DESIDERIO NATURALE DI DIO. — A longstanding philosophical and theological problem, which has received various and conflicting solutions over the centuries and is still the subject of lively discussion today.
Nor is this surprising, when one considers that it involves the entire question of the relation of the finite to the infinite, of the contingent to the absolute, and the properly theological question of the point at which the supernatural is inserted into human nature.
SUMMARY:
I. Greek philosophy
II. The thought of the Fathers
III. The Scholastics
IV. S. Tommaso and his interpretation. — V. theology.I. GREEK PHILOSOPHY
Setting aside Stoicism, which, in its most genuine form, amounts to a pantheistic monism and therefore has no reason to pose a problem founded on the relationship between man and divinity, the question of a more or less conscious tendency of the human spirit toward God is discernible at least among the three great philosophers: Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus.It is known that the Platonic God does not display genuinely personal characteristics, but is identified with the noetic world of ideas, or more probably with the idea of the good. In any case, the theory of the pre-existence of the soul, before it informed the body, leads Plato to establish a relationship between it and the divine sphere of ideas, its place of origin. This relationship begins along the epistemological line as the recollection of ideas already contemplated and now reflected in the sensible world by way of participation (μέθιξας) or imitation (μίμησις); it then develops along the psychological line as the nostalgia or loving tendency (έριος) of the soul to return to its ideal world. This nostalgia, which in the Symposium is personified in Ἔριος (ὁ «love») and in the Phaedrus becomes frenzy (μανία), is the psychological expression of a metaphysical principle, namely, the subordination of man and the sensible world to the Absolute, in which alone lies the supreme reason of both. Fervent desire of the spirit, which tends to escape from matter toward the ideal world: in this desire the aesthetic and religious moments coincide.
For Aristotle, God is the prime unmoved mover, a form transcending all matter and therefore pure thought in act, pure act, the fullness of being subsisting in itself and by itself. The Aristotelian God is metaphysically more firmly established and more personal than the Platonic one. But the relationship between God and the world, emphasized by the master through the participation of ideas and through the concept of the good, is diminished by the disciple, who reduces divine influence to final causality, sufficient to ground an ethics more than a religion. The prime mover moves everything, including man, as the supreme end, by way of attraction, and man’s tendency toward God is resolved into movement, which is passage from potency to act. Man naturally moves toward the divine (pure act) insofar as he strives to actualize his noblest faculties, the intellect and the will, the former more than the latter. Man’s perfection and happiness consist in the progressive attainment of truth: to the attractiveness of thinking thought, which is God, man responds with a thirst for knowledge, which brings him closer to God.
But the desire for the divine reaches the heights of mysticism in Plotinus. Although he distinguishes the One, the Intellect, and the Soul informing the cosmos (ὕν. Νοῦς, Ὑμᾶς), he overcomes pluralism through the concept of emanation, which is the descent (πρόσθεος) of the One into lower degrees and therefore its immanence in the intelligible world and in the cosmic world. The profound unity, despite apparent multiplicity, is the motive for the return (ἐπιστροφή) of all reality to the original One. This return is accomplished principally in man by way of the will and by way of the intellect, so that an ethics and an epistemology of salvation are constituted. Through sensation, dialectic, and intuition, the soul rises up to the
Νοῦς, in whose contemplation of the One life participates, the supreme end of man, as Aristotle had already taught. But Plotinus goes further when he grants the soul, impatient with the imperfection of the visible world, the faculty of rising to ecstasy (Eunendi, VI, 9), which is “the flight of the Alone to the Alone,” no longer merely intellectual vision, but possession, the soul’s identification with its origin, which is God, first intuited, now experienced.
Thus Greek metaphysics reaches the summit of religious feeling, awaiting the incarnate Λόγος.
