The Search characterizes it, we
need to know where to begin. Should we begin in what is allegedly
man’s prison, or in rerum naturam, or in a wisdom—or perhaps somewhere
in between?
Dialogical Considerations
The Search begins with a dialogue with those who are at least somewhat
advanced, who see some things, see through others, but who can profit from
discourse. In the case of dialogue among wisdom traditions, this presupposes
not merely a common pool of propositions to which dialogical partners are
ready to give assent once they understand the meaning of what is proposed,
but also that they enjoy some common patterns of consent within their
respective social, moral, juridical, and religious institutions.The moral is not
in a theory, much less in a future yet-to-be-realized. Moral evidence is
7 “[T]he moral imperative is not man’s imprisonment from which he must make his

escape in order finally to be able to do as he wants.” Ibid., emphasis mine.
8 Ibid., 90. Quoting C. S. Lewis.
9 The Confessions of Saint Augustine, trans. Rex Warner (New York: Signet Classic,

2001), 208.

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Russell Hittinger

already lived.This would be a very favorable situation for the “search” for
natural law components of a universal ethics.
We are working today within a less favorable situation. As Cardinal
Ratzinger worried, modern times evince both a fracturing and a homogenizing of perspective about moral evidence.To enter a dialogue is to find
oneself “confronted all at once by a determined defense of the fundamental judgments of modernity”10—namely, that there are facts which
still need to be organized by human experimentation, and that the moral
will make its appearance when the disparate material of nature is fully
humanized by human choice. And, as it is, everyone knows this to be
true. In his homily at the pro eligendo summon Pontifice Mass (19 April
2005), he famously characterized this movement from pieces of evidence
to a uniform truth: “We are moving towards a dictatorship of relativism
which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its
highest goal one’s own ego and one’s own desires.”
Although his appraisal is not as bleak as the Cardinal’s, J. Budziszewski
brings out both the opportunities and the perils of dialogue about natural law today, which he neatly captures with the terms “diplomacy and
theology.” In the face of such a diverse public, he warns, it is a tricky thing
to know what scarcely needs to be said, what can be said in terms of
“placeholders,” and what can be said in expectation of serious disagreement—or worse yet, of disagreement that can hardly be articulated.
I will restrict my comments to his term “placeholders.” Any project
that is both diplomatic and theological, which is to say both dialogical
and doctrinal, will make use of placeholders. A placeholder is a term that
readily invokes assent while leaving the depth of meaning out of view.
For instance, Budsziszewski tags a sentence in §87 of The Search :“Such a
natural order of society in the service of the person is connoted, according to the social doctrine of the Church, by the four values that derive
from the natural inclinations of the human being and which designate
the contours of the common good that society should pursue; these are:
freedom, truth, justice, and solidarity.”
One can agree that these four values—freedom, truth, justice, and solidarity—look “suspiciously like platitudes.” Interestingly, however, The
Search here quotes another document which paraphrases (out of order)
the very subtitle of Pope John XXIII’s Pacem in Terris (1963). In the original, the four terms were proffered not as “values” but principles upon
which peace is achieved: truth, justice, charity, and liberty. Placeholders
might represent a rhetorical point of departure, as a word or phrase can
10 Id. 78.

Concluding Unscientific Postscript

829

signify the conclusionary meaning of a whole line of thought. Placeholders might also signify a gap in a particular line of thought, to which
the interlocutors can return later. Principles on the other hand are points
of departure in a normative sense of the term. I make this observation
not to criticize Budziszewski but rather to buttress his point. What was
once meant to be an argument, driven at each step by four principles, had
become a placeholder fifty years later.
Let us consider for a moment Pacem in Terris. It is a touchstone for
contemplating the dual aims of diplomacy and theology. Pacem is both
dialogical and doctrinal. Most importantly, for our purposes, it is the first
papal encyclical to treat natural law in general terms for a general audience—for men of good will—and even more significantly for the express
purpose of mobilizing collaboration along a wide front of moral, social, and
political issues. Pope John distinguished quite clearly between “error as such
and the person who falls into error,” as well as between “a false philosophy
of the nature, origin and purpose of men and the world, and economic,
social, cultural, and political undertakings, even when such undertakings
draw their origin and inspiration from that philosophy.”11 Hence, he hoped
that there might emerge a legitimate sphere in which Catholics can collaborate with Protestants, with those who hold no religion, and possibly with
those who hold an anti-religious ideology, in social and political endeavors12 —insofar as these undertakings express “morally lawful aspirations,”13
especially collaboration in defense of “man’s natural rights.”14
Pacem in Terris locates evidence in and for a very specific dialogue that
was one notch below the dialogue between wisdom traditions—not so far
below that the exercise would have been in vain. In his opening allocution to the Second Vatican Council, Pope John reminded the bishops that
“history is the teacher of life.”15 A common historical experience can have
11 Pacem in Terris §§158–159.
12 Despite the fact that these sections of Pacem in Terris were framed with several

qualifications of both a moral and doctrinal nature, they ignited more debate in
the external forum of domestic politics than any other part of the encyclical.
Qualifications, e.g.: Catholics should do nothing that compromises morality and
religion (§157); that one must not forget the possibility and need for conversion
(§158); that fruitful cooperation is not a foregone conclusion but must be
discerned according to prudence, which is itself measured by the principles of
natural law and the directives of ecclesiastical authority (§160); and that gradual
growth is better than the impetuosity of political revolution (§§161–162).
13 Pacem in Terris §159.
14 Pacem in Terris §157.
15 Gaudet Mater (October 11, 1962), Sacrosanctum Oecumenicum Concilium Vatican II,
Constitutiones, Decreta, Declarationes (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana,
1993), 858.

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Russell Hittinger

a useful winnowing effect for interlocutors of good will. Some options are
recognized almost immediately as dead ends, while others remain what
William James called “live options.” Thus, discerning the “signs of the
times” enables one to know where, in medias res, a dialogue ought to begin.
For Pope John, the experience of the post-war generation created an
opportune moment for setting forth natural law principles governing
peace as tranquility of order.The pathologies of totalitarian states were in
full evidence; western Europe was still being rebuilt from the devastation
of the war; the Cuban missile crisis had made everyone aware of the need
for at least some limits to use of lethal force, even in defense of a good
cause; and the rapid pace of decolonization made it imperative that the
new polities be founded on the four principles comprising the encyclical’s
subtitle.The Pope did not need to convince his reader that morality is not
“man’s prison.” Enough people had been sent to real graves and been in
real prisons for the difference to be evident.
It is precisely in this kind of situation that placeholders can be used
temporarily in a benign way to capture important dimensions of the
moral order which were already being learned by experience. This
certainly was Jacques Maritain’s view. Referring to the drafts in process
for a U.N. Declaration of the Rights of Man, he observed in 1947 that
“the perspectives open to men, both on the planes of history and of
philosophy, are wider and richer than before.”16 Put to one side Maritain’s somewhat specious argument about connatural affectivity as the
way that natural law is first known. It is irrelevant to the case in point,
which is that both assent and consent (truth and feasibility of agreement)
sometimes are more favorable under certain conditions of shared experience. Between what is first in the order of cognition and what is final in
the order of philosophical explanation stand other “evidences” that point
toward both.This is no more surprising than the fact that many Catholics
could make little sense of the morality of contraception until faced with
the problem of abortion.
For its part, Pacem in Terris provides a rather traditional picture of natural law, beginning with the encyclical’s opening sentence: “Peace on
Earth—which man throughout the ages has so longed for and sought
after—can never be established, never guaranteed, except by the diligent
observance of the divinely established order.”The encyclical’s list of some
twenty-five natural or human rights (§§8–36) stands between two discussions of divinely created order (§§2–7, 37–38) which serve as bookends.
The first is a substantive prelude, while the second is a forceful reminder
16 Jacques Maritain, “Introduction” to the UNESCO document, Human Rights:

Comments and Interpretations (1948).

Concluding Unscientific Postscript

831

and admonition. In the prelude, the Pope speaks of the whole created
universe, marked by order, intelligibility, and beauty. He distinguishes
carefully between the order of nature as a whole and the excellence of
human participation in eternal law. After enumerating the rights, he
quotes St. Thomas: “Human reason is the standard which measures the
degree of goodness of the human will, and as such it derives from the
eternal law, which is divine reason. . . . Hence it is clear that the goodness
of the human will depends much more on the eternal law than on
human reason” (§38).17
In its own time and place, Pacem in Terris attempted a fairly high level
dialogue, making use of Budziszewski’s notions of diplomacy and theology. The Pope takes note of contemporary desiderata —what men want
and hope to achieve regarding justice and peace.The word “value” (valor )
is not in the encyclical.18 Instead, we find animorum appetitiones and other
such phrases to indicate what people are trying to accomplish (§§79,
159). These, in turn, are judged “lawful” in light of the four principles.
When the dialogical and doctrinal aims are conflated, the placeholders
come to include more than the historical and social evidence.
History might be the “teacher of life,” but it also teaches that opportune moments for dialogue are often short-lived. Indeed, very shortlived.Take, for example, Maurice Cardinal Roy’s remarks sent to Paul VI
in 1973 on the “Occasion of the Tenth Anniversary of the Encyclical
‘Pacem in Terris’.” Cardinal Roy was a distinguished churchman of his
time, to say the least.19 In a section entitled “A Method for Our Times,”
the Cardinal admits to being somewhat puzzled by John XXIII’s theme
of order, especially as it relates to cosmological, metaphysical, and anthropological matters. He asks, “Is this answer still valid, ten years later?”
For today, this idea of nature is very much questioned, if not rejected.
There is argument concerning the word itself, which could lead one to
suppose that there is a strict parallel between man and his morality and
biological laws and behavior.There is argument also about its content,
negative (what nature forbids) or positive (what nature permits). The
17 Citing ST I–II, q. 19, a. 4.
18 The valori were superimposed, first in Italian, as headings for newspapers, and

through this venue entered into other translations.
19 Having been the Archbishop of Quebec, subsequently the first President of the

Pontifical Council on the Laity, then of the Pontifical Council on Justice and
Peace, and finally the President of the Pontifical Council on the Family. Pope
Paul VI addressed his letter, Octogesima Adveniens, on the Eightieth Anniversary of
Rerum Novarum (May 14, 1971), to Cardinal Roy, who, in turn addressed his
thoughts to the Pope on the subject of Pacem in Terris.

