Supernatural, Order of the

SUPERNATURAL, ORDER OF THE. - I. TERMINOLOGY AND HISTORY. - According to the common doctrine now prevailing in the Church, it is a truth of faith (Council of Trent, sess. V, can. I [Denz-U, 788]; the 23rd proposition of Baius condemned by St. Pius V: [ibid., 1023]) that the human race from the beginning was elevated by God gratuitously, out of sheer liberality, to the ultimate end, which is the beatific vision (v.), and to the state of Grace, of virtues and of gifts of the Holy Spirit, which constitute the means suited to that end: means and end that transcend human nature in its being and in its operation, in its capacity and in its own requirements, and therefore belong to a supernatural order, which is understood and defined by reference to the concept of nature and of what belongs to nature as its own, ontologically and dynamically. The Christian religion not only affirms but has lived for twenty centuries the truth and the reality of the supernatural order; the theology, however, of the supernatural order has developed slowly through the crises of errors, the reaction and the reflection of the Doctors, and above all under the influence and the vigilant control of the ecclesiastical magisterium.

The theological elaboration is accompanied by a progressive clarification of terms and formulas. The term "nature" and its corresponding concept pass well defined from Greek philosophy (especially Aristotelian) into Christian language. Both the Latin word "natura" and the corresponding Greek φύσις derive from a verb (nasci = φύσιν), which means to be born, to come to light, and therefore imply the fundamental idea of "origin," especially of the living being from another living being, hence the genesis of one being from another. In living beings, genesis is true generation, which has as its principle and as its term the same nature (for example, human nature identical in the father and in the son).

Hence the Aristotelian concept of nature as a primary and immanent concept of activity, which coincides with the specific essence (οὐσία): two terms that indicate the same thing under different aspects, namely the quidditative principle of the entity on the line of being (essence - οὐσία) and on the line of action (nature - φύσις). The concept of nature as a genetic principle received a greater determination within Christianity because of the development of the doctrine on personality (v. PERSON) imposed by the exigency of the Trinitarian and Christological dogma. But Greek philosophy also suggested a broader sense of the term nature, insofar as it was used to signify the complex of beings with their own genetic principles, which constitute the universe, called therefore by the Greeks simply φύσις (τὰ φυσικά) and by the Latins "rerum natura."

In either sense, for Christian philosophy, especially Aristotelian-Thomistic, "nature" means a stable principle of a character necessary in itself and in relation to its activity, its laws, its properties. Consequently the term "natural" is used to indicate everything that belongs to nature either genetically or constitutionally or dynamically: thus, for example, it is natural that from a man another man be born essentially equal to the first; it is natural that man be endowed with intelligence and free will; it is also natural that man tend toward the good and toward happiness.

Natural in the cosmic sense is everything that forms part of created nature and unfolds within it according to the operative virtues and the laws of the particular natures that compose the universe. This concept of nature and natural in the sense of a fixed reality and well determined by stable laws of a necessary character is in force among the Scholastics, especially St. Thomas and later theologians, and sinks its roots in the Fathers and in Greek philosophy. Nevertheless, alongside this conception another one develops, which goes back to St. Augustine, and presents nature as an entity that exists and operates in one way or another not by intrinsic determination but by an influence of the divine will, which adapts effects to causes as it sees fit. St. Augustine, while upholding the absolute dominion of God's will, recognizes the intimate structure of beings according to fixed laws, and therefore is not in contrast with the Scholastic conception, which is linked to St. Thomas. But his disciples accentuated the function of the divine will in comparison with the structure and the intimate function of nature.

