Natura Pura: On the Recovery of Nature in the Doctrine of Grace 9780823292196

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N AT U R A P U R A

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Romanus Cessario, O.P. Joseph Koterski, S.J. series editors

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N AT U R A P U R A

n the Recovery of Nature in the Doctrine of Grace

STEVEN A. LONG

ordham niversity ress new york 2010

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Copyright 䉷 2010 Fordham University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher. Fordham University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or thirdparty Internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Long, Steven A. Natura pura : on the recovery of nature in the doctrine of grace / Steven A. Long.—1st ed. p. cm.— (Moral philosophy and moral theology) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0-8232–3105–8 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Grace (Theology)—History of doctrines. 2. Nature—History of doctrines. 3. Thomas, Aquinas, Saint, 1225?–1274. Summa theologica. 4. Catholic Church—Doctrines. 5. Philosophical theology. I. Title. BT761.3.L66 2010 233⬘.5—dc22 2009036160 Printed in the United States of America 12 11 10 5 4 3 2 1 First edition

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Contents

Acknowledgments

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Introduction

1

Chapter One: On the Loss, and the Recovery, of Nature as a Theonomic Principle: Reflections on the Nature/Grace Controversy

10

Chapter Two: A Criticism of Nature as Vacuole for Grace

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Chapter Three: On the Impropriety of Treating Theology’s Handmaiden like an Analytic

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Chapter Four: Why Natura Pura Is Not the Theological Stalking Horse for Secularist Minimalism or Pelagianism

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Chapter Five: Conclusion

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Appendix: Cardinal Ratzinger and Pope Benedict XVI

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Notes

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Index

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Acknowledgments

First of all, I am profoundly thankful for the constant sympathy and support of my wife, Anna Maria, throughout the writing of this book, as I am for my children’s understanding of the role that writing plays in their father’s life and work. This work and its author owe a particular debt to the two exemplary scholars Professor Ralph McInerny and Professor John Boyle for their incisively astute commentary and observations, as alike for their great appreciation for this book. To say that I am grateful to these scholars for their encouragement would be sheer understatement. I should also like to thank the editors of this series, Fr. Joseph Koterski, S.J., and Fr. Romanus Cessario, O.P. Their openness to revisiting so central and profound a question as the right relation of grace to nature, and to considering the ever-widening series of implications, problems, and dangers consequent on the effort to recover from the error of treating nature as merely a vacuole for grace, is the reason why the present work has been able to come into existence. Further, although I have been preoccupied with these themes for many years, and published concerning them even before Professor Lawrence Feingold wrote his important book, nonetheless Feingold’s magisterial work On the Natural Desire for God According to St. Thomas Aquinas and His Interpreters has also played a role in re-energizing my engagement with this subject. Not only I, but the scholarly world at large, owe Dr. Feingold a debt of thanks for the magnitude of his accomplishment. I have derived great benefit from the sagacious criticisms and suggestions of my friend and colleague Professor Roger Nutt, and from the

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helpful encouragement and friendship of Professor Gregory Vall (who is not to be blamed for this work, but only acknowledged for encouraging sympathy and friendship toward the one who wrote it). And it would be impossible not to note the dialogic encouragement provided the writing of this book by Professor Joseph Trabbic, who nonetheless is wholly innocent of its thesis and a great appreciator of Balthasar’s theology. I am also indebted to Professor Matthew Levering for his customarily perspicacious editorial suggestions, offered amidst reservations regarding aspects of this project. I am grateful to the academic dean of Ave Maria University, Professor Michael Dauphinais, for his helpfulness in sustaining the project of this book. Michael Waldstein, the Max Seckler Professor of Theology at Ave Maria University, is to be thanked for aiding the author in one strategically judicious textual correction, and for his friendship and speculative engagement which athwart all difference is always instructive and edifying. I am grateful to Fr. Joseph Fessio, S.J., whose friendship and generosity have extended to his conversations with me regarding this book, with whose thesis he significantly disagrees: would that all theological differences could be discussed in the ambience of such gracious friendship. Heartfelt thanks are owed to Sarah Byers of Boston College for her judicious encouragement regarding the cover art for this book. I should like to thank Helen Tartar and Eric Newman of Fordham University Press for their professionalism and cheerful generosity in overseeing the final stages of the preparation of this manuscript. Words of gratitude are also owed to my indefatigable research assistant, Matthew Ryan McWhorter, who has been a great help in preparing this manuscript for the Press. Finally, I should like to acknowledge the invaluable debt I owe to my deceased father and mother, James and Rosemary Long. In God’s good providence my life, together with so many other good things, came to me through their generosity: how can one ever begin to repay them? Their fortitude, fidelity, and love continue to illumine my path. Eternal rest grant unto them O Lord, and let thy perpetual light shine upon them, and may they rest in peace.

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INTRODUCTION

The existence of God and other like truths about God, which can be known by natural reason, are not articles of faith, but are preambles to the articles; for faith presupposes natural knowledge, even as grace presupposes nature, and perfection supposes something that can be perfected. Nevertheless, there is nothing to prevent a man, who cannot grasp a proof, accepting, as a matter of faith, something which in itself is capable of being scientifically known and demonstrated. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae

The following chapters converge on one central point: the crucial need to return to the actual teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas with respect to the distinction within unity of nature and grace.1 Never has the phrase of Jacques Maritain, ‘‘distinguish in order to unite,’’ been more necessary, yet seemingly more desolate and forgotten. This sad condition is not the fruit of any malign design, but rather the effect of a confluence of many errors—often unintentionally amplified in the heroic effort to suppress their implications without correcting them at the root. Many contemporary Roman Catholic theologians—to the degree that they engage this question—incline to accept an account of the relation of nature and grace that dissolves the entire structure of human nature and its proportionate end into a pure posit or limit concept. It is thought, because concrete nature exists in the context of the call to grace—inserted in the narrative of creation in grace, the fall, and the redemption—that therefore the proportionate natural end either does not exist or does exist but in a fashion so permeated by grace and sin

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as to be unintelligible in its own right. The idea that human reality in concreto includes, but also goes beyond, the natural, and that the natural is indeed knowable through an abstraction which attains a real principle in precision from its mode of existence and the differing relations it may have to God, is simply unthinkable to generations of theologians for whom ‘‘abstraction’’ is something very much like a term of abuse. Yet, at the same time, Hegel, and others for whom being itself is reduced to a mere abstraction, have contributed to this singular and crucial loss of the Catholic intellectual life. The result is that the font of intellectual life is now so dry that Catholic theologians barely know how to think about the proportionate nature of the human ens creatum any longer. For surely it is a crucial failure in logic to assert that, because there is more in the concrete than merely the proportionate ordering of nature, therefore this proportionate ordering of nature does not exist in the concrete or is unknowable in the concrete. This book is written to argue to the contrary. Sed contra: nature is not merely a negative concept, a sort of empty theological Newtonian space providing a hollow ‘‘place’’ or vacuole for grace. And precisely insofar as human nature has an ontological density and proportionate end, just so far is the knowledge of these essential to the work of the theologian. This is precisely why St. Thomas held that grace presupposes nature—not as an empty placeholder, but with its own created perfection positively ordered toward God within natural limits while being capable with divine aid of elevation to divine friendship and the beatific vision. The natural desire for God is precisely a sign of the fittingness of revelation. It is beyond cavil that the etiology of the view that nature is indistinguishable in concreto and a mere limit concept leads us to the interpretation of Aquinas by Henri de Lubac. Further, it leads us to a lowest common denominator concept of obediential potency (shared with Etienne Gilson) that does not acknowledge the full range of diverse types of ‘‘obediential potency’’ and so to a problem that a more careful consideration of Thomas’s teaching would have avoided. Thus, the first consideration of this volume is an essay seeking to provide both a response and perhaps more importantly, an appreciation for the genuine theological ends sought by de Lubac, in the course of responding to, and arguing for a correction of, his teaching.

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But is not all the talk about the proper ontological density of natura merely a Renaissance corruption of the teaching of St. Thomas? No. And the texts that prove this without the least doubt are included in the first chapter, an essay written on the occasion of a symposium honoring the distinguished and profound contribution of Dr. Lawrence Feingold’s The Natural Desire to See God According to St. Thomas Aquinas and His Interpreters. I have deliberately retained the character of this essay as part of the symposium largely verbatim (with two significant exceptions2), both because Dr. Feingold merits that his original and lengthy manuscript be read in its entirety by every soul interested in this question, and because this essay presents arguments that are virtually unknown by many who are accustomed to the rhetoric surrounding the nature/grace dispute but not the profound and clear teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas. For this occasion, I here wish not only to unfold the teaching of St. Thomas—well articulated by Dr. Feingold in his magisterial work—that there does exist a proportionate natural end distinct from the supernatural end. But also as noted above I wish to offer an explanation situating the teaching of Henri de Lubac on nature and grace within the problem situation to whose implications he was responding. It is the gravamen of this analysis that if one inherits a reduced and anti-theistic idea of ‘‘nature,’’ and if one also inherits an absolutization of the libertarian idea that human freedom lies naturally outside the divine causality and providence, then the denial of any natural proportionate end distinct from supernatural beatitude may seem essential to safeguarding the theonomic character of the human drama. Yet the premises from which such a conclusion spring are demonstrably false. Hence, while one may sympathize with the objectives motivating the negations of natura pura, one cannot share the conclusion inasmuch as the premises upon which it is conditioned are untrue. Hence, the first chapter of this book (On the Loss, and the Recovery, of Nature as a Theonomic Principle: Reflections on the Nature/ Grace Controversy) presents the texts of Aquinas exhibiting his teaching that there is a proportionate natural end distinguishable from the final supernatural end. It argues that both de Lubac and Gilson misprized Thomas’s application of obediential potency to the relation of

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nature to grace because they each reduced obediential potency to its lowest instance, mere miraculous transmutation. And finally it argues that de Lubac’s position would be the only one available to the thoughtful Christian were it necessary to accept as true the remote judgments that formed the problem situation to which he was responding—but that it is not necessary to accept them; that these seminal errors should be corrected rather than for apologetic reasons permitted to define the essential contours of theology; and that the price of escaping their force without disavowing them is a strategic disequilibration of the Christian synthesis. Like a firefighter who does not know that the fire has spread far beyond one room and who inadvertently intensifies the fire elsewhere by redirecting the airflow, de Lubac’s heroic effort to escape the implications of antecedent errors in certain critical respects served to amplify them. Nonetheless, any fruitful recovery of the richness of the tradition must achieve the theological end he sought—that of safeguarding the thoroughly theonomic character of the real—while avoiding the loss of nature that has ensued from the manner in which he sought to achieve the end of safeguarding the theonomic character of reality. The second chapter (A Criticism of Nature as Vacuole for Grace) addresses the implications of de Lubac’s account as these come to be harvested in the Theology of Karl Barth by Hans Urs von Balthasar. Here we will focus again upon: textual and doctrinal error with respect to the teaching of Aquinas; the loss of the ontological density of natura; the inconsistency of Balthasar with respect to this question—at one instant asserting that nature is merely a negative limit concept and at another affirming that an entire natural ethics may be licitly derived from it; the clear indebtedness of Balthasar to de Lubac’s notion of concrete nature as something necessarily so permeated with the elements of the fall and grace as to be indistinguishable therefrom; the entry onto the scene of quasi-Hegelian dialectic which quickly proceeds through the geometric point of nature to the line of grace without

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pausing to note nature’s ensuing utter lack of magnitude, and the consequent collapsing of subordinate formalities as assimilated to the form of the mystery of the cross—an assimilation that must be affirmed, to be sure, but which should not entail the canceling or overflight of the subordinate natural forms and finalities in concreto.

The third chapter (On the Impropriety of Treating Theology’s Handmaiden like an Analytic) attempts to address the suggestion that the natural ‘‘heir to the throne’’ of scholastic method within Catholic life is analytic philosophy—a suggestion particularly significant once the ontological density of created nature is returned to theology. Such a thought is perhaps rendered inevitable by the sheer sociological omnipresence of analytic thought in North American academic life. However, it is largely negated by examination of the question whether in the properly philosophic order there any longer is such a thing as analytic philosophy following the failed cognitive revolutions (Tractatus, Principia Mathematica, Ayer’s positivism, linguistic reductionism, etc.), in behalf of which Thomistic thought was generally shunned in North American academe after the Second Vatican Council. This chapter argues that analytic philosophy as practiced and inculcated today entails no normative unified method either for philosophy of nature or metaphysics, and reduces merely to a logical propaedeutic. Hence, there is no longer any such thing in the philosophic order as ‘‘analytic philosophy.’’ Rather, there are only analytic practitioners who may in different ways independently engage in philosophy. Thus, it is difficult to see how an analytic thought that has resolved itself into a pure meta-philosophy can meaningfully either substitute for, or even strategically assist in, the labors of classical Thomism that remain engaged with nature and being (which are not merely second-order or conceptual objects). It also argues that the omnipresence of analytic thought as a sociological factor poses the danger of a reduction of the speculative dimensions of Catholic philosophy in general—and Thomism in particular—to the apologetic confines of ‘‘opening up’’ analytic philosophy. The suggestion that analytic thought is prepared now to carry the baton of the philosophic appropriation of nature within theology is also historically parochial, failing to note that the introduction of new analytic modes and orders into Catholic academe generally was part of

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an historic secularization of Catholic institutional life. In this chapter I also take up the emblematic work of Fr. I. M. Bochenski (who also published as J. M. Bochenski), whose reduction of philosophy to metaphilosophy in behalf of logicism has a certain prophetic quality when viewed over against the historical resolution of analytic thought into nothing but pure meta-philosophic principles. A further word is perhaps necessary regarding the logic of including the third chapter of this book, for one may well wonder what an extremely general criticism of analytic thought in relation to philosophic method is doing in a book on the question of natura pura? Once it is understood that engagement with nature on its own terms, and not merely as a theological ipse dixit or pure posit, is required, the danger will always be that theologians will simply look to whatever happens to be prevalent in the world of thought at the moment as providing the requisite account of ‘‘the natural’’; today, of course, what is extraordinarily prevalent is what is called ‘‘analytic philosophy.’’ There is of course something to the idea that one must look to see what is commonly held, as there may indeed often be good reasons for it. However, in the realm of philosophy, this is not necessarily so unless we speak broadly of the consensus of millennia. The sad truth is that the account of nature given by enlightenment and post-enlightenment modernity and postmodernity has lost its ontological and metaphysical bearings. The negation of the error regarding nature in de Lubac’s thesis, and in Balthasar’s dialectical appropriation and extension of that thesis, needs to be followed by an appropriately and philosophically rigorous theonomic concept of nature. As we move onward from the erroneous nature/grace thesis, we pass over a trap door, and it behooves one to close the trap door before walking over it. That trap door is the sociological circumambience of ‘‘analytic thought,’’ which superordinates logic to authentic method, and most of which (surely not all, but still most) is prey to the errors of scientism, logicism, or, alternately, skepticism. It is quite true that analytic thought does not require scientism, but inasmuch as it requires no unified authentic method in the philosophy of nature and metaphysics of every analytic practitioner—while still it acknowledges that the positive sciences are first-order disciplines—such

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thought tends to inculcate the view that philosophy is a second-order logical homunculus of positive science. Yet it is widely taken—or at least takes itself—to be the voice of the contemporary civilized mind contemplating natural order. This sociological omnipresence of analytic thought is not to be ignored or taken lightly. It needs to be observed, lest the effect of rejecting de Lubac’s thesis be to fall immediately back into the naturalism and anti-theistic positivism he rightly and profoundly opposed. Without the rekindling of the appropriate theoretic habitus—without philosophic contemplation and analysis of natura— there is grave danger of falling into an anti-theistic naturalism or pure scientism, in which the only first-order propositions derive from positive science, and philosophy is construed as merely second-order logical consideration of implications. The vade mecum for this situation is: the full philosophical contemplation of nature together with the implied realization that nature and natural order are theonomic principles. The fourth chapter (Why Natura Pura Is Not the Theological Stalking Horse for Secularist Minimalism or Pelagianism) addresses an erroneous argument shared by widely divergent critics. This argument is the following: If one accepts the reality of a nature knowable in precision from grace, with its own proportionate end distinct from the beatific vision—a nature that God could have created outside of sanctifying grace, but did not—then grace will necessarily become (it is alleged) a mere optional accessory addition to a nature that is perfectly fine without it. One might summarize this as the view that if nature and natural order are intelligible, then one is bound to be something of a Pelagian. Further, this putatively ‘‘perfectly fine’’ nature, it is thought, implies secularist minimalism in public life as a corollary derivative, such that public life is sealed off from theological scrutiny or criticism to which it is, and must be, necessarily and permanently closed. Such critics hence view the very idea of the relative autonomy and integrity of nature vis-a`-vis the order of grace as implying minimalist secularist consensus in the public square. On this matter I offer reflections on the thoughts of three authors who, in nuanced and limited fashion, do nonetheless seem to approach this thesis: Jacques Maritain, who propounds a view of purely practical, rights-based consensus amongst people who have no theoretic common ground; Jean Porter,

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who defends a similar reliance upon the secular appropriation of a ‘‘rights talk’’ that is originally of Christian origin; and David Schindler, Sr., who regards the idea of a distinguishable and relatively autonomous natural order of ends as an implicit superordination of autonomy over created receptivity in social life, with the consequent implied secularist minimalism. Whether carefully observing the seeming ineluctability of this implication, cautiously affirming its helpful aspects, or lamenting it, these three Catholic voices each seem in some respect to accept that such an implication exists. In this chapter I argue the sed contra. The fifth chapter offers summary conclusion. An appendix considers the motion of Cardinal Ratzinger’s thought toward his Regensburg Lecture as Pope Benedict the XVI, placing it in the context of the analysis of this book. The present work is, then, an attempt at a brief vade mecum for a generation of theologians and philosophers whose formation has for the most part not underscored for them the crucial theological and philosophic importance of an intellective contemplation of the whole ontological density of nature. Throughout this work the objective is the vindication, together with the consideration of the import for theology, of the twofold doctrine of natura pura, i.e., the doctrine (1) that even here and now, in the concrete order, there is impressed upon each human person a natural order to the proximate, proportionate, natural end from which the species of man is derived, an end that is in principle naturally knowable and distinct from the final and supernatural end; and (2) that the human person could without injustice have been created with this natural ordering alone, outside of sanctifying grace, in puris naturalibus, and without the further ordering of man to supernatural beatific vision (for the call to grace is an unmerited gift). This is of course the doctrine that, contrary to common misperception, is maximally developed and theologically deployed within the work of St. Thomas Aquinas and the classically Thomistic school of theology and philosophy deriving from it. Hence, the defense of this thesis is in large part the defense of Thomistic realism regarding the doctrine of the distinction between the orders of grace and nature.3

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Further, the whole first part of the book—the first two chapters— articulate the theological and philosophic case ad intra for St. Thomas’s much-misunderstood thesis regarding natura pura, whereas the whole second half of the book articulates theologically and philosophically what is genetically necessary to preserve the healthfulness of the reference to pure nature in philosophy and in the public sphere generally: First, in the philosophical realm generally (genuine theistic metaphysics, philosophy of nature, and philosophic anthropology, to be distinguished from a merely partial meta-philosophy or logical propaedeutic); Second, in the public sphere (not secularist minimalism, but natural wisdom regarding the existence of God; prudence in regard to the development of the e´lan of the first precepts of the natural law as efficacious in secondary and tertiary precepts within a teleologically unified and theistic natural law; and openness to the practical augmenting of natural moral virtue and moral philosophy by moral theology which alone can fully judge the concrete situation within which nature now exists, despite the real and essential adequation of moral philosophy to the nature of the good for man).

Of course, the second half of the book is more topical to contemporary Westerners, and specifically beyond that to contemporary North Americans. But one hopes that this disturbing fact of the book’s clear relevance to contemporary theology, philosophy, thought, culture, and politics should not stand in the way of anyone reading it.

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Chapter One

ON THE LOSS, AND T HE RECOVERY, OF NATURE AS A THEONOMIC PRINCIPLE: REFLECTIONS ON T HE NATURE/GRACE CONTROVERSY Introduction Dr. Lawrence Feingold is to be thanked for the comprehensive, instructive, and irenic character of his work The Natural Desire to See God According to St. Thomas Aquinas and His Interpreters.1 The doctrinal and historical intricacy, the sympathy, indeed, the sheer largeness of intent of this book, merits extensive consideration. Hence, insofar as mastery of a teaching implies critical command of the contrary case, the publishing of this book marks a potent challenge for those who assume—on the warrant of de Lubac’s claim—that most of St. Thomas’s commentators have preferred ‘‘Renaissance corruptions’’ to the genuine teaching of Aquinas. Considering this claim in detail, this volume establishes both systematically and exegetically that the case is otherwise. The Natural Desire to See God According to St. Thomas Aquinas and His Interpreters merits careful attention for this historical, exegetic, and doctrinal contribution, as also for helping a generation of theologians and philosophers to appreciate the importance of this controversy and the profundity of the Thomistic commentatorial tradition. Likewise, this essay is penned with one eye focused on John Milbank’s recent work The Suspended Middle.2 This work—which rightly discerns the profundity of the questions pursued by de Lubac and the importance of their implications for theology—nonetheless fails to From the Symposium on Lawrence Feingold’s The Natural Desire to See God, published in Nova et Vetera, English Edition 5, no. 1 (2007).

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The L oss of N ature as Theonomic Principle 1 1

discern the larger stage on which the loss of nature as a theonomic principle has been played, and the distortive results it has both in prejudicing the nature/grace question, and for theology as a whole. As the third section of this present essay is devoted to articulating, the relative and limited integrity of nature within the actual teaching of St. Thomas has been the casualty of a deific view of freedom. This view of freedom was bound to separate God from the natural world of human action, and equally bound to suggest efforts at retrieval by dissolving nature into supernature and contradicting Thomas’s clear teaching that there is a proximate natural end inferior to the supernatural end.3 In this essay, it is my intent to contribute to the project of facilitating a renewed appreciation of St. Thomas’s profound teaching—explored so rigorously by the commentators—on the character of the relation between the natural and the supernatural. I shall try to achieve three things. First, this essay will survey the general speculative dimensions of the controversy about the character of the natural desire for God, so closely related to the question of the natural end; second, it will explore in particular the contours of what I take to be the common error of de Lubac and Gilson respecting the obediential potency for grace and glory; third, it will argue that de 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. I will conclude by observing the protean implications of these issues for the effort to understand, and to transcend, an invertebrate postmodern theological pluralism that itself presupposes the loss of natural order as a theonomic principle. While the first objective of this essay speaks for itself, the second and third considerations require a preliminary gloss. St. Thomas’s clear and classical teaching is that human nature is defined in its species in relation to the natural and proximate end as distinct from the supernatural beatific end. Further, he teaches that man possesses a purely passive obediential potency for grace—a potency that exists only in relation to the active agency of God—a teaching that explicates how supernatural acts are simultaneously our own yet also enacted only through the grace of God. Yet a unilateral stress upon certain aspects of St. Thomas’s teaching about the natural desire for God led de Lubac to deny the

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existence of a proportionate natural end as opposed to the supernatural finis ultimus. And both de Lubac and Gilson4 came to think of obediential potency as a mere generic susceptibility to miracle, denying the distinct, specific sense of obediential potency as applied by St. Thomas Aquinas to the relation of nature to grace. The motivating reason for these departures from the teaching of St. Thomas appears to repose in a wider theological concern springing from the loss of nature as a theonomic principle and from a creative yet defective strategy for recovery of this loss. This wider concern is of course not irrelevant to the present situation of theology (and of philosophy as well). Before turning to these points, however, a rather extensive word is owed to the general consideration of the nature/grace problematic, and simultaneously to the synthesis of St. Thomas’s actual texts, inclusive of those which, given the profundity of de Lubac’s influence, it has become customary to pass over in silence. Only after this extensive general treatment will the focus narrow, first, to address the decisive loss for theological anthropology of the classical conception of obediential potency; and second, to consider the defective theological problematic faced by de Lubac—a problematic for whose loss of nature as a theonomic principle a ‘‘natural desire’’ for supernatural beatitude could seem to be—while yet not being—a sufficient cure. At the start of this essay, I beg the privilege of an author to request that those for whom the first two sections of this argument may be uncongenial consider the wider treatment of the third section before assessing its success or failure. For only the third section of the essay offers an interpretation of the strategic derailment of theology—rooted in the loss of natural order as a theonomic principle—to which de Lubac’s nature/grace thesis constituted a creative but flawed response. Because this loss persists through much contemporary thought, it becomes all the more vital to correct it at its root rather than merely to extemporize responses to effects that occur further on in the chain of implications.

Dimensions of the Controversy The distinction between nature and grace is a foundational distinction for Christian life. This distinction is helpfully approached through the

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The L oss of Nature a s Theonomic Principle 1 3

interpretative schools that, prior to la nouvelle the´ologie, successfully articulated and indeed safeguarded this vital distinction. The doctrinal analysis of this distinction is rich with implications both for the contemplative and the practical life, and indeed systematically inflects theology such that a wrong emphasis on this question will generally lead to the symbiotic evils on the one hand of fideism, and on the other, of rationalism: twin aberrations. Yet weighty theological considerations motivated great scholars and lovers of the Church such as Henri de Lubac to read St. Thomas’s texts with an exclusory eye, neglecting texts that clearly rendered his own account problematic. These considerations remain with us today—all the more so inasmuch as the texts overlooked by de Lubac, and the antecedent commentatorial tradition, are little known. It helps to put to rest the exegetic difficulty. It is without doubt true that there is a problem in the very texts of Aquinas, and a problem which seemingly does not allow much room for maneuver with respect to its solution because the doctrinal points that constitute the elements of the problem—one is almost tempted to say ‘‘constitute the contradiction’’—are starkly and clearly stated in St. Thomas’s text. Yet the realization that there are indeed two sets of texts, one of which was not merely an interposed corruption, itself marks a decisive advance toward correct interpretation of Thomas’s teaching. So, there are two sets of texts. On the one hand, we have St. Thomas’s arguments that to know God is the end of every intelligent substance (Scg III, 25); that there is indeed a natural desire for God (Scg III, 25; Sth I–II, q. 3, a. 8); and that no natural desire may be in vain (Sth I, q. 75, a. 6; Compendium 104). On the other hand, we have his clear affirmation that human and angelic nature are distinguished based upon their differing natural and proximate ends whereas their supernatural beatific end is the same—‘‘Those beings whose proximate and natural end is one and the same are one in species. However, eternal beatitude is a final and supernatural end’’ (Sth I, q. 75, a. 7, ad 1; Quaestiones de anima, a. 7, ad 10)5—and further, that ‘‘in the very beginning of creation human nature was ordained to beatitude, not as to an end proper to man by reason of his nature, but given him solely by divine liberality’’ (Quaestiones disputatae de veritate, q. 14, a. 10, ad

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2);6 that man could have been created in a state of pure nature lacking any supernatural aid of grace (Quod. I, q. 4, a. 3, resp.);7 and that, had man been created by God in such a state, the absence of the beatific vision would not have been a punishment because there is a difference between ‘‘necessarily not to have’’ and ‘‘not necessarily to have,’’ and that it is the second of these that would apply had man been created outside of sanctifying grace (De malo, q. 5, a. 1, ad 15). Regarding this last, if the natural desire for God were formally a desire for supernaturally beatific vision, it would follow that to be perpetually deprived of this end proper to nature would be a punishment. Yet St. Thomas teaches exactly the contrary.8 Finally, among this second set of texts, one finds that St. Thomas clearly argues in Summa theologiae I, question 62, article 2, that only grace can direct the movement of the will toward beatitude: The angels needed grace to turn toward God insofar as He is the object of beatitude. For as was explained above (q. 60, a. 2), the will’s natural movement is the source [principium] of all the things we will. But the will’s natural inclination is toward what is naturally fitting for it. And so if something is beyond its nature, then the will cannot be moved toward it without the assistance of some other principle that lies beyond its nature [ab aliquo alio principio supernaturali]. For instance, it is clear that fire has a natural inclination to produce heat and to generate fire; however, it lies beyond fire’s natural power to generate flesh, and so fire does not have an inclination toward generating flesh except insofar as it is moved as an instrument by the nutritive soul. Now it was shown above, in the discussion of our knowledge of God (q. 12, a. 4), that to see God through his essence—which is what the ultimate beatitude of a rational creature consists in—lies beyond the nature of any created intellect. Hence, no rational creature can have a movement of will that is ordered to this sort of beatitude unless he is moved by a supernatural agent; this is what we call the assistance of grace. And so one has to claim that an angel could not have turned with his will toward this sort of beatitude except through the assistance of grace.9

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The second set of texts hedges about, and delimits, the possible signification of the first set, and vice versa. That is, if we do not wish to suppose St. Thomas’s texts to exhibit raw incoherence, then we will need to read these texts in relation one to another. This is clear, for example, with texts such as that of the Summa theologiae I–II, question 3, article 8, which addresses the question: ‘‘Whether man’s happiness consists in the vision of the divine essence?’’ In this article St. Thomas affirms that man naturally desires to know the essence of any cause once he knows it to be, and that only knowing the essence of God can bring to rest the natural desire of the intellect to know the essence of the cause of finite things. So, he affirms with respect to perfect happiness that it can be brought about only by the vision of God. One observes, however, that the desire in question is elicited (it is compared with desiring to know the cause of an eclipse, which clearly presupposes prior knowledge). Note also that the question concerns that in which, simpliciter and absolutely speaking, perfect happiness consists. There is no reference to whether this is possible, or not possible, although St. Thomas seems to be writing with the theological assurance of its possibility (a possibility that, as Feingold reminds us,10 St. Thomas elsewhere identifies as flowing from divine faith, as in Summa contra gentiles, III, chapter 153: ‘‘Fides autem, quae causatur ex gratia, declarat possibilem esse unionem hominis ad Deum secundum perfectam fruitionem, in qua beatitudo consistit’’). Nor does St. Thomas deploy here any argument regarding the impossibility of natural desire being in vain.11 He seeks only to determine what constitutes perfect happiness. Likewise, whether there is a lesser felicity proportioned to human nature as such he does not here address, and certainly does not here deny. Since St. Thomas does affirm it elsewhere, for example in contradistinguishing human and angelic natural ends (every end has the nature of the good—so one is speaking of some measure of felicity) as opposed to the unity of the supernatural finis ultimus; or in distinguishing imperfect from perfect felicity (Sth I–II, q. 5, a. 5), it is clearly not a text establishing that seeing God is the properly natural end of man. Indeed, in the Summa theologiae I–II, question 5, article 5, ad 3, St. Thomas insists that the species of the imperfect operation subject to

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man’s natural power is distinct from the species of the perfect operation that is man’s happiness (Imperfecta autem operatio, quae subiacet naturali hominis potestati, non est eiusdem speciei cum operatione illa perfecta quae est hominis beatitudo, cum operationis species dependeat ex obiecto). Thus, while there is more to be said about this text, the Summa theologiae I–II, question 3, article 8, establishes precisely what it set out to establish: that perfect beatitude for man can be found only in the vision of God. Manifestly, reading such texts within their precisely delimited reference, and refusing to extend them beyond, requires a knowledge of the text, an understanding of the reasoning of St. Thomas, and an intellectual asceticism that refuses to lose sight of the whole for the sake of exuberance with the part. De Lubac’s argument stresses the first set of texts, and more or less passes by the second (save when generically suggesting that these and other sources of Thomist reservation regarding his thesis are Renaissance corruptions concocted by Cajetan). I do not recollect de Lubac anywhere commenting extensively upon the second set of texts12—in particular either with regard to the teaching of Aquinas that the absence of beatific vision for man in a state of pure nature would not constitute a punishment, or in relation to St. Thomas’s clear teaching that human nature is defined by its natural and proximate end, which he says is distinct from the supernatural finis ultimus. The error of the historian who treats speculative propositions from without, thus failing theoretically to reconcile component parts of the doctrine to which they belong, forms part of this story, as does also the unfortunate mistrust of the scientia required to distill the meaning of these texts. That the pedagogic and heuristic limits of the scholastic project to which he was exposed may accidentally have contributed to kindling such mistrust in a mind as cultured and learned as de Lubac’s constitutes a tragedy within the twentieth-century history of Thomism. Yet, the omission to which this mistrust led is, with the distance of time, difficult to deny.13 The rediscovery of the needed scientia is a necessity for contemplating the distinctions in Thomas’s texts and articulated by the commentators to enable a felicitous contemplation of the Gospel. As an

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illustration one notes the distinction between the mode of being and the mode of realization of a divinely caused effect—as visible, for example, in the distinction between raising a body from the dead (restoring its natural life) by miracle, and achieving an effect whose being is intrinsically supernatural (for example, supernatural charity, the lumen gloriae, the Incarnation of Christ). Perhaps equally helpful is the realization that the putative Renaissance corruptions14 interposed by allegedly rationalizing scholastic interpreters exist within the very texts of St. Thomas himself—something which the astute critic may be disinclined to perceive as evidence for time travel. After all, if human nature has its species in relation to its natural end which is distinct from the supernatural end, then this teaching of Thomas alone destroys the proposition that for Thomas supernatural beatific vision is the natural end (and this formulation that beatific vision is the natural end by contrast occurs nowhere in Thomas’s text: yes, God is the natural end, but God as First Cause of these effects, not God precisely as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). Likewise, if supernatural beatitude were the natural end of man, then to be perpetually deprived of it by God would necessarily constitute a punishment: while according to Thomas (and in a different way also according to de Lubac, who with all believers admitted the gratuity of grace and of the call to beatitude—it is the compatibility of this belief with his thesis which poses the difficulty), were man to die in the hypothetical state of pure nature and so not attain to the beatific vision, the inaccessibility of this vision would not be a punishment. Failure to attend to such texts naturally inclines one to read the first set of texts about natural desire for God as straightforward and unproblematic, whereas in Thomas they exist within a wider philosophic and theological context necessary to their interpretation: a context of scientia which requires actual mastery of a body of natural distinctions. Hence, those whose theology rests exclusively within a broadly theistic, historicized, cultural hermeneutic will tend to lack the metaphysical entry capital to commence interpretation of Aquinas on these points, and so tend to make scant sense of the controversy that so divided de Lubac from the consensus of the Thomistic commentatorial tradition.

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The truth is that any full regard for the complexity of St. Thomas’s teaching would suggest at the very least a certain reluctance to import into the first set of texts conclusions that are incompatible with many unimpeachably clear and unquestionable formulations of Thomas elsewhere. For instance, the teaching that to know God is the end of every intelligent substance, apart from St. Thomas’s wider teaching, might be read as suggesting that man lacks a proportionate natural finality (something Thomas expressly denies), and so in the absence of other texts might seem to suggest that the beatific finality is indeed properly speaking the natural end of man. The difference between an ontologically imperfect end proportionate to nature, and the perfect beatific end achieved solely through divine aid, requires advertence not alone to more texts, but to distinct aspects of the real. Yet as regards texts, even if one ignores the second set of texts, what should one make of those such as the following from the Summa contra gentiles, III, chapter 25, titled ‘‘That to Know God Is the End of Every Intellectual Substance’’ (rather a different title than ‘‘intrinsically supernatural beatitude is the end of every intelligent substance,’’ one should note): ‘‘Thus however slight may be the knowledge of God to which the intellect can attain, this will be the intellect’s last end, rather than a perfect knowledge of lower intelligibles.’’ What function does the ‘‘however slight’’ play, save to accommodate the manifest difference between a natural end perfect in its order with all the ensuing natural limits, and the supernatural end that is absolutely ontologically perfect and transcendent of all natural limit? Natural understanding of God—if taken seriously and straightforwardly—is necessarily limited with respect to God because conditioned by finite evidence. Yet this natural desire and natural understanding constitutes a purely passive obediential potency, which under the active agency of God renders man capable of the supernatural vision of God. Nonetheless the first set of texts emphasized by de Lubac raises genuine problems of prime importance. Without doubt the question of natural desire is profound. What is the natural desire for God, and what is its object? Is this desire equivalently a natural desire for supernatural beatitude? And how could the natural desire for God not target supernatural beatitude—for is not the object of supernatural beatitude

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God in his essence, and is not the natural desire for God a desire to know God in his essence? That this desire reaches God only as cause of finite nature and under a formality infinitely inferior to supernatural beatitude—attaining God as a function of the natural desire to know the essence of any cause once it is known to exist, rather than as specified directly by the inner being of God15—requires insight into the requisites of natural teleology. Likewise, when we speak of ‘‘natural’’ desire for God, what is the sense of ‘‘natural’’? Do we mean to refer to the voluntas ut natura or to what is the naturally befitting object of the will as such, and so to claim that the hidden reality of God is the natural befitting object of the will? Is the will as nature (voluntas ut natura) and in precision from grace naturally proportioned to the hidden substance of God—is it expressly and explicitly a deific faculty ordered apart from grace to the intrinsically supernatural vision of God? Or is not the befitting natural object of the will instead good in general, the universal good? The natural inclination clearly is for Thomas that toward which the thing naturally tends, which involves action and movement. Surely Thomas teaches that ‘‘the natural movement of the will is the principle of all things that we will. But the will’s natural inclination is directed towards what is in keeping with its nature’’ (Sth I, q. 62, a. 2, emphasis added). Hence, the will cannot be moved toward something beyond its nature such as supernatural beatitude without extrinsic supernatural assistance— about which last he states that ‘‘this is what we call the assistance of grace’’ (Sth I, q. 62, a. 2). If the natural desire of the will in the sense of voluntas ut natura is not ordered to supernatural beatitude, must it not then be the case that the natural desire for God is a desire elicited by prior knowledge of the existence of God?16 Cajetan’s ‘‘hypothesis’’ of pure nature is often scorned as suggesting a ‘‘layer cake’’ of nature and grace. Yet his famed commentatorial treatment seems to suggest that the natural desire for God is modalized by the state in which nature exists, so that this desire would be found in one way had God not created man from the beginning within the privileged life of sanctifying grace, and is found in another in the context of man’s creation in the state of grace and of the data of supernatural revelation. The scholastic consensus quo ante—that the natural

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desire for God is of itself an inefficacious desire within the ambit of the general desire for knowledge of being, and is a conditional desire save in relation to the promises of revelation—seems enhanced in a remarkably subtle way by Cajetan’s contextualizing of natural order within the life of grace.17 The following points articulate St. Thomas’s teaching regarding the natural desire for God: The arc of natural desire for God (viewed in itself and apart from grace and revelation) is specified by natural knowledge, and so cannot formally reach to the essence of God as such, howsoever much it reaches it materially.18 The natural desire for God is a desire consequent on the natural ordination of intellect to being, a desire to know the essence of a cause once that cause is known to exist. This desire is elicited by the acquired knowledge that God is, rather than being equivalent to the voluntas ut natura (or, for that matter, the intellectus ut natura)—because what the will naturally desires as its befitting object is the good in general and not specifically the essence of God (howsoever much it be true that God is the subsisting universal good).19 The natural desire for God is not of itself efficacious. That is, we have no natural capacity to know the essence of the First Cause quidditatively. Although we do indeed naturally move toward contemplation of God as First Cause, this motion cannot reach the divine essence. Indeed, this desire is thoroughly conditioned by the finite evidence whence it arises, such that it is not proportioned to God, but rather is proportioned to the intellective desire to understand the world in general which gives rise to it.20 But to desire to know God in Himself under the ratio of ‘‘cause of the world’’ is somewhat like the desire to know Einstein under the ratio of ‘‘man wearing a raincoat.’’ As ‘‘man wearing a raincoat’’ is an accidental denomination vis-a`-vis Einstein, so to desire God as cause of the world is strictly speaking not truly to desire God, Who is infinitely more than cause of the world. Indeed, for God to be cause of the world signifies something in the world, whereas God infinitely transcends the world. Whether the hypothetical but immutable divine will should will the universe to be, or not, does not alter the

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infinite goodness of God. Creation is an utterly free and gratuitous act of divine generosity. There are diverse ways in which this natural desire for God can exist. For example, the natural desire would exist in one way had man never been assisted with supernatural aid;21 it exists in another way in the actual order of providence wherein man is created in sanctifying grace and where the real possibility of the beatific vision is divinely revealed. Where revelation makes the real possibility of beatific vision known, this renders the otherwise conditional desire to know God to become unconditional. Apart from revelation the desire would be conditional— ‘‘were it possible’’ one would will it. Just as one might wish to live forever, or never to make a mistake—both logically, but seemingly not really, possible—so one would wish to know the essence of the First Cause, save that in this case one genuinely would not know what one is wishing for. After revelation, the desire becomes unconditional. Once God reveals Himself and his gift of divine life, the natural desire thus elevated and supernaturalized in grace inclines toward it absolutely by inclining toward the infinitely higher end of union with the Uncreated Persons of the Holy Trinity. For the object of the natural desire for God under the ratio of ‘‘cause of these effects’’ is incorporated within the graced desire of God as God. This idea of the modalization of the natural desire according to the states in which it may be found, contextualizes it in relation to grace. Because St. Thomas’s focus is upon the given providential synthesis, his principal treatment of the natural desire is a treatment that takes it up as it actually is to be found in this present order, and not merely as it would be found in the hypothetical state of pure nature (although the phrase from Summa contra gentiles, III, chapter 25—‘‘however slight may be the knowledge of God to which the intellect can attain this will be the intellect’s last end’’—seems a nod of the head to the state of the natural desire apart from revelation, since it expressly considers a state in which the last end of the intellect is the wisdom about God as First Cause that does not reach the divine essence: ‘‘however slight’’). Finally, specific obediential potency is not a mere susceptibility to miracle but represents what a nature is capable of with the assistance of the active power of God. Hence, while it remains true that grace is an extrinsic principle vis-a`-vis human nature—human nature is not grace, nor is it law, which is why St. Thomas in the prologue to his treatise on law in the Summa theologiae identifies grace and law as extrinsic principles—

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nonetheless, grace does work within human nature as such whose rational character makes it with divine assistance to be susceptible of elevation to supernatural life, action, and merit. Grace thus elevates human nature and works within it, enabling the Christian to perform genuinely supernaturalized acts meritorious of beatitude.

The convergence of both Dominican and Jesuit commentatorial authors—Sylvester of Ferrara, Cajetan, Ban˜ez, John of St. Thomas, Sua´rez—around themes such as these within St. Thomas’s work is all the more remarkable for having fallen off the map of a generation of theologians. Of course, these commentators do not all agree (and some would dissent from certain of the elements above), yet, for none of them is the natural desire for God a desire for intrinsically supernatural beatitude.22 This is an arresting theological consensus, whose density and ascetic rigor contrasts markedly with the loss of awareness of texts, contexts, and doctrinal implications that has come to dominate accounts of the relations of nature and grace, or—for that matter—of theology and philosophy. Correct doctrine with respect to the relation of grace to nature is of the greatest strategic import for theology, by reason of the theological synthesis it sustains. By contrast, a teaching that renders human nature to be a vacuole or pure naught, lacking proportionate created integrity and unknowable apart from the beatific vision, seems to make the doctrine of Nicea to be unintelligible. For what is assumed in the Word is defined in precision from the datum of its assumption. One does not say, ‘‘The Person of the Word assumed the nature that is defined by its being assumed by the Person of the Word’’—for that would render hypostatic union a necessary function of finite human nature. The idea that the natural end of man—the end from which human nature derives its species—is that divine good directly known and loved by God alone, seems to imply that man is naturally deific. But the connatural and direct knowledge and love of God is verified in God alone, howsoever much it is the case that all creation is indirectly ordered to God as End.23 What defines human nature, as St. Thomas Aquinas expressly and everywhere affirms, is the proximate and natural end rather than the

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supernatural end.24 Hence, for example, these words of Fr. Brian Shanley regarding the text of Aquinas are simply false: ‘‘It needs to be emphasized at the outset that Aquinas holds that man has one and only one end or telos: the beatific vision of God. There are not two human ends, one natural and the other supernatural, as was thought in older, erroneous versions of two-tiered Thomism.’’25 If he had written that for Thomas there is but one finis ultimus, which is beatific vision, or that there are not two ‘‘coequal’’ ends, this would be true. But while there is only one finis ultimus, which is supernatural, this does not rule out an end proportionate to nature that is further ordered in grace to the ultimate supernatural finality. Already we have cited, above, the words of St. Thomas: ‘‘Those beings whose proximate and natural end is one and the same are one in species. However, eternal beatitude is a final and supernatural end.’’26 Clearly, then, for St. Thomas there is a proximate and natural end, defining of the species, which is distinct from and inferior to the final end of supernatural beatitude. Further, nature is the preamble to grace and not merely its postscript. Yet lacking natural finality distinct from supernatural beatitude, nature does indeed become merely a placeholder for grace, as though the manifestation of what man is capable of with divine grace did not presuppose nature, or, as though in order to be theocentric, nature must already be ordered to supernatural beatitude apart from grace. Speech about nature anticipating grace is utterly vain in a context within which the order of nature is not distinguished from the order of grace. Since powers are distinguished by acts, and acts by objects, and objects by ends, to distinguish the two orders is to acknowledge that the natural end is distinct from, and less perfect than, the supernatural end. Nor is this to free nature from God, because natural order is theonomic, the impress of the ordering wisdom of God. Indeed, natural law obligates man to receive whatsoever God deigns to reveal. Further, man’s creation in sanctifying grace orders nature to a higher end—it is causally efficacious—such that sin itself does not put man into a state of ‘‘pure nature’’ but rather does harm to nature (not, of course, substantially, but accidentally, in lessening the strength of the motion toward the end). Just as a man who climbs up the Empire State Building and then

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jumps loses something more than the height he had attained (namely, his life), so nature as concretely further ordered in grace is profoundly harmed when grace is lost (although, again, accidentally, in regard to the vigor of its motion to the end, and not essentially: fallen man is yet human), precisely because it has itself been ordered through grace toward the more exalted beatific end. But the very idea of the supernatural is not the idea of a merely natural completion. The attempt to argue that, if nature and grace are distinct, no natural harm should therefore ensue upon the loss of grace, is an argument that implicitly fails to accept the causal efficacy of grace. Once ordered in and by grace at creation, thereinafter human nature will be vain and frustrated apart from the supernatural end. That is, human nature, as created in sanctifying grace, is as such remotely ordered to the supernatural end by this fact—the very reason why St. Thomas, in the Summa theologiae I–II, question 89, article 6, will argue that the first morally significant act of a boy who has not been baptized is either damnific or salvific (because, implicitly, he either seeks the due good as such—which requires grace—or does not, which is damnific).27 That the two orders are distinct hardly voids the causal efficacy of grace. Nor is the causal efficacy of grace transmutative of species, because the natural end remains in its integrity as further ordered to the supernatural end—just as knowledge of and desire for God merely as cause of finite creation is in grace ordered to knowledge of and desire for God as He is in Himself. Further, human nature is such that with divine aid it is capable of supernatural beatitude—the nature itself need not be transmuted, but rather only aided and elevated by the active agency of God. While Scotus implies that the appetite for supernatural beatitude is in substance natural, Aquinas pronouncedly and clearly denies this proposition.28 With St. Thomas, one may hold that the way in which the higher creation of man and angel is naturally ordered to God as End is infinitely lesser than the way in which supernatural grace, elevating and redirecting nature and enabling it to participate in the very love of God, orders the creature to God as End. The ontological reditus incorporates a natural element (and its epistemic requisites) within the life of grace. Human and angelic nature are indeed ordered to God in

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precision from grace, but along an infinitely lower trajectory than that of supernatural grace, so that only with divine aid may these natures be elevated within the higher arc that passes into the very mystery of God Himself. Further, the natural is not an arena of autonomy from God: all created being and action derive from God as First Cause. Thus, what frequently is presented as unhistorical novelty is paradoxically the teaching not only of Aquinas but of the consensus of the Catholic theological tradition. This is not merely an historically curious vindication of great commentators become obscure, but a rediscovery of the genuine synthesis of St. Thomas: a synthesis wherein the natural mode of participation in eternal law is transcended by the nobler participation of the eternal law in supernatural grace. That the teloi of these participations are distinct, are materially but not formally the same—God as principle of created nature as opposed to God revealed in Himself (for there is infinitely more in God than merely being ‘‘principle of created nature,’’ just as there is more in Einstein than being ‘‘man wearing a raincoat’’)—is essential to the integrity of St. Thomas’s teaching. Likewise, that the natural desire for God represents an obediential potency whereby the active agency of God may elevate man to achieve distinctive supernatural friendship indicates that the lower participation of the eternal law is presupposed to the higher. Nonexistent natures obviously are not elevated by grace, and a nature lacking a proportionate end would be a nature lacking any actual natural tendency whatsoever, for actual motion is only known in relation to the end to which it tends. Now, every orthodox Catholic—as de Lubac insisted—considers that nature has no claim on grace (as de Lubac put it, ‘‘in my view, which is that of every Catholic, any idea of a claim of created nature in relation to the supernatural should be absolutely excluded’’29) and that man cannot really move toward supernatural beatitude without grace. It follows that since man cannot under any circumstances move toward supernatural beatitude without grace that no purely natural motion toward such an end apart from grace and revelation is possible. This is true quite apart from sin: even had man been created without the supernatural aid of grace and had done no evil, he still would not

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be able to actually move toward intrinsically supernatural beatitude inasmuch as this infinitely transcends finite nature (which is not to deny that man naturally would have been able to move asymptotically toward God as causal principle of created nature). But in the absence of natural motion (howsoever accidentally impeded) toward X, X is not said to be the natural end. One recollects the words of Summa theologiae I, question 62, article 2: ‘‘But the will’s natural inclination is toward what is naturally fitting for it. And so if something is beyond its nature, then the will cannot be moved toward it without the assistance of some other principle that lies beyond its nature [ab aliquo alio principio supernaturali].’’ Just as reading Shakespeare does not finalize the motion of the Tulip because the Tulip naturally exhibits no actual tendency or motion toward reading Shakespeare, and the Tulip is defined not by reading Shakespeare but by the end toward which it actually moves, so human nature is defined in relation to the end proportionate to that nature and toward which it actually moves as from its natural inclination. As he puts it in the Summa contra gentiles: Also. Everything is directed to a suitable end in proportion to its form: since different species have different ends. Now, the end whereto man is directed by the assistance of divine grace is above human nature. Therefore man needs, over and above, a supernatural form and perfection, so as to be suitably directed to that same end. Besides. It behooves man to reach his last end by means of his own actions. Now, everything acts in proportion to its form. Therefore, in order that man may be brought to his last end by means of his own actions, he needs to receive an additional form, whereby his actions may be rendered effective in meriting his last end.30 There is simply no doubt that this is Thomas’s teaching.31 Perhaps the understanding of the natural desire for and motion toward God as distinct from the graced desire for and motion toward God has lapsed so very much is precisely because theologians no longer consider themselves in need of understanding natural motion and natural teleology.32 Yet

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if ever there were a question that requires natural teleology—of the sort that Thomas develops with exquisite philosophic care—surely it is the question of the natural desire for God. Further, there is no reductionist aspect to this consideration. It is because human nature in its spiritual character is such as to be able to be further aided by God to enjoy divine friendship—further aided to know God not merely as principle of nature but as He is in Himself— that human nature is said to manifest an obediential potency for grace and glory in relation to the active agency of God. This is indeed not a natural potency, but a purely passive potency of a given nature in relation to the active agency of God. The obediential potency enables the creature to receive from God an actuation radically disproportionate to its unassisted nature and natural potencies. Here again the truth is manifest that only those who discern the profundity of the gift of created nature see how far grace and revelation transcend it: far from naturalism, it is the exaltation of the supernatural order that follows from these considerations. These reflections, while dispensing in principle with the conundrums of a created nature putatively hot-wired into supernatural beatitude, imply and indeed invite a complementary project. That complementary project consists in seeing how it is that the theological intention of de Lubac might most fittingly have been fulfilled not by the hypothesis of a creature whose natural desire is deific, but by the very notion of obediential potency itself. Further, this complementary project needs to explain the historical and doctrinal elements that remotely but really condition the theological stage, leaving Henri de Lubac and others such as J. Laporta with only the narrowest apparent interpretative margins for safeguarding and developing a certain legitimate Christian intention that that antecedent theological problem situation seemed to endanger. This complementary consideration constitutes a veritable Rosetta stone in deciphering the intelligible causes and narrative of postmodern, pluralist theological fragmentation: the loss of the sacramental nature of the Word, the evisceration of anthropology and moral theology, and the dangerous proliferation of historicist fideisms and ideologized rationalist modes of thought.

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This complementary project to which I should now like to turn, pursues not only a deeper awareness of the context that molded de Lubac’s creativity in the directions in which it flowed—largely positive, but in this significant point regarding nature and grace, deeply problematic—but also seeks a strategic viewpoint for understanding the problem situation of theology, and the impediments and challenges to Catholic thought at the start of the new millennium. For, the contrapositions that defined the horizon of theology for de Lubac and called forth his teaching have not been corrected as he hoped. These contrapositions persist today in structuring theological contemplation apart from the requisites of Catholic doctrine and culture. To these points I shall now turn. First I will address the misconstrual of St. Thomas’s doctrine of obediential potency by de Lubac and Gilson, and their consequent loss of the idea of specific obediential potency as thematized in St. Thomas’s account of nature and grace.33 Then I will try to identify the critical deprivations within the theological situation as he inherited it that tempted so profound a Catholic intelligence to the solution he adopted in Surnaturel.

The Immediate and Proximate Context: Error Regarding Obediential Potency The immediate context for assessing de Lubac’s thought about nature and grace is of course that of the loss to theological anthropology represented by the misconstrual and rejection of the classical conception of specific obediential potency. Insofar as de Lubac refers to obediential potency, he seems to depict it chiefly as susceptibility to miracle, and as in any case not pertinent to the fundamental question of the relation of nature to grace. This is a view, of course, largely associated with the Franciscan school. It demarcates a common if erroneous judgment, which has been shared by such notable Thomistic figures in the twentieth century as Etienne Gilson (in his later work), for whom obediential potency in relation to grace was tantamount to the idea of a mere extrinsic and miraculous transmutation of nature. As noted above, de Lubac did not significantly advert to the texts that militate against his

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reading of the natural desire and obediential potency, and tended more and more to attribute opposition to his account merely to ‘‘fanatical Sua´rezians and intransigent Thomists.’’34 He was inclined to conflate insistence upon the distinction between the end proportionate to nature and the supernatural finis ultimus with a naive naturalism, as these remarks indicate: Take, then, the great traditional texts, from Augustine, say, and Thomas, dealing with man’s final end and beatitude: they will be systematically brought down to a natural plane and their whole meaning thus perverted. They will no longer be taken to be anything but affirmations of a purely natural philosophy. The ‘‘perfection’’ of human nature spoken of in these texts, a perfection which was recognized as meaning its supernatural consummation, will thus become a completely natural perfection which can be adequately defined by pure philosophy.35 This concern lest the idea of ‘‘natural perfection’’ enter Christian thought is paradoxical, inasmuch as human nature in its integrity is precisely a perfection, and one without which the mystery of the Incarnation is impossible. Further, how would God Himself distinguish nature and supernature were it not the case that between the divine nature and the nature of the created person there are naturally diverse ends? A natural end is that toward which a being naturally tends as to the perfection proportionate to it and from which its species is distinguished,36 and clearly this definition does not describe the supernatural beatific vision (for only the divine nature is defined by intrinsically supernatural and deific felicity—even in beatitude, the creature’s knowledge does not comprehend God but rather is measured by God). It follows that the philosophic definition of ‘‘end’’ was to be surmounted with a different conception, for which the only justification was its putative efficacy in saving the Christian intellect from the danger of naturalism. But it is precisely in relation to the end proportionate to human nature that the supernatural end comes properly into view: the Triune God Who moves us to Himself in beatific vision is not merely the maraschino cherry on a purely natural sundae.37 Why should specific obediential potency be equated with mere miraculous transmutation? In one

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of his letters, Gilson well articulates the position he came to share with de Lubac: I don’t think either of us has ever found a set of terms adequate to define the Thomist position, and that’s quite to be expected, since he himself could not find one either. In fact, his terminology is somewhat loose, because he never throws away an expression if it is possible to justify it in some sense. Potentiality subject to obedience is an instructive example of what I’m talking about. He came upon the term ready-made; strictly speaking, it is applicable only to miracles, where nothing in matter either prepares for, expects, or makes the phenomenon possible [emphasis added]; in general (your excellent quotes on page 244), all nature is in a state of potentiality subject to obedience to whatever it may please God to do with it, provided that this is not, in itself, contradictory or impossible.38 Henri de Lubac of course thought the same: In the order of finality itself, so as to avoid any confusion between the supernatural gift and the mere fulfillment a nature receives from some natural agent, we may join some of the moderns— without in any way departing from the spirit of the past—in specifying that the ‘‘passive potentiality’’ which characterizes human nature in relation to that supernatural gift can be called ‘‘specific obediential power’’—‘‘potentia obedientialis specifica hominis’’—or ‘‘passive obediential power.’’ But it remains quite clear, from the explanations he has given us, that for St. Thomas particularly, the simple idea of potentia obedientialis conceived not ‘‘to express the condition in which God’s gift places us of being able to become children of God,’’ but to account for the possibility of miracle, is not adequate as a definition of the relationship of human nature to the supernatural. It does not lay sufficient stress on the ‘‘absolutely special case of spirit.’’39 Of course, it is true that obediential potency conceived as mere susceptibility to miracle is insufficient with respect to the fittingness of

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human nature to receive the divine aid (human nature is such that it may be uplifted by grace to the supernatural knowledge and love of God, whereas irrational natures cannot, insofar as irrational, be so aided). Yet it is clear that the common view of de Lubac and Gilson that for Thomas ‘‘obediential potency’’ refers only to the generic susceptibility to divine miracle falls short of Thomas’s text: only the wellmerited reputation of Gilson with respect to other aspects of Thomas’s synthesis, and the incredible depth of de Lubac’s knowledge and love of the Church Fathers could impart some semblance of life to it. In fact, de Lubac’s above-cited reasoning should have led him to the realization that ‘‘obediential potency’’ was not to be confined to the case of mere generic transmutability. This discovery—to which he is so close in the above-cited text—would necessarily have realigned his account of nature and grace with the commentatorial consensus. For in what would the obediential potency for grace and glory consist, if not in the rational character and in the natural desire for God as distinct from this same desire as supernaturally elevated within the graced desire for beatific vision? In fact, the most conspicuous ‘‘modern’’ defender of the view that Thomas’s notion of obediential potency is not confined to mere transmutability but also extends to ‘‘specific obediential power’’ is Sua´rez. Compare de Lubac’s contrary view with the express teaching of St. Thomas—the very words to which Gilson supposed the historically inclined were more sensitively disposed than the mere philosophers with their ‘‘superficial’’ and ‘‘scholastic’’ preoccupations (critics of Gilson, too, were waved off by de Lubac as symptomatic of ‘‘superficial philosophizing endemic to the Church from the beginning but which has infested Scholasticism since the thirteenth century’’40). St. Thomas writes: When a passive subject is by nature constituted to receive various perfections from diversely ordered agents, the diversity and order of the passive powers in the patient will correspond to the diversity and order of the active powers in the agents, for an active power will correspond to each passive potency. For example, water or earth have some potency whereby they are naturally apt

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to be changed by fire; and another potency whereby they are naturally apt to be changed by a heavenly body; and still another, whereby they are naturally apt to be moved or changed by God. Just as from water or from earth something can be made by the power of a heavenly body which cannot be made by the power of fire; so, from the same elements something can be formed by the power of a supernatural agent which no natural agent can produce. For this reason we say that in the whole of creation there is a certain obediential potency whereby every creature obeys God by receiving into itself whatsoever God wills.41 Here one observes St. Thomas affirming that a diverse range of actuation corresponds to the purely passive potency of each nature in relation to a distinct, active agency—including the active agency of God. Hence, human nature may be aided by God to act in a fashion that a stone may not be aided. This is the very notion of specific obediential potency—whatever terminology may be used to articulate it—and clearly it is neither a Renaissance corruption nor ‘‘modern’’ (unless the Middle Ages are ‘‘modern’’). Moreover, this passage manifests that St. Thomas’s well-articulated conception of obediential potency is decidedly not reducible merely to a susceptibility to miraculous transmutation. Susceptibility to miraculous transmutation (as water may be changed to wine by divine agency) may, however, perhaps be described as the most generic and lowest sense of obediential potency: the floor, rather than the ceiling, of the concept. But the specific sense of obediential potency with regard to grace is an aptness of human nature—an aptness that exists only in relation to the active power of God and is simply speaking disproportionate to finite nature—whereby, with divine aid, man may be elevated to supernatural life and to agency meritorious of Heaven. Hence, man may be elevated to the higher life of grace and divine friendship, because the spiritual nature is such that with divine aid it may be so uplifted, whereas a rock cannot be uplifted to acts of supernatural knowledge and love precisely because it lacks rational nature. If a rock were uplifted to the divine friendship in knowledge and love of God, it would by that fact cease to be a rock (although there is a

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wide sense of ‘‘love’’ in which we may say that all creation loves God, but here we are speaking specifically of love as it pertains to rational will). Just as earth and water have diverse passive potencies in relation to different active agencies, so human nature possesses a passive potency for that which can only be achieved in it through the active agency of God. It is this conception of obediential potency that expounds acts of infused virtue as truly acts of the human agent, without thereby implying that human nature can perform supernaturalized acts apart from divine aid. Indeed, properly understood, this doctrine of obediential potency involves the realization that human nature is itself elevated and perfected by God, while the perfection is in substance supernatural, and human nature is not even capable of this perfection save in relation to God. Had they but seen, Gilson and de Lubac would have realized that St. Thomas and his commentators were, in their exposition of obediential potency, describing the contours of the very mystery that they themselves sought to understand. For man’s nature is not transmuted but elevated, and so must first be elevable by divine grace: the very meaning of specific obediential potency as opposed to generic obediential potency. Here again one discerns the need not alone for historical erudition, but for scientific penetration of natural distinctions—a cautionary tale for those for whom theology and philosophy have become mere ancillary functions of historical erudition. It is also this conception of obediential potency that most profoundly answers to the language of Vatican II with regard to God ‘‘revealing man to himself ’’ (Gaudium et spes, n. 22). For the higher capacities of man aided by grace are not knowable apart from the gift of grace, yet it is these capacities to which man is called: human nature is created in sanctifying grace, and the order of nature is efficaciously further ordered in grace (and so if man sins, he rebounds, not into a purely natural order, but into an order of nature as accidentally wounded). As I have elsewhere attempted to express this point: The similitude of the stained-glass window illumined by the sun’s rays well bespeaks the character of the doctrine of obediential

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potency as applied to the relation of nature and grace. The stained-glass window, were it cognizant, could not ‘‘know what it was missing’’ were it never to irradiate its bright colors under the influence of the sun. It would be a window, still, and function as part of the structure—though it would, in a given respect, not be fulfilled. It would be what it is, not fail to be part of the whole structure of which it would form an integral part, nor lack its own participation in the good of the whole as a specific perfection. Yet its nature stands properly revealed only under the extrinsic causality of the sun’s illumination: seeing it so illumined, we know what stained glass truly is for.42 Yet, were one to adopt the more generic conception of obediential potency as its exclusive sense, missing the more specific sense of obediential potency as revealed in passages such as that of St. Thomas from De virtutibus above, then it would be necessary to reject obediential potency and to deem it wholly inapplicable to man’s elevation in grace and achievement of supernatural beatitude. For just as water transmuted to wine is no longer water, so if obediential potency ‘‘in the strict sense’’ is taken to refer only to miraculous transmutation of nature, it follows that fulfillment of the obediential potency for supernatural life is the transmutation and loss of human nature. Thus would it follow that no human person would be redeemed (for to be redeemed would then mean: to lose human nature). This would indeed be an extrinsic and odd conception of grace as destructive of human nature rather than uplifting and redeeming it. Given such a reading of ‘‘obediential potency,’’ it follows as a matter of course that one must reject the application of obediential potency to the nature/grace relation. De Lubac and Gilson must be given credit—as manifesting integrity of theological intention—for opposing this sort of monstrosity. They were right that the specter of a generic obediential potency, as though grace came to man not only extrinsically but through supernatural transmutation (like the changing of water to wine), needed to yield to a sense that God’s first creation of human nature made it such as with divine aid to be able to attain to supernatural life and action. Yet these latter words properly describe

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the conception of specific obediential potency as Thomas applies it to the relation of nature to grace: the very idea that they failed to acknowledge. A good theological intention is not enough: because everything moves to its end according to its form, the formal account must be adequate. On this score de Lubac and Gilson’s reading of obediential potency appears not only exegetically but theologically erroneous. It is after all St. Thomas Aquinas who writes of supernatural beatitude that ‘‘There is another good of man that exceeds the proportion of human nature because the natural powers are not sufficient for attaining, or thinking, or desiring it.’’43 If natural powers are of themselves insufficient for desiring the supernatural good that exceeds the proportion of human nature, might not this mean that the natural desire for God is in itself a desire specified not by uncreated nature—which is literally unknowable apart from revelation—but by that created nature in relation to whose existential dependence the reality of God is discovered? A natural desire for God not qua God but qua Cause of finite being, whereas there is infinitely more in God than being the cause of finite being? A rock cannot know and love God without ceasing to be a rock—it cannot even be ‘‘helped’’ to know and love because it lacks any such faculties that might so be helped.44 By contrast, while a human person cannot know and love God in direct vision and embrace without supernatural aid, with such aid the human person may partake in intrinsically supernatural divine friendship, and this is the specific notion of obediential potency as applied to the relation of grace to nature. It is a wholly passive potency, which yet presupposes as its subject some determinate nature that is such that, when aided by the active agency of God, it may achieve a certain specific range of actuation. It is because of man’s essentially spiritual nature that he has an obediential potency to the supernatural life. Thomas even uses the language of a ‘‘twofold capacity’’—one of nature simply, and one of nature ‘‘according to the order of divine power’’—to explain the incarnation, ‘‘the grace of union which is the greatest grace.’’45 Clearly then, the over-generic and extrinsicist account of obediential potency—which reduces it to the lowest instance of

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mere capacity for natural transmutation and does not acknowledge specific obediential potency—misses something essential. The fear of extrinsicism harbored by Gilson and de Lubac indifferently targeted both a legitimate object of aversion (the proposition that nothing in man is truly elevated and perfected by grace, so that grace would become a vermiform appendage) and an illegitimate object of aversion (the proposition that supernatural beatitude cannot as such be targeted by a purely natural desire). This fear obstructed their reading of St. Thomas’s text. Yet, since virtually all commentators of St. Thomas’s work preceding them did acknowledge the specific sense of obediential potency applicable to the nature/grace question, it seems that other factors should be discerned as moving them to this undifferentiated preoccupation with the avoidance of extrinsicism (whereas it is not grace as extrinsic principle—for that is what grace is, since grace is not nature—but grace as transmutative principle, that constitutes a deformation of Christian teaching). Clearly, the decisive points were not missed from any ordinary nescience nor from bad will, but rather from a diverted attention preoccupied with profound and necessary theological purpose. It is to the nature of this diversion and that purpose that we now turn.

