Tractatus de Deo uno secundum naturam

No creature has a natural immediate vision of the divine essence.

« Not only is God in himself absolutely invisible to the bodily eye; but also no created intellect, according to its natural mode of knowing, can gaze upon the divine essence in itself, and as it is in itself; it can know it only through another created object, and so only analogically. »

Vision, although by its first imposition of the name it is said of perception by the sense of sight, is used in a derived meaning of intellectual knowledge, and so is altogether the same as understanding. But just as sensible vision is the immediate and clear perception of a visible object in itself, so also mental vision, said simply, especially when it is referred to God as the object of the vision, in its proper sense signifies a clear and immediate understanding of the object in itself. Hence Paul simply calls the invisible things of God, but of their mediate understanding he speaks of conspection only with an added explanation: « For the invisible things of him are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made » Rom. I. 20. (above p. 38.). That this signification of vision, and its distinction from mediate knowledge, whether of reason or of faith, may be more precisely determined, it is customary to call it, by an added defining term, intuitive vision.

Now, first of all, in Scripture there is a twofold series of testimonies. In one, it is not only said that God is not seen by us in this life, namely with that immediate and intuitive vision of which we treated in the preceding chapter; but God is simply presented as invisible to the created intellect and visible to himself alone. In the other series of testimonies, however, for angels and men in eternal life, the intuitive vision itself is preached and promised, but as a grace of God and as the reward and crown of the merits of grace. In quite the same sense ecclesiastical preaching and the whole tradition declare and set forth more explicitly this distinction between the invisibility and the vision of God in himself. Such revealed doctrine, as is plain, contains at last this dogma: that God in himself is invisible to the natural powers of a creature; that this creature, however, can be raised, and in fact has been raised by grace, to the intuitive vision of God, in which accordingly perfect supernatural beatitude and the ultimate (formal) supernatural end are constituted. Since moreover this very vision, as an operation of a created mind however elevated by a supernatural light, remains a finite understanding, while its object, as infinite being, is infinitely knowable, therefore the vision of God in a creature admits of degrees of perfection without limit, and can never be adequately commensurate with the whole infinite knowability of the object: in this sense the comprehension of God is said to belong to the infinite intellect alone. There can therefore be distinguished, as it were, four orders, altogether diverse from one another in kind: sensible vision; then intellectual vision of God, but in an improper sense and mediate through the things that are made; intuitive vision of God in the proper sense; and finally comprehensive vision. The first is in itself impossible; the second, and it alone, can be in the natural order; the third is granted to a creature in the supernatural order; the fourth belongs to God alone. Therefore, looking at vision through the bodily sense, or looking at the natural powers of the created intellect and taking vision in its proper sense for immediate intuition, God can and ought to be called simply invisible both to angels and to men; looking also at the supernatural order, but understanding by the name of vision that which is comprehensive, corresponding in its perfection to the whole knowability of the object, God in this sense is absolutely invisible to the created intellect and visible to himself alone. Hence, in opposition to the heresy which asserts (as the Eunomians did) a natural comprehensibility of God for the human intellect (see above th. X.), God must be called invisible to the creature in both senses, whether intuitively by natural powers or simply comprehensively. This distinction, as we shall show in its place, can reconcile the opinions of many most weighty Fathers, and without it they cannot be reconciled with Catholic doctrine or with one another.

We must therefore inquire about the invisibility of God for the natural powers of the creature, which we shall treat in this thesis; in what follows we shall then speak of the supernatural intuitive vision of God, whether it is; and then finally, in our manner and as far as is permitted, we shall inquire how this supernatural and intuitive vision of God is.

