Article II. Mystical Theology and the Essentially Supernatural Character of Infused Faith
The doctrine of St. Thomas about our natural intellectual knowledge and the essence of sanctifying grace directs us toward the loftiest orthodox mystical theology. The same is true of his teaching about the supernatural character of the infused virtues and of the gifts of the Holy Ghost. In this article we will treat especially the supernatural character of faith. But first we must say a few words about the supernatural character of the Christian moral virtues.
These moral virtues are the four cardinal virtues (prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance) and the virtues joined with them, particularly those of religion (or justice in regard to God), of magnanimity, patience, perseverance (all related to fortitude), of chastity, gentleness, modesty, and humility.
While reading the part of St. Thomas' Summa dealing with these Christian moral virtues, especially prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance, many think these are only the natural virtues described by Aristotle and that they are clothed with a simple adventitious supernatural modality, springing from the influence of charity, which should direct all our acts to God. Some theologians have not gone beyond this conception.
The thought of St. Thomas is far loftier. According to his teaching, the Christian moral virtues are infused and, because of their formal object, essentially distinct from the highest acquired moral virtues described by the greatest philosophers. These acquired moral virtues, useful as they may be, could be continually developed without ever attaining the formal object of the Christian virtues. An infinite difference exists between Aristotelian temperance, governed solely by right
6 s reason, and Christian temperance, ruled by divine faith and supernatural prudence. St. Thomas says: “Evidently the measure to be imposed on our passions differs essentially according as it springs from the human rule of reason or from the divine rule. For example, in the use of food the measure prescribed by reason has for its end the avoidance of what is harmful to health and to the exercise of reason itself, while according to the divine law, as St. Paul says, man must chastise his body and bring it into subjection by abstinence and other similar austerities. ,, 1 This measure, which belongs to the supernatural order, is in fact animated by that which unaided reason is ignorant of, but which faith teaches us about the results of original sin and of our personal sins, about the infinite elevation of our supernatural end, about the obligation of loving God, the Author of grace, more than ourselves and above all, and of renouncing self in order to follow our Lord Tesus Christ. 2
St. Thomas is equally insistent on the necessity of a progressive purification in order that the Christian moral virtues, aided by the acquired virtues, may reach their perfection. He shows us what they should become in those who really strive for divine union. “Then/* he says, “prudence scorns the things of the world for the contemplation of divine things; it directs all the thoughts of the soul toward God. Temperance abandons, so far as nature can bear it, what the body demands; fortitude prevents the soul from becoming frightened in the face of death and when confronted with the unknown supernatural. Justice leads the soul finally to enter fully on this entirely divine way.” 8 Loftier still, he says, are the virtues of the soul that is already purified, those of the blessed and of the great saints on earth.
iSee la Ilae, q.63, a.4.
2 Cf. B. Froget, De Vhabitation du Saint-Esprit dam les dmes justes, Part IV, chap. 5, no. 3: “The infused moral virtues specifically distinct from the acquired moral virtues.”
8 See la Ilae, q.61, a.5.
This teaching is not less elevated than that offered by Tauler in his Sermons, or by St. John of the Cross ( The Ascent of Mount Carmel and The Dark Night of the Soul) in the chapters which he devotes to the active and passive purification of the soul.
In regard to the theological virtues, some, who read the Summa theologica in an entirely material manner, reach the conclusion that our act of faith is a substantially natural act clothed with a supernatural modality: substantially natural, because it reposes formally on the natural, historical knowledge of Christ’s preaching and of the miracles which confirmed it; clothed with a supernatural modality, so that it may be useful to salvation. This modality is often said to resemble a layer of gold applied to copper in order to make plated metal. We would thus have “plated supernatural” life and not a new, essentially supernatural life. 4
According to this conception, the certitude of our supernatural faith in the Blessed Trinity, the incarnation, and other mysteries, would rest formally in the last analysis on the inferior though morally certain knowledge which our unaided reason can have of the signs of revelation and of the marks of the Church. The act of faith would be a sort of reasoning, formally based on a certitude of inferior order. Often this certitude rests merely on the human testimony of our parents and of our pastors, for very few of the faithful can make a critical study of the origins of Christianity. The act of theological faith thus conceived is no longer infallibly certain, and preserves almost nothing that is supernatural and mysterious. It is no longer evident why interior grace is absolutely necessary not only to confirm it but to produce it. This last point was definitely defined by the Church against the Pelagians and the semi-Pelagians.
This material conception is simply another case of the reduction of the higher to the lower. It is an error analogous to
- See la Ilae, q.63, a.4; Ha Ilae, q.6, a.i.
that discussed above in relation to rational first principles.
