Possibility of the Revelation of the Natural Truths of Religion; Existence of an Order of Supernatural Mysteries

Chapter X: Possibility of Supernatural Revelation in General, and Especially of the Revelation of the Natural Truths of Religion

Article I: Possibility of Immediate Revelation

It may seem that there is no necessity for a supernatural revelation of truths which reason itself can discover, and that to discuss the mere possibility of such a revelation is superfluous. It will be shown later that there is a genuine moral necessity for the revelation even of the natural truths of Religion, in order — to use the words of the Vatican Council — that they might be known “by all, easily, with firm certitude, and with no admixture of error.”

The possibility of an immediate revelation is proved by reason. Revelation, as already indicated, is formal Divine magisterial instruction, given objectively through the supernatural statement of a truth, and subjectively by the infusion of supernatural light, whereby an infallible judgment can be made concerning the truth divinely proposed. The possibility of the supernatural revelation of the natural truths of Religion may be set forth in the following syllogism:

Major: An action which is not repugnant from the standpoint of its object, its subject, or its agent, is possible from the standpoint of reason.

Minor: But the supernatural revelation of the natural truths of Religion is not repugnant in any of these three respects.

Conclusion: Therefore the supernatural revelation of the natural truths of Religion is possible from the standpoint of reason.

Proof of the Minor. (1) From the standpoint of the object. Truths may be discovered by reason, or may be taught by one who already knows them; the truths themselves are wholly indifferent to either mode of cognition. (2) From the standpoint of the subject. If man can be taught by man, why should it be impossible for him to receive Divine instruction? The autonomy of reason offers no objection here, since such autonomy is relative, not absolute — just as the sensitive faculties are properly directed by the rational faculty, why should it be impossible for the rational faculty itself to be directed by Divine Revelation? “If you continue in my word… the truth shall make you free” (John VIII, 31–32). Subordination to infallible truth is not servitude, but honour. (3) From the Divine standpoint. No legitimate objection arises from the fact that supernatural Revelation is miraculous. When God intervenes in human affairs, there is no interference with the laws of nature, as will be seen in the later discussion of miracles; there is no difficulty in supposing that a supernatural light, supernaturally given, might be vouchsafed for the knowledge of natural truths.

Article II: Possibility of Mediate Revelation

(A) From the Divine standpoint. God governs men through men, in order that He may communicate to His creatures something of the dignity of causality itself. The powers and rights that belong to human authority belong, a fortiori, to God. Human authority rules its subjects through ministers, whose commands must be formally accepted as the commands of that authority; God, surely, can therefore convey instruction through the instrumentality of others. Among pagan nations, where a standard of morality and virtue is reached measured according to their opportunities of light and the difficulties of their environment, salvation, in that case, remains secured; God does not require impossibilities for salvation.

(B) From the standpoint of man. It is natural that, within human society, man should learn from man. Grace perfects nature, while at the same time safeguarding its own proper characteristics; it is therefore fitting that men should be instructed in Divine things by God’s own ministers. Few men could discover, without the help of a master, even the elementary truths of geometry — Pascal, who unaided discovered many such truths, was an altogether extraordinary genius. It might be objected that the salvation of mankind would be more effectively accomplished by an immediate revelation, through some purely mental religious experience, reaching all men equally. But it is a well-established fact of human society, confirmed by ordinary experience, that mediate instruction through others has always been the ordinary vehicle by which the mass of mankind attains to truth.

Chapter XI: Supernatural Mysteries — Existence of an Order of Supernatural Truth and Life in God

I. Heterodox Opinions and the Teaching of the Church

(1) Rationalists, Pantheists, and Semi-Rationalists deny the existence of any order which objectively exceeds the powers of human reason. (2) Pelagians and Semi-Pelagians deny that the Supernatural Order exceeds the powers of reason subjectively: on the supposition of an external revelation, internal grace, in their view, would not be necessary for belief, or at least not for the very beginning of Faith. (3) The early Protestants, together with Baius and Jansenius, deny that the Supernatural Order exceeds the exigency of our nature, claiming that grace is, in some sense, due to nature. These errors have all been condemned. Catholic doctrine holds: (1) that not even by the absolute power of God could an intellect be created which, by its own natural powers, could see God as He is in Himself; nor (2) could there be created a supernatural substance to which the light of glory would itself be natural.

