Chapter XOn Natural Theology. Thesis XV

Natural theology is that which proceeds from principles known in themselves by the natural light of the human intellect, [col. 1391] according to the mode of human reason. In this definition of ours we posit no genus and no difference, lest this theology should perhaps seem to share a genus or difference with the preceding ones. For this theology cannot be called wisdom as to its genus except equivocally; nor can divine things, from which the difference of this theology must be constituted, be attributed to it properly and simply, but only with a like homonymy. You might put knowledge in place of the genus, or even, if it seems good, awareness;¹ but wisdom least of all. And the divine things whose account constitutes the difference of true theology are named here partly properly, and partly improperly and by opinion. Still, I am willing that it be called knowledge of divine things, [p. 65] so that some genus of this theology, though an equivocal one, may be agreed on among all. The singular delimitation of this theology by its causes we have laid down in our preceding definition. The efficient cause of this theology is nature itself, and the natural light of our intellect; the material cause, principles known in themselves of divine things, in which this natural theology consists and is occupied; the form is that this theology proceeds from those principles according to the mode of human reason. We have not troubled to supply the end, because it is certain by nature's teaching, and yet it did not seem to pertain much to this definition of ours. The efficient cause of this theology, then, is not art, not chance, or anything else, but nature itself, which the philosophers have taught is the principle and cause of motion and rest in that in which it is, primarily and of itself. This is the common principle by which this natural theology is impressed singularly in each man. But since this common principle so acts in individuals that it employs certain definite instruments for its several functions, parts, as it were, serving the whole nature, the human intellect is laid beneath as the proper subject of this theology; by its natural light both the principles are discerned and the processions from the principles follow in the just order of nature. We call principles those things which are known of themselves by the light of nature, which are known immediately, and which are unmoved or immutable, so that certain knowledge may at last follow from them. From these principles reasoning draws certain processes, like streams from springs: it compares the principles of nature with the truth of things or sets them apart from one another; it joins causes with effects and concludes from them; it determines common and singular things; and finally it orders all things so as to gain knowledge of all the things that man's reason can investigate and attain. But because the mode of human reason is very narrow, on account of the weakness of our intellect, which is related to the most manifest things of nature just as the eye of an owl is to the light of the sun, as that eminent philosopher Aristotle acknowledged in the Metaphysics, we have seen fit to delimit the form of this whole knowledge by the words according to the mode of human reason. From this we necessarily conclude that if human reason is so weak not only in human things but also in natural things, much narrower limits must be set to our reasoning in things that are above nature; lest in things so arduous, by the hiding of which the glory of God shines forth most brightly (as the wise man once taught), the natural man should dare to indulge and flatter himself. No one endowed with even moderate reason will deny this, stated universally, because both the common notions begotten by nature teach it and the experience of all ages and men proves it. Yet to set the matter more conveniently before everyone's eyes, three things seem to us to need explaining in order in this question. First we must see what those principles are, and of what kind, that cling to us from nature; next, what is the account of this nature in which, as in their subject, these principles are implanted; and lastly, what is the work, and what are the effects, of that nature and its principles, or what besides they can be, both in investigating and grasping human and natural things and in investigating and grasping divine things, with the help of our human reason.

