Autor: Stebbins, J. Michael

Buch: The Divine Initiative

Titel: The Divine Initiative

Stichwort: Dogma und Spekulation (spekulative Theologie); Unterscheidung: an it sit - quomodo sit verum

Kurzinhalt: Crucial distinction between dogma and theological speculation; dogma: propositions that believers affirm in faith to be true: speculation: efforts to explain ...

Textausschnitt: l The Distinction between Dogma and Speculation

2/1 In his writings on gratia operans Lonergan established what was to remain for him a crucial distinction between dogma and theological speculation.1 Dogma consists in propositions that believers affirm in faith to be true. But speculation, the fruit of the restless, reverent impulse that Anselm termed fides quaerens intellectum (faith seeking understanding), consists in efforts to explain, to interrelate, to reconcile the affirmations of dogma; it strives to bring to light, within the limits of human understanding, the sublime intelligibility of divinely revealed truth and its relevance to the transformation of human living. In other words, dogma and speculation are both distinct from and related to one another because they provide answers to two distinct but related kinds of questions, namely, questions that intend truth and questions that intend an understanding of truth. (3; Fs)

3/1 This distinction surfaces again in the introductory section of De ente supernaturali, where Lonergan anticipates the objection that any attempt to use the notion of the supernatural to explain the gratuity of grace must be ruled invalid because it relies on a concept that was unfamiliar both to the authors of scripture and to the patristic writers. He replies by recommending that anyone who raises the objection ought to listen to these words of Aquinas: (3f; Fs)

[A]ny act should be carried out in accordance with what suits its end. But a disputation can be ordered to two ends. For one kind of disputation aims at removing doubt about whether something is so; and in a theological disputation of this sort one must rely primarily on authorities [...] But another kind of disputation - the magisterial kind, found in the schools - aims not at removing error but at instructing the students so they may be led to an understanding of the truth which the teacher proposes; and in this case one must proceed by relying on reasons that reach to the root of the truth, and by showing the students how what is proposed is true; otherwise, if the teacher settles the question by appealing to authorities alone, the student will indeed reach certainty that something is so; but he will acquire no science or understanding and will go away empty.2 (4; Fs)

4/1 In this passage Aquinas differentiates two questions that can motivate a theological disputation. With respect to any proposition that purports to express some fact or state of affairs, one can ask whether it is so (an ita sit); the corresponding answer takes the form of an affirmation or denial of the proposition's truth. Teachers of theology engaged in a disputation oriented to this end proceed primarily by appealing to authorities whose testimony will be accepted by their students. While Aquinas acknowledges the real usefulness of this kind of disputation in situations where error needs to be dispelled or doubt removed, he warns that in other situations it may be wholly inadequate. For students may pose another kind of question, a question that arises not out of a desire to overcome doubts or settle what in fact is the case but rather out of a desire to understand some truth that is already affirmed in faith. This question, 'How is it true?' (quomodo sit verum), motivates what Aquinas calls the 'magisterial' disputation, and it is answered when one grasps the reason or reasons that in some fashion explain why the proposed truth is true. The explanation Aquinas has in mind here should not be construed as a proof, for he says explicitly that the magisterial disputation does not have as its aim the removal of error or doubt. Just what theological explanation entails will become clearer in the following pages. Here the point is to notice that Lonergan follows Aquinas in claiming that theology involves at least two kinds of activity which, though distinct, have complementary functions. (4; Fs)

5/1 Lonergan's early writings on grace have to do primarily with the second, speculative task of theology. His dissertation bears the subtitle 'A Study of the Speculative Development in the Writings of St Thomas of Aquin'; in De ente supernaturali Lonergan offers no commentary on Aquinas's remarks regarding the two kinds of disputation other than to say to his readers, 'Let us discuss, therefore, the magisterial question, not whether grace is gratuitous, but why it is gratuitous or what the root of this truth is' (DES:2). The remainder of the present chapter is devoted to determining more precisely what Lonergan means when he speaks of understanding in a specifically theological context. To view the matter as he does requires a rather lengthy - but, as I hope this study as a whole will bear out, fruitful - excursus regarding the manner in which he understands understanding in general. What will become apparent is that the distinction between dogma and speculation is neither the product of an oversubtle mind nor a clever bit of scholastic legerdemain; rather, it is a fundamental theological insight grounded in a searching analysis of the activities by which human beings come to know reality. (4f; Fs)

Autor: Stebbins, J. Michael

Buch: The Divine Initiative

Titel: The Divine Initiative

Stichwort: Verbum: Vertiefung der Erkenntnislehre v. Thomas; Kurzfassung dieser Theorie; Begriff; Seele; Introspektion

Kurzinhalt: human knowing: a compound process; the act of understanding: a pivotal moment in human knowing; concepts: the rational self-expression of acts of understanding; introspection

Textausschnitt: 2 The Two Operations of the Human Intellect

2.1 The Introspective Method of Thomas Aquinas

6/1 At the time that he wrote De ente supernaturali, Lonergan was more than halfway through his five-year period of intensive research into Aquinas's trinitarian theory,1 a labour that eventuated in the publication of the Verbum articles and laid the groundwork for his monumental book Insight. Lonergan's interest in this topic was provoked in part by the existence of a disagreement among Catholic theologians as to the meaning of Aquinas's psychological analogy of the Trinity (found in its most developed form in articles 27-43 of the Pars Prima).2 (5; Fs)

7/1 As his research progressed, Lonergan grew in the conviction that the trinitarian controversy was only one symptom of an illness that had infected scholastic philosophy and theology as a whole, an illness whose roots lay in the almost complete failure of that tradition to appreciate the importance accorded by Aquinas to the act of understanding {intelligere)3. The situation could be remedied, he believed, only by penetrating Aquinas's doctrine on human knowing more deeply than the Thomistic tradition had managed to do (V:206-15). The Verbum articles are an impressive witness to the breadth, sophistication, and painstaking care of his inquiry. In the end, what Lonergan claimed to have accomplished was nothing less than an authentic recovery of the Thomist theory of human knowing (V:215-20). Among the most important elements that he sought to restore to their proper place in that theory were the following: that human knowing is a compound process rather than some single intellectual operation; that the act of understanding is the pivotal moment in human knowing; that direct understanding is a conscious act consisting in the grasp of some intelligible pattern in the data of sense or imagination; that concepts are not the product of an unconscious, metaphysical process but rather the rational self-expression of acts of understanding; that reasoning is understanding-in-process, and therefore is not essentially a matter of formal logic; that knowledge of what actually exists is had only after one has passed judgment on the correctness of the intelligibility grasped by understanding; that while Aquinas does employ metaphysical analysis to express his theory, the source of the theory was Aquinas's introspective insight into the intelligibility of his own intellectual operations as he consciously experienced them. I will touch on each of these issues in the present chapter. It will be most helpful to begin with the last, because it explains why Lonergan talks about the Thomist theory of knowledge in the terms that he does and why he appropriates the main lines of the theory as his own. (5f; Fs)

8/1 Both Aquinas and Aristotle explore the problem of how to determine just what it is that makes a human being a human being. They note that human beings are living; and what makes any living being to be alive and to be a particular kind of living being is a soul.4 Hence the problem of acquiring explanatory knowledge of the human being as specifically human boils down to the problem of determining how the human soul differs from other kinds of souls. Aquinas and Aristotle had a method for arriving at such a differentiation: (6; Fs)

[S]ouls differ by difference in their potencies. Since potency is knowable only inasmuch as it is in act, to know the different potencies it is necessary to know their acts. Again, since one act is distinguished from another by the difference of their respective objects, to know different kinds of acts it is necessary to discriminate between different kinds of objects. Knowledge of soul, then, begins from a distinction of objects; specifying objects leads to a discrimination between different kinds of act; different kinds of act reveal difference of potency; and the different combinations of potencies lead to knowledge of the different essences that satisfy the generic definition of soul.5
9/1 Although its categories are metaphysical, Lonergan does not hesitate to call this approach, insofar as it is applied to the study of the human soul, 'a method of empirical introspection.'6 The acts and objects that mark human beings off from members of other animal species are all to be found in human consciousness.7 To attain scientific knowledge of the human soul, therefore, one must begin by examining such distinctive acts and objects; and these, acts and objects alike, are to be found not in some abstract human consciousness but in the consciousness of concretely existing human beings - most notably, oneself. (6f; Fs) (notabene)

10/1 Lonergan does not claim that Aquinas made introspection an explicit theme in his writings.8 He does argue, however, that Aquinas's metaphysical account of human knowing stems in fact from what Aquinas himself understood about his own concrete acts of knowing as experienced by him in his own consciousness.9 To review the (in my judgment, solid) evidence adduced by Lonergan in support of this contention would take me far afield, so I will limit myself to two observations: first, Lonergan claims not only that he has correctly interpreted the position of Aquinas but also that this position, in its essentials, actually offers a correct explanation of human knowing; and second, the reason why Lonergan adopted this position has nothing to do with blind acquiescence to authority, and everything to do with the fact that he was able to verify the position himself by reflecting on his own conscious operations.10 (7; Fs)

11/1 I should point out that by 'introspection' Lonergan does not intend some kind of 'looking within' oneself in order to 'see' what is 'there.' In fact, in later works he tends to avoid the term precisely because of its visual and spatial connotations.11 What he means by 'empirical introspection' and similar terms is simply the practice of attending to, and trying to understand correctly, the process of one's own knowing as it actually occurs in one's own mind.12 That process is not something unconscious. Just as we are aware of seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling, so too remembering, imagining, wondering, pursuing clues, having and formulating insights, weighing evidence, concluding to the truth or falsity of one's insights all take place within the field of our awareness and so can be the object of inquiry. (7; Fs)

12/1 What follows, then, is a sketch of the psychological facts underpinning Aquinas's theory of human knowing. He discovered them in his own consciousness; so did Lonergan; and so must the reader, if the goal is to understand these two men as they understood themselves. (7; Fs)

Autor: Stebbins, J. Michael

Buch: The Divine Initiative

Titel: The Divine Initiative

Stichwort: Erste Tätigkeit d. Verstandes: direktes Verstehen - Begriff (dicere); Intelligibilität im Phantasma; quid (an) sit; inner word

Kurzinhalt: First Operation: Direct Understanding; the intelligibility (intelligible species) grasped in an act of direct understanding is immanent in a phantasm; concepts are grounded in acts of understanding

Textausschnitt: 20/1 If I am trying to understand a circle, I draw or imagine a circle as best I can. Then I begin to reason. What makes it look like that? I manipulate the image: I can draw lines from a point in the centre to the circle; what if I make one line longer than all the rest? The result is a curve that is no longer smooth. What if I make one a little shorter? A similar result. Gradually I come to realize that circularity must have something to do with the equal length of lines radiating from the centre of the circle. This process of reasoning continues until I grasp, all at once in an act of understanding, the entire set of terms and relations essential to making the circle what it is, namely, a locus of coplanar points equidistant from a centre. This grasp is what Lonergan calls an act of direct understanding; it consists in an insight into phantasm, an apprehension of the intelligibility - that is, the form, pattern, order, structure, coherence - that interrelates the various elements of the phantasm. Aquinas designates this act, which satisfies the wonder manifested in a particular occurrence of the question quid sit, as the first operation of the human intellect. (10; Fs)
21/1 In every instance, the intelligibility (in Thomist phraseology, 'intelligible species') grasped in an act of direct understanding is immanent in a phantasm; it is the intelligibility of the phantasm:
[O]ne cannot understand without understanding something; and the something understood, the something whose intelligibility is actuated, is in the phantasm. To understand circularity is to grasp by intellect a necessary nexus between imagined equal radii and imagined uniform curvature. The terms to be connected are sensibly perceived; their relation, connection, unification, is what insight knows in the sensitive presentation.
22/1 Thus phantasms are indispensable to human knowing because by insight we grasp an intelligibility precisely as related to the particular data of some phantasm. But intelligibility is not itself something that can be either sensed or imagined: (10; Fs)
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24/1 There are two aspects to the first operation of the intellect: insofar as it is an insight, a grasp of the intelligibility of a phantasm - and this is the only aspect I have treated up to this point - it is an act of understanding (intelligere); but insofar as it produces an expression of the intelligibility grasped in understanding, it is an act of conceptualizing or defining (dicere). While by insight we grasp an intelligibility as related to or immanent in a phantasm, we can conceptualize because simultaneously (and precisely because of our insight) we also know the intelligibility as something distinct from the phantasm. The reason we have to ask quid sit in the first place is that a phantasm as phantasm is unexplained; our inquiry anticipates an explanation that is not conveyed by our mere experience of a field of data. Consequently, when we understand, we are conscious of the fact that we have grasped something over and above what is given by our senses or formed in our imaginations, and as a result we can express the content of our insight as an intelligibility - an explanatory set of terms and relations - precisely as distinct from the phantasm. When I understand a circle, I grasp through insight the intelligibility of the particular image that I have been trying to understand; I express the content of that insight as the pattern of distinctions and relations that constitute the concept or essential definition of a circle. This is the essence of the circle, the goal of the question quid sit. As such, it is universal and unchanging (V:51). For an essence, a concept, a quod quid est, is an intelligibility that has been set free, so to speak, from the sensible conditions in which it was initially grasped, an intelligibility that pertains not to any particular instance but to an indefinite number of similar instances. Archimedes ...
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25/1 The foregoing analysis is of great importance because it reveals that concepts are grounded in acts of understanding. We can express a concept precisely because, and only because, we have discovered through an insight an intelligibility immanent in a phantasm. And the 'because' does not mean only that insight and concept are related as efficient cause and effect; rather, as Lonergan points out, 'Conceptualization is the self-expression of an act of understanding; such self-expression is possible only because understanding is self-possessed, conscious of itself and its own conditions as understanding' (V:42; cf. 33-34). When we understand, in other words, we also know both that we understand and that our understanding constitutes sufficient grounds for the expression of an intelligibility. Hence conceptualizing is not an optional activity that may or may not follow on the occurrence of an insight; an act of direct understanding cannot but express itself in this way. (11f; Fs) (notabene)

26/1 It is important to be clear about what a concept is. It is not to be confused with the name of a thing or with a verbal definition. Names or sets of words can be used to signify concepts; but concepts themselves are preverbal expressions of acts of understanding. In the language of Aquinas, concepts are 'inner words,' meanings, self-expressions of intelligence in act, admitting a variety of expressions in the 'outer words' (whether spoken or otherwise manifested) of human language (V: 1-4). (12; Fs) (notabene)
27/1 It is not too difficult to verify the genetic relation of insight to concept in one's own experience. With relative ease one can memorize and perhaps even use correctly a set of words or symbols that express a concept; but if one has not experienced an act of understanding in which the intelligibility expressed in the concept is grasped in sensible data, then one is not really in possession of the concept, the inner word. Many students find themselves in this situation when they learn mathematics in school: they memorize verbal definitions and learn to apply them correctly when asked to solve familiar sorts of problems, but they do so by rote and not because they understand; when faced with an unfamiliar problem or application, suddenly they are at a loss as to how to proceed. The point, then, is that concepts and definitions are expressions of acts of understanding; they mean or define what is understood; and so ideas parroted without understanding are devoid of their proper meaning. (12; Fs)

Autor: Stebbins, J. Michael

Buch: The Divine Initiative

Titel: The Divine Initiative

Stichwort: 2. Tätigkeit des Verstandes: an sit; resolutio in principia; lumen intellectus (Prinzipien); inneres Wort: Urteil

Kurzinhalt: The Second Operation: Reflective Understanding; this act of understanding yields an inner word that is not a concept but a judgment; 'intelligible emanation';

