Gardeil, La Structure, Pt. 3 (The Interior State of the Righteous Soul)

The present text is a sketch translation from the first section of Ambroise Gardeil’s La structure de l’âme et l’expérience mystique. I put it together years ago for a course, so it is still in draft form. However, because I referenced it in a recent posting on To Be a Thomist, I thought that I would dig it up and quickly brush it up a bit. It dates from many years back now, so my subsequent experience as a translator would doubtlessly have led me to render various things differently. Nonetheless, I think the text is useful and should not be sitting about in a folder on my computer. It is taken from the first eighty-seven pages of vol. 2 of La structure.

Prologue

Upwards we ascend!

In the First Part of this work, we established what is the receptive subject of the divine life, namely, Mens [or Nous].

At the depths of Mens, we found a habitual relation, one wholly belonging to the intelligible order, between, on the one hand, Mens which is able to know and, on the other, Mens as intelligible and God. This relation, which at this point is nothing more than a mere possibility of knowledge, does not suffice, moreover, for making God and the intelligible Mens true objects for the Mens which is able to know.¹ Rather, they are presumptive objects.² Nonetheless, it is here, between God and the soul, that grace, a participation in the divine nature, will be able to be introduced and join them together.

Moreover, we acknowledged that the Mens which is able to know contains an obediential potency which renders it capable of receiving grace from God, the principle of divine life.

Thus, we had an account of the full and complete receptive subject of the divine life.

In Part Two, we analyzed sanctifying grace itself, first determining its static being and, then, its dynamogenic being.

Ontologically, sanctifying grace is a created [but supernatural] quality, informing and specifying our soul, divinizing it, “and recasting our entire being in the image of our Heavenly Father.”

As we saw in our discussions concerning this point, this grace, by which we participate in God’s nature, gives rise to a foundational tendency toward the divine life, a dynamic tendency, empowering us with an assimilative conformity with the intelligible essence of this Sovereign Good, the very contemplation of which is the life of God Himself and the terminus of life as children of God.³

Thus, we have determined the two components of the righteous soul: the receptive subject of grace and grace itself.

Therefore, let us admit, as a duty imposed upon us by God’s own word, that the illapsus of grace into its receptive subject has been brought about by the All-Powerful Goodness, and we will here find ourselves to be in the presence of the Soul in the state of grace!

To speak in a language akin to that used by naturalists, what ingredients will internally make up this state? Given what we have already said, this is not difficult to specify.

From the subjective perspective, there will be the knowing Mens, along with grace, which divinizes it in its very essence, thus orienting it toward divine realities, which on earth it will need to attain through faith, hope, and charity, and then in the here-after, to embrace through face-to face vision of God and charity in its consummated state.

However, this is not the full story. The state of grace does not involve only subjective grace. It is not only, as it were, from without, a kind of efficacious tendency turned toward a better state, the definitive state of the blessed in heaven. Already, it contains, within its depths, a kind of substitute for and anticipation of the vision of God, a real and physical dwelling place of the hidden God, sealed in the depths of the soul. There, God, substantially present in the righteous soul, gives Himself to it as an object of thought and love. In the deepest part of the soul, what theologians call objective grace corresponds to its subjective grace. Consequently, the interior state of the righteous is not only something analogous to the state of the beatified soul but, instead, is substantially the very realization of this state.

Indeed, as clear witnesses supporting this substantial and objective immanence of God in the Christian soul, do we not have words such as these: “If a man loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him”?⁴ This text here names only the Father and the Son, but it is completed by the following words, which directly precede it: “And I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Counselor, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth… You know him, for he dwells with you, and will be in you.”⁵ More briefly stated, although embracing everything at once, there are the words of St. John the Apostle: “God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.”⁶

Charity, the condition of God’s dwelling in us, is but one with grace. Grace and charity go hand in hand, like a nature and its first, characteristic, and adequate property, into which the nature pours forth. They are two moments of one and the same divine gift. In Scripture, their name is identical, χάρις, the gift of the divine love. Therefore, according to the Master, in the interior state of the righteous soul, in addition to the power to grasp the Deity constituted by subjective grace, there is a real, intimate, and permanent presence of the Deity itself, of “objective grace.” The Fathers and theologians, synthesizing the revealed word along with the human doctrines that enable us to explain and illuminate it, named this interior state of the righteous soul: the intimate indwelling of God in righteous souls.

Hence, we now have the precise subject of this third part of our work, and we also understand what, in a still rather-general manner, was announced by its title: the interior state of the righteous soul. Doubtlessly and first of all, this subject is the righteous soul itself, along with its grace; however, it moreover is the intimate indwelling of the Deity within it.

Just as from the moment when the Incarnate Word entered into the world (according to the Apostle’s expression, ingrediens mundum)⁷ the composition of the universe was changed and henceforth had to reckon with this divine ingredient, so too the interior state of the righteous soul, in addition to itself, the receptive subject of the divine life and of the grace that renders it efficaciously capable of making this life its own, sees erupt within itself, illabi, such a sublime ingredient, the intimate life of the Deity.

But, for us believers, this is still something that we know only as a fact [held on faith]. We must now, to the degree that it is possible, investigate into how this fact is realized, bringing together all the elements of unequal magnitude entering into the state of grace, likewise striving to perceive and justify its internal organization.

This is what we will attempt to do by formulating our response to these three questions:

I. How is God’s indwelling realized in righteous souls?

II. What is St. Thomas’s thought concerning the interior state of the righteous man?

III. Is the interior state of the righteous soul conformed to the internal structure of the soul?

Question 1: How is God’s indwelling realized in righteous souls?

Prologue

The history of theology sets before us two diametrically opposed opinions concerning this subject. On the one hand, there is the opinion held by Gabriel Vasquez, who conceived of the substantial presence of the Holy Trinity in the righteous through sanctifying grace as though it were an extension of God’s presence in the creature through the divine activity which creates, conserves, and moves it: God’s presence of immensity. On the other hand, there is the opinion held by Francisco Suárez, who declared that the presence of immensity, resulting from the divine activity, is not needed for establishing the substantial indwelling of God in the souls of the righteous. According to him, this indwelling results only from the requirements of sanctifying grace, such as they assert themselves in the requirements of the theological virtue of charity.

In this Question, we intend to examine these two opinions and to show that the first distorts the true character of the divine indwelling, whereas the second exaggerates, to the point of utter impossibility (at least for the present life), what sanctifying grace requires in regard to God’s substantial presence in the soul.

We will divide this question into four articles:

I. According to St. Thomas, what are the modes of God’s presence in the creature?

II. How does Vasquez denature the special character of God’s presence in the righteous by holding it is a kind of extension of the divine presence of immensity?

III. How do Suarez and certain Thomists, by dispensing with the presence of immensity, exaggerate the actual requirements of grace in regard to God’s intimate and substantial presence in the righteous soul?

IV. Given the efficacy of the objections which are mutually addressed to each other by these opposed partisans (either on behalf the presence of immensity or on behalf the requirements of grace), may there not be room for a solution that enables us to regard these two factors as being complementary, thereby holding that God’s substantial indwelling in the righteous soul results from the synthesis of both of them?

Article I

According to St. Thomas, what are the modes of God’s presence in the creature?

Before beginning our specific examination of each of these two systems, we will find it helpful to provide a high-level, overview inventory of the different ways that God can be present to His creature. This basic framework will enable us to more easily locate the various data furnished by the opinions under discussion.

St. Thomas offers us this overview. Therefore, let us first listen to him concerning what is formally signified by this expression, “God’s presence”:

When we say that God is everywhere, this implies a relation from God to the creature, a relation that has its real existence, however, only in the creature, not in God. Now, in fact, on the side of the creature, there are multiple such relations, which are diversified following upon the various effects by means of which God renders us like unto Him. The newness of one effect in relation to another leads us to say that God is no longer present in the creature as He was before. And this is why the Holy Spirit, who is everywhere, can, on account of the relation of creation to Him (as Creator), be said to have a new existence in a created being, in virtue of a new relation which the creature comes to have vis-à-vis Him (a relation implied in one of His effects).⁸

Therefore, according to St. Thomas, the various forms of God’s presence in the creature involve only diversity in the creature’s relation to God, coming from the diversity of the gifts which are given to it. In order to rule out all ambiguity regarding the true cause of various modes of presence, St. Thomas takes care to insist and to note immediately that a new presence is not produced by the diversity of gifts precisely as gifts but, rather, by the new relation to God Himself which emerges from certain gifts. Indeed, if we confined ourselves to the gifts inasmuch as they are effects of God, they would be, in their diversity, multiple participations in the various divine perfections, the likeness of which is found in every created effect, although the relation of the creature to God Himself would not change. “The Holy Spirit would be said to be in the being in different manner solely because this being would benefit from some effect from God which he had not possessed heretofore.”⁹ St. Thomas excludes this conception in a concise manner: “The relation which gives rise to the diversity of gifts received by the creature does not stop at the gifts but thereupon stretches onward toward Him who gives these gifts.”¹⁰

In other words, God is newly present to the soul only when, through certain effects of His, a new and original relation to Him emerges, one that is distinct from the relation of effect to cause, something that is a property of every one of His effects, including grace. A new and special presence is begotten not by the production of a new effect but, rather, by the new relation to God that follows upon the specific nature of this new effect.¹¹

From this “essential and formal” perspective,¹² St. Thomas draws out three modes of God’s presence which give birth to the diversity of the gifts which He bestows upon the creature:

The distinction of these modes is taken partly from the creature and partly from God.

(1˚ It is taken, first) from the creature, which is ordered and united to God in various ways (a real diversity and not a merely rationate one).

Indeed, given that God is said to exist in things inasmuch as He is in contact with them, where a new mode of contact with God is encountered, there must be (for God) a new mode of existing (in things). Now, the creature is connected to God in three ways.

First of all, it is so connected merely by way of likeness inasmuch as a likeness of the divine goodness is found in the creature, a likeness which does not, however, attain God considered in His substance. This mode of contact is found in all creatures, which are all like unto the Divine Good. Thus, we have the common mode by which God is found in every creature, by His essence, His presence, and His power.

Secondly, the creature attains God Himself, considered in His substance and not in mere likeness, doing so by its activity as a creature. And this is what takes place when someone adheres through faith to the First Truth Himself and, through charity, to the Sovereign Goodness. This represents a second mode of Gods existence in things, by which God is specially present in the saints through grace.

Thirdly, the creature not only attains God Himself through is activity but also attains Him in His own proper being as God, understanding the latter not as referring to the act which constitutes the divine essence—for the creature cannot be changed into the divine nature—but, rather, as referring to the act which constitutes the hypostasis or person, to which the creature is elevated and united. Thus, we have a final mode of God’s presence, namely, that whereby God is in Christ through the (Hypostatic) Union.

2˚ On the side of God, however, no real diversity is found but, rather, only a rationate form thereof [diversitas ratione], as when we distinguish in Him essence, power, and activity. Given that God’s essence is separated (absoluta) from every creature, it is not in the creature except inasmuch as it is connected thereto by way of His activity (the divine activity). Therefore, when God acts within a thing, He is said to be in this thing through His presence, for the agent must be present to his work in some manner. However, the divine activity does not depart from the divine power from which it derives. Therefore, God will be in things through His power, and given that His power is His very essence, he will consequently be in things through His essence.¹³

Note, in passing, that these three last ways by which God is present in things, through presence, power, and essence, are at bottom, ultimately one, with the third specifying the second and the second the first.¹⁴ Therefore, they merely serve to spell out the details of the first member of the other enumeration, taken from creatures, namely, the relation to God as Cause, a relation that is common to all creatures and presupposed by the others, as St. Thomas takes care to repeat soon thereafter:

These three modes of presence are not taken from the side of the creature but, rather from the side of God inasmuch as He acts within things. Therefore, they are consequent to every creature and are presupposed by the other modes (the second and third, namely by grace and the Hypostatic Union). Where God is present by the (Hypostatic) Union, He is also present by grace, and where He is present by grace, He is also present by essence, presence, and power.¹⁵

Now, to summarize all of this, in the creature, there are only three kinds of relations and, hence, three real, formally distinct ways that God is present: 1) through the common presence which is called “of likeness” above, a presence which is the effect of God’s universal activity, His presence of immensity, along with its three aspects (by presence, power, and essence); 2) through the objective presence specially belonging to grace acting through faith and charity; 3) through the special presence resulting from the hypostatic union. This final mode of presence—need we note this fact?—is something unique and separate and must not be utilized in the course of this study, except to furnish, on occasion, a point of comparison.

This a priori overview will enable us to classify with ease the systems we will now consider.

Article II

How does Vasquez denature the special character of God’s presence in the righteous by regarding it as being a kind of extension of the divine presence of immensity?

Commenting on ST q. 8, a. 3 [sic], where St. Thomas defines the special manner that God is within the rational creature through grace, namely, “as the known is in the knower and the desired object in him who desires it,” Vasquez begins with this declaration: “There is practically no controversy among theologians concerning this mode of presence, but it is of such a nature that it would not suffice to render God present within things by His essence if He were not Himself present, in addition, by His immensity. And, indeed, this mode [of presence] unites man to God only through knowledge and affect, whether actual or habitual.

In these opening remarks, Vasquez says nothing displeasing to our eyes. They stand in agreement with St. Thomas’s own opinion, which we will explain in due time. Moreover, Vasquez will go on to specify his thought on the matter by setting it in opposition to Suárez: “Nonetheless,” he continues, “Certain recent theologians think that when the gifts of grace are conferred beyond these charisms, the person of the Holy Spirit is given and comes to us with the entire Trinity, in such a way that if, in addition, God were not immense and existing in all things on account of His universal activity and substantially, ‘He would be in us according to His essence (solely) on account of the gifts of grace.’”

Here we have Suarez’s own opinion, not that of St. Thomas, who, as we will see, holds that God is indeed really present by knowledge and love without, however, asserting in any way this unreal supposition that this presence could be brought about independent of God’s presence of immensity. Much to the contrary, as we will indeed see, according to St. Thomas, the two substantial presences—by immensity and activity on the one hand and by knowledge and love on the other—are doubtlessly distinct and special, though also complementary.

This is not how these matters are understood by Vasquez who, in order to respond to Suarez, goes so far as to completely suppress God’s real presence sicut cognitum et amatum, as known and love, thereby reducing every form God’s real presence in us to His presence of immensity.

He does not, however, contest what St. Thomas says in ST I, q. 43, a. 3, concerning the person of the Holy Spirit and the entire Trinity’s coming into us on account of charity. However, for him, this substantial presence of God within us is explained as being nothing more than an extension of the presence of immensity resulting from the divine activity: “The true explanation,” he says, “is that, with God already existing in us, He moreover deigns to appear in us through a new effect, namely, grace. And given that this gift is appropriated to the Holy Spirit, we say, dicitur, that He Himself is given and sent to us and that the entire Trinity comes with Him.”