St. Thomas teaches that, just as sensation is only an inferior knowledge prerequisite to that of principles, a knowledge which is founded on intellectual evidence, so also the rational knowledge of the signs of revelation plays only the part of a preamble to prepare our intellect to receive the influence of grace, which alone can make us adhere infallibly to the formal motive of faith, to the authority of God revealing, in an order infinitely superior to the reasoning that went before.
St. Thomas saw the entire meaning and range of our Lord’s words: “No man can come to Me, except the Father, who hath sent Me, draw him. . . . Everyone that hath heard of the Father, and hath learned, cometh to Me. . . . Amen, amen I say unto you: He that believeth in Me, hath everlasting life.” * “My sheep hear My voice.” 6 “Everyone that is of the truth, heareth My voice.”1 St. Paul says the same thing: “Faith is a gift of God. . . . Faith is the substance of things to be hoped for,” 8 or the seed, the beginning of eternal life.
And the Council of Trent 9 defined as follows: “In justification man receives, with the remission of sins, the three virtues of faith, hope, and charity, infused at the same time into his soul by Jesus Christ, on whom he is grafted.”
Thus, as St. Thomas teaches, faith is substantially supernatural, specified by a formal motive of the same entirely supernatural order, a motive that faith attains in an absolutely infallible manner. This is why, rather than call it in question, we must undergo the worst torments, as the martyrs did.
This absolutely infallible and essentially supernatural certitude resolves itself only materially into our morally certain knowledge (critical or non-critical) of the signs which confirmed Christ’s preaching and also such knowledge of the
5 John 6: 44, 45, 47.
« John 10: 27.
s Heb. 11: 1.
0 Sess. VI, chap. 7.
marks of the Church. It is based formally on the authority of God revealing, on the first revealing uncreated Truth which reveals itself with the mysteries that it manifests, which is believed with the mysteries in an order infinitely superior to rational evidence, just as physical light appears and is seen at the same time as it makes us see colors. 10 As the Thomists usually say, “The first revealing Truth is at once that which is believed and that by which one believes, as light is that which is seen and that by which one sees.” 11 St. Augustine expressed this idea in his commentary on St. John. 12
The question concerns not only belief in God, the Author of nature and of sensible miracles which reason can know by its own power; it concerns also belief in God, the Author of grace, in God considered in His intimate life, in God who leads us to a supernatural end by giving rise in us to essentially supernatural acts. 18
If God had supernaturally revealed only the natural truths of religion, as, for example. His natural providence, without
10 Cf. St. Thomas, De veritate, q.14, a. 8 ad 411m.
11 Cf. Cajetan, In Ila Ilae, q.i, a.i; and on the same subject, John of St. Thomas, Bannes, the Salamanca theologians, Billuart, etc. Capreolus expresses himself in the same manner in his Commentary on the Sentences, III Sent., d.24, q.i, a.3, 4.
12 St. Augustine, In Joan., 8: 14, tr. 35. Migne, XXXV, 1658: “Light gives .testimony of itself . . . and is a witness to itself that the light may be known. . . . Likewise Wisdom, the Word of God.”
is “Accordingly if we consider, in faith, the formal aspect of the object, it is nothing else than the First Truth. For the faith we are speaking of does not assent to anything, except for the reason that it is revealed by God. Hence the mean on which faith is based is the divine Truth” (Ila Ilae, q.i, a.i). “Now it has been already stated that the object of faith is the First Truth, as unseen, and whatever we hold on account thereof” (q.4, a.i). “Nevertheless, we must observe that in the object of faith, there is something formal, as it were, namely, the First Truth surpassing all the natural knowledge of a crea ture, and something material, namely, the thing to which we assent while adhering to the First Truth” (q.5, a. 1).
De veritate, q.14, a.8, corp.: “All created truth is defectible. . . . Therefore faith, which is set down as a virtue, must make the intellect of man adhere to the truth which consists in divine knowledge, by transcending the truth of his own intellect. And so the faithful soul through simple and unchanging truth 4 s free from the fickleness of unstable error, as Dionysius says; De div. nom. c. VII.” Cf. Ibid., ad 2um, ad 3um, ad 9um, ad i6um.
telling us anything about supernatural mysteries (e. g., the Blessed Trinity), our faith would have been supernatural only by reason of its origin, by its mode of production, but not at all by its formal object or by its essence. It would have been specifically inferior to Christian faith, whatever the semirationalists, who wished to prove the mysteries of Christianity, may have said about it. On the contrary, our infused faith is not specifically inferior to that which the angels had before enjoying the beatific vision, even though our faith expresses itself in acquired ideas and theirs in infused ideas.