Textausschnitt: 31/1 Our movement towards knowledge shifts into this next phase when our wonder, now operating in a critical or reflective mode, transforms the concept from a mere possibility into a something-to-be-verified, just as it previously transformed the phantasm we were considering from mere data into a something-to-be-understood. Instead of being content with a bright idea, we pose a further question: Is the intelligibility grasped in our act of direct understanding the same as the intelligibility of the real thing that is the terminal object of our inquiry? This is the second of Aquinas's questions, an sit. We reach an answer to this question through the occurrence of an act of reflective (rather than direct) understanding, which consists in grasping whether or not there is sufficient evidence to verify that the conceptual content expressed by our direct understanding does indeed explain the actually existing thing that we seek to know. (14; Fs)

32/1 Aquinas speaks of verification as involving a resolutio in principia (a resolving of something to its principles) whereby we return to the two remote sources of our insight: our innate intellectual light, which I shall discuss shortly, and the data of sense. The immediate object of our inquiry is a phantasm, a schematic image that we form in order to represent what we take to be the significant elements of the data. Lonergan contends that insights into phantasm, as well as their consequent conceptual expressions, are in themselves unerring: (14; Fs)

No one misunderstands things as he imagines them: for insight into phantasm to be erroneous either one must fancy what is not or else fail to imagine what is; of itself, per se, apart from errors in imagining, insight is infallible; and, were that not so, one would not expect to correct misunderstandings by pointing out what has been overlooked or by correcting what mistakenly has been fancied. (V:176)

33/1 The point of returning to the data of sense, therefore, is to ensure that the phantasm that we have understood and whose essence we have defined is in fact an adequate representation of the sense data on the actually existing thing that is the ultimate object of our inquiry. Archimedes' insight, for instance, can be checked experimentally by immersing different pure metals or known alloys in water and verifying that there is a uniform correlation between the mass of the metal and the volume of water displaced. If the expected intelligibilities are found to be immanent in the data, then the evidence suggests the correctness of our insight. If they are not, then the fault lies not in our insight but in our failure to isolate some or all of the relevant aspects of the data, and we must continue our search for understanding, this time with an altered phantasm: back to the drawing board! (14f; Fs)

34/1 But sense data are not the only source of understanding; there is also what Aquinas calls the lumen intellectus (in Lonergan's rendering, 'intellectual light'), which is 'constitutive of our very power of understanding.' It cannot be known in its pure state; it always manifests itself as something (V:89). It is especially evident in our knowledge of first principles, a fact that bears directly upon our knowledge of the real as real (V:80-81). For every act of human understanding depends on the occurrence of some prior act of understanding. But the series of these acts is not an infinite regress, for we understand certain first principles that are naturally known; Aquinas frequently cites as examples our knowledge that a thing cannot both be and not-be, or that the whole is greater than the part. Why do we assent to first principles? Because they express the very meaning of intelligence and intelligibility, and hence the very nature of the human mind itself. Thus, in any instance of knowing we appeal ultimately to the innate power of our own minds to know the real. (15; Fs)

Autor: Stebbins, J. Michael

Buch: The Divine Initiative

Titel: The Divine Initiative

Stichwort: Das innere Wort: Produkt des rationalen Bewusstseins; Ratio als Wirkursache des inneren Wortes; imago Dei

Kurzinhalt: Any effect has a sufficient ground in its cause; but an inner word not merely has a sufficient ground in ...;

Textausschnitt: 36/1 A brief aside is in order. I have taken care to stress that concepts and judgments are both inner words, not out of some misplaced concern to respect the niceties of Aquinas's language but rather because it is in the expressing (dicere) of an inner word {verbum) by and from an act of understanding (intelligere), whether direct or reflective, that human knowing most evidently reveals itself precisely as rational. The expression of an inner word is an 'intelligible emanation,' that is, an act that is intelligible because it is intelligent: (15; Fs)

Any effect has a sufficient ground in its cause; but an inner word not merely has a sufficient ground in the act of understanding it expresses; it also has a knowing as sufficient ground, and that ground is operative precisely as a knowing, knowing itself to be sufficient. To introduce a term that will summarize this, we may say that the inner word is rational, not indeed with the derived rationality of discourse, of reasoning from premises to conclusions, but with the basic and essential rationality of rational consciousness, with the rationality that can be discerned in any judgment, with the rationality that now we have to observe in all concepts. For human understanding, though it has its object in the phantasm and knows it in the phantasm, yet is not content with an object in this state. It pivots on itself to produce for itself another object which is the inner word as ratio, intentio, definitio, quod quid est. And this pivoting and production is no mere matter of some metaphysical sausage-machine, at one end slicing species off phantasm, and at the other popping out concepts; it is an operation of rational consciousness. (V:34)

Autor: Stebbins, J. Michael

Buch: The Divine Initiative

Titel: The Divine Initiative

Stichwort: Entwicklung des Verstehehens: intelligere multa per unum; discursus, ratiocinando; ordo cognoscendi (essendi); ratiocinatio; Abstraktion

Kurzinhalt: synthesis: one thing in another; rational - intellectual (human beings, angels); abstraction: adds to, rather than subtracts from;

Textausschnitt: 43/1 Furthermore, because our intellectual light is a created participation in the light of divine understanding, the desire to know impels us towards just this kind of synthesis: (18; Fs) (notabene)
[I]t is to such a [synthetic] view of all reality that human intellect naturally aspires. The specific drive of our nature is to understand, and indeed to understand everything, neither confusing the trees with the forest nor content to contemplate the forest without seeing all the trees. For the spirit of inquiry within us never calls a halt, never can be satisfied, until our intellects, united to God as body to soul, know ipsum intelligere and through that vision, though then knowing aught else is a trifle, contemplate the universe as well.
44/1 Thus, synthesis is the content of an act of direct understanding that grasps one thing in another rather than one thing from another; one understands both the whole and its parts without detriment to the understanding of either, for one grasps the parts precisely as in the whole (V:54-55). (18; Fs) (notabene)
45/1 Because we have to begin from the presentations of sense, the attainment of synthesis does not come immediately or automatically for humans. We advance gradually from understanding one thing to understanding another, a process that Aquinas calls 'reasoning' (ratiocinatio) or 'discourse' (discursus). We do not grasp essences immediately or intuitively; instead, we reach an understanding of causes only through a consideration of their effects, or of natures through a consideration of their properties (V:§6). Aquinas's introspective method is a case in point: we can determine what the human soul is only by reasoning from the objects of human acts to the acts themselves, from the acts to the potencies actualized by the acts, from the potencies to the essence in which the potencies inhere. It is otherwise for angels, who possess the fullness of intellectual light. When they grasp an intelligible species, they grasp it immediately and, simultaneously, know without reasoning everything that can be known in it, that is, every conclusion that could be drawn from it by reasoning. Thus, says Aquinas, angels are called intellectual beings because they understand principles and implications at a glance, seeing effects in causes and causes in effects, while human souls are called rational because they attain knowledge through discursive thought. (18f; Fs)

Autor: Stebbins, J. Michael

Buch: The Divine Initiative

Titel: The Divine Initiative

Stichwort: intellectus possibilis, agens; Habitus: Wissenschaft, Intellekt, Weisheit; Zielobjekt

Kurzinhalt: species intelligibilis; habit: intellect (knowing the first principles of demonstrations), science, wisdom;

Textausschnitt: [F]irst, there is the moving object of direct understanding, namely, the actuated intelligibility of what is presented by imagination; secondly, there is the terminal object of direct understanding, the essence expressed in a definition; thirdly, there is the moving object of reflective understanding, the aggregate of what is called the evidence on an issue; fourthly, there is the terminal object of reflective understanding, the verum [the true] expressed in a judgment; Fifthly, there is the transcendent object, reality, known imperfectly in prior acts but perfectly only through the truth of judgment.
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59/1 Now two of these objects, the immanent intelligibility of the phantasm (the species intelligibilis or quidditas rei materialis ) and the evidence regarding the relevance of the concept to the data, are said to be 'moving' objects; by this Lonergan means that they cause the act of either direct or reflective understanding to occur in the intellect (V: 139-40). In other words, these are agent objects functioning as efficient causes, and with respect to them the intellect is receptive, not active. (The analysis of the intellect and will as passive potencies will prove very significant for Lonergan's understanding of supernatural acts. ) Thus an act of understanding, whether direct or reflective, is an actuation of a passive potency. To this potency, our capacity to understand, Aristotle and Aquinas give the name 'possible intellect'. (24; Fs) (notabene)
60/1 But the intellect also plays an active role in its own actuation. For phantasms become actually intelligible only if they are 'illuminated,' that is, if they are objects of wonder, objects whose nature the intellect seeks to understand. In the same way, evidence becomes relevant only if the intellect is engaged in reflective activity, 'assaying its knowledge' by a reduction to first principles (V:62-63). To account for the production of illuminated phantasms and relevant evidence, which are never simply given as data of either imagination or sense, it is necessary to posit an active principle, the 'agent intellect,' which produces these agent objects as instruments for attaining knowledge: (24; Fs)
Both definition and judgment proceed from acts of understanding, but the former from direct, the latter from reflective understanding. Both acts of understanding have their principal cause in the agent intellect, but the direct act in the agent intellect as spirit of wonder and inquiry, the reflective act in the agent intellect as spirit of critical reflection, as virtus iudicativa.

Autor: Stebbins, J. Michael

Buch: The Divine Initiative

Titel: The Divine Initiative

Stichwort: ordo cognoscendi - essendi; ordo compositionis: für intelligente Studenten

Kurzinhalt: The Two Ways of Learning; as Aristotle has it, from objects we learn to specify acts; from acts, potencies; from potencies, essences

Textausschnitt: .... As Aristotle has it, from objects we learn to specify acts; from acts, potencies; from potencies, essences. All human discovery proceeds, at least in the first instance, according to the ordo cognoscendi. But whenever this process comes to a term and the inquirer attains knowledge of some essence or other cause, he or she also grasps, as a consequence, the ordo essendi. For explanation is synthetic: it includes a grasp of implications, so that in understanding an essence one knows and can demonstrate logically what potencies it grounds, what the acts of those potencies are, what the objects of those acts are; in understanding a cause, one knows and can demonstrate its effects. (32; Fs)
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84/1 Lonergan employs this same distinction in De ente supernaturali. The ordo resolutionis proceeds from revealed truths to their intelligible ordering (de veritatibus revelatis ad eorum ordinationem intelligibilem procedit); the ordo compositionis descends from an intelligible ordering to the things that are to be ordered (ex intelligibili ordinatione ad ordinanda descendit) (DES:3). The latter is the order governing the arrangement of the subject-matter in De ente supernaturali. Thus, Lonergan does not structure that treatise by assembling and analysing scriptural statements and then working his way gradually towards an explanation of the gratuity of grace; instead he begins with a treatment of supernatural being because it is the synthetic intelligibility that, by providing a way of ordering the dogmatic data, explains the gratuity of grace. To refer to supernatural being as abstractissimum, then, is simply to draw attention to its highly synthetic character. (33; Fs)

Autor: Stebbins, J. Michael

Buch: The Divine Initiative

Titel: The Divine Initiative

Stichwort: Definition: Substanz; Unterschied: Substand- Akzidenz; essentia: simpliciter dicta , secundum quid: erste, zweite Substanz

Kurzinhalt: substance may be defined as 'that to which it belongs to be per se; accidents: also includes an added relation to their subject; first, secon act

Textausschnitt: 8/2 The easiest way to begin, it seems to me, is to recall that an essence is the concept or definition of a thing, the answer to the question, 'What is it?' Essences are of two kinds. There is substance (quod quid est), which Lonergan defines as 'essence in the strict sense' (essentia simpliciter dicta) (DES:5), the ultimate goal of any scientific inquiry. Less accurately, says Lonergan, substance may be defined as 'that to which it belongs to be per se.' In contrast to substance is accident, which is 'essence in a restricted sense' (essentia secundum quid) (DES:5). Respiration, for instance, is an accident; so too is an intellect. These have essences in the sense that one can define what they are; none the less they have essences only imperfectly, because they do not exist per se but only with reference to some substance that serves as their subject. Hence 'substance alone is a quid [a 'what'] without qualification; accidents, too, are instances of quid, but only after a fashion, for their intelligibility is not merely what they are, but also includes an added relation to their subject; and this difference in their intelligibility and essence involves a generically different modus essendi [mode of being].' In this context the term 'accident' should not be taken to suggest the merely incidental. Lonergan is thinking of proper accidents, that is, the properties that a being has because of what it is; these are, after their own fashion, 'essential' aspects of a being. (38; Fs)

9/2 In each 'line' of being, the substantial and the accidental, one can identify two kinds of act and two corresponding kinds of potency. In the line of substance, form actuates matter, and existence actuates essence. In the line of accident, accidental form actuates accidental potency, and accidental act (operation) actuates operative potency (that is, accidental potency that has received a determination from accidental form). Thus form is called 'first act,' and act, in the sense of esse or operation, is called 'second act.' Lonergan points out that second act is a primitive notion that 'is more invoked than defined; with regard to substance it is the act of existence; with regard to accident it is the act of being moved, of shining, of becoming hot, of sensing, of understanding, of willing' (DES:36). First act, in turn, is defined in terms of second act: it is 'the principle by which a specifically determined second act is per se in a subject' (DES:38), where per se means 'intelligibly and uniformly by reason of the subject itself (DES:58), and where 'subject' refers to essence or to operative potency. Hence first act is form, either substantial or accidental, or something similar to form such as a habit (DES59), because form is the reason why a given subject is in fact an appropriate potency for a particular second act: (39; Fs) (notabene)
Thus in Aristotelian physics heaviness or the form of heaviness is a first act, since it is the principle by which a heavy object is per se moved downwards. Similarly, the external sensitive potencies (sight, hearing, etc.) are the principles by which per se sensitive operations (acts of seeing, acts of hearing, etc.) occur in sensitive organs. And in the same way, operative habits in the intellect (science) and in the will (virtue, vice) are the principles by which per se operations (of science, of virtue, of vice) occur in the intellect or will. (DES:38)

12/2 With regard to the distinction between accidental and essential passive potency, Lonergan adds the following explanation: (40; Fs)
A passive potency is called accidental because it is only per accidens [that is, because of some extrinsic circumstance] if a second act is not in it: thus whoever has the potency of sight, per se sees in second act, [but] per accidens does not see in second act, for if the required conditions are met he is able to see whenever he wishes.
A passive potency is called essential because it lacks a form or habit or other similar principle by which per se a second act is in it. (DES:59)
13/2 Thus, the point of referring to these passive potencies as 'accidental' and 'essential' is to indicate the state of the subject relative to the reception of second act. A human embryo is in essential passive potency to seeing, for though it will have eyes, it does not yet have them; a mature human whose eyes are closed is in accidental passive potency to seeing; a mature human whose eyes are open (and properly functioning) actually sees (NTR:12). Similarly, the raw materials that go into the manufacturing of a car are in essential passive potency to being a car that is actually driven; a car sitting in a garage is in accidental passive potency to being actually driven. (40; Fs)
14/2 Lonergan emphasizes that the constitutive ontological components - substantial and accidental potency, form, and act - are really distinct from one another. Two terms, A and B, are really distinct if A is, if B is, and if A is not B. Now potency, form, and act are all verifiable components of proportionate being. Form is neither potency nor act, because form is intelligible in itself but potency and act are not. Furthermore, potency and act have their intelligibility in some other, but each with respect to a different other. Potency is rendered intelligible by form. Act, though specifically determined by form, is not thereby rendered fully intelligible, for all acts are contingent and so also require an efficient cause to account for them - a fact whose implications are considered in the next section. Hence potency and act are really distinct from one another. Finally, substance and accident are really distinct as well. Substance has its being per se; and accident has its being only in relation to substance; consequently, substance can be defined without reference to accident, but not vice versa (V: 156-57). There is, for example, a real distinction between me and my acts of understanding (NTR:25). (40; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Stebbins, J. Michael

