A Response to Blondel’s “Action” by Ambroise Gardeil Pt. 3 “Action: Its Subjective Resources (Can We Possess God?)”

God, the ultimate object in the chain of attractions that ceaselessly stirs our heart and will: here we have the supreme requirement of human action! If this First Desirable Reality did not exist, if Universal Goodness did not pour its fullness into the fleeting goods that I pursue to the point of exhaustion, why should I act, I whose living will necessarily reflects the infinity of my thought and knowledge? To suppress God is to destroy human action itself, for it is to deprive it of its proportionate motive and its adequate raison d’être.¹

Thus understood, the notion of the final end resolves the supposed contradiction between happiness and virtue that lies at the heart of the Kantian antinomy of practical reason. For what is virtue if not the fulfillment of the law that commands us to attain our ultimate end? And where is man’s happiness to be found, if not in the possession of that same ultimate end? There is no reason to be surprised by this reconciliation, for it was from the very core of our subjective aspirations that we drew forth the obligation that binds us. In order to discover it, all we needed to do was to abandon a critical method which is “fictitious” in its perspective, “unstable” in its foundations—ultimately, “artificial” in its methods²—and to return instead to the psychological observation of our own immanent life, a method condemned and prohibited by Kant. Since it deals with general facts, with large-scale phenomena that resist arbitrary interpretation,³ this method can yield only certain results.

However, can we directly take hold of God as our object, can we reach Him, can we possess Him? The attraction of His goodness draws us through created goods. Do we have the resources needed to attain the very cause of this attraction and to enjoy its fullness? Can the finite exercise any grasp upon the infinite? Such is the problem that now imposes itself on our inquiry. With it, we pass from the objective to the subjective, and from the second question of the Prima Secundae to the third. We shall follow the very arrangement of the articles of this question. The reader will be forced, in the end, to admit that Saint Thomas indeed understood quite a bit about Order.⁴

The Finite in the Presence of the Infinite.
(Utrum beatitudo sit aliquid increatum?—Is beatitude something uncreated?)⁵

God is infinite, and we are finite beings. This sobering recognition must necessarily begin our work of inventorying our subjective resources. Action originates in being; it is, itself, a mode of being. Therefore, its power is measured by the qualities of the being that it is or presupposes. And finite being, it would seem, can possess only finite capacity.

That is why, at the beginning of q. 3—dedicated to reviewing the subjective resources of human action with respect to the possession of the perfect good—Saint Thomas poses this question: Is man’s beatitude something uncreated? That is, is it something unconditioned or infinite?

Among the scholastics, there were some who answered affirmatively. And if we here cite John of Ripa, we do not do so merely as archeologists, exhuming medieval curiosities for the pleasure of seeing them; rather, we turn to him so that we might present, on the quill of an old medieval master, an intellectual position that is, after all, conceivable within the question that concerns us. Doubtless not understanding how it could be possible for a created being to see God (for him, seeing was the mode by which we attain Him), John of Ripa imagined that man could just as well be graced with the act of the divine intelligence as human nature in Jesus Christ had been with the Person of the Word. This position is, of course, full of philosophical and theological impossibilities, though we shall indicate only a few. Either it makes the beatifying act—the perfect development of human life—an act that is neither vital nor human; or it demands that a finite being produce an infinite action, which would be the very substance of God (for all is one in God). Now, action is not, like personality, a perfection that dominates and governs the being subjected to its influence: it is a second act, consequent upon the nature of the being—dominated, governed, and influenced by it. Thus, God Himself would be conditioned by us. This is said only to show to what extremes someone’s intellect can be driven when grappling with the problem concerning the disproportion between the finite and the infinite.

Saint Thomas acknowledges the infinity of our last end, yet declares that we have access to this object through an action that is our own, created and conditioned like ourselves. This answer raises difficulties of every kind, and we find its echo even among the most modern of philosophers.

