SUPRANNATURAL ORDER
I. TERMINOLOGY AND HISTORY
According to the common doctrine now prevailing in the Church, it is a truth of faith (Council of Trent, Session V, Canon 1 [Denz-U, 788]; proposition 23a of Baius condemned by St. Pius V: [ibid., 1023]) that the human race from the beginning was elevated by God gratuitously, by His sole liberality, to the supreme end, which is the beatific vision (v.), and to the state of grace, of infused virtues, and of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, which constitute the means suited to that end. These means and this end transcend human nature in its being and operation, in its capacity and proper exigencies, and therefore belong to a supranatural order, understood and defined in reference to the concept of nature and of what pertains to nature as its own, both ontologically and dynamically.
Christian religion not only affirms but has lived for twenty centuries the truth and reality of the supranatural order; theology, however, of the supranatural order developed slowly through the crises of errors, the reaction and reflection of the Doctors, and above all under the influence and vigilant control of the ecclesiastical magisterium.
The theological elaboration was accompanied by a progressive clarification of terms and formulas. The term “nature” and the corresponding concept passed well-defined from Greek philosophy (especially Aristotelian) into Christian language. Both the Latin word *natura* and the Greek φύσις derive from a verb (nasci = φύτει), meaning to be born, to come into the light, and therefore imply the fundamental idea of “origin,” especially of the living from another living being, thus marked by being from another. In living beings, generation is true generation, which has as its principle and term the same nature (e.g., human nature identical in father and son).
Hence the Aristotelian concept of nature as the first and immanent concept of activity, coinciding with specific essence (σύστασις): two terms indicating the same thing under different aspects, namely the quidditative principle of the being on the line of being (essence - σύστασις) and on the line of action (nature - φύσις). The concept of nature as a genetic principle received further determination within Christianity through the development of the doctrine of personality (v. PERSONA) imposed by the exigencies of the Trinitarian and Christological dogmas. But Greek philosophy also suggested a broader sense of the term nature, in that it was used to signify the complex of beings with their own genetic principles, which constitute the universe, called by the Greeks simply φύσις (τὰ φυσικά) and by the Latins *rerum natura*.
In both senses, for Christian philosophy, especially that of Aristotelian-Thomistic inspiration, “nature” signifies a stable principle with a necessary character in itself and in relation to its activity, its laws, and its properties. Consequently, the term “natural” is used to indicate all that belongs to nature either genetically, constitutionally, or dynamically: thus, for example, it is natural that from a man another man is born essentially equal to the first; it is natural that man is endowed with intelligence and free will; it is also natural that man tends toward the good and happiness.
In a cosmic sense, natural is everything that is 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 the natural, in the sense of a fixed and well-determined reality governed by stable and necessary laws, was held by the Scholastics, especially by St. Thomas and later theologians, and has its roots in the Fathers and in Greek philosophy. However, alongside this conception, another developed, stemming from St. Augustine, which presents nature as an entity that exists and operates in one way or another not by intrinsic determination but by the influence of the divine will, which adapts effects to causes as it sees fit. St. Augustine, while affirming the absolute dominion of God’s will, acknowledged the intimate structure of beings according to fixed laws, and thus was not in contrast with the Scholastic conception, which is linked to St. Thomas. But his disciples emphasized the role of the divine will in comparison with the structure and intrinsic function of nature.
Another concept influenced the theological elaboration of the natural and the supranatural: that of *exigentia* (exigence). To “exigere” (to demand) is to claim for oneself, to attribute as a right, in such a way as to create a debt in another subject. In the proper sense, exigence, since it implies a right, refers to persons. But it can be extended, by analogy, even to things, and thus one can speak of the exigence of nature. If nature is created, it first of all demands its cause, which posits and explains its origin; it further necessarily demands all that intrinsically constitutes it; e.g., human nature demands a rational soul with its faculties and a body with its organs and its determined structure. Nature also demands the means and objects indispensable for the exercise of its energies and potentialities. This third exigence (the most important) is based on the operative faculties of nature, which, like intellect and will in man, can open toward the infinite without being able to reach it by their own resources. In this case, the exigence has as its term a complement of nature that can derive only from a superior cause. Thus one arrives at conceiving a kind of debt on God’s part toward the creature. It has been said (De Lubac) that the Scholastics are dominated by legalism and thus would exclude from nature a juridical exigence that would constitute God as a debtor, but not an ontological exigence. It is, however, historically established that the Scholastics unanimously deny, as absurd, any juridical exigence of the creature in relation to God, even in the sphere of merit, which they generally conceive as subordinate to a divine promise (Peter Lombard, *Sentences* II, d. 43: “Non est debitor nobis, nisi forte ex promisso”).
