Tractatus de divina traditione et Scriptura

Some have attempted to prove that the whole of our knowledge, at least of the metaphysical, theological, and ethical order, is received from faith, or rests upon faith as its necessary ultimate foundation, from that opinion which establishes the absolute necessity of instruction and erudition in human society, in such a way that without this instruction man would perpetually and necessarily remain devoid of all ideas and knowledge of this kind, and thus be deprived of the use of reason¹. A fuller disputation concerning these opinions being remitted to psychology, where the origin of ideas is treated, it will suffice for our present scope to declare the function of instruction ordered to the knowledge of the true from internal reasons, which for brevity's sake we shall call scientia, and the distinction of this instruction from tradition, by which an object is proposed as to be believed on account of the authority of testimony, to which faith corresponds.

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1. Any instruction whatever, that is, any proposal of truth made from without, does not effect but supposes the subjective powers of understanding. But, the adversaries reply, instruction is necessary for unfolding the powers of human reason; for without instruction, as experience shows, man never arrives at the use of reason. Be it so; I now ask, what does it mean for man to have the use of reason? I think nothing else than that, with a sound harmony of the cognitive faculties supposed, his intellect is already informed with a sufficient amplitude of ideas and of truths (judgments in habit), which he can rightly use according to the inborn power of reason, and from which he can advance to the knowing of other truths. What is said, therefore, namely that instruction, whether connatural and common in human society or artificial and scientific, is necessary for unfolding the use of reason, cannot signify anything else than that instruction is necessary for acquiring a sufficient amplitude of ideas and of knowledge of the true (or judgments). Instruction must therefore be considered in relation to acquiring ideas or intellectual concepts, and in relation to forming judgments or knowing the relations of ideas and of the objects which are exhibited to the ideas.

a) Ideas cannot be formed except by the intellect itself, by its inborn power, from objects logically present to it, that is, knowably exhibited³. Instruction, therefore, for the forming of ideas, can contribute nothing else than to exhibit objects in a fitting manner to the cognitive faculties: first indeed those which fall under experience; then, once the intellectual concepts of those things have been formed by the inborn power of the intellect, and thereby relations already discerned and judgments and first principles formed by the intellect of its own accord, to represent knowably to the intellect, in fitting connection with things already known, other objects also, even those subject to no experience, that by its own power the intellect may conceive the ideas of them. In sum, the whole business of instruction in the conceiving of ideas is reduced solely to the fitting exhibition of objects. An idea, therefore, is not nor can be conceived from the authority of testimony, and hence not through actual faith; but the intellect, by its natural power or supernaturally elevated, forms the concept from the object represented to itself.

There are indeed objects which are exhibited to the intellect by divine revelation alone, and to whose apprehension it would never have attained without revelation; yet the simple apprehension, by which nothing is affirmed or denied, the intellect does not form from the authority of revelation; but while through revelation the object is exhibited in connection with other ideas and knowledge already possessed, it forms some analogous concept of the exhibited object itself. Thus we form some idea, for example, of the generation of the Son of God, of the procession of the Holy Spirit, of a person constituted by relation, of a human nature united to the Word according to hypostasis, etc. « Our intellect has a twofold operation: one by which it forms the simple quiddities of things, as what man is or what animal is; in which operation, indeed, the true and the false are not found of themselves, just as neither in incomplex words. The other operation of the intellect is that according to which it composes and divides by affirming and denying; and in this the true and the false are now found, as also in the complex word (in the proposition), which is its sign. Believing, however, is not found in the first operation, but in the second; for we believe true things and disbelieve false things » S. Th. de Verit. q. 14. a. 1. θ.

It is therefore altogether evident that external instruction and teaching, as regards the formation of ideas, cannot be of such a sort that ideas are conceived through faith or through assent on account of authority, since there is as yet no assent there; but that instruction pertains solely to the fitter exhibition of the object.

b) With respect to judgments, or the knowledge of truths properly so called, which we placed in the second place, instruction can be of two kinds; it can tend, namely, to ingenerate knowledge or to provoke faith. This second mode of proposal and instruction certainly has place in a great many objects of our knowledge, which we know only by faith, whether divine or human; but it neither is nor can be universal with respect to all knowledges, and namely with respect to those knowledges of truth which are necessarily presupposed to faith as its foundations and precede it, as has been sufficiently demonstrated above. But in the proposal and instruction directed to the knowledge of truths, everything holds that we have said of the function of instruction in relation to conceiving ideas. The whole business, namely, consists in the fitting exhibition of the true to the intellect, that by its own power it may discern the true from intrinsic reasons.

