Grace, Nature, and the Theorem of the Supernatural a Trinitarian Perspective Neil Ormerod

Grace, Nature, and the Theorem of the Supernatural A Trinitarian Perspective Neil Ormerod

Abstract. — The issue of grace-nature is foundational to theology. Problems concerning the distinction came to a head in the work of Henri de Lubac. Yet de Lubac began his investigation by eschewing a theological approach to the issue. Rahner argues that only a Trinitarian God can be a self-communicating God. From this perspective then the solution to the problem of divine self-communication (grace) resides in a properly Trinitarian context. This paper will argue that a more substantial response to the issue of grace-nature can be found through the work of Lonergan on the Trinity, using the so-called four-point hypothesis.

The grace-nature debate remains one of the enduring, indeed perennial, issues faced by theology, as it struggles to understand – fides quaerens intellectum – the content of revelation. How and in what ways can God communicate God’s own being to the created order, be it the Incarna- tion of the Logos in Jesus of Nazareth (John 1:14), our shared experience of God’s love poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit given to us (Rom 5:5), or our seeing God face-to-face in the beatific vision (1 Cor 13:12), in such a way that we share in the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4) while God remains God and the creature remains a creature, albeit divinized in some sense? The first round of responses in the West to these questions focused strongly on the supernatural quality of the saving event and its healing effect on the recipient, gratia sanans. The theology of Augustine bears the strong imprint of this grace-sin dialectic, the existential plight of the sinner caught between the compulsive power of sin and the liberating impact of grace. Concretely this dialectic captures our existential human situation, of a fallen humanity trapped in sinfulness, non posse non pec- care, needing the gracious actions of God to free us from our servitude to sin. But nonetheless it remains a half-truth. Its focus on the concrete situation fails to identify the full intelligibility of the situation, particularly GRACE, NATURE, AND THE THEOREM OF THE SUPERNATURAL 27 in relation to human nature.1 For Augustine, human nature was a pliable entity, different before the Fall, after the Fall, and as redeemed by Christ. But when we ask whether Jesus took on our human nature, to which are we referring? More pointedly what is the role of human freedom in this drama of salvation and how can we coordinate the relative significance of grace and freedom in that drama? As Augustine himself noted, “He who made you without your participation, does not justify you without your participation.”2 As is well known, to address these issues the scholastics of the Mid- dle Ages introduced the theorem of the supernatural.3 This consisted in identifying two orders of being, one natural, and the other supernatural. These were orders identified in terms of related pairs such as grace and nature, or faith and reason; each order is distinct but related. Lonergan notes two aspects of this theorem. The first is that its significance did not lie in its identification of the supernatural, which everyone accepted, but in specifying heuristically a clearly defined order of the natural, a line of reference against which the supernatural is to be measured. Grace is no longer just healing of our fallen human nature, but the elevation of a nature conceived as a metaphysical principle of action and rest, allowing it to achieve what otherwise it could not achieve without an added supernatural assistance.4 The second aspect is the theoretical nature of the distinction. It does not add a new datum to theology, but provides an intelligibility to existing data. In relation to the question of grace and free will, Lonergan argues that the distinction allowed theolo- gians, “(1) to discuss the nature of grace without discussing liberty, (2) to discuss the nature of liberty without discussing grace, and (3) to

1. See for example Steven A. Long, Natura Pura: On the Recovery of Nature in the Doctrine of Grace (Bronx, NY: Fordham University Press, 2010), 80: “If Balthasar meant only that, concretely speaking, there is no pure nature in the sense of a nature existentially unaffected by sin and grace, that is true, and it is perfectly consistent with the abstract intelligibility of nature and of its being distinct from that which affects it.” Emphasis in the original. 2. Sermon 169, 11, 13: PL 38, 923. Quoted in the Apostolic Letter of Pope John Paul II, Augustinum Hipponensem, available at https://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul- ii/en/apost_letters/1986/documents/hf_jp-ii_apl_26081986_augustinum-hipponensem. html. 3. For an account see Bernard J. F. Lonergan, Grace and Freedom: Operative Grace in the Thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, ed. Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), 17-20. 4. In this way the grace-nature distinction provides a strong bulwark against Pela- gianism. Nature simply cannot achieve or attain grace on its own. Inasmuch as salvation is participation in grace it cannot be earned or attained by human effort alone. 28 NEIL ORMEROD work out the relations between grace and liberty.”5 We can witness the full power of the distinction at work as a foundational principle in the architectonics of Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae.6 Nonetheless, significant theoretical breakthroughs can soon be mis- construed. Distinct orders are reimagined as separate spheres or realms.7 The possibility of relations between the two orders begins to become obscure. The natural “sphere” is viewed as self-enclosed and autono- mous, making the supernatural purely extrinsic to our natural existence. While we might need grace to be saved, it no longer bears any relationship to our daily lives. Some would suggest that this extrinsicism has led to the emergence of aggressive secularism in our modern age.8 Problems with the whole issue of grace and nature came to the fore with the nouvelle théologie. Reacting against the extrinsicism of the neo- scholastics, Henri de Lubac and others argued that the grace-nature distinction was not essential to theology, that the early Church Fathers did not use it, and that a more intrinsic connection between grace and nature needed to be developed.9 In some ways this was a return to the more concrete existential mode of thinking found in Augustine, and away from the more theoretic and abstract stance of Aquinas. Signifi- cantly a good deal of the debate generated by de Lubac centered on the question of our very desire for God. Is this desire natural or supernatural? Considerable debate on the topic has continued today with major publications appearing on the theme.10