All the more do the Scholastics, especially St. Thomas, exclude an ontological exigence, which would be the only true one, when dealing with the relations between creature and Creator with regard to a complement of created nature. Nor does the distinction between God’s absolute power and His ordained power avail for the Scholastics. On the basis of this distinction (cherished by the Augustinians of the 13th century), the reasoning runs thus: by His absolute power, God could leave a creature, and in particular man, in the condition in which He created it, without any special assistance; but He cannot do so by His power ordained in accordance with other attributes (goodness, love, etc.). Therefore, the complementary aid is not owed by God in view of His absolute power, but is owed in view of His ordained power. And thus the exigence of that aid, already excluded, would return by virtue of this latter power.
Already St. Thomas, in his maturity (Sum. Theol., 1°, q. 25, a. 5, ad 1), eliminates the distinction between the two powers, considering the necessary concurrence of all the attributes (identical with the single 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 cannot be in the creature either a juridical or an ontological exigency that would constitute God as a debtor (at least according to the ordained power) of an 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 thus those exigencies must be such as to remain satisfied without any special intervention of God. In other words, every created nature has all that is necessary and sufficient for its being and operation, already through the creative act issuing from God’s ordained power. Hence, such a nature cannot demand anything more in any way, and therefore God owes it nothing more than what He has given it to constitute it in its degree of being.
From these principles there arises the concept of gratuity as applied to the supernatural. For if in created nature there is no exigency (neither juridical nor ontological) for an extraordinary intervention of God, it is clear that if such an intervention occurs, it is entirely gratuitous. The intimate reason for gratuity is understood only from the fact that in an extraordinary intervention of God, by reason of its contingent character, the freedom of God is manifested more openly than in any natural effect—freedom which God could refrain from without detriment to His divine attributes. Everything that God works outside Himself is gratuitous, even the natural world, and thus it is free; but the supernatural sphere, answering to no exigency, neither on God’s part nor on the creature’s, is a more evident sign of divine freedom and liberality.
The term “supernatural” (cf. H. De Lubac, Remarque sur l'histoire du mot « surnaturel », in Nouv. revue théolog., 61 [1934], pp. 225 ff. and 350 ff.; id., Surnaturel, Paris 1946, pp. 325 ff.; G. de Broglie, De fine ultimo humanae vitae, 1914, pp. 141 ff.), was introduced into Latin theological terminology by John Scotus Eriugena in a version of the Pseudo-Dionysius; however, until St. Albert the Great and St. Thomas, who adopted Aristotelianism (with the precise determination of nature), this term was not much used by the scholastics. From St. Thomas onward it became common in theology and later (in the propositions of Baius) also in the language of the magisterium.