Buch: The Divine Initiative

Titel: The Divine Initiative

Stichwort: Unterschied: Gott (Schöpfer) - geschaffenes Sein; Identität v.: Einheit: Sein, Wesen, operative Potenz u. Tätigkeiten

Kurzinhalt: Intelligibilität: keine Ursache für das Sein; distinctions between essence and act of existing, between operative potency and operation

Textausschnitt: 16/2 The relation of essence to existence and of operative potency to operation is that of potency to act. Now a potency cannot actuate itself, for potency in itself is mere possibility. Nor can an act cause itself, for to do so would require that it somehow be an act prior to being an act, which is impossible. The immanent intelligibility of a being, then, does not account for the coming-to-be of either its actual existence or its operations. Instead, the transition from accidental passive potency to second act is always due to some extrinsic principle, which in Aquinas's language is termed the 'efficient cause' or 'agent.' An efficient cause is the answer to questions of the type, 'What caused this being actually to exist?' or 'What caused this operation actually to occur?' This question, by the very fact of its being raised, constitutes a tacit acknowledgment that knowing the essence of a thing does not suffice for a complete grasp of its intelligibility. (41; Fs) (notabene)
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20/2 Beyond the sheer fact of its existence, a number of predications can be made of this absolutely necessary being. First, to be absolutely necessary is to be pure act. Metaphysical analysis attributes contingence to any act that is the realization of a potency, for every such act is conditioned; hence an absolutely necessary efficient cause is an act with no corresponding potency. Second, since the distinctions between ontological components are grounded in the fundamental distinction between act and potency, pure act is absolutely simple. Still, this is not to deny that pure act has an essence, for it has an immanent intelligibility (albeit one that lies beyond the range of human knowing); nor that it has an esse, for it exists; nor that it has operative potencies, for it is capable of acting; nor that it has operations, for it is by actually operating that it is the ultimate efficient cause of proportionate being. In the absolutely necessary being, however, these terms are not distinct but identical: essence, existence, operative potencies, and operations are one and the same reality. Thus, the compositeness that characterizes proportionate being contrasts with the absolute simplicity of pure act. Third, because pure act is absolutely free of the limitations imposed by potency, it is infinite. Within the universe of proportionate being, acts always involve the realization of a single form, which is the specific determination of a particular genus of potency; but pure act is absolute perfection, that is, the realization of an unrestricted intelligibility. Finally, precisely because it lacks potency, which is the ground of all distinction, pure act is unique. If there were two or more pure acts they would have an identical, infinite intelligibility; and since there is no potency in a being that is pure act, there could be no distinction of subjects in which two such acts could be received. Hence a plurality of pure acts is impossible. This last point has an important corollary: because there is only one pure act, everything else that exists or occurs - and not only proportionate being, whose ontological constitution provides the basis for affirming the existence of pure act in the first place - must be composed of potency and act. To be a creature, therefore, is also to be finite and contingent. (42; Fs)
()
22/2 The proper meaning of terms that are predicated of God cannot be understood by any creature, for finite intellects are not capable of grasping an infinite intelligibility. Such predications signify negation more than they do positive content: to call the necessary being 'infinite' is to deny that its intelligibility is limited in any way; to call it 'simple' is to deny that it is composite; to call it 'pure act' is to deny that it is conditioned by any potency whatsoever. Such characteristics are truly affirmed of God not because we know God uti in se est but solely because we know God insofar as he is the ultimate cause of proportionate being. None the less, to affirm them is to assign a theoretical meaning, albeit primarily a negative one, to the notion of God's transcendence. (43; Fs)

Autor: Stebbins, J. Michael

Buch: The Divine Initiative

Titel: The Divine Initiative

Stichwort: Definition: heiligmachende Gnade - sanctifying grace

Kurzinhalt: Lonergan defines sanctifying grace as a created communication of the divine nature

Textausschnitt: 51/2 Since understanding is a matter of knowing causes, an adequate explanation of the gratuity of grace must begin with the cause that stands first in the ordo compositionis. That gratuity is explained by the supernaturality of grace; but to know why grace is supernatural, one first has to know what grace is. In the first thesis of De ente supernaturali, which has been the central concern of the present chapter up to this point, Lonergan defines sanctifying grace as a created communication of the divine nature. From this definition he derives, in the second thesis, the characteristic of super-naturality. (53f; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Stebbins, J. Michael

Buch: The Divine Initiative

Titel: The Divine Initiative

Stichwort: Definition: Natur, natürlich - übernatürlich (natural - supernatural)

Kurzinhalt: Hence, one can define the natural simply as that which falls within the proportion of a given nature, where 'nature' is taken in its strict sense (that is, as constituted by substance).

Textausschnitt: 52/2 Scholastic manuals on grace frequently define 'natural' as that which pertains to a nature constitutively, consequentially, or exigitively. Lonergan lists everything that can be deemed natural according to this definition: (54; Fs)

In a broad sense nature is constituted by substance, the act of existing which follows substance, and the accidents which flow from substance.

There result from nature principally the end, which is an operation or complex of operations, and secondarily those things which are received in the subject either as ordered to the end or as due to the attainment of the end.

Nature has an exigence for the extrinsic conditions of existing [esse] and of existing well [bene esse], that is, so that it may exist and, for the most part, attain its end. (DES:20)

53/2 This itemization, while unobjectionable in itself, cannot qualify as an essential or theoretical definition: it stops short of explaining exactly why the natural is natural. The reason why we say that anything is natural with respect to some being is that it is proportionate to that being's nature. Hence, one can define the natural simply as that which falls within the proportion of a given nature, where 'nature' is taken in its strict sense (that is, as constituted by substance). This definition establishes analytically or theoretically what the other, despite its sheen of technical terminology, only enumerates (DES:20). Still, both refer to the same object: (54; Fs)

Autor: Stebbins, J. Michael

Buch: The Divine Initiative

Titel: The Divine Initiative

Stichwort: 4 reale göttliche Relationen (Vaterschaft, Sohnschaft aktive, passive Spiration) - Entsprechung in d. Gnade

Kurzinhalt: esse secundarium and sanctifying grace; the habit of charity and the light of glory

Textausschnitt: 48/2 First of all, there are four real divine relations that are really identical with the divine substance, and so there are four very special modes which ground an external imitation of the divine substance. Secondly, there are four absolutely supernatural beings [entia] which are never found uninformed [informis], namely, the esse secundarium of the incarnation, sanctifying grace, the habit of charity, and the light of glory.

49/2 On these grounds the esse secundarium and sanctifying grace are not only created communications of the divine nature but also finite participations in, respectively, the relation of the Father to the Son (paternity) and of the Father and the Son to the Spirit (active spiration); the habit of charity and the light of glory are finite participations in, respectively, the relation of the Spirit to the Father and the Son (passive spiration) and of the Son to the Father (filiation). Thus, the communication of the divine nature to creatures is precisely a sharing in the nature of God as three. (53; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Stebbins, J. Michael

Buch: The Divine Initiative

Titel: The Divine Initiative

Stichwort: Definition: "übernatürlich" (supernaturale) - relativer und absoltuer Sinn; Gebrauch in katholischer Theologie

Kurzinhalt: the term 'supernatural' has both a relative and an absolute sense. The relatively supernatural (supernaturale secundum quid vel relativum) is 'what exceeds the proportion of some particular nature'

Textausschnitt: 55/2 Now the term 'supernatural' has both a relative and an absolute sense. The relatively supernatural (supernaturale secundum quid vel relativum) is 'what exceeds the proportion of some particular nature' (DES:21). Chemical compounds are relatively supernatural with respect to subatomic particles, plants are relatively supernatural with respect to chemical compounds, and so on. In the cosmic hierarchy, any higher grade of being is relatively supernatural in comparison to any lower grade. The absolutely supernatural (supernaturale simpliciter vel absolutum), though it can be understood by analogy with the relatively supernatural, is something radically different. Lonergan defines it as 'that which exceeds the proportion of any finite substance whatsoever, whether created or able to be created.' But whatever exceeds the proportion of any and every possible finite substance must be proportionate to an infinite substance; that is, it must be proportionate to God uti in se est. Hence, the absolutely supernatural does not designate the next possible level above the angels in the hierarchy of being, or even the next level above some possible creature that itself is of a higher proportion than the angels. It transcends utterly whatever is not divine. (55; Fs) (notabene)

56/2 This level of being, the supernatural order, is the intelligibly interrelated totality of those realities in the universe which, though created by God - hence finite and contingent - nevertheless are proportionate to the attainment of God uti in se est. (Note that in Catholic theology, the terms 'supernatural' and 'supernatural order' normally are applied not to God but to the order of being constituted by the participation of creatures in the divine life.) Its principal elements have already come to light; its root is the twofold created communication of the divine nature, which 'exceeds the proportion not only of human nature but also of any finite substance whatsoever, and therefore is strictly supernatural' (DES:19). This orientation of human and angelic nature gives rise to proportionate habits of intellect and will, and these in turn are passive potencies for the occurrence of the strictly supernatural acts of vision and charity. (55; Fs)

Autor: Stebbins, J. Michael

Buch: The Divine Initiative

Titel: The Divine Initiative

Stichwort: Gnade - Ripalda; Behauptung der Möglichkeit einer übernatürlichen Substanz: Widerspruch in sich

Kurzinhalt: God is able to create a substance -> that a communication of the divine nature is naturally owed to it; the created communication of the divine nature is a mystery in the strict sense

Textausschnitt: 67/2 In discussing the second thesis of De ente supernaturali, Lonergan devotes considerable space to refuting a pair of objections to his contention that the created communication of the divine nature is absolutely supernatural. By ruling out the possibility that God could create a being possessed of such a high degree of ontological perfection that it would be proportionate to the created communication of the divine nature, Lonergan places himself in the mainstream of scholastic opinion. But not all have shared the majority view. Juan Martinez de Ripalda , in particular, as well as Luis de Molina, Gregory of Valencia, and M. Morlaix have argued that 'there is no contradiction, or no contradiction can be established, in such statements as, "God is able to create a substance so perfect that a communication of the divine nature is naturally owed to it."' According to Heinrich Lennerz, the problem in Ripalda's case can be traced to the peculiar twist he gave to the notion of nature: (59; Fs)
Ripalda did not extend the concept of nature (the natural order) to all creatable substances, but restricted it to existing substances and to those possible substances which are associated [affines] with existing substances. Thus there are, perhaps, possible substances superior to existing substances, to which the vision of God would be connatural; he calls such a creature a 'supernatural substance' [substantiam supernaturalem].

68/2 In other words, the created communication of the divine nature is conceived as exceeding the proportion only of all actually existing finite substances, not of all finite substances whatsoever; thus it is only relatively supernatural. Ripalda, insisting that he found nothing inherently unreasonable in positing the possibility of a supernatural substance, contended that the disapproval levelled at this view by 'more recent' theological authority was not sufficient grounds for condemning it. (59; Fs) (notabene)

71/2 Lonergan considers a counterargument that might be made in defence of Ripalda's position (DES:31). Isn't it just so much double-talk to assert that the communication of the divine nature is, on the one hand, created and finite and, on the other, proportionate to God precisely as infinite? Isn't such a claim obviously absurd? The objection gives Lonergan a chance to clarify further his notion of the created communication of the divine nature. His response hinges on a discussion of the distinction between substance and the other metaphysical components (DES:32). Substance is an essence in the strict sense and as such is defined through itself and without relation to an other (per se ipsa et sine habitudine ad aliud). Everything besides substance, however, is necessarily defined not only through what it is but also through relation to some other: esse is the act of a substance, accidents exist only in substances, and cognoscitive and appetitive operations, excepting God's, not only exist in substances but also receive their specific determination from an object (DES:32). Lonergan remarks that, 'since a substance is that which is defined only through what it is in itself, it follows that a substance defined through God uti in se est is God and infinite' (DES:32). Thus, Ripalda's notion of a created substance proportionate to the beatific vision is a contradiction in terms. The same cannot be said, however, of the created communication of the divine nature. It is not a substance but only a principle by which certain operations are present in creatures: in the case of Christ, the act of existing by which the assumed human nature is made capable of being united with the divine nature in the person of the Word; in us it is sanctifying grace, the entitative habit from which spring the habit of charity in the will and the light of glory in the intellect, which in turn are the proximate principles of acts of charity and of the beatific vision. Consequently, even though it is defined through God uti in se est, the created communication of the divine nature is not a substance and so is not identical to God. And though it is proportionate to God as infinite, it is itself infinite only in a restricted sense, that is, 'insofar as it is ordered to attaining God uti in se est (DES:31; italics added). (60f; Fs)

Autor: Stebbins, J. Michael

Buch: The Divine Initiative

Titel: The Divine Initiative

Stichwort: Frühscholastik: rechtfertigende Gnade (gratia sanans; Sünde -> Glaube, Liebe); psychologische Erklärung d. Gnade (Lonergan)

Kurzinhalt: ... was conceived only as justifying grace; complicated by the fact ... of equating justifying grace with the virtues of faith and charity; linking the necessity of grace to sin and sin's effects; the psychological interpretation of grace

Textausschnitt: 7/3 Until the early part of the thirteenth century, grace in the strict sense -that is, the divine help necessary for salvation - was conceived only as justifying grace. As a consequence, there was no explicit recognition of a grace bestowed prior to justification; although the early scholastics acknowledged that God prepares sinners for justification, they shied away from using the term gratia to designate such divine assistance. This restricted notion predominated chiefly because theologians took the Pauline passages on justification (which de facto are the context of Paul's discussion of the necessity of grace) as the fundamental data for much of their speculation on grace. There Paul speaks of grace expressly as the cause of justification (for example, Romans 3:24). (69; Fs)

8/3 The speculative situation was further complicated by the fact that theologians generally followed Augustine's practice of equating justifying grace with the virtues of faith and charity. As evidence for this position they could point to certain passages of the Pauline letters in which justification is attributed to faith (for example, Romans 3:28, 4:5) and faith is said to be operative and effective only when it is linked to love (for instance, Galatians 5:6 and 1 Corinthians 13:2). Hence, the manuscripts of the early scholastic period commonly designate grace as 'faith which operates through love' {fides quae per dilectionem operatur). (69f; Fs)

9/3 Given the pervasive influence of Paul and Augustine (or perhaps more accurately, of Paul as interpreted by Augustine), it is hardly surprising to find the Pauline commentaries of the early scholastic era laying great stress on the gratuity of grace and citing Augustine's interpretation of Romans 3:24:

12/3 Here grace is taken to be essentially something given gratuitously {gratis data), an unmerited gift of God, and its gratuity seems to lie in the fact that its recipients are undeserving of grace precisely because they are sinners. (70; Fs) (notabene)
13/3 Theologians of this period regarded sin, or the state of injustice, as an infirmity of nature that darkens the intellect and enslaves the will. In this crippled condition, humans left to their own devices are unable either to discern or to carry out God's commandments; and it is this failure of obedience that, in turn, renders a person unworthy of salvation. Hence there is no salvation without grace. Humans are powerless to save themselves: only the gifts of faith and charity (which bring all the other virtues in their train) can obliterate sin and establish the state of justice by restoring the primordial integrity of intellect and will. On this view, the function of grace is essentially restorative: grace is conceived as gratia sanans, healing the wounds inflicted on us by sin and thus making it possible for us to fulfil the commands of the divine law. Lonergan refers to this as 'the psychological interpretation of grace.' (70f; Fs) (notabene)
14/3 Now it is certainly true that human nature is disordered by sin and can be healed only through the bestowal of grace, and that sin makes one unworthy of salvation. Nevertheless, as Lonergan asserts in the introduction to De ente supernaturali, this insight only partially explains the necessity of grace for salvation. The deficiency of early scholastic speculation lay in its inability to recognize explicitly an additional aspect of grace, namely, its function as gratia elevans, by which the recipients are raised gratuitously to an order of being and operating that exceeds the proportion of their own natures. This lack of a theoretical distinction between the natural and the supernatural orders skewed, in an unsuspected but none the less pervasive manner, the orientation of speculative thought on grace. (71; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Stebbins, J. Michael

Buch: The Divine Initiative

Titel: The Divine Initiative

Stichwort: Gnade: gratia creatrix, salvatrix (Hugh of St Victo); Ungeschuldetheit d. Gnade: Unterschied zur Schöpfung

Kurzinhalt: what it is that sets grace apart from other divine gifts;

Textausschnitt: 15/3 Lonergan points out that, because they could not articulate the specifically supernatural character of grace, the early scholastics were hard-pressed to determine what it is that sets grace apart from other divine gifts (G0:41; GF:14). For grace was conceived largely in terms of its unmeritability; but every gift of God - in other words, creation in its entirety - is given without regard to any creature's merit. As a result, twelfth-century theologians had to grapple with the question whether every divine gift without exception should be designated an instance of grace. At least one author, Adam Scotus, answered in the affirmative; but most, presumably because they wanted to account for the dogmatic data linking grace to salvation, sought to find some grounds for restricting the meaning of gratia. (71; Fs)
16/3 One approach lay in introducing distinctions within grace. Hugh of St Victor, for example, distinguished creating grace (gratia creatrix) from saving grace (gratia salvatrix): (71; Fs)

18/3 Another approach sought to restrict the meaning of grace on etymological grounds. One of its more notable exponents was Cardinal Laborans, whose effort ...