II. THE THOUGHT OF THE FATHERS
Investigation of the thought of the Fathers of the Church concerning this question is particularly difficult, both because of the scarcity of material and because of the fluctuation of terminology. The subject of the beatific vision, with which that of the d. of God is especially connected, is little developed in patristic writings prior to s. Augustine, as indeed is the entire anthropological problem, because of the prevalence of Trinitarian and Christological heresies. Moreover, the thought of the Fathers moves entirely within a supernatural climate, and therefore in their language reason and faith, nature and Grace, merge into a structure so compact that it is difficult to distinguish the attributes of one element from those of another.Nevertheless, certain doctrinal themes can be gleaned from the field, moderately cultivated, of the knowability of God. The apologists against pagan polytheism, already taking their inspiration from Sacred Scripture (Wis. 13 and Rom. 1), affirmed not only the possibility but also the ease of knowing the true God through creation (Aristide, Apol., 1; Taziano, Adv. Graecos, 4; Ireneo, Adv. haer., 11, 9, 1; Tertulliano, Apolog., 17; and others). By this route one arrives at the assertion that knowledge of God is innate, congenial to man (in the sense of spontaneous). But this natural knowledge is imperfect and cannot be compared with that presented by Christian Revelation (I Cor. 13; I Io. 3) in the blessed life. The beatific vision of God is soberly explained by the early Fathers as the goal and reward of a life lived in the faith, hope, and charity of Christ. “For us,” writes s. Basil, echoing tradition (In Ps. 48), “the end for which we perform all our actions and toward which we yearn is the blessed life that awaits us in the other world.” This is the itinerary of Christian asceticism, upon which mystical contemplation is grafted as an anticipation of the beatific vision. The Pseudo Dionysius, between the end of the 5th century and the beginning of the 6th, develops an extensive doctrine concerning this itinerary, harmonizing the fruitful themes of Neoplatonic speculation with the data of Revelation.
Neoplatonism, especially that of Plotinus, truly exercised considerable influence upon the Eastern Fathers, particularly the Alexandrians. The Neoplatonic climate that matured between the 1st and 3rd centuries (from Philo to Plotinus) is so saturated with religious feeling and mysticism that the Fathers readily found in it ideas and a language akin to the Christian conception. The soul’s longing for the divine world, which becomes more pronounced from Plato to Plotinus, as stated above, and which takes concrete form in the idea and practice of an ascent to God through ascetic purification, was readily welcomed by the Fathers, who meditated on the words of the Lord: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” They readily adopted the familiar Platonic principles of the soul’s tendency to see God and of the kinship or affinity between the two, which makes that vision possible as the inner eye is increasingly purified through detachment from the sensible world (ecstasy). At the same time, however, they moderated and corrected these principles in the light of faith. The soul is like God, but distinct from Him as His created image (Ireneo); it therefore has the capacity to see God and desires Him, but, for its eye (νοῦς) to attain such a height, it must not only be purified, as Plotinus maintains, but elevated and illumined by a supernatural light, which is God’s gift (Giustino, Clemente Alessandrino, more decisively Agostino, Epist., 205, 19 and elsewhere). Moreover, in place of the Neoplatonists’ d. of a physical and ontological character, the Fathers set the longing of the will, possessed by the ardor of the infused virtue of charity (cf. s. Agostino, De div. quaest., 83, q. 46). The vision of God in this life, moreover, is never perfect, not even in ecstasy; s. Gregorio Nisseno reduces it to the reflection of God in the purified soul (De beatitudinibus, hom. 6), or rather to the same d. that remains constantly stretched toward Him because it is unsatisfied (De vita Moysis).
The claim of Eunomius (4th century), who admitted an adequate, almost intuitive, cognition of God in this life through the concept of ἀγέννητος (“unbegotten”), compelled the Fathers to exercise greater caution, as is evident in this significant passage of s. Gregorio Nazianzeno (Or. theol., 2, 17): “What God finally is in His nature and essence, no man has ever discovered, nor can discover... For my part, I hold that he will finally discover it when this deformed and indeed divine element, which is our mind and reason (νοῦς, λόγος), has been reunited with its kindred Being, and when the image has ascended to its exemplar, for which it now feels d. And for me this is the whole of philosophy: that then we shall know as much as we are known (cf. I Cor. 13). But in this mortal life all that reaches us is nothing more than a rivulet, a faint ray of the great light.”
This moderated Platonic influence will converge in s. Augustine, while it will regain the upper hand in the Pseudo Dionysius, whose theology, wholly permeated by mysticism drawn from Plotinus through Proclus, reaches the extreme limits of orthodoxy, if indeed it does not cross them.
