After the fall, humans lose this original righteousness, and become incapable of obeying the natural law: Aquinas is quite clear, we cannot do any genuinely ‘natural’ good.Footnote 1
[S]ince human nature is not wholly spoiled by sin so as to be deprived of the whole good proper to nature, man can indeed . . . perform some particular good actions by his natural powers . . . Footnote 2
John Milbank is the most recent of a series of Anglo-Catholic theologians who have promoted an understanding of nature or the cosmos as ‘already in a sense graced’.Footnote 3 Standing in a modern tradition which includes Karl Rahner, Henri de Lubac, Hans Urs von Balthasar and others, Milbank's work is marked throughout by a certain blurring of the boundaries between the natural and the supernatural. The ‘radically orthodox’ position is itself, for Milbank, ‘primarily characterized by a more persistent refusal of distinct “natural” and “supernatural” phases and a consequent assault upon an autonomous naturalism as “nihilistic”’.Footnote 4 One of the main ways Milbank has sought to justify and pursue this position is by appealing to a particular interpretation of Thomas Aquinas. In Truth and Aquinas (2001),Footnote 5 Milbank describes himself as attempting to overcome the ‘usual interpretations’ within which ‘Aquinas is seen as espousing a sharp distinction between reason and faith, and concomitantly between philosophy and theology’.Footnote 6
The primary intent of this article is to raise some questions about Milbank's interpretation of Aquinas. I will pursue this in three stages. First, I will undertake a close reading of some questions in the Summa Theologica where Aquinas most directly discusses grace and its relation to nature. In these questions Aquinas makes a series of important distinctions which allow a thinking of nature and its operations apart from grace. Second, I will examine Milbank's interpretation of Aquinas as set out in Truth in Aquinas (2001). In this book, and especially the essay ‘Truth in Vision’, Milbank presents his clearest case for why he thinks Aquinas supports a notion of ‘nature as graced’. Third, I will argue that, although Milbank draws attention to some important aspects of Aquinas's thought, the conclusions he draws are problematic, both as a reading of Aquinas and further in terms of their political and ethical implications. Specifically, I will argue that Milbank's understanding of nature as thoroughly dependent on grace implies an understanding of nature as, on its own terms, nihilistic or irretrievably fallen. In this way Milbank's dissolution of any qualitative distinction between nature and grace closes down any natural space for even a limited non-theological politics or ethics. Aquinas's clear distinction between grace and nature, by contrast, allows at least some space for natural political and moral knowledge and activity.
Nature and grace in Aquinas
Grace and nature are both central terms in Aquinas's Summa Theologica. On the one hand, Aquinas repeatedly affirms an understanding of grace as a supernatural gift from God, or as the ‘stronger light’ through which the human creature is able to achieve his or her supernatural ends (ST qu. I. II, 109. 1). He further clarifies that grace is a ‘gift freely bestowed’ (ST I. II, 110. 1), elsewhere identified with such supernatural gifts as prophecy, miracles, revelation (ST II. II, 71–8). For Aquinas, grace functions as the central term for organising and describing God's supernatural activity. On the other hand, the term ‘nature’ plays an equally significant role. Aquinas uses nature in a variety of senses; for distinguishing between what is natural and what is conventional or customary (see ST I. II, 91. 3), for stipulating that which is essential and definitive of some particular creature (for the human creature, rationality or reason), and for distinguishing the order of creation more generally – i.e. nature – over and against God and his supernatural works and activities of grace. What is also significant is how Aquinas understands the relationship between nature and grace. Aquinas understands grace and nature as, in significant ways, providing parallel principles of operation for the human creature. This is indicated in Aquinas's discussion of ‘whether grace implies anything in the soul’, and specifically his description of the two types of love God bestows on creatures: ‘[O]ne is common, where He loves “all things that are” (Wisdom 11:25) and thereby gives things their natural being. But the second is a special love, whereby he draws the rational creature above the condition of its nature to a participation of the Divine good’ (110. 1).
Aquinas is clear that both types of love have their origins and ends in God, but he is equally clear in distinguishing between them. The first common love is identified with nature, or as proceeding through ‘natural being’. The second special love is identified with grace, and those instances where God more ‘simply wishes eternal good, which is Himself, for the creature’ (110. 1). This understanding of both grace and nature as distinct yet parallel is further indicated and clarified in three distinctions Aquinas makes: a distinction between grace and providence, between nature intact and spoiled, and an even more basic distinction between nature and the supernatural. Outlining these distinctions will further clarify Aquinas's understanding of nature and grace and how he understands them as distinct from, and yet parallel to, each other.