Commenting on Pascal’s teaching on Progress, a highly regarded professor recently expressed the following thoughts:

Progress would be the march toward the true good, toward God. But God is infinite. How then can we approach Him? To take God Himself as our end, directly, is impossible for us. Yet, we can seek Him through expressions that bear some relation to His perfection, while still adapting themselves to the conditions of our being. In this sense, we must propose to ourselves a realizable ideal. Then, we must strive toward it, without, for the present, looking beyond this. Once this goal is reached, we shall set for ourselves a new, higher object, and so on.⁶

And, without a doubt, these observations have a bearing on progress as it is possible in the present life. However, one will note that the reason alleged has a definitive weight: “But God is infinite”—And its force will not be reduced if we merely toss out affirmations such as: “Certainly, union with God, with absolute perfection, is our last end,” in the same tone as was used a few lines earlier regarding the evolutionist system, which precisely denies this last end: “Those who think this way can be right.”⁷

What is at stake is the distance between the finite and the infinite. One may perhaps succeed in concealing it “by accommodating the idea of the infinite to the given realities of objects which, while surpassing actual reality, remain ends within our reach.”⁸ But, for all that, the distance remains. One can extend two rows of trees to a certain length, perhaps managing to produce the illusion of an indefinite perspective—but only the illusion. The question concerning whether there is a proportion between finite man and the infinite God is not settled by eliminating all relativity on the side of the subject in order to transfer it to the object. That is merely to displace the difficulty, not to resolve it. The real problem is this: whether, subjectively or objectively, “the finite is annihilated in the face of the infinite and becomes a kind of pure nothing.”⁹

This will be the general form for our approach to this matter.

Consider a mathematical continuum—a given line—with its indivisible points. I have an idea: let’s try to cover it with points. Yet, all in vain. Either the points touch and merge into one another; or they neither touch nor merge, leaving endless gaps, failing to cover the continuous line. For these indivisible points, the continuum is a kind of infinite reality. However, I realize that my line describes a circumference: at the center of this circumference is an indivisible point, entirely like the preceding ones. Does it vanish in the face of the circle, as just now the multitude of indivisible points did in the face of a fragment of continuum? Not at all. Although infinitely disproportionate in terms of extension, my center-point now enters into a relation with the circumference. It is the origin of all the circle’s radii—and they are infinite. Though it cannot equal it, it is nevertheless proportioned to it. It is a finite reality that does not vanish in the face of the infinite and is anything but a pure nothing.

Perhaps the same is true for man in relation to God? But indeed, this is what we asserted in a previous article. Our appetite for the universal good seemed to us to place man in a rank set apart among finite beings, just as the center of a circle is a point apart among indivisibles.¹⁰

In the words of the poet [Alphonse de Lamartine]: “Limited in his birth, infinite in his desires / Man is a fallen God who remembers the heavens.” And we, in our own way, have made a similar claim—except that we have preferred to see in ourselves a beginning of the Divine rather than a remnant, and, as it were, the preparation for a future state rather than the memory of a past.

But, is this itself truly possible when it concerns the Infinite and the absolutely Unconditioned? I can almost grasp the mystery involved in a point that would be proportioned to what is, for it, an infinite, though not absolutely so. The continuum is not an unconditioned being; it is only of another order of magnitude than the indivisible point, assuming one can speak of magnitude with regard to the indivisible. But God is the Absolute, and whoever has weighed that word—the Absolute—sees evoked before him the idea of independence from all that is finite, man included. Otherwise, we would posit in God a relation to the finite, for all that is relative demands a correlate. If we have a relation to God, we make this final object one of our categories. Such is the objection—old, very old—but always current, since Renouvier never loses an opportunity to repeat it, and Renouvier is, as is well known, a very modern philosopher.¹¹

But, before Monsieur Renouvier, Rabbi Moses Maimonides—believing, like Monsieur Renouvier, that every relation is situated in time and space¹²—denied that God, being incorporeal, could have any relation to His creation. Saint Thomas devotes four substantial articles of De Potentia q. 8 to examining this difficulty. We believe that a summary of one portion of the tenth article will suffice for responding to Monsieur Renouvier.

Quantitative relations are necessarily reciprocal. Extension, in fact, is an abstraction: its nature is the same no matter which body one has in view. If a relation is established between two extensions—say, a meter and a cubit—each of the two termini has the same reasons as its correlate to be referred to the other. The same may be said of time, which is merely a successive continuum.¹³