I. That God is invisible to the bodily eyes, certainly both from revelation and from reason, is indubitable in theology, I say, and in philosophy. Nevertheless this very invisibility of God can be viewed in two different ways: namely, a) that God of himself is not an object proportionate in his nature to the perception of the senses; or b) that, as God is pure spirit and therefore in his nature wholly above the object of the senses, so the sense cannot be raised supernaturally to spiritual perception, and so to seeing God who is pure spirit (cf. Suarez l. II. c. 6. n. 3. seqq.). In the first way the question concerns the very nature of God, and in this sense the invisibility of God for the bodily eye is as certain as it is certain that God is pure spirit; the divine nature, however, is understood to be spiritual from Christian principles, and will be demonstrated lower down in its place. But in the second sense the question is not so much about the nature of God, which is supposed to be spiritual, as about the nature, or rather about the obediential power (as they call it) of bodily sight, whether its elevation to spiritual perception is absolutely repugnant or not repugnant. See S. August. ep. 147. ad Paulinam n. 49.

In the first sense, then, the revealed invisibility of the divine nature is contained both in all those passages where God is called spirit, and in those where God is expressly declared to be invisible. « No one has ever seen God » Io. I. 18; 1. Io. IV. 12. Christ « the image of the invisible God » (τον Θεον του ἀοράτου) Col. I. 5; « honour to the immortal, invisible, the only God » ¹ 1. Tim. I. 17; « who alone has immortality and dwells in light inaccessible, whom no man has seen nor can see » ib. VI. 16. For in such passages the invisibility of God simply stated, although it includes invisibility also for the powers of the created intellect, is nevertheless directly, and in a certain way a fortiori, the exclusion of bodily vision. In the teaching of the Church and in the exposition of the Fathers, if it were necessary to demonstrate that this dogma has always been indubitable, appeal could be made to the disputes of the Fathers against the Gnostics and the Manichaeans, against the Anthropomorphites, against the Arians, who affirmed that the Son and the Holy Spirit, though not indeed the truly divine essence, were or could be made visible, being of an inferior nature.

In the second sense, the invisibility of God, namely that the bodily eye cannot be raised to the vision of the divine substance, follows from the truth of faith now declared, and from a certain truth: that a power cannot be carried beyond its object, or, for the present matter, that the bodily sense cannot be raised to an operation intrinsically intellectual; for by that very fact it would no longer be a body but a spirit. « Whoever, however, wishes to know with what eyes God is seen, let him think of God himself, because he is wisdom, is truth, is charity (substantial). Wherefore with the eyes with which wisdom, truth and charity are seen, with those same eyes of the soul is that wise and true divinity seen. Therefore God promises his vision not to the eyes of the body but to the eyes of the soul, which he constitutes capable of wisdom, truth and charity » Fulgent. ad Ferrand. ep. 14. quaest. 3. n. 31. Cf. Aug. ep.147. n. 43. 44.

Nevertheless, in the fifth century there were some Catholics who affirmed not only that it could happen, but that it would indeed come to pass, that after the resurrection the eye of the glorified body would see God in his substance ². St Augustine in ep. 92. ad Italicam, in the year 408, rejects this invention indeed as « foolishness » and « madness » (ib. n. 5. 6.); but since some were offended by this severe judgement, he began to adopt a milder manner of speaking in ep. 147. (or in the book on seeing God, as he himself calls it) ad Paulinam n. 48. seqq., and in ep. 148. ad Fortunatianum, where he concedes to his opponents that it is still necessary to inquire more diligently whether this our earthly body is to be so converted into a spiritual one that the eye of the spiritual body sees God. He himself nevertheless always persisted in his earlier and true opinion, and strove to confirm it from the Fathers and Doctors Athanasius, Gregory Nazianzen, Ambrose, Jerome. Yet, to placate a certain bishop who was angry with him on account of those harsher censures, he adds: « Let us inquire more calmly and diligently about the spiritual body, lest perhaps God, if he knows it to be useful to us, may deign to demonstrate something certain and clear according to his Scriptures. For if a more diligent inquiry shall find that such a change of the body is to come, that it can see invisible things, I think that no such power of the body will take away from the mind its vision, so that the outer man could then see God, and the inner man could not... It remains that in the meantime we be most certain of the vision of God according to the inner man; but if the body too, by a wonderful change, is able to do this, something will be added, nothing will be taken away. » ep. 48. n. 17.