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Russell Hittinger
concept also seems too “essentialist” to people of our time, who challenge, as being a relic of Greek philosophy, the term “Natural Law,”
which they consider anachronistic, conservative and defensive. They
object further that the expression was defined arbitrarily and once and
for all in a subjective and western manner, and is therefore one-sided
and lacking in any oral authority for the universal conscience. . . .
Although the term “nature” does in fact lend itself to serious misunderstandings, the reality intended has lost nothing of its forcefulness
when it is replaced by modern synonyms. . . . Such synonyms are: man,
human being, human person, dignity, the rights of man or the rights of
peoples, conscience, humaneness (in conduct), the struggle for justice,
and, more recently,“the duty of being,” the “quality of life.” Could they
not all be summarized in the concept of “values,” which is very much
used today?

Admitting that the very first sentence of Pacem asserts that peace is “diligent observance of the divinely established order,” Cardinal Roy was
unable to contain his dismay: “[T]his word [nature] jars the modern
mentality, as does, even more, the idea that it summons up: a sort of
complicated organic scheme or gigantic genealogical tree, in which each
being and group has its predetermined place.”20
These well-intentioned suggestions for how the magisterium might
improve and expand the dialogue unfortunately allow diplomacy to get
the better of theology. Pope John’s Pacem in Terris proceeded quite differently. He began with what men of good will, in a certain time and place,
seem prepared to affirm about morality and its institutions. He gives no
argument that they ought to do so, for they are already trying to do so.
Nor is there need to tamper with the evidence. Allowing the generation
to speak for itself, Pope John draws what is “sound” and “lawful” into a
framework of principles in which they can be better understood and
stand some chance of succeeding. Rather than smuggling into the
dialogue “synonyms” of the sort Cardinal Roy had in mind, Pacem draws
the common experience back into a picture in which the traditional
terms remain intact.
In his Cambridge lecture, Cardinal Ratzinger proposed something
similar with regard to Christianity and the wisdom traditions:
Practical reason also needs the guarantee of an experiment, but a
greater kind of experiment than can be conducted in the laboratory. It
20 “Reflections by Cardinal Maurice Roy on the Occasion of the Tenth Anniver-

sary of the Encyclical ‘Pacem in Terris’ of Pope John XXIII” (April 11, 1973), in
The Gospel of Peace and Justice: Catholic Social Teaching since Pope John, presented by
Joseph Gremillion (New York: Orbis Books, 1976), 557–58.

Concluding Unscientific Postscript

833

requires the experiment of successful human existence which can come
only with subsequent history itself. For this reason, practical reason was
always ordered towards the grand enterprise of experiencing and testing the collective visions of ethics and religion. Just as science, on one
hand, depends upon the brilliant breakthroughs of great individuals, so,
on the other hand, the construction of a systematic ethic depends upon
the particular vision of individuals who were given a glimpse of the
whole.The grand ethical developments of Greece and of the Near and
Far East, about which we spoke a moment ago, have forfeited nothing
in terms of the validity which lies at the heart of their assertions. We
may look upon them now, however, as tributaries, which flow towards
the grand river of Christianity and its explanation of reality.21

Cardinal Ratzinger’s picture, however, is importantly different from Pacem
in Terris, at least as it regards dialogue.What he means by the “grand enterprise” presupposes wisdom traditions that outlast the occasional moral
insights of a generation. Pope John hoped that such would be the case for
the post-war generation, for whom “the truth of life” among the honest
discussants would be sufficient to achieve a common law grounded in
human dignity.22 Roy’s perplexities, however, indicated that this hope
needed to be moderated. Indeed, with respect to natural law foundations,
the story of that generation is better described as evidence that was
found, and then frittered away.We ought to read Veritatis Splendor (1993)
in this context.
Philosophical and Theological Considerations
When Cardinal Ratzinger spoke of men having lost evidence of what is
moral he was referring to the general moral estate of society in the late
twentieth century.We are reminded of Walker Percy’s book, “Lost in the
Cosmos.”The perennial tradition of natural law however will not agree,
without important qualifications, that what is moral has lost its evidence.
Remarking on Romans 1:20,Augustine said:“O it would be truer to say
that they speak to everyone, but are only understood by those who
compare the voice that comes to them from the outside with the truth
that is within.” Thomas famously contended that there are self-evident
( per se nota ) propositions which “can be exteriorly denied by the mouth
but not interiorly denied by the heart.”23
21 Ratzinger, “Consumer Materialism and Christian Hope,” 92–93.
22 Veritas vitae, which St.Thomas says is not the truth of speech but the rectitude of

one’s existence in conformity to divine law. ST II–II, q. 109, a. 2, ad 3.
23 . . . etsi exterius negentur ore, nunquam interius negari possunt corde. Super

Sent., lib. 1, d. 3, q. 1, a. 2, s.c. 1.

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Russell Hittinger

Let us consider four aspects of evidence corresponding to different acts
of intellect. They are arranged along a spectrum: immediate grasp of a
principle, spontaneous inferences, reasoned out implications for action,
and philosophically justified accounts. Although each has its own
salience, the first two can prove especially difficult to describe because of
their simplicity. Simple things are foundations for dialogue, but they are
not easy to dialogue about. Regarding first evidences, we should rework
Thomas’s dictum: things which cannot be internally denied but which
are usually reported confusedly by the mouth.
Stephen Brock and Lawrence Dewan develop different but overlapping lines of questions about Thomas’s understanding of the first stirrings
of knowledge of the natural law.What is present to the intellect, explicitly and implicitly, prior to either a fully practical or a properly scientific
appropriation of the evidence? They critically press the distinction
between natural law as discovered in the immediate givens of consciousness and natural law as it is presented and affirmed in an adequately justified account or theory (§§27, 31–33, 37, 44, 59, 113).
Some distinction of this sort is unobjectionable. Indeed, it is required
if we are to express the difference between what is first in the order of
learning and what is first in the order of being, and to mark the different
deployments of the intellect—making spontaneous inferences and judgments from what it first grasps of certain principles, and attempting to
achieve, and perhaps arriving at, a properly ordered account.
The question, then, is whether The Search transfers—at least in some
sections of the report—evidence that belongs in the experiential starting
point (or very close to it) over to what can only be grasped and understood through a theoretical justification? This is a rather tricky problem.
But much stands or falls on getting it right, not only for the purpose of
interpreting Thomas, but for the authors’ own project of locating a
common knowledge expressed by the wisdom traditions.
Two passages of The Search report draw Brock’s attention:
This natural law is not at all static in its expression; it does not consist
in a list of definitive and immutable precepts. It is a source of inspiration that always springs up in the search for an objective foundation for
a universal ethics. (§113)
Once we posit the basic affirmation that introduces us to the moral
order—”One must do good and avoid evil”—we see how there arises
in the subject the recognition of the fundamental laws that should
regulate human action. Such recognition does not consist in an abstract
consideration of human nature, nor in the effort to conceptualize,
which would be proper to theoretical philosophy and theology. The

Concluding Unscientific Postscript

835

perception of fundamental moral goods is immediate, vital, based on
the connaturality of the spirit with values and engaging both affectivity and intellect, both the heart and the spirit. It is a grasp often imperfect, still obscure and dim, but it has the profundity of immediacy. It
deals with the data of the most simple and common experience, which
are implicit in the concrete action of persons. (§44)

The main point of these passages is clear enough.The ITC wishes to
correct the caricature that natural law is an already-assembled, static, or
conceptually abstract program—in the fashion, say, of pure practical
reason or a completely rehearsed philosophical justification. Either way
this caricature should be corrected because it collapses the spectrum of
evidence into the starting point. Brock agrees that natural law is neither
a “closed set” nor, at first, a “list.” First precepts of natural law engender
conclusions unfolded by reason and determinations fashioned by
jurisprudence, so it is true that the natural law in man is not static. Moreover, he points out, to speak of a list (of goods and precepts) is to put
concepts into a proper order, and thus it is already to think of first
evidence philosophically.
Having insisted that one extreme must be avoided, does The Search
swing in the other direction—finding too little evidence in the first stirrings of our knowledge of natural law? If there is no conceptualization,
then what is first given might have the “profundity of immediacy” but it
would not stand firmly in the cognitive, and therefore the veridical, order.
Brock proposes that the order of precepts presented in ST I–II, q. 94, a.
2 ( can be read in tandem with Thomas’s treatment of happiness in the
first three questions of I–II. It is telling, for instance, that the first precept
of law in q. 94, a. 2—the good is to be done and pursued and what is
contrary resisted—directs action to the human good in which the parts
(its various dimensions) are aspects of an intelligible whole.This certainly
seems to imply conceptualization, albeit one that is not complete in a
philosophical sense.“The other precepts,” Brock writes,“rest on concepts
of certain particular good things.As goods, these things share in the truth
of the first precept. They are things to be done or sought, and their
contraries are bad and to be avoided.”Thus, the particular goods belonging to natural law are goods that the intellect naturally understands to be
included in the end, that is “our last end, happiness, in a sketchy way.”
What is immediately given are not just desires, needs, inclinations, and
“nudges” of nature but an intellective act that naturally grasps an intelligible whole.This interpretation preserves The Search’s interest in correcting a caricature of natural law.At the same time, it preserves a conceptual

