De immutabilitate traditionis contra modernam haeresim evolutionismi

That the concept of relative truth is absurd in itself, and that apart from the definition consecrated by ancient philosophy (the adequation of intellect and thing), no other notion of truth is admissible.

« Just as the good names that toward which the appetite tends, so the true names that toward which the intellect tends. But this is the difference between appetite and intellect, or any cognition whatsoever: cognition is according as the thing known is in the knower, whereas appetite is according as the appetent is inclined toward the appetible thing itself; and so the term of appetite, which is the good, is in the appetible thing, but the term of cognition, which is the true, is in the intellect itself... Since, moreover, every thing is true according as it has the proper form of its nature, it is necessary that the intellect, insofar as it is knowing, be true insofar as it has the likeness of the thing known, which is its form insofar as it is knowing. And on this account truth is defined by the conformity of intellect and thing »¹. And indeed, if knowledge is, by its own proper nature, a representation of the object, existing in the intellect, it immediately follows that truth, as the proper perfection of knowledge, cannot consist in anything else than in its conformity with the object itself. Now I mean a conformity which is not to be sought in the entity of the cognitive act by comparison with the entity of the thing outside the intellect, but precisely in this: that the object is in reality constituted in itself as the intellect apprehends and says it to be constituted.

But in order that the intellect say something about the real constitution of the object, it is necessary that it refer itself to that object by its act; and it does this not in simple apprehension, but only in judgment, which is expressed by a proposition. For every judgment comprehends two notions, of which one is taken as the subject, which stands for the thing to which² the mind refers itself, and the other as the form which is attributed to the subject and predicated of it. And the subject indeed, standing for a thing outside the intellect, always enunciates something designated and distinct, although as yet imperfectly apprehended, as a kind of quasi-potential thing that is to be determined by the predicate. Nor are these things mutually inconsistent. For certainly the mathematician begins to speak of the triangle before he knows its properties, and the physicist of magnetism as of the cause of certain effects, without yet knowing its intimate constitution; you name a plant before you have determined its species; you name an angel, even if you have a very vague and imperfect notion of it; you name God, even though you know that you are infinitely far from a conception of His essence, for it is enough that you say the first being, the cause on which the universe depends, or whatever else of that kind, so as to distinguish Him from everything that is not He. Just as, therefore, a corporeal singular is presented to me most distinctly, although I am ignorant of many things about it and its very numerical constitution, or principle of individuation, is hidden from me, so the subject of the judgment is set before me as something singularly designated and yet potential, which is to be determined by the predicate. Now, therefore, if the form signified by the predicate agrees with the thing designated by the subject, as the judgment affirms that it agrees, or if it does not agree, as the judgment denies that it agrees, truth is had; but if not, falsity; and each is said not relatively but absolutely, simply, without qualification. For the agreement on the part of the thing either is or is not, and this is the objective agreement to which the agreement affirmed by the intellect must be adequated, so that this at last may be truth, and nothing else: the adequation of intellect and thing.

But note well the terms of the adequation. The terms of the adequation are not the intellect and the thing — as if, namely, on the one side the object were posited in its whole reality, and on the other the intellect were exhausting the whole intelligibility of that reality, and consequently as if nothing ought to be in the object that would not be equally in the intellect. For it is thus that the new masters wished to interpret the adequation of intellect and thing, in order to reduce to absurdity the definition of truth received in ancient philosophy — and indeed an all too easy task. For who, I ask, could ever have dreamed that true knowledge is the same as comprehensive cognition, through which a thing is known as much as it is knowable? You will not, therefore, take the terms of the adequation in this way, but so that on one side is what the intellect affirms about the thing, and on the other what in the thing corresponds conformably to the affirmation. Accordingly, when I judge that God is wise, I do not say that there is an adequation between my knowledge and God or the wisdom of God — far be it — but only between the fact that wisdom is in God, or belongs to God, and that which shows forth as affirmed about this agreement in my judgment.

Again, the terms of the adequation are not the mode of the intellect in understanding and judging, and the mode of the thing in itself, because again the mode of understanding is one thing, and what is affirmed about the object through this mode of understanding is altogether another. Hence St Thomas, in the First Part, q. 13, a. 12, asking whether true propositions can be formed about God, and objecting to himself that every intellect understanding a thing otherwise than it is, is false, and that on the other hand the mode of God is plainly different from the mode of our cognition, answers thus: « To the third it must be said that this proposition: an intellect understanding a thing otherwise than it is, is false, is twofold, inasmuch as this adverb otherwise can determine this verb understanding, on the part of the thing understood or on the part of the one understanding. If on the part of the thing understood, then the proposition is true, and the sense is: Whatever intellect understands a thing to be otherwise than it is, is false. But this has no place in the present matter, because our intellect, forming a proposition about God, does not say that He is composite, but simple. If, however, on the part of the one understanding, then the proposition is false. For the mode of the intellect in understanding is other than the mode of the thing in being. For it is manifest that our intellect understands material things existing below it immaterially — not that it understands them to be immaterial, but it has an immaterial mode in understanding. And similarly, when it understands simple things that are above it, it understands them according to its own mode, namely composite, (that is, by composing the predicate with the subject), yet not so that it understands them to be composite. And thus our intellect is not false when it forms a composition about God ». And for a similar reason, when our intellect affirms simple perfections of God, it does not affirm them of Him according to the determinate and participated mode that they have among us. For in the names that we attribute to God, there are two things to consider, namely the perfections themselves signified — such as goodness, life, wisdom, etc. — and the mode of signifying. Therefore, as regards the perfection that such names signify, they properly belong to God — indeed, more properly than to creatures — and thus they are predicated of Him by us; but not as regards the imperfect mode in which the participated perfection is found among us³. And therefore, even if the proper mode of the divine perfection is not positively known by us, nor can even be positively known before we are granted intuitive vision, nevertheless in those things that our mind rightly judges about God there is always an adequation of intellect and thing, because there is always truly in God that which the intellect affirms to belong to God, and as it affirms it to belong to Him.