II. On the Proof of the Existence of a Supernatural Order of Truth and Life in God

1° Is such a proof even possible? How can it be shown that there exists in God not only an order of natural mysteries — the prescience of future contingent events, say, or the compatibility of Divine liberty with Divine immutability — but an order of genuinely supernatural mysteries, such as the Trinity, which cannot become known at all unless revealed, and which remain undemonstrable even after revelation? Since the Supernatural cannot be known naturally, either in itself or in its effects, no direct proof of its existence can be given; but an indirect proof, drawn from the very limitations of a created intellect, can be given. This proof manifests the existence of such an order not positively, but negatively and relatively — namely, that there exists in God an order of truth and life exceeding the limits of all natural knowledge. But since the proof, strictly speaking, takes the form of a defence made after the fact of Revelation, it is more accurate to say that reason alone can defend the truth that there exist in God not merely natural mysteries, but a genuine order of supernatural mysteries.

2° What are the limits of human knowledge? These limits are twofold: as regards extension, and as regards penetrative power. Future contingent events exceed the extension of our natural knowledge, but once they have come to pass, they do not exceed the penetrative power of the intellect, provided their cause is easily known; on the other hand, the metaphysical doctrine of Aristotle often exceeds the penetrative power of students whose intelligence is not yet sufficiently developed, though it in no way exceeds the extension of what may, in principle, be known.

Whence, then, do these limits come? (a) The limits of the extension of knowledge arise from its objective medium — that through which knowledge reaches its various objects. A telescope, for instance, enables the sense of sight to perceive objects otherwise invisible; a principle, in which certain conclusions are virtually contained, enables the intellect similarly to extend its knowledge, reaching explicit comprehension of implicit truths. The extension of our knowledge is as wide as the extension of the objective medium the intellect employs — the “objective medium” here being not only that which is directly known, but that through which other truths become known (to be distinguished from the “subjective medium” of sensitive perception treated in Epistemology, such as a representative image, by which an outward object is known). An illustration: the order of vegetative life cannot be known from the principles of physics and chemistry alone, because these principles, as objective media, are not sufficiently extensive to include the nature of vital action; nor can the order of intellectual life be known from the principles of Sensism — hence the essential failure of Empiricism, contrary to whose teaching an idea is not a mere compound image, a judgment is not a mere association of images, and reasoning is not merely the drawing of empirical conclusions.

Is there, then, in God an order of truth exceeding the objective medium of a created intellect? (b) The limits of penetrative power arise, by contrast, from the vigour of the intellectual faculty itself and from its training — the same demonstration is readily understood by some students and not by others, and this natural penetrative power undoubtedly grows through study and training. The question, therefore, is twofold: does there exist in God an order of truth exceeding the objective medium available to any created intellect? And does there exist in God an order of truth exceeding the very penetrative power of any created intellect? If the first response is affirmative, the second will be affirmative as well, since that which exceeds the objective medium of a faculty also exceeds the natural penetrative power of that same faculty — thus a metaphysical conclusion exceeds the objective medium proper to mathematics, and mathematicians consequently grasp a metaphysical demonstration only with difficulty, because they instinctively accept quantitatively what should, in fact, be understood qualitatively.

3° What argument may be adduced from the standpoint of God Himself? Some writers argue thus from the Divine infinitude: an order of supernatural truth and life is an order exceeding the natural knowledge of any created intellect; but God, because of His infinitude, exceeds the natural knowledge of any created intellect; therefore there exists in God an order of supernatural truth. This syllogism, however, only proves the existence in God of an order of natural mysteries — of a nature which “exceeds” any created intellect, yet whose existence is naturally knowable without any revelation at all, such as the prescience of future contingent events. From the infinitude of God it follows that every Divine attribute naturally knowable has an eminent and infinite mode of being, and that this mode cannot be known naturally in a positive way, but only negatively (e.g., wisdom “not finite”) and relatively (e.g., “supreme” wisdom). Hence, because of this imperfection of our natural knowledge, every Divine attribute remains, in a sense, a mystery, and the intimate compatibility of the Divine attributes with one another remains hidden — though we know, without revelation, that all the Divine attributes are compatible, and indeed identical, in God Himself. But is there, further, in God an order of genuinely supernatural mysteries — an order which, unless revealed, cannot be known at all, and which, even after revelation, remains strictly undemonstrable?