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Russell Hittinger

purchase on what is most “common” and universal. In §37 of the document we can make good sense of the assertion that “independently of the
theoretical justifications of the concept of natural law, it is possible to
discover the immediate givens of consciousness of which it wants to give
an account.” But we would have to correct at least the language in what
follows:“We will then see how the concept of natural law is based on an
explanatory picture that founds and legitimizes moral values, in a manner
that can be shared by many.” Put in this way, what is conceptually shared
is put much too far toward the philosophical side of the picture.
Just here I want to make four points. Although in no way complete,
they might be useful for gathering strands of earlier discussion and pointing toward issues to be discussed more thoroughly.
First, consider the price to be paid for speaking of the first evidences of
natural law as an “inspiration” or a pre-conceptual avidity (if, indeed, such
is meant by The Search §§27, 37, 59, 113).What is most “common” loses
its location in what is naturally known. If the first evidence of natural law
is understood as an “inspiration” prior to the intellect’s grasp of the true
and the good, how could there be precepts (in the strict sense of the term)
which obtain at the very outset? A conceptual natural law would have to
ensue upon a pre-conceptual one, and therefore precepts could emerge
only in crossing that threshold. Doesn’t this picture conflict rather directly
with Thomas’s teaching that the participation in Eternal Law proper to
man is in the created light of the intellect (ST I–II, q. 91, a. 2)? In his
detailed and philosophically challenging essay, John McDermott reminds
us that nature is “an analogous concept.” In a composite creature like man,
different dimensions of nature are simultaneously operative. Even so, we
do not want to describe what is proper to the human grasp of natural law
as a transition from a condition lacking that proprium.
Second, unless great care is taken, a concept itself might not suffice for
being under a precept. One could argue that first and ‘most common’
moral concepts are indeterminate with respect to particular actions.This
is the problem that arises in Kevin Flannery’s careful and contained
exegesis of The Search §53/59 and ST I–II, q. 94, a. 4. If indeed the most
general practical principles—the most common precepts—are tokens of
precepts still-to-be-constructed, then we would seem to be put once
again in a strange transition from a natural law that is directive (not
merely affectively nudging but in some way rationally indicating) but not
obligating, to a natural law that is fully and adequately preceptive. If
precepts of the latter sort are the work of conscience or prudence, then
natural law properly speaking can emerge only rather late in the game.
What, then, becomes of the distinction between antecedent law and the

Concluding Unscientific Postscript

837

application of the law in certain circumstances? In a lengthy footnote
(note 4), Steven Long also worries about the ITC language, which could
suggest to some readers that the ethical life is chiefly or wholly a matter
of determination or ad hoc verdicts of prudence.That position stands in at
least the suburbs of the moral theology criticized by Veritatis Splendor.
Third, we recall the anthropological question that Cardinal Ratzinger
spoke about in his Cambridge lecture—openness to reality as a whole.
This depends upon intellect and rational appetite. To sharpen the question: Does the good first manifest itself as practical, which is to say under
the restriction of what we do or make? If so, then the intellect is first
open and ordained to a good only under a certain aspect: that of directing the will—a very important aspect, to be sure. As Brock notes,
“Thomas says that the good is the first thing to fall in the apprehension
of practical reason. But he does not say . . . that what the good first falls
into is the apprehension of practical reason.”Thomas preserves a praxistranscending ordination to the truth of the good.The intellect is ordered
to the true, irrespective of whether it terminates in directive action.
Steven Long puts it deftly. “No matter what I may wish to order my
knowledge to practically, whether it is true is not merely a function of what
I plan to do.” If, as Long contends, the inception of rational appetite is in
knowledge of reality, then morality is not “man’s prison.”
A fourth point can serve as a segue to Laurence Dewan’s essay.
Suppose that Thomas is correct, that what the good first falls into is the
apprehension of practical reason.This leaves standing the possibility of the
operational primacy of practical reason in the order of finality, which is
nothing other than the pursuit and possession of happiness. Thomas
himself raises the question. Human happiness is a good for man himself.
Whereas speculative acts chiefly reach things extra hominem, practical acts
are concerned with things ipsius hominis, such as how he acts and is acted
upon. Therefore, human happiness consists more in the excellence of
practical virtue. Thomas concedes that such would be the case if man
were himself [objectively] his own ultimate end (ST I–II, q. 3, a. 5, ad 3).
For a battery of reasons, which we will not rehearse here,Thomas denies
that the finis cuius, the very end for which one ultimately acts, is the
excellence of self-directive acts.24 But if it were the case, that would have
an important implication for natural law, for natural law would be a law
directing man to his own good precisely as final, both as finis cuius and
finis quo. One might be puzzled about what kind of a law orders a rational
24 More strongly, Thomas denies that any act of the human soul can count as the

finis cuius.The speculative operation, however, is more agreeable to a final good
extra animam. ST I–II, q. 2, aa. 7–8.

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Russell Hittinger

creature merely to its private good. But this is only the beginning of difficulties which will arise in the train of that premise. My point is that more
than one very important issue intersects with the question of the relationship between speculative and practical reason.
We are here in the domain of a philosophical problem that also stands
rather close to our theme of first evidences. Can the intellective creature
be under natural law without some inkling of what he is being directed
to, and by whom he is being directed? Lawrence Dewan also worries that
The Search’s depiction of the spectrum running from experience to philosophical explanation is not quite right. How do we align a conceptual
grasp, a spontaneous inference, and a theoretical justification of natural
law? And when we speak of being under the natural law, are we in the
sphere of experience or justification? ITC is clear about the latter question, but in some passages it is not so clear about the former. Homing in
on “the experience of being subject to natural law as law,” Dewan
proposes that “we should not exclude from ‘the immediate givens of consciousness’ in this matter the divinity of the source of the experience.” We recall that
this was one of Cardinal Ratzinger’s concerns in his Cambridge lecture:
“Morality is not man’s prison; it is rather the divine in him.”
Two passages from The Search strike a note that seems discordant with
other sections. In each case, the ITC appears to be trying to correct a
certain caricature of natural law by widening the gap between experience and justification.
To be able to be recognized by all men and in all culture, the norms of
behavior in society should have their source in the human person
himself, in his needs, in his inclinations. (§115)
The moral obligation that the subject recognizes does not come,
therefore, from a law that would be exterior (as a heteronomy), but
affirms itself from within the subject itself. In fact, as indicated by the
maxim we have cited—“One must do good and avoid evil”—the
moral good determined by reason “imposes itself ” on the subject. . . .
This law is normative in virtue of an internal requirement of the spirit.
It is born in the very heart of our being as an invitation to the realization and transcending of ourselves. It is not therefore a matter of
subjecting oneself to the law of another, but of accepting the law of
one’s own being. (§43)

These and other such passages underscore the traditional teaching that
natural law is not in us in the fashion of a positive law. It is not imposed.
But it cannot be true that the human soul is the “source” of the law, at
least not if one wishes to affirm, on the explanatory side of things, that

Concluding Unscientific Postscript

839

natural law is “participated theonomy” (§§60, 62, 63). If a self-originating ground of natural law is false on the explanatory side, why should it
seem true on the experiential side?
From these words (in §43) we could draw two different conclusions.
The first is that participation in the Eternal Law is not a matter of being
subjected merely to the law of another creature. This conclusion is
compatible with a rough and philosophically untutored insight that we
are dependent upon a prior or higher law that is distinct from the
conventions of the city.The second is that natural law is not in any way
a law received from another, a teaching more or less along the lines of
Kant. Clearly, these are quite different conclusions.25 Depending on
which one we follow, the notion of “transcendence” in morals will differ
considerably. If the divine is the source of the law, transcendence is
implied at the very outset of “being subjected.” On the other view, the
divine could be an upshot of the moral life, coming into view as we transcend ourselves.
As The Search itself recognizes (§§31–32), in modern times the divine
source of natural law usually is dismissed at both ends of the experienceconcept-explanation spectrum. Modern natural law theory prescinds
from reason informed by faith, along with the confessional expressions
and justifications of such experience. It also holds that reference to God
at the experiential and at the purely philosophical level is “optional”
because the concept of morality and duty is coherent in itself. Surely, the
ITC does not want to paint itself into either of these corners. What are
the options?
One option is to move the issue of the “divinity of the source”
completely to the side of philosophical explanation. The problem with
this option is twofold. In the first place, the explanation will have little or
no resonance in ordinary experience. I am afraid it will look like the
rabbit pulled out of an empty hat. In the second place, the explanation
might contradict ordinary experience, or at least one’s initial estimation
of it. For ordinary experience, why not say that it is enough to understand (to use the ITC’s words) that as regards natural law one is not
subject “to the law of another, but of accepting the law of one’s own
25 The translation is not always reliable. For example, the French text at §38, “Ce

n’est que progressivement que la personne humaine accède à l’expérience
morale et devient capable de se dire à elle-même les préceptes qui doivent guider
son agir,” in the Bolin translation reads: “The human person only progressively
comes to moral experience and becomes capable of giving himself the precepts
that should guide his action.” Se dire and se donne, however, are not the same.To
say or to formulate does not imply a legislative act.

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Russell Hittinger

being.” Perhaps this is what we earlier discussed as a “placeholder.” Surely,
one’s nature is not a “law.” Eventually, a proper explanation will have to
uproot the placeholder. Is this a mode of explanation, or is it rather a
correction or negation?
Another option is to approach the issue in the way suggested by
Dewan. Usually, evidence for the theological dimension is put either in
the domain of faith or in the domain of demonstration. Dewan warns that
the intermediate terrain should not be passed over too quickly. Treating
the natural law obligation in religion, Thomas held that “Natural reason
declares to man that he is subject to some higher being, because of the
deficiencies that he experiences in himself, with respect to which he needs
to be helped and directed by some higher being. And whatever that is, it
is that which everywhere is called ‘a god’ ” (ST II–II, q. 85, a. 1).Thomas,
Dewan explains, “is not presenting a scientific demonstration of the existence of God, but is reporting and attempting to describe what is some
universal spontaneous natural inference. Man’s experience of himself is as of
a being which cannot stand by itself, without aid, and which cannot
survive without steering, without direction, from some source of intelligent direction, moving things along for man’s protection and welfare.”
Where does this dictate of reason stand in the scheme of evidence? It
is the created intellect declaring to itself, in a rough way, how it stands in
a scheme of things.This manner of taking stock needs to be distinguished
on the one hand from God speaking about Himself (revelation) and on
the other hand from a demonstration. Dewan contends that this dictate
of reason, as “a type of natural knowledge,” needs to be put closer to what
The Search calls “moral awareness.”
. . . not the fruit of deliberate study and method, but given in the way
that eyes and ears are given, and yet a knowledge which is not merely
the intellectual insight into starting-points, whether of simple terms
like “the good” or of propositions like “the good is to be done and
promoted, and the bad avoided,” but a naturally occurring, spontaneous
reasoning process.