In the Greek world (pagan and Christian), the corresponding term to “supernatural,” namely ὑπερφυσικός, is the conclusion of a not brief itinerary marked by the terms ὑπερουράνιος (supercelestial), used especially by Plato, and ὑπερκόσμιος (supermundane), preferred by the Neoplatonists, as well as other similar terms (ὑπερφυής, ὑπερούσιος, etc.). Among Greek philosophers these terms are generally used in a cosmic, local sense; among Christian writers, however, they gradually assume a spiritual meaning. Already Clement of Alexandria and Origen used the Platonic ὑπερκόσμιος to denote transcendent, divine realities (Origen, De principiis, I. IV, ch. 1, no. 7 and elsewhere). Marius Victorinus, in the same sense, spoke of invisible, divine things, using the term “supercelestial” (= ὑπερουράνιος). A similar development occurred with the other related term ὑπερφυής. For example, Clement of Alexandria, Hippolytus, the Pseudo-Dionysius, and St. Gregory of Nyssa used it in the sense of mysterious, eternal, spiritual (citations in De Lubac, op. cit., note on p. 341). Moreover, St. Paul himself uses ὑπερφυής to signify the heavenly, spiritual man (1 Cor 15:46 ff.). But soon Christian writers came to prefer the term ὑπερφυσικός, which first took on the meaning of marvelous (miracle), then of ineffable, divine, transcending earthly and human things (cf. especially Isidore of Pelusium). The idea is also expressed by the phrase ὑπὲρ φύσιν, which, both among pagans and among the Fathers, is contrasted with παρὰ φύσιν (= contrary to nature) and κατὰ φύσιν (= according to nature). St. Cyril of Alexandria, following Isidore of Pelusium (his friend and relative), notes that the higher gifts bestowed by God upon man to elevate him are superior not only to his nature but to nature itself. More fully, St. Maximus employs the phrase, establishing the itinerary of Redemption: man is freed from passions (παρὰ φύσιν), is restored to the rational sphere (κατὰ φύσιν), and is enriched with supernatural goods (ὑπὲρ φύσιν) (Ad Thalassium, q. 65: PG 90, 769). In Latin, the Greek term is rendered as “supernaturalis” already in the version of the 19th letter of Isidore of Pelusium, and then in the translation of the Pseudo-Dionysius made by John Scotus Eriugena, as noted above.
II. Doctrine
1. Magisterium of the Church
The documents of the ecclesiastical magisterium explicitly contain the affirmation of the supernatural as a fact under various aspects: a) empirical: a verifiable effect of a cause that cannot be natural; such are miracles (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 divine Revelation, making of them a certain argument of credibility (cf. Vatican Council, sess. III, ch. 3 and can. 4 de fide: Denz.-U., 1790, 1813); b) theoretical: truths revealed by God that surpass the capacity of human reason, such as the mysteries of the Most Holy Trinity, the Incarnation, the Word, etc.; the Church, while recognizing the powers and rights of reason, defends the transcendence of the Mystery (v.), the object of divine faith (cf. Vatican Council, sess. III, ch. 4; cf. can. 1 de fide et ratione); c) practical: proper to human activity in view of eternal life is the divine grace infused into the soul and 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 Second Council of Orange, a. 429; Council of Trent, sess. VI, especially can. 1 and 3 de justificatione).In addition to 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, Jansenius, and the modernists. Among the propositions of Baius condemned by Pius V (1567), some (21st, 23rd, 24th, 26th, 42nd) openly deny the existence and function of divine grace as a supernatural gift added to human nature to transform and elevate II. From the condemnation of these propositions it is deduced that the Church holds that God infuses grace as a gratuitous gift that transcends the conditions and exigencies of nature.
But a more precise denial of any genuine exigency of human nature in the face of the gift of Grace—and hence of the supernatural’s transcendence over nature—is found in Pius X’s encyclical *Pascendi* (1907), where, in reference to the immanentism and the method of immanence (*v.*) adopted by the modernists, it is written:
> “Here we must once again lament that there are not lacking Catholics who, although they reject immanence as a doctrine, nevertheless employ it in apologetics, doing so with such imprudence as to seem to admit in human nature not only a capacity and suitability for the supernatural order—as Christian apologists have always done with appropriate reservations—but even a genuine exigency.”
(Denz.-U., 2103). This important clarification highlights the absolutely gratuitous character of the supernatural and its transcendence over nature, to which it is in no way owed and over which it possesses neither active capacity nor any right. This concept is reiterated by another path in Pius XII’s *Humani generis* (12 Aug. 1950):
> “Others pervert the true gratuity of the supernatural order, holding that God cannot create a rational being without destining and calling it to the beatific vision.”
In these words, the concept emerges of the possibility of a pure nature (without supernatural gifts), which God could have created without violating His justice and goodness.
