participation in the triune god: engaging karl rahner’s
TRANSCRIPT
THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA
Participation in the Triune God: Engaging Karl Rahner’s Trinitarian Theology with
Bernard Lonergan’s Four-Point Hypothesis, as Developed by Robert Doran
A DISSERTATION
Submitted to the Faculty of the
School of Theology and Religious Studies
Of The Catholic University of America
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
For the Degree
Doctor of Philosophy
©
Copyright
All Rights Reserved
By
Michael Kujan
Washington, D.C.
2018
Participation in the Triune God: Engaging Karl Rahner’s Trinitarian Theology with
Bernard Lonergan’s Four-Point Hypothesis, as Developed by Robert Doran
Michael Kujan, Ph.D.
Director: Rev. John P. Galvin, Dr. Theol.
The Canadian Jesuit theologian Bernard Lonergan (1904-1984) introduced into
Trinitarian theology what his interpreter Robert Doran (1939- ) has called his “four-point
hypothesis.” This hypothesis identifies four created supernatural realities through which human
beings participate in the four relations among the three divine persons. These four created
supernatural realities are the human existence of Jesus (i.e., the esse secundarium), sanctifying
grace, the habit of charity, and the light of glory (i.e., the lumen gloriae) whereby the saints in
heaven see God. Through these four, people participate, respectively, in the four divine relations
of paternity, active spiration, passive spiration, and filiation. Paternity, filiation, and passive
spiration constitute the three divine persons, respectively, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Active
spiration is really identical to paternity and filiation considered together.
Ever since this four-point hypothesis came to Doran’s attention in 1994, he has sought to
construct a systematic theology based upon it. Within his systematic theology, Doran appeals to
this four-point hypothesis as the basis for a new formulation of the psychological analogy used to
describe the Trinity, an exercise which Lonergan did not perform himself. Doran’s formulation
of the psychological analogy differs from those developed previously by Augustine (354-430),
Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), and Lonergan inasmuch as his analogy does not proceed from
what is known about human nature, but rather from the human experience of supernatural grace.
Accordingly, Doran has been developing a supernatural, psychological analogy for the Trinity by
examining how the four created supernatural realities identified in Lonergan’s four-point
hypothesis enable human consciousness to experience and participate in the divine life.
Although Doran is developing such a supernatural, psychological analogy within the
context of Lonergan’s Trinitarian theology, he invites others to make connections between the
four-point hypothesis and the writings of other theologians. Toward this end, this study engages
the four-point hypothesis with the Trinitarian theology of the German Jesuit, Karl Rahner (1904-
1984). It assesses Rahner’s theology as a possible framework within which to develop a four-
point hypothesis and a supernatural, psychological analogy. It concludes that Rahner’s theology
provides a stronger ontological foundation for both than Lonergan and Doran.
ii
This dissertation by Michael Kujan fulfills the thesis requirement for the doctoral degree in
Systematic Theology approved by Rev. John P. Galvin, Dr. Theol., as Director, and by William
P. Loewe, Ph.D., and Joshua Benson, Ph.D., as Readers.
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Rev. John P. Galvin, Dr. Theol., Director
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
William P. Loewe, Ph.D., Reader
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Joshua Benson, Ph.D., Reader
iii
For Diane, the love of my life.
iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS...........................................................................................................vii
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
CHAPTER I: Bernard Lonergan’s Four-Point Hypothesis: Its Interpretation and
Development......................................................................................................................16
A. Lonergan’s Hypothesis..........................................................................................16
1. Lonergan’s Notes for His 1951-1952 Course on Grace.............................20
a) The Grace of Union, or the Esse Secundarium..............................25
b) Sanctifying Grace...........................................................................59
c) The Habit of Charity......................................................................65
d) The Light of Glory.........................................................................67
2. “De Ente Supernaturali”............................................................................68
3. Lonergan’s Notes for His 1947-1948 Course on Grace............................74
4. Divinarum Personarum and De Deo Trino: Pars Systematica.................77
B. Robert Doran’s Development of Lonergan............................................................85
1. Doran’s Literature on the Four-Point Hypothesis......................................85
2. The Possibility of a Supernatural Trinitarian Analogy..............................87
3. Doran’s Systematic Theology....................................................................92
4. Doran’s Use of the Four-Point Hypothesis..............................................103
5. Doran on a Phenomenology of Grace......................................................105
6. Participation in Active and Passive Spiration..........................................106
7. Participation in Paternity and Filiation....................................................113
v
8. Two Forms of Participation in God: Notional and Essential...................120
9. Distinguishing the Divine Relations by Their Orderings........................122
10. Doran’s Planned Future Work.................................................................126
C. Responses to Doran’s Project..............................................................................128
1. Charles Hefling........................................................................................130
2. David Coffey...........................................................................................138
D. Conclusion...........................................................................................................142
CHAPTER II: Karl Rahner’s Theology of Grace and the Trinity: Its Interpretation and
Development....................................................................................................................144
A. Philosophical Foundations for Theology.............................................................144
B. Pure Nature and Historical Nature.......................................................................160
C. Uncreated Grace, Created Grace, and Quasi-Formal Causality..........................172
D. The Trinitarian “Grundaxiom” and Non-Appropriated Relations.......................189
E. Conclusion...........................................................................................................201
CHAPTER III: Transposing the Four-Point Hypothesis into the Categories of Karl Rahner’s
Theology..........................................................................................................................203
A. The Trinitarian Structure of Grace.......................................................................205
B. Rahner on the Four Created Graces of the Four-Point Hypothesis.....................208
1. Point One: Esse Secundarium..................................................................211
2. Point Two: Sanctifying Grace..................................................................229
3. Point Three: The Habit of Charity...........................................................232
4. Point Four: The Light of Glory................................................................234
vi
C. Conclusion...........................................................................................................242
CHAPTER IV: Developing the Four-Point Hypothesis into a Supernatural Trinitarian
Analogy from the Foundations of Karl Rahner’s Theology............................................244
A. Natural Analogies for the Trinity.........................................................................244
B. Toward a Supernatural Psychological Analogy...................................................249
C. Conclusion...........................................................................................................260
CHAPTER V: Comparing the Theologies of Karl Rahner and Bernard Lonergan as
Foundations for the Development of a Supernatural, Psychological Analogy................262
A. The Natural Psychological Analogy as a Foundation..........................................262
B. The Four-Point Hypothesis as a Foundation........................................................267
C. The Relationship between Uncreated and Created Grace as a Foundation.........274
D. Conclusion...........................................................................................................282
CONCLUSION...........................................................................................................................284
BIBLIOGRAPHY.......................................................................................................................289
vii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am grateful to all of those who helped to make this study possible. I would like to thank
Rev. John Galvin for encouraging me as I pursued this course of study and for directing me
throughout the process of research and writing. I am also indebted to Dr. William Loewe and to
Dr. Joshua Benson for their generosity as they devoted their time and attention to my work and
provided helpful corrections and suggestions. My gratitude also extends to The Catholic
University of America for providing me with support and resources as I performed this study.
I am very appreciative of my parents, who have been so generous in their support of me
over the years. I am especially grateful to Diane, the love of my life and the joy of my heart. I
thank her for her patience and loving support as I worked to complete this study.
1
INTRODUCTION
The Canadian Jesuit theologian Bernard Lonergan (1904-1984) introduced into
Trinitarian theology what his interpreter Robert Doran (1939- ) has called his “four-point
hypothesis.” It was first presented in Lonergan’s notes for his course on grace in 1951-1952 at
Regis College in Toronto, then again in his Divinarum personarum (1957), which in turn was the
forerunner to his De Deo trino: Pars systematica (1964). Ever since this four-point hypothesis
came to Doran’s attention in 1994, he has written several articles working to construct a
systematic theology based upon it. He has also recently continued to develop this systematic
theology in the first volume of his projected two volume work The Trinity in History: A
Theology of the Divine Missions (2012).
This hypothesis identifies four created supernatural realities through which human beings
participate in the four relations among the three divine persons. These four created supernatural
realities are the human existence of Jesus (i.e., the esse secundarium), sanctifying grace, charity,
and the light of glory (i.e., the lumen gloriae) whereby the saints in heaven see God. Through
these four, people participate, respectively, in the four divine relations of paternity, active
spiration, passive spiration, and filiation. Paternity, filiation, and passive spiration constitute the
three divine persons, respectively, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Active spiration is really
identical to paternity and filiation considered together.1
1 Cf. Robert M. Doran, “The Trinity in History: First Steps beyond Volume 1” (paper presented at the
Lonergan Workshop, Boston College, Boston, MA, June 18, 2014), http://lonerganresource.com/pdf/books/1
/52%20-%20The%20Trinity%20in%20History%20-%20First%20Steps%20Beyond%20Volume%201.pdf (accessed
January 23, 2018), 19: “Active spiration is really identical with paternity and filiation together, and so is only
notionally or conceptually distinct from them.”
2
Within his systematic theology, Doran appeals to this four-point hypothesis as the basis
for a new formulation of the psychological analogy used to describe the Trinity, an exercise
which Lonergan did not perform himself, only hinting at the possibility. Doran’s formulation of
the psychological analogy differs from those developed previously by Augustine of Hippo (354-
430), Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), and Lonergan inasmuch as his analogy does not proceed
from what is known about human nature, but rather from the human experience of supernatural
grace.
As a foundation for his project of expanding the four-point hypothesis into a new form of
the psychological analogy, Doran cites Lonergan’s essay “Christology Today: Methodological
Reflections” (1976), in which he suggests a Trinitarian analogy that would begin with the
dynamic state of being in love.2 Developing this idea, Doran has sought to transpose the
traditional psychological analogy developed by Lonergan in his De Deo trino into a supernatural,
psychological analogy based in Lonergan’s intentionality analysis of “religiously differentiated
consciousness,” which explains how grace affects human consciousness. This amounts to a
supernatural analogy from the order of grace based upon the human experience of the four
created supernatural realities identified in Lonergan’s four-point hypothesis.
In addition, since Doran recognizes that human experience of the supernatural is based
upon the elevation of human nature, he has sought to clarify his supernatural, psychological
analogy by comparing the structure of religiously differentiated consciousness with the nature of
“interiorly differentiated consciousness,” which Lonergan developed to explain human
2 Cf. Bernard Lonergan, “Christology Today: Methodological Reflections,” in A Third Collection: Papers
by Bernard J.F. Lonergan, SJ, ed. Frederick Crowe (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1985), 93-4.
3
consciousness on the level of nature, and which Doran has used to articulate Lonergan’s original
natural psychological analogy with greater precision.3
Although Doran is using the four-point hypothesis to develop a supernatural,
psychological analogy within the context of Lonergan’s theology, he invites others to make
connections between the four-point hypothesis and the writings of other theologians.4 In fact, the
Trinitarian theology of the German Jesuit, Karl Rahner (1904-1984), ought to be engaged with
this four-point hypothesis. His insights about the Trinity, the nature of grace, and the human
experience thereof would serve as a valuable resource for those who seek to further develop a
supernatural, psychological analogy around the four-point hypothesis going forward.
Rahner developed his Trinitarian theology in several articles, as well as in an extended
treatment in the second volume of the systematic theology series Mysterium salutis (1967).5
Central to his theology is his widely influential “Grundaxiom” that the “immanent Trinity” of
God’s inner life “is the economic Trinity” expressed in history through the divine missions, “and
3 Cf. Robert M. Doran, The Trinity in History: Missions and Processions (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 2012), 391n49:
The analogy that I am proposing, which is a development on the possibilities latent in Lonergan’s later
analogy, will be understood by analogy with precisely the natural realities to which we are currently
appealing. That is one of my reasons for going into so much detail on the analogy from nature, even if I
wish to promote an analogy from supernatural participation in divine life. The other reason, of course, is to
establish the relations from above between the realm of religious values and the personal value of the
subject in his or her self-transcendence.
4 Cf. ibid., xvi: “Readers will no doubt want more explicit connections than I have provided to other figures
in the contemporary systematic-theological scene. But I have found that students with different interests are quite
capable of providing these on their own. . . . I have to ask that readers allow the systematic task to stand on its own
and that they make their own connections to other theologians and theological emphases.”
5 Karl Rahner, “Der dreifaltige Gott als transzendenter Urgrund der Heilsgeschichte,” in Mysterium salutis,
Bd. 2, Johannes Feiner, Magnus Löhrer, Hrsg. (Einsiedeln: Benziger, 1967), 317-401.
4
vice-versa.” From this axiom, Rahner concludes that human beings have a “proper” or “non-
appropriated” relation to each of the persons of the immanent Trinity, precisely on account of the
economic Trinity’s two-fold manner of “self-communication” through grace and incarnation.
These non-appropriated relations constitute the participation of human beings in the life of each
of the divine persons, rather than merely in the divine nature in a general sense. Rahner believed
that unless the relations of human beings to the divine persons were non-appropriated, it would
be impossible for people to experience by grace the Father, the Son, and the Spirit as “distinct
manners of subsisting.” Everything they knew about God by revelation would then apply equally
to all three persons, as following from the activity of their shared divine nature. In such a case,
people’s experience of the economic Trinity would not amount to a real encounter with the
different persons of the immanent Trinity. The different aspects involved in people’s experience
of the economic Trinity would be merely appropriated, rather than properly attributed, to the
persons of the immanent Trinity. For Rahner, such a situation would amount to a failure in God’s
act of self-communication.
The identity of the immanent Trinity with the economic Trinity in Rahner’s theology, in
which the non-appropriated relations of human beings to the divine persons are grounded, is
constituted by the “quasi-formal” causality of God’s self-communication upon the human spirit
through grace. This manner of causality is distinct from the “efficient” causality by which the
Trinity acts as one through the divine nature, wherein merely appropriated relations exist
between each of the divine persons and creation. Doran has criticized Rahner for his description
of God’s self-communication in grace as the quasi-formal cause of a supernaturally elevated
person, rather than as the term of such a person’s created relation to God in the order of
5
exemplary causality, as Lonergan held. However, Rahner has concluded that unless God
exercises quasi-formal causality, supernatural participation in the divine persons through non-
appropriated relations is impossible. For this reason, it appears that Rahner’s theology of grace
and the Trinity provides a stronger ontological ground than Lonergan for the four-point
hypothesis.
Fundamental to this comparison of Lonergan, Doran, and Rahner in reference to the four-
point hypothesis is their common belief that, to an extent, human beings can experience grace in
this life. Indeed, without experience of the four preeminent graces mentioned in the four-point
hypothesis, any supernatural Trinitarian analogy developed from it would be emptied of
meaning. However, whether people experience grace is a disputed question in Catholic
theology.6
6 Cf. L. Matthew Petillo, “The ‘Experience of Grace’ in the Theologies of Karl Rahner and Bernard
Lonergan” (PhD diss., Boston College, 2009), in ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, https://search-proquest-com
.proxycu.wrlc.org/pqdtglobal/docview/304848745/fulltextPDF/DF71704BA1F41CCPQ (accessed January 23,
2018), 2-3:
The idea of ‘an experience of grace,’ though endorsed by transcendental Thomistic thinkers, has raised red
flags in the minds of magisterial authorities. In one of the more recent versions of the Catechism, the
following statement was issued regarding ‘grace’ and ‘experience:’ “since it belongs to the supernatural
order, grace escapes our experience and cannot be known except by faith.” Aside from the official and
relatively recent catechetical teaching that, at least ostensibly, rejects the idea of an ‘experience of grace,’
there are also large sectors of Catholic theologians who fail to recognize its legitimacy. While the document
and its exponents, quite correctly, intend to preserve the supernatural character of grace, the exclusion of
grace from consciousness has, in recent years, elicited reproach for reflecting an excessive abstractness and
perhaps a certain extrinsicism that fails to meet the demands of the personalist turn in twentieth century
theology. The so called “personalist turn,” as part of the overall pastoral reorientation of Catholic
consciousness, was carried out more fully and explicitly under the auspices of Pope John XXIII as a means
of reinvigorating a piety enervated by the overwhelming and pervasive sense of the absence of God in
modern culture. Though precipitated by the scientific revolution and disseminated by those whom
Schleiermacher called “the cultured despisers of religion,” the sense of divine absence—the feeling that
God was an absentee father—was exacerbated during the twentieth century by the sudden and
unpredictable eruption of war in 1914 and, most poignantly, by the epic monstrosities of Auschwitz nearly
three decades later. By the mid 1940s, Christian piety, in the minds and hearts of the faithful, had become
deflated by the felt disconnect and even polarity between, on the one hand, Church doctrine, which spoke
so eloquently of divine love, and, on the other, the abysmal realities of human life. The conversation, which
6
In fact, paragraph 2005 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church argues that grace
escapes human experience, for such experience would give people knowledge of when they have
received sanctifying grace, thereby assuring them of their salvation. It notes that knowledge of
personal salvation does not fall under the certainty of faith, since revelation only gives faith the
assurance that God’s grace has been offered to humanity and is at work in the world. The
Catechism states,
Since it belongs to the supernatural order, grace escapes our experience and cannot be
known except by faith. We cannot therefore rely on our feelings or our works to conclude
that we are justified and saved. However, according to the Lord's words “Thus you will
know them by their fruits” – reflection on God's blessings in our life and in the lives of
the saints offers us a guarantee that grace is at work in us and spurs us on to an ever
greater faith and an attitude of trustful poverty.7
In itself, the Catechism is an ordinary magisterial teaching, the publication of which was
requested by a synod of bishops and promulgated with papal authority. Referencing a more
authoritative source, the Catechism cites the extraordinary magisterial teaching of the “Decree on
Justification” from the sixth session of the Council of Trent (1547), which states the following in
its ninth chapter:
Although it is necessary to believe that sins are neither forgiven, nor ever have been
forgiven, except gratuitously by divine mercy for Christ's sake, yet it must not be said
that sins are forgiven or have been forgiven to anyone who boasts of his confidence and
certainty of the forgiveness of his sins and rests on that alone, since among heretics and
schismatics this vain confidence, remote from all piety, may exist, indeed in our own
troubled times does exist, and is preached against the Catholic Church with vigorous
opposition. But neither is this to be asserted, that they who are truly justified without any
doubt whatever should decide for themselves that they are justified, and that no one is
was Vatican II, emerged as the event in which the people of God mounted a response to this crisis of
spiritual irrelevance.
7 Catechism of the Catholic Church: Revised in Accordance with the Official Latin Text Promulgated by
Pope John Paul II, 2nd ed. (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), no. 2005. Emphasis in original.
7
absolved from sins and is justified, except him who believes with certainty that he is
absolved and justified, and that by this faith alone are absolution and justification
effected, as if he who does not believe this is doubtful of the promises of God and of the
efficacy of the death and resurrection of Christ. For, just as no pious person should doubt
the mercy of God, the merit of Christ, and the virtue and efficacy of the sacraments, so
every one, when he considers himself and his own weakness and indisposition, may
entertain fear and apprehension as to his own grace, since no one can know with the
certainty of faith, which cannot be subject to error, that he has obtained the grace of
God.8
In this passage, the decree argues that faith does not give one certainty that the grace one
has received will be efficacious of salvation. Even though a person is justified by the grace of
faith, salvation requires that faith be perfected by charity. One cannot be certain by the light of
faith alone, however, that one’s actions are authentically motivated by charity through the
reception of sanctifying grace. Hence, the text cautions against those who have vain confidence
in their salvation through false assurance of being in the state of grace. The Catechism cites this
passage from Trent because this affirms its claim that people cannot have an experiential
knowledge of grace that would lead them to take their salvation for granted.
8 Heinrich Joseph Dominicus Denzinger and Peter Hünermann, Enchiridion Symbolorum: A Compendium
of Creeds, Definitions, and Declarations on Matters of Faith and Morals, 43rd ed., eds. Robert Fastiggi and Anne
Englund Nash (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012), no. 1533-4:
Quamvis autem necessarium sit credere, neque remitti, neque remissa umquam fuisse peccata, nisi gratis
divina misericordia propter Christum: nemini tamen fiduciam et certitudinem remissionis peccatorum
suorum iactanti et in ea sola quiescenti peccata dimitti vel dimissa esse dicendum est, cum apud haereticos
et schismaticos possit esse, immo nostra tempestate sit et magna contra Ecclesiam catholicam contentione
praedicetur vana haec et ab omni pietate remota fiducia. Sed neque illud asserendum est, oportere eos, qui
vere iustificati sunt absque ulla omnino dubitatione apud semetipsos statuere, se esse iustificatos,
neminemque a peccatis absolvi ac iustificari, nisi eum, qui certo credat, se absolutum et iustificatum esse,
atque hac sola fide absolutionem et iustificationem perfici, quasi qui hoc non credit, de Dei promissis deque
mortis et resurrectionis Christi efficacia dubitet. Nam sicut nemo pius de Dei misericordia, de Christi
merito deque sacramentorum virtute et efficacia dubitare debet: sic quilibet, dum seipsum suamque
propriam infirmitatem et indispositionem respicit, de sua gratia formidare et timere potest, cum nullus scire
valeat certitudine fidei, cui non potest subesse falsum, se gratiam Dei esse consecutum.
8
In his early writing “Analysis of Faith,” Lonergan seems to agree that supernatural
realities surpass human knowledge. He does claim that grace can be experienced. However, he
also argues that someone with faith can only have a conjectural knowledge of grace. For
Lonergan, intimate knowledge of grace and the supernatural only comes through the vision of
God. Thus, he believes that even though people can experience grace to an extent, they cannot
judge the state of grace in their souls with certainty. He states,
The experience of grace, which one can have, grounds only a conjectural knowledge of
grace. It is true that one may be moved by grace to eternal life, be directed towards a
supernatural end. It is true that through God’s grace one may be moved to affirm
‘credendity,’ that he or she truly ought to believe. But it is not true that one who is so
moved can be certain that this movement comes from God. Not only is the psychology
here extremely complex, and not only is it imprudent to make a judgment about one’s
own psychological state, but supernatural acts as supernatural lie outside the field of
human knowledge, since they are supernatural for the very reason that they regard God as
he is in himself.9
For Lonergan, the impossibility of judging the state of one’s soul, which the Catechism
and the Council of Trent rightly emphasize, need not imply that grace cannot be experienced in
any sense. Rather, human beings can have some limited experience of the supernatural in their
growth from grace to glory. Later in life, Lonergan argued that such consciousness of grace
enables one to supernaturally experience the dynamic state of being in love with God. Doran
explains Lonergan’s belief that people can experience being loved by God and being invited to
love God in return, which he described on occasion in terms of a fifth level of consciousness:
“The gift of God’s love for us poured forth into our hearts is an uncreated grace that effects in us,
9 Bernard Lonergan, “Analysis of Faith,” in Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, Vol. 19: Early Latin
Theology, eds. Robert M. Doran and H. Daniel Monsour, trans. Michael G. Shields (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 2011), 479.
9
as a relational disposition to receive it, and so as the consequent condition of its being given, the
created grace of a fifth level of consciousness, at which we experience ourselves as loved
unconditionally by God and invited to love God in return.”10
Furthermore, Doran explains how
the fifth level of consciousness corresponds to what is called “sanctifying grace” in Scholastic
theology, and how the dynamic state of being in love with God corresponds to “the virtue of
charity.” These two are the remote and proximate principles of the operations of charity. These
two comprise the conscious basis of people’s participation in God through grace. Doran explains
these two graces as follows:
This experience of being loved unconditionally and of being invited to love in return is
the conscious basis of (1) our share in the inner life of God, (2) our consequent falling in
love with God, and (3) the dynamic state of our being in love with God. The dynamic
state of being in love with God, in turn, as equivalent to what the Scholastic tradition
called the infused virtue of charity, is the proximate principle of the operations of charity
whereby God is attained as God is in God’s own self. But the created, remote, and
proportionate principle of these operations – what Scholastic theology called the
entitative habit or sanctifying grace of a created communication of the divine nature – is
the fifth level of consciousness, the experience of resting in God’s unconditional love for
us and of being invited to love in return, the real relation to, and constituted by, the
indwelling God as term of the relation.11
Doran’s transposition of sanctifying grace and charity into the categories of intentionality
analysis clarifies how grace can be experienced and understood as an analogue for the four
divine relations of the God in whom people participate. This is what Doran has focused on in his
development of Lonergan’s four-point hypothesis toward a supernatural analogy for the Trinity.
These transposed categories are essential to any such supernatural analogy. Indeed, while
10
Robert M. Doran, “Consciousness and Grace,” Method: Journal of Lonergan Studies 11, no. 1 (1993):
75.
11 Ibid.
10
scholastic metaphysics traditionally did not believe one could directly experience anything
pertaining to the essence of the soul and its potencies, such as sanctifying grace and the habit of
charity, the studies of interiority performed by theologians such as Lonergan, Doran, and Rahner
have shown how these supernatural realities may be experienced subjectively, and not just
known conceptually.12
Indeed, despite the appreciable reasons why the Catechism downplays the
experience of grace, including its emphasis that one cannot judge the state of one’s soul, this
teaching is likely to cause grace to appear extrinsic to human nature and people’s experience of
God in the world.13
12
Cf. Petillo, “The ‘Experience of Grace,’” 50-1:
Was it possible to express the medieval theology of grace in terms of human experience? The procedure of
scholastic metaphysics begins with an awareness of objects as its initial set of data and proceeds through a
series of deductions to an apprehension of the soul and its potencies. Since the concept of an ‘essence of the
soul,’ in which sanctifying grace is received, results from inferential reasoning and is not experienced in the
immediate data of consciousness, the technique proper to the scholastic method leaves no room for an
experience of sanctifying grace. The idea of an experience of grace lies beyond the ambit of a thirteenth
century ‘science of the soul.’ For it would require, in terms of the stage of meaning proper to scholastic
theology, an experience of a supernatural gift received in the inner-most essence of the soul and its
potencies; and according to scholastic science, there is no direct and immediate experience of the soul.
An experience of what the scholastics meant by grace involves a breakthrough to a realm of
interiority in which one becomes aware of the inner-most depths of the “soul.” Such a breakthrough
requires a move beyond the “logical” techniques of medieval science to the “introspective” techniques of
transcendental method. Both Karl Rahner and Bernard Lonergan employed the technique of introspection
in their transcendental methods as a means of searching for the experiential equivalents of the basic terms
and relations of scholastic metaphysics.
13 Cf. ibid., 4-6:
But why the insistence that grace “escapes our experience and cannot be known except by faith”? In other
words, why is the Church hesitant to work out the full implications of the revolutionary insights of Vatican
II? Firstly, the insistence that grace lies beyond the limits of human experience became important as a
strategic ploy to counter the “certain knowledge of salvation” asserted by the reformers. In other words,
there is a concern that if Catholics admit that grace can be verified in human experience, a concession is
being made to the belief that personal salvation can be known with certainty. Secondly, the exclusion of
grace from experience, in more recent times, has served the critical function of safeguarding the
‘supernatural’ from the reductionistic propensities of a post-modern hermeneutic of suspicion. Some fear
that expressing grace in the language of human experience reduces a supernatural gift to the level of an
empirical, predictable, controllable phenomenon. While the hermeneutic can be seen in the works of
Nietzsche, Freud, Marx, and Durkheim, the specific venture of deconstructing religious experience was
11
Rahner likewise argues that grace can be experienced. He acknowledges that since people
only know of supernatural realities through faith, many would be hesitant to claim an experience
of grace unless they were mystics. However, Rahner suggests that there are “steps in the
experience of grace,” and that the lowest of these steps are available to everyone. This
suggestion is based upon the idea that grace is appropriated gradually. As Rahner writes,
Have we ever actually experienced grace? We do not mean by this some pious feeling, a
sort of festive religious uplift, or any soft comfort, but precisely the experiencing of
grace, i.e. of that visitation by the Holy Spirit of the triune God which has become a
reality in Christ through his becoming man and through his sacrifice on the Cross. Is it
possible at all to experience grace in this life? Would not an affirmative answer to this
question mean the destruction of faith, of that semi-obscure cloud which envelops us as
long as we are pilgrims on this earth? The mystics do indeed tell us – and they would
testify to the truth of their assertion by laying down their lives – that they have already
experienced God and hence also grace. But this empirical knowledge of God in mystic
experience is an obscure and mysterious matter about which one cannot speak if one has
not experienced it, and about which one will not speak if one has. Our question,
taken up by the American Pragmatist John Dewey. In the attempt to ‘get behind’ an awareness of the
supernatural, Dewey reduces it to its ‘natural’ causes and conditions ‘beneath the surface’ of consciousness.
The fear is that if all elements in consciousness are reduced to empirical explanation, locating grace in
consciousness renders it vulnerable to the same reduction. Thirdly, since an experience of grace, aside from
the Catholic mystical tradition, tends to be associated with the more spirited practices of some of the non-
Catholic denominations, the resistance to affirming an experiential dimension to grace can be a means of
preserving the contemplative mode of worship that typifies the Catholic tradition. In other words, it may be
a deliberate attempt, on the part of the magisterium, to distance the Church liturgically from the anti-
intellectual piety of some of the more charismatic churches for whom spontaneity in prayer—
extemporaneous speech and tongues—the experience of being a sacred conduit through which the
explosive grace of the spirit flows—becomes the mark of genuine religiosity; for such churches, any trace
of a calculated, measured, and planned response to the Word of God—any hint of rational reflection—
renders the response impersonal and automatically invalidates the prayer. The insistence that “grace
escapes our experience and cannot be known except by faith” can be seen as an apologetic maneuver that
attempts to distinguish and preserve the rich meditative spirituality of the Catholic liturgical tradition.
In an attempt to defend Catholic piety and retain the supernatural and mysterious sense of grace,
conservative voices in the Catholic Church tend to propose the Thomistic theology of grace, or most
typically, some conceptualist variation, as the final and definitive word. In this conceptual framework,
grace is relegated to a plane of existence beyond human consciousness—quarantined—and thereby
removed from the dangers that would result from thinking about it in terms of human experience.
12
therefore, cannot be answered simply a priori. But perhaps there are steps in the
experience of grace, the lowest of which is accessible even to us?14
Rahner goes on to describe the stages in which grace may be received and experienced.
He notes that God as uncreated grace is always offered to humanity, such that God’s self-
communication is continually available to human experience. At first, on earth, the light of faith
makes one aware of God’s self-communication only in an unthematic way.15
Ultimately, in
heaven, the light of glory makes one conscious of it thematically. Hence, Rahner argues that
people’s experience of the divine mysteries becomes increasingly thematic as the light of faith
grows into the light of glory.16
Hence, one might say that the degree of created grace in the soul,
whereby one’s faith is formed by sanctifying grace and charity, determines the extent to which a
person’s consciousness of uncreated grace is thematic. Accordingly, people must appropriate
God’s grace in a gradual manner before their knowledge of the supernatural can become more
thematic and the possibilities of their love can be intensified, realized, and solidified.17
Rahner
14
Karl Rahner, “Reflections on the Experience of Grace,” in Theological Investigations, Vol. 3: The
Theology of the Spiritual Life, trans. Karl H. Kruger and Boniface Kruger (London: Darton, Longman and Todd,
1967), 86.
15 Cf. Karl Rahner, “Christology within an Evolutionary View of the World,” in Theological Investigations,
Vol. 5: Later Writings, trans. Karl H. Kruger (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1966), 172: “We are those even
who in the experience of grace experience the event of the promise of the absolute nearness of the all-founding
mystery (even though this experience is an unobjectified one).”
16 Cf. Karl Rahner, “Intellectual Honesty and Christian Faith,” in Theological Investigations, Vol. 7:
Further Theology of the Spiritual Life, trans. David Bourke (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1971), 56: “Faith
that is really committed feels itself protected and nourished by the experience of grace which precisely carries its
own intrinsic justification with it. For such experience of grace, however subtle and indefinable the form in which it
manifests itself, and however silent and interior the state of liberation which it brings, does point us on to the
mystery of God.”
17 Cf. Karl Rahner, “Why and How Can We Venerate the Saints?” in Theological Investigations, Vol. 8:
Further Theology of the Spiritual Life; 2, trans. David Bourke (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1971), 19-20:
13
explains how people on earth who experience themselves as spirit, existing on the boundary
between the world and God’s eternity, are able to experience their growth in grace, even prior to
the beatific vision:
Man as spirit – precisely in real existence and not merely in theory – should really live on
the border between God and the world, time and eternity, and [the man of the spirit and
saint] always try again to make sure that they are really doing this, that the spirit in them
is not merely the medium of the human kind of life.
To proceed: once we experience the spirit in this way, we (at least, we as
Christians who live in faith) have also already in fact experienced the supernatural. We
have done so perhaps in a very anonymous and inexpressible manner. Probably we have
experienced it in such a way even that we were unable to turn round – and did not dare to
do so – to look the supernatural straight in the face. But we know – when we let ourselves
go in this experience of the spirit, when the tangible and assignable, the relishable
element disappears, when everything takes on the taste of death and destruction, or when
everything disappears as if in an inexpressible, as it were white, colourless and intangible
beatitude – then in actual fact it is not merely the spirit but the Holy Spirit who is at work
in us. Then is the hour of his grace. Then the seemingly uncanny, bottomless depth of our
existence as experienced by us is the bottomless depth of God communicating himself to
us, the dawning of his approaching infinity which no longer has any set paths, which is
tasted like a nothing because it is infinity. When we have let ourselves go and no longer
belong to ourselves, when we have denied ourselves and no longer have the disposing of
ourselves, when everything (including ourselves) has moved away from us as if into an
infinite distance, then we begin to live in the world of God himself, the world of the God
of grace and of eternal life.18
In this state God’s self-bestowal in grace is experienced with an immediacy in which the ‘object’ is
precisely not brought into line with the other objects of the first-named experience, is not assignable to any
particular ‘category’. Thus the process by which we make conceptually present to ourselves both God
himself and our connection with him in knowledge and love, so that both he and it become ‘objects of
enquiry’ to us, however important and necessary this process may be, is ultimately secondary. Of course in
this too it is precisely the reality of God himself that we are explicitly directing our attention to. But in the
last analysis this is in fact because in this act, which bears upon a concept, a still more basic and more
elemental act takes place, one which has been elevated by grace to a state of transcendence in which it
bears upon the reality of God himself and is upheld and sustained by it. The act achieved by our explicit
consciousness always rests upon and presupposes the basic act, without being able to ‘take it in’ or
thematise it in any exhaustive or comprehensive sense in each case.
18 Rahner, “Reflections on the Experience of Grace,” 88-9.
14
Rahner cautions, however, in a similar manner as the Catechism, that people cannot know
when they are in the state of grace, lest they should experience a false assurance of their
salvation. He stresses that salvation cannot be experienced as guaranteed until heaven, after one
has voluntarily arrived, through grace, at an eternal acceptance God’s offer of self-
communication. Salvation is a gift that must be received gratefully and selflessly. People can
never claim it is owed to them, especially since they are unable to judge the state of grace in their
souls. Before receiving salvation in heaven, people can be certain of God’s love, but not of their
own sanctification. As Rahner writes,
Let each one of us look for the experience of grace in the contemplation of our life, but
not so that we can say: there it is; I have it. One cannot ‘find’ it so as to claim it
triumphantly as one’s own possession. One can only look for it by forgetting oneself; one
can only find it by seeking God and by giving oneself to him in a love which forgets self,
and without still returning to oneself.19
Having briefly introduced Lonergan’s four-point hypothesis, its development by Doran,
and Rahner’s Trinitarian theology, this dissertation continues in the following chapters to discuss
how their understanding of the experience of grace can lead to an analogical knowledge of the
Trinity: The first chapter introduces Lonergan’s four-point hypothesis and reviews its
development in the current body of literature. The second chapter introduces Rahner’s
Trinitarian theology by situating it in the overall context of Rahner’s theology and by surveying
the major trajectories of its interpretation. The third chapter suggests areas of agreement between
Rahner’s Trinitarian theology and the four-point hypothesis that would enable a transposition of
the hypothesis into the categories of Rahner’s theology. The fourth chapter seeks to develop the
19
Ibid., 89.
15
four-point hypothesis into a supernatural Trinitarian analogy from the foundations of Rahner’s
theology. The last chapter considers the theological differences between Lonergan and Rahner as
potential obstacles to the act of transposing the four-point hypothesis from the context of
Lonergan’s thought to that of Rahner. It argues that Rahner’s theology of grace and the Trinity
provides a stronger ontological ground than Lonergan for the four-point hypothesis and a
supernatural, psychological analogy.
16
CHAPTER I
Bernard Lonergan’s Four-Point Hypothesis: Its Interpretation and Development
The purpose of this dissertation is to examine whether Karl Rahner’s theology of grace
and the Trinity could provide a stronger ontological ground than Bernard Lonergan for the four-
point hypothesis and a supernatural, psychological analogy. Toward this end, it is necessary to
study the original context in which Lonergan’s four-point hypothesis and Rahner’s Trinitarian
theology were expounded, as well as their development in the current body of literature. This
first chapter will consider Lonergan’s hypothesis and its development, especially by his
interpreter Robert Doran. With this foundation in mind, the next chapter will study Rahner’s
Trinitarian theology for the purpose of determining whether Rahner’s theology may be fruitfully
developed in dialogue with the four-point hypothesis.
A. Bernard Lonergan’s Hypothesis
This section will study Lonergan’s four-point hypothesis in its original context. The
development of this hypothesis in current scholarship will also be reviewed. Lonergan’s four-
point hypothesis can be found in his notes for his course on grace in 1951-1952, and then in his
Divinarum personarum (1957), which was revised into its final form as De Deo trino: Pars
systematica (1964). According to this hypothesis, there are four supernatural realities by which
people participate in the four divine relations of paternity, active spiration, passive spiration, and
filiation. Those four are, respectively, Christ’s esse secundarium, sanctifying grace, the habit of
17
charity, and the lumen gloriae. Lonergan’s hypothesis has been developed by his interpreter
Doran into a foundation for systematic theology. For Doran, this hypothesis also serves as the
basis for a new Trinitarian analogy drawn from the human experience of the supernatural. Other
Lonergan scholars have also weighed in on the significance of the four-point hypothesis for
theology going forward, especially as they engage Doran’s work.
After completing his doctoral dissertation at Gregorian University in 1940 (although he
did not officially defend it until 1946), Lonergan taught at the College de l'Immaculee
Conception in Montreal from 1940-1946 and at Regis College in Toronto from 1947-1953.
During this time, Lonergan wrote some class notes and systematic supplements on the subject of
grace that he prepared for his courses. Some of them include his systematic supplement “De ente
supernaturali” (1946)1 and sets of notes from his two courses on grace from 1947-1948 and
1 Cf. Robert M. Doran, introduction to “The Supernatural Order,” in Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan,
Vol. 19: Early Latin Theology, by Bernard Lonergan, eds. Robert M. Doran and H. Daniel Monsour, trans. Michael
G. Shields (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011), 53: “The work ‘De ente supernaturali,’ whose title we
might translate ‘On the Supernatural Order,’ was written by Bernard Lonergan in the fall semester of the academic
year 1946-47, the last semester he taught at the College of the Immaculate Conception in Montreal.” For more
history of the background of this and related texts, cf. J. Michael Stebbins, The Divine Initiative: Grace, World-
Order, and Human Freedom in the Early Writings of Bernard Lonergan (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1995), xvii:
A good part of Bernard Lonergan's early academic career was spent coming to grips with the complexities
of Thomas Aquinas's theology of grace. His doctoral dissertation, ‘Gratia Operans: A Study of the
Speculative Development in the Writings of St Thomas of Aquin,’ was completed in 1940. It was
extensively rewritten and published as a series of four articles in the journal Theological Studies in 1941
and 1942, and some twenty years later the articles appeared in book form as Grace and Freedom. In 1946
Lonergan composed a treatise, which has yet to be published, entitled De ente supernaturali:
Supplementum schematicum (On Supernatural Being: A Schematic Supplement). Written near the end of
the period during which Lonergan taught at the College de l'Immaculee Conception, the Jesuit seminary in
Montreal, it served as a textbook for the course on grace that he taught on several occasions. Clustered
around these major efforts were several articles that touched in one way or another on the doctrine of grace:
these include ‘Finality, Love, Marriage’ (1943), which relates the divinization of human beings through
grace to what Lonergan terms ‘vertical finality’; ‘On God and Secondary Causes’ (1946), a lengthy book
review in which Lonergan spells out his understanding of causality in general and instrumental causality in
particular; ‘The Natural Desire to See God’ (1949), on a disputed question regarding the interrelation of the
18
1951-1952.2 While “De ente supernaturali” and his two sets of notes from 1947-1948 on “The
Object of the Treatise on Grace and the Virtues” and “The Grace of Justification and the
Indwelling of the Holy Spirit” do not refer to the four-point hypothesis,3 they do contain much
discussion of created grace that is useful in interpreting his later hypothesis. Most importantly,
Lonergan’s “Supplementary Notes on Sanctifying Grace” from 1951-1952 contain his first and
most developed statement of the four-point hypothesis. While his notes for his 1947-1948 course
were considered too loosely organized for inclusion in the Collected Works of Bernard
natural and supernatural orders; and the unpublished treatise De scientia atque voluntate Dei (1950), which
contains an extended treatment of divine transcendence.
2 Robert M. Doran, “Sanctifying Grace, Charity, and Divine Indwelling: A Key to the Nexus Mysteriorum
Fidei,” Lonergan Workshop 23 (2012): 168n8:
The notes . . . can be found on the website www.bernardlonergan.com: the 1947·48 courses are found at
16000DTL040 and 16200DTL040, and the 1951-52 notes at 20500DTL040. An edited version of the 1951-
52 notes, with translation, has been published in volume 19 of Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, Early
Latin Theology, trans. Michael G. Shields, eds. Robert M. Doran and H. Daniel Monsour (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2011). Both sets of 1947-1948 notes have appeared in English translation by
Michael G. Shields on the website. The principal supplements, “De ente supernaturali” and “De scientia
atque voluntate Dei,” have been published with translation by Michael G. Shields in volume 19, Early Latin
Theology, 2011.
3 In his 1947-1948 course notes on “The Object of the Treatise on Grace and the Virtues,” Lonergan
entertains the possibility that creatures may have proper relations to individual divine persons when the latter are
considered as constitutive principles of divine participation, rather than as effective principles of creation. However,
he does not develop such an argument until his “Supplementary Notes on Sanctifying Grace” from 1951-1952. Cf.
Bernard Lonergan, “Notes on the Object of the Treatise on Grace and the Virtues,” trans. Michael G. Shields,
Bernard Lonergan Archive, Marquette University, http://www.bernardlonergan.com/pdf/16200DTE040.pdf
(accessed January 23, 2018), 58: “This statement [‘all things must be held to be common to the Trinity inasmuch as
they relate to God as their supreme efficient cause’] perhaps leaves a certain latitude in a case where God is not an
effective but a constitutive principle.” Page numbers cited from Lonergan’s 1947-1948 notes correspond to those of
the pdf file, not those of his original notes.
19
Lonergan, his 1951-1952 notes, along with “De ente supernaturali” and other writings, have been
translated from Latin and gathered into the Collected Works, Volume 19: Early Latin Theology.4
After teaching at Regis College, Lonergan taught at the Gregorian University from 1953-
1964. There, Lonergan taught courses on the Trinity and Christology, and he wrote Latin
textbooks for them. One of his volumes on the Trinity was originally entitled Divinarum
personarum, which he finished in 1957. Lonergan’s four point hypothesis is found in its second
and final form in this text. He eventually revised Divinarum personarum to become the volume
De Deo trino: Pars systematica, completed in 1964. His formulation of the four-point hypothesis
is identical in both texts, however. This later formulation of the hypothesis is also Lonergan’s
most well-known.
Since the 1951-1952 notes contain Lonergan’s first reference to the four-point
hypothesis, they will be examined first. Afterward, those portions from “De ente supernaturali”
and his 1947-1948 course notes that develop ideas related to the hypothesis will be considered.
Finally, his formulation of the hypothesis in Divinarum personarum and De Deo trino: Pars
systematica will be studied.
4 Cf. Robert M. Doran, preface to Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, Vol. 19: Early Latin Theology,
eds. Robert M. Doran and H. Daniel Monsour, trans. Michael G. Shields (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
2011), xv-xvi:
It was felt that, despite the valuable material contained in these 1947-48 notes, they were too loosely
organized to be presented in a collection of Lonergan’s writings. But this is not the case with the 1951-52
notes. These represent the most complete systematic treatment of sanctifying grace to be found in
Lonergan’s known writings, both published and unpublished. In this set of notes readers will also find an
early statement of the hypothesis that first appeared in print in the 1957 Divinarum Personarum, in which
the four divine relations are coupled with four created graces that participate respectively in the relations:
paternity with the secondary act of existence of the Incarnation, active spiration with sanctifying grace,
passive spiration with the habit of charity, and filiation with the light of glory. The treatment of this
hypothesis is more ample in the 1951-52 notes than in Divinarum Personarum or the later De Deo Trino:
Pars systematica.
20
1. Lonergan’s Notes for His 1951-1952 Course on Grace
In his 1951-1952 notes, Lonergan lays the foundation for his four-point hypothesis when
he identifies the four preeminent supernatural realities, or created graces, through which God
communicates himself in history. He states that “there are four graces that are preeminently
qualified to be called such; these are the grace of union, the light of glory, sanctifying grace, and
the virtue of charity.”5 In his notes, he defines each of these four realities in the following
manner, drawing from Thomas Aquinas as his primary source:
The grace of union is that finite entity received in the humanity of Christ so that it exists
through the personal act of existence of the divine Word. This grace is therefore the
extrinsic term whereby one may say, ‘The Word was made flesh.’
The light of glory is that finite entity by which a created intellect is disposed to
receiving the divine essence as an intelligible species and thus see God as he is in
himself.
Sanctifying grace is that finite entity by which a finite substance is reborn and
regenerated for participating in the very life of God.
Charity is that finite entity whereby a regenerated finite substance habitually
possesses genuine friendship with God.6
Lonergan explains that these four supernatural realities are preeminent among all others
because “the other graces are rather dispositions toward the above-mentioned graces or
5 Bernard Lonergan, “Supplementary Notes on Sanctifying Grace,” in Collected Works of Bernard
Lonergan, Vol. 19: Early Latin Theology, eds. Robert M. Doran and H. Daniel Monsour, trans. Michael G. Shields
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011), 631. Cf. Robert M. Doran, “The Four Entia Supernaturalia:
Expanding the 1957 Hypothesis with Earlier Course Notes” (paper presented at the West Coast Methods Institute,
Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, CA, April 2009), http://lonerganresource.com/pdf/books/1/31%20-
%20The%20Four%20Entia%20Supernaturalia.pdf (accessed January 23, 2018), 14: “There are four graces to which
the word ‘grace’ applies in a preeminent way: the grace of union, the light of glory, sanctifying grace, and the habit
of charity.” Note that Lonergan will also come to identify in this context the grace of union with the esse
secundarium, which will be explained below.
6 Lonergan, “Supplementary Notes on Sanctifying Grace,” 631-3.
21
consequent upon them.”7 As examples of graces and supernatural realities subordinate to the
preeminent four, he refers to faith, hope, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, infused cardinal virtues, and
the resurrection of the body.8 On account of the priority of the four, Lonergan seeks to focus on
their ontological foundation so as to show “why these graces are of such a high degree of
perfection that they touch, in a way, subsistent being itself.”9
These four graces imitate God through participation in the divine essence, both as
common the the three divine persons and as really identical with the four divine relations.
Accordingly, they may be said to imitate God not just generally, but specifically in reference to
the divine relations. As a foundation for this principle, Lonergan notes that “the divine essence
itself is the primary exemplary cause”10
of created things in two respects: “first, as absolute and
common to the three divine persons; second, as being really identical with one or other real
trinitarian relation – with paternity, filiation, active spiration, or passive spiration.”11
These
divine relations are proper to the Father, the Son, the Father and the Son considered together
(because active spiration is really identical with paternity and filiation considered together), and
the Holy Spirit, respectively.
Lonergan notes that all things, including the four preeminent graces, are efficiently
caused by all three persons acting together through their common essence. Thus, they relate to
7 Ibid., 633.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid.
22
the divine persons inasmuch as each of the persons shares in the common activity of efficient
causation. God is also the exemplary cause of natural creatures to the extent that they are
patterned after the divine being that caused them. The divine persons who are really identical
with this divine being may also be said to be the exemplary cause of things, although natural
creatures are patterned no more after one divine person than another, except by appropriation.
However, Lonergan argues that the situation is different for supernatural realities.12
He argues
that since the four graces imitate God in a preeminent way, they each participate in a specific
divine relation in a manner that may not be attributed to others. While they do relate to all three
persons who shared in their creation, they also have a proper (i.e. non-appropriated) relation to
one or another divine person according to the manner of their supernatural participation in the
divine being. This conclusion gives Lonergan the ability to form the four-point hypothesis
through the following explanation, in which he correlates the grace of union with paternity, the
light of glory with filiation, sanctifying grace with active spiration, and charity with passive
spiration:
Now since every finite substance is something absolute, it seems appropriate to say that it
imitates the divine essence considered as absolute. But since these four eminent graces
are intimately connected with the divine life, it seems appropriate to say that they imitate
the divine essence considered as really identical with one or other real trinitarian relation.
Thus the grace of union imitates and participates in a finite way the divine paternity, the
light of glory divine filiation, sanctifying grace active spiration, and the virtue of charity
passive spiration.13
12
Cf. ibid., 635: “For a finite substance imitates the divine essence in its absoluteness. But these graces,
which exceed the proportion of any finite substance, imitate the divine trinitarian relations.”
13 Ibid, 633.
23
Although the four graces of the four-point hypothesis are efficiently caused by all three
divine persons through a shared act, they nonetheless have relations that terminate in specific
divine persons.14
Accordingly, they not only participate in the divine essence generally, but also
imitate the divine relations in distinct manners. However, it may be unclear how each of the four
supernatural realities has a proper and exclusive relation to a particular divine person (or, in the
case of charity, two persons considered together through active spiration), and thereby
participates in a divine relation as its exemplary cause.