The position developed by Dewan seems especially useful for understanding an implicit consensus among wisdom traditions. For one thing,
it leaves intact the other points along the spectrum: what is given by
nature, the first intellective vision of the good, philosophical explanations
and justifications, and the data of faith. “Natural law,” he writes, “is
possessed by the human being primarily through the vision of what
goodness is, a vision that attests to our immediate relation to the univer-

Concluding Unscientific Postscript

841

sal cause of being and goodness.” This seems to be the experiential soil
for wisdom traditions.
Conclusion
None of the authors in our collection of essays impeaches the ITC for
ignoring the metaphysical aspects of natural law (for example, §§34, 77).
Dewan notes favorably the document’s references to St.Thomas, Leo XIII,
and the Catechism of the Catholic Church on natural law as participation in
the Eternal Law. It is surely a strong suit of the document. For his part,
Steven Long applauds its “affirmation of the strategic importance of a
non-competitive account of divine and human causality for the understanding of natural law as a mode of the divine providence.” He continues:“If human freedom is subtracted from the effect of divine agency, then
of course human freedom lies outside the divine providence, and accordingly wholly outside the eternal law, outside the divine providential ordering.Thus natural law would be impossible, because natural law is nothing
other than the rational participation in eternal law, and eternal law and
divine governance generally extend only so far as divine agency extends.”
Undoubtedly, this is an issue of singular importance for systematic and
philosophical theology. A non-competitive relationship between divine
and human agency is also implicit in the wisdom traditions. Getting the
account right, therefore, will at least partially constitute an answer to
Cardinal Ratzinger’s question of whether morality is “man’s prison.”
Neither the essayists nor the ITC report hold that such an account is
merely “optional” at the level of theoretical justification. While this is
under dispute everywhere else, it is so not here. But in these essays, the
issues do not so much gravitate toward the work of a fully philosophical
justification, but stand instead at the beginning, in what we can call the
role of concepts in initial experience. I would not have predicted this
tendency of the debate. But here it is. I have learned much from both The
Search and the essayists in this volume. For whatever errors and misconceptions that have entered the debate through my postscript, I have only
myself to blame.
N&V

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 9, No. 3 (2011): 843–863

843

Book Reviews
Surnaturel: A Controversy at the Heart of Twentieth-Century
Thomistic Thought edited by Serge-Thomas Bonino, O.P., translated
by Robert Williams, translation revised by Matthew Levering (Naples, FL:
Sapientia Press, 2009 ) 362 pp.
The Natural Desire to See God According to St. Thomas
Aquinas and His Interpreters by Lawrence Feingold, second edition
(Naples, FL: Sapientia Press, 2010 ) 527 pp.
I N his contribution to Surnaturel: A Controversy, Gilbert Narcisse, O.P.,
writes that without the supernatural, “the theologian loses his object of
study and all epistemological capability of attaining it.” And again,“there
is no theologian without a theology of the relationship between nature
and grace” (295). Just so and after more than sixty years, Henri de Lubac’s
Surnaturel (1946) has not lost its fascination for Catholic theologians.Two
things, at least, have recently contributed to an even greater attention to
the topics dealt with in what must strike the theological novice as a
collection of excessively abstruse historical essays into some of the dustiest nooks and crannies of the archives of “scholasticism.” The first is the
claim of John Milbank and his congeners to the mantle of de Lubac, the
claim that Radical Orthodoxy builds on and completes the work of
Surnaturel. The second is the publication of a Roman dissertation entitled
The Natural Desire to See God According to St. Thomas and His Interpreters
(2001), the second edition of which has recently appeared from Sapientia Press. In this volume, Lawrence Feingold both meets the issues on the
historical ground of de Lubac’s predilection, but finds his interpretation
of St. Thomas untenable, and also concludes that de Lubac’s own
construction of the relation of the natural and supernatural orders is
incoherent. This is provocative, since for many contemporary theologians, whether heirs of Karl Rahner or of Hans Urs von Balthasar, many
of the conclusions of Surnaturel both historical and theological, are as it
were “settled law.”We might as well mention here too the conclusion of

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Book Reviews

Fergus Kerr’s recent study of de Lubac that “it is hard to believe that he
did not plan his books in order to destroy neoscholastic theology.” So,
minds are once again focused where they were more than sixty years ago.
Minds need not be focused in exactly the same way, however. Is there
some historically trustworthy and theologically irenic way to enter into
the issues raised by the interpretation and Wirkungsgeschichte of Surnaturel?
Yes. In 2001, the Revue Thomiste published the papers of a symposium,
“The Supernatural: A Controversy at the Heart of Twentieth-Century
Thomistic Thought,” edited by Serge-Thomas Bonino, O.P. The first book
before us is the English translation of this volume. In his introduction,
Bonino says that while there can be no demand of nature for the supernatural, neither can nature be thought to be in a condition of simple nonrepugnance to grace.There is a “congenital openness of the mind to the
supernatural.” And this sense of things is part of the legacy of de Lubac,
part of his enduring achievement, along with which Bonino counts
making us pay closer attention to texts and the history of doctrines, reembedding St. Thomas in the tradition of the Fathers, and a bestowal of
the primacy to theology over philosophy in the articulation of Christian
wisdom. These things are “henceforth irreversible acquisitions” (viii).
Moreover, about half of the contributors indicate in one way or another
their satisfaction with de Lubac’s interpretation of the natural desire to see
God.This is not a volume written from a single point of view.
De Lubac’s Surnaturel provokes interest from several directions, and the
collection before us accordingly provides an entry into the entire nest of
related questions in four chief ways. Some are interested in the history of
theology, contemporary or medieval or Baroque. Some are interested in
locating the guidance of St. Thomas in determining the res, the matter
itself. All interests are served by the book before us. Part One takes us to
the year of grace 1946 and is devoted to de Lubac himself and the
production and immediate reception of Surnaturel. Part Two examines
“Nature and the Supernatural in Thomas Aquinas.” Part Three takes up
nature and the supernatural in post-Thomist scholasticism. Part Four,
finally, listens for reverberations of Surnaturel in contemporary theology.
In Part One, Etienne Fouillioux, emeritus professor of history at
Lyons, describes for us the place of de Lubac in French Catholic culture
and theology in 1946. He was already well known as the author of
Catholicisme (1938) and the Le Drame de l’humanisme athée (1944).And he
was recognized as raising questions about contemporary scholastic theology in such works as Corpus Mysticum (1944). Furthermore, he had
attained a certain moral authority by his personal conduct during the War
as a leader of the “spiritual resistance” and by his rebuke of anti-Semitism

Book Reviews

845

and Pétainism. He was editor of Recherches de science religieuse and had
been elected a delegate to the General Congregation of the Society of
Jesus in 1946. It is important especially for Americans to try to be aware
of the variously fractured state of French Catholicism after the War and
to recognize de Lubac’s place in it. Fouilloux contributes enormously in
short compass to our appreciation of the flammable materials surrounding de Lubac, ready to be touched off by any stray spark. Georges
Chantraine, S.J., the friend to whom de Lubac left his literary remains,
editor of the oeuvres completes, and his biographer, follows Fouilloux’s
setting of the scene with a précis of Surnaturel. He gives us in short form
de Lubac’s reading of the Fathers, his construal of post-Thomist scholasticism’s production of the “hypothesis” and then “system” of “pure
nature,” and his charge that it reduces nature’s appetite for grace to an
obediential potency.
It next falls to Henri Donneaud, O.P., to detail the various receptions
of Surnaturel by the traditional Thomists Charles Boyer, S.J., Rosaire
Gagnebet, O.P., and Marie-Joseph Le Guillou, O.P. He alerts us to the
necessity to distinguish “natural desire” taken as an ontological, structural
appetite built in to the nature, on the one hand, and on the other, taken
as a conscious, elicited desire fully directed to the vision of God only
under the guidance of grace. Part One finishes with an essay by René
Mougel on de Lubac’s relation to Jacques Maritain apropos of the sin of
the angels.What is missing in this part, as Bonino notes in the introduction, is a comparable article on de Lubac’s relation to Etienne Gilson.
Bonino remarks in the introduction that de Lubac’s exegesis of St.
Thomas has, not surprisingly, been surpassed.The essays in Part Two give
evidence of this claim.
Michel Bastit opens the section by asking whether Thomism is an
Aristotelian system.The importance of this question stems from the fact
that, granted the Platonic, and Neoplatonic, resources available to St.
Thomas, it matters a great deal whether and at what points he makes
Platonism to frame Aristotle or rather to be framed by him. Bastit
observes that St.Thomas preserves the Aristotelian diversity of being. He
supplements the Platonic formal hierarchy with Aristotelian substance.
And he asserts the real distinction of esse and essence within a composition of principles that preserves the unity of beings. The upshot is that
Aristotle enables St.Thomas to escape Neoplatonic pantheism, and Aristotelian “consistency of nature and specificity of each being” provide “the
guarantee that Redemption has a subject,” and that grace will be gratuitous (101).The relevance for an appreciation of Surnaturel is understated
but clear. If one inserts Aristotelian nature into a Plotinian emanationism,

