La evolución homogénea del dogma católico

103. A DIFFICULTY.—If, as we have just seen, the physical-connective virtual is not a true theological virtual, it follows already clearly that theological reasoning must be connective-metaphysical; it must proceed by an intrinsic and not an extrinsic way; it must be "from one to another according to reason, which is not another in reality"; it must be, in a word, purely conceptual reasoning or reasoning about distinct aspects within the same objectivity of the starting point.

But this seems not always to hold, or to present a great difficulty. Indeed, theology, like metaphysics, does not argue solely by formal causes, as mathematics or logic do, but also by efficient and final causes. Thus, for example, the existence of God and the creation of the world are true metaphysical and theological conclusions, and yet they do not seem to be deduced by the formal route, but by the efficient and final route. Now then: everyone knows that, while the formal cause is intrinsic, the efficient and final causes are extrinsic causes and really distinct from the effect from which our reason deduces them. Therefore, a conclusion can be a true theological conclusion and be really distinct from the revealed deposit and extrinsic to it. Many argue thus because they have not formed a clear idea of the true metaphysical process nor, therefore, of the true theological process ¹.

104. THEOLOGY USES ALL KINDS OF ARGUMENTS.—Let us begin by establishing that Sacred Theology is a true wisdom, and the supreme among human wisdoms; that it is the principal among all sciences; that it extends to the subject matters of all other sciences; that, for this very reason, it can use every kind of procedure.

Therefore, he can argue by every kind of argument: by probable arguments and by certain ones; among the certain ones, by arguments from cause or through cause, and from effect or through effect; among the arguments through cause, both by the formal cause and by the efficient, exemplary, and final cause²

But although metaphysics and theology use all kinds of arguments, not all their arguments are of equal value, nor are all of them rigorously metaphysical or theological.

Indeed, even setting aside probable arguments for not being rigorously scientific, there still remain among certain arguments three essentially distinct kinds of certainty: moral certainty, physical certainty, and metaphysical certainty. Therefore, only those arguments that possess metaphysical certainty will be rigorously metaphysical arguments. And since theology is nothing other than metaphysics applied to God, only those arguments will be rigorously theological in which there is a metaphysical or absolutely certain connection between their conclusion and their premises.

105. SACRED THEOLOGY IS THE METAPHYSICS OF THE REVEALED DEPOSIT.—All theology, as St. Thomas says, has God as its formal object, and can consider nothing else except in relation to God.

As there are two kinds of knowledge about God—natural knowledge, or knowledge through creatures, and supernatural knowledge, or knowledge through divine revelation—there are two kinds of metaphysics or theology. The first is called natural metaphysics, or natural theology, or theodicy. The second receives the name sacred metaphysics or sacred theology³

As neither in the natural order nor in the supernatural order do we have in this life knowledge of God in Himself, but only through His effects, both natural theology and sacred theology take as a means of demonstration not God Himself, but some effect of God. Natural theology takes as its means the natural effects of God that we call creatures. Sacred theology takes as its means that supernatural effect of God that we call divine revelation or revealed deposit. Applying metaphysical principles to creatures, the conclusions that we call natural theology or theodicy result. Applying the same metaphysical principles to the revealed deposit, the conclusions that we call sacred theology result. Only metaphysical principles, being the only analogous and transcendent ones, are applicable to the divine as to the human, to the supernatural or revealed as to the natural. Only metaphysical principles, because they are founded on the principle of contradiction, and therefore on that of identity, are capable of deducing conclusions that are really identical and homogeneous with their principles.

Since, then, theology is a true metaphysics, we shall endeavor to show, with all the clarity that may be possible for us, how every rigorous theological conclusion comes from the revealed deposit by an intrinsic route, not an extrinsic one; by an implicit or inclusive or analytical route, not by a purely connective or synthetic or additive route; by way of objective identity in the revealed deposit; by way of perfect homogeneity. And this, whether the process be by way of effect or by way of cause, whether by formal cause, efficient or final, provided that it be by a truly metaphysical process.

106. THE TRUE METAPHYSICAL-THEOLOGICAL "PROCESS".—Indeed: what is metaphysical certainty? The absolute certainty, or certainty "in every event," is called and is metaphysical certainty; that which can never fail; that whose negation would destroy the very principle of contradiction and, therefore, that of identity; in a word, that which is founded on the very essence of the thing, and which for that reason is of the intellect of the thing.