Behind It All: The Loss of Natural Order as a Theonomic Principle It is clear that de Lubac’s reading of Aquinas with respect to obediential potency is erroneous, and that indeed time has only deepened and intensified the consequent divorce of theological formation and method from natural truth (although Pope John Paul II’s Fides et ratio stands in marked contradiction to this tendency). But likewise it is clear that de Lubac—a great scholar and lover of the Church, blessed with a subtle and powerful intellect, misprised this teaching neither from any common nescience nor from malice. Rather, the need to safeguard a profound theological intention in an inhospitable intellectual climate seemed to point toward the argument that the object of the natural desire for God must be intrinsically supernatural beatific

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vision. The nature of this animating intention requires greater consideration. No theologian worthy of the name should fail to affirm the theocentric character of reality as such. Yet, from the Enlightenment on, the view that nature constitutes a separate jurisdiction from divine authority and governance—one utterly separable from the theistic account, and only dubiously related to the truth of the Gospels—gained in influence and prestige. The Enlightenment spawned secular theories of progress, and a reductive naturalism that happily banished the very knowledge of God from the realm of natural truth to one of (at best) a shadowy noumenal existence. Indeed, this tendency is discernibly present today in the insistence of many philosophers and commentators on science that the realm of physical causes must be considered to be ‘‘causally closed’’ and so putatively impermeable to any immaterial cause whatsoever, including God. Kant, Hume, Comte, and in the twentieth century the movements of scientism and positivism, all tended to reduce natural knowledge in such a way as to minimize or seemingly render impossible the project of metaphysical scientia and knowledge of God. Ethics, too, was to be confined within the realm of a secular and non-metaphysical reason alone. Even when theories maintained speculative trajectories or theistic nomenclature, too often the trajectory was immanentist or the terms merely placeholders within doctrines remote from theism and more distant still from traditional Christianity. In this light, one thinks, of course, of Hegel. To make matters worse, however, within Catholic life itself, there had been a gradual but nonetheless crucial disengagement of Catholic theology from the metaphysical realism of St. Thomas Aquinas. The history of this unfortunate and retrograde motion together with the tracing of its speculative influence remains to be written. But it is here that we need pause to recollect the role of Molina in this story. For it is manifest that, beginning with Molina’s teaching in the sixteenth century, it became acceptable to view free human action as standing outside of divine governance and causality, and this idea is incompatible with the understanding of nature as a theonomic principle. This tendency has only intensified and grown, such that it is frequently the

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case that when a theologian speaks of ‘‘freedom,’’ it is assumed that the proper definition of a cause as contingent or necessary is a function of that cause’s relation to God. That is, it is assumed that, to be free, a cause must possess the liberty of indifference with respect to divine causality. Yet it is the teaching of St. Thomas that no created cause possesses a liberty of indifference with respect to divine causality, and that a cause is denominated as contingent rather than necessary solely owing to its proportion to the contingency of its terrestrial effects. In short, created liberty is not defined in relation to God, but in relation to the nature of the proximate cause. Thus, Thomas writes in De malo: And therefore necessity and contingency in things are distinguished not in relation to the divine will, which is a universal cause, but in relation to created causes which the divine will has ordered proportionately to the effects, namely in such a way that the causes of necessary effects are unchangeable, and of contingent effects changeable.46 St. Thomas further articulates the dependence of the created human will on God when he writes: It should be said that when it is said that God left man to himself, this does not mean to exclude man from divine providence, but merely that he has not a prefixed operating power determined to one as with natural things; because they are only acted upon as though directed by another towards an end—for they do not act of themselves, directing themselves towards an end, as do rational creatures through free choice whereby these take counsel and make choices. Hence it is significantly said: In the hand of his own counsel. But because the same act of free choice is reduced to God as to a cause, it is necessary that whatsoever happens from the exercise of free choice be subject to divine providence. For the providence of man is contained under the providence of God, as a particular cause under a universal cause.47 And, even more clearly: ‘‘When anything moves itself, this does not exclude its being moved by another, from which it has even this that

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it moves itself. Thus, it is not repugnant to liberty that God is the cause of the free act of the will.’’48 Whereas Molina strove with all his power to do justice to freedom and providence—falling as it were by accident into the error whereby freedom is defined with respect to God rather than with respect to its finite and contingent effects—it is without doubt true today that the libertarian account of freedom as an absolute capacity outside of the governance of the omnipotent God is prevalent even among believers. Whereas Thomas held that no terrestrial finite good could coerce the will, so that the rational will is free,49 it is common today to suppose that the creature must somehow also be able to stand outside the divine causality for it to be free. Yet this view treats the divine causality like that of a creature, neglecting the dependence of all created reality in being and action upon God. The formulation of Molina has sadly outlived the profound Christian context of his work, which limited the ill effect of this formulation and prevented its worst implications from being drawn. It is certainly true, as Molina writes in the Concordia, ‘‘that the will is free only when, all requirements being retained, the will could indeed act otherwise’’50 —provided we refer solely to terrestrial requirements. But if we include the hypothetical but immutable divine will as a requirement, then this proposition is impossible. For, owing to the divine simplicity, it is not God Who changes but rather only the world: if God ordains from all eternity that the creature shall freely (in the sense of: not coerced by any terrestrial good) choose X, and the creature is moved freely to choose X, what changes is not God but the creature. The creature is really related to, and dependent upon, God, but not vice versa. Between God efficaciously willing a created effect and God not efficaciously willing some created effect, the sole difference is that the efficaciously willed effect actually is. Thus, one cannot retain the requirement that God cause the creature freely to act while the creature is not caused freely to act, because this is a contradiction in terms. The Molinist account unwittingly carries the implication that the domain of human action is outside divine providence insofar as outside divine causality. Thomas makes the connection quite patent in the Summa theologiae I–II, question 91, article 2, teaching that:

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since all things subject to divine providence are ruled and measured by the eternal law, as was stated above (I–II, a. 90, q. 1); it is evident that all things partake somewhat of the eternal law, in so far as, namely, from its being imprinted on them, they derive their respective inclinations to their proper acts and ends. The implication here is not that there is some recondite class of things that are not subject to divine providence while still being ruled and measured by eternal law. Rather, if the human will is not subject to divine providence, then it is not ruled and measured by the eternal law. As Thomas teaches, providence extends so far as power:51 the will cannot be subject to divine providence if it lies outside the divine causality. Hence, if we affirm a theonomic conception of natural law, we need also to affirm that the human will is autonomous neither in being nor in action, but is moved to its act from without, yet in such a manner that this motion is truly its own motion. This is to say that the very motion that is received by the will from God is that whereby it moves itself in free self-determination. Like existence itself, the positive substance of my action is most my own, yet also most a gift. In Molina, the emphasis is upon scientia media or middle knowledge—the doctrine that God knows all the varied circumstances in the light of which the creature will act or not act—a teaching that some critics speak of as a determinism of circumstance.52 For why should circumstances alter how one would be inclined to act unless they exercise some causality, a causality seemingly denied to God by the Molinist account. Why then should what is denied to God be attributed to finite circumstances? But it is in any case not this aspect of his teaching that has prevailed. What is arresting about the Molinist account is not the emphasis on circumstance, which is but an ineffective brake placed on the turning of the wheel, but the logic of the turning of the wheel itself, in the direction of separating human agency from divine causality. And indeed, this is the effect that Molinism seems concretely to have had— not to move people to accept scientia media, which seems fraught with contradiction, but to move toward the rejection of the subjection of human agency to divine causality. Apart from the question of Molina’s

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full theological position, his negative treatment of the dependence of human freedom on divine causality seems in historical terms to be one large stride in the direction of undifferentiated libertarianism of a sort that implies that the created will is a being a se. What thus ensues in the common imagination as well as in ensuing academic interpretations is an immense and insupportable freedom—as though the finite creature were characterized by a divine aseity of will. A separate jurisdiction of human liberty is thus created that is literally beyond divine governance, so that it becomes difficult to imagine what difference even divine revelation could make to the situation—for why should a will whose act is a se require or seek aid of any kind? If its act is a se, it follows that its being is a se (operatio sequitur esse). And a being a se is intrinsically independent of every other being—the very logic whereby God is affirmed to be intrinsically independent of any created cause.53 Hence, intra-Catholic meditations on freedom as well as philosophic tendencies rooted in the Enlightenment each carved out a dominion for natural human agency as absolutely independent of God. The convergent effect is that of secular and intra-Catholic tendencies of thought each of which tend toward making the natural realm—and particularly the natural realm of human agency—an utterly separate jurisdiction sealed off from providence. In this light, the continued insistence upon the nature/grace distinction could seem to be an insistence upon maintaining an artificial and destructive divorce between God and the world, and a fortiori between God and the human world. Within such a world, natural law, far from being what it was for St. Thomas—namely, nothing other than the rational participation of the eternal law—becomes instead the demarcation of a realm outside the governance of the eternal law. Natural law becomes, as it were, the ‘‘stalking horse’’ of secularism and naturalist reductionism. A more complete inversion of the character of the doctrine of the natural law cannot be imagined—indeed a transvaluation of all values. Even more arresting is that these two complementary motions retreating from the theonomic character of nature and natural order end by insisting on similar judgments. The advocate of absolute autonomy for the rational creature must deny the subjection of man’s will to

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divine causality and providence—ruling out the ‘‘interference’’ of God with a will either supposed to be purely in act or else mysteriously able to move itself from potency to act without first receiving this motion from God. Likewise, the contemporary physicalist or materialist advocate of ‘‘causal closure’’ amongst physical causes must deny the subjection of any physical agency whatsoever to the higher causality of God. Hence, the physicalist or materialist also must rule out the ‘‘interference’’ of God with the natural world and with the nature of human agency. In one case, the motive is the preservation of absolute freedom; in the other case, the motive is the preservation of causal closure (and, for some authors, absolute necessity) amongst exclusively physical causes. One may well note that it seems that for Kant both of these motivations simultaneously hold sway—the categories of phenomenal necessitation just as much as the nature of human freedom require the denial of any knowable providential government of world and will. But in either case, the effect is the same: the banishing of God from the natural world and especially from the natural world of human agency.54 What was to be Henri de Lubac’s response to the distinction of nature from grace as it functioned within the anomalous context of the exile of God from the natural world and from the nature of human agency? Reading the de Lubac of The Drama of Atheist Humanism, it becomes perfectly clear that he was well acquainted with anti-theism and the banishing of God from history through the unreasoning exaltation of matter, or will, or reason. He was also intimately aware of the dilemma of human freedom in a world that, like a mausoleum, enclosed its inhabitants in a lofty and impenetrable solitude or, alternately, offered release solely through alienating extroversion. To a Christian man of such profound vision and cultural sensitivity as well as historical awareness, it cannot have been other than ravishingly tempting utterly to contradict the naturalist reduction with one working in a different and Christian direction, asserting a natural desire for intrinsically supernatural beatitude. The dynamism of man himself would be taken not only as pointed ad Deum but as aspirationally projected within the Triune life of God Himself.55 Neither positivism nor scientism nor any of the other ‘‘isms’’ seeking to confine man

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within the terrestrial cage and to reduce the human mystery to a problem of naturalist flow-dynamics would gain any purchase over this starting point for the Christian apologetic, for this apologetic would be nothing other than the answer to the question: ‘‘What is man?’’ In the face of such crushing cultural, ideological, and philosophic adversity, the distinctions contemplated and honed within baroque scholasticism—that revelation reveals man to himself with respect to his deeper destiny in grace, but not primarily or properly with respect to human nature as such (of which one has connatural awareness and potential natural wisdom) but rather medicinally—could hardly seem decisive. Against the anti-theists—Marx, Nietzsche, and the rest—de Lubac would rely upon teleology. Almost alone amidst contemporaries for whom teleology defined nothing, de Lubac would overstress teleology, making of the finis ultimus of intrinsically supernatural beatific vision the very natural end of man, and denying that human nature is placed in its species—as Aquinas expressly asserts that it is—by its natural and proportionate end as distinct from the supernatural beatific end.56 The convergent implication of secular and Molinist thought seems indeed to be the loss of nature and natural order as theonomic principles, and the loss of natural law as nothing else than a participation of eternal law. Once this theonomic character of natural order and natural law are lost, then sustaining the distinction of nature and grace simply formalizes the boundaries consequent upon the loss of God. One may say safely, from this repose of distance in time, that de Lubac was correct in seeking the answer in teleology, and correct again in seeking an answer that would once more establish the theonomic character of natural order. While he was incorrect in supposing that natural teleology in itself could be shoehorned into or equated with a supernatural trajectory, it was precisely his instinct that the theonomic character of nature needed to be preserved that led him to attempt this defense in a manner that unwittingly falsifies nature itself. This turning of nature into a vacuole fit only for supernatural beatitude even apart from grace and revelation paradoxically completed the ontological evacuation of nature to which de Lubac was in part responding. Perhaps this is the clearest theological instance of ‘‘destroying the village in order to save it,’’ but it still does not constitute a sufficient answer to the negation

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of the theonomic character of natural law and, more widely, of natural order. It also manifests a lack of that radical providentialist trust in the specifically natural that demarcates the theological vision of St. Thomas from those who are prone to assume that the natural in its own right must be a zone without the divine governance, and so needing to be as theologically minimized as possible. That is, it manifests despair in seeking to re-achieve the theonomic character of natural order by draining the natural of its own distinctive finality and intelligibility. It is not the first time that a physician unintentionally has communicated the plague he nobly sought to resist. The persistent refusal to see the limited but dignified fashion in which not only all creation, but man specifically, is naturally ordered to God, is explicable only within a context wherein it has already been decided as an initial postulate that sublunary natural order has no efficacy or essential role within theological method. But all of creation is ordered ad Deum, and man naturally desires God as Cause and Principle of finite nature—a natural desire that is not by its essence formally a desire for supernatural beatific vision. Rather, it is a real but limited created dynamism toward God as Cause of finite being, reflective of that spiritual dignity in man that constitutes a potency of obedience for what God may bring forth through his grace. Nonetheless, if one’s project is to cut short the very possibility of rationalist misconstrual of nature as a separate and absolutely autonomous jurisdiction, if one is wary of the distinct character of the natural within the theological synthesis, and if one stands historically downstream from the abandonment of St. Thomas’s doctrine of providence, then the hot-wiring of nature to grace becomes all too alluring. That a correct judgment of the relation of nature to God is required by theology itself—such that error here is liable thoroughly and in multifarious ways to denature theology—may quickly appear of secondary importance by comparison with safeguarding the pertinence of revelation in an increasingly naturalist world. It is ironic that the very medicine actually required for this latter purpose—the purpose of safeguarding the pertinence of revelation from the irrelevance to which naturalism would consign it—is itself principally a function of the truth regarding the relation of nature and grace.

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

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of which not only man, so long as his nature remains unimpaired, loves God above all things and more than himself, but also every single creature, each in its own way, that is either by an intellectual, or by a rational, or by an animal, or at least by a natural love, as stones do, for instance, and other things bereft of knowledge, because each part naturally loves the common good of the whole more than its own particular good. This is evidenced by its operation, since the principal inclination of each part is towards common action conducive to the good of the whole. It may also be seen in civic virtues whereby sometimes the citizens suffer damage even to their own property and persons for the sake of the common good. Wherefore much more is this realized with regard to the friendship of charity which is based on the fellowship of the gifts of grace.57 Natural love is not perverse, it prefers God to self, and it is essentially inferior to supernatural charity. To cite St. Thomas again to this effect, he writes: Accordingly, since God is the universal good, and under this good both man and angel and all creatures are comprised because every creature in regard to its entire being naturally belongs to God, it follows that from natural love angel and man alike love God before themselves and with greater love. Otherwise, if either of them loved self more than God, it would follow that natural love would be perverse, and that it would not be perfected but destroyed by charity.58 Elsewhere St. Thomas makes clear that the restoration of natural love after sin requires grace: In the state of integral nature man did not need the gift of grace added to his natural endowments in order to love God above all things naturally, although he needed God’s help moving him to it; but in the state of corrupted nature, man needs, even for this, the help of grace healing his nature.59 Yet the significant point here is that sin itself is defined as deprivation vis-a`-vis the theonomic role of nature, and that restoration of the

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natural love is only part—and the lesser part—of the effect of the redemption. Indeed, paradoxically, the attainment of the natural end will require medicinal grace, but not because it is itself supernatural, but because nature is itself further ordered in grace from its creation and is thus harmed by the loss of grace. For the restoration of natural integrity and rectitude forms part of a loftier motion that rises past the merely natural proximate end to the finis ultimus of supernatural beatitude. And thus—because to desire, know, and love God as principle of all being is something quite different than to desire, know, and love God as object of supernatural beatitude—Thomas writes that ‘‘it must therefore be said that to love God as the principle of all being pertains to natural love, but to love God as the object of beatitude pertains to the gratuitous love in which merit consists.’’60

Conclusion: The Protean Implications If our aim is countering the loss of the normativity of nature as a theonomic principle, the first impulse of de Lubac—the prime resort to teleology—is condign, but this resort must be to genuinely natural teleology as conditioning our reception of revelation. For this natural conditioning, like the preparation of Israel by the prophets, is part of the divine economy itself and not something alien or extrinsic to the divine governance. Yet this in itself will not avail for so long as the realm of nature—and especially the realm of human agency—is supposed to be a separate jurisdiction immunized and utterly independent from providential government. For the loss of natural order as a theonomic concept that transpires upon the subtraction of human agency from divine order is an irreplaceable loss. Consequently, the greatest need of contemporary thought is to rediscover the theonomic character of natural law, and more extendedly of natural order as such—which will require a vigorous return to metaphysics, natural theology, and ontology of nature. The natural character of—and need for— metaphysics as sapiential science is thus exhibited. Such a project is in all frankness a great and perhaps overmastering challenge for an age in which philosophers have preponderantly retreated to logical and linguistic preoccupations remote from nature,

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while many theologians drift in historicist or textual currents seemingly permanently outside the orbit of reference to natural order or, alternately, dwell within intricate dialectical fictions. The perhaps-unintended radicalization of de Lubac’s position itself by prominent and distinguished theological minds;61 the widespread despair of natural truth regarding God, the soul, and the moral life, proceeding from the distinct sources of nihilism, fideism, and rationalism; the substitution of ungrounded and relativized dialectics, historicist reflections, textualism, or logicism for metaphysics, natural teleology, and ontology of nature; the danger (to which the Church has responded in Dominus Iesus) that the relativized dialectical context may go so far as to infect the concrete affirmation of the mysteries of faith itself; the radical miscasting of the doctrine of natural law outside of its proper theistic context; and the more or less ideologized movements resulting from the vacuum of teaching—all this constitutes an enormous welter of danger and confusion. It is tempting to outline the most conspicuous errors and challenges—proceeding from the evacuation of natural norms within theology—within each of the component disciplines of theology and philosophy itself, as well as within the more general life of the Church and of society. Such an undertaking would constitute a project to itself, and doubtless one worthy of the effort in detailing the disorientations consequent on the theological retreat from nature. Such a list might include: a causal role in engendering fideist, rationalist, and nihilist impulses; excessive autonomism in ethics (and, implicitly, in philosophic anthropology); the divorce of the practical from the speculative to which it is naturally wedded (for naturally speaking, all knowing has a speculative component, with practical knowing adding only a relation to action and so a distinct end62); the loss of unified teleology and of the material continuity of natural proximate end with the supernatural end (God as principle and cause of nature as distinct from God as revealing Himself in supernatural beatitude); the denial that God is necessary to the doctrine of natural law; a certain de-sacramentalization of nature; the epistemic radicalization of de Lubac’s position represented by the claim that nature is utterly unknowable in precision from

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revelation;63 and the kindred claim that the treatise De Deo uno is not presupposed by and necessary to the treatise De Deo trino. This last thesis—that the treatise on the One God is not presupposed by and necessary to the treatise on the Triune God—is embraced by many genuinely Catholic scholars. Nonetheless it truly represents theology walking off into thin air, as though the revelation of God in Christ does not invite and presuppose a natural doctrine of God as a condition for the intelligibility of the truth that Christ is God. When we affirm that Christ is God and man, the obvious question is: Quid sit Deus? The effort either to re-situate this query, or—at the worst—to suppress it, seems not to be a theological effort, albeit it might be construed as theoplastic: yet another sign of the loss of nature as a normative principle within theology. That no theologian would wish to stop with natural theology, or to lose the sense of its continuity with the mysteries of faith within the providential synthesis of revelation and grace, is perfectly reasonable. But that one should wish to subtract the natural ordering of creation to God from the inception of theology, or to treat the doctrine of God this implies as though it were not methodically presupposed by and necessary to revealed theology, indicates misalignment in one’s understanding of nature and grace, and perhaps also with respect to the humble epistemic roots of man’s contact with the real. The first creation is presupposed by and taken up within the contemplation of the new creation in grace: it is not a separate dead residue from which revealed theology can happily detach itself without losing both divine and human nature. To use a hallowed but valid formula (De veritate II, q. 14, a. 9, ad 8): ‘‘Grace presupposes nature.’’ One might also include in the list of consequences of the loss of natural order as a theonomic principle the loss of regard for principled conformity to the moral teaching of the Church as necessary for ecclesial communion and participation in the sacramental life of the Church. For the moral law dissociate from eternal law is construed as a zone of absolute personal autonomy, and nature so dissociate no longer yields connatural certitudes but merely more or less provisional ‘‘points of view.’’ Here the evacuation of nature and the dissociation of natural from eternal law keep pace, pari passu, yielding a conclusion so antinomian as to leave nothing standing of the Catholic sense of the

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moral life. Even the most crass and destructive type of autonomy often is defended as compatible with communion with the Church (witness those for whom no degree of dissent—even regarding the wrongful homicide of millions of innocent unborn children—is sufficient to warrant exclusion from the sacraments). Yet the supernatural unity of the Church is not the unity of mere well-wishing and social fellowship, it is a supernatural society, participation in whose source and summit—the Eucharistic sacrifice—presupposes conformity to the teaching of the Church and places one within an order of governance (and that not merely canonic, but substantive). Indifference to the Church’s doctrine of faith and morals displayed by persons and groups who then elevate and honor contingent issues of social prudence and party politics to the same level argues both a grotesque lack of assimilation to the supernatural life in Christ and a serious confusion between natural social assimilation to a secular group and abandonment to God and his Church. Yet doubtless the path to transcend these doctrinal difficulties and errors, so as to achieve an organic development of Catholic life and doctrine, is illumined by the instruction of papal encyclicals such as Pope John Paul II’s Fides et ratio and Veritatis splendor. And this same path is also highlighted by works of retrieving scholarship such as Dr. Feingold has given us in The Natural Desire to See God According to St. Thomas Aquinas and His Interpreters. And it is profoundly highlighted in the work of De Lubac himself, the whole purpose of whose controversial account of nature and grace was to affirm the theonomic character of natural order, albeit at the cost of a certain confusedly volatile conflation of supernatural and natural dynamisms. The judgment that this path is erroneous because it denies the distinct manner in which created natural order is theonomic does nothing whatsoever to negate the ineluctability of the prior judgment: the judgment that the theonomic character of natural order needs strongly and effectively to be re-affirmed. In this sense, the most important element of the teleology of de Lubac’s own account truly is achieved (to be sure, in a radically distinct way) in the doctrine of St. Thomas Aquinas and of the Thomistic commentatorial tradition that de Lubac critically misapprehended.

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It is of course true that the medicinal grace that restores natural integrity also to some degree enables the assent of faith to compensate for the absence of the knowledge of natural truths. Yet clearly what may be known in service to theological contemplation ought to be known. The tendencies that elsewise may be expected to hold sway and fill the vacuum in the realm of thought, culture, and sensibility are either unhelpful or positively harmful to the task of explicating and promoting Christian life. It is perhaps the final salute that a Thomist owes to the efforts of de Lubac on this score to see to it that the chief effect of emending his error about the natural desire for God is not merely to throw us back to the status quo ante. For that status quo ante already was deeply marred and impaired by the grievous attrition of the tradition’s emphasis upon nature as a normative principle in theology—a theonomic principle—and the consequent harboring in germinus of the praxeological obsessions and autonomist tendencies that became the chief divagations of the postconciliar era. Rather—if truth is holographic—the task is to see to it that the shards of right reason are reunited within a rich and realistic metaphysic translucent to the further ordering of grace and revelation, and at the service of sacra doctrina. Such a treatment— clarifying the manner in which human nature with divine aid may achieve supernatural friendship and beatific fruition, and bringing all creation into the service and under the dominion of Christ—is a fitting response to an error whose doubtless genuine and profound theological motivation it more truly fathoms and fulfills.64

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Chapter Two

A CRITICISM OF NATURE AS VA CU OLE F O R G RA CE In chapter 1, I responded to the famed thesis of Henri de Lubac while attempting to situate the theological problematic within which that thesis could seem the sole intelligible strategy for preserving the truth of Christian revelation from naturalism. In this fashion, one strives to preserve the theological intention whilst remediating the error. In this chapter, the very error that the last chapter was spent correcting will be seen fructifying in the theology of a great Catholic savant. Hans Urs von Balthasar is without doubt one of the most fertile and theologically powerful Catholic minds of the past hundred years. His conception of theology as essentially Marian in form, and his profound testimony to the supreme beauty of the overarching providence of God, are elements of the Catholic synthesis that at his hands receive masterful treatment. It is the thesis of this chapter, however, that with respect to the relation of nature and grace his famed work The Theology of Karl Barth1 is deeply flawed; that it affirms propositions incompossible one with another; and further that it exhibits an erroneous understanding of ‘‘concrete nature’’ seemingly derived from, and certainly cognate with, the work of Henri de Lubac. While it is beyond the scope of this chapter, I should nonetheless like to put forward the idea that these criticisms seek to provide a means for enhancing and preserving the Catholic intent of both theologians; both sought—beginning, middle, and end—to contemplate the whole truth articulated in sacred tradition and sacred scripture, and it is that tradition itself that finally requires an account of the relation of nature to grace distinct from what either concluded. Correcting this crucial teaching enables the rest of their work to be read, as it were, in

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the right key, while also providing the interpretative basis for a rereading of problematic aspects of their teaching. By contrast, failure to correct it risks the metastasis of a dangerous inadvertent error to the entire body of teaching they sought to communicate. Hence, far from iconoclasm, the corrective offered here is put forth in the realization that the contributions of de Lubac and Balthasar are irreducible to their pivotal treatment of the relation of nature to grace, and so preservable even if at the cost of exposing oneself to the charge of being an adversary. Of course, in the purely logical sense of the term, anyone who disputes a point with another is, vis-a`-vis that point, an adversary—guilty as charged (for one can hardly claim, after the fact, that either would concur with the analysis of this book). But with respect to what one might call the ‘‘total project’’ of such theologians—which is irreducible to this one element of their work—it is difficult to conceive how any Catholic could either be or wish to be an adversary. Further, if the analysis put forth below hits its mark, then it follows that this correction of their teaching is necessitated by the very Catholic tradition they sought to articulate. Thus, it is loyal to the most formal, vital, and profound constitutive intent of their theologizing. It also, of course, provides anew a basis for appreciation of the masterful insight of St. Thomas Aquinas, whose actual doctrine on these points is nuanced, profound, and illuminating. My approach shall be simple and forthright—for it is not as though these texts of Balthasar are unknown. First, I shall cite critical passages regarding nature and grace offered by Balthasar in The Theology of Karl Barth, offering commentary pari passu. These passages articulate, as it were, the path to the conclusion that nature is merely a residual or limit concept bereft of significant ontological density and intelligibility in its own right. Yet this is a conclusion that Balthasar at one moment affirms and at the next, at least apparently, denies. This alternate affirmation and denial is something that I shall argue is not a nuance or delicacy of his account. It might conceivably be construed as the effect of an importation of Hegelian method (and, if this is so, then we have well and truly left the landscape of realist philosophy, natural teleology, and the metaphysics of esse). But a more commonplace and simple

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explanation is available—namely, that it reflects so thoroughgoing an effort to elude the dangerous implications of his prior account of nature as to court incoherence. Second, I shall then briefly consider Balthasar’s embrace of a sense of ‘‘concrete nature’’ that he rightly associates with the teaching of Henri de Lubac. I shall argue that this treatment of ‘‘concrete nature’’ implies an epistemic denial of the efficacy of abstraction in cognizing proportionate natural order, and that this denial is incompatible both with the teaching of Aquinas and with the requisites of metaphysical realism. That is to say, such an account of ‘‘concrete nature’’ fails to do justice to St. Thomas’s treatment of being and nature and the proportionate epistemic requisites for knowing them, as it alike fails to accompany St. Thomas in the acknowledgement that there exists a proportionate natural end knowable in precision from grace even in the present order of things that comprises the creation of man in sanctifying grace, the fall, and the redemption. Third, and finally, (1) I shall consider two zones in, as it were, the ‘‘internal’’ economy of Balthasar’s theological contemplation wherein the error about nature is liable to introduce error. And, (2) I will argue that, in the external forum of the Church’s life in relation to the secular world, certain specific dangers both to our contemplation of revealed truth, and to the moral life, are implicit in this error about nature. This is an important datum, not least because at the minimum certain of these implied dangers were opposed with great constancy and clarity by both Balthasar and de Lubac, so that we possess good reason to think that, were it shown that something they held implies such errors, they would have developed their teaching differently. And of course, it is important that we direct our minds to the requisite principles necessary to address these dangers.

Commentary on Balthasar’s Reflections on Nature and Grace The mother lode of Balthasar’s rich reflections on nature and grace in The Theology of Karl Barth is contained in chapter 2 of section 3, titled ‘‘The Concept of Nature in Catholic Theology.’’ It is here that the

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transformation of St. Thomas’s teaching that nature is preface to grace is worked, at the end of which nature is no longer preface, but only postscript, to grace. Indeed, ‘‘postscript’’ is perhaps saying too much, for even a postscript has definitive and distinctly cognizable content, even when it refers to the body of a letter. Whereas, for Balthasar, nature becomes the equivalent of a theological vacuole or empty Newtonian space, a placeholder for grace. Of course, as this cannot by reason of necessity be a line-by-line commentary, everything that follows below doubtless will be subject to various caveats about what has not been treated. For example, I shall not spend time regarding the various merely philosophical senses of ‘‘grace’’2 nor seek to sort out a doctrine of theological analogy that is a posterior implication with respect to his foundational errors regarding natural truth, nor vary the focal emphasis upon his formal constructions of the relation of nature and grace. To the prima facie objection that this is to distort his thought, because nature should be taken up solely within the dialectical orbit of theology and so it is to be considered only after thorough contemplation of the method of theology, the answer must be: this very presupposition exemplifies both error regarding the relation of nature to grace and the very formal role played by the teachings of Balthasar on this score to be treated below. Analogy as passing through finite nature presupposes finite nature as something more than the methodological afterthought or ipse dixit of the theologian. This is precisely what the consideration below is ordered to demonstrating. Indeed, to hold the contrary is no more intelligible than it is to say that Cajetan may not be criticized with respect to his account of nature and grace without first accounting for his entire doctrine, as though all of reality were nothing other than a set of relations so thoroughly reciprocally constituting that all questions of truth resolve to questions internal to some particular theory. It is perhaps whistling in the dark to note that Go¨del’s theorem of incompleteness seems contrary to such an idea. But in any case, we are not required to accept a theologian’s account whole and entire as a condition for criticizing it. And one must start somewhere. Here our starting point is not the many points on which Balthasar’s reflections seem convergent with profound Catholic insight, but the one central point

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where error with respect to that which is required by the Catholic intelligence seems to loom. Nor is this critical approach untypical, but is rather the treatment accorded to all important theologians, St. Thomas Aquinas not excepted (although, what is exceptional is: Thomas does not, on the major points, exhibit to the degree history would lead one to expect even of great minds, the limits, partial truths, and errors to which it is so easy to fall prey). Accordingly, this treatment is restricted to this point. Let us see what the text argues. Referring to the beatific end, Balthasar begins unexceptionally, but moves to a conclusion that is utterly incorrect with regard to the doctrine of St. Thomas Aquinas (and, therefore also, I believe—for the reasons articulated by St. Thomas— with the truth): All these ways of interpreting Aquinas are secondary to the previous insight: as a created being of nature, man has no other goal than the supernatural vision of God. It is essential to realize that Thomas does not regard this as a hypothetical goal. Indeed he knows of a finis naturalis, meaning a fulfillment corresponding to the immanent structure of human powers. But he sees this fulfillment either as a goal for this life as opposed to the next, in the Aristotelian tradition, the ideal of the seeker after wisdom. Or he sees it as the cognitio verpertina [sic] [evening knowledge] as opposed to a cognitio matutina [morning knowledge], in the Augustinian tradition where this distinction first arose. Or finally, he might have meant it in the sense of a distinction between the praemium essentiale and praemium accidentale internal to a supernatural glory. But Thomas never entertains, even hypothetically, a final goal that could be unmoored from the supernatural vision of God. According to his medieval presuppositions, it would have been impossible for him even to make the conceptual distinction implied by this problem.3 These last lines are conspicuous: Thomas not only does not entertain the hypothesis that God could have created man without ordering him to the beatific vision, but he could not so much as ‘‘make the

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conceptual distinction implied by this problem.’’ Of course, if by ‘‘even hypothetically’’ we mean within this given order, then this is true by definition: Of course, given that God has called man to the beatific vision, it is impossible to place the finis ultimus in a purely natural end. But the hypothesis of pure nature is precisely the hypothesis that God could have, without any contradiction to His wisdom or Goodness, created man from the beginning without sanctifying grace, without the call to supernatural beatitude. It is this which—if it means anything reasonable about Thomas’s text—Balthasar must be saying. And this appears to be something that, at least in the twentieth century, many people have believed about St. Thomas’s teaching. But it is demonstrably false about Thomas’s text, as the first chapter of this book has emphasized. How—apart from the hypothesis Thomas is said to be incapable of conceiving owing to his medieval presuppositions—are we otherwise to construe these words of St. Thomas: ‘‘But because it was possible for God to have made man in a state of pure nature, it is useful to consider how far natural love could be extended’’?4 Or the following words, which signify at least that St. Thomas was more than capable of conceiving the idea of nature created apart from its ordering to the beatific vision in grace: ‘‘Man endowed with only natural powers would be without the divine vision if he were to die in this state, but nevertheless the debt of not having it would not be applicable to him. For it is one thing not to be bound to have, which does not have the nature of punishment but of defect only, and it is another thing to be bound not to have, which does have the nature of punishment’’?5 Is not the proposition that man endowed with only natural powers would lack the divine vision—i.e., man not endowed with grace, and on this hypothesis not even with the preternatural gifts (whose ratio in the present order, it is true, is sanctifying grace, but which could conceivably have a different ratio—but here these too are excluded)—is not this proposition to conceive the hypothesis of pure nature? Indeed, the lack of beatitude is said, on this hypothesis, not even to be a punishment. It would seem that St. Thomas has conceived the inconceivable. Or perhaps more likely: Balthasar on this strategic point has accepted an erroneous reading.

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Balthasar continues: To pose such a hypothesis, to maintain that a graceless order of nature or creation is at least possible, only became urgent for theology when a heretic wanted to make the fluid bond between nature and the supernatural a forced and juridic one.6 This happened when Baius chose to derive a de jure compulsory right to grace understood as a strict requirement (debitum) from nature based on the de facto configuration of both orders, which were linked because of free grace, not necessity.7 Certainly it is true that Baius was a heretic, and that the question of the nature/grace relation became crucial owing to his heresy. But here we see, to note it only in passing, the supposition that it is enough to avoid the error of Baius if we say that grace is a free gift, not a necessity. But of course, the issue is: is it, or is it not, the due natural perfection of man? If it is, then its deprivation is punishment; if it is not, then it is not in justice a necessity. That the gift be free does not address the issue whether there is a necessity of justice that it be given. Oxygen is a free gift of God to man, and our nature requires it. Were God to have created man twenty leagues beneath the sea, this might seem a punishment and not a mere defect. Likewise, if supernatural beatitude is the natural end, and not simply an end of which man is with the divine help of grace capable owing to his spiritual nature, then its withholding would seem to be a punishment. Yet this would seem by implication to be to fall into the very error of Baius. However, this observation to one side, it is also the case that while Baius heightened the stakes, the conception of natura pura, of man created in puris naturalibus, derives from the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas and not merely from the need to respond to the provocation of Baius. Yet Balthasar continues: ‘‘This conclusion gave birth to ‘natural theology’ in the modern sense of the term, that is, to a theology of natura pura.’’8 Sed contra, the texts locating this notion in the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas have already been cited in the first chapter above. Surely it would be absurd to suggest that critics of Baius discovered time travel, redacted Thomas’s texts without his knowledge, and

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inserted these texts. They are Thomas’s, and their meaning is not intrinsically obscure (although much contemporary theological discourse doubtless sadly has permitted them to fall into obscurity9). But one must return to Balthasar’s earlier explanation of what Thomas might have meant by adverting to a natural finality, i.e.: Indeed he knows of a finis naturalis, meaning a fulfillment corresponding to the immanent structure of human powers. But he sees this fulfillment either as a goal for this life as opposed to the next, in the Aristotelian tradition, the ideal of the seeker after wisdom. Or he sees it as the cognitio verpertina [sic] [evening knowledge] as opposed to a cognitio matutina [morning knowledge], in the Augustinian tradition where this distinction first arose. Or finally, he might have meant it in the sense of a distinction between the praemium essentiale and praemium accidentale internal to a supernatural glory.10 Now, certainly, Thomas did mean a finis naturalis as a ‘‘fulfillment corresponding to the immanent structure of human powers,’’ and also did see this as principally ‘‘a goal for this life as opposed to the next.’’ But that does not mean that he did not conceive it also as such that God could have created it apart from any further ordering by grace. Moreover, it is not merely a ‘‘fulfillment corresponding to the immanent structure of human powers,’’ although it is that. For, because it is that, because it is the fulfillment ‘‘corresponding to the immanent structure of human powers,’’ it is also the natural end from which the species is distinguished. As we had occasion to note in the first chapter, Thomas clearly teaches that there is a natural and proximate end distinct from the final and supernatural end, and it is from the natural and proximate end that the human species is distinguished.11 Moreover, it is not merely distinguished in some Platonic heaven. It is distinguished even now, on earth, and in the actual given synthesis of Providence inclusive of creation in sanctifying grace, the fall of man, and the redemption. For the gift of revelation and grace does not promulgate the loss of humanity or of natural good, but rather the healing of the wounds of nature after original sin, and the elevation of man to

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the divine friendship and to the beatific vision—ends absolutely disproportionate to human nature. Even given the call to the supernatural life, man qua man is constituted and defined in relation to the natural as distinct from the supernatural end: that is what it means for St. Thomas to say that the human species is derived not from the supernatural finis ultimus but from the proximate natural end. Balthasar continues: But this theology of natura pura belongs within a structure determined by Christian theology and was developed as the hypothetical conclusion that was meant to preserve the supernatural character of grace. In other words, the concept was functional, intended to preserve God’s freedom vis-a´-vis nature and the underivability of the Covenant from creation. But this conceptual hypothesis, which was not even necessary as an expressed statement before Baius, soon managed to develop into a full system detached from its theological presuppositions, and on that basis it took on a life of its own.12 In a footnote that follows the name ‘‘Baius’’ in the above quotation— note 4—we find Balthasar commenting that: ‘‘This is true provided we are speaking with the unaffected impartiality of the St. Thomas of the visio as finis quodammodo naturalis.’’ But, for Thomas, the ‘‘quodammodo’’ is everything. It is of course true that ‘‘natura pura belongs within a structure determined by Christian theology,’’ provided that we realize that it is not Christian theology that determined the structure of the creation, but rather God Himself, and that our access to nature is not only through revealed theology but through the proportionate objects and ends of our natural powers established by God. Nor did He create only provisionally, intending later to take back the original gift: the proportionate natural order and finality are an essential element in divine providence. Indeed, the concept of natura pura is ‘‘functional’’ because it pertains to that which God created. As for not being needed as an express statement before Baius, manifestly St. Thomas did not think so, which was why he penned statements regarding the possibility of man being

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created apart from grace with only natural aids. Further, we must make a distinction: even when created in sanctifying grace, there is human nature, and it is defined by its proportionate finalities. This is not the ‘‘state’’ of pure nature, but simply nature itself, which even in this present order can be known in precision from grace. The state of pure nature is simply a state or condition of nature in which God would not have called man to the beatific vision and would have provided only natural aids to man. Its possibility seems to follow simply from the divine omnipotence and from the definition of human nature. Hence, it is not surprising to find that when one begins by denying the very possibility of the hypothetical state of pure nature one is liable to end by denying that nature is so much as knowable in distinction or precision from the order of grace. As we shall see, Balthasar logically and consistently follows this error all the way to the denial that nature is knowable in precision from grace (although he does at places seem to relent from this view). It is, of course, the intention of Balthasar to accord with Catholic doctrine, and he thus, speaking of Augustine’s contribution to the tradition, acknowledges the following, in lines to which this present author would wholeheartedly assent: But he was quite well aware, as were all the Fathers, that this unity that was the foundation of Adam’s existence was itself no necessary synthesis but a de facto one. It belongs to the very essence of the creature that it must indeed be creature, but not a creature who has been exalted to a new order by grace; by nature a creature is the ‘‘servant’’ but not the ‘‘friend’’ of God.13 Here the unreformed Thomist can only stand up and cheer. Yes. Grace is an unmerited gift, and man is not naturally ordained to the beatific vision, although he is naturally capable of being so ordained within the merciful grace of God. Affirmations of this sort punctuate Balthasar’s contemplations throughout the chapter, and this is a very strong sign that, just as de Lubac, he had no slightest wish to imply that nature has any claim on grace and beatitude. The rectitude and orthodoxy of intention on this point is exemplary and beyond question.

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Yet, the question remains: granted that this is the intention and desideratum, and that there is no question whatsoever of questioning the end sought by these theologians, were their means condign? We have addressed this significantly above, in the first chapter. Here, it must be noted that there is a confusion involved in thinking that, because grace is a personal gift of God, therefore one has addressed adequately the question whether the idea of supernatural beatitude as the only possible natural end does not imply a certain necessity of justice to revelation. For if one accepts that revelation is a free gift of God and supposes that this makes it possible to say that supernatural beatitude is the only possible end without thereby implying that revelation is necessary, the position of Baius appears to be retained: human nature is consequently so utterly lacking in any proportionate good that, minus the gift of grace, the nature would be penalized or tormented. Every decision by every judge in the world is arguably a free and personal decision, but some are necessitated by justice. In the absence of the affirmation of the existence and intelligibility of a proportionate natural end distinct from supernatural beatitude, it appears that a necessity of justice comes to pertain to the need of man for grace, even if this derivative-implied consequence is not desired. And it is necessitation in justice, and not merely as contrary to free and personal act, that is rejected in the Church’s anathematization of the error of Baius. Given the actual order of Providence—our creation in sanctifying grace—it is consequently true in this present order that punishment awaits those whose sins are unrepented. But as St. Thomas Aquinas teaches, had God created man without sanctifying grace, deprivation of supernatural beatitude would not have been a punishment.14 Balthasar argues that nature cannot be abstracted in its essential intelligibility from the complex in which it will be found, and from its mode of existence. One must hasten to add that as Balthasar is known to speak kindly of the real distinction of essence and existence, this is an odd position: for in finite beings esse is not reducible to quiddity. And so, the knowledge of quiddity—which is genuine knowledge—is both valid and abstractive. To quote Balthasar speaking about the concept of nature (which he also says, ‘‘never even entered the field of vision of Vatican I,’’15 despite

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the language of Vatican I affirming that man can know the existence of God, our Creator and Lord, from the natural light of reason): Above all, it is quite obvious, and it is becoming ever more striking, that when we use this concept—which expresses the essence of what it means to be a creature—it cannot be neutral in either its philosophical or theological usage. Of course, theology can utilize the philosophical concept of nature for its own purposes, but it will still have a wholly different angle on the issue from philosophy when it seeks to determine the essence of created reality. If this were not the case, we would possess along with philosophy and theology a neutral zone of thought, which means there would exist a standpoint hovering over both of them.16 Now, the sense of ‘‘neutrality’’ here is initially ambiguous, and there is something to say in favor of the view that the ‘‘angle’’ or ‘‘standpoint’’ of theology is necessarily different from that of philosophy: who could deny that? Yet, there is also something strange about dissolving objective principles into angles and standpoints since these last have reference to such objective principles. The ‘‘neutrality’’ of nature is evidentiary, it is presupposed both to theology and philosophy, it is presupposed even to grace (even in the creation of man in sanctifying grace, there is an obvious need for there to be a subject of grace, with a nature, in order for it to be recipient of grace). What ‘‘hovers’’ over both theology and philosophy, for example, are such pedestrian requisites of nature and being such as that being is not nonbeing, a metaphysical as well as logical truth which if the theologian denies he falls into error. Balthasar does intend—every bit as much as did de Lubac—to deny the proposition of Baius, and argues that only theologically (in the sense, of course, of revealed theology, not philosophical theology) can the beatific end be properly understood as a gracious gift of the Creator. As he puts it, were philosophy by itself supposed to be able to achieve such a truth regarding our Christian vocation, ‘‘then we could conceive of a creature to whom God would have to be gracious. And that would mean that it would essentially no longer be a creature.’’17

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Of course, this is true, and it is the root of our objection to the claim that Aquinas could but did not even make the distinction needed to conceive the problematic of pure nature as distinct from grace—a supposition expressly contrary to St. Thomas’s text. Nonetheless, if one were to suppose that for grace to be a free gift it sufficed that it be personal and free, then of course one might seek this path hoping to avoid the conclusion of Baius. Balthasar is also certainly correct that the mere philosophic conception of grace as something beyond nature is inadequate and negative— manifestly it belongs to revelation to reveal. No one ever thought differently, least of all those authors from whom, following de Lubac, Balthasar differs without, however, seeking to engage them or to respond to their thought. (Perhaps he was convinced that de Lubac’s response to Cajetan was adequate; surely the misportrayals of Cajetan on this score are legion, something aptly demonstrated by Dr. Ralph McInerny in his magisterial Praeambula fidei.) Yet clearly it is not the case that the contrast of the supernatural with the natural does not require prior knowledge of the natural. One cannot contrast two things where only one is to be found, something that directly pertains to the realism of our affirmation of nature and grace. Hence, while the positive character of revelation is contemplated by revealed theology, the idea that it can be contrasted with nature when nature cannot be known seems logically impossible, no matter how many dialectical positings the theologian undertakes: Created nature in all its ontological density is not the theologian’s posit; it is God’s effect. There ensues, a short while later in Balthasar’s treatment, a paragraph that starts unexceptionally and ends in confusion: The positive definition of grace can only be given through grace itself. God must himself reveal what he is within himself. The creature cannot delimit itself in relation to this Unknown reality. Nor can the creature, as a theologically understood ‘‘pure’’ nature, ever know wherein it specifically is different from God. Only the light of revelation can draw this distinction and make this clear—not a philosophy that ascends from the world to God, or even (especially!) the mysticism of a Plotinus.18

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Where to begin? Yes: ‘‘The positive definition of grace can only be given through grace itself.’’ But, no, this positive definition is not thereby without reference to that aboriginal gift of God that is created nature precisely with its own ontological density which is naturally—not solely through grace—knowable and definable. Further, it is not true that the creature ‘‘cannot delimit itself in relation to this Unknown reality’’— that is literally and utterly false, for were it true, it would be untrue to say with St. Thomas Aquinas that ‘‘not only does faith hold that there is creation but reason also demonstrates it.’’19 In fact, the creature is not ‘‘delimiting itself ’’—it is already ‘‘delimited’’ by creation—the creature is knowing itself as so delimited. And what should one make of the following: ‘‘Nor can the creature, as a theologically understood ‘pure’ nature, ever know wherein it specifically is different from God.’’ For there is no specific difference of creature from God to be known either by nature or by grace, because there is no common genus. If he means by ‘‘specific difference’’ to refer to quidditative knowledge of God in supernatural beatitude, then this is not a matter of contrast with the creature at all, and indeed the contrast of creature/Creator is naturally knowable. To contrast does not mean to have the optimal or greatest knowledge of what is being contrasted. Surely, in the beatific vision, our knowledge of God is superabundantly more perfect than what passes as natural knowledge of God. But merely to distinguish or contrast the imperfection of the creature with the significantly ‘‘known as unknown’’ limitless perfection of God requires only that we see what distinguishes ontological imperfection from perfection. Aquinas and Aristotle rather clearly hold that the root of this ontological imperfection is potentia. Of course, such a position is very widely viewed as mossbacked, antiquarian Greek thought in masquerade as Christian reflection, but it has a speculative and systematic justification with which most of the critics are (perhaps by choice) unacquainted. In any case, some knowledge of the limitation of act by potency is sufficient to found a contrast of the creature (as limited in act) with God (as not being so limited). Because supernatural beatitude is the last end of man, the whole hierarchy of natural ends is further ordered in grace to this end, and, concretely speaking, revelation contextualizes natural knowledge. But

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we should not, from this datum, make the mistake of treating nature purely negatively as ‘‘not grace,’’ and because it is in the total picture further ordered toward grace then, at the end—mirabile dictu—pull the dialectical rabbit from the hat and define nature in itself as simply a something-or-other somehow already on the way to grace. The Hegelian character of such a dialectic is clear: ‘‘X is not Y; but X is defined by not being Y, and so X is defined in relation to Y; and so as defined in relation to Y, X is on the way to being Y.’’ Nature as such is not on the way to grace save insofar as under the actual ordering causality of grace itself—which is true of man’s creation in grace! But this does not negate but affirms the distinct and intelligible divine gift of nature. Another way of stating this is to say that finite being and nature are constituted not by the relation to God, but rather by God, and that the relation to God follows upon the creation of being and nature (with the latter’s full ontological density and proportionate end). Prior to creation, there is nothing to be related to God, so the relation to God follows upon the fact of creation, follows upon the being and nature of the creature. Hence, one cannot dissolve being and nature into a mere internal relation to the supernatural. 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 in grace): God’s real world order 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.20 No Thomist could say it better—certainly, for example, one will find amongst those rejecting de Lubac’s thesis (from which Balthasar’s account largely sets forth), e.g., Jacques Maritain, comparable formulations (although not to be separate in reality does not mean not to be distinct in reality). Indeed, Maritain famously goes so far as to argue that natural moral philosophy is subalternated to moral theology, because—although essentially adequated to man’s nature—it nonetheless requires knowledge of the data of revelation in order to conform one’s judgments as

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to the actual circumstances and mode of being of this nature, a fallen nature aboriginally ordained to grace and redeemed in Christ. But this is a far different thing from supposing that created nature as such, simpliciter, is unknowable apart from grace. It is also quite different from holding that created nature cannot be distinguished in the given multiplex of nature and grace, for the essential adequation of intellect and nature remains, howsoever much it is the case that the mode of being and circumstances must also be cognized in order to give fully adequate direction to man in the concrete. But to give partially adequate direction is not to give no direction whatsoever. To know the order of human nature in itself and properly is important for the moral theologian, who must know more than the truth about original and actual sin, the fall, and the redemption, but must also understand both what is naturally good and what is inconsistent with that good. We are now in a position to begin to contemplate the full Balthasarian reduction of created nature. It begins to appear in his denial that man can define nature in precision from grace. As he puts it at first: The theological concept of nature is primarily a negative one: it draws a boundary line. It can only be distilled into a pure state through a process of subtraction, because God’s initial creation was already supernatural to begin with and continued to remain so after the Fall.21 Once again, this is of course true with respect to man’s creation in grace, and yet it is imbalanced, because God’s initial creation was not merely supernatural, but both natural and supernatural from the beginning. Further, as has already been suggested above, created nature is ontologically prior to the reception of grace even if the two are temporally simultaneous, because it requires a created receiver of grace to receive grace. Noteworthy, however, is the term ‘‘subtraction’’ rather than ‘‘abstraction.’’ What is subtracted must be present in order to be subtracted (or is nature a ‘‘negative number’’ for Balthasar?), and either it is or is not cognitively acquired by the ‘‘subtraction.’’ The proper term is ‘‘abstraction’’—which makes clear that we are taking in one thing, and leaving out something else. But Balthasar appears to be

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devoted to the proposition that only nature in the concrete, with all its circumstances, is truly nature, and that what is cognitively acquired via abstraction is something that has no role in the given play of Providence. Balthasar continues, and here he must be quoted at great length in order to make clear that we are not putting words in his mouth, but that he himself thinks of nature as merely a limit condition for grace. In short, this is the place where the long march to the evisceration of nature within theological method is undertaken with vigor. This march achieves its summit only in two paragraphs completing and formalizing the thought introduced by three consecutive prior paragraphs. Before turning to this capstone that articulates Balthasar’s position with maximal formality, these three earlier paragraphs will—one at a time—be quoted and commented upon. For their length I apologize, but they are provided in full to guarantee that we are not isolating mere accidental formulations of his at the price of his overall thought, but rather precisely identifying his overall thought and the context for his dialectical reduction of nature to a vacuole for grace. To begin with the first of these paragraphs, Balthasar writes: Now common sense claims to know what nature is. But the more exactly it tries to grasp it, the more difficult—nay, impossible—it becomes to isolate it neatly from the other dimension: supernatural grace. But it is equally difficult to espy the negative effects on the realm of nature of the loss of grace. The question, for example, how far ‘‘ignorance and hardship belong to natural existence,’’ how much concupiscence, disease, death (and the forms that death takes) are the result of sin or are part of the definition of being human and animal; but also questions about marriage, community, the State, our relation to a God who might not have revealed himself in his personal, interior life, the necessity for prayer in a natural state (which many people deny, for good reasons), the eschatological fate of the soul, resurrection of the body, Last Judgment, eternal bliss: all such questions addressed to pure nature are simply unanswerable.22 Now, it is true that only for the believer and the revealed theologian, who are aware of the gift of revelation and of grace, does the question

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of distinguishing nature from grace in the given multiplex of the real occur. But this is not impossible. Nor is it impossible to distinguish nature from what pertains to nature as a function of the punitive effect of the loss of grace. So, for instance, St. Thomas Aquinas well identifies both the fittingness of the original preternatural gift of bodily immortality (a function of the dignity of a bodily creature endowed with an immortal soul) and the essentially natural truth that the matter of the human composite is of itself, apart from divine aid, corruptible. Hence, Thomas held that part of considering the hypothesis of man created in puris naturalibus is considering the deprivation of the beatific vision should a man die in this state, a deprivation which he teaches is not, as we have seen, a punishment because it is not absolutely necessary to nature to have the benefit of the gift of revelation and grace (but not necessarily to have is different from necessarily not to have!). One cannot help but lament Balthasar’s approving comment about the denial of the need for prayer in a state of pure nature ‘‘which many people deny, for good reasons’’—for this denial is utterly contrary to right reason. As Aquinas shows with masterful orthodoxy, public worship and prayer is owed to the Creator from whom every public and private benefit is derived, and the virtue of religion falls under the natural good of justice. One is perhaps not unwarranted in supposing that Balthasar, so sure that Vatican I was unconcerned with nature, has somehow missed the presence of the natural knowability of God as Creator (regarding which we have quoted the earlier teaching of Aquinas, above) and the datum that from this natural knowledge devolve natural duties in justice to God. Denying this may be many things, but it is not in accord with the clear teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas, and it is at least in very strong tension if not outright contradiction with the teaching of Vatican I. For if it is naturally knowable that God, our Creator and Lord, exists, then it would seem that we know that all public and private goods flow from God, and this implies natural duties in justice. But then, such a scholastic inference clearly has not yet transubstantiated the clear teaching of the tradition into the mere logical posit of a dialectical formula as something to be conjured and banished at will for the sake of saving theological appearances.

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This putative subjection of nature to the theologian’s pure posit is also the clear sign that such a dialectical assimilation wars with the facticity as well as the formality of the divine gift. For the theologian is a creature, and it is God, not he, who authors and sustains the order of created nature. It is for this very reason that the natural law, which is nothing other than the eternal law as rationally participable by the human creature, is not subject to transformation or essential alteration but is eternal. As for ‘‘all such questions addressed to pure nature are simply unanswerable,’’ the universality of this negation makes it easy of rejection as false, for we have just answered one of these above, in speaking of the natural obligation in justice to give public and private worship and prayer to God. Of course, to the degree that these questions depend upon the disposition of circumstances beyond human nature by divine providence, they become progressively remote from rational certitude.23 Yet even here the essential lines of possibility are rationally discernible. But it is true that all such questions addressed to pure nature will be unanswerable for someone who has jettisoned the doctrine of the adequatio of mind and thing in behalf of a modal supernaturalization of nature so complete as to suggest that, apart from its ordering to grace, there is nothing in the real order present to be known. However, here we anticipate, as this extremity of Balthasar’s teaching is provided only later. For now, we turn to the second paragraph: To be sure, there are any number of theologians who do not hesitate to come forth with a ready-made answer to all these questions. One should once more bear in mind, however, that it would only occur to theologians in their work as theologians to pose such a question. But as soon as they come up with something remotely pertinent to this question, they inevitably give us a ‘‘system of pure nature,’’ that is, merely a pale, phantasmagoric double image, a hollow phantom of the real, existing world order. The success with which this pale film was laid over the real order has only meant ‘‘the loss of feeling for the infinite qualitative difference between grace and nature.’’24 Of course, St. Thomas Aquinas’s answers are not ready-made, although one might wish they were accessible in such a fashion. To the contrary,

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they require the two elements of genius and grace (no, not merely the one element: grace presupposes nature). While Balthasar collapses all the varied and quite diverse inquiries that he lists in the first paragraph into one question—‘‘it would only occur to theologians in their work as theologians to pose such a question’’—certain of the questions in the prior list would under any circumstances occur to man (e.g., again, the one regarding prayer). However, certainly those questions that concern the precise effect of original and actual sin, or of grace upon nature, presuppose the revelata and so, clearly, only the theologians in their work as theologians will likely initially pose them. (It would be disingenuous not to note that grace may ‘‘highlight’’ an aspect of nature that, accordingly, becomes of special interest to the philosopher. The fact that something is first encountered owing to revelation does not prevent someone from subsequently seeking natural insight into the selfsame object, as long as we are dealing with something that is not itself intrinsically revealed. Original sin and grace, however, and their effects, clearly are among the revelata.) As for nature abstracted (not merely ‘‘subtracted’’) from the multiplex of sin and grace, the view that this leaves us with merely ‘‘a hollow phantom of the real, existing world order’’ is curious, since (1) it is not hollow but pertains to a real principle in the given order, and (2) it does not seek to replace the existing order but rather supplies one of its principles. About this, however, Balthasar becomes persuaded that even to speak of nature and grace as principles equalizes and relativizes them, although there is no reason whatsoever for thinking this, since the order obtaining among principles must nonetheless presuppose them: if there is no nature, or there is no grace, the problem of their relation would not occur. He cites de Lubac, in a footnote to the passage quoted immediately above, to this effect—‘‘The supernatural order thus loses its unique dimensionality and finally becomes only a kind of Doppelga¨nger of the natural order’’; and, again, ‘‘Nature and supernature find themselves in certain of their relations put on the same level. And whatever one might say against this, it includes them both in one species-concept.’’ But, sed contra, were this to be true it would be pure nominalism. God is the one and only intrinsically supernatural reality, everything else being supernatural through God’s principal efficient

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causality ordaining it instrumentally to the supernatural end, as with infused grace, the lumen gloriae, etc. That grace is a principle of the supernatural life, and the natural form a principle of natural life, does not make supernatural and natural equal. Such a conclusion is, to say the least, a blatant non sequitur. Balthasar extends his reasoning in the third paragraph: In other words, the content of the concept of a pure nature cannot be exactly specified. Based on the belief that it is possible to give a clear exposition of interworldly structures in their eidos, at least up to a certain point, some people then think they have discovered purely natural and purely isolable relationships. Then they feel justified in continuing this construction and likewise in drawing conclusive boundary lines, even going so far as to specify the relationship of this hypothetical ‘‘being’’ to God and its ultimate fate! But it is obvious how questionable the results of this are. For where do we get the right to understand these interworldly structures as if they were disengaged from transcendence? How can you drain marriage, for example, or the whole of mortality of its concrete relation to God and to the Last Things? The only end we know in our de facto world is our supernatural one. So how can we so blithely maintain that the world possesses a self-sufficient definitive ground of fulfillment apart from this end? Only God, God alone, can have the final word. The fact that grace is free in its relation to nature does not suffice for making pure nature so governing a concept.25 Of course, the concept of pure nature can be exactly specified. 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 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

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ordered in grace. To be further ordered is not not to be, nor is it to be naturally unknowable. Balthasar asks, ‘‘For where do we get the right to understand these interworldly structures as if they were disengaged from transcendence?’’ Of course, this presupposes that there is in distinction from grace no relative transcendence of created human nature owing to its spiritual character, nor any transcendence with respect to the natural relation to God. As we have seen, Balthasar describes the necessity for prayer in a state of unassisted nature to be something ‘‘which many people deny, and for good reasons.’’ It is not surprising that he treats the natural as that which is devoid of genuine reference to God. Further, since naturally speaking the free act of the will achieves its act as moved by God, the reference to the divine transcendence exists in the very act of human freedom as lying within the creative providence of God. But such understanding requires realist premises that begin with the nature of created being not as the posit of a thinker—even a theological thinker—but rather as an effect that testifies to and originates in its Creator. Quoth Balthasar: ‘‘The only end we know in our de facto world is our supernatural one.’’ To the contrary, we will only know our supernatural end in beatific vision, a vision that is not within our de facto world save in the person of Christ. Supernatural beatitude is our supernatural end, and we know many ends that are not this end, although they are further ordered to it. Indeed human nature is defined in its species by the hierarchy of such natural ends, and to deny these simply makes no sense. One recalls, not for the first time, the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas from Summa theologiae, I, q. 75, a. 7, ad 1.26 The objection is: ‘‘It would seem that the soul is of the same species as an angel. For each thing is ordained to its proper end by the nature of its species, whence is derived its inclination for that end. But the end of the soul is the same as that of an angel—namely, eternal happiness. Therefore they are of the same species.’’ The answer is: ‘‘This argument proceeds from the proximate and natural end. Eternal happiness is the ultimate and supernatural end.’’ We have here a simple opposition: either human nature is, or is not, intelligible in its species—which is derived from the natural end—in distinction from grace and beatific

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vision. To hold that human nature is not intelligible in its species in distinction from grace is to make of the Nicene doctrine the doctrine that, in Christ, God assumes a ‘‘who knows what?’’ It is also to imply that no definitive distinction can be made between our natural rational participation of the eternal law that is known as the natural law and that essentially higher participation of the eternal law which is that of the lex nova and gratia. Paradoxically, therefore, the effect of the unilateral suppression of nature in behalf of grace is the implicit reductio of grace to the natural level. This of course also reveals why it would be erroneous to seek first to fathom Balthasar’s entire theological method and doctrine of analogy prior to considering his treatment of nature and grace, for if there is no distinct ratio of nature, there is nothing to be treated analogously in any traditional sense of the term, and the resultant construction is a dialectical orchestration perhaps closer to Hegel than to Augustine or Aquinas. Once more, with respect to: ‘‘The only end we know in our de facto world is our supernatural one.’’ One must note that this does not say that we know no end that is not itself further ordered to the supernatural finis ultimus. It says that the only end we know in our de facto world is our supernatural one. This surpasses hyperbole: when I know that I desire the end of nutrition, I do not thereby formally cognize the intrinsically supernatural beatitude. And nutrition is, hic et nunc, in this very de facto world, an end. Quod erat demonstrandum. Of course, this also pertains to the acme of natural ends, the natural contemplation of the universe in relation to God—we know this as a natural end, and in doing so do not formally cognize supernatural beatific vision. It is, here and now, in the present world, an end. And so, beginning with that remarkable line, Balthasar completes the third paragraph. I quote again: The only end we know in our de facto world is our supernatural one. So how can we so blithely maintain that the world possesses a self-sufficient definitive ground of fulfillment apart from this end? Only God, God alone, can have the final word. The fact that grace is free in its relation to nature does not suffice for making pure nature so governing a concept.27

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To the first sentence response has already been given. But as for ‘‘blithely’’ maintaining that ‘‘the world possesses a self-sufficient definitive ground of fulfillment apart from this’’—i.e., apart from the beatific—‘‘end?’’ One must ask: who said the realm of pure nature was self-sufficient? Does it not proceed from, and depend upon, the Creator? Where is this inference deriving except that on Balthasar’s view of nature, for nature to be relatively distinct and to have its own proportionate end would be for it to be self-sufficient? But does not all of created nature, and every natural motion, presuppose God not only remotely and indirectly but even with respect to the application of natural motion to particular acts? Is it not true that in everything that operates, God is the cause of its operating? Balthasar possesses a nontheonomic concept of nature, and so to overcome this one must hotwire nature to grace. But the error is the inceptive misconstruction of nature in relation to God’s creative goodness, an error that explains the willingness to drain nature of its divinely bestowed richness and so empty it that it becomes a mere remainder of dialectics. Unsurprisingly, at this point in his exposition Balthasar undertakes the decisive and final rejection of natura as primordial revelation in preference for a more controllable variable of natura as merely the minimum prerequisite to grace, ‘‘createdness as such’’ and ‘‘the antechamber that is not of itself the grace of participation.’’ In two capstone paragraphs he most formally articulates his understanding: While we do not need to describe it in great detail, this image of the servant who has been simultaneously clothed in the grace of friendship captures the contrast between nature and grace. Nature is to be sought in that minimum that must be present in every possible situation where God wants to reveal himself to a creature. And that minimum is expressed by the term analogia entis. If there is to be revelation, then it can only proceed from God to the creature—to a creature that precisely as a creature does not include revelation in its conceptual range. The ‘‘nature’’ that grace presupposes is createdness as such. We shall call this concept of nature the formal concept of nature. This minimum is therefore the presupposition of all grace

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because its necessity must be prior to the facticity of any and all revelation. As revelation takes place, nature is set off from it as the antechamber that is not, of itself, the grace of participation. When the inconceivably free event of grace occurs, it becomes simultaneously clear how truly gratuitous this freest of all gifts really is and how much it does not have to be.28 So now, from having causal integrity and a proportionate end, created nature has become merely ‘‘that minimum that must be present in every possible situation where God wants to reveal himself to a creature.’’ To which we ask: to what? ‘‘Creature’’ you say? What is that? The answer returns: ‘‘that which is created.’’ And we ask: is there any content to this? Presumably some creatures are distinct from others? But no: the ‘‘nature’’—henceforth nature must always be put off with scare quotes—the ‘‘nature’’ that grace presupposes is not something with ontological density, but is merely a content-less genus awaiting fulfillment in grace: The ‘‘nature’’ that grace presupposes is ‘‘createdness as such.’’ So, the human creature no longer enjoys anything definitive other than grace and ‘‘createdness as such’’—its proportionate natural ends seemingly cease to define the humanum. Indeed, created nature is thus considered merely a generically necessary presupposition for revelation, but it has no positive specific content of its own knowable in precision from revelation. But how can createdness as such not implicitly suggest specific created natures? And how can these natural species be derived and distinguished save in relation to proportionate act and end? For all are derived ultimately from God’s creative causality, but it is by what creation effectuates in them rather than from their common origin that they are distinguished and defined. Since creation does indeed effectuate in them something positive distinct from grace and knowable in terms of proportionate act and end, natura is more than merely createdness as such. Hence, to leave room only for createdness as such does not sufficiently acknowledge what God has wrought in specific nature. To say the very least, the rendering of natura as ‘‘createdness as such’’ seems too abstract, but more properly it seems simply insufficient.