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Book Reviews

then the natural desire for God will be structural, ontological, for therein
natures lose their consistency and so distinction. If, on the contrary,
participation is framed by Aristotle, there can be no such natural desire as
de Lubac understands it. Furthermore, Cajetan is, as it were, rehabilitated
as a reader of St.Thomas one must reckon with.
Jean-Miguel Garrigues renders a similarly understated verdict on de
Lubac’s strictures on characterizing nature as in obediential potency to
the supernatural. He does this by asking about the “natural grace” of
Christ, the grace that follows upon the origin of Christ’s humanity in its
assumption, and discussing the potency of this nature for the grace of
union. It is an obediential potency, according to St. Thomas. This does
not, however, mean that the fitness of human nature so to be assumed is
denied or ignored. Rather, the fitness for union derives from the nature
itself as rational, as capable of vision.Thus the potency of human nature
in general to grace and glory is obediential, and still, it is fitting that it be
so endowed.
Serge-Thomas Bonino, in his own contribution to the volume, investigates St.Thomas’s theory of limbo, which most approaches the idea of
“pure nature” and which de Lubac mostly skips. St. Thomas entertains
the position common to the thirteenth century that such souls’ knowledge of the supernatural call to the vision of God need not induce suffering under the condition of their virtuous resignation. But he prefers to
argue for their complete ignorance of such an end on the ground that
the knowledge of it is impossible apart from revelation. Though St.
Thomas does not speak of “beatitude” for such souls, and it remains that
de facto they are suffering a penalty for original sin, there is here the limning of a “natural end” of man, and any innate ordering to or proportion
unto vision is denied.Vision is not connatural to human nature.
In what many readers will find to be one of the more valuable contributions, J.-P.Torrell, O.P., sorts out St.Thomas’s view of the state of original justice and the state of corruption. Contrary to Peter Lombard, St.
Thomas holds that man was created in grace in view of his supernatural
end. Even so and precisely in order to come to a just appreciation of
grace, he takes up the task of contrasting what man could do in virtue of
original grace (Adam’s first state), what he could do in virtue of uncorrupted nature but without grace (the never realized state of “integrity”),
and what ungraced nature can do now, after corruption by sin (our actual
condition prior to justification).Within this project, the concept of “integral nature” occupies the same strategic position as that of pura naturalia.
St.Thomas’s synthesis of the Areopagite and St. Augustine on the effects
of original sin is very clearly and helpfully presented.

Book Reviews

847

For many, Part Two will be the most important: it provides as it were
by triangulation a judgment as to de Lubac’s exegesis and interpretation
of Thomas. The studies clearly if in a muted voice raise questions about
the adequacy of de Lubac’s handling of nature, obediential potency, and
“pure nature” in St.Thomas.
Part Three contains three studies, the first of which, by Lawrence
Renault, addresses a part of the post-Thomist history of the theology of
the supernatural omitted by de Lubac, the part played by William of
Ockham, who denied there could be an innate desire for a supernatural
end, and much before Cajetan taught the strict proportion between an
end and access to an end. Jacob Schmutz contributes an essay on the
metaphysical path of late scholasticism to the separation of the natural
and supernatural orders that de Lubac alleges occurs in sixteenth- and
seventeenth-century scholasticism. This metaphysical path more and
more conceives of created causality as something independent of God.
While St. Thomas and the thirteenth century leave us with the view
according to which the causality of second causes is itself wholly created,
this inheritance of Neoplatonism is progressively transmuted into a view
where the creature adds something to the divine causality, and we end
with the thesis espoused by Molina according to which God and the
creature are partial causes of one and the same effect. “Influence,” which
in the thirteenth century was another name for procession from the First
Cause, ends up by naming the divine causality as the condition of the
mere maintenance in being of the second cause.The last contribution to
this part of the volume is a study of the natural desire to see God as
treated by the Salmanticenses. It begins with a very clear delimitation of
the distinction of natural appetite or natural, innate desire, and elicited
conscious desire that those just entering the discussion will find helpful,
although the author’s clarity unfortunately diminishes when he presents
the difference between the elicited desire to see God, which is the desire
to know what the First Cause is, and the elicited desire to attain to this
knowledge as one’s beatitude.
Part Four brings us to “the question of the supernatural today.” Georges
Cottier, O.P., seeks to re-introduce the notion of a natural mysticism, a
mysticism of the ego engaged in a radical experience of itself, and its being
prior to any act, prior to any unfolding of the soul into its powers, and this
in contrast to contemporary efforts to make of all mysticism a supernatural one, in which the Christian revelation resounds and the grace of Christ
is operative.The rehabilitation of a natural mysticism, concomitant with a
recognition of naturally available truths in other religions will make us less
liable to confound Christianity with other religions. This same issue is

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Book Reviews

taken up also by Gilbert Narcisse, O.P., who examines the impact of de
Lubac on contemporary theology. He points to four areas where contemporary positions, though they do not follow directly from the theses of the
Surnaturel, nevertheless are fostered by them. One of these is the issue
already visited by Cottier, the move from the unique mediation of Christ
to the recognition of many non-Christian (or cryptically Christian) mediations of revelation and grace.The others are the transition from rationalist apologetics to a fundamental theology conceived to be addressed to
men already touched by grace, the transition from theology sub ratione Dei
to theology sub ratione Trinitatis (Balthasar), and the shift from Thomistic
metaphysics to philosophical pluralism. Narcisse closes with the observation of the role of metaphysics in the ability to keep a firm hold on the
gratuity of grace.
In a last essay, Benoît-Dominique de La Soujeole, O.P., correlates the
nature-grace extrinsicism which de Lubac laments with modern ecclesiology. St. Robert Bellarmine’s distinction between the soul and body of
the Church, according to which one could belong to one and not the
other, survives into the twentieth century, where the Church as visible
and natural society remains in principle something that can be separable
from the Church as communion in grace and charity. La Soujeole follows
Cardinal Journet in seeking a more adequate conception of the unity of
the Church, and finds help in identifying the visibility of the New Law
not only in the means of grace, but in the effects of grace in the visible
community of charity.This provides a broader basis on which to re-think
not only the question of unity, but that of membership, as well.
This is an altogether fine collection of essays. I mentioned that about
half the contributors express sympathy with de Lubac’s interpretation of
the natural desire to see God.That no essay directly addresses this issue in
St. Thomas or in itself is a disappointment, but also a sign of the enormity of the question.
The large volume by Lawrence Feingold is the demonstration of this
enormity.This second edition is a friendlier version of the original dissertation in that the extensive Latin quotations have been translated, the exposition at some few points streamlined, and at others made more pointed.
There are many reasons to read this book. First, there is the importance of
the res, of a correct understanding of the natural desire to see God, for both
theological anthropology and apologetics. Second, we want also to know
what St.Thomas taught about this.Third, we want also to know whether
the subsequent scholastic reception of St. Thomas preserved or deformed
his teaching. Fourth, we want to know the adequacy of de Lubac’s reception of both St.Thomas and his scholastic heirs, the better to sort out our

Book Reviews

849

own very messy theological inheritance. This last interest is connected to
questions about the nature and practice of Catholic theology, about which
Feingold says: “a global vilification of an entire period of over four
centuries in the history of Catholic theology cannot fail to be seriously
detrimental to the cause of theology and the life of the Church, because it
introduces a violent rupture rather than organic growth” (440). On all four
counts, Feingold’s book must, I think, be counted indispensable. Moreover,
the orderliness and clarity of his exposition give us a model of how to
write, and the charity of his discussion a model of how to conduct
ourselves. He also alerts us to an important pastoral dimension of the
proceedings:“one of the great pastoral problems of our time is that so many
people . . . take heaven for granted as something somehow due simply to
natural goodness” (443).
What is in this book? A first chapter introduces us to ST I–II, q. 3, a.
8, where St. Thomas says that, once we know from the things that have
been made that God their cause exists, we naturally desire to know the
essence of that cause. It follows from this, St. Thomas concludes, that
man’s perfect happiness, wherein every desire is perfectly satisfied, consists
in the vision of God. Four questions structure the ensuing reception of
this argument. First, does this conscious “elicited” desire to know God
manifest the existence of another and more basic desire, an unconscious
but “innate” desire to know God, which would amount to positing a
constitutive ordination in man unto the vision of God? Second, is the
natural desire to see God absolute or conditional? That is, is it like a
settled intention for an end known to be attainable, or is it like a wish
that things could be so, in the absence of seeing how they could be so?
Third, is the argument whose grand conclusion is that our happiness
consists in the vision of God demonstrative or an indication of fittingness? Fourth, does the desire to see God show the impossibility of there
being a state of “pure nature” for human beings? The questions fit
together as follows. If the desire is innate, then it is absolute. If the desire
is absolute, and supposing it is an object of certain natural knowledge, the
argument constitutes a philosophical demonstration that our ultimate
end is the vision of God. Last, if the desire is absolute, its fulfillment is
owed, something due to man, and it is impossible that God could have
established and left man puris in naturalibus to pursue an end and a happiness other than the vision of God.
In chapter 2, Feingold lays the groundwork for understanding both St.
Thomas’s position and the entire subsequent history of the question by
sorting out St. Thomas’s analysis of appetite and desire, so providing the
systematic context in which a natural desire to see God is asserted. Every

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nature, every power of every nature, has a natural appetite unto its proportionate end. This is a constitutive inclination which makes the nature or
power be what it is; it is what is later called innate desire. A constitutive
inclination, it is always “on,” and so is to be distinguished from elicited
appetite, the appetite or desire that follows upon knowledge in those creatures with a cognoscitive capacity. Elicited desire in man follows the intellect’s cognition of some good. It is conscious, and it absolutely depends on
entertaining consciously the good in question. Natural appetite, the
constitutive appetite that specifies a nature or power, is evidently something always and necessarily in force; it is not facultative. It is a mistake,
however, to think that elicited appetite is by contrast always free. Deliberated acts of will bearing on how to attain to some known good are
certainly free; they are what we call “choices.” But prior to them there are
naturally elicited acts of will for goods, natural in the sense that, once the
good is presented to appetitive power, the power must incline to them in
act. For men, these are such things as life, virtue, society, and knowledge.
And there can be natural specifications of these general inclinations. A
natural specification of the inclination to knowledge following on the
natural knowledge of God’s existence is the desire to know God’s essence.
When St.Thomas speaks of a natural desire for the vision of God, does
he mean an innate desire or a naturally occurring elicited act of inclination toward the good of knowing the first cause or both? The canvass of
texts Feingold makes in chapter 3 shows us that the most natural way to
take St.Thomas is that he is asserting the existence of an elicited desire,
naturally evoked upon the knowledge of God’s existence, and a desire
that is conditional, for it comes with the realization that the knowledge
of the essence of God is not within the compass of our cognoscitive
power to attain to on its own. Even so, questions remain. Is the natural
desire to see God the same as desiring supernatural happiness? But in that
case, how can it not be what is otherwise described as the act of the theological virtue of hope? And then, how can grace not be required to
incline us to the supernatural end of glory? St.Thomas does not leave this
matter with all the clarity his readers would desire in every text. The
subsequent history is the series of triangulations and calculations, as it
were, by which the Thomist tradition puts text to text and finds its way
to what must be the answer.
The role of John Duns Scotus in this history is the first order of business after the canvass of St.Thomas’s texts. For Scotus, the potency to see
God is natural, not obediential, and the desire to see God is innate. For
St. Thomas, the desire seems to be something naturally knowable, naturally available to us according as we come to the knowledge of the exis-