Another concept influences the theological elaboration of the natural and the supernatural: exigency. To require is equivalent to claiming for oneself, to attribute to oneself by right, in such a way as to create a debt in another subject. In the proper sense, exigency, implying a right, refers to persons. But it can be extended, in a transferred sense, also to things, and therefore one can speak of an exigency of nature. Nature, if it is created, demands first of all its cause, which posits and explains its origin; it further necessarily demands everything that intrinsically constitutes it; for example, human nature demands a rational soul with its faculties and a body with its organs and its determinate structure. Nature further demands the means and the objects indispensable to the unfolding of its energies and its potentialities. This third exigency (the most important) is founded on the operative faculties of nature, which, like the intellect and the will in man, can open toward the infinite without being able to reach it by their own resources. In such a case the exigency has as its term a complement of nature, which can derive to it only from a higher cause. One thus arrives at conceiving a kind of debt on the part of God toward the creature. It has been said (De Lubac) that the Scholastics are dominated by the juridical and therefore would exclude from nature a juridical exigency, which would make God a debtor, but not an ontological exigency. It is instead historically established that the Scholastics unanimously deny as absurd a juridical exigency of the creature before God, even in the sphere of merit, which they generally conceive as subordinate to a divine promise (P. Lombard, II Sent. d. 43: "Non est debitor nobis, nisi forte ex promisso").

With even stronger reason the Scholastics exclude an ontological exigency, which would be the only true one, when it is a matter of relations between creature and Creator, in order to a complement of created nature. Nor does the distinction between absolute divine power and ordained divine power avail for the Scholastics, especially for St. Thomas. On the basis of this distinction (dear to the Augustinians of the 18th century) one reasons thus: God could leave a creature, and in particular man, in the conditions in which He created it, without a special help, by virtue of His absolute power; but He cannot do so by virtue of the power coordinated with other attributes (goodness, love, etc.). Therefore the complementary succor is not owed on the part of God in view of absolute power, but is owed in view of ordained power. And thus the exigency of that succor, already excluded, would return by virtue of this latter power.

But already St. Thomas, in his maturity (Sum. Theol., 1a, q. 25, a. 5, ad 1) eliminates the distinction of the two powers, given the necessary concurrence of all the attributes (identical with the one essence) in every divine operation: « Nihil potest esse in potentia divina quod non possit esse in voluntate iusta ipsius et intellectu sapiente eius ». Therefore there can be in the creature no exigency, whether juridical or ontological, that makes God a debtor (at least according to the ordained power) of a extraordinary complement to nature. If there are ontological exigencies in nature, they belong to the very structure of the creature, willed as such by God according to his ordained power, and therefore those exigencies must be such as to remain satisfied without a special intervention of God. In other words, every created nature has all that is necessary and sufficient for its being and for its operating, already through the creative act that sprang from the power ordained by God. Therefore such a nature cannot demand more in any way, and hence God owes it nothing more than what he has given it to constitute it in its degree of being.

From these principles springs the concept of gratuitousness applied to the supernatural. For if in created nature there is no exigency (whether juridical or ontological) for a extraordinary intervention of God, it is clear that if such an intervention occurs, it is entirely gratuitous. The intimate reason for its gratuitousness is not understood except from the fact that in an intervention of God that is extraordinary, by its contingent character, there is manifested more openly than any natural effect the freedom of God, who could do without it without offense to his divine attributes. All that God works outside himself is gratuitous, even the world of nature, and therefore it is free; but the supernatural sphere, answering to no exigency, either on the part of God or on the part of the creature, is a more evident sign of the divine freedom and liberality.

The term supernatural (cf. H. De Lubac, Remarque sur l'histoire du mot « surnaturel », in Nouv. revue théolog., 61 [1934], p. 225 ff. and 350 ff.; id., Surnaturel, Paris 1946, p. 325 ff., G. de Broglie, De fine ultimo humanae vitae, ibid. 1948, p. 141 ff.). was introduced into Latin theological terminology by Scotus Eriugena in a version of Pseudo-Dionysius; nevertheless, until St. Albert the Great and St. Thomas, who adopted Aristotelianism (with the exact determination of « nature »), that term was not much used by the scholastics. From St. Thomas onward it became common in theology and later (Proposition of Baius) also in the language of the magisterium.

