Tractatus de Deo uno secundum naturam

On the manifestation in supernatural deeds, insofar as through them God is intelligible by reason.

« Besides the manifestation of God in the works of nature, there is another, comprised in supernatural deeds. For the complex of supernatural deeds, as an observable historical order and a certain new universe, most splendidly manifests the existence and the many perfections of God, insofar as, above all, reason itself with certainty attains both the existence of these deeds and their necessary connection with the existence of God and with the perfections of God. »

The more perfect the effects are, the more manifestly do they demonstrate the existence of their cause and its perfections, provided they are known formally as effects. If therefore already from the works of nature, « brought forth for this purpose, that God might be known from the beginning » (Tertull.), the existence and attributes of the almighty creator shine forth so brilliantly, it cannot be that God, infinitely powerful, wise, good and merciful, does not press himself upon human knowledge with most lucid rays in the superadded manifestation, which consists of works of a far more sublime order, produced for this very end, so that those who did not recognize God in the former might be struck by this second one. Hence the holy Fathers, when they compare both manifestations, are accustomed to call that natural one, in comparison with this supernatural one, a faint adumbration seen from afar. « No one denies, because no one is ignorant, says Tertull. de spectat. c. 2, that nature of its own accord suggests God to be the Creator of the universe. » Immediately, however, he declares what this manifestation of God is, compared with the other, supernatural one: they do not « know God thoroughly, except by natural right, and not also by familiar right; from afar, and not from near. » And Clemens Alex. Strom. VI. p. 635: « that they know God not according to perfect knowledge (ἐπιγνωσιν) but according to a certain circumfusion (κατα περιφασιν)¹ : this the most eminent of the Greeks, Peter, teaches in the Praedicatio » (a supposititious work). See also Strom. V. p. 612. « Some even of the philosophers of this age have seen that God is a certain eternal life… wise, making those who are wise… a fixed truth… where are all the reasons of all created things; they indeed saw, but from afar, they saw but were placed in error… For because they also saw, as far as a man can see, the creator through the creature, the maker through the thing made, the fabricator of the world through the world, Paulus Apostolus is a witness, whom surely Christians ought to believe » Aug. Serm. 141. n. 1.

Now, if we consider the supernatural manifestation itself, first of all, as a certain series of great historical deeds and wonderful events, it constitutes under this aspect a certain universe, whose existence is made known with the greatest historical certainty, and whose necessary connection with the existence of a cause reason plainly perceives. Reason understands no less surely that this cause cannot be anything other than a being wholly different from all the powers of this visible world and from its whole collection, infinitely powerful, good, wise, all-knowing, provident, and finally God, whom the doctrine itself, connected with the supernatural deeds, proclaims, and to whom those deeds have an intrinsic order, in their infinite perfections, for the manifestation to human knowledge. That this necessary connection between the existence of the effects, which constitute the manifestation, and the existence of the manifesting cause should be understood by reason, the mere obvious consideration of the effects suffices, insofar as they are known merely historically.

1°. Let the state and condition of Christian society, already established, say in the fourth century and thereafter, be compared with the moral condition of human society in the same era, as it stood in past generations (Act. XIV. 16.). From this comparison, instituted, it will be evident that there has taken place an immense conversion, a universal change, first indeed in principles and religious ideas, in worship and in morals; and from this that the same change has pervaded all institutions, private and public, and finally the whole manner of thinking, feeling and acting. We see all society pursue with the highest hatred and contempt whatever it had until shortly before cultivated as the palladium of public glory and happiness; the simple and the learned alike instructed in the most sublime principles, to which, if anything akin to them had at some time been held by any of the philosophers with « blind happiness, » it was called divine; virtues, of which not even the names had been known before, held in the highest esteem by all and exercised by most with a fortitude never heard of.