2. **Positive Proofs.** — a) **Sacred Scripture:** The beatific vision, the formal reason of the entire supernatural order, is promised to the pure of heart (Mt. 5:8) and is proper to the angels and the blessed in heaven (Mt. 18:10 and 22:30). St. Paul extols, as a participation in the very knowledge of God, the beatific vision, which surpasses all knowledge of God possible in this life, even faith (1 Cor. 13:8-12). St. John (1 Jn. 3:1-2) declares the adoption of sons and even more the beatific vision—a gift of the Father—to be the supreme term of the assimilation to God effected in us by divine Grace, beyond any capacity or right of nature. The sanctification of man through faith or Grace is called by St. John a rebirth, a regeneration in God (Jn. 1:12-13; 3:5), a communication and vital indwelling in Christ (Jn. 6:57; 15:1 ff.). Likewise, St. Paul speaks of the new creature (2 Cor. 5:17), of the renewal of man by the power of the Holy Spirit (Tit. 3:5), to which is linked the entire life of faith and charity, described as pneumatic, charismatic, in antithesis to the life of the natural man (ψυχικός).
b) **Fathers of the Church:** Especially the Eastern Fathers insist on the concept of deification (οσιολογικός) to denote the life of sanctification through Grace. The most effective witnesses are St. Athanasius and St. Cyril. For the West, the testimony of St. Augustine suffices, who extols the gratuity of Grace to such an extent that he sometimes seems 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 formed regarding the two orders, natural and supernatural, which can be reduced to the following schema. Natural and supernatural are said with respect to nature considered in its being and its active or passive potentiality. Natural are the essential constitutive elements of an entity, natural also is its operative virtue in relation to an effect proportionate to it, and natural finally is its capacity to receive the action of a cause that is 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, lies beyond its sphere of action, and is bound to secondary causes. But this notion must be supplemented by another: that of absolute gratuity, by which the supernatural, as a divine intervention or gift, excludes any right or exigency on the part of the creature and any debt on the part of God. The two notions of transcendence and gratuity lead to the concept of an entitative difference between the natural and the supernatural in its most formal sense.
The supernatural reality can be substantial or accidental, essential or modal. Supernatural in a substantial and absolute sense is only God, who transcends all created nature; indeed, God considered in Himself and by Himself, without relation to man, is improperly called supernatural, being absolutely identical with His own nature. A properly supernatural substance created is not easily conceivable (though some theologians admit the possibility: Molina, Ripalda); the supernatural is ultimately a participation in the divine by a rational nature, through a modification in being and operation, and thus reduces to an accidental reality, as indeed Grace (*v.*) and the other infused habits bestowed by God in the soul are. But there is a gradation from the extreme limits of nature to the supernatural properly so called. Miracles approach the so-called preternatural effects, which include a good already belonging to nature but perfected by divine action in its conditions and duration; for example, the bodily immortality of the first parents, which was a miraculous prolongation of natural life, perhaps under superior conditions. In the third place, there is relative supernatural, which transcends this or that nature but not all created nature: for example, infused knowledge, natural to and proper to angels, granted by God to man. Finally, there is essential supernatural, which is an entity realized by God in the rational creature and which surpasses all created nature in its constitution, potentiality, and exigencies; such is Grace communicated to the soul as a mysterious participation in the divine nature itself, along the line of a quasi-formal causality. Grace is ordered to glory, that is, to the beatific vision, which is the apex and supreme reason of the entire sphere of the supernatural: it, in the line of final causality, governs the whole economy of Grace (as means) and is realized formally as an immediate intentional communication of the divine essence to the created intellect.
In conclusion:
a) The natural order consists in a nature or in all created nature, considered in its essential constitution and in its active and passive potentiality in relation to its proper end, proportionate to its forces and 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 a goal transcending all created nature, through a defined vital activity that culminates in the beatific vision, the supreme term of the economy of Grace. Given the absolute gratuity of the supernatural entity, it is clear that there is no intrinsic connection between the two orders; in nature there is only a passive capacity to receive the divine action, which freely realizes the supernatural in II. Theologians call this capacity *potentia oboedientialis* (St. Thomas, *De verit.*, q. 29, a. 3, ad 3; *De potentia*, q. 6, a. 1, ad 18 and elsewhere: *V. infra*). Therefore, considering human nature in itself and abstracting 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 repugn it but is in fact fitting to human nature. On this point, heated debates have raged even among Catholics since the 16th century.