In the Greek world (pagan and Christian) the term corresponding to supernatural, that is ὑπερφύνης, is the epilogue of a not brief itinerary marked by the words ὑπερουράνιος (supercelestial), used especially by Plato, and ὑπερκόσμιος (superworldly), used more willingly by the Neoplatonists, as well as other similar terms (ὑπερκόσμιος, ὑπερκείμενος, etc.). Among the Greek philosophers these terms are generally employed in a cosmic, local sense; among Christian writers, on the other hand, they gradually assume a spiritual sense. Already Clement of Alexandria and Origen used the Platonic ὑπερουράνιος to indicate transcendent, divine realities (Origen, De principiis, I. IV, cap. 1, n. 7 and elsewhere). Marius Victorinus in the same sense spoke of invisible, divine things, using the term « supercelestial » (= ὑπερουράνιος). The other related term ὑπερκόσμιος underwent an equal development among the Fathers. For example, Clement of Alexandria, Hippolytus, Ps.-Dionysius, St. Gregory of Nyssa employed it in the sense of mysterious, eternal, spiritual (citations in De Lubac, op. cit., in the note to p. 341). Moreover, St. Paul too uses ὑπερκόσμιος to signify the heavenly, spiritual man (I Cor. 15, 46 ff.). But among Christian writers they attached themselves more willingly to the term ὑπερφύνης, which takes on first the meaning of wonder (miracle), then of ineffable, divine, that transcends earthly and human things (cf. especially Isidore of Pelusium). The idea is expressed also with the phrase ὑπὲρ φύσιν, which both among the profane and among the Fathers is found in contrast with παρὰ φύσιν (= against nature) and κατὰ φύσιν (= according to nature). St. Cyril of Alexandria, following Isidore of Pelusium (his friend and relative), notes that the superior gifts given by God to man to elevate him are superior not only to his (man's) nature, but to nature (as a whole). More extensively St. Maximus employs the phrase, establishing the itinerary of the Redemption: man is freed from the passions (παρὰ φύσιν), is restored in the rational sphere (κατὰ φύσιν), is enriched with supernatural goods (ὑπὲρ φύσιν) (Ad Thalassium, q. 65: PG 90, 769). In Latin the Greek term is rendered by « supernaturalis » already in the version of the 19th letter of Isidore of Pelusium, then in the translation of Ps.-Dionysius made by Scotus Eriugena, as was said above.

II. DOCTRINE

1. Magisterium of the Church

The documents of the ecclesiastical magisterium contain explicitly the affirmation of the supernatural as a fact under various aspects: a) empirical: the verifiable effect of a cause that cannot be natural: such is the miracle (v.) in the physical order and in the moral order, which the Church recognizes in the life of Jesus Christ and of the saints and considers as a seal of the divine Revelation, making of it a certain argument of credibility (cf. Vatican Council, sess. III, cap. 3 and can. 4 de fide: Denz-U, 1790, 1813) b) theoretical: truths revealed by God, which surpass the capacity of human reason, such as the mysteries of the Most Holy Trinity, of the Incarnation, of the Word, etc.; the Church, while recognizing the forces and the rights of reason, defends the transcendence of the Mystery (v.), object of divine faith (cf. Vat. Council, sess. III, cap. 4; cf. can. 1 de fide et ratione); c) practical: proper to human activity in order to eternal life is the divine Grace infused in the soul and in its faculties together with the theological and cardinal virtues and the gifts of the Holy Spirit, which elevate man to a supernatural state, in which he lives and acts in a deiform manner (cf. the anti-Pelagian documents: Council of Carthage, a. 418, and II of Orange, a. 429; Council of Trent, sess. III, especially can. 1 and 3 de iustificatione).

Besides the affirmation of the supernatural as a fact, under the threefold aspect: empirical, theoretical and practical, the magisterium of the Church has also pronounced on the nature of supernatural reality, on the occasion of the errors of Baius, of Jansenius and of the modernists. Among the propositions of Baius condemned by Pius V (1567) some (21st, 23rd, 24th, 26th, 42nd) openly deny the existence and the function of divine Grace, as a supernatural gift added to human nature to transform and elevate it. From the condemnation of these propositions it is deduced that the Church holds that God infuses Grace as a gratuitous gift, which transcends the conditions and the exigencies of nature.