Vasquez proves in the following way the fact that this effect would not suffice for establishing the presence of the Person of the Holy Spirit or of God, considered in His essence, if He were not already present on account of His universal activity or were not immense (and everywhere) substantially:

Beyond the common notion of being effects of the divine power, these gifts (of grace) have the special character of uniting us, by way of affection, to God as to a rule, whence, the name “the righteous,” and as to a friend, whence the name, “beloved” of God, and furthermore, “saints” and immaculate. However, these results, all affective in character, or at least being related to affection, can exist between beings that are absent substantially. This is completely obvious.¹⁶

As is clear, Vasquez was struck by the ideal or moral character of the relation of knowledge and love to its object, whether natural or supernatural. He says so at the start and will repeat it at the end. This represents the perpetual fulcrum of his thought in this matter.

Indeed, affection leaves the reality of the object that it aims at precisely as it finds it. It refers to it, and that suffices for us to acknowledge, in the reality of the thing thus aimed at, an extrinsic denomination, an aspect which legitimizes the affection and makes this reality into an object of love. However, quite clearly, affection, precisely inasmuch as it is solely affection, does not have the power to make its object physically penetrate into the subject.

A solution was ready at hand for Vasquez: to make use of God’s real presence within all things by way of His immensity, His activity, henceforth holding that the tendency of knowledge and love find their terminus in the depths of the soul. Thus, in virtue of this presupposed omnipresence of God, the soul would thus have realized the new relation of experiential knowledge and fruitional love to this intimately present object, a relation that is indeed real.¹⁷

However, this solution did not come to Vasquez’s mind, for he was faced with the excessive conception expressed by Suárez, his rival from Alcala,¹⁸ claiming that God’s real presence in the soul through grace could dispense with His presence of immensity and that God was in us according to His essence exclusively on account of the requirements of charity, and therefore, those of sanctifying grace, which finds its supreme actualization in the requirements of charity.

Admitting, with St. Thomas, on whose text he was commenting, the special presence of the very person of the Holy Spirit and of the entire Trinity within us on account of grace, Vasquez thought that he could explain it sufficiently by making it out to be an extension of God’s presence of immensity. The presence of immensity was due to God’s universal activity in every creature; however, among the effects of this universal activity, grace seemed to be a wholly original, new, and special EFFECT, involving, Vasquez thought, a special relation with the divine CAUSE. “Special,” I say, not from the perspective of God’s manner of being present, which could only be that of the divine immensity consequent upon the divine activity precisely as such, but rather, from the perspective of the appropriation of this effect to the person of the Holy Spirit.

Thus, Vasquez set God’s special, real presence within the soul upon a positive foundation, namely, God’s real presence by way of immensity, which he substituted for the foundation that he judged to be inefficacious, namely, the affective tendency extoled by Suárez. Only, he sacrificed, upon the altar of appropriation, the REAL relation to God, as He is, through the knowledge and love coming forth from grace, which indeed seems to formally constitute, according to St. Thomas, God’s special and real presence in the righteous. “With God already existing in us, He moreover deigns to appear in us through a new effect, namely, grace. And given that this gift is appropriated to the Holy Spirit, we say that He Himself is given and sent to us and that the entire Trinity comes with Him.”¹⁹ The whole of Vasquez’s teaching is summarized in these lines.

In short, we will say in our own turn that Vasquez did not wish to hold that God’s presence in us by grace is accounted for by grace’s dynamic and objective tendency toward God, the source of supernatural knowledge and love, because he thought this was powerless to bring about the substantial presence of its object, thus leading him to fall back upon the tendency toward God as Cause, consequent to the ontological being of this same grace, considered as an effect of God. The excellence, originality, and newness of this EFFECT, namely, grace, seemed to him sufficient for a special presence to be spoken of as a true reality, even though this presence remained a form of God’s presence of immensity. He believed that appropriation placed his opinion within the “good graces of Thomism,” since it enabled him to attribute this specialization of God’s common presence as such to the person of the Holy Spirit on account of the sympathy which relates every supernatural effect to the Holy Spirit as to its cause.

It is not difficult to situate this opinion within the framework that we established earlier on the basis of St. Thomas’s text. In its ontological being as one of God’s effects, sanctifying grace is only a likeness of the divine being, one that is truly formal, though created and hence, not attaining God in His substance but, rather, only referring to Him, as to its efficient and exemplar cause.²⁰ Consequently, in line with such an outlook, we do not pass beyond God’s presence through His activity, the presence of immensity, a presence that is substantial in nature, though not proper to grace. Now, what we were looking to define, however, was the special presence belonging to grace. Vasquez has missed the precise point of the question.²¹

Now, this is what enables us to say that he ultimately reached his goal of providing a realistic explanation for God’s presence through grace only by distorting the true, special character of this presence, which according to St. Thomas, is a result of the knowledge and love of God issuing from Grace.

Fr. Terrien.—On account of the favor quite-rightly enjoyed by Fr. Terrien’s work, La grâce et la gloire, we will be permitted to give this modern work a place among the great theologians of the same school.

Terrien gave two, sequential explanations for God’s indwelling in righteous souls through grace. If we have understood him aright, the first coincides with that of Vasquez,²² whereas the second is ultimately reduced to St. Thomas’s.²³ Fr. Terrien believes that they can be reconciled:

We do not believe that, in providing one explanation we consequently must exclude all others: they assume each other, are interconnected, and mutually complement each other. An author having great authority among the mystics reduces them to two main ones. “God,” he says, “is united to us in this utterly special manner, both as principle and as terminus: as the principle which produces grace in us as a participation in His nature and His own proper life; and as the terminus grasped by the soul by means of this participation. Through His activity, God clears the way within the most intimate depths of the soul, and the soul in turn, through the activities that it is capable of through grace, comes to possess God.”

This formulation is excellent. It is St. Thomas’s own position,²⁴ as Fr. Terrien will explain it in his own second explanation and as we will strive to express later on.²⁵

Why is it that Fr. Terrien does not hold this position which he has expressed so well and, instead of holding that these two explanations as being mutually complementary, comes to consider the first as being self-sufficient? For me, this is intensely disappointing.

Let us set matters straight. It is quite true, whatever Vasquez might have thought, that the explanation of God’s indwelling by the activities that the soul is capable of through grace must not be excluded in favor of the explanation of this same indwelling by God’s activity inasmuch as He is the author of Grace. And it is nonetheless true, whatever Suarez might have thought, that the explanation of God’s indwelling by means of the activities that the soul is capable of through grace cannot dispense with the explanation by God’s activity as the Author of grace. Therefore, Fr. Terrien was perfectly correct, in opposition to both of his two illustrious confreres.

However, he believes he can argue, throughout the fourth chapter of his work, that God’s mere presence in the soul resulting from the production of sanctifying grace as an effect contains an adequate and complete explanation for God’s substantial indwelling in us through grace, thus, independent of the objective presence coordinated with the activity of the sanctified soul. This represents Vasquez’s very own opinion. Only, it here seems to be stripped of its extreme exclusivism since, in a second explanation, which is St. Thomas’s own, our author will hold that the supernatural activities issuing from grace, namely [supernatural] knowledge and love, are indeed a decisive and formal factor of the divine indwelling, all the while, however, combining them with God’s substantial presence coming from the production of grace, thus separating himself from Suarez’s equally extreme exclusivism.

Therefore, for Terrien, there are two complete and self-sufficient explanations for God’s indwelling in the righteous, whereas, for St. Thomas, there is only one, that which ultimately results from possession of Him through the knowledge and love issuing from grace, presupposing God’s substantial presence through the production of grace, though not by itself bringing about the substantial indwelling spoken of in Scripture.

Thus, in what pertains to his first manner of explaining things, Terrien exposes himself to all the objections that militate against Vasquez and which were asserted above, objections that Suarez, moreover, eloquently and, unless I am mistaken, victoriously developed.²⁶

Let us now see the new arguments that Terrien proposes in support of his first explanation.

In St. John Damascene, “The faithful echo of the most renowned doctors of the East,” he read that “God’s dwelling place” is where He manifests His power and His activity. Whence, it follows that, “the more a creature participates in His activity and His grace, the more it is God’s dwelling place.”²⁷ And he exclaims:

Who would not recognize in his language the same teaching that would be found later on in Albert the Great, the Angel of the Schools, and others, for they provide the same explanation, indeed in nearly the same terms, for the presence of spirits in general and, especially the indwelling of God in the righteous, His children. He is in them, as the efficient and exemplar principle of their supernatural being. He remains because His effect is permanent, because He dwells there and because, in God’s case, the divine activity is as necessary for preserving being as it is for giving it to them.²⁸

I cannot shake the feeling that a confusion lurks in these lines of text. God’s indwelling in us through grace is not what is thus proven by the divine activity. Rather, what is proven is the presence of immensity which is, itself too, a substantial presence of God, though of a different order. The production of “supernatural being,” that is, of the EFFECT, grace, does not change the nature of God’s presence through His divine activity, but instead, marks an extension and accentuation of it. This substantial character of the presence of immensity, as well as its accentuation by the production of grace, is all that one can deduce from the divine activity, and it is all that Terrien himself deduces from it in the two, subsequent pages.²⁹ Indeed, Albert the Great and St. Thomas drew this conclusion “in nearly the same terms,” concerning the divine activity, though, they did not hold that it is the indwelling that specially belongs to grace.—Likewise, God’s likeness, which is the very essence of grace, requires God to be present to the sanctified soul as exemplar cause, “like the stamp to the soft wax.”³⁰ However, this exemplar (and, therefore, still causal) presence of God is not, whatever the author might conclude, the intimate indwelling of God in question here. Rather, it is God present within the soul through His created likeness. It is quite clear that Terrien was not able to avoid falling into self-contradiction in his wording and that, all the while pronouncing the word “indwelling,” he did not cease to speak of God’s sanctifying action in the depths of the souls and, with St. Augustine, “Of God’s approach.” This is not at all the same thing as His indwelling.

Terrien felt this so well himself that, quite honestly, he posed the objection to himself: one could object, he says, that this mode of presence is the same as that which applies to every creature. And he responds: yes, doubtlessly, there is an analogy between these two modes of presence, given that both of them are based on God’s immediate influence upon the creature. However, what an astonishing diversity is found in the effects!³¹ [In his own words:]

Let us recall St. John Damascene’s luminous principle and conclude: therefore, everywhere there are more admirable effects of the divine bounty, God will be more present there.

And if it happens that these effects, like those of grace and glory, infinitely exceed the other works coming forth from the divine HAND, God will be in the creature in an infinitely more intimate and loftier way than in the rest of creation. He will be there so much so that one will be able to say, in full truth, that He comes, when He produces these effects, that He remains, for as long as He conserves them, that He departs when our sins destroy within ourselves the work of His grace, and that He enters more fully when our merits and our generosity enable Him to give Himself more abundantly with His gifts.

Remove this grace or, what comes down to the same, remove the action, wholly present to us, giving it to us, and there no longer will be union in this superior and divine order.³²

As is clear, this is pure Vasquez. Once again, only one sentence is needed in response, ever the same one: you do not go beyond presence by way of activity, God’s presence of immensity. And there is no need to join the author in “meditating”³³ upon the influence that God, who is already present within us through the production of grace, then internally exercises upon the powers within us, urging us onward toward heavenly things by making us love, pray, and act as children of God. All of this is good, but it is from causality, now motive and no longer solely productive, though still, in the end, efficient causality. Now, we hold—from St. Thomas and followed universally by Theology—that in an effect the relation which follows upon its production or its movement by God aims not at the Triune God as He is in Himself but, rather, at the One God, the creator and governor of His creation. Therefore, it is only through appropriation that these intimate influences can be attributed to the Holy Spirit, something that Vasquez openly admitted.

A fortiori, when our author imagines the soul penetrated by the substance and action of God who dwells within it as in the temple and living sanctuary where God remains, he, in truth, goes beyond what his position truly allows him to conclude.³⁴ As we will see, the soul is not fashioned into the temple spoken of in Scripture by means of the efficient-causal sanctifying action of God, substantially present, by His immensity, in our soul. A temple is not only a place where man is sanctified by God. It is a place where man responds, by his effort to embrace the Divinity, to God who sanctifies him. God is not only its cause but is also its object. In order for there to be a temple, man must respond under the divine presence, as St. Thomas constantly says, through faith and love issuing from grace. God’s indwelling is brought about and the temple is complete through the activity of the sanctified soul, seizing God substantially present within itself, as the cause and stimulant of the grace within it. God’s intimate indwelling in the soul does not result solely from the relation of grace, considered as an effect, to God who produces, conserves, stimulates, and increases it but, also, and above all, in the end, results from the new relation that emerges from grace—from the fact of its creation, conservation, enlivening, and exercise—in relation to God substantially present, giving Himself to the sanctified soul, in its most intimate depths, as an object of knowledge and love.

In this interpretation, the disregarding of the second of these two relations, both of which are indispensable for constituting God’s substantial indwelling within us, is what leads our author to commit—I beg your pardon for the use of this word, in his memory—a paralogism like the one that we read above, a claim which he himself believes contains the decisive proof for His thesis: “He (God) will be there so much so that one will be able to say, in full truth, that He comes, when He produces these effects, that He remains, for as long as He conserves them, that He departs when our sins destroy within ourselves the work of His grace, etc.”³⁵ The point is precise: but why? Because the relation of the sanctified soul to the Triune God as the object of supernatural knowledge and love is correlative to the relation of the same soul to the One God, the cause of grace. In other words, because the sanctified soul cannot have and preserve the love of God present in it unless God, acting as cause, produces and conserves within it grace, the principle of this love. God comes when He produces grace, for as soon as grace is produced, the soul simultaneously becomes capable of welcoming God through its faith and love. He departs when our sins destroy grace, for the relation to God as the object of knowledge and love—the relation which is constitutive of indwelling—properly speaking, ceases to exist at the same time as does the divine act that conserves grace as well as the presence of God as its cause resulting from it.

Without this relation to God as an object, God would come, would remain, and would depart from the soul just as He comes to the pebble that He creates or conserves and as He departs from the being that dies. Christ quite certainly was not speaking of this coming and this departure when he said: We will come to him and make our dwelling within him. “To him”: but to whom then? Christ responds: “If someone loves me…” God’s indwelling is bestowed upon him who loves Christ-God, who is turned toward Him through charity. Grace definitively opens the door to God and brings about His indwelling only through its objective relation of knowledge and love with God.

Consequently, what are we to think concerning the text from Contra gentiles, bk. 4, ch. 21 referred to by Terrien,³⁶ which he interprets as expressing his own explanation?³⁷ The passage of this chapter referred to by our author can only be the following:

The divine effects not only begin to exist through the divine activity but, moreover, are conserved in existence by it. Therefore, as that which acts and that which is brought about must be simultaneously in act, sicut movens et motum, in all cases where an effect of God is encountered, God Himself must be there as causing the effect, et ipse Deus effector. Therefore, just as the charity by which we love God is in us through the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit Himself must be in us for as long as charity remains there. Whence, the words of the Apostle: Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?

Would we not here have Terrien’s very own opinion? Everything is there: indwelling, the temple of the Holy Spirit, and all of this resulting from the fact that God is in the soul ut effector, as the Author of charity as an effect.