Relations founded on action are not always reciprocal. The effect is always referable to the cause; the cause is not always referred to the effect. Only those causes that expect some good or perfection from their action are related intrinsically to the effect they produce. Such are those causes that act like instruments of higher causes: univocal causes or instrumental causes. These are interested in the success of their operation and thus depend upon it. But this is not the case for first causes, in whatever order they are considered. Whether as principle or end of movement, by which other beings gravitate under their influence and toward them, first causes remain, in themselves, entirely foreign to the order of actions and forces in which their satellites are moved. Science, for example, has a real relation to the knowable object; the knower is referred by an act of intelligence to the thing known,¹⁴ which subsists outside the soul and is in no way affected by this immanent act. Things in themselves, as such, remain entirely outside the intelligible world: the relation that exists in science does not affect the thing in itself.—The same is true for sensible knowledge. The organic reaction of a sense power is not the adequate cause of sensation: the latter has its own proper mode of activity to which the sensible object is wholly extrinsic.—The non-reciprocity of relations founded on action is evident in countless other analogies: I move around a column—it was on my left, now it is on my right; I alone have changed. Currency is indifferent to all the commercial exchanges in which it takes part.¹⁵ Man, in his substance, remains entirely unaffected by the reproductions made of him by the fine arts... etc., etc.

Thus, as St. Thomas concludes, this suffices for one to understand that a relation can exist quite really in creatures without positing anything in God. “No good returns to Him from creation. His action is supremely liberal,” says Avicenna. “Without change, He produces change.”¹⁶ “As the knowable is relative, so too in this way is God relative. The knowable is not ordered to science, but science is ordered to the knowable. In the same way, one can speak of relations from God to creatures—aware, however, that what one thereby means is precisely that creatures are referred to Him.”¹⁷

Therefore, we can, without positing a created relation in the Infinite, take God directly as our goal. Examples of such unilateral relations abound. Science, as we have seen, commerce, and art all live by this kind of reference. The scientist, by his operation, attains truth, whose concrete being lies outside him; an objective standard governs our commercial exchanges;¹⁸ the artist is aware of truly attaining the human types, his models, though they remain unaffected by his masterpieces. Real life proceeds and is ordered with reference to being, despite the subtleties of phenomenalism. God, then, unapproachable in Himself, can nonetheless be truly attained by our activities (opérations), if He is their terminus.

But under what aspect? It is here that room must be made for something suggested by Émile Boutroux. If the divine reality does not escape our grasp—as our appetite for this reality testifies—and if our approaches to God involve nothing contradictory or diminishing to God (since they posit nothing in Him), it nevertheless remains true that the idea we can form concerning God, at least in the present life, is purely analogical.¹⁹

Let us be clear about the question. We are no longer asking whether we can take God directly as our end. That has been established. The divine infinite does not hinder it. But the question now is: under what intellectual aspect will we tend directly toward God? For the will necessarily presupposes some intellectual apprehension.

In order for us truly to attain God, He must not appear to us as being so utterly foreign that our activity would be lost in the clouds by seeking Him; nor must we form such a thoroughly subjective idea of Him that He ceases to be the true God. Now, between total diversity and total likeness, between heterogeneity and homogeneity, there is analogy. God is not a stranger to our mind: we observe, as a matter of fact, that our will is proportioned to a real being that surpasses us. And quite legitimately, it seems, we name this Being on the basis of His effect within us, attributing to Him all the perfections manifested by that effect, without any of the imperfections it may bear in our other experiences. Thus, we have a symbolic idea of God—an idea inadequate as a conception, yet sufficient for situating ourselves and guiding our action.

Analogy is everywhere throughout nature: the inorganic world imitates life; the plant imitates the animal; and the animal kingdom imitates the human. Now, everywhere it appears, analogy surrounds itself with success. Observe, for example, the formation of crystals in a bath saturated with salts. If the law of continuity in nature is not a mere word, do not spreading crystalline networks in inorganic matter seem like an attempt at self-formation found in plant life? Nature is trying itself out! Jouffroy, horrified by the cataclysms of past ages, hurled this phrase at his listeners like a death knell. For our part, let us take it up anew with that joyful wonder which, according to Aristotle, is the dawn of a new science. Might we not also be an attempt at something? Come now! Man has survived the revolutions of the globe; he stands like the keystone of a countless host of analogies, which, throughout all the kingdoms of creation, hint at his coming. Might there not be in him a supreme analogy? He is trying himself out, yes!—But is he trying himself for nothing? Could not the keystone also be a toothing stone?²⁰ If the inorganic world did not fail when it attempted the flower, is not the pattern of the crystal both the figure and the foretoken of its final success, when it was taken up by the organic force?