The distinction between grace and providence
The first question Aquinas directly addresses on grace is that of ‘whether the human creature can have knowledge of truth without grace’ (qu. I. II, 109. 1).Footnote 7 What is important in this question is that Aquinas carefully concludes that knowledge of temporal or sensible truths of a certain type can indeed be possessed without God's bestowal of grace, but also stipulates how such knowledge is still dependent on God in a more general way. His argument proceeds as follows.
First, Aquinas defines ‘[k]nowing the truth’ as ‘an exercise or actualization of intellectual light’. This definition allows Aquinas to clarify that knowing, as an ‘exercise’, is a motion (which is supported by Aristotle's understanding that, ‘in a broad sense . . . understanding and willing are called movements’).
Aquinas, considering the action or motion that takes place in the physical world, observes (again in line with Aristotle) how ‘physical movements are derived from the movement of the heavenly body as the primary physical mover [i.e. God]’. With this observation Thomas is then able to generalise how ‘all movements, both physical and spiritual, are derived from what is the primary mover simply speaking, which is God’. In this primary sense, then, God is identified as the source of all movement and actuality and, ‘however perfect a physical or spiritual nature is taken to be, it cannot proceed to actualize itself unless it is moved by God’. This is what Aquinas describes as the ‘order of His providence’.
With this in mind, Aquinas distinguishes between two preliminary ways in which any creature is dependent on God: ‘firstly, by having the form by which it acts from him; secondly, [in the way we have seen] by being moved by him into action’. This distinction between form and movement sets up a twofold relation of dependence, whereby ‘every form implanted in created realities by God possesses efficacy in respect to some definite actualization’, and whereby God's providence is necessary to actualise this nature.
This in turn allows Aquinas to make an all important distinction between how God operates in the world. On the one hand, all creatures, including humans, have a continual dependence on God's providence for the actualisation of their natures (i.e. movement through their forms). Under this more general providence, or through this actualisation, creatures are able to exercise knowledge in a manner specific and appropriate to their natures. In the case of humans Aquinas clarifies that the intellect, which has as its form the ‘intelligible light itself’, is ‘sufficient of itself for certain intelligible realities, those, namely, acquaintance with which it can reach by way of sensible realities’.
On the other hand, however, Aquinas is also careful to stipulate that while ‘every form implanted in created realities by God . . . can proceed in accordance with the nature proper to it; which it cannot go beyond except in virtue of some supplementary form’. This also pertains to the human intellect, which ‘cannot know more profound realities unless it is perfected by a stronger light, say the light of faith or prophecy; and this is called the light of grace, inasmuch as it supplements nature’. On this basis Aquinas distinguishes between two different ways in which God operates in the world. First, God operates in a more general and providential way, and the way that is necessary for any creaturely motion or actualisation whatsoever. Second, God also more specifically operates by bestowing the divine gift or supplement of grace; a grace that allows a type of knowledge that goes beyond natural or sensible things. Aquinas elsewhere, as we have seen, clarifies this difference as between ‘a general love, by which he loves all things that are’ and between ‘a special love, by which he draws the rational creature above its natural condition to have a part in divine goodness’ (I. II, 110. 1).
This distinction between God's general providence and the more specific gift of grace governs Aquinas's conclusion about whether humans can know any truth without grace. Aquinas notes that, strictly speaking, human creatures are continually and utterly dependent on God, and in this sense can know nothing whatsoever without him. However, the nature of this dependence differs according to what type of knowledge is being sought – i.e. whether the knowledge pertains to natural or supernatural things. Aquinas is clear that for a knowledge of natural things ‘man needs divine assistance so that his intellect may be moved by God to actualize himself. He does not however need a new light, supplementing his natural light.’ For Aquinas, in other words, humans can acquire knowledge of natural things with the aid of God's more general involvement or providence and without grace in the second and more supplementary sense. The secondary ‘stronger light of grace’ only becomes necessary for a knowledge of ‘more profound intelligible realities’, or for what ‘transcends natural knowledge’.