Perfect! But, let us follow along in the text: “Therefore,” continues St. Thomas, “just as it is by the Holy Spirit that we are rendered capable of loving God—given that every beloved being is in the lover precisely as such—it likewise is necessary that, through the Holy Spirit the Father and the Son dwell in us. Whence, the words of our Savior: we will come to him, that is, to him who loves God, and make our dwelling in him.”

I do concede that, in the first part of this text, St. Thomas—who, when he formally treats of the divine indwelling, always attributes it to God’s abode in us through knowledge and love issuing from grace—here pronounces the words indwelling and temple in relation to the existence of the Holy Spirit in us as cause and conserver of the righteous person’s charity, Deus effector. Therefore, if one relies solely upon the material words of the text, separating them from what follows after them, then yes, indeed, Terrien’s opinion is established in St. Thomas.

However, later on in the text, St. Thomas brings into the picture another intimate abode of God within us, no longer, He says, that of God ut effector, but that of God as the object of love, ut amatum in amante, in quantum huiusmodi. And although the text, “Ad eum veniemus, etc.,” which he cites in support of this, explicitly speaks only of the objective abode of the Father and the Son in us, there can be no doubt that the Holy Spirit is included therein too, since this abode is realized, if we follow him, in virtue of God’s love³⁸—and, therefore, the love of God as a whole, Father, Son, and Spirit. This objective abode is what St. Thomas always understands by God’s indwelling in the righteous soul when he treats the question ex professo, doing so in union with Terrien himself (in accord with the latter’s second manner of explaining the divine indwelling).

Will we need to think that there are two indwellings of God in us, one properly belonging to the Holy Spirit as producer and conserver of our charity, and the other as common to the three persons, pursuant to the love of God and to grace inasmuch as it is the source of this love? This is Pétau’s position, combatted in such decisive terms by Fr. Froget.³⁹ The latter demonstrates, as he desires, that, in particular in St. Thomas’s thought, every time that that the production and conservation of grace are under discussion, it is the One God who intervenes, or else the Triune God, though acting in the manner of a unique principle for all of His works ad extra. And if efficient causality of a particular effect, like grace, is attributed to the Holy Spirit by Sacred Scripture, this can be so only through the application of the law of appropriation. And the same must be said concerning God’s presence following upon the divine activity, which in such cases is only the presence of immensity which doubtlessly makes the very substance of God exist in us, though that of God as a whole.

Consequently, it can only be in a broad sense,⁴⁰ by way of appropriation, that St. Thomas applied to the Holy Spirit’s abode in us ut effector gratia the text of St. Paul, “Nescitis quia templum Dei estis et Spiritus Dei habitat in vobis?”, and we need not look within this substantial existence of the Divine Cause in us for a formal explanation for the real presence of God in us which specially belongs to grace.

And nonetheless, St. Thomas’s citation of this text here is not inappropriate, even from the perspective of God’s real indwelling in the righteous.

This is so first of all because if the divine action does not, by itself, bring about this indwelling, God’s real presence in us, through the production of grace—no matter what Suárez might say—is necessarily presupposed by it, since it bestows upon the soul the divine substance which the knowledge and love issuing from grace will thus be able to embrace, with an experiential embrace. Likewise, this is the case because the emergence of the righteous person’s relation of knowledge and love to the Holy Trinity spontaneously arises, indeed as a result, from the production of grace. And thus, God’s substantial presence in us by the divine causality, as well as the real indwelling that arises from the knowledge and love of God following upon grace, are in fact simultaneous.

Perhaps St. Thomas’s awareness of this contemporaneity of the two divine forms of divine presence (one furnishing, so to speak, the matter, for His real indwelling, and the other realizing it) is what led him to cite the text that we saw in relation to the first. And in this case, he would go beyond what can be explained by this first presence by way of appropriation. Given that St. Thomas is not here treating of the question of the indwelling in a formal manner, as is proven by the very title of this 22^nd chapter, this explanation is at least plausible.

Therefore, I believe that the text referred to by Terrien is not decisive. A fortiori, I dismiss the texts from St. Thomas and St. Albert discussed in pages 213ff of his work, texts which he invokes in passing in support of his position.⁴¹ With the best of intentions here, I there find only an exposition concerning the special mode of presence belonging to spirits, something that is not in question here, and in particular, concerning the special mode of God’s presence through His activity and immensity, the role of which, as I already indicated, is purely preparatory for God’s indwelling.

Here, I bring the contentious portion of this exposition to a close so that I may, quite to the contrary, praise Terrien for his second explanation.⁴² He did not give into Suarez’s exaggeration, and when he delivers his final decision concerning the realism of objective presence, He makes appeal, not to the requirements of charity but, rather, to the substantial presence of immensity: “For God’s very substance is what is present, giving, conserving, and activating the power of knowing and loving.” It is said in two lines,⁴³ but it is said!

Let us conclude from this discussion of the Vasquezian system that the requirements of subjective grace, founded solely on the ontological being of this grace, do not have the efficacious power for realizing and bringing about, by itself, God’s indwelling in the soul of the righteous. The attempts in this direction have led only to illusory results by making the real presence of God that specifically belongs to grace into a particular case of the presence of immensity.

Article III

How do Suarez and certain Thomists, by dispensing with the presence of immensity, exaggerate the actual requirements of grace in regard to God’s intimate and substantial presence in the righteous soul?

Suarez.—Suarez begins by attacking Vasquez’s opinion. He has no difficulty showing that what brings about God’s special presence in the soul through to grace is not the newness of this effect but, rather, the power to perfectly know and love God given to the soul by grace gives, a power, he says, existing IN the soul, enabling it to enjoy God to the degree this is possible in this life and to be disposed to perfect enjoyment of Him [in the hereafter].⁴⁴

As is clear, this is the intrinsic tendency of grace to the Triune God as an object, terminus, and end, contrasted by Suarez to the relation to the One God, the cause of the effect of grace, advocated on behalf of by Vasquez so as to explain the special presence attributable to grace. So far, we have St. Thomas’s own thought in pure form.

In response to Vasquez’s objection that this tendency could exist in man only as an idea representing God or as an affective impulse toward Him, that is, all in all, effects of God, which are integrally one with grace and positing in God only an extrinsic denomination as a known and loved object, which can just as well involve God’s remoteness and absence,⁴⁵ Suarez responds first of all quite rightly that we would then only have the common presence of immensity attributable to God’s power, at the very most with an extensive increase of this presence to a new effect, which would not assure God’s substantial presence in the soul in some new capacity.

Then, passing on from criticism to the exposition of his own thought, Suarez strives to erect, in the face of Vasquez’s conception, the diametrically opposed one which has remained connected to his name ever since.⁴⁶

For my part, he says, I find to be sufficiently (satis) probable and pious the opinion held by those who say that the gifts of sanctifying grace are such that, though their own, proper efficacy and by a right that is in some way connatural, they call for the intimate, real, and personal presence of God in the soul sanctified by these gifts.⁴⁷

“They call for…”: this is perfectly true. However, our concern here is not with this requirement but, instead, with the effective and immediate realization of this requirement. Suarez senses this fact, and augmenting this position and—here we have the glaring exaggeration—carrying onward it to the very antipode of Vasquez’s own, he declares:

If, per impossibile, we imagined that the Holy Spirit were not in fact really present (that is, by immensity) to the soul—precisely because the soul would be graced with the gifts of grace—the Holy Spirit Himself would come to it through a personal presence and would be present in it, remaining there for as long as grace remained therein. Therefore, the soul, in this respect alone—and even though it in fact moreover possesses God present in it through His immensity and power—can be said, quite rightly, to really possess God forthwith, in a new and unique manner by way of grace and charity and indeed by means of these gifts.⁴⁸

The consequence of this claim is obvious. If, separately, completely by itself and without the presence of immensity, grace—considered, not as an effect but, rather, in its intrinsic requirements in relation to God as the terminus of knowledge and of love—can even in this life bring about God’s real presence in the soul, this presence is completely original, in no way that of immensity, a presence which is proper to grace, even when it is, in fact, brought about in parallel with the presence of immensity. The diversity of formal notions of presence calls for a diversity in forms of presence.⁴⁹

What proofs does Suarez bring forth in support of his antecedent?

First, an analogy. If, he says, we were to imagine that the Word is not present by way of His immensity to the humanity of Christ, He would be present substantially on account of the hypostatic union.—However, the author does not attach more importance to this argument than it is worth, for as he says, this physical union (hence, one necessarily entailing the real presence of one of its termini as soon as the other is posited) cannot be compared to the righteous soul’s affective union with God, a union which is brought about only through the intermediary of an accident.⁵⁰

The “moral”⁵¹ proof still remains, which Suarez judges suffices for declaring (SATIS DECLARAT) his antecedent:

By grace and charity, a most perfect friendship between God and man is contracted. Now, of itself, friendship requires, between the friends, a union which would not solely be a conformity of sentiment but, indeed, an inseparable presence and shared existence (conjunctionem) to the degree this is possible. Therefore, so perfect a form of friendship, especially given the fact that it is spiritual, requires, in virtue of a divine right and as something owed, God’s intimate presence in the sanctified soul. In this way, God makes man His friend, namely, by really existing in him, precisely in virtue of the perfection of his friendship, such that, in the absence of any other basis (for God’s real presence in him), this alone would suffice.

However, given that this union, however friendly and cordial it may be, is not a union of absolute equality but, rather, is one between beings that are proportionally equal, it follows that God remains in man as his protector and governor, thus taking care of him, not only through His general providence but, also on the special basis of His friendship. Furthermore, on account of His divine majesty, God is present in him as in a living temple, as is indicated in Sacred Scripture.⁵²

Such is the moral proof alleged by Suarez. He believes that the outlook is not foreign (alienum) to St. Thomas but, instead, serves to illuminate his own explanations, quaedam declaratio illius.

He attempts to prove this by attempting to reconcile his position with what St. Thomas holds concerning the beatific vision:

The blessed, through the efficacy of the light of glory, have God present to their minds in a special manner, as visible object which is so intimately united to them that, by itself and without any other intermediary, He is seen by them. Doubtlessly, the light of glory does not, by itself, bring about a physical union between the intellect and God, such that one could say that it renders Him present. Nonetheless, it is a disposition which, of its nature, posits this presence, outside of every consideration of the divine immensity. Why could not grace and charity be a similar disposition in another capacity? The necessity of this conclusion comes from the fact that, without the gifts of grace, true and real friendship between God and man cannot be contracted.⁵³

The Carmelite Theologians of Salamanca.—The Salmanticenses do not differ from Suarez⁵⁴ except inasmuch as Suarez, aware of the novelty that he is introducing here, uses language that is more reserved and less affirmative, particularly in regard to what concerns the attribution of his position to St. Thomas. By contrast, the Salmanticenses strive to establish that St. Thomas’s own doctrine provides the foundation for the opinion holding that the real existence of the divine persons in us flows solely from the requirements of charity.

As ever, the concern here is to present an a priori justification for God’s real presence in the soul through the requirements of grace. In no way do they question the fact of this real presence, which is not itself in question. On that point, both Suarez and the Salmanticeses are perfect.⁵⁵

The Salmanticenses’ exposition begins with the refutation of the opinion of those who think that the mode of presence specially belonging to grace—ut cognitum in cognoscente et amatum in amante, the only one indicated by St. Thomas—provides only an objective presence of God and, in the subject, only an inclination toward real presence. The Salmanticenses look to prove, by three reasons, that God’s presence, realized solely in this way, is substantial.⁵⁶

Of these three reasons, the third (drawn from the feeling of resting in God, a sign of His real presence, experienced by saints on earth in the exercise of their charity)⁵⁷ proves, in truth, to a certain degree,⁵⁸ the fact of God’s real presence in the soul. However, this argument is a posteriori, through effects, and not a priori, through the requirements of charity and of grace. Therefore, it is not concerned with our current subject, nor in accord with the intentions of its authors. The two other reasons are identical with those of Suarez, namely, the perfection of friendship established between man and God by charity,⁵⁹ and the absolutely specific likeness, eiusdem specie atomae, of the charity of the righteous on earth with that of the blessed in heaven⁶⁰ (with the latter involving a real presence). In order to avoid repetition, we will not, therefore, present these two proofs.⁶¹

Fr. Froget, O.P.—It seems to me that the pages in which Fr. Froget deduces the substantial reality of God’s presence in righteous souls, solely on the basis of charity and grace, are ultimately tied up with Suárez’s position through the intermediary of the Salmanticenses.⁶²

Here in agreement with all theologians, Froget holds that the requirements of charity serve only to actualize the foundational requirements of grace and that the latter can be judged by the former.

Therefore, what is charity? A form of friendship. And Froget shows quite excellently the three conditions of friendship which are perfectly realized in charity. Therefore, it represents a perfect form of friendship. However, what kind of union does this utterly perfect friendship imply?

Is it an affective and moral union, which, according to St. Thomas, constitutes the very essence of love? Is it a real and effective union, to which love tends and which it calls for, a union which is, according to St. Thomas, the proper effect of love?

Froget responds that it is an effective and real union. And justly considering the requirements of friendship, which exist only if it is fully reciprocal, on the side of our divine friend he proves his claim in the following terms: “Nothing is impossible for God. For Him, neither time, nor distance are obstacles. Therefore, since His sovereignly efficacious love can realize, without difficulty, what He desires, can we not legitimately conclude that the dilection that it brings to the righteous soul in some way requires Him to personally come into it?”⁶³

The argument is unmistakably that of Suarez⁶⁴ and of the Salmanticenses.⁶⁵ Given that friendship is essentially reciprocal, the requirements of charity can be considered from the side of the divine friend. Now, on God’s side, these requirements are immediately realizable. Therefore…. The author does not dare to go further and say, “Immediately realized,” but this is obviously what he thinks, and he will indeed push on in this direction.

Therefore, he presents the following objection to himself: “It will perhaps be said that this effective presence of the Beloved One does not belong to this period of exile but, instead, awaits us in patria. In the meanwhile, a merely moral presence, a union of heart and affection, would sufficiently respond, during the state of way,⁶⁶ to the requirements of friendship.”⁶⁷ Then, he follows with a warmhearted panegyric concerning the grandeurs of this moral presence.⁶⁸

No, however, replies Froget: “This is not enough. The laws of love require more still.” And he proves this by way of three arguments. The first of these arguments is summed up in this citation from St. Thomas: “The love of charity is concerned with that which is already possessed.” The second is encapsulated in this other citation drawn from the same St. Thomas: “God is present to those who love Him, even in this life, through the indwelling of grace.”

However, St. Thomas’s own context does not permit us to draw the conclusion which these texts seem, at first glance, to signify. It is in relation to faith and hope, which are possible only when their object lies in the distance, that charity (which, like every form of love, exists in both presence and in absence) is said, in the first case, to possess—that is, to be able to possess—its object. Fr. Froget sensed this fact as well, since he is content to conclude that if the three theological virtues are oriented to God immediately, charity “draws closer to him.” Indeed! But drawing closer is not the same thing as a real union.