Autor: Stebbins, J. Michael

Buch: The Divine Initiative

Titel: The Divine Initiative

Stichwort: Gnade: Naturalia - Gratuita

Kurzinhalt: in this context nature has to do with what one receives at birth, and grace with what one receives in addition, as a free gift

Textausschnitt: 20/3 A definitive resolution of the foregoing problem would have required the application of the theorem of the supernatural, but there was not as yet a sufficient grasp of the meaning of 'nature' to make the discovery of the theorem a possibility. Although the concept of nature underwent dramatic development during the twelfth century, it did not begin to receive its comprehensive formulation within the framework of Aristotelian metaphysics until the first part of the thirteenth century, with the result that, prior to the work of Philip the Chancellor, attempts to define grace in contradistinction to nature tended to go awry. In some authors, one finds natura and what pertains to natura (the naturalia) associated with terms such as origo (origin) and datum (given), while gratia and what pertains to gratia (the gratuita) are associated with supererogatoria (what is paid over and above), superadditum (what is added over and above), and donum (gift), among others. In other words, in this context nature has to do with what one receives at birth, and grace with what one receives in addition, as a free gift. Magister Martinus affords an example of this line of thought: (73; Fs)

25/3 From this standpoint, then, there are no virtues in the unjustified, for they do not possess charity. Because virtues are the principles of good acts, consistency would seem to demand the further conclusion that the unjustified, being bereft of virtues, are incapable of any good act. While a few twelfth-century theologians took this extreme view, most chose a different tack: they tended to admit the possibility of acts prior to justification that are good in some sense, but they denied that such acts could be meritorious of eternal life. Still, in the absence of a satisfactory distinction between goodness and merit, the term 'good' was applied to the acts of the unjustified only hesitantly and in a diminished sense. (74; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Stebbins, J. Michael

Buch: The Divine Initiative

Titel: The Divine Initiative

Stichwort: Kindertaufe; Schwierigkeit d. Erklärung der Kindstaufe im Rahmen d. psychologischen Erklärung d. Gnade; Anselm

Kurzinhalt: Within the framework of the psychological notion of grace, the state of justice tended to be conceived wholly in terms of acts: to possess faith meant actually to believe,

Textausschnitt: 26/3 Another of the speculative difficulties faced by the early scholastics had to do with infant baptism (GO:27-3O; GF:8-9, 16-17). Again, the dogmatic issue was not at stake; the theologians aligned themselves with the longstanding practice of the church, which was predicated on the belief that infants are in fact saved through the reception of the sacrament. But difficulties arose when it came to explaining why the sacrament has this efficacy. Within the framework of the psychological notion of grace, the state of justice tended to be conceived wholly in terms of acts: to possess faith meant actually to believe, to possess charity meant actually to love God above all things. It was not apparent, therefore, how one could speak of baptized infants as justified, since they plainly lack the requisite operations of believing and willing. (75; Fs) (notabene)
27/3 One way of approaching the problem was to sidestep it entirely, and so some theologians went no further than to repeat the Augustinian claim that the infant is justified by receiving the sacrament of faith even though it does not make an act of faith. For the more speculatively inclined, Anselm provided an ingenious solution: infants are not justified by baptism, but they are forgiven for the fault they have inherited from Adam; if they die in this state 'they are saved as if they were just [quasi iusti] by the justice of Christ, who gave himself for them, and by the justice of the faith of the church their mother, which believes on their behalf.' This approach exerted a great deal of influence on early scholastic speculation. By the twelfth century, the speculative issue came to be expressed more technically in terms of the question whether a virtue is a quality or a motion. The tenacity of the Anselmian position is evident from the fact that as late as 1201 it won the tentative approbation of Innocent III, who found it more persuasive than the view that through baptism infants are justified by receiving the infused virtues in the form of habits rather than in the form of acts. (75; Fs)

Autor: Stebbins, J. Michael

Buch: The Divine Initiative

Titel: The Divine Initiative

Stichwort: Gnade - Verdienst - Adam;

Kurzinhalt: Adam had within himself the ability to avoid sinning, but that without the help of grace he could neither will nor carry out meritorious acts

Textausschnitt: 28/3 The psychological interpretation of grace also hampered early scholastic attempts to explain the basis of the doctrine of merit, which states that good works performed with the help of grace are truly meritorious of eternal salvation. There was never any question that grace is necessary for merit; the problem lay in pinning down the reason for that necessity. In the case of fallen human nature the connection could be explained as follows. 'Merit' denotes a worthiness for reward based, in a manner determined by the giver of the reward, on one's performance. The merit that leads to eternal life is the result of faithfully carrying out God's commandments. The highest of these is the commandment to love God above all things, but such love is not possible for human beings because of nature's sin-induced debility. Thus grace - specifically, the virtue of charity - is a sine qua non for merit, for it alone can cause the will to love God as God commands. (75f; Fs)
29/3 The case of our first parents, however, proved more refractory. Theologians agreed with Augustine's view that prior to the fall Adam had within himself the ability to avoid sinning, but that without the help of grace he could neither will nor carry out meritorious acts. Since he had not yet sinned, however, and so did not need to be cured of sin's detrimental effects, they were at a loss to explain coherently how grace, conceived as gratia sanans, effected the meritoriousness of Adam's acts. One solution, advanced by Peter Lombard and others, posited the expenditure of effort as a condition of merit, noted that before the fall Adam did not have to struggle to resist temptation, and so concluded that his acts could be rendered meritorious only through grace. Another, less common solution held that Adam could not merit without grace because he was neither in via nor in patria. The awkwardness of these responses reveals rather starkly the underlying confusion resulting from the inability to grasp the supernatural character of the reward of which grace makes one worthy. (76; Fs)

Autor: Stebbins, J. Michael

Buch: The Divine Initiative

Titel: The Divine Initiative

Stichwort: Gnade - Freiheit: Problem unter dem "psychologischen" Aspekt der Gnade

Kurzinhalt: How is that we are free, if we can do what is good only through a grace we cannot acquire by our own efforts?

Textausschnitt: 30/3 From a theological standpoint, the notion of merit implies not only the necessity of grace but also the existence of freedom: there is no point in speaking about evil acts as sinful or good acts as meritorious unless those acts are freely undertaken. Augustine had shown that scripture attests to this fact, and the early scholastics accordingly were not in doubt as to the reality of human freedom. But it did not seem to them that true freedom could exist except as the result of grace: for if the will is debilitated and enslaved by sin, then its power of free choice also stands in need of the restorative and liberating power of gratia sanans. The doctrinal affirmation of both human freedom and the absolute necessity of grace presented a formidable speculative difficulty: How is that we are free, if we can do what is good only through a grace we cannot acquire by our own efforts? Conversely, how is it that grace is necessary for good acts if we are truly free and therefore responsible for the good and evil we choose (GO:214)? (76; Fs) (notabene)

... The text Lonergan uses to summarize the Augustinian position is taken from De gratia et libero arbitrio: 'Our will is always free, but not always good. For either it is free from justice, when it is subject to sin, and then it is evil; or it is free from sin, when it is subject to justice, and then it is good.' An even more lapidary formulation appears in De correptione et gratia: 'Free choice is adequate for evil, but it can manage good only if it is helped by Sovereign Good.' There is, then, a disjunction between freedom from justice and freedom from sin, and the latter is attainable only with the help of grace. While this view upholds the necessity of grace, it succeeds in doing so only because it is willing to employ an ambiguous notion of human freedom. (76f; Fs)

... Whereas the Pelagians had tried to solve the problem of grace and freedom by eliminating the need for grace, the early scholastics exhibited a tendency to solve the problem at the expense of a coherent explanation of human freedom.

34/3 Lonergan locates the cause of these difficulties in the failure to acknowledge the distinction between the natural and supernatural orders (G0:41, 46; GF:15). Because grace was conceived of only psychologically, the will seemed the obvious point at which to focus questions concerning the necessity of grace. But the will and its properties were poorly understood. Until the distinction between the natural and supernatural orders was explicitly recognized, there was a tendency to conflate what pertains to nature and what pertains to grace. In this case, it was not clear that the freedom of the human will pertains to human nature, and so further questions that would have led to a more accurate understanding of the will and its freedom went unasked. As Lonergan has demonstrated at length, and as I will attempt to show in the next section, it was only after a thorough and painstaking investigation, made possible by the discovery of the theorem of the supernatural, that Aquinas was able to explain the correlation of grace and freedom more satisfactorily. (78; Fs)

Autor: Stebbins, J. Michael

Buch: The Divine Initiative

Titel: The Divine Initiative

Stichwort: Philipp der Kanzler: natürlich - übernatürlich; appetitus pure naturalis, sequens cognitionem

Kurzinhalt: Philip the Chancellor: distinction between the natural and supernatural orders; the core of Philip's achievement lies in what might be called his rediscovery of the natural order:

Textausschnitt: 36/3 It was in opposition to this view that Philip the Chancellor first employed the theoretical distinction between the natural and supernatural orders. In his Summa de bono he distinguishes between a purely natural appetite (appetitus pure naturalis) and an appetite that follows knowledge (appetitus sequens cognitionem). A purely natural appetite - say, the tendency of a stone to fall when released - loves or desires on its own account, but an appetite that follows knowledge conforms to the mode of knowledge. Now the love of God above all things, Philip says, is of the second type, for it is motivated by the knowledge that God is the highest of all goods that are good in themselves. Since the mode of that love corresponds to the mode of the knowledge from which it springs, and since we possess two sources of knowledge about God - faith and reason - there must be a corresponding duality in our love of God. By faith we acquire knowledge of God that lies beyond the grasp of unaided reason (the fact that God is a Trinity of persons, for instance, or that the Word became flesh), and by this means our intellect is raised above itself. The knowledge of faith gives rise to charity, which elevates us per gratiam et per gloriam (through grace and glory). By reason, on the other hand, we acquire knowledge of God through creatures and accordingly are moved to a natural love of God above all things. This latter knowledge and its consequent love do not elevate us above ourselves because they are the result of natural gifts bestowed on us by the Creator. None the less, the natural love of God constitutes a true love of God super omnia that is radically distinct from self-regarding appetite. (78f; Fs)

37/3 In this fashion, says Lonergan, Philip 'presented the theory of two orders, entitatively disproportionate: not only was there the familiar series of grace, faith, charity and merit, but also nature, reason and the natural love of God' (GF:15-16). One might be hard put to find a tidy summary of the theorem in Philip's work; for that matter, the word 'supernatural' does not occur anywhere in what Landgraf considers to be the crucial passages of the Summa de bono. But Philip's argument for the existence of a natural love of God above all things reveals that he grasped the essence of the theorem of the supernatural, namely, the disproportion between the order of nature and the order of grace. By the gift of nature we attain true knowledge and love of God; by the gift of grace we attain a more profound knowledge and love that lie utterly beyond the reach of our unaided natural powers. In this sense, grace 'elevates' nature. (79; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Stebbins, J. Michael

Buch: The Divine Initiative

Titel: The Divine Initiative

Stichwort: Philipp d. Kanzler (habituelle Gnade): Seele - Vermögen = Gnade - Glaube, Liebe; gratia sanans, elevans

Kurzinhalt: Just as those faculties represent potencies flowing from the soul ... so the virtues of faith and charity represent potencies flowing from grace; one can also observe here the elevating function of grace

Textausschnitt: eg: Überstieg von der gratia sanans zur gratia elevans

41/3 Philip himself was responsible for giving the notion of habitual grace its initial expression (GO:30; GF:16-17). In attempting to grasp the meaning of the Pauline theme of the life that comes through faith in Christ (e.g., Romans 1:17, Galatians 2:20), Philip made use of the Aristotelian distinction between the soul and its operative faculties. Just as those faculties represent potencies flowing from the soul, which is the principle that gives life to the body, so the virtues of faith and charity represent potencies flowing from grace, which is the principle that gives a higher kind of life to the soul, making it pleasing to God and thereby rendering works performed through charity worthy of eternal merit. In this manner the use of a natural analogy enabled Philip to distinguish grace from faith and charity, instead of identifying them with one another, and to specify their interrelationship. More important, one can also observe here the elevating function of grace that first appeared in the distinction between charity and natural love of God. It marks a crucial turning-point. Before Philip's insight, the necessity of grace had been predicated solely on the wounded condition of nature after the fall. The theorem of the supernatural, however, expresses an incapacity of human nature that is due not to sin but to our nature's intrinsic limitations. Even if we were in the state of innocence, we would need to be elevated by grace in order to attain the knowledge of faith and the love of charity. This function of grace is not sanans but elevans, and for all practical purposes it had been overlooked by generation after generation of theologians engaged in the effort to explain the necessity of grace. Thus, Philip the Chancellor's notion of a grace that is explicitly supernatural represents a decisive advance beyond the traditional position that saw grace as performing only a psychological function. (81; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Stebbins, J. Michael

Buch: The Divine Initiative

Titel: The Divine Initiative

Stichwort: gratia elevans: Kindertaufe, Adam, Freiheit

Kurzinhalt:

Textausschnitt: 43/3 With Philip's theory in place, the situation of baptized infants no longer appeared as an anomaly requiring a special explanation. (82; Fs)
44/3 The concept of gratia elevans also made it a relatively simple matter to account for Adam's inability to merit eternal life without grace even in the state of innocence. Alexander of Hales gives the following explanation: (82; Fs)

Lonergan contends that the theorem of the supernatural made possible the insight that freedom pertains to human nature, that its intelligibility can be sought in the natural order; he finds evidence for this hypothesis in the fact that, within a short time after the discovery of the theorem of the supernatural, a number of theologians began to subject human freedom to philosophical scrutiny in a way that had not previously been the case. Moreover, Lonergan suspects that this development might not have gone forward so vigorously if theologians had immediately been able to integrate the elevating function of grace with the function traditionally assigned to it, namely, that of healing the effects of sin on the intellect and will. For some authors, however, the realization that grace orients human nature to a supernatural end served for a time as practically the sole reason for affirming the necessity of grace; as a consequence, the role of gratia sanans suffered 'a temporary eclipse.' Lonergan's point is that in the long run this error worked to the benefit of theological speculation because it encouraged closer attention to the task of determining what human liberty is in itself, apart from the influence of grace, and thereby paved the way for a coherent and more nuanced account of the relationship between grace and freedom (GO:45:46; GF:18). (82f; Fs)