But a more precise negation of every true and proper exigency of human nature in the face of the gift of Grace, and therefore of the supernatural transcendence of the latter over the former, is found in the encyclical Pascendi of Pius X (1907), where, with regard to immanentism and the method of immanence (v.) adopted by the modernists, one reads: « Here we must once again complain that there are not lacking Catholics who, although they reject immanence as a doctrine, nevertheless make use of it for apologetics, and do so so imprudently as to seem to admit in human nature not only a capacity and a suitability with respect to the supernatural order, as Christian apologists have always done with opportune reservations, but also a true and proper exigency » (Denz-U, 2103). This important clarification brings to light the absolutely gratuitous character of the supernatural and its transcendence with respect to nature, to which it is by no means owed and which has neither active capacity nor any right with respect to it. This concept is reaffirmed by another route by Pius XII in Humani generis (12 Aug. 1950): « Others pervert the true gratuitousness of the supernatural order, holding that God cannot create a rational being without destining and calling it to the beatific vision ». In these words there emerges the concept of the possibility of a pure nature (without supernatural gifts); which God could create without injuring his justice and his goodness.

2. Positive proofs

a) Sacred Scripture: the beatific vision, formal reason of the whole supernatural order, is promised to the pure of heart (Mt. 5, 8) is proper to the angels and the blessed in heaven (Mt. 18, 10 and 22, 30). St. Paul exalts, as a participation of the divine knowledge itself, the beatific vision, which surpasses every cognition of God possible during the earthly life, even faith (I Cor. 13, 8-12). And St. John (I Io. 3, 1-2) declares to be a gift of the Father the adoptive filiation and even more the beatific vision, which is the supreme term of the assimilation with God operated in us by divine Grace, beyond every capacity or right of nature. The sanctification of man by way of faith or of Grace is called by St. John rebirth, regeneration in God (Io. 1, 12-13; 3, 5), communication and vital immanence in Christ (Io. 6, 57; 15, 1 ff.). Likewise St. Paul speaks of a new creature (II Cor. 5, 17), of a renewal of man by virtue of the Holy Spirit (Tit. 3, 5), to which is linked the whole life of faith and of charity, called therefore pneumatic, charismatic, in antithesis with the life of the natural man (ψυγικός). b) Fathers: especially the Orientals all insist on the concept of deification (θεοποίησις) to indicate the life of sanctification through Grace. The most effective are St. Athanasius and St. Cyril. For the West the testimony of St. Augustine is sufficient, who exalts the gratuitousness of Grace so much as to seem at times exaggerated. For all the scriptural and patristic documentation v. GRACE and PARADISE.

3. Theological synthesis

From these and other documents of Revelation a well-defined theological doctrine has been formed around the two orders, natural and supernatural, which can be reduced to this schema. Natural and supernatural are said with respect to nature considered in its being and in its active or passive potentiality. Natural are the essential constitutive elements of an entity, natural also is its operative virtue in order to an effect proportionate to it, natural finally is its capacity to receive the action of a cause also natural. Consequently the supernatural transcends nature in its essential constitution, in its power and in its proper capacity: in a word the supernatural surpasses the forces of nature, is above its range of action, bound to second causes. But this notion must be integrated by the other, which is absolute gratuitousness, whereby the supernatural, as divine intervention or gift, excludes the right or exigency on the part of the creature and the debt on the part of God. The two notions of transcendence and of gratuitousness lead to the concept of an entitative difference between the natural and the supernatural in its most formal acceptation.