Starting from the principle that man naturally seeks happiness and that there is no perfect happiness apart from God, St. Agostino places at the root of human existence a tendency toward God. This tendency recalls the “return” of which Plotinus speaks, but the holy Doctor departs from and corrects him by substituting the Christian concept of creation for the Plotinian concept of emanation, and by introducing into the spirit’s ascending dialectic the light of faith and the flame of supernatural charity. God is the supreme principle and end of all creatures, but in a particular way of man, made in his image and therefore capable of knowing and loving him. The intellect and the will have as their object unconditioned truth and goodness; and since all creatures are limited beings, pale reflections of the Supreme Being, with whom absolute truth and goodness are identified, the spirit is continually stirred by a thirst that is quenched only in the possession of God: “Lord, you have made us for Yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in You” (Conf., 1, 1). This is an innate, natural dynamism and impulse, which unfolds along the intellectual line of the search for truth but is animated by an impulse of love. It is the metaphysical indigence of finite being that becomes psychological indigence and a tension of the spirit, described by Agostino in dramatic tones in the De vita beata, the De Civitate Dei, but above all in the Confessiones. The stimuli of the intellect and the will are creatures, man himself, who scrutinizes and knows himself; but more than anything else, it is God who dwells within man and makes him thirst for him with some glimmer of his light: “For my hunger was within me and came from the inner food that You Yourself are, O my God” (Conf., 3, 1). The goal of the ascent will be God, possessed through intellectual vision as truth and through love as goodness; beatitude will be gaudium de veritate, that is, the possession and enjoyment of God (Deo frui). Thus the d. of happiness is the attainment (consecutio) of God, which occurs not through absorption into him, but through a contact of knowledge and love (De moribus Ecclesiae, 11, 18). This contact matures through the exercise of the virtues, which is a progressive assimilation to God. It is appropriate to observe that in Agostino’s exposition, consideration is dominated by man in his historical concreteness, not in metaphysical abstraction; and therefore, although he often warns that perfect beatitude and the means of attaining it are a gift of God not owed to man, the two orders, natural and supernatural, do not appear clearly distinguished in the sense later intended by the scholastics. The d. of God, according to Agostino, is a constitutive impulse of human being itself, which in the present order unfolds and reaches its goal under the influence of Grace; this does not exclude the possibility of another order of things, in which that d. rooted in human nature might follow a different development, with forms of assistance different from Grace. In short, Agostino does not exclude the hypothesis of a pure nature, not elevated to the supernatural order, such as it is in fact at present.
III. THE SCHOLASTICS
Heirs of the thought of the Fathers, they are all agreed in reaffirming a desire for God in the human soul; but when they seek to deepen and determine the nature of that desire, they divide into so many opinions that it is not easy to follow and understand them. In truth, the difficulty arises from the complexity of the elements involved and, in part, from the terminology then undergoing development. One need only think of the terms “natural” and “supernatural,” whose history De Lubac has recently attempted to trace. The insufficiently clear distinction between nature and the supernatural, which is discernible in the Augustinian conception, persists at least until s. Tommaso and aggravates the difficulty of the question of the ultimate end, which is intimately connected with the one treated here. Finally, the interference of the psychological line with the metaphysical one, already emphasized in s. Agostino, gives rise to ambiguity among the Scholastics and their readers. Under the influence of s. Agostino (De Trinitate, 1, 13), the ancient Scholastics generally do not see man’s ultimate end, and therefore perfect beatitude, as lying outside the beatific vision, although they acknowledge an imperfect happiness, such as that established by the philosophers as the term of human life. S. Anselmo (De casu diaboli, 12) calls the first beatitudo iustitiae and the second beatitudo commodi. This notion remains more or less accepted until the seventeenth century, when Silvestro Mauro for the first time clearly distinguishes two equally perfect beatitudes, one natural (proper to pure nature), the other supernatural (proper to the order of Grace). Thus one reads in his Opus theologicum, VI, 7: De possibilitate naturae purae.Yet, while insisting on the beatific vision as the only true happiness, the ancients did not infer from it a conclusion contrary to the gratuitousness of the supernatural order (Grace–vision) or to the possibility of another order of things. Guglielmo d’Alvernia, for example, maintains the dilemma: either the beatific vision or eternal suffering; but he diminishes its force when (contrary to the opinion of s. Agostino) he exempts children who die without Baptism from every punishment, granting them a natural happiness (De universo, II, 82); consequently, he excludes every necessity from the divine predestining action, affirming only its fittingness (loc. cit., 21).