St Augustine most beautifully resolved this question about the year 427, in de Civ. Dei l. XXII. c. 29. The blessed know God « not through creatures but in a creature, » as St Bonaventure says (above p. 77.); and therefore when after the resurrection, with their glorified bodily eyes, they will see « a new heaven and a new earth, » in the creature which « shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God » (Rom. VIII. 21.), they will most clearly behold by the intellect the presence, power and essence of God, not indeed in himself but through another thing visible to the glorified eyes themselves ³ « That the divine presence is known through the intellect from the bodies themselves at once when they are seen, comes about from two things, namely from the clearness of the intellect and from the radiance of the divine brightness in the renewed bodies » S. Th. 1. q. 12. a. 3. ad 2. In this way the words of St Augustine are to be understood: « Wherefore it can happen, and it is very credible, that we shall see the worldly bodies of the new heaven and new earth in such a way that we shall see God present everywhere and governing all bodies, through the bodies which we shall carry, and through those (things) which we shall look upon, with the clearest perspicuity, wherever we turn our eyes; not as now the invisible things of God, understood through the things that are made, are beheld through a mirror in an enigma... but as men, among whom we live, exerting living motions and vital movements, as soon as we look upon them we do not believe that they live, but see that they do... so, wherever we carry those spiritual lights of our bodies, we shall behold the incorporeal God governing all things, even through bodies » Aug. ib. n. 6. Cf. Lupum Ferrariens. ep.30. (Bibl. Max. PP. T. XV. p. 15.).

II. But in the Scriptures and in the ecclesiastical exposition, chiefly and in the first intention, the discourse concerns the invisibility of God not for the bodily eyes but for the created intellect.

1°. In the words of Rom. I. 20., examined above (th. II.), that wonderful conjunction of invisibility and visibility is recalled: « the invisible things of him through the things that are made are clearly seen, being understood⁴. « Mediate vision, that is, the knowability and knowledge of God for the created intellect through notions derived from elsewhere, is affirmed in such a way that God in himself, or all the things that are in God, are simply called invisible. Now indeed a) the whole question there concerns intellectual visibility and invisibility. b) Invisibility is predicated of the subject as an intrinsic and essential mark of the attributes of God, and therefore (on account of his all-round simplicity) of God himself. Whence this invisibility cannot be understood as restricted to the human intellect alone, but must be understood simply, from its intrinsic character, for every created intellect; for that God is perfectly visible and comprehensible to himself is supposed as self-evident. c) This invisibility excludes the immediate vision of God even in himself, as is plain from the opposition by which the invisible things of God are described as visible to the intellect and seen through another. d) Both in this place and whenever elsewhere there is talk of the invisibility of God, it cannot be understood to exclude vision through an intellect elevated to the supernatural order and mode of understanding, because an explicit revelation, in another series of testimonies, explicitly claims this supernatural immediate vision for angels and for men, as we shall see, as the ultimate end and crown, and eternal life. The divine things are therefore said to be invisible in themselves for the natural faculty of every created intellect (cf. above p. 38.).

In the same sense the invisibility of God is again described by the Apostle: « blessed and only mighty... who alone has immortality, and dwells in light inaccessible, whom no man has seen nor can see » 1. Tim. VI. 16. The very intrinsic perfection of the divine Esse, incommunicable to creatures, described by the Apostle according to certain attributes, is the reason why God dwells in inaccessible light. For by its infinite perfection it is in itself infinitely knowable, and therefore it is said to dwell in light; but from the same reason of infinite perfection it comes about that vision properly so called, that is, immediate knowledge of the divine Esse as it is in itself, surpasses every intellect that is outside this light, that is, every created intellect knowing naturally; and therefore light is said to be simply inaccessible. Hence Paul infers a denial not only of the fact but also of the possibility: no man has seen nor can see. Although the inference is particular, about men, the universal principle, that light is said to be simply inaccessible, is not on that account restricted to men alone.