Autor: Stebbins, J. Michael

Buch: The Divine Initiative

Titel: The Divine Initiative

Stichwort: Thomas: Freiheit - Gnade; Beziehung: Wille - Verstand (Korrektur Aristoteles'); quoad specificationem (exercitium) actus

Kurzinhalt: he ceased subscribing to the Aristotelian understanding of the causal relation between will and intellect; Lonergan: four different presuppositions of a free human act:

Textausschnitt: eg: lieberum arbitrium kein drittes Vermögen neben Verstand und Wille (Albertus); Freiheit nicht in Bezug auf den Willen allein, sondern auf den Gesamkakt.
Schema:
Verstand: specificatio des Willens, aber nicht exercituus
Exercituus: zwei Ursachen - letztes Ziel (Wille als passive Potenz); Wahl der Mittel (Wille)
Beratschlagung: two lines of causation [...] converge in effecting the act of choice in the will: (siehe unten)


53/3 The most important correction in Aquinas's theory of the will came when he ceased subscribing to the Aristotelian understanding of the causal relation between will and intellect (6F:94-95; GO:238-4O). Aristotle held that the will is a wholly passive potency that spontaneously desires whatever object the intellect proposes to it as good; in other words, the act of willing is determined by the intellect rather than by the will itself. According to Lonergan, the problem is not that Aquinas ever held strictly to this view but rather that for the greater part of his career he simply did not venture to explain how the will, given its dependence on the intellect for its object, could cause or determine its own acts. Hence, however he viewed the relation between intellect and will prior to writing the Prima secundae, he did not deem it incompatible with human self-determination: (84f; Fs)
The fundamental thesis from the Sentences to the Pars Prima inclusively is that the free agent is the cause of its own determination. The determination in question is not the determination of the will but the determination of action generally. Such determination comes from the intellect, and intellectual beings are free, not because they move from an intrinsic [principle] (as the gravia [heavy] and levia [light]), not because they move themselves (as do plants and animals), not because they judge (for the lamb judges the wolf dangerous), but because they are the masters and makers of their judgement, they construct the form of their own activity.
54/3 This helps to explain why Aquinas, even after rejecting the notion of liberum arbitrium as a distinct potency, continued for some time to treat the will and free choice in separate questions, attributing freedom to the human being as a whole but not specifically to the human will.' (85; Fs)

56/3 Aquinas met these conditions by proposing the following scheme. The intellect does not cause the will to act but only apprehends and proposes to the will the goods that serve as the will's objects. That is, the intellect is said to cause the specification of acts of willing. But the exercise or actual occurrence of acts of willing has two causes, neither of which is the intellect, and these correspond to the two types of operation or second act that occur in the will. There are acts of willing an end, that is, acts in which the will wills an object precisely as desirable in itself. And there are acts of willing means, that is, acts in which the will wills an object not as desirable in itself but as leading to the attainment of some object that is desirable in itself. According to Aquinas, acts of willing a means are caused by the will itself; but the will cannot will a means unless it first wills an end; and the act of willing an end is caused ultimately by God. Hence Lonergan remarks that
two lines of causation [...] converge in effecting the act of choice in the will: there is the line of causation quoad specificationem actus [with respect to the specification of the act]; there is another line quoad exercitium actus [with respect to the exercise of the act]. Thus we have two first causes: the object that is apprehended by the intellect as the end, and the agent that moves the will to this end. The consequent process is that the will moves the intellect to take counsel on means to the end, and then the object apprehended as means, together with the will of the end, moves the will to a choice of the means. Thus the rejection of the Aristotelian passivity of the will eliminates the old position that the intellect is first mover; now there are two first movers, the intellect quoad specificationem actus, and God quoad exercitium actus. Both are required for the emergence of an act of choice; on the other hand, the lack of either will explain the absence of the subsequent process of taking counsel and choosing. (notabene)
57/3 The will is a passive potency, in the sense that it cannot cause its own act of willing an end; but it is active insofar as by willing an end it becomes proportionate to willing the means to the end. This is in keeping with the principle that an efficient cause must be in second act in order to produce an effect. Figure 2 summarizes Aquinas's scheme. Why the will cannot cause its own acts of willing an end, and why only God can cause those acts, are questions that must be set aside for a later chapter. The important point at present is simply to note how, within this theory, Aquinas defines the freedom of the human will, and how he accounts for its reality even under the action of grace. (86; Fs)
58/3 Lonergan explains that Aquinas, in his various treatments of the subject, mentions four different presuppositions of a free human act: (86; Fs)
(A) a field of action in which more than one course of action is objectively possible; (B) an intellect that is able to work out more than one course of action; (C) a will that is not automatically determined by the first course of action that occurs to the intellect; and, since this condition is only a condition, securing indeterminacy without telling what in fact does determine, (D) a will that moves itself. (GF:95; cf. GO:177)

58/3 Lonergan explains that Aquinas, in his various treatments of the subject, mentions four different presuppositions of a free human act: (86; Fs)
(A) a field of action in which more than one course of action is objectively possible; (B) an intellect that is able to work out more than one course of action; (C) a will that is not automatically determined by the first course of action that occurs to the intellect; and, since this condition is only a condition, securing indeterminacy without telling what in fact does determine, (D) a will that moves itself. (GF:95; cf. GO:177)

Autor: Stebbins, J. Michael

Buch: The Divine Initiative

Titel: The Divine Initiative

Stichwort: Thomas: Freiheit - Gnade; Beziehung: gratia sanans, Konversion; Sünde - Trägheit;

Kurzinhalt: Conversion - here is a need for divine grace to move the will to willing a new end; in turn, the willing of that end prompts the will freely to choose means that

Textausschnitt: eg: der frühe Thomas: At this early stage of Aquinas's thought, there is no explicit advertence to the need for gratia sanans. But Lonergan sees a shift occurring in the De veritate, (siehe unten)
Lonergan (Meinungsänderung Thomas' bezüglich der gratia sanans) aufgrund:

1) Änderung in des Willens hinsichtlich des letzten Zieles
2) Trägheitsgesetzt der Sünde
3) Beständigkeit des Willens


60/3 In his commentary on the Sentences, Aquinas follows the example of his teacher Albert in explaining the necessity of grace entirely in terms of the disproportion between human nature and its supernatural end. He contends that since humans are free, they do not sin of necessity: they can, if they so choose, avoid each instance of sin without the help of grace; since they can avoid each, they can avoid all. Hence he takes Peter Lombard's non posse non peccare, which describes the state of human liberty after the fall, to mean only that the sinner cannot be forgiven except by grace. At this early stage of Aquinas's thought, there is no explicit advertence to the need for gratia sanans. But Lonergan sees a shift occurring in the De veritate, where Aquinas cites Augustine's denunciation of the Pelagian claim that grace is necessary only for the forgiveness of past sins and not for the avoidance of future sins; from this point on, Aquinas, apparently having recognized the error of his previous view, gradually works out an understanding of the human being's inability to do good without grace. The problem to be met, of course, was how to reconcile this necessity of grace with the fact of human freedom (GO:215). (87f; Fs) (notabene)
61/3 Lonergan outlines Aquinas's developed position on the issue as follows. To begin with, although human beings naturally desire the good, their potentiality is so indeterminate that for the most part they do what is wrong if left to their own devices. Thus, there is a need for grace to make our desire for the good efficacious, particularly through the infusion of habits that enable us to choose our connatural and supernatural good (GO:215-21; GF:41-46). (88; Fs)

Autor: Stebbins, J. Michael

Buch: The Divine Initiative

Titel: The Divine Initiative

Stichwort: Thomas: Gnade - Freiheit: Beschränktheit des menschl. Willens; Möglichkeit d. Wirken Gottes

Kurzinhalt: Human freedom is not absolute: will cannot select its ends, it cannot escape the restrictions of psychological continuity ...;

Textausschnitt: eg: Beschränktheit des menschl. Willens:
1) Wahl des letzten Zieles
2) bezüglich psychischer Determinanten
3) Durchhaltevermögen
Möglichkeit des Wirken Gottes:
[T]he free act emerges from, and is conditioned by, created antecedents over which freedom has no direct control. It follows that it is possible for God to manipulate these antecedents (s. unten)


65/3 This analysis of the will allowed Aquinas to demonstrate the compatibility of grace and freedom. The early scholastics had not been able to explain coherently how fallen human nature can be free and yet incapable of avoiding sin without the assistance of grace. On the basis of his understanding of the will and its need for grace (GO:215-56; GF:41-61, 93-97) and of the manner in which all created beings function as instrumental causes under the control of God, the universal and transcendent cause, Aquinas offers the following solution to this speculative problem. Human freedom is not absolute. The will's sphere of efficacy is limited by the very nature of the will itself: it cannot select its ends, it cannot escape the restrictions of psychological continuity, it cannot ever choose the good once and for all. Hence, when grace operates to cause the will's willing of ends, to change its spontaneous inclinations, to ensure its perseverance, it does not intrude in freedom's proper domain: (89; Fs)

[T]he free act emerges from, and is conditioned by, created antecedents over which freedom has no direct control. It follows that it is possible for God to manipulate these antecedents and through such manipulation to exercise a control over free acts themselves [...] Indeed, both above and below, both right and left, the free choice has determinants over which it exercises no control. God directly controls the orientation of the will to ends; indirectly He controls the situations which intellect apprehends and in which will has to choose; indirectly He also controls both the higher determinants of intellectual attitude or mental pattern and the lower determinants of mood and temperament; finally, each free choice is free only hic et nunc [here and now], for no man can decide today what he is to will tomorrow. There is no end of room for God to work on the free choice without violating it, to govern above its self-governance, to set the stage and guide the reactions and give each character its personal role in the drama of life.
Elsewhere Lonergan summarizes the point by saying that
grace is compatible with liberty because of itself liberty is limited and grace enables it to transcend that limitation. [Aquinas] does not presuppose an unlimited liberty which grace confines to the good; he presupposes the limited liberty of psychological continuity, and makes grace an escape from the servitude of sin. (GO:23O)

Autor: Stebbins, J. Michael

Buch: The Divine Initiative

Titel: The Divine Initiative

Stichwort: Thomas: Gnade; zweifache Geschuldetheit (Pelagius); gratia elevans, sanans; Gattung -Art

Kurzinhalt: Aquinas writes of a twofold necessity of grace; Lonergan: the two manners in which sinners have need of grace are related to one another as genus to species; grace is gratuitous primarily because it is

Textausschnitt: eg: zweifache Ungeschuldetheit der Gnade:
Hence, grace is gratuitous primarily because it is absolutely supernatural, and only secondarily and partially because we have sinned. (siehe unten)

68/3 The Thomist analysis of the natural limitations of human freedom yielded another important result: it made it possible for Aquinas to restore the notion of gratia sanans to its rightful position in the speculative elaboration of the doctrine of grace (GO:228-31; GF:46-55). The Pelagian error is twofold, because it denies not only the supernaturality of grace but also the moral impotence of the sinner (GO:32; GF:60). The early scholastics had neglected the former error; for a time Aquinas neglected the latter. However, his facing up to the fuller implications of Augustine's position led him to a closer examination of the human will; he came to realize that past sins vitiate the will's freedom so that the sinner cannot avoid falling into further sin; as a consequence, he was able to show that the psychological continuity of the sinner can truly be characterized by the Lombard's non posse non peccare. (90; Fs)
69/3 In the Prima secundae, therefore, Aquinas writes of a twofold necessity of grace:
Thus in the state of integral nature man requires gratuitous virtue superadded to natural virtue for one reason, namely, to do and to will supernatural good. But in the state of corrupt nature, this requirement is twofold, namely, in order for man to be healed, and further, in order that he may carry out the meritorious good of supernatural virtue.
Here habitual grace functions explicitly as both elevans and sanans. In this fashion Aquinas successfully integrates the Augustinian view of grace with the line of development stemming from Philip the Chancellor. (91; Fs)
70/3 According to Lonergan, the two manners in which sinners have need of grace are related to one another as genus to species: 'the necessity from the supernatural end is generic, for it regards man simply as a creature; on the other hand, the various states of man are specifically different initial positions with regard to the attainment of eternal life' (GO:32). This twofold need implies a twofold gratuity of grace: the gift of divine grace is gratuitous because our sins have made us undeserving of it; yet even if the human race had never sinned, grace would still be a wholly unexpected, wholly unmerited gift of God's merciful love. Although grace heals the effects of sin in us, this healing is ultimately for the sake of our sharing in the life of the Trinity. Hence, grace is gratuitous primarily because it is absolutely supernatural, and only secondarily and partially because we have sinned. (91; Fs)

Autor: Stebbins, J. Michael

Buch: The Divine Initiative

Titel: The Divine Initiative

Stichwort: Bewegung - Tätigkeit; Definition: actus perfectus, imperfectus;

Kurzinhalt: First act: 'the act of what is in potency inasmuch as it is in potency'; second act: 'the act of what is in act'; distinction between action (praxis) distinct from its end and action coincident with its end

Textausschnitt: 9/4 In the first two theses of De ente supernaturali, Lonergan uses 'operation' and 'second act' synonymously, but in the third he introduces a distinction. Second acts are of two kinds. The first he calls actus imperfecti (act of the imperfect or incomplete), and it is defined as 'the act of what is in potency inasmuch as it is in potency' {actus exsistentis in potentia prout huiusmodi); it is equivalent to movement (motus) The other kind of second act, actus perfecti (act of the perfect or complete), is 'the act of what is in act' (actus exsistentis in actu); this is operation in the strict sense of the word. (96; Fs)

10/4 A more descriptive account of the two kinds of second act can be found in Aristotle's Metaphysics, which Lonergan paraphrases as follows: (96; Fs)

There is a distinction between action (praxis) distinct from its end and action coincident with its end. One cannot at once be walking a given distance and have walked it, be being cured and have been cured, be learning something and have learned it. But at once one is seeing and has seen, one is understanding and has understood, one is alive and has been alive, one is happy and has been happy. In the former instances there is a difference between action and end, and we have either what is not properly action or, at best, incomplete action - such are movements. In the latter instances action and end are coincident - such are operations.
11/4 Thus, for example, reasoning is a movement but understanding is an operation; weighing the evidence is a movement but grasping the sufficiency of the evidence is an operation. Again from the Ethics: (96; Fs)

Autor: Stebbins, J. Michael

Buch: The Divine Initiative

Titel: The Divine Initiative

Stichwort: Aktive, passive Potenz; aktive Potenz = zweiter Akt, insofern ...; Definition: Wirkursache; Proportion: Wirkursache - Wirkung

Kurzinhalt: Passive potency: an order towards receiving an act; active potency: an order towards producing an act; efficient cause as 'that which produces something else

Textausschnitt: 14/4 Potency in general is an order towards act (ordo ad actum), and it is of two kinds (DES:58). Passive potency - the kind of potency with which I have principally been concerned up to this point - is an order towards receiving an act; a given passive potency is designated as either essential or accidental depending upon whether it is ordered to a first or a second act. The act of a passive potency, considered in itself, is the immanent perfection of some accidental potency. As such it is simply an act, not the exercise of efficient causality. (97; Fs)

15/4 Active potency, by contrast, is an order towards producing an act (DES:58, 62); moreover, it is identical with second act 'not viewed in itself or insofar as it is second act, but considered according to its own property, that is, according to the capacity of second act to produce [something] similar to itself (DES:62). Only to the extent that anything is in act can it produce an effect; in order to be an efficient cause, a thing must first have the immanent perfection of second act that, in itself, constitutes the possibility of operating an effect. In other words, the same act both perfects the subject and grounds the production of an effect: (97; Fs)

16/4 Lonergan defines an efficient cause as 'that which produces something else,' that is, 'the subject of an active potency as actuated [subiectum potentiae activae qua actuatae].' A being is in active potency insofar as it is in second act and insofar as that second act is capable of producing an effect; the same being becomes an efficient cause insofar as the effect is in fact produced. The sense of this definition will require a good deal more probing in connection with the efficacy of divine concourse. (98; Fs) (notabene)
17/4 In anticipation of that lengthier discussion, only one other comment needs to be made at this point, and it regards the proportionality between an efficient cause and its effect: (98; Fs)

This proportion is measured according to the perfection of form; hence, the active potency of an efficient cause is due to second act, but the proportion of the cause to its effect is due to form (first act), which is perfected by second act. The basis of this is the fact that second act is not of itself limited to some finite proportion, but is limited generically by the potency in which it occurs and specifically by the form which it perfects.


