Question 2: The Supernatural
Thanks Dan for starting off our conversation of Francis Hall's Theological Outlines. Lets have a go at question 2, on the supernatural. While I thought he opened clearly with his definition of theology, some confusion immediately comes in when he starts in on the supernatural , or at least some terms go by without being well explained. Of course, "the supernatural" is a huge topic, especially when we also look at philosophical concerns (which he apparently wants to do). I would like to quote this bit at the end though, and then make a brief comment: "Certain writers err in supposing that the distinction between lower and higher natures and between the forces resident in them (for this is what the distinction between natural and supernatural really means) has the effect of banishing God from nature and of reducing nature's Divine significance. It is God that worketh whether He employs the forces resident in lower or higher natures, or dispenses with the use of means." In other words, grace founds nature, as Balthasar and de Lubac stressed. And if we look at Hall's definition of supernatural, which is anything the causation of which cannot be assigned to visible or human means, then obviously men and women are fundamentally graced, and all of the natural causes which they assign and effect come from grace. Balthasar makes the same point at the end of "Love Alone" and it really grounds his understanding of universal salvation. More on that later.
10 comments:
I have read and re-read and re-read the section of Hall on "supernatural," and I have to admit that I'm still not sure precisely what he means by the term. Are angels supernatural, by Hall's definition, or does supernatural exclusively refer to uncreate being?
In any case, I do not believe you have interpreted the last paragraph of Hall correctly. Hall's concern here is the relation of creaturely causality and divine causality. How is it for God to be a cause of an event which we can comprehensively explain in terms of natural causes?
Hall is not referring to the relation of nature and grace, as this is understood in Roman Catholic theology, whether traditional or new-style.
It is of course a truism to say that everything God creates is created by grace and comes from grace.
Thanks for your comment, pontificator, and by the way, great blog. But is it true that we can "comprehensively explain" anything in terms of natural causes? Isn't this very naive in light of quantum physics and failed "theories of everything." This is where science breaks down and theology kicks in (psychoanalysis is the science of this juncture/break). Maybe I misunderstand you, but a truism ought to speak the truth, which puts it in the purview of theology and not science. And since it resides there it is more a challenge for us than a foundation.
Aron, I guess it's my turn to plead misunderstanding.
However we understand the world in terms of natural causality, I think we want to always insist that God normally works in the world through secondary causes; otherwise we end up with a "God of the gaps." What Hall, I think, is trying to say is that creaturely causality does not exclude divine causality, because the latter utterly transcends the world and is not part of the world.
Thank you, that formulation is very helpful, and it explains some problems, perhaps, with Hall's next chapter on miracles, especially the section that I quote. It seems like He is very much in "God of the gaps" territory, but perhaps that is more his time and circumstance than an enduring fault. We need a better vocabulary for how it is that the Word effects these "miracles of evolution". . . .
It's correct to say that creation in general, and humanity in particular, are "fundamentally graced" if by 'grace' one means 'gratuitous action'. From that standpoint, the very existence of the world is a grace. But that can be understood as a truth of natural theology: since God doesn't need to create in order to be fully God, then creation is an acte gratuité, though by no means irrational. But 'grace' in the specific sense of revealed theology is God's communication of his life to rational creatures whose existence is already 'grace' in the broader sense.
It's important not to confuse the two. If one does, it's very easy to fall into the belief that God could not have created rational animals without ordering them to theosis (or, in Latin terms, to "the beatific vision"). That would affirm grace in the broad, natural sense but deny it in the specific, theological sense.
Okay, I reread the first three questions. Pontificator is right: the status of angels is ambiguous, since they are certainly not uncreated like God, and yet seem to be lined up with God's supernatural causation. Tolkien's very Catholic angelic forces, on the other hand, are very properly and Thomistically associated with the natural processes of creation (in the Silmarillion creation myth).
But here's the really big problem I'm seeing with Hall. He is in every way so very Cartesian, rather than Thomistic! He assumes "nature" is spirit-less, "mechanical," "necessary." (Remember that for Plato through the Renaissance, necessary things had the highest degree of "formal" or spiritual principle indwelling them. Hall simply restates the new Cartesian dualism that replaced the earlier Western view.) Hall also assumes, let's notice, a Newtonian steady-state universe, created by God in its fully operative state and then running like a clock. But apparently, since Darwin had introduced an evolving biological nature, Hall superimposes that on the steady-state universe and concludes that supernatural forces occasionally come into play and work along with the steady-state natural forces, which by themselves would never move from one steady-state to the next-higher steady-state. This is fascinating! I keep jumping up and down and yelling "Why aren't we reeling from the incredibly big and dramatic shift that has occurred in my own adult lifetime from a steady-state universe that never changes to a Big Bang universe, so unexpected and so collossal a change? This proves how utterly a-historical we are these days. Do our children even realize what we have learned? No, because everyone is so distracted arguing about stupid trivia like a six-thousand-year-old universe that both sides are afraid to point out the size of the breaththrough!
