Sect. 138The Chief Errors Concerning the SupernaturalThe Chief Errors Concerning the Supernatural
The modern opponents of the Catholic doctrine of Grace have tried to identify it with the errors condemned in former times by the Church. This accusation is easily repelled by confronting the condemned errors with the unvarying Catholic teaching.
I. In patristic times the chief opponents of the supernatural were the Manichæans and the Pelagians, who, as St. Augustine says, in different ways and for different reasons, agreed in attacking the grace of Christ (Contra Epist. Pelag., l. ii., c. 1). Both founded their opposition on a false conception of human nature.
1. The Manichæans held the soul to be an emanation from the Divine Substance, a member of God, to which, by reason of its good nature, God was bound to give whatsoever belonged to its highest beatitude and perfection. In their system, an elevation to a perfection higher than that given by nature is impossible; the Spiritual Substance can only be freed from the external and violent influence of the Evil Principle.
2. The Pelagians, on the contrary, looked upon man as a creature, and the gifts bestowed on him in creation as graces. They even praised human nature and the natural faculty of the will for good as a Divine grace. Besides this “grace,” which, according to them, still exists unimpaired in man, they admitted no other. They held that the original destination of man to the beatific vision was natural to him, and that his natural power for good was sufficient to merit supreme beatitude. In like manner, they considered a life altogether free from sin and faults to be within the natural power of man. They completely rejected the Catholic doctrine concerning Original Sin, as incompatible with their own doctrine on the naturalness of the original state of man. In fact, if man before the Fall had nothing in the shape of grace to distinguish him from fallen man, if in both there is the same unimpaired power of attaining eternal life, then no depravation of human nature was caused by the sin of our First Parents.
The dogmatical point of view from which the controversy with the Pelagians was conducted lies in the doctrine of Original Sin, considered as a distortion and corruption of the original institution and integrity of man, unfitting him for the attainment of that end to which, as a matter of fact, God had destined him. As the Pelagians admitted the ideal perfection of the actual destination of man, viz. eternal life with God, we should expect, and in fact we find, that their Catholic opponents compared the higher perfection of original man with man’s present depraved condition, rather than with his nature pure and simple. Hence they had to describe the privileges of the original state, not so much as free gifts added to nature, but rather as goods belonging to the first man as a matter of fact. In this sense, such goods and privileges may be represented as innate and connatural as regards man before the Fall. The Pelagians thought that freedom from ignorance, concupiscence, and death was not required for the perfection of man either before or after the Fall, and consequently denied it altogether; Now, when the Catholic doctors asserted the existence of this privilege, they had not to point out its gratuitous character: their point was to show that ignorance, concupiscence, and death were evils of our present state, incompatible with the perfection of human nature as actually endowed by God. The Fathers were bound to take up this line of defence because their adversaries conceded in principle the perfection of the original state, and only admitted the evils of ignorance, concupiscence, and death in that state on the plea that they were not evils of such a kind as to interfere with its perfection.
II. The peculiar nature of the heresy opposed by the Fathers caused them, as may be inferred from what we have said, (1) to speak of the actual destination of original man to a supernatural end, and of the integrity of his nature, as being man’s natural state, taking natural as equivalent to original; (2) to point out the supernatural character of the original state in comparison with the present depraved state of man, but to leave almost untouched its supernatural character as compared with the first man’s pure nature. The Reformers, and, after them, Baius and Jansenius, would have us believe that these peculiarities are tantamount to a denial of the supernatural character of the original state, and that, consequently, the doctrine of the Schoolmen, affirming the supernaturality of the same, is in direct opposition to the teaching of the Fathers. They further pretended to find the Pelagian doctrine of “the indestructible, ideal goodness of our present nature,” in the scholastic doctrine that the nature of the first man, considered in itself, (apart from supernatural elevation, or as nature pure and simple), was identical with human nature as it is at present, when deprived of the graces and privileges of the original state. They went so far as to assert that the ancient Church was at one with the Pelagians as to the natural character of the original state! In reality, the Reformers’ own doctrine, which they falsely attribute to the Church, is, at least on this last point, very clearly connected with Pelagianism; it is the old heresy with an infusion of Manichaeism and Averroism added. Starting from false notions concerning human nature and the supernatural, Reformers and Pelagians alike arrive at false conclusions concerning the present state of man. The Reformers exaggerate the essence and the consequences of Original Sin in the same measure as the Pelagians denied them. For this reason the Church had to defend against the Reformers the supernatural character of the original state. The Council of Trent did not, indeed, strike at the very root of their errors, because the first Reformers had not gone far enough. But the Holy See intervened most decidedly as soon as Baius and Jansenius reproduced the old error in a more refined form. St. Pius V. censured the propositions of Baius in the Bull Ex omnibus afflictionibus, 1567; so too did Gregory XIII. in the Bull Provisionis nostræ, 1579; and Urban VIII., in the Bull In eminenti, 1641, which contains the first condemnation of the Augustinus of Jansenius. Several more Jansenistic propositions were censured in the Bulls Unigenitus of Clement XI. and Auctorem fidei of Pius VI.