Supernatural reality can be substantial or accidental, essential or modal. Supernatural in the substantial and absolute sense is only God, who transcends all created nature; indeed God considered in himself and for himself, without relation to man, is improperly called supernatural, being absolutely his own nature. A properly supernatural, created substance is not easily conceivable (although some theologian admits its possibility: Molina, Ripalda); the supernatural is at bottom a participation of the divine in a rational nature, by way of modification in being and in operating, and therefore it is reduced to accidental reality, as in fact are Grace (v.) and the other habits infused by God in the soul. But there is a gradation from the extreme limits of nature to the supernatural properly so called. To the miracle there approach the effects called preternatural, which include a good already belonging to nature, but perfected by divine action in its conditions, in its duration; as, for example, the bodily immortality of the first parents, which was a miraculous continuation of the natural life of the body, perhaps in superior conditions. In the third place there is the relative supernatural, which transcends this or that nature, but not all created nature: thus, for example, infused knowledge, proper and natural in the Angels, granted by God to man. Finally the essential supernatural, which is an entity realized by God in the rational creature and which surpasses all created nature in its constitution, in its potentiality and in its exigencies; such is the Grace communicated to the soul as a mysterious participation of the divine nature itself, on the line of a quasi-formal causality. Grace bespeaks order to glory, that is to the beatific vision, which is the apex and the supreme reason of the whole supernatural sphere: it in the line of final causality commands the whole economy of Grace (means) and is realized formally as an immediate intentional communication of the divine essence to the created intelligence.

In conclusion: a) the natural order consists in a nature, or in the whole of created nature, considered in its essential constitution and in its active and passive potentiality in relation to its own end, proportioned to its powers and to its native exigencies; b) the supernatural order consists in the divine action by which God elevates and disposes a rational nature to the attainment of an end transcending all created nature, by means of a deiform vital activity that culminates in the beatific vision, the supreme term of the economy of Grace. Given the absolute gratuitousness of the supernatural entity, it is clear that there is no intrinsic connection between the one order and the other; in nature there is only a passive capacity to receive the divine action, which freely realizes the supernatural in it. Theologians call that capacity obediential potency (St. Thomas, De verit., q. 29, a. 3, ad 3; De potentia, q. 6, a. 1, ad 18 and elsewhere: v. below). Therefore, considering human nature in itself and prescinding from divine Revelation, reason cannot positively demonstrate the possibility of the supernatural order, but after Revelation it can demonstrate that the supernatural not only does not conflict with human nature but is even fitting for it. On this point heated discussions have arisen even among Catholics, from the 16th century onward.

4. Controversial points

The Scholastics had inherited from St. Augustine a conception in which the supernatural order was not clearly distinguished from the natural order, though not in the sense that the holy Doctor identified the one with the other. In his struggle with Pelagius, the assertor of an exaggerated naturalism, he found himself compelled to emphasize the supernatural and its function even at the expense of nature. But many would wrongly abuse his authority to reach conclusions foreign to his thought, which was substantially orthodox.