In reality, it is the supernatural mystery of His intimate life which God has revealed to us. Consequently our faith is based on the very truth of God, the Author of grace, on the uncreated knowledge of His intimate life which He possesses: an entirely supernatural first Truth, to which the infused light of faith raises us, and to which it makes us adhere infallibly. 14 It is eternal first Truth, which is still obscure for us because transluminous, says Dionysius, and is infinitely superior not only to the evidence of rational principles which enable us to recognize a miracle, but even to the evidence which the angels naturally enjoy, and which the demons preserve; 18 “the First Truth which interiorly illuminates and teaches man.” “
Therefore without the infused light of faith man remains in the presence of the Gospel like a hearer deprived of musical i± “A heretic does not hold the other articles of faith about which he does not err in the same way as one of the faithful does, namely, by adhering simply to the divine truth, because in order to do so, a man needs the help of the habit of faith; but he holds the things that are of faith by his own will and judgment” (Ila Ilae, q.5, a. 3 ad lum). “For, since man by assenting to matters of faith, is raised above his nature, this must needs accrue to him from some supernatural principle moving him inwardly; and this is God” (q.6, a.i). In Boetium de Trinit ., q.3, a. 1 ad 4um: “The things which are proposed exteriorly relate to the knowledge of faith, as though received through the senses for the recognition of principles.”
15 De veritate, q.14, a. 9 ad 4um: “To believe is used equivocally of the faithful and of demons.” a
16 Quodlibet 11 , a. 6 ad sum.
sense who listens to a symphony without really perceiving its beauty. “But,” says St. Paul, “the sensual man perceiveth not these things that are of the Spirit of God; for it is foolishness to him, and he cannot understand, because it is spiritually examined.” 17
The faithful, on the contrary, understand “the deep things of God” spoken of by the revelation which is proposed by the Church. “This school, where God teaches and is understood, is far removed from the senses,” says St. Augustine. “We see many men come to the Son of God, since we see many who believe in Christ; but where and how they have heard and learned this truth of the Father, that we do not see. This grace is entirely too intimate and too secret for us to see it.” 18
St. Thomas says: “Three things lead us to believe in Christ: “first, natural reason; . . . secondly, the testimony of the law and the prophets; . . . thirdly, the preaching of the Apostles; but when thus led we have reached belief; then we can say that we believe, not for any of the preceding motives, but solely because of the very truth of God ... to which we adhere firmly under the influence of an infused light; because faith has certitude from light divinely infused.” 19 Elsewhere St. Thomas says: “God dwells in us by living faith, according to the expression of St. Paul: 20 ‘Christ dwells in your hearts by faith.’ ” 21
This lofty doctrine has often been given a materialistic in- it See I Cor. 2: 14. See the commentary of St. Thomas on this text. In the encyclical Providentissimus, Leo XIII says: “The sense of Holy Scripture can nowhere be found incorrupt outside the Church, and cannot be expected to be found in writers who, being without the true faith, only gnaw the bark of the Sacred Scripture, and never attain its pith.” To discover the literal meaning of Scripture, it is not always sufficient to have grammar, a dictionary, and the rules of rational exegesis, but one must also follow positively those of Christian and Catholic exegesis which proceeds under the divine light of faith, as is stated in all good treatises on interpretation of Scripture, is De praedestinatione sanctorum, PL, XLIV, 970. Also PL, XLV, 1019.
18 St. Thomas, In Joann., chap. 4, lect. 5, no. 2.
20 Eph. 3: 17.
*1 In Ep . ad Gal., 3: 11. ) , terpretation and has been considerably diminished. The great commentators of St. Thomas for the last seven centuries have always defended it and cherished it. To be convinced of this, we need only read what they have written about the articles of the Summa relative to the supernatural character of the theological virtues and especially of faith. 22 One should read particularly the fine writings of the Carmelites of Salamanca on this point, which they regard as the foundation of the mystical doctrine of their father, St. John of the Cross. 23 Both St. Fran-
22 On this important point, Capreolus, Cajetan, Cano, Lemos, John of St. Thomas, and the Carmelites of Salamanca have always energetically opposed the nominalist conceptions or any that have sprung from nominalism, which disregard the essential supernaturalness of infused faith and of the motive which specifies it. Suarez agrees with St. Thomas on this point.
23 Salmanticenses, De gratia, tr. XIV, disp. Ill, dub. 3, no. 40: “The formal motive of infused faith is the testimony of God, the Author of grace, which establishes a supernatural certitude. Man by his natural powers can rely on the testimony of God, the Author of nature (and of naturally knowable miracles), but he cannot without grace rely on the testimony of God, the Author of grace, on the voice of the heavenly Father, which is the principle of an essentially supernatural certitude, relative to an object and to an end of the same order/’ Cf. Ibid., nos. 28, 40, 42, 45, 60. Salmant., De fide, disp. I, dub. 5, nos. 163, 193. Divine revelation is that by which we believe mysteries, and revelation itself is believed by the same act; we adhere to it supernaturally by faith. Thus we have said with St. Thomas (De veritate, q. 14, a. 18 ad 4um), light is seen and makes us see colors. These last formulas, as we have noted, are current among all the great commentators of St. Thomas (Dominicans or Carmelites), and are also used by Suarez.