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tence of the First Cause, and then, want to know its essence. But Scotus
holds that the natural desire cannot be known apart from revelation,
which informs us of the de facto end of man, the vision of God.This has
the consequence that the natural desire for the vision of God is emptied
of any apologetic value in manifesting the truth of Catholic doctrine.
The history Feingold shows us subsequent to Scotus is the history of
a long argument within the parameters set by St.Thomas and Scotus, the
story as Feingold tells it of a steady contemplation of the reality of the
supernatural order and an increasingly happy and integrated articulation
of this reality as bestowed in Christ.
Denis the Carthusian begins the dialectic in the mid-fifteenth century.
He sees that the first order of business is to oppose Scotus.There can be
no natural desire for the vision of God if natural desire means innate
desire, a pondus naturae that operates even prior to knowledge, for such
innate desire cannot extend beyond the proportion of nature.The potency
to supernatural happiness and vision is obediential and not natural. This
draws the difference between Scotus and St.Thomas very successfully. But
then, Denis does not know how to handle the texts of St.Thomas that do
assert a natural desire to see God. Supposing this natural desire is what
Scotus means by natural desire, Denis aptly raises two fundamental questions: First, how can such a natural desire to see God be compatible with
the supernatural and gratuitous character of actually seeing God, if a natural desire cannot be in vain? And second, how can there be an argument
from a datum of nature—natural desire for vision—showing something
that we otherwise treat as a mystery known only by revelation?
There follows a long chronicle of the efforts to sort out these issues.
Cardinal Cajetan again shows that there can be no Scotist innate inclination
to the vision of God. Such would make us not merely capax Dei, able to
share the divine nature (2 Pt 1:4), but already and in virtue of our created
being sharers in that nature. By nature, we have a natural desire for an end
proper and proportionate to that nature. And knowing God as God knows
himself is obviously a perfection not proportionate to man.What inclines us
to God supernaturally possessed, what orders us to such possession, is not
nature but grace and the theological virtues. Feingold at this point reviews
the many texts of St.Thomas that establish this and so Cajetan’s faithfulness
to his master.There is as well an exhaustive review of the objections to Cajetan put forward by Gilson, Jorge Laporta, and de Lubac.That the potency
to vision be obediential, not natural, is required if the gratuity of the supernatural order is to be maintained. For St.Thomas, a natural potency for some
perfection is always and necessarily and with no exceptions allied with a
natural active potency that can produce the fulfillment in question. That

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there is no human capacity to realize on our own the vision of God is of
course implied in the necessity of grace to attain such an end. However, not
all obediential potency is the same.There is the potency of any created thing
to obey the God who can make sons of Abraham out of stones. And there
is the potency of man to become a son of God. In the former case, the
potency is generic; in the latter, we are dealing with a specific obediential
potency, in which the subject of the potency does not pass away (as do the
stones), but in which it is perfected along the lines of its own nature,
precisely as one who knows and loves. Here again Feingold reviews the texts
of St.Thomas one by one and in detail in order to demonstrate to the reader
the accuracy of Cajetan’s reading of St.Thomas. It is this notion, that of a
specific obediential potency, that entails that grace perfects nature and that
renders the charge of “extrinsicism” against Cajetan and Suárez false.
When it comes to making sense of ST I–II, q. 3, a. 8, and parallels,
however, the great commentator stumbles. Such argument is not in the
philosophical but in the theological order, Cajetan hazards. We are to
understand that St. Thomas is arguing from supernatural effects to their
supernatural cause. Or we must distinguish knowing God as cause and
knowing him unrestrictedly in his essence.
A successful march on what we must understand St. Thomas’s assertion of a natural desire to see God to entail begins with Sylvester of
Ferrara, who establishes in the first place that St. Thomas is speaking of
an elicited desire, once the existence of the First Cause is known, and
who in the second place points out that it is a naturally and necessarily
elicited desire: it cannot be that we do not desire to know what God is
once we know that he is. Sylvester also brings to prominence the distinction between wanting to see God, and wanting the vision of God to be
our happiness.The first is spontaneous and natural; the second is a desire
moved by grace.
Denis, Cajetan, and Sylvester read St. Thomas as opposed to each
other; Soto and Toletus do not, and they make St.Thomas affirm a natural desire to see God as Scotus understands it. This chapter is not some
function of scrupulosity in treating the record, but shows us a possibility
within the dialectic of positions, a possibility that will be refused by the
very next generation of de Soto’s students, a possibility that Suárez, the
omnivore, will be aware of in the final construction of an adequate reading of St.Thomas, and a possibility that will be resurrected in the twentieth century by Jorge Laporta and Henri de Lubac.
Collectively, Bartolomé de Medina, Domingo Báñez, and Francisco
Suárez construct the position that Feingold labels the “consensus,” the
consensus of some three hundred years.The desire to see God is an elicited

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853

desire; it is a conditional, an imperfect desire; and it provides an argument
for the fittingness of our call to a supernatural end, but not a demonstration of the possibility of the call and still less of its actuality.With this, the
way to read all of St.Thomas’s texts together has been reached.As well, one
of the major but little-emphasized implications of St.Thomas’s position is
expressed in detail, and that is the necessary existence of a connatural final
end for man, and the consequent realization that, with no injustice, man
could have been let to exist in a state of “pure nature.” Feingold notes the
extent to which the possibility of “pure nature” is defined by magisterial
teaching after Jansenism.
Enter de Lubac. Feingold is careful to inform us that he understands
himself to be dealing very narrowly with de Lubac’s theological anthropology, and with nothing else in his theological production. He distinguishes himself explicitly from John Milbank. Milbank takes the entire
production of de Lubac as a systematic whole, the key to which is Surnaturel. Feingold does not.
De Lubac is one with Jansenius in denying the possibility for us of a
state of pure nature. He does this not by asserting that grace and glory are
due to prelapsarian Adam, but by holding that finality to vision is already
a part of the natural constitution of man. Fundamental to de Lubac’s
position is the thesis that a supernatural finality is “imprinted” on our
nature, for only so is “extrinsicism” avoided, wherein grace when given
would be imposed on a human being already and erroneously conceived
as self-sufficient, with a merely obediential potency to grace. Second, this
intrinsic finality, already given with the nature and defining the nature, is
itself a “natural desire” for the vision of God; in the later language it is an
“innate” desire for vision, something prior to any elicited and conscious
desire to see God, which elicited desire is only a manifestation of what is
alone ontologically and theologically interesting, the innate desire, the
pondus naturae whose resting place is vision. Third, since the desire for
vision is innate, and a natural desire is determined to one end alone, there
can be no other end for man; his only end is vision. De Lubac embraces
the position of Scotus that the potency for vision is natural, but he is
more radical, for while Scotus thought a purely natural beatitude possible for us, de Lubac holds that, absent the vision of God, we are in misery.
The fact that our only end is vision entails, fourth, the impossibility that
man with the nature he now has could exist in a state of “pure nature.”
Since it follows from the natural, innate desire that our actual end is in
fact vision, and the application of the axiom that no natural desire can be
in vain is to be applied simply and without qualification, it must be, fifth,
that the natural desire itself cannot be known apart from revelation.Were

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it otherwise, then from the natural desire naturally known, we would
come to know what Catholic tradition insists can only be known by
revelation, namely, that our actual end consists in the vision of God. Sixth
and last, this intrinsic finality unto vision ought not be conceived as an
actual “ordering” of man unto vision, and so it does not in any way imply
that grace and glory are due to man, a debitum naturae. It is grace and the
theological virtues, not the natural desire, that “orders” man to a strictly
and completely gratuitous supernatural end.
It is with this last point that things start to come unraveled.What could
an intrinsic finality of nature toward an end possibly be that does not
“order” the nature toward the end? The distinction de Lubac needs at this
point is not given in St. Thomas, for whom our nature is connaturally
ordered toward a connatural end, and for whom it is sanctifying grace
and the theological virtues that give us an intrinsic finality toward a
supernatural end, and actually order us toward that end. If the nature is
not intrinsically ordered by nature toward vision, and if being actually so
ordered is a gratuitous gift, then it follows also that a state of pure nature
is perfectly possible, and in fact, it is actually entertained when St.Thomas
writes of limbo, in the beginning as at the end of his career.
Theologically, the problem de Lubac’s position faces is the gratuity of
grace. He tries to preserve gratuity by distinguishing nature taken
abstractly (not ordered to vision) and taken concretely (ordered to
vision), but as Feingold shows, it is difficult to maintain this as a real
distinction.This proposal, moreover, points to the underlying philosophical problem of de Lubac’s position which is indeed the integrity of
nature. A created nature, precisely in its real distinction from the divine
nature, must have a finality unto another end than that of the divine
nature. It cannot have a supernatural finality inscribed in it except on
pain of ceasing to be a created nature with a proportionate end. And a
created nature with no proportionate end is no nature.
De Lubac is sometimes represented as maintaining the “openness” of
human spirit to grace, as we have seen above (Bonino). But on Feingold’s
showing, he does far more. He makes the link between nature and grace
so tight as to destroy the gratuity of grace.The problem can be expressed
by asking whether the intrinsic finality de Lubac postulates is itself natural or supernatural. It is natural, contained within the nature, else how does
it provide the solution to the problem of extrinsicism? But if it is a finality toward something supernatural, how can it not also itself be something
supernatural? “Openness” is rather maintained, for Feingold, by asserting
a specific obediential potency:“potency” asserts a possibility really verified
in this subject,“obediential” says that the realization of the possibility will