2. We can consider this instruction, both in relation to ideas and in relation to the knowledge of truths, more distinctly, as it is effected by things or by signs. Insofar as it is effected by things, it is nothing else than the representation of sensible objects and of natural signs (for the account of these is the same as of things) to the senses, that the inborn power of the intellect may form intellectual concepts and certain first judgments and principles; in which instruction, if yet it is to be called by this name, authority and faith have no part, no otherwise than when objects are exhibited of themselves with no one showing them.

Instruction properly so called then begins when it already uses arbitrary signs, among which words and the contexture of words (that is, speech) hold the first place. Concerning this properly so called instruction the following things are manifest.

a) It is repugnant that by instruction through arbitrary signs, of which kind words principally are, the first ideas and the first intellectual knowledges should be conceived. For unless the mind of the learner be already informed with many intellectual concepts and knowledges of truths, arbitrary signs (e.g., vocables) will not be signs to him formally, but things only, sound, I say. « When first those two syllables, when we say head, struck my ears, I knew not what they signified, any more than when I first heard or read saraballas (Dan. III. 27). But when head was often said, noting and observing when it was said, I found the word to be of the thing which was already most known to me by seeing. Before I had found this, this word was to me only a sound; but I learned that it was a sign when I found out of what thing it was the sign, which indeed, as I have said, I had learned not by signification but by aspect. And so the sign is learned rather by the thing known, than the thing itself by the sign given » s. Aug. de Magistro n. 33. Read the rest there.

b) When the mind already knows the nature of a sign, and what the words heard signify, and hence has already had many ideas beforehand, and is furnished with the understanding of many truths and principles, speech ordered to ingenerating knowledge can only exhibit to the learner, in connection with truths already known, through known signs, other truths in a fitting manner, that his intellect may discern these other truths from those already known and from intrinsic reasons. By instruction through words, therefore, which is directed to knowledge, nothing else is effected but the fitting exhibition of the true in connection with truths already known; but the light of the intellect, given, preserved, and aided by God (by natural or supernatural concurrence), discerns the truth from its innermost reason. By this instruction, therefore, neither the first ideas nor the first knowledges of the true can be acquired, but these are supposed to it as a foundation or necessary condition; nor does the knowledge to which instruction helps rest upon authority or have the character of faith.

St. Augustine discourses most subtly concerning this whole matter, l. c. nn. 38 ff., whose sense you have set forth by the Angelic Doctor. « In the acquisition of knowledge, the teacher leads another to the knowledge of things unknown in the manner of discovery, just as if someone leads himself to the knowledge of the unknown. But the process of reason arriving at the knowledge of the unknown in discovery is to apply common principles known of themselves to determinate matters, and thence to proceed to certain particular conclusions and from these to others. Hence also in this way one is said to teach another, in that he expounds to the other through signs that discursion of reason which he makes in himself by natural reason; and thus the natural reason of the disciple, through such things proposed to him as through certain instruments, arrives at the knowledge of things unknown... The knowledge of things is not effected in us through the knowledge of signs, but through the knowledge of certain things more certain, namely of principles, which are proposed and applied to us through certain signs, to other things which were before unknown to us simply, although known in a certain respect (in principles already known).... In the disciple intelligible forms are described, from which the knowledge received through teaching is constituted, immediately indeed by the agent intellect (of the disciple) but mediately by him who teaches. For the teacher proposes the signs of intelligible things, from which the agent intellect receives intelligible intentions and describes them in the possible intellect⁴; whence the very words of the teacher, heard or seen in writing, are related to causing knowledge in the intellect in this way, as are the things which are outside the soul... That something be known through certitude is from the light of reason divinely imparted within, in which God speaks in us, but not from man teaching outwardly, except insofar as he who teaches us resolves conclusions into principles; from which, however, we would not receive the certitude of knowledge, unless there were in us the certitude of the principles into which conclusions are resolved » s. Thomas de Verit. q. 11. a 1. Θ. et ad 2. 11. 13.

