Part IV: Henri de Lubac’s Ressourcement of the Desiderium Naturale Dei and the Gift

By Daniel W. McClain

IV. Creation as Gift: moving forward with nature and grace

If de Lubac proposes a recovery of Thomas’ teaching on the desiderium naturale that is sensitive to the concern to maintain an intrinsic end to human nature, he is also aware of the concern presented by those who initially adopted the pure nature hypothesis. We need a way now to move beyond the dead weight of pure nature that is also able to address its substantial concerns. We have to be able to talk about the supernatural finality of this human nature without either lessening the gratuity of the supernatural or the integrity of human nature in receiving that finality. We need to be able to hold both that “grace perfects nature” and “the total transcendence of the gift.”[1]

Part of de Lubac’s brilliance rests in his use of the analogy of gift over and against the hypothesis of pure nature. He begins with the two parallel movements in the creation of human being: first, the gift of “me to myself;” and second, the “imprint[ing] on my being a supernatural finality.”[2] These two movements, which de Lubac calls “formulas,” do much more to demonstrate divine gratuity than “pure nature.” The first moment shows the paradoxical and gratuitous beginning of human existence, that there is no phrase that can ever really get at the act of instantiating a me in order to receive the gift of myself. This movement helps to demonstrate the distinct character of both essence and existence. For the human being, God’s gratuity goes to the bottommost depth of human nature, so much so that it escapes any and all systematic explanations inasmuch as they imply a subject that is first created and, only after creation, given a supernatural finality. All such explanations that would ontologically separate my being from my supernatural finality are erected upon a “fictitious presupposition.”[3] In fact, we ought to affirm these explanations, yet in the same breath refuse to rest on them as if they were adequate. Rather, all of our postulations on nature and grace need to guard against any reification of an hypothetical order, of conceiving of the human relation to God only from analogies within nature.[4] De Lubac sees the solution to this error in a better understanding of the gift of grace which holds together the “twofold ontological passage” of existence and supernatural finality. The donum perfectum illuminates both the impassable distance between God and creation and the fact that “this gift constitutes for nature a real sublimation… a real deification” although “there is not… the least supernatural element in [nature].”[5] Thus, God’s call to being, the awakening of the desire for the end in Him, and the grace which instantiates both requires that we hold fast to both the “heterogeneity” of nature and that the connection which “the spiritual creature has… to God… comes from its origin.”[6]

The gift of the desire for the supernatural finality is unique. De Lubac argues that it cannot be explained by resorting to any kind of analogy to natural relationships. It demands the clear distinction between “the gifts of grace” and “the gifts of nature.”[7] The mystery of grace requires us to hold in tension the distinction between nature and supernatural with the natural desire for the donum perfectum, which, quoting Pascal, de Lubac calls the “new world” we receive in Christ when we behold God as he is.[8]

V. The Paradox of “the completely free gift”

What is important to keep in mind is that the desire for a supernatural finality neither enables the human to achieve that finality by natural impetus nor gives ownership of that finality.[9] The desire for the beatific vision is not the same as knowing what will be entailed in that vision or possessing the vision itself. Nor does the desire entail that we are owed the vision: “It is the free will of the giver which awakens the desire. This is incontestable.”[10] The mystery of this is only problematic to those that have accepted a rational univocity. The Word itself presents a mystery, that

“is baffling to a philosophy of pure rationality but not to a philosophy which recognizes in the human mind both that potential absolute that makes it declare the truth, and that abyss of darkness in which it remains by that fact of being both created and bodily.[11]

But even bound to mystery and its own limits, human reason is unbounded. It can criticize itself and the concepts it has accepted. Some are too quick to accept solutions, analogies, “clear cut harmonies and explanations” in theology where a sense of mystery should have been retained.[12] Because of a lack of historical and doctrinal knowledge of the desiderium naturale, many theologians adopted positions that seemed the “safest” but which actually “lessened” the gratuity of the supernatural, making it “superficial.”[13]

De Lubac offers a corrective to the apparent contradiction in the call to supernatural finality by correlating “the offer of grace… in the sphere of moral liberty… [to] the call to the supernatural… in the ontological sphere.” Insofar as the offer of grace enables moral freedom, a formula already accepted in moral theology, de Lubac argues that simultaneously the call to the supernatural finality enables the natural desire for that end. The difference between the two is only logical. By dialectically maintaining divine initiative in both cases via his form of intrinsicism, de Lubac holds the supposedly opposed orders of nature and gratuity together in a way that neither compromises nature nor lessens gratuity.[14]

Whereas de Lubac argues that God, of his own good will, orders within us a supernatural finality toward which we desire, others have gone so far as to assert that this supernatural finality, as opposed to a natural finality, would be tantamount to making our natures themselves supernatural. The consequences of this would indeed be contrary to Thomas’ teaching. However, need a supernatural finality entail a supernatural human nature, an idea as obviously illogical as it is heterodox? To the extent that Augustine, Thomas, Bonaventure, and Scotus – to name a few – contribute to the trajectory and consensus of the first fifteen centuries of the Tradition, it has certainly not been foreign or untenable to the Tradition to hold that natural human wonder and desire reaches beyond itself. Further, we have also seen in St. Thomas that true happiness for humanity only consists in the ultimate rest in God of that wonder and desire in the after life. In this regard, Feingold’s premise is dubious: “According to St. Thomas, the natural inclination of our will is directed to the end that is proportionate to our nature…”[15] At stake here is not necessarily the notion of proportionality, but what he means by nature and natural. Has he already accepted the premises of pure nature? Besides, Feingold is also misguided by his own equivocations in his criticisms of de Lubac. Consider the following: “the addition of a supernatural principle….”; “…determined by a supernatural finality…”; and “…a supernatural finality inscribed upon it…”[16] His very terminology is constrained by his extrinsicism. He seems to miss the point of de Lubac’s recovery of not only the natural desire, but also his emphasis upon and recovery of an intrinsic finality, and therefore anthropology.