Argument on this question must be drawn from the intimate life of God Himself; it is not sufficient to reason merely from the Divine infinitude, unless that infinitude is understood not as one further mode of being among the Divine attributes, but as itself a negative expression of the very Deity as such.

III. Demonstration of the Existence of a Supernatural Order Objectively Exceeding the Natural Powers of Created Intellect

Major: God, in His intimate nature, cannot be known positively from creatures.

Minor: But the natural objective medium of every created intellect can only be a creature.

Conclusion: Therefore no created intellect, from its own natural objective medium, can possibly know those truths which belong to the intimate life of God — and these truths constitute an order of genuinely supernatural truth.

Proof of the Major. From creatures, God is known positively only as regards those perfections which are analogically common to Him and to creatures; as regards perfections which belong to Him exclusively, He is known only negatively and relatively. Now, God considered in His intimate nature is precisely God considered from the standpoint of those perfections which belong to Him exclusively; therefore He, in His intimate nature, cannot be known from creatures positively. (A) Creatures are so infinitely inferior to God that they cannot bear to Him any resemblance either generic or specific, but only analogical. (B) Perfections belonging exclusively to God can therefore be known from creatures only negatively and relatively: God is Being — not finite, not changeable, not temporal; God is Being — supreme, first, most perfect. Hence God, in His intimate life, cannot be known positively from creatures, exactly as mechanics cannot make known the inner life of a plant, nor vegetative life explain the higher perfection of sensitive life, nor sensitive life explain the still higher perfection of rational life.

Moreover, a cognitive faculty has an essential relation to its formal object, and the act itself receives its specification from that object; hence, since the natural objective medium of a created intellect must itself be a creature, and since things specified by the same formal object are of the same nature, it would follow — were the Divine essence directly and immediately seen by a created intellect through its natural medium — that the created intellect would receive its specification from the Divine essence itself, and would thereby become, absurdly, God (Cf. St. Thomas, I, q. 12, a. 4).

A direct proof may also be given: a spiritual essence whose mode of immateriality exceeds the mode of immateriality of the nature that knows, cannot be known naturally and immediately by that nature. But the Divine essence has a mode of immateriality and infinity exceeding that of every created intellect. Therefore the Divine essence cannot naturally and immediately be known by any created intellect, and it follows that only a creature can be the natural objective medium of a created intellect.

The natural objective medium of a created intellect will therefore always be a creature, accepted either concretely or abstractedly — genera, species, transcendentals, and the like. Even an angel naturally knows God not immediately, but, as it were, in a mirror, since angelic nature itself mirrors, to some extent, the Divine perfections (I, q. 56, a. 3). “Behold, God is great, exceeding our knowledge” (Job XXXVI, 26); “the King of kings, and Lord of lords… who inhabiteth light inaccessible” (1 Tim. VI, 15–16); “for what man knoweth the things of a man, but the spirit of a man that is in him? So the things also that are of God, no man knoweth, but the Spirit of God” (1 Cor. II, 11).

IV. The Supernatural Order Exceeds Subjectively the Penetrative Power of Any Created Intellect

This thesis is formulated against the Pelagians and Semi-Pelagians, who taught that external revelation, through the mere preaching of the Gospel, is sufficient for believing the mysteries of Faith — or at least sufficient for the very beginning of Faith — and that an internal light of Faith, strengthening the intellect itself, is not, strictly, necessary. The penetrative power of a cognoscitive faculty receives its own specification from its natural objective medium, and is proportioned to it. But the intimate mysteries of Divine life exceed the natural objective medium of any created intellect; hence they exceed also its natural penetrative power. In order that a created intellect should truly see God, there is need not merely of an objective manifestation, but of a genuine subjective strength — hence the necessity of the lumen gloriae, the “light of glory.”

V. The Supernatural Order Exceeds the Exigency of the Creature

This thesis is directed against Baius, Luther, Calvin, the Jansenists, and the Modernists. That which absolutely exceeds the natural objective medium of a created intellect exceeds, at the same time, its natural end; and that which exceeds a creature’s natural end and natural perfection exceeds also its exigency.