It is one and the same act which is both produced by an active potency and received in a passive potency [...] This selfsame act, inasmuch as it is from an active potency, is action [actio] (an act of a subject as from another), and inasmuch as it is in a passive potency, is passion [passio] (an act of a subject as in the subject). Hence, action is from the agent and in the patient [that is, the receiving subject].

Autor: Stebbins, J. Michael

Buch: The Divine Initiative

Titel: The Divine Initiative

Stichwort: Definition: Objekt - id quod operationi opponitur; intellectus possibilis - agens; Beispiele

Kurzinhalt: efficient cause = 'agent objects'; effects = 'terminal objects'; distinction between agent intellect and possible intellect, intelligere - dicere; Object and Attainment

Textausschnitt: eg: Beispiele für die Beziehung Subjekt - Objekt -> Objekt als Wirkursache der Tätigkeit oder als bewirkt. S. unten 20/4

19/4 We come now to the notion of object, which is defined as 'that which is opposed to an operation' [id quod operationi opponitur] (DES:39). Lonergan goes on to amplify the sense of this definition: 'an object is either an effect produced by an operation, or an efficient cause which produces an operation'; conversely, 'an operation is either an efficient cause which produces an object or an effect produced by an object.' If the potency is passive, the object produces the operation; if the potency is active, the operation produces the object. In order to avoid confusion on this score, Lonergan sometimes refers to 'agent objects' (that is, efficient causes) and 'terminal objects' (that is, effects). Thus, the explanatory relation of operation to object is one of efficient causality, although in any given instance one has to ascertain which is cause and which is effect. (98; Fs)

20/4 Near the end of the third Verbum article, Lonergan provides a helpful illustration of objects and of the other terms and relations that I have presented in the last few pages: (99; Fs)
The distinction between agent intellect and possible intellect is a distinction between an efficient [that is, active] potency that produces and a natural [that is, passive] potency that receives [...] The distinction between intelligere and dicere is a distinction between the two meanings of action, operation: intelligere is action in the sense of act; dicere is action in the sense of operating an effect. The distinction between agent object and terminal object is to be applied twice. On the level of intellectual apprehension the agent object is the quidditas rei materialis, [...] known in and through a phantasm illuminated by agent intellect; this agent object is the objectum proprium intellectus humani [the proper object of the human intellect]; it is the object of insight. Corresponding to this agent object there is the terminal object of the inner word; this is the concept [...] Again, on the level of judgment the agent object is the objective evidence provided by sense and/or empirical consciousness, ordered conceptually and logically in a reductio ad principia, and moving to the critical act of understanding. Corresponding to this agent object, there is the other terminal object, the inner word of judgment, the verum, in and through which is known the final object, the ens reale. (notabene)

Autor: Stebbins, J. Michael

Buch: The Divine Initiative

Titel: The Divine Initiative

Stichwort: Formalobjekt: Quod - Quo; Definition: rationale Tätigkeit; Mensch als Bild Gottes, Trinität

Kurzinhalt: Formal Object Quod and Quo; rational operation -> intrinsically reflective;

Textausschnitt: 25/4 First, a few words need to be said about the distinction between non-rational and rational operations, since it is only to the latter that the distinction of formal object quod and quo properly applies (DES:41). 'A rational operation,' says Lonergan, 'is intrinsically reflective [reflexa]; that is, it attains its object because of a sufficient motive' (DES:41). He gives the following examples: (100; Fs)

Autor: Stebbins, J. Michael

Buch: The Divine Initiative

Titel: The Divine Initiative

Stichwort: 4 Gemeinsamkeiten: Molina, Banez (Molinists, Bannezians)

Kurzinhalt: Both sides presume (1) that vital acts are the effects of self-moving potencies; (2) that ...

Textausschnitt: 1/7 In the preceding chapter I asserted that the differences between the Molinists and the Bannezians would ultimately prove less consequential than heir agreement on certain fundamental issues. Both sides presume (1) that vital acts are the effects of self-moving potencies; (2) that first act (form) is the efficient cause of second act (operation); (3) that efficient causality involves an influx that passes from agent to patient; and (4) that in all divine concourse, God acts without the use of any created intermediary. In general, the truth of these propositions is simply taken for granted by all concerned. (212; Fs) (notabene)

2/7 One of Lonergan's principal aims in his early writings on grace is to demonstrate that these philosophical assumptions are unworthy of the confidence commonly placed in them: he explodes the theory of vital act and discloses the fallacies inherent in the conventional scholastic understandings of efficient causality, operation, and cooperation as they relate to the question of divine concourse. The point of these attacks is not to argue for the sake of argument, to raise new clouds in an already blinding speculative dust storm. As we shall see, Lonergan has in mind something much more profound, namely, to show that the reconciliation of grace and freedom - the problem that the Molinist and Bannezian systems each purport to solve - is in fact a problem only insofar as one's thinking is based on faulty philosophical assumptions of the kind just mentioned. (212; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Stebbins, J. Michael

Buch: The Divine Initiative

Titel: The Divine Initiative

Stichwort: Molina, Banez (Molinists, Bannezians): Theorie der vitalen Akte (Fehlschluss)

Kurzinhalt: ... analysis something like the following. A supernatural act is an act of either the intellect or the will; hence it is a vital act; hence it must somehow be produced by the potency ...

Textausschnitt: 3/7 Despite their radical differences, the Bannezians and the Molinists concur in professing allegiance to the theory of vital act. From this theory they deduce that a supernatural act can occur in a finite potency only if the act is produced by a supernatural principle in the potency itself. The task here is to determine what the sufficient and necessary conditions of the occurrence of a supernatural act in a finite subject are (DES:84). Must an act of this kind always be produced by the potency in which it occurs, as the conventional scholastic analysis would have it? (212f; Fs)

1.1 The Supernatural Elevation of Vital Potencies

4/7 When called upon to explain the occurrence of supernatural acts in a finite subject, the adherent of the theory of vital act provides an analysis something like the following. A supernatural act is an act of either the intellect or the will; hence it is a vital act; hence it must somehow be produced by the potency that it perfects. Since an efficient cause can produce only that perfection in another that it itself already possesses, a finite potency can produce a supernatural act only if it is 'elevated' to the supernatural order so that it becomes proportionate to producing the act. (213; Fs) (notabene)

5/7 In what does this elevation consist? The Bannezians and the Molinists would agree that in the case of those who have been justified, an answer is easy enough to come by. These finite beings have already received sanctifying grace, and so they possess the theological virtues as immanent, proportionate principles of supernatural operations. Of course, as Lonergan points out, this view takes the infused virtues to be efficient causes of their own actuation (DES:98). Some go so far as to assert that the occurrence of supernatural acts in the justified does not involve a gift of actual grace, except for those times of weakness or temptation when the infused habit cannot muster the energy to produce a supernatural act. (213; Fs)

6/7 As for supernatural acts that occur prior to justification and hence prior to the subject's reception of the infused virtues, we have already seen that both the Molinists and the Bannezians require an elevation of the relevant potency, though they diverge on the question of whether the elevation is extrinsic or intrinsic. Most Molinists (including those of the Suarezian variety) wish to deny that God in any way moves the potency itself to the production of its first act, and so they assert that the potency is elevated only extrinsically, by the supernatural assistance of the Holy Spirit. This assistance is nothing other than a special instance of the divine concourse itself that, like the Bannezian premotion, is made to do double duty in the absence of the infused virtues. Once the potency is in first act, no further elevation is required to render it proportionate to the production of a salutary second act. For both Bannezians and semi-Bannezians, by contrast, the occurrence of a supernatural act in a subject requires a prior, intrinsic elevation that makes the subject proportionate to the production of that act. This elevation is supplied either by the infused virtues or, in the unjustified, by the same divine premotion that moves the potency to produce its vital act. (213; Fs) (notabene)

7/7 In sum, the Bannezians' and Molinists' espousal of the theory of vital act leads them to affirm that supernatural acts must necessarily be produced by the finite subjects in which they occur and that, as a consequence, no supernatural act can occur in a finite subject unless the subject is made proportionate to the production of the act. The requisite elevation is provided either permanently by the presence of an infused virtue, or transiently by the conferral of actual grace. (213; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Stebbins, J. Michael

Buch: The Divine Initiative

Titel: The Divine Initiative

Stichwort: Lonergan contra Banzez, Molina: Aufnahme übernatürlicher Akte: potentia oboedientialis allein

Kurzinhalt: reception of a supernatural act -> unnecessary to posit any condition other than the fact of the subject's obediential potency

Textausschnitt: 8/7 Lonergan distinguishes the conditions for the reception of supernatural acts from the conditions for the production of supernatural acts. He treats the former first. In order to account for the reception of a supernatural act, he says, it is generally unnecessary to posit any condition other than the fact of the subject's obediential potency, which, as it turns out, is only extrinsically distinct from the subject's intellect and will considered precisely as natural, essential, passive potencies. (214; Fs) (notabene)

9/7 Anyone who requires some prior, preparatory elevation of the potency ends up in one of two indefensible positions (DES:85, 99). If, like the Molinists, one argues for an elevation extrinsic to the subject, then in fact that elevation refers to nothing real at all: ex hypothesi it is not something in the subject; nor is it something in God, since the elevation of a potency implies some change or movement, and God is immutable. On the other hand, if one claims in Bannezian fashion that the required elevation is some reality intrinsic to the subject, then one has to specify whether or not that reality is supernatural. If it is not, then how can it raise the subject to the supernatural order? But if the intrinsic, elevating reality is said to be supernatural, then it stands in need of exactly the same explanation as does the supernatural act itself. If obediential potency alone does not suffice to render the subject proportionate to the reception of a supernatural act, then neither does it suffice to render the subject proportionate to the reception of some prior supernatural elevation; consequently, one has to postulate an elevation prior to the prior elevation, and then another elevation still more prior, and so on. But an infinite series of these elevations is impossible; hence the requirement of a supernatural, intrinsic elevation has no basis (cf. GF:25-26 note 17). Lonergan concludes that a supernatural elevation cannot be considered a universally applicable prerequisite for the reception of a supernatural act. Obediential potency alone suffices. (214; Fs)

Autor: Stebbins, J. Michael

Buch: The Divine Initiative

Titel: The Divine Initiative

Stichwort: Möglichkeit -> übernatürlicher Aktes: potentia oboedientialis; Beispiel: erster, zweiter Akt; Fehlschluss: 1. Akt als aktive Potenz

Kurzinhalt: Hence, a finite substance elevated to first act is not thereby able to produce a second act; ... that active potency pertains to second act, not to first, so that a subject must be in second act if it is to produce another second act in itself

Textausschnitt: 16/7 Production involves efficient causality, which is the actuation of some active potency. A being has this potency, the capacity to function as an efficient cause, only to the extent that it is in second act. Thus, an unlit cigarette lighter (first act) is in proximate passive potency to receiving the act of burning (second act); a lighter that has been lit (second act) is in active potency to actuating the passive potency of a pile of wood; the wood as actually burning (second act) is itself in active potency to heating a pot of water or cooking food or setting fire to other nearby objects (all second acts). Viewed from one perspective, the act of burning is passive, for neither the lighter nor the wood causes its own act but rather receives it (the wood receives it from the lit lighter; the lighter receives it remotely from the person who supplies the kinetic energy that causes the spark to be struck). From another perspective, the act of burning is active, for, by virtue of that same immanent act or operation of burning, the wood can cause certain effects to occur in other subjects. (217; Fs) (notabene)

First act is related to second act as a perfectible to its perfection; in this way a substantial form is related to its act of existing, a habit to its use, the form of weight to downward motion, etc. Hence, a finite substance elevated to first act is not thereby able to produce a second act. It is able to produce a second act to the extent to which it has already been elevated to second act. Thus, one who is moved by God to an act of willing a supernatural end is able to produce an act of willing a supernatural means. But one who has not been moved by God to the act of willing the end, even if he has already been elevated by a first act (virtue), cannot produce an act of willing supernatural means. (notabene)
19/7 With this one paragraph Lonergan exposes the speculative incoherence of the theory of vital act. The supporters of this theory supposedly accept the universality of the principle omne agens agit sibi simile, yet they seem blind to the fact that first act is form, that it stands to operation as potency to act, that it is ontologically less perfect than operation (even if it is supplemented by a Bannezian premotion) - in short, that it cannot produce an act in either itself or another because it is not yet in act itself. The two views may be contrasted as depicted in figure 6. A potency is nothing more than a yet-to-be-realized possibility, a yet-to-be-actualized capacity; it cannot perfect itself. No form or habit, therefore, is proportionate to the production of its corresponding second act. Lonergan maintains that, even in those instances where habits are required for the occurrence of supernatural acts, they are required not so that the subject can produce the acts but rather so that it can receive them (DES:88). All of this contradicts the very principle upon which the theory of vital act is predicated, namely, that vital acts are necessarily produced by the subjects in which they occur. (218; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Stebbins, J. Michael

Buch: The Divine Initiative

Titel: The Divine Initiative

Stichwort: Instrumentale Wirkursache; esse imperfectum -> analog zu Bewegung; 2 Arten von Wirkursachen; Beispiel: Meißel

Kurzinhalt: Instrumental Efficient Causality; 'principal inasmuch as the perfection of its form either equals or exceeds the perfection of the effect'; the other is 'instrumental inasmuch ...

