SUPERNATURAL
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SUPERNATURAL
pelagians, cenBured by the Council of Orange (529),
subtracted from the supernatural only certain phases
of man's life as the beginning of faith and final perse-
verance. To this group belong also, in a manner,
the false mystics of the fourteenth century, the Beg-
hards condemned by the Council of Vienne (1312;,
for claiming that the rational creature possesses
beatitude in itself without the help of the lumen
glorice and Eckhart, whose identification of the
Creator and the creature in the act of contemplation
was censured by John XXII in 1329.
To the second group belong the early Reformers and the Jansenist School, though in different degrees. Misinterpreting the still imperfect terminology of the Fathers who called natural, in the sense of original, the elevation of our first parents, the early Reformers held that, according to Patristic teaching and con- trarily to the Schoolmen, that elevation was not supernatural. Their error, rejected by the Council of Trent (Sess. V, decretum de peccato originali, can. 1), was taken up again, but in a more refined form, by Baius who, indeed, designated as super- natural man's original condition but nullified the meaning of the word by stating that our first parent's elevation was demanded by and due to the normal condition of humanity. In spite of his condemnation by Pius V (Denzinger, 9th ed., nn. 901, 903, 906, 922) he was followed by the Jansenist Quesnel and the pseudo-S3'nod of Pistoia, the former censured by Clement XI (Denzinger, nn. 1249, 1250) and the latter by Pius VI (Denzinger, nn. 1379, 1380, 1383). A confusion between the moral and the supernatural order, frequently found in the Baianist and Jansenist writings, was reproduced more or less consciously by some German theologians like Stattler, Hermes, Giinther, Hirsh, Kuhn, etc., who admitted the supernatural character of the other gifts but con- tended that the adoption to eternal life and the par- taking of the Divine nature, being a moral necessity, could not be supernatural. That revival of an old error found a .strong and successful opponent in Kleutgen in the second volume of his theology on the supernatural.
To the third group belongs the Rationalist School from Socinus to the present Modernists. While the foregoing errors proceeded less from a direct denial than from a confusion of the supernatural with the natural order, the Rationalist error rejects it in its entirety, on the plea of philosophical impo.ssi- bility or critical non-existence. The Syllabus of Pius IX and the Vatican Constitution " De fide catho- lica" (Denzinger, n. 1655) checked for a while that radical Naturalism which, however, has reappeared lately in a still more virulent form with Modernism. While there is nothing common between Rosmini and the present Modernists, he may, all unwittingly, have paved the way for them in the following vaguely Subjectivist proposition: "The supernatural order consists in the manifestation of Being in the plenitude of its reality, and the effect of that manifestation is a God-like sentiment, inchoate in this life through the light of faith and grace, consummate in the next through the light of glory" (36th Rosminian proposi- tion condemned by the Holy Office, 14 Dec, 1887). Preserving the dogmatic formuhe while voiding them of their contents, the Modernists constantly speak of the supernatural, but they understand thereby the advanced stages of an evolutive process of the religious sentiment There is no room in their system for the objective and rcvealetl sujiernatural : their Agnosticism declares it imknowable, their Immanentism derives it from om- own vitality, their symbolism ex])laina it in term of subjective experience and their criticism declares non-authentic the docu- ments used to prove it. "There is no question now," says Pius X, in his Encyclical "Pascendi" of 8 Sept., 1907, "of the old error by which a sort of
right to the supernatural was claimed for human
nature. We have gone far beyond that. We have
reached the point where it is affirmed that our most
holy rehgion, in the man Ctu'ist as in us, emanated
from nature spontaneously and entirely. Than this,
there is surely nothing more destructive of the whole
supernatural order."
II. Catholic Doctrine. — From the above docu- ments, it may be summarized in three points: (1) The fact of man's elevation to gi-ace and glory as against the Pelagian error; (2) the supernatmal character of that elevation as agamst the Protestant and Jansenist theory; and (3) as against Rationalism, its possibility and the validity of its credentials.
(1) The fact of man's elevation, probably alluded to in the likeness of God imprinted in Adam (Gen., i, 26), in the tree of life from which he was barred in con.sequence of his sin (Gen., iii, 22), and in the inti- mate union of man with God, as described in the Sapiential and Prophetic books, has its fuU expression in the discourses of Jesus Christ (John, vi and xiv- xvii), in the prologue of the Fourth Gospel compared with John, ii and iii, and in the introduction to several Epistles like I Cor., Eph., and I Pet. The direct and face-to-face vision of God is our future destiny (I Cor., xiii, 12 ; I John, iii, 2). In this world we are not in name only but in very fact the sons of God (I John, iii, 1), being born anew (I John, iii, 7) and having the charity of God infused in our hearts by the Holy Ghost who is given to us (Rom., V, 5) . The emphasis laid by the early Fathers on man's deification has been shown elsewhere (see Adoption). In view of all this it is not true that the Fathers had not even a name to designate the supernatural, as is often asserted by modern critics. De Broglie (Le surnaturel, p. 45) shows that there were at least four different phi-ases to express the supernatural gifts: vT!-4p (pvcLv (above nature), adscititia (super- added), tiadev T^s ovaicLs (foreign to the essence), Xa/3is, xapfff/uora (gratviitous).
(2) The gratuitous or supernatural character of the beatific vision was placed in bold relief by St. Paul (I Tim., vi, 15) and St. John (i, 18 and vi, 46). St. Irenajus merely paraphrases their teaching in the famous sentence: "Homo a se non videt Deum; ille autem volens videtur hominibus quibus vult, quando vult, quemadmodum vult; potens est enim in omnibus Deus" (Contra ha;res., v, 20). Neither can one read such passages as Eph., i, 16i-19 and iii, 14-21; Col., i, 10 sq.; II Pet., i, 4; etc., without realiz- ing that the supernatural character of the intuitive vision applies likewise to present charity "which sur- passes all knowledge". The transcendence of the supernatural order, not only above our present de Jnclo condition, but also above our native constitu- tion viewed philosophically in the elements and prop- erties and exigencies of human nature, is not em- phasized in early Christian Uterature, which deals not with abstractions. St. Paul, however, describ- ing the role of the Redeemer which is to renovate, repair, and restore, comes very near the point by hinting that oiu' present, clearly supernatural ele- vation is but a return to the no le.ss supernatural condition of the "old Adam"; and while the point is not fully discussed by the I'athers before the Pelagian contro\ersies concerning original sin, yet some passing remarks bv St. Irena'us (Contra tueres., Ill, xviii, I, 2) and St.' John Chrysostom (X Homily on St. John, 2) show that there is no chasm between the early Fathers, St. .\ugustine, who presented a bold, if not finished, delineation of the supernatural as such, and the Schoolmen and post-Tridentine theo- logians (as Soto, "De natura et gratia"; Ripalda, "De ente suiiernaturali"; Suarez, "De variis stati- bus") who carefully distinguished the various states of human nature. Ripalila's opinion to the effect that the beatific vision which is de facto supernatural