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855

be directly by God’s agency alone; and “specific” asserts that the realization of the potency does not do away with the subject or change its
nature; no, the nature is preserved, and created spirit remains created spirit
in realizing by the grace of God a supernatural end. It is Feingold’s exposition and defense and deployment of this notion of a specific obediential
potency that is one of the greatest services of his study.
It is deployed not only to maintain gratuity, but also, in tandem with
the natural desire itself, to demonstrate the fittingness of our being called
to vision. The desire shows, says Feingold, man’s transcendence: it projects him to a desideratum absolutely exceeding—transcending—his
natural capacity for perfection, and in this way declares the excellence of
human nature. And to say the potency for the realization of this desire is
specifically obediential declares that its actualization will be the actualization and supernaturalization of precisely this created nature, human
nature, maintaining its integrity, completing it and super-completing it in
the direction of its own highest aspiration, the possession of the truth of
things, and indeed, the Truth of things. The consensus view whose
construction Feingold shows us does not give us a nature “closed in on
itself.” The natural desire, conditional though it be, is conscious, and it
connects us with what is above us precisely insofar as we are humans, and
so, consciously, something that de Lubac’s interpretation evidently does
not do. It is misleading to characterize this understanding as making the
desire a “mere” velleity, as if so to call it were to make it something unimportant, trivial, of no great theological moment.
Feingold’s exposition is especially strong where he points out that the
two ends of man, connatural and supernatural, as envisaged by the
Thomist tradition are not alternatives. Pure nature may be hypothetical,
but our connatural end remains our really and truly existing connatural
end, which is to know God from the things that have been made. That
we are also assigned a supernatural end does not do away with this.
Rather, the supernatural end fulfills our capacity for natural happiness,
and overfills it, but in the same line already projected by our connatural
end, the knowledge of God. The assertion of two ends does not render
us closed to grace, and the fulfillment of the natural desire for a natural
happiness does not give us parallel universes, or layers. Part of the answer
to the charge of extrinsicism is precisely to insist that it is nature that
comes to rest in the super natural end.
Beyond the historical question, beyond the important matters of how
to understand “nature” and obediential potency etc. already touched on,
Feingold’s study is significant for thinking through yet again the crucial
issues de Lubac himself thought to address.

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First, it is important in answering the question, to whom do we think
we are speaking when we take up the work of evangelization? Are we
speaking to already secret Christians? Are we speaking to people already
necessarily interiorly moved in some way by the supernatural order? For
both de Lubac and Rahner, though on different accounts, the answer is
Yes. Or are we speaking to pagans, and perhaps to people in a condition
worse than paganism (as Peter Wust would have it), but in any event
people “separated from Christ, . . . strangers to the covenants of promise,
having no hope and without God in the world” (Eph 2:12)? On the
other hand, for de Lubac and Scotus, to declare that we naturally desire
God is to say something known only by revelation. It is part of the
content of faith, not a preamble. But if the desire is naturally elicited upon
entertaining the idea of God, it can in principle play a role in addressing
the gospel to every man, and no matter what his moral condition.
Second, why are we faced with the daunting task of the evangelization
of peoples who have abandoned the gospel? De Lubac promoted his
version of the natural desire in part because he thought it was the antidote to the view—Cajetan’s and Suárez’s—that led to the cultural
triumph of the Enlightenment and the de-Christianization of Europe.
But if there was in the consensus view no such a divorce between nature
and grace as de Lubac alleged, and if, in fact, this view that de Lubac
scorned is true, and if we do not suppose that the truth about nature and
grace led to the demise of Christian Europe, and if we set aside crude
secularization hypotheses about the incompatibility of electric lights and
angels, then still, de Lubac’s question remains: what did lead to its demise?
We can once again round up the usual suspects. Politically, there were the
“wars of religion,” that is, there was the rise of the absolutist state (D. B.
Hart), which robbed the Church of her public authority, and which had
an interest, carried out by its ideological apologists, in suppressing the
very idea of nature (Pierre Manent). Philosophically, there was, first,
rationalism, and the introduction of rationalism into the analysis of the
act of faith in England (William Chillingworth), and the erection of
reason as the tribunal of what can count as the content of faith in
Germany (Kant); second, there was skepticism, so fixing the limits of
what reason can know that positivism rules our relation to the world, and
relativism our relation to human ends and moral action. Was theology
then blameless? No. Although there was always something odd and
disproportionate in blaming the rise of atheism and secularism—the
cultural suicide of Europe—on the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century
elaboration of the possibility of “pure nature” by certain Jesuit and
Dominican schoolmen, it is not so odd to blame the same schoolmen if

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it is true that they contributed to the construction of the idols of the
authority of conscience and absolute freedom of indifference that were
later to be worshiped by the Enlightenment without benefit of clergy
(see John Lamont in the April 2009 issue of The Thomist).
Sapientia Press has rendered a quite signal service in making these two
N&V
volumes available to a wider audience.
Guy Mansini, O.S.B.
Saint Meinrad Seminary
St. Meinrad, Indiana

World Upside Down: Reading Acts in the Graeco-Roman Age
by C. Kavin Rowe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009 ), 310 pp.
R ECENT years have witnessed a resurgence of interest in the task of theological interpretation of Scripture, the results of which have been mixed.
More often than not, biblical scholars struggle to break out of the strictures of our discipline, making the leap from the ancient text to the
contemporary situation awkwardly and uncertainly.The contributions of
theologians to the various new theological commentary series, on the
other hand, often ride roughshod over the ancient text. In World Upside
Down: Reading Acts in the Graeco-Roman Age, C. Kavin Rowe bridges the
seemingly unbridgeable divide, showing how the book of Acts speaks to
the first-century Christian situation and in so doing can address contemporary issues, as well. Rowe argues against two common interpretations of
Acts. Based on the constant reminders of Paul’s innocence, one standard
reading sees Acts as an apology for the early Christian movement, suggesting that Christianity posed no threat to the Roman Empire. More
recently, some interpreters have argued that, on the contrary, Acts is an
anti-imperial text that challenges the claims of Caesar. Against both of
these readings, Rowe suggests that the key to understanding the message
of Acts lies in holding together the dialectical tension between the gospel’s
challenge to pagan culture and the rejection of political insurrection.
After an introductory chapter laying out the basic premises of the study,
the argument unfolds in three chapters, followed by a conclusion that
brings together Rowe’s reading of Acts with contemporary political and
theological questions. The second chapter shows how the announcement
of the gospel disrupts various aspects of Roman society.The early Christian proclamation of a God who demands exclusive worship inevitably
challenged not only religious convictions but also the social, political, and
economic realities of the empire.This clash of cultures lies at the heart of
four episodes in Acts that are representative of the character of the book as

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a whole.The first story, the confusion of Paul and Barnabas for Zeus and
Hermes in Acts 14, demonstrates the distinctiveness of the Christian
message. In contrast to the common pagan practice of identifying gods of
different names as different manifestations of the same god, Paul and Barnabas pose a sharp distinction between the God revealed in Jesus Christ and
the various pagan gods, thus challenging the whole pagan sacrificial system.
The scandal of this message is made evident by the reaction of the people,
who drag Paul out of the city and stone him. Episodes in Philippi,Athens,
and Ephesus reveal a similar pattern. The exorcism of the woman with a
spirit of prophecy (Acts 16) threatens not only the religious practices of the
Philippians but also a source of income. Despite superficial similarities to
the pagan practice of substituting different names for the same gods, the
Areopagus speech (Acts 17) calls for an abandonment of idolatry. Insofar as
worship was bound up with political life, Paul poses not only a religious
threat but also a political one.The conversion of a large crowd in Ephesus
and the subsequent burning of magical books (Acts 19) put the city in an
uproar. Again, the challenge is not simply “religious,” but rather comprehensive, affecting economics and civic life as much as religion. Based on
this evidence, one might be tempted to side with the proponents of an
anti-imperial reading of Acts, but this is not the whole story.
Alongside these periodic disruptions of Roman society, Luke also
describes a series of trials before Roman officials, each of which ends in
Paul’s acquittal. Scholars have often read these trials as Luke’s defense of
the Church, and they have gone on to infer that, for Luke, the Church
and the Roman Empire could peacefully coexist. In his third chapter
Rowe offers a more nuanced reading of the text that holds together both
these passages and those that are more amenable to an anti-imperial reading. It is true, he notes, that at every one of Paul’s trials the Roman officials acquit him of the charges. Despite the efforts of Paul’s opponents to
paint him as an insurrectionist, the Romans recognize that the early
Christian movement was not interested in sedition—even the claim that
Jesus is “Lord of all” (Acts 10:36) does not for Luke entail the establishment of a worldly empire in competition with Rome. Those who have
argued that Luke offers a pro-Roman picture of the empire ignore an
important element of Luke’s story, however. Though the Romans
acknowledged Jesus’ innocence, he nevertheless ended up on the cross.
Given Jesus’ fate, Paul’s acquittals are tinged with uncertainty.
The fourth chapter seeks to account for the tension revealed by the
preceding argument. Rowe attributes the complexity of the Church’s
position vis-à-vis the empire to three interrelated practices of the early
Christians: confession of Jesus as Lord, universal mission, and the forma-