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 two. In his struggle with Pelagius, an exponent of exaggerated naturalism, he found himself compelled to emphasize the supernatural and its function even at the expense of nature. But many have wrongly abused his authority to reach conclusions foreign to his thought, which was substantially orthodox.
The first controversy among the Scholastics arose over the relationship between nature and the supernatural (s.), in light of the beatific vision. The Augustinian tendency found expression in Scotus, who, starting from the univocity of being, admitted in nature a congenital desire for the full possession of God (the beatific vision), and thus a potency of obedience that was not purely passive but in a certain sense active. In other words, the Franciscan school, following Scotus, firmly opposed the concept of the supernatural as something extrinsic to the spirit (extrinsicism) and sought to bind nature and the supernatural in a way that tempered transcendence with an immanent motive (intrinsicism).
St. Thomas, starting from the analogy of being, was more concerned with the transcendence of the supernatural and drew a strong line of demarcation between it and human nature, in which he recognized only a passive potency of obedience (= the capacity to receive God’s action). Nevertheless, St. Thomas himself occasionally softened the harshness of this systematic position and spoke of a natural desire (v. Dio*) for the vision of God, a topic that continues to be much debated today. Yet Aquinas, like the great Scholastics in general, consistently defended the absolute gratuity of the beatific vision and of the entire supernatural order, maintaining that God could have chosen not to elevate man to the ultimate end, which is eternal life, but to leave him with a goal proportionate to his nature, namely, the natural knowledge of God through creatures. He thus clearly distinguished two supreme ends for the rational creature:
> “The ultimate perfection of a rational or intellectual nature is twofold. One, indeed, which it can attain by the power of its nature... The other, which is the happiness that we hope for in the future life, in which we shall see God as He is. This, however, is beyond the nature of any created intellect” (*Summa Theol.*, I, 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*, op. cit.) misinterprets St. Thomas when he attributes to him the opinion that there is only the supernatural end to which God must ordain man. De Broglie (*De fine ultimo humanae vitae*, Paris 1948) is right to refute De Lubac on this point. Consistently, St. Thomas asserts that God could (even by ordained power) create man “in puris naturalibus” (*In II Sent.*, d. 3, 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 pure nature clearly appears—a concept that would soon become the subject of much debate.
The error of Baius (16th c.) forced a deeper examination of the relationship between nature and the supernatural. Already Luther had said that the gifts constituting the state of innocence and original justice in Adam were constitutive parts of human nature, which therefore remained intrinsically corrupted when it lost those gifts through the sin of the first man. Baius attenuated this concept by making grace and the other gifts an integrative part of human nature. In this way, the idea of the gratuity of the supernatural order was eliminated, as it was presented as the fulfillment of a demand of nature.
The theologians of the time, with the support of the Church’s magisterium, rose up against this error (which Luther, Baius, and later the Jansenists dared to attribute to St. Augustine) and developed what was more or less implicit in St. Augustine and St. Thomas, namely, the concept of the possibility of a pure nature (v.), and consequently rejected any kind of demand (whether juridical or ontological) from human nature with respect to supernatural realities (grace and the beatific vision). The reaction against Baianism cast into the shadows the skeptical conception, which at that time could have favored the error. Later (18th c.), the Augustinians (Noris, Berti, Bellelli) revived the motif of the single end, the supernatural, to which God could not (by ordained power) fail to destine man. This return to a demand (even if only ontological) for the supernatural was not progress but a covert concession to Baianism.
The question has been reopened in our own time, under the pressure of immanentism (v.), adopted by modernism (v.), and under the impetus of religious psychologism, which is based on the entire doctrine of the subconscious. Immanentism as a doctrine cannot be considered, since it is irreconcilable with Catholic doctrine, which absolutely requires a transcendence, i.e., a God personally distinct from the world and, in general, a natural and supernatural reality as the object of knowledge. Yet within Catholicism itself, particularly in apologetics, some authors have attempted to adopt immanentism as a method, demonstrating the truth of Christianity through the path of religious experience (a harmony with the aspirations of the human heart and spirit). This tendency, already found in Pascal (*Pensées*), was systematically developed first by Cardinal Dechamps in the field of ecclesiology, and then by Maurice Blondel in the field of individual psychology.