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Quoth Balthasar, above: ‘‘We shall call this concept of nature the formal concept of nature. This minimum is therefore the presupposition of all grace because its necessity must be prior to the facticity of any and all revelation. As revelation takes place, nature is set off from it as the antechamber that is not, of itself, the grace of participation.’’ So nature is merely a negation of the participation of grace, an empty place for grace, generically necessary prior to the gift of revelation and yet vacuous: blank Newtonian space for the reception of the revelata. Nor is this merely an interpretation, it is Balthasar’s own construction of his teaching. Hence, one notes: The formal concept of nature gives us the bare minimum, but there is no upper limit to the content of the material concept. Philosophy basically is open when it moves upward. It demonstrates its essence as the thought of a creature, who of course cannot set prior limits to what God actually has said or could say to us. This is all the more true because the concrete object of philosophy is never a purely philosophical object but always transcends the boundaries of philosophy. Of course, philosophy does have a formal object, that is, the nature of the creaturely world as such. But it has no purely isolable material object, because the actual world of creation actively participates de facto in the Word of revelation, either positively in grace, or negatively, in sin.29 And so it is that, having no upper limit, nature can indeed play multiple roles within theological dialectics for so long as we prescind from it having any definitional content. No nature surviving save ‘‘createdness as such’’—a pure negation of participation in grace and ground of the reception of grace that yet has nothing ontologically positive of its own, no proportionate order of defining ends—it follows that nature will no longer be able to weigh down the theologian with ‘‘irrelevant’’ restrictions to the free flow of dialectical imagination. Anything can be said short of direct denial of the revelata, because there is no natural limit. Indeed, no limit can be set to God by the creature,

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but one is startled that Balthasar fails here to see that the principle of noncontradiction is indeed a limit, and it is God’s own limit, as it is an inexpungible law of being naturally accessible to the mind in precision from grace and revelation. Or shall we say that God is and is not at the same time and in the same respect? Natural philosophy has discovered, not ‘‘set,’’ a limit, and one that the theologian ought to respect, too, on pain of affirming and denying the revelata simultaneously. Likewise, the ordering toward proportionate natural ends is something positive and evident to reason, which only the overweening exigency to avert the dangers of naturalism could move a theologian to deny. Of course philosophy does not have an ‘‘isolable’’ material object, if by ‘‘isolable’’ one means that the nature it discerns is not present in its subject together with other lesser—or greater—formalities or rationes. But denying for this reason that the nature it cognizes is real or actually present in the concrete is like saying that—because geometric shapes are abstracted from substances that possess qualities like colors—there are no geometric patterns and one cannot truly distinguish ‘‘triangular’’ from ‘‘green’’ because some green thing is triangular.30 And so henceforth to be triangular and to be green will be supposed to signify nothing different. But even if all triangular things were green, to be triangular and to be green would be distinct. Indeed, one can imagine the geometer being tutored on the perversity of geometric abstraction—since God’s love is at the root of all things, and geometric shape is abstracted from things, it then follows that the inner essence of geometric form is divine love. However, ‘‘right triangle’’ is not in this way defined by love, and it is nonetheless worth knowing for all of that. ‘‘Intellect,’’ ‘‘will,’’ ‘‘potency,’’ ‘‘act,’’ ‘‘form,’’ ‘‘matter,’’ ‘‘efficient cause,’’ ‘‘final cause,’’ and so on, indefinitely, are not defined by beatific vision either. Of course, divine wisdom is the source of intelligibility, and so of geometric intelligibility, too. Nothing in this is lost by affirming a subordinate form. When St. Thomas taught that charity is the form of every virtue, he specifically did not deny to all the virtues their proximate objects. Likewise, although human persons are ordered in grace to supernatural beatitude, the species of man is derived from the proportionate natural end. That ‘‘the actual world of creation actively participates de facto in the Word of revelation’’ does not mean that created

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nature is unintelligible, or that what is known of it abstractively does not truly pertain to it. That what is at stake here is emptying the nature of created being to the status of a mere dialectical limit concept or posit is clear in the comment: ‘‘So we cannot speak in this context univocally but only dialectically: the stronger the union between God and man becomes, which the Word of God effects, the more clearly we see the difference between them, especially as it applies to the categories of subjectivity and personal character.’’31 But for the word ‘‘dialectically,’’ the word ‘‘analogically’’ should have been written instead, for the distinction between creature and Creator, however enhanced by infused supernatural wisdom, is nonetheless present naturally and apart from any revealed premise. But Balthasar has too completely denied the impress in concrete nature of the whole natural hierarchy of ends for him easily to entertain this clear element of Catholic tradition. And so he writes: The range of views stretch all the way from Ripalda to Billot: at one extreme is Ripalda’s version, according to which every act, no matter how remote from or misdirected toward it is with respect to our supernatural goal, is borne up by grace (entitative). The middle ground is occupied by those systems (with varying emphases) in which a nature that functions at first purely naturally is ‘‘intercepted’’ at some point by grace and directed to its supernatural end. Finally there is the other extreme—and extreme it is, as it has hardly any adherents, or even could have, for that matter—which leaves room for a full-blown (if subordinate) finality of pure nature in the de facto world order (as in Billot).32 This is remarkable: Balthasar seems here to suggest that, by denominating the subordinated natural end that is further ordered in grace ‘‘pure nature,’’ one thereby guarantees that there is no subordinate natural finality distinct from the supernatural end. But, on the contrary, there is a hierarchy of natural ends, and at the summit of this hierarchy a natural end that in a different order could have been the finis ultimus but is not now, but that nonetheless now still is the anchor of this natural hierarchy and still constitutes a proximate end. That natural end, however, still exists, and is still the highest purely natural finality, albeit it

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is now further ordered in grace. As for this doctrine having hardly any adherents, and for that matter not being capable of having any adherents, well: it is the authentic teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas, compared with which Balthasar’s reading, and that of de Lubac from whom he largely inherited it, are understandable but contrary readings. Further, the reading Balthasar judges incapable of having adherents is as a matter of prosaic fact the reading of most of the Dominican commentators—and of the preponderant number of Jesuit commentators—of Aquinas.33 This is to say that, in historico-doctrinal terms, the reading of de Lubac and Balthasar (and of Gilson, and of Laporta) is a minority reading. Here there is no substitution for reading Lawrence Feingold’s magisterial work, The Natural Desire to See God According to St. Thomas Aquinas and His Interpreters.34 Nature, and natural ends, do not suddenly vanish upon the promulgation of the lex nova, because grace does not destroy, but perfects nature (i.e., nature and the hierarchy of natural ends actually exist). Thus, we have Balthasar’s account of created nature: a mere limit or remainder concept of a content-less minimum natura for the reception of grace, but lacking any ontological character, density, or dynamism in its own right. Balthasar comments: ‘‘There is no slice of pure nature in the world.’’35 But he might as well have said, ‘‘There is no slice of world in the world.’’ If the world is not ‘‘nothing but grace’’ then— unless we hold a doctrine according to which intelligible abstraction is impossible owing to an Hegelian view that everything is inextricably and reciprocally defined by everything else—that which is other than grace may be known in its own right and as distinct from grace rather than merely as a vacuole or dialectical placeholder for grace. If Balthasar meant only that, concretely speaking, there is no pure nature in the sense of a nature existentially unaffected by sin and grace, that is true, and it is completely consistent with the abstract intelligibility of nature and of its being distinct from that which affects it (nature is not sin; nature is not grace). The reason? Being and essential nature are really distinct.36 Balthasar quite rightly affirms that everything is or can be wholly irradiated by grace, and also that it has its ‘‘natural side’’37—but proceeds to say that, ‘‘This already means that nature de facto has only

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one, single, supernatural end.’’ But this is untrue and is indeed inconsistent with the affirmation of the natural. For we know substances by powers, powers by acts, acts by objects, and objects by ends; accordingly, the only way in which it could be true that there is only a single, supernatural end would be if human beings never acted so as to move toward natural goods or ends. But this is palpably not the case, from which it follows that Balthasar’s claim is false. The order of natural ends does not disappear with revelation. And to say that there is no nature as such because it is always concretely existing in some relation to grace and supernatural beatitude is to say that nature is itself intrinsically unintelligible. He comments: It only confuses things when we try to equate fallen human nature with some ‘‘pure nature’’ that stands outside the order of grace, quite apart from the fact that this hypothetical concept of pure nature cannot be given any content and thus is unsuited to serve as a model for a condition of nature that actually does obtain.38 Surely he is correct that nature is not necessarily fallen. But here Balthasar, like many others, confuses two related but distinct senses of natura pura: (1) as a state or condition lacking divine assistance of supernatural grace, i.e., a condition in which it lacks either supernatural assistance or harm that befalls uniquely from the loss of supernatural assistance; (2) as nature simpliciter, which is defined in precision from supernatural grace but is then affirmed in all the varying states in which it may be found: e.g., in the hypothesis of unaided nature; in its creation in sanctifying grace; in the state of original sin; in the Person of the Divine Word; in the status of persons who are baptized wayfarers, in the state of grace, ordered toward beatitude; in the persons of those in the eternal city of supernatural beatitude. The condition of pure nature is only a hypothesis; but human nature simpliciter—pure nature in the sense of all that defines human nature as such—is found in all who have the nature, irrespective the condition in which they have it, regardless of with what impairment or blessings they enjoy it. And that nature is defined by its proximate and natural end, whence its species is derived. Or so teaches St. Thomas Aquinas.

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Since it is from the second sense that the first sense of the hypothesis derives (in relation to the divine omnipotence, to be sure), these two distinct but interrelated senses of natura pura define the doctrine. I.e., there is a nature and proportionate natural order to the proximate natural end whence the species is derived, nature simply speaking, and this same nature might have existed in a radically diverse regimen from that which now obtains: a regimen in which it would not have been created in grace and then fallen and then been redeemed, restored and elevated in grace, but rather in which no aid of supernatural grace would have been provided. Balthasar does at moments seem to take back his earlier negations—as for instance when he affirms: For man in particular, this reality of being a subject can be analyzed in terms of his body-soul unity, with all that each of these two terms implies, singly and when united in one subject. Using the analogy of the human person, we can then sketch a corresponding doctrine of the essence of subhuman natures and at least a schematic doctrine of a created ‘‘pure spirit.’’ In this doctrine, God will tower as the principium et finis (Denz. 1785) of the world. For created spirit, in order for it to be such, must necessarily be recognized as such. And thus we will be able to develop an ethics of created being as such (religio). This natural moral law will emerge from man’s dependence on the Creator, which is itself bound to his specifically human, physical, psychological, sexual and social nature.39 One observes that rather more is involved here than a mere ‘‘createdness as such.’’ Suddenly we are presented with natures possessed of ontological density, dynamism, teleological order to something distinct from (but not, of course, necessarily opposed to or cut off from) the beatific vision. But no sooner has it made its appearance than it vanishes from the stage, as Balthasar notes that, ‘‘The more our investigation moves from the abstract to the concrete and individual, the more distant from this abstract construction (the realm of ‘‘pure nature’’) will the experimental material become.’’40 Now, this is doubtless true, and yet it does nothing to negate the structural and ontological adequation of this judgment of ‘‘pure nature,’’ which indeed is found in the

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concrete individual (as human nature is predicated of St. Paul, though St. Paul be further ordered beyond any natural end to the essentially supernatural beatific end, and though St. Paul suffers the wounds of original sin, of concupiscence and death). Yet this exceedingly brief appearance of natura is destined for no particularly significant role in Balthasar’s theology. And indeed, throughout his corpus he never intensively and extensively develops moral theology—precisely that aspect of theology where being and nature are seen to be rich with anthropological and moral content. In Balthasar’s theology, nature, it appears, is to remain a geometric point fit only to terminate the line of grace but having no magnitude of its own. This is a position that is not properly speaking the error of fideism, but is nonetheless perhaps more serious precisely because it is so distortive of the categories in terms of which fideism is identified. For all the incredibly powerful and soaring elements of Balthasar’s theology, it is this Achilles’ heel that most imperils his achievement, by way of causing the subtle and profound dislocation of its foundational elements. We have seen the problem, and also the manner in which he momentarily undoes his multiple negations by suddenly postulating that a whole ethic shall burst forth from ‘‘createdness as such’’—even affirming the ‘‘specifically human’’—while swiftly arguing that all ‘‘experimental material’’ must be found remote from nature as an ‘‘abstract construction.’’ But does not the nature cognized abstractly actually exist in the individual substance? It remains to identify the role played by his concurrence with de Lubac’s sense of ‘‘concrete nature,’’ and to identify briefly how this error vitiates theology.

The Fallacy of ‘‘Concrete Nature’’ In the first chapter, and also immediately above, we have seen that both de Lubac and Balthasar advert to ‘‘concrete nature’’ as obviating any definitive proportionate ‘‘natural’’ end for man. In the concrete, we are told, grace is so comprehensive and irradiating, and the fall from grace so cavernously profound, that really there is nothing of nature but a geometric point designating what could be conceived as

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something like a Platonic midpoint of the struggle. The words of Henri de Lubac from the fourth chapter of The Mystery of the Supernatural regarding the idea of pure nature, quoted in chapter 1, may also stand for Balthasar’s view in The Theology of Karl Barth: I do not say that it is false, but I do say that it is insufficient. For it completely fails to show, as people seem to think and as by the logic of the theory it should, that I could have had another, more humble, ‘natural’ destiny. It only demonstrates—presuming it to be well-founded—that in another universe a being other than myself, with a nature similar to mine, could have been given this humbler destiny. But, I repeat, what has this other being really to do with me? What have I to do with him? To convince me that I might really have had this humbler destiny—humbler, but note also less onerous—you need only show it to me, even momentarily, as something really imprinted upon me, in my nature as it is. Most people would agree that this is precisely what is, by hypothesis, impossible. My destiny is something ontological, and not something I can change as anything else changes its destination.41 Likewise, Balthasar holds this view of concrete nature: The only end we know in our de facto world is our supernatural one. So how can we so blithely maintain that the world possesses a self-sufficient definitive ground of fulfillment apart from this end? Only God, God alone, can have the final word. The fact that grace is free in its relation to nature does not suffice for making pure nature so governing a concept.42 Balthasar expresses himself here in terms of the de facto world, and we have seen that he makes the same point expressly in terms of the concrete: ‘‘The more our investigation moves from the abstract to the concrete and individual, the more distant from this abstract construction (the realm of ‘pure nature’) will the experimental material become.’’43 It is of course true that the subject is concrete, and that although the subject has a nature, still the subject in the world is ineluctably

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more than this nature (and perhaps in certain respects also less, since the teleology of this nature may be impeded or frustrated by human evildoing, in which case one would say that the divinely instilled aims of human nature have not been honored). Yet this quite demonstrably did not keep St. Thomas Aquinas from holding that a state of unassisted nature was not impossible for God to create or inconsistent with the divine goodness or justice, nor did it keep him from holding that natural teleology was knowable (despite the datum that from the beginning nature was created in grace and ordered to supernatural beatitude). Nor did the truth that in actual existence there is no neutrality with respect to the supernatural end cause St. Thomas to deny that human nature can be known in precision both from its existence and from all its circumstances and accidents, the most penetrating and profound of accidents being the superadditum of grace.44 What, then, accounts for the difference between the doctrine of St. Thomas Aquinas, and that of de Lubac and Balthasar? It appears that both de Lubac and Balthasar perhaps breathed too deeply of the suspicion toward abstraction popular in the 1950s amongst a wide variety both of scholastic and non-scholastic authors. And this consideration of the Thomistic fascination with the concrete, in particular with concrete existence, in relation to la nouvelle the´ologie, would make an interesting and profound historical disquisition. But the speculative lessons drawn from this fascination, and from this negative attitude toward abstraction, are in this instance the wrong lessons—human persons do act toward ends proportionate to their natures, and consequently the intelligible and definable human nature that is the principle of such action is not the less knowable merely because human nature is further ordered in and by grace. This is simply a gloss upon the truth that Christians must always find themselves communicating to non-believers: namely, that faith, hope, and charity do not constitute an alienation of the person from his own nature because grace not only heals but elevates nature without transmuting or destroying it. But this denial of alienation, transmutation, and destruction quite simply and absolutely requires that human nature receive its species from the hierarchy of its connatural proportionate ends. It also requires that the intelligible abstraction of nature should

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yield, not a deformation of the real, but a certain assimilation—subject to judgment—to the real. After all, essence in the concrete order is a real principle, although it is a potency in relation to esse. And it is because the potency cannot be known without implicit reference to the act, while yet the object of the act of knowing the potency as potency excludes the act as such (for potency is not act), that we can really distinguish essence and existence within corporeal being. Now, no matter how permeating grace is, it does not transmute human nature. And so, there is indeed some definitional content, some neutral content that is predicated both of the Divine Word, and of Fred the bookie, and (partially!—for the soul is not complete in its species) of the soul in heaven, and of the sinner, and even of the saint on earth, or of a humanity never destined to grace had God so created it. The claim that grace is so permeating that natural intelligibility disappears requires us to believe that human intelligence either no longer has the power to abstract, or that, because we may misinterpret abstraction, abstraction itself is therefore misleading or distortive. Yet neither of these options is true. Indeed, were it true that abstraction necessarily and constantly deformed or mispresented the essence as such, then the essential adequation of all human thought would have to be denied. Such a denial would then make it impossible to distinguish the human nature in Christ from the nature of a nematode or an asteroid. It would also, of course, make nonsense of the very metaphysical distinction of essence and existence that Balthasar, following Gilson and Maritain, admired in the work of St. Thomas Aquinas. Further, without acknowledging some dignity to the humble act of abstraction, the formula of Nicea and the Athanasian witness cease to denote the mystery of faith. For that which was not assumed is not redeemed, and this requires that human nature be assumed. Of course, it is ineradicably assumed as concrete—the Person of the Incarnate Word is not an abstraction!—but it is truly assumed with all the content that its abstract definition identifies. Nor is it merely ‘‘createdness as such’’ that is assumed, but human nature. If the assumption of human nature by the Incarnate Word is other than a dialectical card trick, human nature must possess some

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ontological density in its own right—else there is no difference between being assumed and not being assumed, since no content is predicated in common such that between creation and redemption there is only an equivocal subject. Someone may wish at this juncture to say: ‘‘No, there is an analogical continuity, not an equivocal one.’’ But analogy can pertain only to the way that this essential nature exists, it cannot pertain to this essential nature itself, on pain of rendering it no longer the same nature (i.e., on pain of denying that it is the identical human nature that is the real metaphysical principle of human beings that is assumed by God). Of course, analogy pertains as between human and divine nature; of course, it pertains with respect to the manner in which human nature exists in the Divine Word and in individual human persons. But there is an ‘‘in itself ’’ aspect to nature that must be cognizable and without which none of this is remotely intelligible. The mode of being of human nature is distinct in Christ, and in St. Peter, but the definition of human nature as such is not. That is what is required for the intelligibility of the doctrine of Nicea, and anything that impedes or contradicts this by so doing impedes and contradicts the most foundational truth of Christianity. It must be possible for us to know what ‘‘human nature’’ as assumable by God designates. When we say that Christ had everything that we have by nature, but not sin, we close in on the datum that there indeed is a content of human nature that is neither simply a function of grace nor of sin. That the content of human nature is not merely ‘‘createdness as such’’ is manifest in the fact that we can identify that which must be true of Christ owing to the formulation in question that Christ has everything in our nature save sin and what it implies. For example, we do not think that hunger for food signifies sin, or derives merely from original sin; nor do we think this of friendship, or love for one’s mother, etc. That these are destined to be elevated and completed in supernatural friendship does not prevent them from being inceptively and definitionally natural. The ox and the ass in the manger are taken up within a divine narrative of grace—but the ox and the ass are not defined in their

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species by that narrative. Joseph and Mary are taken up in that narrative far more profoundly, but they, too, are not defined in their species by it, although their destiny as hearers of the Word is thereby defined. Nature and its ordering to the proportionate end, while further defined in relation to the supernatural finis ultimus, are not such as to be defined only by that further ordering to the supernatural end: Grace does not make nature (unless we mean simply profane ‘‘nature,’’ which is a defect or deprivation of nature properly speaking) vanish (and indeed, the defects consequent on sin do not vanish so swiftly as we wish they would!). Rather, the ordering of the human person to the whole hierarchy of ends persists within the new regime of grace. To be further ordered does not connote losing the prior order—for it is that selfsame order of ends that is further ordered in grace. If we say that it is not the same human nature that is created and that is redeemed, then no human creatures are redeemed. This is, not to put too fine a point on it, nonsense. The danger of a too-great mystagogy of the concrete is not alone objective, but also subjective. Abstraction is a sign of the ordering of human intellect to the universe of truth. While we may misinterpret abstraction by supposing that it is the whole, this possible failure should not obscure the truth that abstraction does not deform its object but rather vouchsafes it. Hence, however incomplete our view is when we abstract nature as a whole (abstractio totius), we do in fact thereby acquire knowledge of a real principle in man—however true it may also be that in the practical order we will need the perfection of further guidance (in order to know how this principle actually exists within the given concrete order and in relation to the realities of grace and original and actual sin) to make prudential judgments with respect to action. But the need for help in applying our knowledge of a principle of man to man in his concrete singularity—owing to man’s creation in grace, and the Fall—is a practical need. If all we had were knowledge of nature, we should find much paradoxical or unintelligible, as it seems that Aristotle himself did (why is it that so many human beings pursue that which is not their good—i.e., why is the multitude convinced, against reason, that the good is pleasure as such?). But, speculatively speaking, affirming human nature of each and every human

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individual irrespective his relation to grace or sin will be correct: whatever enhancements or deprivations pertain to the individual will not invalidate but only qualify the possession of the nature in question. The immolation of created nature is not the terminus of the divine gift of being. Finally, one is left responding to de Lubac, and to Balthasar, by observing that, contrary to both, the order to the natural end is evidently imprinted upon us even here and now. It is not true that the only end we know in our de facto world is our supernatural one, although it is the ultimate and supernatural end. The natural end does not become other than natural when it is further ordered to the supernatural end; this further ordering does not annul or cancel the first, but rather constantly presupposes it. The complexity of the given order does not mean that everything is reciprocally defined by and defining of everything else. It is not a nest of thoroughgoingly internal relations such that abstraction cannot yield anything that is a real and defining principle. Moreover, were that so, what would follow would be not an enhancement of Christian teaching, but the complete and utter unintelligibility of that teaching because the formulation of Nicea would be either empty or utterly equivocal. The radical and permeating re-ordering of human nature in and by grace does not annul that nature, nor deny it its specific intelligibility—an intelligibility that is a function of its proportionate natural end from which its species is received. The gifts of sanctifying grace and infused faith, hope, and charity presuppose the gift of rational nature—e.g., rocks, table lamps, and soap bars do not receive them. Man receives a supernatural gift, new principles of supernatural action in the form of the infused theological virtues, and can do so because intellect and will are spiritual faculties susceptible of being aided and uplifted by God to share in His knowledge and love in beatific vision. Contrary to the secularist verdict, the man of faith is not someone who has lost his mind. Why does the angel not need to eat, whereas man needs to eat? Diverse natures with diverse proportionate ends. Why does man’s intellectual life proceed more discursively than intuitively, but the angel’s wholly intuitively? Diverse natures with diverse proportionate ends.

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Yes, whatever one does, whether eating or drinking, it should be ordered to the glory of God. But the reason why man needs to eat or drink—or to pursue friendship, or to reason discursively, or to order sense knowledge and discursive knowledge to the contemplation of the creator—proceeds from the human nature bequeathed by God, which has a teleological dynamism defined by proportionate ends, however much it is true that human nature is healed, elevated, and further ordered to supernatural beatitude in and by grace. If someone wishes to say that the bequeathal of nature is part of a wider story, this is true, but the wider story does not annul but presupposes the proportionate ordering of nature. In the end, then, the erroneous view that ‘‘concrete nature’’ involves so great a reciprocal co-definition by other principles as no longer to be the same nature is an error of equivocation. The human person exists in a world defined not alone by specifically human nature, but by the creation in sanctifying grace, the Fall, and the Redemption: yes. And, practically speaking, to give fully adequate moral direction, natural moral law and virtue must be considered and placed within the wider defining context of grace. But speculatively speaking, human nature—as receiving its species from the proportionate natural end—is correctly predicated of the Person of the Incarnate Word, of Adam, of St. Paul, and—if God had deigned to create such a person—of anyone created in puris naturalibus. The imprinting of the order to the natural end that de Lubac and Balthasar find so mysteriously impossible to locate in man as he is stems from the implicit supposition—a supposition that they strongly wished to deny but that yet is implied by denial of the proportionate natural finality impressed on man as he is—that the finis ultimus of supernatural beatific vision supplants the order of natural ends and robs it of its relative integrity and intelligibility. But—sed contra—here and now the inclination to listen to a piece of music is intelligible in purely natural terms (musical good is not identical with the beatific vision, is not intrinsically supernatural), but not necessarily reductively natural as though excluding grace (because the whole dynamism of man’s natural inclinational structure is further ordered in grace toward supernatural beatitude). That man’s ultimate and supernatural end transcends

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all proportionate natural ends does not make such subordinated ends no longer to exist. The question is in its essence simple: Does human nature receive its proper definition from the ordering to supernatural beatitude? No. For it shares the last supernatural beatific end with all the innumerable distinct species of angels. Rather, it receives its species from the proportionate, proximate natural end, which is further ordered in grace to the finis ultimus of supernatural beatitude. God and man is not God minus man or less than man: man’s essential nature is precisely to be found in the Person of the Word, with the same definition (for nature is not defined in terms of sin, or in terms of grace, nor merely as an empty dialectical placeholder of ‘‘createdness in such,’’ but in terms of its natural end from which it derives its species).

Two Sets of Implications I have attempted to set forth both the nature and the extent of the error regarding nature and grace shared by de Lubac and Balthasar: the flight from intelligible metaphysical abstraction, the reductio of nature to a mere dialectical limit concept, and the draining away of nature’s ontological density, in-itselfness, and proportionate teleological dynamism so as to render it merely a ‘‘Newtonian empty space’’ awaiting revelation and grace. It remains to indicate two sets of implied errors. One set is internal to the theology of Balthasar and requires further interpretative labor. Yet, even prior to this further interpretative research, it would be wrong not to suggest those areas where, nature being lost, certain dangerous implications are most likely to assert themselves. The other set of implications obtains in the external forum of the Church’s evangelical mission in the world, and here I shall focus only on two, although as my words at the end of the first chapter suggest, I believe there are more. With respect to this second set of implications, it must be said that for the most part they were vigorously and nobly opposed by de Lubac and Balthasar with never a suspicion that their own theses might bear

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some etiological relation to the afflictions opposed. I have already said a word at the end of the first chapter, suggesting the array of evils that seem consequent on the loss of nature. But one should never make the mistake of supposing that de Lubac or Balthasar realized the extent of the damage inflicted through the dialectical reduction of nature: to the contrary, what to the eyes of this author seem clear implications of the negation of nature, were to these authors enormities wholly unrelated to their theology and to be resisted tout court. Of course, in a certain respect, these two sets of implications45— within the inner forum of Balthasar’s theology, on the one hand, and confronting the evangelical mission of the Church, on the other—as they derive from the same negations, to a certain degree interpenetrate. But never in the minds of the authors, whose intent was first and last to do justice to the profound truth and beauty of the Catholic faith.

Two Zones of Dubious Implication Interior to Balthasar’s Theology Before passing to the unfortunate implications with respect to the Church’s evangelical mission in the world, I wish to offer preliminary identification of the two primary zones within Balthasar’s theology that seem most likely to be affected by his treatment of ‘‘the reciprocal codefinition of nature and grace’’—or, in other words, by his denial of the abstractive intelligibility of natural order metaphysically required for the intelligibility of the deposit of faith. Admittedly, an intensive treatment of these zones within Balthasar’s theological doctrine escapes the necessary limits of this present consideration. Nonetheless, the treatment thus far proffered enables one to identify the areas where the reductio of nature to a dialectical remainder concept is most likely to communicate itself and generate further difficulties. And so, by way of indicating zones for further research and, likely, for correction, these remarks are offered. The first of these zones is manifestly with respect to the doctrine of analogy between creature and God, and with respect to the analogia entis itself. As regards the analogy of creature to God, this requires a certain purification of names predicated of God, such that only transcendental or pure perfections are

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predicated. The classical analysis here is well known, and so I shall not belabor it: Certain perfections do not intrinsically include potency, howsoever much they are always found with potency in the world of our experience. Thus, ‘‘to be’’ does not include in its denotation ‘‘not to be’’; ‘‘truth’’ does not include ‘‘falsity’’; ‘‘good’’ does not include ‘‘evil’’; ‘‘unity’’ does not includes ‘‘manyness’’; ‘‘knowledge’’ does not include ‘‘ignorance’’; and so on. And yet, in finite things, these perfections are limited. But because they do not themselves denote such limit, these perfections can more properly be said of God than they can of creatures in whom they are found only with the limit of potentiality. Clearly, however, when nature becomes a mere dialectical geometric point terminating the line of grace, resolving the content of speech about God to such perfections is liable to be viewed as no longer so important or necessary (if nature as such is drained of metaphysical dynamism, ‘‘in-itselfness,’’ density, what foundational theological significance will metaphysical conclusions about being and perfection be able to retain?). Thus, perfections that do indeed denote limit may begin to be predicated of God in Himself (wonder; surprise; anticipation; and so on). The beginning of all this must be seen in the denial of the abstractive intelligibility of proportionate nature in relation to the analogy of being. As regards the analogy of being, it requires the intelligent perception that being is and can be in many ways, and that these ways while diverse are nonetheless similar. Hence, ‘‘being’’ as predicated of frog, dog, comet, man, and angel is diverse yet similar, and it is acquired not in a perfect abstraction of a univocal content but through a confusion or fusing together of diverse yet similar rationes. Thus, ‘‘is’’ is not the prisoner of any species or genus, not even of the quasi-genus of material being, because no genus formally includes the differences on the basis of which species are constituted (as the genus animal is not defined by ‘‘rational’’—else all animals would be rational), while being includes all its differences (elsewise they would not exist).46 Note how the analogia entis is thus articulated through the irreducibility of ‘‘is’’ to ‘‘this’’ or ‘‘that.’’ Even were there only one existing creature, it would not be true that ‘‘to be’’ and to be ‘‘that creature’’

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were identical (else the creature would be self-existent and a se by definition)—although these are indeed identified in the being of the creature. To be, and to be of a given nature, are not identical because (pick one!): esse overpasses the genus of material quiddities; there is nothing about ‘‘to be’’ or the ratio of act as such that requires any particular creature to exist; there really could be other distinct creatures; and of course the being of the creature is only possible owing to the creator and source of created esse, and that creator is Ipsum esse subsistens per se. To offer a limited illustrative comparison, nothing about ‘‘animal’’ requires it to be ‘‘rational,’’ although in the rational animal these are identified. So, similarly, there is nothing about esse that naturally and essentially limits it to any given mode of being. This is of course a limited comparison because ‘‘rational’’ is a further actual perfection of ‘‘animal,’’ whereas in the comparison of genus/species to existence/ essence, this is not the aspect considered (for in created being essence is itself a potential principle vis-a`-vis existence rather than an act further perfecting a potency). Rather, what is being compared in the illustration is only the similarity of the uncontracted and universal character of the genus (and not its potentiality vis-a`-vis species as act) with the universal and uncontracted perfection of being: as the genus qua genus is not of itself limited to a particular species, so being qua being is not of itself limited to any particular mode (of course, absolutely speaking, existence is more comparable to the species, because existence is act, and the species constitutes a further actuation vis-a`-vis the genus). Thus, there is nothing about the analogical ratio of act as such that requires potency, not to mention requiring every act to be of one particular reductive species of potency. Were the first part of the above proposition not true, the demonstration of the existence of God would be impossible. The reason is as follows: What is not present in the premises cannot make a novel appearance in the conclusion— therefore, if to be were not analogous but meant merely univocally material being in the premises, then in the conclusion to be could not be analogical but would denote univocally material being. Act and potency are analogous—they pass through every order of being and are reducible to none, and act is not self-limiting (which is to say that act is act, and not that act is act and potency: it is to affirm the principle

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of identity and noncontradiction with respect to act), so there is no possible derivation of potency from act that can demonstrate that act must be limited. If one grasps the ratio of act, one grasps not a mere logical entity but a real analogical principle, one that is limited (insofar as it is limited) only by some corresponding potency. This is also evident inasmuch as that which constitutes the essential nature is really distinct from that whereby it is actually existent. The analogy of being does not, then, deny genus and species but places these within being that is intellectually apprehended as itself neither a genus nor a species. Hence, the analogy of being preserves, implies, and requires the intra-formal univocal determinations of created form and nature (each nature has its own distinct specific character) while yet ‘‘form’’ and ‘‘nature’’ are analogical, for just as being, nature is and can be in many ways. The analogically diverse finite participations of being are indeed distinctive and intelligible rationes. Here, too, the Balthasarian preemptive dissolution of abstractive intelligibility will remove the ‘‘notes’’ through which the composition of the analogia entis is intelligibly communicated to us. Hence, the reduction of nature and natural order to pure posit cripples the doctrine of the analogia entis and renders it something like a musical composition with no notes, leaving it to be treated as a blank space to be filled by something like theological intuition. In short, one is left with a doctrine of analogy that is difficult to take seriously on its own terms—but then, perhaps within a theology so constructed, it is not intended to be taken seriously on its own terms, but only to represent another dialectically unfolding moment to be surpassed. But the surpassing of the analogy of being reminds one of Gilson’s observation from The Unity of Philosophical Experience that metaphysics always buries its undertakers. (Gilson spoke of philosophy, but of philosophy in the context of the philosophy of being.) Both at the level of the being common to substance and the categories, and at the level of the analogy of creature to God, the negation of the ontological density of nature is thus liable to introduce dialectical distortions into our contemplation of God. This, of course, may reach its height with respect to the doctrine of the Trinity. Naturally enough, this is a zone where systematic penetration is arguably today insufficient,47 whilst it needs to be at its zenith if we are to gain some analogical entry to so sublime a consideration. Yet the methodological ascesis

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required for this entry no longer is credited as essentially important, proceeding as it does from a metaphysical analysis whose intelligibility vanishes with the vanishing of the intelligible abstraction of natura. Minus the intellective ascesis of metaphysical analogy, we are left with the shadow show of the dialectical projection of any material or potential element whatsoever upon the Trinity under the pale excuse that this renders the Trinity more dynamically actual—rather like children enjoying the thought that the shadows of their hands playing on the wall are actual beings. Contemplation then gives way to the play of an imaginative creativity so total as to lack even the experimental limit found in hypothetico-deductive physics that can provide the latter with some contactus with the real. The danger is that the whole ensemble of imagination, limit, multiplicity, change, and potency, is thus liable to be imported within the deity and made the occasion for the hypostasis of theological fiction. It may be that the true difficulty here is only secondarily that of the loss of the intelligibility of the doctrine of analogy, and that the primary difficulty is that the reduction of nature to a mere empty theological posit opens the doors to the advent of a thoroughgoing dialectical method cognate with that of Hegel within dogmatic theology itself. It is good to affirm that everything must be interiorly subject to reformulation through its assimilation to the mystery of the Cross, but while there is truth in this formulation, there is also a large reserve of possible implied overstatement and error. The ontological principle of noncontradiction is not subject to such reformulation; nor is the natural law (unless we mean here to signify merely our perspective on the same as enhanced by grace: but this is utterly consistent with natura pura in precisely the sense that we have above seen Balthasar deny). The other zone within Balthasar’s theology where the loss of natura seems to obtrude itself, and to require corrective, regards the moral life. And here the loss of nature is palpable chiefly by way of omission. Where the subject matter becomes the Christian moral life, Balthasar rightly points us to the glorious witness of the lives of the saints. Yet clearly there are truly essential elements of moral theology that cannot be cognized without reference to the hierarchy of proportionate natural ends. Theology is a sapiential unity, and its breakup into a variety of

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mere unrelated specializations is a serious error that Balthasar himself rightly teaches us to avoid. Yet the price for the denial of natura is fairly clearly going to be exacted in the form of the omission of profound theological treatment of the role of natural virtue and natural law within the life of grace—a natural virtue and law presupposed by the Gospel itself, which supposes we know the difference between temperance and drunkenness, between husbanding what is our own and stealing what is another’s (and explicating this last on the basis of the revelata alone with no reference to natural knowledge is simply an impossibility), and so on. Thus, with the loss of nature, the danger either of emptying the Christian moral life of content, or of failing to include within Christian wisdom the natural provenance of certain moral insights, is very great, and perhaps most effectually checked not so much by any resources internal to Balthasar’s account of moral theology as by the natural moral intuitions of the readers of his theology who will tend to import natural form and perfection into the theology in order to render it intelligible. Nonetheless, the danger of viewing this content like Wittgenstein’s ladder, to be ‘‘kicked away’’ when one has climbed it, is great. Yet Balthasar himself was doubtless appreciative of the famed comment of St. Teresa of Avila, to the effect that, however far one progresses in the spiritual life, one never leaves behind the human nature of Jesus (which accordingly is something rather more than a posit of theological method or mere ‘‘createdness as such’’—indeed, the angels are created, too, and yet the Eternal Word did not become ‘‘angel’’: et homo factus est).

Two Obstructive Implications for the Evangelical Mission of the Church Of course, that which is an omission in moral theology becomes in the wider culture the challenge of a soft nihilism that, by refusing the natural presuppositions of Christian moral life, denies its intelligibility and integrity in itself. And so we return to the consideration of implications of the loss of natura that were opposed by de Lubac and Balthasar,

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but that nonetheless appear to be remotely conditioned upon the theoretic evisceration of nature. And perhaps the prime implication, opposed with utter and evangelical simplicity and nobility by both de Lubac and Balthasar, consists in a certain antinomian rejection of the Church’s intelligibly authoritative direction in moral teaching: the magisterium in faith and morals. How is this rejection an implication of the denial of natura? Because moral matters are not mere relations of the ‘‘zero point’’ of a natural vacuole to the beatific good, but rather involve the essential mediation of subordinated teleologies. This, of course, means that in the given order there is indeed a natural end that is itself proportionate to human nature.48 ‘‘Thou shalt not steal’’—but steal what, from whom? Clearly not from God—He can take care of Himself pretty well—but from one’s neighbor. And is property and its genesis among the revelata, or an inference from grace, or is it not rather an institution whose genesis is partly customary, partly natural, and proximate to natural reason? To take up a more conspicuous and pronouncedly ‘‘natural’’ teleology of far greater ontological density: how shall we understand the institution of marriage? Is the relation of male and female with respect to family and procreation something that enters into human life solely because of the revelata, with no foundational dependence upon or relation to natural teleology? Or—to risk perhaps too great a clarity in dispatching so gnostical an idea—is it not instead the case that failure to possess certain teleologically functional organs renders marriage—even the sacrament of marriage—impossible? And how should this last be, save that there are indeed ontological realities—subordinated, proportionate, and proximate teleological orderings—distinct from the ordering to the supernatural finis ultimus? Clearly, one may progress to the beatific end whether married or not; but to be married, albeit as a sacrament it involves a distinctive grace, nonetheless requires by way of presupposition the differentiation of human nature in male and female and their teleological ordering. In the reductio of nature to a vacuole for grace, the ontological density and subordinate teleologies of nature recede from the cynosure, becoming of progressively enfeebled interest. That now we should face explicit denial of the normativity of such teleologies, even within the

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Catholic life, is thus hardly surprising. For how should a geometric point dictate to people anything with respect to their ethical lives, from the use of medical technologies to the use of their own bodies to the use of contraception and abortion? The mere ‘‘abstract,’’ ‘‘nonpersonal’’ categories of ‘‘pure nature’’—we have repeatedly been instructed by many and diverse authorities—are too far remote from the fully concrete and personal ordering of grace, as though this ordering in grace could persist through the deliberate embrace of moral deprivations. And if such moral norms cannot be derived from a geometric point, even less can they be understood in their human meaning merely by referring to scriptural teachings, because these teachings themselves presuppose a prior natural frame of reference. Indeed, they concern being, and so they presuppose metaphysics; they are written in human language, and so presuppose the natural limits of such language; and clearly Christian moral teaching also presupposes some prior sense of natural virtue and vice. But which is the proper framework: to instruct people that something is wrong ‘‘because the Church and Scripture say so,’’ with no further consideration; or to show the way that vice is disruptive, and virtue perfective, with respect both to the natural end and the life of grace? The teleology that specifies human virtue and perfection is critical for moral theology, and it is of especial importance in the apologetic engagement of the Church with a culture that assumes that moral limitations are mere dictatorial means for controlling and suppressing normal human spontaneity for the sake of the sustenance of a merely institutional equation of power and status. Again, Balthasar and de Lubac never accepted such antinomianism with respect to the Christian life, and wholeheartedly accepted and strove faithfully to teach what the Church teaches. They resisted the widespread dissent from the authoritative magisterium of the Church on faith and morals characteristic of the latter half of the twentieth century. On the other hand, they never observed that denial of the ontological density of natura in its own right could hardly imply anything other than the antinomian rejection of all moral objectives and precepts defined by natural ends subordinate to the final end of supernatural beatific vision. Yet, we do not experience our moral lives as starkly confronting the alternatives of ‘‘yea’’ or ‘‘nay’’ with respect to

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beatific vision minus the mediation of created goods and teleologies, but rather precisely through this mediation. We are not perched before utter nonbeing and God as though no created order encompassed us and demanded our regard, appreciation, and fidelity. Rather, the grammar of our assent to God weaves into its fundament all those subordinate natural teleologies that are further ordered in and by grace, in such a fashion that the whole sublunary order of proportionate natural teleology is thereby affirmed as well. This is quite well reflected in the moral theology of marital fidelity: One’s spouse is a creature of God, and spousal relations constitute a natural human good—a sacramentally blessed natural good, but a natural good nonetheless. There is no hope of seeking God through infidelity to one’s spouse, because this does not merely violate the subordinated natural teleology but also—since that teleology itself is further ordered and elevated in grace—it contravenes supernatural charity. With natura transformed to a dialectical posit, and the authority of the magisterium and of revelation increasingly viewed as susceptible of endless re-interpretation, moral doctrine emanating from the Holy See came for some minds to be seen as merely a raw assertion of ecclesial power, to be resisted in the name of a misapprehended subsidiarity or liberty. Of course, there is a real increment of dishonesty in the reduction of the constant moral teachings of the Church to a violent intrusion of arbitrary power. Clearly, the rebuke to this grave misconstruction of the moral guidance of the Church is contained in her care for the whole subordinate ordering of natural ends as further directed in and by grace. Mala in se are incompatible with the natural structure of the good life, and so are incompatible with the elevation of that life within the order of grace and charity, which are the seeds of beatific vision. It is this account of natural good in the life of grace that is imperiled by the denial of the ontological density and proportionate end of human nature. As everything that is predicated of the nature is predicated of the person whose nature it is, the negation of natura within theological method—however accompanied by personalist intentions—cannot avoid injustice to the person. However, it is not alone the moral order that is drained and enervated by the extermination of nature as a principle within theological

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method. It is also the apologetic mission and demeanor of the Church before the world. Consequent upon the exnihilation of the ontological density of nature within theology, nature moves from being preamble and presupposition to grace to being purely a postscript to grace—as I have put it, the point without magnitude that terminates the line of grace. A more complete yet elegant washing of nature from theological hands is difficult to imagine. But since the signs of the credibility of revelation are in principle naturally accessible even to those lacking faith—but at the price of a certain seriousness of intent and rigorous reasoning—the displacement of nature ends by being a displacement of these signs of credibility and their natural appropriation both within faith and on the part of those on the way to faith. Of course, it is true that faith does not follow as a syllogistic necessity from natural evidence. But the basic signs of the credibility of the faith are indeed all functions of natural reasonability and indeed of natural causal reasoning, which is why the answer to Hume is rather important. How many clerics, however, are in possession of such understanding to help those grappling with the natural preambles to faith? Instead, many among the finest of Catholic minds, post-Balthasar, have become persuaded that such considerations are superfluous or doomed to futility. Such an attitude is in the strongest tension with the clear—yet today too frequently obfuscated and ignored—language of the first canon of Vatican I regarding natural knowledge of God (as, of course, likewise this same attitude is in tension with Vatican I’s teaching that natural reason has its own distinct object and source in contrast with divine faith). Perhaps the most profound contributant to this overshadowing of Vatican I, and of the teaching of Aquinas and indeed the antecedent tradition in general, is the erroneous construction of the relation of nature to grace developed by de Lubac and consequently received and systematically developed by Balthasar. The first canon on revelation of Vatican I states:49 ‘‘If anyone says that the one, true God, our creator and lord, cannot be known with certainty from the things that have been made by the natural light of human reason: let him be anathema.’’ The minimalist or reductive interpretation of the sense of ‘‘cannot’’ in Vatican I’s canon regarding knowledge of God through the natural light of human reason is, of

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course, widespread, consequent upon the dialectical reduction of nature. ‘‘Cannot’’ often is construed as merely the denial of logical possibility, or else as a denial of real possibility so remote as to be irrelevant, or even as the denial of obediential potency (forgetting that the document speaks of this knowledge as precisely following upon the natural light of human reason). Sed contra: (1) How does one know of the actual power of the natural light of reason apart from its operation? (2) Why is it that, everywhere else in near proximity to the canon in question, the sense of ‘‘cannot’’ is real, and indeed is not merely the sense of real possibility but indeed of real proximate potency? For example, to take cognate language from the Council’s third canon on revelation: ‘‘If anyone says that a human being cannot [emphasis added] be divinely elevated to a knowledge and perfection which exceeds the natural, but of himself can and must reach finally the possession of all truth and goodness by continual development: let him be anathema.’’ Do any of the interpreters for whom the certain knowledge of God by the natural light of reason is merely the faintest whiff of remote possibility, and for whom the ‘‘cannot’’ of the canon (which anathematizes those who hold that God ‘‘cannot be known with certainty from the things that have been made by the natural light of human reason’’) is taken merely logically—do any of these theologians or philosophers interpret the ‘‘cannot’’ in this third canon as negating mere logical possibility? Such a contemporary evasion puts one in mind of Pelagius’s evasions—that he meant to address only possibility and not actuality. The language of the canon should not be forced into an alien mold, a mold inconsistent and at variance with the tradition. In fact, in both cases it is not mere logical possibility, nor even a real but remote possibility, but it designates proximate potency that is in the first case natural, and in the second case obediential. For a human being really hic et nunc can by the natural light of human reason know the one, true God, our creator and lord, with certainty from the things that have been made, and a human being really hic et nunc can be divinely elevated to a perfection exceeding the natural. (3) Hence, why should we not interpret the sense of ‘‘cannot’’ as pertaining, not merely to logical possibility or even remote real possibility, but as the obvious ‘‘can’’ of proximate

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potency inasmuch as the document is directive in nature? Directive documents do not tend to waste much breath about what is scarcely possible, but do tend to concern themselves with what is achievable in the actual order of things. With respect to the canon, there has also been—consequent upon theology’s loss of nature in its ontological density—a retreat from the clear words of the canon regarding God as creator. Many seem to believe that this is naturally unknowable. Yet this is contrary not only to the teaching of Aquinas (who with not merely good but apodictic cause held it to be naturally demonstrable—see In Sent. 2.2.2 sol.), but also contrary to the clear force of the selfsame first canon on revelation from Vatican I. For if the terms one, true God, creator, and lord were not pertinent to the canon, the canon would not have included them, and if the canon were to add terms not pertinent to our natural knowledge of God, it surely might have been expected to add ‘‘triune,’’ ‘‘incarnate,’’ or similar terms, which of course it did not. Rather, the canon used certain terms pertinent to the object of our natural knowledge of God (not the only pertinent ones, but critical ones nonetheless). There remains, of course, a common perception that the world testifies to the reality of its creator, but this is quite frequently treated as something that is outside the realm of reason. Those who would be open to the formal and rigorous consideration of the real evidences that do indeed natively move the mind to assent to the reality of the creator are stopped short with the insinuation that this natural motion of the mind is, after all, not quite so serious or rationally compelling a reality as one might at first have thought. It is not hard to see with what ease culture will then incline to the supine supposition that religious conviction is largely an emotive affair. Nor does the loss of reasoned formality cease here, but travels through the perception of liturgical form, of confessional discipline, and so on: one cannot refuse the form of reason it is due without consequently suffering the loss of a sense of proportion. But reason does not specify itself, but is specified by being and nature, and it is in terms of nature that being is known. Thus, the loss of the normativity of nature strikes at the role of reason itself

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within theology. This is too steep a price to pay to indulge an understandable fear of naturalism and hostility to rationalism that yet, in mistargeting its object, risks doing grave accidental harm to the essential structure of human reason and its participation in the divine order. How does one distinguish a miracle? In relation to natural causality. In the absence of knowledge of natural causality—which, since efficiency can neither be nor be defined apart from finality, once again involves natural finality—what is a miracle? Apart from such knowledge of natural causal order, the miracle becomes anything or nothing. There then cease to be objective criteria, unless one completes the dialectical circle by saying that only that which moves one to faith is a miracle (and such a notion suppresses the miracle as sign of the truth of the faith or as visible divine approbation of a sacred person, place, or thing, a sign whose clear implication can be—as it often was in the Scriptures and is today—resisted or denied by some). Of course, faith is an infused supernatural gift, and in this sense its motive is never some merely terrestrial object: One believes because revelation is from God Who can neither deceive nor be deceived, and not from any lesser motive. But the supernatural character of the gift is not in question here, but rather the analogical intelligibility of the Christian apologetic presented to the world, for many in the world look first to discern the credibility of the act of faith of whose actual provenance they are unsure. In the apologetic tradition of the Church, contemplation of the signs of the credibility of the faith involves an intensive appropriation of natural truth. Faith is a gift. And this cannot, in apologetics, properly be lost sight of or minimized. Nor in apologetics should one lose sight of the mysterious attraction of the truths of faith and of the whole supernatural life. Yet, though faith is a gift that transcends our natural capacities, it is a gift that is directed to a rational creature, and so it is ordered to be received in a reasonable fashion. The gift of faith may be given all at once, but it may also be given as the decisive coda to a long, slowly maturing, graced judgment that is ever more leavened by the credibility of the evidence and the attractiveness of the divinely revealed truth, a truth that surpasses all finite evidence in its proportion to God alone.

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The classical Christian apologetic includes a strong natural philosophic and metaphysical doctrine of God, creation, and providence, and a strong presentation of the historical facts favoring the credibility of Christianity. Yet after the reduction of nature to a blank Newtonian space awaiting grace, such advertence to natural philosophy and metaphysics, and to historical considerations favoring the credibility of Christian faith, predictably vanishes. Advertence to philosophy vanishes because it depends on a recognition of the ontological density of nature in precision from, yet also within, Christian faith and theology, and is accused of rationalism; advertence to history vanishes because the signs of credibility still involve a measure of causal reasoning and philosophy to assess and understand, so that this particular use of history, following upon the loss of nature, is seen as rationalistic or vulgar. Indeed, the use of history may be thought to be unprofessional. For history as profession often assumes the status of a second-order discourse, not having for its object ‘‘history’’ in the sense of that which has occurred, but rather having for its object only that which is witnessed by two or more witnesses. Yet, is not one witness ever enough? And how do we evaluate the claim of the Church to be a witness to Christ? Historians cannot totally abstract themselves from the necessity to judge philosophical questions that pertain to the object of historical study (e.g., are miracles possible?). But what Kant did for being— namely, lose sight of it—the exclusive use of historical-critical method appears to have done for history (which is not a priori reducible to the contours of this sole method). Of course, when theology methodologically detaches itself from nature precisely as a root principle that is irreducible to any merely intrasystemic posit, thus declaring independence from nature as presupposed by grace and promulgating nature as purely a postscript of grace, there is not only theological error, but also the danger that nature will be progressively misinterpreted within theology. This also implies that, to the extent that an account of nature is sought by theologians, it is liable to be sought erroneously—not least by treating ‘‘nature’’ and ‘‘science’’ as univocal terms that by right belong wholly to positive science. Hence, it is not unusual to discover contemporary theologians responding to the question of the natural demonstrability of God

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wholly in terms of what contemporary positive science does or does not allow. Of course, there is no harm in engaging positive science. But there is great harm in accepting reductionist philosophic premises about the limits and nature of knowledge, or in accepting correspondingly deracinated accounts of nature and being, merely on the philosophic say-so or petitio principii of biologists or physicists doubling in brass as metaphysicians. This is to say that not only will there be great deprivation internal to theological contemplation and within the Catholic life when natura is treated as a mere Cartesian coordinate, but that there will also be corresponding deprivation in every area of the Church’s engagement with the world. Such deprivation is liable in a subterranean fashion to kindle more or less errant efforts to supply the void. The Church’s engagement with the world—which necessarily involves questions of nature—will tend in the absence of genuinely systematic philosophic and theological treatment of nature to be positively malformed by whatever the lingua franca of contemporary scientific culture and popular ideology may be. The natural wisdom rejected at the front door as handmaiden is liable to return at the back— mutated, disoriented, savage, and imperial—not as natural wisdom, but as ideologized natural distortion. Consequent upon the eclipse of natura, what would one expect to occur in the ensuing apologetic void? As a metaphysical realist, one might anticipate a resurgence of doctrinaire atheism and agnosticism— perhaps, given the widespread prestige of positive science today, clothed in ideology masquerading as science. One might also expect it to lack the cognitive sophistication of earlier epochs in which atheism and agnosticism were more prevalently subject to extensive rational criticism and disputation—this subjection to criticism being an essentially Christian inheritance derived from the form of the disputed question of the scholastics, and one that higher culture still, to some degree, imperfectly mimics. Precisely this is what has happened. For example, authors such as Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens clearly have no genuine mastery of the theistic problematic they seek to criticize— Dawkins misstating the very arguments from Aquinas he seeks to criticize.50 What is perhaps most striking is not the mere recrudescence of agnostic and atheist opposition to theism, but rather its extraordinarily

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low cognitive level, verging on the demagogic. It is also striking that a new hygienic religion, with its own fasts and abstinences, and its own days of obligation and table of the law, is forming in our midst, concerned not for moral integrity but for bodily health, concerned not for the common good of society but for putative equilibrium in eco-systems, concerned not with God, the soul, death, and judgment, but with political correctness and the political enforcement of public policy masquerading as science and even as spirituality. What has changed from a generation or two ago? Sadly, it must be admitted that what has changed is the culture at large, which has receded from the aristocratic aspects of intellectual life into democratist ideological indulgences. But even more critically and sadly, it must be admitted that what has changed is the nature of atheism’s public interlocutor in the cultural sphere. Normatively speaking, the Catholic tradition has not changed. And, indeed, if anything, the encyclical Fides et ratio has raised the prestige of the philosophical dimensions of theological method. But, ‘‘on the ground’’ as it were, one still finds a prevalent antinomian historicism, dissent from the magisterium, and a most deplorable ignorance of the philosophical dimensions of theism and the role of philosophic method within theology, or what one might call a general lack of regard for natural reason as a constituent of theological wisdom. In the time since 1970, these afflictions, like the lack of any pronounced philosophic constituent in priestly formation, have been more culturally prominent than the Church’s historically strong doctrinal confidence in reason. This is something that Pope Benedict XVI’s Regensburg lecture has done much to address and to improve. But the loss is nonetheless real.

Conclusion In the light of these difficult implications—both those interior to Balthasar’s theology and those percolating through the Church’s evangelical encounter with the secular world—the crucial role of fixed nature and natural teleology should become conspicuous. A renewed theological method doubtless requires the rediscovery of natura pura without

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losing sight of the genuine scriptural developments, the achievement in the knowledge of the doctrine of the Fathers of the Church, and the sense of the Marian vocation of the theologian and of theological aesthetics respectively achieved by de Lubac and Balthasar. But the failure to regard natural teleology within the wider order of grace does not well serve grace. Doctrinal intelligence and extensive historical experiment converge to yield the same observations. Hence the most crucial necessity is for a recovery of the ontological amplitude, in-itselfness, and teleological dynamism of nature interior to theological method, an openness to the full ontological density and intelligibility of nature as receiving its species from its proportionate natural end. Created natures are not hollow, nor lacking proportionate intelligibility. Nor does nature exclusively belong to positive science— something which serious Thomists and Aristotelians can easily demonstrate. Perhaps the worst consequence of the dialectical reduction of nature is simply this: When all of nature and reason are reduced to dialectically posited naughts, the likelihood is high that this dialectical obscuration of all natural truth will metastasize into our very sense of the revelata, into which this same dialectical cloud of negation may be injected. It was, indeed, largely because of this occurring—irrespective what one thinks its causes to be—that Dominus Iesus needed to be promulgated. And it has been our argument throughout that natura pura in all its ontological density is merely the acknowledgement of the intelligible and profound richness of the Nicene formula. For human nature is ordered not alone to the supernaturally beatific end, but to its proportionate natural end, whence its species is derived. Perhaps it all resolves to this: St. Thomas Aquinas remains, at the end, a richer and more profound dialogic partner and teacher than Karl Barth. If de Lubac—and in his way, Balthasar as well—showed the Catholic theologian the superior riches of patristic theology from which too many gazes were averted, this is without prejudice to the datum that the teaching of St. Thomas—Doctor Communis—is the hermeneutical key for the Catholic truth found in all the doctors and Fathers of the Church. And it is also true that the metaphysical realism so essential for theological method achieves paradigmatic form, open

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to unlimited development and application, in the teaching of Aquinas, not least because of the profundity of his realization that nature is a theonomic concept not by extrinsic attribution with revelation, but in its own limited participation of divine providence. Nature belongs first to God by its very constitution as nature, in all its corresponding limitation (which is not yet sin!), and prior to grace (man is created in grace, but there must be a subject of grace with a nature in order for grace to be received). It is the contention of the Thomist that, far from needing to deny the reality of the proximate natural end for theological reasons, denying this reality will prove devastating both to theology and to scientia analogically speaking, to moral truth, and to culture. Yet this insight implies that the recovery of natura within theological method requires philosophical instrumentalities. The next chapter argues that if—as here concluded—a realist contemplation of natura is essential to theological method, then theology can ill afford the confusion whereby a partial meta-philosophy (howsoever sociologically omnipresent in the Anglophone world) would be preferred to a philosophy of nature and metaphysics. If the Balthasarian mere ‘‘createdness as such’’ loses sight of the ontological density and specificity of nature, neither can the meta-philosophic residue of various failed cognitive revolutions known as ‘‘analytic thought’’—lacking any unified philosophy of nature and metaphysics whatsoever—hope to supplant the role of classical Thomism within theology. It is to these points that we next turn.

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Chapter Three

ON THE IMPROPRIETY OF TREATING THEOLOGY’S HANDMAIDEN LIKE AN ANALYTIC All these complexities and exceptions duly noted, the cultural fact remains fairly simple and clear. The main form of contemporary philosophical scholasticism is analytic philosophy, and it is almost entirely written in English. It announces by its name the secondary or handmaidenly role it is to play: not revealing or disclosing truth but analyzing the exigencies of what is taught or disclosed. Indeed, not a few undergraduates become disappointed by this basic and defining characteristic. They want revelations and epiphanies, but analytic philosophers seem always to be operating in the shadows, not saying immediately what is right or wrong but discussing the concepts of right and wrong so that one might approach moral questions with clarity and responsibility, not announcing what is true but investigating the nature of truth. One hears a common complaint, ‘‘empty formalism,’’ and it makes my point. Second-order technical discussions are the bread and butter of scholasticism, and students have complained of the apparent existential dryness since the days of Plato’s Academy. Rusty Reno, ‘‘Theology’s Continental Captivity’’ As is evident in the beginning of the Metaphysics, the speculative sciences concern things the knowledge of which is sought for their own sake. However, we do not seek to know the things studied by logic for themselves, but as a help to the other sciences. So logic is not included under speculative philosophy as a principal part but as something brought under speculative philosophy as furnishing speculative thought with its instruments, namely, syllogisms, definitions, and the like, which we need in the speculative sciences. Thus, according to Boethius, logic is not so much a science as the instrument of science. St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Boethius’s De trinitate

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The Problem The essential role of natura in theological method, with all its ontological dynamism, density, and relative autonomy vis-a`-vis the revelata, raises the stakes with regard to the understanding of nature and being.1 Following upon the theological recovery of nature, a correct and fruitful approach to the understanding of these principles is necessary within theological method. Hence, there arises the possibility that the type of thought that has flourished during the long winter of Catholic disengagement with natura, and that is circumambient in North America and Great Britain, may by default be judged a fit inheritor of, or substitute for, the office of classical Thomism. And it is indeed today often thought to be the case that analytic thought represents that contemporaneous tendency most cognate with a classical Thomism that is somehow presumably no longer itself feasible, such that analytic philosophy is taken to be ‘‘what Thomas would be doing were he alive today.’’ Such views are more common than their rarified regard for what is erroneously called analytic method in philosophy might tend to indicate. For indeed it is an error to conflate logic with scientific method, and it is an error to suppose that philosophy of nature and metaphysics are not—in the strong, Aristotelian sense of the term— scientia. Logic is employed by all the sciences—it is the propaedeutic to them all—yet no science of the real receives its total method from mere logic, and this is equally true of metaphysics and ontology of nature. This consideration moves one rather quickly to the initial problems with the suggestion that classical Thomism is no longer feasible save when re-appropriated through ‘‘analytic method.’’ First, even if (contrary to fact) this suggestion were true, the premise should be well established that in order to say with confidence that ‘‘X’’ is a development with respect to ‘‘Y,’’ we should know Y. This is immediately to establish that all claims with respect to developing the teaching of Aquinas are to be judged in relation to the teaching of Aquinas and of that school that has developed Thomas’s philosophy in its own right— which is to say, that all claims to develop Thomistic philosophy are to be measured in comparison with classical Thomism. But this requires

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knowing Thomas’s philosophy,2 not to mention knowing the philosophic development of his work through several centuries of commentators from Capreolus, Cajetan, Ban˜ez, or John of St. Thomas, to Maritain, Gilson, Yves Simon, Charles De Koninck, or GarrigouLagrange, onward to a Wippel, a Bonino, a Dewan, a McInerny, etc. In short, to carry on engagement with Aquinas in abstracto from the speculative interpretations, considerations, development, and applications of his teaching by Thomists through to the present—and to do so without adequate regard for and engagement with the texts of Aquinas—will constitute a disregard for classical Thomism likely to alternate between denying the existence of the wheel and reinventing it.3 But this first point, howsoever important, is a mere cavil next to the observation, secondly, that in order to constitute something Thomistic, analytic philosophy would first need, in the philosophic order, to constitute something. But it does not. Nor should this be shocking inasmuch as it is admitted in all quarters today that ‘‘analytic philosophy’’ does not designate a unitary doctrine: one may find nominalists and realists, and even, as we are reminded ‘‘analytic Thomists’’ and ‘‘analytic Aristotelians.’’ But this analytic mode of philosophy has thus become, as it were, an adjective on pilgrimage to find what if anything it may modify. It was not always so. There was a moment when great revolutions of thought, analytic in provenance, more or less forced all the other stars from the heavens. But then, one by one, these revolutionary suns burned out. Although Go¨del’s theorem sidelined the ‘‘revolution’’ of the Principia Mathematica; although A. J. Ayer’s famed verification criterion had, as he later put it, the disadvantage of being untrue; although Wittgenstein’s Tractatus was rejected by Wittgenstein himself (for placing a demarcation limit on speech and intelligibility while incoherently forbidding reference to that which is beyond the limit—and so how could it then be known qua limit?); whereas his later linguistic reductionism putatively holding ad hoc—but actually holding systematically—that all philosophic questions are pseudo-questions rooted in confusion about language, was rejected by everyone else; although Strawson’s argument for descriptive metaphysics by itself ran into the

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causal issues involved in theism; although Ryle’s behaviorist reductionism is today and was when he wrote it contested within analytic thought and arguably theoretically indefensible—despite all this, the teachings and authors displaced and silenced by these intriguing compendia of error have not been rediscovered. And analytic thought, although in search of a new revolution, is to this day marked by the deprivation of method in philosophy of nature and metaphysics.4 This deprivation is clear not so much in any particular positive doctrine, although one may advert to logicism,5 conventionalism, etc. Rather, it is clear in that analytic philosophic education does not as an essential normative condition require the command of any distinctive method in philosophy of nature or in metaphysics. What analytic curricula in philosophy require in the way of method is a certain understanding of logic (how adequate may be debated6), a concern for language, and to some degree a concern about how arguments should be expressed. But logic is a propaedeutic to method rather than a method; concern for language is to be judged by its effects; and how an argument is expressed is secondary to what the argument is. Hence, analytic thought as such today has no intrinsically philosophic method or formation to offer. By contrast, even the divisions within contemporary Thomism are disputations regarding unified method in natural philosophy and metaphysics; there are few such marked divisions; and they swirl about the same definitory points.7 It should be clear: it is not enough for proponents of something that is called a ‘‘method’’ to identify it merely in reference to a collection of ad hoc discussions. In one sense, analytic philosophy is what analytic philosophers do. But one may ask: what is the substantive unified method deployed by these philosophers with respect to such engagement? If analytic philosophy as such requires the acceptance of any normative metaphysical or ontological evidence and principles, it would be gratifying to discover what these might be and why most analytic philosophers and most analytic philosophy programs do not acknowledge them within their formal instruction. If, on the other hand—as appears to be the case—analytic philosophic formation entails no normative methodic account with respect to metaphysics and

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natural philosophy, then we can hardly have a basis for regarding analytic philosophy as such as uniquely poised to aid in developing these philosophic disciplines, howsoever true it is that discourse with particular minds formed in the analytic tradition may prove fruitful.8 But surely the famed view of Frege that existence is merely a secondorder property of concepts rather than a first intentional reality is a metaphysical view essential to analytic teaching? It is surpassingly common. But analysts themselves do not hold this judgment as essential to analytic thought as such.9 Of course, speculatively this account has been subjected to criticism both from within and from without analytic precincts.10 Again: although the great analytic revolutions with their positive systems have imploded, somehow the teachings and authors rejected on the basis of these failed revolutions are largely still persona non grata for analytic thinkers. The negations once propounded formally and intellectually, as implications of positive teachings, have with the waning of these teachings become merely sociological and pseudo-axiomatic since the positive accounts whence these negations sprang have since been shown to be false. It is a remarkable datum that after these failed analytic revolutions, the state of an analytic philosophy student who is in possession of all the curious negations for which there were once systematic justifications (but are no longer, for the positive systems whence they derived have failed), is in fact implicitly treated as the natural state of the human intellect in need of no justification. Yet that the starting point for philosophic instruction should normatively include no ontological or metaphysical method— and that it should exclude all the contemporary and historical authors excluded in the common analytic philosophic formation—is of course far from self-evident, nor has the positive case justifying such negations been demonstrated.11 Further, despite the lack of common teaching—or perhaps because of it—there is arguably still in analytic philosophy a material prevalence of methodic deprivations with respect to natura as an ontological principle, tracing to earlier errors regarding metaphysics, philosophy of nature, and the role of historico-doctrinal problematic (i.e., the role of the antecedent intellectual problem situation) in understanding philosophic

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theory and its development and criticism. And this material inheritance from the fathers of the analytic movement, while no longer acknowledged as normative by analytic thinkers, lives on in the omnipresence with which its negations are still enthroned almost as a sociological default within analytic philosophic curricula. Thus, it appears true that since the collapse of the multifarious analytic revolutions, there is no longer any substantively unified body of philosophic work properly designable by the term ‘‘analytic,’’ howsoever much there may be interesting discussions and analyses pertinent to philosophy. Again, the proposition is not that analytic thought is of no worth or should not be studied, but that it has no sufficient unified method in philosophy of nature and metaphysics and therefore lacks what would be required for it to serve as replacement or even critical augmentation for classical Thomism. Method in metaphysics and in philosophy of nature is irreducible to logic, for these disciplines are not second-order disciplines. Hence, the substantive reasoning with respect to real principles of being and nature that is developed in the Thomistic tradition is neither merely an historical nor merely logical matter: the principle of contradiction is a metaphysical principle prior to, and as a condition of being, a logical principle. Indeed, logic is propaedeutic to method. To illustrate philosophic method as opposed to mere logic, consider the understanding amongst Aristotelians and Thomists of the systematic discursive motio from noncontradiction as a metaphysical principle, onward to the ineluctable problem of monism and the various deficient responses to this problem, to the discovery of the real principle of potency as the root of limit, multiplicity, and change, and onward again in the systematic discrimination and explanation of the four causes, to the development of the doctrine of the analogy of being, and to an analogical ontological doctrine of causality or sufficient reason: all of which is part of the methodic formation of the Thomist philosopher. The analysis of act and potency by Aristotle, and of the four causes, and of the analogia entis—all further developed and applied by Aquinas, and further yet by centuries of philosophic labor—do not reduce to a mere logical system, any more than does St. Thomas’s masterful

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development of intentionality later taken up by John of St. Thomas. Yet clearly these are not merely ad hoc functions of logical exploration of concepts, but rather they unfold in a given order in the systematic meditation on being and nature and their causes as real principles. Not to be in command of this methodically systematic order of ontological analysis is either to lose understanding of principles or to fail properly to see their universality: for example, to lose the understanding of the nature of the distinction of act and potency, or to fail to understand why every order of proportionate being is divided by act and potency. It is hardly arguable that there is, to use MacIntyrean language, a methodic narrative essential for classical Thomism, whereas analytic thought has no essential method in philosophy of nature and metaphysics. Individual authors formed in the analytic tradition may offer individual contributions with respect to these disciplines, but analytic practitioners as such do not accept as essential to analytic thought any normative commitment to such contributions nor to any method in philosophy of nature and metaphysics. It is no part of my argument that analytic philosophers cannot make contributions to the pursuit of truth, but it is part of my argument that no warrant has been provided for supposing that classical Thomism is itself ‘‘in need’’ of analytic philosophy to save itself from the doldrums of error or confusion, so to speak. I.e., the contributions made by analytic practitioners in philosophy of nature or metaphysics are not specific to analytic philosophy, since there is not any genuine analytic ‘‘method’’ but merely logic as opposed to everything else (the ‘‘everything else’’ category including the material residue of the recent analytic past, certain preferences as to how arguments should be exhibited, and any genuine methodic commitment above and beyond logic that an analytic practitioner may accept). With respect to the philosophic contributions of minds formed in analytic thought, the arguments are: (1) that there is nothing philosophically essential about such contributions traceable solely to the mere meta-philosophic principles which today are the sole unifying ligature of analytic thought (as opposed to: method in metaphysics and ontology); and (2) that the analytic world, whether as meta-philosophic principles on the one hand, or as de facto philosophizing of various

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types on the other, is not methodically equipped either to substitute for, or by its own peculiar ‘‘analytic’’ resources even significantly to augment, the speculative metaphysical realism of classical Thomism. In holding this one does no more than to take the analytic world— reflected in analytic curricula and in analytic literature—at face value. That is, one is continually told that one need not be a Fregean, or follow Wittgenstein, or hold any substantive account of philosophic method outside of a mere commitment to logic, in order to be an analytic philosopher. But this is simply to say that analytic thought is not a philosophy. Is there not something strange in being informed that analytic thought is not a philosophy when this seems necessary for the analytic practitioner to avoid the charge that analytic thought is tantamount to some specific typical analytic reductionism, while alternately and simultaneously being informed that it is a philosophy, is superior to other philosophic approaches, and should inform philosophic curricula? At best this is the promulgation of the superiority of meta-philosophy to philosophy; at worst it is an invitation to unmitigated anti-philosophic dogmatism or scientism. Today the term ‘‘analytic’’ is free of any philosophic substance at all, a Banquo’s ghost as it were, roaming the halls of academe, seeking living philosophic works to haunt and adjectivally modify. In the course of such spectral roaming, some analysts actually succeed in ‘‘crossing to the other side’’ and making contact with real ontological evidence whose assessment accordingly requires distinctively philosophic insight and judgment. But one can reasonably acknowledge that there is something distinctively and exclusively ‘‘analytic’’ about this if and only if analytic philosophers will all own the consequent treatment of ontology as essential to analytic philosophic formation. If not, then of course there is no question of such a view being essentially analytic even if it is materially predominant among analytic thinkers. Analytic ‘‘method’’ thus is not method at all, but turns out to be merely a partial meta-philosophy, a part of a part masquerading as the whole. The confusion of meta-philosophic principles with method is a methodic impoverishment. One might properly, as opposed to merely nominally, designate analytic thinkers as ‘‘analytic philosophers’’ when they will acknowledge that they actually hold a philosophy qua analytic, but for

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so long as even the widespread logicism permeating the analytic tradition is conceived by analytics themselves as purely accidental to that tradition, what can one say other than that the adjective ‘‘analytic’’ designates meta-philosophic principles?—i.e., there is no analytic philosophy. Nor can it be admitted that preference as to how an argument is best presented is other than meta-philosophic (what counts is what the argument is and whether it is true—not how it is displayed). And arguments for logicism are not arguments from logic, but from the philosophy of logic, something, again, that analytics deny that they hold in common qua analytics. Do analytics act as though, and affect to believe, that there is such a thing as analytic philosophy—something in accord with which their meta-philosophic principles, and their aesthetic and sociological proclivities regarding how an argument should be presented, are constantly being given an institutional and methodological preference for which there is no apparent foundation? Yes. But the warrant for this belief, outside of sociological inertia, is hard to find. The analytic world is largely today a composite of sociological desiderata and meta-philosophy rather than a methodically unified doctrinal entity, built on: logic and a penchant for logical symbolism in the presentation of arguments,12 constituting a partial meta-philosophy that is erroneously called analytic ‘‘method’’ (‘‘erroneously’’ because logic is propaedeutic to method in every science rather than itself being a method, and preferences about how arguments should be displayed are extrinsic to the arguments themselves and rather picayune as grounds for examining or not examining them); a concern for the analysis of language; an inherited and merely material lacuna with respect to any necessary principles of being and nature, and also with respect to the methodic approach to such principles as essential within philosophic formation (i.e.: although common, one may be an analytic thinker and not share these defects); similar common inherited material tendencies toward logicism on the one hand, and toward Humean skepticism and conventionalism on the other (although, strictly speaking, neither of these can be held necessary

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with respect to what analytic thought is, because analytic thought is now but a partial meta-philosophy,13 despite the fact that these are materially viewed perhaps the two most preponderant influences); negative attitudes toward philosophies and philosophers inconsistent with the implications of the original revolutionary analytic doctrines. For example: who, among contemporary analytics, reads Henry Veatch, or Yves Simon, much less Jacques Maritain, or Fr. del Prado? The answer is: Of course, these have been untouchables for years, although the criteria by which they have been untouchables have varied, until, at present, no criteria are any longer needed. It is indeed a challenge for every tendency or school of thought to distinguish between the actual status of arguments and criticisms, and the mere sociological inertia that can affect every form of thought. But this is of particular importance with respect to analytic practitioners because of the sociological predominance of analytic thought on the one hand, and the falsification of the strategically positive philosophic judgments of the early revolutionary analytic doctrines on the other. Where the original grounds of criticism no longer are extant, it is not a sign of integrity of thought to persist uncritically in negations that no longer are justifiable. This would be equally true were someone formed in classical Thomism to discount without consideration the work of analytically formed authors, even though there is some reason in advance of consideration to hold that analytic formation as such lacks the necessary methodic components greatly to augment classical Thomism.