Offering some clarity, Lonergan lists various reasons why it is appropriate to divide
created grace into four preeminent forms that participate in the four divine relations. He states
that this four-point hypothesis “shows the nexus between these graces and God’s own life”15
and
“clearly and distinctly lays bare the root of absolute supernaturality.”16
He believes it is fitting
“that four different ontological foundations are clearly and distinctly assigned to four different
graces.”17
Additionally, Lonergan finds this hypothesis appropriate because it founds the connection
between sanctifying grace and charity. He states, “Sanctifying grace and the virtue of charity are
(1) distinct, (2) commensurate, and (3) such that when grace is infused, charity flourishes, and
14
Note that while things have created relations that terminate in God, this does not imply that God changes
ontologically. Cf. Lonergan, “Notes on the Object of the Treatise on Grace and the Virtues,” 54: “Everything
extrinsic to God is predicated of God contingently; everything predicated of God contingently is predicated not
entitatively but terminatively; and everything predicated of God terminatively supposes the term.” Also, cf. Doran,
“The Four Entia Supernaturalia,” 18: “Whatever is said of God contingently is said not entitatively but
terminatively, that is, of God as the term of a created relation.”
15
Lonergan, “Supplementary Notes on Sanctifying Grace,” 635.
16 Ibid.
17 Ibid.
24
when charity ceases, grace ceases. The foundation of this connection is that these graces imitate
active spiration and passive spiration, which are (1) distinct, (2) correlative, (3) equal, and (4)
inseparable.”18
Likewise, he notes that the hypothesis founds the connection between the
incarnation and the beatific vision through the relationship between the grace of union and the
light of glory. Lonergan explains, “Christ as man possessed the beatific vision throughout his
entire mortal life. Thus, our glory depends upon our merits, in that we merit to the extent that we
are living members of Christ. . . . The foundation of this connection is that, just as paternity is the
principle and filiation the resultant, so also the grace of union is the principle and the light of
glory is the resultant.”19
Lonergan also describes how the appropriateness of the four-point hypothesis can be seen
in the incarnation itself on account of its participation in divine paternity and its relation to the
Son. He writes,
Divine paternity is the divine intellect as speaking his Word and thus intellectually
generating his own Son. The Incarnation of the Son imitates, in a way, this generation;
for the Incarnation is a certain re-generation in which, not a new person is born, but rather
a new nature comes to an already existing person. Moreover, since the grace of union
imitates divine paternity, it has a special relation to divine filiation; and thus the grace of
union is a finite entity whereby a created humanity exists through the personal act of
existence of the divine Word.20
Also, Lonergan notes that the appropriateness of the hypothesis is found in the light of glory on
account of its participation in divine filiation and its relation to the Father. He states, “Since the
18
Ibid.
19 Ibid.
20 Ibid., 635-7
25
light of glory imitates divine filiation, the Word as spoken by the Father, it has a special relation
to God the Father as intelligent and intellectually generating. And thus it founds the reception of
the divine essence as a species and the vision itself.”21
Lonergan’s views that he expressed in his 1951-1952 notes about each of the four
preeminent forms of created grace may be studied in some additional detail. The grace of union
(or esse secundarium), sanctifying grace, charity, and the light of glory will thus be examined in
turn. Given that these notes are supplementary notes on sanctifying grace, Lonergan elaborates
upon sanctifying grace there more than the other three preeminent graces. However, he does
briefly relate sanctifying grace to charity and the light of glory in those notes. This is also the
only place where Lonergan formulates the first point of his four-point hypothesis using the
phrase “grace of union” instead of “esse secundarium,” and so it will be useful to examine how
the grace of union may be identified with the esse secundarium that Lonergan draws from
Thomas Aquinas. On account of the controversial nature of this concept in Thomistic
scholarship, it deserves some extended treatment.
a) The Grace of Union, or the Esse Secundarium
The term “grace of union,” as used by Lonergan above to describe “that finite entity
received in the humanity of Christ so that it exists through the personal act of existence of the
21
Ibid., 637.
26
divine Word,”22
is a reality he will also refer to in his later formulation of the four-point
hypothesis as the “esse secundarium,” a term used by Aquinas to describe the created existence
of Christ’s humanity. Across his various theological writings, Aquinas almost always describes
Christ as having only a single existence (esse).23
However, in article four of his Quaestio
disputata de unione Verbi incarnati,24
he attributes two existences to Christ, one for each of his
two natures. He describes the two-fold existence of Christ in this passage in terms of esse
principale and esse secundarium. Interpreters of Aquinas throughout history have differed on
whether this distinction found within De unione should be viewed as compatible with or
fundamentally divergent from his other statements on the esse of Christ, especially that contained
in his Summa theologiae III, q. 17, a. 2, where he gives his most extensive treatment in support
of the conclusion that Christ has only one existence (esse).
On account of the apparent conflict of ideas that De unione presents, some within the
Thomistic commentarial tradition dismissed the text as either having been falsely attributed to
Aquinas as its author, or else as having been a work from early in his career that ultimately gave
way to formulations corresponding to his mature view on the matter.25
However, it has become
22
Ibid., 631.
23 The word esse, as used by Aquinas, will be translated and understood here as referring to “existence”
rather than “being,” the latter of which Aquinas will more properly signify by the use of the word ens.
24 Thomas Aquinas, Quaestio disputata de unione Verbi incarnati, in Quaestiones Disputatae, Vol. II, eds.
P. Bazzi, M. Calcaterra, T. S. Centi, E. Odetto, P. M. Pession (Taurini: Marietti, 1949), 421-35
25 Cf. Victor Salas, Jr., “Thomas Aquinas on Christ’s Esse: A Metaphysics of the Incarnation,” The Thomist
70 (2006): 579: “The easiest way to overcome the present difficulty would simply be to dismiss the problematic text
or to disavow it as spurious. This is what some, such as Louis Billot, do, wheras others, Cajetan for instance, being
more conservative in their assessment of the text’s authenticity, argue that the De unione is an early text eventually
rejected by a more mature Aquinas.”
27
clear that the De unione was not only undoubtedly written by Aquinas himself, but also that it
was a product from late in his career, having been written perhaps only some months before his
parallel treatment found in the Summa theologiae.26
Aquinas articulated his view of the incarnation partially in response to other views
suggested by Peter Lombard (c. 1096-1160), whose Libri quattuor sententiarum were widely
used in theological education in Aquinas’ time.27
In addition to the view adopted by Aquinas that
identified Christ’s being with a single suppositum, Lombard put forward other views for
consideration which, in his mind, one might perhaps just as well maintain, such as that Christ
was composed of two supposita or that the soul and body of Christ were related to his divine
person only accidentally.28
Aquinas, in contrast, believes by the time of his writing of Summa
theologiae III that it is the doctrine of the Church that there is only one suppositum in the being
of Christ, such that all other accounts that deny this fact are not merely faulty but also heretical.29
26
Cf. Jean-Pierre Torrell, St. Thomas Aquinas, Vol. 1: The Person and His Work, trans. Robert Royal
(Washington, D.C.: CUA Press, 1996), 336-7: “The disputed question De unione verbi incarnati must be situated
very probably toward the end of the second period of teaching in Paris, before Easter, early in April, or perhaps in
May 1272. Given the doctrinal issues at stake in a.4 and their connection to IIIa q.17 a.2, concerning the unity of
esse in Christ, the two writings are practically contemporaneous.” Cf. ibid., 333: “As to the Tertia Pars, probably
begun in Paris at the end of the winter 1271-72, its composition was pursued in Naples until 6 December 1273, the
date Thomas stopped writing.”
27 Cf. John Froula, “One and the Same Lord: The Thomistic Teaching on the Existence of Christ” (PhD
diss., Ave Maria University, 2012), in ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, https://search-proquest-com
.proxycu.wrlc.org/pqdtglobal/docview/1523716086/fulltextPDF/474EA000A0894F77PQ/ (accessed January 23,
2018), 39: “The commentary on the Sentences was like the chef d’oeuvre that the apprentice was required to present
in order to become the master artisan.”
28 Cf. Peter Lombard, Libri quattuor sententiarum lib. III, dist. 6 (Ad Claras Aquas, prope Florentiam: Ex
Typographia Collegii S. Bonaventurae, 1916).
29 Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae III, q. 2, a. 6, in Summa theologiae, Pars IIIa et Supplementum,
eds. De Rubeis, Billuart, Faucher, et al. (Taurini: Marietti, 1948), 28-30.
28
All of Aquinas’ treatments on the being of Christ are conceptually unified around the idea
that Christ has a single suppositum, which is almost always supported by the idea of there being
only one existence in Christ.30
The affirmation of one suppositum allows one to attribute
qualities pertaining to both the divine and human natures of Christ to his one person, understood
as that which underlies them both as the ultimate subject of attribution.31
However, Aquinas’
multiplication of existences in Christ in De unione adds additional complexity to the issue. It
causes one to wonder whether the attribution of an esse secundarium to the human nature of
Christ negates Aquinas’ claim that Christ has one suppositum, since in all other instances in
Aquinas this point is tied directly to his argument for a single esse in Christ.32
For this reason,
while it is now commonly accepted that De unione was written around the time Aquinas wrote
the third part of this Summa theologiae as an expression of his mature thought, scholars are
currently divided over the issue of whether Aquinas’ treatment in De unione represents a
divergence that is fundamentally irreconcilable with his typical manner of discussing Christ’s
30
This esse is put forward by Aquinas as that by which Christ exists simply, as a whole. Cf. Froula, “One
and the Same Lord,” 5: “When speaking of Christ’s esse, in this context, he is using the word esse in its proper
sense, and simpliciter, or simply speaking.”
31 Cf. ibid., 32: “The one esse acts as predicational bridge.”
32 As Adrian Hastings points out, whether one could rightly accuse Aquinas of monophysitism or
Nestorianism hangs in the balance here. Cf. Adrian Hastings, “Christ’s Act of Existence,” Downside Review 73, no.
232 (1955): 140:
If it is true then that a real nature requires its own substantial existence, the refusal to admit more than one
in Christ is at heart a revival of the old Monophysite error in a new form; but on the other hand if unity of
person necessarily signifies a unity (and not only a union) of existence, then to say that there are two
existences in Christ is tantamount to Nestorianism. In the one case, to deny the two existences would really
be to deny that Christ’s human nature exists at all; in the other, to admit the two would be to place two
persons in Christ.
29
being.33
While it may be argued that the concept of esse secundarium found in De unione
implicitly contradicts the notion of a single suppositum in Christ, it is also possible to hold that
the introduction of this term makes an important distinction which enriches Aquinas’ view on
Christ’s being without thereby creating a discontinuity in expression.
Aquinas deals with the being of Christ as it relates to the issue of his esse in five places.
They are Scriptum super Sententiis lib. III, dist. 6, q. 2, a. 2; Quodlibet IX q. 2, a. 2; Compendium
theologiae lib. 1, cap. 212; Summa theologiae III q. 17, a. 2; and Quaestio disputata de unione
Verbi incarnati a. 4. It will be instructive to examine each of the first three texts in order to bring
the most significant claims made by Aquinas in his Summa theologiae and De unione into a
wider context. Then it will be possible to engage the two latter texts in greater depth, in light of
which it will be determined whether there are any grounds for asserting their complementarity.
Scriptum super Sententiis Lib. III, Dist. 6, Q. 2, A. 2
In this text, the whole of which Thomist scholar Jean-Pierre Torrell believes Aquinas to
have largely written between 1252-1256,34
the question at hand is whether in Christ there is not
only one esse. Aquinas responds to the three different views put forward by Lombard that
attempt to understand the being of Christ. The first holds that there are two supposita in Christ
but only one person, whereas the third claims that the body and soul of Christ were accidentally
33
Cf. Joseph Wawrykow, “Hypostatic Union,” in The Theology of Thomas Aquinas, eds. Rik Van
Nieuwenhove and Joseph Wawrykow (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), 251n43: “Scholars
disagree sharply: has Aquinas there actually rejected what he argues for consistently in the Scriptum, ScG, and the
ST? Or is it a merely terminological departure?”
34 Cf. Torrell, St. Thomas Aquinas, Vol. 1, 332.
30
united to Christ’s divine person.35
Aquinas argues that only the second opinion that affirms only
one suppositum in the being of Christ is correct, whereas the other two lead to the notion of there
being two esse, and consequently also two supposita (and two persons), in Christ:
Respondeo dicendum, quod secundum philosophum 5 Metaph., esse duobus modis
dicitur. Uno modo secundum quod significat veritatem propositionis, secundum quod est
copula; et sic, ut Commentator ibidem dicit, ens est praedicatum accidentale; et hoc esse
non est in re, sed in mente, quae conjungit praedicatum cum subjecto, ut dicit
philosophus in 6 Metaph. Unde de hoc non est hic quaestio. Alio modo dicitur esse, quod
pertinet ad naturam rei, secundum quod dividitur secundum decem genera; et hoc quidem
esse est in re, et est actus entis resultans ex principiis rei, sicut lucere est actus lucentis.
Aliquando tamen sumitur esse pro essentia, secundum quam res est: quia per actus
consueverunt significari eorum principia, ut potentiae vel habitus. Loquendo igitur de
esse secundum quod est actus entis, sic dico, quod secundum secundam opinionem
oportet ponere tantum unum esse; secundum alias autem duas oportet ponere duo esse.
Ens enim subsistens, est quod habet esse tamquam ejus quod est, quamvis sit naturae vel
formae tamquam ejus quo est: unde nec natura rei nec partes ejus proprie dicuntur esse, si
esse praedicto modo accipiatur; similiter autem nec accidentia, sed suppositum
completum, quod est secundum omnia illa. Unde etiam philosophus dicit in 2 Metaph.,
quod accidens magis proprie est entis quam ens. Prima ergo opinio, quae ponit duo
subsistentia, ponit duo esse substantialia; similiter tertia opinio, quia ponit quod partes
humanae naturae adveniunt divinae personae accidentaliter, ponit duo esse, unum
substantiale, et aliud accidentale; secunda vero opinio, quia ponit unum subsistens, et
ponit humanitatem non accidentaliter advenire divinae personae, oportet quod ponat
unum esse. Impossibile est enim quod unum aliquid habeat duo esse substantialia; quia
unum fundatur super ens: unde si sint plura esse, secundum quae aliquid dicitur ens
simpliciter, impossibile est quod dicatur unum. Sed non est inconveniens quod esse unius
subsistentis sit per respectum ad plura, sicut esse Petri est unum, habens tamen respectum
ad diversa principia constituentia ipsum: et similiter suo modo unum esse Christi habet
duos respectus, unum ad naturam humanam, alterum ad divinam.36
35
Cf. Peter Lombard, Libri quattuor sententiarum lib. III, dist. 6.
36 Thomas Aquinas, Scriptum super Sententiis lib. III, dist. 6, q. 2, a. 2, co., in Scriptum super libros
Sententiarum, Tomus III, ed. Maria Fabianus Moos (Parisiis: P. Lethielleux, 1933), 238-9. For an English
translation, cf. Froula, “One and the Same Lord,” 50-3:
I respond saying, that according to the Philosopher 5 Metaph., esse is said in two ways. One way according
to which it signifies the truth of a proposition, according to which it is a copula; and thus, as the
Commentator says in the same place, being is predicated accidentally; and this esse is not in the thing, but
in the mind, which joins the predicate to the subject, as the philosopher says in 6 Metaph. So this question
is not about that. Esse is said in another way, which pertains to the nature of things according to which it is
divided according to the ten genera; and this particular esse is in the thing, and it is the act of being
31
Here, Aquinas notes that esse normally refers either to the copula used for predication or
to the act of being resulting from the principles of a thing. However, it may also be used to
signify the essence of a subsisting being, inasmuch as this is understood to be the principle
according to which a thing exists. Aquinas claims that when esse is understood as referring to the
act of being, one should posit only one esse in Christ. Also, when esse is taken in the sense of the
essence of the thing subsisting, it still follows that one should posit only one esse in Christ; for
although there are two essences in Christ which are predicated of him, esse is not, properly
speaking, to be attributed to the nature or form of a thing by which it subsists, but only to the
complete supposit inasmuch as it is that which subsists. In the case of Christ, his human nature is
that by which he exists as human, but is ultimately not that which exists in itself. Only one esse
is attributed to Christ so as to avoid the conclusion that Christ has two substantial esse, on
account of which he would have two supposita and not one. Christ is therefore one subsistent
resulting from the principles of the thing, as “to light” is the act of lighting. Sometimes, however, esse is
borrowed for essence, according to which a thing is: since it was customary that the principles of things,
like potency or habit, be signified by act. Speaking then about esse according to what is the act of being, I
say this, that according to the second opinion it follows to posit only one esse; but according to the other
two it follows to posit two esse. For a subsisting being is what has esse as its what it is, although it would
be to nature or to form as that by which it is: whence neither the nature of the thing nor its parts is properly
called esse, if esse is accepted in the aforesaid way; and similarly neither accidents, but the complete
supposit, which is according to which all those are. Whence also the philosopher says in 2 Metaph. that an
accident is more properly of a being, than a being. Therefore the first opinion, which posits two
subsistences, posits two substantial esse; similarly the third opinion, since it posits that the parts of human
nature came to be to the divine person accidentally, posits two esse, one substantial and another accidental;
according to the true opinion, since it posits one subsisting thing, and posits the humanity to come to the
divine nature not accidentally, it follows that it would posit one esse. For it is impossible that some one
thing have two substantial esse, since one is based on being: whence if there were more than one esse,
according to which something is called a being simply, it is impossible that it be called one. But it is not
unbecoming that the esse of one subsisting thing be to many in a respect, just as the esse of Peter is one,
having nevertheless respect to his different constitutive principles: and likewise in its mode the one esse of
Christ has two respects, one to the human nature, the other to the divine.
32
being. However, Aquinas does admit that there is nothing wrong in saying that the one esse of a
subsisting being such as Christ has multiple respects, as to both his human and divine nature.
Aquinas does also note here that since the first and third opinions described by Lombard
propose that Christ has two esse (two substantial esse according to the first and one substantial,
one accidental according to the third), they are unable to describe Christ as one subsisting being.
Only in the event that one attributes one esse to Christ is it possible to do so. While this is
immediately clear in the case of the first opinion, where two substantial esse (and therefore also
two supposita) are posited, it is much less obvious why this is so in the case of the third. Would
it not be possible for an accident, which Aquinas says a couple sentences earlier should not be
called esse properly speaking, to exist in the divine esse as its one suppositum? Aquinas seems to
be implying here that, while substance has no esse of its own except for that proportionate to its
own act which accounts for its subsistence (which is not present in the case of Christ’s human
nature, whose subsistence is constituted only by way of relation to the divine esse), an accident
normally carries its own esse into another in which it subsists in relation. However, if the
incarnation were to have taken place through an accidental union, this would have meant that the
accidental esse of Christ’s humanity would not have been able to be received into a substance, as
the divine esse has no potency toward receiving finite act. As such, in this unique case
(comparable perhaps to the situation of the accidental species of bread and wine in the Eucharist)
the accidental esse of Christ’s humanity would have no substance to exist in; and thus, if it were
made to exist by God, it would have to exist in itself by its own proportionate esse. In that case it
would have to be that whereby it existed simply, thereby setting up a suppositum in addition to
that of the divine esse. This would necessarily result in Christ being composed of two persons,
33
which for Aquinas is inadmissible. Accordingly, only the scenario in which the human nature of
Christ (as a substance) relates to the divine esse without thereby being required to carry its own
esse into the divine esse (as an accident would) allows for the reality of a single suppositum in
Christ.
Initially, it would seem that Aquinas is ruling out here any manner in which one might
attribute to the human nature of Christ an esse of its own. However, some will claim that
Aquinas’ language of the two respects leaves room for one to speak of the human nature of
Christ as esse in a sense analogous to and derivative from the one divine esse whereby Christ
subsists. As John Froula argues,
Here at the end of the body of the article, St. Thomas speaks of two “respectus” of the
esse of Christ, one of them to the human nature. Because they are respects of the divine
esse, and one of them has a corresponding relational existence in re in the human nature
of Christ, it can be called esse derivatively and analogically. One could make an
argument that because Christ exists in a human nature, this “inness” or respectus, which
is a real relation for his human nature, comes to be because it is in act, and is therefore a
principle which can be called by the name esse. So we have three different propositions
taken from III Sent. 6, 2, 2 that seem to converge on the conclusion that the human nature
of Christ can be called an esse in the sense of essence or nature in act without a
proportionate esse. The first is that esse is used for essence because the principles of
something are signified by act. The second is that the human nature of Christ is not esse
“properly so called,” the implication being that the human nature of Christ in act is
improperly called esse by reason of it being a “quo est” of the subsisting Christ. The third
is that there are two respects of the one esse of Christ to his two natures. While the phrase
“esse secundarium” is not used, it would not be incompatible with the above to use that
phrase to refer to the human quiddity or nature of Christ in act, which includes a
concomitant real relation of union to the divine personal esse.37
37
Froula, “One and the Same Lord,” 53-4.
34
Quodlibet IX Q. 2, A. 2
In his ninth quodlibetal question, which Torrell notes has been dated by scholars
anywhere between 1256-1266,38
Aquinas follows a similar structure to that of his Scriptum in his
approach to describing the being of Christ, although he adds some additional qualifications. He
begins in a similar fashion by distinguishing the two meanings of esse drawn from Aristotle’s
Metaphysics. However, instead of distinguishing a third sense of esse as he did before, he divides
the second meaning of esse as “act of being” into two ways, predicating the act of being
differently to substances which subsist through themselves (which are properly said to have esse)
and to things which do not subsist through themselves but through another (to which esse is
attributed as that by which something exists). Concerning the latter category, Aquinas writes,
“Omnia vero quae non per se subsistunt, sed in alio et cum alio, sive sint accidentia sive formae
substantiales aut quaelibet partes, non habent esse ita ut ipsa vere sint, sed attribuitur eis esse alio
modo, idest ut quo aliud est.”39
However, since these things are viewed merely as superadded
relative to the substantial being in which they subsist, Aquinas affirms only a single substantial
esse in Christ.40
Yet, he also qualifies this statement with the observation that, although Christ is
38
Cf. Torrell, St. Thomas Aquinas, Vol. 1, 211.
39 Thomas Aquinas, Quodlibet IX, q. 2, a. 2, co., in Quaestiones Quodlibetales, ed. Raymundi Spiazzi
(Taurini: Marietti, 1949), 181. For an English translation, cf. Froula, “One and the Same Lord,” 56: “All things that
do not subsist through themselves, but in another and with another, whether they be accidents or [substantial] forms
or whatever parts, do not have esse such as they truly are, but esse is attributed to them in another way, that is, as
that by which something is.”
40 Cf. John F. Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas: From Finite Being to Uncreated
Being (Washington D.C.: CUA Press, 2000), 258:
Esse is truly and properly attributed to a thing which subsists in itself, that is, to a subsisting subject. But a
twofold esse is assigned to such a subject. One esse results from those things by which the unity of the
subsisting subject is completed. This is the subject’s proper and substantial act of being. Another kind of
35
one subsistent being, his divine and human natures both pertain to the overall integrity of his
being inasmuch as his suppositum is of them both. He writes, “Quia ergo in Christo ponimus
unam rem subsistentem tantum, ad cuius integritatem concurrit etiam humanitas, quia unum
suppositum est utriusque naturae; ideo oportet dicere quod esse substantiale, quod proprie
attribuitur supposito, in Christo est unum tantum.”41
This closely parallels Aquinas’ recognition
of the two respects of Christ’s esse in the Scriptum.
It should also be noted that while Aquinas here identifies one substantial esse in Christ,
he does not thereby explicitly preclude the notion that the human nature of Christ may be
identified as a substance of its own in a certain sense (although Aquinas certainly does not think
that Christ’s human nature subsists in itself as its own being apart from the divine esse). Froula
argues that this text leaves room for an attribution of esse to Christ’s human nature when viewed
as a substance. He states, “The restrictive use of substantial esse for the one esse of Christ should
not be taken to mean that the humanity of Christ is in no way a substance, and that should esse
be attributed to the humanity of Christ it would not be substantial in any way. The word proprie
is key here: substantial esse properly said is only attributed to the supposit.”42
being (esse) is assigned to the subject in addition to all those factors which complete it as a subsisting
subject. Thomas describes this as a superadded or accidental being (esse). . . . Thomas applies this
reasoning to the theological question at issue. In Christ there is only one substantial act of being, that of the
divine supposit; but in him there is also a manifold accidental being (esse).
41 Thomas Aquinas, Quodlibet IX, q. 2, a. 2, co., in Quaestiones Quodlibetales, 181. For English
translation, cf. Froula, “One and the Same Lord,” 57: “Therefore in Christ we posit only one subsisting thing, to the
integrity of which coincides also humanity, since one supposit is of both natures; therefore it is necessary to say that
substantial esse, which is properly attributed to the supposit, in Christ is only one.”
42 Froula, “One and the Same Lord,” 57.
36
Since Aquinas writes here that esse is attributed to forms and accidents as principles by
which a subsisting thing has esse (natures could also be inserted here, since this is found in the
list of such things from the Scriptum),43
he acknowledges the possibility of attributing esse to
things in an improper sense. Furthermore, in his answer to the first objection, Aquinas notes that
Christ has two instances of a “special principle of being” (speciale essendi principium) by which
the esse of Christ is specified and which form a diversity of life in his divine and human natures:
“Ad primum ergo dicendum, quod vivere dicit esse quoddam specificatum per speciale essendi
principium; et ideo diversitas vitae consequitur diversitatem principiorum vivendi, sed magis
respicit ad suppositum subsistens.”44
Froula consequently argues that the one suppositum of
Christ is specified into two certain specific esse, the first being that of his divine nature which is
the source of his subsistence, and the second being that by which he has life in his human nature:
“What seems implied is that in Christ there are two certain specific esse because there are two
special principles of being (essendi) in Christ. . . . What is really two are the principles of being
(essendi), or natures.”45
Froula suggests that the best way to interpret Aquinas’ statement that “to
live” (vivere) looks more to the subsisting supposit than to the certain specified esse of the
special principle of being is to conclude that “the specified kind of esse that goes with life is not
43
Cf. ibid., 56: “A nature, though not specified here along with accidents, forms, and parts, but also being
that by which something is, can have esse attributed to it as well. There is an attribution of esse to the principles and
elements of a subsisting thing.”
44 Thomas Aquinas, Quodlibet IX, q. 2, a. 2. ad. 1, in Quaestiones Quodlibetales, 181. For English
translation, cf. Froula, “One and the Same Lord,” 57: ‘To the first, therefore, it should be said that to live means a
certain specified esse, through a special principle of being; and thus diversity of life follows diversity of principles
of living, but it more looks to the subsisting supposit.”
45 Froula, “One and the Same Lord,” 58.
37
the primary sense of esse that goes with subsistence.”46
As such, Christ’s human life does not
flow from the special principle of being that is his human substance per se, but ultimately from
the esse properly speaking of the one suppositum in which his human substance and its certain
specified esse subsists.
This language definitely goes beyond that contained in Aquinas’ account from the
Scriptum, where he had simply said that nature, form, and accidents are not properly called esse,
since they are merely that by which the subsisting being has esse. Yet, although the Scriptum
excludes nature, form, and accidents from the proper attribution of esse, it remains silent on the
possibility of an improper attribution of esse to things by which a subsisting being has esse
properly speaking in its suppositum. This possibility is simply brought into the forefront of
discussion in Quodlibet IX. Hence, these two passages may certainly be read as compatible.
Compendium theologiae lib. 1, cap. 212
Aquinas’ treatment of the being of Christ in his Compendium theologiae, dated by Torrell
between 1265-126747
is much shorter than that contained in his other works.
Ea vero quae ad suppositum sive hypostasim pertinent, unum tantum in Christo confiteri
oportet: unde si esse accipiatur secundum quod unum esse est unius suppositi, videtur
dicendum quod in Christo sit tantum unum esse. Manifestum est enim quod partes divise
singule proprium esse habent, secundum autem quod in toto considerantur, non habent
singule suum esse, sed omnes sunt per esse totius. Sic igitur si consideremus ipsum
Christum ut quoddam integrum suppositum duarum naturarum, erit eius unum tantum
esse, sicut et est unum suppositum.48
46
Ibid.
47 Cf. Torrell, St. Thomas Aquinas, Vol. 1, 349.
48 Thomas Aquinas, Compendium theologiae lib. 1, cap. 212, in Opuscula Theologica: Vol. I: De Re
Dogmatica Et Morali, ed. Raymundi A. Verardo (Taurini: Marietti, 1954), 98. Translated by Froula, “One and the
Same Lord,” 59: “Truly it is necessary to confess that those things that pertain to the supposit or hypostasis are only
one in Christ: hence if esse is taken according as one esse is of one supposit, it seems that it must be said that in
38
Many of the nuances found in the prior two texts fall out of discussion here, although
they come back into discussion in the Summa theologiae. Here, Aquinas simply means to
reiterate that when esse is understood as that of the suppositum, Christ has only one esse as the
whole in which his various parts have esse. It may not be absolutely closed to other senses of
esse, however; for, since Aquinas notes here that he is taking esse in a certain way, Froula claims
that “multiple senses of esse are obliquely alluded to.”49
Summa theologiae III, Q. 17, A. 2
The following passage from the third part of the Summa theologiae, which was written
between 1271-1273,50
is one of Aquinas’ most clear discussions of the being of Christ:
Respondeo dicendum quod, quia in Christo sunt duae naturae et una hypostasis, necesse
est quod ea quae ad naturam pertinent in Christo sint duo, quae autem pertinent ad
hypostasim in Christo sint unum tantum. Esse autem pertinet ad hypostasim et ad
naturam: ad hypostasim quidem sicut ad id quod habet esse; ad naturam autem sicut ad id
quo aliquid habet esse; natura enim significatur per modum formae, quae dicitur ens ex
eo quod ea aliquid est, sicut albedine est aliquid album, et humanitate est aliquis homo.
Est autem considerandum quod, si aliqua forma vel natura est quae non pertineat ad esse
personale hypostasis subsistentis, illud esse non dicitur esse illius personae simpliciter,
sed secundum quid: sicut esse album est esse Socratis, non inquantum est Socrates, sed
inquantum est albus. Et huiusmodi esse nihil prohibet multiplicari in una hypostasi vel
persona: aliud enim est esse quo Socrates est albus, et quo Socrates est musicus. Sed illud
esse quod pertinet ad ipsam hypostasim vel personam secundum se, impossibile est in
una hypostasi vel persona multiplicari: quia impossibile est quod unius rei non sit unum
Christ there is only one esse. For it is clear, that the divided parts of the singular have proper esse, but according as
they are considered in a whole, they do not have their own esse, but all of them are through the esse of the whole. If
therefore we consider Christ himself as a certain integral supposit of two natures, his esse will be only one, just as he
is one supposit.”
49 Froula, “One and the Same Lord,” 59.
50 Cf. Torrell, St. Thomas Aquinas, Vol. 1, 333: “As to the Tertia Pars, probably begun in Paris at the end
of the winter 1271-72, its composition was pursued in Naples until 6 December 1273, the date Thomas stopped
writing.”
39
esse. Si igitur humana natura adveniret Filio Dei, non hypostatice vel personaliter, sed
accidentaliter, sicut quidam posuerunt, oporteret ponere in Christo duo esse: unum
quidem secundum quod est Deus; aliud autem secundum quod est homo. Sicut in Socrate
ponitur aliud esse secundum quod est albus, aliud secundum quod est homo: quia esse
album non pertinet ad ipsum esse personale Socratis. Esse autem capitatum, et esse
corporeum, et esse animatum, totum pertinet ad unam personam Socratis: et ideo ex
omnibus his non fit nisi unum esse in Socrate. Et si contingeret quod, post constitutionem
personae Socratis, advenirent Socrati manus vel pedes vel oculi, sicut accidit in caeco
nato, ex his non accresceret Socrati aliud esse, sed solum relatio quaedam ad huiusmodi:
quia scilicet diceretur esse non solum secundum ea quae prius habebat, sed etiam
secundum ea quae postmodum sibi adveniunt. Sic igitur, cum humana natura coniungatur
Filio Dei hypostatice vel personaliter, ut supra dictum est, et non accidentaliter,
consequens est quod secundum humanam naturam non adveniat sibi novum esse
personale, sed solum nova habitudo esse personalis praeexistentis ad naturam humanam:
ut scilicet persona illa iam dicatur subsistere, non solum secundum naturam divinam, sed
etiam humanam.51
51
Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae III, q. 17, a. 2, co., in Summa theologiae, Pars IIIa et
Supplementum, 131. For English translation, cf. Froula, “One and the Same Lord,” 61-2, 65-7:
I respond saying that, since in Christ there are two natures and one hypostasis, it is necessary that those
things which pertain to the nature in Christ be two, but those which pertain to the hypostasis in Christ be
only one. But esse pertains to hypostasis and to nature, to the hypostasis as to that which has esse; but to
nature as to that by which something has esse; for nature is signified through the mode of form, which is
called a being because something is by it, just as by whiteness something is white, and by humanity
someone is a man. But it is to be considered that if some form or nature which does not pertain to the
personal esse of the subsisting hypostasis, that esse is not called the esse of the person simply, but
according to which, as to be white is the to be of Socrates, not inasmuch as Socrates is, but inasmuch as he
is white. And in this way nothing prohibits esse from being multiplied in a hypostasis or person, for
Socrates is white by an esse other than that by which Socrates is musical. But that esse which according to
itself pertains to the very hypostasis or person is impossible to multiply, since it is impossible that of a
single thing there not be one esse. If therefore human nature comes to the Son of God, not hypostatically or
personally, but accidentally, as some posited, it would follow to put in Christ two esse, one according to
which he is God, another according to which he is man. Just one esse is put in Socrates according to which
he is white, another according to which he is man, since white does not pertain to the personal esse of
Socrates itself. But to be ‘headed’ and to be embodied, and to be ensouled, all pertain to the one person of
Socrates, and therefore out of all these things is not anything other than the one esse of Socrates. And if it
might happen that after the constituting of the person of Socrates, there came to Socrates a hand or foot or
eyes, as it happened to the man born blind, from these things would not accrue to Socrates another esse, but
only a relation to such things, since it would be said to be not only according to those things which it had
before, but also according those things which came to it afterwards. Therefore, since the human nature is
conjoined to the Son of God hypostatically or personally, as said above, and not accidentally, it follows that
according to the human nature there does not come to him new personal esse, but only a new relation of the
preexisting personal esse to the human nature, as, namely, that person already said to subsist, not only
according to the divine nature, but also the human.
40
In this text, Aquinas begins his response by stating that a hypostasis (i.e. suppositum) is
that which has esse but that a nature (which is signified through form and is differentiated from
the suppositum)52
is that by which something has esse. Form, however, can be distinguished into
various types relative to a substance. In other texts, Aquinas identifies different types of form
which are relevant to the distinctions he makes in this text, and these may be usefully applied to
them in order to clarify his meaning.
An important distinction Aquinas makes toward this end is between first substance
(substantia prima) and second substance (substantia secunda).53
These terms may be defined in
reference to what Aquinas calls the form of the whole (forma totius).54
The forma totius
designates the quiddity of a species (which in a composite substance involves both form and
matter).55
Composite substances may also be denominated by the form of the part (forma partis),
52
For discussion of the signification of human nature by its form (that is “humanity,” which is the form of
the whole considered with precision from individuating characteristics) and its distinction from the suppositum of
the form of the whole considered as a being, cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q. 3, a. 3, co., in Summa
theologiae, Prima Pars, ed. Petri Caramello (Taurini: Marietti, 1948), 133.
53 For Aquinas’ distinction between first substance and second substance, cf. Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones
disputatae de potentia Dei, q. 9, a. 2, ad. 6-7, in Quaestiones Disputatae, Vol. II, eds. P. Bazzi, M. Calcaterra, T. S.
Centi, E. Odetto, P. M. Pession (Taurini: Marietti, 1949), 71-2; Summa theologiae I, q. 29, a. 1, ad. 2, in Summa
theologiae, Prima Pars, 156.
54
For Aquinas’ understanding of the form of the whole, in its distinction from the form of the part, cf.
Thomas Aquinas, In duodecim libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis expositio VII, L. 9, C. 1467-69, in In duodecim
libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis expositio, eds. M. R. Cathala, Raymundi M. Spiazzi (Taurini: Marietti, 1964),
358-9.
55
Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles lib. 2, cap. 68, n. 3, editio Leonina manualis (Romae:
Apud Sedem Commissionis Leoninae, 1934), 167: “Aliquid sit forma substantialis alterius, duo requiruntur. Quorum
unum est, ut forma sit principium essendi substantialiter ei cuius est forma: principium autem dico, non factivum,
sed formale, quo aliquid est et denominatur ens. Unde sequitur aliud, scilicet quod forma et materia conveniant in
uno esse: quod non contingit de principio effectivo cum eo cui dat esse. Et hoc esse est in quo subsistit substantia
composita.” For an English translation, cf. On the Truth of the Catholic Faith- Summa Contra Gentiles, Book Two:
Creation, trans. James F. Anderson (New York: Hanover House, 1955), 204:
41
which is the substantial form of a being that actuates its matter. The forma totius of a human
being is its human essence, whereas its forma partis is its soul.
In reference to the forma totius, the substantia prima is the forma totius considered as
an individual being (e.g. “a man”). In contrast, the substantia secunda is the forma totius
abstracted without precision from individuating characteristics (e.g. “man,” considered
absolutely as a common nature in terms of genus and species).56
While substantia secunda is
considered abstractly without its manner of subsistence, it is impossible for a substance to subsist
through anything but the esse of substantia prima. Thus, the substantia secunda is that by which
something has esse and the substantia prima is that which has esse. Since this esse proper to the
substantia prima is that of the forma totius considered as an individual being, it is called esse
simpliciter (“existence simply”). Overall, the substantia prima corresponds to what Aquinas
designated above as hypostasis, and the substantia secunda corresponds to what he called nature
abstracted from its hypostasis.
The rest of the above text may be read in light of these terms and concepts in an effort
to clarify its meaning. In the text, Aquinas moves on to distinguish a substantia prima, which has
For one thing to be another’s substantial form, two requirements must be met. First, the form must be the
principle of the substantial being of the thing whose form it is; I speak not of the productive but of the
formal principle whereby a thing exists and is called a being. The second requirement then follows from
this, namely, that the form and the matter be joined together in the unity of one act of being; which is not
true of the union of the efficient cause with that to which it gives being. And this single act of being is that
in which the composite substance subsists.
Also, cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q. 75, a. 4, ad. 2, in Summa theologiae, Prima Pars, 351.
56
Besides being considered as a whole absolutely, the form of the whole can also be signified as a part by
abstracting it with precision from individuating characteristics, leaving only its non-existing essential characteristics
(e.g. “humanity”). Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles lib. 4, cap. 81, n. 10, editio Leonina manualis.
(Romae: Apud Sedem Commissionis Leoninae, 1934), 547.
42
one esse simpliciter, from an accidental form, by which the accidental esse of a substantia prima
is multiplied according to its various accidental predicaments. Since accidental forms do not
pertain to the personal esse simpliciter of the suppositum, but rather to the multiplication of esse
according to different manners of being, they are called esse secundum quid (“existence
according to which”).57
Aquinas states that such esse secundum quid can be multiplied in a being
according to its various accidental predicaments without thereby negating the oneness of the
substantia prima or hypostasis that is its esse simpliciter. However, Aquinas notes that the
incarnation of Christ could not have consisted in an accidental union (a relational bond through
esse secundum quid) between his divinity and humanity. In such a case, Christ’s humanity would
have an esse simpliciter distinct from his esse simpliciter as God, both of which would be
impossible to attribute to a single person that necessarily has only one esse simpliciter.
Aquinas goes on to note that while accidental form multiplies the esse secundum quid
of a hypostasis, a substantial part of a whole being has no esse other than the one esse of the
hypostasis to which it pertains. This principle applies to the composite substance of a human
being that has multiple substantial parts, including a soul and a body. Such substantial parts
pertain to the esse simpliciter of the hypostasis that is the human person. They add no additional
esse to a person, but only relations between them and the person in which they subsist.
Forming an analogy with the esse of substantial parts in a composite substance,
Aquinas defends the central claim of this passage regarding the esse of Christ. He notes that just
57
Cf. Froula, “One and the Same Lord,” 206: “Nothing prevents a multiplication of accidental esse in
Christ, because the esse of accidents does not terminate in the person the way the esse of a substantial human nature
does.”
43
as a substantial part has no subsistent esse of its own besides that of the hypostasis to which it
pertains, so too, in the case of the incarnation, does Christ’s human nature have no subsistent
esse of its own besides the single esse of Christ’s divine person to which it pertains as its
hypostasis. The assumption of a human nature in Christ only creates a relation between that
nature and his person, not an additional subsistent esse or accidental esse secundum quid. Thus,
while Christ’s human nature is that by which he has subsistent esse as a human, only Christ’s
divine person has its own subsistent esse.
Hence, in the case of the hypostatic union, Christ’s human nature does not have a
proportionate esse such that it would be that by which it would be that which had its esse
simpliciter in itself as the suppositum of its own forma totius. It is therefore only the divine
person of Christ whose esse is proportionate to the task of serving as the suppositum for the
forma totius of his human nature, thereby grounding it in the one substantial esse of its
substantia prima. Thus, Christ’s human nature may be thought of as a substantia secunda that is
not considered to have its own proper subsistent esse, but only a relation to the substantia prima
of his divine person to whose single esse simpliciter it pertains. This substantia secunda is that
by which Christ’s humanity has esse simpliciter through its relation to the substantia prima.
Accordingly, Christ’s human nature does not have a substantial esse distinct from the divine
esse; and since accidental esse secundum quid is not proper to it either, it does not appear that
Aquinas would attribute any esse to this substantia secunda other than the divine esse proper to
Christ’s divine person.58
58
Cf. Hastings, “Christ’s Act of Existence,” 144: “There is no second existence in Christ because existence
is either substantial (simpliciter) or accidental (secundum quid) and that proper to his human nature can be neither.”
44
Despite his conclusions drawn thus far, Aquinas still has not satisfactorily addressed
two important questions: 1) how is Christ’s human nature, when viewed as a substantia secunda
distinct from the substantia prima of the divine suppositum, able to serve as the principle in
which accidents become the principle by which they have their own multiplied esse secundum
quid, and 2) how is Christ’s human nature able to really relate to the divine suppositum if the
very esse in which he has esse simpliciter is merely logically related to him? These
considerations seem to suggest that another esse of some sort may be required in Christ’s
humanity to enable its central functions.
Aquinas makes further qualifications to his statement in the corpus through his replies to
objections. The first, second, and fourth of these are very relevant to the issue described above,
and are thus worth investigating. The first objection argues, “Esse consequitur naturam, esse
enim est a forma. Ergo in Christo sunt duo esse.”59
Aquinas replies, “Esse consequitur naturam,
non sicut habentem esse, sed sicut qua aliquid est, personam autem, sive hypostasim, consequitur
sicut habentem esse.”60
It is to be observed here that while Aquinas admits that esse simpliciter
follows from the nature/form that pertains to it, this esse simpliciter only follows from it in the
Also, cf. Dominic Bañez, The Primacy of Existence in Thomas Aquinas: A Commentary in Thomistic Metaphysics,
trans. Benjamin S. Llamzon (Chicago: Henry Regency Company, 1966), 36: “The humanity in Christ our Lord does
not have an existence that is created and received in a subject; rather it exists outside nothingness through the
existence of the divine Word, which terminates and completes the order of that humanity to actuality.”
59 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae III, q. 17, a. 2, arg. 1, in Summa theologiae, Pars IIIa et
Supplementum, 130. For an English translation, cf. Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, Vol. 4: IIa IIae QQ.
149-189, IIIa QQ. 1-73, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (1948; repr., Westminster, MD: Christian
Classics, 1981), 2118: “[Esse] follows the nature, for [esse] is from the form. Hence in Christ there are two [esse].”
60 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae III, q. 17, a. 2, ad. 1, in Summa theologiae, Pars IIIa et
Supplementum, 131. For an English translation, cf. Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, Vol. 4, trans. Fathers
of the English Dominican Province, 2119: “[Esse] is consequent upon nature, not as upon that which has [esse], but
as upon that whereby a thing is: whereas it is consequent upon person or hypostasis, as upon that which has [esse].”
45
sense of it being that by which it has esse simpliciter. Hence, the esse simpliciter following from
the nature/form follows ultimately from the esse simpliciter of the hypostasis, which alone is that
which has esse simpliciter. While not precluding the notion that esse can be multiplied in the
case of accidental esse secundum quid, this reply clarifies how esse follows from Christ’s human
nature in a way that maintains his single substantial esse.
The second objection argues, “Esse filii Dei est ipsa divina natura, et est aeternum. Esse
autem hominis Christi non est natura, sed est esse temporale. Ergo in Christo non est tantum
unum esse.”61
Aquinas replies, “Illud esse aeternum filii Dei quod est divina natura, fit esse
hominis, inquantum humana natura assumitur a filio Dei in unitate personae.”62
Here, Aquinas
views the one esse simpliciter of Christ according to the temporal and eternal aspects of his
subsistent whole.63
He does so in a way that grounds and terminates his human nature (along
61
Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae III, q. 17, a. 2, arg. 2, in Summa theologiae, Pars IIIa et
Supplementum, 130. For an English translation, cf. Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, Vol. 4, trans. Fathers
of the English Dominican Province, 2118: “The [esse] of the Son of God is the Divine Nature itself, and is eternal:
whereas the [esse] of the Man Christ is not the Divine Nature, but is a temporal [esse]. Therefore there is not only
one [esse] in Christ.”
62 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae III, q. 17, a. 2, ad. 2, in Summa theologiae, Pars IIIa et
Supplementum, 131. For an English translation, cf. Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, Vol. 4, trans. Fathers
of the English Dominican Province, 2119: “The eternal [esse] of the Son of God, which is the Divine Nature,
becomes the [esse] of man, inasmuch as the human nature is assumed by the Son of God to unity of Person.” Cf.
David A. Tamisiea, “St. Thomas Aquinas on the One Esse of Christ,” Angelicum 88 (2011): 400: “Christ’s human
esse is none other than the divine esse when considered from the perspective of its subsisting in a human nature.”
63 Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae III, q. 2, a. 4, co, in Summa theologiae, Pars IIIa et
Supplementum, 26:
Persona sive hypostasis Christi dupliciter considerari potest. Uno modo, secundum id quod est in se. Et sic
est omnino simplex, sicut et natura verbi. Alio modo, secundum rationem personae vel hypostasis, ad quam
pertinet subsistere in aliqua natura. Et secundum hoc, persona Christi subsistit in duabus naturis. Unde, licet
sit ibi unum subsistens, est tamen ibi alia et alia ratio subsistendi. Et sic dicitur persona composita,
inquantum unum duobus subsistit.
46
with the accidental esse which this form actualizes) in the esse simpliciter of his eternal
suppositum constituted by his divine nature. This is what he means when he claims that the
divine esse becomes the esse of his human nature inasmuch as his humanity is assumed into the
esse of his divine person. As Joseph Wawrykow notes, this posits a communication of the divine
esse to the human nature of Christ.64
For this reason, Christ’s human nature does not have esse
simpliciter through itself, but rather through his eternal esse.
Finally, the fourth objection argues, “In Christo anima dat aliquod esse corpori, cum sit
forma eius. Sed non dat sibi esse divinum, cum sit increatum. Ergo in Christo est aliud esse
praeter esse divinum. Et sic in Christo non est tantum unum esse.”65
Aquinas replies,
Anima in Christo dat esse corpori inquantum facit ipsum actu animatum, quod est dare ei
complementum naturae et specie. Sed si intelligatur corpus perfectum per animam absque
hypostasis habente utrumque, hoc totum compositum ex anima et corpore, prout
significatur nomine humanitatis, non significatur ut quod est, sed ut quo aliquid est. Et
ideo ipsum esse est personae subsistentis, secundum quod habet habitudinem ad talem
For an English translation, cf. Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, Vol. 4, trans. Fathers of the English
Dominican Province, 2031:
The Person or hypostasis of Christ may be viewed in two ways. First as it is in itself, and thus it is
altogether simple, even as the Nature of the Word. Secondly, in the aspect of person or hypostasis to which
it belongs to subsist in a nature; and thus the Person of Christ subsists in two natures. Hence though there is
one subsisting being in Him, yet there are different aspects of subsistence, and hence He is said to be a
composite person, insomuch as one being subsists in two.”
64 Wawrykow, “Hypostatic Union,” 242: “What we learn here is that an additional way of putting
‘assumption’ is to speak of the communication of the divine esse to the human nature of Christ.”
65 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae III, q. 17, a. 2, arg. 4, in Summa theologiae, Pars IIIa et
Supplementum, 130. For an English translation, cf. Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, Vol. 4, trans. Fathers
of the English Dominican Province, 2118: “In Christ the soul gives some [esse] to the body, since it is its form. But
it does not give the Divine [esse], since this is uncreated. Therefore in Christ there is another [esse] besides the
Divine [esse]; and thus in Christ there is not only one [esse].”
47
naturam, cuius habitudinis causa est anima inquantum perficit humanam naturam
informando corpus.66
Here, Aquinas seems to combine certain difficulties associated with the first and second
objections and to present a solution thereunto. Having already shown in his replies to these prior
two objections that 1) the esse following from the nature/form follows from the single esse of the
hypostasis, and that 2) the divine esse becomes the esse of Christ’s human nature inasmuch as
his humanity is assumed into the esse of his divine person which has esse simpliciter, the fourth
objection presumes that Aquinas has not yet properly distinguished how Christ’s uncreated esse
differs from his created esse which his soul, as the substantial form of Christ’s humanity, gives to
its matter, consisting of his body and accidental predicaments.