See, then, how sophistical are the things they bring forward to establish their notion of relative truth. For they say: How could that judgment be absolutely true in which the subject is apprehended confusedly, and the predicate has a mode altogether different from that which the thing has in itself? How would knowledge so far distant from a reality everywhere elevated above us not be mixed with falsity, and consequently at most relatively true? Finally, if neither God, nor His attributes, nor their proper nature are known to us, will there then be anything more than a mere manner of speaking in all those things that we either reason about or discuss concerning God and divine matters? So they say, but absurdly, because all these things show that our cognition can receive a greater perfection, whether by means of better species than those we now have, or through a direct intuition of that which is now manifested only in its effects, or through a new light by which the intellectual power is strengthened; but they do not prove that the right judgments of our intellect about even the highest things will ever have to be reformed. It does not matter that the subject of the judgment is not manifest in itself; for it is enough that it be so designated that we know what we are speaking about. Again, it does not matter that the predicate is inferior to the form signified; for it is enough that the concept be placed under such an abstraction that it can extend even to a reality which otherwise exceeds our knowledge — as is seen in the case of separate substances, in formal notions that do not include in their signification the limitation proper to corporeal things; and in the case of God, the limitation of the creature. And indeed, if the concepts of life, cognition, love, etc., included that mode of living, understanding, and loving that is in us, they would most certainly be attributed to God only falsely, just as we would falsely say that God is a body, or an animal, etc. But now, since these notions abstract from our determinations and of themselves express pure actuality unmixed with any restrictive element, they can and ought to be attributed to the infinite being. Finally, it does not matter that the mode of God's being is immensely distant from that which is known among us; for we do not judge, as was said above, that there is in God that mode of perfection which is known to us, or the concretion or composition that is found in our enunciations. It must therefore be said that God is wise, immense, omnipotent, omniscient, etc., and a judgment thus brought forth will always have the same immutable truth in whatever state of culture, and for whatever intellect, whatever may be the higher mode by which the heavenly minds attain the object, more fully penetrating its intelligibility and more closely approaching the perfect knowledge of it.

And indeed, every doctrine that is forced to change its assertions or their sense, so that what had previously been admitted is no longer recognized as exact, must evidently confess that it was simply mistaken, and not merely ignorant of what it now knows, or that it was only at a certain lower degree of relative truth. If physics at one time admitted that light is propagated by the emission of little spheres, and afterwards recognized that it consists in vibrations or periodic alterations of some fluid, it undoubtedly erred before. If it were ever demonstrated that the human soul is joined to the body only in the manner of an efficient or moving cause, and not through an intimate communication of its substantial reality, whoever once thought that the soul is the true form of the body was in error. If the moderns rightly affirmed that personality is constituted by consciousness, and not by the formal notion of a distinct subsistent — which notion by its nature precedes every operation, and hence also every consciousness of itself — whoever posited in Christ two natures and one person, while there are evidently two consciousnesses corresponding to divine and human cognition, that man again had a false judgment about Christ. And from first to last, what, I ask, is clearer, what more evident, than that it is impossible for a doctrine to be changed from a yes to a no, or vice versa, without thereby showing that a change has been made, either from error into truth or from truth into error? And if you say, from relative truth into a better relative truth, you are joining words without sense, you form an empty sound, and you do not understand what you are saying.

But perhaps they will rejoin: The change from yes to no does not occur between the same terms; rather, with the progress of science the signification of the terms becomes different, and therefore the change is not so much in the judgments, in which truth formally resides, as in the concepts and simple apprehensions on which depends the sense of the assertions and the meaning of the whole doctrine. Certainly, we reply, it depends very much. Therefore, before any proposition is brought forward, the sense of each word must be exactly defined, as was wont to be done in the ancient school and is neglected in the modern school. But let us see. Has the sense of the words really changed? Are the concepts different? What follows as regards the change of judgments? One of two things. Either the sense has so changed that there is now imported a thing altogether disparate from that which was signified before, and then the new judgment, since it is not about the same thing, must by no means be placed in comparison with the former, or be held to modify or reform it; and consequently, if such a change ever occurred, it would be necessary to agree on the words from the beginning, and to observe that what is at issue is only a new terminology, or a new vocabulary. Or the sense has so changed that the same word always refers to the same thing, and nevertheless is determined by some note contrary to what was understood before; and then it is evident that a change from yes to no has occurred between the same terms under the same words — as if you were always to say that the soul is the form of the human body, but now understand by form a merely extrinsic cause, and not an intrinsic and constitutive one. Then too it is evident that either what was said before was false and what is said now is true, or what was said before was true and what is said now is false; but in every mode, no place is left for relative truth, whether before or now.