The distinction between nature intact and spoiled
Having established this basic distinction between God's providence and grace, Aquinas introduces a further distinction for understanding grace and its relation to nature. This emerges in his discussion of ‘whether humans can do or will any good without God's grace’ (qu. I. II, 109. 2). In this article Aquinas distinguishes between how human nature (and also nature more generally) should be considered: ‘firstly, in its intactness, as it was in our first progenitor before sin; and secondly, as it is spoiled in us after the sin of our first progenitor’. Aquinas acknowledges that in both states ‘human nature needs divine assistance, as primary mover’ (i.e. what I have called providence). Even to will and do natural goods the creature is utterly dependent on God in this way. Aquinas also clarifies that in both states the supplement of grace is needed if human nature is to achieve any supernatural good.
It is here that Aquinas introduces a further distinction. Aquinas clarifies that in a pre-lapsarian state ‘man needs a gratuitous capacity supplementing the capacity of his nature in one respect, namely to perform and will the supernatural good’. Second, in the state of ‘spoiled nature’ the creature requires this supplementary grace in an additional way. The fallen creature requires grace, not only to achieve or pursue supernatural goods, but also in order to fully achieve the natural goods that are proper to his nature. In the post-lapsarian state of spoiled nature ‘man falls short even of what he is capable of according to his nature’.
However, while the post-lapsarian human creature remains dependent upon grace to restore his or her nature, it is significant, as Aquinas clarifies, that ‘since human nature is not wholly spoiled by sin so as to be deprived of the whole good proper to nature, man can indeed . . . perform some particular good actions by his natural powers’. This is consistent with Aquinas's position on the effects of sin on nature elsewhere, for instance in his earlier discussion of ‘whether sin diminishes the goodness of nature’ (I. II, 85. 1). Here Aquinas first acknowledges that original sin has destroyed one particular good of nature: ‘the gift of original justice . . . conferred on the whole of human nature in the person of the first man’. However, Aquinas resists any idea that the effects of sin on nature should in any way be conceived as absolute. He rejects outright that sin has destroyed or diminished ‘the principles by which nature is constituted, and the properties that flow from them, such as the powers of the soul and so forth’. He also rejects that sin has destroyed the natural ‘inclination to virtue’, although he acknowledges this has been somewhat diminished by sin. In other words, nature, even while partly spoiled, retains a certain integrity on its own grounds and on this basis cannot be considered as somehow wholly dependent on grace.
The distinction between nature and the supernatural
Both Aquinas's distinction between God's general provision and supplementary giftings of grace, and his further distinction between nature intact and spoiled (and careful stipulating of when and why each needs grace), attest to a basic distinction between the natural and supernatural orders. In both instances Aquinas understands nature and the supernatural as existing as distinct registers of knowledge or activity. In one sense this basic distinction is present throughout Aquinas's discussions of grace, but it is worth considering two further places where he directly brings this into play.
This distinction is present when Aquinas addresses ‘whether man can love God by his natural endowments alone without grace’ (109. 3). Here Aquinas again finds that ‘in the state of intact nature man could perform by virtue of his own nature the good which is connatural to him, without the supplement of a gratuitous gift, although not without the assistance of God moving him’. Even on natural terms – i.e. through natural love and desire – ‘every particular thing loves its own proper good for the sake of the common good of the whole universe; and this is God’. In this intact state Aquinas recognises, following Dionysius, that ‘God turns all things to a love of himself’. Aquinas also recognises that ‘in the state of spoiled nature man falls short of this in the desire of his rational will’.Footnote 8 However, even while sin limits creaturely capacities, the human creature still retains a certain inclination towards God on natural grounds. For Aquinas, the love of God above all things was and is possible as a natural love; as a love ‘natural to any created creature’. Aquinas is, of course, very clear that supernatural goods and knowledge cannot be achieved on natural grounds, for example meriting eternal life (109. 5). However, he does allow that certain natural goods and ends, including a love of God, can be pursued and achieved naturally, albeit now only partially and imperfectly.