Likewise, if we pay heed to the body of the article referred to by the second text (itself being the response to the first objection), we will read the following: “Owing to the fact that God is thus loved (by charity), He is in him who loves Him through His more noble effect, as is said in St. John says in 1 Jn. 4:16: ‘He who remains in love remains in God and God in him.’” The indwelling of grace involved in ad 1 is therefore only the “indwelling” of Goodness per essentiam in this participated goodness, His effect, namely, grace. This is the accented presence of immensity that we encountered in Vasquez. Therefore, one cannot draw anything from these texts in support of the realist requirements of the laws of love.

As for the third argument, it does not substantially differ from that by which Suarez and the Salmanticenses deduce God’s real presence in the righteous from the identity existing between charity in heaven and charity upon earth:

Charity does not pass away. Its flame will be enkindled in the presence of the Supreme Good. Its fervor will redouble, but its nature will not change. Now, in heaven, charity calls for real union, perfect union, the consummate union of the created will with the sovereign good. Does it not seem natural that it would equally require, even in this life, the Holy Spirit’s true and substantial presence?...—This conclusion imposes itself upon whoever reflects on the fact that… only a difference of degrees, of more and less, exists between charity in heaven and charity on earth. Likewise, all the while being unable to currently know God through His essence, to see Him as He is, we can nonetheless love Him in Himself, directly and immediately.⁶⁹

This argument has the advantage over the others in the fact that it relies so closely upon the requirements of our created charity. Granted, these requirements are defined not by what is intrinsic to the love of charity but, rather, by way of comparison with the charity of heaven. Therefore, it represents an extrinsic argument, though it is valid in virtue of the testimony drawn from Sacred Scripture and the agreement of theologians concerning the points that represent the nerve of the proof: the continued endurance of our earthly charity in heaven, and God’s real presence to the charity of heaven.

While discussing Suárez, we will see what we must think concerning this proof. For now, we will merely note that, in very good company, standing alongside the Salmanticenses, Billuart, and doubtlessly other Thomists,⁷⁰ Fr. Froget has adopted, in regard to the requirements of charity in terms of God’s real presence in the soul in this life, the thesis and arguments of Suárez.

Article IV

Given the victorious efficacy of the objections which are mutually addressed to each other by these opposed partisans (either of the presence of immensity or of the requirements of grace), may there not be room for a solution that enables us to regard these two factors as being complementary, thereby holding that God’s substantial indwelling in the righteous soul is the result of their synthesis?

If Suárez limited himself to saying, with the partisans of the opinion which he himself described as being “probable and pious,” that charity and sanctifying grace, in virtue of a right that is, in some way connatural, “call for” the intimate, real, and personal presence of God in the soul sanctified by these gifts, every Thomist would submit to the declaration of his thesis.

However, he adds that if, “per impossibile,” God were not in the soul through His activity, along with the presence of immensity that results from it, the Holy Spirit would come to it immediately, solely by rights of the requirements of grace, with a personal presence, remaining there for as long as grace remained present in the soul.

Suárez negligently throws out these words, “per impossibile,” with a casual air, all the while not seeming to suspect what they entail. It is nothing more nor less than the radical destruction of these requirements of grace on which he claims to exclusively found the indwelling of God in the righteous soul. For, I think that the requirements of grace needed for establishing, through their own power, the real abode of God in us, are requirements of a grace that is real. Now, grace can be real only if God produces it, and, hence, only if He is substantially present to the sanctified soul through His presence of immensity. The presence of immensity is not, of course, the formal reason for the intimate presence of God specially belonging to grace, but it does represent its inseparable adjunct, for God’s real presence cannot be efficaciously required except by the requirements of a grace that is real. This contradiction is what John of St. Thomas places in relief in the following terms: “If, per impossibile, God is considered without His immensity, He will be considered as producing neither nature, nor grace in their being and, consequently, as not providing the foundation for this other presence, which is added to the sanctified being and results in the creature from the new relation that is established between it and God by means of grace.”⁷¹ I do not believe that stronger words could be marshalled against the implausibility of Suárez’s hypothesis.

Nonetheless, given that, in the end, we here have only a case of physical impossibility, enabling us to pursue the debate on the level of essences and their abstract requirements, we must examine, without losing the benefit of this preliminary observation, the three arguments mobilized in proof of the existence of God’s real presence in us through the connatural requirements of grace, considered abstractly.

Suárez’s arguments.—I. Suarez himself did justice to his first argument drawn from the requirements of the hypostatic union. Indeed, he concedes that there is no comparison to be made here between, on the one hand, the requirement claimed by Christ’s human nature (supposing it to be physically assumed by the Word) in relation to the real presence of the Word in it, and on the other, the requirements of grace which, of itself, is only a tendency to real and personal union with God. In the case of the hypostatic union, once the first terminus is posited, the second arises physically; in the second case, the immediate and physical result is precisely what is in question here. It is quite true, as John of St. Thomas says in this regard, that “through the unitive assumption and application of Christ’s humanity to the divine person, the latter finds itself united in person and present to it in a quite special manner.” However, all the same, God’s real presence resulting from the requirements of grace “is not as manifest as is the union of the divine person, in His personal being, to this humanity.”⁷²

Therefore, we will not reflect on this first argument except to mention that it is an analogy which, even though it proves nothing, was nonetheless useful for this discussion by providing a clear declaration of its author’s intention and by capturing the overall structure of his argument.

The two other arguments are drawn from the requirements properly belonging to charity and, consequently—as we cannot overemphasize—the requirements of grace, the profound source and reason for charity.

However, these requirements are presented in different manners in those two arguments. In the first, which is the “moral” argument, they are considered on God’s side, in virtue of the right belonging to every kind of friendship, which, given its reciprocal nature, can be envisioned indifferently in either of the two friends. In the second argument, these requirements are considered in our own created charity, defined, in view of the thesis, by its identity and resemblance with the charity of the blessed, the latter involving real presence.

II. Let us first consider the moral argument drawn from the perfection of the friendship of charity. And, above all, as a matter of shared agreement, let us place, above all discussion, the fact that every kind of perfect love does not come to a halt at affection but, as St. Thomas teaches, desires and seeks ardently for real union with the beloved. Doubtlessly, affective union constitutes love formally as such.⁷³ Real union can only be its proper effect. However, as a perfect love includes not only love’s essence but also its properties, there can be no doubt that the tendency to God’s effective presence in the soul is included, for this reason, in the perfect friendship of charity.

I say, “the tendency” and not the effective presence itself. St. Thomas, on whom we here rely, says nothing more. “Love produces (real) union efficaciously, for it is what urges (the lover) onward to desire and seek after the presence of the beloved, as a thing which is befitting to it and of concern for it.”⁷⁴ And further on: “When St. Augustine says that love is ‘unitive,’ he is there referring to affective union; when he says, immediately thereafter, that it aspires to be united, copulare intendens, he there is referring to real union.”⁷⁵ Therefore, all that can be concluded concerning the perfection of friendship, according to these data drawn from St. Thomas, is that it necessarily includes a tendency, an intention, toward real union. The effective realization of real union is, therefore, within this order as something normal; however, such effective realization is not included, as its property, in perfect friendship.

This is a point that John of St. Thomas openly expresses in several places:

Although friendship, in order to be perfect, posits this perfect presence, nonetheless, when the latter is brought about (quando exercetur), friendship’s mediation is not the formal reason for effective presence; there must be bodily and quantitative contact (in the case of bodily beings) or virtual contact, brought about by an energy in act (in the case of spirits). Therefore, if friendship has an undeniable right to real presence, we still must find the determining reason for this presence when it is brought about, whether it be through virtual contact, which would be reduced (in the case of God) to immensity or some other mode of real union.⁷⁶

Further on, aiming directly at Suarez’s own reasoning concerning the perfect friendship found in God, John of St. Thomas remarks:

All of this forever suffers from the same obscurity… for, in the end, if I have a love for food or for money, I would never have its real presence without material contact being involved. Whether we are driven onward by love to seek God’s presence, or whether God would Himself be inclined to give it,⁷⁷ one cannot conclude from that that love would be the determining reason for God’s substantial contact (with the soul). Something else must be found.⁷⁸

And, coming back to these reflections in a more developed manner in his treatise On the Divine Missions, our author concludes as follows: “Here, we have the point of difficulty where the debate exists among all those, we can say, who strove to make use of the utterly great perfection the love of charity in order to provide a justification for God’s physical presence to the soul. It is quite true that such love requires such presence and pursues it. However, it does not bring it about, formally speaking. By itself, love is not the determining reason that renders friends really present. When they come to be really present to one another, this is brought about through contact and bodily presence, which the lover seeks through love.”⁷⁹

In the whole of this discussion, John of St. Thomas does nothing more than apply to this question concerning the sanctified soul’s real possession of God’s substance the principles that St. Thomas developed each time he treated of formal beatitude,⁸⁰ that is, the precise act by which the substance of God is grasped by the blessed in heaven. Let us cite this passage from the Summa theologiae:

Beatitude is the attainment of the last end. Now, the attainment of the end does not consist in the very act of the will, for the will is directed to the end, both absent, when it desires it, and present, when it is delighted by resting therein. Now it is evident that the very desire of the end is not the attainment of the end but, rather, is a movement towards it. Moreover, delight comes to the will from the end being present and not conversely, is a thing made present by the fact that the will delights in it.

Therefore, the presence of the end to him who desires it must be due to something other than an act of the will. This is evidently the case in regard to sensible ends. For if money were acquired through an act of the will, the covetous man would have it from the very moment that he wished for it. However, for the time being, it is far from him, and he attains it by grasping it in his hand or in some like manner, and then, he delights in the money thus gotten. And the same is true for an intelligible end. Indeed, at first we desire to attain such an end, and we attain it when it is made present to us by an act of the intellect. Then, the delighted will rests in the end when attained.⁸¹

As is clear, for St. Thomas, if God’s real presence in beatitude is not the effect of the will, this is neither because this will lacks the requirement for this presence nor because it lacks the capacity to enjoy it. No, instead, this is so because of its very nature, which cannot procure such contact, the terminus of its exigencies and condition of enjoyment. One could say, drawing on the example used by St. Thomas, that the will lacks the “hands” for taking possession of its object and embracing it in its substance. And this is why it must appeal to the intellect, fortified by the light of glory, which is what can grasp the wholly intelligible reality of God who offers Himself to it, thus embracing Him, in virtue of the principle that the understood object and the intellect are more united than are matter and form. What we need here, in order to render account of God’s presence in us through grace, is something analogous to this realistic grasp of the divine intelligible by the intellect. It is no help to speak of a requirement ante and a resting post adeptionem for the will. They are not involved. It is clear that once one has found the hand that is able to grasp God, the union realized thanks to it will primordially be the work of the exigencies and searching activity of the will (primam unionem, scilicet realem, amor facit EFFECTIVE) and that the consummation of the possession of God through the enjoyment of His real presence will be brought about, it as well, by the will. However, between its search and enjoyment, there is the first taking of possession which the will by itself cannot realize, and thus, we ask: what realizes it?⁸²

Will it be said that love, in God, need not follow these rules? But then, this would be to give up thinking of divine things by way of analogy with created things, and such a state of affairs would represent the end of all theological reflection on this lofty question, including Suarez’s theological reflection.

Will it be said that God’s effective love is creative in nature? We are aware of this fact. God’s love is what produces, as its correlative effect, sanctifying grace in those whom He loves with a privileged and definitive love. However, here, we are not concerned with creating. God’s real presence, considered from God’s side, is God rendering Himself present. It is not an effect. We are not at all questioning whether He is really present in us through grace. This is a sure fact. However, since we are here considering God’s love on God’s side, we would need to identify and express the determining reason, on God’s side, for His real presence in us through grace, a presence which grace, along with charity (which is the supreme expression of its requirements), does not manage, on His side, to explain.

Will it be said, with Fr. Froget, that nothing is impossible for God? But, what is meant by this recourse made to the Divine Omnipotence? Does it mean that the exigencies of God’s love, by thus participating in His Omnipotence, do not in any way take into account their analogy with the exigencies of love in general and, violating them, will be capable of making the divine substance emerge in the face of our charity and grace within our soul? If the analogy involved in absolute perfections found in God and in us signifies something, here it is an impossibility, for a contradiction exists between the exigencies here conceded to the divine love and the exigencies connatural to any love. Now, the divine power does not bring about contradiction.

If one wishes to speak about the divine power in general, in the service of God’s dilection for us (though not identical with it), we doubtlessly here have, if not “the hand,” at least “the arm” which we are looking for. However, all things can be concluded from the omnipotence at the service of God’s love: the Incarnation, the Eucharist, and the beatific union. The hand? Where is the hand? That is, where is the special determining reason for God’s real presence in the soul through grace, for this divine presence’s contact with us and not for the marvels of God’s goodness for us in general?

For a moment, I thought that Fr. Froget was going to designate this formal reason, namely, when he said: For God, neither time nor distance are obstacles.⁸³ In an analogous passage, Fr. Terrien had pressed on to the point of giving an explanation, perhaps without realizing the value of what thus stated in a line. However, we already discussed this above.⁸⁴ What I find unfortunate is the fact that Froget did not see at this moment that what was required by the fact that he proclaimed (namely, that for God, neither time, nor distance are obstacles), that which immediately justifies this fact, is—not God’s omnipotence in general—but, rather, the omnipotence of the Author, hic and nunc, of grace as well as of the soul. In other words: the common presence of immensity. This presence, at once substantial and that of a friend (since it follows [suit à] the expansion of the friendship-bestowing gift of grace) would have perfected this substantial indwelling of God in the righteous person’s soul, which he speaks of—like Fr. Terrien for that matter—with such unction. If he would have seen this, he most certainly would not be satisfied with this timid conclusion which leaves the point of the difficulty in question: “can we not legitimately conclude that the dilection that it brings to the righteous soul in some way requires Him to personally come into it?” However, building upon the divine presence of immensity, itself being specially strengthened [s’affirmant spécialement] in the sanctified soul, he would have proclaimed aloud to the requirements of his grace, represented by the requirements of his charity: “Seek no further. Be rid of your doubt! Your God is here within! Enter! All is yours!”

And nonetheless, however timid it might be, we cannot unreservedly accept this conclusion. So be it! The friendship which God bears for us requires God, by such means as He has at His disposal, to come personally into us. But when? Need this be immediate? Perfect friendship must procure real presence, and quite certainly, if God has done so much as to give us [a tant fait que de nous donner] a charity which aspires to be really united to Him, He has not done this so that He would then eternally refuse to give us His presence. Now, how many friendships on earth are complete and perfect, even though the meeting [reunion] of friends is rare or delayed? Let us not forget that the essence of love is the union of affections and that, provided that it be accompanied by a desire for real presence, love, precisely as love, is complete. Therefore, in the absence of every reason bringing about and imposing upon our mind, by its positive character, God’s real and physical presence (as the presence of immensity would), it is impossible to know whether the necessity which requires God to come personally into the soul which He loves must be realized in this life or, instead, only in heaven, for this latter presence suffices for satisfying the requirements of God’s love, and—this represents our final words to Suárez and Fr. Froget—“the laws of love” cannot ask for anything more.

III. However, our sights must now turn not to charity in general nor to God’s own charity but, rather, to our own charity and there consider the requirements of the divine love. If the charity of the righteous on earth is identical on all points with the charity of the blessed in heaven, with the latter involving the real possession of God, then our own charity would share with the charity of the blessed in requiring God’s substantial presence. This is the third argument of this theory, and we must examine it carefully.