Textausschnitt: 24/7 The reader is already familiar with Lonergan's definition of an efficient cause and with the idea that the proportion of an efficient cause is determined by its form. Lonergan goes on to distinguish two kinds of efficient cause: one kind is 'principal inasmuch as the perfection of its form either equals or exceeds the perfection of the effect'; the other is 'instrumental inasmuch as the perfection of its form is exceeded by the perfection of the effect' (DES:63). How can an effect be more perfect than its cause? According to Aquinas, only if the cause is instrumental to the causal activity of some other efficient cause that itself is proportionate to the effect. Hence, Lonergan can also define an instrument or an instrumental efficient cause as 'a lower cause moved by a higher so as to produce an effect within the category proportionate to the higher' (GF:81; cf. GO:142-44). In other words, instrumentality is defined in terms of the relation between causes with differing degrees of ontological perfection. (220; Fs) (notabene)

25/7 Now the definitions just given imply that the only principal efficient cause, in the strict sense of the term, is God (DES:64). Every effect exists, but God is the only being that exists through the perfection of its form; hence, God alone is proportionate to producing actual existence or occurrence. As a consequence, 'every effect, inasmuch as it exists [inquantum habet esse], exceeds the proper proportion of any finite cause whatsoever' (ibid.). Whenever a finite cause produces an effect - even, let it be emphasized, when the form of the effect is less perfect than that of the cause - the cause is never more than instrumental with respect to the production of the effect's actual existence or occurrence (GF:89-9O; DSAVD:81). (220; Fs) (notabene)

[]
27/7 Finally, what is it about the instrument that allows it to produce effects more perfect than itself? Since the entire effect does in fact proceed from the instrumental efficient cause, then 'if the instrument is to operate beyond its proper proportion and within the category of the higher cause, it must receive some participation of the latter's special productive capacity' (GF:81; cf. DES:64). This participation pertains not to the instrument's form as such (for by definition, its form is less perfect than that of either the principal cause or the effect) but to its operation. What makes the chisel proportionate to the sculpting of a statue is not the form of the chisel but rather the precise pattern of the chisel's motions - a pattern caused by the artist, without which the shape of the statue would never emerge from the piece of stone. This participation of the instrumental cause in the proportion of the higher cause, this active potency of the instrument as such, is called 'instrumental power' (virtus instrumentalis). (220f; Fs)

28/7 Aquinas defines instrumental power by way of an analogy with motion. Motion is
not 'something' but a process 'towards something.' It is not included in any of the ten genera entis [genera or categories of being], but it is the process towards three of them; it is 'towards being in a place,' 'towards being of a certain kind,' 'towards being of a certain size.' This intermediate between not being and being, the process towards being something, is termed an esse incompletum. (GO: 143)

29/7 Local movement, change in quality, change in size - each represents the coming-to-be of some reality that is the term of the motion, so that motion can be thought of as the 'incomplete being' of the term, the term in its process of becoming (V:101-105; cf. GF:81 note 84). The analogy, then, is that 'just as motion is the esse incompletum of its term, for instance, "becoming white" is an incomplete "being white," so also the proportion of the instrument is an incomplete realisation of the proportion of the principal cause.' The fact that Aquinas proposes this analogy is important because, as I will show later in this chapter, it represents yet another point with respect to which Lonergan takes exception to the Bannezians' overconfident appropriation of the label 'Thomist.' (221; Fs)

Autor: Stebbins, J. Michael

Buch: The Divine Initiative

Titel: The Divine Initiative

Stichwort: Wirkursache als Zustrom; A -> B -> C: verschiedene Möglichkeiten

Kurzinhalt: Efficient Causality as Influx; the first alternative analyses the causal series, A causes B and B causes C, in a manner reminiscent of Durandus

Textausschnitt: 32/7 The first alternative analyses the causal series, A causes B and B causes C, in a manner reminiscent of Durandus: (222; Fs)

[O]ne may say that in such a causal series there are two and only two instances of influx and so two and only two real instances of efficient causality: from A to B, and from B to C; but there is no third influx from A to C; accordingly, mediate causality is not a true species of causality but merely a name for the combination of two other instances.
33/7 This position, then, amounts to a refutation of the possibility of mediate causality, for C receives but one influx, and that from the cause most proximate to it, B. It is the sort of model that, if used as an analogy for understanding divine concourse, leads to the position that 'God causes the creature, the creature produces its effect, but God does not exercise any other causality than that by which he produces the creature' (DES:101). If this is the only way in which God and finite causes can contribute jointly to the production of an effect, then 'cooperation' and 'concourse' are misnomers. (222; Fs)

34/7 There is another way of conceiving the matter:
[O]ne may say that in the causal series there are, at least at times, three instances of influx and so three instances of efficient causality: not only from A to B, and from B to C, but also a third from A to C; simultaneously both A and B exert an influx to produce C. Now while this makes A the efficient cause of C not only in name but also in reality, it does so by making A the immediate cause of C; mediate causality is not saved.
35/7 Lonergan identifies this understanding of mediate causality as similar to Molina's. As applied to divine concourse, it identifies the influx from A to B with God's creation of the creature, the influx from B to C with the creature's production of its act or effect, and the third influx, from A to C, with simultaneous divine concourse. Lonergan indicates, however, that while this approach attempts to explain how God is the cause of the created effect, it does so without any appeal to mediate causality. Hence, God's efficient causality with respect to the effect produced by the creature must be immediate. In other words, this model shares with the previous one the view that C can receive an influx only from an immediately proximate cause; there is apparently no possibility of an influx reaching C through the mediation of B. (223; Fs) (notabene)

36/7 Furthermore, it is by no means evident that the Molinists' analogy for divine concourse is an appropriate one (DES:183; cf. GO: 158). The notion of simultaneous efficient causality is intelligible enough when applied to the production of material and quantitative effects, as in Molina's example of the two men who together pull a barge. In such a case, 'the total effect is nothing other than the vectorial addition of its parts'; but what is one to make of a 'spiritual vectorial addition by which man produces an act as vital and God produces the same act as supernatural' (DES: 183)? Lonergan is speaking here of supernatural divine concourse, but it seems to me that the same question can be posed with respect to natural divine concourse, where the creature produces the act's vitality and other qualities, and God produces the act's esse. Lonergan does not find the idea of a 'spiritual vectorial addition' to be either intelligible in itself or demonstrable from some other source. Since, then, the applicability of the analogy is gratuitously asserted, it may just as gratuitously be denied. This result exposes the theoretical flimsiness of the notion of simultaneous concourse: it simply does not explain how God operates in all created operations. (223; Fs)

37/7 Finally, a third alternative, which Lonergan likens to the position of Banez, can be proposed. Again, there are three influxes rather than two: (223; Fs)

[O] ne may say that there is a real difference between B as effect of A and B as cause of C, and this real difference is what explains the reality of mediate efficient causality; first, an influx from A gives B' [B as effect of A]; secondly, an influx from A gives B" [B as cause of C]; thirdly, an influx from B" gives C..

38/7 According to this model, each influx can be conceived as an instance of the efficient causality by which God produces a physical premotion in the creature. The first influx gives the creature its active potency {B'), and the second causes it to produce (B") its act or effect. Unlike the previous two models, therefore, this one at least succeeds in assigning a more-than-nominal meaning to mediate efficient causality: it is A's causing of B's causing. (223; Fs)

Autor: Stebbins, J. Michael

Buch: The Divine Initiative

Titel: The Divine Initiative

Stichwort: Wirkursache - Wirkung -> absolut - relativ, vorausgehend - nachfolgend, früher - gleichzeitig, innere - äußere; Banez, Molina

Kurzinhalt: efficacy -> absolut - relative, antecedent - consequent; previous - simultaneous, intrinsic - extrinsic

Textausschnitt: 1 Divine Efficacy and the Possibility of Contingence

1.1 The Meaning of 'Efficacy'

4/8 Efficacy is a quality predicated of an efficient cause. Specifically, it is the quality of indefectibility: an efficacious efficient cause is one that cannot fail to produce its effect, so that in De ente supernaturali 'indefectibility,' 'irresistibility,' and 'efficacy' are treated as synonyms (DES:108). The production of an effect by an efficacious cause, therefore, involves some kind of necessity. (254; Fs)

5/8 Lonergan employs a series of four disjunctions to express different reasons that can be given for affirming that a given efficient cause is efficacious. First, the efficacy of an efficient cause is either absolute or relative (DES:110). It is absolute if it 'gives rise to metaphysical certitude' -that is, if the cause is efficacious under any and all conditions. Efficacy is relative, on the other hand, if it generates only physical or moral certitude.

6/8 Second, efficacy is antecedent if it 'pertains to the cause antecedently to the occurrence of the effect' (DES:109). This antecedence is not temporal; it implies only that the necessity of the effect's occurrence is due to, or can be deduced from, the perfection of the cause itself (DES:123). By contrast, consequent efficacy consequent efficacy 'pertains to the cause only because de facto the effect occurs' (DES:109). Consequent efficacy, like relative, qualifies as efficacy only in an improper sense. That is to say, the mere occurrence of an effect is not enough to establish the efficacy of the cause; if efficacy, indefectibility, irresistibility is to mean anything at all, then it must somehow be grounded in the actuality of the cause rather than in the actuality of the effect and in this sense be antecedent - in the logical or causal order - to the effect's occurrence. (255; Fs)

Third, efficacy is either previous or simultaneous. Lonergan's definition of these terms is a bit surprising because it makes no explicit reference to temporal relations: efficacy is previous if it 'is adequately distinguished from the fact that the effect occurs'; it is simultaneous if it 'is not adequately distinguished from the fact that the effect occurs' (DES:110).

9/8 These four sets of terms can be used to mark off the differences between the Bannezians and the Molinists on the question of the efficacy of divine concourse (DES:111). Both schools agree that divine concourse is efficacious. According to the Bannezians, 'God either does or does not give a physical premotion; if he does, the effect certainly occurs; if he does not, the effect cannot occur.' In the Molinist system, 'God either does or does not concur; if he does, the effect certainly occurs; if he does not, the effect certainly does not occur.' Moreover, both sides agree that the efficacy of divine concourse is absolute (for it is unconditioned) and antecedent (for it is grounded in God's perfection). (255; Fs)

10/8 Where they diverge is on the matter of the two remaining distinctions (DES:110). In the Bannezian system, the efficacy of divine concourse is previous: it pertains to the physical premotion, and the premotion is an entity that is really distinct from the effect that it causes. But the Molinists classify the efficacy of divine concourse as simultaneous, since it is not adequately distinct from the occurrence of the effect in whose production God cooperates. (One might expect the Molinists themselves to say instead that divine efficacy is simultaneous because God and the created cause operate at the same moment in time to produce a given effect.) (255f; Fs) (notabene)

11/8 Again, for the Bannezians the efficacy of efficacious grace is intrinsic, because the physical premotions by which God moves finite potencies are entities that by their very nature exert an irresistible influence. For the Molinists, on the other hand, the efficacy of divine concourse is extrinsic. It is grounded not in grace as such but rather in the divine scientia media, by which God knows, for example, that a grace given to a particular person in a particular set of circumstances would unfailingly result in the person's making a particular choice; and in the divine will, by which God chooses actually to bring about these circumstances and to bestow this grace. (256; Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Stebbins, J. Michael

Buch: The Divine Initiative

Titel: The Divine Initiative

Stichwort: Wirkursache - Wirkung -> transzendent - normal

Kurzinhalt: ordinary and transcendent efficacy; transcendent efficacy positively excludes a necessary nexus between cause and effect

Textausschnitt: 17/8 To the four distinctions already applied to the notion of efficacy, Lonergan adds a fifth: that between ordinary and transcendent efficacy (DES:117). Ordinary efficacy 'is grounded in a necessary causal nexus between cause and effect.' The meaning of this statement is easy enough to grasp, as can be seen by considering any efficacious finite cause, A, and its effect, B. To say that A is efficacious is to affirm that A produces B necessarily, irresistibly, without fail. In this case one is not simply affirming that agent and patient are mutually related in such a way that A can, and in fact does, produce B; one is also making the further affirmation that, given the particular make-up of A, and given the particular interrelation between A and the patient in which it produces B, the existence or occurrence of A causes the existence or occurrence of B necessarily. A and its relation to the patient constitute a necessary causal nexus; in this situation, the effect, B, cannot but emerge. Thus, perfect knowledge of A in its concrete situation yields infallible knowledge of B. (257; Fs)

18/8 Transcendent efficacy, however, is something altogether different. It pertains to an efficient cause which, though it produces its effect efficaciously, does so without benefit of any necessary nexus between itself and the effect (DES:117) - an arresting idea, to say the least, since efficacy implies some sort of necessity. On the basis of this definition Lonergan elaborates the key difference, 'a difference of the greatest moment,' between ordinary and transcendent efficacy (DES:118). A cause endowed with ordinary efficacy cannot give rise to a contingent effect, for by definition the effect follows from the cause by reason of a necessary, rather than a contingent, nexus. But transcendent efficacy positively excludes a necessary nexus between cause and effect; as a consequence, knowing that a cause possesses transcendent efficacy does not give one grounds for concluding that it cannot produce contingent effects. (257f; Fs) (notabene)

19/8 The unique instance of a transcendent cause is God: (258; Fs)
God creates not necessarily but freely; from the fact that God exists it does not follow that any creature exists necessarily; from the fact that God is known perfectly in himself, it does not follow that any creature is known as actually existing; for God is entitatively the same whether he does or does not create. (DES:117) (notabene)
20/8 Hence, it is incorrect to conclude that, as an absolutely and antecedently efficacious cause, God cannot produce a contingent effect. Instead, as Aquinas maintains, just as every other efficient cause produces the mode of its effects, so too God causes some effects to emerge necessarily and others contingently, according to the divine plan: (258; Fs)
Since the divine will is supremely efficacious, it follows not only that those things happen which God wills to happen, but also that they happen in the manner in which God wills them to happen. But God wills some things to happen necessarily and others contingently, so that things may be ordered to the wholeness of the universe. For this reason he has furnished some effects with necessary causes which cannot fail, from which the effects arise of necessity; but he has supplied other effects with contingent and defectible causes, from which the effects proceed contingently. Therefore, effects willed by God do not come about contingently because their proximate causes are contingent, but because God has willed them to come about contingently and has prepared contingent causes for them. (notabene)

21/8 There are no limits to God's freedom to create. Whatever the divine intellect conceives as actual, whatever the divine will intends as actual, actually exists in exactly the manner that God conceives and wills it. Hence, because God's absolute and antecedent efficacy is transcendent, it is consistent with a world-order marked by elements of contingence, including the occurrence of formally free acts. (258; Fs)

Autor: Stebbins, J. Michael

Buch: The Divine Initiative

Titel: The Divine Initiative

Stichwort: Theorem der göttlichen Transzendenz; Notwendigkeit: absolut, hypothetisch; Thomas, Aristoteles: Kontingenz - Vorsehung; transzendente Wirkursache

Kurzinhalt: ... possible to show that God's effects need not occur with more than hypothetical necessity; because God is universal cause, His providence must be certain; but because He is a transcendent cause, ...

Textausschnitt: 1.2.2 The Theorem of Divine Transcendence

22/8 To say that God acts transcendently is not somehow to water down the efficacy of divine causality or to beg the question about the relation of divine concourse to human freedom, but rather to affirm that the necessity implied by that efficacy must be compatible with the occurrence of contingent effects (GO:332). Lonergan shows that this is not a nonsensical requirement by drawing a distinction between absolute and hypothetical necessity.1 (259; Fs)

23/8 Absolute necessity 'is affirmed unconditionally,' as exemplified in statements such as 'It is necessary that God exists' and 'It is necessary that twice two is four.' No 'ifs' are posited: the truth of these propositions holds under any and all conditions. But hypothetical necessity 'is affirmed conditionally in such a way that the consequent is included in the antecedent' (DES:120). Lonergan gives two examples: 'It is necessary that Socrates is sitting if he is sitting,' and 'It is necessary that I am choosing this if I am choosing this.' Does this kind of necessity mean that Socrates could not have avoided sitting or that my choosing was necessitated? No; it means that if Socrates is sitting, then ipso facto he is necessarily sitting and not standing or running, and that if I am making this choice, then ipso facto I am necessarily making this one and not some other. Hypothetical necessity follows simply from the application of the principle of non-contradiction to any given situation: 'If A, then A: granted the protasis, the apodosis follows necessarily' (GF: 104-105; cf. DSAVD:20). In this minimal sense, everything whatsoever that exists or occurs is necessary. The examples, which could be multiplied indefinitely, amply illustrate the compatibility of contingence and hypothetical necessity: both Socrates's sitting and my choosing are contingent events, since they need not have occurred; yet insofar as each is actually occurring, its occurrence is necessary. (259; Fs) (notabene)

24/8 If divine efficacy is transcendent, therefore, it must be possible to show that God's effects need not occur with more than hypothetical necessity, thereby preserving the possibility of contingence. Lonergan sets out to provide the needed demonstration by scrutinizing the proposition, 'If God either knows or wills or causes this thing to exist (or this event to occur), then this thing necessarily exists (or this event necessarily occurs)' (cf. DES:120). The proposition expresses the fact of divine efficacy; but is it also of the form, 'If A, then A'? If so, then from the mere knowledge that God knows, wills, or causes something to exist or occur, one can infer no more than that the thing exists or occurs with hypothetical necessity; only further knowledge of the particular effect can reveal whether or not its existence or occurrence was also the result of some metaphysical, physical, or moral necessity. (259; Fs) (notabene)
25/8 To reach this conclusion, Lonergan has to demonstrate that the antecedent proposition, 'If God either knows or wills or causes this thing to exist (or this event to occur),' contains or includes the consequent proposition, 'This thing exists (or this event occurs).' He does this by proving that 'whatever is predicated of God externally [ad extra] is predicated by extrinsic denomination,' that is, by reason of some entity extrinsic to God: (260; Fs)

For nothing in God is contingent; but any creature is able not to exist; therefore it can be willed by God to not exist; therefore it can be known by God as not actually existing. Now this kind of knowing and willing, which is able not to be, which is contingent, cannot be something entitative in God himself, in whom there is no contingent reality. None the less, this knowing and this willing are truly affirmed of God, for God truly knows creatures as actual and truly wills them. What is predicated [contingently and] truly of God and yet is not predicated on account of an entity received contingently in God himself, is predicated by extrinsic denomination.

