Chapter XVOn the Efficient Cause of Our Theology

Up to this point we have spoken of the essential parts (as they are commonly called) and the internal causes of our theology. Now we must come to the causes that are usually called external or extrinsic. These are the efficient cause and the end, which we shall pursue in due order, as briefly as possible. Thesis XXVIII. We posit a twofold efficient cause of our theology: one principal, the other instrumental. Whenever the efficient cause of anything is treated, we usually observe above all whether the efficient cause produces by its own power or not; whether it produces the whole or in part; and finally whether it produces the thing essentially or accidentally. These things must be observed by us in all things, natural and human, so that we may attain true knowledge of the things their causes produce. But here, when we are dealing with theology, that is, the wisdom of divine truth, which no creature, nor even the universe itself, can grasp or attain, this same method must certainly be observed most diligently in examining our theology: to see what produced it by its own power, wholly or in part, essentially or accidentally, and what help was added in producing it. Since we call this wisdom now in question our theology, and of these words the latter is the name of the genus, while the former distinguishes the genus and constitutes its species, the surest way of tracing the efficient cause will be if it can be discovered from the very account of the genus and the species. The genus is theology, that is, wisdom or the account of divine things. But divine things [p. 86] surpass in every way our nature and that of this whole universe. Since, therefore, they cannot be grasped by us, nor by nature and the universe of nature, the efficient cause of theology must certainly not be sought in man, nor in any created thing, nor even in this whole universe. For why should it be sought in such a thing, where it neither is nor ever can be by its internal power or faculty? The genus is supernatural; therefore it cannot proceed from a natural cause, nor even from nature itself. Indeed, it is so supernatural that it can be produced by God alone as its efficient cause and principle, because God alone produces supernatural forms, not one form another. When we are to speak of theology according to its genus, therefore, its efficient cause is one and singular. But since we are seeking the delimited species of theology and its efficient cause insofar as we call this theology ours, we therefore say that there is indeed one principal cause of our absolute theology, and another instrumental cause: because the theology that proceeded purely from God is made ours by a definite instrument, as it were, and [col. 1410] passes, as it were, into the household of the human race. Thus we assert that there is a twofold efficient cause of theology: one principal, which alone formed theology by its power; the other instrumental, which fitted and accommodated that divinely formed wisdom to our capacity. We shall therefore treat each in its order.

Thesis XXIX. The principal and absolute efficient cause of our theology is God the Father, in the Son, through his Spirit, inspiring it, as the one and only author and the highest and most perfect producer of this wisdom in his servants. Whenever the causes of things produced are weighed in order (and order must be observed among several causes producing together), it is always necessary that the account of the cause which is principal be held principally, whatever the causes that concur to one effect. But since it very often happens in created things that, when several causes are co-ordinated with one another, each is partial (as they call it) and works for its part in the common effect, while on the other hand causes that alone are sufficient and productive of themselves are called absolute, we, being about to treat of divine things, which differ in their whole kind and mode from the production of created things, have joined two attributes together when we called God the principal and absolute efficient cause of our theology. We call him principal or chief because a comparison is made of one cause with another pertaining to the same effect; absolute, because without any other helping he accomplishes his effect by his power and faculty alone. Although these two cannot easily concur in created things, we join both together in divine things, both because we believe that God as the absolute efficient cause works in all things, even in subordinate causes, and because, if he employs further causes, he always holds the principal place among all the causes, which he uses most wisely and justly to accomplish his will. And if there is anything that has needed a wonderful and most powerful cause, it is certainly theology, which men can have not from nature but only from the communication of grace, from which it has been called our, that is, human, theology. For if no one knew the things of a man except the spirit of man which is in him, certainly no man would have known this wisdom, which is the wisdom of the divine Spirit, had not a revelation come upon men from elsewhere. Therefore we hold that the efficient cause of this theology is God the Father in the Son through his Spirit, that is, the one true and eternal God, and in the unity of essence three persons, working in common in this communication of grace. For who will reveal the things of God, even the deepest, except the Spirit of God? And in whom, or from whom, will the same Spirit reveal them, except in the Son our Mediator, and from the Father, who gave the Son as the one Prophet and Teacher of his Church? [p. 87] The divine mode of this communication is inspiration. For although the manner of teaching which God uses toward created things, and all created things according to God, is manifold, yet in the communication of this heavenly and spiritual grace a spiritual mode had to be kept: both on account of the nature of the thing in question, and on account of the nature of him who communicates it. For it was fitting that the communication of this spiritual good, proceeding from a spiritual author, should be only spiritual. Moreover, as nature permits a bodily thing to be communicated only in a bodily way, so grace prescribes that a spiritual thing be communicated in the manner of spirit. But this above all shows that there was need of a spiritual communication, which we call inspiration: that God is the author of this communication, and claims for himself alone its highest and perfect production as a work proper to his divine glory. For who but God, its one author, would have bestowed a thing so spiritual and so great? Who would have set forth the highest thing of all, which surpasses the nature of the universe in dignity, unless the author and champion of nature himself had overflowed by grace? Who but the most perfect would ever have taught a thing perfect, and indeed the saving discloser of all heavenly perfection? This, then, is the author of our theology and heavenly wisdom, which he produced in his servants and implanted according to the allotted measure of his gift: so that each received his own portion from God the author of theology, but the perfect form of this theology was set before all in common by God.