In Suarez, this third argument is complicated by an attempt to compare grace and charity on earth to the light of glory. Doubtlessly, the latter, as Suarez himself recognizes, does not bring about, all by itself, physical union between the intellect and God. Nonetheless, it is a disposition which, by its very nature, calls for this presence: “Why could not grace and charity be a similar disposition?”⁸⁵ John of Saint Thomas has no difficulty in responding to this question, and his response is, quite precisely, just as Suárez himself concedes, that the light of glory is not what brings about God’s real presence, the very thing that one expects of grace and glory. “It is an undisputed fact,” this master states, “that once the light of glory is given, the union of the intellect to the divine essence thereby comes to be established, but why? Because (simultaneously) the divine essence is united (physically) after the manner of an intelligible species to the minds of the blessed. There is nothing of the sort in the soul prior to the light of glory, solely on account of the infusion of grace, and we can see no other union that would be given.”⁸⁶

It is as though he said: your claim that the light of glory and grace are like each other is irrelevant. The concern here is to justify, by means of the requirements of grace and without the presence of immensity, the real and effective presence of God in the souls of the just. Now, in beatitude, the light of glory does not, by itself, have this requirement. The light of glory is a supernatural disposition which proportions the intellect to receive the divine intelligible. Now, since God does nothing in vain, it is indeed quite in order that the union of God and the intellect would be brought about once the human intellect possesses the light of glory (constat quod illo posito datur unio divinae essentiae), and in fact, the intellect of the blessed henceforth possesses everything that it needs so that God’s essence might be united to it as would an idea, an intelligible species. However, it is on its own proper initiative, if one can speak in such a manner, that the divine essence brings about this physical union, which the light of glory makes possible but does not itself bring about. Why and how would grace be something more than this?

Yes, it will be said, but all the same, God’s real presence in the soul follows immediately upon the presence of the light of glory in the intellect of the blessed.—Perfectly true, but we know the positive reason for why this is so: the divine essence enters physically into the intellect, after the manner of an intelligible species. Can you affirm something analogous in the holy soul on account of its charity? Certainly not! Thus, outside of the presence of immensity, show me how this union is brought about. There is none at hand: nec apparet quod detur alia unio.

In the Salmanticenses, the argument emerges from this extraneous [étrangère] consideration so as to rest only on the fact that the two loves, that in heaven and that on earth, are specifically the same. Do not both of them tend toward God inasmuch as He is the sovereign good, sovereignly loved, as He is in Himself? “As He is in Himself,” what does this mean? Our authors continue, saying that we should ask this of the charity of heaven. It responds: as an object which is substantially present to me. And in conclusion: if charity on earth were to give a different response, the two charities would need to be distinct, not only morally but even specifically and substantially, for they would call for specifically different forms of possession of their object.⁸⁷

I have abridged the argument expressed by the Salmanticenses, but I do not believe that I have betrayed its overall sense, one that Fr. Froget in turn expresses with candor in his conclusion: “Thus, all the while remaining incapable of knowing God through his essence, we can nonetheless love Him in Himself, directly and immediately.”

I do wonder how such high-caliber theologians were able to confuse things that are so radically different: the immediate ordering of charity to God such as He is in Himself, which is the specifying object of charity, with the real, substantial presence of this specifying object, in the intimate depths of the soul. As is well known, the presence of an object, as such, to a power, to a habitus, or to an activity [opération], abstracts from the substantial presence of the being presented: to specify is not to exist physically in a being. This is so elementary a point that I had to reread the documents in question before being convinced that our authors committed such a confusion.⁸⁸

Therefore, what does it mean for something to specify? It is to give a being its form, to give a tendency the terminus that formally determines it and differentiates it from every other tendency, the terminus which remains the same during the movement and at the culmination of the movement in which this tendency is fulfilled. The specification is identically the same, whether the movement be in the midst of progressing or whether it is actualized and brought to its completion in real contact with its terminus.

God, such as He is in Himself—this is the terminus, the unique specifying object of every form of charity, whether in via or in patria. And charity tends toward this terminus thanks to the light of the supernaturalized intellect that guides it and directs it. It does so according to its own mode of activity, which is the mode belonging to every act of will, namely, through the object of the intellect; it loves the reality of the good that specifies it—in our present case, God such as He is in Himself.⁸⁹

Has it attained Him? Such is the case in the beatific vision, where an intimate and substantial union is realized between God and the intellect, one which wholly fills man’s spirit,⁹⁰ a real presence of God, which is translated into consummated charity and into enjoyment of God who is possessed.

Is it still en route, guided by revelation, by the words and ideas of the Creed, which can indeed tell us what God is in Himself, though at a distance—as intentiones, as tendencies, as is said in the wondrously expressive word used by scholastic thinkers? Then, charity conforms to this way in which God is presented to it. It is intentional. Yes, indeed, it tends to the reality of God such as He is in Himself: motus voluntatis terminatur ad res. However, it is united to Him without really passing beyond the verbum which represents Him within the subject. It aims at the reality represented; however, it neither embraces nor enjoys it, properly speaking.

The fact that the charity of heaven and that of earth have identical divine specifying objects does not, therefore, change anything in the state of our charity. On-high and here-below, charity remains the same: on-high being concerned with a God who is really present, thanks to the divine vision; here-below, being concerned with a God represented in the formulas of faith. And naturally, everything that we say concerning the powerlessness or the power of charity is found again, by way of resorption [en s’y résorbant], in the grace of wayfarers or in grace consummated in glory, from which charity draws, in its two states, everything that it is and possesses.

Therefore, on the basis of the specific identity, eiusdem speciei atomae, of the charity of earth and that of heaven, both rendered to the supreme degree of the specific perfection of charity though without passing out of the line of its specific perfection, we can draw no conclusion as regards the real and physical presence of God, such as He is in Himself and in the souls of the righteous upon earth.

This presence exists and is a fact that is affirmed by Sacred Scripture. However, it does not draw its effective existence solely from the requirements of the charity had by the saints on earth. Our grace can only tend efficaciously toward physical possession of God, realizable when He enters into us, either in eternity or even now here-below. In order for this possession to emerge as something given in an effective manner here-below, we must make appeal to some other factor involved in the divine presence other than charity and grace. And as we have said, this other factor is the divine immensity, extended to the supernatural order (as is fitting, since it is the divine immensity); it is what enables that which, of itself, is only a tendency to be realized in the substantial presence of God in the depths of the soul.

Conclusion

Let us conclude this already too-long discussion by noting the successes and failures of the two opposed theories. Vasquez and Terrien (in his first explanation) give God’s real, effective, and substantial presence an outstanding positive foundation by having recourse to the presence of immensity resulting from the divine activity, extending itself to the giving of grace. However, they run aground when they believe that the indwelling of God which specially belongs to grace can be found in the production of grace, precisely as an effect, and in the subsequent relation to the Author of the supernatural [order thereby caused through the production of this effect]. This ultimately denatures the character of this indwelling, which is the indwelling of the Trinity and of the Persons thereof as such, not as the one God, the Author of the supernatural [order]. What is added, then, by speaking of appropriation, ultimately ends up discrediting this teaching: a presence through appropriation is wholly opposed to a real, substantial, and personal presence.

Suarez, the Salmanticenses, and Froget have rendered account of the fact that we cannot look on the side of the efficient cause of grace if we are looking to find a personal and real presence of the divine persons which would go beyond appropriation. They note well that we must look on the side of the tendency toward God as an object, arising in the soul as soon as grace exists therein. Indeed, is it not precisely as objects [of knowledge] that the divine persons are themselves—really and in a non-appropriated manner—present to the beatified intellect? Therefore, our authors perfectly right in referring to the special relation to God as known and love which is constitutive of grace as such, there seeing the positive reason for what is special in the presence of God owed to grace.—However, they run aground when they wish to deduce from this relation God’s effective, intimate, and substantial presence in the souls of the righteous on earth. From the foundational tendency immanent to grace, a tendency which generates the knowledge had through faith and the love that follows upon it, one can indeed conclude that God, such as He is in Himself, is the specifying object of our grace, but not that this specifying object is substantially present within the subject. This is clear since grace, like charity, is complete, despite the fact that it is still only a tendency. To tend and to embrace are two different things.

The perfection and omnipotence of God’s love are invoked, and in this too, one sees things aright, for it would be odd if God were to establish perfect friendship between us and Him if He did not intend to satisfy the supreme requirement of this love which is the physical and personal union of friends. However, this requirement finds its satisfaction in the real union of heaven coming at the end of the life of the righteous: the essential perfection of love, which is uniquely found in affection, is perfectly reconcilable with the experience of delays. Nothing requires the perfection of God’s love for us to requisition His Omnipotence in order to immediately give us the substantial divine presence. And even when this would be given, we still would need to indicate the precise means by which the Divine Omnipotence would bring about God’s entrance into us, something which love, by itself, does not suffice to bring about.

Therefore, we remain faced with two positive and solid factors of God’s effective presence in His righteous ones: the Vasquezian factor, namely, the presence of immensity resulting from the production of grace as an effect; and the Suarezian factor, namely, the requirements intrinsic to grace, which call for their fulfillment, as a right, though without being able, by themselves, to presently actualize this right, the real and personal presence of God in us.

We have seen where we ended up by opposing them to one another, as though they were mutually exclusive. Could we not attempt to supplement them by one another, the first explaining the substantial character of God’s presence in the soul as a result of grace and the second accounting for what is special in this same presence?

Thus, the difficult work of excavation that we have carried out in this section would not be lost, and truth be told, we could even say that we are now ready to begin our work precisely thanks to the accomplishment of this initial task.

Question 2: What is St. Thomas’s Thought Concerning the Interior State of the Righteous Person?

In this Question, I intend to establish that the presence of immensity is, according to St. Thomas, the presupposed and indispensable condition for the realization of the indwelling of the Holy Trinity in us through grace during the present life.

In the simple and indivisible essence of the holy soul, there are two realities present. On the one hand, there is the very substance of the immense God, the creator of the soul and efficient cause of sanctifying grace, preserving both in their being, portans omnia verbo virtutis suae.⁹¹ On the other hand, there is the divine energy of grace which renders the soul capable of tending toward God by faith and divine love and of desiring, with all its powers, real union with God, without however, being able to bring about the physical contact which would render Him substantially present. This represents the outlook concerning our interior depths to which our earlier discussions led us.

According to theologians, the presence of immensity is a presence common to all beings. And as we have seen, against Vasquez, while the production of grace, the infused virtues, and the gifts, along with their conservation and activation comes to increase the surface area of the first grasping of the soul resulting from the very creation of this soul, this presence, inasmuch as it is God’s substantial presence, cannot itself be increased. As Suárez objected quite aptly to Vasquez: “Given that the soul is indivisible, it is (from its creation) completely and intimately present to God entirely, considered in His essence (itself immutable). There cannot be more or less in this mode of presence or existence of God in things.”⁹² The point is quite obvious: as soon as God is substantially present in virtue of creation, what can we still look for from the perspective of this same physical and substantial presence? By extending the divine action, one cannot however increase the substance of God thus present. And this presence, once again, is the presence common to every creature, the substantial presence of immensity which results from the creature’s relation to God whose universal action creates and conserves its natural and supernatural being, a relation which aims not at the Triune God but, rather at the One God, substantially and intimately present in all of His effects.

However, if, from the perspective of the mode of the divine reality’s presence, there is no difference between any given creature and the holy soul, everything changes when we take into account the intrinsic tendency of grace which arises immediately upon the bestowal of this grace to the soul, and keeps watch within it, eager for real union with God.

When God’s substance exists within any given creature thanks to His creative activity, it resides there alone and is, as it were, parked. It is present in this being, not to it. Without a doubt, the created substance is penetrated by the divine action which sustains it and moves it: omnia in Ipso constant, all things have their consistency in God. However, from the perspective of the very being of the two realities—that which is divine and that which is created—there is only juxtaposition. God is, of necessity, in stones, wood, and water… entirely present; however, He is there as something foreign. The being of the creature is unable to enter into direct relation with the very substance of God who is, nonetheless, so intimately present to it, unable to communicate with Him, to grasp Him and, if one may dare to speak thus, to assimilate itself to Him. The presence of God is as complete as possible but it takes place in a no-less-complete form of indifference.

This is what was expressively noted by St. Augustine when he said:

For what is there that is not in Him, of whom it is divinely written, “For of Him, and through Him, and in Him, are all things?” If, then, all things are in Him, in whom can any possibly live that do live, or be moved that are moved, except in Him in whom they are? Yet all are not with Him in that way in which it is said to the soul (ei, scilicet menti), “I am continually with You.” Nor is He with all in that way in which we say, “The Lord be with you.”⁹³

The Lord with us and no longer only in us: this is the special presence which is added, on account of grace, in those in possession of it.

In the indivisible unity of the spiritual soul, Mens, divinized by grace, the divine substance is physically present, as it is in all things, by the presence of immensity attributable to the Author of nature and of grace. However, here, it finds itself faced with the coordinated, efficacious tendency of the participated divine nature which urges the soul onward toward reunion with God, through a real union, at least in beatitude. God, present in the holy soul through His immensity, now there encounters an energy that is capable of grasping Him. One and the same, indivisible soul, Mens, contains them both: on the one hand, the divine reality to which the soul aspires and, on the other, the sanctified soul whose entire energy is oriented toward this grasping. Clearly, in this kind of enclosed place, a new relation necessarily flows forth between the holy soul and God substantially present in it, a unique relation that has nothing in common with the relation by which the presence of immensity is constituted since it is not founded upon the divine causality but, rather, upon the essential ordination of grace to unite us intimately, through the efficacious knowledge and love which emanate from it, to God substantially present in us.

Therefore, before anything is manifested in the powers, virtues, and activities of the soul, in faith, hope, charity, and the gifts, solely by being placed in the presence of the divine reality and of the tendency toward it which is essential to grace, an initial form of joining is brought about in the indivisibility of the spiritual soul. The soul, equipped with His grace and emerging in this state from the power of God, turns back by a kind of reflex movement, something whose secret key is found in its spirituality,⁹⁴ toward the God who produces it and is immanent within it. Its relation to this immanent God is no longer the relation to God as an efficient cause which gives rise to the presence of immensity. What it seeks in its God, substantially present within it, is the object of knowledge and love to which it is efficaciously ordered. The divine immensity gives this new mode of presence its substantial character: grace gives it the special and characteristic element that distinguishes it forever from the presence of immensity. It is the objective presence of a spiritual reality, substantially united to a being capable of embracing it, received in a spirit of generosity, as the spirit that it is, in another spirit. This is the presence of God’s very substance, not that of God the Cause but, rather, of God such as He is, inasmuch as He is God, no longer God simply immanent within our soul, as He is within stone and wood, but rather, as dwelling like a guest in the soul capable of knowing and loving Him, in the soul inasmuch as it is akin to God through grace.