1. The doctrine of Baius concerning the absolutely supernatural starts from this principle: The destination to beatitude in God and to a moral life, which, in some form or other, God has decreed for all rational creatures, must be a destination to “eternal life,” consisting in the Beatific Vision of God, and to that morality by which man merits eternal life. From this principle Baius draws the following inferences:—
(a) The vocation to eternal life cannot be a gratuitous adoption, and the bestowal of the means necessary for the attainment of this end cannot be a gratuitous elevation of the creature, but is rather an endowment due to nature.
(b) To merit eternal life it is not necessary that the creature should possess a higher status, in keeping with the excellence of the reward to be merited, since the merit depends only on the moral value of the works done—that is, on their being performed in obedience to the law.
(c) Hence meritorious works are not, either in themselves or as to their moral goodness, the fruits of a freely bestowed Divine grace. Although the power and means necessary for performing such works are the gift of the Holy Ghost, still the works are due to nature, and are nature’s own. Further, meritorious works have their merit by a natural law, not by Divine condescension; consequently, eternal life is only a reward, and not at the same time a grace.
(d) There is no other moral goodness but that which merits eternal life; there is no love of the Creator but the love of charity, which tends to eternal life in the vision of God; the worship of God by faith, hope, and charity is not the object of a special, supernatural vocation, but is the essential form of all morality. Lastly, Baius stated that all morality essentially consists in the love of God, so that no act is a moral act if not animated by love for God. In a word, Baius denied any elevation of the creature above its necessary status or rank, and above its natural powers.
In the condemnation of the above errors and of Jansenius’s elaborate exposition of them, we have a formal and detailed approval of the doctrine which they attacked, viz. that the actual destination and endowment of rational creatures are really supernatural, and that habitual grace is a supernatural status, in which the creature, being adopted by God, Who condescends to live in His creature as in His temple, is made to partake of the Divine Nature, and is thus elevated to Divine dignity, glory, and sanctity; whereas, by reason of its nature alone, the creature would indeed be called to and enabled to attain a certain beatitude and morality, but far inferior to the beatitude and morality which are the fruit of elevating grace.
2. Concerning the relatively supernatural in man, Baius teaches that God was bound to create innocent man free from all evils and defects which disturb the order of human nature and interfere with its full beatitude, because otherwise man would have been bad and unhappy without any fault of his. Notably in the fourth chapter of his book, De Prima Hominis Justitia, he says that perfect subordination of man’s animal tendencies and of the motions of his body to the mind belonged to the absolutely necessary integrity of the first man. The Bull of St. Pius V. attributes to him also the proposition that immortality was not in Adam’s case a gratuitous endowment. As far as immortality is concerned, the above doctrine was especially rejected in the condemnation of prop. lxxviii., and, later, in the Bull Auctorem Fidei, n. xvii. Moreover the following proposition (n. lv.) was condemned by St. Pius V.: “God could not, in the beginning, have created man such as he is born now.” The words “as he is born now” of course refer to the nature of man as it is after the Fall, without the integrity of the original estate. If, then, the quoted proposition is false, the contradictory is true, viz. “God could have created man, in the beginning, such as he is born now;” in other words, without any of the gifts lost by the sin of Adam. Therefore none of these privileges were due to human nature. The proposition, although condemned without any restriction of its meaning, is applied by Baius to concupiscence, wherefore its condemnation especially implies the possibility of the first man being created subject to concupiscence.
III. Recent theologians have evolved a notion of the supernatural which, while not quite identical with that of Baius, is a combination of Baianism and Pelagianism. The chief points of this modern system are the following. It admits the existence and the natural origin of the relatively supernatural gifts, but denies the absolutely supernatural—that is, the adoption to eternal life, the partaking of the Divine Nature, and a higher moral life essentially different from natural moral life. Man is the child of God by nature, not by adoption, and the destination to which man is actually called is natural to him. The new system starts from a true principle, viz. that moral life is essential to spiritual nature; but it then falsely infers that the morality evolved from the principles of human nature can merit the beatific vision.
The transition from the older errors to this new system took place almost unnoticed during the eighteenth century. Stattler, Hermes, Günther, Hirscher, and Kuhn popularized it in Germany, where it found general favour until Kleutgen successfully opposed it (Theol., vol. ii.). In the progress of this treatise we shall give it due attention.