This same basic distinction (between nature and the supernatural) is also indicated in Aquinas's discussion of ‘whether grace is a quality’ (110. 2). The focus here, however, is not so much on what can be achieved on natural terms, but rather on the distinctiveness of grace over and against nature. Aquinas begins his reply by reiterating that God ‘provides for natural creatures’ both by moving ‘them to their natural acts’ and further by bestowing ‘upon them certain forms and powers, which are principles of acts’. With this in mind, Aquinas then asserts that in a parallel fashion God infuses ‘supernatural forms or qualities into those whom he moves towards obtaining an eternal supernatural good, whereby they may be moved by him sweetly and promptly towards obtaining the eternal good’. However, despite this parallel, Aquinas also carefully stipulates that ‘grace is higher than human nature’ and also ‘accidental’ to the human soul (at least with regard to the mode of being). As something ‘accidental’ or as a ‘quality’, grace is emphasised as being ‘above human nature’ and not ‘a substance or a substantial form’. The importance of grace being a quality (and not substantial) is precisely that this maintains the irreducibility of grace to the corruptible created order. As Aquinas notes ‘to become and to be corrupted belong to what is, properly speaking [emphasis added]’. In contrast ‘no accident comes into being or is corrupted’, although Aquinas does acknowledge (responding to one of the objections) that, in a certain way of speaking, grace is sometimes ‘said to come into being and to be corrupted inasmuch as its subject begins or ceases to be in act with this accident’. In other words Aquinas understands grace as a quality or as accidental in order to distinguish it from nature and protect it as having integrity over and against nature.
Milbank's reading of Aquinas
With these three distinctions in mind, we can now proceed to Milbank's interpretation of Aquinas. It is worth clarifying at the outset that the specific articles we have been discussing receive minimal attention by Milbank. Milbank's single reference to ST I. II, 109 in ‘Truth in Aquinas’ comes at the beginning of the essay, where he acknowledges that Aquinas does indeed seem to be asserting that ‘we can know many things by the light of natural reason without appeal to faith’.Footnote 9 However, Milbank immediately responds that this ‘apparently clear avowal of an autonomous reason and philosophical theology cannot be rendered consistent with certain other crucial passages in his writings and therefore must be reinterpreted’.Footnote 10 It is through this appeal to ‘reinterpretation’, that Milbank proposes to show that ‘the distinctions between faith and reason . . . can only be considered as relative contrasts within a more fundamental gnoseological situation embracing the two poles’.Footnote 11 Milbank indicates his intention to make his initial case for this interpretation in two stages, first by addressing Aquinas's apparent distinction between reason and faith, and further by addressing his apparent distinction between metaphysics and sacra doctrina. We will focus on the former, although in both cases Milbank's argument proceeds in a broadly similar fashion and is governed by the desire to dissolve any qualitative difference between nature (i.e. reason/metaphysics) and the supernatural (faith/sacra doctrina).
Milbank begins his argument by pointing out that ‘both the natural powers of thought and the superadded powers given in grace and glory both operate through participation in the uncreated and intelligible light of the divine intellect’ (citing ST I, 12. 2). Consistent with the emphasis on providence (outlined above), Aquinas recognises that all knowledge of created things is dependent upon a participation in God. From here, Milbank's restatement of Aquinas's position on natural knowledge and truth can be summarised in the following six points.Footnote 12
First, Milbank argues that for Aquinas the mind is capable of a direct intellective vision of truth, albeit in only a very limited way. As Milbank puts it, the higher reason of the intellect ‘enjoys some vision of the pure divine form without matter only known to our modus cognoscendi as the diverse transcendentals of Being, Unity, Truth, Goodness and Beauty’.Footnote 13 Milbank cites a number of passages to justify this reading of Aquinas, including the Summa where Aquinas writes that ‘the intellectual light itself which is in us, is nothing else than a participated likeness of the uncreated light, in which are contained the eternal types’ (ST I, 84. 5).
In addition, Milbank interprets Aquinas as understanding knowledge as a ‘“proportion” that pertains between the being of things and the human intellect’.Footnote 14 For Aquinas, as Milbank states, ‘truth resides primarily within the intellect, but secondarily within things’.Footnote 15 Knowledge thus entails a discursive relation between the intellect and things; specifically in the intellect ‘making pronouncements about truths of external things and in further realizing these truths within itself’.Footnote 16
This discursive process in turn presupposes some kind of implicit connection between the truth found in things and that in the intellect. It is here that Milbank invokes the broadly Platonic character of Aquinas's epistemology. Although Aquinas resists any understanding of things as having independent existing forms, he asserts that ‘the types of all creatures’ exist ‘in the Divine mind, according to which types all things are made in themselves’ (ST I, 84. 5). It is precisely this understanding that allows for knowledge to proceed as a ‘proportion’ between the intellect and things. As Aquinas writes, ‘the human soul knows all things in the eternal types’ and it is ‘by participation of these types we know all things’ (ST I, 84. 5).