5. Bernard J. F. Lonergan, Method in Theology (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1972), 310. 6. David Schindler, “Introduction,” in The Mystery of the Supernatural (New York: Crossroad, 1998), notes that de Lubac demonstrated that the term supernatural “was first used systematically by St Thomas” (xix). 7. Given the importance of phantasm for insight, this re-imaging has profound significance. The underlying image controls the type of insights that emerge, leading to false options such as a “suspended middle” as evoked by de Lubac. I shall explore this later in the article. 8. This appears to be the position of de Lubac and more recently of Radical Orthodoxy. It likely masks a more complex economic, political and cultural process. See Bernard Mulcahy, Aquinas’s Notion of Pure Nature and the Christian Integralism of Henri de Lubac: Not Everything is Grace (New York: Peter Lang, 2011). 9. Henri de Lubac, The Mystery of the Supernatural, trans. Rosemary Sheed (New York: Crossroad, 1998). For a recent appropriation of de Lubac’s stance see John Mil- bank, The Suspended Middle: Henri de Lubac and the Debate Concerning the Supernatural (Grand Rapids, MI and Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans, 2005). 10. Long, Natura Pura; Lawrence Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God Accord- ing to St. Thomas Aquinas and His Interpreters (Ave Maria, FL: Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University, 2010); Mulcahy, Aquinas’s Notion of Pure Nature. More recently, Randall S. Rosenberg, The Givenness of Desire: Concrete Subjectivity and the Natural Desire to See God (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017). GRACE, NATURE, AND THE THEOREM OF THE SUPERNATURAL 29

In this present article I would like to suggest that much of this debate has been carried on without proper regard to the theological nature of the issue. Consequently the discussion draws on metaphysical and philosophical arguments about human nature and its ends. What is missing is the original context within which the notion of the supernatural first arose. That context is Trinitarian, specifically the missions of the Son and Spirit in the Incarnation and grace respectively. This context is rarely alluded to, yet this paper will argue that attention to this context provides a way of resolving many of the tensions found in current debates. Alluding to this context allows for a shift from asking what it is about human nature that accommodates a supernatural life, to asking what does it say about God that such a supernatural life in the creature is possible. Underlying this present approach is the claim of Karl Rahner that in some sense only a Trinitarian God can be a self-communicating God, that the whole nature of the supernatural is inextricably tied to God’s triune nature. As Rahner argues: the differentiation of the self-communication of God in history (of truth) and spirit (of love) must belong to God “in himself,” or otherwise this difference, which undoubtedly exists, would do away with God’s self-communication. For these modalities and their differentiation either are in God himself … or they exist only in us, they belong only to the realm of creatures as effects of the divine creative activity.11 In some sense Rahner is arguing that only a Trinitarian God can engage in a genuine self-communication, making a genuine supernatural relationship possible. While the framework I adopt will be that of recent advances found in the work of Bernard Lonergan and further developed by Robert Doran, Rahner’s insight here is pivotal in shifting the nature of the debate. I begin with some comments on the debates about the grace-nature distinction, particularly in the work of de Lubac and more recent neo- scholastic responses to de Lubac’s work, present in the work of Steven A. Long and Lawrence Feingold, in the context of the writings of Aqui- nas. While of value in themselves, the point I will draw attention to is the lack of a specifically Trinitarian contribution to these debates. They are conducted primarily as philosophical debates, drawing on metaphysical resources with recurrent concerns about the boundaries between

11. Karl Rahner, The Trinity, trans. Joseph Donceel (New York: Crossroad, 1997), 99-100. Emphasis in the original. 30 NEIL ORMEROD philosophy and theology. Yet the problem of the supernatural arises because of our encounter with the Trinitarian God in the economy of salvation.12 However, the debate in these works occurs around some generalized notion of the supernatural, rather than a supernatural specifically revealed as triune in nature. The argument is that only when the specific triune character of the supernatural is taken into consideration can the debate be resolved. To demonstrate this stance I draw on Lon- ergan’s four-point hypothesis, seeking a correlation between the four inner-Trinitarian relations and created participations in the divine nature. This provides a richer account than that formulated by Rahner above.