Another way of looking at the issue is to ask with de Lubac if it is contradictory to assume that man could have a purely natural finality which was at some later time replaced with a supernatural one. What is wrong with the notion that God’s grace is imparted to human nature in the act of giving a different finality? Does not this notion bind God to the natural law of a hypothetical order? “God is in no way governed by ‘prototypes’… In the Word all is ‘reason’; all the ‘intelligible world’ is concentrated in Him…”[17] As such, it is rather illogical to talk about humanity having two ends without losing the integrity of the creature as God knows the creature. “My destiny is an ontological thing, which I can not change as an object changes in destination.”[18] Although it must be maintained that he could have indeed done this, God’s love as Creator for his creatures would imply that God would not divert the end of his creation after creating it, as if it were a channel of water. Diverting the end of the created order would, in de Lubac’s analysis, essentially and ontologically change the identity of the created order. In other words, one could ask: if my ontological being has to be swapped for another, then is it really me experiencing the beatific vision?

Furthermore and more importantly, this second act of ordering to the beatific vision restricts God’s love. “It is… important to get rid of any idea of a God who, though free in theory, is basically morally determined by the perfection of a certain possible universe to create that universe.”[19]  Drawing from Romano Guardini and von Balthasar, de Lubac declares that freedom in the divine life needs to be radically reinterpreted in the light of love. God’s love is both the object of his freedom but is also the entirety of the divine life. Inasmuch as that divine life is everything, there is nothing external to God’s life that constrains him. Thus, the all-encompassing Love is also that which encompasses and redefines liberty.[20] Love, thus understood, loosens the tight grip we are often tempted to have of notions which otherwise seem stable and from which we might put any constraint, restriction, or demand on God.[21]

It is fitting, then, that de Lubac ends with a reflection on Ephesians 1:3-6 in which love is the principle that call us to our destiny, a destiny which no longer serves our purposes but a new doxological purpose. God calls us to love him as a lover calls the beloved. Both God and humanity desire love that is freely given, love which is subject to no demand or claim, but is given and received as a free gift. Yet, so great is His love that, to His praise, he freely gives us His grace in both the very origin of human nature and then “chose us in [Christ]” to be his sons. Thus, the very advent of Christ frames the meaning of human nature and finality in a radical light that can only lead to a profound sense of mystery.[22] Eventually, however, this mystery must give way to worship: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ… to the praise of his glorious grace…”

Notes

[4]    “The Mystery of the Supernatural,” 304: “Hence their habit of thinking strictly of the relation of the spiritual creature to God by means of analogies draw from what happens within nature… Thus one comes to lay down as law that all being must have its connatural end, proportioned to its nature and of the same order as it.”

[5]    Ibid., 302-303.

[6]    Ibid., 304.

[7]    The Mystery of the Supernatural, 89.

[8]    Ibid., 91.

[9]    Ibid., 96; cf. 99: “His sovereign liberty encloses, surpasses and causes all the bonds of intelligibility that we discover between the creature and its destiny;” cf. 155-156, against Cajetan, de Lubac argues (with Matthew of Aquasparta, Soto, Bonaventure, Alexander of Hales, Gregory of Velencia, and Scotus) that it is man’s desire for that which is higher than himself which he can not attain on his own that “it is a mark of superiority.”

[10]  Ibid., 207.

[11]  Ibid., 171.

[12]  Ibid., 177; “Longing for a clear solution on the immediate level of understanding, they have allowed themselves to be guided uncritically by analogies drawn from social relationships or even from the material universe” (176); “It is in any case certainly true that theology is not, or ought not to be, a buildup of concepts by which the believer tries to make the divine mystery less mysterious, and in some cases to eliminate it altogether” (178).

[13]  Ibid., 178.

[14]  Ibid., 183; cf. Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory: The Action, vol. IV (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1994), 145: “[M]an’s inner, Faustian restlessness is resolves at its real, destined goal, that is, in the God who has taken the initiative in revealing, proclaiming, disclosing and giving himself. For man, fashioned by the Logos, is essentially constructed along dia-logical lines: any mono-logical interpretation is bound to destroy him.”

[15]  Lawrence Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God According to St. Thomas and His Interpreters (Rome: Apollinare Studi, 2001), 534.

[16]  Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God, 534 (emphasis mine).

[17]  The Mystery of the Supernatural, 230-231.

[18]  “The Mystery of the Supernatural,” 294.

[19]  The Mystery of the Supernatural, 230; cf. 232: “For such philosophy will no more allow the slightest moral necessity to influence God’s action that it will any metaphysical necessity…”

[20]  Ibid., 228-229.

[21]  Ibid., 235: “God is Love in person, love which freely, and not because of any law or inner determination, creates the being to whom he wills to give himself, and gives himself freely”; cf. 236: “He is a God of whom it would be blasphemy and madness to suppose that any demand of any order whatsoever could be forced upon him, in whatever hypothetical situation one may mentally place oneself, or whatever concrete situation one may imagine creatures to be in… The gratuitousness of the supernatural order… remains gratuitous in every hypothesis. It is forever new.”

[22]  This may what von Balthasar is getting at when he says, “no man will ever hit upon the solution God has in store, that is, the Incarnation of the Logos and his atoning death upon the Cross on our behalf” (Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory: The Action, vol. IV, 143.