What, therefore, is a metaphysical proposition? That which has metaphysical certainty, that which has the very certainty of the principles of contradiction and identity, that whose predicate is of the essence of the subject, or vice versa⁴.

What is metaphysical reasoning? Just as the relation between the conclusion and principle in reasoning is the same as that between the predicate and subject in the proposition, that is metaphysical reasoning which has metaphysical certainty, whose conclusion cannot fail without the principle failing, whose conclusion, in a word, is of the essence of the principle.

Let us give, for greater clarity, some examples of metaphysical reasonings by the formal cause, and then of reasonings by the efficient and final causes.

When I say: The angles of a triangle are equivalent to two right angles or the spiritual is immortal, these are propositions of metaphysical, absolute, essential certainty; they are propositions of intrinsic truth, of absolute inclusion and identity. In them the predicate is of the essence of the subject. Predicate and subject are other in reason, but not other, rather one in reality.

When reasoning I say: It is a triangle; therefore its angles sum to two right angles, or it is spiritual, therefore it is immortal, these are reasonings or processes of metaphysical, absolute, essential certainty; they are inclusive processes and of perfect identity and homogeneity. And why? Because the conclusion is of the essence of the principle from which they are deduced; the conclusion and the principle are other and other according to reason; but not other according to the thing.

And the root of all this is that the value, structure, and nature of argumentation depend on the middle term or minor proposition ⁵.

This, which is most fundamental, is frequently forgotten, focusing only on what the external structure of the process is, whether by cause or by effect, when one should look at what the middle term or minor premise is, for everything depends on that. If that minor premise is of metaphysical certainty, the process and the conclusion are of metaphysical, intrinsic, identical, essential value. And what are the minor premises or middle terms in those two reasonings? They are the following: The angles of a triangle equal two right angles and the spiritual is immortal: precisely the same propositions that we set up as a metaphysical, intrinsic, essential model of one into another according to reason.

Let us now examine the metaphysical and theological process by efficient, final, and exemplary causes, which, because they are called extrinsic causes, have given rise to a difficulty set forth above. Let us take as our model the same two previously cited examples concerning the conclusions of the existence of God and the creation of the world.

The process or ways by which St. Thomas and First Philosophy prove the existence of God are: FROM THE REASON OF motion, FROM THE REASON OF efficient cause, FROM THE REASON OF contingent being, etc., etc.

Let us begin by focusing on that 'FROM REASON', for it is the key to everything, and without it the argument would not be metaphysical. Metaphysics also uses, like physics, the argument from the efficient cause of the effect, from motion, from contingency, and thus takes on the appearance of the extrinsicness of physics; but it uses only the reason or essence of causality, and of the effect, and of movement, and of contingency; and since nothing is more intrinsic than essence, the apparently extrinsic process turns out to be as intrinsic as that of mathematics itself.

When, in metaphysics or theology, to prove the existence of God, it is said: Mutable, or potential, or multiple, or contingent being exists; therefore God exists, that reasoning, apparently extrinsic and purely connective, is essentially intrinsic or inclusive; that process, apparently from one [thing] to another according to reality, is really from one to another according to reason. God is, certainly, another thing than mutable being; but the truth and, therefore, the being of the conclusion are essential to the truth and, therefore, to the being of the principle; the major or principle does not express, but includes, the truth and being of the conclusion.

When, from the datum of the major premise (there exists mutable being), the intellect passes to the truth and being of the conclusion (God exists), the step has not been toward something extrinsic, but rather a mere intellectual development of the twofold reality already essentially included in the same and single datum. This datum of the major premise contains two realities: one that expresses mutable being; another that essentially implies necessary being. To perceive the second reality, the intellect does not need to add in the minor premise another new reality, another new datum, but simply to analyze or decompose the reality or truth that already exists in the major premise, by means of a minor premise that is of the essence of the major premise (notion of motion, notion of contingency, etc.); a minor premise that is essentially inclusive, that is the same essence or reality as the major premise; and if our intellect were sufficiently powerful and intuitive, that minor premise would be superfluous. In the major premise itself we would see infallibly and quasi-simultaneously (and one does not truly see what is not there) the truth and reality that we express in the conclusion. The step, then, is not precisely from the reality of potential being to the reality of God’s existence, but rather the step from the reality of potential being plus the reality of God’s existence, essentially implicit in the word potential, to the reality of God’s existence, made explicit in the conclusion. The end of the process is the reality of God’s existence made explicit; at the beginning of the process that reality was already essentially implied; the process is, then, one of mere intellectual explication; it is, really, “from one to another according to reason.”