In the light of these data, the endorsement of analytic thought either as substituting for, or as significantly enhancing, classical Thomism seems to entail the following: It seems tantamount to little more than a petitio principii, having for its strongest argument the de facto secularization of institutions of higher learning and the unprincipled neglect of speculative work undertaken by contemporary non-analysts either on the ground that those who are not analytic philosophers are not truly contemporary philosophers but something else (most commonly ‘‘historians,’’ as in: interested in the theories of someone who isn’t analytic, whether living or dead), or on the ground that all philosophers are implicitly analytic philosophers because they use logic (as though analytic philosophers owned logic, or, for that matter, as though logic were not preliminary to every science,

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or, again, as though simple assertion should suffice to privilege one’s philosophy of logic from criticism). It typically for Catholic minds involves the danger of superordinating practical apologetical interest in ‘‘opening up analytic thought’’ to the principled and rigorous discovery and unfolding of speculative truth for its own sake and in its own right. It runs the risk, owing to typical but not universal deprivations within analytic method, of misapprehending crucial elements in the teaching of Aquinas. It may nonetheless achieve certain speculative insights—precisely because analytic thought is not a unified doctrine but, after the failed cognitive revolutions, is chiefly a sociological multiplex of speculative privations, logical rigor, and logicist and skeptical errors, amidst all of which some bright minds argue more or less well for certain analyses of Thomistic provenance or pertinent to St. Thomas’s conclusions. Yet these ad hoc beneficial effects do not replace or substitute for the systematic speculative development of Thomas’s teaching in its own right, an activity as little reducible to analytic philosophy as Domingo Ban˜ez or Thomas de Vio Cajetan are reducible to Frege or Quine.

The lack of any positive philosophic theory on the basis of which the persistent and persistently unfounded negations that typify analytic thought could be justified is perhaps today the saving grace of analytic philosophy: there is room for analytic practitioners to grow out of the pervasive scientism and logicism of the earlier analytic period. Yet, the saving grace is also in this case the sign of substantial change: metaphilosophy (or a partial meta-philosophy) is not equivalent to philosophy, and all analytic philosophy is today a partial meta-philosophy (unless we burden it with its de facto prevalent instantiations of logicism and skepticism—precisely what we are always being told by analytic thinkers not to do). Accordingly, to move from meta-philosophy to philosophy is to move from the analytic realm into the realm of philosophy. What introductory text in philosophy within the analytic tradition insists upon certain essential principles of metaphysics as foundational for instruction? But meta-philosophic principles do not spontaneously adapt themselves into a positive philosophic theory. To the degree that the latter—positive philosophic theory—is involved today, we must

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accordingly look beyond the misnomer of ‘‘analytic method’’ to discover its source. Or, at least we must do so until analytic practitioners as such will once more own for themselves qua analytic thinkers not merely a certain type of logic, but also a certain type of engagement with the real involving a corresponding method going beyond mere logic, and possessed of a rational structure intelligible and defensible as a whole. In the absence of the latter, we do not have a philosophy. The sum of the matter is simply this: the realm of analytic thought today is merely the amalgam of considerations developed by persons who have a predictable exposure to certain logical and linguistic disciplines, but no reliable exposure or formation with regard to method in philosophy of nature and metaphysics, where accordingly such persons ‘‘freelance’’ with some seeking to pursue the subject in one way, some in another (and some denying the very validity of the disciplines). There is no analytic philosophy. This patent fact is a reason for looking skeptically on the claims of analytic practitioners to maintain a monopoly of position and influence in academic departments. It suggests no reason whatsoever why any but adventitious contributions might be expected to the development of the realist tradition from analytic sources. Of course, any such contributions are to be welcomed—some are certainly to be expected (since minds of genius will in fact seek content beyond the pale of merely logical and linguistic analysis, and, doing so, some will succeed: genius finds a way14); and some such contributions have already, and conspicuously, been made. An Einstein can come from the patent office, but it does not follow that the patent office as such thus becomes the Source of Einsteinian Genius or of Einsteinian accomplishment, much less the repository of method in hypothetico-deductive physics. The same may be said equally of redoubtable minds formed in analytic thought who subsequently take on the task of genuine engagement with philosophy of nature and metaphysics.

A Brief Cautionary Tale Regarding I. M. Bochenski With respect to real principles or positive accounts standing at the very font of the early ‘‘analytic revolution’’—even prior to the ‘‘linguistic

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turn’’ about which there are similar narratives to be contemplated—the mind is drawn to the illustrative and synecdochic15 case of the great Polish Dominican logician I. M. Bochenski, who became fascinated with mathematical logic. Of course, most analytic thought is far removed from such preoccupations today. But his case not only reveals how much of the early revolutionary phase of the analytic movement has utterly vanished before the mists of time, but presents—at least to my mind—a highly attractive illustration of a Catholic mind wrestling with one of the most formidable of the material influences of the analytic movement, namely that of logicism. Further, in his reduction of philosophy to meta-philosophy, Bochenski in a sense stands as the prophet of the final state of analytic thought, which no longer is identified with any unified method for ontology or metaphysics. Hence, his peculiar way of combining the reduction of philosophy to metaphilosophy with logicism has emblematic significance beyond the mere historical moment in which it occurred. Bochenski formulated an account of the relation of ontology and logic that, if it had been correct, would certainly have made analytic philosophy the natural heir to scholasticism. His case opens an interesting window on the attractiveness of logicism, perhaps a more persistent attraction in the analytic world than either the merely positivistic or linguistic reductionist approaches that also characterized the analytic world during its revolutionary and positive doctrinal phase. As Bochenski put it in his essay Logic and Ontology: But if this is the case, what are the relations between logic and ontology? Two major conclusions were suggested: firstly, that their method is different; secondly, that their object is partly different. The force of this ‘‘partly’’ is that the object of ontology, real entities, is included in that of logic. Or, if one prefers, that while ontology as it is usually practiced is the most abstract theory of real entities, logic in its present state is the general ontology of both real and ideal entities. The following view suggests itself. Ontology could be conceived as continuing the work done in logic. But as it is—and even a broadened ontology, which would include ideal entities as

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well—it is a sort of prolegomenon to logic. It is a nonformal, intuitive inquiry into the basic properties and basic aspects of entities in general. Logic is the systematic, formal, axiomatic elaboration of this material predigested by ontology.16 Yet about this one can only note that logic is not ontology, and that hence it is not the ontology of real entities. Further, the respect in which the ‘‘object of ontology, real entities, is included in that of logic’’ is precisely in abstraction from the very reality which constitutes the formal object of ontology. Hence, the formal object of ontology is only materially included within logic as such, and it is more correct to point out that the logical first principles derive from ontology. In other words, logic receives its first principles from metaphysics, and metaphysics and ontology unfold these first principles in relation to being as such in all its causal reticulations, whereas logic unfolds them with respect to rational entailment as such and more generically in abstraction from actual existence. It is not the case that ontology is merely ‘‘prolegomenon to logic’’ with the latter serving as a ‘‘super ontology’’ of real and ideal entities, and ontology merely a rough initial approach to the real. Sed contra, the very distinction of real and logical is a real, i.e., a metaphysical, distinction. It is only secondarily a logical distinction. Where a real and a merely conceptual object are distinguished, the distinction is real, for instance: My sister really is not a genus, or a deprivation. The principle of noncontradiction is primarily a principle of being, a real principle; because everything is intelligible in proportion to its actuality, such that the object of knowledge is either the real, or that which is possibly real, or that which stands in some conceptual or ideal relation to these (e.g., genus, species), logic necessarily receives its first principles from metaphysics. Hence, the principles of metaphysics and ontology are the most formal principles, because act is most formal in being, and it will belong to the metaphysician to judge the relation of logical principles to being. Bochenski, as a fine Thomist, should have known this, but the elegance of formal axiomatic systems, and the true ontological ‘‘discharge’’ of the first principles as constituting logic as such, captivated

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him in a manner that led him to misconceptualize them. Nonetheless, if there were any salvaging of the analytic as substantive philosophic revolution, and if that salvaging were to be such as to enable analytic thought to assume the role within theological method that scholasticism or classical Thomism have played, then this early argument of Bochenski’s would, if true, have gotten as close to achieving this as is humanly possible. But the difficulty is that Bochenski’s argument is not true. Logic is not ontology, but rather it receives its first principle from metaphysics, and the whole subordinate realm occupied by logic is only intelligible owing to its ordering and relation toward the real. It is for this reason, as St. Thomas and Aristotle both teach, that it belongs to the metaphysician to judge of the relation of the logical principles and categories to being. Or as Aristotle puts it in the Metaphysics when speaking of first philosophy or metaphysics in Book Four: It is evident, then, that it is the office of one science to study both being as being and the attributes which belong to being as being. And it is evident too that the same science studies not only substances but also their accidents, both those mentioned above, and prior and subsequent, genus and species, whole and part, and others such as these.17 Clearly, the metaphysician does not consider species and genus as merely logical notions in relation to our reasoning—the logician does this—but rather considers them in their foundational relation to being, which is beyond the scope of logic as such. It is clear that it belongs to the metaphysician, and not to the logician, to judge the relation of logical principles and categories to being. Bochenski seems to have misread this passage in such a way as to suggest that, instead, being is merely one referent for logical speech, which accordingly has for its object, as it were, a sort of super-transcendental object indifferent to being and nonbeing: a drastic error, inasmuch as being is first in the intellect and nothing is intelligible save owing to its relation to being (including logic). Indeed, it is because the intelligibility of logic exists in relation to being that a metaphysical account of the relation of logical principles and categories to being can be given.

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In light of this attitude, the subsequent repose of Bochenski in the reduction of philosophy to meta-philosophy, and in the view that ‘‘Christian philosophy’’ was merely a ‘‘worldview’’ to be distinguished rigorously from anything ‘‘scientific,’’ becomes more intelligible. These are errors that of course metastasize with far greater swiftness and destructiveness in the minds of others, in whom these errors do not first need to overthrow the primacy and maximal formality of being (Bochenski had a Dominican philosophic education). The eclipse of this disastrous confusion of ontology and logic—a function of the implosion of the positive philosophic content of the analytic revolution and specifically of the termination of the project of the Principia Mathematica by Go¨del’s theorem—has indeed opened the way for fruitful engagement with philosophic questions. But one more properly appreciates the hangover from the revolutionary phase of the analytic movement, and the half-life of its effects, when one contemplates the illustration of its intellectual effect in Bochenski. For this reason it seems condign to pause further, and to note that what first attracted Bochenski to analytic thought was a certain similarity with classical Thomism. Speaking of modern philosophy, he writes that it came into being with the decline of scholastic philosophy. Characteristic of scholasticism is its pluralism (assuming the plurality of really different beings and levels of being), personalism (acknowledging the pre-eminent value of the person), its organic conception of reality, as well as its theocentric attitude—God the Creator at its center of vision. Detailed logical analysis of individual problems is characteristic of scholastic method. Modern philosophy opposes every one of these tenets. Its fundamental principles are mechanism, which eliminates the conception of being as integral and hierarchical, and subjectivism, which diverts man from his previous concentration on God and substitutes the subject as the center. In point of method modern philosophy turned its back on formal logic. With some notable exceptions, it was characterized by the development of great systems and by the neglect of analysis.18 Undeniably, modern philosophy did turn away from ontological pluralism and the organic conception of reality. And indeed it was

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more preoccupied with system than with formal logic. Yet if Descartes is a defender of a reduction of nature to mechanism and quantity, he is also a prime defender of rationalist conceptualism as prior to any account of nature and being. The ‘‘great systems’’ noted by Bochenski exhibit this turning away from being. Further, while scholasticism in general and classical Thomism in particular are not closed systems in the great rationalist manner, they are systematic in a way and to a degree that analytic thought outside of the development of logic and philosophy of logic (normally of a logicist/Platonist kind) is not. In any case, Bochenski himself, in his development, more and more tended to view anything outside logic as mere ideology, and to fall into a thoroughgoing logicism so extreme as to forget that the prime principles of logic are ontological prior to, and as condition for, their being logical principles. With this error, it was a short step simply to fall into detailed logical considerations more and more remote from foundational ontological and metaphysical analysis. Thus, the protoanalytic Thomists of the Cracow school, for example, did not turn their backs on various formalisms that they unwittingly tended to superordinate to the evidence of being. Prof. Jan Wolenski, without any intention of criticism, has well captured this tendency which I should characterize as a devolution but that he sees as relatively unproblematic, if nonetheless extreme. The following extensive quotation from Prof. Wolenski19 well exhibits a view that implicitly banishes the ontosophic dimensions of philosophic truth to the margins of logicist formalism—a formalism every bit as antirealist in its final implications as Cartesian conceptualism, even when its practitioners are avowedly realist, precisely because real and logical necessity are distinct and the latter proceeds from and is finally to be judged from the perspective of the former rather than the opposite. Prof. Wolenski’s own views are unknown to me, but this description of what I call the devolution of Bochenski’s earlier Thomistic realism20 at the behest of logicist premises is in any case well-described by him: Once he said: ‘‘Outside logic there is only nonsense.’’ The statement represents perhaps the strongest logicism in philosophy ever formulated. In Bochenski’s view this logicism also determined

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the scope of logical analysis. Everything is subjected to logical analysis: religion, authority, etc. In particular, he claimed that theology too had to be subjected to logical analysis. He discredited, sometimes quite unpleasantly, all alogical views. For example, he dubbed the group of ‘‘historians’’ in the philosophy of science (Kuhn, Feyerabend, Hanson, Toulmin) ‘‘the Gang of Four.’’ He also complained that so-called ‘‘dialogue philosophers’’ (like Levinas) demoralized young people. The term ‘‘antiirrationalism’’ was introduced by Ajdukiewicz who maintained that we should distinguish two different meanings in which the word ‘‘rationalism’’ was used. Firstly, rationalism is a view which is jointly characterized as apriorism and nativism. On the other hand, rationalism refers to a view recommending knowledge which is sound, well-established, firm, etc. According to Ajdukiewicz, antiirrationalism consists in accepting only those statements which are intersubjectively communicable and intersubjectively testable. It is precisely what Bochenski claims in his tenth commandment. As in the case of Ajdukiewicz, antiirrationalism plays not only a theoretical, but also an important practical role. Simply speaking, irrationalism is dangerous for many vital human interests, because it produces various superstitions. Bochenski devoted much energy in order to show that many popular views are irrational, for example humanism or pacifism. Perhaps one consequence of antiirrationalism is particularly worth noting, namely a very sharp distinction between science and world-view. Science is a pattern of rationality. On the other hand, world-views are irrational in principle. Now, for Bochenski, philosophy belongs to science. Hence, he rejected all conceptions of philosophy which confused philosophy as a science and philosophy as a manifestation of a world-view. He neither rejected world-views as such nor denied their practical importance. However, he constantly insisted that science and world-views should be separated. According to Bochenski, philosophy as a science is not attached to any school. He identified scientific philosophy with that based on logical analysis. Now it is clear why he said that analysis as a method is neither Kantian,

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nor positivistic nor Thomistic, etc. In his dictionary of various superstitions, he considered Christian philosophy as one among them. This qualification might be shocking for someone who recalls that its author is a Dominican. However, the matter looks differently as soon as we remember that philosophy, on Bochenski’s view, is either good, that is, analytical, or wrong, that is, irrational. No other qualification is meaningful, because it immediately confuses science and world-view. This standpoint was also characteristic of the Lvov-Warsaw school. Of course, revelation, natural truth—everything may be logically considered. But the alternative is not to be logical or to be illogical, because it is no more the case that metaphysics receives its principles only from logic than that biology or physics does. Indeed, as I shall happily and frequently repeat, it is logic that receives the first principle from metaphysics: Being is not nonbeing. Granted that nonbeing is merely conceptual, being is not, and it is by virtue of the real character of being that it is not the same as nonbeing—just as, even had God never created, it would still be true that the divine nature is not a created nature, owing to the nature of God. Ontological analysis, in its properly Aristotelian modality and as vindicated and developed by St. Thomas, regards necessities proper to being and nature and not merely to logic, and the view that such necessities do not exist or that their reality is merely an issue of ideological worldview is erroneous. Of course, Bochenski, and the Cracow Circle generally, thought of contemporary formal logic as a neutral tool vouchsafing merely the most accurate deductions possible, and not as substituting for or supplanting natural truths. Yet, even putting aside criticisms that one may offer with respect to the licitness of the quantification of the predicate, the most foundational analyses of Aristotle and Thomas—regarding, for example, the discovery of the real distinction of act and potency in every order of being—are not particularly aided by formalization. And the conception of formal logic as a tool requires serious qualification, of the sort that Bochenski himself was all too ready to apply to the status of many-valued logics. (To quote him from his essay ‘‘On Logical ‘Relativism,’ ’’ written in 1937: ‘‘I admit many-valued logics as systems that bear conventionalism; I deny them as systems that make

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abstraction from conventionalism and for which there are non-conventionalistic interpretations.’’) In short, logic in the classical sense, as not alone an instrument for checking consistency of any sort whatsoever, but rather an organon serving as guarantor for consistency in truth, has its first principles in—and derives from—the ontological order. It is precisely for this reason that many-valued logics, which indeed have their uses, all presuppose and require two-valued logic at the meta level (are they manyvalued logics, or are they not?) whose fundamentality is unequivocal. Go¨del’s theorem also suffices to show that formal systems are not airtight—something that perhaps aids rather than retards one’s advance to the intelligible perception that the first principle (being is not nonbeing) is prior with an ontological priority and for this very reason also is logically prior, as opposed to possessing an exclusively logical priority. Indeed, this alike buttresses the judgment that logic as the rule of correct reasoning is not merely one ‘‘formal system’’ among many. Bochenski wished to defend Thomistic philosophic theology and metaphysics, and this indeed did function for him as a sort of background velleity—but ever more remotely, and as less and less formally dispositive with respect to his actual philosophic activity. This is more or less the course that Catholic engagement with analytic thought (with certain exceptions, it is true) followed until comparatively recently: a minor key acknowledgement of metaphysics and natural philosophy that over time is progressively overlain and supplanted by logical analysis operating upon an evidentiary basis drained of its ontological content. What is thus lost in most analytic treatments was never originally possessed, since few have the benefit of the Dominican background that defined Bochenski’s early approach to philosophizing: namely, a thorough metaphysical reasoning revealing the causes and ontological structuring of proportionate being. Causes and ontological structuring—here is represented a wealth of philosophic scientia which involves insight into real evidence and not merely into second intentions of the mind. Here questions of symbolization are wholly secondary, for it is not the inferences that are difficult but the degree of remotion from sensation in the object under

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consideration and its essential analogicity (here a dose of Cajetan is better than all the formal systems ever devised). In sum—neither the brilliance of Bochenski nor of more recent contemporaries working fruitfully at the intersection of Thomism and analytic thought should deter us from pursuing the full implications of St. Thomas’s teaching that being is first in the intellect, that consequently neither meta-philosophic principles nor thorough-going logicism equate with metaphysical scientia, and that the development of classical Thomism cannot properly be reduced to Thomist/analytic discourse. It would not be so crucial to make this point were it not the case that throughout North America this mistaken identification and reduction are frequently made. But the laudable and enriching willingness of Thomists to engage with others should not be taken to signify that such engagement defines the limits of Thomism. That is an enormous error. As if to remind us of the persistence of the problem, it should be observed that Bochenski, in the volume Logico-Philosophical Studies, attempted a logical formalization of the doctrine of analogy along the lines of a mathematical isomorphic function. Yet the definition of a mathematical function is univocal, howsoever radically the variables may vary. By contrast, when one says: ‘‘light is to the eye: truth is to the mind,’’ there is an analogical likeness of differing rationes that does not reduce to one thing as a mathematical function reduces to one thing. Even if one says that the expression above reduces to ‘‘illumination,’’ the two senses given this term are radically diverse and do not reduce to different values of one univocally common function. Yet there is a primitive likeness that constitutes a proportional unity obtaining between these differing relations, while nonetheless here proportion does not designate something in the genus of quantity.21 To be sure, there is something comparable to diverse variables within one function in the idea of analogy, but the comparison is imperfect because the analogy of proper proportionality reduces neither to a unitary, univocal function nor to a unitary, univocal determination. Rather, it is simply a primitive datum that diverse relations may nonetheless be similar where the similarity is not a univocal term or property predicated of each. E.g.: as potentially walking is to actually

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walking, so is potentially understanding to actually understanding, but walking is not understanding: potency and act are inherently analogical, able to be and to be said in many and diverse ways. As if to remind us that the day is long, and that what appears at the dawn of logicism is likely to reappear at midnight, the insightful Denys Turner, Horace Tracy Pitkin Professor of Historical Theology at Yale University—in a book arguing the crucially persistent need for rational philosophic theology and metaphysics within theological method—turns to the subject of analogy. When addressing analogy, he argues that Thomas meant ‘‘little more’’ by his doctrine of the analogia entis than that being is a common function with diverse essential variables. To quote: We have seen that the content of the expression ‘‘x exists’’ is the value of the variable ‘‘x’’—to that extent Henry of Ghent follows Thomas precisely. What it is for a sheep to exist is simply what it is to be a sheep. What it is for there to be a sheep, the species, is given in the description of the kind of animal world which includes ovines. Hence what it is for a thing to be created is whatever it is for that thing to be brought to exist ‘‘out of nothing’’—that there should be such a world rather than nothing at all. For that reason, what it is to be brought to be out of nothing differs for every kind of thing in the sense that every meaning for the expression ‘‘x exists’’ is determinate to a substitution for x, descriptive of a kind; in this sense there is nothing ‘‘in common’’ between different values for the expression, just as there is ‘‘nothing in common’’ between 4 as the square of 2 and 9 as the square of 3—‘‘. . . exists’’ cannot be predicated univocally. But in the sense in which both values are derived by the same function of ‘‘squaring,’’ operating upon different variables, we cannot say that ‘‘square of . . .’’ is an equivocal term. And, in sum, it seems that Thomas meant little more than this when he says that esse is predicated ‘‘analogically’’—just not equivocally, not univocally.22 The day of logicism is long, indeed. Mathematical functions, such as squaring, possess a univocal nature and definition predicated of every

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instance of squaring in precisely the same sense irrespective the diversity of the variables; whereas, being does not possess a univocal nature and definition predicated in precisely the same sense of every instance of being. Even if one says that to be is for a thing ‘‘to stand outside of nothingness and outside of its causes,’’ we do not have a common function, because ‘‘not to be nonbeing’’ is not yet to be a being unless we are already presupposing a real subject (the Fregean problem, again), and real subjects are essentially varied. But what it means to be is not the same for every thing that is, nor is it ‘‘the same’’ function, but it is a primitive analogical likeness or ‘‘fusing together’’ (John of St. Thomas’s famed ‘‘confusion’’) of essentially differing rationes in a proportional unity. As we saw above, ‘‘light is to the eye as truth is to the mind’’ does not resolve into one univocal functional definition of ‘‘illumination.’’ Being can be, and can be said, in many ways: the terrestrial corollary to the truth that God knows Himself to be imitable in many ways. Absolutely speaking act is prior to potency—that is why the inference is to a First Mover and not to a First Moved—and so in an actually existing being the actus essendi is ontologically prior to the essential capacity to be. But, further, act is proportioned to potency, and since there are differing capacities to be, the ‘‘to be’’ is diversified, yet one, by an analogy of proportionality. Amongst the differing rationes—the frog is to its being as am I to mine—there is a likeness. For although I am not a frog, and for me to exist is not the same as for a frog to exist, yet there is a primitive likeness of these differing proportions, a likeness that does not reduce to something univocally one, but only to something proportionately one. But proportionally one here does not signify univocal quantity or function (not: 2 is to 4 as 6 is to 12, for these reduce to one univocal mathematical object: namely, to ‘‘one half ’’; nor 4 is to 2 as 9 is to 3, for this too reduces to the univocal function, namely ‘‘square’’). Whereas the mathematical illustration is a case of differing variables reflecting one univocal relation, true analogy of proper proportionality is a case of the analogical (not univocal) likeness of simply differing relations. For the distinctively proportioned and diverse relations of existence to essence, or of existence to the individual subject of being, are not generically the same (being is not a

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genus) nor can they be specifically the same (for the relations are specifically distinct: to be a parrot is not to be a dog). Again: being can be, and can be said, in many ways. Even if but one created being existed, it would not be true that proportionate being simply meant only that one being, because that position would imply that the creation of other beings is impossible. To the contrary, St. Thomas teaches us that the universal being predicated of substance and the categories can be added to,23 unlike the perfect being of God. Hence, the categories designate not merely modes of speaking and conceiving but modes of being. Of course, the act of being of one thing is its act of being, but neither when we predicate being of other things nor when we say that other things could be, are we saying that they are all that same one thing. So, while we become aware of being in knowing particular individual things with specific natures, we also realize that there is nothing to restrict being to any one of these, and thus that as predicated either really, potentially, or even merely possibly, of different subjects of being, ‘‘being’’ means always something different yet proportionately identical—because it is, in each case, different and yet proportionately identical.24 This is to realize not only that the ‘‘term’’ being is analogically used, but that the reality of being is intrinsically analogical: Being is and can be (and be said) in many essentially (and individually) different ways. This, again, is the reason why metaphysics does not achieve a perfect abstraction of its object, for it includes all its differentia, unlike univocal perfect abstraction which takes in what is essential and leaves out everything else (but anything left out of being does not exist). Denys Turner, like Bochenski—and like many other analytics still— too quickly undervalues the imperfect abstraction of metaphysics in favor of the perfect and univocal abstraction susceptible to mathematical formalization. The elegance of the famed analogy according to both intention and being goes far deeper than that.25 Merely another parable, the moral of which is that analytic philosophers and those influenced by them, even today, are unlikely to be able to find their way out of the constraints of logicism unaided from without. And yet it is true that analytic thought need not be logicist, howsoever preponderantly this is in fact the case—because analytic thought is not, properly, a philosophy, but merely one part of a meta-philosophy.

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The Danger of Subordinating the Speculative to the Apologetic I have already noted the danger of subordinating speculative exigencies to the contours of apologetic engagement with the analytic world. Some Catholic minds may tend to suppose that, because of its widespread extension throughout North America and England, analytic thought is what it claims to be, the lingua franca of philosophy as such, simpliciter, in comparison with which every other mode of philosophic engagement is antiquarian or lacking in rigor. This is of course a demonstrably false supposition. But many who know it to be false nonetheless persist, for apologetical reasons, in making the discourse with analytic philosophy a higher speculative priority than the philosophic development of the metaphysical realist tradition in its own right and apart from mere extrinsic intelligibility to those trained only in analytic meta-philosophy. This constitutes an additional and distinct difficulty posed by the analytic discovery of Aquinas: a difficulty that occurs when one is tempted to be more concerned with ‘‘opening up’’ analytic thought ‘‘from within’’ to the teaching of Aquinas, than with the positive development of the truth of that teaching in its own right.26 Of course, there is no per se objection to Catholic minds philosophizing, as it were, at points of intriguing intersection between the thought of analytic authors and the teaching of St. Thomas and of Thomists generally. Nor is there anything wrong in learning from the considerations and arguments of analytic meta-philosophers when they venture beyond the meta-realm and into substantive philosophizing. Insofar as analytic thinkers engage substantive matters there can hardly be any de jure ground for refusing their efforts serious consideration. On the other hand, it must be admitted that the propaedeutic to every science—logic—is not of itself a sufficient method. Elements in the philosophy of logic, and systematic application of first metaphysical principles to natural evidence—evidence whose appropriation involves the discovery of certain natural ontological principles—are essentially required. Accordingly, engagement with a school of thinkers who persistently confuse meta-philosophy with philosophy, and who then a-systematically approach philosophic issues whose intelligibility

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requires different treatment, is liable to be unnaturally constrained or even paralyzed. The paralysis in question consists in the limitation of philosophic consideration only to entry-level questions—for the higher-level questions require systematic preliminaries that one may not presume analytic thinkers qua analytic to possess, and indeed toward which one is normally on solid ground in anticipating there to be resistance or hostility from analytic quarters (owing to the de facto prevalent logicism of analytic thought). It is not patently true that a richer development of a theory is guaranteed by developing it only to the degree that someone formed within analytic preoccupations will be able easily to grasp it. I.e., that which it is possible to bring to light for someone lacking the speculative background of Thomas’s thought, and that which it is possible to bring to light with the benefit of this speculative background, differ. The naive and philosophically unsupportable proposition that analytic philosophy simply and merely represents the triumph of sweet reason as such, so that all other modes of philosophic engagement must be some sort of antiquarian, merely historical, or mystagogic obscurantism, is a proposition neither self-evident nor demonstrable nor even prima facie reasonable. Of course, it is a sign of health when a philosophic tradition develops in contact and fruitful exchange with other philosophic approaches. But to insist that a tradition develop no more intensely, profoundly, or thoroughly than it can be made apprehensible to those only superficially aware of it is the triumph of the merely apologetic over the speculative. It is one thing to engage the work of analytic authors and to seek to profit thereby. It is another to insist that the limits of such engagement are the limits of the philosophic as such, or of the acceptable range of Thomistic philosophic activity as such. The latter dooms Thomistic philosophy to merely ‘‘reactive’’ engagement. But the more profound elements of the Thomistic synthesis, and the more profound issues pertaining to its development and application, presuppose and move beyond the limited subset of foundational questions that are liable to constitute the sole zone of discussion with analytic authors. The suggestion that Catholic philosophers should limit themselves to work within the zone of intersection with the projects of analytic

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thinkers, by preference to seeking the most rigorous, speculatively adequate, and profound development of philosophy of which they are capable, is a recipe for permitting non-speculative and merely apologetic issues to determine one’s properly philosophic work. There is occasion for this, it must be granted, but that occasion must not, per se, supplant the primacy of the speculative as such. It is this danger that particularly haunts alert Catholic minds within the analytic tradition who seek to ‘‘open it up’’ to the teaching of Aquinas. For the pure, unadulterated speculative development of philosophy must take precedence over the effort to argue over foundational entry-level questions with philosophers who are insufficiently aware of the cognitive depth of the philosophic problematic in question. It is, curiously enough, the primacy of the speculative life that makes dialogue with analytic philosophers both necessary but also of secondary import for those engaged in the strict speculative development of philosophy as such. There is no particular force to the proposition that the interesting analytic canon of the past seventy years is more vital or instructive than the canon of the past two millennia. To grapple with what Thomas actually teaches, and its pertinence, and its true implications and applications, is to do something more either than to entertain logical quandaries about his teaching, on the one hand, or to content oneself with a mere historico-textual study, on the other. When someone once begins to work in such a vein, it is no longer possible, clutching the analytic fig leaf, to disguise the distinctive ex natura features of the Thomist at work—howsoever much one persists in reading philosophy generally, including works of philosophy written by authors whose formation is analytic. In any case, the central issue—an issue much neglected owing to the circumambience of analytic thought—is the need for a fully speculative Thomism unhindered by purely apologetic and sociological limitations. And vis-a`-vis the need for intensive speculative development, the concern for dialogue with analytic logicism, or with analytic thinkers generally, is an apologetic and secondary aim. Of course, the aim to derive everything one can in the search for truth from engagement with analytic minds is not a secondary aim. But this is alike true

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of the engagement with existentialists, phenomenologists, Marxists, postmodern deconstructionists, and others. Yet the effort to help minds by slow degrees to the discovery of the fundaments of Thomistic philosophy is a far different project than unfolding its intellectual exigencies and developing it in the most rigorous speculative manner that is humanly possible. The latter project, by its very nature, cannot accept traffic directions from merely apologetic or sociological imperatives without ceasing to exist, becoming stunted, or—in the worst case—turning into an ideology tailored to exigencies flowing from the sociology of knowledge. This does not mean that analytic authors can make no contribution to Thomism, but—or so I argue here—these contributions will emerge not from what is distinctively and exclusively analytic, but by virtue of the properly philosophic engagement with real evidence by penetrating minds. Inasmuch as the per se is prior to the per accidens, clearly the strategic focus should always be on the development of the speculative problematic as such and apart from apologetical considerations. Precisely because analytic meta-philosophic principles are insufficient method for philosophy of nature and metaphysics, it must be seen that for analytic Thomism to be fruitful it must be Thomistic. Since the analytic tradition does not own logic, it is rather less clear that in order for Thomistic thought to be fruitful it must be analytic. It is popular to depict this judgment as one that reduces philosophy to a ‘‘party’’ affair. But, to the contrary, it most strongly insists that, apart from any party issue, there are issues of truth, and that some of these pertain to method in philosophy as such. It is widely overlooked, since the implosion of all the substantive analytic philosophies and methods, that Thomism retains speculative judgments about all these matters. They are or are not true. If they are true, then while one may be an analytic Thomist by way of apologetical engagement, one cannot be a Thomist while renouncing Thomistic method. And further, if one is a philosopher seeking the truth, one is most of all interested, not in that which politicians seek—mere consensus for practical purposes—but in the maximal penetration of, and articulation of, the truth. Accordingly, it is utterly perverse to suppose that, where truth claims of maximal importance are at stake, and the highest developments and

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applications of a tradition are at stake, one should for purposes of ‘‘getting along’’ with others simply drop the preoccupations and principled commitments, or the research projects to which these give rise, pending a sufficient rapprochement with those others as to make such speculative labor intelligible to them. For these are intelligible of themselves and will also be so ‘‘for them,’’ insofar as they undertake the requisite considerations, and permit themselves to become acquainted with philosophy of nature and metaphysics, the problematic giving rise to them, and the method that they entail. And if a significant part of the intellectual world refuses to acquaint itself with such intelligible labors? Well, one can try to acquaint them—but that is a secondary philosophic task. In speculative terms: the dog barks, but the caravan moves on. And in the case of the great (failed!) analytic revolutions, these are not even living dogs, but ones that have now been dead for more than one generation. It reposes on those who wish to propitiate the deities of reductionism to provide the apologia for their activity. But giving credence to sociological aftereffects of philosophic errors does not seem a properly philosophical procedure.

Conclusion Finally, those who understand the superiority of Thomistic method to analytic meta-philosophic principles would make a grave error were they to limit their inquiries and research to the zone of likely analytic usages of the latter. Even those who seek to pursue the former within an analytic context have no warrant for the idea that analytic ‘‘philosophy’’ (whatever that is, since analytic thinkers do not acknowledge any such thing) is in any substantive sense the ‘‘heir to the throne’’ of scholastic method and doctrine within theology. Classical Thomism, the sole enduring philosophic school, has more title to such a role than perhaps at any time in its history. For the historical record now shows us, with all the detail necessary for judgment, the sequence of judgments—from modern ideosophic reductionism to postmodern nihilism—that ensues following the loss of

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being and nature. We are greatly indebted to Alasdair MacIntyre27 for pointing out that only from the vantage of the realist tradition do the narratives of modern and postmodern philosophy become intelligible. Those who now realize that the purpose of inquiry is intelligible only on bases other than those of the modern and postmodern experiments, are well advised in seeking rediscovery of that philosophic capstone of the whole realist tradition—classical Thomism—which Sertillanges rightly called ‘‘an ark of salvation’’ for the human intellect: The Church believes today, as she believed from the first, that Thomism is an ark of salvation, capable of keeping minds afloat in the deluge of doctrine. She does not confuse it with faith, nor yet with knowledge in all its fullness; she knows that it is fallible, and that in respect of passing theories, it has shared the errors of different times; but she judges that its structure as a whole corresponds to the constitution of reality and of the intelligence, and she notes that both knowledge and faith converge on it, because it has taken up its position between them like a fortress at a meeting of the roads.28 The heir to the throne of classical Thomism, within contemporary Catholic philosophy and theological method, is: classical Thomism, intensified, developed in its implications, applied, and adorned with the bounty of the conceptual experiments of its contemporaries, which yet can only be properly harvested in the wider context of the truth of being and nature. Homer may indeed occasionally nod, but the truth does not sleep, nor does Thomism vanish each time that neoterists take aim at it. Or as Gilson aptly commented upon metaphysics (he spoke of philosophy, but in the context of the philosophy of being): it always buries its undertakers.29

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Chapter Four

WHY NATURA PURA IS NOT T HE THEOLOGICAL STALKING HORSE FOR SECULARIST MINIMALISM OR PELAGIANISM For de Lubac, the idea of a pure nature contained dangerous Pelagian tendencies, since it meant that it would be possible to sever grace from nature and marginalize it under the category of the ‘supernatural’. The supernatural could subsequently be privatized and social life would then proceed on the basis of the common pursuit of goods associated solely with the ‘‘natural’’ order. The next step would be for the perfection of the natural order to be treated as synonymous with the Christian project. Once the achievement of worldly perfection becomes an end in itself the ‘‘Christian project’’ becomes indistinguishable from the Enlightenment project, and humanity, once again, seeks perfection by relying on its own powers. In MacIntyre’s words, ‘‘the natural becomes an end, not the hallowing of the world.’’ Paradoxically, the belief in the existence of a ‘‘pure nature’’ can also foster Jansenism since there is no longer a ‘‘natural’’ orientation or longing for the supernatural. With such an ‘‘extrinsic’’ account of the relationship of nature to grace, the interpretation of the human telos thereby ends up at either of two extremes—Pelagian or Jansenist—depending on whether one is optimistic or pessimistic about the potential of nature without grace. Tracy Rowland, Culture and the Thomist Tradition

We have argued that nature is neither a pure theological posit, a mere geometric point without magnitude terminating the line of grace, nor the preserve of logicism, Humean conventionalism, scientism, and the other ‘‘isms’’ with which contemporary analytic thought still finds itself somewhat historically burdened.1 Nor will a partial logical meta-philosophy suffice as a method for the systematic contemplation of nature

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and being. Classical Thomism, we are arguing, retains its normative place within the narrative of philosophy and theology, a place that has been occluded in part by the dialectical evisceration of nature as a principle within theology, and in part by the secularization of Catholic institutional and intellectual life and the correlative neglect and ignorance of many profound scholarly voices not only of the tradition as a whole, but even of the last half century. But irrespective the optimal relation between revealed theology and philosophy, is it not the case that to affirm the reality of nature and the persistence of the proximate natural end is to provide a foundation for secularism? And does not this leave us, culturally, morally, legally, and politically, with the equivalent of a Pelagian or semi-Pelagian optimism about nature and closure to the order of revelation and grace that is bound to falsify the actual destiny of the human person and to distort social relations in an anti-Christian fashion? Of course, some of this objection is answered in principle by the correct account of the relation of grace and nature. That is to say, one can hardly designate as ‘‘Pelagian’’ or ‘‘semi-Pelagian’’ an account in which all natural order—and especially our own free action—lies within divine providence and testifies to its transcendent first cause and creator. This is to say that by the very constitution of such acts as the acts of creatures, it is true of them that ‘‘in everything that operates, God is the cause of its operating,’’ and that the divine creative causality embraces even the mode of action as either necessary or contingent. Further, to say that there is a limited and relative autonomy of natural order and reason is not to say that this constitutes a ground for averting our gaze from revealed truth or from the insight into the human condition that it uniquely affords. Indeed, there is strong reason to think that the rejection of natural law, natural reason, and the classical Thomistic sense of the praeambula fidei is at least partially rooted in an oversensitivity to, and a lack of critical philosophic distance from, essentially Protestant modes of theology. For example, one would like to think that a work by Balthasar titled The Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas might have been one in which, far from radicalizing the historically comprehensible error of de Lubac’s Surnaturel regarding the lack of

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any normatively definitive proportionate impress of natural teleology in concrete nature, he might instead have been moved to correct it. Further, enlightenment individualism as a source of modern and postmodern distance from divine revelation is not rooted in classical Thomistic regard for the divine promulgation of natural law from creation, but rather in systematic metaphysical error. To begin with the immolation of the adequatio intellectus ad rem in Cartesian rationalism, Kantian a priorism, Humean skepticism, or Hegelian dialectics—as though these constituted the natural starting point for human knowledge—is already to be checking Christian theology into the Graveyard Motel. Of course, if these types of thought are what is designated by the term ‘‘natural reason,’’ then the refusal of theologians to accept the necessary foundational inclusion of philosophic truth—and of natura in its own limited but real amplitude—within theological method is quite intelligible. However, as my first chapter argues, when nature ceases to be understood as a theonomic principle, the dislocative effects within theology itself are severe, and the sapiential unity of Christian wisdom is disrupted. Below I shall consider certain prominent analyses pertinent to the question whether the Thomistic idea of natura pura necessitates, calls for, or is best articulated by the project of crafting a purely secular zone of practical agreement as the basis for social, political, and legal order, with no reference to the order of grace. The purpose is not to provide exhaustive commentary or response to the works of those considered— each of whom could well command a book—but rather to consider their teaching insofar as it bears directly upon the relation between the idea of natura pura and secularist minimalism in the social, cultural, political, and legal spheres. To restate the thesis, the doctrine of natura pura is the double doctrine (1) that even here and now, in the concrete order, there is impressed upon each human person a natural order to the proximate, proportionate, natural end from which the species of man is derived, which is distinct from the final and supernatural end; and (2) that this ordering could have been created outside of sanctifying grace and without the further ordering of man to supernatural beatific vision (the famed hypothesis of Cajetan), although, from the beginning, the actual concrete order has been first one of man created in grace,

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and then subsequently fallen from grace, and restored and elevated in grace. Secularist minimalism is the privatization of revelation through a denial of its contribution to public life, law, culture, and the life of the mind—as though it were of purely private import. It is particularly the denial that the Church’s authoritative interpretation of the moral law, preaching, and witness to the life of supernatural faith, hope, and charity, and of all the virtues, can in any sense serve as a norm for public life. First, I shall take up the consideration of a suggestion of Jacques Maritain, whose proposal of a minimal purely practical consensus stands in great tension with many other tenets of his own Thomistic philosophy. Subsequently, I shall also comment on the thoughts of Jean Porter and of David Schindler Sr. as these bear upon the relation between natura pura and the problem of secularist minimalism. These three minds—a great Thomistic figure of the twentieth century; a contemporary theologian seeking points of coalescence between classical scholastic analysis and contemporary moral thought; and a prominent theological representative of the Communio Circle—serve well to identify the problems that any theological proponent of the doctrine of natura pura needs to confront. Yet, it is the gravamen of our analysis here that each of these authors tends toward overstating the consanguinity of the theses of natura pura and of secularist minimalism in public life.

Natura Pura and Secularism: The Maritainian Departure from Thomistic Prudence If it be granted—as surely it must be—that there is no Pelagian implication from an account whereby all action in the cosmos in its being, truth, and goodness, resolves into divine motion in the natural order and grace in the supernatural order, there nonetheless remains the question of natura pura within the political order. For, although Christian theologians may understand nature as a mode of the divine governance, agnostics and atheists will quite understandably not share such an understanding. And the twentieth century has witnessed even a

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Thomist of distinction such as Jacques Maritain argue for minimal practical consensus as the basis for a shared practical agenda with all human beings that may seem to some to count as a secular humanism—howsoever much the Thomistic understanding of such proposed consensus necessarily diverges from the understanding of nontheists or even anti-theists who may embrace such a practical consensus. This idea of Maritain’s, precisely because it does contain some truth with respect to the roles of prudence and consensus in social and political life, suggests something that many theologians fear: that in the public life of man, Christian truth will even by believers themselves come to be viewed as merely a private source of inspiration, not strictly pertinent to questions of prudential governance in society. There is the further danger posed by the fact that this privatization is seemingly in continuity with an end Maritain would have abhorred—namely, the principled closure of the public realm to any Christian or even theistic reference whatsoever (for however much he may have supported a minimal practical secular consensus, he never imagined that Christians themselves would abandon their understanding of the public significance of truth in faith and morals for political life, nor that the state should have any business in bullying them to do so). Now, at the very start, it is important to state clearly that the affirmation of natura pura does not require concurrence with Maritain’s view of the foundation of a certain minimal cooperation for the common good with nonbelievers expressed in terms of ‘‘rights.’’ Indeed, Maritain himself believed that, in practical moral matters, natural truth needs to be subalternated to revelation, precisely so that it may be brought to bear prudently and correctly on the concrete circumstances of the human person, which always include two elements that natural moral philosophy in and of itself cannot conceive: original sin and its effects, and the whole order of grace toward the end of supernatural beatitude. In this particular analysis one can see that, at least for Maritain (who affirmed the knowable impress of natural teleology on man even in his concrete nature, and did not share de Lubac’s account of the natural desire for God), natura pura implies and requires, in man’s actual circumstances, more rather than less reference to revelation, precisely as regards prudent moral action.

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One might think that this position of Maritain’s that natural moral philosophy is subalternated to revealed moral theology poses serious strains on his analysis of the foundation for cooperation with nonbelievers, or—put more adequately, since more than a mere ‘‘foundation’’ is involved in his thesis—places strain on the thesis that, as he put it in the first subsection title to chapter 4 of his book Man and the State: ‘‘Men Mutually Opposed in Their Theoretical Conceptions Can Come to a Merely Practical Agreement Regarding a List of Human Rights.’’ The subtitle to this might fittingly have been ‘‘Prelude to a Brawl,’’ because the little agreement shared may indeed be the very fundament of large practical oppositions. To acknowledge rights is not necessarily to acknowledge either the order of ends that properly delimits their role in social life, or to acknowledge the circumstantial and prudential concerns that indicate which ‘‘right’’ is pertinent to the facts. Hence, a ‘‘list’’ of rights, like the lineup of cars at the Indianapolis 500, is liable to involve a race to the finish line of ultimacy: for some, rights de jure will always trump others. For example, prior to Roe vs. Wade, the ‘‘right’’ to life on the part of the fetus trumped the ‘‘right’’ to freedom of religion in the sense that a woman could not abort as a matter of her ‘‘religious principle.’’ Nowadays, of course, a woman can abort for any reason whatsoever, because the court claims to have discovered a constitutional ‘‘right’’ to a dead fetus: a judicial fiat officially derogating the ‘‘right’’ to life of the fetal person. What (philosophically speaking) determines ‘‘trumping order’’? It must be judgment regarding the natural hierarchy of ends, on the one hand, and the judgment of prudential circumstance as to what is pertinent, on the other. This is to say that ‘‘rights’’ talk is not primary but derived. Indeed, there is reason to hold that Maritain was quite aware of this, and this did affect his formulation of the notion of rights, however much it may be the case that he did not sufficiently harvest the problematic implications of the derivative status of rights for political discourse.2 In any case, Maritain’s conception of cooperation in the secular sphere is perhaps more a function of the problematic use of ‘‘rights’’ as intelligible altogether apart from ‘‘theoretical conceptions’’ than of any implication of the thesis of pure nature. Indeed, on his own view, the

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ordering of nature includes, as it did for St. Thomas Aquinas, the good of religion under the virtue of natural justice. For as God is demonstrably the author of all public and private good, public and private thanks and worship are in justice due to Him. Hence, certain natural ethical truths clearly depend upon the ‘‘theoretical conceptions’’ of men, and the content of at least one such ethical truth implies the obligation in justice not alone for private, but for public, worship of and prayer to God. ‘‘Public’’ does not necessarily mean: governmentally executed or coerced. But there is a question as to the role of the state with respect either to directing persons to the realization of such a duty in justice, or even with respect to acknowledging the existence of such a duty in justice. For example, can the state fail to acknowledge genuine duties in justice, even if it does not prescribe anything about their performance and accomplishment? Does not the state need at least to acknowledge the truth regarding moral order, as a condition for prudential judgment even of the facts with respect to legislation to be considered, or with respect to cases that come before the bench? Further, that intellective specification of the human will that renders it insusceptible of command by any finite good (because the will is ordered to universal good, and no finite good is universally, in every respect, good, leaving always a ground for the will to demur) is theoretically demonstrable, and it is this natural datum on which the obediential capacity of the will to be further ordered to God is predicated. Lastly, it does seem true that from a Thomistic vantage point, the critical data of the Fall and of the Redemption and all these imply are accessible in this life only in faith. But for natural moral philosophy to be brought to bear adequately in the guidance of human conduct, knowledge of these large facts about the moral and spiritual life and destiny of man is necessary. For this reason, Maritain’s view that natural moral philosophy is subalternated to moral theology makes sense, for it does not deny that the order contemplated by natural moral philosophy lies within the human agent in concreto, but only denies that this is a sufficient account of man’s moral situation. I.e., while true, there is more to the story, and this ‘‘more’’ is pertinent to the giving of counsel.3 But if Maritain is correct in this analysis, then it looks very much to be the case that he must be wrong in his practical stress upon a ‘‘merely

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practical’’ ground for cooperation with non-Catholics and even nonor ‘‘anti’’-theists because this ‘‘merely practical’’ ground is not equivalent with the natural law as such, which always involves a speculative root, and which also requires for its fullest concrete application some reference to the revealed truth. That is to say, the entire natural order is further ordered by and in grace, and so the effects of the Fall and of grace are pertinent to practical judgment. It is also true that whatever is directly contrary to man’s ultimate end is indirectly contrary to the ordering of natural ends that is presupposed to grace. (It is, after all, a precept of the natural law to do whatever He tells you, to use the words of the Blessed Virgin Mary at the Wedding Feast of Cana.) But to be indirectly opposed to the natural ordering that must contextualize the understanding of rights is to be actively disposed to deny human dignity and to act against genuine or authentic human rights (i.e., against just claims that are true in the light of the essential hierarchy of human ends, and in relation to the circumstances pertinent to the species or type of the claim). This is to say that, without invoking the claims of invincible ignorance, principled opposition to theism is always or for the most part going to imply opposition to the natural law. Of course, the opposition is not total. For example, parents do wish their children to be educated—and accordingly a ‘‘zone of just claims’’ with respect to education is as a natural matter ceded and acknowledged. But the content thought to be condign for that education varies (should there be religious instruction, or moral instruction, and if not, how should these matters be depicted in history classes—or should they be ignored?), as do the circumstances (e.g., should schools be passing out condoms and birth control pills to minors?). The need to educate rooted in the natural law—on which naturally there is consensus—is truly affected by the deprivation of the natural vigor toward even the proximate natural end by original and actual sin, as it is affected by the rejection of supernatural beatitude as the ultimate purpose of the hierarchy of natural ends itself. And so not only is the tendency toward education weakened (and so a mother or father—or a school board, or a faculty—may be tempted to shortchange a child’s

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education), but also the aversion to the last end of supernatural beatitude leads to aversion to the natural hierarchy of ends itself. For these reasons, genuine educational necessities may come to be ignored, and things alien to, and even opposed to, genuine education may be included within educational programs (e.g., mass distribution of the appurtenances of vicious promiscuity, and the turning a blind eye even to the simple therapeutic evil effects of such conduct—the omnipresence of infection with the human pamplona virus, for instance). The minimal consensus about the need for education will not substitute for wisdom regarding the natural law, nor for divine revelation. Natural law does provide the foundation for the intelligibility of our moral discourse, it is true, and this discourse is significantly available to those who are either of different Christian confessions, or who are not Christians, or for that matter not theists. But there is indeed a necessary theoretic content to the natural law, which Maritain’s confidence in ‘‘merely practical agreement’’ quickly elides. And regarding both this content (which is indeed available to the mind, but which is controverted), and also regarding the larger context of its practical, concrete, existential interpretation (for concretely the moral subject suffers the effects of original and/or actual sin, and stands in some relation to revelation and grace), it is somewhat foolish to suppose that atheists and agnostics are necessarily capable of judgments of ‘‘right’’ sufficiently well-founded to avoid clear error extending to grievous injustice and even to persecution. If, on the other hand, the vaunted basis for ‘‘merely practical’’ cooperation designates merely a quasi-starting point provided by providence, then Maritain’s thesis is readily intelligible and acceptable, precisely because the starting point is not sufficient in itself. Of course, the formulation above—‘‘quasi-starting point’’—owes to the datum that there is ineluctably a speculative foundation to natural law doctrine, and that this speculative content is essential to the natural law. Hence, the minimal ‘‘overlap’’ of perception between those confused about or lacking sufficient clarity regarding this speculative content and those possessing the requisite insight, is a starting point of an apologetic nature. That is to say, it is amenable of genuine critical engagement from which may be patiently and dialectically kneaded the matter for

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further insight into the natural law. It is important here to distinguish between systematic philosophic clarity and rigor with respect to the premises and foundation of natural law reasoning, and mere partial de facto insight into the natural law. The former will always be a superior foundation, but it also will always require some speculative exertions and achievements. Yet such conclusions may be held in a different mode, either medicinally, through faith, or naturally, in the sense of ‘‘by the natural inclination of reason’’ prior to strictly rigorous philosophic demonstration but after some measure of discursive reflection. ‘‘But,’’ someone might argue, ‘‘the federal government of the United States has never been any type of Christian or even theistic government, yet it has on the whole avoided grave injustice and persecution, at least since the ending of the perfidious institution of human slavery.’’ Here, of course, one must advert to historical and institutional facts. One such fact, undeniable in its importance, is that until comparatively recently almost all American citizens belonged to some species or other of Christian communion, the exception being religious adherents to Judaism, which is of course likewise an inexpungeably theistic religion. Thus, where the natural order of ends is understood to be intrinsically and proximately ordered to God4 (this has been the historically preponderant Catholic view of the matter), and also to be indirectly further ordered in function of the ordaining of the human person within grace to the final, supernatural beatific vision (the Christian view in general of the matter), the understanding of what is just law is necessarily affected. For what impedes or blocks either the natural or supernatural end will be understood as mala in se, evil in itself, and as contrary to justice and to genuine law as ordained to the common good.5 Of course, the original constitutional arrangement of the United States of America was also one in which the states were the governments of general jurisdiction, and the federal government a government of few and determinately enumerated delegated powers. Hence, the locus of the most significant and foundational political craftsmanship was originally the states and their constitutions, constitutions that governed the most extensive arena of political activity. So radical was this role of the state governments that the states were at liberty, as the

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federal government was not at liberty, to be confessional states, i.e., to acknowledge the authority of a legally identified religion. Less than thirty years before the Civil War, for example, Massachusetts was still a confessional state that officially acknowledged Christianity.6 In any case, the religiosity permeating America’s social fabric, largely of Protestant character, and so well depicted by Alexis de Tocqueville,7 certainly has much to do with the substance of positive legislation in American history and with the understanding of the nature of justice. But even this material permeating effect on American civic history is one that contemporary secularists cannot forget, and suppress, quickly enough to suit their agendas. The instrument chosen for this desired effect is of course the use of the Supreme Court to remove issues from the political realm of self-government, so that they can no longer be politically discussed: an interesting commentary upon the devolution of the word ‘‘liberal.’’ The same prudential observation of the effect of Christianity in the public square may, of course, be made negatively as has just been made positively, simply by contemplating the political and legal tendencies of de-Christianized Europe, so frightened of its history that no public mention of its Christian origins is to be tolerated in the proposed new constitution of the European Union.8 Natura pura does offer the mind—whether secular or Christian—the occasion for discovery of crucial truths that are absolutely pertinent to the moral life. And the fullest and strongest advertence to these is indeed a ground for limited cooperation in the public life: a basis for going forward. But the going forward always implicates those speculative truths actually implicit and foundational to the natural law. And the full practical application of the natural law vis-a`-vis the actual condition of man—because that actual condition is affected by truths only receivable through revelation—will always require further advertence to revelation. Yet it is here that one sees the profound import of natura pura. It is precisely because crucial truths conditioning the reception of the gift of faith and often erroneously thought to be available to faith alone are naturally demonstrable, that the mind, once in possession of natural wisdom regarding these truths, is brought into an analogous frame of reference with that of the Christian believer. So crucial a truth as that of the First Cause

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and Creator of all that is provides a profound core of reference. Because of their proximity to the revelata, all that concerns the preambles of faith also falls under the aegis of actual grace—yet because these truths are in their objective nature proximate to the powers of unaided natural reason, they are properly natural. But every truth about the natural order is, as it were, on a ‘‘double grid’’ vis-a`-vis the proximate natural end from which the human species is derived and vis-a`-vis the ultimate supernatural beatific end rising beyond all proportion to the exigencies of nature alone. The truth that divine providence extends to all created agencies is a natural metaphysical truth. And thus one may see that the natural discovery of the truth about God as First Cause and Provident Creator is itself a gift of particular divine providence over contingent singular effects in the order of cognition. Understanding of the crucial importance of these natural gifts within the economy of divine providence and revelation is thus called for on the part of Christians generally, and in particular on the part of Christian philosophers and theologians. Given the preceding analysis, Maritain’s thesis would have been correct had he focused upon the theoretic foundations of the natural law as that which provides the crucial natural preamble to faith and foundation for cooperation with respect to the common good. For the practical ordering suffices merely to render the requisitely determinate theoretic context all the more important yet all the more controverted. My conclusion is that it is the natural philosophy and metaphysics of theism—or at least the judgments upon which these are based—that play the role that Maritain erroneously gave to purely practical cooperation over lists of unordered rights. Such natural philosophy and metaphysics, conditioning the exercise of practical reason and essential to St. Thomas’s doctrine of the natural law, provide a basis for common understanding and cooperation.9 By contrast, atheism and agnosticism, which are simple and demonstrable errors, by their nature provide nothing to the common good. Of course, practical ordering to sublunary goods is not tantamount to atheism and agnosticism—but it requires prior speculative insight regarding the hierarchy of ends for this practical ordering not to be merely the prelude to intractable oppositions. The analogous basis of reference with respect to this hierarchy of ends is to be found

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in the praeambula fidei, in the basic truths about God and the human soul available to natural reason, and in the natural law in general: truths present to the mind to some degree prior to rigorous demonstration or discursive philosophic interrogation. It is this reference that potentially makes for cooperation with those who reject the revelata. But there is a sense in which, given error about these things, only the lowest level cooperation can be possible. (Can one, with respect to the public life, cooperate with plans requiring the view that the human person is not possessed of any transcendent dignity or destiny? Not if one is a Christian.) The speculative natural content of the tradition also is valuable beyond its pure demonstrative power, in that its very existence and conclusions—like every other form of human scientia—is something that for a certain number of persons is held either seminally in its principles and through certain untutored natural inferences, or else on human faith rather than with the certitude requisite to the science as such. In the way that someone who cannot duplicate the reasoning might nonetheless repose a certain confidence in a physicist’s extrapolation of mathematical formulae to physical calculations of velocity and position, so the existence of the tradition of philosophical theism is in itself a source of a certain confidence predicated upon human faith. Hence, the importance of the discipline is not alone its principal effect—its properly rational achievement of speculative theism—but also in the secondary effect it shares with all scientiae as engendering well-placed human faith. Both the speculative element, and the element of purely human faith, extend into the moral realm, and provide an analogical referent for discussion and for cooperation between those who accept a body of propositions as revealed truths, and those who do not. The moral element is quite important because speculative theism in the classical Thomistic tradition includes the affirmation of the four causes, and thus is opposed to anthropological reductionism and materialism, which it opposes on the foundation of firm philosophic evidence, principles, and conclusions. All this is of tremendous importance for the richness of the premises with which it provides anthropological and moral reflection.