VI. Between Natural and Supernatural Truths There Can Be No Conflict

This thesis is directed against: the Averroists of the thirteenth century and their fifteenth-century followers; the Semi-Rationalists of the nineteenth century (Günther claimed that philosophy might understand God and the soul even better than Faith understands them); and the Fideists, such as Bonnetty, also of the nineteenth century (who claimed that reason is so inherently weak that it might possibly lead us to opinions actually contrary to the Faith). The Vatican Council points out that any apparent conflict is due to one of two contingencies: either dogmas of Faith are not understood according to the true mind of the Church, or mere false opinions are mistaken for genuine pronouncements of reason.

There can be no real conflict, because supernatural truths are founded upon the intimate life of God, while natural truths are founded upon God as the Author of nature. Were “being” taken in a purely equivocal sense — signifying things essentially different, and not even analogically similar — the principle of contradiction itself would lose all validity, and confusion between the two orders would ensue. Nor can there be any pantheistic confusion of the two orders: were “being” taken in a strictly univocal sense, there would be no essential difference of being at all, since univocal things, however diverse in their extrinsic differences, are not really distinguished at bottom — being would collapse into a single genus, and natural and supernatural orders would be reduced to mere generic variants of one another.

VII. Examination of Ontologism

The principle of Ontologism may be thus expressed: God is the first object which the human mind knows.

(1) Ontologism of Malebranche (1638–1715). The Divine essence is seen as the archetype of those things which fall under sensitive and intellectual cognition. The archetypal ideas of man, of substance, quantity, and the like, and of the attributes relative to them, are, on this theory, seen directly in God. These Divine ideas and attributes are said to be really one and the same as the Divine essence, though virtually distinguished from it — this distinction alone sufficing, in Malebranche’s system, for the visibility of the Divine ideas and attributes, while the Divine essence itself remains, on his own account, invisible. Malebranche’s argument runs thus: material objects cannot act upon the immaterial soul, since what is lower cannot affect what is higher; corporeal objects are, accordingly, merely the occasion of our vision, God alone being the true cause. It follows, on this view, that God alone truly exists — “Operatio sequitur esse,” “action follows being.” Malebranche’s fundamental error consists in confusing “being in general” with “Divine being.” “Being in general” is, in fact, the natural adequate object of our intellect, the object in which we first know first principles.

(2) Moderate Ontologism. The individual object, the immediate object of sense, is, on this milder view, seen directly in itself, contrary to Malebranche’s teaching; but the universal, which is necessary, eternal, and immutable, must be seen in God, and is seen in God by a kind of immediate intuition. Ubaghs and others held this view.

(3) The Ontologism of Rosmini. What other Ontologists taught concerning universals, Rosmini applied to transcendental being itself, as that which falls first under the apprehension of the intellect. Rosmini thus (1) confounds “being in general” with Divine being; his system (2) depends upon an extreme realism, whereby universal or transcendental being is granted an objective, formal existence and simply identified with Divine being; hence (3) being is, for Rosmini, not predicated analogically of God and creatures, but univocally — a view which leads directly to Pantheism.

Refutation of Ontologism. (1) The abstraction of the universal from individual sensible things cannot seriously be questioned. Human ideas are acquired through intelligible species, not innate, but abstracted from sensible objects; hence, if the sensitive faculty cannot itself act, no intellectual idea is ever acquired — a man born blind, for instance, has no notion of colour whatsoever. The intellect acquires its knowledge of the soul and of God only in the mirror of sensible things. (2) The following reasoning is probably true: in the human intellect a distinction should be made between the active faculty of intelligence, specific to man, and a passive capacity in which the soul bears some likeness to God — but this passive capacity is greater than the soul’s own active power, and is not limited to any single order of intelligible things; hence it is not repugnant that this capacity should be raised to the knowledge of the most perfect intelligible Being. (3) What is the adequate object of our intellect? The adequate object of our intellect is being, in its widest extent, so far as it is analogically knowable in the mirror of sensible things. It is difficult to prove that the adequate object of our intellect is being in a still wider extent, exceeding even what is knowable in the mirror of sensible and spiritual creatures. (4) God is our last end, but not, on that account, the first object either known or loved. (5) There is no bar to a due subordination between the natural and supernatural orders — Ontologism, by contrast, effectively makes the sense organs useless, denies any real intrinsic distinction between the Divine ideas and the Divine essence, and thereby confuses the natural and supernatural orders. Revelation itself abundantly confirms, rather, that (2) human ideas express supernatural mysteries only analogically, so as to render them credible; and (3) supernatural light can raise the vitality of the human intellect so as to enable it to assent, freely and firmly, to supernatural truth.