More arduous and delicate is the question of man’s inclination toward perfect beatitude. With s. Agostino, the Scholastics recognize in man a natural desire for complete happiness, whose object can only be God. But how is one to explain sin, through which so many people turn away from God? This objection gradually forces them to make distinctions: everyone intuits and desires happiness, but does not know where it truly lies (Pietro Lombardo); what is desired is not life (= the vision of God), but that life, however lived, should be blessed (Prepositino); there is a natural will that tends toward true beatitude, and a derived will that turns toward temporal goods, in which it mistakenly places happiness (Guglielmo d’Auxerre); there is a natural desire to know and enjoy God, which reveals a receptive capacity of the spirit with regard to the beatific vision (“anima humana est beatificabilis”), but this desire can be realized only through faith and Grace (Guglielmo di Alvernia). In Ugo di S. Caro as well, one finds the distinction between two desires, one natural, the other elicited and free, in relation to beatitude.
The Franciscan school, which begins with Alessandro di Hales, will arrive at the concept of an innate desire for beatitude, per modum ponderis (cf. Scoto, In IV Sent., dist. 49), whereby the will inclines toward God without prior cognition. S. Bonaventura insists on the natural, spontaneous desire for true beatitude (In IV Sent., dist. 49 and elsewhere), but he does not exclude an innate intuition of the Supreme Good, which precisely arouses that desire (De mysterio SS. Trinitatis, q. I, 1).
All the elements of the question, more or less developed, converge in the thought of s. Tommaso, which merits particular consideration.
IV. ST. TOMMASO AND HIS INTERPRETATION. — The Angelic Doctor speaks repeatedly of beatitude, as the ultimate end of man, which consists in the vision and enjoyment of God, surpassing human powers (Sum. Theol., 1ª, q. 12, a. 4 and q. 62, a. 1; 1ª-2ª, q. 2, a. 8, q. 3 and q. 114, a. 2; 2ª-2ª, q. 2, a. 3; De veritate, q. 8, a. 3 and elsewhere). Yet there are also texts that mention two beatitudes and therefore two ends, one natural and imperfect, the other perfect and supernatural (Sum. Theol., 1ª, q. 23, a. 1; De veritate, q. 14, a. 2 and q. 27, a. 2, etc.). Despite the transcendence of the beatific vision, however, the holy Doctor repeatedly affirms the desire for it: «Cum enim ultima hominis beatitudo in altissima eius operatione consistat, quae est operatio intellectus, si nunquam essentiam Dei videre potest intellectus creatus, vel nunquam beatitudinem obtinebit, vel in alio eius beatitudo consistit quam in Deo: quod est alienum a fide... Inest homini naturale desiderium cognoscendi causam, cum intutur effectum... Si igitur intellectus rationalis creaturae pertingere non possit ad prima causam rerum, remanebit inane desiderium naturae» (Sum. Theol., 1ª, q. 12, a. 1; cf. also 1ª-2ª, q. 3, a. 8; C. Gent. 3, 50; Comp. theol., 104 and elsewhere).