Lastly, the same doctrine is well defended by Father G. Mattiussi, S.J., Rivista di filosofia neo-scolaslica, December, 1918, pp. 416-19, “L’atto di fede,” and by Father M. de la Taille, S.J., Recherches de science religieuse, September, i 9 ! 9 > P* 275, “L’oraison contemplative.’’ Likewise several years ago Father G. Petazzi, S. J., in an interesting study, Credibilita e fede, rightly contrasted the faith of the devils, springing from the natural perspicacity by which they discern miracles (Ila Ilae, q.5, a. 2 ad 2um) with the infused faith of the faithful. “The acquired faith of the devils,’’ he rightly says, “is neither essentially supernatural nor meritorious. It is not supernatural; although the formal motive of their belief is the authority of God, yet this is not the authority of God as the author of the supernatural order and in relation to a supernatural end. Consequently it is neither meritorious nor laudable, for the devils, while admitting the mysteries of faith, do not seek the good of God, but only their own (it would be stupid for them to deny the divine origin of a word confirmed by such striking signs). And since the authority of God as the author of the supernatural order, in relation to a supernatural end, constitutes a formal motive different from the authority of God considered simply as First Truth naturally knowable, it follows that the faith of the cis de Sales and Bossuet likewise express the same opinion. 24
Among modem theologians, Scheeben, who clearly understood this teaching, wrote as follows: “The formal motive of faith is purely and immediately divine and therefore absolutely one and simple, firm and subsistent, identical with the first and immutable source of all truth (First Truth). On the other hand, faith itself appears as a direct commerce, an intimate union with the interior word of God, and consequently with His interior life. As this interior word not only existed at the time of the manifestation of the exterior word, but also subsists in its quality as eternal word of God, in an eternal present, it elevates our mind to participation in His truth and immortal life, and makes it rest therein.
“The contrary opinion, according to which the exterior act of revelation would be a partial motive of faith, rests on a mechanical conception, in which faith appears as a deductive process helping us to discover the truth of its contents. It lessens the transcendental character of faith, which is essentially an impulse toward God.” 26
This is what prompted Lacordaire to say: “What takes place in us when we believe is a phenomenon of intimate and superhuman light. I do not say that exterior things do not act on devils differs specifically from that of the faithful, as St. Thomas says in De veritate, q.14, a. 9 ad 4um: ‘Belief is equivocally postulated of the faithful and of devils; in the latter there is no faith from any infused light of grace, as there is in the faithful.’ ”
24 St. Francis de Sales, Treatise on the Love of God , Bk. II, chap. 14: “The Almighty, to impart to us the gift of faith, penetrates the soul and speaks to it; not by reasoning, but by inspiration. He proposes to the understanding the objects of its belief in so gentle and persuasive a manner, that the will is powerfully inclined to exert its freedom and authority over the understanding, and thereby reduce it to acquiesce unhesitatingly and fully in the truths revealed.” Bossuet (ElSvations sur les mysteres, 18th week, 17th elevation) says: “Above all, you must believe that those who believe owe all to God; that they are, as our Savior says, taught by God (John 6: 45): that it is necessary that He speak within, and that He search out the hearts of those He wishps especially to make hear Him. Therefore reason no longer: humble yourself. He who has ears to hear, let him hear (Matt. 11: 15): but let him know that it is God who gives these ears which hear.”
25 Scheeben, Dogmatik , I, sec. 40, no. 681.
7o us as rational motives of certitude; but the very act of this supreme certitude, which I speak of, affects us directly like a luminous phenomenon (infused light of faith), like a transluminous phenomenon. . . . We are affected by a transluminous light. . . . Otherwise where would be the proportion between our adherence, which would be natural and rational, and an object surpassing nature and reason? ... It is somewhat like a sympathetic intuition that in a single moment establishes between two men what logic could not do in many years. Just so a sudden illumination at times enlightens the intelligence.” 26 Bishop Gay holds the same opinion. 27
To make us thus adhere to the supreme, essentially supernatural Truth, infused faith should therefore also be supernatural in its essence and not merely by an accidental modality. It is thus infinitely superior to the light of reason, as the latter is to the senses. 28