Aron, unfortunately, the anti-theistic polemic going on right now within the science community because of its reaction to the Intelligent Design movement is causing the long-held 20th-c idea that what is visible (or physical) in the cosmos seems to depend on what is invisible (or outside the system)to become a minority position -- and even the meaning of quantum mechanics has been positivistically reinterpreted and defended as saying nothing about anything being lacking in our abillity to know or describe physical systems. This is how much has changed in the past 10 years because of the neo-con agenda in American politics.
In other words, Christians' in some fashion need to revisit Aristotle's four causes. With Descartes, nature includes but two (efficient, material) of the four (efficient, formal, material, and final cause). And so, you don't have to be a Thomist among the Thomist traditions. It would be helpful, perhaps, to see when the word 'supernatural' comes into play ... I haven't seen it at all in use among 13th/14th c. philosophical-theologians (whereas they employ First cause/secondary causes concepts).
I completely agree with you, Mutibilitie. I'm trying to do this in my own work, and it's the formal cause that has been most lost since Descartes. I'm eager to see what von Balthasar has to say abut God and formal beauty. This website has gotten me into some great reading.
So what do you'all think about the Duns Scotus-Suarez analysis of the origin of modernity? I'm posting a commentary on that by Kevin Hart that I think is fascinating at deepgraceoftheory.com.
Regarding Scotus and Suarez--I think that general claims about the contribution of each are problematic and that what is required is a lot more ground-work in the details before general tales can be told about the advent of Modernity. Perhaps I'm recommending the new-new-historicist approach, where it isn't just the interesting rare details that explain the more known (e.g. some Elizabethan's courtiers dream about Queen Elizabeth, connected with some political decision of her's), but also larger social phenomena. You'd think if people were ok with 'hermeneutic circles' that they'd be hesitant to posit a sure foundation (historical foundationalist?), but certain people are what I could call 'historical foundationalists'. In other words, we're dealing with contingent things here; so we can't say there is a necessary connection between some belief and some action (no matter what theory of volition you posit)--humans as hypocrites is something we could all attest to. Besides, I think, Gilson made fatal mistake by making an existential judgment about Scotus's natural theology, as though his existential crisis is identical with my existential (crisis) questions.
For all of these reasons, I am not so narrowly a 'historical foundationalist', but rather am more interested in respecting and offering criticism of a given metaphysical explication (e.g. Aquinas's natural theology, or Scotus's).
Just think of The Name of the Rose where the Franciscan and Domincans (at least) respect each other's missio on the world, without saying 'you are the reason why modern sin happens'-to me, that's a slothful sort of explanation (rather than a 'thick description' of the contingencies).
Mutabilitie, these are enormously helpful comments you've just made. I zipped over here just now, to The Land 'o Funlikeness, having just posted my summary of Kevin Hart on von Balthasar et alia, and now I wish I'd read this first! Still, I'll hazard that Descartes' influence on the Enlightenment and on the three centuries of modern rationalism, while once it was purely contingent, is NOW retrospectively proved to have been a "necessary" foundation! I'm really fascinated by the Suarez-Descartes conundrum!
Where did I read the fascinating discussion of "mitochondrial Eve," a relevent paradigm to discussion of "historical foundationalism." All human mitochondria are descended from one woman (since we all receive them from our mothers' ova, not from our fathers' sperm). Back at the time of "Eve," however, and before her time, it could have been ANY woman, or several women? and it was only pure historical contingency that this woman's daughter and grand daughters and so on were not eliminated in all the subsequent generations down to our day. Nonetheless, in retrospect, we can trace everything right back to her, AT THIS POINT. This is what comes of reading contemporary science. Mind-boggling new paradigms everywhere....
I'm writing about Plato's dialogue between Socrates and Ion, Ion of Ephasus being today "a name unknown to history." Well, that means current history. Ion may well have been "a historical figure" at various times in the past, in the West or in Islam, for all we know today! It all depends on the contingencies of what mss were available to any given generation and locale, and on whether their knowledge of them got passed down in other mss that survived, or not....
Anyway, I think Kevin Hart's discussion of postmodern theologians is great and would appreciate any comments, corrections you might have, over at www.deepgraceoftheory.com. Thanks!
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