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tion of Christian communities. Though Acts consistently portrays the
early Church as innocent of the charge of insurrection, this does not mean
that this confession of Jesus was totally innocuous. In designating Jesus
“Lord of all,” Luke implicitly undercuts imperial claims to universal sovereignty. Yet this is not a challenge to Caesar’s political power. On the
contrary, Rowe argues, it is Caesar’s claim to the title “Lord of all” that
challenges the universal sovereignty of the God of Israel exercised through
Jesus Christ. This confession leads naturally to the Christian impulse to
universal mission, because Jesus’ lordship is closely tied to salvation (cf.Acts
4:12).The desire for the salvation of all drives Jesus’ disciples to spread the
message throughout the entire world, and this mission entails the formation of Christian communities. The gospel is not simply a matter of the
heart, but rather something that calls forth social embodiment. When
taken together and read in their proper light, these three practices account
for the tension in Luke’s story.The new way of life that Luke offers operates on fundamentally different terms than Greco-Roman culture and
thus accounts for the clash with Roman civilization. At the same time,
because it operates on these different terms, this way of life does not entail
a bid for earthly power over against Caesar. Rather, Luke’s message is a
“light for revelation to the gentiles” (Luke 2:32); its purpose, to call the
gentiles out of darkness into the light of the gospel.
Rowe’s final chapter bears the provocative title “The Apocalypse of
Acts and the Life of Truth,” and it takes steps toward applying the argument of the preceding three chapters to a contemporary setting. Acts,
Rowe argues, sets forth a way of knowing that is not simply a matter of
ratiocination, but rather is an embodied epistemology springing forth
from the concrete practices of the early Christians.These practices inherently make universal claims that are unappealing to moderns whose
purported allegiance is to tolerance above all else, and so Rowe closes the
book with a discussion of the implications of Acts for political theology
and the question of truth. He begins by addressing the common assertion
that polytheism, because it can include a number of gods from different
cultures, was inherently tolerant. Despite the surface plausibility of such
a claim, a closer look at Roman history reveals numerous instances of
imperial intolerance toward certain religious groups, including but not
limited to the Druids and the Christians. Perhaps more importantly,
tolerance does not stand alone, but rather necessarily entails distinctions
between what will and will not be tolerated.Thus, polytheism “defines a
particular kind of tolerance—the kind that places a missionizing Christianity outside its limits” (167, emphasis in original). Rowe goes on to
criticize the bifurcation of politics and theology. Like tolerance, politics is

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not practiced in a vacuum, but rather has a theological—one might say
more neutrally, a metaphysical—basis. One of the fears perpetuated by
the modern narrative of the so-called “Wars of Religion” is that religious
certitude breeds violence and bloodshed. Bringing together the various
strands of his argument, Rowe offers a dialectical assessment of the relation of Acts to tolerance and bloodshed. On the one hand, he notes, “in
a crucial way, the vision of Acts is profoundly intolerant” (170). The
confession of Jesus as Lord of all by necessity demands the conversion of
all. On the other hand, the narrative of Acts eschews the use of force to
spread the gospel. For Luke, witness rather than coercion is the manner
of the gospel’s encounter with the world.
Rowe has offered us a masterful reading of Acts, as well as an erudite
example of how to bring together historically sensitive readings of the
New Testament with contemporary theological questions. As comfortable interacting with philosophers such as Charles Taylor and Alasdair
MacIntyre as he is offering close readings of the Greek text of Acts, Rowe
makes a compelling case for the unity of faith and life, the central theme
of his book. One of his most refreshing contributions is the correction
he offers to standard anti-imperial readings of the New Testament. It has
become a commonplace in certain circles to assert that in proclaiming
Jesus as Lord the early Christians were challenging the claims of Caesar.
Rowe suggests that this is to put things backwards, at least as far as Luke
is concerned. Jesus does not challenge Caesar’s claim to lordship; on the
contrary, from Luke’s perspective Caesar’s claim to lordship challenges the
more fundamental lordship of the God of Israel exercised through Jesus
Christ.The distinction, though subtle, is an important one.
World Upside Down also raises several questions. As already noted, the
designation of Acts as an “apocalypse” is a provocative one, and one that
calls for more justification. Though I am sympathetic with the sense in
which Rowe seems to be using the term, a more detailed engagement
with those who deny the apocalyptic character of Acts would have been
apropos, given the common scholarly bifurcation of salvation history (a
common characterization of Luke’s thought) and apocalyptic. A more
difficult question concerns how one might fruitfully apply the vision of
Acts to a cultural setting in which to some extent Christians occupy the
place of Caesar.The issue is no doubt thorny and complex, but it would
have been helpful to see this work, which addresses questions of contemporary significance, grapple with one of the most difficult and relevant
issues for Christians today. Finally, Rowe’s suggestion in the last few pages
that to deny the worldview of Acts is to distort the text’s meaning,
though true to Acts, raises the perennial question of whether an unbe-

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liever can understand a believer’s text. Is conversion a necessary prerequisite to reading Acts rightly, such that one who contests the vision of
Acts (to use Rowe’s language) will inevitably misread the text? Given his
penchant for dialectic, one might expect Rowe to offer the traditional
answer Sic et non, but I suspect he would find such an answer ultimately
unsatisfying. At any rate, it is one of the pressing questions the work
raises, and one that would have benefited from a fuller discussion.
That the work raises such questions is a testament to Rowe’s learning
and theological acumen. World Upside Down exemplifies a responsible and
sophisticated approach to the often nebulous field of theological interpretation, and for that we are in his debt. May it turn the world of New
Testament scholarship upside down and call us back to the unity of faith
and life fundamental to the gospel.
N&V
Rodrigo J. Morales
Marquette University
Milwaukee,Wisconsin

Commentary on the Gospel of John, by Thomas Aquinas, translated
by Fabian Larcher, O.P., and James A. Weisheipl, O.P., with introduction
and notes by Daniel Keating and Matthew Levering, 3 vols. (Washington,
DC:The Catholic University of America Press, 2010 ).
T HE present revival of interest in Aquinas’s biblical interpretation can be
attributed to at least two factors. One is that scholars have placed a greater
emphasis on the interrelation between the Summa theologiae and Aquinas’s
scriptural interpretation. Aquinas’s interpretation of Scripture deeply
informs his judgments contained in the Summa, and the Summa in turn
serves our reading of Scripture by its ability to arrange the sacra doctrina
found in Scripture into an ordered wisdom that helps illuminate (rather
than obscure) the contents of Scripture. Another factor is that historicalcritical methods of exegesis have proven insufficient by themselves for
engaging the realities taught in Scripture. This has led to an increased
openness for resourcing pre-critical exegetical methods of interpreting
Scripture.When scholars turn to the exegetical past, they find Aquinas a
valuable and largely unexplored resource for contributing to a renewed
engagement with Scripture. These factors (among others) have so
profoundly contributed to a renewed focus on Aquinas’s biblical interpretation that Adian Nichols, O.P., recently observed,“St.Thomas’s reputation as an exegete has probably never stood higher than it does today.”
It is in this fertile setting that a new English translation of Aquinas’s
commentary on the Gospel of John is welcomed. Aquinas’s commentary

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Book Reviews

work on John is special. Scholars have recognized that within Aquinas’s
commentary corpus, certain commentaries are particularly excellent, and
one of these is his commentary on John. The new English edition from
The Catholic University of America Press’s Thomas Aquinas in Translation
series is not the first English edition of Aquinas’s Super Ioannem, but the
new edition contributes significantly to the former, thanks to the efforts
of Daniel Keating and Matthew Levering.The foundation for the English
translation remains the same—that from Fabian Larcher, O.P., and James
Weisheipl, O.P.—but the new edition corrects previous translation
mistakes, adds a section of Aquinas’s commentary entirely left out of the
former translation, and includes a prologue attributed to St. Jerome with
a commentary by Aquinas that helps illuminate Aquinas’s “overall estimation of the Gospel of John.” One of most valuable aspects of this new
edition, however, is the inclusion of footnotes throughout the commentary that reference Aquinas’s Summa theologiae, patristic sources, and various councils, heresies, and lesser-known figures alluded to by Aquinas.
These notes enable the reader to get a sense of the scriptural roots of
Aquinas’s Summa and helps properly situate Aquinas’s commentary within
the Church’s tradition of theological reflection.
Keating and Levering introduce the commentary with some helpful
insights into Aquinas’s interpretive method. They address, first, the relationship between the literal and spiritual senses of Scripture. In Aquinas’s
commentary on John, the literal sense takes precedent, with some chapters lacking a single spiritual interpretation. But spiritual interpretations
(i.e. the “mystical sense”) do occur, and Levering and Keating offer some
guidance in understanding Aquinas’s turn to the mystical sense by providing a case study of Aquinas’s mystical interpretation that occurs with
Jesus’ words to Mary Magdalene, “Do not hold me, for I have not yet
ascended to the Father.” Since Jesus clearly has no problems in other locations with people touching his post-resurrected body (Mt 28:9; Lk
24:39), there must be, according to Aquinas, a meaning in addition to the
literal sense that the Holy Spirit is seeking to teach. It is this realization
that leads Aquinas to explore the mystical sense of this passage. Keating
and Levering then address another striking element of Aquinas’s
commentary on John, and really of almost all of his commentaries: the
number of “parallel” biblical texts cited by Aquinas from both the Old
and the New Testaments. For Keating and Levering, this practice demonstrates Aquinas’s belief that “the realities of faith are present and active
throughout history, preparing for and/or fulfilling the work of deification
in Christ through the Holy Spirit” (xvii). Levering and Keating conclude
their introduction by addressing the various sources that contribute to

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Aquinas’s interpretation of John.The sources include patristic commentary, especially Origen, Augustine, and Chrysostom, with Augustine
having first place among the three; heretics, especially Arius, and heterodox figures, such as Apollinarius, Nestorius, and Eutyches; Aristotle, who
appears explicitly in only nine of the twenty-one chapters, although the
influence of his thinking can be found throughout; and the Glossa Ordinaria, which is clearly present but scarce, with Aquinas’s Cantena aurea
having much more influence than the Glossa.
The contributions contained in the new English edition of Aquinas’s
Commentary on the Gospel of John will surely assist in stoking interest in
Aquinas’s biblical interpretation. One can only hope that commentaries
from pre-modern exegetical luminaries like Aquinas continue to find
their way into the modern classroom and onto the shelves of the modern
preacher.
N&V
Charles Raith II
Baylor University
Waco,Texas