26 Lacordaire, Conferences de Notre Dame de Paris, 17 th conference.
27 Les vertus chretiennes, I, 159 f., in the chapter on faith: “The senses and reason can indeed give us a physical or historical knowledge of supernatural, divine facts. T his is their loftiest employment and in this their concurrence is indispensable. Without them the act of faith would be radically impossible; they are the soil in which this act germinates and which serves it as a support. But in regard to the real, commanded, meritorious perception of revealed supernatural truths, the most exquisite senses and th e most hig hly cultivated reason remain utterly incapable of it. Faith alone can give us this perception. Faith is necessary to make us adhere to the content of revelation, that is, to the divtite reality-expressed in human language; and without grace, which inaugurates it in us, we could not surrender to the proofs on which it rests. Without faith the most intelligent and most learned person remains the purely natural man that St. Paul calls sensual; and the Apostle says that such a one ‘perceiveth not these things that are of the Spirit of God . . . and he cannot understand’ (I Cor. 2: 14)..Even were the human mind capable of this adherence, there w r ould still be the heart, which of necessity has its part here, and truly a very large part.”
28 If this doctrine is expounded to those who see things in the other way, some reply: “Those are mere words.” Thus, without wishing to do so, they confess their unconscious nominalism. This nominalism is bound to lead them to see only meaningless words in the intimate life of God, inasmuch as that life underlies the order of the supernatural mysteries, essentially superior to the order of natural divine mysteries, which reason by itself can know. For the nominalists this distinction between the two orders was only a contingent distinction depending on the free will of God and not on the infinite elevation of His intimate life. Cf. De revelatione, I, 340.
When this great doctrine of St. Thomas is not lessened by a materialistic interpretation, it is, by reason of its loftiness, evidently the foundation of mystical theology, and is in no way inferior to the most beautiful pages on the life of faith in the writings of Dionysius, 29 Tauler, 30 Blessed Henry Suso, 31 or St. John of the Cross. We shall see that the passive purifications of the spirit especially, which are described in The Dark Night of the Soul, can be understood only by what we have just said about the absolute supernaturalness of the formal motive of the theological virtues. These painful passive purifications, in which the gifts of the Holy Ghost have a great share, bring out strikingly this pure, supernatural motive by freeing it more and more from every inferior motive accessible to reason.
To show that mystical contemplation is only the plenitude of the life of faith, the essence of which we have just determined, we need only quote some characteristic passages from the writings of St. John of the Cross. In The Ascent of Mount Carmel 32 he writes: “To be prepared for the divine union, the
Others say: “What you are speaking of presupposes an extraordinary mystical illumination,” whereas we are speaking only of Christian faith, such as that possessed by a believer even in the state of mortal sin; faith with a value and grandeur often unknown.
29 Dionysius, De nom. div., chap, 7, no. 4: “The Logos [divine intelligence] is the simple and really existing truth, around which, as a pure and unerring knowledge of the whole, the divine Faith, the enduring foundation of the be^ lievers, is that which establishes them in the truth, and the truth in them, by an unchangeable identity, they having the pure knowledge of the truth of the things believed.” The contemplative becomes more and more convinced that God is superior to every conception. “Then,” says Dionysius, “the soul being freed from the sensible and from the intellectual world enters the trans^ luminous obscurity of a holy ignorance and, renouncing every scientific fact, is lost in Him who can neither be seen nor understood” ( Theol . mystic ., chap! 1). See also chap. 2.
3 ° Tauler ijn his Sermons often speaks of ent irely pu re, naked faiths stripped of images and rational knowledge. He declares this type of faith very superior to consolations and revelations. This pure faith is .certainly accompanied by the gifts of understanding and of wisdom in an eminent degree. Tauler’s teaching on this point has been summed up in the Institutions, chapters 8 and 35. This work seems not to have been written by him, but to have been drawn from his writings.
3 1 QLuvres mystiques (Thiriot ed.), II, 357.
32 Bk. II, chap. 9.
understanding must be purified, emptied of all that comes from the senses, of all that may present itself clearly. It must be intimately at peace, recollected, and abandoned in faith. This faith alone is the proximate and proportionate means which can unite the soul to God, for faith is in such intimate connection with God that what we believe by faith and what we see by the beatific vision are one and the same thing. God is infinite; faith proposes the infinite to us. God is one and triune; faith proposes Him to us as one and triune. In the same way that God is darkness for our mind, faith enlightens our understanding by blinding it. By this means only does God manifest Himself to the soul in a divine light which exceeds all understanding; whence it results that the greater faith is, the more profound is the union. ... For under the darkness of faith, the understanding is united to God; under cover of this mysterious darkness, God is found hidden.”