In response to this objection, Aquinas notes that this substantial form does give esse to its
matter in the sense that it perfects the nature and species of the body with actual animation. More
precisely, the soul actualizes the body with esse simpliciter (since it is a substantial part within
its matter)67
and actualizes its accidental predicaments in their esse secundum quid (since
66
Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae III, q. 17, a. 2, ad. 4, in Summa theologiae, Pars IIIa et
Supplementum, 131. For an English translation, cf. Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, Vol. 4, trans. Fathers
of the English Dominican Province, 2119:
In Christ the soul gives [esse] to the body, inasmuch as it makes it actually animated, which is to give it the
complement of its nature and species. But if we consider the body perfected by the soul, without the
hypostasis having both—this whole, composed of soul and body, as signified by the word “humanity,” does
not signify “what is,” but “whereby it is.” Hence [esse] belongs to the subsisting person, inasmuch as it has
a relation to such a nature, and of this relation the soul is the cause, inasmuch as it perfects human nature by
informing the body.
Cf. Froula, “One and the Same Lord,” 118: “There must be a distinction between the way esse follows on form or
essence, and the way it follows on the subsistent. Esse follows on form, but only because form is that whereby, or
that through which, or that in which, something is, variously expressed. Form does not have esse as that which is
simply. The supposit is simply, and esse is said most properly of it.”
67 On how the soul communicates esse simpliciter to the body, cf. John F. Wippel, “Thomas Aquinas on
Creatures as Causes of Esse,” International Philosophy Quarterly 40 (2000): 201:
48
accidents do not pertain to the esse simpliciter of the suppositum). Thus, Christ’s human soul, as
the forma partis used to denominate his human nature in its abstraction from matter without
precision, may be understood as a substantia secunda; for his soul is that by which he exists as
human when it acts as a formal principle that is joined with its material principle through the esse
simpliciter of the substantia prima to which the forma totius of his humanity pertains. This
means that in perfecting the body with act, the soul is also that by which the forma totius of the
human nature is perfected with the esse simpliciter proper to the divine suppositum. Aquinas
accordingly ends his reply with the assertion that Christ’s soul, inasmuch as it perfects his human
nature by informing his body with act, is the reality based upon which a relation is established
between his divine esse and his human nature.
While Aquinas thus regards this relation as based in the perfection of the human nature
through the soul’s actualization of the body, he has not thus far explicitly attributed any created
esse to the human nature in itself. He has only attributed created esse to the accidental esse
secundum quid, the perfection of which leads to the perfection of Christ’s human nature. The
reason behind this seems to have been that the substantia secunda of the human nature has no
substantial esse apart from the uncreated divine esse to which it pertains.
However, it would appear that Christ’s human nature must have some form of created
esse in order to account for its relation to his divine esse. Indeed, this becomes clear when one
considers that, for Aquinas, Christ’s divine person has only a logical relation to his human
As Thomas puts it in De pot. 3.9 ad 20, it is rather that God, the Creator, gives esse to the soul as realized in
the body and that a human generator disposes the body so that it can participate in this same act of being by
means of the soul which is united to it. . . . As Thomas expresses this in ST 1.76.1 ad 5, the soul
communicates to corporeal matter that very act of being in which it subsists so that the act of being of the
composite whole is the very same act of being as that of the soul itself.
49
nature, whereas his humanity has a real relation to his person. This view of Aquinas may be seen
when examining Summa theologiae III, q. 2, a. 7, co., where he discusses the sense in which the
hypostatic union is something created:
Omnis relatio quae consideratur inter Deum et creaturam, realiter quidem est in creatura,
per cuius mutationem talis relatio innascitur, non autem est realiter in Deo, sed secundum
rationem tantum, quia non nascitur secundum mutationem Dei. Sic igitur dicendum est
quod haec unio de qua loquimur, non est in Deo realiter, sed secundum rationem tantum
in humana autem natura, quae creatura quaedam est, est realiter. Et ideo oportet dicere
quod sit quoddam creatum.68
Here, Aquinas notes that each relation between God and a creature is a real relation from
the creature to God, but a logical relation from God to the creature. Thus, the hypostatic union of
Christ is in his human nature according to reality and in the divine esse only according to reason.
Now, since the divine esse only has a logical relation to Christ’s human nature, it would appear
that there must be some created esse by which a real relation of his humanity to his person can be
established; yet the only candidate for such an esse presented thus far seems to be esse secundum
quid, which is not sufficient to communicate esse simpliciter to the human nature.69
68
Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae III, q. 2, a. 7, co., in Summa theologiae, Pars IIIa et Supplementum,
31. For an English translation, cf. Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, Vol. 4, trans. Fathers of the English
Dominican Province, 2034:
Every relation which we consider between God and the creature is really in the creature, by whose change
the relation is brought into being; whereas it is not really in God, but only in our way of thinking, since it
does not arise from any change in God. And hence we must say that the union of which we are speaking is
not really in God, except only in our way of thinking; but in the human nature, which is a creature, it is
really. Therefore we must say it is something created.
69 Cf. Froula, “One and the Same Lord,” 67-8: “The new relation that St. Thomas speaks of implies
something being related to. The new relation of the preexisting personal esse, a relation of reason which goes
without saying, implies some foundation in the nature where the relation is real. It would be odd that the subject of
the relation, the relation being an accidental reality and having accidental esse, would have esse in absolutely no
sense.”
50
In his reply to objection 2 of the same article, Aquinas argues further, “Ratio relationis,
sicut et motus dependet ex fine vel termino, sed esse eius dependet ex subiecto. Et quia unio talis
non habet esse reale nisi in natura creata, ut dictum est, consequens est quod habeat esse
creatum.”70
He claims here that the hypostatic union, the subject of which is a real relation in
Christ’s human nature, is a created esse. Yet, since it has already been established that the
hypostatic union is not an accidental union, it cannot be attributed to Christ’s human nature
merely as an accidental esse; for Christ’s human nature would still require the esse simpliciter of
a suppositum. However, this created esse cannot be substantial either; since, for Aquinas, there is
only one substantial esse in Christ. Accordingly, the created esse that needs to be attributed to
Christ’s human nature must consist precisely in its termination in the divine esse simpliciter to
which it pertains through a real relation. This esse would be different from an accidental esse that
carries its own esse into another because a substantia secunda, in its termination in a suppositum
to which it pertains, whether this be constituted through itself or through another principle of
subsistence, does not threaten to add anything to the esse simpliciter of the suppositum.
This conclusion may perhaps suggest itself on the basis of Aquinas’ reference in Summa
theologiae III, q. 17, a. 2, ad. 2 to Christ’s eternal esse becoming the esse of his human nature
through its assumption, which was examined above. Yet, it may also suggest itself on the basis
of his reply to the third objection of the current article: “Homo dicitur et est Deus propter
unionem inquantum terminatur ad hypostasim divinam. Non tamen sequitur quod ipsa unio sit
70
Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae III, q. 2, a. 7, ad. 2, in Summa theologiae, Pars IIIa et
Supplementum, 31. For an English translation, cf. Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, Vol. 4, trans. Fathers
of the English Dominican Province, 2034: “The specific nature of a relation, as of motion, [depends on the end or
term, but its esse] depends on the subject. And since this union has its [esse] nowhere save in a created nature, as
was said above, it follows that it has a created [esse].” The addition to this translation placed in brackets is mine.
51
creator vel Deus, quia quod aliquid dicatur creatum, hoc magis respicit esse ipsius quam
relationem.”71
Here one might read between the lines to propose that the created esse of the
human nature’s real relation to God is a unique type of created substantial esse. Yet, it would be
so not as that which perfects human nature with subsistence, but rather as that by which the
human nature terminates in the esse simpliciter of the divine suppositum. While this perfection
by the esse simpliciter involves the soul’s consequent perfection of its matter, including
accidental forms inhering in the body with temporal esse secundum quid, it does not pertain per
se to accidental esse to terminate in the divine suppositum. It only pertains properly to the human
nature as the forma totius to terminate in the substantia prima of the divine suppositum through
its created esse.72
Quaestio disputata de unione Verbi incarnati, A. 4
Aquinas’ treatment of the being of Christ in De unione, which was noted earlier to have
been written within months of the parallel text from the Summa theologiae, is unique for its
terminological variance from the rest of the texts discussed above, perhaps in part since the
71
Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae III, q. 2, a. 7, ad. 3, in Summa theologiae, Pars IIIa et
Supplementum, 31. For an English translation, cf. Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, Vol. 4, trans. Fathers
of the English Dominican Province, 2034: “A man is called Creator and is God because of the union, inasmuch as it
is terminated in the Divine hypostasis; yet it does not follow that the union itself is the Creator or God, because that
a thing is said to be created regards its [esse] rather than its relation.”
72 Such a notion of created esse in Christ would be similar to that identified by Henry of Ghent in his
Quodlibet X. Cf. Stephen F. Brown, “Thomas Aquinas and His Contemporaries on the Unique Existence in Christ,”
in Christ Among the Medieval Dominicans, eds. Kent Emery and Joseph Wawrykow (Notre Dame, IN: University of
Notre Dame Press, 1998), 221: “If the human nature in Christ were to lack its own proper existence and have the
existence of the divine supposit, then the humanity of Christ would not have any created existence at all, and thus
Christ would not be a creature according to his human nature, because something is not a creature if it does not
participate in created existence.”
52
format of a disputed question allows for more tangents in discourse than a summa.73
Beside his
usage of esse principale and esse secundarium to describe the being of the suppositum as it is
made substantial in his divine and human natures, Aquinas also expands the phrase esse
secundum quid to refer not only to accidental esse, but also to a substance by which a suppositum
is made substantial (which may be considered as a substantia secunda if it is abstracted from the
suppositum).74
In the corpus of article 4, after noting the similarity of the questions about
whether something is a being and whether something is only one esse, Aquinas goes on to say
the following:
Esse enim proprie et vere dicitur de supposito subsistente. Accidentia enim et formae non
subsistentes dicuntur esse, in quantum eis aliquid subsistit; sicut albedo dicitur ens, in
quantum ea est aliquid album. Considerandum est autem, quod aliquae formae sunt
quibus est aliquid ens non simpliciter, sed secundum quid; sicut sunt omnes formae
accidentales. Aliquae autem formae sunt quibus res subsistens simpliciter habet esse; quia
videlicet constituunt esse substantiale rei subsistentis. In Christo autem suppositum
subsistens est persona Filii Dei, quae simpliciter substantificatur per naturam divinam,
non autem simpliciter substantificatur per naturam humanam. Quia persona Filii Dei fuit
ante humanitatem assumptam, nec in aliquo persona est augmentata, seu perfectior, per
naturam humanam assumptam. Substantificatur autem suppositum aeternum per naturam
humanam, in quantum est hic homo. Et ideo sicut Christus est unum simpliciter propter
unitatem suppositi, et duo secundum quid propter duas naturas, ita habet unum esse
simpliciter propter unum esse aeternum aeterni suppositi. Est autem et aliud esse huius
suppositi, non in quantum est aeternum, sed in quantum est temporaliter homo factum.
Quod esse, etsi non sit esse accidentale - quia homo non praedicatur accidentaliter de
Filio Dei, ut supra habitum est - non tamen est esse principale sui suppositi, sed
73
Cf. Froula, “One and the Same Lord,” 73: “A disputed question will deal with a question more broadly
and consider things that are more tangential to the main point. The summa that St. Thomas wrote, while going into
both sides of a question, is relatively more focused. It contains briefer treatments as the name summa implies.”
74 Cf. Hastings, “Christ’s Act of Existence,” 145: “St Thomas applies analogically the same terms and the
same relationships to accidents in us and to the human nature in Christ, always however emphasizing that one is in
the accidental the other in the substantial.”
53
secundarium. Si autem in Christo essent duo supposita, tunc utrumque suppositum
haberet proprium esse sibi principale. Et sic in Christo esset simpliciter duplex esse.75
Aquinas begins by noting that a thing is called an ens (a being) inasmuch as it is called
one esse according to its suppositum. He then claims that accidents and non-subsisting forms are
called esse inasmuch as they are things by which something subsists. He clarifies that while
accidental forms are those things secundum quid a thing is an ens, substantial forms are things by
which subsisting things have esse simpliciter, and this is normally because they constitute the
substantial esse of the subsistent whole. In Christ, however, the suppositum of the divine esse is
made substantial simpliciter from the beginning only through his eternal divine nature; it is only
made substantial through the human nature in the sense that it comes to be a man in time. For
this reason, Aquinas says that while Christ has one esse simpliciter in the unity of his
suppositum, he has two esse secundum quid according to his two natures. Thus, while the esse
simpliciter of the suppositum is made substantial through the substance of the divine nature as
75
Thomas Aquinas, Quaestio disputata de unione Verbi incarnati, a. 4, co., in Quaestiones Disputatae,
Vol. II, 432. For an English translation, cf. Froula, “One and the Same Lord,” 86-8:
For esse properly and truly is said of the subsisting supposit. For accidents and non subsisting forms are
called esse, inasmuch as through them something subsists; just as white is called being in as much as
through it something is white. But it is to be considered that some forms are that through which some thing
is, not simply, but according to which; as are all accidental forms. But other forms are through which a
subsisting thing simply has esse; since it is clear they constitute the substantial esse of the subsisting thing.
But in Christ the subsisting supposit is the person of the Son of God, which is made substantial through the
divine nature, but not made substantial through the human nature simply. Since the person of the Son of
God existed before the assumption of humanity, the person was not made any greater, or more perfect,
through the assumption of human nature. But the eternal supposit was made substantial through human
nature inasmuch as he is this man. And therefore just as Christ is one simply because of the unity of the
supposit, and two according to which, because of the two natures, thus he has one esse simply because of
the one eternal esse of the eternal supposit. But there is also another esse of this supposit, not inasmuch it is
eternal, but inasmuch as it is made man in time. Which esse, even if it is not accidental esse—since man is
not predicated accidentally of the Son of God, as was said above—it is nevertheless not the principle esse,
but subordinate. But if in Christ there were two supposits, then each supposit would have its own principle
esse. And thus in Christ there would be two-fold esse simply speaking.
54
the esse secundum quid (according to which) it is eternal, the esse simpliciter of the suppositum
also has an esse secundarium by which it is made substantial through the substance of the human
nature as the esse secundum quid (according to which) it is temporal as a man. Now, although
the esse secundarium is not an accidental esse (since the incarnation does not involve an
accidental union), neither is it the esse principale of the esse simpliciter of the divine
suppositum. If it were an esse principale, it would have its own suppositum apart from that of the
divine esse simpliciter through its own proportionate act; but this cannot be because Christ has
one suppositum and one esse simpliciter, even though he has two esse secundum quid.76
The first objection presented by Aquinas and his reply to it are instructive here. The
objection is, “In Christo enim est esse divinum et humanum; quae non possunt esse unum, quia
esse non dicitur univoce de Deo et creaturis. Ergo in Christo non est tantum unum esse, sed
duo.”77
Here, it is suggested that since there are both divine and human esse in Christ which are
not attributed to him univocally, there are two esse in Christ. Aquinas’ reply is, “Esse humanae
naturae non est esse divinae. Nec tamen simpliciter dicendum est quod Christus sit duo
secundum esse; quia non ex aequo respicit utrumque esse suppositum aeternum.”78
Aquinas
76
Cf. Froula, “One and the Same Lord,” 5: “The human nature of Christ does not have a proportionate act
of supposital being, so esse in its primary sense, that of the being of the supposit, cannot be attributed simply
speaking to the human nature of Christ.”
77 Thomas Aquinas, Quaestio disputata de unione Verbi incarnati, a. 4, arg. 1, in Quaestiones Disputatae,
Vol. II, 432. For an English translation, cf. De unione Verbi incarnati, trans. Roger W. Nutt (Bristol, CT: Peeters,
2015), 133: “For in Christ there is divine [esse] and human [esse], which cannot be one [esse] since [esse] is not said
univocally of God and creatures. Therefore in Christ there is not one [esse] only, but two.”
78 Thomas Aquinas, Quaestio disputata de unione Verbi incarnati, a. 4, ad. 1, in Quaestiones Disputatae,
Vol. II, 432. For an English translation, cf. De unione Verbi incarnati, trans. Roger W. Nutt, 135: “The [esse] of the
human nature is not the [esse] of the divine nature. Nevertheless, it should not be said simpliciter that Christ is two
according to [esse]; because each [esse] does not concern the eternal suppositum in the same manner.”
55
acknowledges here that the esse secundum quid of the human nature is not the esse secundum
quid of the divine nature, but notes also that Christ does not have two esse simpliciter. He rather
only has the one esse simpliciter pertaining to his suppositum, to which his two esse secundum
quid (namely the esse principale and the esse secundarium) do not relate in an equal way such as
would establish distinct supposita.79
It is important to recall that Aquinas pointed out in the Summa theologiae that a relation
exists between Christ’s human nature and divine person inasmuch as the substance of Christ’s
human nature pertains to the esse simpliciter of the divine suppositum. However, while the
human nature has a real relation to the divine esse, the divine esse only has a logical relation to
the human nature. Thus, when De unione discusses how the esse simpliciter of the divine
suppositum is qualified into two esse secundum quid by being made substantial in its relation to
its two natures, this qualification is simply a logical relation that does not cause any change in
the divine esse, which is not in potency to accidental change or being limited through reception
into a finite essence.80
Also, since the divine nature is the divine esse, the esse secundum quid of
79
Cf. Charles Hefling, “Another Perhaps Permanently Valid Achievement: Lonergan on Christ's (Self-)
Knowledge,” Lonergan Workshop 20 (2008), 137: “This esse secundarium is constitutive of the Word’s being-a-
man, though not of his being or his being one. That which is, both as God and as man, that which “subsists” in both
divine and human natures, is the person of the Word, and that whereby he is whatever he is—eternally or
contingently, as God or as man—is the divine esse.”
80 On how God’s divine esse is not subject to limitation, cf. Froula, “One and the Same Lord,” 186-7:
“Nature ordinarily limits or determines the esse that activates it. The human esse of Christ, being the divine esse
communicated, uniquely is not limited by the human nature it activates.” Also, cf. James B. Reichmann,
“Immanently Transcendent and Subsistent Esse: A Comparison,” The Thomist 38, no. 2 (1974): 345-6:
Aquinas sharply distinguishes the esse of God from common esse, the actuality immanent to each existing
thing by which it is without qualification. The divine esse is subsistent, i.e., it is not that actuality of a form
distinct from it but is, in this unique instance, also that which is. Hence the divine esse does not inhere in a
subject but rather is one with the subject and with the divine essence. Consequently, no limitation is placed
upon it. Because the divine esse subsists, it cannot be an esse which inheres within things and which
56
the divine nature likewise only has a logical relation to the divine esse, as they may be logically
distinguished but are really identical.81
Furthermore, since the divine nature cannot be abstracted
with or without precision from the suppositum of the divine esse, it can in no way be regarded as
a substantia secunda as defined above. Despite being called an esse secundum quid in this text (a
distinction which is merely logical in the end), the divine nature is that which has esse simpliciter
as a substantia prima. However, the esse secundum quid of the human nature, as an esse
secundarium which does not constitute its own subsisting suppositum, has a real relation to the
esse principale inasmuch as it subsists in the divine esse simpliciter. This esse secundarium
refers to the same kind of esse as that which was teased out earlier from Summa theologiae III, q.
17, a. 2 in light of Summa theologiae III, q. 2, a. 7; and this was identified above as the created
esse of the human nature which, while not that which has esse simpliciter, is that by which it
pertains to the human nature to terminate in the divine suppositum and therefrom receive its
perfection with esse simpliciter. In many ways, therefore, the text of the De unione may be
regarded as the logical conclusion of the argumentation put forward throughout the whole of
formally renders them in act. For the esse found in things does not subsist but has the form as
its quasi principle (quasi principium), since it is limited and determined by the very form it actuates.
81 On the identification of God’s essence with his esse, cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q. 3, a. 4,
co., in Summa theologiae, Prima Pars, 17: “Impossibile est ergo quod in Deo sit aliud esse, et aliud eius essentia.”
For an English translation, cf. Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, Vol. 1: 1a QQ. 1-119, trans. Fathers of the
English Dominican Province (1948; repr., Westminster, MD: Christian Classics, 1981), 17: “It is impossible that in
God His existence should differ from His essence.” Also, on how the Trinitarian relations (which subsist in the
divine esse) involve only a logical relation to the divine essence, cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q. 39, a.
1, co., in Summa theologiae, Prima Pars, 193: “Persona enim, ut dictum est supra, significat relationem, prout est
subsistens in natura divina. Relatio autem, ad essentiam comparata, non differt re, sed ratione tantum, comparata
autem ad oppositam relationem, habet, virtute oppositionis, realem distinctionem.” For an English translation, cf.
Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, Vol. 1, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, 194:
“For person, as above stated (29, 4), signifies relation as subsisting in the divine nature. But relation as referred to
the essence does not differ therefrom really, but only in our way of thinking; while as referred to an opposite
relation, it has a real distinction by virtue of that opposition.”
57
Aquinas’ writings, following especially that found in the Summa theologiae where it reached its
penultimate climax.
The above description of the esse secundarium of Christ’s human nature concurs very
much with the way in which Lonergan formulates it. Like Aquinas, Lonergan understands the
human nature of Christ to lack its own esse simpliciter distinct from that of the unlimited divine
suppositum, yet nevertheless also to have received a limited esse secundarium beyond its natural
proportions82
whereby it is assumed into the divine person and terminates thereunto: “The
humanity of Christ lacks its own proper and proportionate [esse], and yet that same humanity is
actuated by a created [esse] not proper to it—not, indeed, in order that it exist, but rather that it
be actually assumed.”83
Since being assumed through the hypostatic union is beyond what is
connatural to human nature, Lonergan understands the esse secundarium that enables this
relation as a supernatural actuation of an obediential potency: “It is clear that this potency is
obediential and this act supernatural.”84
This created supernatural act is not merely accidental (as
grace is in the case of other humans who participate in the divine nature), but rather substantial
82
Cf. Bernard Lonergan, The Triune God: Systematics, vol. 12 of Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan,
eds. Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran, trans. Michael Shields (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009),
471: “Since this assumption exceeds the proportion of nature, this secondary [esse] likewise exceeds the proportion
of the assumed nature.” Thus, while non-proportional esse principale individuates by way of termination, the non-
proportional esse secundarium is what enables the real relation of termination by actualizing an obediential potency
beyond what is connatural to human nature.
83 Bernard Lonergan, The Ontological and Psychological Constitution of Christ, vol. 7 of Collected Works
of Bernard Lonergan, eds. Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran, trans. Michael G. Shields (Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, 2002), 73. While the English consistently renders Lonergan’s “esse” as “act of existence,” this
translation may be misleading, because that term normally refers to the esse of the suppositum. Even if Lonergan
had this translation in mind, he would not have understood this “act of existence” as one which causes the human
essence of Christ to subsist in its own proportion, but rather only relates it to the esse simpliciter of the divine
suppositum that does.
84 Ibid., 113.
58
(although it does not constitute a separate substantial esse simpliciter, but only a substantial esse
secundum quid). He writes,
It is not an accidental created act with a relationship to uncreated act. For an accidental
created act with a relationship to uncreated act, if received in the essence, is sanctifying
grace; if received in the intellect, it is the light of glory. . . . If the potency is substantial,
the act also is substantial. But the potency is substantial: it is the assumed human essence
or nature. Therefore the act also is substantial, so that through it the Son of God is this
man.85
Lonergan notes further that the esse secundarium is ontologically posterior to the esse
principale (i.e. esse simpliciter) of the divine suppositum: “In the ontological order, however, the
infinite [esse] of the Word is simply prior, while that [esse] or substantial supernatural act
whereby the human nature is constituted as actually assumed is simply posterior or altogether
secondary.”86
Even so, however, the esse secundarium is distinct from the esse principale
because, while the latter involves merely a logical relation from Christ’s divine person to his
human nature (since the infinite divine esse has no potency toward receiving any real relations),
the former is that by which his human nature is really related to his divine person: “The
substantial supernatural act received in Christ’s human essence is the foundation of the real
relation of the assumed nature to the Word alone.”87
Hence, Lonergan identifies the relations
between the two terms of the hypostatic union, namely “‘to assume’ and ‘to be assumed,’” as
“the relation of reason in the Word and the real relation in the assumed nature.”88
85
Ibid., 115.
86 Ibid., 145.
87 Ibid., 147.
88 Ibid., 145.
59
However, Lonergan is also careful to note that the esse secundarium is not God or man
because it is not the esse simpliciter by which the divine and human natures subsist. It is rather
(strictly speaking) only that by which the human nature has a real relation to the divine person so
as to subsist as a substance. Accordingly, since it is the esse simpliciter of the divine person
which assumes the human nature, the esse secundarium is neither that which nor that by which
the two terms of the hypostatic union are linked. The intermediary is in fact the divine personal
esse. As he states,
The hypostatic union takes place in the person and on the basis of the person, so that the
intermediary between the two natures is the person of the Word who is God and man.
Besides, if the person of the Word were not that which links and unites the two natures,
there would not be one and the same reality that is God and is man. Clearly, the
secondary act of existence is neither God nor man, and so it is quite impossible for it to
be that which links and unites the two natures in one person. Furthermore, as the person
of the Word is that one same reality which is both God and man, so the Word’s infinite
[esse] is that by which the person of the Word is both God and man. . . . On the other
hand, the secondary [esse], as it is not that which links and unites, neither is it that by
which the link and unifier links and unites.89
b) Sanctifying Grace
In his 1951-1952 notes, Lonergan defines sanctifying grace as “that finite entity by which
a finite substance is reborn and regenerated for participating in the very life of God.”90
Following
Aquinas, he understands sanctifying grace as an accidental form that abides in the human soul as
a quality and a habit. In his words, “Sanctifying grace is an accident in the genus of quality
89
Ibid., 149.
90 Lonergan, “Supplementary Notes on Sanctifying Grace,” 633.
60
reducible to the species of habit.”91
Lonergan also notes that sanctifying grace “is not a virtue,
but is in the essence of the soul as in its subject.”92
This agrees with Aquinas’ account of the
relationship between sanctifying grace and charity, where only the latter is understood to be a
virtue.93
Aquinas disagreed on this point with Peter Lombard, who believed that sanctifying
grace and the virtue of charity were only logically distinct.94
Aquinas maintained that the virtue
of charity is ordained to the sanctifying grace in the soul as the principle that precedes it.95
91
Ibid., 615.
92 Ibid., 615.
93 Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I-II, q. 110, a. 3, s.c., in Summa theologiae, Pars Ia IIae, eds.
De Rubeis, Billuart, Faucher, et al. (Taurini: Marietti, 1948), 562. For an English translation, cf. Summa Theologica
of St. Thomas Aquinas, Vol. 2: Ia IIae QQ. 1-114, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (1948; repr.,
Westminster, MD: Christian Classics, 1981), 1134: “Grace is neither faith nor hope, for these can be without
sanctifying grace. Nor is it charity, since ‘grace foreruns charity,’ as Augustine says in his book on the
Predestination of the Saints (De Dono Persev. xvi). Therefore grace is not virtue.”
94 Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I-II, q. 110, a. 3, co., in Summa theologiae, Pars Ia IIae, 562.
For an English translation, cf. Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, Vol. 2, trans. Fathers of the English
Dominican Province, 1134: “Some held that grace and virtue were identical in essence, and differed only logically--
in the sense that we speak of grace inasmuch as it makes man pleasing to God, or is given gratuitously--and of virtue
inasmuch as it empowers us to act rightly. And the Master seems to have thought this (Sent. ii, D 27).”
95 Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I-II, q. 110, a. 3, co., in Summa theologiae, Pars Ia IIae, 562.
For an English translation, cf. Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, Vol. 2, trans. Fathers of the English
Dominican Province, 1134:
The virtue of a thing has reference to some pre-existing nature, from the fact that everything is disposed
with reference to what befits its nature. But it is manifest that the virtues acquired by human acts of which
we spoke above (55, seqq.) are dispositions, whereby a man is fittingly disposed with reference to the
nature whereby he is a man; whereas infused virtues dispose man in a higher manner and towards a higher
end, and consequently in relation to some higher nature, i.e. in relation to a participation of the Divine
Nature. . . . And thus, even as the natural light of reason is something besides the acquired virtues, which
are ordained to this natural light, so also the light of grace which is a participation of the Divine Nature is
something besides the infused virtues which are derived from and are ordained to this light.
61
Lonergan continues by describing the various formal effects of sanctifying grace, which
he divides into four kinds: primary or secondary, and immanent or transcendent.96
He
distinguishes them as follows:
(a) A primary immanent formal effect is one that is truly predicated of a subject on
account of an intrinsic constitutive element in that subject. . . .
(b) A secondary immanent formal effect is one that is truly predicated of a subject
on account of a distinct and necessary reality consequent upon an intrinsic constitutive
element in that subject. . . .
(c) A primary transcendent formal effect is one that is truly predicated of one
subject on account of an intrinsic constitutive element in another subject. . . .
(d) A secondary transcendent formal effect is one that is truly predicated of one
subject on account of a distinct and necessary reality consequent upon an intrinsic
constitutive element received in another subject.
Lonergan identifies one of the primary immanent effects of sanctifying grace as
participation in the divine nature through the imitation of active spiration. He notes that while
active spiration is attributed the Father and the Son as a substantial relation, it cannot be
attributed to a finite substance, which can only have accidental relations. Yet, a finite substance
can still imitate active spiration through the absolutely supernatural reality of sanctifying grace
as an accidental form. As Lonergan explains,
The primary immanent formal effect of sanctifying grace is that it makes one who has it a
participant of the divine nature. For this grace imitates the divine essence considered
according to its being identical with active spiration. Now active spiration belongs to the
very nature and life of the divine Trinity. But no finite substance, being something
absolute, can imitate the divine essence according to this aspect, which is a relation.97
96
Cf. Lonergan, “Supplementary Notes on Sanctifying Grace,” 623-5.
97 Ibid., 637.
62
Lonergan identifies a secondary immanent formal effect of sanctifying grace as the virtue
of charity.98
He points out the parallel between the relationship of active spiration to passive
spiration and that of sanctifying grace to charity. Accordingly, sanctifying grace is the principle
of which charity is the resultant. This will be examined more in the section below on the habit of
charity.
Lonergan mentions other secondary immanent formal effects of sanctifying grace whose
presence in the soul varies according to a person’s state of life.99
These include proximate
principles of supernatural operations, such as the infused virtues of faith and hope.100
These
proximate principles are secondary effects of sanctifying grace that depend upon its primary
effect, which is its role as the remote principle of supernatural operations. One example of a
proximate principle would be the virtue of charity, as noted above. Another example, which
Lonergan does not explicitly mention in this text, is the light of glory present in the saints in
heaven. However, he does discuss it as such in his 1946 systematic supplement “De ente
supernaturali,” which will also be examined below.
98
Cf. ibid., 639: “An immanent and formal but secondary effect of sanctifying grace is the infused virtue of
charity. For charity flows from sanctifying grace as potencies flow from the essence of the soul. For as active
spriation is to passive spiration, so is sanctifying grace to the virtue of charity. Just as sanctifying grace imitates
active spiration, so does the virtue of charity imitate passive spiration. Now active spiration is to passive spiration as
the principle to its resultant. Therefore sanctifying grace is to charity as the principle to its resultant.”
99 Cf. ibid.
100 Elsewhere, Lonergan notes that faith and hope uninformed by charity are merely virtually supernatural,
not absolutely supernatural. The latter attains God as God is in se, but the former attains God only in some respect.
Cf. Lonergan, The Triune God: Systematics, 471-3n.
63
Lonergan identifies two kinds of primary transcendent formal effects of sanctifying
grace.101
They are divided based upon whether sanctifying grace is considered as an effect of
divine love or as a term of divine love. In the former case, it is known that God efficiently causes
sanctifying grace in a person. In the latter case, it is known that God loves those whom he has
made pleasing by sanctifying grace. When understood as effects, these transcendent effects relate
to essential divine love, which is common to all three divine persons. Yet, when regarded as
terms, they relate to notional divine love, which is proper to individual divine persons. Lonergan
notes that there are no transcendent formal effects of sanctifying grace that are secondary. This is
because transcendent formal effects of sanctifying grace “are not to be conceived as
consequences; but supposing God as one and as a Trinity, by the very fact of having grace one
also has adoptive sonship, brotherhood with the Son, the gift of the Spirit, the indwelling of the
Three, and mutual friendship with God.”102
While considering sanctifying grace as a term of divine love, Lonergan describes it as the
extrinsic term of the Father’s love through the Holy Spirit for his incarnate Son in history.
Noting that “the Father eternally and necessarily loves the Son as God by the Holy Spirit,”103
Lonergan points out likewise that “in time and contingently he loves the Son as man by the Holy
Spirit.”104
Yet, Lonergan argues, “This fact, being contingent, requires an appropriate extrinsic
term. This appropriate term is sanctifying grace alone. For it imitates extrinsically that active
101
Cf. Lonergan, “Supplementary Notes on Sanctifying Grace,” 641-3.
102 Ibid., 663.
103 Ibid., 643.
104 Ibid.
64
spiration whereby the Father loves.”105
Hence, the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father,
when joined to the extrinsic term abiding in Christ that is sanctifying grace, communicates the
Father’s love to the incarnate Son in history. In this manner, the passive spiration of the Holy
Spirit, working in history, creates in Christ a participation in active spiration through the gift of
sanctifying grace.
This love is not simply that which is characteristic of the divine nature generally, but is
more specifically that which is proper to the Holy Spirit as sent by the Father. Lonergan
understands this love as a “notional” property that is not merely appropriated to a particular
divine person. As he explains,
Sanctifying grace in the man Christ is the term of notional divine love if the Father
himself loves him, if the Son as man is loved, and if the Holy Spirit is a gift properly
conferred upon Christ. But according to Scripture the Son is loved properly and not by
appropriation: the Father loves properly and not by appropriation; and the Spirit is
properly and not by appropriation conferred by way of a gift. Therefore sanctifying grace
in the man Christ is the term of notional divine love whereby the Father loves the Son in
the Holy Spirit.106
The sanctifying grace bestowed upon Christ is also the means through which all human
beings participate in the divine life. Christ has sanctifying grace by necessity as a consequence of
the grace of union,107
and he shares it freely with the the rest of humanity. Through sharing in
Christ’s sanctifying grace, people are able to participate in active spiration and receive the
105
Ibid.
106 Ibid., 645.
107
Cf. Lonergan, The Triune God: Systematics, 565: “The grace of union is substantial, while sanctifying
grace is an accident; again, there are many who have sanctifying grace, while only Christ has the grace of union. Nor
does it tell against this that sanctifying grace necessarily follows the grace of union, for what are called inseparable
accidents likewise follow necessarily on substance.”
65
Father’s love by adoption.108
Hence, Lonergan notes that “the Father properly and not by
appropriation loves those who would come to believe in Christ.”109
This love is given to people
through the Holy Spirit being sent into the world, the extrinsic term of which is sanctifying
grace. As Lonergan explains, “Just as sanctifying grace is the extrinsic term according to which
the just are loved by notional love, so also is grace the extrinsic term according to which the
uncreated Gift, the Holy Spirit, notional love, is given to the just.”110
c) The Habit of Charity
In his notes, Lonergan defines the habit or virtue of charity as “that finite entity whereby
a regenerated finite substance habitually possesses genuine friendship with God.”111
In his
explanation, he describes charity as a secondary formal effect of sanctifying grace. He also draws
an analogy between sanctifying grace as the principle of charity and active spiration as the
principle of passive spiration. Although they exist inseparably from one another, Lonergan
identifies a real distinction between sanctifying grace and charity, analogous to the one between
108
Cf. Lonergan, “Supplementary Notes on Sanctifying Grace,” 647: “One is a child by adoption if (1) he
has not been begotten in a natural way, and (2) is loved by the Father just as the Father loves his own Son; but (1)
the just are not naturally God’s children but rather ‘by nature children of wrath’ (Ephesians 2.3), and (2) they are
loved by the Father as he loves his own Son (John 17.23).”
109 Ibid., 645.
110 Ibid., 655-7.
111 Ibid., 633.
66
active and passive spiration. On these grounds, he argues that charity participates in passive
spiration, just as sanctifying grace participates in active spiration. He writes,
An immanent and formal but secondary effect of sanctifying grace is the infused virtue of
charity. For charity flows from sanctifying grace as potencies flow from the essence of
the soul. For as active spiration is to passive spiration, so is sanctifying grace to the virtue
of charity. Just as sanctifying grace imitates active spiration, so does the virtue of charity
imitate passive spiration. Now active spiration is to passive spiration as the principle to
its resultant. Therefore sanctifying grace is to charity as the principle to its resultant.
Moreover, active and passive spiration are really distinct, correlative, inseparable,
and equal. Therefore sanctifying grace and charity are really distinct. With the infusion of
grace, charity is also infused; when charity is lost, so is grace; and the measure of grace
in the same person is the same as the measure of charity.112
Lonergan proceeds to note that while the soul’s reception of divine love is the consequent
external term of the sending of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit dwells in the soul by the infusion of
divine charity. Thus, charity participates in the passive spiration of the Holy Spirit and has a
proper relation to the active spiration of the Father and the Son. Lonergan explains,
The just possess the Spirit insofar as this uncreated Gift is given to them through grace.
Further, grace is the appropriate external term of this donation because it externally
imitates active spiration and therefore has a proper relation to uncreated passive spiration.
But the Spirit is had by participation through infused charity. For the virtue of charity
externally imitates passive spiration which is the Holy Spirit. Finally, with regard to
fruition, the Spirit is possessed insofar as through grace the just habitually have a true
knowledge of God and a proper love for him.113
112
Ibid., 639.
113 Ibid., 657.
67
d) The Light of Glory
Lonergan describes the light of glory (lumen gloriae) in his 1951-1952 notes as “that
finite entity by which a created intellect is disposed to receiving the divine essence as an
intelligible species and thus see God as he is in himself.”114
This closely follows Aquinas’
understanding of the light of glory. For him, the beatific vision of God in heaven consists of the
following form of union between God and the soul: “In the vision wherein God will be seen in
His essence, the Divine essence itself will be the form, as it were, of the intellect, by which it
will understand: nor is it necessary for them to become one in being, but only to become one as
regards the act of understanding.”115
Through the divine similitude of the light of glory, the
intellect of the human soul is disposed to this vision of God, just as matter is actualized by
form.116
114
Ibid., 633.
115 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae Suppl., q. 92, a. 1, ad. 8, in Summa Theologica of St. Thomas
Aquinas, Vol. 5: IIIa QQ. 74-90, Supplement QQ. 1-99, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (1948;
repr., Westminster, MD: Christian Classics, 1981), 2950. For the original Latin text, cf. Summa theologiae, Pars IIIa
et Supplementum, 1042: “In visione qua Deus per essentiam videbitur, ipsa divina essentia erit quasi forma
intellectus qua intelligit. Nec oportet quod efficiantur unum secundum esse simpliciter: sed solum quod fiant unum
quantam pertinet ad actum intelligendi.”
116 Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q. 12, a. 2, co., in Summa theologiae, Prima Pars, 53. For an
English translation, cf. Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, Vol. 1, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican
Province, 50: “The essence of God is His own very existence, as was shown above (Question 3, Article 4), which
cannot be said of any created form; and so no created form can be the similitude representing the essence of God to
the seer. . . . To see the essence of God, there is required some similitude in the visual faculty, namely, the light of
glory strengthening the intellect to see God.” Also, cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae Suppl., q. 92, a. 1, ad.
15, in Summa theologiae, Pars IIIa et Supplementum, 1043. For an English translation, cf. Summa Theologica of St.
Thomas Aquinas, Vol. 5, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, 2951: “[The light of glory] is the
medium under which the object is seen. . . . It does not come in between the knower and the thing known, but is that
which gives the knower the power to know.”
68
Lonergan identifies the light of glory, together with sanctifying grace, as that through
which God bestows adoptive sonship upon people. Yet, he argues that sanctifying grace and the
light of glory cause one to imitate the Son of God in distinct manners, the former according to
the Son’s active spiration, and the latter according to his filiation. As he writes, “According to St
Thomas, adoptive sonship means being made to be like God’s natural Son (Summa theologiae, 3,
q. 23, a. 3 c.). Through sanctifying grace we are made like the Son as the Word spirating love.
Through the light of glory we are like the Son as Son, the Word begotten by the Father.”117
2. “De Ente Supernaturali”
In his 1946 systematic supplement “De ente supernaturali,” Lonergan provides additional
detail about the relationships among the four preeminent created graces involved in the
communication of the divine nature. He discusses the relationships among these four most
specifically while addressing the first two of five theses in his text. In the text’s first thesis, he
identifies the existence of “a created communication of the divine nature, which is a created,
proportionate, and remote principle whereby there are operations in creatures through which they
attain God as he is in himself.”118
In describing this created communication of the divine nature,
Lonergan identifies two operations through which God is attained in himself: “the beatific vision
117
Lonergan, “Supplementary Notes on Sanctifying Grace,” 647.
118 Bernard Lonergan, “The Supernatural Order,” in Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, Vol. 19: Early
Latin Theology, eds. Robert M. Doran and H. Daniel Monsour, trans. Michael G. Shields (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 2011), 65.
69
in the intellect, and the act of charity or love in the will.”119
He notes that these operations
depend upon their principles, namely the four supernatural realities of the grace of union (i.e. the
esse secundarium), sanctifying grace, the habit of charity, and the light of glory.
When articulating the relationships among these four graces as principles of supernatural
operation, Lonergan draws upon a distinction he makes between remote and proximate principles
in a being. As he explains, “That principle is remote which gives rise to the proximate principles
in which the operations themselves are received.”120
In the case of a being that exists in itself,
Lonergan notes that the remote principle of its operations is its substance, while the proximate
principles of its operations are its accidental potencies. He writes, “In the order of being, of
things as they are with respect to themselves, the remote principle is substance, from which arise
accidental potencies in which operations are received as in their proximate principles.”121
However, Lonergan believes that a remote principle is not always a substance, but rather,
for instance, an accidental form in the case of sanctifying grace or an esse secundarium in the
case of the grace of union. Accordingly, Lonergan identifies the grace of union and sanctifying
grace together as the twofold remote principle of the beatific vision and acts of charity, the
supernatural operations by which God is attained in himself. He describes the grace of union as
the primary remote principle, and sanctifying grace as the secondary remote principle. Lonergan
also claims that this twofold remote principle gives rise to the light of glory and the habit of
119
Ibid., 69.
120 Ibid., 67.
121 Ibid.
70
charity as the proximate principles in which supernatural operations are received. Lonergan
explains these remote and proximate principles as follows:
Those who perform operations by which they attain God as he is in himself also possess
not only the proximate principles of these operations, namely, the light of glory and the
habit of charity, but also the remote proportionate principle of these same operations.
This principle is what we call the communication of the divine nature, and since it is
contingent it is also necessarily finite and created.
This principle is twofold: primary and secondary.
The primary principle is the hypostatic union, the grace of union, by virtue of
which this man, our Lord Jesus Christ, is really and truly God. This Name by itself is not
enough: an objective reality is required in order that this man be truly said to be God, and
this reality, being contingent, is something created and finite as well.
The secondary principle is sanctifying or habitual grace by virtue of which we are
children of God, sharers in the divine nature, justified, friends of God, and so forth.122
Lonergan has thus shown the relationships among the four supernatural realities in the
created communication of the divine nature.123
He also notes that there are two uncreated
communications of the divine nature in God, namely from the Father to the Son and from the
Father and the Son together to the Holy Spirit. This is communicated in the relation of paternity
to filiation, as well as in the relation of active spiration to passive spiration in the two divine
processions. As Lonergan writes,
122
Ibid., 71-3
123 Lonergan also specifies that the created communication of the divine nature is materially identical with
sanctifying grace, yet formally diverse from it. Cf. ibid., 73: “There is material identity but formal diversity between
sanctifying grace and the created communication of the divine nature within us. For this created communication is
sanctifying grace not simply as such but inasmuch as it is the remote proportionate principle of the operations by
which we attain God as he is in himself.” Lonergan notes that this relationship is analogous to that which exists
between nature and substance. Cf. ibid.:
Materially, substance and nature are the same; formally, nature differs from substance in that nature is
substance not simply as substance but as the remote proportionate principle relative to operations.
Similarly, there is material identity but formal diversity between sanctifying grace and the created
communication of the divine nature within us. For this created communication is sanctifying grace not
simply as such but inasmuch as it is the remote proportionate principle of the operations by which we attain
God as he is in himself.
71
Besides these created communications of the divine nature there are also two uncreated
communications of it. The Father communicates the divine nature to the Son, and the
Father and the Son together communicate it to the Holy Spirit.
These communications are eternal, necessary, and uncreated. They are uncreated,
since they are really identical with the divine processions, which are really identical with
the internal divine relations, which in turn are really identical with the divine essence,
which is really identical with the uncreated divine act of existence.124
In his second thesis, Lonergan argues that the created communication of the divine
nature, and by extension each of the four preeminent supernatural graces, is absolutely
supernatural. He claims this because it “exceeds the proportion not only of human nature but also
of any finite substance.”125
However, Lonergan admits it is difficult to conceive how a human
being could participate in the nature of God. In fact, in his 1951-1952 notes, he goes so far as to
ask whether finite participation in God is even intelligible. There, he raises the following
objection to divine participation, “There seems to be a contradiction here. This participation is
either finite or it is infinite. If infinite, it is not a participation but God himself. If it is finite, it is
not divine, for God by his very nature is infinite; nor is it absolutely supernatural, since a finite
substance is proportionate to a finite accident.”126
Addressing this difficulty in “De ente supernaturali,” Lonergan concedes that no finite
substance can be absolutely supernatural on account of the nature of substance: “Since, then, a
substance is defined only in terms of what it is in itself, it follows that a substance defined in
124
Ibid., 73.
125 Ibid., 79.
126 Lonergan, “Supplementary Notes on Sanctifying Grace,” 617.
72
terms of God as he is in himself is God and is infinite.”127
Thus, an absolutely supernatural
substance would have to be infinite and identical with God. However, Lonergan contends that
some finite realities other than substance can be absolutely supernatural. They would be infinite
only in some respect by virtue of their imitation of the divine nature. As Lonergan explains,
A substance defined by God as he is in himself is necessarily infinite, we agree; but as to
something other than a substance so defined being necessarily infinite, we admit that it is
infinite in some respect, but not simply infinite.
. . . It is not simply infinite, but only in a certain respect, namely, in that it is
ordered to the attainment of God as he is in himself.128
Such things would differ from substance inasmuch as their being is defined not in terms
of themselves, but in reference to something else, namely a substance. Among those things
which are defined in relation to something else, Lonergan identifies existence (esse), accidental
forms, and operations. He states,
Not everything can be defined apart from a relation to something else. In this category are
everything except substances; thus existence is the act of a substance, an accident is that
to which belongs existence in something else, namely, in a substance, and cognitive and
appetitive operations (except those in God) not only are in something else but also have
an ordination to something else, namely, their respective objects.
If these operations are defined in terms of God as he is in himself, no immediate
difficulty need arise; for they are not defined only in terms of what they are in themselves
but also in terms of that in which they exist and that object to which they are directed.129
These categories of finite reality besides substance may be ascribed to the four
preeminent supernatural graces and their consequent supernatural operations.130
Indeed, an
127
Lonergan, “The Supernatural Order,” 97. Lonergan argues the same way in his 1947-1948 course notes.
Cf. Bernard Lonergan, “Notes on the Grace of Justification and the Indwelling of the Holy Spirit,” Bernard
Lonergan Archive, Marquette University, http://www.bernardlonergan.com/pdf/16000DTE040.pdf (accessed
January 23, 2018), 27: “A substance cannot be absolutely supernatural and still finite.”
128 Lonergan, “The Supernatural Order,” 95.
129 Ibid., 97.
73
absolutely supernatural, yet finite existence is the grace of union (as an esse secundarium). Also,
the most preeminent accidental forms that are absolutely supernatural are sanctifying grace, the
habit of charity, and the light of glory. Finally, these four supernatural realities are the remote
and proximate principles of absolutely supernatural, yet finite operations, which include the
beatific vision and acts of charity.
Overall, these absolutely supernatural realities enable those creatures in which they
inhere to imitate God. They facilitate divine participation in creatures by forming created
relations in them that terminate in God as the exemplary cause of the supernatural order, even
though such relations exceed the natural proportion of finite creatures. Indeed, as Lonergan
explains in thesis 4, “potency to the absolutely supernatural is obediential,”131
rather than natural.
However, God’s gift of grace to a human being can actualize this obediential potency, which
only a rational creature can have by virtue of its natural ability to know and love God.
130
Cf. Bernard Lonergan, The Incarnate Word, vol. 8 in Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, eds. Robert
M. Doran and Jeremy D. Wilkins, trans. Charles C. Hefling (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016), 559:
Essential holiness is, however, communicated to creatures supernaturally, and that in two ways. First, it is
communicated accidentally. In this way the uncreated gift of the Holy Spirit is given in sanctifying grace,
and in the beatific vision the divine essence itself is given as it slips into a created intellect (Summa
theologiae, 1, q. 12, aa. 4, 5). Second, it is communicated substantially. This happens only to Christ, in
whom a human nature is united with God in the person of the Word.
131 Lonergan, “The Supernatural Order,” 127.
74
3. Lonergan’s Notes for His 1947-1948 Course on Grace
In his 1947-1948 notes for his course on grace, Lonergan makes some important remarks
on the relationship between uncreated and created grace. While Lonergan defines created grace
in the passages noted above, he describes uncreated grace here as the manner in which God
supernaturally dwells in creatures by the gift of created grace. More precisely, created grace is
that by which the divine love of uncreated grace terminates in human beings. Hence, Lonergan
explains that they coexist inseparably: “The uncreated gift is the intimate divine love as
terminating in the just. The created gift is that by which this same love terminates in the just. Just
as love as terminating and that by which the love terminates cannot be separated, so the
uncreated and created gifts cannot be separated.”132
By the divine indwelling of uncreated grace, God is the effective and constitutive
principle of human participation in the supernatural. On this point, Lonergan specifies that God’s
uncreated grace is not present in the human soul as an inherent form, but as the term of a created
relation that exists by the formal indwelling of created grace. As he writes, “This uncreated gift
as uncreated is constituted by God alone; hence God is to the condition of the just not only as the
effective principle but also as the constitutive principle. This constitutive principle, however, is
not within the just as an inherent form but is present to the just as the term of a relation.”133
132
Lonergan, “Notes on the Grace of Justification and the Indwelling of the Holy Spirit,” 93.
