PRETERNATURAL GIFTS. - I. NOTION. - By this expression are usually meant the privileges that Adam and Eve received at the beginning, in the state of innocence, together with sanctifying grace, the infused virtues and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Sanctifying grace, the infused virtues and the gifts that derive from it are called supernatural gifts insofar as they are «a participation in the divine nature» (v. DIVINE FELLOWSHIP) and the seed of eternal life, which consists in the immediate vision of the divine essence; they are supernatural gifts not only because God alone can produce them in us and because they are gratuitous, but also because they intrinsically surpass every created or creatable nature, human or angelic. While the life miraculously restored to a corpse is a natural life (vegetative and sensitive), supernaturally caused by God, sanctifying grace is a life essentially supernatural for the angel as much as for man; it is a participation in the intimate life of God and disposes us to see him face to face and to enjoy him for all eternity (v. SUPERNATURAL GIFTS AND ORIGINAL JUSTICE).
The p. g. are far inferior to sanctifying grace; although God alone can produce them in us, and they are not owed to us and therefore gratuitous, they are not intrinsically, by their very essence, superior to any created or creatable nature; indeed they are inferior to the angelic nature and constitute the integrity of our human nature, whence they are called gifts of integrity. Integrity is a perfection of the natural order that can be gratuitously superadded to human nature. Man by nature is a rational animal, nothing more; a profound philosophical knowledge and a solid virtue of the human order belong to his integrity or natural perfection; if, instead of acquiring them slowly, he received them gratuitously from God at the moment of creation, they are called p. g., because they are not superior to nature, but beyond what is owed to it. They proceeded from grace as from their cause, but were inferior to it, forming its ornament and defense.
II. DIVISION OF PRETERNATURAL GIFTS
According to Revelation, the praeternatural gifts are four: in the state of innocence man was preserved in his body from death and from pain, and his soul was preserved from disordered concupiscence and from ignorance. The testimony of Revelation contained in Gen. 1 and 2 is more explicit about the existence and the gratuitousness of the first two privileges, immunity from death and from pain, but it also indicates the loftier and less manifest privileges, immunity from concupiscence and from ignorance. Thus one sees that in the state of original justice there was a threefold harmony: the subordination of the soul to God through Grace; the subordination of the lower part to the higher part of the soul; and the subordination of the body to the soul. From the first the other two derive; when that one was destroyed, the other two also disappeared.
1. In the state of innocence man was immune from death
Although he was by nature subject to death, like the animals, he was nevertheless preserved from it by a singular privilege, as long as he remained faithful to God. This is clearly read in Gen. 2:16: "The Lord said to Adam: you may eat of the fruits of the trees of paradise, but you shall not eat the fruits of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for on the day you eat of it, you shall certainly die." Likewise after the disobedience it is read in Gen. 3:19: "You shall eat your bread by the sweat of your brow until you return to the earth... for you are dust and to dust you shall return." The same doctrine is found in Wis. 2:23-24 and in St. Paul Rom. 5:12-17, in tradition and in many conciliar definitions (Denz-U, 101, 175, 788). St. Thomas (Sum. Theol., I, q. 97, a. 1) explains the fittingness and the gratuitousness of this privilege. As long as the soul was totally subject to God, it was fitting that it should have from God the power to preserve the body in life. This body, as a material composite, is naturally corruptible, like that of the animals; immortality was therefore gratuitous, not owed to our nature, but was a privilege of the state of innocence. The gratuitousness of this gift is affirmed by the Church in the condemnation of several propositions of Baius (Denz-U, 1021, 1026, 1055).
2. Man was also immune from pain
Sacred Scripture partly lets it be understood that in the earthly paradise man had whatever he could reasonably desire, worked without tiring, and the animals and lower beings were subject to him (Gen. 1:26; 2:8, 15; Sir. 17:3-4). Pain appears in Genesis as a consequence of sin (Gen. 3:19). Moreover, immunity from death presupposes immunity from the pains and illnesses that lead to death. Tradition explains this revealed doctrine (cf. R. De Journel, Enchiridion patristicum, 1762, 1952, 2013, 2122), and St. Thomas (Sum. Theol., I, q. 97, a. 2, ad 4) demonstrates the fittingness of this privilege. Certainly the human body, like that of the animals, is by nature subject to pain, but as long as the soul remained subject to God, Providence preserved the body from pain and death.