This conversion of things demands a proportionate cause. Now, a) this cause does not exist in the very elements of the preceding society; for the whole reason of life and society of the gentiles and the new reason of life and society of the Christians are so opposed that it is wholly manifest that this conversion must be ascribed to the sole power of him, to whom the souls and minds of all men are subject, and who can add powers of a higher nature². b) It is established a posteriori and from history that all the attempts made by pagan society over three centuries, with incredible obstinacy and cruelty, were directed at preventing the effect; while the means to produce it, if considered in themselves and as human, were such as seemed devised rather to make it impossible. On the other hand, c) a constant and most widely extended series of miracles, of prophecies fulfilled, of supernal illuminations and consolations of souls, which appear in marvellous effects, demonstrates that he is its author, to whom the whole corporeal and spiritual universe is subject. Therefore the Christian economy as a whole rests on these principles, is contained in these means, and shines with these inward gifts and outwardly manifested perfections of charisms, so that it cannot but be the work of him who is infinitely good, wise, omnipotent, the creator and the sanctifier, whom the Christian religion itself professes as its author. The Christian economy therefore presents itself as a supernatural creation of God³, and its very existence is, and is understood to be, a supernatural manifestation of God. Just as the first institution of Christian society presents God as its creating cause, so its conservation is a continual manifestation of God, conserving, protecting and nourishing it by supernatural power.

2° The Christian history is intimately bound up with the history of the chosen people of the Old Testament, as perfection is with its inchoation. If we consider this, it becomes evident that the whole religious and political life of the Jewish nation, through two thousand years, was wholly different from the religion, life and morals of all peoples. Moreover, this whole diverse condition of an entire nation, which through all its vicissitudes always preserves the same character, is bound up with supernatural deeds, with prophecies uttered and fulfilled, with theophanies not only at intervals but through many centuries in continuous series, and from the great appearance on Sinai onward permanently exhibited in the sight of the whole nation⁴. Furthermore, this complex of supernatural deeds is not merely added to it as by accident, but constitutes the foundation and essential element of the whole religious and political history, so that the latter can be neither understood nor explained without them. Yet all these deeds, prophecies, appearances, and the whole history, are evidently directed solely to this end: that God should manifest himself to his people as the Lord, omnipotent, wise, provident, good and just. The whole history of the Old Testament is therefore nothing but a continuous manifestation of God and of the divine attributes.

3°. All the antecedent manifestations, as preparation, and all the subsequent ones, as effects and continuation, aim at one great manifestation, which is God himself made flesh: « the great mystery of godliness, which was manifested in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, appeared to Angels, was preached to the Gentiles, was believed in the world, was taken up in glory » (1. Tim. III. 16; Tit. III. 4.). Hence John, when he recounts the mystery by which God, in the assumed human nature, became visible, exclaims: « we have seen his glory, as it were (ὡς utpote) of the only-begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. » For although it must be learned by doctrine, and believed on authority, that that very one who appeared visibly is true God, a matter we are not now treating; yet Christ, considered in his whole wonderful life, with all the portents which he wrought by his own power, and considered at the same time in connection with the whole history of the preceding Testament, which was the preparation for him as for the completion, and in connection with the whole subsequent Christian history, which depends on him as on a cause and beginning, and which is all directed to him as to the end, cannot but be understood as the summit of the manifestation of God. Cyril of Alexandria (in Io. Opp. T. IV. p. 77.) asks whence came those sighs of the prophets: emitte lucem tuam etc., since the light was already in the world. He answers this question: « he who had long before been apprehended by thought, and who was now seen even with the bodily eyes, impressed upon us a more compact, as I may say, sense of the knowledge of God, being recognized through miracles and magnificent works »⁵.

Just as this visible universe is rightly called by the Fathers a herald, a proclamation, a teaching about God (see above), because it manifests God to human reason, so much more must the supernatural universe, whose chief outlines we have described, when it is considered only objectively as a complex of facts, prescinding from the formal revelation to which faith responds, be called the objective teaching of God about himself. « For just as human custom speaks in words, as Augustine rightly says (ep. 102. al. 49. ad Deogratias quaest. 6.), so divine power speaks also in deeds; and just as new or less usual words, sprinkled moderately and becomingly into human speech, add splendour, so in wonderful deeds that signify something the divine eloquence is in some way more luminous. » Certainly not by words only, but beside the words and together with the words, « God bears witness by signs and wonders and various powers and distributions of the Holy Spirit » Heb. II. 4.