The immense literature that has grown up around this doctrine of St. Tommaso demonstrates both its importance and its difficulty. The most controversial point lies in the apparent contradiction seemingly implied by the affirmation of a natural desire for a supernatural end such as the beatific vision. The Angelic Doctor’s first disciples, even though they did not share Scoto’s opinion, did not feel the discomfort of that apparent contradiction and continued to defend the natural desire for the beatific vision (Egidio Romano, Herveo Natale, Paludano). In the sixteenth century, however, when Lutheranism recklessly mingled nature and the supernatural, the Thomists became more cautious and rigid in their language. Gaetano then proposed an interpretation of St. Tommaso that removed every difficulty: it was not an innate desire, as the Scotists held, but an elicited desire, that is, one presupposing knowledge of the beatific vision through divine Revelation; such a desire, without the help of Grace, remains ineffective and is called natural only in the sense that it is not repugnant to nature, which possesses an obediential potency toward the supernatural order. This summary explanation, also shared by Bañez, found easy acceptance among many theologians, especially after the condemnation of Baio, who posited in human nature a genuine requirement of Grace and of the beatific vision, thereby compromising God’s freedom and the gratuitousness of the supernatural order. Thus there gradually emerged the opinion that would become common among the Thomists from the seventeenth century onward and that would be attributed without qualification to St. Tommaso: knowing of the beatific vision, man naturally desires it with an elicited desire, but conditionally and ineffectively if Grace is disregarded. Evidently, this was no longer a natural desire, but a supernatural desire, and this interpretation was reinforced by Silvestro Mauro’s opinion concerning the distinction between the two ends, one of which is the adequate term of the natural desire, the other of the supernatural desire. But Silvestro Ferrarese had already criticized Gaetano’s Thomistic exegesis, defending his own, which was more faithful to the texts and to the spirit of the Angelic Doctor. In his commentary on the Summa contra Gentiles (III, 50 ff.), he critically observes that the desire of which St. Tommaso speaks is truly natural, that is, arising from the constitutive principles of human nature, whose intellect, upon seeing any effect of God, spontaneously tends to know also the Cause in its essence; this entails the beatific vision, the only way of knowing the divine essence. Through this natural tendency St. Tommaso wishes to prove not the existence or attainability of the beatific vision, but only its possibility, which presupposes a capacity or receptive potency of the faculties of the soul. Intellect and will tend of themselves toward possession of God, the supreme truth and supreme good, without knowing that this possession can be attained only through the beatific vision, which transcends the powers of nature and is therefore unattainable without supernatural assistance. By this path, opened by Capreolo and Ferrarese, it is easier to grasp the thought of St. Tommaso, which may be summarized in the following terms:
1) God, just as he is the first principle, is also the ultimate end of all creatures, especially of man, who is naturally ordered to God, in whom alone he can find his complete happiness, the repose of every intellectual and volitional appetite: « Impossibile est beatitudinem hominis esse in aliquo bono creato; beatitudo enim est bonum perfectum, quod totaliter quietat appetitum... obiectum autem voluntatis, quae est appetitus humanus, est universale bonum, sicut obiectum intellectus est universale verum; ex quo patet quod nihil potest quietare voluntatem hominis nisi bonum universale, quod non invenitur in aliquo creato, sed solum in Deo » (Sum. Theol., 1a-2ac, q. 2, a. 8; cf. 1a, q. 23, a. 1, 2a-2ac, q. 2, a. 3).
2) This supreme finality may be considered metaphysically and psychologically: in the first sense, it is the ontological subordination of man to God (the transcendental relation of contingent being to the Absolute); in the second sense, it is the tendency of intellect and will toward God as the supreme truth and supreme good. This tendency constitutes the natural desire to know and possess God in himself and thus the desire of the intellect, prompted by the sight of effects, to seek and see their cause; and the consequent desire of the will, born to tend toward the object apprehended by the intellect. The term of both is God, who, although transcendent, is not foreign to the adequate object of intellect and will, which is being, with which truth and goodness are identified: « Nihil finitum desiderium intellectus quietare potest. Quod exinde ostenditur quod intellectus, quolibet finito dato, aliquid ultra molitur apprehendere... Non igitur intellectus substantiae separatae quiescit per hoc quod cognoscit substantias creatas quantumcumque eminentes, sed adhuc naturali desiderio tendit ad intelligendum substantiam quae est altitudinis infinitæ » (C. Gent., 50, V. also 54; cf. Sum. Theol., 1a, q. 12, a. 1; 1a-2ac, q. 3, a. 8; Comp. theol., 104).
3) The natural desire of the human intellect tends toward the vision of the divine essence, whose possibility is proved precisely by that desire: « Non igitur naturale desiderium sciendi potest quietari in nobis, quousque primam causam cognoscamus non quocumque modo, sed per eius essentiam » (Comp. theol., 104; C. Gent., III, 3, 51). Nevertheless, the beatific vision always remains a reality that surpasses the powers of human nature and its requirements: it « ex sola divina liberalitate repromittitur » (De veritate, q. 14, a. 2). Yet the supernatural character of the vision should be understood rather in relation to its attainment, for which nature is inadequate, and it does not prevent the vision from being considered, in a certain sense, connatural to man, who is capable of it and aspires to it (Sum. Theol., 3a, q. 9, a. 2, ad 3).
