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

Notes

Notes 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, Liberté et Loi Naturelle,’’ trans. Hyacinthe Defos du Rau, O.P., and Fr. Serge-Thomas Bonino, O.P., Revue thomiste, Sommaire du n  (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. . 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  Notes 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 théologie moderne (Paris: Aubier, 1965), 242–51; and Le Mystère du surnaturel (Paris: Aubier, 1965), 87–88, 142, 179–89 (noteworthy for its criticism...