Recent times have seen fresh interest in assessing the contribution of Henri de Lubac SJ to Thomistic scholarship. This collection of essays forms part of that assessment focusing on the role that de Lubac's book Surnaturel played in understanding St. Thomas's account of the supernatural. The essays originated at a colloquium in Toulouse in 2000 and the Revue Thomiste first published them in 2001. The essays are now offered in English translation in the Sapientia Press's Faith and Reason series thus bringing them to the attention of a wider audience.
The collection is divided into four sections. The first section focuses on Surnaturel and its reception. Étienne Fouilloux begins the section with a discussion of the historical context of the publication of Surnaturel. Secondly, Georges Chantraine SJ considers the basic theses of Surnaturel. Thirdly, Henry Donneaud OP discusses three different critical thomistic responses to Surnaturel. Fourthly, René Mougal considers the relationship of the theses put forward in Surnaturel to the work of Jacques Maritain. The second section focuses on St. Thomas’ views. Michel Bastit considers the relationship between Thomism and Aristotelianism. Secondly, Jean-Miguel Garrigues discusses the grace of Christ. Thirdly, Serge-Thomas Bonino OP discusses St. Thomas’ account of limbo. Fourthly, Jean-Pierre Torrell OP summarizes St. Thomas teaching on nature and grace. The third section takes up the later scholastic development of St. Thomas's view. Laurence Renault discusses Ockham's view. Secondly, Jacob Schmutz considers a link between a theory of pure nature and late medieval accounts of secondary causality. Thirdly, Marie-Bruno Borde OCD outlines the views of the Salmanticences on the natural desire for God. The final section considers the role of the supernatural in contemporary theology. Cardinal Cottier OP argues that not every mystical experience is supernatural. Secondly, Gilbert Narcisse OP discusses how a number of themes from Surnaturel are favourable to contemporary theological reflection. Thirdly, Benoît-Dominique de La Soujeole OP considers the role of the supernatural in contemporary ecclesiology. Finally, Bishop André-Mutien Léonard discusses the theological necessity of the concept of pure nature.
Undoubtedly there is much to praise about the collection. The contributions are all of a very high standard; they are well written and scholarly, and all of them repay careful study. The contributions also serve to give a taste of the vibrancy of Thomism in France today, and in Toulouse in particular. There are three main difficulties with the collection however. First, it never defends what it thinks de Lubac's contribution to Thomism is. The collection largely assumes that de Lubac's contribution to Thomism is obvious and moves on from there. Hence Bonino in the introduction to the collection suggests that ‘attention to the texts and to development within the history of doctrines, care to place St. Thomas in continuity with the Patristic tradition, the congenital openness of the mind to the supernatural, or the primacy of theology in Christian wisdom’, (viii) are benefits that traditional Thomism acquired from its engagement with de Lubac. But much of this can be challenged. Donneaud's piece, for example, shows that Rosaire Gagnebet OP, a traditional Thomist, paid close attention to the texts of St Thomas. Marie-Michel Labourdette OP, another traditional Thomist, was certainly open to the Patristic tradition, even if he did not want to use it in the same way that de Lubac did. Most significantly of all, no attempt is made to explain why those who think that St. Thomas’ account of the natural desire for God is best explained by an elicited desire cannot also accept that human beings possess a ‘ … congenital openness of the mind to the supernatural’. It might be that some or all of these claims can be justified, but there is no attempt to do so in the collection.
Secondly, throughout the collection one notices an unwillingness to criticise de Lubac's views explicitly. Bonino's penetrating study shows that St. Thomas taught that unbaptised infants enjoy a purely natural end in limbo. That being the case St Thomas not only allowed for the possibility of a state of pure nature but also maintained that in certain circumstances that possibility was realised. Clearly, a theologian who wants to deny this cannot also hold the same view as St. Thomas. Similarly, Torrell's study shows that St. Thomas distinguished human nature's ‘natural’ capacities (pura naturalia) from its gratuitious gifts (gratuita). Since the former do not depend on grace but the latter do it is easy to imagine human nature existing with the former capacity but not the latter and hence affirm the possibility of human nature in a merely natural state. Whether such a state differs from the state of pure nature, as Torrell suggests, will depend on historical study of the theologians who constructed the theology of the state of pure nature. Prima facie though the two states are the same and thus one is left to wonder why it is that only Bishop André-Mutien Léonard defends the necessity of a state of pure nature.
The third difficulty with the collection is the most telling-there are no studies of Denis the Carthusian, Cajetan, Sylvester of Ferrara or Suárez. These thinkers, presumably, constructed the theology that de Lubac allegedly overcame and which differed in some significant way from St. Thomas’ theology. These claims needs to be tested though and whilst the historical studies offered are all interesting none of them investigate whether there actually is a gap between St. Thomas and his commentators. The closest one comes to such an investigation is Borde's fascinating essay on the Salmanticenses but much more is needed.
The collection would have been stronger if it had subjected de Lubac's version of St. Thomas’ account of the supernatural to more scrutiny. That it did not does not mean it is without value, it just needs to be read with that qualification in mind.
