Chapter IXHow Many Modes There Are of Communicating Theology

From what has been said we observe that all theology is distinguished in two ways [col. 1390]: one must be called infinite, the other finite. We believe that theology properly and simply infinite is that which is archetypal and essential to God; and infinite in a certain respect (as they say), and with respect to us, the habitual wisdom of Christ, which embraces all the treasures of saving wisdom and knowledge. Likewise, that theology is properly and simply called finite which is communicated to created things, whether perfectly in heavenly glory or imperfectly in this earthly course, in which Christ our Lord and Savior shines before us with the light of his grace. But since this theology of ours, like that heavenly theology which pertains to creatures, is communicated by God in a definite way and order, before we speak more precisely of the revelation of theology we must try to distinguish as clearly as possible the modes of communicating theology to created things. Thesis XIV. There are, then, two modes of communicating theology, nature and grace: the first as the internal principle of the communication, the second as its external principle. Hence one theology is called natural and the other supernatural. Paul opened this way of distinguishing the communication to us so plainly when he wrote to the Romans, chapter 1, that no wise man can deny it. For when he declares that all men are imbued with some knowledge of God and of themselves, first by the light of nature and then by the authority of Scripture (of which testimonies even one is enough to take from sinners every excuse for their sin), he plainly establishes two modes of the communication by which we have been made partakers of this theology. There is, then, a twofold principle of that communication, and from it proceeds likewise a twofold [p. 64] mode of communication. Of these principles, one is what we call nature, the other what we call grace. God is the common principle of nature as much as of grace, the author of every good in the nature of things, whether it exists according to nature or above nature. But since it graciously pleased the Lord, at the very time of creation, to endow certain of his creatures with some natural theology and to sow its principles in their understanding, we shall certainly be ungrateful toward God if we leave this grace out of account, natural though it is. Yet we must remember that this grace, by the very fact that it is natural, is opposed to that grace of revelation from which our theology is called the theology of revelation. From this common principle, that internal and singular principle was implanted by nature which we call the image of God; according to this image Adam, placed in this life, looked to God as to his exemplar by a proper and internal motion, of which motion God had implanted the common principle in his singular nature and in the common nature of all. But to this internal principle established in man's nature (which we call natural grace), the other mode of communicating theology must always be added, which the orthodox Fathers named supernatural grace; because that natural principle stood firm in us only so long as it clung to that supernatural and external principle, and as soon as it turned away from it, it was corrupted and became most wretched. Hence it came about that theology is posited, analogically, as twofold: one called natural, the other supernatural. When we say natural, we do not want it taken here in the sense we showed above in chapter 1 from Varro and Augustine, but in the proper and simple sense, as we shall shortly (if God wills) define it. We oppose it in our division to that supernatural and revealed theology analogically, not properly, because in reality they differ from each other in their whole genus. For as that supernatural principle, God, cannot be included in a common genus with the natural principle, that is, our understanding, so too the actions that flow properly from each principle cannot be forced by us into a common genus, but are plainly disparate and differ (as they say) by the whole sky. Things so related to each other cannot be divided as co-ordinate members (ἀντιδιῃρημένως), since one is superior to the other in every respect and cannot be equated with it by reason of any common genus, nor by reason of species.