From all that has been said thus far we conclude as follows. It is one thing by far whether ideas and our first knowledges of truths, or indeed all certain knowledges at all, are received or can be received through faith, that is, on account of the authority of testimony; and it is another question whether and how far instruction, whether connatural in human society or artificial through discipline, is necessary for informing the intellect with a sufficient amplitude of ideas and of knowledge of truth in any order whatever. The former is evidently false, and would have to be denied even if the absolute necessity of instruction were affirmed. For this necessity would follow solely from the fact that the objects of knowledge could be exhibited knowably to the intellect in no other way than through instruction, as is clear from the declared function of instruction; but it would not have its origin thence, that truth is certainly knowable to us only from authority and through faith.

3. It remains for us to say, concerning this necessity of instruction for acquiring a sufficient amplitude of knowledge, what seems true to us. The necessity of instruction for acquiring a sufficient amplitude of ideas and principles, that the use of human reason may be judged sufficiently unfolded, does not arise from a defect of intellectual power for understanding the true in objects rightly proposed; for if it were so, all instruction would also be useless. But whatever be the necessity of positive doctrine and instruction, as regards truths rational and naturally knowable it is reduced to the necessity of a fitter manner in the proposal and exhibition of objects, that the intellect may arrive at the knowledge of truths more easily and promptly, and hence also more amply and distinctly.

The connatural state of man, for which he is made from his very nature, is certainly social, in communion and conjunction with other men. Since man, from the very condition of his composite nature as a rational animal, needs external supports for the unfolding, as of his other powers, so also of his intellectual powers, he has connatural supports for the congruous unfolding of the cognitive faculty in human society itself: that objects in the first place be proposed in sufficient amplitude and variety; that constant attention to objects be roused and fostered; that by fitting coupling of the same reason be led from some knowledge to others. But if there be supposed—an hypothesis which some wonderfully abuse—a man from infancy an outcast from human society, by that very supposition he is supposed destitute of the connatural supports for the fitter proposal of objects, for the rousing of attention, for the fitting comparison of ideas and judgments with each other. A great many objects, from which the formation of ideas and of principles, especially moral, is easier and prompter, will never be proposed to him; from those objects which of themselves thrust themselves upon him, he will abstract ideas and form judgments hardly other than those which arise spontaneously by the inborn power of the intellect; for consideration and any more constant attention cannot, in the present condition of nature where the lower appetites draw and distract far more vehemently, be expected in a man thus, as is supposed, destitute of external supports, unless God supply by special internal aids what is lacking in external subsidies.

For a more distinct declaration we can consider in man the subjective faculties of intellect and will, then the external proposal of objects to the intellect and the excitation of the will, and lastly the internal aids of God. The physical faculties, both of intellect and of will, belong to man from his very nature, yet so that for the intellect a fitting proposal of objects is necessary, that then a sufficiently constant attention and consideration be fixed and held by the will; but the will by moral necessity needs excitation and supports, even external ones. Now in that abnormal state the proposal of objects for the intellect does not indeed wholly fail, but it is exceedingly meagre; the external excitation and subsidies for the will, which in society are very many, are there almost wholly lacking. The intellect will therefore form intellectual concepts and first rational judgments only insofar as they arise spontaneously and necessarily from the proposal of objects, however meagre. The amplitude of these ideas and judgments cannot be defined by any certain norm. Without doubt there belong thither the universal ideas of sensible things; the consciousness of self and of one's acts, and the judgments spontaneously arising from these. That to cognitions of this spontaneous kind there must also be referred an obscure and confused notion of some superior being on whom all things depend, and thence likewise a confused knowledge of moral good and evil, is both philosophically persuaded from the nature of human reason as the image of God and from its natural destination, and theologically deduced from the manner in which the holy Fathers, with the Scriptures leading, constantly describe the first confused notion of God as inborn and congenital to rational nature, spontaneous, needing no instruction (ἐμφύτον, αὐτόματον, ἀδίδακτον χρῆμα). See Tract. de Deo, th. VI–VII. Once the mind is informed with first ideas and judgments, man could (by physical possibility), by fixing attention upon objects with free and deliberate will and by reflecting upon himself and his knowledge already acquired, arrive at some further progress and refinement of knowledge; yet from the very confusion and obscurity of his knowledge, from the less accommodated manner in which the objects to be considered present themselves, from the defect of all external excitation for the will, from the vigor of sensual desires, so great difficulties arise that there originates a moral impotence of arriving, in a condition so abnormal and destitute of connatural external supports, at any sufficient degree of clarity and distinctness of ideas and knowledge.