And this happens always in every truly mathematical or metaphysical process; this never happens in any physical-connective process or, as St. Thomas calls it, proper to natural or physical science⁶

CONFIRMATION.—It is beyond doubt that, while mathematics and logic admit demonstrations only “through the formal cause,” metaphysics and theology can demonstrate, as the physical sciences also demonstrate, “through the efficient and final cause.” “The logician and the mathematician consider things only according to formal principles”⁷. “But the things which the theologian considers are separate, existing in the nature of things. Such things can be the principle and end of motion; hence nothing prevents him from demonstrating through the efficient and final cause”⁸.

But since the metaphysical and theological sciences are essentially distinct from the physical sciences, the metaphysical process “by efficient and final cause” of metaphysics and theology must be essentially distinct from the way physics employs it. “For each science takes one part of being according to a special mode, different from the mode in which being is considered in Metaphysics”⁹. This mode in which metaphysics considers every being, and therefore the final, efficient, and exemplar cause, is to consider them not as such causes or effects, but from an essential or transcendental point of view. “*Metaphysics also considers individual beings not according to the proper reasons by which they are such or such a being, but according as it participates in the common reason of being¹⁰.

The relation, then, of efficient cause and effect by which one ascends from creatures to the existence of God is not a physical-connective relation or one belonging to natural science, but an essential-inclusive one or one belonging to the metaphysical sciences. Therefore this relation is one and the same in every creature. "For all creatures are referred to God under one kind of relation, as being His creatures"¹¹. "This mutability which belongs to every creature is not according to some natural motion, but according to dependence on God, from whom if they were abandoned they would fall away from the one by whom they are. Moreover, this dependence pertains to the consideration of metaphysics, rather than of natural science"¹².

The process, therefore, by which one passes from the contingency of being to the existence of God or to the necessity of creation is a process by way of essence, and therefore by the most formal way. The conclusion God exists or is the creator of all is essential to the principle There exists contingent or participated being. "Therefore the efficient cause is required not only because the effect is contingent, but because the effect would not exist (principle) if the cause did not exist (conclusion)"¹³. "Creatures are contained under the divine order and their nature is to depend on God"¹⁴. That essential relation between God and the creature, although not expressed in the definition of contingent being, is enveloped or implicit in the very essence of every contingent being. "Although the relation to a cause does not enter into the definition of the being that is caused, it follows from those things that are of its very essence"¹⁵.

While the physical-actual properties on which the physical-connective process is founded are intrinsic to the subject, but extrinsic to the subject’s existence, since it can exist absolutely without them, the existence of God or any other thing deduced by a metaphysical procedure is intrinsic, intimate, most immediate not only to the subject, but to the existence of the subject or principle from which it is deduced, because it is so to being, insofar as being, which is the most intimate and most formal thing that exists. “Since God is being itself by essence, it is necessary that created being be his proper effect, just as igniting is the proper effect of fire. Being, however, is that which is most intimate to each thing and which most deeply inheres in all things, since it is formal with respect to all things that are in it; hence it is necessary that God is in all things and intimately"¹⁶. "From all of which it is clearly gathered that God is intimate to each one, just as the proper being of a thing is inmost to the thing itself"¹⁷

When, then, from the datum or principle Contingent being exists one passes by that process to the conclusion God exists, one has not passed to a reality that lies outside the datum or principle, but to a reality that was already, albeit not made explicit, within the datum itself. It is, therefore, a real and essentially intrinsic process. It is a process that remains within the same reality of the datum. And this is what we wish to express when dealing with inclusion and homogeneity by the phrase "one into another according to reason"; not that the reality of the divine existence is distinct from the reality of contingent being, but that the reality of the divine existence is essentially required for (and is essentially included in) the reality or existence of contingent being.