Farther on in the same work, 83 St. John of the Cross says of spiritual visions in which creatures are seen: “I do not deny that the memory of them may give rise to some love of God and contemplation; but pure faith and detachment in darkness from all this stimulates and raises the soul much more thereto, without the soul’s knowing how or whence it comes. If it happens that the soul experiences an anguish of very pure love of God, and is ignorant of its cause and motive, it is the effect of faith, which has developed in the night, in nudity and spiritual poverty, and which is accompanied by a more profound, infused love of God. Whence it follows that the more eager the soul is for obscurity, for annihilation in regard to every exterior and interior object which it is capable of possessing, the more it increases its faith, and also hope and charity, inasmuch as the three theological virtues form a unity. Often the person favored does not understand this love and has no feeling of it, since it is not established in the senses by as Ibid., Bk. II, chap. 24.
tenderness, but in the soul by a fortitude, courage, and daring hitherto unknown.”
Previously St. John of the Cross had written: 84 “In order to be supernaturally transformed, the soul must enter the darkness (not only in regard to creatures, but in regard to what reason can know of God). It must remain in the darkness, like a blind person, relying on obscure faith, taking it as light and guide. The soul cannot help itself with any of the things which it understands, tastes, feels, or imagines. . . . Faith dominates all these ideas, tastes, sentiments, and images. If the soul does not wish to extinguish its lights by preferring total obscurity to them, it will not reach what is superior, that is, what faith teaches. . . . The soul creates great obstacles for itself in its ascent toward this lofty state of union with God when it relies on reasoning or is attached to its own judgment or will.” Elsewhere the saint states that by so doing the soul mingles with its supernatural acts an act of coarse quality which does not attain the end. 36
And again St. John of the Cross says: 30 “To busy oneself with things which are clear to the mind and of little value is to forbid onself access to the abyss of faith where God in secret supernaturally instructs the soul, and without its knowledge enriches it with virtues and gifts. . . . The Holy Ghost enlightens the recollected intellect according to the measure
34 Ibid., Bk. II, chap. 4.
35 Ibid. St. John of the Cross speaks in like manner in The Living Flame of Love, 3d str., verse 3: “Spiritual directors, who do not know the spiritual ways and their characteristics, turn souls away from the delicate unctions by which the Holy Ghost prepares them for divine union. . . . They persist in not allowing souls—even if the desire of God formally manifests itself—to pass beyond their principles and methods which are limited to the discursive and the imaginary. They forbid souls to pass beyond the limits of a natural capacity. How poor is the fruit which they draw from it.” Does not he who conceives faith itself as a discursive process, particularly merit these reproaches? If, on the contrary, we consider the act of faith as a simple act without any reasoning, we prepare ourselves by this very consideration to follow the way pointed out by St. John of the Cross.
86 The Ascent of Mount Carmel, Bk. II, chap. 29.
of its recollection. But the most perfect recollection is that which takes place in faith, and for this reason the Holy Ghost does not communicate His lights outside of faith.” In all these texts the saint is concerned with living faith enlightened by a gift of the Holy Ghost. 37
We find the same teaching for more advanced souls in The Dark Night of the Soul: “The soul ought then to enter the second night in order to strip itself perfectly of all perceptions and savors, whether of sense or of spirit, in order to walk in the purity of obscure faith. There only can it find the fitting means by which the soul is united to God, as He Himself declares by the prophet Osee (2: 20); ‘I will espouse thee to Me in faith.’ ” 38
In The Spiritual Canticle, St. John beautifully sums up this doctrine and shows its loftiness. He insists on the absolute supernaturalness of the object which faith attains by the articles of the Credo:
“O crystal well!
Oh, that on Thy silvered surface Thou wouldest mirror forth at once Those eyes desired 39 Which are outlined in my heart!”
“By ‘silvery surfaces’ the soul means the propositions or articles of faith. To understand these verses and those which follow, we must observe that the articles of faith are represented by silver as compared to gold, which is the substance of faith or the truths which it contains considered in themselves. During our lives we adhere to this substance of faith, although it is hidden in a silvered envelope. It will appear unveiled in heaven, and we shall contemplate this pure gold with de-
87 Father Poulain, in our opinion, correctly interprets St. John of the Cross on this point. Cf. Les grdces d'oraison, gth ed., p. 227.