133 Ibid., 5. Cf. ibid., 5n.17. There, in an editorial footnote, Robert Doran comments that in the midst of
teaching this 1947-1948 course, Lonergan substituted the above quote for an earlier statement in his notes, which
had originally translated, “Through this same finite effect there is constituted not only the indwelling of the Holy
Spirit but also the vivification of the justified through the same Spirit.” While the original statement may be
understood to indicate that created grace is the constitutive principle of the justification of souls, or at least that
75
Lonergan argues that God cannot be an inherent form in a justified person because “the
infinite God cannot be a received form limited by the receiving potency.”134
Although it may
appear as though God cannot be the constitutive principle of human justification unless he is
received in the soul intrinsically, Lonergan claims it is sufficient for divine indwelling that God
be present in the justified as the term of a relation. He states, “We deny . . . that every
constitutive principle is received intrinsically. It is clear that there is no relation without a term,
and equally clear that the term of a relation is not received intrinsically in the subject.”135
Despite maintaining that God cannot be an inherent form in the strict sense, Lonergan
considers it within the bounds of Catholic orthodoxy to describe God as the form of justification
in a broader sense. He cites Hermann Lange and Heinrich Lennerz as examples of theologians
who describe God as an extrinsic and assisting form, rather than an intrinsic form, which is
proper to created grace alone.136
Lonergan himself believes that God should at least be
understood to be the form of justification inasmuch as the Holy Spirit is the soul of Christ’s
mystical body, the Church. He states, “The Holy Spirit, then, is the soul of the mystical body of
created grace precedes uncreated grace, the revised one clearly ascribes logical priority to uncreated grace as the
constitutive principle. Created grace is not the constitutive principle of justification, but rather that by which
uncreated grace dwells in the human soul.
134 Ibid., 22.
135 Ibid., 23.
136 For Lonergan’s citations of Lange and Lennerz, cf. ibid., 60: “Lange, [De gratia] §455, p. 342 [italics in
original]: ‘. . . the formal cause, strictly speaking, that is, intrinsically informing, is created grace, but uncreated
grace as the term of a relation can be said to be a formal cause in an analogous sense, that is, extrinsic and assisting
(just as an exemplar cause also is reduced to a formal cause.’” Also, cf. ibid., 61: “Lennerz, De gratia redemptoris
133, likewise expressly admits that the Spirit can be said to be a form in a broader sense: as the term of a relation he
can be said to be an extrinsic, assistant, form ‘of the subject of the relation . . . in the manner of an assistant and
analogous form.’”
76
Christ; and ‘form’ has the same meaning as ‘soul,’ for ‘soul’ is defined as the first act or form of
an organic body. . . . To say, therefore, that the teaching of the Council denies to the Holy Spirit
any notion of form would be to say that the Council denies to the Holy Spirit any notion of soul
of the mystical body of Christ.”137
Lonergan does not wish to take this analogy too far, however. For this reason, he
exercises some caution when discussing positions like that of Matthias Joseph Scheeben (1835-
1888), who maintained that justification is constituted not only through created grace dwelling
formally in the soul, but also through uncreated grace being its “quasi form.”138
As Lonergan
states, “Scheeben taught that our justification is constituted not solely by a physical entity
infused and inherent in us but also by an uncreated gift, tri-personal, in the manner of a quasi
form.”139
Lonergan appears wary of how far this concept may be taken, noting that “but it is hard
to tell where metaphor ends and proper language begins.”140
Thus, Lonergan maintains agreement with the teaching of the Church at the Council of
Trent by stating that created grace is, strictly speaking, the single formal cause of justification.141
137
Ibid., 62.
138 Cf. Matthias Joseph Scheeben, The Mysteries of Christianity, trans. Cyril Vollert (St. Louis, MO: B.
Herder Book Co., 1946), 165-71.
139 Lonergan, “Notes on the Grace of Justification and the Indwelling of the Holy Spirit,” 51.
140 Ibid.
141 Cf. ibid., 77: “The Holy Spirit must necessarily be denied to be an intrinsic determinant, for in that case
created grace would not be the single formal cause.” For the teaching of the Council of Trent, cf. Heinrich Joseph
Dominicus Denzinger and Peter Hünermann, Enchiridion Symbolorum: A Compendium of Creeds, Definitions, and
Declarations on Matters of Faith and Morals, 43rd
ed., eds. Robert Fastiggi and Anne Englund Nash (San Francisco,
Ignatius Press, 2012), no. 1529: “Demum unica formalis causa est iustitia Dei, non qua ipse iustus est, sed qua nos
iustos facit, qua videlicet ab eo donate renovamur spiritu mentis nostrae, et non modo reputamur, sed vere iusti
77
This is true despite the uncreated grace of the Holy Spirit being the soul or form of the mystical
body of Christ. Reconciling these two ideas in an imperfect analogy, he writes, “The Holy Spirit
is the soul of the entire mystical body of Christ in such a way that created grace received in the
just is the single formal cause of justification.”142
4. Divinarum Personarum and Deo Deo trino: Pars Systematica
Lonergan’s four point hypothesis is found in its second and final form in his Divinarum
personarum (1957). He revised this text to become the volume De Deo trino: Pars systematica
(1964). His formulation of the four-point hypothesis is identical in both texts, however. Hence, it
will be cited from this later volume.
This final formulation develops the nature of the four divine relations, and briefly
correlates them with the supernatural realities of the esse secundarium, sanctifying grace, the
habit of charity, and the light of glory. His greater focus upon the divine relations in his
Trinitarian volume marks an approach that differs from that of his course notes on grace, which
develops the four preeminent supernatural graces in greater depth, according to their interrelation
and manner of divine participation. Such is understandable, given the different concentration of
each text.
nominamur et sumus, iustitiam in nobis recipientis unusquisque suam, secundum mensuram, quam Spiritus Sanctus
partitur singulis prout vult, et secundum propriam cuiusque dispositionem et cooperationem.”
142 Lonergan, “Notes on the Grace of Justification and the Indwelling of the Holy Spirit,” 71.
78
Lonergan’s treatment of the four point hypothesis in De Deo trino: Pars systematica
reads as follows:
There are four real divine relations, really identical with the divine substance, and
therefore there are four very special modes that ground the external imitation of the
divine substance. Next, there are four absolutely supernatural realities, which are never
found uninformed, namely, the secondary act of existence of the incarnation, sanctifying
grace, the habit of charity, and the light of glory. It would not be inappropriate, therefore,
to say that the secondary act of existence of the incarnation is a created participation of
paternity, and so has a special relation to the Son; that sanctifying grace is a participation
of active spiration, and so has a special relation to the Holy Spirit; that the habit of charity
is a participation of passive spiration, and so has a special relation to the Father and the
Son; and that the light of glory is a participation of sonship, and so in a most perfect way
brings the children of adoption back to the Father.
But if one says that God operates externally not according to the relations but
according to the common nature, and therefore the real divine relations cannot be
participated in in this way, we must answer with a distinction. The objection would be
true if God were a natural agent that could produce only something similar in nature, as
fire always produces heat and water always causes moisture. But the divine nature
common to the Three is intellectual, and just as God by the divine intellect knows the
four real relations, so also by the divine intellect, together with the divine will, God can
produce beings that are finite yet similar and absolutely supernatural.143
As in his earlier formulation, Lonergan here notes how the four divine relations are
imitated by four supernatural realities. He notes how these realities enable the created substances
which they inform to participate in the notional activity of the persons to whom those relations
correspond. He also states that they involve relations to the same divine persons as those to
which the divine persons in which they participate are related. He explains that grace can enable
creatures to participate in the divine relations because God can create not only as the efficient
cause of things similar to the divine nature, but also as the exemplary cause of things which bear
143
Bernard Lonergan, The Triune God: Systematics, 471-3.
79
some notional similarity to the divine persons. This is possible for God on account of the infinite
act of God’s intellect and will in creating absolutely supernatural, yet finite beings.
In De Deo trino, Lonergan argues that the best model for understanding the Trinity is
Aquinas’ psychological analogy, which describes the divine processions in terms of the internal
processions of the human intellect. He argues that one will have an insufficient understanding of
the divine processions if they are understood solely in terms of the good as self-diffusive, or
modeling the Trinity as a perfect society of love.144
He believes that these models give rise to
further questions that they do not solve. While Lonergan does not explicitly draw a connection
between the psychological analogy and the four-point hypothesis, some of his interpreters, such
as Robert Doran, believe his thought invites one to be developed.145
While clarifying the psychological analogy, Lonergan discusses the relative priority
among the personal properties, relations, and notional acts in the Trinity. These are realities
144
Cf. ibid., 131.
145 In a passage from Divinarum Personarum, which Lonergan did not carry over into De Deo trino: Pars
systematica, he admits that there are some imperfections to the psychological analogy. His remarks acknowledge
room for improvement to the analogy, which some of Lonergan’s interpreters surmise could come through utilizing
the four-point hypothesis. Cf. ibid., 777:
The first imperfection is that we do not clearly and distinctly grasp the formality of intellectual emanation.
The only intellectual emanation in us is the procession of one accidental act from another; therefore we can
scarcely consider them together. The second imperfection is the radical difference between created and
uncreated intellectual emanation. In created emanation one accidental act proceeds from another. But in
uncreated emanation one subsistent person proceeds from another. . . . Although in both cases there are one
and three, still in the image there is one person and three accidental acts, while in God there is one act and
three subsistent persons. Nor is the numerical similarity so significant that the totally diverse enumerated
realities can be understood clearly and distinctly on diverse grounds. Finally, the third imperfection is that
not only is it impossible to demonstrate the divine processions by the natural light of reason, but also, after
these processions are affirmed in faith, the process of reasoning that leads to affirming intellectual
emanations is lengthy, difficult, and obscure.
80
which Thomas Aquinas had also distinguished.146
In their understanding, the three divine persons
are constituted by their personal properties, which are identical with the relations of paternity,
filiation, and passive spiration. The relation of active spiration is not a personal property and
does not constitute any persons in God because it is common to the Father and the Son.
Furthermore, the Son and the Holy Spirit proceed as distinct persons through the notional acts of
generation and spiration, respectively.
Lonergan notes that the same reality in God is constitutive of the divine persons, their
notional acts, and their relations; yet, he states that their relative priority may be distinguished
conceptually.147
Toward this end, he asks whether the notional acts are prior or posterior to the
relations that constitute the divine persons. He explains that this may be answered differently,
depending upon whether notional acts are signified passively or actively.148
According to
Lonergan, notional acts signified passively are prior to personal properties because they are the
way towards constituting the person by the property (e.g. the filiation that constitutes the person
of the Son is a result of being generated, not vice-versa). A notional act signified actively
(dealing here with the case of generation, rather than spiration, which does not constitute a
person) is posterior to the corresponding personal property (e.g. paternity) inasmuch as the latter
is viewed as a relation constitutive of the person, but it is prior inasmuch as the relation as
relation is consequent and grounded upon the notional act. Ultimately, one and the same reality
146
Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q. 32, a. 3, co., in Summa theologiae, Prima Pars, 171.
147 Cf. Lonergan, The Triune God: Systematics, 373-5.
148 For Lonergan’s source in Aquinas, cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q. 40, a. 4, co., in Summa
theologiae, Prima Pars, 204.
81
in God is constitutive of the person and of its notional act and of its relation. So these distinctions
within the eternal and ultimately simple God are merely conceptual ways of making the Trinity
understandable to temporal human beings.
Also of importance in Lonergan’s text is his depiction of how the three persons each
possess all perfections that are identical with the divine essence they share. These perfections
include not only essential attributes, but also the divine relations, which are only logically
distinct from the divine essence. Consequently, while the persons are distinguished by their
relations, the relations are also in each of the persons on account of their real identity with the
divine essence. Yet, a person is constituted by only one of these relations that are in it. On
account of this, each person is really distinct from the other persons, despite all of them being
identical with the divine essence. As Lonergan states, “There is as much perfection in each of the
persons as in all three together. For we affirm that there is only one real perfection; and where
there is only one real perfection, it obviously cannot in itself be more or less.”149
He continues,
We concede that when we are thinking of one person and prescinding from the other two
we are unable to consider the divine perfection and order. But we deny that in such a
consideration we are adverting to the perfection that is present in each of the divine
persons; for according to the doctrine of circuminsession, there is in each of the divine
persons not only the very substance of the other persons but also the relation or personal
property that is really identical with this substance. Therefore, be careful not to confuse
(1) that which a divine person is with (2) the perfection that is in a divine person.150
When treating the divine missions, Lonergan notes that they are constituted in God but
have their term in creatures. Hence, while their terms are efficiently caused by all three persons
149
Lonergan, The Triune God: Systematics, 433.
150 Ibid., 435.
82
acting together through their shared essence, the divine missions are proper to the person who is
sent into the world. Lonergan explains, “Contingent truths, whether predicated of the divine
persons commonly or properly, have their constitution in God but their term in creatures.
Therefore, although the external works of God are necessarily common to the three persons, the
missions in the strict sense are necessarily proper, since a divine person operates by reason of a
relation of origin.”151
This truth is relevant to the four-point hypothesis because it enables the four supernatural
realities, as the terms of the divine missions, to be related properly to specific divine persons.
Yet, it is important to note that the divine persons are not dependent upon the terms of their
missions in creatures. For Lonergan, a temporal mission is constituted by a divine relation of
origin, and it also requires an appropriate external term.152
However, the external terms of the
divine missions are not their constitutive conditions, but rather their consequent conditions.153
This is because the person sending is in no way dependent upon the creature that the mission has
as its term.
151
Ibid., 439.
152 These external terms follow necessarily upon the gift of the divine missions to the humanity of Christ or
to any human being. Cf. ibid., 577:
When divinity itself is communicated, a consequent external term is demanded. So, just as a substantial act,
received in a human essence, follows upon the hypostatic union, and just as sanctifying grace in the soul of
one who is justified follows on the uncreated gift of the Holy Spirit, so also the light of glory in a created
intellect follows on the communication of the divine essence. See Summa theologiae, 1, q. 12, a. 5.
Moreover, sanctifying grace and the light of glory pertain to the accidental order, and so admit of degrees;
thus, as sanctifying grace is greater in some and smaller in others. See Summa theologiae 1, q. 12, a. 6.
153 Cf. ibid., 463-7.
83
In explaining the relations among the divine persons and their relation to creation,
Lonergan distinguishes between constitution and creation, which may be understood in both
active and passive senses.154
God has both being and agency by his intellect, yet while
constitution pertains to God’s being, creation concerns God’s agency. In constitution, what God
understands about God is God; and in creation, what God understands to be outside God is
outside God. Constitution and creation are both involved in the elements of the divine missions.
Common to all three divine persons by appropriation are active constitution of a mission (by
common conceiving and willing) and active creation of its consequent term (by efficient
causality), albeit not confusedly but distinctly. Passive constitution is proper to the one sending
and the one sent. All of the above involve logical relations of the Triune persons toward the
world they are sent to; nothing real and intrinsic is added to the intrinsically immutable divine
persons. Passive creation is the appropriate external term dependent upon the first efficient
cause.
Lonergan continues by noting that the incarnation of the Son and the giving of the Spirit
are similar in the manner of their constitution and creation described above, but different as to
what is constituted and created.155
The material external term of the incarnation is a
nonsubsistent human nature, since the hypostatic union is in the person;156
whereas in the giving
154
Cf. ibid., 467-71.
155 Cf. ibid.
156 Also, since a mission is to a subsistent, the Son is not said to be sent to the nonsubsistent nature that he
assumed, but rather to the human race as its mediator. Cf. ibid., 487.
84
of the Spirit it is a subsistent human nature, since the union of grace is between persons.157
The
corresponding formal external term of the incarnation is the esse secundarium reduced to the
category of substance, and that of the giving of the Spirit is sanctifying grace in the category of
quality.
The Son alone becomes incarnate, and he performs visible works that are proper to
himself through his human nature. Therefore, he has a visible mission, properly speaking.
According to Lonergan, the Son may also be said by appropriation to have an invisible mission,
insofar as “some effects of grace regard more the intellect” than the will and thereby “express a
certain likeness to the Son.”158
In contrast to the Son, who has a proper visible mission, the only
thing that is proper to the Holy Spirit is being sent with an invisible mission.159
Lonergan
specifies that even though the Father, Son, and Spirit come to dwell in souls as uncreated grace
by the power of their shared essential love, only the Spirit is sent according to his proper
perfection as the gift of notional love.160
Indeed, the Father and the Son dwell in souls according
to their own notional perfections in manners distinct from that of the Spirit. Furthermore, the
Spirit’s activity in his invisible mission has been manifested in history by visible signs such as
157
The external terms of the divine missions also include their successive stages in reaching all people. Cf.
ibid., 491.
158 Ibid., 499.
159 Cf. ibid.
160 Cf. ibid., 471-3.
85
fire or a dove, and so Lonergan states that the Spirit may be said to have a visible mission by
appropriation.161
B. Robert Doran’s Development of Lonergan
1. Doran’s Literature on the Four-Point Hypothesis
Robert Doran, as one of Lonergan’s leading interpreters, has taken a special interest in
developing the four-point hypothesis into a Trinitarian analogy as a foundation for systematic
theology. He is the foremost scholar on this manner of developing the four-point hypothesis.
Doran became aware of Lonergan’s four-point hypothesis in 1994, and he has written many
articles developing it as the ground for his systematic theology. Building on the research
collected in these articles, Doran completed the first volume of a projected two volume work The
Trinity in History: A Theology of the Divine Missions in 2012. The first volume is entitled
Missions and Processions, and the second volume, which Doran projects will be completed by
2020,162
has an anticipated title of Missions, Relations, and Persons.163
161
Cf. ibid., 499.
162 Robert M. Doran, “The Structure of Systematic Theology (2)” (paper presented at the Colloquium on
Doing Systematic Theology in a Multi-religious World, Marquette University, November 7, 2013),
http://lonerganresource.com/pdf/books/1
/51%20-%20The%20Structure%20of%20Systematic%20Theology%202.pdf (accessed January 23, 2018), 20-1: “I
am giving myself, God willing, seven years to write that volume.”
163 Cf. Robert M. Doran, “The Trinity in History: First Steps beyond Volume 1” (paper presented at the
Lonergan Workshop, Boston College, Boston, MA, June 18, 2014), http://lonerganresource.com/pdf/books/1
/52%20-%20The%20Trinity%20in%20History%20-%20First%20Steps%20Beyond%20Volume%201.pdf (accessed
January 23, 2018), 2.
86
Doran’s first volume of The Trinity in History draws from Lonergan’s theology of the
divine processions in the first chapter of De Deo trino: Pars Systematica to develop a Trinitarian
analogy from the order of grace. Doran notes, “The concentration in this first volume on
sanctifying grace and charity enables me also to develop an analogy for Trinitarian procession in
the order of grace, to argue that grace itself has a Trinitarian structure, and in fact that it is an
elevation into participation in the life of the Triune God.”164
In the second volume, Doran intends
to develop Lonergan’s theology of divine relations and persons in the second chapter of De Deo
trino to enrich the Trinitarian analogy Doran constructed in the first volume. It will include
further discussion of the invisible and visible missions of the incarnate Word, as well as the
interpersonal nature of grace. As Doran explains,
As I worked through Lonergan’s chapter on the divine processions fairly thoroughly in
order to write the first volume, so I wish to do the same for his chapters on the divine
relations and persons in writing the second volume. I foresee that this volume will have
far more to say about the invisible and visible missions of the Word than did volume 1,
and that it will relate the ‘religious values’ constituted by the divine missions more fully
to cultural and social values than did volume 1, which was primarily concerned with the
relation of religious values to the personal value of the authenticity of subjects. While
volume 1 introduced the category of ‘social grace,’ volume 2 will expand on it
considerably. It will present a Trinitarian theology of social grace.165
164
Robert M. Doran, “A Response,” Method: Journal of Lonergan Studies, n.s. 4, no. 1 (2013): 65. Cf.
Doran, “The Trinity in History: First Steps beyond Volume 1,” 2:
The first volume of The Trinity in History is devoted to an attempt to understand the relation of divine
processions and divine missions, especially by suggesting conscious correlatives to the created external
terms of sanctifying grace and charity. In this sense the volume is concerned primarily with the relation
between the mission and the procession of the Holy Spirit. In the background there lurks the
methodological doctrine that, if the missions are the processions, then one can now begin a systematic
theology of the Trinity with the missions without abandoning the traditional ordo doctrinae starting point
of the processions. The missions give access to the processions, and they do so by identity.
165 Doran, “The Trinity in History: First Steps beyond Volume 1,” 2.
87
2. The Possibility of a Supernatural Trinitarian Analogy
The supernatural Trinitarian analogy that Doran develops from Lonergan’s four-point
hypothesis is essential to his systematic theology. The possibility of such analogy is discussed by
Doran in his article “Being in Love with God: A Source of Analogies for Theological
Understanding.” There, Doran cites the First Vatican Council to explain how knowledge of
divine mysteries can be developed differently through the respective orders of nature and grace:
The First Vatican Council speaks of theological understanding in the following manner:
‘Reason illumined by faith, when it inquires diligently, reverently, and judiciously, with
God’s help attains some understanding of the mysteries, and that a highly fruitful one,
both from the analogy of what it naturally knows and from the interconnection of the
mysteries with one another and with our last end’ (DB 1796, DS 3016, ND 132).166
Here, the council notes that divine mysteries can be better understood in two different ways:
either by analogy from the natural knowledge of the things God has made, or through
recognizing the interconnection of supernatural realities through the grace of faith.
Building on the idea that divine mysteries can be clarified in light of others to which they
are connected, Doran suggests that analogies may be formed between them. According to his
theory, one might arrive at a clearer understanding of the Trinity through an analogical
comparison with the manner in which human beings participate in supernatural realities. He
states,
Lonergan at least potentially opens the possibility of a different kind of analogy from that
emphasized by the Council, an analogy not based on natural knowledge, at least not
proximately, but grounded in the supernatural life of grace, a certain kind of analogy of
166
Robert Doran, “Being in Love with God: A Source of Analogies for Theological Understanding,” Irish
Theological Quarterly 73 (2008), 227.
88
faith, if you wish, or better, an analogy of grace. The Council spoke of understanding the
mysteries of faith not only by analogy with what reason knows naturally but also through
the interconnection of the mysteries with one another. But the statement to which I am
referring goes beyond both of these avenues to theological understanding, in that it
evokes the possibility of an analogy between various mysteries of faith. It is the
possibility of such an analogy that I wish to explore in this article.167
While Doran claims that Lonergan’s trinitarian theology is open to the possibility of a
trinitarian analogy developed from the human experience of grace, he acknowledges that
Lonergan did not advance such an analogy himself. Yet, he believes that a statement Lonergan
made in his essay “Christology Today: Methodological Reflections” about the dynamic state of
being in love lays the groundwork for one. There Lonergan states, “The psychological analogy
. . . has its starting point in that higher synthesis of intellectual, rational, and moral consciousness
that is the dynamic state of being in love.”168
Even though Lonergan does not distinguish here
between natural and supernatural love, Doran notes that the dynamic state of being in love of
which Lonergan speaks might be specified in terms of supernatural love so as to form a basis for
167
Ibid., 228.
168 Bernard Lonergan, “Christology Today: Methodological Reflections,” in A Third Collection: Papers by
Bernard J.F. Lonergan, SJ, ed. Frederick Crowe (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1985), 93. For Lonergan’s full account
of the dynamic state of being in love, cf. ibid., 93-4:
Such love manifests itself in judgments of value. And the judgments are carried out in decisions that are
acts of loving. Such is the analogy found in the creature. Now in God the origin is the Father, in the New
Testament named ho Theos, who is identified with agape (1 John 4:8,16). Such love expresses itself in its
Word, its Logos, its verbum spirans amorem, which is a judgment of value. The judgment of value is
sincere, and so it grounds the Proceeding Love that is identified with the Holy Spirit. There are then two
processions that may be conceived in God; they are not unconscious processes but intellectually, rationally,
morally conscious, as are judgments of value based on the evidence perceived by a lover, and the acts of
loving grounded on judgments of value. The two processions ground four real relations of which three are
really distinct from one another; and these three are not just relations as relations, and so modes of being,
but also subsistent, and so not just paternity and filiation [and passive spiration] but also Father and Son
[and Holy Spirit]. Finally, Father and Son and Spirit are eternal; their consciousness is not in time but
timeless; their subjectivity is not becoming but ever itself; and each in his own distinct manner is subject of
the infinite act that God is, the Father as originating love, the Son as judgment of value expressing that
love, and the Spirit as originated loving.
89
a Trinitarian analogy from the order of grace.169
On the possibility of such an analogy, Doran
says,
Now it is true that Lonergan’s sketch of a trinitarian analogy that begins with the
dynamic state of being in love does not necessarily imply a supernatural analogy, an
analogy from the order of grace, the analogy of created participations in active and
passive spiration. . . But neither does it exclude the possibility of such an analogy, and
this possibility is what I propose to pursue here.170
The type of analogy Doran seeks is one that connects human intersubjective relationships
with their foundation in the relations among the three divine subjects. It looks to identify how the
grace of divine indwelling shapes human subjectivity and yields understanding of the Trinitarian
life in which one participates by grace. Doran explains, “In what is truly a groundbreaking
transformation of traditional language, Lonergan says that the state of grace is a social situation,
a set of intersubjective relationships, where the founding subjects are the three divine subjects,
and where grace prevails because they have come to dwell in us and with us.”171
Doran notes that the human experience of grace which would undergird such an analogy
must be developed by forming a phenomenology of grace. Doran hopes to contribute to this task,
stating: “There remains the need to specify more closely the interior dynamics of the later
analogy. What is needed, of course, is a phenomenology of grace. I am not prepared to offer that,
169
Cf. Robert M. Doran, What Is Systematic Theology? (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), 99:
Even when the analogy for the Trinity shifts, as it does in Lonergan’s later writings, to a starting point in
“that higher synthesis of intellectual, rational, and moral consciousness that is the dynamic state of being in
love,” and so that is sanctifying grace, still, because the language used is philosophical, general categories
continue to be employed. In Lonergan’s later psychological analogy, the created analogue is actually not
nature but created grace. But the categories that are employed to describe it and to explain it are by and
large general categories.
170 Doran, “Being in Love with God,” 231.
171 Ibid., 237.
90
but I hope I may be able to suggest some elements of such an account.”172
He goes on to provide
the following explanation of how grace affects human consciousness:
I wish to suggest a movement from the gift of God's love to a knowledge and orientation
(let us call it a horizon) born of that love, and a movement from the gift and the horizon
together to acts of loving that coalesce into a habit of charity. In traditional terms, the gift
of God's love is sanctifying grace, the horizon born of that love consists of faith and
hope, and the disposition that proceeds from the gift and the horizon together constitutes
charity. The gift of God's love and the horizon born of it are the created graced analogue
of active spiration, and so of Father and Son together, and the habit of charity that
proceeds from them is the created graced analogue of passive spiration, and so of the
Holy Spirit. From the gift of God's love to faith and hope, and from these together to
love; from the Father to the Word, and from Father and Word together to the proceeding
Love that is the Holy Spirit.
In terms of consciousness it is easier to speak of the horizon born of the gift of
God’s love than it is of that gift itself. I believe there is a graced, elementally global, and
for the most part tacit orientation of a human subject’s cognitive openness, a disposition
that favours evidence for affirming the goodness of being in the face of all contrary
evidence rather than acquiescing to the contrary evidence itself. Such an orientation
issues in an affirmation of value, a yes, that as cognitive is faith and as oriented into ever
greater mystery and awaiting yet further discovery of that mystery is hope. From the gift
of God’s love and the faith and hope born of it there proceed acts of loving that
cumulatively coalesce into an ever firmer habit of charity.173
Here Doran notes that the horizon of human knowledge is born of God’s love, indicating
that grace constitutes human beings with an orientation to God and a share in divine love.
Furthermore, he argues that human consciousness of grace also yields analogical knowledge of
the Trinity. However, this analogy from the order of grace requires its foundation in the order of
nature. Doran argues that the natural process of human reasoning and the analogy of being are
implicitly operative in the supernatural analogy. Yet, on account of the intimate relationship
between nature and grace in the created order of being, it is difficult to isolate purely natural
172
Ibid., 238.
173 Ibid., 240.
91
philosophy in human reason. Natural reason is, in fact, always influenced by grace. Doran
explains,
Clearly, I am suggesting a further analogy, an analogy from what we know only in faith.
But even this supernatural analogy is differentiated into its various elements by appealing
to the natural process of moving from loving grasp of evidence to judgment of value and
from these together to decision, a process that we can know by employing our natural
powers of intelligence and reason. The analogy of being has to be implicit in any analogy
of faith or of grace, because the order of salvation presupposes the order of creation.
Conversely, however, we may say with Hans Urs von Balthasar that our natural cognitive
powers always operate either under the positive sign of faith or under the negative sign of
unbelief. There are here no neutral points. The Christian option will acknowledge and
accept the indelible presence of grace at the heart of concrete philosophical thinking.174
Overall, Doran believes that the interconnection of the divine mysteries of grace and the
Trinity allows insight into the divine persons to be drawn from Lonergan’s four-point hypothesis.
He concludes his article as follows:
Furthermore, the supernatural analogy to which I am appealing is an analogy that reveals
precisely the interconnection of the mysteries with one another and with our last end, as
the First Vatican Council wished for all theological understanding. This will become
even more obvious when we appeal, as I believe we may, to the same realities to ground
an understanding of the interrelation of the divine and human consciousnesses of the
incarnate Word, and when the incarnation, the inhabitation of the Holy Spirit, and the
beatific vision are all related to one another in the explication of Lonergan’s magnificent
systematic vision.175
174
Ibid., 241-2. Cf. Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Logic, Vol. 1: The Truth of the World, trans. Adrian J.
Walker (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2000), 11-12.
175 Doran, “Being in Love with God,” 242.
92
3. Doran’s Systematic Theology
Doran believes that systematic theology has to begin with the Trinity.176
In his book The
Trinity in History, Doran develops Lonergan’s four-point hypothesis into a Trinitarian analogy
that serves a foundation for his own systematic theology. Doran describes this text as “the third
book in a series published by the University of Toronto press, but the first to engage full-scale in
the functional specialty ‘Systematics.’”177
The preceding books in this series, published in 1990
and 2005, “deal respectively with issues of Foundations (Theology and the Dialectics of History)
and method (What Is Systematic Theology?).”178
Doran views these two books as contributing to
a theory of history, which is one of the two main aspects of which his systematic theology,
understood as a “unified field structure,” is comprised. Doran summarizes the composition of his
systematic theology as follows: “The two main aspects of that field structure are the theory of
history worked out in Theology and the Dialectics of History and somewhat refined in What Is
176
Cf. Doran, “The Structure of Systematic Theology (2),” 7:
Thus, this proposal about systematics, relying as it does on a hypothesis that links trinitarian relations with
the structure of created grace, insists that systematics has to begin with the Trinity. The commonplace
understanding of Lonergan is that everything begins with the human subject. This, I think, is a profound
misunderstanding. Method (not just the book but the task) begins with the subject. But systematic theology
begins with God. It proceeds in the order of teaching, of synthesis, of composition, and in that order one
begins with the understanding of that which will make it possible to understand everything else.
177 Doran, “A Response,” 61. Lonergan divides theology into eight functional specialties in his book
Method in Theology. For his discussion of the functional specialty of systematics, cf. Bernard Lonergan, Method in
Theology (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972), 335ff.
178 Doran, “A Response,” 61.
93
Systematic Theology? and the elaboration of Lonergan’s four-point hypothesis regarding grace,
which began to get my attention in 1994.”179
Overall, Doran’s systematic theology involves an integration of the four-point hypothesis
with a theory of how history has been influenced by the divine missions. Doran shares
Lonergan’s view that the divine missions are identical with the divine processions of the
immanent Trinity as joined to an external term in history. Doran explains how this theological
foundation allows for the full range of Christian doctrine to be expounded systematically:
The doctrines on creation, revelation, redemption, church, sacraments, and praxis are not
explicitly included in the core ‘focal meanings’ contained in the four-point hypothesis,
but positions in their regard are obviously demanded in a systematic theology. Those
positions cannot be developed without a theory of history. Even the four-point hypothesis
contains a demand for expansion into a theory of history, since at the core of the
hypothesis is the theology, not only of the immanent Trinity – there are four real divine
relations, really identical with divine being – but also and especially of the divine
missions; and the divine missions are the Trinity in history, for the missions are identical
with the divine processions joined to created external terms that are the consequent
created conditions of the fact that the processions are also missions.180
Doran has been writing about the four-point hypothesis since it came to his attention in
1994. Doran collected some of his articles on the topic in his book What Is Systematic Theology?
Shortly after its release, his article “The Starting Point of Systematic Theology” reiterated his
desire to develop the four-point hypothesis into a Trinitarian analogy that could serve as the
179
Ibid., 64.
180 Robert M. Doran, “The Unified Field Structure for Systematic Theology” (paper presented at the
Lonergan Workshop, Boston College, Boston, MA, 2002), http://lonerganresource.com/pdf/books/1
/12%20-%20The%20Unified%20Field%20Structure%20for%20Systematic%20Theology.pdf (accessed January 23,
2018), 20-1.
94
foundation for a systematic theology.181
With this task in mind, Doran describes the four-point
hypothesis in that article as follows:
The hypothesis is referred to as a "four-point hypothesis" because it relates four created
supernatural realities, respectively, to the four divine relations. The created graces are
participations in and imitations of the divine relations. Thus, (1) the esse of the assumed
humanity of Jesus participates in and imitates divine paternity; (2) sanctifying grace, later
identified by Lonergan with a dynamic state of being in love without qualification,
participates in and imitates active spiration; (3) the habit of charity that is the first and
basic consequence of sanctifying grace participates in and imitates passive spiration; and
(4) the light of glory participates in and imitates filiation.182
While the four-point hypothesis is central to his systematic theology, Doran stresses that,
in order to serve as a proper foundation, it cannot stand on its own. In order to prevent systematic
theology from closing itself off from other intellectual disciplines, he believes the four-point
hypothesis must be engaged with ideas that also pertain to other fields of knowledge. He notes,
“If the four-point theological hypothesis were left to stand alone, the theology that would be built
around it would be abstract and relatively static. The hypothesis would ground only the use of
special categories, that is, of categories peculiar to theology, and not of those general categories
that theology shares with other disciplines.”183
Here, Doran differentiates between “special categories” specific to theology and “general
categories” involving not only theology, but also other sciences such as philosophy and history.
Lonergan had also distinguished these two in his Method in Theology. Doran describes these two
181
Cf. Robert Doran, “The Starting Point of Systematic Theology,” Theological Studies 67 (2006): 751:
“We may appeal to [the four-point hypothesis] for a new form of the psychological analogy for the divine
processions, an analogy located in the divine missions themselves, and . . . we may begin a systematic theology with
that new analogy.” Emphasis is Doran’s.
182 Ibid., 752.
183 Ibid., 755.
95
types of categories as follows: “General categories come within the purview of other disciplines
besides theology, and so are shared with these disciplines. Examples would be ‘justice,’ ‘social
structures,’ ‘alienation,’ ‘ideology,’ ‘existence,’ even ‘God.’ Special categories are peculiar to
theology: for example, ‘grace,’ ‘sin,’ ‘the mystical body of Christ,’ ‘the beatific vision.’”184
For Doran, a successful systematic theology requires the assistance of the conclusions
reached by other disciplines. Therefore, systematic theology relies not only upon special
categories exclusive to its own discipline, such as the supernatural realities described in the four-
point hypothesis, but also upon the general categories applicable to various other disciplines.
Doran defends his position by pointing out that Aquinas had also recognized the importance of
theology drawing in an auxiliary fashion from the general categories of other scientific
disciplines, such as Aristotle’s metaphysics. As such, theology’s special categories concerning
the supernatural, which Aquinas drew from Philip the Chancellor’s theorem of the supernatural,
receive additional clarity from the general categories of other sciences. Furthermore, Doran
identifies a parallel between the special and general categories of Aquinas’ systematic theology
and those of the systematic theology he is developing from Lonergan’s philosophy and theology:
“As Aristotle's metaphysics provided Aquinas with his general categories and Philip the
Chancellor's theorem of the supernatural grounded Aquinas's special categories, so Lonergan's
‘basic and total science’ would ground today's general categories, and his four-point hypothesis
184
Ibid., 776.
96
would ground today's special categories.”185
Accordingly, Doran describes his quest for a unified
field structure in reference to Aquinas’ systematic theology as follows:
It could be said that for Aquinas the unified field structure consisted of (1) the theorem of
the supernatural and (2) Aristotle's metaphysics. In this article I propose that a
contemporary unified field structure would consist of (1) the four-point hypothesis and
(2) a theory of history emergent from Lonergan's cognitional theory, epistemology,
metaphysics, and existential ethics along with my complementary suggestions regarding
psychic conversion and esthetic-dramatic operators of human development. I regard these
as basically continuous developments on the two elements of Aquinas's unified field
structure.186
Overall, Doran believes that systematic theology requires a two-fold foundation in special
and general categories. The former of these may be derived from a psychological Trinitarian
analogy from the order of grace. The latter are formed in reference to a theory of history. Doran
proceeds to explain how each ought to be studied.
As noted above, Doran believes that while Lonergan focused on developing a natural
psychological analogy for the Trinity, he also hinted at the possibility of a supernatural,
psychological analogy.187
Doran notes that both types of analogy proceed from a consideration of
185
Ibid., 754. Lonergan’s “total and basic science” and the general categories resulting from it are largely
developed in his philosophical work Insight. Cf. Doran, What Is Systematic Theology? 98: “It is clear from
Lonergan’s treatment of general categories in Method in Theology that Insight would contribute not only a great
portion of the general categories themselves but also the basic framework for generating all of these categories.”
186 Doran, “The Starting Point of Systematic Theology,” 776. On the relation of the medieval theorem of
the supernatural to the four-point hypothesis, cf. Doran, What Is Systematic Theology? 196: “The four-point
hypothesis . . . sublates the medieval theorem of the supernatural into the relation of four created supernatural
realities to the four divine relations.”
187 Cf. Darren Dias, “The Contributions of Bernard J.F. Lonergan to a Systematic Understanding of
Religious Diversity” (PhD diss., St. Michael’s College, 2008), in ProQuest Dissertations and Theses,
https://search-proquest-com.proxycu.wrlc.org/pqdtglobal/docview/304411979/fulltextPDF
/8552C2E3EED74387PQ/ (accessed January 23, 2018), 89: “Bernard Lonergan proposes two psychological
analogies for understanding the Trinity. The first, developed early in his career and enunciated in his lengthy treatise
De Deo Trino can be called the ‘natural-cognitional’ analogy while the other analogy found in his later writings the
‘supernatural-affective’ analogy.” Also, cf. ibid., 130:
97
the experience of human consciousness. However, a supernatural analogy, which would build
upon the conclusions reached through a natural analogy, is the type Doran believes would yield
the most insight into the Trinity and would provide an improved foundation for systematic
theology. As such, Doran seeks to formulate a supernatural, psychological analogy that builds
upon, yet advances beyond, the natural psychological analogies developed previously by
Augustine, Aquinas, and Lonergan. Doran explains,
It thoroughly complicates the matter that there are actually two psychological analogies
in Lonergan's writings, analogies drawn from the dynamic consciousness of the
intelligent creature; and that one of these, the purely cognitional analogy, is natural, and
the other, the one that begins with love, is an analogy in the supernatural order; for the
love with which it begins is the love of God poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit who
has been given to us. The natural analogy has been worked through by Lonergan . . . but
it is the supernatural analogy that is really the one we should be hitching our star to. We
must go beyond the analogies offered us in relatively detailed fashion by Augustine,
Aquinas, and especially the early Lonergan, even as we acknowledge that developing
these analogies promoted permanent achievements in human self-understanding and that
we must rely on those achievements as we move on from them to develop an analogy that
was only hinted at by Lonergan in his late reflections.
For all that, though, we must follow Lonergan in articulating the analogy from
nature first, the cognitional analogy. Only on that basis can we take up the challenge that
he presented late in life to develop an analogy in the supernatural order.188
The new analogy incorporates insights from the previous natural-cognitional psychological analogy
regarding God as dynamically conscious, the number of processions, their grounding of four real relations
of which only three are really distinct from one another and also subsistent modes of being; hence, these
relations are actually the three persons of the Trinity. In the transposition from metaphysical categories to
the interiority categories of a methodical approach there are also marked differences in the two analogies.
God is no longer conceived of as the Father as understanding and principle of the Word; the Word as
affirmation of that understanding; and the Spirit as the love of that self-understanding. Instead, the new
starting point is the experience of love and the analogy is drawn from the analysis of human development
from above downward. Thus, the Father is originating love, the Son the judgment of value that expresses
that love and the Spirit the originated love.
188 Doran, “The Starting Point of Systematic Theology,” 760. For more detail on Doran’s development of
the psychological analogy, cf. Doran, “The Trinity in History: First Steps beyond Volume 1,” 22:
The structure of the psychological analogy is the same whether the analogy be that proposed by Augustine,
by Aquinas, by Lonergan, or by anyone else. What differs is principally the analogue for the Father, the
Speaker of the divine Word. In Augustine, that analogue is called memoria. In Aquinas, it is intelligere,
understanding precisely as dicere, as speaking an inner word. In the early Lonergan, it is the same as for
98
Doran believes that Lonergan’s analogy from nature and his four-point hypothesis
detailed in De Deo trino can serve as a foundation for a supernatural analogy. However, Doran
argues that they must first be modernized by transposing them from the scholastic categories of
their original explication to the categories of “interiorly and religiously differentiated
consciousness” developed by Lonergan later in life to express how a person undergoes self-
appropriation. He states, “The objects intended in the four-point hypothesis must be identified, as
far as possible, in categories that are based in elements in interiorly and religiously differentiated
consciousness. The metaphysical terms and relations of an earlier theology, while still helpful
and even necessary, are not enough.”189
Accordingly, Doran explains that developing a
systematic theology “calls for self-appropriation (a) in the natural order and (b) in the
supernatural order, that is, it calls for interiorly and religiously differentiated consciousness,
respectively.”190
In addition, Doran notes that the general and special categories used in his
systematic theology are drawn respectively from the experience of interiorly and religiously
differentiated consciousness:
For Lonergan all theological categories should have a proximate or remote base in
interiority and religious experience; thus, all general categories should have a
corresponding element in intentional consciousness, while all special categories should
Aquinas, but in a much more fully articulated and differentiated expression of cognitional process. In the
later Lonergan, it is Agapē uttering a judgment of value. In the analogy that I am suggesting, it is again
memoria now understood as the retrospective appropriation of the Befindlichkeit or state of mind in which
one finds oneself gifted by unconditional love, with this appropriation grasped (reflective understanding) as
sufficient evidence for a judgment of value.
189 Doran, “The Starting Point of Systematic Theology,” 757.
190 Ibid., 763.
99
have a corresponding element in religious experience; and the theologian should be able
to show the relation of the categories he or she employs to these respective bases.191
Realizing how human identity is shaped by nature and grace is fundamental to Doran’s
systematic theology. This culminates in the development of special categories from the human
experience of grace that yield knowledge of one’s identity and relation to God as Trinity. As
such, Doran explains that the first of two goals required to ground a systematic theology consists
in “transposing the traditional psychological analogy for the trinitarian processions and relations
(as Lonergan has developed this analogy in De Deo trino) into a supernatural, psychological
analogy based in religiously differentiated consciousness.”192
The second task involved in forming a systematic theology is developing a theory of
history. It is necessary to link theology with history because of the centrality of the divine
missions, which are identical with the divine processions of the immanent Trinity as joined to an
external term in history. In fact, a Trinitarian analogy cannot be properly formed unless it takes
into account the human experience of the divine missions in history. Doran stresses the
importance of integrating a theory of history and the divine missions into a Trinitarian analogy
grounded in the self-appropriation of religiously differentiated consciousness:
It is another thing to add to this requirement of self-appropriation, which in one form or
another and to a greater or lesser extent is already followed by the trinitarian theologies
of Augustine, Aquinas, and Lonergan, the additional requirement of formulating all this
material eventually in terms of a theory of history. This adds a new dimension to the
191
Ibid., 776. Cf. Doran, What Is Systematic Theology? 95: “Interiorly differentiated consciousness is the
base from which are derived general theological categories. . . . Religiously differentiated consciousness is the base
from which are derived special theological categories.” Emphasis is Doran’s.
192 Doran, “The Starting Point of Systematic Theology,” 761.
100
theology of the Trinity. The direct impact, of course, is on that dimension of trinitarian
theology that treats the divine missions, and particularly the mission of the Holy Spirit.193
Overall, Doran develops his systematic theology according to the ordo disciplinae instead
of the ordo inventionis, just as Lonergan did in his De Deo trino: Pars systematica.194
This
means that his systematic exposition of the Trinity “will follow the way of teaching and learning
rather than the way of discovery, and so it will begin with those realities whose understanding
does not presuppose the understanding of anything else, but which, once understood, render
possible the understanding of everything else. In trinitarian theology this means starting with the
193
Ibid., 764-5.
194 Cf. Lonergan, The Triune God: Systematics, 59-69. There, Lonergan notes that the goal of theology as a
science is the certain knowledge of things through causes. This goal is pursued in a two-fold manner on this side of
the beatific vision. Dogmatic theology seeks certitude, while systematic theology seeks an understanding of causes.
These two are required to complement one another toward the goal of theological knowledge. Systematic theology
seeks to grasp reasons and causes, corresponding to the first operation of the intellect; whereas dogmatic theology
makes existential judgments of certitude, corresponding to the second operation of the intellect. The former focuses
on coherence (conceptual relations of things), and the latter on correspondence (truth/fact). These two operations
together comprise the complete intellectual process toward the common objective of knowledge. In the case of
theology, catechetical understanding of the meaning of articles of faith is pursued through the dogmatic way. This
precedes the assent of faith, which realizes through the systematic way that these articles are true and cohere with
each other. However, a deeper understanding of the divine mysteries takes place after the initial assent of faith.
The dogmatic way, or the order of discovery (ordo inventionis), pursues analysis, resolution, certitude, and
the temporal way of knowing. Its goal is to demonstrate what is certain, or a proposition’s degree of certitude. It
begins from what is most obvious and moves to what is more remote and obscure. At the end of its process, it adds
understanding to what it demonstrated previously. It appeals to the multitude of believers to give support to its
claims of certitude. In the order of discovery, the dimensions of the Trinity are studied in the following order:
missions, personal distinctions, consubstantiality, personal properties, relativity, and psychological analogies used to
understand relations of origin.
The systematic way, or the order of teaching/learning (ordo disciplinae), pursues synthesis, composition,
probability (since systems are built around hypothetical suppositions), and the logical simultaneity of knowledge. Its
goal is to understand what is certain. It begins with first principles (things that can be understood apart from other
notions) and moves toward a synthetic grasp of all the issues pertaining to the certitudes of faith. At the beginning of
its process, its initial understanding provides the foundation for further understanding of that which it will
demonstrate posteriorly. It can ignore the multitude of believers and pursue individual methods of synthetic
understanding. In the order of teaching/learning, the dimensions of the Trinity are studied in the following order:
The one God, intellectual processions, relativity, persons considered together, persons considered individually,
persons in relation to the divine essence and relations and processions/notional acts, and persons related to one
another and to human beings.
101
divine processions.”195
Accordingly, Doran’s systematic theology begins by discussing the
divine processions; only afterward does it treat their emanation into history as divine missions
related to an external term. Furthermore, its understanding of the Trinity from the outset is
synthesized in reference to human participation in the divine processions and missions through
the supernatural realities of the four-point hypothesis. In relating human experience to the
Trinity, Doran’s systematic theology will “appeal also to an analogy with created realities in the
supernatural order, that is, to an analogy with what we know only by revelation, to an analogy
with realities in the order of grace: realities that enable us consciously to participate in, and so to
imitate, the conscious inner life of the very God whose mystery we are attempting to
understand.”196
Furthermore, Doran notes that “even these analogies from created supernatural
realities, precisely as humanly constructed analogies, are themselves grounded in analogies from
what is naturally known.”197
As such, all developments of a supernatural analogy in Doran’s
theology are grounded in a proper understanding of human nature and the natural psychological
analogy for the Trinity this yields. As a basis for a synthetic understanding of the Trinity, natural
and supernatural analogies together set the stage for Doran’s systematic theology.
In contrast to the ordo disciplinae (or ordo doctrinae) of systematic theology, Doran
affirms with Lonergan that the ordo inventionis is proper to dogmatic theology. As a result,
dogmatic theology treats Trinitarian theology in the reverse order as systematics. Yet, given their
195
Doran, “The Starting Point of Systematic Theology,” 766-7.
196 Ibid., 767.
197 Ibid.
102
place among the eight functional specialties of theology identified by Lonergan, systematic
theology picks up from where dogmatic theology leaves off. Taking the judgments of fact and of
value expressed in dogmatic theology, systematics attempts to work out appropriate systems of
conceiving the realities indicated by doctrine. In this manner, systematics can remove apparent
doctrinal inconsistencies, point to an inner coherence among the various doctrines of the Church,
and clarify doctrine through the use of analogies offered from more familiar human experience.
In the case of the Trinity, dogmatic theology begins with the divine missions and ends by
considering psychological analogies used to understand the divine processions and missions.
This corresponds to Lonergan’s order of presentation in his De Deo trino: Pars dogmatica.