"Hence, in short, the metaphysical conclusion or science is essentially intrinsic; according to St. Thomas, there is no room for faith and metaphysically certain science with respect to one and the same truth in the same subject, even though that truth is known through the process of cause and effect, as are the truths of God’s existence and of creation. And it is well known that, according to St. Thomas, only knowledge by intrinsic evidence is incompatible with faith. “The reason—says Gonet profoundly—why there is no room for faith regarding the existence of God in the one who knows it through that apparently extrinsic process of cause and effect is that the creature and God are essentially or intrinsically united, and therefore the process and the evidence are truly intrinsic. “The reason for the disparity is that, since every effect is not indeed formally but virtually in its cause, any creature can be said, with respect to all that it has, to be virtually in the intrinsic God"¹⁸. “Although the first cause, which is God, does not enter into the essence of created things, nevertheless the being that inheres in created things cannot be understood except as derived from the divine being" (St. Thomas, On Power, q. 3, a. 5, reply to the first objection). If the existence of God were not “of the concept” of the creature’s existence, the demonstration of the existence of God would be neither metaphysical nor theological¹⁹

107. TWO WAYS OF ARGUING FROM CAUSE TO EFFECT.—Replying, then, categorically to the proposed difficulty, we say that both physics and metaphysics or theology argue from cause (efficient, final, or exemplary) and from effect; but they argue by an essentially different process, because there are two essentially different ways of considering every cause and every effect. In every being there are two really distinct things: 1st The essence, in which are included the metaphysical properties and the essential or transcendent relations or connections. 2nd The physical properties and the accidental or contingent relations, which are really distinct from the essence. Hence there arise two ways of arguing, from cause or from effect: 1st Taking as the middle term the essence of the cause or of the effect, or, what is the same thing, the metaphysical properties or essential relations of the cause or of the effect. 2nd Taking as the middle term the physical properties or accidental relations of the cause or of the effect. Both are processes from cause or from effect. But in the first process there is taken from the cause or the effect, called extrinsic, what they have that is essentially intrinsic: the essence. In the second process not only are the effect and the cause employed, but they are employed precisely in that in which they are extrinsic: the physical-contingent properties or relations. The first process is metaphysical, and physics can never employ it; the second is proper to physics, and through it one can never arrive at the certainty proper to metaphysics or theology: absolute certainty.

Let us give simple examples of both kinds of processes: physical process through cause or through effect, and metaphysical or theological process through cause or through effect.

Physical process from cause. The physical effect of fire is to burn; the physical cause of the burn is fire. If, then, I argue: There is fire with all the physical conditions required for burning, therefore there is a burn or effect of burning; that argument is truly from cause, but not metaphysical, rather physical; not of absolute certainty, but contingent and fallible; and it really failed in the Babylonian furnace and can

"intrinsic, at least on the part of the relation that all creatures bear to the first cause" (John of St. Thomas, Philosophical Course, Logic, 2nd part, q. 25, a. 2, ed. Vivès, vol. 1, p. 688).

Thirdly, I say that there is a twofold consequence: one essential and intrinsic, another accidental and extrinsic. When the holy Doctor says that from the fact that something is a being by participation it follows that it is caused, he is speaking of the essential and intrinsic consequence, just as being an animal follows from being a man, because it is of the very nature of a being by participation to be caused (PAUL NAZARIUS, O.P., Disputations and Scholastic Commentaries on the Summa of St. Thomas Aquinas, vol. 1, q. 44; a. 1, at the end (Cologne, 1621).

"There are relations, not accidental but essential, which are implicit in a given essence. And the concept that expresses this essence expresses at the same time the relations it contains" (GARRIGOU-LAGRANGE, God, p. 542).

to fail whenever it pleases God. And what can fail is not metaphysical or theological.

And why is it not metaphysical, but physical; why is it not necessary, but fallible? Because I have taken as the middle or minor a thing that is not essential, that is not intrinsic to the essence: burning is not of the essence of fire; it is not of the definition or of the concept of fire.

But if, instead of arguing in that way, we had argued thus: There is fire, therefore there is aptitude or exigency to burn; then the argument was rigorously metaphysical and with no possibility whatsoever of failing. That aptitude or exigency the fire conserved in the Babylonian furnace²⁰ and will preserve it always and by absolute necessity, because it is of the essence of fire, it is an essential relation of cause to effect.