88 Bk. II, Part II, chap. 2; also The Living Flame, 3d str., vers. 3, no. 9.
89 That is, as explained farther on, the sight of God of which infused faith is a faint impression, since this faith is the prelude of the beatific vision.
light. . . . Thus faith gives us God even in this life, although under a veil of silver. This does not hinder us from truly receiving Him.” 40
St. Thomas holds the same opinion. In correcting Hugh of St. Victor, he observes that the only contemplation that surpasses faith is the beatific vision. According to his opinion, the contemplation of the angels and that of Adam before the fall was not superior to faith, but, he says, they received the light of the gift of wisdom in greater abundance than we do. 41 And he shows that uniform or circular contemplation, of which Dionysius speaks, presupposes the sacrifice of the senses and of reasoning, or the multiplicity in which they tarry. 42
St. Thomas is not speaking here merely of the contemplation called “ordinary,” and not at all of mystical contemplation. If we should thus misunderstand him, we would confound the latter with its concomitant phenomena and would forget that the holy doctor recognizes that the superior degree of uniform or circular contemplation is that called by Dionysius the great darkness, or the plenitude of faith. St. Thomas says: “Then we know God through ignorance, by a union which surpasses the nature of our soul and in which we are enlightened by the depths of divine wisdom, which we cannot scrutinize.” 48 St. Albert the Great teaches the same doctrine. 44
40 The Spiritual Canticle, Part I, str. 12. Likewise in Maxims and Spiritual Counsels, maxim 24 (p. 557): “No perception or supernatural knowledge can aid us as much to love God as the slightest act of living faith and of hope freed from all intellectual support.” Likewise maxim 27. See also The Living Flame of Love, str. 3, vers. 2: The overshadowings of the soul, the shadow of the divine perfections.
41 See Ha Ilae, q.5, a.i ad lum.
42 “But on the part of the soul, before it arrives at this uniformity, its twofold lack of uniformity needs to be removed. First, that which arises from the variety of external things . . . and secondly, that which arises from the discoursing of reason” (Ila Ilae, q.180, a.6 ad 2um).
43 St. Thomas, In libr. de divinis nomin., chap. 7, lect. 4. Likewise, I Sent., d.8, q.i, a.i ad sum.
44 Comment, in Mysticam theologiam Dionysii, chap. 1. See also De ad - haerendo Deo, chap. 3, a work which for a long time was attributed to St. Albert.
This teaching is confirmed by the testimony of souls experienced in the mystical ways. “One day,” says Blessed Angela of Foligno, “I saw God in a darkness and necessarily in a darkness, because He is situated too far above the mind, and no proportion exists between Him and anything that can become the object of a thought. It is an ineffable delectation in the good which contains all. Nothing therein can become the object either of a word or a concept. I see nothing, I see all. Certitude is obtained in the darkness. The more profound the darkness, so much the more does the good exceed all. This is the reserved mystery. . . . Pay attention. The divine power, wisdom, and will of which I have had marvelous visions at other times, seem less than this which I saw. This is a whole; one would say that the others were parts.” 45 It is the Deity superior to being, to wisdom, to love, which are identical with each other in its infinity.
Such is manifestly the full development of infused faith, of which St. Thomas has so well determined the essential supernaturalness; it is faith based on a formal motive, inaccessible to reason and to the natural knowledge of the angels. Contemplative souls have found great light in learning the true thought of the holy doctor on this fundamental point. 46
45 Le livre des visions et instructions de la B. Angele de Foligno, chap. 26.
46 One of them writes on this subject: “This First Truth gives the soul great independence toward everything created, as though the soul had received shelter in the immutable. It can no longer suffer, as before, from exterior happenings, yet it endures continual suffering. This world, where it must continue to live, has its material, passing realities from which it cannot escape, and it sees itself subjected to deception. Everything but the contemplation of this First Truth is a heavy burden to it, which it bears without impatience. It performs all its external occupations with courage, although without any taste for them, because during the time of trial such is the will of God. And the will of God is truth. The soul loves it passionately no matter what suffering it may find therein. Thus the things of heaven and those of earth, immense happiness and continual suffering, harmonize in peace under this ray of Truth, which now illumines my life. I say ‘O Truth,’ as others say, ‘O Love, O Mercy.’ This is my ejaculatory prayer, my spiritual communion which gives me all my God. This First Truth, this subsistent truth, is God; it is His Being. This First Truth it is which gives me life and, by inclining toward me, nothingness and sin, it assumes the name of love and mere)’.
In fact, if we are truly convinced of the essential supernaturalness of faith, we understand that mystical contemplation is the normal blossoming of this theological virtue united to charity and to the gifts of the Holy Ghost. Only the contemplative rises to the heights of his faith.
The certitude of his contemplation is based formally on a secret illumination of the Holy Ghost, while the concomitant phenomena of suspension of the faculties and of ecstasy are only effects and signs of a state with a supernatural quality beyond the grasp of observation. Here, as also for the natural knowledge of first principles and for the certitude of faith, we must distinguish clearly between the entirely spiritual, formal motive of our adherence and the sensible signs accompanying it.
If, on the other hand, the teaching of St. Thomas on the supernatural character of faith is interpreted materialistically, mystical contemplation will be materialized. Too much attention will be paid to the phenomena that sometimes accompany it, and it will be declared absolutely extraordinary because the fundamental law of the continual development “of the grace of the virtues and of the gifts” will be lost sight of.
