Scheeben’s Doctrine of Divine Adoption by Edwin Hartshorn Palmer (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 547 Sckeeben·'s Doctrine of Divine Adoption. By Enwm HARTSHORN PALMER. Kampen: J. H. Kok, 1958. Pp. 202. This study of Matthias Joseph Scheeben's theology on grace, presented as a doctoral thesis at the Free University of Amsterdam (Protestant) , is evidence from a surprisingly new quarter that interest in his theological work is still alive. The purpose of this study, Dr. Palmer states, is to make Scheeben and his place in Catholic theology better known in Protestant circles. This review will consider only those chapters in the book which explain and evaluate Scheeben's theories on grace and divine adoption. In three well-documented chapters Dr. Palmer sets forth the Catholic doctrine on grace, and Scheeben's theories on the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and ' fuller ' adoption of Christians. In his comparatively short career Scheeben wrote three works which treated in whole or in part the Catholic doctrine on grace. In his first work, Natur und Gnade, written shortly after the completion of his studies, he presented the traditional theological doctrine that habitual grace gives the Christian a participation in divine nature and makes him an adopted son of God. He placed special emphasis on the fact that Christian adoption is not a mere moral act on the part of God raising a man to the legal and external rank of son, but is a ' real ' adoption in which grace confers on the soul a new nature and life. In his later works, Mysterien des Christentums and Handbuch der katholischen Dogmatik, especially in the latter, Scheeben altered his position somewhat. From a long study of the Greek Fathers, especially St. Cyril of Alexandria, he, like Petavius before him, was led to conclude that the traditional doctrine on grace was insufficient to explain the intimate supernatural union of the soul with God. If the Christian is to be called a true son of God, he argued, account must be taken not only of grace which gives him a likeness of divine nature, but also of another element: the personal connection between God and the soul. This latter element is supplied in sanctification by the Holy Spirit dwelling substantially in the soul of the Christian. In natural generation there is not only a similarity of nature, but there is also a substantial connection between father and son. Hence, the definition of generation: origo viventis a vivente conjuncto in similitudinem naturae. Likewise, in the spiritual rebirth of adoptive sonship there is present both gratia creata, a participation in divine nature, and gratia increata, the substantial indwelling of the Holy Spirit. The new element in the theory is evident, namely, that in sanctification there is a twofold formal cause: grace, whereby a man is made holy and pleasing to God, capable of merit and worthy of eternal life; and the Holy Spirit dwelling substantially in the soul, making the Christian worthy of eternal life as the son of Qod. Scheeben called this theory ' fuller ' adoption. 548 BOOK llEVIE)WS This. theory of the twofold formal cause of sanctification was the point of Scheeben's theology most severely attacked by the theologians of the time. In a debate carried on in theological journals, the German theologian, Granderath, maintained that it was pure contradiction to say that the Holy Spirit is the formal cause of a human being. The Holy Spirit, he said, is indeed the efficient cause of sanctification and the term to which the soul is joined in the union of grace. But the Holy Spirit could never be called the forma constifoens of the supernatural life of the soul. In reply to this charge Scheeben declared that the Holy Spirit is evidently not an inherent physicaf'form constituting a nature as such. Nonetheless, He is causa formalis, as a subsistent form bestowing a new nature. It is not impossible, he thought, for one person to be the formal cause of another, provided this is understood to mean forma subsistens insubsistendo informans and not forma inhaerens inhaerendo informans. Scheeben admits, rather weakly, that this is not the usual signification of formal cause, but he thinks it is a legitimate one. In the three final chapters Dr. Palmer turns from an...