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T.J. WalsheApologeticsChapter 12

Revelation of Supernatural Mysteries Possible from the Standpoint of Agent and Subject

Chapter XII.—Revelation of Supernatural Mysteries Possible from the Standpoint of Agent and Subject

I.—Statement of difficulties.

An objection is considered by St. Thomas: “A corporeal sense cannot be elevated so as to understand an incorporeal substance which is above the nature of sense; if therefore to see God be above the nature of created intellect, it is clear that no created intellect can see the Divine essence.”

Scotus urges the following objection: “If the knowledge of the Divine essence be above the nature of our intellect, the blessed will never see God. No faculty can be elevated above its specific object. The faculty of sight for example cannot be elevated so as to understand. Otherwise the faculty would go beyond the limits of its essence, and would not remain the same specifically.”

Modernists object: if the Supernatural Order is at an infinite distance objectively and subjectively from the faculties and exigencies of our nature, in that case elevation to the Supernatural would be against the inclination of our nature, i.e., would be destructive (Cf. E. Le Roy,1 Revue Biblique, Jan., 1906, p. 21). Supernatural revelation would consist of unintelligible mysteries, and their expression would be only metaphorical and symbolic.

II.—No proof can be given showing the impossibility of the revelation of Supernatural Mysteries from the standpoint of agent and subject.

Since elevation to the Supernatural Order is an essentially supernatural endowment, the possibility of such cannot be proved by reason alone. Neither can the possibility be disproved. In order to disprove the possibility of Revelation from the standpoint of agent and subject, it would be necessary to show the absurdity of at least one of the four conditions necessary for revelation:

(1) God from the standpoint of His intimate life can act freely “ad extra.”

(2) Human ideas express analogically supernatural mysteries so as to make them credible.

(3) Supernatural light can raise the vitality of the human intellect so as to assent to supernatural mysteries.

(4) There is an obediential faculty in our nature which can be raised to the Supernatural Order.

(A) It is not repugnant that God should give to us participation in His Divine nature (“Divinæ consortes naturæ,” 2 Pet. i., 4). Nothing can be denied to God—infinitely perfect Being—except on the ground of imperfection. To act freely in regard to those things outside His Divine Nature implies no imperfection. God does not act to secure benefit to Himself, but to secure benefit to His creature. St. Thomas writes: “The higher a nature the more intimate its communication.” God is Pure Act and Highest Good, and it is in absolute accordance with His nature that God should communicate some participation of His intimate life. “Summum Bonum est sui diffusivum.”

(B) It cannot be proved that no idea of our mind is capable of expressing analogically and really (as opposed to metaphorical and symbolic expression) supernatural mysteries as credible. It has been already shown that human ideas cannot express mysteries of the intimate life of God as truths to be understood, or truths to be proved. But for revelation it is sufficient that they should be expressed analogically and really as truths to be believed on the testimony of God obscurely revealing and not on intrinsic evidence. No imperfection follows from the attribution to God of notions of Paternity, Filiation, Procession, Spiration, etc., whereby we receive obscure instruction regarding the supreme supernatural mystery of the Trinity. The same reasoning applies to notions of the Incarnation, Redemption, Eucharist, etc.

(C) Nor is there repugnance as regards the supernatural light necessary to accept infallibly and supernaturally mysteries of the intimate life of God. This light is an accident which raises and strengthens the intellect. It does not and cannot represent the essence of God as He is in Himself, but it tends essentially to God as He is in Himself, and in this way raises the human intellect.

(D) Existence of an obediential faculty which elevates human nature to the supernatural order cannot be disproved. St. Thomas writes: “A sense because it is wholly material cannot be elevated to anything immaterial. But the intellect, human or angelic, somewhat raised from matter, can by Divine grace be further raised to a higher stage. As the human intellect sees under concrete accidents the nature of an object, it can be raised by Divine help so as to apprehend Subsistent Being.”

III.—Existence of obediential capacity whereby human nature may be raised to the Supernatural Order follows from the consideration of the adequate object of the human intellect.

The following syllogism epitomises the teaching of the Thomistic School:

Major: To secure knowledge of reality there is in human nature an obediential capacity which may exceed the proper object of our intellect, but not its adequate object.

Minor: God in His intimate life does not exceed the adequate object of our intellect which is being in its widest extent.

Conclusion: Therefore there is within us an obediential capacity for the knowledge of the intimate life of God, i.e., of supernatural mysteries.

Explanation of this teaching:

1° What is obediential capacity?

Note the following divisions:

St. Thomas first distinguishes capability (which is mere possibility or non-repugnance to being) from subjective capability. Subjective capability may be active or passive. Passive capability may be natural or obediential. Obediential capacity may be such in relation to a created agent, of a superior order. Thus wood and not water has an obediential capacity to the wood-carver. Obediential capacity may be in relation to God either (1) as Author of nature (from God as the Author of nature man receives capability of miraculous power), or (2) as Author of supernatural life.

2° What is the proper object of the intellect?

The proper object of the intellect is intelligible being existing under sensible conditions. Our intellectual knowledge is acquired through species not innate, but abstracted from sensible objects. Hence if the sensitive faculty cannot act, the intellectual idea is never acquired. A man born blind has no notion of colour. The intellect acquires knowledge of the soul and God in the mirror of sensible things.

3° What is the adequate object of our intellect?

The adequate object of our intellect is being in its widest extent, so far as it is analogically cognoscible in the mirror of sensible things. It is difficult to prove that the adequate object of our intellect is being in its widest extent even exceeding what is knowable in the mirror of sensible and spiritual creatures. The following reasoning is probably true:

Major: In the human intellect distinction should be made between the active faculty of intelligence (specific to man) and a passive capacity in which the soul is like to God.