Does man try make an attempt to blossom with the flower the Deity? The question is momentous and calls for further development. For the present, all that we are seeking to prove is that the Absolute does not cease to be the goal of our striving when we pursue it under the form of various analogies. The notion is one thing and the given reality another. The given reality itself is truly and distinctly designated by an analogy that belongs to it alone. The appetite, which is directed toward things and not toward notions, can thus take God directly as its end, expressed under the analogies by which it enters into relation with Him. It is in this sense that we understand the life-project proposed by Monsieur Boutroux: analogical knowledge of God by the intellect (esprit), but a direct tendency of the will toward God Himself.

Let us conclude: God, the end of our life, is uncreated, but our created action possesses resources capable of attaining Him.²¹ The way that we know Him matters little; under analogies that designate Him only from afar, He Himself is the object of our will. The relativity lies entirely on our side. While we strive toward Him, He remains unmoved, like the column at the end of the track, the goal of all the efforts of the swift competitors.

II. The Infinite in the Finite
(Utrum beatitudo sit operatio? — Is beatitude an operation?)²²

The infinity of the Divine Being is not an obstacle to the possession of God. But does He not, necessarily, remain outside of us even when we exercise the Action by which we claim to reach Him? To possess God is to have God within oneself in some way; however, Action, by its very nature, only reaches an object by going forth from us, by ceasing to be ourselves, by forming an intermediary between God and us.

If, in order to proportion us to God, a theologian like John of Ripa granted us a divine attribute, the present objection—so at least the common opinion holds—convinced another master of the Middle Ages to make God descend into us. This is the well-known theory of the Illapsus divinus, dear to the Rhineland mystics and attributed to Henry of Ghent as its first author. According to this theory, our union with God is not brought about either through operation, nor even—as Saint Bonaventure suggested—in the operative power itself. No, it is brought about in the very depth of the soul. God invades it, animae illabitur, and thereby renders it blessed.²³

This doctrine of the Illapsus divinus encounters many philosophical and theological difficulties. While it does show how God possesses man, it does not equally demonstrate how it is that man possesses God. The essence of God [thus present] behaves as though it were some kind of substance: like iron glowing with fire, according to the example offered by these mystics.²⁴ But that is not to possess God in a human way, one that is necessarily conscious and loving. And if one insists upon what is special and deifying in this entrance of God into the soul, the suggestion will be that God immediately informs our souls. Sanctifying grace does not offer an analogy here, as some would like to believe, since the union of God to the soul through grace has as its intermediary a created quality. Therefore, what we are seeking to define right now is not the possession and definitive union. Rather, the direct informing of the soul by God would require God to shrink to the proportions of a created form—that is, that He cease to be God.

Thus, we are compelled to return from the depth of the soul to its surface, from essence to operation, which, though it is not identical with ourselves, is nevertheless something of us. Saint Thomas never claimed, as did the dynamists, that being and action are the same thing. Being acts intermittently, and when it does not actually act, it is not for that reason any less being. Yet being possess its full subjective perfection only when it acts. Between being that is not acting and being that acts, there is the same difference as between a scholar who is thinking nothing—a knower reflecting in potency—and a scholar who is thinking—a knower reflecting in act. Second act: this is where form reaches its full development. In itself, it is only a first act. This relation of being to action is so inherent in the nature of things that the Philosopher rightly said that a thing exists for the sake of its operation. There is no rupture between action and being. The very form of being unfolds in action. This doctrine, which strikes a mean between phenomenalism and rigid substantialism, deserves attention. Neither fragmentation nor rigid unification: it avoids both extremes by characterizing as potency the foundational unity of our psychology, and by making action the perfection corresponding to that potency. Operation is nothing other than the unfolding of the internal law of being represented by its form. It is not necessary that union with God take place in the depth of the soul. It can occur just as well in operation, since operation is intimately united to that depth, for operation is its natural extension and living perfection.

Indeed, the operative state harmonizes with the possession of God. To the supreme objective end corresponds, by its very nature, the supreme subjective development. If there is one case in which man must give “his maximal output,” it is certainly when he seeks to attain his ultimate end. Therefore, if man is to possess God, it must be through an action.