4) More precisely, the natural desire has as its formal object beatitude, in which the thirst of intellect and will (= God Truth-Goodness) is satisfied; but it also has a material object, which is beatitude itself concretized in this or that good. Formally, then, the soul tends through intellect and will toward possession of the supreme truth and the supreme good (= God); but since such possession can be actualized only through the immediate vision of the divine essence, the soul tends toward this vision materially or implicitly: « Quamvis divina visio sit ipsa beatitudo, non tamen sequitur quod quicumque appetit beatitudinem, appetat (explicite) divinam visionem: quia beatitudo inquantum huiusmodi importat per se actum voluntatis, non autem divina visio, sicut aliquis appetit dulce, qui non appetit mel » (In IV Sent., d. 1, q. 1, a. 3, q. 1, ad 2: the entire question should be read).
5) The root of such a d. is obediential potency, a receptive capacity of the metaphysical order, which psychologically resolves into a d. that tends toward possession of God, but cannot attain him fully (through the beatific vision) without Grace: « Quamvis intellectus noster sit factus ad hoc quod videat Deum, non tamen ut naturali sua virtute Deum videre possit, sed per lumen gloriae sibi infusum » (De veritate, q. 10, a. 11, ad 7;
In Boet. De Trinitate, q. 6, a. 4, ad 5 and elsewhere). This is a privilege of the rational creature, which tends not only toward the good it can attain by its own powers, but also toward the good it can receive from the supreme Agent.
In conclusion, the d. of which s. Tommaso speaks may be called innate because it is rooted in the very nature of man as a potency or capacity, but it is properly elicited, that is, accompanied by the cognition that arises from the vision of any effect of God, and unfolds along the psychological line as a real tendency toward God, the formal end insofar as he is the supreme truth and supreme good, and the material end insofar as he is the object of the beatific vision. In the order of intention, that d. is absolute and efficacious, but in the order of execution it remains inefficacious and conditioned upon supernatural assistance.
V. TEOLOGIA MODERNA
Today the question of the d. n. of God is more alive than ever. There is the negative attitude of conservative theologians, which, as has been said, was determined by the errors of Baio and is connected with Gaetano. But the psychological tendency of modern philosophy, largely immanentist, has also infiltrated Catholic circles, bringing the problem of the supernatural in relation to human nature fully back into discussion. Apart from the modernist deviation, which moves along the heterodox path of immanentism and pragmatism, one must note an insistent return to the concept of a more intimate connection between the natural order and the supernatural order, with the danger of eliminating that line of demarcation already traced by St. Thomas and reinforced by the condemnation of Baianism in the 16th century, under Pius V. There is a tendency to exclude the hypothesis of a pure nature (without Grace), which sound theology considers necessary in order to defend the gratuitous character of the supernatural, and to prefer the position of the Augustinians (Norisio, Berti, Bellelli), who regard the destiny of man to the beatific vision as a necessity of fittingness, by virtue of divine wisdom and goodness; this vision would be the only end established by God. In this climate, the opinion of Scotus concerning the innate d. of God and its full possession through the vision finds a place, and there is also talk (Blondel) of a need, indeed of an indigence, of the supernatural lost through original sin. Pius X, in the encyclical Pascendi, recalled the now traditional doctrine concerning the clear distinction between the two orders, condemning the opinion that there is a genuine indigence of the supernatural.Keeping this grave document of the Church’s magisterium in view, one can separate the wheat from the chaff in these modern theological currents. The thought of St. Thomas, as interpreted above, is once again useful for reconciling, without compromises, ancient and modern demands. It certainly moves more along the metaphysical than the psychological line, and rightly so, if one does not wish to build upon sand. But it does not deny the possibility and fittingness of supplementing it with the (Augustinian) historical and psychological consideration that sees man in his concrete reality: carrying in his heart, wounded by original sin, a nostalgia for the riches he has lost. This psychological unease is more than the innate d. or the transcendental relation to God. It is Augustine’s restless heart, echoing all the religious motives of pagan philosophy, all the fervor of Christian asceticism, and also the Kierkegaardian anguish of so much modern philosophy.