The first controversy arose among the Scholastics concerning the relationship between nature and the supernatural, in the light of the beatific vision. The Augustinian tendency found its expression in Scotus, who, starting from the univocity of being, admits in nature a connatural desire for the full possession of God (the beatific vision), and therefore an obediential potency that is not purely passive but also in a certain way active. In other words, the Franciscan school, following in the footsteps of Scotus, is decidedly opposed to the concept of the supernatural as something foreign to the spirit (extrinsicism) and tends to link nature and the supernatural in such a way as to temper transcendence with a motive of immanence (intrinsicism). St. Thomas, on the other hand, starting from the analogy of being, was concerned rather with the transcendence of the supernatural and drew a strong line of demarcation between it and human nature, in which he recognizes an obediential potency that is only passive (= the capacity to receive God's action). Nevertheless, St. Thomas himself here and there softened the harshness of this systematic position and spoke of a natural desire (v. DESIDERIO NATURALE DI DIO) for the vision of God, an object of much discussion still today. But the Aquinate, as indeed the great Scholastics in general, constantly defended the absolute gratuitousness of the beatific vision and of the whole supernatural order, maintaining that God could have not elevated man to the ultimate end that is eternal life, but left him with the end proportioned to his nature, which is the logical knowledge of God through creatures. He therefore clearly distinguished two supreme ends for the rational creature: «Ultima autem perfectio rationalis seu intellectualis naturae est duplex. Una quidem quam potest assequi virtute suae naturae... Alla felicitas, quam in futura expectamus, qua videbimus Deum sicut est. Quod quidem est supra cuiuslibet intellectus creati naturam» (Sum. Theol., 1a, q. 62, a. 1; cf. ibid., q. 23, a. 1; De veritate, q. 14, a. 2 and 10; q. 27, a. 2; In III Sent., d. 23, q. 1, a. 4 and elsewhere). De Lubac (Surnaturel, cit.) badly interprets St. Thomas when he attributes to him the opinion according to which there is only the one supernatural end, to which God was bound to ordain man. De Broglie (De fine ultimo humanae vitae, Paris 1948) is right to refute De Lubac on this point. Coherently, St. Thomas asserts that God could (even by ordained power) create man «in puris naturalibus» (In II Sent., d. 31, q. 1, a. 2, ad 3; De malo, q. 4, a. 1, ad 14 and q. 5, a. 1, ad 15); where the concept of the possibility of pure nature clearly appears, which would soon be the object of great discussions. The error of Baius (16th century) forced a deeper examination of the problem of the relationship between nature and the supernatural. Luther had already said that the gifts which constituted the state of innocence and original justice in Adam were a constitutive part of human nature, which therefore remained intrinsically corrupted when it lost those gifts through the sin of the first man. Baius attenuated this concept, making Grace and the other gifts an integrative part of human nature. In this way the idea of the gratuitousness of the supernatural order was eliminated, since it was presented as the term of an exigency of nature. The theologians of the time rose up, together with the magisterium of the Church, against this error (which Luther and Baius and later the Jansenists dared to attribute to St. Augustine) and developed what in St. Augustine and St. Thomas was more or less implicit, namely the concept of the possibility of a pure nature (v.), and consequently rejected every sort of exigency (juridical and ontological) on the part of human nature with respect to supernatural realities (Grace and the beatific vision). The reaction against Baianism pushed the Scotist conception into the shadows, since at that moment it could favor the error. Later (18th century) the Augustinians (Norris, Berti, Bellelli) took up again the theme of the single end, the supernatural one, to which God could not (by ordained power) fail to destine man. This return to an exigency (even if only ontological) of the supernatural was not a progress, but was a veiled concession to Baianism.

The question was brought back into ferment in our own era, under the pressure of immanentism (v.), adopted by modernism (v.), and under the impulse of religious psychologism, which has at its basis the whole doctrine of the subconscious. Immanentism cannot be taken into consideration as a doctrine, because it is irreconcilable with Catholic doctrine, which absolutely demands a transcendence, that is, a God personally distinct from the world, and in general a reality, both natural and supernatural, that is the object of knowledge. But within Catholicism itself, especially in apologetics, some authors have attempted to adopt immanentism as a method, demonstrating the truth of Christianity by way of religious experience (attunement with the aspirations of the human heart and spirit). This tendency, which is already found in Pascal (Pensées), was systematically developed first by Cardinal Dechamps, on ecclesiological ground, then by Maurice Blondel on the ground of individual psychology. Blondel poses a problem that directly concerns the relationship between human nature and the supernatural, and asks whether, apart from Revelation, our spirit can, by way of introspection and subjective experience, arrive at the threshold of the supernatural and affirm its existence. Considering man, not from the metaphysical point of view, but in his historical reality, in the drama of his intimate life, Blondel brings out what each person feels within himself: a gap, a discomfort, an indigence, which manifests itself in the inexorable discrepancy between the ideal and the real, between the will willing and the will willed. Supposing God as Creator, infinite Wisdom and Goodness, it would be obvious to think that man is not left in this painful condition without a help from on high, which makes possible for him the attainment of his end. Therefore there must exist a succor beyond the limits of the natural order, which completes and elevates nature and its faculties to the point of reaching a destiny worthy of man. In this way philosophy flows into religion, and under the pressure of the exigency of a supernatural succor, the spirit passes on to seek the historical divine Revelation in the guarantees of Christianity. Y. Montcheuil (Maurice Blondel. Pages religieuses, Paris 1942) interprets Blondel's thought in the sense that philosophy leads one to opt for the ultimate end with an act that is in itself supernatural, at least implicitly. But Blondel himself protested against such an exaggeration of his thought (cf. B. Romeyer, La philosophie religieuse, Paris 1943, in the appendix).