2°. In comparing the divine intellect with the created intellect, the vision of God is said to be natural to God alone, so that this is the proper mark distinguishing and the character of divinity. « No one has ever seen God (οὐδεὶς ἑώρακε πώποτε), the only-begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, he has declared him » Io. I. 18. « Not that anyone has seen the Father, except he who is from God (in the bosom of the Father), he has seen the Father » ib. VI. 46. « No one knows the Son except the Father, nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son is willing to reveal him » Matth. XI. 27. « For who among men knows the things of a man, except the spirit of man which is in him? So also the things of God no one has known except the Spirit of God » 1. Cor. II. 11. In all passages of this kind the divine things are set forth which God alone has in vision, and which men cannot know except through God's own revelation, and therefore not by the light of reason but by supernatural faith. Whence it might seem that the opposition is only between the vision as it is in God and natural human reason in the state of the present life; and so one might suppose that natural immediate vision is not excluded for the human intellect in any state, much less for every created intellect. But although the direct aim is to teach that supernatural faith is the one by which alone men can attain to knowing these divine things, and to demonstrate this God is brought in as a revealer who, sees the divine things immediately by his own nature, nevertheless this very vision is set forth as natural to God alone, because God is, and therefore supernatural beyond every creature.

3°. The holy Fathers more distinctly declare not only the thing itself but also the intrinsic reason of this invisibility of God in relation to the natural faculty of a finite intellect. a) First of all there could be brought forward all those Fathers who, disputing against the Eunomians, most steadfastly affirm that God in himself and in his substance can be seen neither by angels nor by men, but is comprehensible only to himself, to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit; the proof of which all of them derive from the testimonies of Scripture cited just before, and especially from that John I. 18. and 1 Cor. II. 11. They bring forward the reason: « because every created nature cannot see the uncreated » Chrysost. in Io. hom. XV. So teach against the Eunomians both Gregory Nazianzen and Gregory of Nyssa, both Cyrils, and especially Chrysostom (see Petav. de Deo l. VII. c. 5.). To understand the mind of these Doctors, two things must be noted. The Eunomians claimed above all immediate intuition of God from the natural light of reason; and then they said that this intuition of theirs, on account of the simplicity of the divine being, was a perfect comprehension, as was demonstrated by us in the preceding chapter. Hence a) those Fathers absolutely denied, in the case of the angels themselves and of every created intellect, comprehension of God, but with expressions which excluded no less than immediate vision, which the heretics asserted, namely natural vision. For that reason β) those same Fathers did not indeed deny to the angels and to blessed men an immediate vision, but said that it is « by a certain condescension of God » (συγκαταβασιν Chrysost. or. III. de Incomprehens.), and that it is by a special « conjunction with God, and because they are illumined by his whole light (διὰ το πλησιον εἶναι θεου καὶ ὅλῳ τῷ φωτι καταλαμπεσθαι Nazianz. or. 34.); and so from those same Fathers it must be judged that God, who is invisible to the powers of a created nature, makes himself visible only through a supernatural light.