Conversely, in his De Deo trino: Pars systematica, Lonergan used Augustine’s natural
psychological analogy as a starting point for his systematic theology. While Lonergan did not
develop until the end of that volume the four-point hypothesis relevant to a supernatural,
psychological analogy, it informs the starting point of Doran’s new venture in systematic
theology. Doran explains the order of his systematic theology as follows:
Thus, as the way of discovery that Lonergan outlines in De Deo trino: Pars dogmatica
ended with Augustine's psychological analogy, which then became the starting point of
the way of teaching and learning, so Lonergan's particular embodiment of the way of
teaching and learning ended with a four-point hypothesis that now informs the starting
point of a new venture along the same kind of path, the ordo doctrinae. If we are
beginning our systematics in its entirety where Lonergan ended his systematics of the
Trinity, it is only on the basis of the development found in his own trinitarian theology
that we are able to do so. He began with the processions. We begin, on a “macro” level,
with the processions and missions together, affirming with Lonergan's assistance that
they are the same reality, except that the mission adds a created contingent external term
that is the consequent condition of the procession being also a mission.198
198
Ibid., 770.
103
4. Doran’s Use of the Four-Point Hypothesis
With this structure of Doran’s systematic theology in mind, it is possible to examine in
detail the relevance of the four-point hypothesis for his Trinitarian analogy. In seeking an
understanding of the divine processions and the divine missions, Doran examines each of the
four supernatural realities of the hypothesis as an analogue for the Trinitarian relations. He notes,
The four-point hypothesis itself is part of our starting point, not our conclusion, and that
hypothesis aims at an obscure understanding not only of divine processions but also of
divine missions and of the created consequent conditions of divine missions—the
secondary act of existence of the assumed humanity, sanctifying grace, the habit of
charity, and the light of glory—as a new set of analogues from which we can gain an
obscure understanding of the processions and relations immanent in God's being.199
For Doran, the external terms of the divine missions correspond to the supernatural
realities described in the four-point hypothesis, precisely as they are experienced in history.
These terms are the consequent condition for the divine processions also being missions. Doran
proceeds to specify the terms of the divine missions of the Word and Spirit that account for their
presence in human beings:
The emanations of Word and Spirit in God, linked to their appropriate contingent external
terms in history (the assumed humanity of the incarnate Word, sanctifying grace, the
habit of charity, and—beyond history but proleptically within it in the form of hope—the
light of glory), are the ultimate condition of possibility of any consistent and sustained
intelligent and responsible emanations in human beings, precisely through the gift of the
Holy Spirit, which is the eternal emanation of the Spirit in God linked to its external term
in history and proceeding not only from the eternal Father and Word but also from the
same Word as incarnate and as sent by the Father.200
199
Ibid., 769.
200 Ibid., 765. Doran also refers to the light of glory as the consequent condition of the beatific vision, rather
than that of a divine mission. Cf. Doran, What Is Systematic Theology? 74: “The four created supernatural realities
that are the created consequent conditions either of the divine missions (the esse secundarium of the Incarnation,
sanctifying grace, and the habit of charity) or of the beatific vision (the light of glory).” Yet, Doran should not be
104
Making use of the four-point hypothesis in a Trinitarian analogy is not without obstacles,
however. For example, Doran notes that the scholastic categories in which the four-point
hypothesis was originally formed do not so easily clarify how the four supernatural realities
affect human consciousness as the basis for analogy. Doran notes, for instance, “Sanctifying
grace has been called an entitative habit, rooted in the essence of the soul. Such it is. Such
terminology of itself says nothing about the difference that this habit would make in
consciousness.”201
For this reason, as noted above, Doran believes that the original formulation
of the four-point hypothesis needs to be transposed into language pertaining to Lonergan’s later
theology on religiously differentiated consciousness.
Another problem consists in the task of framing the human experience of grace in terms
of a phenomenology of grace so that it can be used to develop the supernatural analogy. In order
for the analogy to yield insight, Doran believes one “must, of course, also relate these
supernatural analogues of divine life to operations and states identified in our own interiority and
to our participation in the historical dialectic.”202
While Doran is hoping to contribute to this task
of explaining how grace affects human consciousness, he notes that “a phenomenology of grace
has barely begun to be composed.”203
interpreted by this statement as denying his belief expressed elsewhere that the light of glory is an external term of
divine mission that constitutes in human beings a participation in divine filiation.
201 Doran, “The Starting Point of Systematic Theology,” 761.
202 Ibid., 770.
203 Ibid.
105
5. Doran on a Phenomenology of Grace
Developing a phenomenology of grace is a task involving several challenges. For
instance, among the four terms of the divine missions, Doran notes that the esse secundarium
and the lumen gloriae can only be understood in light of people’s current experience of
sanctifying grace and the habit of charity. These latter two constitute a human being’s
participation in active and passive spiration, respectively.204
Experience of these two elements of
the four-point hypothesis is direct, albeit shrouded in mystery, whereas the other elements are
understood indirectly.205
This is because, as Doran explains, “Only by extrapolation from our
own participation in divine life can we find some structural understanding of the human Jesus’
created participation in divine paternity and of the saints’ participation in the divine Son.”206
As
204
Cf. Doran, What Is Systematic Theology? 109: “Sanctifying grace is a created participation in the active
spiration of the Spirit by the Father and the Son, and the habit of charity breathed forth from sanctifying grace is a
created participation in the passive spiration that is the Holy Spirit.”
205 Cf. L. Matthew Petillo, “Grace, Glory, and the Gaze of Love,” in Grace and Friendship: Theological
Essays in Honor of Fred Lawrence, from His Grateful Students, eds. M. Shawn Copeland and Jeremy D. Wilkins
(Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 2016), 197:
Since most of us, I presume, are neither divine persons subsisting in human nature nor experiencing the
beatific vision, we lack the conscious data required for a direct verification of the esse secundarium and the
lumen gloriae. We might say that sanctifying grace, charity, and in a comparatively greater way, the light
of glory are, to use Lonergan’s turn of phrase, “shrouded in mystery”; or, to use a trite metaphor, the
conscious data on sanctifying grace and charity are the tip of a supernatural iceberg whose vast reality lies
largely within the depths of an ocean of transcendence that is, for the time being, out of our view. In other
words, because we lack data on grace and charity, we are dealing with realities affirmed in faith and
understood only by analogy.
206 Doran, “The Starting Point of Systematic Theology,” 769. Cf. Doran, The Trinity in History, 167. Also,
cf. Doran, “A Response,” 65: “In particular, for us, as opposed to Jesus the incarnate Word of God and to the
enjoying of the beatific vision by the blessed, the realm of religious values in the scale of values is constituted by the
participation in active and passive spiration in the Trinity manifested through sanctifying grace and charity.”
106
such, human experience of sanctifying grace and the habit of charity is the starting point for
constructing a Trinitarian analogy from the order of grace. Doran states,
Our understanding of the first and fourth points of the hypothesis (the assumed human
nature of the incarnate Word and the light of glory) can be had only by extrapolation
from and modification of our understanding of the second and third points. These created
participations in active and passive spiration are precisely the area in which the
supernatural creaturely analogy for the trinitarian relations is developed.207
Doran goes on to explain in more detail why the esse secundarium and the lumen gloriae cannot
be understood directly through phenomenology, but rather only indirectly:
In fact, in the case of the secondary act of existence of the incarnate Word, there are
available to us no data whatever for such a phenomenology, even if the affirmation of the
esse secundarium can be shown to be isomorphic with human acts of reasonable
judgment, and even if we are able to conclude from dogmatic premises something about
the consciousness and knowledge of Jesus.
Nor is there available any material that would enable us to compose a
phenomenology of the light of glory and the beatific vision.
In the case of both the secondary act of existence and the light of glory, then, we
must move by extrapolation from what is available to us, namely, the dynamic state of
being in love in an unqualified sense and the operations of charity, of the originated
loving, that follow habitually from such a state.
Thus, only in the realm of the supernatural analogues of active and passive
spiration do we have the data for a phenomenology of grace; and even there, only with
great difficulty.208
6. Participation in Active and Passive Spiration
For Doran, it is clear that the experience of sanctifying grace and the habit of charity is
the entry point for discovering the nature of the other elements of the four-point hypothesis. The
207
Doran, “The Starting Point of Systematic Theology,” 761. Cf. Doran, The Trinity in History, 162.
208 Doran, “The Starting Point of Systematic Theology,” 770-1. Cf. Doran, The Trinity in History, 169-70.
107
phenomenological study of grace begins with the human experience of these two because they
are the condition for participation in divine love.209
Furthermore, the effect of sanctifying grace
and charity upon human consciousness constitutes a point of reference for learning analogically
about active and passive spiration. Doran stresses that if one is to learn about the distinct
relations of active and passive spiration, then sanctifying grace and charity must be recognized as
really distinct in the manner they affect human consciousness.210
Suggesting that the nature of
this distinction lies in the difference between “the habitual grasp and affirmation of the lover”
and “the habitual state of originated loving,” Doran states,
If we are going to continue to distinguish sanctifying grace from the habit of charity, as
the four-point hypothesis invites us to do, it is important to specify some distinction in
consciousness here; and I suggest that the distinction is one between the habitual grasp
and affirmation of the lover (sanctifying grace) and the habitual state of originated loving
(the habit of charity) that flows from the grasp and affirmation.211
In some of his other writings, Doran expands upon the important, yet difficult task of
identifying the mutually opposed relations between sanctifying grace and the habit of charity in
human consciousness. Toward this end, he notes that while charity apprehends an object
intentionally, the conscious experience of sanctifying grace is non-intentional. Furthermore,
209
Cf. Doran, What Is Systematic Theology? 77: “Thus the intelligent emanation in God of the Holy Spirit,
the eternal procession in God of the Holy Spirit, joined to the created, contingent, consequent external terms that are
sanctifying grace and the habit of charity (as well as to the operative movements that are known as auxilium divinum
or actual grace), the eternal intelligent emanation of the Spirit in God as also Gift in history, is the ultimate condition
of possibility of any consistent or recurrent intelligent emanation of authentic judgments of value and schemes of
recurrence rooted in acts of love in human beings.”
210 Cf. ibid., 109: “Between sanctifying grace and the habit of charity there is as much a real distinction as
there is between active and passive spiration in the Trinity.”
211 Doran, “The Starting Point of Systematic Theology,” 772.
108
Doran states that charity proceeds from sanctifying grace just as passive spiration proceeds from
active spiration.212
As he explains,
As active and passive spiration are distinct by mutually opposed relations, so sanctifying
grace and charity, the created participations in these divine relations, are also distinct by
mutually opposed relations, and the tricky point is to try to capture in language the
conscious element entailed in these created supernatural relations. Religious experience
is, for the most part, well spoken of in terms of the dynamic state of unqualified being in
love. But that gift has to be further differentiated into an actively spirating love and the
acts of love and habit of love that flow from that spiration.
The corresponding conscious element, however, is not an element exclusively in
intentional consciousness, precisely because the experience occurs without there being an
apprehended object to which it responds. The conscious component of sanctifying grace
is an actively spirating love that is given to us, that is not a response to an apprehended
object, and that is a participation in the active spiration of the Holy Spirit by the Father
and the Son as one principle. What proceeds in God is amor procedens, the Holy Spirit,
and what proceeds in us is charity, the created participation in the passively spirated Holy
Spirit. Charity is intentional consciousness, but the conscious component of sanctifying
grace is nonintentional, in that it is not a response to an apprehended object.213
While Lonergan had maintained a real distinction between sanctifying grace and charity
in his early Latin theology, he did not clearly do so when articulating the categories of
religiously differentiated consciousness in his methodical theology. This complicates Doran’s
goal of transposing the four-point hypothesis from the metaphysical terms of scholastic theology
to the phenomenological terms of methodical theology. Indeed, the four-point hypothesis cannot
212
Cf. Doran, “The Trinity in History: First Steps beyond Volume 1,” 1-2:
In the case of the mission of the Holy Spirit, the relevant external terms are two: sanctifying grace and
charity. Sanctifying grace, the elevation of the subject’s central form to participation in divine life, is the
created base of a created relation to the eternal uncreated Holy Spirit. As the base of a relation to the Holy
Spirit, it is said to participate in and imitate the Father and Son together as they actively “breathe” the Holy
Spirit. That divine relation is termed “active spiration.” Charity, on the other hand, proceeds from
sanctifying grace, and so is the created base of a created relation to Father and Son breathing the Holy
Spirit; thus it participates in and imitates the eternal Proceeding Love that is the Holy Spirit passively
spirated.
213 Doran, What Is Systematic Theology? 109.
109
be used in methodical theology unless the latter acknowledges a real distinction between
sanctifying grace and charity. Therefore, Doran desires to differentiate the two more so than
Lonergan did late in his career when subsuming them both under the category of “the dynamic
state of being in love with God.” Doran explains,
A particular problem has been raised over my continuing appeal to the four-point
hypothesis, and the problem has to do precisely with the distinction of sanctifying grace
and charity. In effect, the question is being asked whether the distinction survives the
transition from a metaphysical to a methodical theology. As far as the history of
Lonergan’s own position on the issue is concerned, we may say the following. Lonergan
made it very clear as early as 1946 that the doctrine of an absolutely supernatural
communication of the divine nature can be maintained whether or not one’s systematic
understanding of the doctrine includes a distinction between sanctifying grace and charity
– a distinction that Aquinas makes and that Lonergan repeats from Aquinas and that
Scotus denies. The distinction perdures in his theological writings in a Scholastic mode,
and is very clear in the notes under investigation. However, in the 1974 Lonergan
Workshop, in a question-and-answer session, he admits that his later methodical
transposition of the category of sanctifying grace into the expression ‘the dynamic state
of being in love with God’ represents an ‘amalgam’ of sanctifying grace and charity. I’m
asking whether that methodical transposition can be refined so as to preserve the
distinction. And I want to preserve the distinction precisely because it provides us with a
hypothetical understanding of how it can be true that we do indeed enjoy distinct created
relations to each of the three uncreated divine persons.214
Doran argues that sanctifying grace and charity are really distinct inasmuch as they have
distinct orderings within human consciousness. In this manner, they imitate the real distinction
between active and passive spiration, their created participations. As Doran notes, “Relations are
multiplied not by terms but by orderings. Active spiration and passive spiration are two
orderings, and so their created counterparts must also be two relations.”215
On the one hand,
214 Doran, “Sanctifying Grace, Charity, and Divine Indwelling,” 171-2.
215 Robert M. Doran, “Social Grace and the Mission of the Word” (paper presented at Colloquium on
Doing Catholic Systematic Theology in a Multireligious World, Marquette University, November 2010),
http://lonerganresource.com/pdf/books/1
110
Doran understands sanctifying grace to be ordered to the Holy Spirit through a participation in
the active spiration of the Father and the Son considered together:
The created consequent condition by which it is possible to affirm a created relation to
the uncreated Holy Spirit, that is, what has been known as sanctifying grace, imitates and
participates in the uncreated relation to the Holy Spirit that the Father and the Son
together are. That is, it imitates and participates in what the psychological analogy has
traditionally called active spiration.216
On the other hand, Doran describes charity as ordered to the Father and the Son considered
together through a participation in the Holy Spirit: “Charity relates us back to the Father and the
Son in a created participation in the passive spiration of the Holy Spirit, setting up an inverse
created relation to the uncreated Father and Son, who thus also dwell in us as distinct terms of a
distinct created relation corresponding to their distinction as divine Persons.”217
Hence, as noted
above, human consciousness is ordered in distinct manners through sanctifying grace as “the
habitual grasp and affirmation of the lover” and through charity as “the habitual state of
originated loving.”218
Having maintained the real distinction between sanctifying grace and charity during this
categorial transposition, Doran is able to expound upon the second and third points of the four-
point hypothesis in terms of methodical theology as follows:
The starting point in unpacking that four-point hypothesis is the link between sanctifying
grace and charity as created participations in, respectively, active spiration and passive
/37%20-%20Social%20Grace%20and%20the%20Mission%20of%20the%20Word.pdf (accessed January 23, 2018),
7n7.
216 Ibid., 8.
217 Ibid., 8-9.
218 Cf. Doran, “The Starting Point of Systematic Theology,” 772.
111
spiration. From the standpoint of religiously and interiorly differentiated consciousness,
these created participations are (1) the recalled reception (memoria) of the gift of God’s
love (that is, of sanctifying grace as it affects consciousness) grounding a subsequent set
of judgments of value (faith), as these together participate in active spiration and so set up
a special relation to the indwelling Holy Spirit, and (2) a return of love (charity)
participating in the Proceeding Love that is the Holy Spirit, which establishes a special
relation to the indwelling Father and Son. Memory and faith combine to imitate and
participate in active spiration, and charity imitates and participates in passive spiration.219
Here, Doran tries to establish continuity between the metaphysical and methodical
approaches to grace and the Trinity by appropriating concepts from Augustine such as memoria.
Yet, Doran proceeds to construct a unique supernatural analogy for the Trinity by investigating
phenomenologically what human consciousness reveals about the Trinitarian structure of grace.
He writes,
The analogy that I am suggesting starts with the reception of the gift of God’s love,
recollected in memory, from which there proceeds a set of judgments of value; and from
these two there flows the charity that is the love of God in return. What makes this
analogy different from those proposed by Augustine, Thomas, and both the early and the
later Lonergan is not its structure, which is identical in all of these analogies, but rather
the fact that it is explicitly an analogy, not from nature to the supernatural order, but from
the experience of supernatural grace to its creator, the triune God. Created grace itself has
a Trinitarian form. The analogy in the order of grace begins with the gift of God’s love,
retrospectively interpreted as a gift of being on the receiving end of a love that is without
qualification and that has about it something that seems to emanate from the foundation
of the universe. It is possible (and I wish to emphasize the word ‘possible,’ since I am not
an Augustine scholar) that this retrospective interpretation of one’s own religious
giftedness might be linked to Augustine’s memoria, which was the starting point of his
analogy. If memoria for Augustine is the condition under which the mind is present to
itself, then my appeal to Augustine is valid. If that is not the meaning of memoria in
Augustine, then I am proposing a distinct first step in the analogy. In either case, the
initial step in the analogy is composed of the gift of God’s love recollected and
acknowledged in memoria. This issues in the inner word of a judgment of value
proceeding from memoria and acknowledging the goodness of the gift. This judgment of
value is the foundation of a universalist faith that is present in all authentic religion. The
recollection and judgment of value together constitute a created share in, participation in,
219
Doran, The Trinity in History, 17.
112
imitation of, divine active spiration, the active loving of the Father and the Son for each
other from which divine Amor procedens, passive spiration, the Holy Spirit, originates.
Memoria and its verbum spirans amorem give rise to the disposition of charity, the
antecedent universal willingness that is a created participation in and imitation of the
Holy Spirit, a disposition that establishes a reverse relation of love for the Father and the
Son. The relation between the love acknowledged in memoria and its word, on the one
hand, and charity on the other is analogous to the relation between active and passive
spiration in the triune God.220
While forming a supernatural, psychological analogy on the basis of human participation
in active and passive spiration, Doran stresses that the external term of the Spirit’s historical
mission affects not just individuals, but also communities and the development of history. Doran
argues that “the discernment of the mission of the Holy Spirit thus becomes the most important
ingredient in humankind’s taking responsibility for the guidance of history.”221
For this reason,
Doran emphasizes the category of social grace, discovering precedent in Lonergan’s concept of
the state of grace as a social situation rather than simply an individual habit. He writes,
The combination of the four-point hypothesis with the theory of history thus enables us to
relate Trinitarian theology, even the theology of the immanent Trinity, directly to the
processes not only of individual sanctification but also of human historical unfolding. Not
only is the discernment of the mission of the Holy Spirit in all its concrete details the
most important ingredient in humankind’s taking responsibility for the guidance of
history, as we said above, but conversely, the appropriation of the integral scale of values,
again as much as possible in all its concrete details, would represent the contribution of
systematics to the church and to various local Christian communities in their communal
discernment of the mission of the Holy Spirit. As the theology of a very recent generation
disengaged in a new way the notion of social sin, so the theology of this generation, if it
begins with the four-point hypothesis in the context of a theory of history, will elaborate
the notion of social grace, or, to use Lonergan’s own expression in the final chapter of the
systematic part of his De Deo trino, the notion of the state of grace, not as an individual
220
Robert M. Doran, “What Is the Gift of the Holy Spirit?” (paper presented at Colloquium on Doing
Catholic Systematic Theology in a Multireligious World, Marquette University, October 2009),
http://lonerganresource.com/pdf/books/1
/34%20-%20What%20Is%20the%20Gift%20of%20the%20Holy%20Spirit.pdf (accessed January 23, 2018), 14-15.
221 Doran, What Is Systematic Theology? 77.
113
habit but as a social situation, as an intercommunion of the three divine subjects, one of
them being the incarnate Word of God, with all of those who have said yes to the offer of
a created participation in divine life and as the consequent intercommunion of these
human subjects with one another in the incarnate Word.222
7. Participation in Paternity and Filiation
While the experience of sanctifying grace and charity constitute the starting point from
which a phenomenology of grace can be formed, Doran does not believe that active and passive
spiration are the only Trinitarian relations open to analogical insight. In fact, he argues that when
the four-point hypothesis is transposed into the terms of the phenomenology of religious
interiority, it also yields some understanding of paternity and filiation. Such insight can gained
by reflecting upon how human beings participate in the uncreated divine relations through their
created terms in history, thereby possessing created relations to the divine persons.223
One analogue for the divine relations that shapes human consciousness is the secondary
act of existence (esse secundarium) of Christ’s humanity. Doran otherwise identifies the esse
222
Ibid., 204-5.
223 Cf. Doran, “The structure of Systematic Theology (2),” 6-7:
[The four-point hypothesis] links the four divine relations – paternity, filiation, active spiration, and passive
spiration – with four created imitations of and participations in those relations: respectively, in Scholastic
terms that need transposition into religious interiority to the extent that this is possible, these are the grace
of union or secondary act of existence of the Incarnation, which names the created base of the created
relation of the assumed humanity of Jesus to the eternal divine Word; the light of glory, which is the
consequent condition of the gift of beatific knowing and loving, and the created base of a created relation to
the Father; and both sanctifying grace and the habit or disposition or circle of operations that constitutes
charity, which are the distinct consequent conditions of the gift of the Holy Spirit and participation in
trinitarian life rooted in the gift, the respective bases of created relations first to the Holy Spirit and then to
the Son and the Father.
114
secundarium as “the grace of union required by and consequent upon the constitutive cause of
the union.” Doran clarifies the relationship between the esse secundarium and the grace of union
as follows:
This “secondary act of existence” is required, not for the human essence of Christ to be
real, not for the existence of that essence, not as the constitutive cause whereby Christ the
man exists, not as some intermediary linking and uniting the divinity and humanity, not
as the grace of union constituting the union, but only as the grace of union required by
and consequent upon the constitutive cause of the union.224
Doran states that the grace of union, or the esse secundarium, “names the created base of
the created relation of the assumed humanity of Jesus to the eternal divine Word.”225
As such, the
esse secundarium, as the created term of filiation in history through the Son’s humanity, involves
a created relation to the Son that is analogous to the Father having an uncreated relation to the
Son in his paternity. For this reason, the esse secundarium involves a participation in paternity
and provides some analogical insight into the person of the Father in his relation to the Son.
It may seem counterintuitive for Christ’s esse secundarium to participate in paternity
rather than filiation. However, Doran argues this is so because the esse secundarium grounds the
relation of Christ’s humanity to the second person of the Trinity. Accordingly, this relation to the
Son imitates the Father’s relation to the Son. Hence, Doran notes that “this relation, precisely as
relation to the Word, participates in and imitates paternity, so that anyone who sees Jesus sees
224
Doran, The Trinity in History, 52.
225 Doran, “The Structure of Systematic Theology (2),” 6.
115
the Father.”226
Just as the Father speaks through the Son who is spoken, so too does the Son
speak as the incarnate Word through his humanity. Doran explains this idea as follows:
The divine Word immanent in the Godhead does not speak; the immanent divine Word is
spoken; in technical theological language, its notional act is not dicere, to speak, but dici,
to be spoken. But the incarnate Word speaks, and he speaks only what he hears from the
Father. The relation of the assumed humanity to the person of the divine Word alone is
also a created participation in and imitation of the Father’s real relation to the Son, a
participation in and imitation of the relation to the Son, the Dicere, that we call paternity.
The secondary act of existence grounding the relation of the assumed humanity of Jesus
to the eternal divine Word is in our history the base of a created participation in and
imitation of the Father’s eternal relation to the Word that the Father eternally speaks.227
Doran believes that a phenomenology of the esse secundarium cannot be developed
directly, given that only the conscious experience of Christ pertains to this reality. As noted
previously, Doran has remarked that “there are available to us no data whatever for such a
phenomenology, even if the affirmation of the esse secundarium can be shown to be isomorphic
with human acts of reasonable judgment, and even if we are able to conclude from dogmatic
premises something about the consciousness and knowledge of Jesus.”228
Doran was originally
pessimistic about the extent to which the esse secundarium could be transposed into the
categories of interiorly and religiously differentiated consciousness. However, Doran has
recently argued that such a transposition may be successfully performed in reference to Christ’s
human consciousness, rather than that of other human beings without the esse secundarium.229
226
Ibid., 20.
227 Doran, The Trinity in History, 53.
228 Doran, “The Starting Point of Systematic Theology,” 770.
229 Cf. Robert M. Doran, “Are There Two Consciousnesses in Christ? Transposing the Secondary Act of
Existence” Irish Theological Quarterly 82, no. 2 (2017): 152n11:
116
Doran suggests that some of the dogmatic theology Lonergan develops in The Incarnate
Word and The Ontological and Psychological Constitution of Christ concerning Christ’s divine
and human consciousnesses may yield material for systematic understanding of how these two
consciousnesses interrelate.230
Doran believes that this relationship may be explained in terms of
Christ’s experience of the esse secundarium in his human consciousness.231
Toward this end,
Doran explains the manners in which Christ is present to himself, first in his divine
consciousness and then in his human consciousness:
The divine consciousness of the incarnate Word, then, would be the consciousness ‘on
the side of the subject that is the Son in being consciously generated by the Father’ as
well as ‘on the side of the subject that is the Son who with the Father consciously spirates
the Spirit.’ The incarnate Word is present to himself through divine consciousness in this
way, conscious as well of the Father from whom he proceeds and of the Holy Spirit
whom, together with the Father, he spirates.
His human consciousness, on the other hand, is ontologically grounded in the
secondary act of existence that makes it true to affirm that the Second Person of the
Blessed Trinity is this man Jesus of Nazareth. This human consciousness is the mission
consciousness of the Eternal Word become flesh. It is the consciousness on the side of the
subject that is the Son in being consciously sent by the Father.232
The basic issue is one of validating terms and relations by specifying the conscious intention from which
they are derived. At times this will entail something of a point-by-point correspondence between
metaphysical or other theoretical categories and intentionality or religious-experiential categories (as
Lonergan does, for example, with ‘sanctifying grace’ and ‘being in love with God’), and at times we will
have to be satisfied with naming the intentional operations in which the theoretical categories were grasped
and affirmed. For a long time I thought the latter would be as far as we could go with regard to the
transposition of esse secundarium, until Eric Mabry started my thinking in a different direction. Mabry is a
doctoral student at Regis College in Toronto working on esse secundarium in both Aquinas and Lonergan.
His comment to me was that the transposition might be in terms not of our consciousness but of Christ’s.
What I have done with that comment is my own responsibility, but I owe to Mabry the insight that moved
me in this direction.
230 Cf. ibid., 149-50. Cf. Lonergan, The Ontological and Psychological Constitution of Christ, 190-285, and
idem, The Incarnate Word, 464–539.
231 Cf. Doran, “Are There Two Consciousnesses in Christ?” 151-2.
232 Ibid., 153. Cf. The Triune God: Systematics, 387-9. Also, cf. Eric Mabry, “In Illo Tempore: Being and
Becoming in the Historical Life of Jesus Christ,” Heythop Journal 58 (2017): 31: “Jesus’ human self-presence is the
created participation of his human subjectivity in his divine self-presence.”
117
Hence, while Christ is present to himself as generated by the Father in his divine
consciousness, he is present to himself as sent into the world by the Father in his human
consciousness. Indeed, while Christ knows that he is sent in his divine consciousness on the side
of the object, he only experiences himself as sent on the side of the subject in his human
consciousness. For this reason, Doran concludes, “His divine consciousness is procession
consciousness, and his human consciousness is mission consciousness.”233
Furthermore, he
argues, “The two consciousnesses are related and joined in the one Person of the incarnate Word,
in whom procession becomes mission because of the contingent created condition of that
becoming, consequent upon the divine decision, the created secondary act of existence that
accrues to the assumed human nature of the Word.”234
This correlation of the divine missions with the divine persons as united to their created
external terms gives Doran “a way of transposing the esse secundarium into the condition of
possibility, or ontological ground, of Jesus’ mission consciousness.”235
Accordingly, the
following analogy may be drawn: Just as Christ is conscious of the Father as the one from whom
he proceeds (i.e. “procession consciousness”), Christ is conscious of the esse secundarium as the
ontological ground of his mission consciousness. The esse secundarium may thus be understood
as a created participation in the divine relation of paternity that generates the Son and sends him
with a divine mission. Thus, the esse secundarium ontologically grounds Christ’s conscious
233
Doran, “Are There Two Consciousnesses in Christ?” 153.
234 Ibid., 168.
235 Ibid., 148.
118
experience of this mission.236
This ground of Christ’s mission consciousness also ensured that
Christ’s humanity had the light of glory and the beatific vision from the moment of its creation,
such that it might participate in divine filiation even before Christ’s death and resurrection.237
The light of glory is another analogue for the divine relations as they shape human
consciousness. Doran notes that “the light of glory . . . is the consequent condition of the gift of
beatific knowing and loving, and the created base of a created relation to the Father.”238
Accordingly, the lumen gloriae present in the saints, as the created term of the Father’s paternal
relation to humanity that exists by virtue of the divine missions, involves a created relation to the
Father through a participation in filiation. Through it, one can come to understand something of
the Son in his relation to the Father.
Knowledge of the Father and the Son in their paternity and filiation may also come from
considering the created terms of active and passive spiration in history, which are the habit of
charity and sanctifying grace, respectively. On the remaining two analogues for the divine
236
Cf. Mabry, “In Illo Tempore,” 31: “This supernatural, created, existential principle is the contingent
result of God’s speaking in History. It is the finite horizon under which all Jesus’ human experiences, operations,
acts, and actions unfold and take place.”
237 Cf. Ibid., 28:
As first act of Christ’s human intellect, the beatific vision elevates Christ’s self-presence such that he is
truly present to himself in a supernatural but still human way. As noted above, every act has a subject pole
and an object pole. Christ’s supernatural self-presence is the subject pole of the beatific vision, whereas
God as quidditatively understood is the object pole.
Without beatific knowing, Christ would be incapable of affirming, ‘I am the Son of God.’
Jesus must know that he is God, but to do so he must first have a quidditative knowledge of what God is,
otherwise the crucial part of the judgment would remain an unknown, namely, God. But a quidditative
knowledge of God is only possible through the beatific vision, whereby God informs the human intellect
with his very own essence so that by his essence the human intellect may understand him but not
comprehend him.
238 Doran, “The Structure of Systematic Theology (2),” 6.
119
relations, Doran writes, “Both sanctifying grace and the habit or disposition or circle of
operations that constitutes charity . . . are the distinct consequent conditions of the gift of the
Holy Spirit and participation in trinitarian life rooted in the gift, the respective bases of created
relations first to the Holy Spirit and then to the Son and the Father.”239
Therefore, sanctifying
grace, as the created term of passive spiration in history through the indwelling of the Holy
Spirit, involves a participation in active spiration and a created relation to the Holy Spirit. It
thereby yields some understanding of the Holy Spirit. Likewise, the habit of charity, as the
created term of the Father and the Son’s shared relation to humanity (through active spiration)
that exists on account of the divine missions, involves a participation in passive spiration and a
created relation to the Father and the Son considered together. It thus provides insight into the
Father and the Son in their relation to the Holy Spirit through active spiration. Furthermore,
sanctifying grace and charity are related in a manner analogous to that between active and
passive spiration. As Doran writes, “A created participation in that same Spirit, that is, charity, is
breathed from the elevation into a share in divine life that is sanctifying grace, in a manner
analogous to the being-breathed of the Holy Spirit from the active breathing of the Father and the
Son in their mutually opposed relations of paternity and filiation.”240
Accordingly, these various analogues for the Triune God present in human consciousness
enable God’s self-communication to be understood not only in reference to the Holy Spirit, but
also to the Father and the Son. Doran argues,
239
Ibid., 6-7.
240 Ibid., 20.
120
This divine self-communication, constituted by God alone, allows not only the Holy
Spirit but each of the persons of the Trinity to be present to those to whom the created
grace of God’s favor (gratia gratum faciens) has been given. The gift of the Holy Spirit
as the uncreated term of a created relation also allows the other persons of the Trinity to
be present as distinct terms of distinct created relations, for the Holy Spirit is an
uncreated relation to the Father and the Son, and so to be related to the Holy Spirit must
entail being related to the Father and the Son as terms of a distinct relation.241
8. Two Forms of Participation in God: Notional and Essential
According to Doran, the four created supernatural realities through which human beings
participate in the relations of the divine persons are efficiently caused by all three persons acting
together through their common essence. He states, “The created gift by which God gives us this
participation in divine life is effected, created, by the love that is common to the three divine
persons.”242
Indeed, all forms of participation in God, whether natural or supernatural, entail a
created relation to all three divine persons as their efficient cause. Yet, Doran argues that “since
the four preeminent graces are intimately connected with the divine life, they can appropriately
be said to imitate the divine essence insofar as the divine essence is identical to one or other
divine relation.”243
Accordingly, each of the four supernatural realities that enable divine
participation gives human beings a proper (i.e., non-appropriated) created relation that terminates
241
Doran, The Trinity in History, 79.
242 Ibid.
243 Doran, “The Four Entia Supernaturalia,” 15.
121
in particular divine persons to the exclusion of others in the order of exemplary causality.244
Humans would thereby participate in the divine relations that they imitate by their own created
relations in distinct and proper ways. For Doran, this also involves a participation in the
“notional acts”245
proper to each divine person, as opposed to those essential properties that all
three persons share in common through their shared essence.246
Thus, he claims that the
supernatural elements are “immanently constituted in terms of created participations in what
Aquinas calls the ‘notional acts’ proper to each of the divine persons.”247
One might consider whether each of the various manners of divine participation
described above should more properly be understood as a relation to all three persons through a
participation in the divine essence generally, rather than participation in a single personal relation
specifically, except by appropriation. This possibility may be entertained with at least three of
the four elements of the four-point hypothesis. On account of the hypostatic union, the esse
secundarium of Christ clearly has a proper relation to the Son that is exclusive to him. However,
for the other three supernatural elements, it is perhaps less clear how each one might enable a
244
Cf. ibid., 15: “The ontological foundation of these four graces, these four entia supernaturalia, is
grounded in exemplary causality.”
245 Cf. Doran, “What Is the Gift of the Holy Spirit?” 12: “The term ‘notional acts’ is used to name the
distinct manner in which each of the divine persons is subject of the one divine conscious act of unrestricted
understanding and unqualified love. These acts are ‘notional’ because they cause the divine persons to be known as
distinct from one another.”
246 Cf. Doran, “Sanctifying Grace, Charity, and Divine Indwelling,” 175: “Sanctifying grace is effected,
caused by the essential divine love common to the three persons, but it establishes in us distinct relations to each
person, because the gift is immanently constituted in terms of the distinct divine relations and is to be understood as
a created imitation of and participation in those relations.”
247
Doran, The Trinity in History, 79.
122
human being to have a proper relation that is exclusive to a particular divine person (or, in the
case of charity, two persons considered together), and thereby participate in a divine relation.
Doran argues that although the four elements of the four-point hypothesis are efficiently
caused to exist in human beings by all three divine persons acting together, they nonetheless
entail created relations to specific divine persons as their uncreated terms. This is because these
supernatural realities are the created external terms that are consequent conditions of divine
missions. By imitating the manner in which the divine persons have relations that terminate in
the other divine persons, they involve a real participation in the different divine relations.
Accordingly, the supernatural elements in human life involve not only a general participation in
the divine essence, but also non-appropriated relations that are specific to particular divine
persons.
9. Distinguishing the Divine Relations by Their Orderings
Doran makes some important clarifications regarding how the divine relations are
distinguished. One may initially have the impression that the relations are distinguished and
multiplied according to their terms, considering that each is involved in a pairing of relational
opposition. Indeed, Doran does describe the terms of the divine relations in the following
manner: “The terms of the divine relations as immanent to the Godhead are the opposed
relations: paternity to filiation, filiation to paternity, active spiration to passive spiration, and
123
passive spiration to active spiration.”248
In fact, the terms of the divine missions do have
important implications for the relations among the four created terms of the divine missions.
Doran continues, “The missions add a created external term to each relation, and that created
external term will also have to be understood in relational terms.”249
Now, while one may consider the multiple subjects and terms involved in the divine
relations, Doran argues that these cannot distinguish the relations other than in a purely logical or
conceptual way. He ultimately claims that “for Lonergan relations are really distinguished, not
by a multiplication of terms, but by a multiplication of orderings.”250
Doran states that the divine
relations are really distinguished neither by their distinct terms nor by their distinct subjects. He
provides the following remarks in defense of his argument:
Paternity and active spiration each regards a distinct term: paternity regards the Son as
term, and active spiration the Holy Spirit. But the reason for the multiplication of
relations lies not in distinct subjects or in distinct terms but in distinct orderings. The
same may be said of filiation and active spiration. The terms are distinct, since the term
of filiation is the Father and the term of active spiration is the Holy Spirit. But the
ordering is one: for the Father to beget the Son and for the Son to be begotten of the
Father is for them together to breathe the Holy Spirit.251
Doran’s reasoning implies that if the relations were distinguished by their terms, there
would be a real distinction between active spiration and both paternity and filiation. Such would
amount to the constitution of a fourth person in God that is really distinct from the other three,
248
Doran, “The Structure of Systematic Theology (2),” 19.
249 Ibid.
250 Doran, “The Trinity in History: First Steps beyond Volume 1,” 5n6. Cf. Lonergan, The Triune God:
Systematics, 248-51.
251 Doran, “The Trinity in History: First Steps beyond Volume 1,” 20.
124
which is theologically inadmissible. Also, if the relations were distinguished by their subjects,
there would be only three, rather than four relations. Yet, without the fourth relation of active
spiration, the passive spiration of the Holy Spirit would be left without either an opposed relation
in reference to the Father or a manner of procession that distinguishes it from filiation.
However, if paternity and filiation are understood together as ordered toward breathing
the Holy Spirit, then active spiration may be considered as only logically or conceptually distinct
from paternity and filiation.252
Under this conception, Doran believes that “to beget and to be
begotten are, together, actively to love.”253
This allows for the existence of four divine relations
that constitute no more than three divine persons. In the following remarks, Doran explains how
active spiration is really identical with paternity and filiation, such that it is only conceptually
distinguished from them:
The relation of what utters the Word to the Word that is uttered, and the relation of what
utters the Word to the Love that proceeds from the Word uttered, are conceptually
distinct, but really one relation. Again, the relation of what is uttered to the Speaker that
utters it is conceptually distinct from its relation to the Love that proceeds from it, but
these two conceptually distinct relations are really one. To utter the Word and to be the
Word uttered by the Father are, together, actively to spirate Proceeding Love.254
252
Cf. Jeremy D. Wilkins, “Method and Metaphysics in Theology: Lonergan and Doran,” Method: Journal
of Lonergan Studies, n.s. 5, no. 2 (2016): 66n35:
We conceive wisdom one way and power another. But we know that, in reality, divine wisdom is divine
power. The distinction is merely notional, merely a function of the way we think. On the other hand, we
know that the Father is really not the Son, so divine paternity is really not divine filiation. The distinction is
real. Finally, we conceive the Father’s relation to the Son one way, and his relation to the Spirit another.
Thus, our concept of generation is not our concept of spiration. But we know that, in God, generation really
is spiration, for the Father, by one and the same real ordering, utters the Word and breathes the Spirit. A
multiplicity of really distinct terms does not constitute a diversity of real relations. However, it does
provide a basis in the object, for distinguishing, notionally, the order of the Father to the Son, and the order
of the Father to the Spirit. See Triune God: Systematics, 246-60; 732-36.
253 Doran, “The Trinity in History: First Steps beyond Volume 1,” 19.
254 Ibid., 20.
125
Doran notes that while only three of the four divine relations may be really distinguished
from one another, the four supernatural acts imparted to humanity by grace each maintain a real
distinction from the others. In Doran’s view, this reflects the difference between God’s uncreated
relations, which exist necessarily by their real identity with the divine substance, and humanity’s
created relations, which are contingent and require God’s help to be brought to perfection. Doran
describes how the supernatural, psychological analogy between God and human beings is more
remote on this point:
The analogy in this case is very remote, because in us there are two distinct acts actively
spirating love: understanding as uttering a judgment of value and the judgment of value
thus uttered. In God there is but one infinite act by which God understands and speaks
and conceives and judges. . . . God cannot utter the value judgment that is the divine
Word without Love proceeding from the utterance and the judgment. In us, on the other
hand, there is an exigence, not a necessity, that the value judgment that is spoken from
the grasp of sufficient evidence also breathe love. The ordering can and often does break
down.255
Finally, Doran has noted that in a letter from Lonergan to Philip McShane, dated August
25, 1976, Lonergan admitted a complication of the four-point hypothesis regarding the real
identity of active spiration with paternity and filiation. There, Lonergan states that “to shift the
esse secundarium from participatio Patris to participatio Patris et Spiritus seems fine if one
wishes to identify the esse secundarium with the gratia sanctificans Christi. The relation of
participatio Filii to the Spiritus as well as the Pater seems to follow by implication from the real
identity of filiatio with spiratio activa.”256
Here, while stressing the real identity of paternity and
255
Ibid., 20.
256 Doran, “The Trinity in History: First Steps beyond Volume 1,” 24. Here, Doran quotes a letter from
Bernard Lonergan to Philip McShane, dated August 25, 1976.
126
filiation with active spiration, Lonergan does not deny that the grace of union and the light of
glory are really distinct from sanctifying grace. Yet, he notes that their respective participation in
paternity and filiation necessarily involves a participation in the active spiration of the Father and
the Son together. Consequently, participation either in paternity through the esse secundarium or
in filiation through the light of glory necessarily involves reception of the sanctifying grace that
imitates active spiration. It is in this sense that Lonergan identifies Christ’s grace of union and
light of glory with his sanctifying grace. Indeed, the presence of either the esse secundarium or
the light of glory in the soul necessarily entails the presence of sanctifying grace. Conversely,
while human beings may have sanctifying grace without an esse secundarium and before having
received the light of glory, their reception of sanctifying grace depends upon their solidarity with
Christ, who recapitulates humanity through his esse secundarium and light of glory. These
suggestions of Lonergan demand a more thorough investigation of the relations among the four
created terms of the divine missions, which Doran intends to perform the second volume of The
Trinity in History.
10. Doran’s Planned Future Work
In the second volume of The Trinity in History, Doran has said he will seek to examine
more thoroughly the relational structure of the divine processions, the divine missions, and the
created bases that are the consequent condition of the processions being missions. Doran has
noted that the first thesis he will examine in that volume is as follows: “Since the reality of the
two divine processions with which the divine missions are identical is the reality to be attributed
127
to relations, the missions themselves and the external terms that allow the processions to be
missions will have a thoroughly relational structure.”257
The examination of this thesis will be
essential to the study of how human beings participate in the order of the divine relations.
Doran has identified several questions that he would like to address in the upcoming
volume. They consider the extent to which there are relations among not only the divine persons,
but also the created terms of the divine missions. Doran explains his rationale for such relations
existing among the four supernatural elements as follows: “For if the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Spirit are themselves relations to one another, there must also be a set of created relations
among all of the created terms of those relations: not simply a relation between each of the
created terms and the uncreated reality to which that base, as the term of a mission, is related.” 258
Doran notes how his realization goes beyond what Lonergan had advanced in reference to the
four-point hypothesis:
Lonergan’s celebrated ‘four-point hypothesis’ already bears out the connection of the
missions to the relations. It correlates the preeminent created graces – hypostatic union
understood in terms of the secondary act of existence of the Incarnation, sanctifying
grace, charity, and the light of glory – with the four divine relations. But there remains an
issue of specifying the relations among the four created participations in the divine
relations. The first issue, then, in correlating divine missions with the divine relations is
to specify relations among the four principal entia supernaturalia, the created external
terms that are consequent conditions of divine missions, that correspond to, imitate, and
participate in the divine relations.259
257
Doran, “The Structure of Systematic Theology (2),” 19.
258 Ibid., 20.
259 Doran, “The Trinity in History: First Steps beyond Volume 1,” 11.
128
While Doran has previously written about the relations between sanctifying grace and the
habit of charity, he has not yet explained how all four of the created terms of the divine missions
are related to one another. Doran offers the following questions concerning the foundational
reality of the created supernatural order to be examined in the second volume:
What is the relation of the secondary act of existence of the Incarnation not only to the
Word but also to sanctifying grace, to charity, and to the light of glory?
What is the relation of sanctifying grace not only to the Holy Spirit, and not only to
charity (which we have already established), but also to the secondary act of existence
and to the light of glory?
What is the relation of charity not only to the Father and the Son, and not only to
sanctifying grace (which again we have already established), but also to the secondary act
of existence and to the light of glory?
And what is the relation of the light of glory not only to the Father but also to the
secondary act of existence, to sanctifying grace, and to charity?260
C. Responses to Doran’s Project
Doran foresees the continued development of the four-point hypothesis into a
supernatural Trinitarian analogy as a collaborative effort. He states,
In the course of my efforts to envision how a systematic theology based in Lonergan's
theological method might unfold, I have become increasingly convinced that the first
answer to such a question must be, “collaboratively.” No one person can write such a
systematics in our time, but a group sharing the same assumptions regarding the
fundamental issues that Lonergan discussed under the rubric of religious, moral, and
intellectual conversion can go a long way. One hope of mine in recent years has been to
assemble such a group and start working with them, and that hope now seems to be
taking the form of an online research enterprise that could soon be up and running.
Before my hope takes that cyberspace form, though, it seems to have found a more
traditional organ of communication.261
260
Doran, “The Structure of Systematic Theology (2),” 21.
261 Robert M. Doran, “Addressing The Four-Point Hypothesis,” Theological Studies 68, no. 3 (2007): 674.
129
Doran’s project has elicited significant response among scholars, especially in the journal
Theological Studies where Doran’s article “The Starting Point of Systematic Theology” was
published. Among those who have published responses to Doran’s development of Lonergan’s
four-point hypothesis, some profess fundamental agreement with the way Doran has sought to
transpose it from metaphysical theology to methodical theology. These include Darren Dias and
Neil Ormerod, who have initiated a collaborative project inspired by Doran’s work that involves
writing a new systematic theology in five volumes for the intended use of MDiv/MA theology
students.262
However, others believe that if Lonergan’s hypothesis is to be transposed into the
terms of methodical theology, it should be reduced from four points to two or three. For instance,
Charles Hefling has responded to Doran by advocating the formulation of a three-point
hypothesis to ground a methodical systematic theology.263
Additionally, David Coffey has
responded to Doran and Ormerod by suggesting that points two through four of the hypothesis be
reduced to one point, leaving incarnation and grace as the two points whereby the Trinity is
understood analogically.264
262
Cf. Robert M. Doran, “A New Project in Systematic Theology,” Theological Studies 76, no. 2 (2015):
243-59.
263 Cf. Charles Hefling, “On the (Economic) Trinity: An Argument in Conversation with Robert Doran,”
Theological Studies 68, no. 3 (2007): 642-60.
264 Cf. David M. Coffey, “Response to Neil Ormerod, and Beyond,” Theological Studies 68, no. 4 (2007):
900-15.
130
1. Charles Hefling
In his response to Doran’s article in Theological Studies, Hefling expresses excitement
for Doran’s systematic theology project founded on the four-point hypothesis. However, he
suggests, “It might well seem that what systematic theology is called upon to work out is not a
four-point but a three-point hypothesis.”265
He expresses some reservations against adopting the
four-point hypothesis, such as with his claim that “Doran is putting all his eggs in the basket of a
hapax legomenon.”266
He notes that other than the brief statement of De Deo trino, no other
publication of Lonergan in his lifetime discussed four external terms of divine communication to
creatures (note that Lonergan’s course notes were not published until 2011). In all other
discussions of the external terms, such as in The Ontological and Psychological Constitution of
Christ and The Incarnate Word, there are only three: Christ’s esse secundarium, sanctifying
grace, and the light of glory.267
He states, “To the best of my knowledge, it is only the list in De
Deo trino that adds habitual charity to what Lonergan otherwise thought of consistently as a
threefold communication of divinity to creatures.”268
Hefling gives a couple of reasons why the four-point hypothesis is not the one best suited
for use in methodical theology. One issue he mentions is that, according to Lonergan’s early
metaphysical theology, active spiration is not really distinct from paternity and filiation. Yet,
265
Hefling, “On the (Economic) Trinity,” 647.
266 Ibid., 645.
267 Cf. ibid., 645-6.
268 Ibid., 646.
131
incongruently, sanctifying grace is really distinct from the esse secundarium and the light of
glory, although it cannot be absent when either of these is present. For Hefling, there appears to
be a better analogy between the three really distinct divine relations and only three of the created
supernatural realities identified in the four-point hypothesis. Thus, he argues that a three point
hypothesis would be better suited to form an analogy for the Trinity than a four-point hypothesis
focusing on all four divine relations. Accordingly, he emphasizes, “The four real relations
occupy a kind of conceptual halfway-house. It is equally essential to show that, of the four, only
three are really distinct, since it is with these three that the divine Persons are identical.”269
Hefling does admit, however, that the categories of metaphysical theology distinguish
between entitative and operative habits, thereby implying a real distinction between sanctifying
grace and charity, as well as the existence of four created supernatural realities, rather than three.