The obscure point of this theory is that exigency of the supernatural, which the encyclical Pascendi declares erroneous, if taken in a true and proper sense. Blondel did not fail to attenuate it in order to come into agreement with the thought of the Church, but that expression always remains at least dangerous. Nevertheless the insistence of these authors has its reason for being, nor is it absolutely new. St. Augustine felt it and developed it in the Confessions. Even St. Thomas anticipated it, as his doctrine on the natural desire of God (v.) already demonstrates. But there is more. St. Thomas translates the relationship between nature and the supernatural with the concept of obediential potency, which expresses an ordination to divine action; but he emphasizes that Grace is not created but is conjoined with the soul insofar as it is «Educitur e potentia obedientiali animae» (De potentia, q. 3, a. 8, ad 3; De veritate, q. 27, a. 3, ad 9; q. 29, a. 3, ad 3). This implies a function at least of material causality in the soul with respect to Grace, in the sense that the soul is not materia ex qua, but at least materia in qua in which God produces Grace (De verit., q. 27, a. 3, ad 9). Noteworthy are expressions such as this: «anima est Gratiae capax; eo enim ipso quod facta est ad imaginem Dei, capax est Dei per Gratiam» (Sum. Theol., 1a-2ae, q. 113, a. 10).

This and other motives demonstrate that St. Thomas, while defending the absolute gratuitousness of the supernatural order, knows how to temper its transcendence with a cautious immanence. Certainly in him the metaphysical consideration of man generally dominates, but, as can be seen in this argument, he does not ignore its psychological aspect.

Blondel and other moderns, on the other hand, accentuate the historico-psychological consideration of fallen man and therefore perceive more dramatically his appeal to an extraordinary succor on the part of God.

III. CONCLUSION

The problem of the relationship between nature and the supernatural is one of the liveliest and most delicate in modern theology. After the experience of modernism and its condemnation (encyclical Pascendi), it can be discussed with greater understanding and precision. There are fixed points imposed by the doctrine defined by the Church, such as these: a) there exists the supernatural world distinct from human nature and from the entire cosmic universe (natura naturae and natura naturata); b) the supernatural transcends all the forces and all the exigencies of created intellectual nature (angel-man) in the sense that this nature cannot attain the supernatural by its own forces, nor does it have such a right as to make God a debtor with respect to it; c) today, in fact, man has no other end appointed by God than the supernatural one (beatific vision), but by right God could have created man without elevating him to that end; d) therefore the hypothesis of a pure nature, which does not conflict with either the absolute power or the ordained power of God, is legitimate. This hypothesis is the condition of the absolute gratuitousness of the supernatural order.

But this well-determined and traditional doctrine no longer exhausts the problem. The contribution of Blondel, smoothed of its harshness, can be useful in tempering the rigid transcendence preferred by many classical and modern theologians. First of all, it must be noted that the hypothesis of pure nature cannot be equated with the present state of man, following original sin. In pure nature there would have been only the absence of the supernatural; in fallen nature, on the other hand, there is the privation of it. Hence the anguished unease of the spirit, which over the course of the centuries has given rise to pessimism in religion, in philosophy and in art. From this unease springs an appeal to God to overcome the conscious insufficiency of nature. The term of this appeal, without Revelation, remains obscure, but it implies the presentiment of an extraordinary succor. In a broader sense Blondel is right to extend man's sense of indigence to the entire created universe, in which limit and contingency dominate and yet in which the call to the Absolute is implicit.