b) More directly, and therefore also more clearly, other Fathers explain this invisibility of God and its proper reason. They consider, namely, the eminence of God according to his Esse above all created things, and from this very fact they deduce his eminence in knowability, in his own essence, above every created intellect: « thus he surpasses everything we can think or know, just as he surpasses everything we are » Fulgent. ad Transimund. l. II. c. 1. St Chrysostom expresses the principle itself thus: « a substance, a more eminent substance⁵ cannot perfectly know »⁶ Hom. V. de Incomprehens. n. 3. T. I. p. 485. On this principle the teaching of St Irenaeus, among others, runs thus. God first of all, « according to his greatness », that is by his nature, is « incapable » to all created things, and he presents himself visible, « according to love », that is by a supernatural gift, only. « One God, therefore, who made and arranged all things by the Word and Wisdom (the Holy Spirit)... according to his greatness indeed is unknown to all those who have been made by him... but according to love he is always known through him by whom he made all things... Indeed according to his greatness and wondrous glory no one shall see God and live (Exod. XXXIII. 20.); for the Father is incapable: but according to love and humanity (φιλανθρωπιαν cf. Tit. III. 4.), and because he can do all things, he also grants this to those who love him, namely to see God, which the prophets also prophesied. » Then Irenaeus distinguishes the supernatural vision of God in three ways: namely the vision through symbols in the theophanies of the Old Testament; the vision of the Word in the assumed human nature, both of which are a vision through another and not of the divine nature in itself; lastly, after both of these, the vision of God immediately in himself, in which eternal life is drawn from the very vision of God. He calls the first the vision through the Spirit of prophecy, the second adoptive in the Son, that is, in the human nature adopted or assumed by the Son, and the third paternal vision. For manifestation outside God is attributed by Irenaeus and others to the Word and the Holy Spirit (see de Trin. th. VI. XI. XIII.), and so the immediate manifestation of God in his own nature is called the manifestation of the Father, in whom both the Son and the Spirit are seen as in the fountain and root of the Trinity. If therefore that first vision is as it were in shadow, and the second as it were a preparation, which is supernatural, so much the more the third, namely the immediate vision, is above the powers of created nature, and is to be bestowed only through the supernatural divine light. « For man does not see God of himself. He, however, is seen by men when he wills, to whom he wills, and as he wills; for God is powerful in all things: indeed then (in the Old Testament) he is seen through the Spirit of prophecy, and he is seen also through the Son by adoption, but he will be seen in the kingdom of heaven paternally: the Spirit indeed preparing man for the Son⁷ of God, but the Son bringing him to the Father, and the Father bestowing incorruption for eternal life, which falls to each one from the fact that he sees God. For as those who see the light are within the light and receive its brightness, so also those who see God are within God, receiving his brightness. Now the brightness gives them life; therefore they receive life who see God. And for this reason the incapable and invisible God makes himself visible and comprehensible and capable to men, so that he may give life to those who receive him and see him » ⁸ Iren. l. IV. c. 20. n. 4. 5. (al. c. 37.).

c) The Fathers complete this doctrine of the invisibility of God, on account of the very eminence of the divine Esse above all created things, and explain it more distinctly by considering the very manner in which any natural knowledge stands. They establish as a principle evident in itself, which we have already indicated above (th. X.) from Gregory of Nyssa, Cyril of Alexandria and Dionysius, that all knowledge which is indeed natural is by this very fact proportionate not to the nature of the thing known but to the nature of the knower, and that it cannot be a mode of natural knowledge above the perfection of the knowing nature; for it is the same to say natural as to say proportionate to the nature. This is expressed by that axiom most famous in the schools: « the mode of acting follows the mode of being » (τοῦ εἶναι); and therefore also « everything known is in the knower according to the mode of the knower. » Every intellect, therefore, whatever it understands according to the faculty and character of its nature, it understands according to the mode of its own proper being. Hence, moreover, it conceives objects of a lower order in a nobler mode than that in which they are in themselves, but adapts higher things to itself and to the mode of its nature. God understands all things in his essence as in an exemplar cause, in an infinitely perfect mode; angels naturally know all things according to the analogy of their own proper essence; the human soul, as long as it is the form in a material body, has as its proper and most proportionate object of knowledge material being, and from that it ascends to knowing spiritual things, which it cannot naturally know as they are in themselves, but only according to the analogy of the object proportionate to itself.

Now God, by the whole character of being and by the mode of his infinite Esse, transcends all created things, so that these are of a plainly different order, and are nothing but analogical shadowings of the divine essence. Therefore no created intellect, as long as it knows according to the proportion of its nature, can conceive God as he is in himself; nor can God be to it the immediate object of intuition.

It cannot know God as he is in himself. For it knows according to the mode of its own being, not according to the mode of the Esse known. And by this very fact God cannot be the immediate object of intuition for a created intellect which knows naturally. For a) when that most simple Esse is in itself the object of intuition, it is necessarily known as it is in itself. Indeed this is true generally of every knowable thing which is known in itself and not through another. We do not say that God, if as efficient cause he immediately gives the knowledge of himself, is therefore known as he is in himself; but we say that the idea or perception which the mind forms in itself and informs from the divine Esse itself as from the immediate object, cannot but be knowledge of God as he is in himself. β) Because every intellect which knows naturally has its own object proportionate to itself, through which, or according to whose analogy, it knows all the rest; therefore the divine intellect alone has the divine essence as the proportionate object, and therefore as the immediate object of intuition; but for every created intellect, just as its proportionate object, so its immediate object of intuition is something created; nor can it understand God except according to its analogy, and therefore by mediate knowledge.