We call him the highest author and producer [col. 1411] of this wisdom when we contemplate him employing intermediate causes for this communication of grace. We affirm that he is the one and perfect author and producer because he is the one who works all in all, both in us the elect and in the means taken up for our calling. And if all, then he works perfectly; or else we must say that perfection is nowhere, if it is not in God and from God, which piety forbids us to declare. To this effect the Apostle, directing that even the slenderest rudiments of this heavenly wisdom be held in esteem and be cherished and honored by all as divine, wrote to the Corinthians: I give you to understand that no man speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed; and that no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost (1 Cor. 12:3–4, etc.). Then, rising from those least principles to greater things, or rather to all things universally, he adds: Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord; and there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all. And a little after: All these worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will. As Christ too had said before, rejoicing in spirit: All things are delivered unto me of my Father; and no man knoweth who the Son is, but the Father; and who the Father is, but the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal him; and on that account he had given glory to God the Father (Matt. 11:27; Luke 10:21).

Now let us consider the other cause, which they call instrumental. Thesis XXX. The instrumental cause of this wisdom is the uttered word (λόγος προφορικός), or enunciative speech of God: both spiritual, perceived spiritually, and corporeal, [perceived] corporeally. I am not unaware that the instrumental cause is properly so called by craftsmen when the principal agent (as they call it) employs it externally as an instrument to produce the effect that is to proceed from the action undertaken; and that therefore enunciative speech, whenever God has taken it up immediately, cannot properly be called an instrumental cause. But since there is a certain common analogy of spiritual things with bodily ones, according to which spiritual things also are named analogically by words properly belonging to bodily things, we fittingly refer both, namely spiritual and corporeal speech, to the genus of instrumental cause. For these share [p. 88] a certain analogy with each other, according to which God uses speech with us spiritually and corporeally, as seems good to him, for our instruction; and instrumental cause is fittingly predicated of both as a kind of analogical genus. Nor does it count against this account of ours that corporeal speech employs external instruments, on account of which it seems to be called instrumental; for the same speech uses its instruments within as well, on account of which it is, and is called, equally instrumental. For of the instruments usually employed in our actions, some are conjoined to the principal cause and others separate: as in acting, the hand is a conjoined instrument, a staff a separate one; in speaking, the tongue, palate, and teeth are conjoined, while the air we strike is a separate instrument. God uses both modes analogically in his spiritual speech, whether he uses his own speech alone as an analogous instrument, or whether you would have him take up the speech of angels or our own inwardly. That axiom therefore stands firm: the instrumental cause of this wisdom is the speech of God, as the instrumental cause of wisdom in human affairs is the speech of a man teaching and instructing another. Now a man's speech is manifold. One is innate, which the orthodox Fathers called implanted or natural (ἔμφυτον or φυσικόν); and this is the speech of our intellect with itself. Another is put in, which they called internal (ἐνδιάθετον): the speech which reason conceives from the joining, dividing, and reasoning of things perceived outwardly, and the conclusions that arise from them. The third, finally, is enunciative, commonly called uttered (προφορικός), by which a man communicates to others the conception of his mind, whether inborn in the intellect or perceived outwardly by reason. Of these kinds of speech the first is natural, and therefore always in act in its subject; the second is produced in its subject by another; the third produces in another. Since the question here is about the speech which is an efficient and quasi-instrumental cause, or (as we said a little before) instrumental analogically, the implanted speech (ἔμφυτον) certainly ought not to be understood here, for implanted speech is immanent (as the scholastics say) and [col. 1412] does not pass over to another. Nor should internal speech (ἐνδιάθετον) be understood, since it is passive, not active, speech, and can never truly be attributed to God; for nothing at all befalls God, much less passion, which is utterly unworthy of God's majesty. It remains, then, that we define that speech of God which we call the instrument of this wisdom as uttered (προφορικόν), or enunciative, as we laid down earlier in our thesis. And rightly so. For if no one knows the things of a man except the spirit of man which is in him, and the one to whom the man wishes to set them forth by his enunciative speech or by some sign of it, how much more did we need God's speech, that we might in some way grasp divine, heavenly, supernatural things, which man, the earth, and the whole nature of the universe cannot contain? This uttered speech (προφορικός), then, flows from God himself, and by a kind of flowing or procession from him (so to speak) produces its effect in those who hear.

This enunciative speech of God is distinguished into two kinds, according to its account and mode: the speech God uses is either spiritual or also corporeal. We call spiritual speech that which is uttered without a bodily instrument; corporeal, that which sounds with a bodily instrument applied as well. These two kinds of speech are distinguished from each other in three ways: by their principle, their object, and their mode. By principle: for spiritual speech flows from a spiritual essence alone; corporeal speech from a body, or from a spirit through a body as its instrument, whether conjoined, as a man's body, which is the personal organ of his soul, or separate, as air, a trumpet, and the like, as we showed before. By object: for spiritual speech is directed to a spirit and can never be perceived by any essence other than a spiritual one; corporeal speech is perceived by a body, or by a spirit through a body, as through its vessel drinking in things poured and cast into it from elsewhere. By mode, finally: because spiritual speech [p. 89] is uttered only spiritually by the one who speaks and is perceived spiritually by the one who hears; corporeal speech, though flowing from a spirit as its principal agent, is had and grasped only corporeally, so that it may be drawn through the instrument of the body, as through a funnel, into the inner recesses and chambers of the spirit. God has used both these modes most holily, when it seemed good to him to pour down this heavenly wisdom from above upon the human race. For at sundry times and in divers manners he spoke to the fathers by the Spirit, by apparitions, by very many other instruments, and by his prophets; and then in these times he displayed and communicated by his Son the fullness of that wisdom, which was afterward set down with most certain faithfulness in written records by the Apostles and Evangelists. But of these we shall speak in their time, the Lord helping.