Minor: But this passive capacity is greater than the soul’s active power, and is not limited to any order of intelligible things.

Conclusion: Therefore it is not repugnant that the capacity should be raised to the knowledge of the most perfect intelligible being.

Bannez holds that there is in the soul a threefold capacity:

(1) Specific, whereby we know sensible things.

(2) Generic, whereby we know (as we do after death) purely spiritual natures like the angelic.

(3) Analogical, by virtue of which we may know supernatural mysteries, and herein especially lies the likeness of our soul to God.

Is not the highest capacity of the soul essentially spiritual? “My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.”

4° God, even in His intimate nature, does not exceed the adequate object of our intellect. As a higher analogous idea is contained within the content of an analogous idea (Divine wisdom and human wisdom are within the content of wisdom in general), and as God in His intimate life is a higher analogous idea of the general analogous idea of being, it follows that God, even in His intimate life, is contained in the widest idea of being, which is the adequate object of our intellect.

IV.—Existence of Obediential capacity is suggested from consideration of our natural desire to see God in His Divine essence.

The desire to see God has been misinterpreted by certain Modernists. This desire implies in human nature its capacity and suitability for the reception of supernatural truth, but does not imply an exigency as if the supernatural were due to nature.

1° Argument of St. Thomas.

“If the human intellect knows the essence of any created effect, and knows of God (its cause) only that He exists … there remains the natural desire to investigate the cause.” For complete happiness, therefore, it is necessary that the intellect should reach the essence itself of the First Cause.

2° Error of Baius and the Jansenists.

Their contention was that in human nature there is a natural and efficacious desire of the beatific vision, so that the vision is due to our nature. Beatific vision and Divine grace are consequently natural.

Their arguments were:

(1) The well-known words of St. Augustine: “Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our hearts are unquiet until they find their rest in Thee.”

(2) The teaching of St. Thomas just quoted. But St. Augustine means that nature, elevated by Divine grace and illuminated by Faith, tends to God, and St. Thomas does not imply that the desire of seeing the Divine essence is a natural efficacious desire. He teaches elsewhere that there cannot be a natural efficacious desire unless in regard to a benefit proportioned to human nature and due to it. Hence the desire is not efficacious, not innate, but is elicited by the will and proceeds from the knowledge of the created effects of the First Cause.

Note chart in following paragraph.

3° Statement of theologians examined.

(A) Terminology.

Appetite is natural when it comes from a natural principle and tends to an object proportioned to nature. Appetite is supernatural when it springs from a supernatural principle, e.g., Grace, Charity, Hope, and tends to an object exceeding proportions of nature. Natural appetite is a natural tendency towards a suitable good—a tendency which anticipates the apprehension of the good, e.g., a plant tends to the sunlight necessary for its well-being.

Elicited appetite is that whereby one, who apprehends a good, moves towards its acquisition.

A necessary elicited appetite is that which acts without deliberation on the apprehension of the good. Such appetite is found in irrational animals. A free elicited appetite is that whereby a rational nature, after deliberation and estimation of the merits of a benefit, inclines itself to it.

Finally, reasoned appetite may be efficacious or inefficacious—efficacious when the benefit is regarded as attainable, conditional and inefficacious when the benefit is judged to be beyond acquisition.

Inefficacious appetite is only a velleity.

(B) Augustinian School of the XVIII Century.

According to the teaching of this school the intuitive vision of God is natural as far as appetite is concerned, but is a supernatural end as far as attainment and means of attainment are concerned. Though the means are supernatural and strictly not due, yet in a sense they are due owing to the goodness of Providence, who does not withhold means necessary for an end.

It is clear from these statements that natural and supernatural orders are confused. God as author of nature has implanted in us an appetite for an end to which as author of nature He does not wish to lead us.

(C) Opinion of Scotus.

For intuitive vision of God there is within us a natural appetite innate and inefficacious. But from this statement it follows that there is in human nature a natural innate appetite for happiness in general. If the appetite is innate, it should be efficacious because an innate appetite does not come from knowledge, but from nature itself, and corresponds to the powers and exigencies of that nature.

(D) Opinion of Cajetan.

From knowledge of created things there is no natural desire of seeing God, but there is a connatural desire of seeing God from knowledge of effects of grace and glory, and by the word “connatural” he means conformable to nature, even when supernatural effects are experienced. But the desire which proceeds from supernatural effects of grace must be supernatural, and not “connatural” as Cajetan supposed.

“How great would be the happiness of man, if he were able to gaze immediately upon the Highest Good!” (Cf. Plato: “Convivio” c. 29).

(E) Thomist teaching.

Man naturally desires by a desire not innate but elicited, conditional and inefficacious, to see the essence of God author of nature.

This desire is:

(a) Subjectively: elicited, not innate, because it springs from knowledge of effects of the First Cause, and is not a tendency of our nature anticipating knowledge. It is conditional: “I would like to see the essence of God, if that benefit were possible.” It is inefficacious. The desire is free, because the clear vision of God is not in this life the adequate object of the will.

(b) Objectively: the vision of the essence of God is desired, not as He is three in Person, but as He is one in nature—author of the natural order.

Natural knowledge of God reveals difficulties in regard to Divine attributes naturally knowable, e.g., compatibility of Divine justice and Divine mercy. “From this knowledge there arises the natural desire which wishes more and more to see the Divine Substance” (Contra Gentes Bk. III., c. 50).

Notes

Footnotes

  1. Cf. Professor Aliotta’s criticism on the views of M. Le Roy (Science, Religion and Reality, pp. 172, 173-176.) ↩