This doctrine is whole in the cited works of the holy Fathers, and St Thomas repeats it in summary: « It is impossible that any created intellect should see the essence of God by its natural powers. For knowledge takes place according as the thing known is in the knower. The thing known, however, is in the knower according to the mode of the knower. Hence the knowledge of any knower is according to the mode of its nature. If, therefore, the mode of being of some thing known exceeds the mode of the nature of the knower, it is necessary that the knowledge of that thing be above the nature of that knower.... It follows therefore that to know the subsisting Esse itself is connatural only to the divine intellect, and that it is above the natural faculty of any created intellect, because no creature is its own esse, but has esse participated » S. Th. 1. q. 12. a. 4. Cf. Suarez, Metaphys. disp. XXX. sect. XI. n. 13; de Deo 1. II. c. 9. Namely, God is Esse itself in every line of perfection, and therefore infinite and most simple, and by his essence necessarily actual; but every creature is an analogical shadowing of this infinite Esse, from its essence only in the state of possibility, through the free creation of God actual according to some analogical perfection, but according to degrees of possible perfections without limit not actual but in potency; and thus having some esse participated, wholly of another and different order from the absolute divine Esse. Hence, since every intellect, as long as it remains in its natural mode of knowing, knows according to the mode of its being, the object of knowledge for any created intellect, as it is in itself through its proper notions, can only be something created; the absolute Esse it can know only according to the analogy of this its own proper object, and therefore not according to the mode in which the absolute Esse is in itself; and by this very fact it cannot know that absolute Esse immediately in itself, but only through another. Yet the more perfect the esse of a creature is, that is, the nearer its imitation of the divine Esse, the more perfect is its intellect and the more perfect its mode of knowing, as follows from what has been said; and therefore also the more perfect the mode of knowing the absolute Esse analogically.

Corollary. From what has been demonstrated so far it is plain what must be answered to the question which somewhat more recent Scholastics raise, and which they do not all solve in the same way: whether a creature is possible to which the immediate vision of God, and therefore the intuition of the divine Esse as it is in itself, would be natural. First of all, Scripture and the Fathers universally affirm the invisibility of God and deny natural visibility before all creatures, not only historically, as a fact in the present order, but metaphysically, from the very intrinsic reason of the divine being, by which it comes about that this intuitive vision is natural to God alone. Then the Fathers further explain the reason from the difference between divine being and created being, and from the nature of the act of knowing itself, according to the principle: whatever is (naturally) known is known according to the mode of the knower. Hence the proper and immediate object of natural knowledge, and that by which an object is known as it is in itself, must agree with the nature of the knower, at least in the proper reason of being, for any intellect; from this, then, in this proper object all the rest are known (as we said a little before): the lower things, namely, are understood in a more perfect mode than they are in themselves; but those which by their whole reason of being are above the nature of the knower can be known only mediately and according to the analogy of the proper object of knowledge itself. Wherefore a creature, for which the immediate intuition of the divine being as it is in itself would be natural, would have to be in the same reason of being as the divine being is, and so would not be a creature but God.

But if these things are so, how is it that God can nevertheless raise an intellectual creature supernaturally to the intuitive vision of God? Why cannot God create an intellect for which that natural mode of knowing would be natural, which he can make connatural to another created intellect through a superadded and supernatural gift? The arguments put forward in this difficulty, among many others, have persuaded John Major and some more recent Scholastics, among whom are Ripalda (de Ente supernaturali T. I. disp. 23; T. II. disput. 132, or the last, sect. 40.) and Becanus (in 1. P. Tract. I. c. 9. q. 5.), of the possibility of a created substance supernaturalis, as they called it; that is, a created substance for which the beatific vision of God, and consequently the gifts of grace which are supernatural for creatures existing in the present order, would be commensurate and natural. For us, however, the difficulty put forward, if it has any force, rather seems to prove that this possibility, just as the exaltation to the intuitive vision of God, and the whole order of grace and supernatural sanctification, cannot be known and demonstrated by the light of reason alone (cf. Suarez 1. II. c. 7. n. 12.). Yet once the revelation of a supernatural elevation is supposed, the difficulty is easily solved.

