De immutabilitate traditionis contra modernam haeresim evolutionismi

That the historical method, in opposition to the method of immanence, is the only legitimate method in the preambles of faith, when what must be proved is the fact of revelation, namely: whether the Christian preaching is from God revealing, and as such credible and to be believed.

The historical method generally consists in two things. First, in this: that it deals with texts, or monuments, or external facts.

Second, in this: that it uses experimental criteria alone, which can be of use to the natural faculty of human reason. In both ways, however, it will at once, and even at first sight, appear suited to the demonstration of which we treat in the preambles of faith. Suited, indeed, in the part where it takes the principle of its process from external facts. For, « in order that the obedience of our faith might be consonant to reason, says the Vatican Council, Sess. 3, cap. 3, God willed that the external arguments of his revelation be joined with the interior aids of the Holy Spirit — namely, divine deeds, and in the first place miracles and prophecies ». Suited also in the part where it uses those criteria alone that are taken from the order of natural experience. For revelation is not yet supposed as known. Nay rather, the very existence of revelation is the object of the whole inquiry, and therefore, lest we commit the sin of an inept and vicious circularity, we must set aside any and every rule or norm descending from revelation itself, so that the estimation and criticism of the facts that are assumed as arguments be committed to the dictate of right reason alone. You have, then, in the said historical method all the conditions required in the present matter. Nor is this all. But, what is more, you have in it alone a rational process leading to a solid conclusion of the proposed demonstration. For revelation is a fact; it is a fact most free on the part of God; it is a supernatural fact — that is, one demanded by no exigency of nature at all; it is, finally, a fact that cannot be known by us directly in itself. Where then, do you think, is the argument demonstrating such a fact? That, for example, what was said by Jesus Christ — who in his outward appearance surely did not differ from other men — was truly said by God? That what was preached by the apostles, what was received from them and transmitted from mouth to mouth even to us through the Church, was truly said by God? Think and think again. Unless you wish to erect an absurd apriorism into a principle, a divine fact not knowable in itself must be demonstrated through other divine facts knowable in themselves — namely, those that can have for us the value of signs, as being proposed to our experience and estimation, both in their transcendence beyond the powers of nature and in their relation to the Christian revelation, to be sealed and authenticated, if it be truly divine. And these facts can be of many kinds, and indeed will be. The fact of prophecies fulfilled by their event; those physical facts that are called miracles simply and without addition; and likewise very many other facts, marvellously eminent above all the laws that history discovers — of the kind that are reported by the Vatican Council in the passage cited, toward the end: the wonderful propagation of the Church, her eminent sanctity and inexhaustible fecundity in all good things, Catholic unity, invincible stability, and other like things. For these too are contained in the order of facts; these too are known as divine by historical criteria, and therefore are suited to the demonstration of which we now treat — although its principal foundation must surely be taken from miracles and prophecies, because those signs are more evident for us and more accommodated to the common understanding of all. Such, then, was the process always employed up to now, beginning from Christ the Lord himself and his apostles, as the whole evangelical narrative from beginning to end testifies: God bearing witness, says Heb. II-4, with signs and wonders, and various powers, and distributions of the Holy Spirit¹.

But now that process has been found to labour under some defect or other, and a new method is substituted, taking the principle of demonstration no longer from external facts, but from the subjective state of the soul alone: insofar, namely, as Christian dogmas are postulated by that state and are so adjusted to it that the soul can foresee them in itself, or at least of its own accord enter into them, and by its own energy assimilate them to itself as soon as they are proposed, provided only that it strive to rectify and purify itself by moral honesty. For the progress of our will compels us to confess our insufficiency, leads us to feel the need of some superaddition, and gives us the wherewithal to look into, acknowledge, and at last receive the supernatural order. Now this alone is the legitimate method, because every dogma proved from without sets an undue limit to the rights of reason, and takes away its necessary autonomy, which wills that we acquire truth from those things alone that are immanent to us. For the rest, there is no reason why you should be solicitous about this very principle. For it is enough that you know that the general principle of immanence is the definitive acquisition of modern philosophy. Moreover: « Whoever refuses to admit this principle is no longer counted among philosophers. Whoever has not arrived at an understanding of it thereby demonstrates that he has no philosophical sense ». And do you still doubt? If, however, those rhetorical declamations, in which the whole demonstration consists from beginning to end, do not suffice for someone, he will perhaps marvel at the imaginary basis of the system, its fantastic construction, and its emptiness full of void. And indeed, if judgment were to be passed on the new-fangled theory from a properly theological viewpoint, it would appear wholly to be condemned as corruptive of the fundamental notion of supernatural being — nay, as destructive of all faith whose motive is the authority of God revealing, as has been noted elsewhere. These things, however, being for the present passed over, consider for a little now how vain it is as to the foundation that it presupposes, how inept as to the fact that it assumes, how especially worthy of laughter as to the pretension that it carries — of eliminating, or at least of surpassing, the solidity of the traditional apology from miracles and the other external arguments of revelation.

Vain, I say, as to the foundation that it has set before itself. For wishing to know nothing of the arguments by which the one and true God, creator and our Lord, is known through the things that are made as through effects; closing its eyes to all the deeds of God in the world, to the life, preaching, and works of Jesus Christ, to the preparation and consequences of his advent, to all other objective facts whatsoever by which from the beginning until now the divine testimonies have been made credible beyond measure: it contends to dig out the whole complex of religious truth, even revealed truth, with the existence of God itself included, from the sole inspection of the insufficiency, need, restlessness, and aspirations of the human soul. You would think you were truly hearing somnambulists philosophizing. For what kind of argument, I ask, what sort of reasoning is this: I am in need, therefore there truly exists on the side of the thing that of which I am in need, or of which I seem to myself to be in need? Someone led by the sole dictate of common sense would say: It will be in the desire, it will be in the aspiration, it will also be — and very often — in that fantastic objectivity whose cause and principle is the soul itself, so easily creating and calling to existence the things it desires. For those are what are called the illusions of the soul: « How many, then, are the illusions of the soul, says Augustine, if I should wish to tell, when will time suffice? For whose soul does not suffer these? Brief is what I suggest: how our soul is filled with illusions ». And yet from that imagined objectivity to objective objectivity the distance is as great as between reality and a dream. Finally, desire, aspiration, and whatever else of the kind, of itself shows nothing other than a need; a need nothing other than a void; but a void, so far as I know, can never demonstrate that that by which it is to be filled really exists. These things both appear manifest and are so, whatever that philosophical sense may say by which we are, to our extreme misfortune, deprived. But if haply you object to these things that all those who before us wrote eloquently and wisely about the soul, beatitude, and the end of man deduced many most solid conclusions from the desire of nature, which cannot be illusory or remain in vain: attend, I pray, diligently, that the conditions of their argument are far, far removed from the foundation of the method of immanence. For they consider nature as it is the work of God, the most wise creator and provider — of God, I say, the principle and end of all things, whom they know altogether from elsewhere than from their own aspirations: namely, from the fact of the existence of mundane effects, which do not have in themselves the sufficient reason of their being, of their order, and of their evolution. Then, therefore, the desire of nature is not taken as a bare and simple desire, but as a desire rooted in nature by God its author, to whose wisdom it is manifestly repugnant that he should have implanted in his creature a proportion and exigency and tendency that cannot be fulfilled. Then natural aspiration is formally taken as the inclination of a thing toward its natural end, which is from the direction of the one instituting nature². Then too, from the appetite of the soul an efficacious argument can be formed — although not from any appetite whatsoever, but only from the appetite, as they say, innate, or even elicited without exceeding the terms of the innate³. But in truth, from the moment you shut me up within aspirations, insofar as they are (as you say) immanent aspirations; from the moment you wish the whole building of religious truth to emerge from the depth of aspirations; from the moment you contend that God exists, that revelation exists, that a higher order exists, insofar as — neither more nor less — all these things answer to the aforesaid aspirations of the heart: I laugh within myself, and I say the foundation is vain, illusory, fantastic, empty, like a dream.

But let us omit these things, if you please. Let us admit the foundation for a little, and grant the major premise of the whole process: that there is a necessary connexion between the aspirations of the soul precisely as such, and the concrete existence of the things that are postulated through them. Now let us come to the fact that the new apologetic method places in the position of the minor: namely, that the aspirations of the heart truly require, demand, and postulate revelation. For there perhaps — again a dream, and again a sport of the imagination. Certainly a fact of this kind is far from all positive experience. That, first, all rationalists deny. Second, all Catholic theologians deny it to a man. Third, the Vatican Council denies it, expressly stating and defining that revelation was absolutely necessary only insofar as it pleased God out of his infinite goodness to confer an undue benefit on man, ordaining him to partake of divine goods that wholly 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. But, what is more, those who ought to be the first of all to deny it are the immanentists themselves, since they have no legitimate acquisition of truth except that which comes from the proper fund of the soul. For nothing is thought more foreign to the fund of the human soul than revelation; and one immediately asks what kind of chimera the soul is, if it can receive no truth except an autochthonous one, and at the same time needs nothing more than instruction and doctrine coming to it from without — that is, from God revealing, coming upon it beyond and above all the laws of nature.

What now, if we descend to concrete application! For the revelation that they say is postulated by the aspirations of the heart is not revelation in general, but this revelation marked out in the individual, which is called the Catholic faith. « Now the Catholic faith is this: that we venerate one God in the Trinity and the Trinity in unity, neither confounding the persons nor separating the substance. One person is the Father's, another the Son's, another the Holy Spirit's; but the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit have one divinity, equal glory, coeternal majesty... God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit; and yet not three gods, but one God... The Father is made by no one, neither created nor begotten. The Son is from the Father alone, not made, nor created, but begotten. The Holy Spirit is from the Father and the Son, not made, nor created, nor begotten, but proceeding... It is also the right faith that we believe and confess that D. N. I. C., the Son of God, is God and man... Who although he is God and man, is yet not two but one Christ; one, not by confusion of substance, but by unity of person... Who suffered for our salvation, descended into hell, rose again the third day from the dead, ascended into heaven, sits at the right hand of the Father... This is the Catholic faith, which unless everyone believe faithfully and firmly, he cannot be saved ». Now therefore, inquire and consider. See you, what common ground there can be between this Catholic faith and the aspirations, exigencies, and postulates that lie hidden in the depth of the human soul. If you see it, well and good; I certainly am not able to see it. But you will say that the Christian faith is not to be taken from this side, when judgment must be passed on its correspondence with the aspirations of the heart: not from the theoretical side, but rather from the moral, which affects the practical sense. Let it be, then, as you wish. But even in this way, I say that the argument would be as efficacious and as rigorous by which some Turk would demonstrate the credibility of the revelation brought by his prophet Mahomet. For Mahomet too brought a revelation to the world, and had converse with the archangel Gabriel, according as it is found written in the Alcoran, just as we find it written in the Gospel that J. C. descended from heaven to bring us the words of him who sent him. Moreover, if the judgment rests with the exigencies and tendencies of the heart, how many are there to whom, while they consult their aspirations, the revelation of Mahomet will seem truer than the revelation of Christ! Nor does it avail if you answer that the aspirations to which the paradise of Mahomet responds are not good, and therefore do not demonstrate the truth of its postulates. For, other things being now passed over, who taught you this distinction between good and not good aspirations? And I indeed, as long as I do not put off the real man, as long as I apprehend my nature as constituted under the order of the first cause, the first principle, and the ultimate end of all things, so long can I and do I judge of the goodness or depravity of my aspirations by respect to this supreme end of my will. But again, once you shut me up in my aspirations as in the first principle from which all truth is to be drawn out and compared, I no longer know what good or not good aspirations are. I know nothing else than true and real aspirations. But I find in myself aspirations that postulate the paradise of Mahomet, and others that postulate the paradise of Christ, and I conclude that the revelation of the Alcoran is as true as the revelation of the Gospel is true, the one as receivable as the other is receivable. Do you see an empty system, without subsistence, leading to contradictions?

There is also something worse, in that it trusts so much in its own solidity as to be persuaded that the traditional apology, with miracles and the other external arguments of revelation, already vanishes in the splendour of its light — arguments of which it does not hesitate to affirm that they are no longer accommodated to the modern mentality, and that for men of our age they have lost their demonstrative force. For in this a crowning piece is added to the fantastic judgments of which the whole system consists from beginning to end. You would think them so devoted to immanence that they know nothing at all of what is done outside, and have never heard anything of the new and splendid signs by which it has pleased God in this very age of ours, in the light of the sun and on the stage of the greatest publicity, to confirm the credibility of the Catholic faith. To the history of these facts, then, in which is the full confutation of the ridiculous assertion, we shall refer them⁴. It is indeed most true that the modern spirit of unbelief resists miracles, and attempts impossibilities in order not to admit the reality of miracles, and voluntarily closes its eyes lest it be confounded by the irrecusable testimony of miracles⁵ But, besides that — O immortal gods! — there is no modern novelty there, unless perchance you wish the modern era to begin from the time of the scribes and Pharisees, the conclusion would be diametrically opposite to the one they wish to bring out. For the enemies of revelation strive against its solid demonstrations; but against the light and nebulous apology of immanence, who would turn his arms and his strength? At it they laugh and will always laugh, and the devil with them.

Thus, then, it appears how absurdly the historical method is expelled from what they call fundamental theology. But now the question arises whether, having been unjustly driven from the vestibule, it is rightly admitted into the inmost sanctuary of sacred science. For the solution of which let the following be the proposition.