Blondel raises a question that directly concerns the relationship between human nature and the supernatural, asking whether, apart from Revelation, our spirit, through introspection and subjective experience, can reach the threshold of the supernatural and affirm its existence. Considering man not from a metaphysical standpoint but in his historical reality, in the drama of his inner life, Blondel highlights what each person feels within himself: a void, a discomfort, an indigence that manifests itself in the inexorable gap between the ideal and the real, between the willing will and the willed will. Supposing God as Creator, infinite Wisdom and Goodness, it would be obvious to think that man is not left in this painful condition without help from above that would enable him to attain his end. Therefore, there must exist a help beyond the limits of the natural order, which completes and elevates nature and its faculties to reach the destiny worthy of man. In this way, philosophy leads to religion, and under the pressure of the demand for supernatural aid, the spirit proceeds to seek the historical divine Revelation in the guarantees of Christianity.
Y. Montcheuil (*Maurice Blondel. Pages religieuses*, Paris 1942) interprets Blondel’s thought as meaning that philosophy leads to opting for the ultimate end with an act that is, at least implicitly, supernatural. But Blondel himself protested against such an exaggeration of his thought (cf. B. Romeyer, *La philosophie religieuse*, Paris 1943, in appendix).
The weak point of this theory is that demand for the supernatural, which the encyclical *Pascendi* declares erroneous if taken in a strict sense. Blondel did not fail to attenuate his position to align with the Church’s thought, but that expression remains at least dangerous. Nevertheless, the insistence of these authors has its justification and is not entirely new. St. Augustine felt it and developed it in the *Confessions*. Even St. Thomas anticipated it, as is shown by his doctrine on the natural desire for God (v.). Moreover, St. Thomas expresses the relationship between nature and the supernatural through the concept of the obediential potency, which is ordered to divine action; yet he emphasizes that grace is not created but is concreated with the soul inasmuch as “it is drawn from the obediential potency of the soul” (*De potentia*, q. 3, a. 8, ad 3; *De veritate*, q. 27, a. 3, ad 9; q. 29, a. 3, ad 3). This implies at least a material causality in the soul with respect to grace, in the sense that the soul is not the matter *ex qua*, but at least the matter *in qua* in which God produces grace (*De veritate*, q. 27, a. 3, ad 9). Notable are expressions such as this: “the soul is capable of grace; by the very fact that it is made in the image of God, it is capable of God through grace” (*Summa Theol.*, I-II, q. 113, a. 10).
This and other reasons show that St Thomas, while defending the absolute gratuity of the supernatural order, knew how to temper its transcendence with a cautious immanence. Certainly in him the metaphysical consideration of man generally prevails, but, as is seen in this argument, he does not ignore its psychological aspect.
Blondel and other moderns, on the other hand, emphasize the historical-psychological consideration of fallen man and thus more dramatically perceive his appeal for extraordinary divine assistance.
III. Conclusion
The problem of the relationship between nature and the supernatural order is one of the most lively and 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 certain fixed points imposed by the doctrine defined by the Church, such as these: a) the supernatural order exists, distinct from human nature and from the whole cosmic universe (nature as nature and nature as elevated); b) the supernatural order transcends all the forces and all the exigencies of created intellectual nature (angel or man) in the sense that this nature cannot attain the supernatural by its own powers nor has any right to constitute God as its debtor in this respect; c) in fact today man has no other end set by God than the supernatural (beatific vision), but in justice God could have created man without elevating him to that end; d) it is therefore legitimate to posit the hypothesis of a pure nature which does not conflict with either the absolute or the ordained power of God. This hypothesis is the condition of the absolute gratuity of the supernatural order.But this doctrine, now well-defined and traditional, does not exhaust the problem. Blondel’s contribution, softened of its harshness, may help to mitigate the rigid transcendence preferred by many classical and modern theologians. First of all it must be noted that the hypothetical pure nature cannot be equated with man’s present state after original sin. In a pure nature there would have been only the absence of the supernatural; in fallen nature there is instead its privation. Hence the anguished unease of the spirit which, over the centuries, has given rise to pessimism in religion, philosophy and art. From this unease springs an appeal to God to overcome the nature’s insufficient self-awareness. Without Revelation the goal of this appeal remains obscure, but it implies a presentiment of extraordinary aid. In a broader sense Blondel is right to extend this sense of indigence from man to the whole created universe, in which limitation and contingency prevail and hence an implicit call to the Absolute is involved.