Thus, we can see how this doctrine differs from those of Vasquez and Suarez. The substantial presence of immensity is required, not as in Vasquez as the adequate and determining reason for the presence specially belonging to grace but, rather, as the prior and indispensable condition for this new substantial presence. Moreover, the efficacious requirements of grace, as regards objective union with God, are likewise required, though not, as in Suárez, in the unrealizable hope that they can even now, through the appeal that they express, make descend into us the substance of God which hypothetically is not there.

The role played by the requirements of grace is to order us to join back, in a new manner—through the assimilation proper to knowledge and love, as an objective terminus and not as an efficient principle—to God who is already substantially present in us, if one may so dare to speak, materially, through the presence of immensity.

This doctrine seems to our eyes to be the very truth of the matter, since it alone takes everything into account. It does not, like Vasquez, force the personal presence of God specially belonging to grace to lie upon the Procrustean bed of the common presence of immensity. Nor does it join Suárez in violating the necessarily intentional requirements of our grace by forcing us to assert that God is substantially present in us even in our state as wayfarers, viatores, in fulfillment of our love which here is led along by faith, a virtue belonging to those still travelling upon the path. Without a doubt, He is in fact so present—but not solely in virtue of grace. He is there because, since He is God, He is substantially present to the souls whom He has created and who can be grasped by Him. Only a synthetic view of these complementary realities, the presence of immensity and the power that grace has for joining God everywhere the soul comes to be in contact with Him, can enable us to understand how God’s indwelling is brought about in righteous souls.

This teaching was formulated clearly by St. Thomas, as something natural and obvious, like a particular case of a more general law, indeed doing so in terms that are so clear that a little attention would suffice for those whom we have seen hold positions that are so unreal, in particular for those who love to say, “if per impossibile,” so that they might avoid wasting their energies:

To the third argument, we must respond that these three modes of presence (by power, presence, and essence, which are all integral parts of the presence of immensity) do not have their origin in the creature’s various manners of being but, rather, are considered in relation to God’s own ways of acting. And this is why they are found in every creature and are presupposed for all other modes of presence. In Him in whom God exists through the hypostatic union, He likewise exists through grace, and in him in whom He exists by grace, He exists through essence, presence, and power.⁹⁵

Let us extract this text from the particular elements that it contains inasmuch as it is a response to a particular objection, considering only the doctrine at the foundation of this response. Here, we have a clear affirmation that God’s presence in all things through His activity (presence of immensity) is presupposed by all the other modes of His presence. These other modes of presence are immediately proclaimed: the hypostatic union and the union with God derived from grace. St. Thomas could have added: the presence of God through the glorious vision of Him.⁹⁶ Therefore, it is a general law. And how imposed it is by the very nature of things! Before the created being would be united to God in a special manner, does it not need to exist? However, if it exists, this is because, in everything it is, it exists because of God, and if this is so—in virtue of the divine activity immediately at work in it—God is already necessarily in it per essentiam.

Therefore, God is substantially within this place. Hence, whether He elevates the sacred humanity [of Christ] to the personality of the Word through the hypostatic assumption, or penetrates the intellect of the blessed after the manner of an impressed species, vitally concurring with it in the inexpressible union of the divine vision, or unites Himself to the holy soul as an object of intellection and love, in all such cases this is realized, so to speak, at home. New relations arise within the soul, giving rise to new modes of God’s substantial presence within it, but the preliminary condition in order for these presences to be substantial is found in the divine presence of immensity which, as a presence of God as a whole, per essentiam, provides these presences with their foundational substantial character which their own various formal characters can only draw profit from.

It will perhaps be said: the new relation introduced by grace in relation to the divine substance intimately present within the soul through immensity cannot be a relation to God as He is in Himself, to the Trinitarian God. For He who is present within us substantially through the presence of immensity is the One God, the Cause of the soul and of its grace.⁹⁷

We respond: no doubt, the divine causality is the reason for God’s presence in the soul through His immensity, but He never ceases to be there per essentiam. Now, there are not two essences of God, that of God as a cause and that of the Triune God. Would the Divine Persons be absent from the place where the Divine Essence is found? Therefore, on God’s side, there is only one presence, just as there is only one substance. However, there are two ways for the creature to enter into relation with this unique substantial presence.

First of all, there is that which results from the gifts of nature and grace inasmuch as they are God’s effects, and no new relation can arise from this manner of considering God’s presence to the soul. The relation of the soul and its supernatural gifts to their cause is a relation to the One God and not the Triune God, since it is everywhere admitted that the Trinity, precisely as such, does not act in God’s effects ad extra.⁹⁸

However, one can also consider the relation established (once the soul exists and is endowed with grace through the divine activity) between God’s substance and the divinized soul on account of the divine energy which constitutes grace. This energy aims at the divine substance as God in His eternity contemplates Himself in His own proper substance and, therefore, not as a cause, but rather, as the terminus and object of supernaturalized human activity. Thus, the inner depths of God, so to speak, opens itself up before the soul with the infinity of its being, its attributes, and the intimate life of the divine persons.

If it is impossible that God would be aimed at by His effects in any other way than as a cause and in His unity, there is no difficulty involved in saying that God would be aimed at in Himself and such as He is as the object of knowledge and love. Indeed, the substance of God is, as it were, enclosed and restricted by His efficient causality: the latter manifests God only by reducing Him to one of His aspects, the most external of them,⁹⁹ and if one can so speak, the humblest,¹⁰⁰ since it has an eye to the created order. By contrast, God’s substance, as such, spreads out what is found within itself when it is contemplated and loved. Nothing restricts it. All that are needed are eyes and a heart capable of being elevated to this contemplation and this love. Now, precisely as that which makes us participants in God’s very nature, sanctifying grace is wholly pregnant with this immediate contemplation and love reserved for God. Therefore, the object of grace in the intimate depths of the soul is not God as Cause, the One God; rather, it is God such as He is, Father, Son, and Spirit, with all His attributes, all of His being, and the whole of His intimate life.

The iron law of appropriation which holds that God’s efficient-causal intervention in his creature must be reserved to His unity and attributed to the Divine Persons only as a manner of speaking, has no role to play here in these unique, objective relations that are established, by grace, between the soul and God. This law holds for the order of efficient, exemplar, or final causality, and here we have, in the end, the failure to which Vasquez’s theory was subject. However, it does not rule out the objective relations of the holy soul with its God. The soul can be directly related to God as an object, substantially present in it, such as He is, sicuti est, along with Divine Persons themselves, considered either together or in their distinction from one another.

Here, we could bring back all the considerations by which Vasquez and Suarez, as well as Frs. Froget and Terrien, prematurely extol the presence of the Divine Friend within us, His goodness, His special Providence for the righteous, His intimate familiarity with His friends, and the ardor of His charity for those whom He loves—in a word, the Gift that He makes of His very Person. Indeed, all of this enters into the objective perspectives of a grace which serves to make us like unto God in intellectuality and love, His children, His friends. Yet, note well that all of this is within our grasp in order for us to possess and enjoy Him in this life only through the mediation of the substantial presence of immensity, which alone enables us to pass from the intentional state of the life of grace, characterized by faith, to a state of real union with God and of physical possession of God, not only in a way that is analogous to the blessed in heaven but rather as tending toward it and, indeed, inaugurating it: initium aliquod creaturae eius.¹⁰¹

Once we have recognized this indispensable role played by the substantial presence of immensity, the structure of the state of grace shows itself to be identical, as regards the substance of things, to the structure of the state of glory belonging to the blessed. In both cases, God is substantially present through immensity and encounters in the soul a disposition which is perfect and ready to embrace Him in His substance: consummated grace, established by the light of glory; sanctifying grace, which gives rise to a charity that eagerly desires real union with God. In beatitude, the collision that determines the beatific visioin in act is produced by the divine essence’s own entrance into the intellect of the blessed, acting as an impressed species, informing—at once physically and objectively—this intellect and concurring with it in the eliciting of the act of the divine vision. In the state of grace, such a collision is not given, and this is why, at the foundation of the holy soul, no act intervenes, actualizing grace’s relation to God. However, everything is ready for this contact. The realities that make up the various factors needed for it are present at hand. All that is needed is the spark. In the end, the holy soul finds itself in the state wherein the blessed person find himself, immediately before the divine essence strikes his spirit. The essential structure is the same.

Ultimately, the state of grace is that of the fertilized seed awaiting the shock that determines its development. Roots and stems, leaves and flowers, and at last, its fruit—all of this is contained in the fertilized seed, though in a virtual state. The effective realization of the immanent relation existing between the matter of the grain and the seminal power of the seed which fertilizes it, calls not for new elements to arrive but, rather, for them to collide and come into contact: gratia semen Dei.

The indwelling of God, which above we refused to attribute to sanctifying grace taken in isolation and independent of every prior contact with God (that is, as a subjective energy) is thus what we extend [accordons] to the state of grace, to the gift of God considered in its totality, namely: by His immensity, the substantial presence of God the Author of its nature and of its grace, within the intimate depths of the holy soul, together with the efficacious, supernatural energy which tends toward this same God, which becomes, as a result, an object intimately present to the soul, an object to which it can really unite itself. All by itself, grace, inasmuch as it is a participation in the divine nature, is connected to God’s substance only as His effect, proprissime, per se, quarto modo. The soul in the state of grace, equipped, by the presence of immensity, with the very substance of the object which, by grace, it has the power to embrace, already possesses its God in an initial manner. It is pregnant with the divine substance, just as memory is pregnant with the ideas that it will express, as St. Augustine would say. It is ready to assimilate, in the objective order of knowledge and love, the substance of the Deity. It is connected to it, per se, primo modo, virtualiter. As for the fertilized seed, perfect assimilation to God is nothing more than its blossoming forth: nondum apparuit quid erimus!¹⁰²

*

* *

Let us crown this thesis by citing the whole of the beautiful, synthetic exposition which has constantly undergirded it, in which John of St. Thomas condensed his master’s whole teaching into these concise lines:

(Above all) We must recognize that God—on account of His immensity and of the contact by which He touches all the effects of His power and gives them being—acts as the root of every creature, like the vine which infuses its sap into its branches. Doubtlessly, He is not an informing form, since our soul is such for us; however, He is an acting cause, by which all the being that creatures has is given, flowing forth from Him. He is the universal principle and root of all things. And this is how Sacred Scripture names Him, for example, in the words from the letter to the Hebrews, “He upholds all things by His power” (Heb. 1:3), which is illuminated by this other passage from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans: “It is not you that support the root, but the root that supports you” (Rom. 11:18, RSV). And, likewise, in His speech at the Areopagus: “Yet he is not far from each one of us, for in Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:27-28, RSV).

Therefore, behold how God exists in all things. As the hidden root, the principle for the being of all things, deeper within them than their form is to their accidents, God fills all things intimately and penetrates all things, giving being to all.

Nonetheless, in all of this, we have nothing yet pertaining to the Friend who joins Himself to us and enters into particular relations with us. No! He is the universal principle of all things, the root of their being, and it is in this way that He is present and intimately united to all things.

However, behold, through the mediation of grace, He manifests Himself! Behold that He who is the root and principle (of our being) begins to be present as an object to the created intellect itself, not as any kind of object whatsoever, but, rather, as an object wholly within it, as the root of the whole of its being. This presentation, this intimate familiarity, this commerce necessarily involves a new mode of presence by God, one that is completely different from His presence as the root of the soul’s being and as the principle infusing it with being. A Person is here, living with the soul and present as an object for it! It is a real and intimate presence, for it does not result from the presentation of any given object whatsoever but, instead, from an object which is as intimate to us as is possible, giving Himself to be known as the root and principle of the whole of our being, thus provoking within us, by this intimate familiarity, an experience of Himself through knowledge and love.¹⁰³

Question 3: Is the interior state of the righteous soul conformed to the internal structure of the soul?

In order to better grasp this structure of the divine indwelling belonging to the state of grace, it is time that we introduce the exemplar on which the theologians of grace say that it is modeled, namely the internal structure of its subject, the soul. The state of grace perfects its nature, and it is fitting that, once received into the human soul, this perfection would adapt itself to the soul’s own constitution.

Doubtlessly, these sorts of comparisons do not have the value of being a demonstration. However, by manifesting, on different levels of one and the same being, the same structural design, they render more intelligible and, simultaneously, more synthetic, that which would seem obscure and mysterious if left in isolation. Moreover, the latter has the advantage that its point of comparison is taken from a natural reality with which we are abundantly familiar: our soul.

In the First Part of this work, we described this internal structure of the soul,¹⁰⁴ according to John of St. Thomas. We ask the reader to keep this exposition in mind in order to understand fully what the same John of St. Thomas—who is, one could say, the very teacher of the doctrine we present here—will come to tell us about the relation between the soul’s structure and God’s indwelling in the soul in the state of grace:

I say that even though the mode of God’s existence in the soul through grace is distinct from His mode of existence in the soul through immensity and adds to it, it nonetheless presupposes the latter mode of presence. And therefore, presupposing that the contact and intimate existence of God in the interior depths of the soul have been given, God, by the mediation of grace, becomes present to it in a new manner, namely, as an object experientially knowable and full of savor, fruibile, inside the soul.

The case for Him is like that holding for our soul, which we possess as intimately present to ourselves as the root and principle of all of our activities, when it also becomes present and manifest to us as an object known, not through any kind of objective contact of any (intentional) sort whatsoever but as an object which is intimate to us, which is the root of our being and of our activity, which, therefore, is known by us by a kind of touch and by means of experiential knowledge.

The case for Him is like that which holds for the angel’s substance, which is united in two ways to its intellect: first as its root and the subject in which the latter inheres (which is common to all properties and accidents united to their substance and emanating from it); then, as an object, inasmuch as it serves as an intelligible species so as to inform the intellect. The angelic substance is, in this latter respect, also, an object known and loved, not in any (intentional) manner whatsoever but, rather, intimately, through an experience within itself, as the root and intrinsic principle of the angel.

However, this experiential knowledge of its subject is always manifest and intuitive in the angel, for it does not have a body toward which it must turn again in order to know. In our soul, by contrast, there can only be an obscure form of experiential knowledge, at least as regards the nature of the soul, as long as we depend upon a body in order to know.

Such an experiential mode of knowledge and love for an object known and loved as the root and principle of the personal being of the knower necessarily requires the real and substantial presence of its object’s being: we know and intimately experience only what is present in this way. It does not matter, moreover, that this experiential knowledge would be non-evident and latent (as in our current state) or that it would be intuitive and clear (as in the angel and the separated soul), for it forever remains knowledge of a thing that is wholly intimate to the knower, given that it is the root of its being. Only, in the second case, this thing does not exercise its present simply by acting on the subject and by making it penetrate its influence (influendo, action of presence) but by manifesting itself and making itself known to it openly as an intimate object which offers itself to the soul so that it may enjoy it.

With this concentrated—but how luminous!—page, we now possess the complete psychological “example” of the presence of God within the soul by grace. And we recognize, in light of this summary, the striking analogy of this presence of God with the soul’s own self-presence (the details of which were discussed in our earlier exposition¹⁰⁵).