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As a side observation, it should be noted that in the matter of purely practical agreement, the formalism of constitutions is secondary to the factual and social permeation of life by natural and revealed truth. This is precisely why not even the most innocent public practices are reconcilable with secularism in the public sphere: the secularist wishes that religious believers did not exist, and wishes to order public life as though they did not—sometimes by achieving such nonexistence as an effect of policy. The secularist will not be polluted by any mere practical tolerance or effort to reach de facto peaceful accord with his religious neighbors. Of course, this at the margin implies coercively imposed political servitude and even genocide, of the sort in which atheist regimes persistently indulge, to the rationalizing music of atheist apologists such as Christopher Hitchens, who, one recollects, famously blames the Czars for the Soviet Communist persecution of Christianity. Presumably similar explanations lie in wait to explain China today (which has erected its own governmentally controlled church as a substitute for the Roman Catholic Church in communion with the Holy See, and which imprisons, tortures, and murders believers who refuse to bend the knee to the state rather than to God), and perhaps even Rome at the time of Nero. The softer but nonetheless common secularist goal of effecting political servitude in Christians through exclusion from political processes—by, for example, simply mandating that principled concerns of Christians are of their essence contrary to public life and unworthy even of the opportunity to present themselves in the public square for deliberative purposes of self-government—is of course the more observable phenomenon in North America.10 In any event, we can draw certain conclusions: Purely practical agreement on lists of human rights, like the agreement on who is to joust at a tournament, does not guarantee irenicism but is, in the absence of consensus regarding the order of ends, more likely to result in incessant political and social conflict. Nonetheless, a common foundation for limited practical cooperation with all men of good will may indeed be found in the natural law, not merely by virtue of purely practical exigencies, but rather by virtue of the speculative foundation, principles, and content of the natural law,

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all of which by extension become practical. This content is indeed proportionate to the range of unassisted natural reason, while also forming a strong point of analogical reference and convergence between those who possess, and those who lack, Christian faith. Because of their closeness to the revealed truths of faith, the discovery of these speculative truths of the natural law—especially the praeambula fidei regarding the existence and nature of God as First Cause and Provident Creator, but also extending to moral teachings rooted in natural teleology—may be considered an actual grace. Yet this discovery is by its object and end natural and not supernatural. Although these speculative truths, and their extension into the practical moral life, do constitute a basis for cooperation with all men of good will, nonetheless the complete application of these truths to human persons in their actual concrete existence requires advertence to the rule of faith in order to be fully effective. The reason is simply that human persons are as a matter of fact subject to the effects of original and actual sin, as well as recipients of the enormous gift of sanctifying grace—facts that can only be received through revelation since they are not demonstrable on the basis of finite nature. Need it now be said? Natura pura, the impressing even upon concrete nature hic et nunc of the proportionate teleology toward the proximate natural end, plays a profound role not alone within theological reflection, but also in the apologetic and evangelical engagement of the Church with contemporary society, as well as in providing a point of profound analogical reference for cooperation with others. But does this not imply secularism? No, and for the reasons supplied above, which include the affirmation of the First Cause Who is the Provident Creator, and of the whole of natural ethical teleology, as intrinsically proportionate to natural evidence and reason, conjoined with the need for further guidance from revelation with respect to the complete conditions of its application. What I have provided above is the development of a theory that is not Maritain’s, but is certainly cognate with that of St. Thomas Aquinas (and, in significant part, with Maritain as well). For Maritain—and St. Thomas, too, I believe—rightly teach that in addition to natural knowledge, further revealed truth is needed to provide man with adequate moral guidance with respect both to the actual conditions of the wayfarer after the Fall (and given actual sin and the gift of redemption),

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and also to the sublimity of man’s Last End and the full truth regarding the means thereto. St. Thomas—and in certain places, Maritain alongside him—teaches that there is an essentially speculative foundation to the natural law (reason itself exhibits a teleological ordering, and the will is always intellectively specified and informed). If it is indeed the truth that sets one free, the highest truths of the natural order promise the most benefit for our practical cooperation, which is never ‘‘purely practical’’ but always includes the germ of the speculum, the initial intellective apprehension of the end and of the order of ends, which is the source of the initial inciting spark of appetition.11 Far from secularism, the ontological density of nature and its proximate teleology is essential to the overcoming of secularism; essential to the very capacity of the Christian to engage with, and in, the world, and to articulate the intelligibility of revelation to a world in which revelation is often taken to be the fruit of a purely irrational arbitrium decisively alienating man from his own nature. But this end requires setting aside the antirealist premises of modernity and postmodernity: We properly know not phenomenal objects, nor mere linguistic tropes or usages, nor mere concepts, nor even merely a concrete person in grace lacking any impress of natural order, but rather we know, even in the concrete, beings with natures.

Jean Porter, Nature as Reason, and Christian Social Prudence It is fairly clear that in her work Nature as Reason,12 Dr. Porter embraces several of the most strategically significant and controverted of Thomistic premises within theology and philosophy. Among these are the importance of ‘‘pre-rational nature’’ within moral theology and philosophy, and a resolute non-dualist account of human nature;13 a posteriori reasoning and dependence on sensible experience and (perhaps even too greatly) upon social context in cognition; the priority of the speculative to the practical and its extension into the practical; and the existence of an ethically significant hierarchy of natural ends prior to choice. Further, she unabashedly acknowledges that nature in precision from grace enjoys a certain relative integrity and autonomy. Her project sets forth from what she takes to be strengths in the older scholastic accounts of natural law that are largely lost to modern and

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postmodern considerations. She is also, however, sympathetic with awareness of the social contextualization, articulation, and extension of natural law, as well as of the natural law foundation of subjective ‘‘right.’’ Hence, Porter’s work clearly requires assessment vis-a`-vis the question whether the doctrine of natura pura implies, requires, or suggests that political order should be secular and predicated upon a consensus either none of whose principles is theistic or, at least, none of whose premises is revealed. Given the factors mentioned above, it is not wholly surprising that with respect to the present subject, she seems to reach conclusions somewhat similar to those of Maritain, while moving beyond the idea of minimal practical consensus to an overt admission of ‘‘plural’’ socially embedded natural law perspectives14 open to one another in dialogue, as well as to the development of a principle of subjective right (tethered to be sure to the natural dignity of the subject as one whose freedom is providentially significant). Although she does not stress the historico-doctrinal similarity of her account with that of Maritain, the extent and range of her natural law reflections, combined with her theological scope of vision, propel her toward an analysis that to this author strongly suggests certain of the critical arguments forwarded by Maritain. For this reason, it seems condign to take up one strand of her extremely rich and suggestive work, Nature as Reason, in close proximity to the consideration of Maritain. Porter, alongside Maritain, seeks to rekindle awareness of the extraordinary scope and power of natural law reasoning, and is also alongside Maritain positive regarding the idea of subjective right, howsoever derivative this notion may be with respect to the wider natural law. Further, like Maritain,15 and like the present author, Dr. Porter acknowledges that there is indeed a proximate natural end—distinct from the final, supernatural beatific end—that defines the good proportionate and connatural to the human person.16 Hence, I should like here to pursue five considerations that pertain to her treatment of the natural law, with a composite view to our question whether natura pura must indeed imply secularism or some minimal natural consensus as defining political order:

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First, with respect to her sense of the natural law as signifying at root a ‘‘capacity’’ for moral judgment, as distinct from the actual ordering to such judgments, impressed on a never-neutral, always teleological nature; Second, with respect to a certain wariness in accepting that any ethically significant knowledge may inceptively and unproblematically follow upon the ‘‘close-in’’ teleologies of nature in precision from a later state of the contemplation of the overall hierarchy of ends; Third, with respect to the social embeddedness of our knowledge of the natural law and the epistemic aspects of her account of the extension of natural law reasoning to diverse social matter; Fourth, with respect to her account of subjective right; Fifth and finally, with respect to our construal of the possibilities either for social and political consensus, or for terrestrial happiness in this given providential dispensation, apart from right ordering toward supernatural beatitude.

These considerations cannot here be pressed with anything like the requisite scope to do justice to the width and depth of Dr. Porter’s work, for her work is of comprehensive scope, seeking to address all the many facets of natural law. Here my focus is drastically narrowed to that which immediately converges on the question: does natura pura imply secularist minimalism in social order? It is my hope that these remarks may be helpful in showing that the doctrine of natura pura is indeed closer to the foundation of a ‘‘complete ethic’’ in the Balthasarian sense (would that his sense of natura were up to the exertion of playing such a role!) than to either ethical or political secularist minimalism, while providing also the occasion to note that Dr. Porter’s account is infinitely richer than are those that, unlike her own, jettison the speculative as essential for ethical wisdom. The intention in this consideration is both starkly delimited, and in a measure, critical, but it would be a grave mistake to omit noting that in this book Dr. Porter has achieved a penetrating and profound treatment of the natural law, one that does great justice to its speculative and metaphysical character as well as to its practical importance and unfolding. With respect to her skepticism regarding the ‘‘naturalistic fallacy’’ or dichotomy of nature and good; her diagnosis of the

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errors of dualism; her account of the essentially speculative component of natural moral knowledge; her treatment of the nature of the object of the human act; her distinction of natural and supernatural; and her sense of the essentially theological foundation of the belief in a minimum quotient of human dignity and the claim for equal regard for each human person, Dr. Porter is again and again not only correct, but eloquently and rigorously so. Here is a genuine wrestling with important issues, exhibiting all the signs of a vibrant and penetrating mind. Precisely for this reason it is important to press further on certain issues, in the hope of assuring that the anti-dualist and speculative character of her analysis bear the systemic fruit that they should. Hence, although my purpose is in great measure critical, it is also my hope to encourage the reading of this book and a corresponding wrestling with its propositions: not since Maritain has a mind so rich in scholastic preoccupation attempted to marry Thomism with subjective right and modernity (and now, postmodernity). Because the first three points to be considered lead of their nature to the second two, I shall divide the treatment below on this basis, taking up the first three points in the first section (2a) before turning in the second section (2b) to the last two. Natural Law as ‘‘Capacity,’’ ‘‘Close-In’’ Teleologies, and the Social Mediation and Embeddedness of Natural Law Reflection Sharing as I do so many both of the premises and the conclusions of Dr. Porter, there is nonetheless a premise that seems to me worthy of scruple with respect to her account of the natural law. It is a point that, given her otherwise strong affinity for the importance of the ordering proportionate to human nature may, I hope, augment rather than detract from the significance of her analysis. This point may perhaps best be expressed by the observation that human nature is never ‘‘neutral’’ with respect to the ends connatural to it. That is to say, natural law is never merely that which gives us the capacity or power to judge rightly, but that which is the actual motion or teleological ordering with respect to such judgment even if and when it goes awry. While the further precepts and directives of the natural law are not deductively

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derived from human nature, they are a function of the actual inclinational ordering—itself reflective of teleology—that is effectual in human nature as a whole, even when we fail of advertence or reasonable inference: the actual impress of the divine ordering passively received, whereby every creature receives its being, nature, powers, ordering to acts, objects, and the hierarchy of ends, from God, and on the basis of which we have genuinely natural reasons to do or not to do. This is to say that the natural law governs a motion toward our good that, whilst we are thinking and deliberately acting, is always rationally ongoing in accord with the order impressed upon our nature from the instant of its creation. It is, initially, perhaps a slight question of mere formulation. Speaking of the scholastic authors of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, she writes: This led them to develop a view according to which the natural law is fundamentally a capacity or power to distinguish between good and evil; it is intrinsic to the character of the human soul as made in the Image of God, and therefore it cannot be altogether obliterated; and it is expressed or developed through moral precepts which are confirmed, as well as being completed and transcended, through the operation of grace. Even though the natural law understood in its primary sense does not consist of specific moral rules, it does find immediate expression in the fundamental precepts of the Golden Rule or the two great commandments of love of God and neighbor; these in turn yield the more specific norms of the Decalogue, which can be further specified as warranted by the circumstances of human life. Hence, the natural law more broadly understood does include specific moral norms as well as a fundamental capacity for moral judgment, although there is considerable room for both legitimate variation and sinful distortion at the level of particular norms.17 Clearly, the general sense of this is wholly correct: what is in one respect an actual ordering impressed by God upon human nature is in another respect the basis or foundation for the extension of our moral

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judgments further and further into the realm of concrete particularity. And so, one may indeed in a certain sense see the natural law, vis-a`-vis its further articulation in determinate precepts, as establishing a power or capacity for the same. Yet, were one to interpret this limited sense of power or capacity as signifying simple lack of any actual ordering prior to the articulation of determinate precepts, then the unity of the teleological narrative would appear to be interrupted. The emphasis upon capacity or power seems to place in a status of pure potency what is an actual ordering, articulated in the inclinations of human nature, toward the connatural good for man. Granted that this actual ordering can go astray into ‘‘sinful distortion at the level of particular norms,’’ this is per accidens, and when any ‘‘legitimate variation’’ is realized, the primal ordering of the natural law is its root principle. This, of course, may very well be all that is intended by the words above—it is one of the ways one might interpret them. But the stress upon power and capacity can be misleading, as it may seem to subtract from the actual teleological ordering of nature any genuine act that is at root inexpungeable. One recollects that for Aquinas, although sin lessens the vigor of the motion to the due end, nonetheless that motion persists even in the damned, as it is the source of their eternal remorse.18 And so one may affirm such natural motion without denying the precisions that the lines above so well articulate with respect to the extension of the natural law into more and more specifically determinate precepts governing concrete particularities. Why is this important? Its importance becomes clear in the related questions of the limited but real ethical knowledge flowing from our initial knowledge of natural teleologies, and the role of social mediation in knowledge of the natural law. The nuanced rhetorical shift of emphasis from a divine impressed actual ordering of nature to a power or capacity becomes all the more significant inasmuch as the role of ‘‘pre-moral’’ natural ordering of human action is thought of itself never unequivocally to imply any moral conclusion. Dr. Porter is of course very much opposed to dualisms that deny the moral significance of pre-moral natural order for moral truth. And she is rightfully insistent that it is the whole hierarchy

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of ends as defining the nature of the good that enters into our particular natural law judgments. Yet one might wonder whether, epistemically, the knowledge of this hierarchy is not achieved through experience, over time, and in such a manner that the ‘‘close-in’’ teleologies of nature provide a partial account—in need of further interpretation and analysis, but nonetheless, true—which does itself have moral implications. Speaking about these issues in relation to the general analysis of sexual morality, she writes: The scholastics do not argue from the observed effects of sexual intercourse, or from the structure and function of the sexual organs, to the place of sexuality in human life. Rather, they argue from judgments about the proper place of sexuality in human life to a set of conclusions about the purpose of the sex act and the proper uses of one’s sexual organs. Their analysis is teleological, in the sense that it presupposes some account of what human life considered as a whole should look like and what purposes the different inclinations and functions of human life serve within that context. But nothing in their analysis requires them to argue from the purposes of human functions or organs, considered in isolation from a context set by the overall well-being of the organism, or by a broader account of the proper shape of human life.19 It is certainly true regarding the scholastics that ‘‘nothing in their analysis requires them to argue from the purposes of human functions or organs, considered in isolation [emphasis added] from a context set by the overall well-being of the organism, or by a broader account of the proper shape of human life.’’ This is especially true if by ‘‘considered in isolation’’ one means ‘‘considered outside of the narrative of unified normative teleology’’ or ‘‘apart from the whole hierarchy of morally significant human ends.’’ Certainly, whatever we may say of natural teleology forms a constituent of the broader account of the unified and (prior to choice) ethically significant order of ends. However, if by ‘‘considered in isolation’’ one means that no knowledge of ethical significance may be implied by the natural ordering of our sexual functions in precision from the integration of this ordering with the wider

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goods of human life, this seems to be false. For how do we know the whole, apart from reference to the parts as parts? And further, these parts are not, as it were, lacking all ethical significance until the moment we fully understand their role in a good life. For as true as it is that all action is with respect to the finis ultimus, our understanding of how some actions are ordered to the finis ultimus progresses through experience and inference. Why, then, should it be impossible to draw any proximate knowledge of ethical significance whatsoever from the ‘‘close-in’’ teleologies of nature, including the close-in teleologies of sexual nature? Dr. Porter, distancing scholastic teleology from any immediate derivation of ethical norms from such ‘‘close-in’’ teleology, argues that: This point should be underscored, because we so frequently assume that the scholastics derived moral conclusions from a simplistic analysis according to which the functions of biological processes are indicated by the normal consequences of those processes. On this view, the scholastics’ claim that sexual intercourse is oriented toward reproduction—for example—is refuted by the simple fact (which they somehow failed to notice) that most acts of sexual intercourse do not result in reproduction. But their claims about the purpose of sexual intercourse did not depend on any such simplistic arguments from the effects of sexual intercourse. Rather, these claims depended on judgments about which of the effects of intercourse were good, and therefore natural in a positive sense.20 But the language of ‘‘consequence’’ is of course imprecise, for the per se terminus of an act is not merely whatever may come about from the act—for, of course, contingently many consequences may follow an act which are not properly speaking that which terminates the act. It may be that when I go to work in the morning, a student, seeing my approach, darts for the nearest window and defenestrates himself in despair at the thought of sitting through another lecture, but this clearly is not the end of my going to work in the morning. And if we cede that most acts of intercourse do not terminate in conception, we

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may still note that the act is ordered toward this end, in the sense that even the fallow period of the woman is for the sake of the cycle that brings forth the ova that may be fertilized through intercourse. Hence, while any particular act of intercourse may indeed not terminate in conception, if we ask after the intelligible structure of the act to discover what it is most formally speaking ordered toward, or that for the sake of which the act exists and in which we see its potentialities articulated and terminated, we find that the act is indeed actually ordered to unite a couple procreatively—that is to say, in a way that by its very nature not only makes for one flesh, but that is open to the generation of new life. Similarly, we might look at a class in English composition busily writing essays, and ask two questions: (1) in what do the efforts of these various individuals actually terminate, and (2) toward what are these efforts ordered, as that for the sake of which the act exists and in which their potentialities are articulated and terminated? Certainly, the answer to the first question may be: the efforts actually terminate in a few fair, and many mediocre, essays. But the answer to the latter question is: these efforts are actually ordered for the sake of the end of bringing about good essays. This distinction seems to be cognate with that of Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics, when he speaks of the proper function being the same as the function excellently or paradigmatically performed.21 Ergo, we understand the function of procreative activity as ordered successfully to procreation, or at least not deliberately closed to it. Of course, this is not to determine teleological function by mere incidence: most acorns are burned, destroyed by disease, crushed, or otherwise impeded from becoming oak trees. Nonetheless, given the right circumstances, the dynamism of the acorn is realized and its virtualities to become an oak tree are achieved. Close-in teleological analysis is not mere observing of consequence, although it is true that even here the consequence of impeding will be teleological in the sense that the agencies acting on the acorn and blocking its development are efficiencies of such a nature as indeed to bring about such an effect. Rather, teleological analysis involves distinguishing accidental from essential in such a manner as to achieve knowledge of the normative end that defines a certain type of act. Such abstractive intelligibility seems

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essential if we are ever to develop, on the basis of reflection upon our experience, an account of the ordered whole of the good life and of the hierarchy of ends that defines it. While such close-in teleological analysis cannot tell one everything one needs to know about the ethical character and import of the act in question, it seems that it must indeed supply something of ethical significance to one’s analysis, on pain of having an account of a whole that has no teleologically commensurated parts. Indeed, insofar as there is an order of ends, it is the case that there are subordinated ends, and that these are intelligible as ends. It follows that something about these ends is knowable in precision from their further ordering, even while it is doubtless the case that absent the finis ultimus there would be neither such order nor such intelligibility. This in turn implies that (since we speak of an end) something of ethical significance is known.22 These points are of course ones that Dr. Porter, herself, would seem to accept with respect to the relation of the order of proportionate natural ends to the supernatural beatific end—i.e., there is some ethically significant knowledge even in precision from revelation, howsoever incomplete it may be in relation to the actual state of the human person. Put differently, to know that something is an end is to know that it is related to human happiness, but it is not necessarily to know everything ethically significant there is to know about this relationship. Nonetheless, it is to know something. Such commensurated parts will indeed be better understood in the light of the whole contemplation of the nature of the good life, but the latter must refer to the former as possessed of some subordinate intelligible ethical order. Dr. Porter acknowledges the import of natural order, but there does seem to be a nuanced elision over subordinate but genuine natural moral insight, to the derogation of ‘‘metaphysical biology’’ or the proximate ethical significance of bodily teleologies. It does not seem impossible that the root sense of natural law as ‘‘capacity’’ or ‘‘power’’ rather than as impressed actual order may play some interpretative role here. For a proximate end cannot be known at all as an end without some ethically significant knowledge being implied; the motion of the person toward the Good is indeed operative and

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effectual from the first precept of law onward, passing into all other derivative precepts and actions whereby the natural law is articulated. From the ‘‘line of scrimmage’’ of a sense of natural law as at root a ‘‘capacity’’ to know good from evil (as distinct from an emphasis upon natural law as at root an impressed actual ordering of the person toward the Good operative through all precepts and never in ‘‘neutral’’), onward to a certain wariness regarding the ethical implications of our immediate knowledge of ‘‘close-in’’ bodily teleologies, we thus pass naturally to the issue of the social mediation and social embeddedness of the natural law and the ‘‘underdetermination’’ of moral precepts by the natural law. If the actual order impressed on man toward the Good is placed in a certain cognitive stasis by depicting it simply as capacity, if the denial that we can derive from close-in teleology certain immediate, albeit limited, moral conclusions deprives the moral life of a certain degree of epistemically proximate fixity, then the interpretation of the underdetermination of moral precepts by the natural law as implying ‘‘plural’’ natural law moralities seems to underrate the causal unity of the natural law and the essential intelligibility even of contingent social matter. As Dr. Porter puts it: Because we are complex creatures, there can be a variety of adequate expressions of our nature—as the scholastics knew—and correlatively, these expressions will inevitably take the form of social conventions developed through some form of communal reflection—as they also knew. There is thus ample room for cultural and historical variation in socially particular expressions of the natural law, and this is why we can legitimately speak in terms of natural moralities, rather than in terms of one determinate set of natural law precepts.23 She continues to develop this theme further on in her exposition: At the end of the last chapter, we noted that moral concepts are always necessarily indeterminate to some degree, and this indeterminacy places limits on the degree of certainty that we can attain

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in particular instances of choice. What is more, this indeterminacy of particular choices inevitably introduces elements of contingency at the social level, where moralities emerge and develop out of the intelligibilities informing human nature. This does not mean that the development of particular moralities is an arational process, any more than moral judgment at the individual level is irrational. Nonetheless, the kind of rationality in question cannot be analyzed in such a way as to imply that the social processes of moral discernment can or should (even ‘‘in principle’’) yield a rationally compelling set of moral norms purged of all contingent elements. This brings us to a crucial point. The intelligibilities of human nature inform social norms, and for that reason we can analyze and evaluate particular moralities in terms of their natural origins. In that sense, the Thomistic theory of the natural law is a realistic theory, and implies a version of moral cognitivism. Yet the intelligibilities of human nature underdetermine their forms of expression, and that is why this theory does not yield a comprehensive set of determinate moral norms, compelling to all rational persons. In order to move from our best accounts of human nature to moral judgments, we must first of all take account of the diverse social forms through which our shared nature is expressed, and secondly, we must appraise these in terms of criteria that will inevitably be contingent to some degree.24 If I understand this aspect of the finely honed argument of Dr. Porter correctly, she rightly observes that the natural law underdetermines the more remote precepts closer to the concrete circumstances of the person, owing to the necessary role of contingent social convention and custom. This is true in the sense that such convention necessarily conditions our judgments, as does alike the diverse social matter to which such judgments pertain. Nonetheless, the distinction between the essential and the accidental continues to obtain, as alike does the direct contact with nature in terms of which alone social custom and convention are intelligible. Surely, for example, the role of the principle of noncontradiction as a principle of being is not altered (although it

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may be obscured) by social convention, nor is it impossible for someone within a society whose social forms fail to express a certain aspect of nature to discover and appreciate the truths pertaining to that aspect of human nature. Surely the moral norms applied and subsequently embodied in customary ways may be given an account that distinguishes particular social matter from the moral norms embodied, even if and when we judge that the particular embodiment is necessary to the particular moral practice that is in question. While ‘‘the social processes of moral discernment’’ may not be such that we can purge them of all contingent elements, this may very well be merely because we are explaining these contingent elements in terms of that which is more necessary, an explanation that does not ‘‘explain away’’ but retains the reality of that which is explained. Everything hinges upon how we understand the phrase ‘‘diverse social forms through which our shared nature is expressed’’ in Dr. Porter’s line that, ‘‘In order to move from our best accounts of human nature to moral judgments, we must first of all take account of the diverse social forms through which our shared nature is expressed.’’ Are we to suppose that because human activity occurs within society and as subject to social convention, that therefore our access to nature is starkly limited to the given forms of social expression within particular societies? This fairly clearly is not Dr. Porter’s intent, for were this true, criticism of a society from within, founded upon deficiencies with respect to the natural law, would seem to be impossible (as would be discovery of ‘‘right’’ in societies resistant to the notion). Yet insofar as such criticism is possible, it is clear that the social and conventional mediation of ethical judgment is material rather than formal, howsoever much suasion it may predictably exert upon any interpreter. Thus, social mediation of natural law judgment by convention and custom, while permeating, is nonetheless in principle reducible to circumstance (one implication of this is, for example, that there are per se mala acts, acts that by their natures are evil irrespective the particular conventions of any society). Once it is clear that diverse circumstances may be governed by the same principles, it seems to be the case that there is an intelligibly unifying body of precepts, and that the extension of these within diverse social matter may indeed evoke and require

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creativity and connatural awareness without for all that yielding plural moralities as distinct from plural social embodiments of one morality. While this interpretation safeguards against an over-deductive account of moral life, it also retains the speculative element requisite to the virtue of prudence in all its aspects. Nor does it entail an hubristic claim that we fully cognize all the crucial implications of that one morality, because our discovery of the truths of the natural law is experientially rooted, discursive, and subject to development over time, and does indeed, as Dr. Porter points out, involve diverse social matter and for that matter technological novelties—all of which invite and even require continually renewed attention, analysis, and engagement. Nonetheless, if we understand the natural law in terms of the actual ordering impressed in human nature toward the good, this ordering will pass into the more remote precepts of the natural law from the primary and more proximate precepts. Here we see that both the construal of the natural law as at root a ‘‘capacity,’’ and the reluctance to draw any limited ethical implications whatsoever from the knowledge of close-in natural teleology, seem likely to affect one’s view of the degree to which natural law judgment is at the mercy of contingent social fact. Surely it is, to some degree, at the mercy of contingent social fact, but this may nonetheless be understood as a function of the embodiment or instantiability of moral truth within social matter. Nature abstracted as a whole is both formal and yet includes the common matter of the definition. Similarly, one might think that the social investiture of moral reason is—even when essential to the particular moral informing in question—distinguishable from the animating moral ratio of a given society’s practice, or, put differently, resoluble into form and matter. Nor need one embrace enlightenment foundationalism in order to affirm that there is only one natural order,25 and so only one possible ‘‘morality,’’ which to be sure may be embodied in diverse customs and conventions. Custom and convention need not be interpreted purely as contingent social data, but as social matter subject to the moral form of particular ways of achieving natural ends. St. Thomas’s notion of determinatio surely is pertinent here, for a determinatio does not follow deductively from natural law, but is

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nonetheless founded generically in the natural law. St. Thomas distinguishes between two modes of derivation of human law from the natural law, one by way of ‘‘conclusion,’’ and the other by way of mere ‘‘determination.’’ The first is directly derived from the natural law, while the second is only generically rooted in the natural law. For instance, that we avoid unnecessary fatalities is directly rooted in the natural law precept that the innocent ought not to be slain; but that we achieve this end in civic life by all driving on the left side of the road, or all driving on the right side of the road, is a matter of social determination rather than something directly derived from the natural law. The important point here concerns the nature of determinations of the natural law, for not all such determinations are equally remote from the form they particularize. That some given determination is not derived from the natural law as a principle does not make it utterly contingent, for the nature of the matter varies from instance to instance. The illustration provided by Thomas suggests the presence of degrees of necessitation in some determinations: But it must be noted that something may be derived from the natural law in two ways: first, as a conclusion from the premises, secondly, by way of determination of certain generalities. The first way is like to that by which, in sciences, demonstrated conclusions are drawn from the principles: while the second mode is likened to that whereby, in the arts, general forms are particularized as to details: thus the craftsman needs to determine the general form of a house to some particular shape.26 Note the nature of the illustration. In particularizing the form of a house, the craftsman is guided by two elements: the requisites of the form in general, and the nature of the particular matter and its attendant issues. Given the nature of the matter, it may then follow from the nature of the form that a certain particularization is essentially befitting or even required. For instance, if one is building a multilevel house with a given material, and the material can bear only so much stress, then no more than this given amount can be placed upon beams

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made of that material. Ergo, the particular form achieved will be characterized by this necessity. It may be that, given a certain second matter, there is only one way to achieve some given effect—and this ‘‘reduction to one’’ is clearly a strong ‘‘necessitation’’ insofar as one is particularizing the general form in the given matter. Of course, the reality of determinationes, which are prudential extensions and applications of natural law principle with respect to diverse social matter, should not obscure the truth that there remain also conclusions from the natural law. But even with respect to mere determinations of the natural law it should be clear that, although diverse social customs may be the cause for distinctive forms of moral experience, and for very particularized natural law inferences and applications, there is nothing in such diversification to yield the conclusion that, with adequate knowledge of the factors involved, the moral character of the societal practice will not be intelligible, and intelligible precisely as either more or less good, or as evil. This is to say that stress upon social mediation of natural law necessarily resolves into unity of principle. The thesis that natural law underdetermines particular preceptive judgments is in one sense manifestly true: lack of acquaintance with social facts and their customary dispositions may render the ethical judgment of the same facts opaque to one who has no knowledge, or perhaps better, no lived experience, of them. For example, we can only imagine how disquisitions on the ethics of Internet publication would be understood by someone who had no understanding of, or familiarity with, computers. Yet the de facto areas of profound divergence in ethical judgment amongst societies cuts deeper, to the level of the observations of Pope Benedict the XVI in Spe Salvi regarding the African Josephine Bakhita, canonized by Pope John Paul II. She was born around 1869—she herself did not know the precise date—in Darfur in Sudan. At the age of nine, she was kidnapped by slave-traders, beaten till she bled, and sold five times in the slave-markets of Sudan. Eventually she found herself working as a slave for the mother and the wife of a general, and there she was flogged every day till she bled; as a result of this she bore 144 scars throughout her life.

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Western ears, hearing such a depiction, are rightly horrified by the brutality of her treatment at the hands of slavers, yet such conduct persists to the present, as the capture and enslavement of Christians, and the execution of Muslims who convert to Christianity, evidences. Doubtless there are whole structures of justification that exist putatively justifying such treatment, yet such brutality seems rather starkly inconsistent with any programmatic affirmation of the intrinsic rational dignity of the human person. This is not a criticism of flogging per se as a punishment for serious crime, but rather a criticism of the imposition of such brutal penalty to crush the will of persons treated as though their existence were merely for the sake of a political order so corrupt as not even to acknowledge the humanity of whole categories of human persons. Yet, one within a society who initially turns a blind eye toward such brutality may nonetheless over time discern its evil and work either to ameliorate or finally to remedy it. Hence, even within any given social order, natural law considerations may be applied to correct harmful customs. Thus, it appears that there could only be de facto, and never de jure, plurality with respect to natural moral law. To say that the judgment that such conduct as afflicted Bakhita is evil is merely a function of Western convention is a proposition that doubtless Porter, as well as this author, would consider starkly insufficient in reason. But if social contingencies render natural law an indeterminate guide; if we cannot move from natural teleology to any howsoever limited initial ethical conclusions; and if the natural law is more properly seen as a remote potency than as at root an actual impressed ordering of human nature in its rational unity toward the Good, then how, for Dr. Porter, will natural law be able to serve as a basis for social, political, and legal order—either within one society, or, more pressingly, among different societies? Here we arrive at what I should call Dr. Porter’s Maritainian moment, wherein she strongly defends subjective right in terms of the natural law. Accordingly, it is to this argument, and to its implications regarding natural law, the public square, and happiness—all with a view to our focal question concerning the relation of the doctrine of natura pura to secularist minimalism—that we now turn.

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The Turn to Subjective Right, Foundations for Political Consensus, and Human Happiness Dr. Porter’s reflections on these subjects are fertile enough to provide subject matter for another book, and so this final consideration should point the way to further study of her exposition. Contrasting scholastic natural law with the view typified by the Roman jurist Ulpian that the law of nature is ‘‘that which nature teaches all animals,’’ she writes: ‘‘In contrast, scholastic canon lawyers and theologians were not prepared to relegate the natural law to the prolegomena of morality in so sweeping a fashion.’’27 She then unfolds an analysis of the manner in which natural law reflections suggested, first to canonists and then to others, the idea of a principle of subjective right, noting: As these remarks illustrate, for scholastics the human capacity for self-direction is not simply one human power among others, but the definitively human way in which a creature of this kind reflects God’s wisdom and goodness; what is more, it is a distinctive reflection of that wisdom and goodness because it mirrors the distinctive notes of divine activity itself. As such this capacity deserves not only appreciation as a likeness of God, but reverence as the very Image of God. Here again, we are not far from a doctrine of natural rights, seen now as commending reverence for the image of divinity reflected in rational freedom and selfdirection.28 She continues, observing: The scholastic concept of the natural law thus includes at least one tenet of modern natural rights theories, namely, the affirmation that the human person possesses capacities for moral discernment and free judgment which are properly expressed through free self-direction. Yet this affirmation of the ‘‘faculty or ability or power’’ of the human person, important though it was to the development of a doctrine of subjective natural rights, did not by itself imply an assertion of subjective natural rights. Only some of the scholastics developed their concept of the natural law in

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this direction, and it is probably not surprising that those who did were canon lawyers, not theologians.29 Although this conception clearly entails precursory theological judgments, she is well aware that this would be taken today to impede the universality of rights, as well as of the fact that, for lists of rights to receive generalized support amongst different peoples, they must be virtually empty—or at least ‘‘the more we specify what we mean by rights, the more difficult it becomes to offer convincing arguments that these claims ought to compel acceptance by any rational person, whatever his or her beliefs or moral convictions.’’30 She is also dubious of the capacity of enlightenment universal reason to achieve such an end, saying that such efforts generally fall into two categories: Either they depend on some variant of Kant’s idea that practical reason generates norms through canons of self-consistency, or else they rely on formulating the relevant rights claims at such a general level that they seem empirically to obtain in all cultures. Neither line of argument seems to me successful, for reasons detailed in previous chapters and the first section of this chapter.31 Dr. Porter is persuaded that rights claims in all likelihood are only truly defensible on theological grounds, yet she also thinks that the prominence of ‘‘rights’’ in international discourse and as part of the secular patrimony is a good thing, every bit as much as secular appropriations of the language of the virtues, and of duty, is a good thing. As she puts it: I have yet to see a persuasive philosophical argument, developed on grounds that would be compelling to all, for a doctrine of human rights, and this inclines me to the view that a theoretical defense of human rights must ultimately rest on theological grounds. Yet the widespread persuasiveness of this doctrine, and its appropriation in so many contexts, suggests that it also expresses basic human inclinations in a way that is attractive and persuasive to people who do not share its presuppositions. As such, it provides a basis for critique and reform in contexts of

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belief and practice different from those in which it first emerged—and appropriation and development of this kind needs no additional justification, either theological or philosophical, any more than the appropriation of the language of the virtues or the ideas of duty and obligation would do. The language of rights has become part of the shared patrimony of the race.32 But can such rights mean anything at all across the boundaries of diverse religious, metaphysical, moral, and political boundaries? In a passage directed to a Rawls-like defense of human rights, but written as though she had Maritain’s purely practical consensus in mind—and which I here quote in full to provide the best window into her thought—she writes: On one view, the consensus over human rights can be explained through an appeal to what might be called, in Rawls’s term, an ‘‘overlapping consensus’’—although this argument, as applied to rights claims, may be found in a wide range of authors who have no commitment to Rawls’s overall program. On this view, we find a consensus about rights, even among peoples whose overall moral and religious views are very diverse, because those diverse worldviews all have some elements which would support a rights commitment. On one level this is a very attractive argument, but there is no denying that it is also a very strange argument. What are we to make of a moral idea which can be supported by very different, and even contradictory, sets of considerations? One suspects that any such idea is not really supported by the considerations in terms of which it is defended. Yet seen within the context of a Thomistic theory of natural law, this kind of convergence can be identified and explained in a way that does not render it nugatory, so long as we realize that the relation between theoretical and moral discourse does not all go in one direction. Even though we cannot provide a convincing foundationalist justification for a universal morality, which would be specific enough to be practically useful and yet would be rationally compelling to all persons of good will, we can nonetheless identify certain recurring aspects of moral practices which

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do seem to cut across cultural and historical lines. As we have seen, these reflect species-specific patterns of behavior, which provide an indispensable basis for morality and as such provide one touchstone for evaluating moral theories.33 Nonetheless: are we not here in the presence, not of Bentham’s ‘‘nonsense on stilts’’ but rather perhaps Maritain’s argument on stilts? ‘‘Species-specific patterns of behavior’’ are insufficient to provide the content necessary for rights claims to function as other than a rhetorical metalanguage of law, lacking sufficient specificity to provide the foundation for genuine political or social solidarity. For example: it is doubtless a species-specific pattern of behavior for human communities to see to the education of their young. But some are educated as theists; some as animists; some as Confucianists; some as Communists; and so on. These divisions, as such, are not likely to yield much of a common program of education. Further, some are committed to a natural law judgment as to the essential and proximate responsibility and authority of families over the process of the education of the young—where the focal sense of ‘‘family’’ indicates man and wife, children, and extended bonds of relation radiating both backwards in time (grandparents, aunts, uncles) and forward in time (grandchildren, etc.). But, of course, such a sense of family is not universally shared, as the state of Massachusetts’s enshrinement of homosexual unions as equivalent to matrimony makes clear. Manifestly then, ‘‘rights’’ talk does not seem in itself a path toward civic peace, but toward endless disputation. As I argued in the preceding section of this chapter regarding Maritain, a ‘‘right’’ as a just claim—and here it must be said that this is true even if the just claim in question is founded on something permanent in human nature—presupposes judgment from above regarding the hierarchy of ends, and from beneath regarding prudence (whereby one identifies the practical issue as subject to the claim in question). This is true regarding the ‘‘right’’ of self-determination itself, which of course is only genuinely right when exercised in some ways and not others, and is only even socially tolerable if exercised within certain limits. And what sets these limits? To say ‘‘other rights’’ will be jejune, because each of these, too, is limited.

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The limiting factor with respect to just claims is outside of the genus of rights, whether we speak of objective rights or the claim to subjective right: the limiting factor is the contextualizing narrative provided by unified teleology. That is to say that a good is at stake, and one that hence is the foundation for strong claims in justice—claims that immunize it to some degree from constriction by other, less significant claims, or from arbitrary destruction. Hence, for example, because the Christian knows that man’s freedom has an intellective root and concerns his dignity as a rational agent ordered to receive perfection rationally, there is a strong teleological ground for claims relatively immunizing belief from constraint of coercion. But this hardly indicates that such immunity is absolute (someone who feels in conscience bound to practice the objectionably homicidal rites of Kali on American soil would find himself quickly subject to the full weight of the law). Similarly, to take another illustration, the ‘‘right’’ of citizens to political free expression in the United States of America was originally a function of the need to assure that nothing pertinent to parliamentary or legislative discourse and self-government be arbitrarily suppressed. The need to consider all pertinent evidence for the sake of wise self-government is thus the source of such free political expression. It is not, that is to say, a function of political free expression to burn the flag, desecrate cemeteries, or deface public buildings (for in addition to the destructiveness of such actions, one notes that these are not discursively informative acts). Here, I believe, Dr. Porter’s account of subjective right as a theologically founded doctrine serving as a point of convergence for the gentiles, as it were, seems to fall short of its goal. This is perhaps in part because the natural and metaphysical requisites for natural law doctrine are—like the doctrines of creation and providence—implicitly treated by Porter as theological in such a wise as to suggest that these are not philosophically demonstrable.34 And of course this also converges with the denial of the ethical significance of close-in bodily teleologies. When Dr. Porter speaks of the difficulty of providing warrant for rights claims that can ‘‘compel acceptance by any rational person, whatever his or her beliefs or moral convictions,’’35 it is clear that we are in a sense ‘‘spotting’’ the individual whatever beliefs or moral convictions he may hold, howsoever contrary to reason. But this is a test that no

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just claim, however well-founded, could survive. Thus, for example, some convinced atheists hold that no right to religious freedom exists because both man’s spiritual nature and freedom, and the existence of God, are mere delusions consequent upon class consciousness. But, sed contra, contrary to several generations of fideists, there are rationally compelling demonstrations for the truth of theism, and the evidence supports man’s spiritual nature and freedom. What follows is that their theoretic denial is false. Thus, ‘‘compelling’’ clearly cannot mean: able to overcome any degree of ignorance, ill will, disinterest, lack of learning, or failure in reasoning. If that is the test, then not even the principle of noncontradiction can pass it, which is to say that rationality itself is clearly not ‘‘compelling’’ to people who show comparative disinterest in the pursuit of truth for its own sake. But as the example given above indicates, what will be required in order to render claims of right or justice to be conducive to a healthful social harmony (there are other kinds!) is correct judgment with respect to the hierarchy of ends, and the virtue of prudence. Lacking either of these, injustice will tend to follow—and clearly this requires speculative judgment and truth. What follows the loss of the inscape of natural teleology and metaphysics, however, is as earlier argued the loss of an analogical point of reference for Christians and non-Christians, and the only one on which discourse and common action is feasible: namely, the truth, and the truth proportionate to human nature inclusive of the praeambula fidei. As with Maritain, so with Porter, the natural speculative truths essential to any just public order are implicitly whittled down to a zone of practical similitude amongst recurrent species-specific functions. But such functions are not adequately specified as such. And even to begin to specify them will require the ethical truths consequent upon initial analysis of close-in teleologies; a correct natural account of the hierarchy of natural ends, requiring of course wisdom regarding the existence of God as provident Creator (something that Aquinas rightly held to be demonstrable); and the development of the virtue of prudence. Additionally, there is also the fact that man is in reality ordered beyond the proportionate or proximate natural end, to the final and supernatural beatific end. Thus, although natural ethical truth is accessible, in order

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to apply it properly in man’s actual state, advertence to revelation finally is required. Utopian plans predicated upon merely natural judgments will infallibly go astray. This does not augur well for the project of hyper-universalist ensembles of religious dignitaries of radically diverse traditions decanting rights talk as opposed to merely finding limited areas of agreement and striving to avoid war. Yet this latter path is not a path to peace either, but merely a constant tightrope-walking to avoid catastrophe. Nonetheless, the only sure path to peace is founded on truth, and that means theoretic convictions (which, as earlier argued, can indeed be held in nonscientific ways, just as those riding in a jet plane hold views about the nature of the engine despite not being aerodynamic engineers) as well as practical ones. What does this mean for secular consensus? It means, first, that the speculative truths implied by or contained within the natural law provide a point of analogous reference for believer and nonbeliever, and are naturally knowable; secondly, it also implies that the Church is our tutor in the natural law, for the simple reason that, although the truths of the natural law are knowable apart from revelation, their full existential appropriation and application requires advertence to truths only accessible through revelation. There are truths prior to the promulgation of any secular order, both natural and revealed supernatural truths, and knowledge of these necessarily affects prudence, including political prudence. This does not mean that the Church has one univocal political program, but it does mean that the zone of charitable political discourse is a function of natural moral law and of the Gospel of Christ. It is for precisely this reason that the social and legal tolerance of political states toward the Church tends toward Christianization, and that the rejection of the Church tends toward persecution and suppression. This dynamic is no different now than it was in the early days of the Roman Empire. Dr. Porter embraces a sense of the natural law as at root a power to judge good and evil leading to a subjective right of autonomy. But while this power is real, and a limited, derivative just claim to autonomy is not unreasonable, the limits of this claim flow from the natural law itself as well as from revelation. The natural law is at root a divinely impressed actual ordering of the unified rational nature toward the

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Good, which of course implies power with respect to more remote preceptive judgments, but power on the basis of what is already actual. Correspondingly, even the close-in teleologies of the body yield some ethical determinacy (for instance, what has widely become known under the phrase of the Roman vomitorium is contra naturam, and this judgment is reached upon realizing that to choose an act and then persistently negate the teleology of the act is—absent some overarching therapeutic medical need such as to induce vomiting of poison through an emetic—contrary to reason). Thus from experience we begin to develop our knowledge of the ratio boni, of the nature of the good. Our developing insight into the hierarchy of ends is radically enhanced by the speculative discovery of the First Cause, a discovery that helps to place the relative roles of practical transitive activity and contemplation within the good life—the latter being superordinate as it represents the intensive perfection of reason in itself (as distinct from the perfection of action and appetite through the extension of reason to praxis with the ensuing corollary perfection of the virtue of prudence). This knowledge is in a sense incomplete, because although true and applicable, it will not of itself indicate the way in which human nature actually now exists, and so for its full and complete application to practical act will require the further counsel of revealed truth. Finally, of course, it is also incomplete not only because the application of natural truth to man’s actual providential situation requires the counsel of revelation, but also because the whole order of natural ends is now further ordered with respect to the call of the person in grace to the beatific vision. Thus, the complete practical truth for the human person necessarily includes divine revelation. This thus touches upon the question of terrestrial happiness, for, inasmuch as anything averse to the supernatural end is now to some degree also averse to man’s natural end, the participation even of terrestrial good available outside of the order of grace is a fugitive one. This is not to say that the invisible realm of grace may not be larger than is visible to the naked eye, but such a truth is likewise no ground for failing to stress the ordinary and universal means of grace. The danger elsewise is that natural law becomes a juridic realm that, being construed as lacking any real publicly applicable ethical content beyond species-specific recurrent functions, is nonetheless used

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to ward off either the full doctrinal legacy of natural law—from the close-in teleologies of bodily nature with their ethical implications, on to the praeambula fidei—or even to ward off the directive teachings of divine revelation itself. The affirmation of such a juridic realm seems, not an embrace of the full ontological density of natura as a theonomic principle, but rather a significant methodological evacuation of the ontological density of nature liable to leave the public square in the possession of a naturally minimalist and proceduralist theory. The ‘‘middle term’’ of the Church’s discourse with the world follows the axis of man’s proximate natural teleology and the natural truths about God. A society in which the sociological zone of this middle knowledge is great will be a society with extensive discursive contact with the Church. A society in which the sociological zone of this middle knowledge is small will be a society either ignorant of and indifferent to the Church or even on the way to persecution.36 Accordingly, at this juncture, my earlier conclusion offered with respect to Maritain’s work seems also condign with respect to Dr. Porter’s analysis—one that, like Maritain’s earlier account, is both profoundly Thomistic and also arguably in danger of losing sight of crucial truth claims not alone of Aquinas, but of the Catholic tradition as such. Thus, I now recall that conclusion, with the augmentation of a few bracketed addenda: Purely practical agreement on lists of human rights, like the agreement on who is to joust at a tournament, does not guarantee irenicism but is, in the absence of consensus regarding the order of ends, more likely to result in incessant political and social conflict. [And, after reflecting on the analysis of Dr. Porter, one may also say that subjective right will necessarily be construed and interpreted in terms of objective right, and so is not methodologically free of this problem. I.e., how is the right of self-determination defined? Answer: in terms of what is judged licit for one to determine for oneself—a consideration involving reference to the hierarchy of ends]. Nonetheless, a common foundation for limited practical cooperation with all men of good will may indeed be found in the natural law, not merely by virtue of purely practical exigencies, but rather by virtue of the speculative foundation, principles, and content of the natural law, all of which by extension become practical. This content is indeed proportionate to the range of unassisted natural reason, while also forming

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a strong point of analogical reference and convergence between those who possess, and those who lack, Christian faith. Because of their closeness to the revealed truths of faith, the discovery of these speculative truths of the natural law—especially the praeambula fidei regarding the existence and nature of God as First Cause and Provident Creator, but also extending to moral teachings rooted in natural teleology—may be considered an actual grace. Yet this discovery is by its object and end natural and not supernatural. Although these speculative truths, and their extension into the practical moral life, do constitute a basis for cooperation with all men of good will, nonetheless the complete application of these truths to human persons in their actual concrete existence requires advertence to the rule of faith in order to be fully effective. The reason is simply that human persons are as a matter of fact subject to the effects of original and actual sin, as well as recipients of the enormous gift of sanctifying grace—facts that can only be received through revelation since they are not demonstrable on the basis of finite nature. Need it now be said? Natura pura, the impressing even upon concrete nature hic et nunc of the proportionate teleology toward the proximate natural end, plays a profound role not alone within theological reflection, but also in the apologetic and evangelical engagement of the Church with contemporary society, as well as in providing a point of profound analogical reference for cooperation with others. But does this not imply secularism? No, and for the reasons supplied above, which include the affirmation of the First Cause Who is the Provident Creator, and of the whole of natural ethical teleology, as intrinsically proportionate to natural evidence and reason, conjoined with the need for further guidance from revelation with respect to the complete conditions of its application. What I have provided above is the development of a theory that is not Maritain’s but is certainly cognate with that of St. Thomas Aquinas (and, in significant part, with Maritain as well). For Maritain—and St. Thomas, too, I believe—rightly teach that in addition to natural knowledge, further revealed truth is needed to provide man with adequate moral guidance with respect both to the actual conditions of the wayfarer after the Fall (and given actual sin and the gift of redemption), and also to the sublimity of man’s Last End and the full truth regarding the means thereto. St. Thomas—and in certain places, Maritain alongside

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him—teaches that there is an essentially speculative foundation to the natural law (reason itself exhibits a teleological ordering; and the will is always intellectively specified and informed). If it is indeed the truth that sets one free, the highest truths of the natural order promise the most benefit for our practical cooperation, which is never ‘‘purely practical’’ but always includes the germ of the speculum, the initial intellective apprehension of the end and of the order of ends, which is the source of the initial inciting spark of appetition. Far from secularism, the ontological density of nature and its proximate teleology is essential to the overcoming of secularism; essential to the very capacity of the Christian to engage with, and in, the world, and to articulate the intelligibility of revelation to a world in which revelation is often taken to be the fruit of a purely irrational arbitrium decisively alienating man from his own nature. [On these points I believe that Dr. Porter is in essential agreement, although the construction of these points does, I fear, tend to depreciate the ethical significance of close-in teleologies or ‘‘metaphysical biology.’’] But this end requires setting aside the antirealist premises of modernity and postmodernity: We properly know not phenomenal objects, nor mere linguistic tropes or usages, nor mere concepts, nor even merely a concrete person in grace lacking any impress of natural order, but rather we know, even in the concrete, beings with natures.

Grace, Nature, Prudence, and Liberalism: Reflections on David Schindler Sr.’s Heart of the World, Center of the Church In establishing the relative integrity of the natural order in relation to grace, the first two chapters in this book address the theological root of several of Dr. Schindler’s judgments regarding political and social order.37 Nonetheless, it is important to distinguish between Dr. Schindler’s advertence to la nouvelle the´ologie, and his actual critical insistence upon the necessity of anthropology, ontology, metaphysics, and theology for any sufficiently developed political wisdom. For this latter, second element is merely the affirmation of the primacy of the speculative vis-a`-vis the practical, and although its modalities may be in question (e.g., the flight from natura within theological method, with a

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certain implied derogation of natural analysis and of natural political prudence), its substantive truth ought not to be doubted among those who reason within the Catholic tradition. Indeed, in his affirmation of the principled superiority of the speculative to the practical, Dr. Schindler places the entire discussion of political theory on the plane where it belongs: something with which many contemporary and even Catholic minds may be unfamiliar. While practical reasoning is not merely a function of appetition, it presupposes appetition, and appetition presupposes speculative knowledge (one does not desire that which is not in some way known). All this goes back to the proposition of St. Thomas: Now, to a thing apprehended by the intellect, it is accidental whether it be directed to operation or not, and according to this the speculative and practical intellects differ. For it is the speculative intellect which directs what it apprehends, not to operation, but solely to the consideration of truth; while the practical intellect is that which directs what it apprehends to operation.38 The object of the practical intellect is good directed to operation, and under the aspect of truth. For the practical intellect knows truth, just as the speculative, but it directs the known truth to operation.39 On this score, Dr. Schindler vindicates important truths. This is conspicuous in his work, along with Adrian Walker, vindicating the primacy of form in the discussions swirling around the issue of the legitimacy of ANT-OAR.40 In his extension of this truth, embracing the whole range of speculative truth revealed and natural, both to political life and to the life of the university, Dr. Schindler’s caveats regarding liberalism can be distinguished from his account of the nature/ grace relation. Nonetheless, there remain questions regarding political and academic life arising from determination of the prior issue whether an abstractive knowledge of natural order is possible, on the one hand, and, on the other, whether natural prudence must not profoundly enter into the Christian’s socio-political, cultural, and academic life.

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The role of grace in relation to the vivification of the natural order even in its own right—a role that is fully consistent with the twofold thesis of natura pura as it is here articulated—is seemingly radicalized by Dr. Schindler, so that merely to distinguish natural prudential grounds delimiting consensus in a religiously mixed regime (a regime in which there is not clear consensus regarding the truth of any religion, such that the issue of legal establishment cannot arise in a nondespotic form) appears to be construed as a dogmatic liberal proceduralism. Likewise, while all Catholics have ground to differ with a merely proceduralist view of academe in which distinctive truth claims both natural and revealed would be surrendered to merely secular consensual democratism, it is far from clear that abstractive precision from the wider claims of faith and revealed truth is not patently involved in the method of every natural discipline as such. Three considerations seem to provide the requisite insights for addressing the issues regarding both political life and academe: Maritain’s view of the subalternation of practical moral philosophy to moral theology as a condition for its full proper application to the concrete case; the relative independence and integrity of the natural order of ends (with the implied importance of natural prudence); and the reality of one final supernatural finis ultimus. Keeping in mind the overarching consideration of the theological anxiety lest the doctrine of natura pura imply secularist minimalism in the public square, and against the backdrop of the aforementioned considerations, I wish to offer some brief reflections regarding Dr. Schindler’s objection to John Courtney Murray’s view of the First Amendment in terms of ‘‘articles of peace’’ rather than ‘‘articles of doctrine.’’ I will also offer a few brief comments regarding Schindler’s account of Christian logocentrism and academe. While insufficient to so rich a work, the thoughts below may perhaps suggest the general direction that an analysis of these issues implied by the doctrine of natura pura might take—exhibiting yet again, one hopes, that this direction is not that of secularist minimalism. Perhaps this very datum also may suffice to indicate how ‘‘thick’’ is the area of plausible concurrence, insofar as neither theologians of the Communio circle nor classical Thomists incline to bend the knee toward a purely proceduralist liberalism.

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Schindler on Murray and Religious Freedom Murray, of course, famously holds that religious freedom in the United States, as expressed in the First Amendment, is not a doctrinaire atheism or agnosticism, but rather a prudential formula conditioned by de facto differences of creed but implicitly open to Christian belief: ‘‘articles of peace’’ rather than ‘‘articles of doctrine.’’ As Dr. Schindler puts it in the following extensive passage: First, Murray asserts that, in Continental liberalism, religious freedom is understood in ideological terms as entailing closure to God, and that, in American liberalism, on the contrary, religious freedom is understood in the purely formal terms that maintain an openness to God. What it mentions explicitly is rather the negative relation of ‘‘immunity from (coercion).’’ Now, this may well imply, and for Murray certainly does imply, a positive sense of openness to the transcendent. But in point of fact this definition of freedom is silent about God and the transcendent order. And silence about God is not yet, in and of itself, an indication of positive openness to God. The question that needs yet to be considered is thus whether Murray’s constitutional ‘‘agnosticism’’ might not have cultural consequences which are distinct from those of a constitutional theism; or, put more sharply, whether America’s constitutional ‘‘a-theism’’ might not dispose the culture in the end to something more like Continental liberalism’s atheism. In short, it is not possible to have it both ways: namely, a purely formal definition of religious freedom (‘‘freedom from’’), which nonetheless is already taken to imply a positive openness to God (‘‘freedom for’’). Can one insist that ‘‘freedom from’’ carries a logical implication of ‘‘freedom for,’’ that is, without thereby abandoning the claim of a purely formal-juridical definition? Secondly, when Murray goes on, as he says we must, to offer substantive positive foundations for his formal definition of religious liberty, he conceives these foundations first in terms of philosophy (reason) as distinct from theology (faith, revelation). These foundations, in other words, are themselves conceived first

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negatively in relation to (supernatural) revelation: they are accessible apart from (anyone’s) faith. And the content of the foundations emphasizes further this negative relation: the right to religious freedom rests on man’s dignity, and the dignity resides above all in the intelligence and freedom, hence in the ‘‘exigence to act on his own initiative,’’ which renders man autonomous. Clearly Murray does not deny that (supernatural) revelation ultimately completes the foundations of religious freedom nor does he deny that positive relation to God ultimately founds man’s dignity. The question is simply whether philosophy (reason) conceived first as free from theology (revelation), and thus as juxtaposed to theology, is synonymous with a philosophy conceived first as internally related to theology; and whether a conception of man’s dignity which first makes explicit man’s independence from God (i.e., autonomy) is synonymous with a conception of man’s dignity which first makes explicit man’s positive (i.e., constitutive) relation to God.41 To address the second point first, it is clear that the aspect of receptivity involved in the metaphysical doctrine of creation is not merely a function of revelation. Likewise, it is also clear that autonomy in any sense in which it is not within rather than without the providence of God is likewise inconsistent with the metaphysics of theism. In other words, Dr. Schindler’s second point seems wholly cognate with the thesis argued in the first chapter of this work: namely, that it is the loss of the metaphysics of creation and providence, with the corollary implied loss of the doctrine of natural law (for natural law is nothing but a rational participation in the eternal law), that will tend to corrupt the distinction of nature and grace in the direction of a wrongly construed or absolute autonomy. Once human liberty is no longer conceived as within rather than without divine providence, not only is the theonomic character of natural law lost, but the distinction of nature and grace comes to be conceived as a wall keeping God out of man’s business. One need not, at present, inquire as to whether or to what extent the Molinist or, worse, extreme libertarian construction of human freedom, was something Murray intended to affirm. In any case, Dr.

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Schindler rightly is concerned to deny the absolute autonomism that these doctrines imply. The suggested opposition of a natural extreme autonomy vs. a revealed awareness of our reception of being thus founders on the datum that the doctrines of creation and of divine providence over contingent singular effects are not truths knowable solely by revelation. Indeed, the metaphysical error of an absolute autonomy and liberty of indifference vis-a`-vis divine providence has many sources, some properly theological, and some of enlightenment provenance. But it is not an error consistent with any proper understanding of natural law, nor was it an error whose secular or enlightenment fonts have been decisively determinative of American public life or of the American founding. Clearly, also, it was an error met at the very threshold of the Catholic life by Thomistic adversaries who saw its incompatibility with natural as well as revealed wisdom (here one thinks of Ban˜ez). Dr. Schindler writes: ‘‘The question is simply whether philosophy (reason) conceived first as free from theology (revelation), and thus as juxtaposed to theology, is synonymous with a philosophy conceived first as internally related to theology.’’ The answer must be that in principle they are the same, even though the condition of philosophy in the life of the Christian is superior both because (1) subjectively, there is the aid of the superior illumination of grace, and (2) objectively, revelation both medicinally reveals certain truths nonetheless properly natural and available to reason, while it also provides negative and positive norms that help to inspire and guide inquiry. (So long as, at the moment of demonstration, there is no question of a revealed premise substituting for that which is proportionate to natural knowledge, then there is no difficulty whatsoever with extrinsic inspiration and direction—but of course these last do not substitute within philosophy for philosophic demonstration.) It is not the nature of philosophy as such that alters when a Christian becomes a philosopher, or when a philosopher becomes a Christian, but rather philosophy’s condition of exercise or, as it were, its mode of being. One might think that the doctrine of the subalternation of natural ethics to moral theology as a condition for its full and proper application to the concrete circumstances of man could provide Dr. Schindler

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with the internal relation of philosophy to revelation that he seeks. Yet, the speculative truths of natural philosophy and metaphysics are not achievable solely on the basis of any proposition knowable only by revelation. And this does indicate that there is a crucial realm—an analogous point of reference—which may serve as the basis for a secular consensus that is not hostile to Christianity. Nor does the speculative character of these truths impede their importance for social consensus. For there are multiple bases on which speculative truths are held: rigorous demonstrative grounds; probable grounds; respect for the role of philosophic and theological judgment on the part of those who do not have the requisite learning; and of course, medicinal revelation, are all bases on which the speculative truths essential to natural law doctrine in its proper theonomic sense may be held. The rational attainability of such truths, combined with perception of the manner in which these truths are enhanced and perfected within divine revelation, is indeed the material occasion for many conversions. Grace does not destroy, but perfects, nature, both in reinvigorating it vis-a`-vis its natural proportionate end, and in elevating it to a higher participation of eternal truth than it could elsewise aspire to achieve, ordering it to supernatural beatific vision. But the order of proportionate natural ends is indeed naturally cognizable. This renders the absurdity of scientistic reductionism all the more poignant: when one observes the distinction between genuine philosophical rigor and the petitio principii of an unthinking reduction of the zone of reason merely to the methodic target of any of the particular positive sciences, the comparison is not to the benefit of the latter. This leaves one with the first point of Dr. Schindler—namely, the question whether the very formula of the First Amendment is not rather expressive of a negativity regarding God as opposed to even any implicit openness to God. As he puts it, ‘‘in point of fact this definition of freedom is silent about God and the transcendent order. And silence about God is not yet, in and of itself, an indication of positive openness to God.’’ Further, as we have already cited him, he argues that it is not possible to have it both ways: namely, a purely formal definition of religious freedom (‘‘freedom from’’), which nonetheless is already taken to imply a positive openness to God

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(‘‘freedom for’’). Can one insist that ‘‘freedom from’’ carries a logical implication of ‘‘freedom for,’’ that is, without thereby abandoning the claim of a purely formal-juridical definition?42 There are of course (at least) two problems here. The first problem is the idea that it is from the formula of the First Amendment that one properly should attempt to derive the substantive antecedent character of the religious consensus that American public life has presupposed. Such a procedure is liable itself to be an overly abstracted and proceduralist treatment of civic life that fails to see the coherence of regimes and the manner in which presupposed beliefs affect public life, whether for good or ill. In the present case, for example, it is a question of fact whether this First Amendment was ever intended by the authors of the constitution as a formalization of agnosticism as an American state religion, and the answer to that question is simply in the negative, howsoever many juridic interpretative liberties have subsequently been taken with the amendment by an ultra vires Supreme Court prone to legislate an ideologically secular agenda. That is to say, how we understand the negative ordinances of any political, legal, or social order must be relative to our understanding of the positive convictions animating it. Such understanding must also be relative to an understanding of the actual character of the legal regime itself. I believe that with respect to these tests, Dr. Schindler’s account falls short. One may take it to be Murray’s whole point that the purely negative formulation of the First Amendment was a manner of securing peaceful cooperation with respect to the pursuit of important goods, one of which—indeed, one that is architectonic—is religious Truth. Now, if all the First Amendment did were to turn pursuit of religious truth over to an Absolutely Free Market of Ideas, then the methodological prejudice of enlightenment liberalism that Dr. Schindler discerns hovering over the American founding might indeed be its principal element. But it is to be remembered that the states were the primary governments at the time of the founding, the governments of general jurisdiction, and the federal government was a government of few and delegated powers. The states were indeed characterized by public consensus with respect to religion, some even being confessional states. On

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any unprejudiced historical analysis, the consensus of American public life was simply theistic (not even ‘‘deistic’’—something clear even in the words of the famed deist Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, a document consensually supported, which rather conspicuously uses the language of ‘‘a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence’’). And theism does indeed imply a positive rather than merely negative relation to God, even if the theism in question were supposed to be exclusively natural in character—something contrary to fact inasmuch as strongly held positive beliefs with respect to supernatural revelation were indeed characteristic of American life at the time of the founding. It was precisely because the overwhelming preponderance of the founders took themselves to be under revealed divine Christian ordinance, but did not concur regarding its content, that they sought in prudence to establish the conditions for these different creedal affirmations both to have social and genuinely public scope, and all to be subjected to peaceful cooperation in federal union. Hence, both natural prudence and historical accuracy seem to demand the judgment that the de facto consensus, within which the ‘‘article of peace’’ of the First Amendment was affirmed, was a consensus with respect both to natural theism and with respect to the desirability of different Christian communions of belief each enfleshed in the public square living in a certain real but limited federated cooperation and peace one with another. Hence, the positive belief prevalent and socially enfleshed (through proportionate consensus in each state) was theistic and Christian (largely Protestant Christianity); the character of the legal regime was not, as it now is, that of an overweening federal center of power arrogating whatever decisions it pleases to itself, but rather of a starkly delimited federal zone of responsibility bounded on all sides by the state governments that were the governments of general jurisdiction. Understood in this context, the First Amendment is not an instrument of public agnosticism, but genuinely an instrument of Christian charity, prudence, and peace. The second point regarding Dr. Schindler’s argument concerns his question: ‘‘Can one insist that ‘freedom from’ carries a logical implication of ‘freedom for,’ that is, without thereby abandoning the claim of

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a purely formal-juridical definition?’’ Here Dr. Schindler is perhaps on firmer ground. That is to say, if, de facto, the preponderant belief is some species of, or at least analogous referent to, Christian belief, that the ‘‘formal-juridic’’ definition will in fact and concretely form part of a wider order within which that formal-juridic definition may rightly be anticipated to encourage positive belief. How does it encourage such belief ? By rendering genuine social enfleshment of different Christian communities possible without any threat that one will be able to suppress the rest, and without thus opening up a competition for central governance of power that invites conflict, strife, and even civil war. This is of course the very opposite of what is now occurring in American political life, in which an ever-more-aggressive and aggrandizing secularist ideology seeks to use centralized power, and the ultra vires edicts of the Supreme Court, to suppress all the vestiges of such diverse social enfleshment of Christian belief in public life and even in social arrangements (e.g., for the secularist progressive, children must be ‘‘liberated’’ from oppressive parents, who might, for instance, otherwise impede their access to ‘‘reproductive freedom,’’ which is to say, who might otherwise stand to impede rampant promiscuity and abortifacient wrongful homicide). It is not without interest that it is this kind of radical use of federal power to overrule and suppress social norms, customs, and practices that has rendered public life in the United States more partisan, antagonistic, and conflicted than at any time since the years immediately prior to the Civil War. So, with respect to whether a purely juridic-formal reading of the First Amendment will be adequate to its understanding, the answer of the historian, the sociologist, the political theorist, the philosopher, and the theologian, must be ‘‘no.’’ But the lawyer, precisely because he abstracts from these concerns with precision in considering legal terms of art, will indeed content himself with the juridic-formal reading, precisely because the society itself and its wider ordering are not reducible merely to one negative ordinance, and so the lawyer is under no delusion of needing to perform a logical magic act in which he pulls the rabbit of a completely coherent order from the hat of one of the negative ordinances of his society. The legal meaning of the First Amendment does not alter its wider function in the society, but its legal meaning is

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(for as long as this is not distorted) distinguishable from this function. Does this not mean that Dr. Schindler is correct, and that indeed the pertinent question is ‘‘whether Murray’s constitutional ‘agnosticism’ might not have cultural consequences that are distinct from those of a constitutional theism; or, put more sharply, whether America’s constitutional ‘a-theism’ might not dispose the culture in the end to something more like Continental liberalism’s atheism’’? The answer is that on this point Dr. Schindler is correct, but not for the reason given. For it is not by reason of the ‘‘agnosticism’’ of the First Amendment (it isn’t agnostic) that this effect may accrue to the political order. Rather, it is by reason of the attenuation of the antecedent Christian social dynamisms, and by reason of the importation of new modes and orders in the Machiavellian sense—whereby legal and social order is usurped, inverted, and turned to substantively different purposes—that cultural and socio-political atheist implications ensue. And such alterations may occur even where the legal code is written precisely to forbid it either if the populace preponderantly changes in its core beliefs and practices or if a committed minority finds a way to attenuate the antecedent consensus. Elsewise the historical phenomena associated with the change of social and political order would be utterly unintelligible. This is but another way of saying, with T. S. Eliot, that in history there are no lost causes because there are no won causes: an insight that Christians, who are wayfarers toward their eternal patria, should well understand. Nonetheless, it is true—precisely because the wellsprings of social, political, and legal order derive from fonts more profound than any mere proceduralist formalism, and because Dr. Schindler is right that every such order derives from implicit theological, metaphysical, and anthropological judgments—that mere formal and juridic engagement cannot assure the health of the polity. Such health will always in part be the work of agencies anterior to juridic formality even though man is social and political by nature. This is simply to say that no matter how objectively great the prudential intermediation of belief, and no matter how objectively great the cognitive abstraction from belief for certain purposes, the Christian statesman remains animated and inspired by Christ. And, of course, the health or illness of regimes, like

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the health or illness of a given human person, falls under divine providence and finally is never purely a function either of our intentions or even of our causality. Life is more complicated, and more mysterious, than that. But we can say, and say with some certitude, that it is not the mere legal forms for limited cooperation amongst diverse communions of Christian believers that is to be blamed for the slide of American society, or more widely of European societies that are worse off in this regard, into a form of unthinkingly scientistic, secular conformist reductionism. The mere negative form of the First Amendment is not the genetic carrier of indifferentism or minimalism with respect to theology, metaphysics, and anthropology. Whatever the diverse causes for this phenomenon, it is to the root causes that one must look. In this respect, Dr. Schindler’s treatment is condign, for his insistent emphasis upon liberalism’s theological and anthropological negativity identifies the cause of our present cultural and socio-political conflict in the ‘‘culture wars.’’ Regarding the causal matrix of the increased prestige and influence of enlightenment liberalism’s political faux neutralism, it seems truer to say that Protestantism has always been a halfway house between liberalism and Catholicism than to say that the First Amendment has been the Trojan Horse of liberalism. This much is to be said even prior to remarking that there are indeed many prudential questions to which various strands or species of the older liberalism (prior to its utter intoxication with centralized power and its coalescence with scientism) have contributed some stable principled considerations (e.g., greater awareness in the modern period of what is, and what is not, workable economically with respect to the ‘‘assignment’’ of prices by state authorities is clearly something about which certain even dogmatically liberal authors have nonetheless been correct43).