De Lubac, Feingold and Long – Their Common Neglect of a Trinitarian Perspective

The background and history of the debates around the nouvelle théologie and de Lubac’s contribution to it have been covered by any number of authors, and does not need repeating here.13 It suffices to say here that the key issues that emerge for our present consideration are the relationship between the natural and supernatural orders, the relevance of this as a viable theological distinction, and the anthropological and theological significance of our desire for God, as ably expressed by Augustine as a restlessness of the heart that can rest only in God. While de Lubac wrote an earlier work, largely historical, on the presenting problem, his more fulsome analysis is found in The Mystery of the Supernatural.14 In the preface to this latter work he speaks of it as “one among an already long series of ‘tedious commentaries on the natural but impracticable desire to see God according to St Thomas’, a literary form we have good reason to feel that we have had enough of.”15 He not only identifies the theme of the work, but also the scope of its

12. As Feingold repeatedly notes, the very fact of the existence of the supernatural is known only through revelation. See Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God, 78, 132- 136, 199, 374-377, 428. 13. See for example Stephen Duffy, The Graced Horizon: Nature and Grace in Modern Catholic Thought (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1992); Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God; Milbank, The Suspended Middle; Bruno Forte, “Nature and Grace in Henri de Lubac from Surnaturel to Le mystère du surnaturel,” Communio 23 (1996): 725-737. 14. The earlier work is Surnaturel: Études historiques (Paris: Aubier, 1946). 15. De Lubac, The Mystery of the Supernatural, xxxiii. GRACE, NATURE, AND THE THEOREM OF THE SUPERNATURAL 31 method. Speaking of himself in the third person, de Lubac spells out the approach he will adopt in his work: Starting from the classical question of the relationship between nature and the supernatural, he has restricted his theological reflections to the sphere of formal ontology where they are normally carried out, without any attempt to make them more concrete; he has not therefore made use either of the “covenant” vocabulary, or of that of the “Christian mystery.” … A fortiori, then he has considered neither the mediating role of the incarnate Word, nor the entry of the adopted creature into the relations of the Trinity.16 The only reason posited for this self-imposed restriction to the debate is that this is “where they are normally carried out.” Of course he is cor- rect; this is where the debate has been and continues to be normally located, treating the question as an ontological one about the relationship between nature and the supernatural “in general.” Indeed de Lubac maintains this intellectual discipline with only some fourteen references to the Trinity identified in the index, all relatively inconsequential and tangential to the argument he is mounting.17 In a similar vein, Lawrence Feingold mentions the Trinity in his intro- ductory comments: “And this hope [i.e. the supernatural hope for the beatific vision] then engenders the immeasurable broadening of what we dare to love with a love of friendship: God in His inner (Trinitarian) life.”18 Nonetheless, the actual text makes no substantial contact with the doctrine of the Trinity apart from some minor references to the Holy Spirit and the Incarnation.19 There is correspondingly no index entry on the Trinity (or the Holy Spirit, though there are a few on the Incarna- tion). Stephen A. Long fares no better in this regard. Again we find a recognition that the distinction between the natural and supernatural orders is somehow linked to the Trinity – “yes, God is the natural end, but God as First Cause of these effects, not God precisely as Father, Son

16. De Lubac, The Mystery of the Supernatural, xxxiii-xxxiv. 17. There is good reason to think this count is accurate. Some of the references are quite marginal e.g. a reference to Augustine’s De Trinitate. The indexer seems to have been quite thorough. 18. Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God, xxxvii. 19. For example, he refers to graces in the following terms: “The rational creature is not moved to desire the vision of God by virtue of its nature, but by God Himself, who creates this supernatural desire in us by infusing the Holy Spirit into our hearts … the desire to see God is not a natural desire at all, but comes first from the grace of the Holy Spirit!” Ibid., 87. Emphasis in the original. This is as close as he comes to acknowledg- ing that there is a Trinitarian reality at the heart of the mystery of the supernatural. 32 NEIL ORMEROD and Holy Spirit”20 – still this recognition plays only a minimal role in structuring the debate on the relationship between the natural and supernatural orders. No intrinsic connection between the Trinity and the grace-nature distinction is identified or utilized in the discussion. They all remain in “the sphere of formal ontology where [these debates] are normally carried out.”