Let us now see examples of demonstration, physical and metaphysical, from effect.

Physical demonstration. Select whichever effect one wishes and argue thus: Effect N. exists, therefore its immediate cause exists, whether physical or secondary. For example: N. has been cured of such a disease, therefore the physical causes or conditions of his cure have existed; N. has been nourished with the Eucharist, therefore in the Eucharist there exists nutritive substance, etc., etc.

All these arguments in which one argues from the existence of an effect to its second physical cause are physical, not metaphysical; connective, not inclusive; contingent and fallible, not necessary and infallible. And they can fail by divine intervention whenever it pleases God, for the simple reason that the relation of the second cause to its effect, or of the effect to its second or physical cause, is accidental, not essential. God can Himself supply every action or effect of second efficient causes, just as He supplies it in every miracle, causing the so-called demonstration or physical process to fail, which is never a rigorous demonstration, since it is not a demonstration by essence or by the what it is of the cause or of the effect.

And let it be borne in mind that those demonstrations and every physical demonstration are not fallible and contingent because God makes them fail, but rather God can make them fail because they are fallible and contingent, because they are purely connective and not inclusive, because they are physical and not metaphysical (92).

On the other hand, when to demonstrate the existence of God I say: There exists potential or changeable being, therefore God exists; when to prove the creation of every being outside of God I say: God is being by essence, therefore every other being must proceed from Him; or every being outside of God is potential being or being composed of essence and existence, therefore it is caused being; the uncaused being is essentially one, therefore every multiple being proceeds from the uncaused being; all these reasonings, although through cause or through effect they are through the essence of the cause or of the effect, are metaphysical, not physical, arguments; they are absolutely necessary, not fallible, because essences are necessary and immutable, and God Himself can never make the nature of an essence or of an essential relation fail.

And as the relations of creatures to God as to their first efficient and exemplar cause or as to their ultimate end are essential relations, the metaphysical argument from efficient, exemplar, or final cause or from effect between God and the creature is a process not extrinsic, but intrinsic; not purely connective, but inclusive; not contingent, but essential.

And since nothing is more formal than essence, the argument between God and the creature made by way of efficient, final, or exemplary cause, and every argument from the notion of cause, end, exemplar, effect, etc., is always and in reality, despite all extrinsic appearances, a process by the formal way²¹

108. Two SOURCES OF ILLUSION.—The illusion or appearance of extrinsicality in this class of metaphysical or theological arguments from efficient cause or from effect arises from two points:

1st. From the fact that, the causes being divided into material and formal, efficient, final, and exemplary, and the first two being called intrinsic and the other three extrinsic, one is left under the impression that whenever one argues by efficient cause, final or exemplary, the process is extrinsic and not intrinsic. Without dwelling on the fact that these three causes, like the effect, can be taken to argue in an intrinsic sense (the essence and essential properties or relations of cause and effect), as metaphysics or theology takes them, or only in a connective-extrinsic sense (physical-actual properties or relations), as physics takes them.

2nd. From the fact that, it being commonly said that the procedure for being intrinsic or inclusive or of one into another according to reason must be by the formal way, it is forgotten that formal in a being is not only its form or formal cause, but everything essential to that being, everything that is of reason or of the intellect of the being; everything without which the thing cannot be understood, which is precisely one of the definitions of essence.

When I say: A is part of B, therefore it is less than B; when I say: A is the son of B, therefore B is the father of A; when I say: A has prime matter or prime matter exists, therefore A has substantial form or substantial form exists; all these arguments or processes are not truly extrinsic, but intrinsic; they are not purely connective, but truly inclusive; they are not from one into another according to reality, but from one into another according to reason. Not because the whole is identified with the part, nor the father with the son, nor the form with matter, but because the part, the father, and the form are essentially included, though not expressed, in the whole, in the son, in prime matter; because the one is of the essence or of the concept of the other.