A Brief Word Regarding Schindler on Modern Academe and Christian Logocentrism Dr. Schindler rightly discerns so much of the drama of modernity and postmodernity that it is almost a travesty to do less than offer a

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commentary to his work. His comments on Derrida and modernity44 are conspicuously helpful. Yet one cannot help noting that his analysis of logos seems to fall into the oldest of all the old traps of enlightenment liberalism, the reductio of identity into relation.45 As he puts it: Put in its starkest terms, such a view would imply, in contrast to the mechanistic presuppositions of the liberal tradition, that meaning is never present as simple identity; it would imply, further, in contrast to the nihilism of deconstructionism, that meaning, in no longer presenting itself as simple identity, is not thereby evacuated into a simple and ongoing difference. On the contrary, meaning which finds its logos or form in love will maintain its identity but nonetheless now do so only from within relation.46 Yet, when push comes to shove, he himself eloquently and clearly defends the principle of substantial form in all its interiority and without any hint of reduction to relationality (in his analysis of the ANT-OAR question, the issue—precisely as he frames it—appears wholly to repose on the primacy of substantial form).47 Hence, it does not seem unreasonable to point out that Christian logocentrism is more properly represented by Aquinas than by either Hegel or by Hans Urs von Balthasar. For Hegel’s teaching lacks the intelligible fixity of the order of natural form and the order of ends, submersing thought into a mystagogy wherein everything is reciprocally defined by everything else. And Balthasar’s reduction of natura to a dialectical limiting concept is such as, of itself and apart from mitigating influence, to add to the disincarnating and negative anthropologies of modern and postmodern thought, and its Christian context does not wholly immunize against the toxin of hypertrophic Hegelian relationality. No emphasis upon gestalt should be such as to negate natural form and proximate, connatural teleology, on pain of rendering the Nicene formula an empty pleonasm. I believe that this categoric error of superordinating relation to substance stands at the root of a criticism that is condign when pointed at the implicit negation of the truth of revelation by those who think it can be thoroughly and permeatingly abstracted from within institutional life, but is overextended when applied to methodic abstraction

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of the type requisite to knowledge of essential nature and proximate, connatural teleology. Further, of course, for the Christian the relation to God is consequent upon being, since there is nothing to be related to God prior to creation.48 Yet natural speculative truth is not the whole story, and natural moral truth, as a condition of its full and proper application to the special concrete circumstance of man subject to the fall and in need of grace, requires the aid of moral theology. Hence, for all our philosophic and theological difference, Dr. Schindler and the present author remain at one on this proposition of his, which I admire for the formality with which he places it first, as for any Christian it must indeed be: ‘‘The sequela Christi affects the very order of all aspects of civilization.’’ It does, indeed, but understanding how this is so will always require an interior meditation of the in-itselfness of natura as a principle which, along with its proximate finality, is given by God and participates His providence. To make bold: it seems to this author that in Dr. Schindler we face the phenomenon of a profound Christian soul, who in seeking to do service of an essentially Thomistic nature turns to a language received through Balthasar that is with respect to nature in certain aspects more Hegelian than Thomistic. More often than not his concerns are prescient, and his diagnoses provocative and powerful. But not all philosophical instrumentalities are equally helpful in the articulation of sacra doctrina. And it is here that one wishes that, for all the positive achievements of Balthasar, that he might have been less creative in setting out from de Lubac’s account of nature and grace. For not even the whole artillery of continental dialectics can succeed in instantiating proximate teleology while nonetheless and simultaneously rendering it a mere placeholder or blank Newtonian space for revelation, even when the overarching aim is Christian. Hence, paradoxically, the urge to make right through dialectics what prior error regarding the nature/grace relation has made impossible adds to the complexity of harvesting the genius of Balthasar and placing it, as he always sought to do, in its Marian role, which must include a certain piety for the essential dynamisms and hidden virtualities of natura. And, following through from systematic contemplation to practical diagnosis, this same problem

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likewise adds difficulty to the interpretation of the theological meditations of Dr. Schindler with respect to academe. Liberalism, no; but distinguish in order to unite: yes. And distinction requires proximate form and teleology, ontological identity and noncontradiction as presupposed by and not negated by that charity that is the form of every virtue. These remarks do not, of course, offer anything like sufficient justice to so fecund a work as Heart of the World, Center of the Church. But perhaps they may suffice to suggest the conundrums of one who, while holding to the twofold thesis of natura pura, seeks still to profit from this work’s content, and to meditate its implications.

Conclusion Maritain, Porter, and Schindler—authors both quite diverse and yet in certain respects similar—each seem to suppose that the central analogical reference provided by theistic conviction regarding divine creation, providence, and the moral law is not architectonic for political and social consensus. Maritain insists that socio-political consensus be merely practical (something one may rightly think impossible). Porter seems to think it inevitable that secularized rights talk divorced from theism is bound to constitute the basis for social consensus (somewhat waiving the question as to whether, so divorced, such rights talk can ever be truly consistent with human dignity and the eternal law). Simultaneous with her embrace of the speculative root of the natural law tradition, she also seems to adopt somewhat of a skeptical stance regarding both the effect of the social mediation of natural law norms and the natural capacity to discern the moral ‘‘middle term’’ provided by teleology. She thus presents an account remarkably trenchant, and also novel: something Thomistic in its several crucial premises, yet— and here to this author’s mind departing from Thomas—skeptical in its execution. Schindler seemingly thinks that natural truth and prudence offer to the mind in search of God no point of analogical reference or middle term that is distinct from supernatural revelation. Hence, within such an account, nature as putatively constituted in its entirety by relation to the supernatural provides the basis for Christian

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discourse with the world—and this seems to depreciate the in-itselfness and proximate connatural finality short of beatific vision, on the basis of which a genuine but limited wisdom regarding creation, providence, and moral life might develop and contribute to man’s public life. Accordingly, he is constrained to judge political, legal, social, and cultural order with too little aid from natural truth and prudence. These views overstress a genetic fatality whereby natura pura seemingly entails secularist minimalism in the public life of man. They also underemphasize the realization that the core and architectonic elements in socio-political, legal, and cultural life, when these have been healthy in the West and particularly in North America, have comprised a strong subset of the theoretic inheritance of Christendom (the praeambula fidei and the truths of the natural law). This is an inheritance intensively rooted in proportionate natural evidence and finality, and one whose practical implications are not ineffably shrouded in obscurity by concrete social mediations but rather intelligibly articulated within—and applied to—social fact. A latter-day ‘‘peasant of the Garonne’’ might ask: ‘‘We have had half a century of ‘rights talk,’ flight from teleology, continental relationality and a priorism, and agnosis regarding natural truth (whether speculative or practical) amongst theologians: where has it gotten us?’’ Nor is the datum that many hold theoretic truths in a non-theoretic way pertinent. Few Americans are genuine authorities on diet and health, but almost everyone is taught by his mother to eat his vegetables. Few Americans are natural theologians, but almost every American believes that it is most reasonable to affirm the existence of God, and realizes however vaguely that any failure to do so implies an unfounded negation of causal reasoning. For example: the cause of a species is not univocal with that species; the cause for an existing finite being that does not account for itself must be transfinite; and there is nothing on the basis of which plural transfinites can be made intelligible, so that hence there is but one First Cause. While the terminology and the full philosophic defense of this argument are not common, the insights at the root of the argument are extremely common. Likewise, the teleological analysis of human action, even the analysis of close-in teleologies prior to fuller contemplation of the hierarchy of ends, has

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some ethical import. It may not be an ethical import which technedriven cultures either like or to which they find it convenient to advert, but it is naturally intelligible. Of course, too much may be made of the natural praeambula fidei, but also and in our time, commonly, too little is made of them. The crucial middle term in the dialogue of the Church with the world is the created natural order, an order that yields more by way of foundational metaphysical, anthropological, and moral certitude than most contemporary theologians—befuddled by centuries of antirealist reductionism and ideosophy—are willing to acknowledge, despite the emphasis of the Catholic tradition. This is true whether one adverts to speculative truths regarding the existence of God as Creator and Provident Lord, or to speculative knowledge about the practical order (the hierarchy of ends, the ethical implications of close-in natural teleology), or to practical matters (natural prudence in ethics, politics, and even in constitutional law). The result is a theological discourse that much of the world cannot begin to understand, because most of the world still clearly understands that certain goods are irrefragably natural, and, if anything, fails to see how anything else can be real. Clearly, to reach such minds, it will not suffice to say that there is no proximate natural teleology, or that nature is not intelligible in precision from grace. The best seculars, in fact, know that they know something about nature, however limited—and, I may add, however admixed with error—and are disinclined to embrace alienation from known truth for the sake of an unknown. Indeed, the view that Christianity represents an unfounded alienation of man from his own nature is precisely the error whose correction is the constant work of Christian apologetics, which patiently makes those distinctions many deem impossible (e.g., between the impulses of fallen nature, and the proper form and proportionate natural finality of man). Philosophy of nature; philosophic anthropology; metaphysics and natural theology; natural law doctrine—all these, together with a deep connatural as well as theoretic appreciation of the natural virtues, are essential for theological method and doctrine. It is unavoidable that intelligible created nature and natural ordering provide the analogical reference for Christian evangelization: what

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sense is there in preaching to a world that does not exist or that lacks sublunary substance and order? And what renders one’s words intelligible? Indeed, how can a creed exalting the Divine Word fail to understand that created nature is fraught with divine meaning and purpose from its inception and in its own right even in precision from supernatural revelation—a meaning and purpose that constitutes the human obediential potency for divine revelation and beatific vision and in relation to which divine revelation and beatific vision have some intelligibility for us even now, when we see in a glass, darkly? The procession of the Word is an intelligible procession; and the good of the whole universe is the good of an Intellect. Surely, that things should be intelligible in themselves and their own proximate ends as a presupposition of further supernatural relationality in grace is neither a denial nor a derogation of that further relationality.49 If this analysis is true, however, then critical aspects of the systematic contemplation, and of the prudence, of a generation and more of theologians is rendered suspect and in need of corrective mediation in order to serve the tradition. This is a most inconvenient conclusion. But it is a conclusion that the evidence will finally support, whether we advert to the evidence ad intra of the theological life,50 or the evidence ad extra of the divagations from Catholic norms in terms of ecclesial, sacramental, and moral life.

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The Ontological Density, Dynamism, and Proportionate End of Human Nature The preceding pages articulate how central will be our understanding of the relation of nature and grace for the proper contemplation and living of Christian life, and for the Christian’s participation in cultural and public life. It has considered the implications of the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas that there is indeed an end proximate and natural, distinct from the supernatural end, and from which the human species is derived. With no injustice God could have created man merely with this order, in puris naturalibus, but from the divine goodness, love, and liberality instead created man in sanctifying grace. Yet even given our creation in grace, the baneful effects of the Fall, and our restoration and elevation in grace, the intelligible impress of the proximate natural finality remains in man. The whole order of created nature with its participation in divine providence is naturally knowable and retains its abstractive intelligibility, howsoever true it is that such knowledge is always more or less imperiled by the darkening of will and intellect consequent upon sin. Hence, even now, nature, natural order, and natural end, are real and not mere abstractions or limit concepts— rather are they real principles to which we gain access precisely through abstraction from the myriad other factors of historical circumstance, natural accident, sin, and grace. 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. Nothing in this, however,

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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 of the eternal law. As Thomas put it in the Summa theologiae: ‘‘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 law which is derived from it. 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.’’1 And hence the further words of St. Thomas in the same article: ‘‘By the natural law the eternal law is participated proportionately to the capacity of human nature. 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.’’2 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. In this work the argument has been set forth that de Lubac propounded his thesis in the effort to find a way beyond the encroachments of naturalism in the post-Enlightenment and post–World War II modern world. The absolutization either of a closed series of terrestrial causes, or of human freedom, yields a world in which the distinction of nature from grace will seem wrongfully to alienate the created world from God’s providential government. Nature, natural order, and natural law then cease to be theonomic principles whose intelligibility flows from and implies the reality of God. Under these circumstances, if one is to affirm nature as a theonomic principle, it then seems to become necessary to posit the infinitely transcendent supernatural end of beatific vision as supplanting and eradicating man’s natural proportionate end lest this negated end become a wall delineating a spurious absolute autonomy of nature vis-a`-vis its Creator. However, it is neither the case that terrestrial causes constitute an utterly closed series

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nor that human freedom enjoys a liberty of indifference to divine causality, for human liberty is a created liberty and lies within the divine providence. Nature is theonomic not because it lacks relative integrity, intelligibility, ontological density, and its own proportionate end, but because it is a limited finite participation of the eternal law. Nature and natural order bear the impress of the divine wisdom, and natural law is nothing other than a participation—one inferior to that of the lex nova—in the eternal law. The proportionate natural end is inferior to the supernatural end, but it is not nonexistent, but rather founds many important truths essential to Christian anthropology and moral teaching. The full range of naturally knowable truth, in metaphysics, natural theology, natural philosophy, anthropology, and morality, forms a crucially central point of analogous reference for the Church in her evangelical mission. The natural desire for God, while materially it designates God, does so under the ratio of ‘‘Cause of these effects.’’ But it is not essential to God to be Creator, as His perfection utterly transcends and in no way absolutely necessitates creation. Just as the desire to know ‘‘the man who is wearing the raincoat’’—whom later one discovers to be Einstein— refers to Einstein only materially and not formally, so the natural desire for God is not formally a desire for supernatural beatific vision, which infinitely transcends all finite effects. Similarly, the will as nature—the voluntas ut natura—is not ordained to supernatural beatitude, because such beatitude infinitely surpasses the proportion of all finite nature. Only graced desire is formally specified by supernatural beatitude. Nor is the conviction that the proximate natural end could have been man’s sole end, had God freely withheld the call to supernatural beatitude, a novelty of Sua´rez, as de Lubac alleged in his work Duplex hominis beatitudo.3 Man is placed in his species in relation to the natural rather than the supernatural end according to St. Thomas (Sth I q. 75. art. 7 ad 1); further, man could have been created apart from grace and the call to supernatural beatitude (Quod., I q. 4. art. 3, resp.). Since man could have been so created—namely, a being whose species is derived from the natural end—it follows that the natural end (perfect in its species, but ontologically an imperfect beatitude in relation to the divine felicity) would have been present. It is simply not intelligible to claim of that which

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follows deductively from two propositions of St. Thomas that it is a Sua´rezian novelty. Hence also the teaching of St. Thomas, from De malo q. 5, art. 1, ad 15, considered in chapter 1, that had God withheld supernatural beatitude from man created in puris naturalibus, this would not have been a penalty—whereas if man had a strong natural ordination to intrinsically supernatural beatitude, to withhold it without fault would be not only a penalty but an unjust penalty. The argument of St. Thomas in Summa theologiae I q. 62, art. 2, resp.—that because the natural movement of the will is the principle of all that we will, it is impossible for the will to have any inclination toward anything above nature without grace—underscores the proposition that the natural desire for God is formally specified by created effects and reaches God not qua God, but only as Cause of created effects. These teachings are not mere textual heirlooms, but penetrating analyses of systematic importance for the right understanding of nature and grace. It may be thought that this conclusion is a wholesale rejection of the contribution of de Lubac, but this is not true. First, even in that which this work argues to be his critical error, he drew unmistakable attention to the elements necessary to a true solution to the problem. Unlike so many other minds in the twentieth century, he affirms the critical importance of teleology, erring only in a deficient confidence in natural teleology owing to fear of the distortions of naturalism and to a theological problem situation that had already too decisively separated itself from the metaphysical realism necessary to vindicate nature as a theonomic principle. Second, his other great contributions to theology remain. The incredible mastery of, appreciation for, and application of the thought of the Fathers of the Church itself constitutes an epochal achievement. His diagnosis of the nature of anti-theism retains its significance. And his magnificent Medieval Exegesis4 is a work of arresting importance. It is arguably his very greatness that has accentuated the hold of the error of Surnaturel, Augustinianism and Modern Theology, and The Mystery of the Supernatural. That greatness survives the error. The same is true with the case of Hans Urs von Balthasar, although the very creativity of this theologian guaranteed that the problematic thesis would find its way into many corners of his theology. Nature is

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not merely an antechamber for grace, nor reducible to ‘‘createdness as such,’’ but is possessed of its own density and proportionate end. Nonetheless, his work is irreducible to this point, and is arguably better interpreted apart from it. Minds with a great appreciation for Balthasar may yet on this precise point find Aquinas a better guide, and better not least for permitting the full organic development of insights of Balthasar that cannot find a sufficiently robust metaphysical environment for their survival apart from the metaphysics of the Angelic Doctor and his much-misunderstand doctrine of man’s proportionate natural end. To name but one: if there is to be an adequate analogical understanding of communio personarum in the Trinity, it will require the most penetrating meditation upon the metaphysical truth that bonum est diffusivum sui. But of course, the surrender of metaphoric predications that refuse the ascesis of the metaphysical limitations of our knowledge is the cost for this aid. Yet irrespective whether the work of de Lubac and Balthasar is of great worth despite this error (as this author believes), or whether it is utterly vitiated by it, it is vital to the health of Catholic thought that this error be corrected. Not the great Catholic personages—Aquinas, Cajetan, Ban˜ez, de Lubac, Balthasar—but rather the truth of the matter, must resolve this question. To that end this work has been directed.

Retrospective on Analytic Philosophy The loss of natura and of philosophy of nature and metaphysics within theological method removes a decisive element of the intellectual ecology within which realist philosophy thrives. This is to say that the theological evacuation of nature affects not only theology, but philosophy as well. Further and indeed more importantly, upon the theological recovery of natura, there exists the danger that theologians seeking a renewed appreciation of the natural order will turn by default to the circumambient analytic mode of philosophizing as heir to or substitute for the tradition of classical Thomism. This book has argued that the ontological loam of natura requires genuine method for its tilling, and that for this very reason analytic thought as such is not a capable substitute for classical Thomism. Individual analytic thinkers will achieve

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philosophic insights and make contributions: but the analytic approach qua analytic is a mere propaedeutic, whereas genuine philosophy of nature and metaphysics (occluded from the time of Russell, Ryle, and Wittgenstein nearly to the present) has real objects and entails genuine method beyond mere logical and linguistic analysis. The distinction of act and potency, the causes and categories of Aristotle, the metaphysics of esse of St. Thomas, are not mere logical feats but deep insights into the order of created nature. It has been suggested above that ‘‘Analytic Thomism’’ is really Thomistic engagement with analytic thought, appropriating particular insights of analytic authors into the wider contemplation of the realist tradition. Such Thomistic engagement with analytic thought may be fruitful, but should not be taken to preclude work within the classical Thomistic tradition as such. These are not only not properly competitors, but the former depends upon the latter (something perhaps reflected by the datum that ‘‘analytic’’ is the adjective, ‘‘Thomism’’ the noun in ‘‘analytic Thomism’’). The development of philosophy through the interrelation of the teaching of Aquinas and that of contemporary analytic authors may bear fruit, but only because there is something in this exchange that exceeds logical or linguistic analysis. There is no question of advocating the suppression either of analytic thought in general or specifically of ‘‘analytic Thomism.’’ Rather is it the case that, given the sociological predominance of analytic thought within North American academe, and the apologetic preoccupation of many fine Catholic minds with opening up analytic thinkers to the teaching of Aquinas, the intensive pursuit of the speculative development of Thomas’s teaching in its own right suffers many external impediments. Certainly it is the case that in departments of philosophy in North America, one who works in analytic venues is a more survivable commodity. But this sociological datum tends of its nature to deflect the speculative problematic as such, which requires development at its higher levels on the basis of preliminary and presupposed prior judgments that one cannot expect to be widely shared amongst analytic thinkers who have undergone no normative formation with respect to philosophy of nature and metaphysics.

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Not infrequently it is presumed that systematic thought is analytic and that all other concern with Aquinas is merely textual. An enormous speculative literature—whether of the twentieth century alone, or of the whole time since Aquinas—suffices by way of answer. It is odd to suggest that this speculative wealth should be approached principally with a view to finding something in it cognate with the invigorating but comparatively brief analytic canon of the past 75 years—rather like studying modern astronomy solely for the purpose of finding similarities with Ptolemy’s account of epicycles. Some may suppose that it is Aquinas who more properly is like Ptolemy, and analytic thought that is like modern astronomy. Yet modern astronomy has not been widely rejected, as have the pivotal elements of the original ‘‘analytic revolution.’’ But has not classical Thomism been rejected as well? Yes, on the basis of the failed analytic projects. The affirmative upon which the negative was based being taken away, the case against the principal methodic commitments of Thomistic thought is far from being clear, much less clearly sound. I take it as easily discoverable matters of fact that most analytic practitioners no longer think the project of Principia Mathematica with respect to the reduction of mathematics to logic without remainder is possible, gratis Go¨del’s theorem; that most analytic practitioners do not hold the views of Wittgenstein from the Tractatus regarding logic, speech, and metaphysics; that most analytic practitioners do not hold, with the latter Wittgenstein, that all metaphysics is necessarily nonsense; and so on, through the roll call of propositions from Ryle, from Ayer, etc. Even Frege’s view regarding existence as putatively a mere second-order property of concepts, while still common among analytics, would not be thought of among analytics as essential to being an analytic thinker.5 And Frege’s view of existence has received progressively more devastating criticism for its incapacity to cope with obvious true propositions such as ‘‘my dog Spot no longer exists,’’ not to mention for its failure to acknowledge that negation of negation yields something positive only when the original subject of negation is real.6 In any case, what is left of the original analytic revolutions is a concern for logic and language conjoined with a variety of material preoccupations and conclusions not uniformly shared or assented to by all analytic thinkers as such.

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By contrast, Thomas’s metaphysics, natural philosophy, epistemology, anthropology, and natural law doctrine exact of their students a certain methodic care and exposure to a normative problematic. Furthermore, and arrestingly, given the implosion of the theses on behalf of which classical Thomism was abandoned, these endeavors survive largely unscathed by earlier analytic criticisms. There is undeniably much work by analytic thinkers that is invigorating and fascinating (for example, who can read Kripke’s Naming and Necessity without delight?), but let us stop short of suggesting that it is so by virtue of anything essentially common by way of distinctively and exclusively analytic method. For that would not be true. Logic is not a sufficient method for philosophy of nature or for metaphysics, and further, it is not an exclusive possession of analytic thought. Meanwhile, the work to be done in developing and applying St. Thomas’s thought in its own right is enormous. Unless the option is made for reductionist scientism tout court and irrespective the evidence—i.e., an option for logical propaedeutic conjoined with the findings of the positive sciences as the sole realm of ‘‘philosophy’’ and even at the cost of metaphysical obscurantism—it will otherwise be the case that positive, first-order disciplines of philosophy of nature and metaphysics are necessary. Since these latter disciplines cannot be achieved merely with logic; have indeed never been systematically, methodically, and universally developed within analytic thought in a way comparable to their unfolding and normative role in the commentatorial Thomist tradition; and indeed since analytic thought has no normative problematic regarding them that it requires of its practitioners; for all these reasons, analytic formation in meta-philosophy simply cannot replace classical Thomism within theological method.

Natura Pura and Theological Anxiety over the Abomination of Desolation of Minimalist Secularism The emphasis in this work has been to insist that the thesis of natura pura has no necessary entailment of secularist minimalism in cultural

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and public life, and that indeed the thesis glorifies God both in His creation and in the realization that grace is a supervenient gift, and provides a pivotal point of analogical reference essential to the Church’s evangelical mission in the world. Further, we have argued that it is distinctively the speculative doctrine of God, creation, and nature—even when it is not possessed in a fully or properly speculative manner—that provides the crucial ligature whereby the Church in its evangelical mission is enabled intelligibly to address the world. We have been particularly skeptical regarding two notions. The first is that a minima natura of merely practical judgments forms an adequate basis for cooperation in public life, i.e., that ‘‘rights’’—apart from the essential hierarchy of ends defining the nature of the good for man, anchored in speculative theism—are a substitute for genuine social consensus regarding the nature of the good. In this light, this book has also argued that neither the need for social mediation and specification of natural law precepts, nor the incompleteness of our ethical wisdom about bodily teleologies apart from knowledge of the hierarchy of ends, renders the prime precepts of the natural law flowing into the secondary and tertiary precepts to be inefficacious, or the corresponding ethical applications to be lacking in unity. Discerning how natural law premises apply to, and are instantiated within, diverse regimes of social facts does not imply that these applications and instantiations are not genuinely implications and determinations that articulate the truth and unity of the natural law. In particular, it is argued above that ‘‘close-in’’ bodily teleology entails certain ethical implications even prior to the full ethical contemplation implied by an adequately systematic contemplation of the hierarchy of ends—on the ground that, elsewise, this ordering of ends would lack its proper teleologically commensurated parts, which hence must have a certain native per se intelligibility precisely owing to their ordering to the proximate natural finality. The second notion, against which this work has argued, is that the very idea of a limited abstractive autonomy for the natural disciplines—and the role of natural prudence in political life—is somehow contrary to the creature’s receptivity vis-a`-vis God and its need for the divine influx to be and to act. This seems to be rooted in the view that the truth of divine creation and of providence are available solely

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through divine revelation. But the doctrine of the creation and of God’s providence over contingent singular effects is not only received in faith but is demonstrable by reason. Not alone our systematic appreciation of the natural disciplines, but also our historical appreciation of the sources of moral and social consensus (and also of the challenges to Christianity in public life) will be diminished by an enfeebled sense of the role of natural wisdom within the synthesis of grace. Further, this natural wisdom is, arguably, not well served by an over-dialectical emphasis upon putatively internal relations to supernatural beatitude as constituting the creature at the expense of the inwardness and in-itselfness of nature and the proportionate natural end. It is God, not the relation to God, that constitutes the creature, and the creature’s relation to God is consequent upon its being (before it has being, it is not related to anything) and nature (which is defined in its species in relation not to supernatural beatitude but to the natural end). Of course, just as the truth of the principle of noncontradiction enables the thinking of erroneous thoughts, so does the truth of the thesis of natura pura enable erroneous constructions of nature. There is no alternative but to respond to these as they occur. It makes no sense, as a hedge against the fallen intelligence of man, to insist that nature and being are unintelligible so that no one, striving to understand these, will make a mistake that philosophers and theologians will need to take notice of and correct. In this sense, it is true that the vanity of the world comes along with the twofold thesis of natura pura for which we have argued, but this is only because it comes with us, with our nature after the Fall, and not because nature is itself vain or because there is no permanent metaphysical wisdom regarding created nature. And, of course, this is true all the more with respect to natural theories regarding man’s cultural and public life. It is no fault, I am saying, of the thesis of natura pura that there are many possible false propositions regarding nature, and that the objective difficulty of attaining speculative and practical wisdom renders a certain quantum of confusion and error a constant backdrop. Nor need this imply any lack of confidence in the role of natural reason. For there is a truth of

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nature—philosophy of nature is not to be confused with false philosophy and there is such a thing as false philosophy. Even more surprising, perhaps most of all for some theologians: there is such a thing as true philosophy. Likewise, there is such a thing as an over-abstraction from man’s given condition, and from the overarching truths of Catholic faith and morals, but the motivation for this is not the doctrine of natura pura, and indeed, more often than not, has at its roots either metaphysical inanity or falsity with respect to natural law and philosophy of nature. It is precisely for such reasons that Maritain, rightly in my view, held that, although natural ethical knowledge is real, its full application to man’s concrete condition requires reference to moral theology. Even though natural ethical truth is hic et nunc applicable to man, we do not have everything we need with respect to its complete application minus revealed truth (for the fall, and grace, condition the exercise of natural powers). In any case, speculative metaphysical and natural truth is indeed our vade mecum with regard both to criticism of reductionism and secularist minimalism, on the one hand, and the more profound theological meditation over the mysteries of faith, on the other. Why the latter? Who is Christ? God and Man. What is man? And, even more importantly: quid sit Deus? To deny the role of natural knowledge here would appear suicidal for Christian truth. The doctrine of natura pura is an essential requisite of the Nicene formula. Christ is not God and Vacuole, nor (as the denial of the natural intelligibility of theism would have it) Vacuole and Vacuole. Christ is God and Man. Hence, the danger of over-abstraction from truths knowable solely through revelation is not the only danger. There is also the critical, undergirding, and permeating error of the denial of the theonomic character of natural order as such. It is, indeed, the recurrence of such denial that poses the greatest danger to the coherence and the intelligibility of Christian faith. The truths of metaphysics, natural philosophy and ethics, and anthropology are all essential to the intelligibility of Christian doctrine. Yet not only ordinary Christians, but many theologians, seem implicitly to suppose that creation is subject to divine causality only in grace.7 This is not only horribly untrue, it is inconsistent

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with the doctrine of creation and providence, and with the natural law, implying gnostic or Manichean duality. This kind of dualism, when it makes impact with political life, renders the task of Christian social prudence all the more complicated and tortuous. Perhaps now, so very long after Aeterni patris and Vatican I, and after the enormous complication and confusion following the Second Vatican Council (and as the very missing piece needed for a conciliar appreciation of its pastoral directives), we may—through the discursive and dialectical motion back from the verge of minimalist antinomianism about such truth (whether in socio-political and moral matters, systematic philosophy, or systematic theology)—be able finally to appropriate the classical teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas, the doctrine of natura pura.8 It is to this purpose that the preceding pages are offered.

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Cardinal Ratzinger a n d Po p e Be n e d i c t XV I It is essential to our argument in the preceding text that there is indeed a proportionate natural end from which the human species is derived, and that indeed the praeambula fidei are susceptible of apodictic speculative knowledge. Here, however, we clearly draw a conclusion that seems in tension with the earlier teaching of then-Cardinal Ratzinger1 in his work Truth and Tolerance. In the light of our argument above, it is perhaps helpful to consider how in one limited early articulation, the thought of Cardinal Ratzinger was affected by the problematic evacuation of the ontological density of nature while even so beginning to move beyond it (affirming the essential need of theology for metaphysics), in the direction of the strong affirmation of the role of reason seen in the Regensburg Lecture. In doing so, one may see the fashion in which the restoration of the classical Catholic understanding need not imply what it often is taken to imply, and how even in an early commentary affected by the teaching of de Lubac and Balthasar regarding nature and grace, the dynamism of the text even of the early Ratzinger is toward transcendence of this position. In Truth and Tolerance, responding to Kantian reductionism that would deny the very possibility of divine revelation, Ratzinger offers the following thoughts in the extensive quotation below: The problem concerning exegesis, as we have seen, to a great extent coincides with the problem of philosophy. The desperate situation of philosophy—that is to say, the desperate situation into which reason obsessed by positivism has maneuvered itself— has become the desperate situation of our faith. Faith cannot be

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set free unless reason itself opens up again. If the door to metaphysical knowledge remains barred, if we cannot pass beyond the limits to human perception set by Kant, then faith will necessarily atrophy, simply for lack of breathing space. Of course, the attempt to use a strictly autonomous reason that refuses to know about faith, to pull ourselves out of the slough of uncertainties by our own hair, so to speak, can hardly succeed in the end. For human reason is not autonomous at all. It is always living in one historical context or other. Any historical context, as we see, distorts the vision of reason; that is why reason needs the help of history in order to overcome these historical limitations. It is my view that the neoscholastic rationalism that was trying to reconstruct the praeambula fidei, the approach to faith, with pure rational certainty, by means of rational argument that was strictly independent of any faith, has failed; as 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: for in that case, our faith would in the end be based on changing philosophical theories. Yet Barth was mistaken in declaring faith on that account to be a sheer paradox, which can only ever exist contrary to reason and quite independent of it. By no means the least important practical function of faith is to offer healing for the reason as reason, not to overpower it or to remain outside it, but in fact to bring it to itself again, so that—now that faith has set it on the right path again—reason can once more see properly for itself. We have to strive toward such a renewed process of dialogue between faith and philosophy, for each has need of the other. Without faith, philosophy cannot be whole, but faith without reason cannot be human.2 These lines are susceptible of diverse interpretation. Their initial affirmation seems utterly at one with the thesis of this present book, whereas their later express propositions would need, were they to be consistent with the thesis here argued, to be interpreted along the lines of the Regensburg Lecture, and with the corresponding meaning of

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‘‘apodictic’’ referring to the apodicticity of the positive sciences despite the clear reference to ‘‘neoscholastic rationalism.’’ These initial lines are of course favorable: ‘‘Faith cannot be set free unless reason itself opens up again. If the door to metaphysical knowledge remains barred, if we cannot pass beyond the limits to human perception set by Kant, then faith will necessarily atrophy, simply for lack of breathing space.’’ But they are difficult to reconcile with what follows. What Kant denied was the intelligibility of being and the possibility of metaphysics to the natural reason. Hence, to affirm metaphysical knowledge in this context, and to insist that, if the door to such knowledge ‘‘remains barred,’’ ‘‘faith will necessarily atrophy,’’ are propositions dear to the heart both of classical Thomism and of course of the speculative context within which the thesis of natura pura has meaning. Yet he continues, in the next section of the quotation above: Of course, the attempt to use a strictly autonomous reason that refuses to know about faith, to pull ourselves out of the slough of uncertainties by our own hair, so to speak, can hardly succeed in the end. For human reason is not autonomous at all. It is always living in one historical context or other. Any historical context, as we see, distorts the vision of reason; that is why reason needs the help of history in order to overcome these historical limitations. It is my view that the neoscholastic rationalism that was trying to reconstruct the praeambula fidei, the approach to faith, with pure rational certainty, by means of rational argument that was strictly independent of any faith, has failed; as 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: for in that case, our faith would in the end be based on changing philosophical theories. Of course human reason is always in some historical context or another, but this is no particular reason why—even if all these contexts suffer various typical distortions—that reason cannot see further than such distortions. No historical context is, for postlapsarian man, ‘‘perfect’’ in such a way that it could guarantee the optimal conditions for

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the work of rational discursive thought and scientia in its full and proper sense (as opposed to the positivist distortion). And historical wisdom does aid one in discerning, and perhaps in partially overcoming, the limitations of one’s own historical situation. But nothing in this implies that the distortions to which historical epochs are prone must necessarily and invariably preclude the achievement of philosophic truth. Further, no ground whatsoever is given for the judgment that ‘‘the neoscholastic rationalism that was trying to reconstruct the praeambula fidei, the approach to faith, with pure rational certainty, by means of rational argument that was strictly independent of any faith, has failed.’’ If the test is historical and sociological—i.e., did some scholastics fall into distortions, or, did the scholastic authors of the twentieth century succeed in persuading all their Catholic confreres of the legitimacy and importance of this project, or in persuading nonCatholic and even non-theistic or atheistic authors that their demonstrations were well-founded, then the answer appears to be ‘‘no.’’ However, what is believed, and what is the case, are not by any stretch of the imagination necessarily the same. This same point applies to what follows when he writes that ‘‘Karl Barth was right when he rejected philosophy as a basis for faith that is independent of faith itself: for in that case, our faith would in the end be based on changing philosophical theories.’’ For if a theory is true then, despite the fact that there is change in our understanding of it, and even should we come erroneously to think it false, reality remains the same. And here one must repeat the very admonition that strikes the Thomist as pertinent with respect to Balthasar’s account of nature: namely, that nature is not merely the creature or pure posit of a theorist or even of a theologian. It is that which God Himself has created, and its rich substantial content and teleological order are givens of divine providence. For faith to advert to philosophic truth is not for faith ‘‘in the end’’ to be ‘‘based on changing philosophical theories,’’ but rather for faith to be partially based upon the reality known through theories that are demonstrably true. The difficulty with this view from the vantage point of realist philosophy is comparatively simple. Suppose that someone said: there cannot be Ten Commandments, for were this true, the faith would in the end

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be based on changing mathematical theories. We would respond, to the contrary, that there are mathematical truths, that we know some, and that the use of a base-ten number system does indeed enable us properly to enumerate the commandments as ‘‘ten’’ in number irrespective whatever advance (or loss) of mathematical wisdom may occur. Even should we lose knowledge of the base-ten number system, it would not cease to be true that in that system the number of the commandments given on Mt. Sinai was ‘‘ten.’’ Simply put, the matter is by analogy proportionately identical with respect to the apodictic philosophic knowledge of the praeambula fidei.3 But this brings us back to Ratzinger’s comment that ‘‘It is my view that the neoscholastic rationalism that was trying to reconstruct the praeambula fidei, the approach to faith, with pure rational certainty, by means of rational argument that was strictly independent of any faith, has failed; as it cannot be otherwise for any such attempts to do that kind of thing.’’ We must ask what it is to which Ratzinger in this early commentary refers by ‘‘neoscholastic rationalism’’ trying to ‘‘reconstruct’’ the praeambula fidei with ‘‘pure rational certainty’’? A superficial reading might suggest a univocal notion of that which constitutes ‘‘pure rational certainty’’—indeed, perhaps the very idea of ‘‘pure rational certainty’’ possessed by many contemporaries who identify this merely with the principles and firmer conclusions of the positive sciences. Yet were this the case, not only would it be something difficult to square with his later Regensburg Lecture given as supreme pontiff,4 but it would also imply that scholasticism could hardly move from these principles straight to profound metaphysical conclusions. For these principles and conclusions of the positive sciences, although univocal, are in fact quite inferior in certainty to those of philosophy. To illustrate once more, the principle of noncontradiction is a metaphysical principle before, and as a condition of its being, a logical principle. ‘‘Being is not nonbeing’’ contradistinguishes the real (‘‘being’’) with deprivation from the real which is of course conceptual (e.g., ‘‘nonbeing’’ which is not). But whenever a real object is compared with a conceptual object, the distinction is real, for the real object is in truth not merely conceptual. Because this metaphysical principle formally pertains to being as such, it pertains to all the analogical modes of

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being: its not being a univocal but rather analogical principle does not make it less apodictic but more apodictic, as it were, since its range is universal, and it pertains to everything in relation to being, even to potential being, or further, to really possible being (being creatable by God), and even to ideal being (being that exists only in thought). It thus analogously pertains to every scientific principle or conclusion. In comparison with univocal concepts it is inferior in precision but not in certainty, for every science presupposes being and the intelligibility of being for its subject matter. It is certainly true that the scholastic efforts of the past, and even of the present, are continuously derogated because they do not fit the reductionist contours of contemporary scientism, according to which only the positive sciences are possessed of apodictic truth. Yet in his early commentary, and all the more in the ensuing years all the way through to this pontificate, the Regensburg Lecture, and many of his statements given as pope, Ratzinger has opposed scientistic reductionism as well as the denial of metaphysics. But of course if we cannot achieve any knowledge of being—and without the principle of noncontradiction as an analogical metaphysical principle we cannot, for then it would be possible for us to have, and not to have, such knowledge at the same time and in the same respect—then there are no other sciences, and there neither are nor can be any knowable conclusions. Metaphysicians are constantly asked why they believe that one must, absolutely speaking, start with being. The reason is conspicuous: if we do not start with being, we can have no real conclusions. What should we start with: nothing? But the price of starting with being is that which Aristotle discerned long before the dead end of Kantian and other ideosophic projects began to dislodge human rational categories from their ontological foundations—namely the acknowledgement of the apodictic and analogical metaphysical principle of noncontradiction. Every ideosophy achieves its closure to reality by denying this principle—but no ideosophic doctrine can rationally defend such closure, nor render it consistent with knowledge. Do contemporaries understand that this is an apodictic metaphysical principle even though it is not limited to quantity and is not univocal? Most do not. Do even most logicians understand this? No. Do

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most philosophers? One would need to answer: I am afraid not. In this sense, the scholastic project has, in historical and sociological terms, ‘‘failed.’’ But it has not failed in its essential project, which is not that of ‘‘reconstructing’’ the praeambula fidei but rather of attaining and exhibiting their truth by means of rational argument, depending on no premise knowable exclusively through revelation. For no such principle is required for the demonstrations for the existence of God, and of God’s providence; or for the account of the spirituality and immortality of the soul; or for the other conclusions flowing from metaphysics and natural philosophy. In fact, the principle of the real distinction of act and potency, so strenuously rejected by both Scotus and Sua´rez, is demonstrably necessary if one is to deny metaphysical monism, and the four causes are as easily defended today as when Aristotle articulated them, albeit they have a critical importance as correctives for certain constructions of hypothetico-deductive physics that is utterly timely. This is to say that it is simply not the case that philosophic truth is ‘‘changing,’’ howsoever much our theoretic life may both progress and regress. Let us consider the cognate illustration of history. Some epochs, for the most part, have seen widespread acceptance of the truth of Christian faith and morals (at least in the West), whereas some have not. Do we say that the historical truth of Christian faith is a mere function of what people historically think to be true about it? No. The same is the case with every truth claim. One might think that Ratzinger’s early inflections with regard to scholastic rationalism are largely a function of his inheritance, from de Lubac and Balthasar, of an erroneous account of the relation between nature and grace. This would account for his saying, and then unsaying, what is necessary regarding the door to metaphysical knowledge being open. For he cannot mean to imply that faith collapses into terrestrial or natural knowledge, inasmuch as its object and source are superior to natural knowledge according to the de fide teaching of Vatican I. But if natural metaphysical knowledge is possible, then to seek it by natural means (‘‘purely rationally’’) is not unreasonable. And even inasmuch as reason is aided by revelation to avoid pitfalls, nonetheless that which is proportionate to natural reason is indeed proportionate to

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it. One may be helped by the inspiration of faith in rational inquiry, but in philosophy at the moment of demonstration either one’s premises do, or do not, include something knowable solely through revelation. If they do not, and they validly demonstrate, then we have purely rational knowledge. Must Christians live in fear lest they discover natural truths in a purely rational manner? Is it not the case that we should, as Ratzinger’s words suggest, anticipate that Christians will indeed be aided by the extrinsic aid of revelation in their rational and discursive labors, without these for all that being falsified or turned into revelation? Moreover, it stands as a powerful limitation on Ratzinger’s negative characterization of the scholastic philosophic project that it occurs, first, in the context of denying a false philosophy—that of Kant whereby the praeambula fidei must necessarily be unintelligible—and, second, and as has been noted, in the context of an affirmation that the door to metaphysics must be open as a condition for the very possibility of faith: Faith cannot be set free unless reason itself opens up again. If the door to metaphysical knowledge remains barred, if we cannot pass beyond the limits to human perception set by Kant, then faith will necessarily atrophy, simply for lack of breathing space. These affirmations, developed throughout his life, are the essential moment in the commentary in question, while the animadversion with respect to the scholastic project is by contrast in the accidental order. Seen in this context, Ratzinger can hardly intend to subtract what he says about metaphysics when he later criticizes the purely rational labors of ‘‘neoscholastic rationalism.’’ It appears that we have here yet again all the interpretative difficulties posed by the Balthasarian affirmation of a nature that at one moment is a purely dialectical limiting concept, ‘‘createdness as such,’’ and at the next the source for an entire ‘‘natural ethic.’’ (Surely it is difficult to derive the latter—natural ethics—from the former— ‘‘createdness as such’’—without admitting more content, such as the proportionate connatural finality from which the species is derived.5 Further,

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one might ask, is ‘‘createdness as such’’ naturally knowable, as Aquinas thought, or not?) But this merely material presence of the signature genetic error of la nouvelle the´ologie does not obviate either Ratzinger’s perception, or that of Balthasar, that in some way natura must be implicit within theological method. Each followed de Lubac, and de Lubac developed his account of nature and grace as a scorched earth response to reductive anti-theistic naturalism and within a context wherein the theonomic character of natural order had already been negated within theological method itself. The primary desiderata of all these great Catholic theologians are, however—notwithstanding the incessant contradictory assertions characterizing much of theology of the past half century—utterly consistent with, and attainable through, the classical propositions of St. Thomas Aquinas and his school regarding nature and grace. Once either human freedom or an order of closed terrestrial causes is absolutized, it is true that a nature/grace distinction will be tantamount to keeping man in, and God out, of the realm of human action and, by implication, of the realm of morality as such. Yet there is absolutely no rational imperative to follow Molina or Sua´rez, nor (worse yet) Kant or Marx or Nietzsche or Feuerbach, with respect either to the absolutization of human freedom or with respect to the absolutization of a closed order of terrestrial causes.6 Granted that the cultural and philosophic situation within which de Lubac theologized was one very nearly paved over with these implicitly anti-theistic premises, and that his response would indeed be the only one possible were such premises true, they are not true. The theonomic character of nature is manifest in its intelligibly limited participation of the providential order from the instant of its creation onward, in accord with metaphysical realism. Far from constituting a block or hindrance to the supernatural order, specific human nature in its spiritual dimensions is seen to be the root of the obediential potency or capacity for being aided by God to the essentially and infinitely nobler life of supernatural divine friendship in grace and glory. Balthasar staged the most extensive of dialectical efforts to affirm the fecundity of natura within the Christian life while yet treating it as merely an antechamber to grace and failing adequately to acknowledge

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its proximate natural finality whence its species is derived. But the thesis against which we have argued that implies that nature is but a vacuole for grace, is not essential either to the affirmation of the central conditioning role of cruciform love (Christ’s flesh is passible, the purpose of the Incarnation is redemptive) or to the vindication of the essentially ecclesial, Marian, and contemplative character of theology: the great themes of Balthasar’s theology. Thus, far from undercutting Balthasar’s positive contributions, the correction of the error regarding nature and of the corresponding dialectical remediations into which he falls in trying to avert the implications of this error, can enable Balthasarian theology to develop more fully and truly. The correction of these problems will promote a richer moral theology and dimension of cataphatic theological contemplation, as well as aid in avoiding the error of predicating deprivation, material limitation, or suffering of God. Thus, I read the words of our present pontiff Pope Benedict XVI, written when he was still Cardinal Ratzinger, as likewise perched upon the dialectical requisites of satisfying both de Lubac’s thesis and the need to honor Vatican I and to affirm the intrinsic necessity of natural knowledge of God and of the natural law within theological method. Because the latter need is the greater, as alike because of the strength of the Regensburg Lecture itself in affirming the essential role of natural reason within the theological life, it seems most fitting to read the propositions of Ratzinger by emphasizing (1) his affirmation of the need for metaphysics, and (2) the proposition that the scholastic project failed not essentially but only in relation to the sociology of knowledge. Such a reading is doubtless in some measure of tension with the earlier articulated views of Pope Benedict XVI regarding classical Thomism and the scholastic project (although it seems quite congruent with the Regensburg Lecture). But the affirmation of the early Ratzinger of metaphysical intelligibility and reason are fundamental, whereas the accidental negation of the scholastic project pertains to it only owing to the imputation of rationalism. But, of course, the rational knowledge of the praeambula fidei is not rationalism. Further, precisely because the scholastic project does not imply what it has so often been taken to imply—and because de Lubac, Balthasar, and our current Holy Father all have affirmed the need for metaphysics—it is

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perhaps excusable here to follow the teaching of one who has plausibly been thought by many to be the greatest theologian and metaphysician of the Catholic tradition, St. Thomas Aquinas. This becomes all the clearer inasmuch as the Holy Father’s Regensburg Lecture suggests that the zone of reason surpasses the zone of the positive sciences.7 Now, a zone of reason entailing conclusions regarding God Himself suggests precisely the sort of sure, stable participation in the divine providential order that the doctrine of natural law, the praeambula fidei, and Thomistic metaphysics conjointly entail. This is not to say that Pope Benedict XVI is become a Thomist, but rather that Aquinas would not be the Doctor Communis were it not true that he identified and articulated primal truths of the Catholic tradition itself that still surface when masters of theology attain the height of theological insight and profundity. It is in this light that the recent words of Pope Benedict XVI are particularly helpful: From this rapid overview it appears clearly that the security and stability of the world are still fragile. The factors of concern are varied, yet they all bear witness to the fact that human freedom is not absolute, but is a good that is shared, one for which all must assume responsibility. It follows that law and order are guarantees of freedom. Yet law can be an effective force for peace only if its foundations remain solidly anchored in natural law, given by the Creator. This is another reason why God can never be excluded from the horizon of man or of history. God’s name is a name of justice, it represents an urgent appeal for peace.8 This profound emphasis upon God-centered natural law as essential for peace and justice, and as defining the openness of the human and historical horizon to God, articulates the very truth for the sake of whose contemplation, application, and defense, this present work has been written. In fact, these words rightly indicate that, far from implying a secularist minimalism in public life, natural law prevents the exclusion of God from human history. It is with respect to this common Catholic doctrinal conviction that the current argument is pressed affirming the relative integrity and autonomy of the proportionate and proximate natural order of ends within the providential synthesis of grace.

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Introduction 1. The epigraph is taken from Sth, prima pars, q. 2, a. 2, ad 1. 2. In note 35 of chapter 1, the translation of Rosemary Sheed is provided for the text of de Lubac. More importantly, I add a substantive and lengthy final note to chapter 1, responding to criticism of my textual claims. 3. ‘‘In large part’’ because there are weighty issues regarding the theological understanding of evil that also need be addressed in vindicating St. Thomas’s teaching. For those interested in my work touching this question, please see ‘‘Providence, Liberte´ et Loi Naturelle,’’ trans. Hyacinthe Defos du Rau, O.P., and Fr. Serge-Thomas Bonino, O.P., Revue thomiste, Sommaire du n 3 (December 2002): 355–406; also available, with the permission of Revue Thomiste, in Nova et Vetera, English Edition 4, no. 3 (2006): 557–606. See also the profound Thomistic meditations of Fr. Gilles Emery, O.P., on this theme, in his essay ‘‘The Question of Evil and the Mystery of God in Charles Journet,’’ Nova et Vetera, English Edition 4, no. 3 (2006): 529–56. Of course, this question is best approached through the intensive study of the Catholic tradition in sacred scripture, sacred tradition, the magisterium, and the works of the fathers, doctors, and saints, most especially the works of the Doctor Communis, St. Thomas Aquinas. 1. On The Loss, and the Recovery, of Nature as a Theonomic Principle: Reflections on the Nature/Grace Controversy 1. Lawrence Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God According to St. Thomas Aquinas and His Interpreters (Rome: Apollinare Studi, 2001). 2. John Milbank, The Suspended Middle (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005). 3. To be quite clear, Milbank argues that, ‘‘Indeed, it can now be seen that the Surnaturel of 1946 was almost as important an event of cultural revision as Being and Time or the Philosophical Investigations.’’ With this judgment one may wholly concur, save that one might think it even more

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important than these. Yet, his explanation of how this is so fails. In the ensuing lines he writes, ‘‘For it revealed that the space of modern philosophy and culture was paradoxically created by a dubious scholastic theology, which reinvigorated the primitive pagan ontological assumption that ‘capacity’ or ‘power’ rather than ‘desire’ will disclose reality to us.’’ The Suspended Middle, 63. But, to the contrary, the space of modern philosophy and culture have been created by erroneous notions of will in Scotus and ensuing philosophers, and most critically and foundationally by Luis Molina, whose implicit removal of will and human agency from Divine Providence evacuated the scholastic theology of its profound theocentricity, and destroyed natural order as theonomic. To these innovative errors commentators such as Cajetan stood opposed. Radicalizing created will to hot-wire it to the Trinity is hardly the way beyond this impasse, but is understandably inspired by what happens to natural order—including the order of volition—once it is no longer seen as participating by efficient causality the ordering wisdom of God. What is lost to the metaphysical dependence of creature to Creator must then be regained by the triumph of the will—a nature whose theocentricity has been denied must then be dissolved into supernature to regain it. But however tempting such a solution may be, it is not Thomistic, and even more vitally, it is not true. In short, Milbank has identified the wrong ‘‘dubious scholastic theology.’’ The ‘‘pure nature’’ of the possibility that man might have been created ‘‘in puris naturalibus,’’ as Thomas puts it (Quod. I, q. 4, a. 3, resp.), is wholly theocentric and in no way compatible with ‘‘a debased autonomous humanism.’’ A better candidate for meriting this dubious distinction is found in those who separate the will from Divine Providence and their voluntarist progenitors. The metaphysics of the total dependence in being and act of the ens creatum cannot be rejected in part without gradually rejecting the whole teaching of St. Thomas. Regarding Thomas’s affirmation of the proximate natural end as definitive of species and distinct from the supernatural end, see Sth I, q. 75, a. 7, ad 1, and Quaestiones de anima, a. 7, ad 10, the second quoted in detail in note 5 below. 4. For example, see Henri de Lubac, Surnaturel: Etude Historiques (Paris: Aubier, 1946); Augustinisme et the´ologie moderne (Paris: Aubier, 1965), 242–51; and Le Myste`re du surnaturel (Paris: Aubier, 1965), 87–88, 142, 179–89 (noteworthy for its criticism of the Dominican commentator tradition). Along similar lines, note also J. Laporta, La destine´e de la nature humaine selon Thomas d’Aquin (Paris: J. Vrin, 1965). Laporta devotes an appendix to arguing that St. Thomas does not use the language of obediential potency in his account of the supernatural destiny of man (133–46). See also Gilson’s letter to Henri de Lubac, dated June 20, 1965, in which he indicates complete unawareness of the very idea of specific obediential potency, saying of obediential potency that ‘‘strictly speaking, it is applicable only to miracles.’’ Etienne Gilson, Letters of Etienne Gilson to Henri de Lubac (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988), 81.

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5. ‘‘Ad decimum dicendum quod ea quorum unus est finis proximus et naturalis, sunt unum secundum speciem. Beatitudo autem aeterna est finis ultimus et supernaturalis.’’ So much for the claim that the natural end— whence the human species is derived—is one and the same with the supernatural end. Obviously there cannot be at once two ultimate finalities, but God need not have elevated man to the supernatural finis ultimus, but could have ordered man exclusively to his natural end whence the species of human nature is derived (see note 7). In the present order, this natural end is retained while the entire order of nature is causally further ordered in grace to supernatural beatitude. 6. ‘‘Ad secundum dicendum, quod ab ipsa prima institutione natura humana est ordinata in finem beatitudinis, non quasi in finem debitum homini secundum naturam eius, sed ex sola divina liberalitate. Et ideo non oportet quod principia naturae sufficiant ad finem illum consequendum, nisi fuerint adiuta donis superadditis ex divina liberalitate.’’ 7. ‘‘But because it was possible for God to have made man in a state of pure nature, it is useful to consider how far natural love could be extended.’’ (Sed quia possibile fuit Deo ut hominem faceret in puris naturalibus, utile est considerare ad quantum se dilectio naturalis extendere possit.) Note that this refers to the state of nature, while nature is present in any case, and natural order is impressed upon man even when he is further ordered in and by grace from the first moment of his creation—something which de Lubac thought not to be possible. See chapter 4 of The Mystery of the Supernatural, trans. Rosemary Sheed (New York: Herder and Herder, 1967), where de Lubac writes of natural order that ‘‘To convince me that I might really have had this humbler destiny—humbler, but note also less onerous—you need only show it to me, even momentarily, as something really imprinted upon me, in my nature as it is. Most people would agree that this is precisely what is, by hypothesis, impossible.’’ But it is possible: what is impossible in this given order of Providence is for the natural order to be in a state wherein it is not either fallen from grace or elevated within it. But ends proportionate to human nature still are recognizably distinct from ends proportionate only to God. 8. This last point from De malo, q. 5, a. 1, ad 15, is arresting: ‘‘Man endowed with only natural powers would be without the divine vision if he were to die in this state, but nevertheless the debt of not having it would not be applicable to him. For it is one thing not to be bound to have, which does not have the nature of punishment but of defect only, and it is another thing to be bound not to have, which does have the nature of punishment.’’ (Ad decimumquintum dicendum, quod homo in solis naturalibus constitutus careret quidem visione divina, si sic decederet; sed tamen non competeret ei debitum non habendi. Aliud est enim non debere habere, quod non habet rationem poenae, sed defectus tantum; et aliud debere non habere, quod habet rationem poenae.)

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9. ‘‘Dicendum quod angeli indiguerunt gratia ad hoc quod converterentur in Deum, prout est obiectum beatitudinis. Sicut enim superius dictum est, naturalis motus voluntatis est principium omnium eorum quae volumus. Naturalis autem inclinatio voluntatis est ad id quod est conveniens secundum naturam. Et ideo si aliquid sit supra naturam, voluntas in id ferri non potest, nisi ab aliquo alio supernaturali principio adiuta. Sicut patet quod ignis habet naturalem inclinationem ad calefaciendum et ad generandum ignem, sed generare carnem est supra naturalem virtutem ignis, unde ignis ad hoc nullam inclinationem habet, nisi secundum quod movetur ut instrumentum ab anima nutritiva. Ostensum est autem supra, cum de Dei cognitione ageretur, quod videre Deum per essentiam, in quo ultima beatitudo rationalis creaturae consistit, est supra naturam cuiuslibet intellectus creati. Unde nulla creatura rationalis potest habere motum voluntatis ordinatum ad illam beatitudinem, nisi mota a supernaturali agente. Et hoc dicimus auxilium gratiae. Et ideo dicendum est quod angelus in illam beatitudinem voluntate converti non potuit, nisi per auxilium gratiae.’’ Sth I, q. 62, a. 2. 10. See 102–6 (in particular 104) of Natural Desire for Feingold’s helpful early treatment of this article. 11. Of course, elsewhere there is seemingly such argument, for example, Sth I, q. 12, a. 1, or Summa contra gentiles, hereinafter Scg, bk. III, ch. 51, which last argues that ‘‘Since it is impossible that a natural desire be frustrated, which would happen if we could not arrive at the understanding of the divine substance that all minds naturally desire, it is therefore necessary to affirm that it is possible to see the divine substance by way of the intelligence.’’ But apart from all other interpretative issues—which here abound—one must point out that even were this taken in the strongest and most prima facie sense, and as unlimited by other ad extra textual considerations, it would indicate only the possibility of such a vision, and is indeed perfectly compatible with considering the natural desire, as such, both to be a velleity and to be radically disproportionate to the divine essence as such in precision from grace. Such a reading is perfectly in accord with Cajetan’s proposition that this teaching is offered from the vantage point of the theologian: for only through revelation do we know that through the active agency of God the beatific vision is proximately possible for the believer (and one might think this is also true even of the purely abstract possibility or mere ‘‘thinkability’’ of seeing God, again on the grounds that St. Thomas writes in Scg, bk. III, ch. 51, as a theologian—but even if this were not true there would remain an enormously important distinction between proximate possibility and mere abstract possibility). It is of course a further question whether the steep gradient between mere abstract possibility and what is, with divine aid, proximate obediential potency mirrors the distinction between simple logical or conceptual possibility and real possibility. But in any case, only revelation seems to assure the possibility of the divine vision in the second sense of proximate possibility, such that the natural desire becomes unconditional.

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12. See the note at the end of this chapter which further pursues and defends this textual proposition. 13. Those who argue on the force of numerous other speculative assertions of St. Thomas that he cannot have meant what the face value of some propositions may suggest are gently—and sometimes not so gently—mocked by de Lubac, as witness his commentary on Gilson’s letters. In this and other respects the Letters of Etienne Gilson to Henri de Lubac proves a helpful source, as de Lubac’s notes establish that at the end of his career his position, despite varied refinements, had not fundamentally changed. Owing perhaps to overriding issues of perspective, Thomas’s fully theological use of the doctrine of specific obediential potency is never fully engaged by the great churchman. Yet this coincides with a proliferate citation of authors to assert that on this point, as de Lubac quotes Canon Balthasar from the 1928 Criterion 4:473: ‘‘One asks oneself how Cajetan had the nerve to propose his exegesis, and why it was, in point of fact, taken seriously for such a long time’’ (110), or, as he cites Francisco Tolet, that Cajetan’s reading of obediential potency in relation to grace and nature ‘‘destruit testum’’ (103). However, St. Thomas himself directly denies that man’s nature is actually in itself ordered to beatific vision (and surely it should not be averred that natural desire for supernatural beatitude is other than a ‘‘natural ordering’’—natural desire is a sign of natural order). Quoth St. Thomas (Quaestiones disputatae de veritate, q. 14, a. 10, ad 2): ‘‘In the very beginning of creation, human nature was ordained to beatitude, not as to an end proper to man by reason of his nature, but given him solely by divine liberality. Therefore, there is no need for the principles of nature to have sufficient power to achieve that end without the aid of special gifts with which God in his generosity supplements them.’’ (Ad secundum dicendum, quod ab ipsa prima institutione natura humana est ordinata in finem beatitudinis, non quasi in finem debitum homini secundum naturam eius, sed ex sola divina liberalitate. Et ideo non oportet quod principia naturae sufficiant ad finem illum consequendum, nisi fuerint adiuta donis superadditis ex divina liberalitate.) Further, Thomas expressly affirms a natural and proximate end distinct from the supernatural end which distinguishes man from the angel, even though both are called to supernatural beatitude (Quaestiones de anima, a. 7, ad 10): ‘‘Those beings whose proximate and natural end is one and the same are one in species. However, eternal beatitude is a final and supernatural end.’’ (Ad decimum dicendum quod ea quorum unus est finis proximus et naturalis, sunt unum secundum speciem. Beatitudo autem aeterna est finis ultimus et supernaturalis.) This point is of special pertinence for those critics who suppose that only lower, physical beings possess a natural end, for here Thomas is clearly distinguishing any angelic species from the human species by their different natural ends which are distinct from supernatural beatitude. Add to this Thomas’s teaching that man might have been created without any supernatural aid—in short, with nothing but nature and

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the natural order to the natural end (Quaestiones de quolibet, quodlibet I, q. 4, a. 3, resp.: ‘‘it was possible for God to make man with purely natural endowments’’ (Sed quia possibile fuit Deo ut hominem faceret in puris naturalibus, utile est considerare ad quantum se dilectio naturalis extendere possit), and the theological difficulties caused by such speculative omission in the historical insight of the scholars of la nouvelle the´ologie becomes conspicuous. 14. De Lubac notes about Cajetan, citing his earlier work for emphasis, that ‘‘There is no doubt that the ‘commentator’ assigned another orientation to his master’s work.’’ Gilson, Letters, 31 n. 4. See H. de Lubac, Augustinisme et the´ologie moderne. Further, while de Lubac notes his own efforts to soften Gilson’s description of Cajetan’s work as ‘‘corruptorium Thomae,’’ he nonetheless takes great pains to relay several other charges of this sort in the lines that follow, for example, from Soto (whose Scotistic treatment of the will in terms of pondus naturae is famed, but noting that would hardly have dignified Soto’s quoted remark about Cajetan’s account that ‘‘Haec glossa destruit textam, est tortuosa’’). Gilson, Letters, 101 n. 3. In general, the identification of Cajetan as imposing a ‘‘modern’’ reading of St. Thomas’s texts that is somehow distant from its original sense would carry more conviction if the actual texts of St. Thomas that seem to contradict the idea of supernatural beatitude as natural end had been cited and critically engaged. No historical scruples here, however, for is not (as Gilson, for example, tended to express it) a historian always and necessarily the better philosopher? Insofar as a priori this is held necessarily to be so, the commentators—whose emphasis is principally scientific and systematic as was their master’s—come to be instinctually distrusted. Yet Henri de Lubac knew he was arguing for an account, and in this respect—although fully capable of waxing poetic about the superiority of the historical habitus—seems never to have assumed the on-again/off-again pose of superior and dominating indifference to speculative contradiction within theology achieved by Gilson. Granted that the element of mystery must prevail in theology, contradiction is contradiction—something that when Gilson wished to note he would note, and when he did not, he would cast aspersions of ‘‘fanaticism.’’ ‘‘It’s perfectly all right to cling to another system as long as you don’t use your pet theology to oppose Saint Thomas’s. They all do it. And they themselves, no less than certain people who call themselves Thomists, are fanatics, too.’’ Letters, 40. But perhaps such figures, whether Thomist or not, consider certain divergences among teachings to be of greater speculative weight than did Gilson—hardly a ground for the aspersion of fanaticism. A gifted and profound historian and reader of St. Thomas, his own particular combination of habitus could veil from his sight the validity of other combinations of the same. 15. See the Summa contra gentiles III, ch. 25, wherein St. Thomas expressly refers to the natural desire for God as a desire to know the cause of whatever one sees, and to know the cause of any effect including the cause of the effect

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of universal being. Clearly, both these are elicited desires and both formally a function of the natural desire to know causes rather than of a desire whose formal object is supernatural beatitude as such. Further, to desire God as cause of universal being is to desire God under an infinitely lesser denomination than as He is in Himself intrinsically independent of finite being: as though one were to desire to know God as ‘‘First Cause of goldfish.’’ That this natural desire may be elevated within the graced desire for essentially supernatural beatitude does not establish its formal identity with graced desire for God. Further, that contemplation of God is definitive of man’s natural end does not equate with this contemplation of God occurring through free and gratuitous supernatural revelation. There is an intrinsic disproportion between a desire sparked by God’s own direct self-revelation in Christ, and a desire sparked by finite nature to know the Cause of this nature—as there is a formal difference between merely wanting to meet the man in the raincoat, and wanting to meet the same man in the raincoat because he is Einstein and has invited you to discuss physics with him. Materially the object is the same, but the formal specification of the desire is quite different. Clearly, also, the second includes the first, the greater includes the lesser, but not the other way around. 16. It should be added that a similar analysis pertains to the intellect as nature, or in other words to the issue of what the befitting object of the intellect is. For this is the true in general, and perhaps more particularly the truth of quiddity in corporeal matter which is the proper object of the intellect of man as a composite knower, rather than specifically the divine truth. As we have seen, there is a proximate natural end from which the species is derived, and this proximate natural end clearly is not the inner reality of God—the human intellect is not simply and of itself proportionate to the infinitely transcendent God, but to the true in general. 17. Of course, Cajetan did not hold that the hypothetical state of pure nature had ever existed, knowing full well St. Thomas’s teaching that man is created in sanctifying grace. This does not mean that nature never existed, but that it never existed outside an order of Providence in which it was causally further ordered by grace: that is, from the very beginning nature is called to a higher destiny than the natural end whence the species is derived (which does not mean that man ceases to be called to the natural end, but only that it is not the finis ultimus: it is still for St. Thomas a valid and a true end). The Fall of Man is indeed a sign of this further ordering, because man does not rebound to the order of pure nature, but rather nature is wounded: having been causally further ordered, its motion toward the purpose of that ordering cannot be stopped without harm. Of course, it also is true that the idea of defining the doctrine of the Incarnation without the conception of pure nature is impossible: what is it that would be assumed? This is of course too simple an observation for those who paint with broad strokes, but broad strokes often

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fail to depict intricate scenes. It is also inconsistent with the cottage industry of Cajetan-vilification, which devolves from a failure to consider all the pertinent texts in Aquinas, much less to entertain the idea that Cajetan was (as is manifest) a brilliant and subtle reader of St. Thomas: perhaps not always correct, but rather more positively engaged with the doctrine (and the implications of the doctrine) of St. Thomas than suggested by de Lubac in Augustinianism and Modern Theology and elsewhere. 18. I was reminded of the full extent of the following passage from Aquinas (Super Sent., lib. 3, dist. 23, q. 1, a. 4, qc. 3, co.) by Prof. Christopher Malloy of the University of Dallas, concerning which I have also profited from the erudition of Prof. John Boyle, of the University of St. Thomas: ‘‘To the third question it must be said that in all things which act for an end there must be an inclination to the end, a certain ‘inchoation’ of the end, otherwise, they would never do something for an end. But the end towards which the divine generosity has ordained and predestined man, namely, the fruition of himself [of God], is in every way elevated above the faculty of created nature, for ‘neither has the eye seen, nor the ear heard, nor has there arisen in the heart of man what things God has prepared for those who love him’ (1 Cor 2:9). Therefore, by his natural powers alone, man does not have a sufficient inclination to this end, and thus it is necessary that something be superadded to man through which he would have the inclination to that end, as by his natural powers he does have an inclination to the end that is connatural to him. And those things that are superadded are called the theological virtues for three reasons. First, as to the object: For, since that end to which we are ordained is God himself, the inclination that is prerequisite [to this end] consists in an operation that regards God himself. Second, as to the cause: For as that end is ordained for us by God not by our nature, so the inclination to the end is worked in us solely by God; thus it is that these virtues are called theological, as though created in us by God alone. Third, as to knowledge: The inclination to this end is not able to be known by natural reason but rather by divine revelation; therefore, the virtues are called theological since by the divine word they are manifest to us, for the philosophers knew nothing of them.’’ (Ad tertiam quaestionem dicendum, quod in omnibus quae agunt propter finem oportet esse inclinationem ad finem, et quamdam inchoationem finis: alias nunquam operarentur propter finem. Finis autem ad quem divina largitas hominem ordinavit vel praedestinavit, scilicet fruitio sui ipsius, est omnino supra facultatem naturae creatae elevatus: quia nec oculus vidit, nec auris audivit, nec in cor hominis ascendit, quae praeparavit deus diligentibus se, ut dicitur 1 corinth., 2, 9. Unde per naturalia tantum homo non habet sufficienter inclinationem ad illum finem; et ideo oportet quod superaddatur homini aliquid per quod habeat inclinationem in finem illum, sicut per naturalia habet inclinationem in finem sibi connaturalem: et ista superaddita dicuntur virtutes theologicae ex tribus. Primo quantum ad objectum: quia cum finis ad

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quem ordinati sumus, sit ipse deus, inclinatio quae praeexigitur, consistit in operatione quae est circa ipsum deum. Secundo quantum ad causam: quia sicut ille finis est a deo nobis ordinatus non per naturam nostram, ita inclinationem in finem operatur in nobis solus deus: et sic dicuntur virtutes theologicae, quasi a solo deo in nobis creatae. Tertio quantum ad cognitionem, inclinatio in finem non potest per naturalem rationem cognosci, sed per revelationem divinam: et ideo dicuntur theologicae, quia divino sermone sunt nobis manifestatae: unde philosophi nihil de eis cognoverunt.) 19. This is of course one of the most longstanding confusions affecting the entire question of the natural desire for God. Thomas writes of the will as nature, or voluntas ut natura, that ‘‘each power desires by the natural appetite that object which is suitable to itself ’’ (Unde unaquaeque appetit obiectum sibi conveniens naturali appetitu). This is distinguished from animal appetite and likened to ‘‘sight for seeing or sound for hearing’’ (utpote visio ad videndum et auditio ad audiendum). Sth I, q. 80, a. 1, ad 3. But what is suitable to the will by its nature in this sense is intelligible good in general. It must be noted that what the nature is ordered toward and suitable for simply by its nature is that from which Thomas maintains the creature derives its species. But in this sense human nature is not defined by its capacity to be uplifted by God’s grace to supernatural beatific vision—which is shared also by the innumerable species of angels—but by what St. Thomas calls the proximate and natural end, the end that might have been the end simpliciter had God created man in a state of pure nature and not gratuitously ordered man to the beatific vision. To say that by nature the human will directly aspires to the hidden life of God is to define it as the divine will alone may be defined. All creation is ordered to God as End, but through the medium of the proportionate natural end for each creature, which is nothing other than a mode of being like unto God. In the human case, of course, this is constituted by the most exalted contemplation of God within the ambit of natural capacity. But, as Thomas points out, the beatific vision exceeds every purely natural capacity whether of man or angel (Scg III, ch. 52), exceeding all natural capacity to know. Since the desire for God is specified by natural knowledge of God (for the will is—Quaestiones de quolibet, quodlibet VI, q. 2, a. 2—nothing other than inclinatio sequens formam intellectam), it follows that natural desire for God does not truly know what it desires, whereas graced desire (even while man yet is remote from the beatific vision) is rooted in the reality of God itself (and hence one can know more of God by grace than by nature, even in this life). One notes the words of Jacques Maritain: ‘‘But this desire to know the First Cause through its essence is a desire which does not know what it asks, like the sons of Zebedee when they asked to sit on the right and on the left of the Son of Man. ‘Ye know not what ye ask,’ Jesus replied to them. For to know the First Cause in its essence, or without the intermediary of any other thing, is to know the First Cause otherwise than as First Cause; it is to know it by

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ceasing to attain it by the very means by which we attain it, by ceasing to exercise the very act which bears us up to it.’’ Approaches to God, trans. Peter O’Reilly (New York: Harper, 1954), 109–10. See also: ‘‘It is necessary that there be in man an ‘obediential potency’ which, answering to the divine omnipotence, renders him apt to receive a life which surpasses infinitely the capacities of his nature.’’ Approaches, 112. This ‘‘neo’’-Thomist earned the adverse adjective by conforming to the actual teaching of St. Thomas—a paradox he savored. 20. Some authors have supposed that, had God created man in a state of pure nature, that the separated soul would have enjoyed a knowledge of the universe both comprehensive in itself and reflective of all that can be known through the universe of God as in a mirror, by way of divinely infused species. But St. Thomas is silent about such reflections inasmuch as his focus is upon the actual providential synthesis—wherein grace moves us to the infinitely higher goal of personal union with God transcending all created species— rather than upon the mere hypothesis of pure nature. 21. Within this zone of the purely natural, the natural desire to know God as Cause of finite being, as this knowledge principally defines purely natural felicity, is to be distinguished from the natural quasi-velleity to know God as He would be known through Himself were this to be attainable. For the former is proportionate to nature and naturally attainable, whereas that which the latter confusedly seeks is disproportionate to any finite nature and attainable only insofar as God elevates us to a share in divine life: it knows not what it asks, and naturally speaking amounts simply to a desire for more and higher knowledge were this possible (while yet still being conceived on the pattern of a knowing infinitely lesser than that of beatific vision). The status of this confused, conditional, elicited desire clearly changes when elevated in grace and ordered to the supernatural beatific vision, which revelation instructs us to be proximately attainable with divine aid. 22. For the map of this convergence, as of the differences among these commentators, we now have no better compendium than Dr. Feingold’s book. Whereas he stresses the central and formative contributions to the tradition of Sylvester of Ferrara, and of Sua´rez, the emphasis above, stressing Cajetan’s contribution, is my own. While there are other readings of Cajetan, it seems to me that the one that most keeps the intelligible sense of his account is that which I suggest above. 23. See Scg III, 17, whose title is ‘‘That All Things Are Directed to One End, Which Is God.’’ One notes that this reasoning is based upon the order of agents toward God as the Supreme and Common Good of the universe, and naturally pertains to ‘‘all things’’ for ‘‘there can be nothing that has not its being from Him’’ (Omnia autem entia sunt huiusmodi: nam, sicut in secundo probatur, nihil esse potest quod ab ipso non habeat esse. Omnia igitur ordinantur in Deum sicut in finem).