First, in the proper sense and absolutely, supernatural is only that divine order which exceeds the connatural exigence and the powers of all natures (or substances) of the created order. For if supernatural were said only relatively, so that what is natural to a higher order of creatures is supernatural in relation to a lower order, then many things also in the present order which are theologically and simply natural could be called supernatural relatively to lower orders (e.g. rationality in relation to brute animals, etc.); and thus the very notion of a truly supernatural order would be thrown into confusion. But if the true theological notion of the supernatural order is retained, a created supernatural substance involves a contradiction in terms (see Suarez 1. II. c. 9. n. 14. 15.).

2°. A substance for which the intuitive vision of God would be commensurate would have to be in the order of divine being, and so would not be a creature, as we have proved. But it is not therefore evident that there is a contradiction; and from revelation it is known that there is no contradiction, in that a creature may be raised by God, through superadded qualities, above the exigence of created nature to participation in the divine order, and in particular to the participated mode of seeing God, which is natural to God alone and by that very fact supernatural to every creature. In relations which would be external favour of God, this would be easily understood; for example, since every creature is in a servile condition before God, adoption into the sonship of God cannot be natural to it, but is above the exigence of any created nature. But since divine adoption is constituted, not as among men by a mere external relation, but by an intrinsic transformation and by inherent gifts: these very gifts, as the formal cause of that supernatural dignity of being a son of God through adoption, are supernatural; and just as adoption, so also the gifts of adoption, and the consequent right of inheritance, and the inheritance itself corresponding to sonship, cannot by the power of created nature itself be owed to any creature. This does not mean that the gifts themselves are not something effected by God in the creature, and in this sense something belonging to the created order; but that they are the formal cause of such assimilation, participation and union with the uncreated, as is proportionate and owed to no created substance from its congenital principles; and in this sense the gifts belong to the divine order. Thus, for example, if we explain the matter from the highest grade of supernatural things, no created nature can from its intrinsic principles belong to it so as to be the proper nature of a divine Person; for this is intrinsic to the divine nature alone. Therefore when the Word made the human nature his own, this union is above the proportion and the due not only of human nature but of any nature; and in the same way the dignity, rights and gifts which follow from this union and are owed to the nature so united with the divine Person are supernatural. Nevertheless these are something effected by God in the created and united nature. In a similar way the supernatural reason is to be understood and explained in the union through grace, and through the ultimate perfection of grace in the beatific vision; although this union is not identical with that other, the hypostatic union, but only analogous. The difference of supernaturality in the created substance itself, where it is repugnant, and in superadded gifts, where it in fact obtains, Suarez explains thus: « An inferior substance cannot by itself participate what is proper to the superior; but to have the divine essence as the most proper and connatural visible object is proper to God, inasmuch as his substance is his intellect, and therefore it cannot belong to a created substance by the power of its natural virtue. But accidents are instituted (that is, this is the proper intrinsic reason of accidents) to perfect substances and to supply their defects, and therefore through superadded accidents an inferior substance can in some way participate what is proper to the superior. The more so, because in every thing the first foundation, and as it were the measure, of all its connatural properties is its own substance, and therefore a contradiction is involved in the very terms⁹, when one speaks of a supernatural substance. But accidents are added to a substance, and when they come from outside, it is not necessary that they be wholly commensurate with the imperfection of the thing in which they are received; they can be participations of a higher nature, and have their perfection from the object or from elsewhere: there is therefore no similar reason » Suarez 1. II. c. 9. n. 15. See Ysambert in 1. P. q. 12. disp. IV.