Aquinas on the Supernatural

Given that the debate has revolved around the proper interpretations of texts from Aquinas we may find in his writings some clue as to both a contribution to a Trinitarian perspective on the grace-nature debate and simultaneously the source of the neglect. Aquinas is in fact very clear about the relationship between the Trinity and the supernatural, at least in relation to the Incarnation and sanctifying grace. He draws in intrinsic connection between the processions of the Word and the Spirit and their corresponding missions. In eight articles he explores the relationship, specifying it thus: Mission signifies not only procession from the principle, but also determines the temporal term of the procession. Hence mission is only temporal. Or we may say that it includes the eternal procession, with the addition of a temporal effect. For the relation of a divine person to His principle must be eternal. Hence the procession may be called a twin procession, eternal and temporal, not that there is a double relation to the principle, but a double term, temporal and eternal.21 The existence of this “temporal term” (hence created and contingent) allows us to genuinely say that the Word is incarnate in (the created and contingent) Jesus of Nazareth, and that the Holy Spirit truly dwells in the (created and contingent) hearts of believers.22 None of the authors considered above draws attention to this construct developed by Aqui- nas. In fact their almost exclusive references to the supernatural order are in relation to the beatific vision as our supernatural end. And so the

20. Long, Natura Pura, 17. Also the following acknowledgement: “Once God reveals Himself and his gift of divine life, the natural desire thus elevated and super- naturalized in grace inclines toward it absolutely by inclining toward the infinitely higher end of union with the Uncreated Persons of the Holy Trinity” (21). Also 29, 42. 21. STh I q. 43 a2 ad3. 22. While Feingold does occasionally identify the role of the Holy Spirit in relation to sanctifying grace this is not explored in any meaningful sense. GRACE, NATURE, AND THE THEOREM OF THE SUPERNATURAL 33 debate focuses on questions on the relationship between the beatific vision and our desire for God as spoken of by Augustine. What is significant here is that Aquinas fails to provide a Trinitar- ian perspective on the beatific vision, which is specified in terms of the vision of the divine essence. In STh I q. 12, Aquinas examines the nature of the beatific vision in thirteen questions. There he argues from the disproportion of the divine essence to our created intellects, that we require a created supernatural “light of glory”: “But when any created intellect sees the essence of God, the essence of God itself becomes the intelligible form of the intellect. Hence it is necessary that some supernatural disposition should be added to the intellect in order that it may be raised up to such a great and sublime height” (a5).23 This light of glory “establishes the intellect in a kind of ‘deiformity’” (a6). Still this is a “created light” (a5 ad 1) and hence contingent. Yet at no time does the Trinitarian nature of God enter into the discussion except for the sudden and unexplained mention of the divine Word (a10). While as Christians we know this essence to be Trinitarian, this fact does not enter into his analysis, which critically occurs prior to his account of the Trinity. And so the discussion remains in “the sphere of formal ontology.” As a counter-point to the approach of the current debate we can note the work of Bernard Lonergan in class notes presented to his students around 1946-47, De Ente Supernaturali (The Supernatural Order), where he presents his aim thus: “Truths from treatises on the incarnate Word, on habitual grace, in the infused virtues, and on God as ultimate end are brought together … under the formality of the communication of the divine nature.”24 This is then further explicated by noting that “besides these created communications of the divine nature there are two uncreated communications of it,” referring to the two intra-divine processions of Word and Spirit.25 At this early stage Lonergan clearly identifies the central role of the Trinity in relation to our understanding of grace. This intrinsic connection is brought out even more forcefully, if

23. The notion that the divine essence “becomes the intelligible form of the intellect” needs care, as is evident in Aquinas’ treatment of the question in STh Suppl q. 92, where he notes sixteen objections and cites six sed contra. There he notes that this “must not be understood as though the Divine essence were in reality the form of our intellect” rather than “the meaning is that the proportion of the Divine essence to our intellect is as the proportion of form to matter.” This is the origin of the notion of quasi-formal causality which becomes a central plank of Rahner’s theology of the supernatural. 24. Bernard J. F. Lonergan, “The Supernatural Order,” in Early Latin Theology, ed. Robert M. Doran and H. Daniel Monsour, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011), 65. 25. Ibid., 73. 34 NEIL ORMEROD still provisionally, in lecture notes from 1951-52, De Gratia Sanctificante Supplementum (Supplementary Notes on Sanctifying Grace), wherein Lonergan generalizes the construct from the two Trinitarian processions to the four Trinitarian relations.26 We consider this more fully below, but first digress with a turn to the question of theological language.

A Coda on Theological Language

As I mentioned in the introduction to this article, one of the underlying issues here is that of language and its underlying imagery. There are various ways in which one can speak of the realities of grace and nature. Often they are spoken of in terms of spatial imagery such as spheres or realms, leading some to seek to identify a “suspended middle” between the two spheres that stands as a “neutral” space: “This discourse, if it deals with the middle that is suspended between nature and grace, does not itself belong either to philosophy or theology.”27 Similarly Feingold speaks of de Lubac’s position as positing an “‘intermediate’ level inserted between abstract nature and grace.”28 Indeed the underlying spatial imagery comes close to dictating the terms of the discussion, inviting the reader to speculate on the existence of some third “realm” or point which is neither philosophy (concerned with being), nor theology (concerned with revelation). Alternatively the same imagery leads one to think of one realm being subsumed within the other such as the naturalizing of the supernatural or the supernaturalization of the natural.29 Such imagery, however, does little to capture the notion of order (or ordering), as implied by the more traditional language of orders of grace and nature. The language of order does not provide us with a spatial image but with intelligible terms and relations, yet to be specified. This pro- posed ordering will need to be conceptually specified beyond being a mere heuristic, but not necessarily in a way that accommodates a simple spatial metaphor.