A remark from Saint Thomas will complete our clarification. There are indeed two kinds of actions: some go out from the subject and pass into an external matter, such as artistic work.²⁵ These operations perfect the things that are made rather than the one who makes them. They do not cause us to possess them. However, there are also operations that remain within the agent who produces them—such as sensing, knowing, and willing—and in this respect, these “immanent” kinds of operation appear capable of uniting us to our end, of causing our beatitude.²⁶

Let us listen to Saint Thomas:

In external actions, the object of the operation, which is as it were its terminus, is something outside the agent. By contrast, in immanent actions, this object is within the agent himself, and the operation is actual only insofar as it is in the agent. Hence these words of the Philosopher: the sensible in act is the sensation in act; the intelligible in act is the intellect in act... They are different only when they are in potency.²⁷

Therefore, we must not be attached to external operations if we wish to possess God. These may be useful, necessary, meritorious, and commanded by the needs or duties of our practical life. Nonetheless, they lead us outside of ourselves, disperse our forces upon objects that are not our ultimate end, and form an obstacle between that end and ourselves. If we are concerned with possession of the end—and this is our concern, for our final end is at stake—then it is toward immanent operations that we must turn. In their case, the object becomes interior to the operation, and the operation itself is nothing other than a perfection of the subject.

Therefore, let us summarize in three points the resources offered by immanent operation offers on behalf of the possession of God. 1˚ It is being at its maximum tension, in its most perfect state, and therefore most in harmony with the attainment of its final goal. 2˚ This tension causes no rupture: it is the subject itself continuing in the operation. 3˚ The object of the operation is interior to it, without being confused with it: through the operation, the object becomes, in a way, something belonging to the subject.

Therefore, thanks to the twofold belonging that immanent action enjoys—both to its subject and to its object—it is suited for resolving the problem at hand: namely, to find within a subject resources capable of bringing a given being into its possession. It suffices that this being can become its object.

Moreover, as we saw in the previous section, the infinite does not elude the grasp of the finite. Bringing together our two conclusions, we catch a glimpse of the fact that, in immanent action, the Infinite can unite Itself to finite man.

However, among our immanent actions, is there one that is capable of bringing about this synthesis, in which the Divine Infinite could become our immediate Object? With this question we enter the very heart of the problem [which will occupy us for the next several articles].

III. The resources of sensation
(Utrum beatitudo sit operatio sensitivæ partis—Is beatitude is an act of the sensitive part of the soul?)²⁸

“It seems superfluous to ask whether our senses can know God, for all those who admit His real existence as distinct from the world know that He has nothing material in Him, and therefore nothing accessible to the senses. And for those who think He has no other reality than that which they create for Him in their own minds, this subjective quality is not a sensation but an idea. And yet, gentlemen, it can be said that our sensitive faculties of knowing contribute their share to the notion we ought to have of God. Do they not furnish human reason with the materials for its labors: the particular facts from which it draws universal ideas, the effects that allow it to ascend to causes? In the vast construction site of our logical edifices, reason is the architect, the master builder. The senses are, if you will, only subordinate workers, mere laborers, perhaps more prone to dally about than to toil. However, when they allow themselves to be employed by reason and apply themselves to work for it, it is only just to acknowledge the great services they render.”²⁹

These words excellently express what we have to say here, both in objection and by way of resolution. The senses cannot know God—this is granted. But, without concerning ourselves with the additional beatitude they may bring, upon the hypothesis of us actually and immediately possessing God by the intellect and will in the hereafter,³⁰ and remaining for now within the realm of the present life, we recognize in our senses the instrument of an anticipated joy. Indeed, if to possess God is perfect joy, then to tend toward Him is already a beginning of happiness. But one can only tend toward Him if one knows Him. And we do not currently have direct knowledge of God; we know Him only through analogies drawn from sensible things. Thus, the senses are, as it were, the purveyors of our knowledge of God. Under the direction of the intellect, they look all throughout nature to find the grandest images, the noblest impressions, the most harmonious sounds, the most soothing colors, the most delicately affecting scents and tastes, and from all this they compose, as it were, a splendid garment for the Deity. Do we think they fulfill this function without delight? Doubtless they do not know who it is they thus serve, but they sense Him in the very harmony to which they contribute by their labor. They are like workmen who take pleasure in executing a work of art under the direction of a skilled architect. They hasten, they bustle with a joyful zeal. They seem afraid that they might not supply enough for the task: they heap up materials, they dig into the stone, they polish it, they place it where the master has assigned it, already searching with their gaze for another stone which they will make more beautiful, which they will carve more finely, which will shine more brilliantly with the idea glimpsed. Watch them at work, now, under the direction of an Augustine:

What then is this that I feel? What fire burns in my heart? What light irradiates my heart? O fire that ever burns yet never is extinguished, enkindle me! O light that ever shines yet never fades, illumine me! Would that I might be consumed by you, O holy flame! How gently do you burn, how discreetly do you shine, how good it is to be consumed by you! Wretched are they whom you do not consume! Wretched are they whom you do not illumine! O true light that enlightens the universe and fills it… O beatifying light, which can be seen only by the purest eyes. Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God. Purify me, purifying power, heal my eyes… O inaccessible splendor, by the radiance of your light, tear from my eyes the scales of my ancient blindness, so that I may see without being dazzled, that I may see the light in your light. Ah, thanks be to you, my light, for behold, I see! By your aid, O Lord, let my sight pierce ever further. Open wide my eyelids that I may behold the wonders of your law, O you who are truly admirable in your saints. Thanks be to you, O my light, for behold, I see—though… through a mirror, in an image! Ah, but when shall I see face to face?³¹

How happy are the senses, which are tasked with providing images for such noble use! And what unknown resources lie hidden in these faithful servants! What a wealth of information for the soul in search of the divine! What treasures of delight for the saintly soul who wishes to contemplate, for the soul of theologian who sets at the root of his labor the desire for the Sovereign Good, who thinks and writes only to draw ever nearer—with images derived from the senses—to the holy reality he longs to possess!

A mere glance into a corner of Saint Augustine’s workshop has sufficed to reveal these resources to us. But who could begin to speak of the immense reserves amassed in Sacred Scripture, in the writings of the Holy Fathers, and in those of the faithful theologians of the Church! There is no single dogma, no matter how divine it may be, that does not shine forth with images. And dogmatic development will consist in expressing and delineating with greater exactness—within the orbit, however, of ancient terms, images, and expressions—the divine center where a light inaccessible to the senses shines. No understanding of the loftiest mystery is possible without a return to created analogies. And conversely, there is no sensation, however poor or obscure, that cannot aspire to the eminent dignity of becoming an analogy of divine mysteries.

Do you want something even more striking? There is the Church’s liturgy. Here, God is no longer merely evoked by a dead letter fixed in writing. No, here we have living sensation brought into act through representations adapted to the higher instincts of a spiritual being made for God. These are, for example, the ceremonies unfolding around the God of Hosts: ministers each in his rank, images of the silent laws of nature, of the order of the heavenly armies, of the harmonies that mark souls that love God, of angelic hierarchies. Here we have the Church’s temples, with their mighty vaults and soaring arches. Whether they suggest, through the pointed arch, the impression of movement in progress, or, through the round arch, that of repose and finality, the Christian soul sees itself there. Is this not the image of what it is and what it awaits? Through the smell of incense, even those senses which are most resistant to liturgical impressions are brought into harmony, and the wholesome taste of bread, simply distributed, delights the palate, suddenly weaned from its cravings, with its innocent savor. Finally, there is the chant: whether the majestic chant of the people or the soft and measured chant of the choir—what does it matter? It is always the Church’s chant. Here, symbolic vigor reaches its highest expression. The stirring harmony and the word that interprets it form no longer two, but a single living being, animated and alive. “We should not say that the words have been set to music, but that the music has issued forth, has sprung from the very words themselves, where it was contained, as it were, in potency.”³²

Under the combined action of this powerful symbolism, unknown resources are revealed within man and set him in motion. The people themselves grasp this accessible “philosophy.” These men and women, so bound to all that can be touched and felt that God, the immaterial Being, seemed forever remote from them, now direct their aspirations toward the Eternal. Indeed, already and in advance, they have the impression of experiencing Him. How unspeakable the art exercised by religion, which, in order to create a people who are brethren, commands the learned to bow before symbols accessible to the unlearned, and strives to raise the unlearned to divine realities through expressive symbols and suggestive sensations. Thus, from worship there arises a kind of collective movement of souls drawn by the perfect good toward the God who draws them to Himself— a religious socialization of their efforts to possess Him, and, as it were, an anticipated possession and a shared foretaste of the great realities that rule over us and await us.