Correlatively, Milbank also argues that, for Aquinas, created things are themselves only ‘true’ by virtue of their degree of ‘realization of their own perfection, or own goodness’. There is a connection between things and their divine types, insofar as things themselves are only ‘true’ in their correspondence to a divine standard external to themselves. In this sense created things possess truth teleologically, or, as Milbank puts it, through the ‘degree of realization of their own perfection, or own good’. A thing is true insofar as it ‘participates in the divine standard for its own realization’,Footnote 17 or, as Aquinas puts it, ‘natural things are said to be true in so far as they express the likeness of the species that are in the divine mind’ (ST I, 16. 1).
The implication Milbank takes from all this – that, first, knowledge of natural truth involves a correspondence between the human intellect and the types in the divine mind and, second, that all natural things incline towards their types – is that the intellective vision of the divine light (which contains these types) is necessary for natural reason to ‘discern by judgment in some measure the “simple essences” of finite substances as literally conveyed into the human mind by way of the senses’.Footnote 18 It is on this basis that Milbank concludes that the mind ‘when making pronouncements about the truths of external things and in further realizing these truths within oneself . . . continues to be informed by the intellective vision of truth, goodness and beauty’.Footnote 19 The prior intellective vision is in this way constitutive of subsequent rational knowledge (albeit only discursively so), and it is this fact that complicates any straightforward division between revelation and natural reason.
Milbank is clear such complications run in both directions. Just as he construes natural reason as somehow dependent on a more direct intellective vision of truth, he also asserts that ‘even the miraculous must be apprehended by the senses in the normal way, and is in continuity with the usual operation of nature’.Footnote 20 In Milbank's reading, divine disclosure is always only accessible through ‘acts of interpretation’ and thus, ‘for Aquinas, revelation offers the extraordinary only in a very qualified fashion’.Footnote 21 It is in this way that Milbank is able to conclude that, for Aquinas, if ‘“revelation” denotes simply God's self-disclosure, then no new domain other than that of reason is opened up, since . . . we are only able to think at all within the arena of the divine self-disclosure’.Footnote 22
Milbank's conclusions
It is on the basis of this reading that Milbank concludes that reason and faith, no longer isolatable or completely distinct, are better described as two ‘phases within a single extension’.Footnote 23 He further clarifies that, strictly speaking, ‘reason is not even a “phase” distinct from faith – although it may offer a lesser degree of intensity’.Footnote 24 The problems with this conclusion can be indicated by tracing Milbank's failure to remain attentive to the series of careful distinctions present in Aquinas (outlined in the first section above).
First, Milbank fails to properly distinguish between God's more general providence and between the special acts or gifts of grace. Unlike Aquinas, Milbank does not differentiate between the general ways creatures are naturally dependent on God – for an actualisation movement through their forms or types – and between God's more specific supernatural gifts. This is indicated in Milbank's conclusion that, because the human intellect participates in the divine light (the intellect itself being the image of God) some sort of supernatural illumination is a prerequisite for natural reason. Milbank is correct insofar as Aquinas clearly indicates the human intellect has as its form the ‘intelligible light itself’ (ST I. II, 109. 1), and thus that ‘[k]nowing the truth’ proceeds as ‘an exercise or actualization of intellectual light’, but fails to note that this actualisation takes place under God's general providence and not, strictly speaking, as part of the order of grace. Elsewhere Aquinas affirms this in asserting that ‘natural reason, whereby we discern what is good and what is evil, which is the function of the natural law, is nothing else than an imprint on us of the Divine light’ (ST I. II, 91. 2). In both cases what is significant about the intellect or reason is precisely that it is what is most natural to the human creature. Milbank is inattentive to this, and subsequently fails to acknowledge the intellect's participation in God as being what is most natural to it and thus not intrinsically dependent on or governed by faith or grace. It is this inattentiveness that allows Milbank to mistakenly conclude that if ‘intellectus offers a certain measure of direct cognitive vision . . . then the “light of faith” is for Aquinas simply a strengthening of the intellectus by a further degree of participation in the divine light’.Footnote 25 While the intellect and faith are certainly both dependent on God, or exist and proceed as participations in God, Milbank too readily assumes that this is the same kind of dependence or participation. Milbank is thus also too quick in concluding that ‘not only is the intellect grace; it is in a sense simply the site of manifestation of the creature, and so of grace’.Footnote 26
Compounding this problem, Milbank also moves too quickly from Aquinas's understanding that all creaturely truth is dependent upon God, to his own conclusion that ‘[i]t is not the case, for Aquinas, that one can be sufficiently assured of some specific truth merely be attending to a feature of the divine Creation, without necessarily recognizing it as created’.Footnote 27 Milbank has here taken Aquinas's descriptive account of how natural truths are known as being somehow necessary, or necessarily adhered to, in order for natural truths to be known. While Aquinas is indeed clear that no knowledge of natural things is possible without God, it need not follow, as Milbank assumes, that an active faith in God is therefore required for such knowledge.