26. “Notes on Sanctifying Grace.” Lonergan develops his first version of the four- point hypothesis here, but it is not his final suggestion as found in his later work, The Triune God: Systematics, ed. Robert M. Doran and H. Daniel Monsour, trans. Michael Shields, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2007). 27. Milbank, The Suspended Middle, Kindle Location 392. 28. Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God, 333. 29. See for example John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1991), 220-223, 228-232, 234-237. Milbank states his own preference as one of “supernaturalizing the natural.” GRACE, NATURE, AND THE THEOREM OF THE SUPERNATURAL 35

Of course, given that the existence of the supernatural and its nature are revealed mysteries in the theological sense – there is an excess of intelligibility beyond the grasp of a direct insight into the matter – the traditional approach to understanding the supernatural order would be through an analogy with something naturally known, or through a connection (nexus) with some other mystery or mysteries (Vatican I). In the case of the supernatural order we have a special case of the more general question of God’s relationship to the created order.30 So it is not unrea- sonable to propose that our understanding of the relationship between the supernatural and the natural orders can best be approached through an analogy with the more general question of the relationship between the divine and the created order. Both seek to answer the question of how God acts with that which is not God.

Grace-Nature in Trinitarian Perspective

We can take as a starting point de Lubac’s own comments concerning “the entry of the adopted creature into the relations of the Trinity.”31 We can consider the broader question, what relations are in fact possible between God and creation itself? If we accept the premise of classical theism, of God as “necessary being” and creation as “contingent being,” how then does a necessary God have a relation to that which is not necessary? The classical resolution to this problem concerns the notion of contingent prediction, the predication of contingent realities to God which posit a real relation of the creature to God, but a logical and intentional relation of God to the creature.32 God’s wisdom and love create the creature without any change in Godself, but with a real change (from non-existence to existence) in the creature. We can truly call God the Creator without implying any change in Godself; God remains the same whether there is a creation or not. The “difference” is in creation,

30. One can witness this shift occurring in Book 5 of De Trinitate, where Augus- tine moves from his attempted analysis of the presence of the Holy Spirit as donation to the believer (5.16) to the more general question of God’s relationship to the created order (5.17). However, he does not then return to his original concerns, so the question of how the Spirit is donation remains open. See Neil Ormerod, “A Trajectory from Augustine to Aquinas and Lonergan: Contingent Predication and the Trinity,” Irish Theological Quarterly 82 (2017): 208-221. 31. De Lubac, The Mystery of the Supernatural, xxiii-xxiv. 32. See for example David B. Burrell, Aquinas: God and Action (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979). A classical expression can be found in Augus- tine’s De Trinitate, in Book 5.17. 36 NEIL ORMEROD not in God. Creation is the result of an act of divine efficient causality, making that which is not divine to exist ex nihilo.33 On this reading, creation is not so much an event, but a relation, the relation of creature to Creator, through which the creature partici- pates in the divine “being.” It is a relation grounded in divine knowing and loving, where God’s knowledge and love are not “receptive” in the sense that God comes to know and love the creature that already exists; rather everything that the creature is and does is in some sense the product of divine knowing and loving. Still this causal relation is “transcen- dental,” and “primary”; it leaves fully intact all the various forms of terrestrial and secondary causation that we find in the created order, including the secondary causation of human willing.34 All this pertains to the order of creation as naturally constituted, through the relation of the creature to the Creator. The question that arises is then, what other types of relation can God enter into relative to the creature apart from and in addition to the relation of creature to Creator? One possibility, perhaps neglected in much contemporary theological reflection, is that God relates to the creature through the mediation of another higher order creature.35 In the case of human beings this would involve some form of angelic mediation. Inasmuch as we think of angels as purely spiritual beings, they could form a medium for a different form of relation to God which goes beyond the relation of the human creature to Creator. In traditional terms angels could mediate knowledge of divine mysteries which transcend our limited human knowing and so be relatively supernatural to us, without thereby neces-