Indeed, he identifies an analogy between the natural and the supernatural used in Lonergan’s
early theology which allows for this distinction: “As the soul stands, in the natural order, to will
and intellect, of which it is the principle, so grace stands, in the supernatural order, to charity and
faith. Broadly speaking, then, what distinguishes charity from grace, both of which are
supernatural, is what distinguishes will from soul.” Hefling also describes how this analogy
depends upon an understanding of the faculties of the human soul that Lonergan developed in
“De ente supernaturali”:
Stated briefly and schematically, the relevant order as he then conceived it comprises (A)
substance, (B) accidental or passive potency, and (C) operation. In the case of human
acts, potency (B) is further divided into operative faculties (B1), such as will and
intellect, and habits (B2), which may, though they do not necessarily, inform those
269
Ibid., 646.
132
faculties. While it is always through its faculties (B1) that the human soul (A) receives or
elicits operations (C), in general the operations may or may not occur habitually (B2). . . .
Grace is an “entitative” habit, defined as a habit that modifies the essence of the
soul. The modification, in this case, supplies an explanatory viewpoint for understanding
how loving and knowing God can occur with no disparity between subject and act.
However—and this is the crucial point—acts of charity and vision have a further
condition. Their occurrence requires the elevation not only of the soul itself (A), but of its
essential potencies (B1) as well. That is, it requires the infusion of “operative” habits
(B2): the habit of charity, in the will, and the light of glory, in the intellect. To say that
this condition must be met is the same as to say that acts of charity and acts of vision do
not occur otherwise than habitually. Some supernatural acts, notably acts of faith and
hope, may be either transient or habitual. Charity, on the other hand, “faileth not,” and
neither does the beatific vision. That they do not is accounted for by positing the gift of
correspondingly supernatural habits. . . .
An act of charity (C) depends proximately on habitual charity (B2), an operative
habit in the will (B1), and at the same time depends remotely on sanctifying grace, an
entitative habit that modifies substantial form, namely the soul (A).”270
Nevertheless, Hefling argues that when one’s conception of sanctifying grace is
transposed from the context of metaphysical theology to that of methodical theology, it cannot be
really distinguished from charity. Hefling points to a passage in Lonergan’s Method in Theology
where he sketches what a theology of grace looks like before and after being transposed from
metaphysical theology to methodical theology.271
Hefling states,
On the “before” side, the “theoretical theology” of grace that Lonergan presents is none
other than the one he had made his own in earlier writings. As I have just outlined, it
“presupposed a metaphysical psychology in terms of the essence of the soul, its
potencies, habits, and acts.” On the “after” side the sketch indicates categories that a
methodical theology would use instead. Only one of the older terms, “acts,” remains once
the transposition has been effected. All the others disappear, for a reason that is not far to
seek. While it is from acts that a methodical theology will, in the first instance, derive its
terms and relations, the acts it derives them from are the conscious acts of the conscious,
concrete subject. The derivation, that is to say, has an experiential basis. But the study of
270
Ibid., 649-50.
271 Cf. Lonergan, Method in Theology, 298: “Now to effect the transition from theoretical to methodical
theology one must start, not from a metaphysical psychology, but from intentionality analysis and, indeed, from
transcendental method.”
133
the conscious subject, which articulates that basis, “prescinds from the soul, its essence,
its potencies, its habits, for none of these is given in consciousness.” Conscious acts,
precisely as conscious, survive the transition to a methodical theology of grace. The
potencies and the essence of the soul do not.272
Hefling argues that the four-point hypothesis cannot be used in a methodical theology
because the terms used to explicate it in metaphysical theology are no longer to be found.273
He
concedes to Doran that there might be a way to preserve the traditional distinction between
sanctifying grace and charity “by drawing a functionally equivalent distinction, in the
‘transposed’ terms appropriate to a methodical theology.”274
Yet, he does not believe this to be
possible. He explains, “There is no evidence, however, that Lonergan drew any such distinction
in his later work. Nor, more importantly, do the ‘transposed’ terms appropriate to a methodical
theology, defined as he defines them in Method, lend themselves to drawing it.”275
Despite the difficulties of transposition, however, Hefling believes that a three-point
hypothesis may be used in methodical theology. He acknowledges a participation in paternity,
272
Hefling, “On the (Economic) Trinity,” 650.
273 On Hefling’s position, cf. L. Matthew Petillo, “Love and Light: A Hypothesis Regarding Lonergan's
Four-Point Hypothesis,” Lonergan Workshop 25 (2014): 285-7:
According to the theorem of the supernatural, the entitative habit of sanctifying grace is rooted in the
essence of the soul, while the operative habit of charity is rooted in the will as one of its potencies. In
scholastic theology, the real distinction between the essence of the soul and its potencies grounds the real
distinction between sanctifying grace and the habit of charity. But in Hefling’s opinion . . . if, in a
methodical theology, there is no distinct faculty called “will,” then there is no appropriate metaphysical soil
in which the habit of charity as distinct from sanctifying grace, can take root. . . . If Hefling is right that
“will” and “intellect” are not relevant categories in a methodical theology, at the very least, it raises
questions about the explanatory value of special categories that rely on these faculties as their metaphysical
basis. . . . If a theology that derives its terms and relations from an analysis of conscious intentionality
cannot warrant a metaphysically distinct faculty called “intellect,” how does the “light of glory” get
transposed?
274 Hefling, “On the (Economic) Trinity,” 650.
275 Ibid.
134
filiation, and passive spiration in the transposed terms of methodical theology. He points to
Lonergan’s use of the term “dynamic state” in referring to the conscious experience of something
that is functionally equivalent to a hybrid between entitative and operative habits.276
Thus, one of
the three points of his hypothesis would be the dynamic state of being in love, taking the place of
both sanctifying grace and charity. This reality enables participation in passive spiration. Another
point of Hefling’s hypothesis involves the functional equivalent of the esse secundarium, which
he describes as follows: “Its being is being-assumed by the Son only, and as such it participates
in the divine relation that is a relation to the Son, that is, in ‘paternity.’”277
He clarifies that this
external term of divine mission “is not the assumed humanity of Christ itself,” but rather “the
fact of its being the humanity of a divine Person.”278
While the being-assumed of the Son
participates in paternity, Hefling believes that filiation is participated by the functional
276
Cf. ibid., 651-2:
At the same time, however, one of the terms Lonergan does include—indeed, the central term—is
“dynamic state,” which he says is conscious and which he characterizes as a “habitual actuation” of the
human capacity for self-transcendence. Perhaps, then, such a conscious state, which seems to be neither a
subject nor an act, as such, can be thought of as taking on at least part of the role that older theology
assigned to habit. On that assumption, it would be possible to ask how far, if at all, the dynamic state in
question might represent a transposition of an “entitative” or alternatively an “operative” habit. . . . It would
perhaps be consonant with Lonergan’s own statements to say that the one conscious state he refers to
functions both quasi-entitatively, transforming the conscious subject, and quasi-operatively, reorienting the
conscious acts of deciding by which the subject is self-constituted. Some such interpretation would
preserve the old language and something of its old sense. It would not, however, preserve the old
distinction. Rather, it would amount to an alternative—and seriously misleading—way of referring to
unrestricted love as at once a dynamic state and a principle. In other words, it would be a restatement of the
fact that sanctifying grace is at once operative and cooperative. It seems clear that Lonergan himself saw no
reason to distinguish between an “entitative habit” of sanctifying grace and an “operative habit” of charity,
once he had moved away from the faculty psychology on which such a distinction rests.
277 Ibid., 658.
278 Ibid., 658-9n30.
135
equivalent of the light of glory. He writes, “To know as God knows, then, would be to participate
in the divine relation that is a relation to the Father, that is, in ‘filiation.’”279
In light of these observations, Hefling summarizes his hypothesis as follows: “This
‘three-point hypothesis,’ in sum, posits a being related to God the Son, by participation that is
unique to the incarnate Word. It posits a being related to God the Father, by participation that is
eschatological. And it posits a being related to the Father and the Son, by participation that is the
created counterpart of the uncreated gift of the Spirit.”280
In his response to Hefling, Doran argues that the four-point hypothesis is not strictly a
hapax legomenon. Notwithstanding its prior history in Lonergan’s course notes, Doran points to
the long editorial period between the appearance of Divinarum personarum and De Deo trino:
Pars systematica as evidence that Lonergan thought of it as valid for at least several years.
Otherwise, Lonergan would have removed it from the latter text. As Doran explains,
Strictly speaking, this is not a hapax legomenon, since it appeared as well in the earlier
Divinarum personarum, which first appeared in 1957.
Even if this text was the forerunner
to the De Deo trino: Pars systematica of 1964, Lonergan changed a good deal from the
earlier text, as appendix 4 in The Triune God: Systematics manifests, but he did not see fit
to change or abandon this hypothesis.281
Doran concedes to Hefling that Lonergan only discusses three supernatural terms of the
divine missions after De Deo trino. Indeed, he sates, “I have also been aware all along that
Lonergan's later formulations in terms of his intentionality analysis are ‘three-point’ rather than
279
Ibid., 659.
280 Ibid.
281 Doran, “Addressing The Four-Point Hypothesis,” 677.
136
‘four-point’ formulations.”282
Yet, Doran admits dissatisfaction with this shift because he
believes “there is real value to the metaphysical distinction between sanctifying grace and
charity,” and he has “been taken with the extraordinary explanatory systematic potential of the
four-point hypothesis.”283
Doran disagrees with Hefling’s desire to “leave a participation in active spiration out of
the discussion of created grace,” believing that “the four-point hypothesis better accounts for the
divine indwelling of the three divine Persons.”284
Doran claims that his article “Being in Love
with God: A Source of Analogies for Theological Understanding” addresses the manner in which
the four-point hypothesis might be transposed into methodical theology, even though Lonergan
did not do so himself.285
That article has been quoted above. In it, Doran draws upon Christiaan
282
Ibid., 678.
283 Ibid. Cf. Dias, “The Contributions of Bernard J.F. Lonergan to a Systematic Understanding of Religious
Diversity,” 141-2:
Lonergan himself did comparatively little to explicitly develop and draw out the full implications of the
four-point hypothesis. In fact, the later Lonergan's trinitarian formulations in the language and categories
derived from intentionality analysis are frequently expressed in “three-points” and not four as in De Deo
Trino. However, from the 1957 “forerunner” to the later editions of De Deo Trino, Divinarum personarum,
through its many editions and amendments by Lonergan himself, the “four-point” hypothesis remains. The
later Lonergan's trinitarian thought concentrates upon the experience of the three persons of the Trinity,
Father, Son and Spirit, ad extra. There is nothing to suggest that Lonergan discarded his ad intra insights,
including his distinction between active and passive spirations. In fact, his rather nebulous language of “the
gift of God's love,” “the dynamic state of being in love,” “knowledge born of religious love,” “acts of
loving,” and “judgment of value” encourage a technical refinement in which the four-point hypothesis can
be expressed in a methodical theology. The larger critical issue for the interpretation of Lonergan's thought
is whether in his concern for intentionality analysis and a corresponding methodical theology, Lonergan
abandoned some of the insights gleaned from his more “metaphysical theology.” If not, then what is the
relationship between the two: how can Lonergan's four-point hypothesis be transposed from a metaphysical
theology to a methodical theology with its categories of interiority?
284 Doran, “Addressing The Four-Point Hypothesis,” 682.
285 Cf. ibid., 677-8.
137
Jacobs-Vandegeer’s article “Sanctifying Grace in a Methodical Theology,” where the following
observation is made:
We may have reason to doubt the accuracy of a description of the interiority of grace if it
stands at odds with the theoretical theology of the early Lonergan.
In other words, if an
account of religious interiority has metaphysical implications that contradict the key
achievements of Lonergan's early theology as found in his dissertation and in his Latin
works (e.g., “the theorem of the supernatural”), that account may need correction.
Though interiority analysis gives the critical basis for eliminating misleading
metaphysical terms and relations, we may also proceed with the awareness that the
insights of an older, theoretical theology may at times serve as correctives to the
oversights of a contemporary, methodical theology.286
Doran concurs with Jacobs-Vandegeer that some traditional metaphysical insights, such
as the real distinction between sanctifying grace and the habit of charity, should have a
functional equivalent in methodical theology. Accordingly, Doran echoes Jacobs-Vandegeer as
he explains how such equivalents may be identified. Indeed, through intentionality analysis,
Doran distinguishes a state pertaining to the unity of consciousness (such as sanctifying grace)
from a state in which this unity is manifested (such as the habit of charity):
For Jacobs-Vandegeer, if what Lonergan calls the dynamic state of being in love
corresponds to what a medieval theology calls sanctifying grace, then that state has to do
with the unity of consciousness as that unity reflects an entitative habit radicated in the
essence of the soul, in central form, and manifested in diverse acts of faith, hope, and
love, as well as in other operations and states. The dynamic state that corresponds in a
“methodical theology” to what in a metaphysical theology is called sanctifying grace is a
radical enrichment of the unity of consciousness that accompanies the acts of the
theological virtues and other acts while remaining distinct from them.287
286
Christiaan Jacobs-Vandegeer, “Sanctifying Grace in a ‘Methodical Theology,’” Theological Studies 68,
no 1 (2007): 56.
287 Doran, “Addressing The Four-Point Hypothesis,” 678. Cf. Jacobs-Vandegeer, “Sanctifying Grace in a
‘Methodical Theology,’” 63:
Being in love unrestrictedly does not signify an experience either equivalent to or even independent of
some accidental or conjugate act. In any effort to explain the transposition that Lonergan proposed, I
138
2. David Coffey
David Coffey has an article published in Theological Studies that responds to Doran’s
“The Starting Point of Systematic Theology” and Ormerod’s “Two Points or Four?—Rahner and
Lonergan on Trinity, Incarnation, Grace, and Beatific Vision” from the same journal. Coffey
argues against Doran’s four-point hypothesis in favor of a two-point model of understanding the
Trinity through incarnation and grace. He also reacts to Ormerod’s article because it argues in
favor of Lonergan’s conception of divine participation over Rahner’s as well as Coffey’s, given
Ormerod’s impression that “Coffey’s Christology is to some extent the logical unfolding of
Rahner’s position on Christology and grace, together with a strong application of Rahner’s
grundaxiom.”288
Coffey notes in his rejoinder that “I have been more influenced by Rahner,
though by no means have I been captive to him.”289
Hence, he does not presume that his
arguments capture how Rahner would have responded to the early Lonergan’s four-point
suggest that the following four points may provide critical guideposts: (1) accidental operations render the
subject conscious; (2) an entitative habit resides in the essence of the soul, in the substance as distinct from
in its accidents; (3) the entitative habit constitutes the remote principle of the consequent operations
received in the proximate potencies that arise from it; and (4) the conscious manifestation of that remote
principle remains distinct from the operations themselves. The last point underscores the need to identify in
consciousness the difference between “being in love unrestrictedly” (sanctifying grace) and the acts of
faith, hope, and charity (theological virtues) that it makes possible (as from a remote principle).
Also, cf. ibid., 71-2: “If Lonergan attributed consciousness to the unity of the subject, still he maintained
that distinct operations render the subject conscious. . . . The key to understanding the transposition lies in
maintaining the crucial distinction between consciousness as diversified by the operations and consciousness as an
identity immanent in the diversity.”
288 Neil Ormerod “Two Points or Four?—Rahner and Lonergan on Trinity, Incarnation, Grace, and Beatific
Vision,” Theological Studies 68, no. 3 (2007): 670.
289 Coffey, “Response to Neil Ormerod, and Beyond,” 900.
139
hypothesis, had he been aware of it. Indeed, he states, “I leave it to others, should they wish, to
defend Rahner against Ormerod's criticisms.”290
Coffey wishes to maintain the first and fourth points of Lonergan’s hypothesis, although
in a significantly modified form. Regarding the esse secundarium, Coffey believes that it does
not participate in paternity, but rather in filiation. He provides his reasoning as follows:
The sacred humanity must itself be regarded as receptive, indeed as pure, created
receptivity. The most accurate way of conceiving this situation is to grasp the sacred
humanity as receptive in relation to the Father and, therefore, as participating in and
imitating the receptivity of the Son, that is, the sonship of the Second Person in the
immanent Trinity, which is pure, uncreated receptivity in relation to the Father. . . . The
esse of the assumed humanity of Christ, therefore, does not participate in and imitate the
divine paternity, as Lonergan and Doran would have it. Rather, it participates in and
imitates the divine sonship of the Son.291
Indeed, Coffey argues that not just the esse secundarium, but all manners of divine
participation through created grace occur through imitation of the Son, not the Father or the Holy
Spirit.292
Consequently, he states, “This disposes of points two and three of the four-point
hypothesis.”293
In fact, he argues that, with the abandonment of various metaphysical categories
in Lonergan’s methodical theology, there is no room anyway for a real distinction between
sanctifying grace and charity, or even the light of glory when it is understood as a greater degree
of sanctifying grace in its eschatological state.294
290
Ibid., 901.
291 Ibid., 902.
292 Cf. ibid., 903.
293 Ibid.
294 Cf. ibid., 906:
140
For Coffey, that which remains to be transposed from Lonergan’s original hypothesis are
points one and four, where both the esse secundarium and the light of glory are understood as
participations in the Son. According to his view, while the incarnation (esse secundarium) is the
special manner in which Christ’s humanity participates hypostatically in the Son, all other human
beings imitate the Son in a common manner through grace, which may only be conceptually
differentiated into sanctifying grace, charity, and the light of glory as distinct kinds of grace.
Coffey explains how he thinks the esse secundarium, sanctifying grace, and the light of glory,
while related to different divine persons, ultimately reduce to two modes of participation in
filiation:
This leaves the three basic supernaturalia, namely, the substantial sanctification of the
sacred humanity in the hypostatic union, sanctifying grace, and the light of glory. Each of
these is related to a different divine Person: the first to the Son, the second to the Holy
Spirit, and the third to the Father, but, more importantly, each is a form of filiation, the
first two in its receptive mode and the third in its donative mode. Even more basically,
the three supernaturalia reduce to two, in that the third is the eschatological dimension of
the others, which themselves are instrinsically related, the second a participation in the
first.295
I stated earlier that I suspected that Lonergan himself had lost confidence in the four-point hypothesis,
which would explain his silence on it after 1964. By 1972, the publication year of Method in Theology, he
had “moved out of a faculty psychology with its options between intellectualism and voluntarism, and into
an intentionality analysis that distinguishes four successive layers of conscious and intentional operations.”
This move entailed not an abandonment of metaphysics but a relegation of metaphysical terms and
relations to the realm of the derived and the consequent embrace of a ‘critical metaphysics’ in which ‘for
every term and relation there will exist a corresponding element in intentional consciousness.’
In a lecture
delivered at Marquette University in 1968, Lonergan had said that the study of the subject “prescinds from
the soul, its essence, its potencies, its habits, for none of these is given in consciousness.”
The skepticism
thus expressed did not extend to the existence of the soul: “Subject and soul, then, are two quite different
topics. To know one does not exclude the other in any way.”
From this it appears that he no longer held that
there was any real distinction between the essence of the soul and its potencies and habits. By this move,
however, he had apparently abolished the ground for distinguishing between sanctifying grace and the habit
of charity. And, given that the light of glory is the eschatological perfection of faith animated by charity
(see 2 Cor 5:7), neither did there appear to be any longer a ground for distinguishing between the
eschatological state of sanctifying grace and the light of glory.
295 Ibid., 915.
141
Some of the responses Doran gave to Hefling’s article could similarly be applied to
Coffey’s arguments. Indeed, Doran and Ormerod remain convinced that the four-point
hypothesis can be transposed into the terms of a methodical theology, despite Lonergan not
having clearly done so in his lifetime. Furthermore, as noted above, they view participation in the
four divine relations as the best model for understanding the divine indwelling of the three divine
persons. Since all three divine persons are communicated in history through the divine missions,
Doran and Ormerod believe it would be odd if all four divine relations, with which the three
divine persons are necessarily connected, did not have external terms in various forms of created
grace. They believe it is only by participating in the four divine relations through their respective
external terms that people can have non-appropriated relations that terminate distinctly in each of
the divine persons. Contrary to Coffey, they contend that it would be impossible to have a
distinct and proper relation to each of the divine persons if humans only attained God through
participation in filiation. For them, it does not make sense for Coffey to acknowledge a relation
to each of the three persons through the esse secundarium, sanctifying grace, and the light of
glory, respectively, only to reduce these three to two modes of participation in filiation.
Doran and Ormerod defend their belief that there are four preeminent supernatural
realities by arguing that grace should be differentiated not merely logically in terms of its degree,
but really in kind. This leads to the real distinction of the esse secundarium, sanctifying grace,
the habit of charity, and the light of glory from each other. In their belief that these four
participate in the four divine relations, and not solely filiation as Coffey maintains, they hold that
the esse secundarium participates in paternity, rather than fililation. They draw an important
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distinction between Christ’s esse secundarium and his humanity, claiming that the former
participates in paternity and the latter in filiation through the hypostatic union. In contrast,
Coffey does not seem to clearly differentiate the two in this manner, resulting in him conflating
both as participations in the Son. At any rate, if one grants the existence of four really distinct
created supernatural realities, rather than two or three, they believe that the best way to account
for their differentiation is to understand them as the created terms of the four divine relations.
D. Conclusion
This chapter examined Lonergan’s four-point hypothesis, which states that there are four
preeminent created graces, namely Christ’s esse secundarium, sanctifying grace, the habit of
charity, and the lumen gloriae. These are supernatural realities which enable human participation
in the four divine relations of paternity, active spiration, passive spiration, and filiation. This
hypothesis was studied in its original context as a product of Lonergan’s early Latin theological
work. Lonergan’s first formulation of this hypothesis was found in his notes for his course on
grace in 1951-1952. His final formulation of it was identified in his Divinarum personarum
(1957), which was later revised into his De Deo trino: Pars systematica (1964).
This chapter also discussed Doran’s belief that Lonergan’s four-point hypothesis lays the
groundwork for a supernatural, psychological analogy for the Trinity. Accordingly, Doran’s
reflections upon Lonergan’s hypothesis were examined, as were his attempts to develop it into a
Trinitarian analogy. It also noted how Doran has made this hypothesis the foundation for his
143
systematic theology, which develops a supernatural analogy for the divine processions from the
human experience of the supernatural order and the divine missions.
Finally, this chapter discussed the reaction of different scholars to Doran’s expansion of
the four-point hypothesis into a supernatural analogy for the four divine relations. It studied
some of Doran’s objections against his critics who reject the four-point hypothesis, in particular
Hefling and Coffey. It noted that they suggest alternative foundations for a supernatural analogy,
such as a three-point or two-point hypothesis. However, both of these were found wanting.
Despite objections to the contrary, it appears that Lonergan has laid the groundwork for a
Trinitarian analogy that makes use of the four point hypothesis. Noticing this, Doran has
developed Lonergan’s hypothesis in order to construct a psychological analogy from the
supernatural order of human experience. This analogy has been developed within the tradition of
Lonergan’s Trinitarian theology to the point that it may be usefully compared with the
Trinitarian theology of Karl Rahner. Attention will now be turned to this task.
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CHAPTER II
Karl Rahner’s Theology of Grace and the Trinity: Its Interpretation and Development
In his development of Bernard Lonergan’s four-point hypothesis into a supernatural,
psychological analogy, Robert Doran seeks to transpose the four-point hypothesis into the
categories of a methodical theology that addresses the concerns of modern philosophy. He
believes the most appropriate categories for such a transposition are those of interiorly and
religiously differentiated consciousness, which Lonergan developed after his original
formulation of the four-point hypothesis. However, it may be that the categories of another
theologian’s thought may prove more useful in developing a supernatural analogy based upon
the four-point hypothesis.
Therefore, this dissertation now turns to examine whether Karl Rahner’s theology of
grace and the Trinity would provide a stronger ontological foundation for a supernatural analogy
based upon the four-point hypothesis. In preparation for this assessment, this chapter will
examine the major themes of Rahner’s theology of grace and the Trinity as they pertain to the
four-point hypothesis and a supernatural psychological analogy.
A. Philosophical Foundations for Theology
Rahner and Lonergan have a loose philosophical connection concerning a broad
movement known as Transcendental Thomism. While they differ significantly on epistemology,
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they share a related conception of intellectual dynamism.1 However, they expressed it
differently.
According to Lonergan’s psychological model of transcendental deduction, the intellect’s
unthematic orientation toward what is ultimately intelligible guarantees the isomorphism
between the knower and that which is known. Hence, the intellect authentically grasps the reality
of being insofar as the act of self-appropriation manifests this isomorphism.2 This allows the
reality one experiences to be known through critical realism in accord with Lonergan’s
transcendental method, also referred to as his generalized empirical method (GEM).
Furthermore, in Lonergan’s critical realist epistemology, humanity’s intellectual dynamism
toward the transcendent is born from the unrestricted desire to know in anticipation of God’s
absolute act of understanding. He writes, “As the metaphysics of proportionate being rests on the
isomorphism of the proportionate knower to the known, so the transition to the transcendent is
effected by proceeding from the contingent subject’s unrestricted desire to know to the
transcendent subject’s unrestricted act of understanding.”3
For Rahner, the intellect abstracts forms not only on the basis of what is given in
sensation a posteriori, but also in reference to the infinite horizon of being toward which
1 Cf. John F. X. Knasas, “Intellectual Dynamism in Transcendental Thomism: A Metaphysical
Assessment,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 69, no.1 (1995): 16: “I claim that despite inevitable
idiosyncrasies, the philosophies of Maréchal, Rahner, and Lonergan contain a common conception of intellectual
dynamism.”
2 Cf. Paul St. Amour, “Kierkegaard and Lonergan on the Prospect of Cognitional-Existential Integration,”
Lonergan Workshop 18 (2005): 50: “Knowing is not a matter of confronting a world already out there and then of
somehow getting accurate representations of that world into our heads. Knowing involves the active and conscious
performance of experiential and intelligent and rational operations whereby the knower intentionally becomes that
which is known. In knowing there is performed an identity, a unity, an ‘isomorphism’ between knower and known.”
3 Bernard Lonergan, Insight (New York: Philosophical Library Inc., 1957), 679.
146
intellectual dynamism is oriented a priori. In his view, every act of human knowledge involves
not only an explicit apprehension of intentional objects, but also an implicit pre-apprehension
(Vorgriff) of the infinite horizon of being. It is in reference to absolute being that finite beings
may be understood and affirmed in their reality.
The philosophical foundations of Rahner’s thought will be examined in order to
determine their suitability for grounding a Trinitarian analogy through the four-point hypothesis.
Rahner synthesized aspects of the philosophies of various figures, including Thomas Aquinas,
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), Joseph Maréchal (1878-1944), and Martin Heidegger (1889-1976).
Sensitive to the epistemic concerns of modern philosophy, Rahner believed that Thomistic
philosophy as traditionally conceived lacked a sufficient basis for verifying the extra-mental
reality of intelligible objects. With these concerns in mind, he engaged Thomistic thought with
aspects characteristic of modern philosophy, including transcendental anthropology. Yet, despite
his distinctly modern focus on human subjectivity, he understood it not as autonomous, but
rather as dependent upon God in its fundamental orientation. Avoiding the extreme of
autonomous subjectivity found in modern philosophy, Rahner sought to integrate the insights of
ancient and medieval philosophy into his own philosophical synthesis. As he has explained,
Plato, Aristotle and Thomas will remain immortal philosophers from whom we must
learn. But this does not alter the fact (even if the kind of philosophy studied in the Church
has only taken notice of it in the last forty years or so) that philosophy today and hence
theology too cannot and must not return to the stage before modern philosophy’s
transcendental anthropological change of direction since Descartes, Kant, German
Idealism (including its opponents), up to modern Phenomenology, Existentialism and
Fundamental Ontology. With few exceptions, e.g. Blondel, it can be said that this whole
philosophy is most profoundly un-Christian in so far as it pursues a transcendental
philosophy of the autonomous subject, who stands aloof from the transcendental
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experience in which he experiences himself as continually dependent, with his origin in
and orientation towards God.4
In his unsuccessful philosophy dissertation, Spirit in the World, Rahner develops a
metaphysical anthropology that discerns the scope of human knowledge in its pre-apprehension
or outreach (Vorgriff) toward the infinite horizon of being. He explains humanity’s pre-
apprehension of the infinite, which is concurrent with its knowledge of the finite, by drawing
upon Aquinas’ understanding of the intellect’s excessus described in Summa Theologiae I, q. 84,
a. 7, ad 3. Rahner notes that, for Aquinas, “the excessus is necessary for apprehending the
objects of metaphysics in spite of the fact that sensibility is the abiding ground of our
knowledge.”5 Rahner presents his concept of the Vorgriff as a development of Aquinas’
excessus, according to which, following the conversion to the phantasm, the agent intellect
abstracts knowledge of finite being through an implicit reference to the infinite. This indicates
the infinite breadth of the agent intellect’s apprehensive power and the same breadth shared by
the possible intellect’s receptive power.6 Rahner says,
We must therefore ask how the agent intellect is to be understood so that it can know the
form as limited, confined, and thus as of itself embracing further possibilities in itself, as
bordering upon a broader field of possibilities. Obviously this is possible only if,
antecedent to and in addition to apprehending the individual form, it comprehends of
4 Karl Rahner, “Theology and Anthropology,” in Theological Investigations, Vol. 9: Writings of 1965-
1967; 1, trans. Graham Harrison (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1972), 38-9.
5 Karl Rahner, Spirit in the World, trans. William Dych (London: Sheed and Ward, 1968), 142n14.
6 Cf. ibid., 242:
If, then, the agent intellect is the spontaneous, dynamic ordination of the human spirit to esse absolutely,
the “quo est omnia facere,” then the possible intellect as intellect is the potentiality of the human spirit to
comprehend esse absolutely in receptive (hinnehmender) knowledge, the “quo est omnia fieri.” The
receptive (empfangende) breadth of the possible intellect is the same as the apprehensive (zugreifende)
breadth of the agent intellect.
148
itself the whole field of possibilities and thus, in the sensible concretized form,
experiences the concreteness as limitation of these possibilities, whereby it knows the
form itself as able to be multiplied in this field. This transcending apprehension of further
possibilities, through which the form possessed in a concretion in sensibility is
apprehended as limited and so is abstracted, we call “pre-apprehension” (“Vorgriff”).
Although this term is not to be found literally in Thomas, yet its content is contained in
what Thomas calls “excessus” (excess), using a similar image.7
Rahner believes that whenever the human intellect reflects explicitly upon a finite being,
it implicitly affirms esse commune in the act of pre-apprehension. Esse commune is not the
absolute being proper to God, but it does include the community of all existing finite beings, any
of which may be known by the intellect on account of its infinite scope of pre-apprehension.
However, the finitude of the human intellect does not allow esse commune to be comprehended
in its fullness through explicit knowledge. Indeed, Rahner notes that esse can only be understood
when it is concretely limited, either by a definite form or according to ens commune when, as an
abstraction referring to the aspects of being common to all finite beings, it is understood to
represent every concrete form. As Rahner explains,
The esse apprehended in the pre-apprehension, as only implicitly and simultaneously
apprehended (miterfasst) in the pre-apprehension, was known implicitly and
simultaneously (mitgewusst) as able to be limited by quidditative determinations and as
already limited, since the pre-apprehension (Vorgriff), if it is not to be a “grasp” (Griff),
can only be realized in a simultaneous conversion to a definite form limiting esse and in
the conversion to the phantasm. The fullness of being which esse expresses is therefore
never given objectively. If esse is made objective in reflection in order to be known
(gewusst) itself (not merely implicitly and simultaneously known [mitgewusst] in the pre-
apprehension), then that can only be done insofar as it is itself concretized again by a
form. This is either a definite form, and then it limits esse to the fullness of a definite
degree of being, or it represents every form, it is the form of ens commune (any-quiddity),
and then its esse is indeed not limited to any definite degree of ontological actuality, but
for that reason is completely reduced to the empty void of ens commune. Hence, insofar
as this esse simultaneously apprehended in the pre-apprehension is able to be limited, it
7 Ibid., 142.
149
shows itself to be nonabsolute, since an absolute necessarily excludes the possibility of a
limitation. This esse apprehended in the pre-apprehension is therefore in itself esse
“commune” (“common” esse), although this must not be equated with ens commune.8
Additionally, Rahner notes that in every act of knowing, the absolute esse of God’s being
is implicitly affirmed along with esse commune as an object of pre-apprehension that fills its
breadth.9 Yet, in this act of pre-apprehension, a conscious understanding of absolute being does
not take place. In fact, human reason cannot even demonstrate the possibility of a divine grace
whereby one might apprehend absolute esse explicitly. Nevertheless, while humans are unable to
know the divine essence without the grace of the beatific vision, Rahner claims that people can
still explicitly affirm the absolute being of God as the ground of their knowledge of finite
beings.10
As Rahner indicates,
But in this pre-apprehension as the necessary and always already realized condition of
knowledge (even in a doubt, an in-itself, and thus esse is affirmed) the existence of an
Absolute Being is also affirmed simultaneously (mitbejaht). For any possible object
which can come to exist in the breadth of the pre-apprehension is simultaneously
8 Ibid., 180-1.
9 Cf. Karl Rahner, Hearer of the Word, translation of the 1
st edition, ed. Andrew Tallon, trans. Joseph
Donceel (New York: Continuum, 1994), 51:
It is true that the Vorgriff does not immediately put God as an object before the mind [Geist], since, as the
condition of the possibility of all knowledge of objects, the Vorgriff itself never represents an object in
itself. But in this Vorgriff as the necessary and always already fulfilled condition of every human
knowledge and action, the existence of an absolute being, hence of God, is always already co-affirmed,
even though not represented. The Vorgriff coaffirms as objectively as possible that which, as a possible
object, may come to stand in its range; otherwise it would once more aim at nothingness. An absolute being
would wholly fill the range of the Vorgriff. Hence it is co-affirmed as real, since it cannot be grasped as
objectively merely possible, and since the Vorgriff intends primarily not merely possible, but real being. In
this sense we may and must say: the Vorgriff aims at God.
10 Cf. John McDermott, “Karl Rahner in Tradition: The One and the Many,” Fides Quaerens Intellectum 3,
no. 2 (2007): 22: “Nature seems to be oriented in perpetual self-transcendence as if to esse commune, but insofar as
God’s existence is presupposed the movement can be said to approximate God asymptotically. Here the distinction
between nature and the supernatural perfection of the beatific vision is clearly upheld; the direct vision of God
would be a gift beyond the attainment of man’s powers which only wander perpetually.”
150
affirmed. An Absolute Being would completely fill up the breadth of this pre-
apprehension. Hence it is simultaneously affirmed as real (since it cannot be grasped as
merely possible). In this sense, but only in this sense, it can be said: the pre-apprehension
attains to God. Not as though it attains to the Absolute Being immediately in order to
represent (vorstellen) it objectively in its own self, but because the reality of God as that
of absolute esse is implicitly affirmed simultaneously by the breadth of the pre-
apprehension, by esse commune. In this respect, grasping absolute esse would also
completely fill up the breadth of the pre-apprehension. But, on the other hand, insofar as
in human knowledge, which alone is accessible to philosophy, the pre-apprehension is
always broader than the grasp of an object itself because of the conversion to the
phantasm, nothing can be decided philosophically about the possibility of an immediate
apprehension of absolute esse as an object of the first order.11
The divine nature can be known only apophatically apart from revelation. However, the
intellectual dynamism of the human spirit toward God affirms the existence of God as the ground
of the spirit’s self-presence. Hence, one may reflect upon the structure of intellectual dynamism
to form an argument of natural theology for the existence of God. Since human self-presence
must confront its contingent existence, one’s experience of identity would be in flux unless it
were referred to its necessarily existing ground in God’s absolute being. Indeed, human identity
requires possible fulfillment in the absolute, lest it dissolve into nothingness. Yet, such
hypothetical non-being is contradicted by spirit’s experience of its real existence through self-
presence. Thus, since intellectual dynamism affirms that absolute being must be possible as a
ground of human existence, which it affirms really and not just conceptually (as in an ontological
argument), God’s absolute being is known to exist necessarily. An associate of Rahner, the
transcendental philosopher Emerich Coreth explains this argument as follows:
We experience the dynamism of our intellect towards unity beyond all multiplicity,
towards the unconditioned beyond everything conditioned, towards the infinite past all
finiteness. This dynamism reveals to us as the final end or goal of the finite spirit the one,
11
Rahner, Spirit in the World, 181.
151
unconditioned, and infinite being. This dynamism makes sense only if it is directed
towards such a goal. This goal is an a priori condition of the possibility of the undeniable
striving of the human spirit. But such a striving, which constitutes the very essence of our
mind, cannot head towards nothingness. Its end must at least be possible. . . . Thus the act
must be possible by which the spirit reaches absolute and infinite being, and the act is
possible only if its content, in casu, absolute being itself, is possible; otherwise, the
striving of the spirit, as it really is, would be contradictory. But if the absolute being is
possible, it is also necessarily real. In the present case, and only in it, may we conclude
from the possibility to the reality, provided only that the possibility in question is not a
mere logical possibility, but the real possibility of being. Hence we do not conclude from
a conceivable, non-contradictory concept of God to his reality. This would be an invalid
conclusion. But we start from the real activity of the spirit, which is possible only if it
aims at a really possible end, the absolute being. And the latter is possible only as being
itself, which subsists no longer in the duality of being and essence, but whose essence it is
to be, whose being is its essence; therefore, it is the absolutely necessary being, which by
its very essence cannot not be. . . . But we have shown that the possibility of the absolute
being is a condition of the possibility of the activity of the spirit, as it strives towards the
absolute. Hence the Absolute Being really exists.12
For Rahner, the nature of spirit consists in its orientation toward God through pre-
apprehension. Indeed, the process of abstracting and receiving knowledge through the agent and
possible intellects reveals spirit to itself as it stands before absolute being. Rahner notes,
Abstraction showed itself on the one hand to be grounded and accomplished in an
excessus to absolute esse, and on the other hand as the becoming conscious of the a priori
structure of the spirit itself in the sensibly given content which it informs. . . . The
essence of the spirit is the “quo est omnia fieri”: spirit is in potency for absolute being. It
is “in a certain way (that is, in potency and in ordination towards) everything.” Its
becoming conscious of its a priori reality is therefore the pre-apprehension of absolute
being, and vice versa.13
This potency of spirit for knowledge of absolute being manifests the ultimate end of
human life. Rahner says, “This also tells us what the end and goal of the spirit is. For the end of a
12
Emerich Coreth, Metaphysics, trans. Joseph Donceel (New York: Herder and Herder, 1968), 178-9.
13 Rahner, Spirit in the World, 281.
152
power corresponds to the breadth of its scope.”14
Hence, spirit is constituted with a natural desire
to know God explicitly, whom it pre-apprehends implicitly. The intellect can naturally
understand God asymptotically as the ground of finite being, and this gives fulfillment to spirit’s
natural desire. However, spirit’s natural desire is ultimately fulfilled only through God’s
unexacted gift of grace, in which the transcendent nature of God is revealed through self-
communication.15
In fact, Rahner maintains that the spirit’s asymptotic openness to absolute
being shows the possibility of receiving a greater fulfillment from divine revelation.
Consequently, in his subsequent text Hearer of the Word, Rahner discusses how the
absolute transcendence of intellectual dynamism anticipates a possible revelation from God. He
states, “To our fundamental human makeup belongs the a priori absolute transcendence toward
being pure and simple. . . . A priori at least, humanity is open for every kind of knowledge and
does not restrict the scope of a possible revelation.”16
Therefore, Rahner claims that the human
ability to receive divine revelation can be known philosophically as an epistemic foundation for
theology:
It looks as though an epistemological validation of this humble listening to and
welcoming of God’s work were a priori impossible, since they presuppose a supremely
free initiative of the transcendent God in a self-revelation no human being can foresee. If
we start from ourselves, God’s revelation cannot be validated either in its actuality, or in
its necessity, or in its inner nature. This being the case, we understand at once that an
epistemological validation of theology (which should somehow be previous to it) cannot
14
Ibid., 283.
15 Cf. Rahner, Hearer of the Word, 56n: “There is still room for a subjective widening by grace of the
horizon of human knowledge (a new visibility brought about by the ‘light of faith’ as a subjective faculty, as an
‘infused virtue’). The only requirement for this (and this is precisely our point here) is that the objective openness of
our natural transcendence should not from the start anticipate all possible objects of revelation as due to humanity.”
16 Ibid., 55.
153
apply to God’s word, but only to our listening to it. It can establish that it is a priori
possible for us to hear an eventual revelation of God.17
This insight about the scope of human transcendence is fundamental to Rahner’s study of
the philosophy of religion and its relation to theology. In light of this, he notes that “a
metaphysical anthropology turns into an ontology of the obediential potency for a possible free
revelation.”18
However, in seeking to demonstrate humanity’s obediential potency (potentia
oboedientialis) for receiving a divine revelation so as to know God more deeply, Rahner clarifies
that “we are not speaking of the obediential potency for supernatural life, as our ontic elevation
to a share in God’s own life, but only of the obediential potency for a listening to an eventual
word of God.”19 Indeed, he believes that since human knowledge is always mediated through
finite objects, one cannot naturally demonstrate the possibility of an immediate vision of God. As
he states, “Philosophically we cannot say whether the spirit’s transcendental capacity may ever
be filled without the help of a finite sense object. We cannot say whether the beatific vision is
intrinsically possible, much less whether it is humanity’s due.”20
Hence, Rahner argues that
17
Ibid., 5. The word “ergehenden” in the original German is translated here as “eventual.” For the original
from the first edition published in 1941, cf. Karl Rahner, Hörer des Wortes: Zur Grundlegung einer
Religionsphilosophie, in Sämtliche Werke, Bd. 4: Hörer des Wortes, ed. Albert Raffelt (Freiburg im Breisgau:
Herder, 1997), 18: “Wenn das richtig ist, dann ist von vornherein einsichtig, daß sich eine wissenschaftstheoretische
Begründung der Theologie, die doch wenigstens irgendwie der Theologie vorausliegend gedacht werden soll, nicht
auf das Wort Gottes, sondern auf das Hören des Wortes durch den Menschen, nur auf die apriorische Möglichkeit
des Hörenkönnens einer möglicherweise ergehenden Offenbarung Gottes erstrecken kann.”
18 Ibid., 138.
19 Ibid., 16.
20 Ibid., 68. Cf. Karl Rahner, “The Concept of Mystery in Catholic Theology,” in Theological
Investigations, Vol. 4: More Recent Writings, trans. Kevin Smyth (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1966), 61:
The philosophy of religion, conceiving of God as essentially and perpetually the holy mystery, can of
course offer no grounds for a philosophical proof of the possibility of the beatific vision and hence of grace
154
while natural reason can know the possibility of hearing a revelation from God, it cannot prove
that the inner nature of a possible revelation could consist in God’s complete self-communication
to humanity.
Rahner proceeds to show that the epistemic validation of the human openness to divine
revelation is grounded in an understanding of the analogy of being. He refers to Aquinas, who
discussed self-presence (or self-possession) as a transcendental reality of being that can be used
as an analogue for comparing different degrees of being.21
For Rahner, everything in existence
imitates God according to the extent to which its being involves a degree of self-presence, where
a being emanates its essence and returns to itself in a form of reflexion. He identifies this self-
presence of being with the luminosity of being, according to which beings have varying degrees
of luminosity that participate in the divine light, from which all things have their being,
goodness, and intelligibility.22
This analogue enables the following understanding of the
gradation of being: the more immanent this self-presence is in a being, the more it is able to
express and appropriate itself.23
As Rahner explains,
and the supernatural order in general. . . . The answer can be given only by revelation, and this revelation
cannot be confined to words, but must be also the giving of grace, as an inner, objectless though conscious
dynamism directed to the beatific vision.
21 Cf. Rahner, Hearer of the Word, 33: “Knowing, in its original nature, is the self-presence of being.
Thomas says practically the same thing. What we called the self-presence, is called by him reditio subjecti in
seipsum [the return of the subject into itself]. For Thomas to know is an activity by which the knower returns into
itself, resulting, therefore, in a self-presence.”
22 Cf. ibid.: “The essence of being is to know and to be known, in an original unity which we have called
the self-presence of being, the luminosity of being for itself.”
23 Cf. ibid.: “In a remarkable chapter of his Summa contra gentiles (IV, 11) he claims that the degrees of
being—we might say the degrees of possession of being, of intensity of being—correspond to the degrees of the
power of coming to oneself, or returning into oneself.”
155
We may once more refer to the previously mentioned chapter of Summa contra gentiles
(IV, 11), in which Thomas superbly exposes this gradation of the return of the thing into
itself, throughout the different degrees of being. Everything strives back toward itself, it
wishes to come into itself, to take possession of itself, since it is what it wishes to be,
namely being, to the extent that it takes possession of itself. Every activity, from the
purely material up to the inner life of the triune God, is but a gradation of this one
metaphysical theme, of the one meaning of being: self-possession. Now this self-
possession implies a double stage: an outward expansion, an extraposition of its own
essence out of its own ground, an emanation—and a taking-back-again, a reintegration of
this essence that has stepped out of its ground and stands as it were revealed. The more
these two stages are immanent to the being which steps out of itself and returns to itself,
the more a being is able to utter itself and to keep what is thus uttered within itself, to
assimilate the uttered essence, so much the more it participates in being, as presence to
itself.
Next Thomas examines the different degrees of being. The material being utters
itself to some extent in its outward activity, thus showing what it is. But what is thus
shown, the manifestation of its ground in its activity, does not stay with it. It is uttered but
it cannot be assimilated as such by the one that utters it. It operates only upon others.
Strictly speaking it shows only to others what it is and remains hidden to itself. It is no
longer luminous for itself, but only for others. It is only in human beings that the
utterance for our own essence in thought and in action returns for the first time wholly to
ourselves. Insofar as through our thinking and acting we show what we are, we know
about ourselves. We “perceive” and “understand” ourselves.24
For Rahner, this analogy of being emerges from the tension between the openness and
hiddenness of being. While all things are intelligible inasmuch as they have being, which
indicates the openness of being, the pure being of God has the quality of hiddenness as an
absolute mystery that no finite intellect can comprehend. Concerning this mystery, Rahner says,
“We must inquire why, despite and in its luminosity, pure being is that which is utterly
concealed, why being, to the extent that it is being, is not only present-to-itself, but also hidden,
present-only-to-itself.”25
24
Ibid., 38-9.
25 Ibid., 58.
156
In response to this question, Rahner argues that God remains incomprehensible despite
being absolutely luminous because humans “know of God’s infinity only in connection with
finite beings.”26
This is significant since self-presence cannot be predicated univocally of finite
and infinite being. As Rahner notes, “the concept of the being of a being is itself a fluctuating
concept, which cannot in its universality be pinned down to a determined, univocal meaning
(hence to a determined manner of self-presence).”27
Hence, while an analogy can be drawn
between God and creation, contemplating the self-presence of finite being does not enable one to
comprehend God’s infinite being. As Rahner writes, “The positive aspect of this infinity, which
only the concept, not the Vorgriff alone, might make known, remains hidden, despite the basic
openness of this domain of infinity, which results from the spirit’s transcendence.”28
Indeed,
even should God be revealed to humanity, God would remain incomprehensible as the absolute
mystery.
Human understanding of God is very limited apart from revelation. In fact, it is
impossible to deduce the possibility of divinization through grace unless one experiences God’s
revelation. Noting these limitations of natural human reason, Rahner states that “we know the
infinity of God only when, through negation, we move beyond the finite.”29
However, the
doctrine of divine incomprehensibility does not imply that human beings have no obediential
potency to further understand God through revelation. On account of the orientation of the
26
Ibid., 59.
27 Ibid., 38.
28 Ibid., 60.
29 Ibid., 59.
157
human spirit toward God’s being, the “self-manifestation of the infinite remains meaningful and
still has something that may be revealed.”30
In fact, the analogy of self-presence may be used to
show that humans can receive a possible divine revelation.
Rahner argues that the analogy of being as self-presence manifests the freedom of the
personal God to reveal the divine being in history. He explains that the self-presence of a human
knower is marked by a contingent existence. Now, inasmuch as people are present to themselves,
they may consciously reflect upon their implicit pre-apprehension of the horizon of being and
realize that their acts of self-knowledge co-affirm a necessary ground of human existence.31
Since people do not exist necessarily by their self-presence, they are rather known to exist as the
consequence of a free decision of a creative power whose self-presence is necessary and
absolute. Rahner explains how human knowledge affirms its existential dependence upon God’s
free power to create:
God is the whither of the Vorgriff of the human spirit, but is such because God looms
before the finite as free power. Thus, when finite knowledge knows God, this knowledge
is carried by God’s own free positing of this finite reality, which we call creation. Thus it
is always already a reply to a free word, spoken by the absolute, implicitly affirmed as
such a free action when, on account of our transcendence, we finite spirits perceive the
distant radiance of the infinite light.32
30
Ibid.
31 Bernard Lonergan also speaks of humanity’s affirmation of God within the horizon of knowledge. Cf.
Lonergan, Method in Theology, (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972), 103: “The question of God, then, lies within
man’s horizon. Man’s transcendental subjectivity is mutilated or abolished, unless he is stretching forth towards the
intelligible, the unconditioned, the good of value. The reach, not of his attainment, but of his intending is
unrestricted. There lies within his horizon a region for the divine, a shrine for ultimate holiness. It cannot be
ignored.”
32 Rahner, Hearer of the Word, 70.
158
When God is affirmed as absolute being, it is known that God’s intelligibility is fully
present to God because of his perfect self-presence. God is also known to be purely free in
creating finite being, with all of its relative degrees of self-presence. Now, the degree of self-
presence in a finite being determines its ability to know itself, the world, and God. 33
Human
beings are able to return to themselves in thought and action, but they cannot comprehend the
absolute subjectivity of God within their own finite subjectivity. In fact, no finite being can grasp
the ultimate intelligibility of God.