We describe the condition of the principles that are in us in these few words: Thesis XVI. The knowledge of this natural theology in the human intellect is concerned with common things, and is obscure and imperfect; and so it must receive its perfection from the supernatural. Although, by the nature of the argument we have undertaken to explain here, we are properly dealing with the ordering of our reason to divine things according to the power of nature, yet what [col. 1392] is said here of the principles of our nature can also in some manner be applied generally to all human things, and especially to moral things; so that by this way we may attain a knowledge of our nature as far as it [p. 66] pertains to this argument. The principles of which we treat, then, we denote by the word notion, as Tully calls them in very many places; the Greeks called them ἐννοίας and καταλήψεις. And rightly so. For since the intellect of our mind, as the physicists oppose it to reason, is the pure and simple seat of the natural principles, which so cling in each one's intellect that they are in it simply, apart from contemplation of things outside; these principles, I say, are rightly called notions or preconceptions. For this simple knowledge of our intellect is within us by nature in such a way that it usually precedes all other knowledge, and indeed underlies any knowledge as its common foundation. The condition of this notion and of these principles is delimited in three ways by our words, when in the argument of theology we call those notions common, obscure, and imperfect. For three things are needed for a just grasp of things: that we grasp the subject in question truly, clearly, and fully. If instead of the true subject we look to a false or opinative one, as usually happens when we acknowledge the true in general but stray from it in particular, the application of the principles is false. If by the light of the principles we do not see sufficiently the subject or the actions pertaining to it, the notion is obscure. And if we can view only in part the things we need to look at, the notion is imperfect. For example, it is a natural principle that each must be given his due. Here we are usually deceived in three ways in using this principle. For what nature dictates in common about each one we break down with exceptions; and we veil those principles and common notions by our particular conclusions, by the obscurity of the middle terms, and by the imperfection of our judgment. Finally (to plant our foot in the very question we have undertaken), the natural principle dictates to everyone that God must be worshiped. But this principle is in each one common, obscure, and imperfect: common, because it does not teach God singularly, as if pointing with the finger to show that this is God himself; obscure, because what it points out to us it nevertheless does not show clearly; imperfect, finally, because it does not show fully. That this is so the Apostle shows most clearly when he said to the Lystrans who wanted to sacrifice to him: Why do ye these things? We also are men of like passions with you, and preach unto you that ye should turn from these vanities unto the living God, which made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are therein: who in times past suffered all nations to walk in their own ways. Nevertheless he left not himself without witness, in that he did good, and gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness (Acts 14:15–17). For that the notion of God impressed on all of them was common, and not that singular notion by which they might know that this is the true God, the Lystrans themselves show by their deed, and Paul proves by his argument. His arguments show that it was obscure, since the Apostle brings forward nothing but the testimonies of nature, or things done by God in nature, to declare the truth of that supremely adorable God; and these are only the faintest traces of that true and living God, which have testified rather to what is God's than to what God is to the human race from the beginning. For the same reason these principles are imperfect: if they testify anything about God (as they certainly do), they testify most imperfectly and are very far from his perfection. Of the same kind is what the Apostle declared when he was calling the Athenians back from idolatry: For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, To the Unknown God. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you. God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands, etc. (Acts 17:23–24). By these words he declares most clearly the condition of those natural principles: they neither knew singularly the God whom the common principles teach must be worshiped in common, [p. 67] nor knew him evidently, as people who had lived in times of ignorance winked at, nor, finally, knew him perfectly, since God is said to give to all life, and breath, and all things, and to have made of one blood the whole nation of men, that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him and find him, and the rest that Paul there brings forward most weightily. Therefore the same Apostle affirms excellently that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who [col. 1393] hold the truth in unrighteousness; because that which may be known of God by the faculty and order of nature is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead, namely in that common, obscure, and imperfect way that comes from the principles of nature themselves (Rom. 1:19–20). And as this common, obscure, and imperfect character of the principles is recognized in searching out the truth of things, above all of divine things, so that if anything true about God is found out by reason, it comes to man only through few, after a long time, and with a mixture of very many errors, so too it happens in searching out that right which the Apostle in the same place called the judgment of God (τὸ δικαίωμα τοῦ θεοῦ). For whether you consider the divine right and ordering made concerning all things in themselves and among themselves, or the moral right pertaining to the creatures he made after his image, there is nothing at all that cannot easily be convicted of this defect by the same reasoning. Therefore, having weighed everything, we conclude most rightly that there is neither a perfection in these principles and notions capable of divine things, nor any aptitude or power in any way to undertake the searching out of those things; but that it plainly must receive from supernatural grace both its perfection (if it is to receive any) and a receptive power (δεκτικήν), that is, one fit to receive its perfection: so wholly unfit is the sight of this whole nature of ours to see through and perceive the things that God has set above nature.