33. Alternatives to classical theism exist, of course, notably in process thought. However these seem to inevitable compromise creatio ex nihilo or divine transcendence from the created order in some fashion. See David Burrell, “Does process theology rest on a mistake?,” Theological Studies 43 (1982): 125-135; for a defense of classical theism in the light of modern science see Neil Ormerod and Cynthia S. W. Crysdale, Creator God, Evolving World (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2013). 34. There are of course questions to be addressed about the problem of sin and evil and their relationship to divine omnipotence and omniscience, but they go beyond the scope of this paper. For what I hold to be a definitive treatment, see Lonergan, Grace and Freedom. David Burrell has described Lonergan’s treatment of the issue as definitive and his use of the text of Aquinas “comprehensive.” See David Burrell, Faith and Free- dom: An Interfaith Perspective (Malden, MA: Wiley, 2008), 39. 35. Lonergan would refer to this as a “relatively supernatural” position; it would be supernatural for us, but not necessarily for the creature involved. See his discussion of the natural, relatively supernatural and absolutely supernatural solutions to the problem of evil in Bernard J. F. Lonergan, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, ed. Crowe Frederick E. and Robert M. Doran, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992), 746-747. GRACE, NATURE, AND THE THEOREM OF THE SUPERNATURAL 37 sarily attaining a direct participation in the divine nature.36 Human beings would then participate in the angelic life as a mediation towards participation in the divine life. How we might conceive of this in terms of our human experience is another issue, but formally this is a possibility firmly attested to in the biblical witness.37 While the New Testament is not averse to the notion of angelic mediation – indeed takes it for granted as a religious reality – it is also clear that the New Testament is adamant that this type of relation does not account for the realities encountered through the ministry of Jesus. Now God speaks directly, through his Son, not through an angelic medium.38 How then can we enter into a different relation to God which is unmediated by some other creature such as an angel? Here again we can note the comment of de Lubac, who spoke of the possibility of “the entry of the adopted creature into the relations of the Trinity.”39 Creatures can enter into a relation with God through “the relations of the Trinity” themselves. Indeed it is difficult (if not impos- sible) to conceive of how the creature might enter into a relation with God which is not simply the relation of creature to Creator, nor one mediated by an angelic medium, unless there is some type of internal relatedness, of God to God, within God’s own being. To participate in some sense in the internal relatedness of God would then be a participation of God as God is in Godself. This is the import of the quote I drew from Rahner’s work on the Trinity earlier in this essay: the differentiation of the self-communication of God in history (of truth) and spirit (of love) must belong to God “in himself,” or otherwise this difference, which undoubtedly exists, would do away with God’s self-communication. For these modalities and their differentiation either are in God himself … or they exist only in us, they belong only to the realm of creatures as effects of the divine creative activity.40 On this reasoning there is an intimate connection between the mystery of the Trinity and the nature of the supernatural itself. A God who is internally related is able to enter into a relation with the creature which is absolutely supernatural, that is, attains to God as God is in Godself

36. Indeed this is precisely how Aquinas understands prophetic revelation in the Old Testament, as the product of angelic mediation. See STh II-II q. 172 a2. 37. As is often noted, angels in the biblical witness are largely divine messengers, communicating to various persons the content of God’s will. 38. See Hebrews 1:1-13 for a Biblical account of the relation between angels and God’s Son. 39. De Lubac, The Mystery of the Supernatural, xxiii-xxiv. 40. Rahner, The Trinity, 99-100. 38 NEIL ORMEROD through a creaturely participation in those internal relations. Were God not internally related, it becomes more difficult to know how this might be achieved.41 Now classical western Trinitarian theology identifies four real and subsistent relations in God: Father to Son (paternity); Son to Father (filiation); Father and Son to Spirit (active spiration); and Spirit to Father and Son (passive spiration).42 This suggests, generalizing Aquinas’ proposal of the relationship between processions and missions, that there are four ways in which a created supernatural reality can be understood as a term of an internal divine relation. This is the genesis of Lonergan’s so-called four-point hypothesis wherein Lonergan specifies four graces in terms of the four relations: incarnation with paternity; light of glory with filiation; sanctifying grace with active spiration; and habit of charity with passive spiration.43 However, the application is much broader than this as the claim being made is that given God’s Trinitarian nature any possible created absolutely supernatural participation may in some way correspond to one (or more) of the four intra-divine relations. This may range from speculative questions about the possibility of the incarnation of other divine persons to less speculative questions about the nature of the presence of Jesus in the Eucharist.44 The four Trinitarian relations provide a heuristic structure to address any questions that arise in relation to the supernatural order because it specifies ways in which

