Autor: Ormerod, Neil

Buch: Creation, Grace, and Redemption

Titel: Creation, Grace, and Redemption

Stichwort: Schau Gottes, Gnade; Dilemma: menschl. Natur mit 2 Zielen; (natürlich - übernatürlich); Augustinus - Thomas (natürliches Verlangen nach der Ursache); Cajetan (Stockwerke-Theologie; gratia elevans vs sanans)

Kurzinhalt: Is our desire for God part of our human nature, or is it a supernatural gift from God? The posing of this question causes a dilemma... While grace was "elevating," ... it was no longer clear how or even why it could be healing ...

Textausschnitt: THE NATURAL DESIRE TO SEE GOD

116c Perhaps no phrase from Augustine is more well known than his expression of the restlessness of the human heart: "You have made us for yourself and our heart is restless until it rests in you" (Confessions 1.1). It is interesting, then, to learn that in the later part of his life, Augustine became more tentative about making such a statement, particularly in relation to our fallen nature. It seemed to imply a natural ability to move toward God, but Augustine's later, more dialectical approach found that unacceptable.1 However, once a place is found in theology for introducing the grace/nature distinction, the question then arises, Is our desire for God part of our human nature, or is it a supernatural gift from God? The posing of this question causes a dilemma. If our desire for God is part of our human nature, then, given that the fulfillment of that desire can only be the beatific vision, which is strictly supernatural, it would seem that God created human nature incapable of attaining its end. Apart from grace, human nature would be eternally frustrated. On the other hand, if the desire is supernatural, then theology needs to account for two distinct ends of human existence, one natural, the other supernatural, running the danger of splitting human beings in two.2 How are these two ends related to each other? Unless a solution can be found to this dilemma, the intellectual coherence of the construct of human nature remains subject to suspicion, and we should return perhaps to the grace/sin dialectic. (Fs) (notabene)

117a Historically, this problem focused on the teaching of Thomas Aquinas that human nature has a natural desire to see God:

If therefore the human intellect, knowing the essence of some created effect, knows no more of God than that he is; the perfection of that intellect does not yet reach simply the First cause, but there remains in it the natural desire to seek the cause. (ST I-II, q. 3, a. 8)

117a The great Thomist commentator Cajetan (1469-1534) found difficulty with this position of a "natural" desire.3 If there is a natural desire, then this orientation is an orientation to grace in a human nature that is taken to be self-sufficient and self-enclosed. It threatened the gratuity of grace by creating in human nature an exigence or demand for grace in order for it to achieve its final happiness. If we have such a desire, then God must offer us grace in justice to the desire God has planted within us. His conclusion was that grace was somehow extrinsic to "pure" human nature, conceived of as a self-enclosed and complete existence. This developed in the "two-storey" theology of grace, which understood the supernatural as an extrinsic superstructure to human nature. This notion of a "pure" human nature was elevated to a necessary theological principle in order to preserve the gratuity of grace. Human nature was conceived of as having two ends, a natural end determined by its nature, within its powers to attain, and a supernatural end, unrelated to its natural end, totally beyond its powers to attain. While grace was "elevating," adding supernatural ends to human existence, it was no longer clear how or even why it could be healing, and so was lost the great Augustinian insight into grace. (Fs)

118a With few exceptions, this extrinsicist position of Cajetan became the dominant one in Catholic theology until the twentieth century. In its wake came a fatal separation of grace from nature, the sacred from the profane, the religious from the secular, and the spiritual from the mundane. Eventually it came under increasing pressure in the twentieth century with the recovery of the work of the early church fathers, to whom the scholastic construct of human nature was unknown. This led to a period of bitter dispute and debate around a movement known as the nouvelle theologie.4 We shall briefly consider three responses that emerged during this debate, those of Henri de Lubac, Karl Rahner, and Bernard Lonergan. (Fs)