But in this consideration abstraction has been made from the special internal aids of God. These internal aids are to be considered insofar as they would rouse and direct man, that he might morally be able to apply sufficient attention for acquiring a clearer knowledge of God and of moral actions, that then he might morally be able to apply diligence in observing the natural law according to the knowledge already acquired; which if he should perform, God would promote him with more abundant aids, and in the present order of supernatural elevation would either provide him the external doctrine of revelation, or supply the external grace by extraordinary internal illumination. So indeed teach St. Thomas and other theologians. For they do not regard men of this kind, in relation to divine providence, as infants destitute of the use of reason, concerning whom, dying before baptism, how one must judge is explained in the Treatise on the salvific will of God (Tract. de Deo, th. LIII); but they consider them as sufficiently in possession of reason for meriting and demeriting, and hence as capable of and in need of actual grace. To the objection that, if explicit faith is necessary for salvation, consequently a man « brought up in the woods » would lack things necessary for salvation, St. Thomas responds in this sense: « It does not follow as unfitting, it being posited that each is bound to believe something explicitly, if he be brought up in the woods or among brute animals; for this pertains to divine providence, that to each it provide what is necessary for salvation, provided on his part there be no impediment. For if someone thus brought up were to follow the guidance of natural reason in the appetite for good and the flight from evil, it is most certainly to be held that to him God would either reveal by internal inspiration the things necessary to be believed, or direct to him some preacher of the faith » S. Th. de Verit. q. 14. a. 11. ad 1; 3. dist. 25. q. 2. a. 1. sol. ad 2. In the same way speaks Hugh of St. Cher in the Scholia on Rom. II. 12: « Should there be someone brought up in a grove by some beast, and have been there long afterwards; such a one knows nothing of Christ, such a one seems to be excused... I respond, in such cases the judgments of God are a great abyss; yet that not even such a one is excused, because he had natural reason, which if he had acted according to it, doing what was in himself, the Lord would have conferred grace. »

For the rest, concerning this whole hypothesis of an abnormal state outside the society connatural to man, we hold the following. a) Such a condition is ineptly assumed as a term of comparison for judging the natural powers of human reason; no otherwise than if someone were to contend that the vegetative and animal power is to be learned, from the consideration of a man from infancy bound with the tightest bonds over his whole body. b) The unfolding of reason in men of this kind will be various according to diverse native character and diverse external conditions in which they live. But whatever that unfolding be, this one thing we can learn, which from elsewhere is most certain: that man needs a fitting proposal of knowable objects, and that according to the diverse degree of a more or less fitting proposal there are also diverse degrees of the unfolding of reason, of the acquisition of ideas and knowledge. If the objects proposed to the intellect were fewest and altogether uniform—as happened some fifty years ago to that poor young man Gaspar Hauser in Germany, shut up from infancy in a darksome prison—and if thence man in fact remained devoid of all ideas of the superior order, that would not prove the absolute necessity of instruction in human society for acquiring them, but would only demonstrate that some sufficiently ample proposal of objects is required. c) Ineptly is appeal made to experience, by which it would be proved that no ideas of the metaphysical, theological, ethical order can be acquired apart from instruction in human society. For the examples as terms of comparison are very few; but even if in them the supposed fact of the defect of all ideas of this kind were conceded, it would not yet be proved that they could not or could have been acquired, since besides the privation of instruction there are many things which could have impeded the acquisition. But the proof itself of the fact cannot be had from experience alone; for it is established that the memory of obscure and confused ideas and knowledge is obliterated by supervening clear and distinct ideas; the later testimony, therefore, of those men declaring that they were destitute of all ideas of this kind, is worth no more than our forgetfulness, in that we do not recall our obscure ideas and knowledge from earliest childhood.