But a more delicate point is the obediential power or capacity of nature. St. Augustine and St. Thomas, so strongly insistent on the transcendence of the supernatural, are nevertheless in agreement in asserting a natural capacity to receive it from God: « Posse habere fidem, sicut posse habere caritatem naturae est hominum; habere autem fidem, quem admodum habere caritatem, gratia est fidelium » (St. Augustine, De praedestinatione sanctorum, ch. 5, 10). And St. Thomas, as we saw, speaks of the natural capacity of the soul with respect to Grace and of the natural desire of man with respect to God, but he constantly warns that nature can never attain Grace and the possession of God in the beatific vision without supernatural means: « Quamvis enim homo naturaliter inclinetur in finem ultimum, non tamen potest naturaliter illum consequi, sed solum per Gratiam, et hoc est propter eminentiam illius finis » (In Boeth. de Trinitate, q. 6, a. 4 ad 5).

It is therefore legitimate and right to see in the obediential power something more than a dead passivity or a mere non-repugnance. And finally, to avoid an absurd extrinsicism in the economy of Grace (so profoundly and humanly vital), the supernatural must be presented as the complement and perfection of nature, to which God Himself is not a stranger; a complement of the highest ontological and psychological fittingness, which responds fully to the aspirations and the indigences of nature, weakened by the sin of origin.

In this way the latest developments of Catholic doctrine compose in harmonious synthesis transcendence and immanence, and resolve the apparent antinomy between extrinsicism and intrinsicism within the framework of a supernatural anthropology, in which human nature raises itself, without annulling itself, to a vital participation in God.

IV. OBEDIENTIAL POWER

It is the capacity of every created being to receive in itself the action of God with its effects. St. Thomas describes it thus (De virtutibus in communi, q. unica, art. 10, ad 13): « In tota creatura est quaedam oboediantialis potentia, prout tota creatura obedit Deo ad suscipiendum in se quidquid Deus voluerit ».

Theologians differ in their conception of obediential potency according to the different ways in which they understand and explain that relationship.

The Thomists, following in the footsteps of St. Thomas (De veritate, q. 29, a. 3, ad 3; Sum. Theol., 3ª, q. 11, a. 1), hold to a clear distinction between the two orders and therefore to the perfect transcendence of the supernatural. Consequently they distinguish in every creature a natural passive potency, or capacity to receive from natural agents perfections proportioned to its own conditions, and a supernatural passive potency, which is the capacity to receive from God those perfections which do not entail a metaphysical repugnance for the nature that receives them. This passive potency is pure capacity and does not express a direct ordination to the perfection, but to God who can bestow it, if He wills. Thus, for example, the human intellect is naturally capable of receiving the intelligible species abstracted from phantasms, but it cannot see the divine essence intuitively unless God elevates it and disposes it with Grace and the light of glory. Therefore the human intellect can do nothing by its own powers to attain the beatific vision; indeed it cannot even desire it explicitly (v. DESIDERIO NATURALE DI DIO).

Against this Thomistic doctrine the Scotists (cf. Scotus, Opus Oxoniense, IV, d. 49, q. 9) maintain that, since the natural order and the supernatural order are intimately connected, obediential potency is not pure passive capacity, nor does it belong to the supernatural sphere, but is an innate tendency to reach an object of a higher order, to which it is naturally open, without a special intervention of God. Suárez too departs from Thomism, attributing to obediential potency a certain innate virtuality in relation to the supernatural. Those authors who, like Blondel, tend to moderate the transcendence of the supernatural with an attenuated form of immanence logically prefer the Scotist theory. Here, as in the question of the relationship between the two orders, natural and supernatural, extremes must be avoided. To affirm an innate tendency or an active capacity of nature in the face of the supernatural is equivalent to positing in nature a true exigency for the object that transcends it. And this is irreconcilable with the Catholic doctrine set forth by Pius X in the encyclical Pascendi. On the other hand, to reduce obediential potency to a pure inert passivity seems to suggest the concept of a supernatural wholly extraneous to nature and to the psychology of man, in which nonetheless it is realized in a vital manner. It is necessary, then, to conceive obediential potency as an openness of the spirit which, especially in consequence of original sin, is stirred by nostalgia for the lost higher world. A potency, therefore, almost dynamic although ineffective and unequal to the attainment of the object without divine Grace (v. DESIDERIO NATURALE DI DIO; IMMANENZA).

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