This analogy rests first of all upon the parity that exists between God’s substantial presence in the soul through His activity and His immensity and that of the same soul to itself. Certainly, this substantial presence is realized in different manners, on the one side by way of efficient causality [for God’s presence] and on the other by way of consubstantiality [for the soul’s self-presence], and here analogy has its role to play, one that is not bound to the limits of univocal meaning, instead, proportionally reproducing one and the same design on two levels of being. Nonetheless, from the perspective of our current concerns, this difference is accidental, for once they come to be realized, the two presences are, each in its own manner, true, intimate, and substantial presences.

The reality of God is within the soul, just as the reality of the soul, is intrinsic to itself. He is there as the cause of the whole being of the soul, the hidden “root” of its being and activities, “Communicating to it being more intimately than a form does to its matter and a substance to its accidents,” so that, from a certain perspective, the substantial God who is immanent to the soul seems, by the interior nature of His presence, to prevail over the soul itself inasmuch as it is the determining principle of its own being and the “formal root of this being and of its activities.”¹⁰⁶ He is, one could say, more within us than we are within ourselves, more present to our soul than our soul is present to itself, more so the vivifying root of our being—since He is the root of our being in an absolute manner, whereas our soul is, de iure, per se, only the root of our specific being, with our existential being [être d’existence] belonging to it only through an ceaselessly renewed divine influx, per se, non primo, sed concommitanter.¹⁰⁷

Now, what particularly belongs to these two substances or roots of being, intimately present at the foundation of the soul—God and the soul itself—is the fact that, given that both of them are spiritual, they are both perfectly intelligible, thus presupposing that intelligences exist which are proportioned to their intelligibility. As we saw earlier,¹⁰⁸ this property of intelligibility, which is attributable to the intellectual soul on account of its spiritual nature, gives rise to a kind of break [brisure] within it, the reduplication of the soul as intelligible and intelligent, something characteristic of the structure of the soul, Mens, in its depths. This dual aspect, within the identity of the substance, is found again in the angels. And, proportionally, it is found likewise in God, who knows Himself.

Certainly, the soul which, by itself, is able to know its own substance cannot, however, similarly know the divine substance present in it through immensity. However, precisely speaking, sanctifying grace, through which it participates in the divine intellectuality, gives it this power to enter into relations of knowledge and love with God. As a result of grace, the divine root of being and activities, God substantially present in it through immensity becomes an object for it, at least in expectation. Hence, in the innermost depths of the holy soul, a habitual objective union exists between, on the one hand, God substantially present in the soul as its very root and, on the other, the intellectual soul, mens, through grace able to recognize Him such as He is in Himself. The structure of the state of grace is imitated by the structure of spirits and of the human soul itself, the subject wherein grace inheres.

However, even though this analogy existing between the state of grace and the soul (an analogy concerning matters of essential structure) does help us grasp how God can be, at once, a reality substantially existing in the soul and something grasped and possessed in His substance by the soul in a way that is analogous to how He is possessed through the divine vision, it still tells us nothing concerning the moral and living aspect of this presence and this possession. And we cannot stop with this structural analogy, which treats God as though He were a thing, a substance, likewise treating His relations with the soul as though they were those of one substance to another and those of an object to a subject. We must now contemplate the life underneath this lifeless description, and after having noted the likenesses, we must mark out the differences.

Certainly, in the state existence experienced by the separated soul, wherein the essential, latent structure of our soul pours forth, there will be life, the life of a soul which knows and loves itself. However, this life will be wholly on the side of the soul as a subject, not on that of the soul as an object contemplated, for here, on these two sides, we are dealing with only one and the same soul. This is not true in the case of the state of grace, where two persons are present to each other, where God gives Himself as an object, as much as (and indeed more than) the soul gives itself to Him in knowing and loving Him. He who is substantially present to the soul is not present only through the activity which creates the nature in question but, also, by that which produces grace, conserves it, moves it, and arouses it. This presupposes, on both heads, though more particularly in relation to grace, a wholly communicative form of goodness, a true friendship for us by God who comes and remains in us. Therefore, grace is able to look upon God as Father and as our divine friend. Doubtlessly, in these depths of the soul’s essence, sanctified by grace, where the very first, foundational objective union of God and the soul is realized, everything is virtual; however, nonetheless, everything prepares for the union of mystical knowledge and love and for the face-to-face encounter of the blessed life to blossom forth. All the elements are present, in relation, in a state—if one may so speak—of pregnant and vital tension. God is present there, giving Himself to the soul as the latter’s beloved object, and the soul itself tends, in its own turn, obscurely toward Him without yet actually knowing or loving Him, though it is wholly ready to do so in virtue of the sanctifying grace which divinizes it, as well as on account of faith, hope, and charity, along with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, which are ready to bud forth. Therefore, we here have a union of two, a relation between two persons, reigning in the very depths of the soul; and this is the difference between the soul’s own internal life and the intimate life of the righteous soul. God comes into us through a personal initiative, a visitation, or—if we consider it on the side of the Trinity—by a mission, doing so substantially and not as a kind of physically immense object lethally descending with a crushing weight. By contrast, it is through material consubstantiality that the soul as a subject finds the soul in itself as an object and is able to be in relation with it in the very depths of its essence.

Let us try to contemplate, in overview, these two aspects of the state of grace, the structural aspect and its personal and living aspect. To do so, we need only read one of the most beautiful pages found in the work of John of St. Thomas:

The mission of the divine persons and the special existence of God in the (holy) soul are not brought about formally through the contact of immensity, even though the latter is a prerequisite for them. Things take place here as they do in our soul: in order for the soul to be present as an object, it first must be present as a form (informative), and it is precisely inasmuch as it is present in this way that it is sensed by the very experience of this informing, which, as the informing action of a soul, is brought about through a vital movement. However, it is one thing for a soul to inform—that is, to give being vitally inasmuch as it is the form—and quite another for it to be grasped as an object in its informing reality itself. These two presences, that of the soul as formative principle and that of the soul as object are distinct, to the point that one can remain in the absence of the other: in those who sleep or in idiots, the soul is present as an informing form and nonetheless is neither known nor sensed.¹⁰⁹ This too holds true for God’s presence in the soul in the case of sinners. God is in them, indeed intimately, giving them their natural being, and even certain supernatural gifts ([e.g.,] unformed faith and hope, as well as their sacramental characters), but they are like men asleep, not sensing God’s life. By contrast, He who awakes is illuminated by Christ (for he possesses the lumen gratiae) and senses Him, in accord with the words of the Apostle: “Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light” (Eph. 5:14, RSV).

Therefore, when someone begins (through grace) to have God’s objective and experiential presence, God, who was present in him through His operative contact and through the production of being, then Himself begins to exist within the soul in a new way, namely, objectively.

God is thus said to be with us like a friend, like a person living in intimate familiarity with us. He does not cease, however, for all this, to be the root and principle of our life. Rather, in addition to this, He manifests Himself as a distinct person. Or, rather, what is manifested are all of the (Divine) Persons in their distinction, as our companions, assisting us, and dwelling with us. He is no longer only Him who gives us being, as it is given by forms and our soul. Now, He influences us inasmuch as He is a distinct person. Doubtlessly, He ever remains intimately present within us as assisting us and infusing all of our being into us; however, it is as a Person, living with us and constantly present to us, that He manifests Himself.

Sacred Scripture represents the sending [mission] of the divine Persons to us in both of these ways. God is sometimes represented as being closely present to us, like a person who is our friend, dwelling with us, visiting us and making His abode within us (cf. Jn. 14). At other times, God is presented as intimately giving us life, as the principle and root of our life (cf. Is. 57).

Therefore, the Divine Persons are sent so that they may dwell within us and also so that they may enliven us; thus, we draw our life from God, who is not, obviously, a form, but rather, a cause infusing us with eternal life.

And, therefore, our special conjunction with God through the divine sending of grace cannot set out of consideration the contact established with Him through His activity and His immensity. Only, it adds objective manifestation to it.

And all of this does not seem to find a better explanation than the example drawn from our soul, which is at once the form that informs our body and a form that is objectively known.¹¹⁰

This Part Three can find no better closing than that provided by these words, which, from the start, have been the leaven for all of our investigations, encountered naturally again at their culmination.

Transition to the Fourth Part

However, the “Example” of the human soul has not, perhaps, yet given everything that can be expected from it. It enabled us to form an idea of the structure of the state of grace considered in its innermost depths. Could it not help us bring forth from this structure of the state of grace some understanding —at once more theological and more psychological than what can be obtained by synthesizing, without however appealing to these ontological underpinnings, the great host of various statements that could be drawn from the mystics as well as the highly-complex experiences of the saints—concerning the whole of our divine life, up to and including this perceptio quasi experimentalis,¹¹¹ as St. Thomas calls it, which the saints have, even in this life, of God substantially present in their “depths” as a guest and a friend? The prayer of union would thus stand forth as the culmination of the structure of the indwelling that we have striven to set forth in this Part, its natural transposition into the sphere of the activities belonging to the supernatural life.

This new aspect of the problem will be the object of our Fourth Part.

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1. God is not in the soul as an intelligible form (De veritate, q. 10, a. 11, ad 8; cf. ad 11). (God) is not there as an object (St. Thomas, In I Sent., d. 3, q. 5c).↩︎

2. This does not mean that they are presumed object, nor presumptions regarding objects, but rather, objects existing as res and prospectively as objects—as he who will receive the crown is the king prospectively, the presumptive king.↩︎

3. Trans. note: Such assimilation is not comprehensive, however, and Gardeil recognizes this openly.↩︎

4. Jn. 14:23 (RSV).↩︎

5. Jn. 14:16-17 (RSV).↩︎

6. 1 Jn. 4:16 (RSV).↩︎

7. Heb. 10:6.↩︎

8. St. Thomas, In I Sent., d. 14, q. 2, a. 1, sol. 1, ad 1. See John of St. Thomas, Cursus theologicus, In ST I, q. 43, d. 17, a. 3, no. 7.↩︎

9. St. Thomas, In I Sent., d. 14, q. 2, a. 1, sol. 1, obj. 2↩︎

10. Ibid., ad 2.↩︎

11. See ibid., d. 37, q. 1, a. 2, ad 1 and 2.↩︎

12. Ibid., d. 37, q. 1, a. 2, ad 2.↩︎

13. In I Sent., d. 37, a. 1, a. 2c.↩︎

14. See ibid., § ex parte autem Dei.↩︎

15. Ibid., ad 3.↩︎

16. Gabriel Vasquez, Commentariorum ac Disp. In I Part. D. Thomae, q. 8, disp. 30, ch. 3 (Ingolstadt: 1[6]09), vol. 1, 175-176.—We wished to cite Vasquez’s entire text, which nearly always is more or less distorted or amended by those adhering to Suarez’s position, whether yesterday or today.↩︎

17. “The relation of the creature does not come to a halt in the gifts but, furthermore, tends onward to Him who gives these gifts” (In I Sent., dist. 14, q. 2, a. 1, ad 2).↩︎

18. See Suarez, cited by Manieu, 52. It does not seem in doubt that Suarez figures among the recentiores aimed at by Vasquez. Doubtlessly, Suarez’s De trinitate (1606) was written after Vasquez’s own De trinitate (dating before 1598). However, Suarez’s taught the De trintate in Coimbra in 1598-1601, and it is known, as well, that during this period, Vasquez’s commentaries on the De deo were vigorously taken to task by Suarez. As the two masters were rivals from their time in Alcala in 1591-1593, precisely on questions pertaining to the treatise De deo, they could not fail to be aware of each other’s teachings, which were public long before the publication of the works which were prepared for by this teaching. In any case, the opinion recounted by Vasquez is textually the same as Suarez’s.↩︎

19. Vasquez, loc. cit.↩︎

20. See Part Two, q. 1, a. 2, p. 372ff.↩︎

21. See John of St. Thomas, Cursus theologicus, In ST I, q. 8, disp. 8, a. 5, nos. 4-9; item., q. 43, disp. 17, a. 3, no. 3. Cf. Suarez, De trinitate, bk. 12, ch. 5, nos. 2, 9, 10, and 11; Salmanticenses, De trinitate, disp. 19, dub. 4, §3, nos. 68 and 69 and dub. 5, §4; B. Froget, De l’habitation du Saint-Esprit, pt. 2, ch. 2, p. 81-83; ch. 3, §1, 107-11.↩︎

22. See J.-B. Terrien, La grâce et la gloire, bk. 4, ch. 4, tom. 1, p. 242-251.↩︎

23. See ibid., ch. 5, 252-269.↩︎

24. Drawing together St. Thomas, In I Sent., dist. 37, q. 1, a.2, ad 3; ibid., dist. 14, q. 2, a. 1↩︎

25. See Terrien, ibid, ch. 5, 267.↩︎

26. See p. 31, 32 below.↩︎

27. Terrien, ibid., 243-244.↩︎

28. Ibid., 244.↩︎

29. Ibid., 244-248 [sic]↩︎

30. ibid., 245.↩︎

31. Throughout, I have added emphasis to this word. It is the term which is characteristic of Vasquez’s opinion.↩︎

32. Ibid., 246-247 (emphasis added).↩︎

33. Ibid., §2. For these reasonings, see 247-248.↩︎

34. See ibid., 248 and 249 (§Tout autre).↩︎

35. Ibid., 246.↩︎

36. See ibid., 244n2.↩︎

37. See St. Thomas, Contra gentes, bk. 4, ch. 22 (§Quia vero effectus divini)↩︎

38. Cum igitur, per Spiritum Sanctum, Dei amatores efficiamur… St. Thomas intentionally says Dei, of God, even though the Gospel says, “If someone loves me.” This amounts to the same thing, for it is impossible to love the Son without loving the Father and the Holy Spirit.↩︎

39. See Froget, De l’habitation du Saint-Esprit dans les âmes justes, pt. 3, ch. 1, 199-220.↩︎

40. The fact that St. Thomas sometimes uses the word “indwelling” in a broad sense is demonstrated by a passage from the ch. 18 of the same 4^th book of the Contra gentes. In fact, he opposes, at the end of this chapter, the “indwelling” of God the Creator, which is intimate and substantial, to that which the holy books call the indwelling of the demons in us, an indwelling that is wholly external, being nothing other than the influence that the demons can exercise upon us through their efficient causality. Now, by this context, it is clear that what he is here referring to as God’s indwelling is nothing other than the presence of immensity.↩︎

41. See ibid., 244ff.↩︎

42. I will not set forth this explanation here because it is the one that I myself hold and will set forth as being the very thesis held by St. Thomas. See q. 2 below.↩︎

43. See some lines further on this exclamation: “And, therefore, why is He distant if He is everywhere, even at our most profound depths?” Indeed, He is there through the presupposed presence of immensity.—Perfect!↩︎

44. See Suarez, De trinitate, bk. 12 (De missione divinarum personarum), ch. 5 (De Missione invisibili), no. 9.↩︎

45. See ibid., no. 10. Cf. John of St. Thomas, In ST I, q. 43, disp. 17, a. 3, no. 16 (§Contra est), where Vasquez’s objection is developed in full force.↩︎

46. See Suarez, De trinitate, bk. 12, ch. 5, no. 10.↩︎

47. Ibid., no. 12.↩︎

48. Ibid., no. 12. See John of St. Thomas, In ST I, q. 43, disp. 17, a. 3, no. 16 (§ Ad replicam, Vivès ed., 478A). There, John of St. Thomas refutes Vasquez in a completely different manner.↩︎

