Jay: How, with grace, do we know God as He knows Himself?

In Christ,
Jared B

When I say ‘baptized’, I do not merely mean commonly believed or assumed by Church fathers. I mean formally incorporated into Church dogma. And Aristotle’s cosmology was never dogmatized by the Church. So the Galileo case is not a counterexample to my claim. The natural-supernatural distinction is essential to orthodox theology. To deny it is to fall either into deism / Pelagianism on the one hand, or occasionalism / “unqualified salvific monergism” on the other hand. If the supernatural is not distinct from the natural, then we are saved entirely by our natural power, and that is Pelagianism. But likewise, if the natural is not distinct from the supernatural, then the created nature does not do anything at all (which is occasionalism — see Neal’s recent blog post), or God does everything in our salvation. That latter notion is an unqualified salvific monergism that sets up the reductio I describe here. To deny the distinction between the natural and the supernatural is ultimately to deny the doctrine of creation, because it denies the distinction between Creator and creature. I’m not sure what you mean by “scientifically natural”, but the methods of empirical science cannot penetrate to the level of primary causes, which is the level at which philosophy (in its proper sense) and sacred theology speak. The distinction between primary causes and secondary causes must not be glossed as a distinction between a poetical way of speaking, and scientific truths, respectively. Such a gloss would be nothing less than positivism, i.e. a denial of philosophy altogether.

In the peace of Christ,

- Bryan

In Christ,
Jared B

I have encountered variations of that expression (“but a baptized version of x” ) in contexts in which it is used to dismiss philosophy that has been incorporated into the Church’s dogma according to the third stance of philosophy viz-a-viz sacred theology, as described in section 77 of Fides et Ratio. That’s what I was responding to, i.e. the phrase meant in that sense. That’s the sort of notion that Pope Benedict was arguing against in his Regensburg address. I have heard this notion used to justify taking out bits and pieces of the Nicene Creed in its use of ‘ousia‘ and the ‘hypostasis‘ – physis distinction in Chalcedon. I have also heard it used to dismiss transubstantiation, as well as the four Aristotelian causes that the Sixth Session of the Council of Trent uses to explain the causes of justification. So, I agree that Catholic soteriology does not “presuppose” a high view, or any view, of Aristotle. But I was looking at it a different way. When the Church does baptize something from Aristotle in her dogmatic explanations of theology, then we can know that this bit of Aristotle, at least, was correct, at least as used in that particular theological application. The principle that grace perfects nature, in conjunction with the Church’s theological incorporation of certain Aristotelian concepts or other philosophical tools in Her dogmatic pronouncements, means not that Catholic soteriology *presupposes* a high view of Aristotle, but that in those dogmatic pronouncements Catholic soteriology verifies (even veridicalizes) those baptized concepts.

In the peace of Christ,

- Bryan

The notion of God giving Himself to dwell within us is, I think, quite clear in Aquinas. He writes:

For God is in all things by His essence, power and presence, according to His one common mode, as the cause existing in the effects which participate in His goodness. Above and beyond this common mode, however, there is one special mode belonging to the rational nature wherein God is said to be present as the object known is in the knower, and the beloved in the lover. And since the rational creature by its operation of knowledge and love attains to God Himself, according to this special mode God is said not only to exist in the rational creature but also to dwell therein as in His own temple. So no other effect can be put down as the reason why the divine person is in the rational creature in a new mode, except sanctifying grace. Hence, the divine person is sent, and proceeds temporally only according to sanctifying grace. (ST I Q.43 a.3)

Aquinas recognizes that God is present in the believer, in this new mode, only by way of sanctifying grace. Aquinas is drawing from John 14:23, where Jesus says, “If anyone love Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him, and make Our abode with him.” There has to be love for God in us, before the Trinity can make its dwelling in us. Aquinas says this again in that same article when he writes:

By the gift of sanctifying grace the rational creature is perfected so that it can freely use not only the created gift itself, but enjoy also the divine person Himself; and so the invisible mission takes place according to the gift of sanctifying grace; and yet the divine person Himself is given.

So it is not just sanctifying grace that is given; God gives Himself to us, and in that sense God is gift. This is uncreated grace. Even the Father gives Himself, according to Aquinas, “as freely bestowing Himself to be enjoyed by the creature.” (ST I Q.43 a.4 ad 1)

He writes:

Sanctifying grace disposes the soul to possess the divine person; and this is signified when it is said that the Holy Ghost is given according to the gift of grace. Nevertheless the gift itself of grace is from the Holy Ghost; which is meant by the words, “the charity of God is poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Ghost.” (ST I Q.43 a.3 ad 2)

Here he is quoting Romans 5:5, which distinguishes the charity of God that is poured forth into our hearts, from the Holy Spirit who pours this charity into our hearts. Once we have charity in our hearts (and this is a supernatural virtue given by sanctifying grace), only then may our soul “possess” God.

In the peace of Christ,

- Bryan

For Aquinas, the human intellect, apart from grace, cannot penetrate into the divine essence, because there is a vast difference between creature and Creator. Without grace, we do not have the proportionality to know God as He knows Himself. We may know of God through His effects. But, apart from grace, we are incapable of knowing God as He knows Himself. We would end up at best with the sort of happiness Aristotle describes in Book X of the Nicomachean Ethics. This would be the state of limbo, the highest level of hell. And, for Aquinas, the will cannot love what it does not know, so the will cannot go beyond the intellect with respect to entering the life and love of the Trinity, apart from grace. According to Aquinas, this is no less true for the angels, who are greater in being than are we. So if by their intellect and will they cannot enter the life and love of the Trinity apart from grace, then a fortiori, neither can we.

I’m not sure what “theological dimension” you are referring to, or what exactly you think may have been obscured by certain Scholastics. Insofar as grace perfects nature, and insofar as Aristotle’s ethics are correct, it would follow that Catholic soteriology would be a kind of baptized Aristotelian ethics. That’s not a problem from a Catholic point of view, because that phrase “but a baptized version of x” has its roots in a low [i.e. non-Catholic] view of baptism.

In the peace of Christ,

- Bryan