The problematic character of Milbank's conclusion is further indicated in his inattentiveness to Aquinas's understanding of how grace functions in a pre-lapsarian state. Later in his essay Milbank comments that ‘[b]efore the fall, reason was perfected by an original grace and righteousness which included an anticipation of the incarnation in its aspect of glory’.Footnote 28 This differs markedly from Aquinas's understanding of grace before the fall, which, as we have seen, was necessary only for supernatural activities and ends, and not for natural ones. While Aquinas is clear that God's general providence and grace were both necessary in a state of intact nature, they were necessary for distinctive natural and supernatural activities and knowledge, or for achieving distinctly natural and supernatural ends. Milbank's misunderstanding of the pre-lapsarian state is also what leads to his assertion (quoted in the introduction) that, ‘[a]fter the fall, humans lose this original righteousness, and become incapable of obeying the natural law: Aquinas is quite clear, we cannot do any genuinely “natural” good’.Footnote 29 For Milbank, unlike Aquinas, the fall is total, a fact that is isomorphic with his emphasis on the universality of grace.
Finally, Milbank is inattentive to the ways Aquinas distinguishes between nature and the supernatural so as to protect the integrity of both orders. This inattentiveness is present throughout Milbank's account, but one place it is indicated is in Milbank's discussions of Neoplatonism. Milbank, as we have seen, puts much weight on what might be broadly described as the Neoplatonic themes in Aquinas: Aquinas's emphasis on how knowledge takes place through, in Milbank's words, ‘the analogical proportion’ as a ‘participation in transcendental beauty’,Footnote 30 and also how a thing finds truth through its participation ‘in the divine standard for its own realization’.Footnote 31 It is on the basis of such themes that Milbank concludes that ‘Platonism trumps Aristotelian in Aquinas’ and ‘in such a way that instead of the most general and abstract being removed from material things, it is rather individual material things which are paradoxically removed from themselves – referred beyond themselves in order to be recognized as themselves’.Footnote 32 The reason why Milbank is forced to make a choice between Platonism and Aristotelian is precisely because he fails to recognise that the teleologies inherent in things – i.e. the way things refer beyond themselves to God – exist and proceed, for Aquinas, as natural teleologies (or as integral to things in such a way that they do not ‘remove things from themselves’). By firmly distinguishing between the supernatural and natural orders, and then by identifying these teleologies with the natural order, Aquinas avoids having to make Milbank's choice. When Aquinas indicates, following Dionysius, that ‘God leads all things to a love of himself’, this is indicated as occurring at the level of nature (I. II, 109. 3). Aquinas asserts that ‘in the state of perfect nature man referred the love of himself and of all other things to the love of God as to its end’ (I. II, 109. 3). While Aquinas readily acknowledges that this natural teleology is now damaged, or that, no longer being in the state of perfect nature, ‘man falls short of this in the appetite of his rational will . . . unless it is cured by God's grace’, the teleology itself is identified as natural.Footnote 33 This is also indicated when Aquinas asserts that ‘the rational creature . . . has a share of the Eternal Reason, whereby it has a natural inclination to its proper act and end: and this participation of the eternal law in the rational creature is called the natural law’ (I. II, 91. 2). Even the fact that grace is described as needed for curing or healing nature suggests that nature, while damaged, retains a certain integrity (i.e. insofar as it is ‘cured’ and not replaced). Although Aquinas describes natural things as inclining towards God, this need not imply, as Milbank assumes, that the order of nature is now rendered as being somehow continually dependent on the supernatural, or as in need of grace in any ongoing or ontological sense.