Finally, you will notice what difference there is between what they call relative truth and what we all admit, the relative perfection of the knowledge of truth. Indeed, just as there are infinitely many possible intellects, some more perfect than others, up to the supreme intellect which is God, so too there are infinitely many degrees of perfection in the knowledge of the true. There is comprehensive cognition and non-comprehensive cognition; there is intuitive and abstractive; there is proper and quidditative, and improper and analogical. There are intelligible species that represent things in different ways; there is an intellectual light more or less powerful to penetrate what is contained in them and to judge according to them. There is a more or less intense clarity of principles; there is a more or less attentive consideration of the notes of the object, of the facts given by experience, and of effects in their relation to causes. There are certain judgments and probable judgments; there are apodictic arguments and mere conjectures, etc. It can therefore be said that the cognition of that truth which would be most imperfect in relation to an angel is perfect in relation to man, in the same sense, namely, in which the knowledge of which a learned philosopher would be ashamed is rightly called great in relation to a child. But, I ask, do not infer from this that whatever truth a child attains is not of equal truth for the philosopher. Do not conclude that truth itself is to be called relative to various intellects, or to various conditions of them. For the adequation in which its nature consists admits no degrees, since it is placed in this: that the form expressed by the predicate truly belongs to the real subject, as the intellect affirms. And this adequation either is or is not. Hence a judgment is either absolutely true or absolutely false. If it is composite, let it be resolved⁴ into its parts, and each part will be in itself either absolutely true or absolutely false. And in the true part every intellect, even the most sublime, will have to agree, although that more sublime intellect sees how the inferior mind is still immensely distant from a perfect and adequate penetration of the object according to its whole intelligibility. The conclusion, then, is that relative truth either has no sense at all, or reduces the notion of truth to the concept of Protagoras, according to which the true is that which appears, and therefore any contradictories whatsoever can be true at the same time, when different people judge differently about the same things.

But now, if the philosopher cannot consent to such a mode of truth — or rather of universal ignorance or madness — much less can the theologian or the believer, because then not only natural reason is destroyed, but also religion, faith, and the revelation of God, as must be briefly declared in the proposition that follows.

That the dogmas of our religion are truly and properly from heaven, and that by this very fact they would still resist the notion of relative truth by a special title, even if it were not otherwise evidenced by contradictory and mutually conflicting notes. And that the same absurd device, when it is applied to the evolution of sacred tradition, destroys the formal motive of faith, destroys its material object, destroys the mode of supreme certainty that faith ought to have in the believer.

It is scarcely intelligible, indeed, by what hallucination they are seized, when our neocritics seriously transform themselves into reformers of theology and promoters of a higher understanding of Catholic dogma, while among them the confusion of ideas grows to such a point that they no longer know how to say whether the doctrine of faith is from God or from men. For behold, in order to persuade [us] that there is in our faith nothing more than relative truth, they now do not hesitate to affirm that the conceptions which the Church proposes as revealed dogmas are not truths fallen from heaven, because those dogmas, however divine as to origin and substance, are nevertheless human as to structure and composition¹. But what is to be understood by origin and substance, in opposition to structure and composition, they do not explain. Nor do they need to explain it, especially since, where they speak clearly of the divine element which they retain in name only in our dogmas, it also clearly appears that it is in reality human, so that all things are at last contained in the same human order: both origin and substance and structure and composition. Once this is posited, it does not matter to know the proper differences of the individual words. But let us for the present omit these things. Let us take the distinction between the divine and the human element of dogmas in the best sense it can absolutely claim, and let us see whether from a distinction of this kind (whose legitimacy no one will deny on some sure ground) there finally follows that the conceptions which the Church proposes as revealed dogmas are not immutable truths fallen from heaven, but only mutable, reformable, relative conceptions, always to be purified by the progressive settling of the dregs and slag which they previously contained.

Certainly, in dogmas as they are proposed to us, there are first words; then there are concepts taken separately, and these either simple and incomplex, or complex and resulting from simples; finally there is the connection by which concepts are combined in judgment. What then do our evolutionists mean, when they say that dogmatic truths are not fallen from heaven?

That the words are not fallen from heaven? That indeed we concede, for we have never dreamed that a new language would come to us from above together with the revelation of God. That the concepts are not fallen from heaven? That too we grant indubitably, if the discourse concerns first and elementary concepts, because notions of this kind, if they had not been in us, would have had to come to be in us, in order that the discourse of revelation might become intelligible to us, either by miraculous infusion or by the fact that new objects would have been presented to our senses and our intuition. But revelation provides neither of these. It does not supply us with new intelligible species, it does not bring us visions, it does not elevate us to that new mode of understanding with which we shall be endowed only in the state of the end. It presupposed, therefore, our concepts, at least the first and elementary ones. For the account of complex ones is not altogether the same, because nothing prevents revelation from having brought certain new ones which our reason would not otherwise have had, as is clear from these names, consubstantial, Mother of God, transubstantiation, etc., in which the elements of the combination were commonly known among us, but the combination itself not so. But this does not much matter at present. For it will now suffice to observe this: that concepts taken separately are related to doctrines as the letters of the alphabet are related to words, or words to speeches; and that the same concepts enter into the most diverse doctrines of the most diverse origin, just as the same letters enter into the most diverse words of the most diverse signification. « The letters, says Augustine, are themselves repeated in so many thousands of words and speeches, they are not increased; words are infinite, yet letters are finite; no one can number words, anyone can number letters, whence there is a multitude of words. When one letter is placed in various places, and has force according to its place, it does not have one single meaning. What things are so diverse as God and the devil? Yet at the beginning there is the letter D, when we say Deus, and when we say Diabolus. Therefore the letter has force according to its place. But he errs, and is too absurd, and carries a childish heart, who, when he has read, for example, the letter D in the name of God, fears to place it in the name of the devil, as though he would do God an injury »². But now, do you too beware of a childish heart, and transfer the comparison to the question proposed to us, so that you may see even to evidence that words can be from the earth, elementary concepts can be from the earth, the structure and mode of enunciations can be from the earth, although the truths and dogmas are from heaven which are formed from these concepts, which are signified by these words, which are expressed by this structure of speech.

For tell me: from the fact that there are only twenty-four letters of the alphabet, that these twenty-four letters are in everyone's use, that I can write whatever I wish to write only with those same most common twenty-four letters, will you deduce that some truth which, for example, was known to me alone, and which I now manifest to you in writing, formally and precisely as manifested to you and directed to you, is not from me? Or from the fact that you use a language which you did not compose, which you learned wholly from others, whose vocabulary, idioms, structure, and rules owe nothing to you: from this, I say, that you use such a language, shall I at last have to conclude that the senses expressed by you in that language are not your senses; that the sentences uttered are not your sentences; that the assertions and judgments brought forward are not assertions and judgments originating from you, and clothed with your authority, if you have any? Think the same, therefore, in the present matter, and reason with proportion. For God was not the author of human concepts, precisely insofar as He is revealer. Yet nevertheless those same concepts were compared to Him as the alphabet to the scribe, as the vocabulary to the orator, as a language already fixed and preformed to the author who wishes to use it, so that in whatever way, whether by speaking, or by writing, or by dictating, he may manifest to others the hidden senses of his mind. What does it matter, then, that the letters of the alphabet and the words of the vocabulary used by God the revealer were not fallen from heaven? For sentences and dogmas reside nowhere in alphabetic, or phonetic, or even ideal elements, but only in the composition by which those elements are associated so as to rise into sentences and be formed into enunciations. But a composition of this kind in our case is beyond doubt from heaven, because it is from God revealing, because it is from God dictating³.

It is not permitted, therefore, to deduce from the fact that our dogmas keep the mode and structure of human conceptions that which the new masters want. But the only conclusion can be that the divine mysteries have one mode in the word of revelation and another mode in themselves, as St Thomas notes, 2-2, Q. 1, a. 2: « Things known, he says, are in the knower according to the mode of the knower. Now the proper mode of the human intellect is that it know the truth by composing and dividing. And therefore those things which are simple in themselves, the human intellect knows according to a certain combination, just as conversely the divine intellect knows incomplexly those things which are complex in themselves. Thus, therefore, the object of faith can be considered in two ways. In one way on the part of the thing believed itself, and thus the object of faith is something incomplex, namely the thing itself about which faith is had. In another way on the part of the believer, and according to this, the object of faith is something complex by way of the enunciable ». To this also comes what Augustine says, expounding the beginning of the Gospel of John, where [he speaks] of the Word which was in the beginning with God: « To speak as it is, who can? I dare to say, my brethren, perhaps not even John himself spoke as it is, but he too spoke as he could, because being a man he spoke of God, and indeed inspired by God, but nevertheless a man. Because he was inspired, he said something; if he had not been inspired, he would have said nothing; but because being a man he was inspired, he did not say the whole that is, but what a man could, he said »⁴. And the final reason is that in this supernatural revelation or dictation, the alphabet of the utterance is still our natural concepts, and such an alphabet does not contain the proper mode of God. Not that it says that God has another mode than the one He really has in Himself; for thus there would be falsity, as was said above. But because no one says, nor can anyone say, what that mode positively is, transcending all limitation and all admixture of imperfection, which through the manifold compositions of his letters, as it were, he expresses and declares most truly concerning God. Nor in this is there any difference between the dogmas of natural theodicy and the dogmas of revelation, because both have been and are expressed in the same intellectual language. But while in the former the association of the elements of the judgment is from reason moved by evidence, in the latter it is from God teaching us the agreement of the predicate with the subject, even where that agreement escapes every intuition of reason and exceeds every estimation of it. But in truth, if in judgments rightly formed by that same reason of ours there is always absolute truth, how much more in those which are directly from God, unless perchance you wish either to make God the author of falsity, or to deny Him the power of expressing the truth of His mysteries in a language, however imperfect and deficient, that is among us.

But it is scarcely necessary to demonstrate how, that device of relative truth standing in the dogmas proposed by the Church, it is all over with the Christian, that is, the theological, faith, from which there is now subtracted both the formal motive and the material object and the proper mode of firmness and certainty.

There is subtracted first the formal motive, which is that of the authority of God revealing. For where will there be a place for the authority of God in those conceptions which are by no means absolutely true, which only insofar as possible approximate reality, which consist in modes of speaking, which fluctuate and vary and are changed with the wind of the doctrine of men? We shall have, therefore, human opinions; but the faith which rests upon the first truth itself, or upon God testifying, we shall certainly not have.

There is subtracted also the material object. For what is it that we shall now be able to believe? Perhaps that there is some mystery confusedly analogous to the assertions which the Church proclaims and teaches? But these precise doctrines — for example, that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are one God and consubstantial among themselves, that Jesus Christ is one person having a divine and a human nature, that bread and wine are converted into His body and blood, that under the species of the sacrament His body itself and His blood itself are contained truly, really, and substantially — we shall not be able to believe. For we speak thus now, because we cannot speak better now. But the time will come in which, according to a better evolution of studies, it will be said otherwise, and more truly. Therefore, for the sake of discipline, we shall stand by the formulas authentically proposed: by the formulas, I say, not by the things which are signified by the formulas.

There is subtracted a fortiori the proper mode of believing which is necessary in divine faith, namely the mode of adherence that is indubitable and firm above all things. For certainly, I ought to give my life rather than call into doubt the consubstantiality of the Trinity, the duality of natures in the one supposit of Christ, transubstantiation⁵ in the Eucharist, etc. But, O blood uselessly shed, O life not esteemed at its true value, if it is only a matter of human formulas which are in favour today and will be changed tomorrow! If in the meantime it is lawful for me to think that consubstantiality is the proper vocabulary of a certain school, to which another vocabulary, and another sense, can one day be substituted! If I can think that perhaps Jesus Christ is not God except through some transformation of His soul, and I know not what acquired consciousness of I know not what conjunction with the Father! or that His eucharistic presence is perhaps not badly explained by the perennial permanence of His spirit in the midst of those who continue and promote His work in the world!

And with what mind, finally, with what disposition or credulity shall we hereafter utter the profession of faith, saying: I with firm faith believe and profess all and every one of the things contained in the symbol of faith which the holy Roman Church uses, namely, etc.? And again: This true Catholic faith, outside which no one can be saved, which I now spontaneously profess and truly hold, I promise, vow, and swear that I will most constantly retain and confess, with God's help, the same whole and immaculate even to the last breath of my life. So help me God, etc.?

Evident, therefore, is the complete opposition which the device of relative truth has with the first and most fundamental principles of the Catholic religion. But come now. There now fall to be considered somewhat more carefully the arguments drawn from the sources of history, by which they wish to persuade [us of] this same device.

That in defence of their error they vainly appeal to the notion or doctrines which they say were imported from profane schools into sacred doctrine, or to past adaptations of theology to philosophy, especially Aristotelian, which they invent.

I. — It is sufficiently apparent from what was said in the preceding paragraph how notions which are truly common to the doctrine of faith and to the philosophical schools by no means prove what pleases the neocritics: namely, that our dogmas are not from heaven, and that by this very fact they are also of no other condition, as regards absolute truth, than any doctrines whatsoever of human origin and authority. It is sufficiently apparent how supernatural dogma uses the same elements as natural science to form its own proper concepts and its own proper judgments. The truth is new in a new composition of ideas, even if the component ideas are old; the comprehensive idea of many notes is also new, even if the notes themselves are common. For nothing would any longer be intelligible to us in the matter of religion, if there could not be used in it the more fundamental concepts of being, substance, body, soul, life, spirit, cause and effect, means and end, potency and act, and the like. What, I ask, would it serve to name God, if we did not form a concept of Him — indeed an abstractive and analogical one, not intuitive and proper, yet such as belongs to God alone — representing Him through notes taken from the most common objects, as the first being, perfect without limit, the cause of being to all things that are besides Himself? What would have been revealed to us about the Trinity, if we had not already had the notion of person as an individual subsisting in an intellectual nature? What about the incarnation, if we had not understood the sense of the words: divine person, human nature, the assumption of one by another, etc.? There was revealed, therefore, the composition of concepts; the first concepts were not given, nor ought they to have been given, anew.

They err, therefore, and they err wholly in the question of right, deducing from the aforesaid fact of the community of concepts consequences which the fact does not allow. But they err besides in the question of fact itself, while they extend the fact beyond its true limits, while they ascribe to philosophy certain notions which in reality are exclusively proper to revelation, positing, for example, as known to the ancient pagans and current in profane schools, the concepts of consubstantial and of transubstantiation.

Indeed the notion of substance was not unknown to the ancients, nor was that of identity. The ancients spoke of substantial identity, both numerical and specific. Numerical identity, indeed; and then they observed that an individual identical with itself does not have a real relation to itself, but only a relation of reason, in which alone the terms of comparison can be constituted. Specific identity, however; and then they considered as agreeing in the same substantial notion all individuals whose essence answers to the same definition, and whose distinction arises from the division of matter. But in truth, the comprehensive concept which the word consubstantial expresses had never occurred to the human mind, or at least had never been clearly formed, before the faith of the Trinity led men to treat of persons distinct from one another through relations of origin, and not through some absolute reality. Perhaps the Platonists could have thought something similar with regard to those universal forms which, according to them, uniformly stamped all individuals of the same species, but their absurd concept could never become precise, and remained confused without any determinate formula. Perhaps too the Averroists could have said that men are consubstantial in that intellect which they posited as unique and common, so that through the continuation of various phantasms with it, the individual men would be understanding. But again, the absurd position always remains like a vague shadow, without delineated boundaries and precise expression; besides the fact that from the aforesaid unity of intellect there would indeed have followed a community of intellectual operations in distinct subjects, not a numerical identity of substance in them. Whence the true notion of consubstantial was in no way devised in the schools of the philosophers, nor is the corresponding name homousion found among them. But that word, which had already begun to be employed for the divine persons by some Fathers of the third century, was definitively consecrated in the Council of Nicaea to forestall all the frauds of the Arians. For when the Son was said to be one thing with the Father, these inferred that then He would not be distinct from Him. If He was said to be other than the Father, they concluded: therefore He is not one with Him in reality and essence. If not originated, therefore not a son. If originated, therefore not God. If second, therefore not equal. If equal, therefore not proceeding. If not produced, how begotten? If produced, how not a creature? In sum, they sought artifices on every side, and that word alone, so expressive of absolute identity in some real distinction (for he cannot be called consubstantial who is not truly other, and does not at the same time have the same substance numerically), was the victorious word, against which they could oppose nothing other than a rabid negation¹.

Likewise it had never come into anyone's mind that a real conversion could take place of one substance, according to its whole self, into another substance singularly designated and pre-existing, to which even by force of the conversion nothing is added, as the faith teaches in the mystery of the Eucharist. For all the natural transformations of which philosophy treats are something far different, where something always remains of the term from which the conversion is made, and the term to which it is made always results anew, or at least is increased in itself, and is not wholly presupposed to the conversion. And yet here too the elementary and first notes are taken from common experience: for example, the notion of substance; the notion of whole substance, or of substance according to all its constitutive elements; finally the notion of conversion, which, as regards the most general notion of positive mutation by which one thing passes over into another, is still retained. Whence it happens that we can apprehend the sense of these words: the whole substance of the bread is converted into the body, and the whole substance of the wine is converted into the blood of J. C., only the species remaining. But no mortal had ever joined together notions of this kind, and not only had he not joined them in thesis, but not even in hypothesis, by thinking even the mere possibility of so singular and so wonderful a conversion. Whoever, therefore, dreamed of the concept of transubstantiation as current in the schools, has not sufficiently learned in the catechism what transubstantiation imports, and how far, far distant it is from every transformation, even substantial².

What now is to be said of the idea of the word, which·the critics, following in the footsteps of Jean Le Clerc and Mosheim, would wish to have been derived, in revealed doctrine, from the Alexandrian Neoplatonic school? What, do you think, except almost the same as what was said in the two preceding examples? Certainly, the word Λόγος; or Verbum, with its proper signification, belongs to the order of human cognition. For again and again I ask: if we had in no way had this notion, if there had not been in our vocabulary a word corresponding to the notion, how could the evangelist have spoken to us of the Word which was in the beginning with the Father? It would have been necessary for him to devise a new word, by giving its definition, and for this very purpose he would have had to use names customary among us. But the matter did not happen so, because the idea of the word was already preformed, and it belongs to the glory of the Platonic school that it dwelt in so noble a speculation. Aristotle indeed had touched on the question; nay, with greater precision, as is his wont, he had declared the σῦλλήψιν, or mental concept, which is the thing understood in the intellect's being, and the same as the word of the intellect. But he had not considered the word as the exemplar of the work which the artisan places outside himself, nor especially had he said anything of the word which would be in the supreme intellect as the exemplary cause of the universe. On the contrary, the Platonists had been led to such a consideration by their absurd doctrine concerning universals, that is, subsisting ideas which in each species of corporeal things would be for all individuals the reason and principle of being. For thence they had come to posit a certain first idea, emanating from the highest and supreme God, to which the order and structure of the whole universe of things would correspond³. And in this conception there was indeed something true. But how many false things they mixed in! how diametrically opposed to all the principles of Christian doctrine! On this matter Petavius will exhibit to you a full demonstration, l. 1 de Trin. c. 1, and D. Maranus in the preface to the works of St Justin, Part. 2, c. 1.

It is true that Augustine and other ecclesiastical writers attributed to the Platonists ideas as it were Christian concerning the Word. But let it be noted first that those holy Fathers, pleasing themselves in what the school of Plato had of spiritual and divine in comparison with the others, were more urbane and more indulgent interpreters than the simple truth of the matter would otherwise have borne; in which they afterwards had the scholastics as imitators with regard to Aristotle. Let it be noted secondly that revealed truth in part illuminates even those who reject it, and that Christianity immediately compelled the Alexandrian philosophers of the second and third centuries to set forth their own views with certain better appearances of truth. Let it be noted especially thirdly that the leader and teacher of the Neoplatonic school had been Philo, who, being a Jew, knew the Scriptures of the Old Testament very well, nay, even published various commentaries on them. In the Scriptures of the Old Testament, however, for example Prov. viii-22 (to pass over many other places now), there is discourse of the wisdom begotten from eternity, which God possessed as the beginning of His ways before He made anything from the beginning; which was already conceived, and already being brought forth, when the abysses were not yet, and the fountains of waters had not yet burst forth; which was present to Him who begat when He prepared the heavens, when He enclosed the abysses with a fixed law and circuit, when He strengthened the aether above and weighed the fountains of waters, when He set a limit to the sea and laid a law upon the waters that they should not pass their bounds, when He hung the foundations of the earth; which was with Him composing all things and delighted every day, playing in the world⁴; to which wisdom, finally, being begotten, it was altogether easy to apply the Platonic doctrine of the Λόγῳ, or Word, or ideal reason by which all things were founded, formed, and disposed⁵. And this is what Philo did, who wherever he speaks of the eternal Word of God, evidently depends on the doctrine of ancient Scripture, both in Genesis and in the aforementioned place of Proverbs and other parallel places: « Whoever, he says, wishes to be free of that shame which commonly attends doubt, let him pronounce freely and openly that none of the things which are immersed in matter have sufficient strength to sustain the mass of the world. But that eternal Word of the eternal God is by far the most powerful and most firm pillar of the universe. For this is that [Word] by whose command, while it extends from the middle to the extremes and at the same time from the highest to the middle, the established and perpetual course of nature is carried on. For it associates and binds together all parts among themselves, because the Father by whom it was begotten willed it to be a certain most firm bond of the whole universe. It is therefore no wonder if neither the mass of the earth, with such force of waters permeating its inner recesses, is ever dissolved, nor fire is extinguished by air, nor air in turn is set ablaze by fire, since that divine Word, which has established itself as a kind of vocal medium among the mute elements, so that, as in music furnished and arranged with its notes, a fitting and sweet harmony of the whole universe might exist, has undertaken to soften and moderate the threats of contraries by a certain friendly conjunction »⁶. This is Philo in one of the clearer passages collected by Eusebius. But although he was assisted by the light of ancient revelation, yet nevertheless, while he strives to adapt the doctrine of Scripture to Platonic ideas, he does not hesitate to posit the Word as a second God under the first and supreme God. « Why, he says, as if he were speaking of another God, does he say that man was made by him according to the image of God, and not according to his own? That indeed is altogether excellently and wisely celebrated by the divine oracle, (Genes. v·1). For nothing mortal was there at all that could be marked with the image of that supreme Parent of all things. But there was that which could be [marked] with the image of the second God, that is, of the same Word »⁷. And this same pagan conception, sprinkled with many other absurdities, is found among the later authors of the same school, Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, and Proclus⁸: so that it may at last clearly appear that that mysterious notion of the Word which the faith proposes, and which the Gospel of John hands down (I mean the Word which is one God with Him from whom it proceeds according to the intellectual operation, and is distinguished from Him by the relation of origin alone), is far, far distant from everything that the philosophers could think, not even excepting those who in this point seemed to think more deeply than the others.

By these things, however, we do not refuse [to admit] that right philosophy ought altogether to acknowledge the inner word proceeding in our mind. But the simplicity of God and His supreme identity with His own understanding seemed to exclude every procession of this kind within God Himself. Nay, as long as no distinction was thought of other than that of the absolute from the absolute, the exclusion was evidently legitimate and true, and by this very fact the Platonists, positing the divine Word as really distinct from its principle, were positing a great absurdity, thereby establishing a multitude of gods. Nevertheless divine Providence disposed that those same philosophers should prepare, and make customary, the very word with which the sublime truth might be expressed intelligibly for us in the fourth Gospel — the truth which was already implicitly contained in the wisdom books of the Old Testament, and also in the three Synoptic Gospels⁹, and was at last openly revealed to us by God through John. Moreover, the erudition which says that the Word of St John and of Catholic theology is derived from the λόγῳ of the Neoplatonists cannot be anything other than a counterfeit and shallow erudition of the most superficial knowledge.

But now someone will say: Is not the doctrine of the Catholic faith, compared with the doctrines of the philosophers, found to have not only notions, either simply or at least as to their first rudiments, common [with them], but sometimes even dogmas wholly identical? And the Vatican Council will immediately give the answer, saying: « Holy mother the Church holds and teaches that God, the beginning¹⁰ and end of all things, can be known with certainty by the natural light of human reason from created things... Nevertheless, it has pleased His wisdom and goodness to reveal Himself and the eternal decrees of His will to the human race by another, namely a supernatural, way... To this divine revelation it is indeed to be attributed that those things which in divine matters are not of themselves inaccessible to human reason can, even in the present condition of the human race, be known by all readily, with firm certainty, and with no error mixed in. Yet revelation is not for this reason to be called absolutely necessary, but because God, out of His infinite goodness, has ordained man to a supernatural end, namely to partake of the divine goods which altogether surpass the understanding of the human mind; since eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man, what God has prepared for those who love Him ». And in very truth, the view of the Fathers and of all theologians has always been settled and certain, that in the doctrine of faith a twofold order of truths is contained, of which some are suprarational, and are known only insofar as they are revealed, while others are knowable even by human reason, and yet have in fact been handed down to us by God revealing, for the reasons which the Vatican [Council] hints at in the place cited above, and which St Thomas declares at length in the first chapters of the Summa contra Gentes. We have also always been persuaded that there have been at all times some who received from nature so much right judgment and good sense as is enough for knowing certain principles: for example, that a new entity requires a proportionate cause; that a subject in potency is not reduced to act except by the power of a perfect act; that corporeal nature must consist of a twofold principle, material and formal; that life proceeds from a principle more perfect than the mechanical forces are; that the soul is united substantially to the living body; that intellectual operation shows a spirit independent in being from matter; that the existence and order of the world demonstrate a God existing, etc. These and other truths appeared manifest to some school not illuminated by the light of revelation. Whence Justin said that the Word in past ages had granted to many wise Gentiles a ray of His light ¹¹. And Clement of Alexandria saw in Greek philosophy a kind of preparation for the full truth of Christianity¹². And Augustine, as was said above, received with applause whatever was truly sublime in the Platonic doctrines¹³. And when afterwards, under the leadership of Boethius and Damascene, theological discipline began to be ordered with greater rigor, there came spontaneously into use a logic so precise, and a method so conformed to human cognition, as Aristotle had taught. All of which is so because our weak reason is still capable of knowing something with certainty; and it is surely a wonder if it must now be asserted and vindicated amid such an inflation of proud science. We, therefore, with the ancient common sense reasoned thus: some natural cognitions, the fruit of true experience and sound logic, are found even in the infallible Catholic doctrine; therefore these natural cognitions were true, and right philosophy had acquired them, insofar as it too is a natural reason from God. But in our days the procedure is diametrically changed, and they say: Christian doctrine has certain dogmas which are also found in the ancient schools of the philosophers; therefore this doctrine derives from them, and since, moreover, philosophical doctrines are always uncertain, relative, and mutable, it must necessarily be a partaker of the same uncertainty, mutability, and relativity. But where, I ask, is the right procedure? where the sophistical reasoning?

II. — But on the calumny of the adaptation of theology to Aristotelian philosophy, enough has already been said elsewhere¹⁴. Certainly, from the very fact that the truths of faith are expressed, according to what was premised above, in the idiom of our natural concepts, whatever helps toward an accurate analysis of them will also help toward the understanding¹⁵ and exposition of revealed truth, in almost the same way as a vocabulary or lexicon, in which the meanings of names are set forth clearly, plainly, and exactly, helps toward the understanding and explanation of some author. Now therefore, if it belongs to philosophy to classify, define, and resolve into first elements our common and ordinary notions, its use in theology will be proportionally related as the use of a lexicon in exegetical matters. And just as the exegete does not accommodate his exposition to the lexicon, from the fact that he seeks in the lexicon whereby he may more penetrate and more clearly declare the sense of his author, so neither have the scholastic doctors accommodated sacred doctrine to philosophy, from the fact that they used philosophy to expound distinctly, in order, and with a scientific method, the dogmas revealed to us by God.

But it must be carefully noted that no philosophy was ever employed in support of traditional theology under this precise title: because it prevailed in the world, or was commended by the authority of some particular school; but on this alone, on this single title: because and insofar as it was found consonant with right reason and with the rule of revelation. Whence St Thomas, 2-2, Q. 167, a. 1 ad 3um: « The study of philosophy is in itself praiseworthy on account of the truth which the philosophers perceived, God revealing it to them, as is said Rom. 1-19. But because some abuse philosophy for the impugning of the faith, therefore the Apostle says Coloss. II-8: See that no one deceive you through philosophy and vain fallacy, according to the tradition of men, and not according to Christ». Not all philosophies, therefore, come into the same rank; but some are like the idols of Egypt, which the people of Israel had to detest and flee; others, however, like the ornaments and vessels of gold and silver, which that same people, going out of Egypt, claimed for itself rather as for a better use, at God's command, as Augustine elegantly relates, l. 2 de doctr. christ. c. 40.

In every way, therefore, it appears that the arguments brought forward in favour of that absurd device of relative truth in the traditional doctrine of the Church are empty. And of this indeed enough has been said thus far.