41. This observation may be of significance in interreligious settings, particularly with Judaism and Islam, both of which have a strong doctrine of creation and recognize angelic mediation, but deny the Trinitarian nature of God. 42. While the terminology is fluid the four realities intended are the same as identified in STh I q. 28. On the relations as real and subsistent see Lonergan, The Triune God: Systematics, 231-247. While there are four subsistent relations, Lonergan argues that only three are distinct, hence they give rise to only three divine persons. 43. The final form of the hypothesis is in ibid., 471-473. There is a growing lit- erature on this hypothesis. See for example Robert M. Doran, “Addressing the Four- point Hypothesis,” Theological Studies 68 (2007): 674-682; The Trinity in History: Mis- sions and Processions (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012); Neil Ormerod, “The Four-Point Hypothesis: Transpositions and Complications,” Irish Theological Quarterly 77 (2012): 127-140; “The Grace-Nature Distinction and the Construction of a System- atic Theology,” Theological Studies 75 (2014): 515-536. 44. On the possibility of the incarnation of other persons of the Trinity see STh III q. 3 a5-7. On Christ’s presence in the Eucharist see STh III q. 76 a6: “But in Christ, being in Himself and being under the sacrament are not the same thing, because when we say that He is under this sacrament, we express a kind of relationship to this sacrament ... just as God, Whose existence is unfailing and immortal, ceases to be in some corruptible creature because such corruptible creature ceases to exist. And in this way, since Christ has unfailing and incorruptible being, He ceases to be under this sacrament, not because He ceases to be, nor yet by local movement of His own, as is clear from what has been said, but only by the fact that the sacramental species cease to exist.” GRACE, NATURE, AND THE THEOREM OF THE SUPERNATURAL 39 a Trinitarian God can enter into relations with creatures that are not just a Creator-creature relation, but in some sense imitate the inner God-God relations. This generalizes Rahner’s claim that only a Trinitar- ian God can be a genuinely self-communicating God. This insight locates the mystery of the supernatural precisely where it belongs, within the framework of a Trinitarian revelation. It is only within the revelation of the Incarnation and the experience of God’s love poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit given to us (Rom 5:5) that we come to know of the Trinitarian nature of God. Without the fact of these supernatural Trinitarian realities there is no “problem” of the supernatural to solve. There is no known or knowable (absolutely) supernatural order to relate to the natural order. From this perspective de Lubac’s decision to restrict “his theological reflections to the sphere of formal ontology where they are normally carried out” appears slightly misguided. The only supernatural order we know is Trinitarian, yet we attempt to put this datum aside in our attempts to resolve the problem of the supernatural, as if we can deal with some sort of “supernatural in general.” We are then restricted to a consideration of how a creature can enter into a supernatural relationship with God simply as creator.

The Supernatural and the Fulfilment of Human Nature

Now for Aristotle natures are inherently teleological; they are directed towards an end. For Aquinas, God is understood to be the end of all things so all natures are inherently ordered in some fashion to God.45 In human beings this ordering is conscious and intentional, a desire to see God. However, if all things are in some sense ordered to God, how do we distinguish between God as a natural and God as a supernatural end, particularly in the case of human beings who have a desire for that end? This issue is central to much of the debate on the nature of our desire for God. Here again Lonergan provides a helpful clue. In the essay, “Mission and the Spirit,” Lonergan defines finality in the following terms: “By ‘finality’ I would name not the end itself but relation to

45. STh I q. 44 a4. “But it does not belong to the First Agent, Who is agent only, to act for the acquisition of some end; He intends only to communicate His perfection, which is His goodness; while every creature intends to acquire its own perfection, which is the likeness of the divine perfection and goodness. Therefore the divine goodness is the end of all things.” 40 NEIL ORMEROD the end.”46 God is the end of all things, but their finality is not identified simply by the end, but in the specific relation they have to that end. Now by definition all creatures are in relation to God as creator; in human beings then their “natural” finality is to know and love God above all things as their creator. However, this does not exhaust the types of relations that human beings can enter into with God; they are also able to enter into the four inner Trinitarian relations in various ways, which would then be a truly “supernatural” finality, one beyond their capacity as simply creatures. Such relationships are gratuitous, taken on the divine initiative and over and above the creature-Creator relationship. Now any of the four Trinitarian relations could act as the final and complete supernatural fulfilment of human nature. And in a certain sense to be in a created supernatural relation with any of the four relations is to be in a relationship with them all, since they are all mutually defined.47 Participation in any such relation is a relation to God and as such attains God as God is in Godself, because each of the relations is God, while not reducible to God simply as Creator. Still the actual economy of the supernatural in this world is contingent, not necessary, and so could be other than it is, and so participation in any of the four relations could constitute the actual finality of human existence. However, there is a fittingness to the proposal made by Lonergan, that the light of glory which initiates our complete supernatural fulfilment should be found in a relation that terminates in God the Father (the relation of filiation).48 Such a proposal would perfectly complete the schema of exitus and reditus, exodus and return, of all things originating from the Father (including the Son and Spirit) and all things returning to the Father. Lonergan provides a different sense of its appropriateness drawing on the logic of the psychological analogy: “For since the light of glory imitates divine filiation, the Word as spoken by the Father, it has a special relation to God the Father as intelligent and intel- lectually generating [the Word]. And thus it founds the reception of the divine essence as a species and the vision itself.”49 Of course to participate in the relation of filiation is also to participate in the reverse relation of paternity which terminates in the Son;