What the holy doctor teaches about hope and charity will also be materialistically interpreted. If anyone should imagine that reason alone, studying historically the Gospel confirmed
“I well know that I have not seen this Truth, since it is not given to us to see God while we are in the prison of our body; but my faith possesses this Truth in this dark light.
“During one of these prayers of great darkness which I sometimes have, I was permitted to contemplate this essential glory of the Blessed Trinity, in comparison with which the most magnificent works of His wisdom, even that of the incarnation, do not count. And it seemed to me that the contemplative act of faith corresponded to this intimate life of God. I understood then the truth of that saying of St. John of the Cross, that the smallest act of pure love is of greater value in the eyes of God and more profitable to the Church than the greatest works. The desire to give contemplative souls to God and to His Church was greatly strengthened as a result. And I understood that the doctrine of St. Thomas on the supernaturalness of faith is intimately bound up with the contemplative and mystical life, which is none other than the life of faith par excellence."
by miracles, can without grace attain the formal motive which specifies infused faith, he would be led to think that reason can in the same way know the formal motive of hope and of charity. Were this the case, the acts of these virtues would be substantially natural, and would require only a supernatural modality in order to be useful to salvation. Our act of charity would thus resemble a natural and reasonable affection which had been supernaturalized in order to become meritorious. In this case we no longer see the infinite distance which separates, in their very essence and in their essential vitality, the natural desire to be happy from the act of infused hope, or again that distance which separates the natural love of the sovereign Good, which Plato speaks of in The Banquet, from the divine charity which is mentioned so repeatedly in the Gospel.
Some theologians, following the nominalists, have seriously diminished the supernatural character of the Christian virtues, even of the theological virtues; but such diminution is certainly not found in St. Thomas. In his opinion, these virtues are supernatural in their very essence, which raises infinitely the vitality of our intelligence and of our will. They are specified by a formal object, or a formal motive, which infinitely surpasses the natural powers of the human soul and those of the highest angels.
This doctrine of the essentially supernatural, formal motive of the three theological virtues places the teaching of St. Thomas on the same level as that of the greatest orthodox mystics. 47
Finally, we are confronted with the question of the gifts of the Holy Ghost and of the supernatural inspiration to which they render us docile, as sails render a ship responsive to the breath of the wind. Some theologians, who did not see the necessity of the infused moral virtues, which are superior to v? “The species of every habit depends on the formal aspect of the object, without which the species of the habit cannot remain” (Ha Ilae, q.5, a. 3).
acquired moral virtues, were surprised to learn that in every soul in the state of grace there are, in addition, gifts of the Holy Ghost, superior by their divine mode to the infused moral virtues. They denied this essential superiority because they failed to recognize the supernatural riches which the mystical life especially manifests to us. Understanding St. Thomas materially, they confused the inspiration of the Holy Ghost with the actual grace necessary for the exercise of the virtues as soon as some special difficulty presents itself.
St. Thomas, on the contrary, teaches explicitly the essential distinction between the virtues and the gifts, and consequently he distinguishes exactly the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, which surpasses the human mode, from the simple actual grace which is adapted to this mode. 48 On this point also, by declaring the gifts necessary to salvation, St. Thomas agrees with the greatest mystics. He adds, as they do, that the gifts, although subordinated to the theological virtues, greatly as sist in their development. The Holy Ghost communicates His lights to us in the recollection of faith. Thus the difference is very great between that supernatural faith which subsists without charity in a soul in the state of mortal sin, and living faith which is aided by the gifts and profound touches of the Holy Ghost.
We shall find the same loftiness in the doctrine of St. Thomas on actual grace, on the mode of God’s presence in the just soul, and on the eminent and absolute simplicity of the divine essence.
The humble Thomas Aquinas, who was always inclined to silence and always recollected, lived this supernatural doctrine. His whole heart was given up to the love of God while he was pondering and solving the most difficult questions. How could it be otherwise in a great saint destined to remain throughout the centuries the light of theology? The
WSumma, la Ilae, q.68. See infra, chap. 5, art. 5. "The r 61 e of the gifts of the Holy Ghost; their predominance in infused contemplation.”2
heavenly gift of wisdom illumined his research, directed his intelligence and will toward an ever deeper possession of divine truth and life, and this it did although he was engaged in the most diverse studies. Questions seemingly remote from this supreme end are so only for a soul that has not yet reached that height'where all is lost in God, the beginning and end of all things. Undoubtedly St. Thomas was raised to the highest degrees of mystical contemplation, and certainly his teaching will not hinder souls in their ascent.
Footnotes
Chapter 6 of 31