However, the human spirit is sufficiently present to itself that its intellectual dynamism
pre-apprehends God, even though God transcends natural understanding. In its outreach toward
the reality of God that exceeds the limits of natural reason, the human intellect manifests an
obediential potency for receiving further knowledge of God through revelation, should God
freely give it. As Rahner notes, “The contingency of this finite creature implies as such that it is
changeable, hence that by itself it must be the object of further possible free interventions of the
33
Cf. Rahner, Spirit in the World, 97-8:
Knowing is being-present-to-self (Beisichsein), the reflectedness-upon-itself (Insichreflektiertheit) of being
itself. Knowing will know something to the extent in which it is this something. From this it follows that it
is established a priori in the being of a knower what it can know, because its being is the a priori norm for
what it can become. The ontological structure of a knowing essence is the a priori norm of its possible
objects. The structure of an existent of a definite intensity of being can be transposed into the structure of
its presence-to-self, in fact it is already and always this, and thus is also the structure of its proper object,
and hence also the a priori condition for all else that is to be known by it. That is all the more true since
knowledge is a result of the ontological unity of object and cognitive faculty, but this becoming-one has the
a priori norm of its possibility in the being of the cognitive faculty as the existent which unites the object
with itself. Since the a priori of knowledge is grounded in the structure of being, and since an ontological
union of knowing and known must also and necessarily respect the intrinsic ontological structure of the
known, the a priori of knowledge does not conceal the nature of possible objects, but has already and
always revealed it.
159
absolute.”34
In the following passage, he explains how the analogical knowledge of God as the
ground of all being has the potential to grow into a deeper understanding of the absolute mystery,
although intellectual dynamism cannot exceed its natural limits without revelation:
Through the Vorgriff, in the analogy of our concept of being, we reach from the start,
although in an empty way, all possible degrees of the intensity of being, from the pure
possibility of prime matter up to pure being. On the other hand, in the appearances,
specified degrees of the intensity of being are made immediately accessible to our
intuition. By denying the limits of such a specified, immediately accessible intensity of
being, by displaying these limits upwards in the direction of pure being, it is possible to
determine, in some way, albeit only negatively, extramundane beings as such and not
only in their most general determinations, which they share with all beings. . . .
The concept of being is not merely a static one, of the most empty and
meaningless generality. For all its empty universality it possesses an inner dynamism
toward the fullness of being (that is the meaning of the analogy of the concept of being).
That is why it has, by itself, the possibility of growing interiorly, as it were, and of taking
on a richer content, from within and not through the adding of external properties derived
from elsewhere. Thus it becomes possible to let the concept of being, together with its
transcendental determinations, grow by and out of itself until, stopped as it were in its
dynamism by negation at a certain point, it designates a certain extramundane intensity of
being.35
Indeed, just as God is free in creating the world, so too is God’s historical revelation free.
It is not necessary that God be revealed. As Rahner explains, “Pure being is free being, hence it
is not from the start and necessarily manifested to the finite being.”36
Furthermore, he says,
“Insofar as the free positing of God makes God appear to us as a person, the knowledge of this
personal God depends always on God’s own free decision.”37
Ultimately, while God was not
bound to it, God has been revealed in history through God’s self-communication. God’s
34
Rahner, Hearer of the Word, 71.
35 Ibid., 130.
36 Ibid., 73.
37 Ibid., 70.
160
revelation is such that the human spirit is ultimately able to know, yet not comprehend, the
divine essence in the beatific vision through the grace of the light of glory.
B. Pure Nature and Historical Nature
The philosophical views Rahner developed in Spirit in the World and Hearer of the Word
shape his unique understanding of the relationship between nature and grace, which he advanced
in his subsequent writings. He does believe in common with many scholastically trained
theologians that human nature is marked by an obediential potency for the reception of grace,
whereby it may participate in God’s supernatural life. Yet, Rahner’s view is distinctive on
account of his claim that this obediential potency is rooted in the soul’s intellectual dynamism
toward God as the whither of human existence. In this dynamism, the soul naturally remains
open to the possible gift of God’s self-communication through its pre-apprehension of God’s
absolute being. Rahner maintains that, even without grace, human intellectual dynamism would
be naturally oriented toward God asymptotically through pre-apprehension. Gratuitously, God’s
grace has actually been communicated to human beings for their fulfillment in the present order
of existence.
Rahner indicates that transcendental analysis can reveal much of what constitutes human
nature. It can help distinguish between that which human beings receive through grace and that
which belongs to them naturally, although it is difficult to differentiate these two possibilities of
161
human existence through experience.38
Indeed, Rahner notes that the idea of “pure nature,” as
distinct from “historical nature” that is actually impacted by grace and sin, serves as an important
remainder concept that clarifies the unexacted nature of grace.39
However, he emphasizes that in
the actual order of human existence, it is impossible to define exactly what human nature would
be like if God had never offered grace to it. As Rahner explains,
This is not intended to deny that something which is recognized to be present in
consequence of a transcendental analysis of the human reality belongs to human nature
(even in the theological sense). . . . But conversely . . . one cannot ascertain the whole of
human nature by such a transcendental method. . . . Once anthropology (in the widest
sense) is forced to make use of a nontranscendental (and in this sense a posteriori)
method in ascertaining man’s nature, it begins at this point to become unavoidably
‘imprecise’. For there is no way of establishing quite clearly in all cases from experience
alone (at least without recourse to theology) whether what experience shows about man
belongs to his nature as such (invariably and without exception) or to his historical
nature, so far as this displays features (invariably and without exception from the
38
Cf. Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity, trans.
William Dych (New York: Crossroad, 1978), 129-30:
Therefore God’s self-communication in grace, as a modification of transcendence in and through which the
holy mystery, that mystery by which transcendence is intrinsically opened and borne, is present in its own
self and in absolute closeness and self-communication, cannot by simple and individual acts of reflection
and psychological introspection be differentiated from those basic structures of human transcendence
which we tried to present in the second chapter of our reflections. The absolutely unlimited transcendence
of the natural spirit in knowledge and freedom along with its term, the holy mystery, already implies by
itself such an infinity in the subject that the possession of God in absolute self-communication does not
really fall outside of this infinite possibility of transcendence, although it remains gratuitous. Therefore the
transcendental experience of this abstract possibility on the one hand and the experience of its radical
fulfillment by God’s self-communication on the other cannot be clearly and unambiguously differentiated
simply by the direct introspection of an individual as long as the history of freedom in its acceptance or
rejection is still going on, and hence as long as this fulfillment through self-communication has not yet
reached its culmination in the final and definitive state which we usually call the immediate vision of God.
39 Cf. Karl Rahner, “Concerning the Relationship Between Nature and Grace,” in Theological
Investigations, Vol. 1: God, Christ, Mary and Grace, trans. Cornelius Ernst (London: Darton, Longman and Todd,
1961), 301-2: “A precise delimitation of nature from grace (supposing it were possible at all) and so a really pure
concept of pure nature could thus in every case only be pursued with the help of Revelation, which tells us what in
us is grace and so provides us with the means of abstracting this grace from the body of our existential experience of
man and thus of acquiring pure nature (in its totality) as a ‘remainder’.”
162
empirical point of view, but conditioned by the fact of vocation to a supernatural end)
which it would not have had if this vocation had not existed.40
Although there is no way to determine precisely how human beings would exist in the
absence of grace, transcendental analysis can still determine the dimensions of pure nature to
some extent. Rahner states, “This is not to deny that in the light of experience and still more of
Revelation it might not be possible in some determinate respect to use a transcendental method
to delimit what this human nature contains. ‘Animale rationale’ may still in this respect be an apt
description.”41
Such abstract delimitations of pure human nature, however, should not distract
one from the supernatural end of humanity’s historical nature in its “concrete quiddity.” Rahner
writes,
Must not what God decrees for man be eo ipso an interior ontological constituent of his
concrete quiddity ‘terminative’, even if it is not a constituent of his ‘nature’? For an
ontology which grasps the truth that man's concrete quiddity depends utterly on God, is
not his binding disposition eo ipso not just a juridical decree of God but precisely what
man is, hence not just an imperative proceeding from God but man's own inward depths?
If God gives creation and man above all a supernatural end and this end is first ‘in
intentione’, then man (and the world) is by that very fact always and everywhere
inwardly other in structure than he would be if he did not have this end, and hence other
as well before he has reached this end partially (the grace which justifies) or wholly (the
beatific vision).42
Without undermining the insight that grace is unexacted, the study of pure nature from a
theological perspective also shows how people have a specific obediential potency to be
40
Karl Rahner, “Some Implications of the Scholastic Concept of Uncreated Grace,” in Theological
Investigations, Vol. 1: God, Christ, Mary and Grace, trans. Cornelius Ernst (London: Darton, Longman and Todd,
1961), 298n2.
41 Ibid., 314.
42 Rahner, “Concerning the Relationship Between Nature and Grace,” 302-3.
163
transformed by grace without ceasing to be human.43
This does not imply that grace is owed to
human beings, but neither does it mean that human nature has a neutral posture toward grace as
something extrinsic and non-repugnant. It rather involves a fundamental yet unexacting
orientation toward the supernatural. This indicates the natural value of the human spirit and its
manner of existence, which would be inherently meaningful even if God had never offered
himself to spirit as grace. Indeed, human beings in the state of pure nature would have had a
natural end capable of fulfillment, although imperfect.44
Rahner explains,
Even when the gratuitousness of grace for human nature as such has been recognized, it
is still helpful to try to work out more clearly how human nature is ordained to grace, as a
potentia oboedientialis. It is not necessary to take this potentia oboedientialis as more or
less just a non-repugnance, which would be the extrinsicism of which we have spoken
already. To be ordained to grace, and to be so constituted that there is an exigency for
grace which would render the whole ordination to grace futile if grace were not actually
43
Cf. Karl Rahner, “Potentia Oboedientialis,” in Sacramentum Mundi: An Encyclopedia of Theology, Vol.
5, eds. Karl Rahner, et al. (New York: Herder and Herder, 1970), 65-6: “By reason of its unlimited transcendence in
knowledge and freedom, this nature can be potentiality for the self-communication of God, since it is thus capable of
receiving this self-communication without being eliminated thereby and ceasing to be a human and creaturely
being.43
On “specific obediential potency,” cf. Andrew Dean Swafford, Nature and Grace: A New Approach to
Thomistic Ressourcement (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2014), 16:
“Obediential potency” has two distinct meanings: (1) “generic” obediential potency which corresponds to
the case of a miracle, and which indicates no real relation between the specific nature of the creature and its
miraculous transformation; and (2) “specific” obediential potency which corresponds to man’s specific
capacity for the beatific vision, and which stipulates that the capacity for a certain elevation is in fact rooted
in the very nature of the creature in question; this elevation is therefore perfective of that particular nature,
albeit in a way that transcends the powers of its nature, strictly speaking.
44 Cf. Rahner, “Concerning the Relationship between Nature and Grace,” 317: “Not as though the remotest
doubt were being thrown here on the fact that man has a nature and that this in itself has an end assigned to it.”
Also, cf. ibid., 315-6:
There is no reason why it could not retain its meaning and necessity even without grace, if on the one hand
one can learn to see it as the indispensable transcendental condition of the possibility of a spiritual life at
all; and on the other hand if this spiritual life, although in comparison with the beatific vision it remains
eternally in umbris et imaginibus, can at any rate be shown to be neither meaningless nor harsh but can
always be seen as a positive, though finite, good which God could bestow even when he has not called man
immediately before his face. . . . A spiritual life towards God as an end approached merely asymptotically
is not to be dismissed as meaningless from the start.
164
imparted, are by no means the same thing. Spirit, that is, openness for God, freedom and
conscious self-possession, is essentially impossible without a transcendence whose
absolute fulfilment is grace. Still, a fulfilment of this sort is not owed to it, if we suppose
that this conscious possession of self in freedom before God is meaningful in itself, and
not just as a pure means and a mere stage on the way to the beatific vision. This
supposition arises from the absolute (not ‘infinite’) value and validity of every personal
act, in itself.45
Rahner clarifies that humanity in the current state of existence has only one end, a
supernatural one. Also, while it is true that humanity in the the state of pure nature would have
had a natural end, it would have been intrinsically oriented toward elevation to a supernatural
end should it ever receive God’s self-communication. As Rahner indicates,
The (real) end of man must be designated as “supernatural”. . . . One can only speak of a
“natural end” of man with extreme caution. If a natura pura had ever existed, it would
have had a “natural end” (which would have been completely different from the actual
end of man, not just materially but also formally). And in the real order, as man now
actually exists, there are elements which on this unreal supposition would belong to such
a “natural end”. But this does not justify one in speaking of a “natural end” of man as he
actually is. Thomas Aquinas’s language does not make the natural end an alternative to
the supernatural end. . . . The “supernatural” end . . . can quite well be understood as
supernatural and as intrinsic at the same time. For the “essence” or “nature” of man is
that of a purposeful free being, whose “nature” it is to be open without limit to the free
disposition of God (as potentia oboedientialis). And the finality of man . . . must be seen
from the outset in terms of a dialogal relationship between divine and human freedom.
These constitute the end, so that the “nature” of man is only a formal and permanent pre-
45
Karl Rahner, “Nature and Grace,” in Theological Investigations, Vol. 4: More Recent Writings, trans.
Kevin Smyth (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1966), 185-6. Cf. Karl Rahner, Nature and Grace: Dilemmas in
the Modern Church, trans. Dinah Wharton (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1964), 139-141:
The attempt to work out more clearly the way in which nature is ordered to grace (in the sense of a potentia
obedientialis) is still meaningful when we realize that grace is not due to nature, whether sinful or not. . . .
Even though a spirit (i.e., openness to God, freedom and conscious and free self-possession) is essentially
impossible without this transcendence, whose absolute fulfillment is grace, yet this fulfillment does not
thereby become due. . . . Without transcendence open to the supernatural there is no spirit; but spirit itself is
already meaningful without supernatural grace. Its fulfillment through grace is not, therefore, an exigency
of its nature, although it is open to this supernatural fulfillment. . . . We can only fully understand man in
his “undefinable” essence if we see him as potentia obedientialis for the divine life; this is his nature. His
nature is such that its absolute fulfillment comes through grace, and so nature of itself must reckon with the
meaningful possibility of remaining without absolute fulfillment.
165
view of this relationship, but is not something which of itself constitutes this end. For the
self-communication of God (grace), in spite of being supernatural, is the very “heart” of
man.46
According to Rahner, God’s existence is affirmed implicitly and ineluctably by human
transcendence.47
As he explains, “If the Whither of transcendence is that which by disclosing
itself gives transcendence its reality; if transcendence is the condition of possibility of all
spiritual understanding and insight; and if the Whither of transcendence is the holy mystery: then
the holy mystery is the one thing that is self-explanatory, the one thing that is its own self-
sufficient reason, even in our eyes.”48
This transcendental affirmation of God’s existence, which
would exist in a state of pure nature, is qualified in historical nature by the element of grace.
Human beings experience the offer of grace through God’s self-communication at least
unthematically within the horizon of their transcendence. Consequently, in the order of grace,
natural theology and revealed theology take place together. Rahner explains, “There cannot be
any pure philosophy whatever as something produced by man himself in his concrete life. In his
thinking man as philosopher is in fact constantly subject to a theological a priori, namely that
46
Karl Rahner, “Order, IV. End of Man,” in Sacramentum Mundi: An Encyclopedia of Theology, Vol. 4,
eds. Karl Rahner, et al. (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969), 119-20.
47 According to Rahner, an atheist’s denial of God is self-destructive inasmuch as all people implicitly
affirm the existence of God in the transcendental orientation of their spirit. Cf. Karl Rahner, “Atheism,” in
Sacramentum Mundi: An Encyclopedia of Theology, Vol. 1, eds. Karl Rahner, et al. (New York: Herder and Herder,
1968), 117: “A philosophical criticism of atheism will first have to show, by a transcendental method, that,
epistemologically (critically) and metaphysically, absolute scepticism or a positivist, pragmatist or ‘criticist’
restriction of human knowledge to the realm of immediate experience is self-destructive, and that therefore the very
possibility of metaphysics is always affirmed by its implicit existence in man’s necessary knowledge.”
48
Rahner, “The Concept of Mystery in Catholic Theology,” 57.
166
transcendental determination which orientates him towards the immediate presence of God.”49
Furthermore,
Revealed theology has the human spirit’s transcendental and limitless horizon as its inner
motive and as the precondition of its existence. It is only because of this transcendental
horizon that something like ‘God’ can be understood at all. ‘Natural’, ‘philosophical’
theology is first and last not one sphere of study side by side with revealed theology, as if
both could be pursued quite independently of each other, but an internal factor of
revealed theology itself; if philosophical theology, however, is transcendental
anthropology, so is revealed theology too.50
The implicit pre-apprehension of God orients human beings to seek an explicit
knowledge of God in order that they might become more consciously aware of God and God’s
workings in the order of grace.51
God’s grace may thereby be appropriated freely and
consciously with a cooperative spirit. Moreover, God enlightens human beings through
revelation with the knowledge that their identity is ultimately rooted in God’s love. As Rahner
says, “The capacity for the God of self-bestowing personal Love is the central and abiding
existential of man as he really is.”52
Hence, the “love of God is the only total integration of
49
Karl Rahner, “On the Current Relationship between Philosophy and Theology,” in Theological
Investigations, Vol. 13: Theology, Anthropology, Christology, trans. David Bourke (London: Darton, Longman and
Todd, 1975), 63.
50 Rahner, “Theology and Anthropology,” 34.
51 Cf. Francis Schüssler Fiorenza, “The New Theology and Transcendental Thomism,” in Modern Christian
Thought: Vol. II, eds. James C. Livingston, et al. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2000), 210:
This pre-apprehension of God is a knowledge of God, but God as the undefined and absolute mystery.
Consequently, the quest for meaning still endures. This pre-apprehension is both the condition of the search
and the impetus for the search. As the condition for the search it constitutes the de facto historical
transcendental condition of the possibility for the human person to be open to and to hear God’s revelation
or, as the title of his second book expresses, it is to be ‘Hearers of the Word.’ Rahner’s transcendental and
existential analysis, therefore, aims to show the conditions of the possibility not merely of metaphysical
knowledge of God, but of Christian revelation.
52 Rahner, “Concerning the Relationship between Nature and Grace,” 312.
167
human existence,”53
and “in this love, therefore, man enters into the adventure of his own
reality.”54
This grace is identified by Rahner as God’s self-communication, whereby God is
bestowed upon human beings so that they may be brought to perfection in holiness. This self-
communication establishes an intersubjective union between God and humanity, about which
Rahner writes, “This self-communication means precisely that objectivity of gift and
communication which is the climax of subjectivity on the side of the one communicating and of
the one receiving.”55
On the effects of God’s self-communication, Rahner states, “Ontological
self-communication must be understood as the condition which makes personal and immediate
knowledge and love for God possible.”56
Thus, the grace of God’s self-communication gives
human beings the opportunity to know and love God as their ultimate end. Rahner explains,
We can describe the transcendental experience of God’s self-communication in grace, or,
to put it differently, the dynamism and the finalization of the spirit as knowledge and love
towards the immediacy of God, which dynamism is of such a kind that, because of God’s
self-communication, the goal itself is also the very power of the movement (we usually
call this movement grace).57
By always being present to human beings as their fulfillment and source of identity, God
offers them the grace of participation in his own divine life as the absolute subject. Rahner
53
Karl Rahner, “Theology of Freedom,” in Theological Investigations, Vol. 6: Concerning Vatican Council
II, trans. Karl H. Kruger and Boniface Kruger (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1969), 187.
54 Ibid., 188.
55 Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, 118.
56 Ibid., 122.
57 Ibid., 130.
168
explains that “in this self-communication God . . . does not originally cause and produce
something different from himself in the creature, but rather that he communicates his own divine
reality and makes it a constitutive element in the fulfillment of the creature.”58
Therefore, Rahner
believes that God is the “quasi-formal cause” who elevates human finality by grace beyond what
it would have been naturally through God’s efficient causality of creation. Hence, he writes,
“God’s own being is the quasi-formal cause and not merely the external efficient cause of a
determination of the finite being.”59
Thus, human identity is formally grounded in the grace of
God’s self-communication and quasi-formal causality, “in which God’s ‘actus infinitus’ itself
becomes the ‘finite’ actuality of a finite potency.”60
With this in mind, Rahner identifies the
nature of the human person as “the event of God’s absolute self-communication.”61
Rahner uses the term “supernatural existential” to express the reality of human existence
that has been elevated by grace toward God as its supernatural end in its concrete quiddity.62
58
Ibid., 121.
59 Karl Rahner, “Natural Science and Reasonable Faith,” in Theological Investigations, Vol. 21: Science
and Christian Faith, trans. Hugh M. Riley (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1988), 36. This is not meant,
however, as an argument for pantheism. Cf. ibid., 35-6.
60
Karl Rahner, “Revelation, II. God’s Self-Communication,” in Encyclopedia of Theology: The Concise
Sacramentum Mundi, eds. Karl Rahner, et al. (New York: The Seabury Press, 1975), 1466-7.
61 Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, 126.
62 Cf. L. Matthew Petillo, “The ‘Experience of Grace’ in the Theologies of Karl Rahner and Bernard
Lonergan” (PhD diss., Boston College, 2009), in ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, https://search-proquest-com
.proxycu.wrlc.org/pqdtglobal/docview/304848745/fulltextPDF/DF71704BA1F41CCPQ (accessed January 23,
2018), 125: “For Rahner, the human quiddity—‘what it means to be’ human—is a combination of nature and the
supernatural existential. So the supernatural existential, as a disposition for God (which functions as material cause
in relation to God) is part of the human quiddity; it is part of the definition of ‘human.’ Human ‘nature,’ is what
Rahner refers to as a ‘remainder concept.’” Also, cf. Kenneth D. Eberhard, “Karl Rahner and the Supernatural
Existential,” Thought 46, no. 4 (1971): 555:
169
Human nature is structured in such a way that, when fully constituted in its quasi-formal cause
by grace, it is ordered to participation in the divine life through the supernatural existential.63
Rahner explains how the grace for salvation is constantly offered to all human persons through
their supernatural existential, as well as how this grace must be appropriated through their free
will:
The supernatural grace of faith and justification offered by God to men . . . can perfectly
well be interpreted on the basis of God's universal will to save as a grace which, as
offered (!), is a constantly present existential of the creature endowed with spiritual
faculties and of the world in general, which orientates these to the immediacy of God as
their final end, though of course in saying this the question still remains wholly open of
whether an individual freely gives himself to, or alternatively rejects, this existential
which constitutes the innermost dynamism of his being and its history, an existential
which is and remains continually present. God's universal will to save objectifies itself in
that communication of himself which we call grace. It does this effectively at all times
and in all places in the form of the offering and the enabling power of acting in a way that
leads to salvation.64
The supernatural existential is nothing other than the relationship of man to the horizon of absolute being as
gracious. That is to say, it is a relation to absolute being, which is offering itself to man in immediate
proximity. The supernatural existential is man's “situation” within this offer: an offer which affects him
ontologically and intrinsically because it affects his preconcept by which he performs every act of knowing
and willing. Hence, Rahner can call it a real ontological determination which is nevertheless previous
(logically prior) to man's freedom and previous to and independent of sanctifying grace (which is the offer
as accepted). It is continual because it involves man's horizon, from which it is impossible for him to
escape. It obliges man to a supernatural ultimate end because this supernatural horizon is de facto the only
horizon which man historically has. And finally, the ordering itself is a grace: for it is an offer to which
man himself has no right.
63 Cf. Gerald McCool, “Philosophy and Christian Wisdom,” Thought, 44 (1969): 494: “If God has called
man to the supernatural order, the call cannot have left his nature unchanged. Its consequence has been the
production within man of a supernatural ontological reality, the supernatural existential.”
64 Karl Rahner, “Observations on the Problem of the ‘Anonymous Christian,’” in Theological
Investigations, Vol. 14: Ecclesiology, Questions in the Church, The Church in the World, trans. David Bourke
(London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1976), 288. Cf. Karl Rahner, “Theos in the New Testament,” in Theological
Investigations, Vol. 1: God, Christ, Mary and Grace, trans. Cornelius Ernst (London: Darton, Longman and Todd,
1961), 83n: “This necessary ‘natural’ openness of man to God is, in the historically realized scheme of things,
always necessarily ‘overlaid’ (even when man is not in a state of justifying grace) by a supernatural ‘existential’
ordering the spiritual person to the God of eternal life.”
170
While humanity’s historical nature is immediately apparent to Rahner’s experience as
constituted with a supernatural existential, his concept of pure nature (in which people would
have “natural existentials”65
) is relatively thin as a remainder concept of historical nature.
Although pure nature lies outside of humanity’s actual experience, and cannot fulfill it because
of its supernatural calling in the order of grace, Rahner explains that it is an important concept to
investigate because it shows how humanity is open to the reception of grace through obediential
potency without exacting it:
Man can experiment with himself only in the region of God’s supernatural loving will, he
can never find the nature he wants in a ‘chemically pure’ state, separated from its
supernatural existential. Nature in this sense continues to be a remainder concept, but a
necessary and objectively justified one, if one wishes to achieve reflexive consciousness
of that unexactedness of grace which goes together with man’s inner, unconditional
ordination to it.66
As the whither of human transcendence, God is understood differently in the order of
grace than he would be in a state of pure nature.67
Indeed, Rahner cautions against “identifying
this unlimited dynamism of the spiritual nature in a simply apodeictic way with that dynamism
which we experience (or believe we experience) in the adventure of our concrete spiritual
existence, because here the supernatural existential may already be at work – as subsequently
65
Cf. Karl Rahner, “Man (Anthropology), III. Theological,” in Sacramentum Mundi: An Encyclopedia of
Theology, Vol. 3, eds. Karl Rahner, et al. (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969), 369.There, Rahner identifies “the
inescapable dualism in spiritual creatures between what belongs to their ‘essence’ and what to their ‘concrete
existence,’” which implies a distinction between “natural or supernatural existentials.”
66 Rahner, “Concerning the Relationship between Nature and Grace,” 315.
67 Cf. Karen Kilby, “The Vorgriff auf Esse: A Study in the Relation of Philosophy to Theology in the
Thought of Karl Rahner” (PhD diss., Yale University, 1994), in ProQuest Dissertations and Theses,
https://search-proquest-com.proxycu.wrlc.org/pqdtglobal/docview/304136186/fulltextPDF
/2FD3BF969147459APQ/ (accessed January 23, 2018), 140: “The Vorgriff is on his account a feature not only of
pure nature but also (albeit in a different way) of our actual nature.” Related to this is Rahner’s distinction between
natural revelation and real revelation. On this, cf. Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, 170-1.
171
emerges in the light of Revelation.”68
In the state of pure nature, God would only be experienced
in a “distant and aloof” manner as “an overtone as it were of our subjective transcendence” and
as “the condition of possibility of knowledge of categorized objects.”69
However, through grace
and revelation, the mystery of God can be experienced intimately and, in the beatific vision,
directly in itself. Humanity’s subjective nature is thus endowed with a higher degree of self-
presence than would be possible without grace, which grants the human intellect a more clarified
understanding of the reality of God and the analogy of being. Yet, even with grace, God always
remains incomprehensible and does not cease to be the absolute mystery. Rahner writes,
When we described the nature of the holy mystery, as present to our transcendence, we
said that this presence of the mystery has the nature of the distant and aloof. The holy
mystery is accessible only in our experience of subjective transcendence, and only in so
far as this transcendence acts as the condition of possibility of an objectivated knowledge
according to categories. If these two elements of the distant aloofness of the holy mystery
are eliminated: if therefore the Whither of our transcendence is no longer known merely
as an overtone as it were of our subjective transcendence but experienced in itself, and if
the experience no longer takes place as the condition of possibility of knowledge of
categorized objects; and if such experience is possible – which we do not prove a priori
but presuppose as guaranteed by revelation: then the holy mystery no longer manifests
itself as a distant aloofness. But that does not mean that it no longer is a mystery. On the
contrary, the mystery is there and most truly itself, radically nameless, indefinable and
inviolable. Grace is therefore the grace of the nearness of the abiding mystery: it makes
God accessible in the form of the holy mystery and presents him thus as the
incomprehensible. In the vision of God face to face which grace makes possible many
mysteries are indeed removed. But this only means that what they express is manifested
in its own being and substance, is experienced therefore in itself and must no longer rely
for its manifestation on the word that does duty for it and the authority of the recognized
spokesman and prophet. Nonetheless, these mysteries remain mysterious and
incomprehensible. They do not lose their mystery and become perspicuous. They can still
not be resolved into something distinct from their content from which the content could
be deduced and so made ‘intelligible’. The Trinity for instance is not ‘clearly understood’
68
Rahner, “Concerning the Relationship between Nature and Grace,” 315.
69 Rahner, “The Concept of Mystery in Catholic Theology,” 55-6.
172
in the vision – it is contemplated as the divine incomprehensibility; otherwise it would
not be identical with God who is identical with his incomprehensibility.70
Although the human intellect pre-apprehends God unthematically, it can only know God
thematically through its encounter with the world in history. Hence, an elevated human subject
may at first experience grace only unthematically through its pre-apprehension of God as self-
communicated, but grace may be experienced thematically as one consciously encounters and
apprehends God’s revelation in history. The conscious experience of grace reaches its climax in
the beatific vision, but before grace is fully appropriated, it may be experienced more or less
thematically as a person’s conscious knowledge and love of God develops in response to grace.
Hence, Rahner notes that God’s union with humanity through grace does not immediately result
in an explicit knowledge of God in the beatific vision: “So far as it is the ontological
presupposition of the beatific vision, this union is already posited independently of an actually
exercised apprehension of the threefold God by man in knowledge and love.”71
C. Uncreated Grace, Created Grace, and Quasi-Formal Causality
A major aspect of Rahner’s theological anthropology is his understanding of the
relationship between uncreated grace and created grace. He places emphasis differently than the
neo-scholastic thought that had been dominant in theology prior to the rise of the nouvelle
theologie, Transcendental Thomism, and other contemporary theological movements. While the
70
Ibid.
71
Rahner, “Some Implications of the Scholastic Concept of Uncreated Grace,” 335.
173
neo-scholastics largely explained uncreated grace as a result of created grace,72
Rahner stresses
that the indwelling of uncreated grace enables the possibility of receiving created grace.73
By
elaborating upon the nature of uncreated grace, Rahner desires to bring the view more consonant
with Scriptural and patristic theology that regards “created grace as a consequence of God’s
communication of himself to the man whose sins have been forgiven” into harmony with the
scholastic depiction of “created grace as the basis of this communication.”74
Ultimately, Rahner
stresses that “man is endowed by grace not only with something created but with God himself.”75
This can be regarded as an authentic recovery of Aquinas’ view of the relationship between
uncreated and created grace, notwithstanding other differences between Rahner and Aquinas.76
72
Cf. ibid., 324: “However diverse they may be among themselves, it is true of all the scholastic theories
that they see God’s indwelling and his conjunction with the justified man as based exclusively upon created grace.
In virtue of the fact that created grace is imparted to the soul God imparts himself to it and dwells in it. Thus what
we call uncreated grace (i.e. God as bestowing himself upon man) is a function of created grace.”
73 Cf. ibid., 343: “‘Uncreated grace’ is not ontologically speaking a pure consequence of created grace as a
qualitative accident.” Also, cf. Fred Sanders, “The Image of the Immanent Trinity: Implications of Rahner’s Rule
for a Theological Interpretation of Scripture” (PhD diss., Graduate Theological Union, 2001), in ProQuest
Dissertations and Theses, https://search-proquest-com.proxycu.wrlc.org/pqdtglobal/docview/304697503/
fulltextPDF/92C826F944084DBBPQ/ (accessed January 23, 2018), 92: “Rahner reverses the trend of post-
Tridentine neoscholasticism toward giving priority to created grace, by arguing that the created grace within a
person is only the consequence of that which is primary, the personal presence of God to the human being.”
74 Rahner, “Some Implications of the Scholastic Concept of Uncreated Grace,” 325. Rahner believes that
the idea of created grace can be reconciled with the biblical and patristic depiction of divine indwelling. Cf. Karl
Rahner, The Trinity, trans. Joseph Donceel (New York: Crossroad, 1970), 67n: “The doctrine of grace must show in
more detail that the doctrine of “created” (infused and “habitual”) grace, as it prevails in Latin theology since the
reaction against Peter Lombard, does not contradict this biblical and patristic basic conception, or should, at least,
not reject it.”
75 Rahner, “Man (Anthropology), III. Theological,” 369.
76 Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Quaestio disputata de caritate, a. 1, in Quaestiones Disputatae, Vol. II, eds. P.
Bazzi, M. Calcaterra, T. S. Centi, E. Odetto, P. M. Pession (Taurini: Marietti, 1949), 753-7; Summa theologiae I-II,
q. 110, a. 2, in Summa theologiae, Pars Ia IIae, eds. De Rubeis, Billuart, Faucher, et al. (Taurini: Marietti, 1948),
561-2; Summa theologiae II-II, q. 23, a. 2, in Summa theologiae, Pars IIa IIae, eds. De Rubeis, Billuart, Faucher, et
al. (Taurini: Marietti, 1948), 127-8. Also, cf. Joseph A. DiNoia, “Nature, Grace, and Experience: Karl Rahner’s
Theology of Human Transformation,” Philosophy & Theology 7, no. 2 (1992): 115: “Rahner is in basic accord with
174
Rahner describes uncreated grace as the reality of God as self-communicated to humanity
through personal indwelling. Establishing a relation of God to humanity, uncreated grace
bestows humanity with a supernatural end through the supernatural existential.77
Created grace,
by contrast, refers to the modification of human beings whereby they are made “connatural”78
with the supernatural end to which God calls them in divine providence. This transformation
enables participation in the divine life and grounds the relation of human beings to God’s
uncreated grace. As Rahner writes,
‘Uncreated grace’ (God’s communication of himself to man, the indwelling of the Spirit)
implies a new relation of God to man. But this can only be conceived of as founded upon
an absolute entitative modification of man himself, which modification is the real basis of
the new real relation of man to God upon which rests the relation of God to man. This
absolute entitative modification and determination of man is created grace, which has in
consequence a twofold aspect: it is ontologically the formal basis of the analogical
supernatural participation in God’s nature through entitative assimilation of man to God’s
spirituality and holiness (consortium formale), and it is the basis of a special relation
(union, indwelling) between man and God himself (consortium terminativum).79
Since the gift of created grace is impossible without the presence of its giver in the
human soul, Rahner stresses that the uncreated grace of God is logically prior to the created
grace that unites human beings to God. He also argues that God’s indwelling through self-
Aquinas in his emphasis on the primacy of uncreated grace and in his conception of the relation of nature and grace.
It is with respect to his notion of the experience of grace, with its dependence on the conceptualities of
transcendental idealism, that main divergences between Rahner and Aquinas can be identified.”
77 Cf. Stephen J. Duffy, The Graced Horizon (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1992), 217: “For Rahner
. . . the supernatural existential is not a “disposition” for the offer of uncreated grace. It is the offer itself, present
continually since God is one’s enduring Woraufhin of transcendence.
78 Cf. Rahner, “Man (Anthropology), III. Theological,” 369: “Grace is the condition of the possibility of the
capacity for connatural reception of God’s self-manifestation in word (faith – love) and in the beatific vision; nature
is the constitution of man which is presupposed by, and persists in, this capacity to hear.”
79 Rahner, “Some Implications of the Scholastic Concept of Uncreated Grace,” 324-5.
175
communication changes the ontological core of a person not merely in an accidental or external
way, but in a formal and internal way. This reflects his understanding of the supernatural
existential, according to which God’s self-communication fundamentally transforms human
finality.
Rahner’s primary analogy for the relationship between uncreated and created grace is that
between form and matter.80
Inasmuch as God marks humanity with a supernatural end and
constitutes its supernatural existential, Rahner understands God’s uncreated grace to be the
“quasi-formal cause” of human nature as elevated by grace. Accordingly, created grace is the
(quasi-)material cause of God’s self-communication that corresponds to the quasi-formal
causality of uncreated grace. Together, as in the union between matter and form, created grace as
material cause and uncreated grace as quasi-formal cause establish the supernatural finality of
the human person.81
Rahner argues that God does not change or become part of creation when self-
communicated as uncreated grace. He uses the prefix “quasi” when describing God’s formal
causality because it clarifies that God remains immutable and uncreated when offered to
80
Cf. ibid., 334: “Thus it becomes clear that the proposition no longer holds good which maintains that
man has uncreated grace because he possesses created grace; on the contrary, with Scripture and the Fathers the
communication of uncreated grace can be conceived of under a certain respect as logically and really prior to created
grace: in that mode namely in which a formal cause is prior to the ultimate material disposition.”
81 Cf. ibid., 333: “Now according to St Thomas it is the case with a dispositio ultima (dispositio quae est
necessitas ad formam) that on the one hand as causa materialis it logically precedes the forma, and yet on the other
that it depends for its subsistence upon the formal causality of the forma, so that to affirm its presence is
simultaneously to affirm with inner necessity the presence of the formal causality of the forma and conversely.”
176
humanity as uncreated grace.82
He justifies his use of the term “quasi-formal causality” as
follows:
It cannot be impossible in principle to allow an active formal causality (eine formale
Wirkursächlichkeit) of God upon a creature without thereby implying that this reactively
impresses a new determination upon God’s Being in itself, one which would do away
with his absolute transcendence and immutability. One may explicitly draw attention to
this meta-categorical character of God’s abidingly transcendent formal causality by a
prefixed ‘quasi’, and in our case then be entitled to say that in the vision of God his Being
exercises a quasi-formal causality. All this ‘quasi’ implies is that this ‘forma’, in spite of
its formal causality, which must be taken really seriously, abides in its absolute
transcendence (inviolateness, ‘freedom’). But it does not imply that the statement, ‘In the
beatific vision God occupies the place of a species in virtue of a formal causality’, is a
mode of speech lacking all binding force; on the contrary, it is the quasi which must be
prefixed to every application to God of a category in itself terrestrial. The only reason
why it is specially to be recommended in our case that the quasi should be explicitly
added is that (as opposed to efficient causality) it provides an emphatic reminder of the
analogical nature of our concepts in the matter of a relationship to the world known only
through Revelation.83
As the principle of created grace, uncreated grace logically precedes created grace,
although the latter is also required for the soul to participate in the former. Therefore, God’s
formal indwelling through uncreated grace requires that the soul be moved in its material
disposition toward this form through created grace. While created grace is considered an
accidental form relative to the soul, it is considered matter relative to the quasi-formal indwelling
of God.
82
Cf. Kilby, “The Vorgriff auf Esse: A Study in the Relation of Philosophy to Theology in the Thought of
Karl Rahner,” 107: “God acts only as quasi-formal cause, however—there is only an analogous relationship between
the kind of thing the divine self-communication is and known instances of formal causality: in this one case alone
the cause remains intact, free over against the thing caused, unentangled in the being of which it nevertheless
becomes the (accidental) form.”
83 Rahner, “Some Implications of the Scholastic Concept of Uncreated Grace,” 330-1.
177
Rahner’s focus upon the logical priority of uncreated grace marks him apart from those
neo-scholastics who would have expressed uncreated grace as merely the end result for which
created grace prepares the human soul. Rahner is unique in his emphasis that human beings only
have created grace to the extent that they are united with God’s uncreated grace. Although the
human soul is always marked with a supernatural existential by the presence of God’s self-
communication, God’s transcendent causality in grace allows space for human freedom to accept
or reject the call to supernatural life. Accordingly, to the extent that this call is accepted with the
aid of grace, God draws the human person closer to God’s uncreated grace and bestows the gift
of created grace in due proportion.84
The ability to freely respond to God through created grace requires that people have
already been ontologically constituted with a supernatural existential, within the situation of
which they can then ontically respond to God in freedom. On this matter, Rahner notes “the
difference and unity of the ontic and ontological aspects of this quasi-formal causality of God, in
which God’s ‘actus infinitus’ itself becomes the ‘finite’ actuality of a finite potency.”85
For
Rahner, the possibility of ontic freedom presupposes God’s ontological constitution of humanity
with the supernatural existential. In other words, the supernatural end of participation in the
divine life must be made connatural to human beings before they can freely respond to its offer.
84
Cf. Karl Rahner, “Grace, II. Theological,” in Encyclopedia of Theology: The Concise Sacramentum
Mundi, eds. Karl Rahner, et al. (New York: The Seabury Press, 1975), 589: “Grace as God’s self-communication is
not only a constitutive principle of the capacity for its acceptance (in what theology calls the supernatural habitus of
faith, hope and love), but also of the free act of acceptance.”
85 Karl Rahner, “Revelation, II. God’s Self-Communication,” 1466-7.
178
In the ontological constitution of grace, there remains a distance between God and human
beings to the extent that they have yet to cooperate with this grace ontically in freedom.86 Until
God’s grace is fully appropriated, human beings experience tension within this distance between
their natural identity and their personal appropriation thereof.87
They may achieve a relative
identity of person and nature once they fully appropriate divine grace. Yet, only God, as pure act,
has an absolute identity of person and nature.88
Upon its complete appropriation, God’s indwelling results in the beatific vision. This
requires that created grace, as the material cause of humanity’s union with God, enables the soul
to be fully disposed to God’s quasi-formal union through the divine similitude that is the light of
glory. Since the quasi-formal cause of this union logically precedes its material cause, uncreated
grace imparts sanctifying grace and then the light of glory in order to structure this material
cause and dispose the soul to the beatific vision of God as uncreated grace. Yet, in the beatific
86
Rahner notes that it is indeed possible for an evil will to arise within this distance. Cf. Rahner,
Foundations of Christian Faith, 105: “An evil will does indeed contradict God within that difference which obtains
between God and a creature in transcendental uniqueness. . . . This difference is affirmed in the act of freedom, in a
good act as well as an evil one.”
87 Cf. Karl Rahner, “The Theological Concept of Concupiscencia,” in Theological Investigations, Vol. 1:
God, Christ, Mary and Grace, trans. Cornelius Ernst (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1961), 362-4:
There always remains in the nature of things a tension between what a man is as a kind of entity simply
present before one (as ‘nature’) and what he wants to make of himself by his free decision (as ‘person’): a
tension between what he is simply passively and what he actively posits himself as and wishes to
understand himself to be. The ‘person’ never wholly absorbs its ‘nature’. . . . The dualism of person and
nature just indicated has its metaphysical roots in the finitude of man; thus ultimately in the distinction
between essence and existence, in virtue of which the essence, in its complete unfolding, always remains
an ideal capable of being attained only asymptotically by the concretely existing being, even as regards the
freedom through which it makes itself what it is.
88 Cf. ibid., 366-7: “An absolute identity of nature and person . . . is found only in the absolute freedom of
the infinite Being. In the case of exhaustive, ideal dominion of the finite person over its nature, this exhaustiveness
can only consist in the fact that the personal decision is wholly and securely achieved as regards the nature.”
179
vision, the finite form of the human intellect into which God is received remains finite, and God
remains infinite. Rahner explains that “God’s active formal causality does not interiorly
determinate the ‘form’ in itself (as is the case with finite forms)” and that “God’s Being in spite
of its relation as form to the finite mind does not make the divinity into an inner determination of
this mind.”89
Like the scholastics, Rahner discusses created grace as an accidental form that modifies
the soul.90
He similarly divides created grace into actual and habitual.91
However, he argues that
created grace, which “is ontologically an accidental reality,”92
is only absolutely supernatural
inasmuch as it is constituted quasi-formally by God’s self-communication. Accordingly, created
grace is not, strictly speaking, a sufficient cause of the supernatural elevation of the human spirit
apart from the quasi-formal indwelling of God’s uncreated grace.93
Indeed, Rahner states that
89
Rahner, “Some Implications of the Scholastic Concept of Uncreated Grace,” 330-1n19.
90
Cf. Karl Rahner, “Grace, II. Theological,” in Encyclopedia of Theology: A Concise Sacramentum Mundi,
eds. Karl Rahner, et al. (London: Burns & Oates, 1975), 592: “It is of course true that the concept of uncreated grace
means that man himself is genuinely and inwardly transformed by this self-communication and that therefore in this
sense there is a “created”, accidental grace (i.e., not posited by the very fact of positing man’s nature, but received
by him).”
91 Cf. ibid., 593: “Grace is habitual inasmuch as God’s supernatural self-communication is permanently
offered to man. . . . The same grace is called actual inasmuch as it is the basis of this act of acceptance in which it
actualizes itself.”
92 Rahner, “Some Implications of the Scholastic Concept of Uncreated Grace,” 333n24.
93 Cf. Rahner, “Concerning the Relationship between Nature and Grace,” 310n:
Grace is only then conceived of in its true essence when it is recognized to be not just the created
‘accidental’ reality produced by God’s efficient causality ‘in’ a (natural) substance, but includes ‘uncreated
grace’ in its own concept in such a way that this may not be conceived of purely as a consequence of
created grace. For it is difficult to see from an ontological point of view why it should not at least be
possible for a created accident (however ‘divinizing’ it may be thought to be) to be ordered to a natural
substance connatural with it, i.e. it is difficult to see how a purely created, accidental reality could be
supernatural simpliciter.
180
created grace may only be considered something absolutely supernatural in light of its
connection with the uncreated grace to which human beings relate in their supernatural
existential. As he explains,
Thus it becomes possible to say in what the strictly supernatural character of a created
grace (here primarily the light of glory) consists: while in the created entity in general its
relation to the divine cause does not belong to the inner distinguishing features of its
essence (Ia 44.1 ad 1), created grace, as ultima dispositio to an immediate communication
of the divine Being itself in the mode of formal causality – a communication which can
only exist in terms of this formal causality – involves a relation to God which belongs to
its very essence.
And it is so and only so that a created grace can possess the quality of something
absolutely supernatural. This is seen most clearly when one takes into consideration what
sort of entity is capable of being an absolute mystery. It is necessary to provide an answer
to this question if one bears in mind the Thomist doctrine of the relationship between
knower and known, that a created thing purely as such can never be an absolute
mysterium. For in principle it is always possible in virtue of the convertibility of being,
knowing and intelligibility, to correlate with any finite grade of being a knower of the
same or a higher level of being to which the former grade of being of a finite level is not
in principle inaccessible. Accordingly Ripalda’s view was in itself quite sound, when he
held that created grace (the inner, essential connexion of which with uncreated grace he
did not clearly perceive) can only be unexacted in concrete fact with respect to any really
created substance, but not with respect to some still higher, conceivable and creatable
substance (cf. H. Lange, De Gratia, Freiburg 1929, n. 260). Given a grace which on the
one hand is ontologically an accidental reality and on the other remains as such purely in
the created order, it is really impossible to show why to such an accident there should not
correspond a created substance as possible, from which such an accident could proceed
connaturally. Hence we may sum up our conclusions as follows: it is quite impossible for
something purely created to be really absolutely supernatural and to present an absolute
mysterium; but if there is something supernatural simply speaking which is absolutely
mysterious, then God himself must belong to what constitutes it, i.e. God in so far as he is
not merely the ever transcendent Creator, the efficient cause of something finite which is
distinct from him, but in so far as he communicates himself to the finite entity in quasi-
formal causality.94
94
Rahner, “Some Implications of the Scholastic Concept of Uncreated Grace,” 333n24. Cf. Rahner, “The
Concept of Mystery in Catholic Theology,” 66:
This distinction between efficient and quasi-formal causality in God is the clear basis of the essential and
radical distinction between the natural and the supernatural. And this is not difficult to understand. A reality
which is not God himself, and does not exist as consequence of such a self-communication (as created
actuation by uncreated act), which is therefore simply a created entity, cannot be supernatural in the
181
Rahner’s conclusion in this passage that created grace is intimately bound with uncreated
grace should strongly qualify how one interprets his reference to Ripalda’s view that there may
be a creatable substance for which created grace would be connatural, rather than unexacted.
Here, Rahner emphasizes that created grace and uncreated grace must always, in principle, be
offered together as the matter and form of God’s self-communication in history. Created grace
cannot exist without uncreated grace, just as matter cannot exist without form. Given this
connection, which Rahner admits Ripalda “did not clearly perceive,” it seems to follow that to
hypothesize a creatable substance for which created grace is connatural amounts to supposing a
creature for which uncreated grace is connatural (albeit only inasmuch as it could receive it).
Yet, such a creature would be impossible because uncreated grace is identical with God, who is
supernatural relative to any creatable substance. It appears for this reason that God is the only
reality, actual or hypothetical, whose being naturally includes uncreated grace. Thus, if uncreated
grace cannot be acquired through the natural means of any creature, then neither can created
grace. Accordingly, a creature cannot receive created grace unless God’s uncreated grace is
freely communicated in an unexacted manner. God thereby disposes the creature with created
grace to serve as the material cause of God’s quasi-formal self-communication.
strictest sense. For such a reality can as such not be a created substance: the question of its gratuitousness
could have absolutely no meaning, since there would be no recipient of the gift distinct from the gratuitous
gift. And an additional accidental determination which would also be a purely created one cannot be
absolutely supernatural. For it is ontologically quite arbitrary to postulate the logical repugnance and
impossibility of a created substance which would not be naturally on the same level of being as the
supernatural accidental determination in question. A possible determination of a subject, where the
determination is finite and created, can always be ordained to a possible substantial subject, from which it
flows as its normal determination.
182
Overall, while Rahner does not refute Ripalda explicitly here, his view concerning the
relationship between created and uncreated grace undermines Ripalda’s theory, inasmuch as it
would only seem to be valid if there were no necessary connection between created and
uncreated grace. Yet, such is not the case, and Rahner argues against Ripalda more explicitly on
this point elsewhere.95
Hence, even when postulating a creatable substance for which created
grace would be connatural, this creature could not acquire this accident unless God freely gave it
along with uncreated grace, which is necessarily unexacted by creatures.
In the quotation cited above, Rahner concurs with Aquinas that human nature may be
considered apart from its efficient causation by God, just as human nature can be considered
apart from a possible elevation by grace (although not from its dynamic openness to it). In the
article of the Summa Theologiae to which Rahner refers, Aquinas explains that no finite being
can be self-existing. It belongs to the essence of any finite being that, should it exist, it exists by
being caused. God causes beings to exist by allowing them to participate in God’s self-existing
being. Indeed, “All beings apart from God are not their own being, but are beings by
participation.”96
Furthermore, since the power of causation belongs essentially to God, God
accounts for the participation of finite beings in the divine being. Thus, “Whatever is found in
anything by participation, must be caused in it by that to which it belongs essentially, as iron
95
Cf. Rahner, “Concerning the Relationship between Nature and Grace,” 310n: “There is no essence of a
creaturely kind which God could constitute for which this communication could be the normal, matter-of-course
perfection to which it was compellingly disposed. This is indeed (against Ripalda) the general teaching of theology
today: grace and glory are simply speaking supernatural.”