Thus also when I say: Contingent being exists, therefore God exists, or it is contingent being, therefore it is created being, the procedure is truly intrinsic, inclusive, from one to another according to reason. Not that God, we repeat, is the same reality as contingent being, nor that the reality of the Creator is the same as that of the creature, but that the existence of God is essential to the existence of contingent being; the existence of the Creator is essential to the existence of created or potential being: the one is of the definition or of the concept of the other; the one is included in the other²². There is no further difference except that in the reasonings of whole and part, of father and son, the implicitness is simple and shallow (implicit formal), which requires only a mere explanation of terms, and therefore the reasoning is improper and the knowledge is immediate or of simple intelligence, whereas in the examples of contingent being and God, of matter and form, of spirituality and immortality, and of immutability and eternity, the implicitness is for human reason hidden and profound (virtual implicit or inclusive), which requires the combination of new concepts, and the reasoning is most proper, and the knowledge is mediate or scientific. But the new or minor concepts that human reason combines to discover those mediate or scientific conclusions are not new realities, but the very definition or essence of what is contained in the datum or principle; the definition or essence of the contingent and the necessary, of prime matter and form, of cause and effect, of spirituality and immortality, of immutability and eternity. The process is, then, by way of essence, by the formal way, by the inclusive way, by the way of perfect homogeneity.

109. COROLLARIES.—From what we have been saying, these five corollaries are deduced:

1.° Sacred theology proceeds, besides and above the process, always by formal cause. And therefore metaphysics cannot argue by secondary efficient or final causes, because its process would be physical-fallible, but by formal causes, or by primary efficient and final causes; and since, when it argues by these primary causes, its process turns out to be as essential and formal and intrinsic as that of the formal causes, therefore it is usually said more briefly that metaphysics argues only by intrinsic causes. “A metaphysical demonstration does not proceed except from internal causes” (PESCH, Philosophia Lacensis, bk. 4, n. 1.082).

In short, because the minor premises of every true metaphysical process must be intrinsic or of the essence of the major premises from which they proceed, Saint Thomas says that the conclusions of metaphysics or theology are proximate to the principles themselves. And since the principles of Christian theology are the truths of faith, its true and rigorous conclusions have always been held in the true Thomist school not only as definable as truths of faith, but even as already proximate to faith. “Whence it is clear that the consideration of metaphysics or theology is supremely intellectual. And hence it is also that it bestows principles upon all other sciences insofar as intellectual consideration is the principle of rational [consideration]... To proceed intellectually is not attributed to divine science as though it did not reason by proceeding from principles to conclusions, but because its reasoning is most proximate to intellectual consideration, and its conclusions are [most proximate] to its principles” (St. Thomas, On Boethius, q. 6, a. 1). “It seems to us that the first and principal grade of an erroneous proposition, according to the common manner of speaking of theologians, is when one says the contrary of a manifest theological conclusion which is gathered from faith by an evident consequence, and which nevertheless is not yet defined by the Church... Where it must be observed that this grade is so proximate to heresy that sometimes it can even be called heresy” (Báñez, 2-2, q. 11, a. 2).

The more carefully we study St. Thomas and his great commentators, the more stupefied we remain by the poor idea that that ill-fated virtual or extrinsic or non-inclusive process, in which, since Suárez, the essence of theological science properly so-called has been made to consist, has caused to be formed concerning true theology, the true theological conclusion, and the true theological process.

Physical-connective process, or from one thing into another according to reality, proper to physics; another intrinsic, inclusive process, strictly metaphysical and theological, which is a formal process, or from one thing into another according to reason, proper and exclusive to the mathematical-metaphysical sciences or to those of abstraction, superior in dignity and certainty to physics. This is the firm foundation on which objective homogeneity rests, without theology needing to have only that process or to deduce all its conclusions through that process. But for good measure.

2nd. Every rigorously metaphysical-theological conclusion is always deduced by a process of essence or of essential relations implicit in the same essence, whether the process be by effect or by cause, whether by the material and formal causes, or by the efficient, exemplar, or final causes.

3.º Every conclusion, then, that is rigorously metaphysical-theological arises through an intrinsic and inclusive process, through a process of objective identity.

4th. Every rigorously metaphysico-theological conclusion is homogeneous with the revealed deposit, because it is objectively implicit in it.

5.º The whole of theology, then, properly and strictly so called, and theological conclusions properly and strictly so called, far from being something extrinsic to the revealed deposit, as they are in the modern conception since Suárez, are, on the contrary, according to St. Thomas's conception, something intrinsic to the revealed deposit, of the very essence or of the intellect of revealed being, just as natural theology or metaphysics is of the essence or of the intellect of natural being (40).