The modern opponents of the Catholic doctrine of Grace have tried to identify it with the errors condemned in former times by the Church. This accusation is easily repelled by confronting the condemned errors with the unvarying Catholic teaching.
I. In patristic times the chief opponents of the supernatural were the Manichæans and the Pelagians, who, as St. Augustine says, in different ways and for different reasons, agreed in attacking the grace of Christ (Contra Epist. Pelag., l. ii., c. 1). Both founded their opposition on a false conception of human nature.
1. The Manichæans held the soul to be an emanation from the Divine Substance, a member of God, to which, by reason of its good nature, God was bound to give whatsoever belonged to its highest beatitude and perfection. In their system, an elevation to a perfection higher than that given by nature is impossible; the Spiritual Substance can only be freed from the external and violent influence of the Evil Principle.
2. The Pelagians, on the contrary, looked upon man as a creature, and the gifts bestowed on him in creation as graces. They even praised human nature and the natural faculty of the will for good as a Divine grace. Besides this “grace,” which, according to them, still exists unimpaired in man, they admitted no other. They held that the original destination of man to the beatific vision was natural to him, and that his natural power for good was sufficient to merit supreme beatitude. In like manner, they considered a life altogether free from sin and faults to be within the natural power of man. They completely rejected the Catholic doctrine concerning Original Sin, as incompatible with their own doctrine on the naturalness of the original state of man. In fact, if man before the Fall had nothing in the shape of grace to distinguish him from fallen man, if in both there is the same unimpaired power of attaining eternal life, then no depravation of human nature was caused by the sin of our First Parents.
The dogmatical point of view from which the controversy with the Pelagians was conducted lies in the doctrine of Original Sin, considered as a distortion and corruption of the original institution and integrity of man, unfitting him for the attainment of that end to which, as a matter of fact, God had destined him. As the Pelagians admitted the ideal perfection of the actual destination of man, viz. eternal life with God, we should expect, and in fact we find, that their Catholic opponents compared the higher perfection of original man with man’s present depraved condition, rather than with his nature pure and simple. Hence they had to describe the privileges of the original state, not so much as free gifts added to nature, but rather as goods belonging to the first man as a matter of fact. In this sense, such goods and privileges may be represented as innate and connatural as regards man before the Fall. The Pelagians thought that freedom from ignorance, concupiscence, and death was not required for the perfection of man either before or after the Fall, and consequently denied it altogether; Now, when the Catholic doctors asserted the existence of this privilege, they had not to point out its gratuitous character: their point was to show that ignorance, concupiscence, and death were evils of our present state, incompatible with the perfection of human nature as actually endowed by God. The Fathers were bound to take up this line of defence because their adversaries conceded in principle the perfection of the original state, and only admitted the evils of ignorance, concupiscence, and death in that state on the plea that they were not evils of such a kind as to interfere with its perfection.
II. The peculiar nature of the heresy opposed by the Fathers caused them, as may be inferred from what we have said, (1) to speak of the actual destination of original man to a supernatural end, and of the integrity of his nature, as being man’s natural state, taking natural as equivalent to original; (2) to point out the supernatural character of the original state in comparison with the present depraved state of man, but to leave almost untouched its supernatural character as compared with the first man’s pure nature. The Reformers, and, after them, Baius and Jansenius, would have us believe that these peculiarities are tantamount to a denial of the supernatural character of the original state, and that, consequently, the doctrine of the Schoolmen, affirming the supernaturality of the same, is in direct opposition to the teaching of the Fathers. They further pretended to find the Pelagian doctrine of “the indestructible, ideal goodness of our present nature,” in the scholastic doctrine that the nature of the first man, considered in itself, (apart from supernatural elevation, or as nature pure and simple), was identical with human nature as it is at present, when deprived of the graces and privileges of the original state. They went so far as to assert that the ancient Church was at one with the Pelagians as to the natural character of the original state! In reality, the Reformers’ own doctrine, which they falsely attribute to the Church, is, at least on this last point, very clearly connected with Pelagianism; it is the old heresy with an infusion of Manichaeism and Averroism added. Starting from false notions concerning human nature and the supernatural, Reformers and Pelagians alike arrive at false conclusions concerning the present state of man. The Reformers exaggerate the essence and the consequences of Original Sin in the same measure as the Pelagians denied them. For this reason the Church had to defend against the Reformers the supernatural character of the original state. The Council of Trent did not, indeed, strike at the very root of their errors, because the first Reformers had not gone far enough. But the Holy See intervened most decidedly as soon as Baius and Jansenius reproduced the old error in a more refined form. St. Pius V. censured the propositions of Baius in the Bull Ex omnibus afflictionibus, 1567; so too did Gregory XIII. in the Bull Provisionis nostræ, 1579; and Urban VIII., in the Bull In eminenti, 1641, which contains the first condemnation of the Augustinus of Jansenius. Several more Jansenistic propositions were censured in the Bulls Unigenitus of Clement XI. and Auctorem fidei of Pius VI.
