La evolución homogénea del dogma católico

117. In the preceding sections we believe we have made clear that in modern theology there reigned a great confusion about the understanding and nature of the immediate or formal revealed and of the mediate or virtual revealed, constitutive and specifically distinctive elements of faith and theology; that this confusion dates from a false notion of the virtual revealed, introduced by Suárez to mitigate an extreme theory of Molina; that with this Suarezian understanding of the virtual revealed, current today in most manuals, true theology and the true theological conclusion were confused with faith, Suárez’s doctrine thus entering into the Scotist currents of Vázquez and Vega; while what is left as theology and theological conclusion properly so called is a nominal theology, without any possible homogeneity with the revealed datum, with no greater certainty or abstraction than those of the physical-contingent order.

We believe that we have also made it clear that all that doctrine is not the doctrine of traditional theology, nor, above all, the doctrine of St. Thomas; that for St. Thomas the inclusive virtual—a virtual possessing the same reality and objectivity as the formally revealed—is the specific constitutive and distinguishing element of theology and of the theological conclusion; that theology and the theological conclusion are a conceptually distinct but objectively identical and homogeneous development with the immediately revealed truth; that between the theological conclusion and the revealed datum, or between true theology and faith, there exists a perfect objective-material identity, a complete real continuity, although with a distinct conceptual virtuality and a distinct formal motive; that true theology and rigorous theological conclusion are material found not outside the revealed deposit, through connection with what is within the deposit, but rather material found in the revealed principles, within the revealed deposit, through an identical intellectual analysis which human reason makes of the divine principles or statements contained in the deposit, using for this purpose not the physical connection that exists between what is within and what is without, but the transcendent notions of the human intellect, which are proportionally but really applicable to what is within as to what is without, to the human as to the divine, to the natural as to the supernatural, to the revealed as to the unrevealed. If this conception of ours of theology, which we believe to be the conception of St. Thomas, is legitimate, there result two conceptions of theology that are supremely distinct and even opposed.

To form an idea of this, one need only reflect that, since God has revealed not all truth, but a certain number or field of truths, there must be a limit distinguishing the extent of the revealed field from that which is not revealed; there must be two fields: one of revealed truth; the other of unrevealed truth; one of divine truth; the other of human truth.

Let it now be recalled that all the truths that make up Catholic doctrine are divided into four groups or departments: 1st, revealed datum, or the set of divine assertions recorded by the Apostles or inspired writers in the two sources of Scripture and Tradition; 2nd, dogmas, or the set of dogmatic assertions defined as of divine faith by the Church; 3rd, infallible truths, or the set of assertions defined as infallible by the Church, but not yet as of divine faith; 4th, theological conclusions, or the set of assertions demonstratively deduced from the principles of faith by theology (3).

All these four departments, that whole set of affirmations, must be either really revealed or really not revealed. All of them must be either really within the revealed field or really outside the revealed field. We deliberately avoid for this time the use of mediate and immediate, formal and virtual, whose poor or varied understanding could give rise to confusion, and we employ the word really; for between being really revealed and really not revealed, between being really in the revealed field and really in the non-revealed field, there is no middle ground.

Now let the reader ask himself in what field each of those four degrees of Catholic doctrine lies, and to what field one must go to find them; and he will plainly see two very different conceptions of theology, two very different theories about theological truth. Both conceptions or theories agree that the revealed datum and dogma fall within the revealed field; they also agree that, in order to seek infallible truth and theological truth, wherever they may be found, one must start from that revealed field. But for Suárez, theological truth is found in the non-revealed field, and one must go there to seek it. For St. Thomas, theological truth is found within the revealed field, and one must remain in it to find it.

For Suárez, theology, starting from the revealed field (the major premises of faith), uses as its procedure the physical connection (the minor of the virtual connective), by which it passes from the revealed field to the non-revealed, and in this non-revealed field it gathers its fruits (conclusions). For Saint Thomas, theology uses as its procedure the implicit virtual, or the bond of metaphysical-inclusive connection, which runs through the interior of the revealed field; and in the revealed field it gathers its fruits.

For Suárez, the theologian is properly a laborer who, placed in the revealed field, looks through the telescope at the objects that are in the other field, in the unrevealed field. For St. Thomas, the theologian's proper function is to apply the microscope or the scalpel to the very objects of the revealed field and to discover what lies within them.

For Suárez, the true theological minor premise is a path that, setting out from the revealed field, exits and runs through the exterior, and whatever the traveler finds along that path is a human, profane object, not divine, not revealed; although it is true that he would not have stumbled upon that object had he not set out from the revealed. For Saint Thomas, the theological minor premise is a path that runs through the interior and the depths of the revealed, never going outside, and therefore, whatever objects are gathered are objectively divine and revealed, though grasped by human reason, which can always mistake the path and slip outside without noticing, and which can always tarnish or distort, even unintentionally, the object gathered.

For Suárez, in a word, the true theological conclusion expresses an objective reality really distinct from the revealed deposit; it is not implicitly revealed; it is not definable matter of faith, except by a new revelation. For Saint Thomas, the true theological conclusion, theological truth, is really or objectively identical with the revealed deposit; it is implicitly revealed; it is definable matter of faith, without need of a new revelation.

This parallel that we have just made between the two divergent conceptions of Suárez and St. Thomas is most exact. The parallel concerns theology properly so-called, that is, theology as a rigorous science “which does not argue to prove its principles, which are the articles of faith, but from them it proceeds to show something else—(the conclusions)”. In that parallel, then, it is not a question of the other sapiential function of defense and explanation that theology exercises with respect to its own principles. “Hence sacred doctrine, since it has no superior, disputes against one who denies its principles”¹.

We note this so that no one may be moved to say that Suárez also admits that theology deals with the revealed field, since it explains its principles, which are revealed. It is not a matter of principles: it is a matter of the conception of theology as a science of conclusions properly so called.

In the following chapter we shall see how from those two diverse conceptions of true theology there have resulted in parallel, in Suárez and in St. Thomas, two likewise diverse conceptions of the organic place that the authority of the Church occupies in our divine faith and in the evolution or explanation of the revealed deposit.