Lawrence Feingold's ambitious book addresses the question in what sense did St. Thomas and his major interpreters think that the natural desire for God was natural. Essentially Feingold's project has two objectives: to show that the main commentatorial account of Aquinas's position is the substantially correct interpretation of St. Thomas’ view and to show that that commentatorial account identifies the true sense in which human beings have a natural desire for God. This second edition of Feingold's book differs from the first in three main ways. First, Feingold has removed the Latin texts for the footnotes that the first edition contained. Secondly, Feingold has removed the first edition's chapters on conditional willing and Capreolus. Thirdly, Feingold has added a new conclusion and some bibliographical updates. The result is a work of sixteen chapters and a conclusion which is smaller than the first edition but nevertheless still substantial.
The book can be divided into four sections: first Aquinas's view (chapters 1–3), secondly Scotus's view (chapter 4), thirdly the attempts of the commentators to expound Aquinas's view (Chapters 5–12) and fourthly the challenge to that commentatorial account from its principle critics Jansenius and de Lubac (chapters 13–16). In the first three chapters Feingold introduces a number of distinctions central to the views of Aquinas and his interpreters and analyses a number of Aquinas's texts on the natural desire for God. There are two crucial points. First, Feingold argues that Aquinas is committed to a distinction between desires which are independent of knowledge and desires which are dependent on knowledge. Adopting subsequent terminology Feingold suggests that we call the former desires ‘innate’ and the latter desires ‘elicited’. Secondly, Feingold suggests that in Aquinas's view some elicited desires are natural desires. The force of these first three chapters is to lay the groundwork for arguing that when Aquinas speaks of ‘a natural desire for God’, what he has in mind is an elicited desire for God that is subsequent to a naturally acquired knowledge of God.
Chapter 4 expounds Scotus's view that the natural desire for God is an innate desire. He reasons that because elicited desires are dependent on knowledge yet the will can always will the contrary of what is known, elicited desires cannot be natural desires. But if elicited desires are not natural desires, then the natural desire for God cannot be an elicited desire – it must be an innate desire. Scotus's view is important because it provides one of the key elements in the intellectual context in which the Thomistic commentators try to expound Aquinas's view. Rather than desiring to unleash militant secularism on the world, the commentators disagree with Scotus on the technical question of whether there can be an innate desire for a supernatural end without necessarily possessing the resources to explain how the alternative view – that the natural desire for God is an elicited desire – can be coherent.
Chapters 5–12 chart the vicissitudes of the commentatorial attempts to expound Aquinas's view. Feingold pieces together an account which argues that St Thomas held that the objects of innate desires are proportionate (chapter 6) and owed (chapter 11) to the subject of those desires. Since the beatific vision does not meet either of these two criteria, human beings do not have an innate desire (chapters 5, 6, 11) or a natural passive potency for that vision (chapter 7). Rather what human beings have is an elicited desire for God which depends on a prior natural knowledge that God exists (chapter 9) and a specific obediential potency for the beatific vision (chapter 7).
Chapters 13–16 engage with the critics of the commentatorial reading of Aquinas. Feingold argues that the commentatorial critics misinterpret Aquinas's view and undermine the gratuity of grace by insisting that human beings as they currently are could not have a purely natural end.
Feingold has produced a very impressive work. He is able to show that Jansenius's and de Lubac's readings of Aquinas are at fault: they lack textual corroboration in Aquinas and they entail theologically erroneous consequences. At the same time, Feingold finds textual corroboration for the commentatorial account in St Thomas' work and where that commentatorial account does depart from St Thomas, Feingold can show that such departure is due to an inadequate response to Scotus. In sum, it seems to the reviewer at least that Feingold is successful in showing that the main commentatorial account of Aquinas's position is the substantially correct interpretation of St. Thomas' view.
Where Feingold is less convincing is in showing that the commentatorial account he identifies captures the true sense in which human beings have a natural desire for God. This is not just a matter of interpreting St. Thomas – one can correctly interpret a view of St Thomas which nevertheless is false. Rather this is about defending the Thomist claim that the objects of innate desires are proportionate and owed to the subject of those desires. Again, that this is a Thomist claim is not in question, that this claim is true is subject to doubt, because none of the defences offered for it in the book are entirely satisfactory. For example, one might simply reject the Aristotelian principle that natural active powers and passive powers complement each other and thus find fault with any view which depends upon that principle. Likewise, one can argue that Cajetan's criticisms of Scotus in De potentia neutra (p 82–85) merely show that one must exclude violent perfections from a creature's innate desire – a position Scotus would accept (p53), not that these criticisms entail that the object of innate desire must be proportionate to the subject of that desire. Finally, against Suárez (p 251) one might argue that whilst a creature does not have two innate desires for two different actual ends that does not exclude a creature having two innate desires for two different possible ends. What prohibits the former but not the latter is the logic of identity not the constitution of the will.
None of this however should detract from Feingold's achievement. It is a measure of Feingold's success that he has managed to shift the debate from matters of Thomistic interpretation to arguing for the truth of that interpretation with non-Thomist interlocutors.