A more delicate point is the obediential potency or capacity of nature. St Augustine and St Thomas, so solicitous for the transcendence of the supernatural, are nevertheless agreed in admitting a natural capacity to receive it from God: “To be able to have faith, just as to be able to have charity, belongs to the nature of man; but to have faith, just as to have charity, is the gift of grace to the faithful” (St Augustine, De praedestinatione sanctorum, ch. 5, 10). And St Thomas, as we shall see, speaks of the natural capacity of the soul with respect to grace and of man’s natural desire for God, but constantly warns that nature can never attain grace and the possession of God in the beatific vision without supernatural means: “Although man is naturally inclined to his ultimate end, yet he cannot attain it naturally, but only by grace; and this is because of the eminence of that end” (In Boeth. de Trinitate, q. 6, a. 4 ad 5).
It is therefore legitimate and right to see in obediential potency more than a dead passivity or mere non-repugnance. Finally, to avoid an extrinsicism so absurd in the economy of grace (and 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 congruity, which fully answers to the aspirations and indigence of nature, marred by original guilt.
In this way the latest developments of Catholic doctrine harmoniously synthesize transcendence and gratuity, and resolve the apparent antinomy between extrinsicism and intrinsicism within the framework of a supernatural anthropology, in which human nature is elevated, without being annihilated, to a vital participation in God.
IV. Obediential Potency
It is the capacity of every created being to receive within itself the action of God with its effects. St Thomas describes it thus (De virtutibus in communi, q. unica, art. 10, ad 13): “In every creature there is a certain obediential potency, inasmuch as every creature obeys God so as to receive within itself whatever God may wish.”Theologians differ in their conception of obediential potency according to the various ways in which they understand and explain this relationship.
Thomists, following St Thomas (De veritate, q. 29, a. 3, ad 3; Sum. Theol., 3a, q. 11, a. 1), insist on a clear distinction between the two orders and hence on the perfect transcendence of the supernatural. Consequently they distinguish in every creature a natural passive potency or capacity to receive from natural agents perfections proportionate to its own proper conditions, and a supernatural passive potency, which is the capacity to receive from God perfections which do not imply any metaphysical repugnance for the nature that receives them. This passive potency is a pure capacity and does not imply a direct ordination to perfection, but to God Who may bestow it if He wills. Thus, for example, the human intellect is naturally capable of receiving intelligible species abstracted from phantasms, but it cannot intuitively see the divine essence unless God elevates and disposes it by 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 explicitly desire it (see DISSIDERO NATURALE DI DIO).
Against this Thomistic doctrine the Scotists (cf. SCOTO, *Opus Oxoniense*, IV, d. 49, q. 9) maintain that, since the natural order and the supernatural order are intimately connected, the obediential potency is not a pure passive capacity, nor does it belong to the supernatural sphere, but is an innate tendency to attain an object of a higher order, to which it is naturally open, without any special intervention of God. Even Suárez departs from Thomism, attributing to the obediential potency a certain innate virtuality in relation to the supernatural. Authors who, like Blondel, tend to moderate the transcendence of the supernatural by a mitigated form of immanence logically prefer the Scotist theory. Here, as in the question of the relationship between the two orders, the natural and the supernatural, extremes must be avoided. To affirm an innate tendency or an active capacity of nature in relation to the supernatural is equivalent to positing in nature a true exigency for an object that transcends II. And this is irreconcilable with the Catholic doctrine expounded by Pius X in the encyclical *Pascendi*. On the other hand, to reduce the obediential potency to a mere inert passivity seems to suggest the concept of a supernatural entirely foreign to nature.