We have spoken of the principles. Now let us look at the whole nature itself in which, as in their subject, these principles are implanted. A twofold account must be observed of our nature, in which these principles and common notions are present. For this nature is considered either in itself, as it was created by God, or according to what befell it, sin and the corruption that followed from the fall of our first parents. Concerning the first mode and condition of our original nature, and of the principles placed in it, we lay down as follows. Thesis XVII. This was the condition of natural theology in Adam while his nature was whole: it was to be cultivated and increased by reasoning from common, obscure, and imperfect principles, and to be perfected by grace. I am not unaware that what we have just said seems new and unheard of to very many: that whole nature, as it was in Adam from creation, was endowed with these limits, as it were, of its theology, and did not go further according to nature. Yet anyone, I think, who weighs together the two points we are about to make will cease to wonder. One is that by the very fact that it is called natural theology, supernatural wisdom is excluded, as differing in its whole genus; nor can the one be confused with the other without positing an opposite in an opposite (as the scholastics say) and a most manifest contradiction of two members with each other, which is utterly foreign to all knowledge. The other is that the account of growth is not thereby taken away, the growth that man in whole nature would have attained from principles, until he was perfected by supernatural grace and raised to its summit. For since the nature of man is so constituted that it has principles in itself but attains progress by reasoning and study until it reaches just knowledge, no one can doubt that the common account of nature was in Adam too, and would have been in his posterity, had they stood firm in that original integrity. Adam therefore had uncorrupted principles, as belong to nature; and then from the comparison of these principles with things and signs [p. 68] he could successively, by the work of reasoning, compose, divide, conclude, and determine, according to nature, whatever nature was to attain in divine things by its faculty; and finally acquire some knowledge of divine things after the mode of whole nature. But he could not transcend above nature, because each of his faculties had its own singular mode; beyond that mode Adam was indeed to rise, but by the gift of supernatural grace, not by the power of his own nature. For all things in him were whole and uncorrupted, but content with the limits of nature, not wandering beyond nature. The principles in him, then, were common: for had they been singular, they would not have been principles, but conclusions and determinations of reason pertaining to true and just knowledge. The same were obscure in him: for had they been clear and plainly evident, they would no longer have been, or deservedly been called, mere principles; rather the middle terms too would have been put into him; and middle terms, by everyone's agreement, belong properly not to the intellect, as the perpetual seat of principles, but to reason. Finally, the same were imperfect: not with a vicious imperfection, or an imperfection [col. 1394] of nature (for he had the perfection of nature from creation),² but with an imperfection in a certain respect (as they call it), that is, in comparison with that infinite perfection of God and of divine things, a perfection which no created thing can reach by the power of its nature, and none can grasp of itself. These principles, then, like seeds deposited in the field of the human intellect, had likewise to be cultivated and increased, the work of nature being added to the principles. Now reason, in man made after the image of God, is nature's laborer; by its cultivation those principles had to be carried forward from their generality to particular works, from obscurity into light, from imperfection into some perfection according to the mode of natural faculty: so that knowledge might be produced in man's mind from the seed of the principles and the cultivation of reason. What then? Could knowledge of divine things be perfected in whole man by these instruments of nature, as it were? By no means. For reason itself could not but suffer from obscurity and imperfection, since it had no other material from which to beget knowledge than the principles; for in the principles (as the more recent philosophers usually say) all things are present virtually and in common which are grasped singularly by the reason and knowledge of men. From this it follows at once that not even in whole human nature could reason ascend to a higher summit of human knowledge than it could build upon the principles and out of them. These things posited, we rightly conclude that even in whole human nature theology could not be perfect according to the perfection of human nature simply, but that this theology was to be perfected by the supernatural grace of God, or rather as it were abolished by a perfection entering in its place; so that man might remain enriched by supernatural theology, and be carried over by supernatural power through grace to that blessed condition, to the living hope of which we have been begotten again by the Lord (1 Pet. 1:3). Nor is there any reason for anyone to wonder that we say natural theology was to be abolished by the supernatural. For the Apostle teaches us to speak so when he speaks of this theology of ours and of that which is to come in heaven: For we know in part, he says, and we prophesy in part; but when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away, etc. (1 Cor. 13:9[–10]). That bringing in (ἐπεισαγωγή) of a form not only different but of a different and most perfect kind is to swallow up, as it were, this form of our theology and claim it for its own perfection.