“Man must seek, but he must also find. True joy is the condition of life, and constant disappointment cannot fail to produce sadness and discouragement.”³³ Here we reconcile ourselves with the philosopher who wrote these lines. We shall grant to analogy—to those “expressions which bear some relation to the divine perfection while adapting themselves to the conditions of our being”—the power to give us a provisional knowledge and, consequently, an anticipatory possession of God. If the man who seeks God already finds Him in this life to the point that he sometimes seems to experience Him, he owes it in large part to the resources of sensation.

But amid the representations he forms concerning his beloved God, through symbols best suited to the inward aspirations of his soul, he sometimes feels a yearning that remains unsatisfied, stirring within his heart, words that rise to his lips. They are the words of Saint Augustine: “Ah, but when shall I see face to face?”

(To be continued.)

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1. See the two parts (pt. 1 and pt. 2) dedicated to the objective requirements of action.↩︎

2. See Ambroise Gardeil, “Devons-nous ‘traverser Kant’?” Revue Thomiste, 5 (1987): 155.↩︎

3. See Émile Boutroux: Course on Pascal: Man, Revue des Cours et Conférences (1898), 63: “Pascal senses that, when it comes to man, one must take him in his entirety if one wishes to see him as he truly is. No hypothesis is admissible. We must observe human life in its given complexity.”↩︎

4. See the end of the previous article in this sequence. What characterizes these first three questions of the Prima Secundae is the union of rigorous demonstration through causes—the order of the mind—with the manifestation of the will’s good or end—the order of the heart. Therefore, it is inaccurate to make the order of the heart consist chiefly in “digression on each point related to the end to continually make it evident” (Pascal). The order of the heart consists in the living relation of the will to its object. But since the objects of the will are hierarchically ordered with respect to the last end, nothing prevents the mind from tracing this graduated movement of the will’s return to its supreme object. Thus, there is reciprocal influence and parallel development of the two orders. Constant digression only succeeds in scattering the heart. Only moral science reproduces the ordered synthesis that constitutes the order of the heart.↩︎

5. See I-II, q. 3, a. 1.↩︎

6. Revue des cours et conferences no. 14 (1898): 631.↩︎

7. ibid., no. 19, p. 70 and 71.↩︎

8. ibid.↩︎

9. Pascal: “Unites joined one to another ad infinitum infinity will never increase at all, no more than a foot adds anything to an infinite measure. The finite is annihilated in the presence of the infinite and becomes a mere nothing. So too is our mind before God; and so too is our justice before divine justice. There is not so great a disproportion between our justice and that of God as that between unity and infinity...” (Ed. Brunschvicg, no. 233.)↩︎

10. Revue Thomiste, July 1898, p. 282.↩︎

11. Cf. “L’idée de Dieu,” Année philosophique (1897): 16.↩︎

12. Renouvier, La nouvelle Monadologie, 1.12.13.↩︎

13. Whether objective (as for Rabbi Moses) or subjective (as for Renouvier, ibid., p. 12), time is nonetheless a quantity which always ends up affecting the relation, objectively considered.↩︎

14. Trans. note: Though, by this act, the knower is related to the thing precisely as an object, not solely as a brute res, thing.↩︎

15. Trans. note: This must be taken very generally as regards a kind of neutrality in the relationship between monetary value and the things for which it is used. However, for example, the velocity of exchange does effect the value of the currency.↩︎

16. De Potentia q. 8, a. 10.↩︎

17. De Potentia q. 8, a. 11 ad 1. Trans. note: The knowable object, in exercising objective causality (though efficiently raised to that status by the intellect), measures the intellect. The measured (intellect) is related to its measure (the given reality acting as an object). The opposite is not true.↩︎

18. Trans. note: See my comment above. Clearly, Fr. Gardeil is applying a measure-measured relation here. It is more fluid than he supposes, but in some way the relation remains, albeit amid the practical semiosis of the market.↩︎

19. Trans. note: Though, such analogy will be either natural or supernatural. On the superanalogy of faith, see the notes gathered here on To Be a Thomist and discussed further in this article in Nova et Vetera (English Edition).↩︎

20. Trans. note: In architecture, a “toothing stone” (pierre d’attente) is a projection from a wall that allows future construction to be built in continuity with the foundation of the older construction. Fr. Gardeil will use this term to describe our obediential potency. See Ambroise Gardeil, The True Christian Life, trans. Matthew K. Minerd (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2022), 7:

    Grace does not destroy nature. It perfects it. This theological axiom invites us to look on grace not as something foreign within our soul but rather as something which discovers a ready terrain in our soul, a capacity to receive it. This capacity will be the “toothing stone” for the divine life, as well as its “insertion point” into our proper life [qua human]. Once sanctifying grace is received into the soul, it renders us capable of truly exercising, ourselves, acts reserved to the life of God as though they were indeed our own acts.