46. Bernard J. F. Lonergan, “Mission and the Spirit,” in A Third Collection: Papers by Bernard J. F. Lonergan, ed. Frederick E. Crowe (New York and London: Paulist Press and Geoffrey Chapman, 1985), 24. 47. This is made evident in the case of the Incarnation in Neil Ormerod, “‘For in him the whole fullness of Deity dwells bodily’: The Trinitarian Depths of the Incar- nation,” Theological Studies 77 (2016): 803-822. 48. Fittingness is often the only form of intelligibility properly open to mystery. See Lonergan, “The Notion of Fittingness,” in Early Latin Theology, 483-533. 49. “Notes on Sanctifying Grace,” 637. GRACE, NATURE, AND THE THEOREM OF THE SUPERNATURAL 41 and to participate in these two relations which constitute the Father and the Son is to participate in active spiration which terminates in the Holy Spirit, and the reverse relation of passive spiration which terminates in the Father and Son. Thus participation in filiation, as the light of glory, initiates us into a fully Trinitarian dynamic of Father, Son and Spirit far beyond the mere knowing and loving of God as Creator. Nonetheless all these considerations are structural and heuristic in need of a further filling out with a phenomenological account of how these various participations may be experienced in the life of the blessed.50 Suffice it to say we may then be in a position to move beyond questions as to whether the beatific vision is the fulfilment of the life of grace or the life of faith or whatever, and to be able to indicate how various aspects of our lives are fulfilled by our participation in each of the four Trinitarian relations.51 Indeed we get a suggestion of this in Aquinas when he talks about the beatific vision in the following terms: “And in this way ‘com- prehension’ is one of the three prerogatives of the soul, responding to hope, as vision responds to faith, and fruition responds to charity. … But the blessed possess these three things in God; because they see Him, and in seeing Him, possess Him as present, having the power to see Him always; and possessing Him, they enjoy Him as the ultimate fulfilment of desire.”52

Conclusion

We began with a critique of an approach to the grace-nature debate that specifically sidelined the concrete nature of the supernatural as Trinitar- ian. This sidelining has resulted in a discourse constructed largely in “the

50. The key to this will be to follow up Doran’s suggestions on a possible supernatural psychological analogy. One way of filling out the heuristic structure with a more phenomenological account of the impact of these participations in the divine nature can be found in Neil Ormerod, “The Metaphysics of Holiness: Created Participation in the Divine Nature,” Irish Theological Quarterly 79 (2014): 68-82. 51. See for example L. Matthew Petillo, “Grace, Glory, and the Gaze of Love,” in Grace and Friendship: Theological Essays in Honor of Fred Lawrence from his Grateful Students, ed. M. Shawn Copeland and Jeremy D. Wilkins (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 2016), 191-212. Petillo argues that the light of glory is the fulfilment of the life of grace. 52. STh I q. 12 a7. This has added relevance when we add Doran’s proposal link- ing the four created participations with grace and the three theological virtues of faith, hope and charity. See Doran, The Trinity in History: Missions and Processions; Neil Ormerod, “A (Non-Communio) Trinitarian Ecclesiology: Grounded in Grace, Lived in Faith, Hope, and Charity,” Theological Studies 76 (2015): 448-467. 42 NEIL ORMEROD sphere of formal ontology where [it is] normally carried out, without any attempt to make them more concrete.”53 However, as the paper has demonstrated this unnecessarily hamstrings the discussion of the grace- nature issue and hides essential elements which lead to a clearer account of the structure of the supernatural in its relationship to God as triune and to humanity as the recipient of the supernatural. Elements of this were already present in Aquinas, but were more fully developed in Lon- ergan. It is based on the conviction that the Trinitarian economy of grace is the only supernatural order we know. From this all else should be related. In particular we have suggested that this may open up new possibilities in relation to providing a Trinitarian theology of the beatific vision as the fulfillment of our human desire for God.

Neil Ormerod is Executive Officer (Research Analytics) at the Sydney College of Divinity. He is widely published in journals such as Theological Studies, Irish Theological Quarterly and The Heythrop Journal. His research interests include the work of Bernard Lonergan, the doctrine of the Trinity and historical ecclesiology. His latest publication is Faith and Reason: The Possibility of a Christian Philosophy (Fortress, 2017). He is currently working on a book on the one triune creator God, drawing on the Trinitarian theology of Lonergan and Robert Doran. Address: Sydney College of Divinity, PO Box 1882 Macquarie Centre, NSW 2113, Australia. Email: [email protected].

53. De Lubac, The Mystery of the Supernatural, xxxiii.