49. Let us note here an example of Suarez’s perpetual genius, requiring formal rationes that are in fact separated or separable in order to admit a real distinction. This is the spirit which he carried along in the questions pertaining to essence and existence, matter and form, etc. In this particular case, the presence of immensity would need to be ruled out in order for the presence resulting from grace to seem, to his eyes, truly special.↩︎

50. See Suarez, De trinitate, bk. 12, ch. 5, no. 12. Cf. St. Thomas, In I Sent., d. 15, q. 5, a. 3.↩︎

51. Ibid., no. 13.↩︎

52. Ibid.↩︎

53. Ibid., no. 14↩︎

54. “And therefore, if per impossibile, the aforementioned persons did not exist through their essence, presence, and power in all things, nonetheless, in a righteous soul to whom they are sent, they would be substantially… present, and the same persons would dwell within him substantially,” Salmanticenses, De trinitate, disp. 19, dub. 5, §1, no. 77; cf. Suarez, De trinitate, bk. 12, ch. 5, no. 12, the text cited above.↩︎

55. See Salmanticenses, De trinitate, disp. 19, dub. 5, §§1 and 2, no. 81 and 82.↩︎

56. See ibid., no. 83.↩︎

57. See ibid., nos. 90 and 91.↩︎

58. To a certain degree! In Cursus theologicus, In ST I, q. 43, disp. 17, a. 3, no. 8, John of St. Thomas thus supports our own reservation: “It remains that, in this life, we do not enjoy God in a real manner but, rather, in hope and radically in grace. Therefore, such enjoyment does not require a real union [conjunctionem], for even when two humans enjoy each other solely in intention and in hope, real and bodily presence is not required. Second, it remains that for enjoyment of spiritual things, no advantage is drawn from local or real presence, for one angel can contemplate and love another in an utterly perfect manner, even if they are separated by a great distance. Therefore, we can enjoy God as absent through an imperfect enjoyment as viatores, just as we are joined [coniungimur] to Christ’s humanity and to the Blessed Virgin, who nonetheless, are bodily and really in heaven.” See Part four, ch. 3, a. 6.↩︎

59. See Salmanticenses, De trinitate, disp. 19, dub. 5, §§1 and 2, nos. 84-86.↩︎

60. See ibid., nos. 87-89.↩︎

61. Billuart too is in line with Suarezes opinion. See Summa sancti thomae, De trinitate, diss. 4, a. 4, § Quaeritur 4˚.↩︎

62. See Frojet, De l’habitation du Saint-Esprit dans les âmes justes, pt. 2, ch. 5.—Fr. Froget, in fact, provides a perfect exposition of the general theory of God’s indwelling by means of Sacred Scripture and the texts of St. Thomas, as he does in the arguments by which He establishes it a posteriori. In particular, I would like to note the following passages in the 1^st edition of the work from 1900: the fact of the real indwelling (pt. 2, ch. 1, p. 53-78); the nature of its real presence (ch. 2, p. 79-103); refutation of Vasquez (p. 81-82); refutation of Oberdoeffer (ch. 3, p. 107-112); refutation of Verani, Ramière, and Pétau (p. 112-120); exposition of St. Thomas’s teaching concerning the various modes of presence (ch. 3, p. 121-126); the analogy between the state of grace and the beatific vision (ch. 4, p. 137-154). However, it is regrettable that he uses the expression, “The indwelling of God par excellence,” applied to the mode of indwelling brought about by God’s activity, advocated on behalf of by Vasquez and Terrien (see p. 112; also, cf. 88, 89, 91, 92-96). As we saw above, the term indwelling can, doubtlessly, be adduced from St. Thomas’s own words in Contra gentes, bk. 4, ch. 21 and 18. See our discussion above on pages 26ff concerning the meaning of these passages. However, “indwelling par excellence” truly goes too far! Rather, we must say that it is indwelling in the broad sense.↩︎

63. Ibid., 171.↩︎

64. See Suarez, De trinitate, bk. 12, ch. 5.↩︎

65. See Salmanticenses, De trinitate, disp. 19, dub. 5, §§1 and 2, nos. 84-86.↩︎

66. Status viae, our present state.↩︎

67. Froget, De l’habitation du Saint-Esprit dans les âmes justes, 171-172.↩︎

68. See ibid., 172-173. Note that this objection runs from page 171 to page 173. It is developed in so convincing a manner that inattentive readers could well imagine that the author’s own theory is found therein.↩︎

69. Froget, 177.↩︎

70. For example, Gonzalez, In ST I, q. 8, disp. 18, cited by John of St. Thomas in Cursus theologicus, In ST I, q. 8, disp. 8, a. 6, no. 6.↩︎

71. John of St. Thomas, Cursus Theologicus, In ST I, q. 43, dist. 17, a. 3, no. 13.↩︎

72. Ibid., no. 7.↩︎

73. “However, the second form of union (=affective union), is what formally constitutes love, for love itself is such a union or bond (ST I-II, q. 28, a. 1).↩︎

74. ST I-II, q. 28, a. 1c.↩︎

75. Ibid.↩︎

76. John of St. Thomas, Cursus theologicus, In ST I, q. 8, disp. 8, a. 6, no. 5. See ST I-II, q. 3, a. 4.↩︎

77. These words are quite close to Froget’s own expressions on page 38.↩︎

78. John of St. Thomas, Cursus theologicus, In ST I, q. 8, disp. 8, a. 6, no. 6.↩︎

79. Ibid., In ST I, q. 43, disp. 17, a. 3, no. 8 (§ Secundo est difficultas) (Vivès edition, 471B).↩︎

80. See our article, “Les Ressources du Vouloir,” Revue thomiste 7 (1899), esp. 455-456.↩︎

81. ST I-II, q. 3, a. 4 (trans. English Dominican Friars [1920], slightly modified). Likewise see the parallel passages indicated at the head of this article.—In other words, in order to hold Suarez’s present thesis, one would need to admit the position of Scotus and Peter Aureol, which makes the will the act that act by which beatitude is conquered, for the question concerning beatitude and that concerning the real possession of God through grace and charity are closely analogous to one another. Moreover, it is quite astonishing that the Salmanticenses—theologians who are so firmly set against Scotus in the question of Beatitude (Dub. 4, §7, p. 90-93; §8, no. 95)—did not see the analogy between the two situations, nor, hence, the fact that the solution was based on the same principles.↩︎

82. See ST I-II, q. 3, a. 4; 28, a. 1; Contra gentes, bk. 3, chs. 25 and 26.↩︎

83. See Froget, De l’habitation du Saint-Esprit dans les âmes justes, 171. See p. 38 above.↩︎

84. See page 30 above.↩︎

85. See Suarez, De trinitate, loc. cit., no. 14. See p. 35 above.↩︎

86. John of St. Thomas, Cursus theologicus, In ST I ,q. 8, a. 6, no. 6.↩︎

87. See Salmanticeses, De trintiate, disp. 19, dub. 8, no. 87 (§ Confirmatur 1˚ and 2˚).↩︎

88. After having an authoritative request registered to me on this head, I verified anew, after these claims were published in the Revue thomiste, all the texts of this Dubium V. I cannot escape this conclusion, which to me remains quite evident: The Salmanticenses hold Suarez’s opinion on this point.↩︎

89. See Cajetan, In ST II-II, q. 24, a. 7, nos. 12-23. Also, cf. no. 9. Cajetan holds that, on earth, charity is in a preternatural state precisely because it is in a tendential state, extra locum suum. Obviously, he is not treating our question in this commentary on ST II-II, q. 24, but the insistence with which he refers to the beatific vision as being the natural state of charity (no. 12) shows quite well that Suarez’s arguments would have affected him very little.↩︎

90. See our article, “Les ressources du Vouloir,” Revue thomiste 7 (1899): 459-460. [Tr. note: In particular: “Now, to be good for a man or to be an object of intellectual apprehension—either way, you have the same thing. It is only from the moment when you have grasped your good by your intellect that you have willed, loved, desired, acted, and enjoyed in a human manner. The only thing proportioned to a good that is indeed total for man is that human activity which is total for him. Only the intellect achieves the humanization of your action, for only it completes, finishes, and so to speak, totalizes man.”]↩︎

91. Heb. 1:3.↩︎

92. Suárez, De trinitate, De missione div. pers., ch. 5, no. 9.↩︎

93. St. Augustine, De trinitate, bk. 14, ch. 12, no. 16 (trans. Arthur West Haddan, slightly edited). See On the Literal Meaning of Genesis, bk. 4, no. 23.—In this text from the De trinitate, St. Augustine transforms God’s existence in all things into the existence of all things in God. However, these different formulas say something identical, since God is present in all things not as circumscribed by the dimensions of things but, rather, ut effector entis as penetrating and enveloping them with his universal efficient power, which makes them exist in Him more than He exists in them.—The end of the passage likely refers to the state of sinners, but the idea remains, for they have in common with every creature the fact that they exist without grace and, hence, are indifferent to the materiality of God’s presence in them.↩︎

94. “Quoniam est incoporea,” St. Augustine, De trinitate, bk. 9, no. 3. The neo-Platonist Proclus is likely St. Augustine’s source for this doctrine concerning correlation between spirituality and the capacity for self-reflection. See St. Thomas’s commentary on the Liber de causis, lect. 7 and 15. Also, De veritate, q. 1, a. 9.↩︎

95. St. Thomas, In I Sent., dist. 37, q. 1, a. 2, ad 3. The same doctrine concerning the presence of immensity presupposed for the presence through grace is found again in St. Thomas in relation to the temporal mission of the Divine Persons which, on God’s side, concretizes God’s special presence through grace and, like it, results from the fact that the soul novo modo se habet ad ipsum, is related to Him in a new way. Let us cite several texts. “Although the Holy Spirit who is everywhere could not be where he had not been… nonetheless, He can be somewhere in a given manner in which he had not heretofore been present, by means of a change brought about concerning that in which he is said to be” (In I Sent., d. 15, q. 2, a. 1, ad 1). “The fact that a Divine Person exists in someone in a new manner or to be had by someone temporally, is not because of a change in that Divine Person but, rather, because of a change in the creature” (ST I, q. 43, a. 2, ad 2). Likewise, when St. Thomas describes the perfect image of the Trinity in the soul resulting from God’s presence in it, following St. Augustine, he says: “However, if (the powers of the soul) are considered in relation to this object, God,… the order is most fully preserved, for intelligence proceeds from memory because (God) is in the soul through His essence and is held by it not by way of acquisition” (In I Sent., dist. 3, q. 4, a. 4c; cf. ad 1 and ad 2). “For God Himself is knowable and loveable of Himself, and is known and loved by each mind inasmuch as He is present to the mind, and such presence in the mind is memory of Him” (De veritate, q. 10, a. 7, ad 2). This grasping of God, non per acquisitionem, is what St. Thomas, following St. Augsutine, calls a kind of “memory” of God because it does not involve an act: et loco actus habet hoc ipsum qud est tenere (In I Sent, dist. 3, q. 4, a. 1, ad 3). It only exists between two beings which by the very nature of things are present through their essence within the soul, namely, the soul itself and God (cf. ibid., a. 4, ad 1 and 2). By assimilating the presence by which God is present within the soul to the presence of the soul within the soul through substantial identity, indicates in a remarkable manner the character of the substantial presence belonging to the presence of immensity.↩︎

96. John of St. Thomas developed St. Thomas’s doctrine on this matter concerning the role of God’s presence through immensity in the glorious vision of Him, along with its distinction from the proper ratio for God’s substantial presence in this vision. See Cursus theologicus, In ST I, q. 43, a. 3, no. (§ Dico ergo).↩︎

97. See John of St. Thomas, Cursus theologicus, In ST I, q. 43, disp. 17, a. 3, no. 16 (§Confirmatur); see the response in no. 17.↩︎

98. [Tr. note: In accord with the maxim, “omnia opera Trinitatis ad extra sunt indivisa.”]↩︎

99. For this reason, in the Summa theologiae (in ST I, q. 25), the Divine Power is placed last among the divine attributes since it has an eye to creation.↩︎

100. See Noelle Maurice Denis, “L’humilité de la cause première,” L’Être en puissance, Conclusions (Paris: Jouve, 1922), 233-234.↩︎

101. Jam. 1:18.↩︎

102. 1 Jn. 3:2.↩︎

103. John of St. Thomas, Cursus theologicus, In ST I, q. 43, disp. 17, a. 3, no. 11. This text, like the majority of the texts from John of St. Thomas cited herein (published in 1644) were copied literally and in interposed form in the Theologia Mystica D. Thomae of Vallgornera published in 1682. See the edition edited by Berthier and published in Turin in 1891, nos. 866-872.↩︎

104. See bk. 2, q. 4, a. 3 (vol. 1, p. 142ff).↩︎

105. See Part One, bk. 2, q. 4, a. 3.↩︎

106. “… Just as though He were the life of our life and the soul of our soul through the intimate presence by which He intimately bestows [influit] upon us not only our natural existence but also the existence of grace, by which we recognize the very Persons themselves in us as being present” (John of St. Thomas, Cursus theologicus, In ST I, q. 43, disp. 17, a. 3, no. 12 (Vivès, 474A).—“God (bestows life) upon us by way of intimate influence [per modum influentis], bestowing existence, doing so much more than the soul does, though in the genus of efficient causality, and thus He requires real presence” (ibid., no. 17; Vivès, 479A).↩︎

107. ST I, q. 1, a. 5. Also see Cajetan’s commentary on this article, no. 4 (§ Et per hoc patet).↩︎

108. Part One, bk. 2, q. 4.↩︎

109. In the course of his magnificent flights, John of St. Thomas almost always evokes, as a point of comparison, the experience of psychological consciousness by which we know our self through actual knowledge, as regards its existence, and at least in a general manner, as regards its nature. However, we know by itself [par lui-même] (vol. 1, p. 142), and on the basis of St. Thomas’s own remarks on this head, that underneath the actual psychological experience there is direct habitual experience, consisting in a simple relation, without any actual objective manifestation, between the soul as a subject and the soul as an object. This relation is what must be implied and not consciousness in act when one remains (as we do here in this article) within the bounds of God’s merely substantial presence to the soul. In particular, when John of St. Thomas speaks, as regards the soul’s relation to itself, of a certain actual experientia animationis, he mixes into his explanation of the constitutive structure of the soul (which is wholly habitual in character) an element taken from the level of actual psychological knowledge. We must gloss these examples with the words habitualiter and virtualiter. Likewise, certain texts where St. Thomas himself seems to posit within the depths of the soul a kind of obscure intuition of its substance must be interpreted in light of passages where St. Thomas clearly declares the wholly habitual character of this intuition, for example, in In I Sent., dist. 3, ch. 4 and 5. Likewise, see vol. 1, 142ff.↩︎

110. John of St. Thomas, Cursus theologicus, In ST I, q. 43, disp. 17, a. 3, no. 15.↩︎

111. See ST I, q. 43, a. 5, ad 2; In I Sent., dist. 14, q. 2, a. 2, ad 3.↩︎