For the thought of the Fathers: R. Arnou, Platonisme des Pères, in DThC, XII, coll. 2375-87; E. Portalié, Augustin (Saint), in DThC, I, coll. 2432-43; E. Gilson, Introduction à l'étude de St Augustin, Parigi 1929; C. Boyer, Essais sur la doctrine de St Augustin, ivi 1932; id., L'idée de la vérité dans la philosophie de St Augustin, 2e ed., ivi 1941.
For the scholastics: H. Ligard, La théologie scolastique et la transcendance du surnaturel, Parigi 1908; M. De Wulf, Histoire de la philosophie médiévale, 5e ed., Lovanio 1924; E. Eher, De naturali hominis beatitudine ad mentem Scholae antiquioris, in Gregorianum, 9 (1927), p. 269 sgg.; V. Doucet, De naturali seu innato supernaturalis beatitudinii desiderio iuxta Theologiae a saec. XIII usque ad saec. XX, in Antonianum, 5 (1929), pp. 167-208; E. Gilson, La philosophie au moyen âge, 2e ed., Parigi 1947; V. De Broglie, De fine ultimo humanae vitae, ivi 1948.
For St. Thomas: J. Sestili, De naturali intelligenti animae capacitate atque appetitu intunendi divinam essentiam theologica d'Aquitiis, Napoli-Roma 1896 (v. su questo opuscolo A. Holder, Le désir naturel de la vision béatifique, in Revue Augustinienne, 16-17 (1910), pp. 5-26); G. Broglie, De la place du surnaturel dans la philosophie de St Thomas, in Recherches de sciences religieuses, 15 (1924), pp. 193-245, 481-97; J. Maréchal, Le point de départ de la métaphysique, V, Parigi 1926; E. Briabois, Désir naturel et vision de Dieu, in Nouvelle revue théologique, 59 (1927), pp. 81-97; R. Garrigou-Lagrange, L'appétit naturel et la puissance obédientielle, in Revue thomiste, 35 (1928), pp. 474-78; M. Cuervo, El deseo natural de ver a Dios y los fundamentos de la apologética immanentista, in Ciencia tomista, 20 (1928), pp. 332-48; J. E. O' Mahony, The desire of God in the philosophy of St Thomas Aquinas, Dublino Cork 1929 (Scotist interpretation); M. D. Roland Gosselin, Béatitude et désir naturel d'après St Thomas d'Aquin, in Revue de sciences philosophiques et théologiques, 18 (1929), pp. 193-222 (in a Thomist sense); A. Fernandez, Naturale desiderium videndi divinam essentiam apud Divum Thomam eiusque scholam, in Divus Thomis, 33 (Piacenza 1930), pp. 5-28, 503-37 (along the line of S. Ferrarese); S. Vallaro, De naturali desiderio videndi essentiam Dei et de eius valore ad demonstrandam possibilitatem eiusdem visionis Dei quidditative, in Angelicum, 11 (1934), pp. 133-70; id., De natura capacitatis intellectus creati ad videndam divinam essentiam, in Angelicum, 12 (1935), pp. 192-216 (along the line of Fernandez and with greater clarity); B. M. Lemer, De desiderio naturali ad visionem beatificam, Roma 1948 (a speculative work, broad in scope, which highlights the intellectual character of the d. of which St. Thomas speaks).
For modern thought: J. V. Bairvel, Nature et surnaturel, 5e ed., Parigi 1931 (between the old and new currents); A. Verriele, Le surnaturel en nous et le péché originel, ivi 1932 (very open to modern demands, while conceding them cautiously); H. De Lubac, Surnaturel, ivi 1946: a work of extensive historical erudition but bold in its interpretations, to the point of endangering certain traditional doctrines; it was criticized by De Broglie, op. cit., and by C. Boyer, Nature pure et surnaturel, dans le surnaturel « du père De Lubac, in Gregorianum, 28 (1947), pp. 379-95.
Pietro Parente
DE SIMILITUDINE CARNIS PECCATI:
V. PACIANO.