1. The doctrine of Baius concerning the absolutely supernatural starts from this principle: The destination to beatitude in God and to a moral life, which, in some form or other, God has decreed for all rational creatures, must be a destination to “eternal life,” consisting in the Beatific Vision of God, and to that morality by which man merits eternal life. From this principle Baius draws the following inferences:—
(a) The vocation to eternal life cannot be a gratuitous adoption, and the bestowal of the means necessary for the attainment of this end cannot be a gratuitous elevation of the creature, but is rather an endowment due to nature.
(b) To merit eternal life it is not necessary that the creature should possess a higher status, in keeping with the excellence of the reward to be merited, since the merit depends only on the moral value of the works done—that is, on their being performed in obedience to the law.
(c) Hence meritorious works are not, either in themselves or as to their moral goodness, the fruits of a freely bestowed Divine grace. Although the power and means necessary for performing such works are the gift of the Holy Ghost, still the works are due to nature, and are nature’s own. Further, meritorious works have their merit by a natural law, not by Divine condescension; consequently, eternal life is only a reward, and not at the same time a grace.
(d) There is no other moral goodness but that which merits eternal life; there is no love of the Creator but the love of charity, which tends to eternal life in the vision of God; the worship of God by faith, hope, and charity is not the object of a special, supernatural vocation, but is the essential form of all morality. Lastly, Baius stated that all morality essentially consists in the love of God, so that no act is a moral act if not animated by love for God. In a word, Baius denied any elevation of the creature above its necessary status or rank, and above its natural powers.
In the condemnation of the above errors and of Jansenius’s elaborate exposition of them, we have a formal and detailed approval of the doctrine which they attacked, viz. that the actual destination and endowment of rational creatures are really supernatural, and that habitual grace is a supernatural status, in which the creature, being adopted by God, Who condescends to live in His creature as in His temple, is made to partake of the Divine Nature, and is thus elevated to Divine dignity, glory, and sanctity; whereas, by reason of its nature alone, the creature would indeed be called to and enabled to attain a certain beatitude and morality, but far inferior to the beatitude and morality which are the fruit of elevating grace.
2. Concerning the relatively supernatural in man, Baius teaches that God was bound to create innocent man free from all evils and defects which disturb the order of human nature and interfere with its full beatitude, because otherwise man would have been bad and unhappy without any fault of his. Notably in the fourth chapter of his book, De Prima Hominis Justitia, he says that perfect subordination of man’s animal tendencies and of the motions of his body to the mind belonged to the absolutely necessary integrity of the first man. The Bull of St. Pius V. attributes to him also the proposition that immortality was not in Adam’s case a gratuitous endowment. As far as immortality is concerned, the above doctrine was especially rejected in the condemnation of prop. lxxviii., and, later, in the Bull Auctorem Fidei, n. xvii. Moreover the following proposition (n. lv.) was condemned by St. Pius V.: “God could not, in the beginning, have created man such as he is born now.” The words “as he is born now” of course refer to the nature of man as it is after the Fall, without the integrity of the original estate. If, then, the quoted proposition is false, the contradictory is true, viz. “God could have created man, in the beginning, such as he is born now;” in other words, without any of the gifts lost by the sin of Adam. Therefore none of these privileges were due to human nature. The proposition, although condemned without any restriction of its meaning, is applied by Baius to concupiscence, wherefore its condemnation especially implies the possibility of the first man being created subject to concupiscence.
III. Recent theologians have evolved a notion of the supernatural which, while not quite identical with that of Baius, is a combination of Baianism and Pelagianism. The chief points of this modern system are the following. It admits the existence and the natural origin of the relatively supernatural gifts, but denies the absolutely supernatural—that is, the adoption to eternal life, the partaking of the Divine Nature, and a higher moral life essentially different from natural moral life. Man is the child of God by nature, not by adoption, and the destination to which man is actually called is natural to him. The new system starts from a true principle, viz. that moral life is essential to spiritual nature; but it then falsely infers that the morality evolved from the principles of human nature can merit the beatific vision.
The transition from the older errors to this new system took place almost unnoticed during the eighteenth century. Stattler, Hermes, Günther, Hirscher, and Kuhn popularized it in Germany, where it found general favour until Kleutgen successfully opposed it (Theol., vol. ii.). In the progress of this treatise we shall give it due attention.
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