The Dynamics of Christian Perfection

\ THE DYNAMICS OF CHRISTIAN PERFECTION GOD'S creative covenant demands perfection of all reality. The et~mal hills or the grass, which is today and tomorrow is no more, have all known the mandate to perfection promulgated in their natures. To men, whose compliance must be conscious, the command was repeated: " I am the Almighty God: walk before Me and be perfect." 1 In a restless heart or in a revolving cosmos the pattern of perfection is much the same: to fulfill oneself is to find God. Each creature, then, in striving for its own perfection is seeking something of the divine likeness. Nowhere is that likeness more fully realized than in the supernatural sonship of Christian perfection. Infinite as the formal equivalent of divine life, adoptive sonship is at the same time imitative. A completeness above human needs, it in no way contradicts human nature. As in His own Person divinity and humanity are subsistently united, so through Christ's merits the heights and the depths are contactually one. The Infinite freely shares His life that nothing may be lacking to the finite. " A new creature " for whom " all things are made new" 2--especially his motives ·and movements toward perfection -has1 come to be through rebirth in water and the Holy Ghost. His perspective of perfection is supernatural and his possibility of attaining it secure, since " grace and truth came through Jesus Christ." 3 At once promissol'y and mandatory , then, are Christ's words: "You, therefore, are to be perfect, even as your heavenly Father is perfect." 4 In the vocabulary of Christ and his followers, however, the notion of perfection--even with its unequivocal demand for an infinite norm-lost none of the calculated latitude it had had with the philosophers. The germinal idea of perfection re1 Genesis 17 :1. "John1:17. • II Cornithians 5 :17. • Matthew 5 :48. ~47 4 ~48 DOMINIC HUGHES mained " that to which nothing of the elements proper to it is lacking." 5 Nor are its analogical usages abandoned.6 Although in a Christian context completeness, i. e. " perfection," in evil merely illustrates perfection in good, this latter meaning has several senses. Perfection may signify the absolute realization of the notion in boundless divine goodness, or it may have any number of relative meanings amidst the partial perfections of creatures. When these latter meanings are ordered hierarchically they form a Jacob's ladder of perfections from the least to the limitless. At the summit and beyond any hierarchy of perfections is God's ineffable self-possession. With absolutely nothing la~king in His own loveableness or in His act of love, His perfection is complete and comprehensive.7 lmmobilely active, infinite in its intensity and etern~;tl in its constancy, God's perfection is identified with Himself. Such completeness in simplicity is beyond the piecemeal understanding of any creature, yet upon the authority of Him Who ·descended from heaven it is the objective and the norm of any progress in the incomparably inferior degrees of created supernatural perfection. The dependent degrees of perfection in Christ's grace are as variegated as cells in His mystical body. Yet each is relatively complete. Classification of these various perfections has distinguished them first by state of nature and then by stage of development. In the blessed state of heaven the human soul will know a perfection almost unimaginable upon earth. Since his intellect and will are in immediate contact with God, in Whom neither sufficiency nor satisfaction are lacking, a human being functions to the full ·capacity of his unimpeded soul. Nothing possible to his nature is then lacking to him; grace has brought him to the maximum perfection his nature will allow.8 In this life, however, the intensity and continuity of even a man's most perfect act is perforce impeded and inter- • V. Metaphysics, c. 16. 0 Summa Tkeol., I, q. 4, a. 1, ad 1 and De Perjectione Vitae Spiritualis, c. I. 7 Summa Tkeol., II-II, q. 184, a. 2. a Ibid. THE DYNAMICS OF CHRISTIAN PERFECTION 249 rupted. Because he walks in Faith and because his way is long, a wayfarer's completeness in Christ cannot be measured...