So much for the condition of natural theology in man's uncorrupted nature. Let us see its condition since nature was corrupted by depravity. Thesis XVIII. But after this nature was corrupted, those same principles remained in each person, common, obscure, and imperfect; but in themselves utterly corrupt, and among themselves utterly confused, like the rubble of our nature, through our depravity. It is not our plan here [p. 69] to treat particularly of the corruption of our nature, or of the origin and manner of that corruption; we shall only do this at present, that we may learn the mode or condition of that natural theology since man fell miserably into sin. It is commonly known (and the orthodox Fathers, and the scholastics following in their footsteps, taught it excellently) that the natural gifts were corrupted and the supernatural lost. From this saying we hold that supernatural theology, as it were disowned and most unworthily rejected by man's sin, withdrew from here into heaven; while natural theology, like everything else that is from nature, was corrupted. For how could it have remained uncorrupted in a subject corrupt in every part? The manner of this corruption must be observed in two respects: first, in the constitution of the subject itself and of its several parts; second, in the ordering of the subject and its parts among themselves and to all other things. In the subject, then (as we said before), there were these: principles in the intellect, and reason in the mind, from which natural man could acquire some knowledge. But since those principles, even in man's whole nature, labored under their own limitations, and likewise human reason, according to the condition of the principles, was not free from changeability, the corruption that came upon man certainly could not cure these limitations, could not keep them in the same state, and could not, finally, protect them from any diminishing. So if they were common in individuals before, they remained common, but now infested with vice; if they had been obscure, they were made far more obscure; if, finally, imperfect, [col. 1395] they collapsed into a much heavier imperfection; and so man's reason could not but be carried toward the worse and be most grievously and shamefully vitiated. Therefore it can most truly be said of man's nature that, like the whole nature, so all its principles were in themselves utterly corrupt; above all those which looked to theology, whose subject is above the whole nature of all created things and cannot be grasped even by whole nature otherwise than according to the mode of that nature. Nor were they only utterly corrupt in themselves, but (what is more) utterly estranged from all just order and fitting relation among themselves. For what more disordered (ἄτακτον) can be thought of than if something observed due order neither with its whole, nor with the parts of that whole, nor with other things outside its whole? And such were those very principles at once found to be in fallen man: they remained the same principles in foundation, but most different in mode, since they could keep measure neither in themselves, nor among themselves, nor with other things. This is why we say they were utterly confused among themselves, like the rubble of a nature lying miserably prostrate through our grievous fall. For as when an elegant house is thrown down by a very heavy fall and collapses in one moment by some greater force, all its form perishes, and its parts, however skillfully made and beautiful beyond measure, lie shattered and ruined, buried out of sight in heaps of rubble; so too whatever was elegant in human nature has gone, buried as in a shapeless and disordered mass of our depravity. It remains, lastly, to consider the work and effects of that nature and of the natural principles in it. Surely, if the work of the principles and of our whole nature is now so meager even in those things to which nature can rise, much more must the infirmity and weakness of nature and its principles be maintained in natural theology, since the subject of theology cannot be grasped by this nature, but surpasses infinitely the whole of nature, and not only the nature of each man.

Concerning natural theology, then, if we look to its work and effects, we conclude from what precedes as follows. Thesis XIX. This theology, therefore, can bring nothing whatever to perfection, and never does; nor is it of itself even capable of a perfection supervening from grace. We have stated three things briefly here about natural theology, as those skilled in the sciences have directed that, according to the essence of the things in question, [p. 70] three things be weighed: their power, work, and passion (δύναμιν, ἔργον, καὶ πάθος), that is, their potency, action, and undergoing. Of the potency of this theology, then, it is said: This theology can bring nothing whatever to perfection. No wonder: since it cannot come to perfection itself, how should it bring others to just perfection? Of its work or action, we say that it never brings anything to perfection; which will be beyond all dispute among all who are endowed with reason and judgment, especially if they consider that from an imperfect cause, indeed a most imperfect one, no effects other than imperfect can arise; otherwise (which is most absurd) an imperfect tree would be said to bear perfect fruit. The third point we affirm of this natural theology will perhaps seem to some weightier and harder to believe, who cannot bear that everything be taken from our nature and ascribed to the glorious grace of God. For we say that this natural theology is not of itself even capable of a perfection supervening upon it from grace: that is, it has of itself, by its own nature or power, no affection, ordered relation, or disposition (as they call it) by which it might receive that perfection which is poured over it by heavenly grace. So although it may receive anything in nature and from nature according to the kind of potency they call passive, from the aptitude and disposition of our nature, yet if you look to the fruit and reception of those heavenly and spiritual gifts which God communicates to men by singular revelation, this theology has of itself no passive potency, no receptive potency, no obediential potency (as the scholastics call it), and finally no disposition, by which natural theology might share with the supernatural. There is indeed a subject common to both, with which they are concerned; but these two wisdoms differ from each other (so to speak) in the totality of their nature. For it is not the sharing of the same subject that makes sciences of one kind, but their mode; as the musician and the arithmetician are both occupied with numbers, but differ from each other in the mode [col. 1396] of treatment. This is shown by a single argument of comparison between these very things: nature brings forth a disposition only from pre-existing matter, but the Spirit of God worketh all in all. So for natural theology, nature supplies the intellect and employs the seeds of the principles for its disposition; but for that supernatural theology, the Spirit of God claims all the parts for himself entirely, so that it is called supernatural by every right.