Conclusion
Milbank begins his essay, as we have seen, by juxtaposing his own reading of Aquinas over and against ‘the most usual interpretations’ that espouse ‘a sharp distinct between reason and faith’.Footnote 34 Milbank's concern (the concern of radical orthodoxy more generally) is that such a dualism anticipates a situation ‘where science and politics were confined to immanent and autonomous secular realms’ and where faith, correlatively, appealed ‘to an arational positivity of authority invested with a right to rule’.Footnote 35 The concern is that such a dualism ‘encouraged, with and not against early modernity, a theocratic and hierocratic authoritarianism’, and simultaneously a construal of the natural world as purely natural, and therefore ‘secular’ and ‘nihilistic’.Footnote 36 In significant ways Milbank's reading of Aquinas can be understood as an attempt to distance Aquinas from possessing even intimations of any such dualism,Footnote 37 and thus find in him resources for opposing modern construals of nature, faith, theology and politics. It is this, arguably, that leads to Milbank's selective misreading, or inattentiveness to distinctions that are central for Aquinas. Milbank seeks to overcome the more deleterious aspects of modernity by dissolving any qualitative distinction between faith and reason (or between nature and the supernatural more generally), and therein any possibility of a purely natural or secular space.
Aquinas offers a different approach. On his own terms Aquinas possesses an understanding of nature and grace clearly distinguishable from modern conceptions. The way Aquinas conceives all creatures as being dependent on God for any movement or actualising of their natures whatsoever clearly forecloses the possibility of any purely secular or nihilistic space (of the type that so concerns Milbank). This basic dependence is furthered by Aquinas's distinction between the integrity of pre-lapsarian human nature and the spoiled state of post-lapsarian nature. Aquinas, in contrast to Milbank, identifies ‘the first progenitor’ as having distinguishable natural and supernatural ends, and in so doing affirms the basic goodness of nature (or the basic teleologies of natural things towards God). This in turn opens a space for recognising certain natural goods, and again in such a way that actually precludes any understanding of nature as secular or nihilistic. If things have a certain intrinsic goodness through their natures – through which they incline towards God – then it becomes difficult to conceive of them as secular or lacking in goodness. This situation is further protected by Aquinas's clear distinctions between nature and the supernatural. In this way, or through all these distinctions, Aquinas creates a space for human creatures to be able to achieve knowledge and certain goods on natural terms, while simultaneously protecting this achievement from interfering with supernatural concerns and ends. The goodness of natural acts and knowledge can count as no substitute for supernatural knowledge and goods precisely because nature and the supernatural are clearly distinct. This is what recommends Aquinas's position over and against Milbank's. Milbank's dissolution of any clear distinction between nature and the supernatural places him in a position where he is unable to recognise or affirm the possibility of any natural goodness or natural knowledge whatsoever (as we have seen). For Milbank the necessity of grace (and God) is implicitly dependent on the idea that nature on its own terms, or without grace, is thoroughly secular and nihilistic. In contrast, Aquinas's much more rendered account, with its more thoroughgoing distinctions, provides a space for recognising and pursuing some basic natural goods, albeit in only a limited and partial way.
This is also, finally, what links these distinctions of Aquinas to a number of other central issues and questions in the Summa. Aquinas's ability to affirm political authority – precisely through affirming that a certain hierarchy pertained to nature in its intact state – depends upon his understanding of nature as, in and of itself, appropriately directing the creature towards God (ST I, 96. 3). This is also indicated in Aquinas's ability to recognise matrimony as a natural good. Aquinas's claim that human creatures can possess property –in the sense of being able to procure and dispense with it – is justified in reference to what is naturally necessary. The appropriateness of goodness of property is a response to the fall, or to the fact of human nature being spoiled (II. II, 66. 2). Finally, the more general understanding of a natural law as somehow having normative significance for human creatures relies upon an implicit understanding of nature itself as having a certain integrity and goodness (ST I. II, 94. 4, 6).Footnote 38 It is difficult to see how any of these discussions – insofar that they all, in different ways, rely upon nature having a certain integrity and goodness – might be reconciled with Milbank's conclusion, and his related claim that Aquinas needs ‘reinterpreting’. The fundamental role that a distinct concept of nature has within the Summa (and elsewhere grace), and the questions and discussions that it makes possible, indicate, against Milbank, that Aquinas's own clear distinction between nature and grace provides a much better hermeneutic for interpreting the Summa.