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24. Quaestiones de anima, a. 7, ad 10. 25. See Fr. Brian Shanley’s, ‘‘Pagan Virtue,’’ Thomist 63, (1999): 553–77, particularly 555. 26. Again, see Quaestiones de anima, a. 7, ad 10, quoted in full in note 5 above, or Sth I, q. 75, a. 7, ad 1, with respect to human nature being defined by the proximate and natural end as distinct from the supernatural end. Human nature is not defined by a nonexistent natural end, albeit the natural end is not, from the very creation of man in grace, man’s final end. 27. ‘‘Now the first thing that occurs to a man to think about then, is to deliberate about himself. And if he then direct himself to the due end, he will, by means of grace, receive the remission of original sin: whereas if he does not then direct himself to the due end, and as far as he is capable of discretion at that particular age, he will sin mortally, through not doing that which is in his power to do.’’ Sth I-II, q. 89, a. 6. 28. Note the teaching of Scotus on this matter, arguing that if grace were to elevate the human intellect beyond its natural capacity, this would mutate the intellect, whereas in his view an accidental quality can perfect the capacity of an already existing power but not change its nature. Ordinatio I [Vatican ed.], distinction 3, 113–14; III, 70–71. Thomas by contrast holds that the divine elevation and emendation of the ontological limits of the human intellect via the lumen gloriae does indeed transcend the natural use of the intellect, rendering it capable of an intrinsically supernatural act while not altering or annulling its nature. That is, nature is elevated to a supernatural capacity by a supernatural grace. Scg, bk. III, chs. 53–54. 29. Henri de Lubac, Augustinianism and Modern Theology, trans. Lancelot Sheppard (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969), at the close of the first chapter regarding Baius, p. 33. 30. ‘‘Amplius. Unumquodque ordinatur in finem sibi convenientem secundum rationem suae formae: diversarum enim specierum diversi sunt fines. Sed finis in quem homo dirigitur per auxilium divinae gratiae, est supra naturam humanam. Ergo oportet quod homini superaddatur aliqua supernaturalis forma et perfectio, per quam convenienter ordinetur in finem praedictum. ‘‘Item. Oportet quod homo ad ultimum finem per proprias operationes perveniat. Unumquodque autem operatur secundum propriam formam. Oportet igitur, ad hoc quod homo perducatur in ultimum finem per proprias operationes, quod superaddatur ei aliqua forma, ex qua eius operationes efficaciam aliquam accipiant promerendi ultimum finem.’’ Scg III, ch. 150, nn. 5 and 6. 31. Note, again, Quaestiones de anima, a. 7, ad 10; and Sth I, q. 62, a. 2. 32. Indeed, this may be widened to include understanding of the whole ontology of nature, and of the distinct discipline of metaphysics. Hence, one finds many authors today advancing the old, and radically erroneous, view according to which there are strictly speaking no ‘‘demonstrations’’ of the

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existence of God. This unfortunate inversion of Thomas’s teaching—in truth a hoary old misreading and stock answer perpetually recycled by fideist authors—is unfortunately resuscitated in the work of John Milbank and Catherine Pickstock: ‘‘ ‘Demonstrations’ of God’s existence can only be meant to offer weakly probable modes of argument and very attenuated ‘showings.’ ’’ Truth in Aquinas (London: Routledge, 2001), 28. One may agree that the ‘‘showing’’ is attenuated (one does not demonstrate the existence of God in the manner that one demonstrates one’s battle scar) without implying that the demonstration is only ‘‘weakly probable’’—an expression contrary to Thomas’s teaching regarding the nature of demonstration. Of course, Thomas holds not only that the truth of the proposition that God is is demonstrable: he also holds that the truth of creation is demonstrable: ‘‘I answer that not only does faith hold that there is creation but reason also demonstrates it.’’ Scriptum on the Sentences, II, dist. 1, q. 1, a. 2. The present author has heard it said more than once by theologians that natural theology ‘‘makes atheism possible’’—as though, if only we pretend that the existence of God is selfevident to everyone, we can avoid the need to contemplate the evidence of creation’s dependence upon its transfinite Cause. One supposes in the same way that the principle of non-contradiction makes falsity possible—but one trusts that the fact that truth may be contradicted hardly constitutes sufficient reason for abandoning truth. The degree of unaffected innocence of the knowledge of natural ontology and metaphysics among contemporary theologians is perhaps rivaled only by the singular remotion of many contemporary analytic philosophers from the theoretic canon of two millennia of Catholic philosophy for the sake of the theoretic canon of the past seventy-five years. Interesting years, it is true: but perhaps not quite that interesting? In any case, it is within such circumstances that fideist and rationalist impulses may begin to run amuck. 33. It must be noted that de Lubac’s orthodoxy, profound love for the Church, and desire to resolve the impasse suggested by the horizon defining his vision all make his treatment of this issue a more favorable place to confront the distortion of the understanding of the relation of nature to grace than that of others. For example, one thinks of authors such as Karl Rahner, whose conclusion is in this respect nonetheless quite close to de Lubac’s in excoriating the antecedent consensus (as he once put it, the purpose of his work was to make ‘‘scholasticism’’ impossible in the future). But for Rahner, this requires the invention of an overly generic and unclear conception of a ‘‘supernatural existential’’ to replace the intelligible principles of nature and grace, whereas de Lubac aims to retain these principles as properly foundational, although seemingly likewise adding what might be construed as a third element of ‘‘paradoxical’’ ordering toward properly supernatural beatitude prior to grace. 34. Gilson, Letters, 102 n. 3 (carried on from 101). An interesting conjunction, which should have served as a warning: How could all the interpreters

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of St. Thomas on this point be completely in error? Of course, such is not impossible. But it is not a likely supposition, nor is it reasonable to discard generations of theological and philosophic work on the force of such a supposition. Both Thomists and Sua´rezians read the Angelic Doctor as holding for obediential potency as pertaining to the relation of nature to grace. Their inhouse disputation about the sense of ‘‘obediential potency’’ cannot obscure the datum that, at bottom, each views it as a passive potency of a very particular sort, the sort involving a specific range of actuation to which a nature is amenable solely through the active agency of an extrinsic cause. Today, many persons who have read neither Thomas, nor Thomistic commentators, nor Sua´rez, nor Sua´rezians, are equally convinced that all are incorrect on this point, and also are convinced that the scholastics were ahistorical. But sed contra: it seems that they were correct, and that however ahistorical their work, at least they did not judge authors without first reading them. 35. Henri de Lubac, The Mystery of the Supernatural, trans. Rosemary Sheed (New York: Herder and Herder, 1967), 48–49. The concern with naturalism is alike manifest in Augustinianism and Modern Theology, 292. Speaking of those critical of the idea of a purely natural desire for intrinsically supernatural beatitude, he asserts: ‘‘Actually, without realizing it, they were losing valuable ground, in some degree yielding to the prevalent naturalism and making the most dangerous concessions to a world entirely unconcerned about its higher destiny.’’ 36. One directs the attention once more to Quaestiones de anima, a. 7, ad 10, which is of course duplicated in Sth I, q. 75, a. 7, ad 1, and elsewhere. Bluntly: there is precisely no doubt in Thomas’s text that what defines human nature is precisely the natural end as distinct from the supernaturally beatific end. Recollect the text from De anima: ‘‘Those beings whose proximate and natural end is one and the same are one in species. However, eternal beatitude is a final and supernatural end.’’ This—absolutely in itself—would be sufficient to destroy the thesis of Surnaturel and Augustinianism and Modern Theology with respect to the actual teaching of Aquinas. It is also enough to indicate that Cajetan did not invent this teaching. Yet in fairness, the animating quest was perhaps less to engage St. Thomas’s teaching than to achieve a symbiosis of certain aspects of the teaching of the Angelic Doctor—perhaps ‘‘corrected’’ of certain of its actual traits—with nonscientific conceptions of theology. This suggests a parallel between de Lubac and Heidegger. As Heidegger identifies the font of metaphysics and ontology as scientia in the work of Aristotle, and accuses this Aristotelian understanding of science with being the origin of the positivist and reductionist spirit regarding being, so de Lubac seems to consider the ideal of scientia assimilated by St. Thomas to theological purpose, as naturalist and intrinsically prone to rationalist desiccation and the flight from mystery. Of course, de Lubac separates out from Thomas’s work elements that he prefers, a speculative reconstruction that loses what Thomas says about

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nature and natural end. Yet one may argue that genuine mystery does not entail the evisceration of the natural, and that obediential potency does not, for Thomas, reduce to its most generic meaning of mere susceptibility to miracle. If Thomas’s teaching offers a hermeneutical principle for the reading of the Fathers, this suggests the presence in his work of a supervening excellence. Ironically, the genius of de Lubac—his profound gift for appreciating the Fathers in their own terms—may partially account for his misdoubts regarding basic elements of St. Thomas’s stress on theology as science. 37. It should not be forgotten that the position of Henri de Lubac bears some comparison to that of Scotus insofar as the capacity for beatific vision is a natural capacity aided by grace, as opposed to being what it is for Aquinas: a strictly supernatural capacity that requires the supernatural strengthening of the lumen gloriae to render the human creature even capable of receiving the supernatural vision of God. Hence, it transpires that, while the concern is avoiding Aristotelian ‘‘naturalism,’’ this concern seems likely to give way precisely to a species of naturalism that Aquinas directly and unwaveringly opposed through his texts and for all his life: that naturalism which would claim that there is a strictly natural desire and natural capacity for supernatural beatific vision requiring merely extrinsic supernatural aid for its accomplishment. This is opposed to the insight that the desire and capacity for supernatural beatific vision is as such itself an effect of supernatural grace. 38. Gilson, Letters, 81–82. 39. De Lubac, Mystery, 184–85. 40. Gilson, Letters, 110–11 n. 10. 41. ‘‘Ad decimumtertium dicendum, quod quando aliquod passivum natum est consequi diversas perfectiones a diversis agentibus ordinatis, secundum differentiam et ordinem potentiarum activarum in agentibus, est differentia et ordo potentiarum passivarum in passivo; quia potentiae passivae respondet potentia activa: sicut patet quod aqua vel terra habet aliquam potentiam secundum quam nata est moveri ab igne; et aliam secundum quam nata est moveri a corpore caelesti; et ulterius aliam secundum quam nata est moveri a Deo. Sicut enim ex aqua vel terra potest aliquid fieri virtute corporis caelestis, quod non potest fieri virtute ignis; ita ex eis potest aliquid fieri virtute supernaturalis agentis quod non potest fieri virtute alicuius naturalis agentis; et secundum hoc dicimus, quod in tota creatura est quaedam obedientialis potentia, prout tota creatura obedit Deo ad suscipiendum in se quidquid Deus voluerit.’’ De virtutibus, q. 1, a. 10, ad 13. 42. ‘‘On the Possibility of a Purely Natural End for Man,’’ Thomist 64 (2000): 236. 43. De veritate, q. 14, a. 2. 44. Perhaps there is some way in which the nature of a rock can be distinctively aided by God to radiate glory—but it surely cannot achieve knowledge without an intellective power, nor love in a proper spiritual sense without the rational power of will.

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45. ‘‘A double capability may be remarked in human nature: one, in respect of the order of natural power, and this is always fulfilled by God, Who apportions to each according to its natural capability; the other in respect to the order of the Divine power, which all creatures implicitly obey; and the capability we speak of pertains to this. But God does not fulfill all such capabilities, otherwise God could do only what He has done in creatures, and this is false, as stated above (I, q. 105, a. 6). But there is no reason why human nature should not have been raised to something greater after sin. For God allows evils to happen in order to bring a greater good therefrom; hence it is written (Rm 5:20): ‘Where sin abounded, grace did more abound.’ Hence, too, in the blessing of the Paschal candle, we say: ‘O happy fault, that merited such and so great a Redeemer!’ ’’ Sth III, q. 1, a. 3, ad 3. While the specific phrase ‘‘obediential potency’’ is not used here, clearly the general idea is congruent with that articulated in De virtutibus (see note 41 above), which undeniably expresses the conception of specific obediential potency. The idea is that of a potency in relation to the divine power ‘‘which all creatures implicitly obey’’—what is this, but obediential potency? 46. ‘‘Et hoc quidem quantum ad scientiam patet ex his que supra dicta sunt: sic enim se habet diuina scientia ad futura contingentia sicut se habet oculus noster ad contingentia quae in presenti sunt, ut dictum est; unde sicut certissime uidemus Sortem sedere dum sedet, nec tamen propter hoc sit simpliciter necessarium, ita etiam ex hoc quod Deus uidet omnia que eueniunt in se ipsis, non tollitur contingentia rerum. Ex parte autem uoluntatis considerandum est quod uoluntas diuina est uniuersaliter causa entis et uniuersaliter omnium quae consequuntur ⬍ipsum⬎, unde et necessitatis et contingentie; ipsa autem est supra ordinem necessarii et contingentis sicut est supra totum esse creatum. Et ideo necessitas et contingentia in rebus distinguitur non per habitudinem ad uoluntatem diuinam quae est causa communis, sed per comparationem ad causas creatas, quas proportionaliter diuina uoluntas ad effectus ordinauit, ut scilicet necessariorum effectuum sint causae intransmutabiles, contingentium autem transmutabiles.’’ De malo, q. 16, a. 7, ad 15 (Leonine ed.). 47. ‘‘Dicendum quod in hoc quod dicitur Deum hominem sibi reliquisse, non excluditur homo a divina providentia; sed ostenditur quod non praefigitur ei virtus operativa determinata ad unum, sicut rebus naturalibus; quae aguntur tantum, quasi ab altero directae in finem, non autem seipsa agunt, quasi se dirigentia in finem, ut creaturae rationales per liberum arbitrium, quo consiliantur et eligunt. Unde signanter dicit: ‘In manu consilii sui.’ Sed quia ipse actus liberi arbitrii reducitur in Deum sicut in causam, necesse est ut ea quae ex libero arbitrio fiunt, divinae providentiae subdantur; providentia enim hominis continetur sub providentia Dei, sicut causa particularis sub causa universali.’’ Sth I, q. 22, a. 2, ad 4 (Ottawa ed.). 48. ‘‘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

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libertati quod Deus est causa actus liberi arbitrii.’’ De malo, q. 3, a. 2, ad 4 (Leonine ed.). 49. St. Thomas teaches that the object of the will as a rational appetite is the universal good, the good in general. Since every finite good is a limited good, no finite good is universally good or good in every respect (were it so, it would not be a finite or limited good). It follows that no finite good may coerce the will. Even at the very moment of choice, the intellect presents the finite good to the will as finite, as limited and hence not universally good—as, in some respect, really not good, even if it be not the respect pertinent to our moral fulfillment. Thus, even at the moment of choice, the rational will retains a dominating indifference with respect to any finite good. See Sth I, q. 82, a. 2, ad 2. 50. Concordia, q. 14, a. 13, disp. II. 51. See Sth I, q. 22, a. 2. 52. In the twentieth century, one thinks of the extensive criticism offered by Norbert del Prado, De Gratia et Libero Arbitrio, 3 vols. (Friburgi Helvetiorum: Ex Typis Consociationis Sancti Pauli, 1907) and Reginald GarrigouLagrange, God: His Existence and His Nature, 2 vols., trans. Dom Bede Rose (St. Louis: Herder, 1934). 53. The idea that the separation of freedom from providential government could be accepted without its implications being harvested has proven deficient. Granted that the idea of the directive authority of natural law is chiefly cognitive, still for such directive authority to be even potentially effective it is a necessary condition that the finite agent be susceptible of direction. But if the finite agent’s will is not only independent vis-a`-vis all merely terrestrial causality but stands outside of divine causality as well, then it follows that the finite agent’s willing is a se and so not susceptible to governance by any extrinsic agent. Thus we end with the temper tantrum construed as a metaphysical principle, with an incapacity on the part of the modern and post-modern to receive directive governance in the moral, social, and political orders, and with a fixed strategic resistance of governance with respect to the supernatural life itself. This shows itself not merely in antinomian glosses on natural law (for example, one notes Bernard Ha¨ring and Josef Fuchs) but in the supposition that the Church must, herself, accommodate the absolute requisites of ecclesial communion to the a priori supremacy of pluralism and autonomy: an insistence in reason impossible yet socially widespread and hardly unknown even within the Church. 54. It is also possibly pertinent that Molina strongly influenced the thought of many of his brethren within the Society of Jesus, which historically has been associated with some measure of support for the Molinist account. It may not be wholly accidental that the effort to reinstate the theonomic character of nature by supernaturalizing the natural telos should derive from a gifted and creative theologian formed within this order and sensitive to the onset of naturalism.

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55. Of course, de Lubac would have denied that the natural desire for God—which he took to be a desire for supernatural beatitude—had any psychological corollary whatsoever. Nonetheless, if to aspire is to seek to attain a goal, then quite literally de Lubac’s position must countenance that the voluntas ut natura aspires to supernatural beatitude, whether this has a psychological correlate or not. It is this position itself which, the Thomist will discern, defines the created nature as deific by skipping over the proximate and natural end altogether. Of course, there is also the question whether it makes sense that so profound a metaphysical orientation as de Lubac claimed for the will can be intelligible in the absence of any psychological correlate—especially inasmuch as movement of the will is depicted as follows by St. Thomas: ‘‘motus voluntatis est inclinatio sequens formam intellectam.’’ Quaestiones de quolibet, quodlibet VI, q. 2, a. 2. That is, it is impossible that there be any natural volition that is not first specified by intellect, and this natural specification is necessarily infinitely less than that which specifies the intellect in beatific vision. It follows that all natural willing is only distributively rather than simultaneously universal, and that likewise all natural willing is specified by created realities. God ineluctably is then to be known and desired as ‘‘Cause of finite effects’’; and, while for St. Thomas ‘‘each power desires by the natural appetite that object which is suitable to itself,’’ what is suitable to the will is the intelligible good in general. Sth I, q. 80, a. 1, ad 3. The universal good is the aspect under which the will desires whatever it seeks, but it is no more to be identified with the universal subsistent Good in God than the befitting adequate object of the intellect as universal being is to be confused with the being of God: as though the metaphysician seeking to study being qua being were, by that fact and in precision from grace, naturally seeking the beatific vision. 56. Once again, one notes texts such as Quaestiones de anima, a. 7, ad 10, and Sth I, q. 75, a. 7, ad 1, remembering such texts of de Lubac, for example, as the fourth chapter of The Mystery of the Supernatural (see note 7 above). 57. ‘‘Respondeo dicendum quod a Deo duplex bonum accipere possumus, scilicet bonum naturae, et bonum gratiae. Super communicatione autem bonorum naturalium nobis a Deo facta fundatur amor naturalis, quo non solum homo in suae integritate naturae super omnia diligit Deum et plus quam seipsum, sed etiam quaelibet creatura suo modo, idest vel intellectuali vel rationali vel animali, vel saltem naturali amore, sicut lapides et alia quae cognitione carent, quia unaquaeque pars naturaliter plus amat commune bonum totius quam particulare bonum proprium. Quod manifestatur ex opere, quaelibet enim pars habet inclinationem principalem ad actionem communem utilitati totius. Apparet etiam hoc in politicis virtutibus, secundum quas cives pro bono communi et dispendia propriarum rerum et personarum interdum sustinent. Unde multo magis hoc verificatur in amicitia caritatis, quae fundatur super communicatione donorum gratiae.’’ Sth II–II, q. 26, a. 3.

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58. ‘‘Quia igitur bonum universale est ipse Deus, et sub hoc bono continetur etiam Angelus et homo et omnis creatura, quia omnis creatura naturaliter, secundum id quod est, Dei est; sequitur quod naturali dilectione etiam Angelus et homo plus et principalius diligat Deum quam seipsum. Alioquin, si naturaliter plus seipsum diligeret quam Deum, sequeretur quod naturalis dilectio esset perversa; et quod non perficeretur per caritatem, sed destrueretur.’’ Sth I, q. 60, a. 5. 59. ‘‘Et ideo dicendum est quod homo in statu naturae integrae non indigebat dono gratiae superadditae naturalibus bonis ad diligendum Deum naturaliter super omnia; licet indigeret auxilio Dei ad hoc eum moventis. Sed in statu naturae corruptae indiget homo etiam ad hoc auxilio gratiae naturam sanantis.’’ Sth I–II, q. 109, a. 3. 60. ‘‘Ad primum ergo dicendum, quod diligere Deum prout est principium totius esse, ad naturalem dilectionem pertinet; sed diligere Deum prout est obiectum beatitudinis, est gratuitae dilectionis, in qua meritum consistit.’’ Quod. I, q. 4, a. 3, ad 1. 61. One notes the work of Dr. David Schindler, who has at least on occasion suggested that nature is objectively undefinable apart from grace. This is rather a different proposition than to say that medicinal grace is needed— owing to the Fall—in order to attain the proximate natural end that is indeed naturally knowable, or even than the proposition that medicinal grace may be needed by some to cognize that which is nonetheless objectively defined in precision from grace. See ‘‘Christology, Public Theology, and Thomism: De Lubac, Balthasar, and Murray,’’ in The Future of Thomism, ed. Deal W. Hudson and Dennis W. Moran (Notre Dame, IN: American Maritain Association, 1992), 253–54 n. 9. Yet one also notes this author’s arguments stressing the metaphysical principle of form with respect to the dangers of reductionism in genetic engineering, in which he strongly affirms the proportionate natural principles without that objective reference to revelation that one would think necessary were it true that nature is indefinable apart from grace. See his ‘‘A Response to the Joint Statement ‘Production of Pluripotent Stem Cells by Oocyte Assisted Reprogramming,’ ’’ Communio 32 (2005). With respect to the radicalization of de Lubac’s position, one also thinks of theologians in the East. For example, see the work of John D. Zizioulas, whose bibliography includes two books and some sixty articles published in a variety of languages. His main publication, L’Eˆtre eccle´sial (Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1981), is a collection of six previously published articles; the English edition, Being as Communion (London: Darton, Longmann and Todd, 1985), is somewhat modified to include later materials. Dr. Zizioulas now serves as an Orthodox bishop. In his theology, being and history outside of Christ are so unintelligible that philosophy as a purely rational investigation seems capable of holding little of worth for the Christian believer. Paul McPartlan wrote a thesis, The Eucharist Makes the Church: Henri de Lubac and John Zizioulas in Dialogue (Edinburgh:

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T&T Clark, 1993), comparing Zizioulas’s theology of the Church with that of Henri de Lubac, noting a certain degree of convergence. Zizioulas argues that Latin theology, as manifest in the teaching of popes, councils, and bishops, fails to appreciate the radically relational and existential character of creation renewed in Christ, causing consequent deformations with respect to participation in the Eucharist and understanding of the mystery of the Church. The similarity of such reasoning with the radical view that the creature is a subsistent relation—something properly predicable of the Divine Persons of the Trinity alone, but that certain eminent scholars assert with respect to the created human person—is doctrinally remarkable. See, for example, the work of W. Norris Clarke, Person and Being (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1993), as alike his essay ‘‘Person, Being, and St. Thomas’’ in Communio 19 (1992), and Kenneth Schmitz, ‘‘The First Principle of Personal Becoming,’’ Review of Metaphysics 47 (1994), together with my criticism—Steven Long, ‘‘Personal Receptivity and Act: A Thomistic Critique,’’ Thomist 61 (1997)—and his answer ‘‘Created Receptivity,’’ 339–72, published with my brief ‘‘Reply,’’ 373–76, alongside in The Thomist 61 (1997). 62. One notes the following illustrative lines about this, which also track Aquinas’s more forthright definitions of the speculative and practical elsewhere—but the formulation here is arresting: ‘‘But the knowledge that an artist has about something that can be made is of two kinds: speculative and practical. He has speculative or theoretical knowledge when he knows the intimate nature of a work but does not have the intention of applying the principles to the production of the work. His knowledge is practical, properly speaking, when by his intention he ordains the principles of the work to operation as an end. In this way, as Avicenna says, medicine is divided into theoretical and practical. It is clear that the practical knowledge of an artist follows his speculative knowledge, since it is made practical by applying the speculative to a work. But when the practical is absent, the speculative remains’’ (emphasis added). De veritate, q. 2, a. 8. 63. See note 62 above. 64. Nicholas Healy, in his ‘‘Henri de Lubac on Nature and Grace’’ (Communio, Winter 2008, 599–612) criticizes my claim that de Lubac viewed with ‘‘exclusory eye’’ the texts which above I have argued de Lubac either failed to engage or treated in a context alien to Thomas’s teaching. For example, Healy claims that de Lubac considered Summa theologiae I q, 62, art. 2, resp. ‘‘at length’’ in The Mystery of the Supernatural. Yet in that book de Lubac quoted merely one single line from the article in question, and that precisely not from the first part of the article that poses problems for de Lubac’s thesis. The Mystery of the Supernatural, trans. Rosemary Sheed (New York: Herder and Herder, 1967), 113, text and note 47. The fact that de Lubac quoted texts from two other articles perhaps misled Healy into supposing that 62.2 was quoted at length. In that article, St. Thomas argues that, because the natural movement

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of the will is the principle of all the things that we naturally will, it is impossible for the will to have any inclination whatsoever toward anything above nature unless helped by a supernatural principle. Manifestly, since for St. Thomas desire is an inclination, this establishes that it is impossible that there be a natural desire for essentially supernatural beatific vision on the ground that any inclination whatsoever to what is above nature requires grace. The natural desire to see God—a desire for God as ‘‘Cause of these effects’’ to sum up Thomas’s words in Sth I, q. 12, art. 1, resp.—is not simply identical with the graced desire for the Triune God as supernatural beatitude, inasmuch as it is specified by created effects. And to be ‘‘cause of creatures’’ is wholly inessential to God, who is infinitely more and other than merely ‘‘cause of creatures’’ and whose blessedness absolutely transcends all creatures. Nor can what is essentially proper to the voluntas ut natura—the will as nature—plausibly be held to consist in the beatific vision, for that vision is proportionate to no finite nature whatsoever, and the will by its nature is ordered to the good in general, universal good: it is not a naturally deific faculty, although it is susceptible to divine aid and elevation whereby it may be made capable of the beatific vision. Those interested in further consideration of these themes might consult my essays ‘‘Obediential Potency, Human Knowledge, and the Natural Desire for God,’’ International Philosophic Quarterly, March 1997, 37(1), 45– 63, and ‘‘On the Possibility of a Purely Natural End for Man: A Response to Denis Bradley,’’ The Thomist, April, 2000, 64(2), 21–237. Sth I, q. 75, art. 7, ad 1 and the cognate Quaestiones de anima, art. 7, ad 10 constitute two crucial texts that de Lubac appears never to have taken up. These texts affirm that man as such receives his species in relation to the proximate natural end and not—even in the regime of grace—from supernatural beatitude. That man qua man receives his species—is defined by—a purely natural end rather than by supernatural beatitude is not a view with which the thought of de Lubac is associated, and it is difficult to imagine that he would have found agreement with this teaching of Aquinas easy had he known of it. But nowhere in Surnaturel, Augustinianism in Modern Theology, or The Mystery of the Supernatural will one find him grappling with these teachings, of which he seemingly was unaware to the extent that he implicitly suggests them to be of Sua´rezian origin. For example, see ‘‘Duplex hominis beatitudo’’ (Communio, Winter 2008; 600, translated and published by permission of Recherches de science religieuse), wherein de Lubac declares it to be a ‘‘novel’’ doctrine introduced by Sua´rez that there is ‘‘a natural beatitude that man would have been able to attain had he been created without being ordered to a supernatural end (sine ordinatione ad finem supernaturalem).’’ Yet, since Sth I, q. 75, art. 7, ad 1 and Quaestiones de anima, art.7, ad 10 teach that the human species is derived from the proximate natural end rather than from supernatural beatitude; and since Thomas expressly teaches that God could have created man without grace and so without the gift of supernatural beatitude (Quod. I, q. 4, a. 3, resp.); and since ‘‘man’’ so created would indeed

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persist in species (this is what it means to say that ‘‘man’’ could be created without grace); it follows from all this that, in that case, the proportionate natural end whence the species is derived would have been man’s sole end. It is odd to call a deductive inference from two sets of propositions taught by Aquinas a novelty of Sua´rezian origination. Professor Healy seems to suggest (‘‘Henri de Lubac on Nature and Grace,’’ 558) that de Lubac would have had no trouble with affirmation of the teaching of Sth I, q. 75, art. 7, ad 1. But had de Lubac affirmed it, he would have been subject, by deductive logic, to Cajetan’s position. This renders Healy’s position closer to that of Cajetan than of de Lubac, and it is not unreasonable to celebrate the existence of this position through suggesting the befitting but syllabically challenging terminology of ‘‘neo-de Lubacian’’—or perhaps even ‘‘neo-Cajetanian’’—theology. Healy’s own articulated substantive view of the truth of this matter— affirming the proportionate natural end (as distinguished from his understanding of de Lubac’s teaching), appears to the present author to be a genuinely positive one. But that de Lubac would concur with Sth I q. 75 art. 7 ad 1 or Quaestiones de anima art. 7 ad 10, given his failure to engage these texts, their implications for his thesis, and his view that the propositions that they imply are Sua´rezian novelties, seems unfounded. Likewise, de Lubac did not squarely confront the reasoning of De malo q. 5, a. 1, ad 15. Although he did at least indicate knowledge of it in Surnaturel: Etudes historiques, ed. Michael Sales (Desclee de Brouwer: 1991), 456 (‘‘cette privation n’eut pas reveˆtu le caracte`re d’une peine’’—a point that comes singularly from the ad 15), he did not sufficiently consider its significance in terms of the natural desire, designating the teaching merely as a ‘‘paradox’’ that ‘‘poses a problem, and that this problem is not resolved in explicit terms anywhere in the work of Saint Thomas,’’ a problem resulting from a ‘‘new philosophical framework’’ that is ‘‘poorly adapted’’ (mal adapte´) to the Christian doctrinal tradition. ‘‘Ce qu’il y a, c’est le paradoxe meˆme de la nature humaine (ou plutoˆt de l’esprit cre´e´), paradoxe que saint Thomas n’a point invente´, mais dont il a conserve et transmis l’he´ritage,—quoique dans un cadre philosophique en partie nouveau, qui, lui e´tant mal adapte´, lui donne parfois des allures de contradiction. Disons au moins que la doctrine de cet article, confronte´e avec la doctrine thomiste de la be´atitude, pose un proble`me, et que ce proble`me n’est re´solu nulle part en termes expre`s dans l’oeuvre de saint Thomas.’’ Further, ‘‘peine’’ or sorrow (pain, torment) is a dubious rendering of poenae or punishment/penalty, and this—together with de Lubac’s failure to consider St. Thomas’s account of punishment—markedly weakens his interpretation of this passage. The non-consideration of Thomas’s definition of penalty alone suffices to indicate the non-extensive character of de Lubac’s treatment. De malo q. 5, art. 1, ad 15 teaches that, had man been created in puris naturalibus and then died bereft of the beatific vision, this lack of the vision would not be a punishment. For Thomas, a punishment,

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when it is just, proceeds from fault and is constituted by a deprivation of the natural good of the one punished, contrary to that person’s will, and engenders suffering. Clearly, if there were a strong and unconditional natural desire for supernatural beatitude as opposed to a conditional desire to know God under the disproportionate ratio of ‘‘Cause of created effects,’’ then its deprivation would be a punishment, and its deprivation prior to fault would be an unjust punishment. Yet Thomas says it would not constitute a punishment. This is not merely because it would not proceed from fault, but because man apart from grace has no unconditional natural desire for supernatural beatitude which is not man’s natural end, a point made all the stronger in Thomas’s words in De malo q. 5, art. 3, resp. regarding the limbo puerorum: ‘‘Now it pertains to natural knowledge that the soul knows it was created for happiness and that happiness consists in the attainment of the perfect good. But that that perfect good for which man was made is that glory which the saints possess is beyond natural knowledge.’’ (Pertinet autem ad naturalem cognitionem quod anima sciat se propter beatitudinem creatam, et quod beatitudo consistit in adeptione perfecti boni; sed quod illud bonum perfectum, ad quod homo factus est, sit illa gloria quam sancti possident, est supra cognitionem naturalem.) While de Lubac did consider certain pivotal teachings of Aquinas regarding nature and grace—e.g., the hypothesis of creation in puris naturalibus and the gratuity of creation in grace (although it is difficult to find any reference to Quod. I, q. 4, a. 3, c.)—nonetheless, he did so in a context in which texts essential for their interpretation have never been properly engaged and understood. He also cited Quaestiones disputatae de veritate, q. 14, a. 10, ad 2 in Duplex hominis beatitudo (notes 16 and 17), as Healy suggests, albeit without engaging even that part of the text de Lubac himself quoted that says of supernatural beatitude that: ‘‘The other is the good which is out of all proportion with man’s nature because his natural powers are not enough to attain to it either in thought or desire.’’ I.e., he quotes St. Thomas arguing that there is no natural desire for supernatural beatitude without grace—that our natural powers cannot even attain to it in desire—without noting that this contradicts the proposition that our natural powers do attain to it in desire; it contradicts de Lubac’s proposition that we have a natural desire for supernatural beatitude. In any event, these texts were treated by de Lubac without sufficient reference to Thomas’s own doctrine of man’s natural end. Thus, all told, it still to this author seems to be true that de Lubac viewed these texts with an ‘‘exclusory eye’’ in the sense of never substantially engaging certain of these texts, and of engaging others in a way drastically impaired by the doctrinal effect of earlier textual omissions and so discordant with Thomas’s actual teaching. The explanation can be seen in de Lubac’s account of why St. Thomas employs Aristotelian philosophy: not, he argues, because it gives a correct account of reality, or because its moderate realism was compelling (as he criticizes M. Louis Rougier for holding). Rather, he says, the reality

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is ‘‘much simpler’’: ‘‘La re´alite´ est, croyons-nous, beaucoup plus simple’’—the reason for St. Thomas’s use of Aristotle was ‘‘the culture’’ that defined the philosophic intelligence of that period and about which there was no question of absolute preference, whether by the Arabs or by St. Thomas: ‘‘C’e´tait pour eux la culture.’’ (See Surnaturel, 473, n. E: ‘‘Saint Thomas a-t-il choisi Aristote?’’). If one does not appreciate philosophy, it will be quite difficult to appreciate the role of philosophy within St. Thomas’s theological method. De Lubac’s remarkable historical gifts obscured from him the need for auxiliary disciplines necessary to approach the interpretation of St. Thomas’s texts, for it is no more true that St. Thomas does not exhibit an absolute preference for Aristotelian moderate realism than that he does not exhibit an absolute preference for attentiveness to the sacred page (and, yes, the comparison is deliberate, for grace presupposes nature). Thomas himself tells us that he relies on Aristotle, where he does rely upon him, because what he says is true, and not merely because it is ‘‘the culture’’: something that a historical insight shorn of historicism should discern. It was no part of de Lubac’s intent, but, nonetheless, in this way of superordinating ‘‘culture’’ to ‘‘philosophic truth’’ lies invertebrate postmodern theological pluralism. The gifts of de Lubac lay with the love of the Fathers, and deep insight into the mystery of the Church. Lest we stumble in his shadow, however, it is important to free oneself from the prejudice that the way to avoid naturalism is to deny the proportionate natural end which—had God so willed—might have been man’s sole finality. Nothing is lost to the greatness of de Lubac by recognizing the limits of his achievement, and by refusing to assess his variegated work solely by one controversial thesis which ran aground upon his lack of connaturality with the method of St. Thomas Aquinas. Nonetheless, even if the contrary were true, the common good of the Church requires that the truth of the matter inform us, and that was always de Lubac’s intention as well. 2. A Criticism of Nature as Vacuole for Grace 1. Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Theology of Karl Barth (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992), hereinafter cited as TKB. 2. TKB, 277–78. 3. TKB, 269. 4. ‘‘Sed quia possibile fuit Deo ut hominem faceret in puris naturalibus, utile est considerare ad quantum se dilectio naturalis extendere possit.’’ Quod. I, q. 4, a. 3, resp. 5. ‘‘Ad decimumquintum dicendum, quod homo in solis naturalibus constitutus careret quidem visione divina, si sic decederet; sed tamen non competeret ei debitum non habendi. Aliud est enim non debere habere, quod non habet rationem poenae, sed defectus tantum; et aliud debere non habere, quod habet rationem poenae.’’ De malo, q. 5, a. 1, ad 15.

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6. TKB, 269. 7. TKB, 269. 8. TKB, 269. 9. For example, the commonplace depiction of the idea that human nature is distinct from divine nature as a ‘‘corrupt second scholasticism’’ is an understandable confusion among those who never mastered the ‘‘first scholasticism,’’ while nonetheless not the optimal terminology in which to refer to a conception necessary for the intelligibility of the Nicene Creed. 10. TKB, 269. 11. Here one can do no better than note the texts of Summa theologiae, I, q. 75, a. 7, ad 1, or Quaestiones de anima, a. 7, ad 10. The whole force of these passages is that the objector is referring to the end from which the species is denominated, whereas the final and supernatural end is not that end (for if it were, man and angel, who equally are called to beatific vision, would be of the same species, which is false). 12. TKB, 270. 13. TKB, 271. 14. De malo, q. 5, a. 1, ad 15. 15. TKB, 273. 16. TKB, 273. 17. TKB, 273. 18. TKB, 279. 19. In Sent. 2.2.2 sol. 20. TKB, 280. 21. TKB, 282–83. 22. TKB, 283. 23. The point amounts to this. In a hypothetical state of pure nature, it would still be possible for God to provide helps to our nature short of sanctifying grace or divine charity. As they existed in Adam and Eve, the preternatural gifts have grace and charity as their inner ratio, but had man been created apart from grace, there is nothing in their definition to preclude God granting them simply as befitting the dignity of a creature with immortal spirit. Similarly, God may grant a variety of natural helps in the formation of virtue— helps that in the present economy are orchestrated by grace but that could have existed otherwise. Matters of this sort, which exceed the proportion to nature and yet are not grace, are not matters about which apodictic judgment appears possible—not because there is no apodictic judgment about what is and what is not proportionate to nature, but because such considerations move beyond nature to prudential circumstance and the divine good pleasure. 24. TKB, 283. 25. TKB, 284. 26. ‘‘Unumquodque enim ordinatur ad proprium finem per naturam suae speciei per quam habet inclinationem ad finem sed idem est finis animae et

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angeli, scilicet beatitudo aeterna. Ergo sunt unius speciei.’’ ‘‘Ad primum ergo. Dicendum quod ratio illa procedit de fine proximo et naturali. Beatitudo autem aeterna est finis ultimus et supernaturalis.’’ Summa theologiae, I, q. 75, a. 7, obj. 1 & ad 1. 27. TKB, 284. 28. TKB, 285. 29. TKB, 291. 30. Of course, the abstraction of nature as a whole, the abstractio totius, is distinct from mathematical abstraction (abstractio formae), as it alike differs from the judgment of separation that analogically achieves the ‘‘abstraction’’ of being (but not by simple apprehension). The point is not that abstractive knowledge of nature is of mathematical precision, but that in its own way it achieves its object: Nature is abstractively intelligible. 31. TKB, 292. 32. TKB, 289. 33. There is some difference in formulation between those who stress the natural end as the good life specified by the whole hierarchy of ends, and those who see the natural end as the noblest of the ends naturally defining the good life: i.e., the ordering of the whole universe of action and thought to the contemplation of God. But each acknowledges the same thing: the specification of the good life by the hierarchy of ends, and the natural contemplation of God as the loftiest end. Given the datum that no natural end as natural can put the will wholly at rest, these formulations seem to leave one with a distinction without a difference. Because it is a natural end, the end of the ordering of the universe of action and thought to the contemplation of God requires the subordinated ends in a different sense than does the supernatural end. The supernatural end requires the subordinated ends only inasmuch as grace orders human nature to beatific vision, such that one cannot deliberately act contrary to the natural good and achieve beatific vision, but one can, for example, be deprived of natural good in martyrdom and achieve the beatific vision. By contrast, the natural end of the good life requires all its integral parts—the loftiest natural end cannot be achieved, for example, save through the prior attainment even of virtuous practical action (which is required both in itself but also for the good of the contemplation of action in relation to God, which is part of the ordering of the entire universe to this contemplation) and of course also of speculative truth generally (required by the ordering of the universe of thought to God). For this reason, both formulations are correct: The loftiest end is the formality in relation to which all the other natural ends are required, and yet the other natural ends are distinctively required, for without them the attainment of that natural end is impeded. Of course, given that man is created in sanctifying grace, and has suffered the Fall, our enjoyment of the natural good in this life—even with the assistance of grace—is somewhat fugitive. But the beatific vision achieves, in a deeper

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and more profound fashion than anything nature could afford, the fullest contemplation of God of which the creature is capable with divine aid. 34. Lawrence Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God According to St. Thomas Aquinas and His Interpreters (Rome: Apollinare Studi, 2001). Of course, there are those who would prefer for this work not to be read, who make their arguments by snide insinuation rather than by scholarly engagement—something that renders the achievement of the author here all the more noteworthy and profound. 35. TKB, 288. 36. This is a doctrine of St. Thomas’s of which Balthasar is known to have thought well. Yet in the twentieth century in some Catholic circles it has been thought feasible to separate this doctrine from its realist basis and epistemic implications. And Gilson (unlike Maritain) did not think highly of the demonstrative value of the intellectus essentiae arguments for real distinction of essence and the act of being in physical things. 37. TKB, 287. 38. TKB, 288. 39. TKB, 291. 40. TKB, 292. 41. Henri de Lubac, The Mystery of the Supernatural, tr. Rosemary Sheed (New York: Herder and Herder, 1967), 81. 42. TKB, 284. 43. TKB, 292. 44. One takes it for granted that anyone who has read St. Thomas knows that the ‘‘accidental’’ is not thereby unimportant, for it is a further articulation of substance and, in the case of grace and of the infused theological virtues, a new and higher principle of action participating in the eternal law more profoundly than does the natural law (without, for all that, replacing the natural law). 45. Or, more properly: one set of implications that seem likely to be found in Balthasar’s theology, and another set of actual implications seen in the life of the Church. 46. I am aware that today it is commonly thought that St. Thomas Aquinas abandoned the analogy of proper proportionality found in De veritate. This view presumes that the reason for St. Thomas not expressly articulating it later in his work is that he no longer held it, but this view neither avoids the systematic difficulties of other accounts of the analogia entis nor answers the simple question: Might St. Thomas not have ceased mentioning this analogy of proper proportionality because he believed the question about it that he raised in De veritate was answered in De veritate? Does this question arise expressly elsewhere in his corpus of writing and receive a different answer? No. As for the systematic difficulties of other accounts, these, we are constantly told, are not a problem for Thomas. Really? Does anyone genuinely

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wish to defend the view that St. Thomas could not conceive the difficulty with the idea that the existence of finite things—that existence on the basis of which the mind rises to the affirmation of God—is not properly existence at all, so that there genuinely is no effect of being? For this is the implication of holding that analogy of extrinsic attribution pertains to being, and every other account that involves intrinsic attribution will be found to require analogy of proper proportionality. Although I have labored through many a dense manuscript, textual and systematic, addressing the issue of analogy, this analysis is one that I have never seen persuasively answered. But we do know that for Thomas himself all univocal naming presupposes one first, non-univocal, analogical name, and that is being (Summa theologiae, I, q. 13, a. 5, ad 1). It is hardly plausible to suggest that a mind like St. Thomas Aquinas’s could suppose that the analogy in question is one of extrinsic attribution, but if the analogy in question is one of intrinsic attribution, it is difficult to see how it could not involve proper proportionality (granted that the element of order introduced with the discovery of the First Cause enriches and deepens our understanding of the analogy of being). 47. I expressly exclude from this negative description, however, the seraphic Trinitarian contemplations of Fr. Gilles Emery, O.P., and Prof. John Boyle. And theological scholars of great objective eminence are aware both of the foundational importance and the challenge posed by St. Thomas’s teaching—for example, among the most formidable and admirable of these minds, one thinks of Dr. Michael Waldstein. The need for metaphysical penetration is particularly great with respect to the understanding of the relation of the communio personarum to Trinitarian theology. 48. Whether this natural end is, as it were, the good life as specified by the whole hierarchy of ends; or whether it is also, and as an implication of this hierarchy, the noblest and most specifying perfection of that hierarchy that consists in the ordering of the whole universe of action and knowledge to the natural contemplation of God—in either case, there is a proportionate natural end from which the human species is derived. 49. The documents of Vatican I are widely available. Most simply, one can read these documents online: ‘‘Decrees of the First Vatican Council,’’ http:// www.piar.hu/councils/ecum20.htm. 50. No freshman composition ever ill-penned has, in my experience, managed to so bungle the simple statement of the five ways, much less their logical and ontological structure, as the book The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins (New York: Houghton-Mifflin, 2006). But why should one be surprised that when this biologist lectures about philosophic arguments beyond his expertise, he misstates and distorts them? The more pressing query is: how can so cognitively shoddy an artifact so wholly escape severe criticism? And the answer is: we have lowered the value of the cognitive currency by withdrawing from it the speculative riches of nature understood as a theonomic principle. As for

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the five ways: he radically misstates the first three ways. The fourth way he states, but misunderstands in a manner that I actually use in teaching it, to make clear that it pertains only to transcendental and pure perfections—as Thomas says, being, good, true, and the like—although the illustration from Aristotelian physics gives a semblance of justification to the confusion suffered both by Dawkins and by generations of college students. Remarkably, Dawkins fails to realize that it is a feature of causal analysis that the cause of the species is never univocal with that species. He also uses the term ‘‘chance’’ in a manner that is unclear—which is necessary to his argument, for if clarified, it becomes quite obvious that any intelligible definition of what is meant by ‘‘chance’’ formally presupposes and requires overarching causal intelligibility. With respect to the fifth way, his account of evolution fails in the most obvious way: Evolution formally presupposes the mechanism whereby genetic alterations are received and are generatively communicated—hence, the clear requisite for ‘‘natural selection’’ is wholly unexplained by natural selection. But rather than pursue this causally, he prefers to leave it unaddressed because it is the province not of biology, but of philosophy. He is left, as are all reductionists, insisting that real causal questions that his method cannot answer would be better unanswered rather than answered through a methodology other than that of his preferred science: a non sequitur masquerading as a scientific position, and roughly equivalent to: ‘‘If it is broccoli, therefore it isn’t food, because I won’t eat it’’. Nonetheless, his book clearly evinces the loss of the very formal logical and ontological rigor that once was brought to such subjects. At the least, an understanding of the nature of the particular arguments that he supposes himself to be criticizing would have been condign. 3. On the Impropriety of Treating Theology’s Handmaiden like an Analytic 1. The epigraphs are from Rusty Reno, ‘‘Theology’s Continental Captivity,’’ First Things (April, 2006), and St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary, q. 5, a. 1, ad 2. Reno, in his book, makes a plausible argument for a certain limited preferability of analytic to continental thought, while wholly failing to discern the degree to which logicism among analytics and transcendental subjectivity on the continent are merely different sides of the same anti-metaphysical coin. He also argues: ‘‘Yet, there was never just one scholastic philosophy: Scholars debated; new resources were adopted; systems were developed. What remained constant and what made all this work ‘of the schools’ was its function or role. Philosophy operated as a supporting intellectual practice within a settled consensus about the truth of Christian doctrine.’’ Now, of course, it is true, there was never merely one scholastic philosophy, but the author of Aeterni patris—and several other pontiffs, as well—would have been surprised at the notion that the metaphysics, philosophy of nature, anthropology, epistemology, and natural law teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas constituted merely

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one option among many. Indeed, in the language of a long list of pontiffs, including Pope John Paul II, the metaphysics of esse is extolled as a ne plus ultra of human thought. Perhaps Reno did not notice that most analytic practitioners over the past forty-five years—following Frege’s demonstrably erroneous view of existence as merely a second-order property of concepts—have held this doctrine to be a mere lamentable confusion? Of course, analytic thought is not in bondage to Frege, and as I shall argue below, is in bondage to no philosophy because it no longer constitutes something distinctive within the properly philosophic order, and thus lacks the resources necessary to fill the shoes of Thomism. In any case, Reno’s article should suffice to indicate the importance of this question and the need to distinguish between mere meta-philosophy, and philosophy, the latter of which is essentially required within theological method. 2. I do not consider the work of serious ‘‘analytic Thomists’’ to be in any essential or exclusive sense ‘‘analytic.’’ If we speak of serious analytic Thomists, in taking up the teaching of Thomas they necessarily take up methodological constraints regarding philosophy of nature and metaphysics which are wholly external to anything that could be claimed to be ‘‘analytic method,’’ howsoever logically they do so and with whatever external concessions to the way in which analytic practitioners like arguments to be displayed. To the extent that something is philosophy today, its methodic commitments are over and above the methodic commitments of formation in analytic thought, which amount merely to a kind of logical propaedeutic. But this is to anticipate the argument below. 3. For a standard argument for nescience of Thomism, see Thomas D. Sullivan, New Blackfriars 80: 938 (April 1999): 202–6. He argues that the insistence that we understand St. Thomas’s arguments, or that of the school that has intensively developed his thought, as a condition of philosophically judging his work (what he calls the position of the ‘‘practical historicist’’), is bound to have the same effects as theoretic historicism: ‘‘The upshot is that while the Practical Historicist disagrees with the Theoretical Historicist in principle, in practice it all comes to the same: Aquinas becomes utterly irrelevant to anything going on today.’’ Note that, despite the fact that Thomists continue to engage in speculative work in the twenty-first century (as they did in the twentieth!) quite independent of analytic thought, this isn’t for Sullivan ‘‘going on’’ today because it is not analytic: an interesting view of what openmindedness in judging arguments has become for some analytic practitioners. Of course, this view of the absolute speculative primacy of what is ‘‘going on today’’—even were it adequate, as it is not because it excludes all but the analytic subset—is historicism plain and simple: an odd note to strike by someone who claims to be criticizing historicism. He continues: ‘‘The answer is that, happily, one of the Practical Historicist’s assumptions is false. It simply is not the case that before we consider A’s thought in relation to B’s, we must

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first clearly grasp A’s position. This is because possible interpretations of a position come to light as a result of comparison. In particular, it often happens that we come to understand a position well only by considering closely subsequent criticism made of it.’’ Of course, comparison involves two things, not one (how does the critic—or the critic’s reader—know that the critic has responded to the argument actually made without adequate examination of that argument?). And the point that subsequent criticism may reveal important aspects of an original argument is true, and doubtless also applicable to the whole of analytic thought: but what would he think of someone who in responding to what a particular analytic author thought did not see fit to come to know what the argument actually was? (Indeed, on his own principles why isn’t what Sullivan wrote merely history such that subsequent interpretations obviate the need to understand him?—i.e., should the Sullivan Principle be: ‘‘who cares what Sullivan thinks or whether it is true?’’). Thankfully, this does not represent the state of mind of all analytic practitioners, many of whom retain the awareness that fielding and responding to an argument involves more than one’s own dialectical convenience. 4. It must be seen that this is a simple matter of fact. No significant analytic program in the world today requires as necessitated by analytic philosophy any distinctive unified instruction with respect to method either in philosophy of nature or in metaphysics. In fact, many analytic practitioners—so long accustomed to thinking of philosophy as exclusively a second-order discipline concerned only with conceptual analysis of scientific or common sense statements—would not understand the idea of philosophy having a genuine formal object in the order of first intention. But of course, that is a material legacy, as there are many analytic practitioners who are realists. But such practitioners are neither realists nor logicists owing to analytic thought as such, for such thought as analytic is merely a partial meta-philosophy/propaedeutic rather than a method. 5. Logicism is, of course, first the doctrine that mathematics may be entirely reduced to logic; second, the general view that, as Bertrand Russell, Frege, Ayer, and others held, philosophy is essentially a department of logic. It is also, by extension, any treatment of a philosophic issue that ‘‘logicizes’’ it—i.e., that treats as purely formal, logical, or conceptual that which is natural. It is easy to see that, historico-doctrinally, analytic thought has been preponderantly dominated by logicism in its several dimensions. But as logicist judgment is not formally presented as essential to analytic thought within analytic curricula; as merely to offer formation in logical and linguistic analysis need not imply logicism; and as authors so formed have progressively come to object to one or another aspect of logicism—most especially after Go¨del’s theorem, but also even in relation to metaphysical issues such as that of esse; for all these reasons, analytic thought as such cannot even any longer be considered to constitute a logicist philosophy. It is not philosophy, it is widespread meta-philosophy sociologically rooted in the residue of the earlier

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revolutionary analytic movements in regard to which it constitutes a sort of post-factual epiphenomenon. 6. For a splendid analysis of the errors of supposing that Aristotle’s consideration of logical demonstration is but one of several formal systems, see Richard Berquist’s translation of, introduction to, and commentary on St. Thomas Aquinas’s Commentary on Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics (Notre Dame, IN: Dumb Ox Books, 2007). 7. Clearly, the phrases ‘‘Thomism of the strict observance,’’ Laval Thomism, River Forest Thomism, existential Thomism, and transcendental Thomism each designate something, and the first four all share a great number of methodic judgments. The odd man out here is ‘‘transcendental Thomism,’’ which one may as well acknowledge is, by any reasonable doctrinal or historical standard, Thomism only by way of analogy of extrinsic attribution. But imagine the confined disputations of Garrigou-Lagrange, De Koninck, Jacques Maritain, or of Ralph McInerny and Lawrence Dewan, and one sees just how dense the consensus in method and object is that conditions the ongoing disputes. By contrast, there is simply nothing remotely like this methodic heritage in the analytic world today. E.g., Thomists dispute about the role and preconditions of a particular judgment (separatio) with respect to the discovery of the object of metaphysics (ens commune). Analytic philosophy has no normative account of the object of metaphysics nor of how it is discovered, and it would be impossible to confine analytic authors to any reasonable facsimile of one method because method is something over and above analytic formation, left to every analytic thinker to develop individually (if, that is, the thinker deems metaphysics to be possible). There would be no consensus of analytics qua analytics as to whether any such judgment as separatio were pertinent to metaphysics at all, or even whether metaphysics is explanatory or merely descriptive. Analytic thought precisely as such—and not as what, over and above analytic formation, is pursued by individuals whose formation has been analytic—is meta-philosophy. Of course, to someone who supposes that philosophy ought to imitate positive science, the idea that such discussions revolve around fixed points is a sign of stagnation and failure. Such thought derives precisely from the failure to distinguish the formal objects of metaphysics and philosophy of nature from the objects and methods of the positive sciences. Whereas by contrast even those Thomists who take philosophy of nature merely to be a more general, and experimental science, a more particularized knowledge, must acknowledge that the object of metaphysics is distinctive, and that the object of philosophy of nature transcends the limits of the positive sciences and is presupposed by them. 8. This is simply to place the onus of definition where it belongs. When a school claims as by right the privilege of determining philosophic curricula throughout the first world, one is entitled to know on what philosophic basis the claim is levied. To discover that it is levied merely on the basis of a certain

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fondness for, and interpretation of, logic—which is the propaedeutic for every science, but method to none; and also on the basis of negations once appended to affirmations that have since been abandoned as untrue; and, finally, on the basis of mere sociological inertia, and prejudice, is to discover that there is no sufficient answer to the original question. But if analytic philosophy is not a philosophy, but only at best a partial meta-philosophy, then it is absurd to treat it as one, or to give it the cognitive regard due to one. Individual analytic minds merit philosophic regard, but analytic meta-philosophy as such does not merit the regard due to philosophy (save, perhaps, by analogy of attribution in the cases of minds formed in meta-philosophy but moving beyond it). 9. See, for example the recent review by Richard Cross, of Analytic Thomism: Traditions in Dialogue, ed. by Craig Paterson and Matthew Pugh (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006): ‘‘Does a commitment to the methods of analytic philosophy require that one so committed think of existence merely as a property of concepts? Not according to Geach, Cahalan, Braine, and Pugh; on the other side, we have the ostrich Thomists to a man, and perhaps Kenny and Davies too. Knasas’s contribution to this volume is (unintentionally, I think) an object lesson here. For clearly there is nothing about analytic philosophy that requires us to accept that existence must be merely a property of concepts, and a small handful of analytic philosophers of the non-Thomist variety have argued as much (e.g. J. L. Mackie and Colin McGinn, as well as Peter Geach)’’ [emphasis added]. Ars Disputandi 7, (2007), available on the Internet at http:// www.arsdisputandi.org/publish/articles/000271/article.pdf. 10. The Fregean account of existence as a second-order predicate is false, and cannot account for ordinary knowledge of things coming into being and passing away. Efforts to deal with such difficulties by hypothesizing that nothing ever passes away, so that it is merely the case that relations cease to obtain, are so lost in dialectical obscurantism as to be beyond belief. If one says: ‘‘I do not not have a nose,’’ this means: ‘‘I actually in reality do have a nose,’’ precisely because the subject of negation—oneself—is real. But if one says, ‘‘All five-headed zebras with wings do not not vote for libertarian candidates,’’ this does not imply that ‘‘actually in reality there are five-headed zebras with wings that vote for libertarian candidates.’’ Thus, when Frege says that being is merely the negation of naught, this is false, for the negation of a negation may be either merely conceptual or real (for example, the negation of all creaturely negation would involve no real subject if God had created no world). But the negation of ‘‘not any’’ is not ‘‘some actually existing’’ unless the ‘‘any’’ is already given to be real—i.e., the negation of ‘‘not any’’ is ‘‘some’’ but the existential supposition needs to be given in order to derive whether the some is real (the negation ‘‘not not any [merely hypothetical] characters’’ does not mean ‘‘some actually existing characters’’). Frege’s understanding is a typical Platonizing conflation of real and conceptual. But if and only if the subject

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of negation is real will the negation of negation equate with something ontologically positive. This, of course, is something that the consensus of analytic minds over the past twenty years has simply missed—whereas St. Thomas had it right from the start: ‘‘There are other opposites of which only one of the two terms is a natural being, and the other is only its removal or negation. This appears, for instance, in opposites based upon affirmation and negation or upon privation and possession. In such cases the negation of an opposite which posits a natural being is real, because it is the negation of a real being, but the negation of the other opposite is not real, because it is not the negation of any real being. It is the negation of a negation. Consequently, this negation of a negation, which is the negation of the second opposite, in no way differs in reality from the positing of the other. In reality, then, the coming to be of white and the destruction of not-white are the same. But because a negation, though not a real being, is nevertheless a conceptual being, the negation of the negation is distinct conceptually or in our manner of understanding from the positing of the affirmation. Thus, in the manner of understanding it the destruction of not-white is distinct from the coming to be of white’’ [emphasis added]. (Quaedam vero opposita sunt quorum alterum tantum est natura quaedam, reliquum vero non est nisi remotio vel negatio ipsius, sicut patet in oppositis secundum affirmationem et negationem, vel secundum privationem et habitum; et in talibus negatio oppositi quod ponit naturam aliquam, est realis quia est alicuius rei, negatio vero alterius oppositi non est realis, quia non est alicuius rei, est enim negatio negationis; et ideo haec negatio negationis quae est negatio alterius oppositi, nihil differt secundum rem a positione alterius; unde secundum rem idem est generatio albi et corruptio non albi. Sed quia negatio, quamvis non sit res naturae, est tamen res rationis, ideo negatio negationis secundum rationem sive secundum modum intelligendi est aliud a positione affirmationis; et sic corruptio non albi secundum modum intelligendi est aliud quam generatio albi.) De veritate, III. 28. resp. (Leonine ed.). Of course, again, here Thomas clearly is speaking of the case in which what is posited is first a real natural being, and it is only this that renders the negation of negation tantamount to something ontologically positive. 11. Of course, no philosophy can demonstrate that everything it does not consider is unworthy of consideration. But that is not the point here. The point here is that very specific negations flowed from Russell’s and Whitehead’s Principia Mathematica, from Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, and then later from his linguistic reductionism; from Strawson (regarding theistic metaphysics); from Ryle (regarding anthropology); from Ayer (regarding knowledge, ethics, metaphysics, and theism); and from Frege (e.g., the denial that existence is anything other than a second-order concept). Once the foundations of these negations is removed, the logical step is the reinstatement for philosophic consideration of the questions, works, and authors ruled out by these teachings. Yet, among analytic thinkers this logical step remains comparatively speaking the exception rather than the rule.