    Obviously, this must be understood as a passive obediential potency. In some contexts, e.g., including the Scotistic and Suárezian, the expression takes on too positive a register. On the former, see the following text cited by Garrigou-Lagrange in On Divine Revelation, from Vacant, Études comparées sur la philosophie de S. Thomas d’Aquin et sur celle de Duns Scot (Paris: Beauchesne, 1891), 12–20:

    St. Thomas carefully determines the boundaries of the natural order and the supernatural order. By contrast, according to Scotus, our natural faculties possess, like a weak seed, the power of acting supernaturally and of enjoying the intuitive vision of God. This power cannot develop itself without grace. However, it nonetheless constitutes a kind of toothing stone. Thus, it follows that we bear within ourselves a natural tendency (appetitus naturalis innatus) for seeing God supernaturally. . . . Therefore, the Subtle Doctor was led to make the distinction between nature and grace depend upon God’s free will, which can, consequently, change the character of His gifts. . . . The natural or supernatural character of each of these gifts depends upon an arbitrary determination by God.

    ↩︎

21. ST I-II, q. 3, a. 1.↩︎

22. ST I-II, q. 3, a. 2.↩︎

23. Trans. note: This question also recapitulates the various debates over the mode of the Trinity’s presence in the souls of the righteous. For a thorough summary of the western-scholastic debates, as well as detailed further sourcing, see Francis Cunningham, The Indwelling of the Trinity: A Historico-Doctrinal Study of the Theory of St. Thomas Aquinas (Dubuque, Iowa: The Prior Press, 1955). It is also related to questions surrounding the Palamite controversy. On this, see Matthew K. Minerd, “The Ontology of the Divine Indwelling A Hard-Headed Thomist Meets with Palamas” in the forthcoming proceedings of the American Maritain Association, to be published by CUA Press, edited by Heather Erb. Similarly, see Jean-Hervé Nicolas treatment of Rahner on grace and the triune indwelling, in Les profondeurs de la grâce and the first volume of Catholic Dogmatic Theology.↩︎

24. Trans. note: It is, of course, an older analogy, going back to the patristic tradition. It recognizes the importance of the supernatural presence of immensity presupposed operative union through supernatural knowledge and love. On this question, Gardeil ultimately carefully parses these matters in La structure, vol. 2. Note, however, Cunningham’s critiques of Gardeil concerning the relation between God’s supernatural presence of immensity and the presence of Grace.↩︎

25. Trans. note: Although, whatever might be the productive-contemplative in the artist prior to art (what Maritain would refer to as poetic intuition, though one can choose another idiom if one wishes), is immanent in important ways. The creative idea is a perfection of the artist (and of the one who truly re-enters into that intuition by way of “aesthetic” experience) up which the work of art depends.↩︎

26. ST I, q. 3, a. 2, ad 3.↩︎

27. ST I, q. 14, a. 2c. Trans. note: This is why the later Thomist tradition came to emphasize that immanent acts are in the category of quality, not quantity. (The Aristotelian category of action is strictly correlative to passion. As the maxim runs: action is in the “patient”. In other words, the category of action denominates transitive action. The case of creation, for example, is interesting for in that case, one cannot say that Active Creation (creation “on God’s side”) is not action in the strict sense but, instead, is only virtually productive. See Doronzo, Dogmatica, vol. 2, nos. 359–360.↩︎

28. ST I, q. 3, art. 3.↩︎

29. Thomas Etourneau, OP, Conférences à Notre-Dame. 1898. La lumière des sens.↩︎

30. Trans. Note: The topic of “accidental beatitude” is an often skipped yet utterly essential aspect of the theology of the resurrection. The glorification of the body is no mere secondary radiation of glory. It is the fulfillment of the complete mystery of Christ’s victory within us.↩︎

31. Augustine, Soliloquies, ch. 34. See the passage cited at the end of the second article in this sequence.↩︎

32. C. Bellaigue, “À l’abbaye de Solesmes,” Revue des Deux Mondes (November 15, 1898), 356.↩︎

33. Revue des cours et conferences, 14, p. 632.↩︎