Surnaturel: A Controversy at the Heart of Twentieth-Century Thomistic Thought ed. by Serge-Thomas Bonino, O.P. (review)

632 BOOK REVIEWS Surnaturel: A Controversy at the Heart ofTwentieth-Century Thomistic Thought. Edited by SERGE-THOMAS BONINO, 0.P. Translated by ROBERTWILLIAMS. Ave Maria, Fla.: Sapientia Press, 2009. Pp. xiii + 362. $32.95 (paper). ISBN 978-1-932589-52-8. Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University has published an English translation of a symposium examining the controversy surrounding Henri de Lubac's Surnaturel (1946), held in May 2000 at the Institut Catholique of Toulouse and originally published in French in the Revue Thomiste 101 (2001). Although lacking a unitary character in subject matter and perspective, the essays in the book are representative of the Toulouse school of Thomism, which seeks to combine a historical-critical exegesis of St. Thomas and his school with a theological emphasis and a dialogue with contemporarytheological currents. The work is divided into four sections: the historical context of Surnaturel, nature and grace in St. Thomas, the Scholastic development, and contemporary perspectives. In the first section, Henry Donneaud's "Surnaturel through the Fine-Tooth Comb ofTraditional Thomism," offers an interesting view ofthree very different types of critiques of Surnaturel, represented by the works of Charles Boyer, S.J., Rosaire Gagnebet, O.P., and Marie-Joseph Le Guillou, O.P. This essay is welcome for calling attention to these three fine Thomists whose profound and complementary critiques of the thesis of de Lubac tend today to be completely overlooked. After presenting the position of Le Guillou, Donneaud gives a brief criticism of it for not solving an apparent contradiction in the texts of St. Thomas himself, which frequently assert both that (a) every intellectual creature has a natural desire to see God, and (b) the vision of God transcends all natural inclination (citing 1 Cor 2:9). Donneaud also observes that de Lubac downplayed the second line of texts. Following Jorge Laporta, Donneaud holds that the solution lies in differentiating two senses of natural desire, innate and elicited, and understanding the natural desire to see God as innate rather than elicited (55). Marie-Bruno Borde, in a later article in the book on the Salmanticenses (254), holds the same position. While I agree on the necessity of this distinction, I think that Donneaud, Borde, and Laporta err in reversing the roles of these two forms of natural desire. Saint Thomas affirms an elicited natural desire to see God that is aroused by knowledge of God's existence. Once we know that God is, we spontaneously seek to know who God is. However, when St. Thomas frequently denies that there is a "natural inclination" for the vision of God, he is denying an innate natural desire for the supernatural, because natural inclination is based on proportionality and the capacity of man's faculties, which clearly cannot of themselves attain the vision of God. Chaintraine's article, "The Supernatural: Discernment of Catholic Thought according to Henri de Lubac," gives a good summary of de Lubac's position, but without critical discernment. For example, Chaintraine repeats de Lubac's claim that the defense of the possibility of a state of pure nature on the part of Suarez BOOK REVIEWS 633 and others was motivated by purely philosophical reasons (29). The historical context and the texts of Suarez (Opera omnia, 4:153-54; 26:154), however, show that the principal concern was theological. After the condemnation of Michael Baius, it became necessary to show the gratuitousness of our supernatural end also with respect to Adam and Eve before the Fall. The attitude of Jacques Maritain to Surnaturel is addressed by Rene Mougel in his essay, "The Position ofJacques Maritain Regarding Surnaturel: The Sin of the Angel, or 'Spirit and Liberty.'" Mougel centers his attention on the question of whether the angels would have been able to sin had they been created in a purely natural order. This hypothetical question is of great interest for moral theology, and drew forth some very interesting essays in the mid-twentieth century, including a fine article by Maritain, in which he argues that the angels would have been able to sin in such an order. Although the peccability of the angels is a question in which Maritain and de Lubac came to hold the...