26/8 If God knows, wills, or causes some effect actually to exist or occur, then the effect actually occurs; if God does not so know, will, or cause, then the effect does not occur. But as Lonergan puts it in Insight, 'God is intrinsically the same whether or not he understands, affirms, wills, causes this or that universe to be' (I:661 [CWL 3:684]). Hence the only difference between, on the one hand, God's knowing, willing, or causing a particular world-order as actual, and, on the other, God's knowing the same world-order as merely possible, is the existence or non-existence of that world-order itself: (260; Fs) (notabene)
Kommentar eg (09/10/2004): Gute Antwort auf die Möglichkeit anderer Welten!
[T]here can be no predication by extrinsic denomination without the actuality of the extrinsic denominator: else the adaequatio veri-tatis [the correspondence of truth between the proposition and reality] is not satisfied. Accordingly, to assert that God knows this creature or event, that He wills it, that He effects it, is also ipso facto to assert that the creature or event actually is.

27/8 This analysis yields the desired result. The proposition, 'If God either knows or wills or causes this thing to exist (or this event to occur),' includes the proposition, 'This thing exists (or this event occurs)': If A, then A. As a consequence, God's effects need not occur with more than hypothetical necessity, which means that it is possible for them to occur either contingently or necessarily, in accordance with the divine intention. Thus, the relative efficacy of God's instruments does not compromise the absolute efficacy of God. And this, Lonergan avers, is nothing other than Aquinas's own position: 'By means of this distinction between absolute and hypothetical necessity, St Thomas solves [every] proposed difficulty stemming from the opposition of either God's knowledge or God's will or God's efficiency to the contingence of creatures.' (260f; Fs)

27/8 This analysis yields the desired result. The proposition, 'If God either knows or wills or causes this thing to exist (or this event to occur),' includes the proposition, 'This thing exists (or this event occurs)': If A, then A. As a consequence, God's effects need not occur with more than hypothetical necessity, which means that it is possible for them to occur either contingently or necessarily, in accordance with the divine intention. Thus, the relative efficacy of God's instruments does not compromise the absolute efficacy of God. And this, Lonergan avers, is nothing other than Aquinas's own position: 'By means of this distinction between absolute and hypothetical necessity, St Thomas solves [every] proposed difficulty stemming from the opposition of either God's knowledge or God's will or God's efficiency to the contingence of creatures.' (260f; Fs)

28/8 Let me review Lonergan's line of reasoning: because divine efficacy is transcendent, one must affirm the possibility of contingent divine effects; but one can affirm this possibility only by affirming that the necessity of divine effects need be no more than hypothetical; and this affirmation depends upon yet another, namely, that divine efficacy is actual insofar as its effects are actual. In Lonergan's terms, then, divine efficacy is simultaneous: (261; Fs)

[A]lthough the efficacy of God himself is antecedent, inasmuch as it is inferred solely from the infinite divine perfection, nonetheless it is simultaneous, not previous. For this efficacy is not adequately distinct from the effect itself, since indeed one cannot make affirmations concerning God with respect to some effect without supposing the effect itself as an extrinsic denominator. (DES:123)
Thus, if divine efficacy is transcendent, it must also be simultaneous.
29/8 Lonergan designates the position I have laid out in the preceding pages as 'the theorem of divine transcendence,' which may be stated as follows: (261; Fs)

God knows with equal infallibility, He wills with equal irresistibility, He effects with equal efficacy, both the necessary and the contingent. For however infallible the knowledge, however irresistible the will, however efficacious the action, what is known, willed, effected, is no more than hypothetically necessary. And what hypothetically is necessary, absolutely may be necessary or contingent.

30/8 Precisely because it is theorem, what the theorem of divine transcendence adds to one's store of knowledge is not a new fact but a new way of intelligibly relating a set of facts already affirmed as true. In this instance, the theorem constitutes a synthesis of the efficacy of divine causality and the contingence of created beings: (261; Fs)

[In the Contra gentiles] simultaneously St Thomas had achieved the higher synthesis of Aristotelian contingence and Christian providence. In Aristotle, terrestrial contingence had its ultimate basis in his negation or neglect of providence: events happened contingently because there was no cause to which they could be reduced except prime matter, and prime matter was not a determinate cause. Antithetical to this position was the Christian affirmation of providence, for divine providence foresaw and planned and brought about every event. The Thomist higher synthesis was to place God above and beyond the created orders of necessity and contingence: because God is universal cause, His providence must be certain; but because He is a transcendent cause, there can be no incompatibility
between terrestrial contingence and the causal certitude of providence. (GF:79) (notabene)

31/8 The transcendence of divine efficacy, then, secures the possibility of that most contingent of hypothetically necessary realities, the formally free act. (262; Fs)

Autor: Stebbins, J. Michael

Buch: The Divine Initiative

Titel: The Divine Initiative

Stichwort: Zeit - Ewigkeit; Thomas: Gott kennt keine Ereignisse als zukünftig

Kurzinhalt: common-sense notion of eternity and its relation to time; 'If God knows this, this must be,' the 'this' of the apodosis must be taken in the same sense as the 'this' of the protasis

Textausschnitt: 32/8 Against the theorem of divine transcendence the following objection might be raised (DES: 124-25; cf. DSAVD:12). Consider the proposition, 'From eternity God knows and wills this thing to exist at a particular time.' God's knowing and willing are eternal, but the effect, the finite reality without which the statement is false, is temporal. Now either there is divine knowledge and volition of the effect before it actually occurs, or there is not. If there is, then for the time prior to the effect's occurrence one can affirm God's knowing and willing of the effect without thereby affirming the effect's actuality; in other words, those acts are predicated of God by intrinsic, not extrinsic, denomination, so that the whole argument for the possibility of contingent divine effects crumbles. On the other hand, if God does not know and will the effect before it occurs, then the possibility of contingence is saved, but the effect's occurrence eludes divine governance. This objection - which might better be said to overlook than to attack Lonergan's position, since it ignores the contradiction involved in claiming that any contingent reality can be intrinsic to God - derives its plausibility chiefly from a common-sense notion of eternity and its relation to time. Eternity is thought of as everlasting duration, which can be represented by a time-line extending endlessly into the past and endlessly into the future; on this view, there is no essential difference between eternity and the created time of the universe, except that the former has neither beginning nor end; during the time that the created universe exists, eternity and created time are seen as contemporaneous (DES: 124). Within this imaginative framework, God's eternal knowing and willing of the created order are conceived as temporally prior to the actual existence of that order, as if God knew and willed the finite universe as a future reality before it actually came into existence. Hence, the apparent reasonableness of the objection: if God infallibly knows and irresistibly wills the finite universe from eternity, and so knows and wills it precisely as future, then the finite universe can admit no contingence; everything that is to exist or occur - including the activity of created wills - must turn out exactly as God has preordained. (263f; Fs) (notabene)

33/8 But this position, however appealing to common sense, is untenable, because it presumes that God is a temporal being: (264; Fs)

If the future is known with certainty, then necessarily it must come to be; and what necessarily must come to be, is not contingent but necessary. But St Thomas denies that God knows events as future. He is not in time but [in] an eternal 'now' to which everything is present. Hence when you say, 'If God knows this, this must be,' the 'this' of the apodosis must be taken in the same sense as the 'this' of the protasis. But the 'this' of the protasis is present; therefore, the 'this' of the apodosis is present; it follows that 'this must be' is not absolute but hypothetical necessity: 'Necesse est Socratem currere dum currit' [It is necessary that Socrates is running while he is running]. (notabene)

34/8 In other words, God's activity and created reality are simultaneous - not in the sense that can be represented in our imagination by the juxtaposition of parallel time-lines, but in the sense that for God, who is not in time at all, past, present, and future are identical. To grasp this fact requires that we correct our spontaneous way of conceiving the relation of time to being: (264; Fs)

[A]ccording to the commonplace estimate, time contains beings, so that beings can be simultaneous [only] to the extent that they exist at the same time. But according to philosophical judgment, being contains time as one of its parts, namely, the category 'when'; for this reason, beings are simultaneous to the extent that they are beings, unless a limitation of time impedes [this simultaneity]. (DSAVD:10)

35/8 Hence, Lonergan can argue that the proposition, 'From eternity God knows and wills this thing to exist at a certain time and with a certain duration,' does not involve any contradiction: (264; Fs)

The truth of this proposition is not obtained by way of entities [ea] which are found entitatively in God, since nothing in God is contingent, since nothing which is able not to be is in God entitatively. Hence an external term [terminus ad extra, that is, an extrinsic denominator] is required so that there may be the correspondence of truth between the proposition and reality. But just what external term is required? Must it be eternal? Most certainly not, since in that case the proposition asserting that the external term exists not eternally, but at a certain time and with a certain duration, would prove to be false.

36/8 The denial of contingence on the grounds that God's knowing, willing, or causing is temporally prior to what is known, willed, or caused is based on the assumption that one's childhood images of the relation between time and eternity are disclosive of reality. Here again, what first presents itself as a speculative difficulty is resolved with relative ease by the shift from a common-sense to an explanatory perspective. (265; Fs)

Autor: Stebbins, J. Michael

Buch: The Divine Initiative

Titel: The Divine Initiative

Stichwort: Finalität; 4 Arten einer vertikalen Finalität: instrumental (Meißel), dispositiv (Fragen -> Einsicht); material (Evolution), obödiential

Kurzinhalt: ... there is vertical finality, which is 'to an end higher than the proportionate end.

Textausschnitt: eg - verikale Finalität: Finalität, die das proportionierte Ziel (Wesen = vertikale Finalität) übersteigt
eg - 4 Arten einer vertikalen Finalität: instrumental (Meißel), dispositiv (Fragen -> Einsicht); material (Evolution), obödiential

60/2 'Finality' denotes the relation of a thing to its end, where the end motivates an appetite or orients a process precisely because the end is good (FLM:18 [CWL 4:19]). There are three kinds of finality. The first is absolute, an orientation to God who is intrinsic and essential goodness; it is shared identically by every finite being because 'if there is anything to respond to motive or to proceed to term, then its response or tendency can be accounted for ultimately only by the one self-sufficient good.'1 But as creatures differ by reason of their essences, so too does the manner in which they respond to or tend towards God. Hence, there is a second type of finality that is horizontal, which 'is to a motive or term that is proportionate to essence' (FLM:21 [CWL 4:22]). Neither of these first two kinds of finality would sound strange to the ears of a typical Thomist. (56f; Fs)

61/2 Not so with the third kind of finality, for it is a notion that, if it can be found in the writings of Aquinas, is certainly not there in anything like the explicit and generalized form Lonergan gives it.2 Besides absolute finality to God as intrinsic goodness and horizontal finality to the proportionate end that is determined by essence, there is vertical finality, which is 'to an end higher than the proportionate end.'3 That finality can be manifested in four ways (FLM:19-20 [CWL 4:20-21]). First, 'a concrete plurality of lower activities may be instrumental to a higher end in another subject'; this manifestation is illustrated by the movements of a chisel that permit the artist to realize his or her end of producing a sculpture.4 Second, vertical finality may be dispositive, that is, a concrete plurality of lower activities may dispose to a higher end to be realized in the same subject, as when one's questioning and reasoning set the stage for the occurrence of an insight. Third, vertical finality can have a material manifestation, by which Lonergan means that 'a concrete plurality of lower entities may be the material cause from which a higher form is educed or into which a subsistent form is infused'; the former can be illustrated by biological evolution, the latter by the fertilized human ovum. For our purposes, however, the fourth manifestation of vertical finality is the most significant: (57; Fs)
[A] concrete plurality of rational beings have the obediential potency to receive the communication of God himself: such is the mystical body of Christ with its head in the hypostatic union, its principal unfolding in the inhabitation of the Holy Spirit by sanctifying grace, and its ultimate consummation in the beatific vision which Aquinas explained on the analogy of the union of soul and body.5
62/2 Vertical finality, then, is a feature of world-order; were it not, there would be no place for sciences such as physical chemistry, biochemistry, and biophysics. Just as subatomic particles can participate in the relatively supernatural events of chemical reactions or biological processes, so human beings can participate in the absolutely supernatural events of knowing and loving God uti in se est. The radical discontinuity that sets off the absolutely supernatural order from all other created orders of being does not preclude participation. Far from it - as constituted by or oriented to the attainment by creatures of God uti in se est, the absolutely supernatural order has to do precisely, and in an eminent way, with the participation of lower grades of being in higher.6 (57; Fs) (notabene)

62/2 Vertical finality, then, is a feature of world-order; were it not, there would be no place for sciences such as physical chemistry, biochemistry, and biophysics. Just as subatomic particles can participate in the relatively supernatural events of chemical reactions or biological processes, so human beings can participate in the absolutely supernatural events of knowing and loving God uti in se est. The radical discontinuity that sets off the absolutely supernatural order from all other created orders of being does not preclude participation. Far from it - as constituted by or oriented to the attainment by creatures of God uti in se est, the absolutely supernatural order has to do precisely, and in an eminent way, with the participation of lower grades of being in higher.1 (57; Fs) (notabene)
63/2 Note that every manifestation of vertical finality has its basis in 'a plurality of concrete entities': essences acting in conjunction with one another exhibit what Lonergan refers to as an 'upthrust' from their own to higher levels (FLM:2O-21 [CWL 4:21-22]). Hence, while horizontal finality has its roots in the abstract essences of things and therefore pertains to things even in isolation, vertical finality is in the concrete; in point of fact it is not from the isolated instance but from the conjoined plurality; and it is in the field not of natural but of statistical law, not of the abstract per se but of the concrete per acadens. Still, though accidental to the isolated object or the abstract essence, vertical finality is of the very idea of our hierarchic universe, of the ordination of things devised and exploited by the divine Artisan. For the cosmos is not an aggregate of isolated objects hierarchically arranged on isolated levels, but a dynamic whole in which instrumentally, dispositively, materially, obedientially, one level of being or activity subserves another. The interconnections are endless and manifest. (FLM:21-22 [CWL 4:22]) (58; Fs)

64/2 This vertical finality, which 'seems to operate through the fertility of concrete plurality' (FLM:20 [CWL 4:21]), constitutes the basic dynamism of the created universe. It is the very possibility of development, of novelty, of synthesis, of the emergence of higher grades of being and activity. (58; Fs)