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12. There is, of course, an argument here: for it is the logical relations themselves, and not their mode of expression, that is most significant, and it is arguably the case that the condition of possibility for the construction of artificial systems of representation is the prior cognition of the same distinctions linguistically. Aristotle, himself, of course, used symbolic representation; yet, in Aristotle’s philosophic work, such representation is the exception. If logicism were true, and a complete formal system requiring no further interpretation were adequate to logic, this would imply one judgment, but, for example, the modes of supposition of terms always requires interpretation. In any case, provided that the logical relations themselves are acknowledged and normative, there is a strong case for arguing that the mode of presentation is an entirely secondary and even non-philosophic affair. 13. By ‘‘partial’’ meta-philosophy I mean, not even constituting a complete meta-philosophy (surely grammar is also meta-philosophic, but it is clearly nonsense to claim that mastery of grammar is sufficient to render someone a philosopher). 14. This is not to suggest that genius can break out of the mold in only one way, and that Thomistic; it is only to argue that insofar as it breaks the mold, the mold is not the efficient cause (and—of course—even genius can be misguided or erroneous). 15. ‘‘Illustrative’’ and ‘‘synecdochic’’ because reflective of the logicism at the font of much analytic thought; because of the aversion to acknowledging the need for genuine philosophic method as distinct from mere logical metaphilosophy; and because the consequent philosophic errors derivative from these judgments persist in arising, as we shall touch upon below in reference to the example of Turner. One notes such aversion to the idea of philosophic method even in the later Wittgenstein, for whom, of course, ‘‘There is not a philosophical method, though there are indeed methods, like different therapies’’—the point of all of which was for him ‘‘that the philosophical problems should completely disappear’’ (Philosophical Investigations, 噛133). A different philosophical assessment of logic from Bochenski’s, to be sure, but a similar negation of properly philosophic method, conjoined with the further negation (which Bochenski would have abhorred and rightly held erroneous) that philosophy has no real object nor any real problems, being for Wittgenstein only a second-order discipline at best. 16. J. M. Bochenski, ‘‘Logic and Ontology,’’ published in Philosophy East and West, Vol. 24, No. 3. (July, 1974), 275–92. The quotation is taken from 290. 17. Derived from St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, the passage taken from Aristotle’s Metaphysics 1005a13–18. 18. I. M. Bochenski, Contemporary European Philosophy, trans. Donald Nicholl and Karl Aschenbrenner (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1957), 1–2.

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19. Professor Jan Wolenski’s comments were originally found at the following Internet address: http://www.unifr.ch/ieo/ieo-veta/40jah/texte.wolenski .html, but the site is now unavailable. Professor Wolenski is a distinguished professor of philosophy at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow, Poland, and is the author of several books on logic and philosophy. He is an analytic thinker who is himself close to the heritage of the Lwo´w-Warsaw School, which forms the subject of one of his several books: Logic and Philosophy in the Lvov-Warsaw school (Dordrecht, London, Kluwer, 1989). 20. This devolution in Bochenski’s thought also sheds light upon the history of the devolution of serious Thomistic philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. Professor David Solomon, Director of the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture, recounts the story that as a recent analytic hire at the University of Notre Dame, he was invited to a luncheon with several analytic faculty members. He recollects that Bochenski had booked the table, and ordered a very good red wine, and that as Bochenski approached the table he saluted all present with the words: ‘‘Death to all Thomists!’’ As Solomon tells the story, Bochenski was on his way to Florida to take a test to qualify for flying jet airplanes. The story surely is in keeping with Bochenski’s later opposition to Thomistic philosophy. In any case, this makes more intelligible the subsequent history of Notre Dame’s abandonment of classical and scholastic philosophy for analytic meta-philosophy. Somehow, one never suspected that the retreat from the Catholic intellectual tradition at the University of Notre Dame was purely an accidental affair. 21. For a similar consideration of this same question, see Fr. Alfred Wilder, OP, Angelicum 80, no1 (2003): 35–52. 22. Denys Turner, Faith, Reason and the Existence of God (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 180. 23. See Sth, I, q. 3, art. 4, ad 1. 24. There is an argument that this pertains even within a species, for one individual truly is not another individual of the same species, so that whereas their existence may in relation to specific nature be the same, it is not the same in relation to individual being (each has its own existence which is not that of the other). 25. One is of course aware that critics such as Bernard Montagnes, in his work The Doctrine of the Analogy of Being According to Thomas Aquinas, trans. E. M. Macierowski, ed. Andrew Tallon (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2004), 7; first published as La doctrine de l’analogie de l’eˆtre d’apre`s Saint Thomas d’Aquin (Louvain: Publications Universitaires/Paris: Be´atrice-Nauwelaerts, 1963); or Gregory P. Rocca, Speaking the Incomprehensible God: Thomas Aquinas on the Interplay of Positive and Negative Theology (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2004), to say nothing of other major Thomistic scholars such as Ralph McInerny and John Wippel, have objections to this treatment of analogy. But it must be noted that all Thomists necessarily

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must engage this narrative, as it has left a profound mark on the Thomistic tradition of inquiry. Further, with respect to the historical objection that St. Thomas clearly mentions this analogy principally in De veritate (and perhaps, some will grudgingly cede, in the Scriptum on the Sentences), but then does not return to it or ‘‘drops’’ it, sed contra: It is perfectly possible to hold that Thomas answered the precise question he sought to answer in De veritate—a question that he never revisits as such—and having given his answer, sees no reason to return to the question. I.e., the operative computer metaphor here is not random access memory—which when it drops from sight is lost to the computer; the operative computer metaphor is a screen saver, which is always running in the background. In the absence of express repudiation of this teaching, it is too fundamental with respect to metaphysics and natural theology to reject unless an adequate systematic reason can be given. Many reasons are given, but at the end of the day it is difficult to see why the analogy of proportionality constituted by diverse rationes of act and potency should not constitute that analogy of being signified by his words (Sth. I. q. 13. a. 5. ad 2) that ‘‘all univocal predications are reduced to one first non-univocal analogical predication, which is being.’’ The analogy of being cannot be one of extrinsic attribution, and it is diversified by the diverse rationes of act and potency that divide every order of being. It also does not imply (as De veritate, I, q. 2, a. 11 instructs us) the placing of God in a determined relation to the creature: the Barthian objection. Nor is this merely a ‘‘mathematical’’ analogy, the improper but readily understood mathematical example only being used initially, and Thomas then turning to a proper example—‘‘Sometimes, however, a thing is predicated analogously according to the second type of agreement, as sight is predicated of bodily sight and of the intellect because understanding is in the mind as sight is in the eye’’—which does not reduce to one univocal sense of ‘‘sight.’’ (Quandoque vero dicitur aliquid analogice secundo modo convenientiae; sicut nomen visus dicitur de visu corporali et intellectu, eo quod sicut visus est in oculo, ita intellectus in mente.) Nor is the disagreement of Thomists on this matter like the rejection by analytics of the revolutionary analytic systems: all Thomists acknowledge that analogy is crucial for metaphysics and natural theology, and the overwhelming commentatorial consensus on this matter over centuries follows the teaching of Cajetan, and even among those who do not, the bulk of the consensus is that the analogy of being is not merely logical but real. Analytic thought has literally nothing like this with respect to unified method in metaphysics, with authors literally all over the map with respect to neoteric metaphysical accounts: something that clearly exhibits the truth that today analytic thought as such does not constitute a philosophy. This sprint from the starting line of logic totally to reinvent metaphysics is perhaps less compelling for those who already are formed in philosophic method. 26. It will of course be obvious that the two may proceed hand in hand; but they also may not. And there is certainly no particular reason to suppose

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that real development of Thomas’s thought is most aided by engagement with analytic thought, although in particular areas certainly this may and does occur. Yet it is hardly plausible to claim that a meta-philosophy is up to the task of the full development of Thomas’s thought. 27. See Alasdair MacIntyre, First Principles, Final Ends, and Contemporary Philosophical Issues (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1990). 28. A. G. Sertillanges, The Intellectual Life, trans. Mary Ryan (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1998), 117. The following words, on 116, I would also happily make my own: ‘‘I persist in saying to the young Catholics who read me: study St. Thomas, he is the man of our day. You would think he had been created seven centuries ago to quench our thirst. Compared to the muddy water now served up to us, he is a clear spring. When by a vigorous effort you have overcome the first difficulties of an archaic mode of exposition, he reassures your mind, floods it with light, and provides a setting both strong and flexible for its further acquisitions.’’ 29. See Etienne Gilson, The Unity of Philosophical Experience (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1965), 306. 4. Why Natura Pura Is Not the Theological Stalking Horse for Secularist Minimalism or Pelagianism 1. The epigraph is from Tracey Rowland, who here expounds the common view of those who follow de Lubac and Balthasar in preference to Aquinas on the issue of nature and grace. This book would have been improved by a more adequate engagement with the Thomist tradition, which, alas, it simply assumes is without remainder to be identified with the work of the later—not the earlier!—Gilson. The whole commentatorial tradition, however, is swiftly lost in simple acceptance of the readings of Gilson and de Lubac, who demonstrably did not understand St. Thomas’s accounts of ‘‘obediential potency’’ or the hypothesis of man created in puris naturalibus. Culture and the Thomist Tradition (London: Routledge, 2003), 94. 2. Without entering into more detail with respect to my difference with Maritain’s account of rights, it must be seen that for him, too, rights are derivative rather than primary vis-a`-vis the natural law. For he distinguishes between the possession and the exercise of rights, and comments about one justly condemned to death that in such a case: ‘‘If a criminal can be justly condemned to die, it is because by his crime he has deprived himself, let us not say of the right to live, but of the possibility of justly asserting this right: he has morally cut himself off from the human community, precisely as regards the use of this fundamental and ‘inalienable’ right which the punishment inflicted upon him prevents him from exercising.’’ Jacques Maritain, Man and the State (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), 101–2. What can this mean save that under these circumstances the individual has no just

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claim to the immunity identified by the right? I.e., that a right, as a just claim hic et nunc, necessarily is derivative vis-a`-vis both the hierarchy of ends from above, and prudential circumstance from below? And so ‘‘rights’’ will be either inapplicable or mischievous notions apart from prior true judgment regarding the ordering of ends and the prudence that applies such knowledge. But this is the whole gravamen of the classical argument that the good is prior to the right, and that ‘‘rights’’ must be at best a prudentially specified and limited— and derivative—function of wisdom regarding the good. Of course, Vatican documents need to be read with this truth in mind, however many Catholic minds lose sight of the truth that what is ‘‘right’’ will always be for the classical and Catholic mind a teleological function, not to be confused (as so many do) with utilitarianism or proportionalism. As Aristotle reminds us, the good is sought by the virtuous because it is good, for its own sake: ‘‘But in the case of the virtues an act is not performed justly or with self-control if the act itself is of a certain kind, but only if in addition the agent has certain characteristics as he performs it: first of all, he must know what he is doing; secondly, he must choose to act the way he does, and he must choose it for its own sake; and in the third place, the act must spring from a firm and unchangeable character.’’ Nicomachean Ethics, tr. Martin Ostwald, Prentice Hall, 1999, 39: 1105a, 30. 3. For Maritain’s defense of this proposition against the brilliant objections of the Thomist philosopher and theologian Ramirez, see his Science and Wisdom (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1940). 4. Not naturally ordered to supernaturally beatific vision, but naturally ordered to God as First Cause, Final End, and extrinsic Common Good of the universe of finite beings, and to Whom the mind is proportionately and naturally moved solely as specified by finite effects. 5. Nor is this merely true of theists: the good is prior to the right, and no account of ‘‘rights’’ will ever be intelligible and substantive without reference to crucial teleological judgments. Hence, secularists, too, manifest their judgment of the nature of the good in the way that they frame ‘‘rights’’ and in the insouciance with which they derogate religious freedom and religious speech, which, by being religious, for them loses the attribute of being speech: how could a Christian speak in public? One sees this incredulity in a variety of Supreme Court cases wherein public religious speech is treated as more subversive and dangerous than disease or even treason—something the framers of the U.S. Constitution, under which originally and even after the First Amendment it was legal for a state to be a confessional state, would scarcely have been able to fathom. 6. Not only were nine of the original colonies confessional states, but as M. Stanton Evans puts the matter: ‘‘Official support for religious faith and state religious requirements for public office persisted well after the adoption of the First Amendment. The established church of Massachusetts was not

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abolished until 1833. In New Hampshire, the requirement that one had to be Protestant to serve in the legislature was continued until 1877. In New Jersey, Roman Catholics were not permitted to hold office until 1844. In Maryland, the stipulation that one had to be a Christian lasted until 1826. As late as 1835, one had to be a Protestant to take office in North Carolina; until 1868, the requirement was that one had to be a Christian; thereafter that one had to profess a belief in God.’’ Evans wryly notes regarding Madison that ‘‘It is a little noted fact, for instance, that on the same day he introduced his bill in the Virginia legislature for disestablishment of the Episcopal church (October 31, 1785), he also introduced a bill to punish those who broke the Sabbath (plus another providing for days of prayer and thanksgiving).’’ The Theme is Freedom: Religion, Politics, and the American Tradition (Washington DC: Regnery, 1994), 277–78. Of course, the point here is simple. As a matter of historical fact, in North America during the time leading up to and for some while after acceptance of the Constitution, the political and legal culture of the governments of general jurisdiction (the states) rather than of the government of few and delegated powers (the federal government) was unequivocally Christian, and this context defined American political life on the ground. As Evans cites regarding Vermont, admitted into the Union in 1791 and renowned as both theologically and politically one of the more liberal states, its oath required for assumption of office was the following: ‘‘I do believe in one God, the Creator and Governor of the Universe, the rewarder of the good and punisher of the wicked. And I do acknowledge the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be given by divine inspiration and own and profess the Protestant religion’’ (277). The remarkable lacunae in much historical scholarship on these matters are largely a function of secularist ideological enthusiasms impatient of the resistance of history to its postulates. That the first amendment regarded distinctively and exclusively the federal government, and did not involve hostility to establishment as such in the states, is sufficiently illustrated by the datum that Fisher Ames of Massachusetts (as Evans puts it, ‘‘a conservative from a state with an established church’’—i.e., Congregationalism) wrote the specific language voted by the lower chamber (283). 7. ‘‘The greater part of English America was populated by men who, having broken away from the authority of the pope, never submitted to any supreme religious authority again. They therefore brought to the New World a Christianity that can best be described as democratic and republican: this singularly favored the establishment of a republic and democracy in temporal affairs.’’ Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (New York: Library Classics of the United States, Inc., 2004), 332. Of course, his rendering that these men ‘‘never submitted to any supreme religious authority again’’ would have been translated by them in Protestant terms, as ‘‘never accepted any unscriptural claim to supreme religious authority again’’—i.e., they maintained a Protestant religious outlook. But it is remarkable that state office-holding was often predicated on essentially religious

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tests. The doctrine was theistic, Christian, and in its mode Protestant and hence characterized by an aspect of fideism and by a certain indifference to the conundrums of having an infallible revelation minus an infallible canon of sacred scripture. But to say that theism, Christianity, and the Ten Commandments did not radiate their influence in the formation of the legal institutions of America is simply preposterous. 8. In this respect, the analysis of George Weigel is profound and pertinent. The Cube and the Cathedral (New York: Basic Books, 2005). 9. For a proposition to be metaphysical does not require that the one holding it necessarily enjoy full appreciation of it as a function of genuine scientia. Moreover, spontaneous natural reasoning that is susceptible of being given rigorously rational formulation within the context of metaphysical scientia does incline many persons toward metaphysical judgments regarding God, providence, good and evil. To suppose that such judgments cannot be the foundation of consensus merely because these judgments are implicitly theoretic, or because most who hold such judgments cannot provide a fully systematic account of them, is rather like holding that no consensus upon the function of the engine in the airplane may exist because most of the passengers are not aerodynamic engineering experts. Of course, with respect to this speculative element, it also poses questions with respect to Maritain’s conception of the relation of intellectus to inclinatio—a consideration in which, again, normative teleology provides the middle term for the solution. But that is another question. 10. It is an interesting datum that the most successful, diverse, and inclusivist political regime of the past one hundred years was achieved within preponderantly Catholic Austro-Hungary prior to the secularization wrought after the First World War, a secularization that was indeed the prelude to the Nazi destruction of liberty and tolerance. Catholics, Greeks, Jews, seculars— all co-existed within the baroque structures of an essentially prudential extension of Christian political order. There is, of course, nothing remotely like such a thing feasible today, for the contemporary ideal of ‘‘tolerance’’ is one that functions only at the lowest civilizational level and never at the highest. By contrast, it was at the highest level of civilization that Austro-Hungary achieved such cosmopolitan tolerance, because that tolerance was tied and essentially ordered to a wider Christian understanding of the common good. The modern and postmodern stance amounts to this: better the principled destruction of higher civilizational forms than the acceptance of concern for moral and spiritual verities as essential to the common good of civil society. This is but a variant of the preference for uniform equality in mediocrity over diverse participations of the good that are approaches to excellence; for equality, not liberty; for the lowest common denominator of sameness, not analogically diverse participations of the good; for deadeningly uniform mediocrity, not excellence. Austro-Hungary’s civilizational accomplishment was achieved

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by accepting analogical diversification of social life on a communitarian basis, in which legal governance matched community. Nothing like this can even be conceived by modern and postmodern minds, which cannot even imagine this type of principled irenicism orchestrated by a morally and spiritually substantive account of the common good into which is written the need to regard the social dictates of conscience, so that diverse social participations in the common order—each with its own legal and cultural density—would be honored and included as a thread in the common fabric. Of course, when that common fabric was destroyed by tyrannical Wilsonian edict and replaced by bureaucratic state secularism, the resultant loss of confidence and temptation to ethnophobia provided a witches’ cauldron for the energumens of the National Socialist Party—a potent illustration, indeed, of the destructiveness of war and the manner in which one set of vicious effects builds upon another. It is not without importance that the last emperor of Austro-Hungary pleaded and negotiated to end the horrendous bloodletting of World War I, but was ignored by all the great powers involved. The Church has named him among the blessed: ‘‘From the beginning, the Emperor Charles conceived of his office as a holy service to his people. His chief concern was to follow the Christian vocation to holiness also in his political actions. For this reason, his thoughts turned to social assistance. May he be an example for all of us, especially for those who have political responsibilities in Europe today!’’ Pope John Paul II, Homily, Mass of Beatification, Saint Peter’s Square, Oct. 3, 2004. 11. It has been brought to my attention that some take such formulations as the above with respect to appetition to indicate that, on my view, all that is necessary for practical reason is appetition. By no means! But without appetition there will be no practical reasoning, and therefore the necessary role of the speculative in the genesis of appetition is pertinent to the etiology of the practical as an extension, in the Aristotelian sense, of the speculative, and likewise pertinent to the clear Thomistic doctrine of the primacy of the speculative. 12. Jean Porter, Nature as Reason: A Thomistic Theory of the Natural Law (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), hereinafter cited as NaR. 13. Her account of the dependence of the rational or active participation of the eternal law upon the prior, passive participation is exemplarily excellent. NaR, 71. 14. NaR, 330, 333. 15. Indeed, like St. Thomas Aquinas himself. 16. ‘‘I would add, however, that Aquinas does in fact recognize the existence of a kind of natural happiness that could be experienced and enjoyed as a limited but distinctive kind of happiness, even if we had not been called to any further end,’’ and the author generously cites my work. NaR, 158 n. 23. Yet she does also state that, ‘‘the idea of ‘pure nature’ is not tenable, as we have seen, because human nature always exists in some culturally specific

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form; correlatively our knowledge of human nature is mediated through conventions and depends on analysis and argument, rather than direct observation. Nonetheless, just as we can distinguish, albeit imperfectly, between what is natural to the human person as such and what reflects particular social/ cultural expressions, so we can distinguish between what is natural to us and what stems from grace.’’ I provide both parts of this quotation because the second part seems, to this author, to contradict the first part: for ‘‘pure nature’’ means only ‘‘nature simpliciter,’’ and both it, and its intelligibility, thus seem to be requisite for the very thinkability of the hypothesis of a state of pure nature (which state, of course, does not now obtain, although nature as such—the other sense of natura pura—and the proportionate natural end persist). Cf. NaR, 385. This is perhaps important because the abstractive intelligibility of nature at its root becomes ever more important to the possible adequation of preceptive judgments of the natural law in concrete social matter. 17. NaR, 13–14. 18. See Sth I–II, q. 85, a. 1, resp., where St. Thomas teaches that nature is, in part, destroyed by original sin. He identifies three senses of human nature: (1) the principles and properties of human nature; (2) the natural inclination to virtue; and (3) that gift of original justice conferred upon the first parents of the human race. He states that the third (the gift of original justice) is destroyed by sin; the second (the natural inclination to virtue) is diminished by sin; and the first (the principles and properties of human nature) is neither destroyed nor diminished by sin. 19. NaR, 76–77. 20. NaR, 75–76. 21. ‘‘The proper function of man, then, consists in an activity of the soul in conformity with a rational principle or, at least, not without it. In speaking of the proper function of a given individual we mean that it is the same in kind as the function of an individual who sets high standards for himself: the proper function of the harpist, for example, is the same as the function of a harpist who has set high standards for himself. The same applies to any and every group of individuals: the full attainment of excellence must be added to the mere function.’’ Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, tr. Martin Ostwald (Prentice Hall: 1999), 1098a 6–11, 17. 22. I here presuppose that the reader is familiar with the decisive refutations of the good/nature or fact/value dichotomy. Those who need to see the analytic mode of supporting this dichotomy answered may be particularly aided by Henry Veatch’s seminal work, For an Ontology of Morals: A Critique of Contemporary Ethical Theory (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1971), although he also considers phenomenological critics. Those who, however, need more with respect to phenomenological criticisms would be well

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served to read Dr. Michael Waldstein’s luminous essay, ‘‘Dietrich von Hildebrand and St. Thomas Aquinas on Goodness and Happiness,’’ published in Nova et Vetera, English Edition, 1, no. 2 (2003): 403–64. 23. NaR, 333. 24. NaR, 338. 25. An interacting order of efficient causes implies the corollary ordering of ends—a universe rather than a multiverse: a cosmos. Even the idea of ‘‘possible universes’’ within contemporary hypothetico-deductive physics is essentially presented as possibly a causal inference (in, for example, ‘‘string theory’’), but systematically interrelated efficiency implies systematically ordered finality. And so, strictly speaking, one should refer to such an idea as that of multiple (possible) physical systems within one universe or cosmos. Of course, even the theistic idea of God creating multiple orders with no connection among them is impossible by definition: if God creates them, they are connected in that each derives from the same First Cause and stands in some objectively comparable relation thereto, even if no creature has the requisite knowledge to make the comparison. 26. Sth I–II, q. 95, a. 2. 27. NaR, 346. 28. NaR, 351. 29. NaR, 351. 30. NaR, 359. 31. NaR, 360. 32. NaR, 371. 33. NaR, 363. 34. It also seems, at least at times, as though the reference to the contingent aspect of cultural commitment is blurred with the commitment to revealed truth as opposed to universal natural moral law. But more preponderantly the sense is that the emphasis upon creation and providence is not constitutive of scholastic natural law doctrine but only of its interpretation. See NaR, 65: ‘‘The scholastics were of course not the first to interpret the natural law by reference to the doctrines of creation and providence. But for them, this connection was particularly important, and their development of the concept of the natural law reflects this fact.’’ But it is not merely that the doctrine supervened from revelation, but that it was held to be demonstrable from natural reason. And as natural law is nothing other than the rational participation of the eternal law, if there is no eternal law, then there is no natural law. As that which defines a thing is not inessential to it, it follows that the truths of natural theology insisted upon by Aquinas—as for example that (see Scriptum on the Sentences, II, dist. 1, q. 1, a. 2) ‘‘not only does faith hold that there is creation but reason also demonstrates it’’—are of constitutive import for the natural law. 35. NaR, 359.

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36. One must insist here that the rational tendency toward certain conclusions need not be in every case articulated in its maximally formal and demonstrative expression in order to count as genuinely speculative. Just as our actual natural reasoning is presupposed to formal logic, so our rational tendency toward certain conclusions is presupposed to the rigorous and scientific working out of those conclusions—something necessary, to be sure, but something that does not derogate its own humble beginnings. Further, the influence of any rigorous reasoning in society extends further than the reach of those who are capable of it. This was clear, once, in an epoch in which the New York Times could find itself reviewing a book by Jacques Maritain. What has changed, as is argued in chapter 2, is the character of the synecdochic Catholic interlocutor, who today is seemingly missing parts of his cognitive DNA and interprets even the clear language of Vatican I regarding the natural knowability of the existence of our Creator and Lord as a merely logical possibility rather than as real proximate potency founded on actual cognitive experience. Hence, apodicticity today is interpreted solely in scientistic terms, even by Catholic minds; it is thought of as the possession of the positive sciences. That the metaphysical principle of noncontradiction is more genuinely apodictic than any other principle of any other science, not merely despite but even because of its analogical scope, is seemingly an inference too remote from antirealist e´lan for contemporary thought to bear. 37. Heart of the World, Center of the Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1996), hereinafter cited as HWCC. 38. ‘‘Accidit autem alicui apprehenso per intellectum, quod ordinetur ad opus, vel non ordinetur. Secundum hoc autem differunt intellectus speculativus et practicus. Nam intellectus speculativus est, qui quod apprehendit, non ordinat ad opus, sed ad solam veritatis considerationem: practicus vero intellectus dicitur, qui hoc quod apprehendit, ordinat ad opus.’’ Sth I, q. 79, a. 11. 39. ‘‘Ita obiectum intellectus practici est bonum ordinabile ad opus, sub ratione veri. Intellectus enim practicus veritatem cognoscit sicut speculativus; sed veritatem cognitam ordinat ad opus.’’ Sth I, q. 79, a. 11, ad 2. 40. To track the remarkably penetrating Communio articles on ANT-OAR by David Schindler and Adrian Walker, as well as the arguments of their critics, and their replies—all of which hinge on the nature of substantial form—see ‘‘Critiques of Altered Nuclear Transfer (ANT) and Oocyte Assisted Reprogramming (OAR),’’ Communio: International Catholic Review. http:// www.communio-icr.com/ant.htm. 41. HWCC, 63–65. 42. HWCC, 64. 43. I think here of Ludwig von Mises, who despite what I should regard as grave error with respect to metaphysics, moral law and virtue, prudence in political life, and epistemology, nonetheless prophetically analyzed the devastation that the ‘‘planned economy’’ would necessarily cause. He argued that

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the notion of replacing the multivarious judgments and particular knowledge of participants that impinge on prices with a coercively imposed price structure would merely mandate tragic shortages and misallocation of resources. The extent to which this is true became manifest after the fall of the Berlin Wall, when the disparity in wealth between East and West Germany was so much greater than had previously been thought that it ended the experimentation with planned economies throughout the world. Yet while correct in this respect, von Mises accepted whole cloth the famed ‘‘fact/value dichotomy,’’ as well as a reductionist epistemology limiting human knowledge to mere ‘‘phenomena’’ in the Kantian sense. These judgments are both false and deplorable. 44. See HWCC, 189–96. 45. See HWCC, 196–99. This is not—I hope it is needless to say—to dissent from his view of the essentially Marian character of theological life. 46. HWCC, 197. 47. See his writing, and that of Adrian Walker, on ANT-OAR, in which they defend the humanum from the danger of a certain subtle and implicit genetic reductionism, placing all their stakes on the principle of substantial form. http://www.communio-icr.com/ant.htm. 48. The relation to God follows upon the creation of substance, and does not precede it (God has no real relation to the creature, and before the creature is, it is not related). This is of course the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas, as witness his Commentary on the Sentences, book II, dist. I, q. 1, article 2, ad 4. The relation of createdness is post factum with respect to created being inasmuch as nonexistent beings do not have real relations. 49. Of course, in one limited respect Hume was right: being caused is not an analytic constituent of the mere definition of things; but this does not mean that being caused cannot be discovered through ontological analysis, or that as he erroneously thought, there is no natural necessity. The principle of noncontradiction itself is a naturally necessary principle of being or the real as such, for whenever a real and non-real are distinguished, the distinction itself is real (for example: My sister is not a mere concept; this is a real distinction because it pertains to the reality of my sister). And the proposition that becoming can occur without a cause is impossible for the simple reason that it is impossible for there to be real evidence of the same, as likewise it is clear that ex nihil nihil fit. Relationality, even causal relationality, may be strongly defended without superordinating relation to created nature, a relation which exists only after the fact of creation (before the fact there is nothing to relate!). 50. It will be observed that my attention has been offered principally to de Lubac and Balthasar, and not to Rahner, with respect to the retreat from the doctrine of natura pura and a realist account of grace. However, surely it will be apparent that between the idea of an order to intrinsically supernatural life impressed on the creature from the start but prior to the reception of sanctifying

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grace, and the idea of this ordering not as ‘‘impressed’’ but as a supernatural existential operative prior to reception of sanctifying grace, there is a strong analogy. De Lubac’s account is preferable because his account is spurred by the need for an evangelical response to naturalist anti-theism and by his own immersion in the patristic tradition; whereas Rahner’s account—despite superficial references to Aquinas—is fundamentally a compound of continental ideosophy, a doctrine of the univocity of being less subtle than Scotus’s, and an enamored love of autonomy and historicity. Further, it is de Lubac who influences Balthasar, and it is Balthasar who, in brilliantly setting forth the ecclesial, Marian, and contemplative form of theology, accidentally also passes on the additional content of this signature genetic error at the root of la nouvelle the´ologie to contemporary Catholic thought. But a Balthasar who was not, as the real Balthasar was, a man inspired with profound insight into Catholic truth, might equally have applied the same dialectical view of nature as a mere limit concept to Rahner’s account of grace and the supernatural existential, with similar effects—save that this error consequently would not have been as likely to find its way into more traditionally Roman Catholic reflections given Rahner’s postconciliar antinomian shift toward denial of the Church’s magisterium with respect to concrete moral norms. 5. Conclusion 1. ‘‘Respondeo dicendum quod praeter legem naturalem et legem humanam, necessarium fuit ad directionem humanae vitae habere legem divinam. Et hoc propter quatuor rationes. Primo quidem, quia per legem dirigitur homo ad actus proprios in ordine ad ultimum finem. Et si quidem homo ordinaretur tantum ad finem qui non excederet proportionem naturalis facultatis hominis, non oporteret quod homo haberet aliquid directivum ex parte rationis, supra legem naturalem et legem humanitus positam, quae ab ea derivatur. Sed quia homo ordinatur ad finem beatitudinis aeternae, quae excedit proportionem naturalis facultatis humanae, ut supra habitum est; ideo necessarium fuit ut supra legem naturalem et humanam, dirigeretur etiam ad suum finem lege divinitus data.’’ Sth I–II, q. 91, a. 4, resp. 2. ‘‘Ad primum ergo dicendum quod per naturalem legem participatur lex aeterna secundum proportionem capacitatis humanae naturae. Sed oportet ut altiori modo dirigatur homo in ultimum finem supernaturalem. Et ideo superadditur lex divinitus data, per quam lex aeterna participatur altiori modo.’’ Sth I–II, q. 91, a. 4, ad 1. 3. Henri de Lubac, ‘‘Duplex hominis beatitudo’’ Communio (Winter 2008): 600, trans. and published by permission of Recherches de science religieuse. Compare above, chapter 1, note 64. 4. Henri de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, (Eerdmans, 1998) volume 1, tr. Mark Sebanc; volume 2 (Eerdmans, 2000), tr. Edward M. Macierowski.

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5. Despite the prevalence even today of the view that existence is merely the property of a concept rather than a first intentional object, analytic minds themselves insist that this view is not essential to analytic thought, and indeed it is coming under progressive analytic criticism. See note 9 in chapter 3, citing Prof. Richard Cross of Oxford to this effect. 6. Existence is not merely ‘‘the negation of naught’’ as Frege famously taught. To the contrary: The negation of naught only is ‘‘something existing’’ if we have already posited a real subject. Only where there is a real subject does the negation of negation yield something ontologically positive. If one says that a real person does not not have a nose, that means he really does have a nose. But if one says: ‘‘no flying hippopotami singing La Traviata do not teach at Oxford,’’ that does not mean that there actually exist flying hippopotami singing La Traviata at Oxford. Frege’s formulation presupposes precisely what no second-order consideration can rightfully presuppose: actual existence. See note 10 in chapter 3 for St. Thomas’s analysis from De veritate on this question. 7. Whereas, if created nature were not subject to divine causality in itself, simpliciter, there would be no created nature nor any subject who could be aided by God so as receive grace and achieve beatific union with God. 8. One is reconciled, in advance, to hearing the proposition that ‘‘this thesis has confused the doctrine of the praeambula fidei with that of a dubious construction of natura pura, a mere limit hypothesis of Aquinas at best.’’ But we have already shown the texts in which Thomas affirms a natural and proximate finality impressed on man and intelligible even here and now, concretely, and from which the human species is derived, an end that is distinct from the ultimate and supernatural finality. That God might without injustice have created man in puris naturalibus is also clearly Thomas’s teaching. This twofold doctrine is essentially presupposed by the praeambula fidei, because the preambles are naturally knowable truths, a conception that would be odd were there only one monistic supernatural end with no proximate natural finality. Indeed, the conception of the praeambula fidei would be impossible apart from natural finality, because it presupposes natural efficiency as defined by natural finality, and so such natural finality must exist. Further, this natural finality is a limited ordering toward God, short of grace or the beatific vision. Here one can do no better than to say: (1) read St. Thomas; (2) read both the marvelous work by Lawrence Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God According to St. Thomas Aquinas and His Interpreters (Rome: Apollinare Studi, 2001), and Ralph McInerny’s similarly strategic work, Praeambula fidei: Thomism and the God of the Philosophers (Washington, DC: CUA Press, 2006); and finally (an author’s vanity), (3) re-read the first chapter of this present work. Appendix: Cardinal Ratzinger, and Pope Benedict XVI 1. I refer to ‘‘Ratzinger’’ in what follows, both because when he wrote this he was a Cardinal, but also because I believe he would himself wish that

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arguments of his personal theology articulated prior to his pontificate (as distinct from formal ecclesial pronouncements) be treated in this way, respectfully, but precisely as the work of a fellow laborer in the vineyard subject to academic disputation. In any case, this is my motive for addressing him as I do, and no disrespect whatsoever is meant thereby. 2. Cardinal Ratzinger, Truth and Tolerance, trans. Henry Taylor (Ignatius Press: San Francisco, 2004), 135–136. 3. The proportional analogy here concerns strictly apodicticity and not precision. Yet while this analogy involves a ‘‘confusion’’ or fusing together of diverse rationes, and so is more vague and less precise than is mathematical knowledge, it is if anything more apodictic. Being is presupposed by every science. 4. He criticizes the reduction of reason to the zone of mathematicoempirical truths: ‘‘This gives rise to two principles which are crucial for the issue we have raised. First, only the kind of certainty resulting from the interplay of mathematical and empirical elements can be considered scientific. Anything that would claim to be science must be measured against this criterion. Hence the human sciences, such as history, psychology, sociology and philosophy, attempt to conform themselves to this canon of scientificity. A second point, which is important for our reflections, is that by its very nature this method excludes the question of God, making it appear an unscientific or pre-scientific question. Consequently, we are faced with a reduction of the radius of science and reason, one which needs to be questioned.’’ As he puts it, ‘‘While we rejoice in the new possibilities open to humanity, we also see the dangers arising from these possibilities and we must ask ourselves how we can overcome them. We will succeed in doing so only if reason and faith come together in a new way, if we overcome the self-imposed limitation of reason to the empirically verifiable, and if we once more disclose its vast horizons.’’ And also: ‘‘The West has long been endangered by this aversion to the questions which underlie its rationality, and can only suffer great harm thereby. The courage to engage the whole breadth of reason, and not the denial of its grandeur—this is the programme with which a theology grounded in Biblical faith enters into the debates of our time.’’ ‘‘ ‘Not to act reasonably (with ‘‘logos’’) is contrary to the nature of God,’ said Manuel II, according to his Christian understanding of God, in response to his Persian interlocutor. It is to this great ‘logos,’ to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures.’’ In interpreting these remarks, it thus becomes apparent that a certain antecedent scope and openness of reason is presupposed by the aid bestowed by faith upon reason: something that again points to the proportionate, proximate natural end. Benedict XVI, ‘‘Lecture of the Holy Father, Aula Magna of the University of Regensburg, Tuesday, 12 September 2006,’’ The Holy See, http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/ speeches/2006/september/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20060912_ university-regensburg_en.html.

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5. One happily and indefinitely adverts to the doctrine of Sth I, q. 75, a. 7, ad 1, and of Quaestiones de anima, a. 7, ad 10. 6. Of course, Molina and Sua´rez did not mean to absolutize human freedom, but when one posits a liberty of indifference to the creative causality of the omnipotent God, that truly impossible premise is of course precisely what one proposes. Why impossible? Because, as we have argued above and in many other fora, it is the case owing to the divine simplicity that when God causes something, it is not God that alters or changes, but what signifies the divine causality is the actuality of the effect. The only real difference between God causing X and God not causing X is not in God but rather is the being of X, the actual reality of the caused effect. To say otherwise is to say that God does and does not cause at the same time and in the same respect, a proposition that not even all the famed subtlety of Sua´rez can rescue from palpable absurdity. Likewise, the proposition that the order of terrestrial causes is closed is simply incompatible with the prime evidence and conclusions of natural philosophy. For once one knows that the principle of noncontradiction is a metaphysical principle, the monism of Parmenides looms, and is dislodged only by the perception that the things we actually sense and see changing, each analogically participate being, and do so as limited by potency which accounts for the susceptibility to change and motion, for limitation in being, and for multiplicity in being. But this brings us very quickly to the real distinction of act and potency passing through finite being, and to the first way of St. Thomas’s Summa theologiae, which—all cavils predicated on hypothetico-deductive physics to one side—is still quite valid. Not even the principle of inertia can void the argument, because, first, the Newtonian principles really and fully obtain only in a vacuum, but no perfect vacuum exists, with the implication that the Newtonian formula applies except where it doesn’t; and second, precisely because act is not self-limiting. If one conceives of actual motion without material limit (which is what Newton implicitly did in conceiving of pure vacuum), one necessarily infinitizes it, a conclusion wholly consistent with Thomistic and Aristotelian thought although—need it be said?—there is no perfect vacuum and therefore no infinite inertia or act. Third, Newton was never concerned systematically to discover the source of actual motion but rather to lay down laws pertaining to change from either a state of motion or of rest, which is to say: he does not sufficiently discern that even his own account provided evidence for the primacy of act. I.e., the only thing that requires energy is either starting actual motion or stopping actual motion, but why should this be? Save that act is primary vis-a`-vis potency? But, of course, the understanding of potency lies outside the method and formal object of hypothetico-deductive physics, which does not penetrate the natural evidence as deeply and universally as ontology of nature. Similarly, ontology of nature does not seek predictive accuracy or quantitative precision. 7. Benedict XVI, ‘‘Lecture of the Holy Father, Aula Magna of the University of Regensburg, Tuesday, 12 September 2006,’’ The Holy See, http://www

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.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2006/september/documents/hf_ ben-xvi_spe_20060912_university-regensburg_en.html. 8. See point 8 of the ‘‘Address Of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI to the Diplomatic Corps Accredited to The Holy See for the Traditional Exchange of New Year Greetings,’’ Monday, 7 January 2008, Libreria Editrice Vaticana.

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absolute autonomy, 41–42, 186–87 abstraction, 2, 85–88, 96, 133, 247n30 act analogical ratio of, 94–95 beatific vision and, 78 limitation of, 65 potency and, 115, 131, 132, 218 adequatio of mind and thing, 70 agency, 45. See also will agnosticism common good and, 151 First Amendment and, 189, 190 moral life and, 148 natura pura and, 143 science and, 106 Ajdukiewicz, Kazimierz, 127 America. See United States Ames, Fisher, 261n6 analogy analytic thought and, 131 of attribution, 45 of being, 93, 95, 115 between creature and God, 92–93 doctrine of, 96 of proper proportionality, 132, 248–49n46 Thomist thought and, 258n25 analytic philosophy, 5, 110–39 apologetic engagement with, 134–38 Bochenski and, 121–33 retrospective on, 204–7 speculative priority of, 134–38 analytic Thomism, 205 angelic nature, 13, 15, 24–25, 89, 91, 227n13 ANT-OAR, 183, 194, 267n47 anthropological reductionism, 152 anti-theists, 43

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antiirrationalism, 127 antinomian historicism, 107 antirealist reductionism, 198 apologetic engagement with analytic philosophy, 134–38 analytic thought and, 136 faith as gift and, 104 loss of nature as theonomic principle and, 43 moral life and, 101, 181 natura pura and, 154, 198 natural philosophy and metaphysics of, 105 appetition, 183, 263n11 Aquinas. See Thomas Aquinas Aristotle on act and potency, 115 analytic philosophy and, 112 on ethics, 163 on good, 88, 260n2 on metaphysics, 124 ontological analysis and, 128 on ontological imperfection, 65 symbolic representation used by, 256n12 Athanasian witness, 86 atheism common good and, 151 moral life and, 148 natura pura and, 143 religious freedom and, 177 science and, 106, 107 state regimes of, 153 Augustine, 61, 74 Augustinianism and Modern Theology (de Lubac), 203 Austro-Hungary, Christian political order in, 262–63n10

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autonomy divine providence and, 186–87 moral law and, 48, 49–50 nature and, 25 of nature and human agency, 45 relative, 111 secularism and, 8 subjective right of, 178 Ayer, A. J., 112 Baius, 58, 60, 62, 63 Balthasar, Hans Urs von on concrete nature, 83–91 on grace, 54–83 on nature as vacuole for grace, 4, 52–109, 203–4 theological implications, 92–97 Ban˜ez, Domingo, 22, 120 Barth, Karl, 108 beatitude deprivation of, 57, 62, 69, 203, 244n64 grace as only direction on will toward, 14 knowledge of God as, 16, 73 natural order toward, 18–19, 57, 90, 225n5 nature distinct from, 82 supernatural nature of, 17, 35 behaviorist reductionism, 113 being analytic thought and, 124–25 essence distinction from, 248n36 as first in intellect, 130 nature and, 66, 80 realization and, 17 Benedict XVI, 8, 107, 170, 212–22, 270n1 Bochenski, I. M., 6, 121–33, 257n20 Boyle, John, 230n18, 249n47 Cajetan (Thomas de Vio) analytic thought and, 120 de Lubac on, 16, 64, 228n14 on natural desire for God, 22 on pure nature, 19–20, 229n17 on revelation, 226n11 on will, 224n3 capacity of natural law, 158–60 Catholic thought and doctrine analytic thought and, 5–6, 135–36 Balthasar and, 61 China’s state-controlled church as substitute for, 153

liberalism and, 193 loss of nature as theonomic principle and, 37–38, 45 moral life and, 49–50, 100 natura pura and, 108 causal closure, 42 causality creative, 76 efficient, 71–72 First Cause, 25, 75 human will and, 3 miracles and, 104 ontological analysis and, 129 philosophic method and, 115 charity, 17, 45, 78, 100 China, persecution of Christianity in, 153 Christ. See Incarnation of Christ Christian logocentrism, 193–96 Christian social prudence, 155–82 Church, evangelical mission of, 97–107, 154, 181, 198. See also Catholic thought and doctrine classical Thomism analytic thought and, 111, 119–20, 126, 130 liberalism and, 184 normative place within philosophy and theology, 141 scholastic method and, 5, 138, 221 speculative theism and, 152 close-in teleologies, 161–64, 208 common good and natural law, 149–51, 180–81 Comte, Auguste, 37 concrete nature, 1, 52–53, 83–91, 142 confessional discipline, 103 confessional states, 149–50, 189–90, 261n6 conventionalism, 118, 128 Cracow Circle, 128 created nature Balthasar’s account of, 80 grace and, 66–67 as naturally knowable, 200 order of, 198 as presupposing God, 75 proportionate intelligibility of, 108 creation creature/Creator contrast in, 65 divine providence and, 59, 88, 209, 211 metaphysical doctrine of, 186, 187 as natural and supernatural, 67 naturally ordered to God, 44 274

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Index 275 creative causality, 76 culture natural law and, 166–67, 200, 209 secularism in, 107, 193 Dawkins, Richard, 106, 249–50n50 De Deo trino vs. De Deo uno, 49 de Lubac, Henri on Cajetan, 228n14 on concrete nature, 52–53, 54, 83–91 on human agency independent of God, 42 natura pura and, 267–68n50 on natural desire to know God, 18–19 on natural order, 225n7 naturalism and, 201 on obediential potency, 3–4, 11–12, 28–36, 227n13 selective use of Aquinas texts, 13, 16, 244n64 teleology used by, 47 theonomic character of natural order and, 50 de Tocqueville, Alexis, 150 de Vio, Thomas. See Cajetan Declaration of Independence, 190 Derrida, Jacques, 194 desire to know God grace and, 14, 229n15, 231n19 happiness and, 15 natural, 2, 11–12, 13, 18–19 as obediential potency, 25 determinations of natural law, 168–70 determinism of circumstance, 40 devolution of Thomist realism, 126–28 Dewan, Lawrence, 253n7 divine causality, 37–38, 41–42. See also causality divine nature, 87 divine providence absolute autonomy and, 41–42 creation and, 209, 211 freedom and, 37–38, 238n53 liberty and, 41 metaphysical doctrine of, 151, 187 natural end and supernatural end distinction, 59, 201 natural order and finality as element of, 60, 141 as naturally knowable, 200 sin and, 62

supernatural end and, 59, 201 will and, 3, 38–40, 224n3 doctrine of analogy, 96, 130. See also analogy Dominican thought, 22, 80 Drama of Atheist Humanism, The (de Lubac), 42 dualism, 158, 160, 211 dynamism of nature, 42, 44, 82, 90, 200–4 education, 147–48, 175 efficient causality, 71–72, 78, 265n25 Emery, Gilles, 249n47 Enlightenment absolute autonomy and, 41, 187 individualism and, 142 liberalism and, 193, 194 loss of nature as theonomic principle and, 6, 37 naturalism and, 201 reason and, 173 esse, 86, 94, 251n1 essence, 62, 86, 248n36 eternal happiness, 73 eternal law, 70, 201–2, 265n34 ethics, 37, 48. See also moral life; virtue Eucharist, 50 European Union, secularism in, 150, 193 evangelical mission of Church, 97–107, 154, 181, 198 Evans, M. Stanton, 261n6 evil moral philosophy and, 149 natural law and, 165, 178 theological understanding of, 223n3 evolutionary theory, 250n50 existence, 62, 86, 114, 269n6 existential Thomism, 253n7 existentialism, 137 extrinsicism, 36 faith moral life and, 154, 181 philosophy and, 215 as supernatural gift, 104 fallen nature, 67. See also original sin family, definitions of, 175 Feingold, Lawrence, 3, 10, 15, 50, 80 felicity, imperfect vs. perfect, 15 fideism, 13, 48, 83 fidelity in marriage, 100 Fides et ratio (John Paul II), 50 275

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final causality, 78 finis naturalis. See natural ends finis ultimus. See supernatural end First Amendment, 184, 185–93 First Cause, 25, 75 First Vatican Council, 62–63, 101–2, 221 form, 78, 183 formal logic, 128–29, 130 Franciscan thought, 28 free expression rights, 176 freedom deific view of, 11 dependence on divine causality, 41 divine providence and, 3, 202, 238n53 libertarian account of, 39, 271n6 loss of nature as theonomic principle and, 37–38 Frege, Gottlob, 114, 120, 206, 254n10 gay marriage, 175 genetic engineering, 240n61 genocide, 153 Gilson, Etienne, 11, 12, 28–36, 95, 139, 224n4, 248n36 God as author of all public and private good, 146 being and nature constituted by, 66 creative causality of, 76 efficient causality of, 71–72 as First Cause, 25, 75 natural law and, 222 God Delusion, The (Dawkins), 249n50 Go¨del’s theorem of incompleteness, 55, 112, 125, 129, 206, 252n5 good hierarchy of ends defining nature of, 161 natural law and, 165, 168, 178 nature and, 157–58 private and public, 69, 146 of religion, 146 secularism and, 260n5 grace Balthasar on, 54–83 divine providence and, 59 fallen nature and, 67 as gift, 58, 61–62, 68 higher capacities of man not knowable apart from, 33–34, 45 loss of, 23–24 marriage and, 98 moral life and, 100, 181

moral philosophy and, 146 natura pura and, 142–43 natural order within, 20, 147, 184, 225n5 nature as preamble to, 2, 23, 49, 55, 72, 88–89, 147 nature distinction from, 12–28, 64, 109 nature perfected through, 86, 90, 188, 200 obediential potency for, 11, 28–36 ordering of, 51 philosophical conception of, 64 positive definition of, 65 as principle of supernatural life, 72 restoration of natural love through, 46–47 revelation of, 71, 154 supernatural character of, 25, 60 happiness desire to know God and, 15 natural ends and, 16, 164 as supernatural end, 73, 179, 201 Healy, Nicholas, 241n64, 243n64, 244n64 Heart of the World, Center of the Church (Schindler Sr.), 182–96 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 2, 37, 53, 66, 74, 96, 142, 194 Heidegger, Martin, 235n36 historicism, 105, 251–52n3 Hitchens, Christopher, 106, 153 homosexual unions, 175 human rights. See rights humanism, 144 Hume, David, 37, 101, 142, 267n49 identity, principle of, 94–95, 194 Incarnation of Christ fallen nature redeemed in, 67 human nature and, 29, 86–87, 97 natura pura and, 210 as revelation, 49, 229n15 supernatural nature of, 17 individualism, 142 inertia, principle of, 271n6 infidelity, 100 infused grace, 72 intellect, 78, 130, 229n16, 233n28 irrationalism, 72 isolable material object, 78 Jefferson, Thomas, 190 Jesuit thought, 22, 80 27 6

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I n d e x 277 John of St. Thomas, 22, 116 John Paul II, 36, 50, 251n1 justice common good and, 149 as duty to God, 69, 70, 146 grace and, 58 necessity of, 62 rights and, 176 virtue of, 146 Kant, Immanuel, 37, 42, 105, 142, 212 language and analytic method, 118, 205 Laporta, J., 224n4 Laval Thomism, 253n7 liberalism, 183–84, 189, 192–94 libertarianism, 39, 271n6 liberty as created, 202 divine providence and, 41, 186 loss of nature as theonomic principle and, 37–38 liberty of indifference, 38, 187, 202, 271n6 liturgical form, 103 logic analytic thought and, 119–20, 205 mathematical, 122, 130, 133 metaphysics and, 123 method relation to, 113, 115 ontology and, 124 philosophy of nature and, 116 scientific method vs., 111 speculative development and, 136 Logic and Ontology (Bochenski), 122–23 logicism, 6, 48, 118, 122, 252–53n5 Logico-Philosophical Studies (Bochenski), 130 logocentrism, 193–96 love, 45–47 Lubac, Henri de. See de Lubac, Henri lumen gloriae, 17, 72 MacIntyre, Alasdair, 139 mala in se, 100, 149 Malloy, Christopher, 230n18 Man and the State (Maritain), 145 Maritain, Jacques on desire to know God, 231n19 on moral philosophy vs. moral theology, 66–67, 184, 210 on natura pura and secularism, 143–55 on nature distinction from grace, 1

on revelation as necessary for moral guidance, 181–82 on rights, 7, 259–60n2 on speculative foundation of natural law, 155, 182 marriage, 98, 100, 175 materialism, 42, 152 mathematical logic, 122, 130, 133 McInerny, Ralph, 64, 253n7, 258n25 McPartlan, Paul, 240–41n61 medicinal revelation, 188, 240n61 Medieval Exegesis (de Lubac), 203 meta-philosophy, 117, 120, 122, 125, 134 metaphysical biology, 164 metaphysics classical Thomism and, 207 creation and, 186 in divine providence, 151 logic and, 116, 123 method of, 113–14, 115 natura pura and, 9 natural theology and, 198 necessity of, 207 political wisdom and, 182 as scientia, 111 theonomic character of natural law and, 47, 48 Metaphysics (Aristotle), 124 Milbank, John, 10, 223–24n3, 234n32 minimalist secularism. See secularist minimalism minimum practical consensus, 144 miracles, 104 mode of being vs. realization, 17 modern academe and analytic thought, 193–96 Molina, Luis de, 37–41, 224n3, 238n54 moral life. See also virtue Catholic doctrine and, 49–50 faith and, 181 loss of nature impact on, 97–107 natural law and, 165–66, 170, 187 revelation and, 154, 177–78, 179, 181, 210 secularist minimalism and, 143 sexual morality, 161–63 social processes of, 165–67 moral theology, 66–67, 146, 184, 195, 210 Murray, John Courtney, 184, 185–93 The Mystery of the Supernatural (de Lubac), 84, 203, 241n64 27 7

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27 8

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National Socialist Party, 263n10 natura pura doctrine of, 8, 142 dynamism of, 195 as lacking divine assistance of supernatural grace, 81–82 moral life and, 150–51, 154, 181 as nature simpliciter, 81–82 in public life, 197 revelation and, 144 secularism and, 143–55, 156 secularist minimalism and, 207–11 theological method role of, 111, 220 Thomism and, 142 natural causality, 104 Natural Desire to See God According to St. Thomas Aquinas and His Interpreters, The (Feingold), 3, 10, 50, 80 natural ends divine providence and, 60 grace and, 201 hierarchy of, 65, 73, 79, 81, 88, 145, 160–61 human vs. angelic, 15 ontological imperfection of, 18 ordering toward, 78, 89 perfection of, 29 rights claims and, 177 supernatural ends distinct from, 16, 22–23, 59, 90–91, 142, 151, 156, 227n13 natural justice, 146 natural knowledge of God, 69, 102–4, 200, 221 natural law as capacity to judge rightly, 158–60 classical Thomism and, 207 common good and, 153–54 determinations of, 169–70 as eternal law, 70, 201–2, 265n34 grace and, 97 moral philosophy and, 148, 187 moral precepts underdetermined by, 165, 170 Porter’s treatment of, 155–82 scholastic concept of, 172–73 secularism and, 41 social mediation and social embeddedness of, 153, 165–71 speculative foundation of, 155, 182, 196 theological method and, 198, 221 theonomic character of, 43, 47–51

natural love, 45–47 natural moral philosophy, 66–67, 146, 184, 195 natural order, 36–47, 50, 60, 147, 184, 225n7 natural perfection, 29 natural philosophy, 78, 113–14, 207 natural selection theory, 250n50 natural teleology, 27, 47, 48, 85, 142 natural theology, 47, 58, 198 natural virtue, 97, 99 naturalism analytical thought and, 7 de Lubac and, 29, 201, 220, 235n35 fallacy of, 157–58 loss of nature as theonomic principle and, 37 natural philosophy and, 78 reason and, 104 revelation and, 44 naturalist reductionism, 41, 92 nature abstracted from sin and grace, 71, 247n30 access to, 60 Balthasar on, 54–83 in Christ, 86 de-sacramentalization of, 48 dynamism of, 200–4 elevation of, 33–34, 85–86, 90, 200 grace distinction from, 12–28, 23, 64, 82, 109 hierarchy of natural ends defining, 73 intellect as, 229n16 as limit condition for grace, 68 loss of natural order as theonomic principle, 36–47, 103 neutrality of, 63, 85 as normative principle in theology, 51 obediential potency and, 28–36 ontological density of, 200–4 ordered to supernatural ends, 24 ordering of, 2, 225n5 original sin and, 264n18 perfected through grace, 188 as preamble to grace, 2, 23, 49, 55, 72, 88, 89, 147 proportionate end of, 200–4 sin and, 23, 59 as theonomic principle, 10–51, 201 transmutation of, 28–36 will as, 202, 231n19 278

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I n d e x 279 Nature as Reason (Porter), 155–82 negation as implication of positive teachings, 114, 269n6 neoscholastic rationalism, 214, 215 neutrality of nature, 63, 85 Nicene doctrine, 22, 74, 86, 87, 210 Nicomachean Ethics (Aristotle), 163 nihilism, 48 nominalism, 71, 111 nonbelievers cooperation toward common good with, 152, 153, 154 credibility of revelation naturally accessible to, 101 natural moral philosophy and, 144, 145 secularism in public sphere and, 153 noncontradiction, principle of, 78, 95–96, 115, 123, 166, 267n49 la nouvelle the´ologie, 13, 85, 182 obediential potency de Lubac on, 3–4, 11–12, 28–36, 227n13 of desire to know God, 25 error of, 11, 28–36 Gilson on, 224n4 for grace, 27 Thomist thought on, 235n34 objective rights, 176 One God treatise, 49 ontological analysis, 123–24, 128–29 ontological density of nature within Christian faith and theology, 105 in created nature, 65 natural vs. supernatural ends and, 82, 200–4 negation of, 95, 101 secularism and, 155, 182 theonomic character of natural law and, 47, 48 ontological imperfection, 65 ontological pluralism, 125 original sin grace and, 88 moral philosophy and, 144, 146, 181 nature and, 229n17, 264n18 revelation of, 71 supernatural end and, 59 See also sin partial meta-philosophy, 117, 120 passive potency, 32, 33, 35 perfect happiness, 15. See also happiness

perfection creature/Creator contrast in, 65, 92–93 natural and supernatural ends, 18 of nature through grace, 29, 45, 58, 188 phenomenologists, 137 philosophic anthropology, 9, 48, 198 philosophy of logic, 118, 120 philosophy of nature, 9, 111, 115–16, 198, 207 physicalism, 42 Pickstock, Catherine, 234n32 planned economy, 267n43 pluralism, 125 political correctness, 107 political free expression rights, 176 political order, 156–57, 171, 262–63n10 political servitude, 153 political wisdom, 182 Porter, Jean, 7–8, 155–82 close-in teleologies, 161–64 natural law as capacity, 158–60 social mediation and social embeddedness of natural law, 165–71 subjective rights, 172–82 positive philosophic theory, 120–21 positive science, 6, 105–6, 108, 222 positivism, 37, 42 postmodern deconstructionists, 137 potency act and, 94–95, 115, 131, 132, 218 beatific vision and, 78 esse relation to, 86 for grace, 27 limitation of act by, 65 passive, 32, 33, 35 perfections and, 93 See also obediential potency practical knowing and speculative truth, 48, 183 praeambula fidei, 215, 216, 269n8 Praeambula fidei (McInerny), 64 prayer, 69, 70, 73, 146 pre-rational nature, 155 Principia Mathematica (Russell & Whitehead), 112, 125, 206 principle of identity, 94–95, 194 principle of inertia, 271n6 principle of noncontradiction, 78, 95–96, 115, 123, 166, 267n49 principle of substantial form, 194 private good, 69 27 9

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procreative activity vs. procreation, 163 proportional unity, 130, 132 proportionate end, 142, 200–4. See also natural ends Protestant theology, 141, 150, 193 providence. See divine providence prudence justice and, 177, 190 political, 183–84, 211 revelation and, 144, 196 public good, 69 public life natura pura in, 197 natural law and, 200, 209 secularist minimalism and, 143, 144, 207–8 public policy, 107 public worship and prayer, 69, 70, 73, 146 punishment, 57, 58, 62, 69, 203, 244n64 pure nature, 72, 79, 81, 229n17. See also natura pura Rahner, Karl, 234n33, 267–68n50 rationalism, 13, 27, 48, 103–4, 142, 214–15 Ratzinger, Joseph, 8, 212–22, 270n1. See also Benedict XVI realism, 37, 54, 73, 106, 111 reason, 63, 102–4, 222, 234n32. See also analytic philosophy reductionism antirealist nature of, 198 behaviorist, 113 cultural influence of, 193 in genetic engineering, 240n61 naturalist, 41, 92 scientistic, 207, 217 speculative theism and, 152 Regensburg Lecture, 212, 213, 217, 222 religious freedom, 177, 185–93 Reno, Rusty, 110, 250–51n1 revealed theology, 64, 68–69 revelation analytic thought and, 128 creation and, 186 desire to know God and, 2 divine providence and, 59, 226n11 faith and, 146 as gift, 62, 68 of God in Christ, 49 hierarchy of natural ends and, 51, 81 moral life and, 98, 100, 154, 177–78, 179, 181

natural knowledge contextualized through, 60, 65–66, 77, 144 ordering of, 51, 81 philosophical inquiry and, 187 positive character of, 64 reason and, 102, 103 secularist minimalism and, 143 social permeation of life by, 153 rights Maritain on, 259–60n2 ordering of, 145, 173, 180 secularism and, 144, 196 subjective nature of, 171, 172–82 River Forest Thomism, 253n7 Rowland, Tracy, 140, 259n1 Russell, Bertrand, 252n5 Ryle, John Charles, 113 sacramental life of Church, 49–50 Schindler, David, Sr., 8, 182–96, 240n61 scholasticism analytic thought and, 5, 126 classical Thomism and, 221 close-in teleology and, 162 in natural law, 172–73 rationalism and, 218 scientia, 16–17, 37, 262n9 scientia media, 40 scientific method vs. logic, 111 scientism, 6, 37, 42, 117 Scotus, 24, 218, 224n3, 233n28, 236n37 Second Vatican Council, 33 secularism analytic thought and, 119 of Catholic institutional life, 6, 141 centralized power and, 191, 263n10 loss of nature as theonomic principle and, 37, 45 natura pura and, 142, 143–55, 156 natural human agency independent of God, 41 natural law and, 41 nature of good and, 260n5 persecution of Christians under, 153 revelation and, 153 rights and, 145–46, 196 virtue and duty in, 173–74 secularist minimalism, 7, 8, 143–55, 197, 207–8 Sertillanges, A. G., 139 sexual morality, 161–63 Shanley, Brian, 23 280

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I n d e x 281 Sheed, Rosemary, 223n2 sin human natural desire and, 45 moral life and, 154, 181 nature and, 23 restoration of natural love after, 46–47 supernatural end and, 160 See also original sin skepticism, 6, 118, 142 social harmony, 177 social mediation and social embeddedness of natural law, 165–71, 208 Society of Jesus, 238n54 socio-political consensus, 196 sociological inertia, 119 Solomon, David, 257n20 Soviet Union, persecution of Christianity in, 153 species-specific patterns of behavior, 175 speculative truth analytic thought and, 119, 120, 134–38 moral philosophy and, 152, 154, 195 in natural law, 155, 182, 196 in natural moral knowledge, 158 in natural philosophy, 188 practical knowing and, 48, 183 Strawson, P. F., 112–13 Sua´rez, Francisco, 22, 31, 218, 232n22 subjective rights, 171, 172–82 substantial form, principle of, 194 Sullivan, Thomas D., 251–52n3 Summa contra gentiles (Thomas Aquinas), 18, 26 Summa theologiae (Thomas Aquinas), 14–16, 24–26, 39–40, 73, 201–3, 241n64 supernatural end beatific vision as only knowledge source for, 73 divine providence and, 201 God’s principal efficient causality toward, 71–72 grace and, 25 natura pura and, 142 natural ends distinct from, 16, 22–23, 45, 59, 88, 90–91, 142, 151, 156, 227n13 obediential potency and, 29 ontological perfection of, 18 ordering toward, 24, 89 supernatural unity of Church, 50 Supreme Court, U.S., 150, 189, 191, 260n5

Surnaturel (de Lubac), 141–42, 203 Suspended Middle, The (Milbank), 10 Sylvester of Ferrara, 22, 232n22 symbolization, 129 teleology, 43, 47, 48, 161–64. See also natural teleology Teresa of Avila, 97 textualism, 48 theism, 149–50, 190 theological anthropology, 28 Theology of Karl Barth, The (Balthasar), 4, 52–55, 84 Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas, The (Balthasar), 141 Thomas Aquinas analogy of proper proportionality and, 248–49n46 Catholic doctrine and, 108 on charity as form of every virtue, 78 on concrete nature, 53, 54, 85 critical approach to, 56 on deprivation of beatific vision, 69 on determinatio, 168–69 on elevation of intellect, 130, 233n28 on existence of God demonstrated through reason, 65, 234n32 on grace and desire to know God, 14 on intentionality, 116 on liberty and human will, 38–40, 231n19 on logic, 110, 124, 194 on man’s creation in sanctifying grace, 62 natura pura and, 8–9, 57 on natural desire for God, 11–12, 13, 20–22, 26–27, 103 on natural ends, 3, 16, 22–23, 73, 269n8 on natural law, 151, 155, 183, 201 on natural love, 45–47 on natural movement of will, 203, 239n55, 241–42n64 on nature distinct from grace, 64, 71 on obediential potency, 31–32, 34, 227n13 on object of will, 238n49 ontological analysis and, 128 on ontological imperfection, 65 on providence, 44 on revelation as necessary for moral guidance, 154, 181–82 on sin and nature, 160, 264n18 281

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on supernatural end, 3, 16, 22–23, 35 on will as nature, 38–40, 203, 231n19, 238n49, 239n55, 241–42n64 Thomas de Vio. See Cajetan Thomism after Vatican II, 5 analytic philosophy and, 112 method of, 137, 138, 207, 245n64 natura pura and, 8–9, 143–55 obediential potency and, 235n34 secularism and, 45 See also classical Thomism Tocqueville, Alexis de, 150, 261–62n7 tolerance, 262n10 Tolet, Francisco, 227n13 transcendental Thomism, 253n7 Triune God treatise, 49, 95–96 truth. See speculative truth Truth and Tolerance (Ratzinger), 212 Turner, Denys, 131, 133 Ulpian, 172 underdetermination of moral precepts, 165–66 unified teleology, 48 United States First Amendment rights in, 184, 185–93 political free expression rights in, 176 secularism in, 193 theism in founding of, 149–50, 190

Unity of Philosophical Experience, The (Gilson), 95 universality of rights, 173 Vatican I, 62–63, 101–2, 221 Vatican II, 33 Veatch, Henry, 264–65n22 Veritatis splendor (John Paul II), 50 vice, 99 virtue charity as form of, 78 grace and, 97 of natural justice, 146 of prudence, 177 secularist thought on, 173–74 von Mises, Ludwig, 266–67n43 Waldstein, Michael, 249n47, 265n22 Walker, Adrian, 183, 267n47 will beatific vision and, 78 divine providence and, 224n3 natural movement of, 19, 26, 239n55, 241–42n64 as nature, 19, 73, 202, 231n19 Wippel, John, 258n25 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 112, 206, 256n15 Wolenski, Jan, 126–28, 257n19 worship, 69, 70, 73, 146 Zizioulas, John D., 240–41n61 zone of just claims, 147

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Moral Philosophy and Moral Theology Martin Rhonheimer, Natural Law and Practical Reason: A Thomist View of Moral Autonomy. Translated by Gerald Marlsbary. Anton Losinger, The Anthropological Turn: The Human Orientation of Karl Rahner. Translated and with a foreword by Daniel O. Dahlstrom. Thomas Hibbs, Virtue’s Splendor: Wisdom, Prudence, and the Human Good. Bernard N. Schumacher, A Philosophy of Hope: Josef Pieper and the Contemporary Debate on Hope. Translated by D. C. Schindler. John Knasas, Being and Some 20th Century Thomists. G. J. McAleer, Ecstatic Morality and Sexual Politics: A Catholic and Antitotalitarian Theory of the Body. Daniel McInerny, The Difficult Good: A Thomistic Approach to Moral Conflict and Human Happiness. Lawrence Dewan, O.P., Wisdom, Law, and Virtue: Essays in Thomistic Ethics. Luis Cortest, The Disfigured Face: Traditional Natural Law and Its Encounter with Modernity.

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