3. Man was immune from disordered concupiscence
Gen. 2:25 and 3:7 lay the foundation of this doctrine: before sin Adam and Eve were naked and did not blush at it; after sin they felt the need to clothe themselves because of the disordered concupiscence that had awakened in them. St. Paul (Rom. 6:12; 7:19-25) specifies this teaching. The Council of Trent (Denz-U, 792) declares that concupiscence is sometimes called by St. Paul with the name of sin (Rom. 6:22) because it was born from sin and inclines to sin, but that in the baptized it is not, properly speaking, a sin, but rather a wound in the process of healing. Following the holy Fathers, especially St. John Chrysostom, St. Augustine and St. Cyril of Alexandria, St. Thomas (Sum. Theol., I, q. 95, a. 1) shows the fittingness of this privilege: as long as reason remained subject to God it was fitting that the lower faculties should remain subject; but this subjection was not natural, otherwise it would have remained, like nature, even after sin (cf. Sum. Theol., I, q. 81, a. 3, ad 2).
4. Man was immune from ignorance
This is a truth theologically certain (cf. Sum. Theol., I, q. 94, a. 3, 4). To be ignorant does not mean only not to know; it means not to know what, according to one's age and condition, one ought to know. Thus of a European who does not know Chinese, one does not say that he is ignorant of it. Now the first man, with the supernatural knowledge of infused faith, founded on the authority of God revealing, had natural knowledge proportionate to his state of original justice and necessary for governing himself and instructing and educating his children. It is the common teaching of theologians that, according to what Sacred Scripture lets be understood, Adam was created adult with an intelligence already formed, although still perfectible. It is further said (Gen. 19-20) that God made the animals file past the man so that he might give them a name. Finally Adam knew the meaning of the elements of language. The first man also had to know what distinguished him from the animal, what distinguishes the intellect and the senses, the will and the sensibility; he had to have a certain knowledge of the real value of the necessity and universality of the first principles of contradiction, of causality and of finality, without which one cannot demonstrate the existence of God, first cause and last end. The first man, living, as Genesis says, in familiarity with God, should finally have had sure knowledge of moral and religious matters, which was necessary for him for the conduct of his own life and the education of his children (Eccl. 17:1-8).
Tradition also affirms this clearly, through St. Augustine, St. Cyril of Alexandria, St. John Damascene (cf. R. de Journel, Enchir. Patrist., index theol., 272). St. Thomas (Sum. Theol., I, q. 94, a. 3) explains it thus: "The creatures formed by God at the beginning were created not only that they might exist, but that they might be the principle (and model) of future ones; for a just reason they were produced in a perfect state." And if the first man, in the state of innocence, had a most perfect body immune from death and pain, as Genesis openly says, all the more should he have had a perfect soul in order to be able rightly to govern himself and his children. This high knowledge of moral and religious laws could coexist with a rudimentary material civilization; thus some founders of religious Orders, like St. Benedict and St. Francis of Assisi, received from God a very high knowledge concerning the Order they were to found, well before the technical drafting of its rules; the spirit preceded the letter in order to give it life; afterward technical and material progress was often accompanied by moral and spiritual regression.
The knowledge of the first man always remained a knowledge of faith enlightened by the gifts of the Holy Spirit; he did not see God intuitively, nor the Angels, nor did he know future contingents, nor the secrets of hearts.
III. CONCLUSIONS
These four privileges of the state of innocence constituted the gift of integrity that accompanies sanctifying grace, the infused virtues and the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. This integrity was not due to human nature; it was gratuitous (or preternatural), as the Church declares against Baius (Denz-U, 1026). From this it follows that the state of pure nature, or purely natural nature, is possible, that is, that God could have created man without grace and without the preternatural gifts of integrity. This is evident from the condemnation of several propositions of Baius (Denz-U, 1021, 1023, 1055, 1070, 1516). Nevertheless, according to St. Thomas (C. Gent., I. IV, ch. 52) the disordered concupiscence found in man, and the weakness of resistance to the higher part of the soul, are a probable sign of original sin, which came to disturb the harmony established by the Creator.
If the first man had not sinned, the preternatural gifts would have been transmitted by him to his descendants together with human nature (Council of Trent, sess. V, cann. 1 and 2; Denz-U, 788-89). The children of Adam would not have had the perfection that he had from having been created adult and as educator of the human race, but they would have had a special acuteness for knowing the truth, especially moral truth, without danger of error.
Bibliography5 works
Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange