De immutabilitate traditionis contra modernam haeresim evolutionismi

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.