96 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q. 44, a. 1, co., in Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, Vol.
1: 1a QQ. 1-119, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (1948; repr., Westminster, MD: Christian
Classics, 1981), 229. For the original Latin text, cf. Summa theologiae, Prima Pars, ed. Petri Caramello (Taurini:
Marietti, 1948), 224.
183
becomes ignited by fire.”97
Accordingly, creatures only have the quality of being caused through
their relation to God and God’s free decision to create. As he states, “Though the relation to its
cause is not part of the definition of a thing caused, still it follows, as a consequence, on what
belongs to its essence; because from the fact that a thing has being by participation, it follows
that it is caused.”98
Conversely, however, Rahner believes that the nature of created grace cannot be
considered apart from uncreated grace. This is due to the difference between God’s efficient
causality in creation and God’s quasi-formal causality in self-communication. In Rahner’s
understanding of quasi-formal causality, God is able to unite with what was constituted as
different from God through God’s efficient causality.99
He explains that while an efficient cause
creates something different from itself, a formal cause becomes the constitutive element of the
subject in which it dwells:
In efficient causality the effect is always different from the cause. But we are also
familiar with formal causality: a particular existent, a principle of being is a constitutive
element in another subject by the fact that it communicates itself to this subject, and does
not just cause something different from itself which is then an intrinsic, constitutive
principle in that which experiences this efficient causality.100
97
Ibid.
98 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 44, a. 1, ad. 1, in Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas,
Vol. 1, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, 229. For the original Latin text, cf. Summa theologiae,
Prima Pars, 224.
99 Cf. Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, 122: “This self-communication of God to what is not God
implies the efficient causation of something other and different from God as its condition.” Also, cf. Rahner, The
Trinity, 36: “He does not merely indirectly give his creature some share of himself by creating and giving us created
and finite realities through his omnipotent efficient causality. In a quasi-formal causality he really and in the strictest
sense of the word bestows himself.”
100 Ibid., 121.
184
Rahner analogously depicts quasi-formal causality in terms of the hylomorphic union of
matter and form. In such a union, matter can only be designated according to its determinate
form, which is in turn individuated in the designated matter that it adapts to itself. As Aquinas
states, “Now in all things composed of matter and form, the determining principle is on the part
of the form, which is as it were the end and terminus of the matter. Consequently for the being of
a thing the need of a determinate form is prior to the need of determinate matter: for determinate
matter is needed that it may be adapted to the determinate form.”101
Similarly, Rahner argues
above that uncreated grace is the determining principle of created grace, such that the latter
cannot be considered apart from its intrinsic relation to the former as its formal determination.
The intrinsic relationship of created grace to uncreated grace shapes Rahner’s view of
how human identity is constituted by the gift of God’s self-communication in the order of grace.
When God’s offer of uncreated grace bestows humanity with a supernatural existential, this does
not only enable it to receive created grace as an accidental modification of its nature.102
Indeed,
human beings are only able to receive created grace as an accidental form because they have
been modified more fundamentally by uncreated grace, which is the quasi-formal determining
101
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 60, a. 7, co., in Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas,
Vol. 4, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, 2344. For the original Latin text, cf. Summa theologiae,
Pars IIIa et Supplementum, eds. De Rubeis, Billuart, Faucher, et al. (Taurini: Marietti, 1948), 372-3.
102 Cf. Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, 123: “The doctrine that grace and fulfillment in the
immediate vision of God are supernatural does not mean that the supernatural ‘elevation’ of a spiritual creature is
added extrinsically and accidentally to the essence and the structure of a spiritual subject of unlimited
transcendence.” Also, cf. Phan, Eternity in Time, 59: “For Rahner the eschatological fulfillment of human beings is
not something accidental or artificially added to our nature. Rather it is the consummation of what is most intimate
and essential to us; it is the fulfillment of ourselves. Conversely it also shows that failure to achieve this goal does
not affect merely some secondary part of the person but his or her very self.”
185
principle of their reception of God’s self-communication.103
Accordingly, Rahner notes, “God in
his own proper reality makes himself the innermost constitutive element of man.”104
While God does not change by serving as the quasi-formal cause of human existence in
the order of grace,105
God is intimately communicated to people’s essential being in their self-
presence. Since the inner dynamism of human subjectivity that encounters God as its ground
pertains to its essential being,106
God’s self-communication as uncreated grace is a determining
principle of humanity’s supernatural elevation.107
Rahner explains that God fundamentally
shapes human identity and self-presence because “in transcendence as such, absolute being is the
innermost constitutive element by which this transcendental movement is borne towards itself,
and is not just the extrinsic term and extrinsic goal of a movement.”108
103
Cf. Petillo, “The ‘Experience of Grace’ in the Theologies of Karl Rahner and Bernard Lonergan,” 114:
“For Rahner, the self-communication of God, which is the primary meaning of grace, creates a disposition and
openness in the creature to receive that communication. In Rahner’s estimation, this disposition is not an ‘accidental
modification’ of the creature’s being, but rather a defining and constitutive feature.”
104 Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, 116.
105 Cf. ibid., 120: “God makes himself a constitutive principle of the created existent without thereby losing
his absolute, ontological independence.” Also, cf. ibid., 121: “Only the absolute being of God can not only establish
what is different from himself without becoming subject to this difference from himself, but can also at the same
time communicate himself in his own reality without losing himself in this communication.”
106 Cf. ibid., 119:
The essence of man . . . becomes present basically and originally in transcendental experience. Here man
experiences himself as a finite, categorical existent, as established in his difference from God by absolute
being, as an existent coming from absolute being and grounded in absolute mystery. The fact that he has his
origin permanently in God and the fact that he is radically different from God are in their unity and
mutually conditioning relationship fundamental existentials of man.
107 Cf. ibid., 117: “‘Self-communication’ is meant here in a strictly ontological sense corresponding to
man’s essential being, man whose being is being-present-to-himself, and being personally responsible for himself in
self-consciousness and freedom.”
108 Ibid., 121-2.
186
In its elevation of the human person, God’s uncreated grace is the transcendental formal
cause of justification, while created grace is its categorical formal cause. As Rahner writes,
“Created grace alone (as a finite determination of the subject) can be called forma in the strict
(categorical) sense of the word (as opposed to the divine Being itself, which remains
transcendent with respect to the creature in spite of its formal causality).”109
Hence, despite his
view of quasi-formal causality, Rahner affirms the doctrine of the Council of Trent that created
grace is the single formal cause of justification:
The Council’s teaching on created grace as the unica causa formalis of justification does
not exclude our conception of the relationship between created and uncreated grace. For
in this conception too created grace remains the ‘unique’ formal cause of justification, in
so far as it alone is the genuine (categorical) ‘form’ of the justified man, and once it is
posited, justification as a whole is really posited with it already.110
A central aspect of Rahner’s belief in God as quasi-formal cause is that God constitutes
human subjectivity with freedom in transcendence.111
This transcendent causality is established
109
Rahner, “Some Implications of the Scholastic Concept of Uncreated Grace,” 341.
110 Ibid., 342. For the teaching of the Council of Trent, cf. Heinrich Joseph Dominicus Denzinger and Peter
Hünermann, Enchiridion Symbolorum: A Compendium of Creeds, Definitions, and Declarations on Matters of Faith
and Morals, 43rd
ed., eds. Robert Fastiggi and Anne Englund Nash (San Francisco, Ignatius Press, 2012), no. 1529:
“Demum unica formalis causa est iustitia Dei, non qua ipse iustus est, sed qua nos iustos facit, qua videlicet ab eo
donate renovamur spiritu mentis nostrae, et non modo reputamur, sed vere iusti nominamur et sumus, iustitiam in
nobis recipientis unusquisque suam, secundum mensuram, quam Spiritus Sanctus partitur singulis prout vult, et
secundum propriam cuiusque dispositionem et cooperationem.”
111 Cf. Rahner, “Theos in the New Testament,” 110: “The personal God so transcends the world that he can
allow this world, which is totally dependent on him, a genuine activity, even with regard to himself; that what is
totally dependent on him acquires through his own agency a genuine independence with regard to him; that God can
set man free with regard to God himself.” The word “Selbständigkeit” in the original German is translated here as
“independence.” For the original, cf. Karl Rahner, “Theos im Neuen Testament,” in Schriften zur Theologie, Bd. 1
(Einsiedeln: Benziger, 1954), 126:
So ist für die Metaphysik die Gefahr fast unvermeidlich, daß sie nicht versteht, daß der personale Gott ein
so weltüberlegener ist, daß er dieser von ihm restlos abhängigen Welt dennoch eine echte Aktivität, und
zwar ihm selbst gegenüber, verleihen kann, daß die personalgeistige Welt wirklich reaktiv Gott gegenüber
187
within the difference between the finite subjectivity of human beings and the absolute
subjectivity of God. Since God is the transcendent ground of the categorical world, God is not
differentiated from the world in the same manner as categorical realities are relatively
distinguished. Rahner explains,
Of course the subjectivity and personhood which we experience as our own, the
individual and limited uniqueness through which we are distinguished from others, the
freedom which has to be exercised only under a thousand conditions and necessities, all
of this signifies a finite subjectivity with limitations which we cannot assert with these
limitations of its ground, namely, God. And it is self-evident that such an individual
personhood cannot belong to God, who is the absolute ground of everything in radical
originality. . . . In this sense God is not an individual person because he cannot
experience himself as defined in relation to another or limited by another, because he
does not experience any difference from himself, but rather he himself establishes the
difference, and hence ultimately he himself is the difference vis-à-vis others.112
Since God is not “defined in relation to another,” Rahner argues that the difference
between God and the world is God. Hence, any change in the world is grounded in the reality of
God. As such, God may freely unite with creatures within this differentiation through
transcendent causality. As Rahner writes, “The difference between God and the world is of such
a nature that God establishes and is the difference of the world from himself, and for this reason
he establishes the closest unity precisely in the differentiation.”113
Yet, he also notes that God’s
self-communication does not involve any real change in God. This is because the difference
between God and human beings “is not something which happens to him, but rather he alone
sein kann, daß das restlos von ihm Abhängige durch ihn eine echte Selbständigkeit ihm gegenüber erhält,
daß Gott den Menschen Gott selbst gegenüber freigeben kann.
112 Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, 74.
113 Ibid., 62.
188
makes it possible.”114
However, this does not mean that God’s self-communication takes place
only on the side of the creature. Such would imply that God is not truly communicated by grace.
Indeed, created grace cannot enable divine participation without uncreated grace.115
Accordingly,
“It is a self-communication in which the God who imparts himself brings about the acceptation
of his gift, in such a way that the acceptance does not reduce the communication to the level of
merely created things.”116
Hence, God’s self-communication reveals a differentiation within the
unity of God’s absolute self-presence in its relation to humanity as quasi-formal cause. Rahner
elaborates,
It follows as a formal axiom that if the difference present in something imparted by God,
as such, is only on the side of the creature, there can be no question of a self-
communication, in which there is a real difference in that which is imparted as such,
therefore ‘for us’, God must then be differentiated ‘in himself’, without prejudice to his
unity (which is then characterized as that of the absolute ‘essence’), and this
differentiation is characterized as the relative mode of the relationship of himself to
himself. We may therefore affirm: if revelation (a) attests a real self-communication, and
(b) declares that this self-communication contains differences for us (appears as
mediated, but not by a mediation of a purely created type, which would destroy its
114
Ibid., 105. Cf. P. de Letter, “Divine Quasi-Formal Causality,” Irish Theological Quarterly 27, no. 3
(1960): 223:
The union between the soul and God by grace is not a mutual relation; the divine Act unites the soul to
himself and he terminates this relation of union. All the newness or change resulting from this divine quasi-
formal causality lies in the soul, there is none in God. . . . He terminates the relation of the soul’s real union
with him without being himself the subject of a real relation of union with the soul. Only in a mutual
relation are the two related ones both subject and term of the respective twofold relation.
115 Cf. Letter, “Divine Quasi-Formal Causality,” 223: “The self-gift of the Uncreated Grace to the soul,
transforming and divinizing it, of necessity ‘produces’ created grace, a new form inherent in the soul, uniting it to
God and making it like unto him. The quasi-formal causality of God which by itself does not produce any effect, but
only unites the soul to himself, of necessity goes together with an efficient causality which effects the transformation
of the soul or produces created grace.”
116 Karl Rahner, “Remarks on the Dogmatic Treatise ‘De Trinitate,’” in Theological Investigations, Vol. 4:
More Recent Writings, trans. Kevin Smyth (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1966), 97.
189
character of real self-communication), then distinction and mediation is eo ipso affirmed
of God as he is in himself and of himself.117
D. The Trinitarian “Grundaxiom” and Non-Appropriated Relations
Rahner believes that God has been revealed in history as a Trinity of persons, inasmuch
as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are each present to humanity in God’s self-communication.
These three persons, or “distinct manners of subsisting” (a term that Rahner believes is more
suitable than “person” in the modern context), share the divine essence and its power of efficient
causality in creating the world.118
They also share one consciousness and subjectivity.119
Yet
they are distinct in their notional activity and are conscious of each other.120
117
Ibid., 96n28.
118 Cf. Rahner, The Trinity, 109: “The one God subsists in three distinct manners of subsisting.” Also, cf.
ibid., 111-2: “The same God, as distinct in a threefold manner, is concretely ‘three-personal,’ or, the other way
around, that the ‘three-personality’ co-signifies the unity of the same God.” Further, cf. Jordan Matthew Miller,
“You Loved Me before the Foundation of the World: An Examination of Karl Rahner’s Doctrine of Trinity and
Comparison to that of Hans Urs Von Balthasar” (PhD. diss., Fordham, 2014), in ProQuest Dissertations and Theses,
https://search-proquest-com.proxycu.wrlc.org/pqdtglobal/docview/1562902315/fulltextPDF/
52ABA5A66B5B4FEBPQ/ (accessed January 23, 2018), 149:
Rahner contrasts German “subjectivity” (Subjektivität) with the Latin “subject” (Latin – distinctum
subiectum) remarking that “if we keep any modern connotation out of the concept of the person as such (in
God!), then it says simply no more than ‘distinct subject’” [Rahner, The Trinity, 112-3]. It is evident that he
is using Subjektivität to mean consciousness or self-awareness, as he uses the term in this way throughout
the book; by contrast, it is clear that, as he uses it here, distinctum subiectum does not mean consciousness
or self-awareness. Based on the context, it would seem that his tacit definition of subiectum (at least within
trinitarian doctrine, perhaps not in other areas) is simply ‘manner of subsisting,’ insofar as this terminology
is explicitly stated by Rahner to signify nothing more or other than what the term ‘person’ signified before
it became “unavoidably burdened” by the evolution of language.
119 Cf. Rahner, The Trinity, 75-6: “There exists in God only one power, one will, only one self-presence, a
unique activity, a unique beatitude, and so forth. Hence, self-awareness is not a moment which distinguishes the
divine ‘persons’ one from the other, even though each divine ‘person,’ as concrete, possesses a self-consciousness.
Whatever would mean three ‘subjectivities’ must be carefully kept away from the concept of person in the present
context.” Also, cf. ibid., 76n: “Hence within the Trinity there is no reciprocal ‘Thou.’ The Son is the Father’s self-
190
Drawing upon his concept of God’s self-communication as a quasi-formal cause in
history, Rahner argues that God has a history, but that this does not undermine God’s
immutability.121
He thus identifies the Trinity present in the world through the divine missions
with the Trinity in itself, such that “the doctrine of the Trinity cannot be adequately distinguished
from the doctrine of the economy of salvation.”122
Accordingly, Rahner claims in his
“Grundaxiom” that “the ‘economic’ Trinity is the ‘immanent’ Trinity and the ‘immanent’ Trinity
is the ‘economic’ Trinity.”123
This axiom has been interpreted in various ways, and it is often criticized.124
Yet, despite
what some of its critics argue, Rahner’s identification of the immanent Trinity with the economic
utterance which should not in its turn be conceived as ‘uttering,’ and the Spirit is the ‘gift’ which does not give in its
turn. Jn. 17, 21; Gal. 4, 6; Rom. 8, 15 presuppose a creaturely starting point for the ‘Thou’ addressed to the Father.”
120 Cf. ibid., 107n:
Although we may say that each of the divine “persons” is “conscious” of the two others, and does not
merely possess them as “objects” of knowledge, this derives not only from the identity of the divine
essence (and from the accompanying absolute self-presence of this essence) in the Father, the Son, and the
Spirit, but also from the fact that every “notional act” (identical with the divine essence) renders, as
conscious (and relative), every other notional act co-conscious.
121
Cf. Rahner, “Revelation, II. God’s Self-Communication,” 1467:
The term self-communication also implies that God himself can really have a “history” of his own, and
does not merely posit it as distinct from himself. . . . It is often obscured, however, by an over-anxious
scholastic philosophy under the impression that it endangers the dogma of God’s immutability. Correctly
understood, the idea of God’s self-communication explains God’s quasi-formal causality by maintaining
the dialectical insight that God who “in himself” is unchanging (“quasi . . .”), can have a change in the
changeable creature (“. . . formal”), e.g., God’s Word himself was made man “in time.”
122
Rahner, The Trinity, 24.
123 Ibid., 22. Italics are Rahner’s.
124 For a study of Rahner’s Trinitarian theology and his “Grundaxiom,” cf. Michael Hauber, Unsagbar
Nahe: Eine Studie zur Entstehung und Bedeutung der Trinitätstheologie Karl Rahners (Innsbruck: Tyrolia, 2011).
On the debate surrounding the interpretation of Rahner’s “Grundaxiom,”cf. Nancy Dallavalle, “Revisiting Rahner:
On the Theological Status of Trinitarian Theology,” Irish Theological Quarterly 63 (1998): 133; Bruce Marshall,
191
Trinity and Truth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 264-5. For a more lengthy account, cf. Miller,
“You Loved Me before the Foundation of the World,” 43-4n41:
Rahner’s axiom is certainly the most thoroughly discussed aspect of his doctrine of the Trinity. The
meaning of the axiom (both Rahner’s own intended meaning, and the meaning of the axiom insofar as it
has taken on ‘a life of its own’ outside of Rahner’s work) has been frequently debated. It is not possible to
discuss here more than forty years of debate, but by focusing on a handful of authors the key issues can be
raised.
There is widespread disagreement as to how the axiom should be received. Fred Sanders presents
a typology according to which various authors are cast as ‘radicalizers’ or ‘restricters’ in their responses to
the axiom (Sanders, The Image of the Immanent Trinity: Rahner's Rule and the Theological Interpretation
of Scripture, New York: Peter Lang, 2005). ‘Radicalizers’ (Sanders cites P. Schoonenberg, J. Moltmann,
and C. LaCugna as examples) are those who understand the axiom as a strict identity, calling into question
whether it makes sense to speak about ‘immanent’ and ‘economic’ at all. ‘Restricters’ (Sanders cites Y.
Congar, W. Kasper, and Balthasar as examples) are those who challenge the second half of the axiom
(“immanent Trinity is economic Trinity”) in order to affirm the transcendence of God and divine freedom.
Sanders is sympathetic to Rahner’s trinitarian theology but is himself a ‘restricter,’ arguing that the second
half of the axiom must be qualified and that the economic Trinity is the image of the immanent Trinity.
Dennis Jowers (Karl Rahner’s Trinitarian Axiom: ‘The Economic Trinity is the Immanent Trinity
and Vice Versa’, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2006) identifies at least four possible “misconstruals” of the
axiom: (1) a "trivially obvious identity" (Trinity = Trinity); (2) an absolute identity (no distinction of
economic and immanent); (3) economic Trinity as ‘copy’ or ‘photo’ of immanent; (4) de facto identity,
meaning that God might actually be different in his immanent being than he is in economy, but in fact is
not different (by free choice) (Jowers, 87-89). According to Jowers, “Rahner’s actual meaning” is that “[the
divine self-communication] can, if occurring in freedom, only occur in the intra-divine manner of the two
communications of the one divine essence by the Father to the Son and the Spirit.” (Rahner, Trinity, 36).
“In other words,” says Jowers, “the immanent constitution of the Trinity forms a kind of a priori law for
the divine self-communication ad extra so that the structure of the latter cannot but correspond to the
structure of the former.” (Jowers, 89-90). Jowers rejects the axiom completely, but his central objection
does not hit the mark, as it rests on a fundamental misreading of Rahner's teaching on divine immutability
and his doctrine that God truly changes in/as the creature. Jowers clearly takes this to mean that God’s
essence is mutating, which would (if true) open Rahner to Jowers’ objection that we cannot know for sure
that God’s being is truly revealed in the economy if God’s being itself can change. (Jowers 90-91) But
Rahner explicitly rejects a mutability of the divine essence in itself. God changes in/as the other insofar as
the being of the other (creature) is a participation in God's being (discussed below).
David Lincicum ("Economy and immanence: Karl Rahner’s doctrine of the Trinity,” European
Journal of Theology, 14 no 2 (2005), 111-118) distinguishes between a “methodological” and an
“ontological” interpretation of Rahner’s axiom, the former meaning that we only know the immanent
Trinity through the economy, and the latter meaning that there is no distinction at all between the immanent
Trinity and the economy; he affirms the ‘methodological’ and rejects the ‘ontological’ interpretation.
Meanwhile Randal Rauser ("Rahner's Rule: An Emperor Without Clothes?" International Journal of
Systematic Theology 7 no 1 (2005), 81-94) takes a very dim view of the Grundaxiom, arguing that it is "an
axiom in search of an interpretation.” He identifies three possible interpretations: strict realist, loose realist,
anti-realist; none of these, he says, are both (1) non-trivial and (2) possibly true.
For his part, Rahner states many times that God’s being is distinct from salvation history, and that
the threefoldness of God’s being is prior to the creation of the universe. Even so, there is ambiguity: he also
states that “no adequate distinction can be made between the doctrine of Trinity and the doctrine of the
economy of salvation” (Rahner, Trinity, 24) and remarks that the Incarnation must be our “guiding norm”
for the axiom that the divine being has no ‘real’ (i.e., ontologically constitutive) relation to creatures, rather
than allowing this axiom to act as the norm for our understanding of the Incarnation (Rahner, Trinity, 24).
192
Trinity does not reduce the divinity to its finite historical expression, but rather emphasizes
God’s “radical character of disclosure in the hypostatic union and in grace.”125
As he explains,
“God has given himself so fully in his absolute self-communication to the creature, that the
‘immanent’ Trinity becomes the Trinity of the ‘economy of salvation’, and hence in turn the
Trinity of salvation which we experience is the immanent Trinity. This means that the Trinity of
God’s relationship to us is the reality of God as he is in himself: a trinity of persons.”126
Furthermore, Rahner’s axiom does not imply pantheism or panentheism either, as if the divine
essence were identical with the created world. Rahner clarifies this in the following remarks:
This relationship of a created being to God can on the one hand be identified with the
reality of this being; in an idea of creation which rejects every form of pantheism one
may not say that God himself is an inner constitutive element of a created being. But in
this affirmation theologians must exercise caution for theological reasons which have
nothing to do with natural science. For theologians recognize in the theology of grace and
in the beatific vision a relationship of God to a creaturely reality in which reality God’s
own being is the quasi-formal cause and not merely the external efficient cause of a
determination of the finite being. This theological datum already indicates that an
efficacy of God through himself and not through a created mediation must be rejected as
a pantheistic view only if God at the same time be conceived as an inner essential
constitutive element belonging to the essence of the finite being. The distinction between
God and creature which rejects pantheism therefore does not exclude a determination of a
finite being by God himself as such.127
Here, Rahner explains that God’s quasi-formal causality is the determining principle of a
human being’s supernatural elevation, rather than the “inner essential constitutive element
belonging to the essence of the finite being.” Otherwise, a form of pantheism would follow. This
125
Rahner, “The Concept of Mystery in Catholic Theology,” 69.
126 Ibid.
127 Karl Rahner, “Natural Science and Reasonable Faith,” 35-6.
193
may appear to contradict Rahner’s statement in Foundations of Christian Faith that “God in his
own proper reality makes himself the innermost constitutive element of man.”128
However, as
noted earlier, Rahner’s reference to formal causality as a constitutive element is applied
analogically to the relationship between God’s uncreated grace and human nature. He clarifies
that God is only an inner constitutive element of human beings in the mode of quasi-formal
causality, and not in the mode of strict formal causality whereby grace would make human
nature identical with the divine nature. Even though God’s self-communication is the ground of
human transcendence in the order of grace, and is not external to human beings, the two remain
distinct. This is what Rahner means when he says in Foundations that “in transcendence as such,
absolute being is the innermost constitutive element by which this transcendental movement is
borne towards itself, and is not just the extrinsic term and extrinsic goal of a movement.”129
Hence, whenever Rahner does describe God as an inner constitutive element of humanity’s
concrete existence, such as in the following passage, he does so in a manner that affirms the
difference between God and human transcendence:
God is present for us as the absolute future. . . . Salvation history . . . is the proclamation
of an absolute becoming which does not continue into emptiness but really attains the
absolute future, which is indeed already moving within it; for this becoming is so truly
distinguished from its yet-to-come future and fulfilment (without implying pantheism,
therefore) that the infinite reality of this future is nevertheless already active within it and
supports it as an inner constitutive element of this becoming, even though it is
independent of this becoming itself (and in this way every form of primitive deism and
128
Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, 116.
129 Ibid., 121-2.
194
any merely external relationship of God and the world are eliminated from the very start,
and the truth in pantheism is preserved).130
Furthermore, Rahner’s distinction between pure nature and historical nature may resolve
this problem of interpretation. Examining his conception of the relationship between human
nature in itself and human nature as elevated by the supernatural existential clarifies his
understanding of how God’s grace relates to the constitution of a human being. When Rahner
describes God’s quasi-formal causality as the inner constitutive element of human beings, he
does so in reference to their concrete quiddity, but not their pure nature. In this respect, Rahner
affirms that God’s self-communication can be an inner constitutive element of human beings
with a supernatural existential, but denies that it belongs to the composition of their essence in
itself. Accordingly, the human essence is the prior condition for God’s self-communication that
elevates the creature in transcendence. As Rahner writes,
God is not only causa efficiens but also causa quasi formalis of that which the creature is
in the truest and most concrete sense. The nature of the spiritual creature consists in the
fact that that which is ‘innermost’ to it, that whence, to which and through which it is, is
precisely not an element of this essence and this nature which belongs to it. Rather its
nature is based upon the fact that that which is supra-essential, that which transcends it, is
that which gives it its support, its meaning, its future and its most basic impulse, though
admittedly it does so in such a way that the nature of this spiritual creature, that which
belongs to it as such, is not thereby taken away from it but rather obtains from this its
ultimate validity and consistency and achieves growth and development because of it.
The closeness of God’s self-bestowal and the unique personality of the creature grow in
equal, and not in converse measure. This self-bestowal of God, in which God bestows
himself precisely as the absolute transcendent, is the most immanent factor in the
creature. The fact that it is given its own nature to possess, the ‘immanence of essence’ in
this sense, is the prior condition, and at the same time the consequence, of the still more
radical immanence of the transcendence of God in the spiritual creature, this creature
130
Karl Rahner, “Marxist Utopia and the Christian Future of Man,” in Theological Investigations, Vol. 6:
Concerning Vatican Council II, trans. Karl H. Kruger and Boniface Kruger (London: Darton, Longman and Todd,
1969), 60.
195
being considered as that which has been endowed with grace through the uncreated grace
of God.131
Rahner stresses with his axiom that the divine missions must be really predicated of the
divine persons in themselves, given God’s free decision to enter into history. Even though the
created external terms of the divine missions are efficiently caused by all three divine persons
through the power of their shared nature, Rahner argues that the actions performed by these
missions are not predicable of all three. In fact, God’s quasi-formal causality communicates each
divine person uniquely as uncreated grace through the divine missions and their external terms of
created grace. As Rahner notes,
The true and authentic concept of grace interprets grace (hence also salvation history) as
a self-communication of God (not primarily as “created grace”) in Christ and in his Spirit.
Grace should not be reduced to a “relation” (a purely mental relation at that) of the one
God to the elected creature, nor to a relation which is merely “appropriated” to the other
divine persons. In the recipient himself grace is not some created sanctifying “quality”
produced in a merely causal way by the one God.132
Thus, when the Father sends the Son and Spirit, each of these divine missions is not
merely appropriated to a divine person, but is properly attributable to only one. This is because
“the relations of the three divine persons to man in grace are not simply appropriations. Each
divine person has his own proper relationship to man in grace, even though each of these
relations presupposes and includes the others.”133
Rahner explains his position by noting that
“not-appropriated relations of a single person are possible when we have to do, not with an
131
Karl Rahner, “Immanent and Transcendent Consummation of the World,” in Theological Investigations,
Vol. 10: Writings of 1965-1967, trans. David Bourke (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1973), 281.
132 Rahner, The Trinity, 22-3.
133 Rahner, “The Concept of Mystery in Catholic Theology,” 70.
196
efficient causality, but with a quasi-formal self-communication of God, which implies that each
divine person possesses its own proper relation to some created reality.”134
He applies this
principle not only to the incarnation of the Son, as has been traditionally argued,135
but also to
the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.136
Rahner also argues that the incarnation is not only properly attributed to the Son, but that
no divine person but the Son could have become incarnate in salvation history. He states, “Only
the Logos has such an immanent relationship to the other divine persons that he can be the one
who can assume hypostatically a created reality and hence be the essential and irreplaceable
revealer of the Father.”137
Rahner believes this follows necessarily from the concept of God’s
self-communication, “for if each divine person could become incarnate, the Logos precisely
could not appear as himself, as this particular person of the Trinity, in the personal manifestation
of God in the economy of salvation.”138
134
Rahner, The Trinity, 77.
135 Cf. Rahner, “Some Implications of the Scholastic Concept of Uncreated Grace,” 344:
The argument here is that where one divine Person as such in distinction from the other two has a relation
to a created reality which is proper to the given Person, this relation can only be a hypostatic unity (such as
is given in Christ’s case alone), since this union must on the one hand occur in respect of what is proper to
the individual Persons, yet on the other hand proper, relative subsistence is the one thing which belongs to a
divine Person in distinction from another (cf. Denz 703).
136
Cf. ibid., 323: “The conjunction of the Holy Spirit in particular with man is a proper and not merely
appropriated one.”
137 Rahner, “The Concept of Mystery in Catholic Theology,” 71.
138 Ibid. For Rahner’s criticism of theologians who maintain that any of the divine persons could have
become incarnate, cf. Rahner, The Trinity, 11: “Starting from Augustine, and as opposed to the older tradition, it has
been among theologians a more or less foregone conclusion that each of the divine persons (if God freely so
decided) could have become man, so that the incarnation of precisely this person can tell us nothing about the
peculiar features of this person within the divinity.”
197
Furthermore, since the personhood of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit cannot be
understood univocally, Rahner believes it cannot be disproved that each person communicated
through revelation appears as only that person can. He laments that “should the doctrine of the
Trinity have to be dropped as false, the major part of religious literature could well remain
virtually unchanged.”139
He argues that if the divine persons were not really communicated in
their uniqueness, then humanity has not really encountered the immanent Trinity through the
economic Trinity:
The opposite of this second presupposition has never been proved. Every possible proof
relies on the supposition that what one divine hypostasis can do must also be possible to
each of the others. But this apparently obvious consideration is in fact a major fallacy. It
proceeds entirely from the basically false supposition that what we call ‘hypostasis’ in
God, three times, represents a general concept. The truth is however that what we call
hypostasis in God is precisely that by which each of the divine persons is uniquely
distinct from the other two, and is absolutely nothing else. It is therefore completely
impossible to conclude from what one hypostasis in God can do, to what another must be
able to do. We are therefore perfectly entitled to identify the immanent and the salvific
Trinity. And this is the only way to prevent the doctrine of the immanent Trinity from
appearing as a mere piece of subtle dialectic in a purely formal reconciliation of one and
three.140
139
Rahner, The Trinity, 10-11. Cf. Edmund Hill, “Karl Rahner's ‘Remarks on the Dogmatic Treatise De
Trlnitate and St. Augustine,’” Augustinian Studies 2 (1971), 67-8:
Rahner states what is wrong with the present situation by remarking that modern Christians ‘are almost just
'monotheist' in their actual religious experience’. You could quite simply abolish the whole dogma of the
Trinity, and it would make no difference to the practical, personal faith of popular Christianity. The dogma
is not even implicit in the ordinary believer's faith in the incarnation, because he expresses that faith in such
terms as ‘the divinity of Christ’, or ‘Jesus Christ, true God and true man’, or ‘Jesus Christ is God’; hardly
ever in such terms as ‘The Word was made flesh’, or ‘Jesus Christ is God the Son’. And Rahner rightly
blames theologians and their way of dealing with the treatise ‘De Trinitate’ for this most unfortunate
weakness in every-day Christian belief. He blames two things in particular; first, what he calls the isolation
of this treatise from the rest of dogma, which in its turn is due to an exaggerated application of the principle
that all divine operations ad extra are common to the three divine persons (a principle that induces in
theologians an ‘anti-trinitarian timidity’), and in a lesser degree to the splitting of the treatise on God into a
first part ‘De Deo Uno’, followed by ‘De Deo Trino’; and secondly a more or less explicit assumption, or
even assertion, that any of the divine persons could have become man, and a consequent failure to ask what
it means that in fact it was the Logos or the Son who became man.
140 Rahner, “The Concept of Mystery in Catholic Theology,” 71. Cf. Rahner, The Trinity, 11-12n:
198
If God’s self-communication were just something created through efficient causality,
there would be no way in which human beings could have a real relationship to the divine life of
the Trinity.141
This is because God’s logical relation to creatures as their efficient cause can
establish nothing more than a real relation of creatures to God as their creator. It does not give
human beings any non-appropriated relations to individual persons of the Trinity. While aspects
of God’s efficient causality might be appropriated to one of the divine persons, they are really
proper to all three persons, possessed by each in their own way.142
Besides, the necessity that
God is a Trinity of persons cannot be known apart from revelation and grace.
Rahner contrasts the logical relation of God to creation as efficient cause with the relation
of God to human beings as quasi-formal cause. He does not seek to refute the principle that God
Every doctrine of the Trinity must emphasize that the “hypostasis” is precisely that in God through which
Father, Son, and Spirit are distinct from one another; that, wherever there exists between the three of them a
real, univocal correspondence, there is absolute numerical identity. Hence the concept of hypostasis,
applied to God, cannot be a universal univocal concept, applying to each of the three persons in the same
way. Yet, in Christology, this concept is used as if it were evident that a “hypostatic function” with respect
to a human nature might as well have been exercised by another hypostasis in God. Should we not at least
inquire whether this well-determined relative subsistence, in which the Father and the Spirit subsist in pure
distinction from—not in equality with—the Son, should not make it impossible for them (unlike in the case
of the Son) to exercise such a hypostatic function with respect to a human nature.
141 Cf. Rahner, The Trinity, 14-5:
Average theology . . . sees in divine grace only the appropriated relations of the divine persons to man, the
effect of an efficient causality of the one God. . . . Someone might reply that our future happiness will
consist precisely in face-to-face vision of this triune God, a vision which “introduces” us into the inner life
of the divinity and constitutes our most authentic perfection, and that this is the reason why we are already
told about this mystery during this life. But then we must inquire how this could be true, if between man
and each one of the three divine persons there is no real ontological relation, something more than mere
appropriation.
142 Cf. Rahner, The Trinity, 77: “The activity which is common to all three persons and appropriated only to
one is (as with the divine essence) possessed by each of the three persons in his own proper way. The threefold way
of subsisting of this activity (considered principiative) is as intrinsic and necessary for its existence as it is necessary
and essential for the divine essence to subsist as threefold.”
199
has no real ontological relations to creatures when considered from the perspective of scholastic
metaphysics. Yet, Rahner’s unique position on quasi-formal causality leads him to affirm an
analogous and qualified sense in which God may be attributed with real ontological relations to
human beings.143
He argues, “How can the contemplation of any reality, even of the loftiest
reality, beatify us if intrinsically it is absolutely unrelated to us in any way?”144
Accordingly,
Rahner maintains that while God remains essentially unchanged as a quasi-formal cause, the
unity of God’s absolute self-presence as the immanent Trinity is differentiated in God’s relation
to humanity through the economic missions of the divine persons.145
143
Cf. Rahner, The Trinity, 15n11: “This way of formulating our position does not intend to touch the
problem whether God has ‘real’ relations ad extra (outwards). We may abstract from this problem here. In our
context, ‘real-ontological,’ as proper to each single divine person with respect to man, should be understood only in
the analogical sense (insofar as the ‘reality,’ not the specificity of the relation is concerned). Thus the Logos as such
has a real relation to his human nature.” Also, cf. Rahner, “Remarks on the Dogmatic Treatise ‘De Trinitate,’”
88n15:
One cannot escape this conclusion by the would-be clever scholastic reference to the fact that the
hypostatic union does not bring about any ‘real relation’ in the Logos himself and hence that nothing in the
order of salvation can be predicated of the Logos as such, as touching the Logos himself. Whatever is the
exact meaning of the axiom of scholastic metaphysics, that God has no ‘real relations’ ad extra, the truth
remains – and it must be taken as the decisive norm for this axiom, and not vice versa – that the Logos
himself is really and truly man, he and only he and not the Father and not the Spirit. And hence it remains
eternally true that if everything that is to be affirmed truly and permanently of the Logos himself is to be
included in a doctrine of the divine persons, then this doctrine itself implies an assertion dealing with the
order of salvation.
144 Rahner, The Trinity, 15.
145 Cf. Rahner, “Remarks on the Dogmatic Treatise ‘De Trinitate,’” 96n28:
It follows as a formal axiom that if the difference present in something imparted by God, as such, is only on
the side of the creature, there can be no question of a self-communication, in which there is a real
difference in that which is imparted as such, therefore ‘for us’, God must then be differentiated ‘in himself’,
without prejudice to his unity (which is then characterized as that of the absolute ‘essence’), and this
differentiation is characterized as the relative mode of the relationship of himself to himself. We may
therefore affirm: if revelation (a) attests a real self-communication, and (b) declares that this self-
communication contains differences for us (appears as mediated, but not by a mediation of a purely created
type, which would destroy its character of real self-communication), then distinction and mediation is eo
ipso affirmed of God as he is in himself and of himself.
200
Indeed, the uncreated grace imparted through the divine missions does enable humanity
to participate in the inner life of the Trinity. Rahner emphasizes that the divine missions bestow
human beings with real relations to specific divine persons, who are each communicated
uniquely through quasi-formal causality. Consequently, the relations that humans have to each of
the persons communicated through the grace of the divine missions are non-appropriated. As
such, Rahner characterizes “man’s relationship in grace as a non-appropriated relation to the
three divine Persons, without doing injury to the principle of the unity of efficient causality in the
creative action of the threefold God ad extra, and without making the indwelling conjunction of
the three divine Persons into a hypostatic union.”146
Rahner believes that the grace of the divine missions gives peoples’ relationship to God a
trinitarian structure. In fact, the quasi-formal causality of God’s uncreated grace fills human
nature with the created graces that are the created terms of the divine missions. Since the created
terms of the divine missions must be really predicated of the divine persons, Rahner argues that
the differentiation present in this trinitarian structure of grace must also be really attributed to the
distinctions among the three divine persons. As he explains, “The consequent trinitarian structure
of our direct relationship with God through grace is also proper to God because of his actual self-
communication – if we assume this, then the permanent mystery of the ‘immanent’ Trinity is
made possible.”147
Accordingly, Rahner concludes that the immanent Trinity is made known to
146
Rahner, “Some Implications of the Scholastic Concept of Uncreated Grace,” 346.
147 Rahner, “Theology and Anthropology,” 32.
201
human beings anthropologically through their experience of the incarnation and grace whereby
the economic Trinity is present in the world:
If the anthropocentric perspective is applied to the doctrine of the Trinity, many things
become more intelligible without at the same time destroying the mystery. We need only
make the quite legitimate assumption that, on account of God’s absolute self-
communication in ‘uncreated’ Grace, the immanent Trinity is strictly identical with the
economic Trinity and vice versa, and we are then able to read the doctrine of the Trinity
‘anthropologically’ without falsifying it.148
E. Conclusion
It was noted at the beginning of this chapter that Doran seeks to transpose the four-point
hypothesis into the categories of a methodical theology that addresses the concerns of modern
philosophy. He believes that Lonergan’s later theological categories of interiorly and religiously
differentiated consciousness are the ones most suitable for such a transposition. However, this
chapter suggested that Rahner’s theological categories could be more useful in developing a
contemporary analogy for the Trinity based upon the four-point hypothesis.
148
Ibid. Cf. Dennis W. Jowers, The Trinitarian Axiom of Karl Rahner, 86: “In order for human beings to
know the Trinity itself, Rahner holds, they must experience God’s triune nature in some way in the depths of their
own being; indeed, the Trinity must become in some sense, an aspect of their being.” Also, cf. Patrick Burke,
Reinterpreting Rahner: A Critical Study of His Major Themes (New York: Fordham University Press, 2002), 247:
It was in the context of his discussion of the formal/quasi-formal causality of grace upon man that Rahner
asserted that the traditional axiom that all works of the Trinity ad extra are common to the three persons of
the Trinity need no longer apply to the workings of grace. . . . This change of perspective enabled Rahner to
appeal to man’s experience of grace in order to explain the distinctions of the three divine persons as modes
of the one divine mystery and to affirm the identity of the immanent and economic Trinity. . . . Indeed, by
studying his own subjectivity under grace, man not only can find the ground for his belief but also can
know the truth of God even unto the inner-trinitarian life.
202
This chapter laid some groundwork for transposing the four-point hypothesis into
Rahner’s theological categories. It examined the aspects of his theology of grace and the Trinity
that are pertinent to the issues discussed in Lonergan’s four-point hypothesis and in Doran’s
development of it into a supernatural analogy. The themes discussed included the philosophical
foundations of Rahner’s theology, his distinction between pure nature and historical nature, his
understanding of the relationship between uncreated grace and created grace, his view of God’s
self-communication as a quasi-formal cause, his “Grundaxiom” that identifies the immanent
Trinity with the economic Trinity, and his belief that people have non-appropriated relations to
the divine persons through grace. These features of Rahner’s theology were highlighted in
preparation for examining whether they might serve as a foundation for a four-point hypothesis
and a supernatural, psychological analogy.
Rahner’s theology of grace and the Trinity contributes significantly to the discussion of
how the experience of grace may lead to an analogical understanding of the Trinity. It is worth
considering whether the four-point hypothesis may be transposed into Rahner’s theological
categories studied above, especially those pertaining to the “Grundaxiom” and God’s quasi-
formal causality as the determining principle of humanity’s supernatural existential. In the
following chapter, these categories of Rahner’s thought will be considered in their potential
utility for developing a supernatural analogy based upon the four-point hypothesis.
203
CHAPTER III
Transposing the Four-Point Hypothesis into the Categories of Karl Rahner’s Theology
Having examined the theologies of Bernard Lonergan and Karl Rahner concerning grace
and the Trinity, one may note some important similarities and differences between them. Rahner
agrees with Lonergan that God’s uncreated grace communicates not only the divine essence, but
also the three divine persons and their four substantial relations. Consequently, it establishes in
human beings a non-appropriated relation to each of the three divine persons through which they
participate in the divine life. This uncreated grace is bestowed upon human beings along with the
gift of created grace, by which they relate to the divine persons communicated through the divine
missions. These missions correspond to the divine processions, precisely as united with their
external terms in history.
Rahner and Lonergan concur that uncreated grace is ontologically prior to created grace,
although they differ in their understanding of their respective form of causality. For Lonergan,
uncreated grace is the exemplary cause of created grace, which God efficiently causes in people
so that they acquire relations that terminate in uncreated grace. In Rahner’s view, by contrast,
uncreated grace is bestowed upon human beings through quasi-formal causality. Its
corresponding material cause, created grace, is produced in a person through God’s efficient
causality.
Yet, despite their fundamental differences, both approaches highlight the fact that created
grace enables human beings to have a unique, non-appropriated relation to each of the divine
persons communicated as uncreated grace. This suggests the existence of some differentiation
204
within created grace that accounts for these non-appropriated relations to the divine persons. If
created grace were not differentiated in reference to the divine persons, then there would seem to
be no way in which distinct non-appropriated relations could be established between human
beings and each of the persons of the Trinity. Lonergan develops this train of thought more than
Rahner, yet the latter makes several remarks that point in this direction.
In his four-point hypothesis, Lonergan identifies four preeminent created graces as the
created terms of the divine missions by which the Trinity and its relations are communicated.
Since Rahner did not develop a four-point hypothesis, he does not divide created grace into four
preeminent forms and correlate them with the four divine relations as clearly as Lonergan does.
However, Rahner does appear on occasion to divide created grace in a four-fold manner as
distinct manners of participation in the divine persons. Given Rahner’s belief in the non-
appropriated relations established through grace, such a differentiation of created grace could be
used to develop a four-point hypothesis from Rahner’s theology.
With that in mind, this chapter will discuss the possibility of transposing the four-point
hypothesis from the context of Lonergan’s thought to that of Rahner. Toward this end, areas of
agreement between Rahner’s theology and each of the points of the four-point hypothesis will be
identified. This exercise is not meant merely to corroborate Lonergan’s hypothesis from an
alternative theological perspective. In fact, if Rahner’s argument is sound that non-appropriated
relations to the divine persons are impossible without God’s quasi-formal causality, Rahner’s
theology would provide a stronger ontological foundation for the four-point hypothesis.
205
A. The Trinitarian Structure of Grace
Like Lonergan and other theologians, Rahner identifies four divine relations among the
divine persons. These correspond to the notional acts of the active begetting of the Father, the
passive begetting of the Son, the active spiration of the Father and the Son together, and the
passive spiration of the Spirit.1 He also states concerning divine fatherhood and sonship that
“both of these relations [are] identical with the active spiration of the Spirit by the Father and the
Son.”2 These divine relations are present to humanity through uncreated grace.
Rahner stresses that uncreated grace establishes a supernatural relationship to God in the
person who receives it.3 The self-communication of the one God reveals the Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit distinctly.4 Since the divine missions are interrelated and inseparable, God’s self-
1 Cf. Karl Rahner, The Trinity, trans. Joseph Donceel (New York: Crossroad, 1970), 78: “Insofar as these
four relations must be conceived as an active producing or as a ‘passive’ being produced, we may say that there are
in God four ‘notional’ acts, active and passive begetting, active and passive spiration.”
2 Ibid.
3 Cf. Karl Rahner, “Theology and Anthropology,” in Theological Investigations, Vol. 9: Writings of 1965-
1967; 1, trans. Graham Harrison (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1972), “Grace is not a ‘thing’ but – as
communicated grace – a conditioning of the spiritual and intellectual subject as such to a direct relationship with
God.”
4 Cf. Karl Rahner, “The Concept of Mystery in Catholic Theology,” in Theological Investigations, Vol. 4:
More Recent Writings, trans. Kevin Smyth (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1966), 70: “The absolute self-
communication of God to the world, as the mystery which has drawn nigh, is Father as the absolutely primordial and
underivative; it is Son, as the principle which itself acts and necessarily must act in history in view of this free self-
communication; it is Holy Spirit, as that which is given, and accepted by us.” The phrase “notwendig inerhalb der
Geschichte handeln müssendes” in the original German is translated “necessarily must act in history.” For the
original, cf. Karl Rahner, “Über den Begriff des Geheimnisses in der katholischen Theologie,” in Schriften zur
Theologie, Bd. 4: Neuere Schriften (Einsiedeln: Benziger, 1960), 95: “Die absolute Selbstmitteilung Gottes an die
Welt als nahekommendes Geheimnis heißt in ihrer absoluten Ursprünglichkeit und Unableitbarkeit Vater, als selbst
handelndes und zu dieser freien Selbstmitteilung notwendig innerhalb der Geschichte handeln müssendes Prizip
Sohn und als geschenktes und von uns angenommenes Heiliger Geist.” Also, cf. Karl Rahner, “The Mystery of the
Trinity,” in Theological Investigations, Vol. 16: Experience of the Spirit: Source of Theology, trans. David Bourke
206
communication is a single act.5 However, all of the divine persons exercise their own quasi-
formal causality.6 Consequently, the uncreated grace of God’s self-communication has a
trinitarian character.7 As Rahner writes, “The gift in which God imparts himself to the world is
precisely God as the triune God, and not something produced by him through efficient causality,
something that represents him. And because he is the triune God, this ‘trinitarian character’ also
affects the gift and makes it triune.”8 This trinitarian character of uncreated grace is
(London: Darton, Longman and Todd 1979), 258: “If God is Trinitarian and is really related to man and not merely
by appropriation, then the communication of being and of self by God must also be Trinitarian. If in this self-
communication he possesses as ‘Father’ a specific relationship to man, one can also speak quite naturally and
without contradiction of the self-communication of the one God, as one can of the self-communication of the Father
in his ‘originality’.” Furthermore, cf. Karl Rahner, “Oneness and Threefoldness of God in Discussion with Islam,” in
Theological Investigations, Vol. 18: God and Revelation, trans. Edward Quinn (London: Darton, Longman and
Todd, 1983), 115: “In this salvific economic Trinity the unoriginated and permanently sovereign God is called
Father; in his self-communication to history, Logos; in his self-communication to man’s transcendentality, Holy
Spirit.” 5 Cf. Karl Rahner, “Trinity, Divine,” in Encyclopedia of Theology: The Concise Sacramentum Mundi, eds.
Karl Rahner, et al. (New York: The Seabury Press, 1975), 1760:
The divine self-communication to the world in the Spirit (grace) and the self-communication in the
hypostatic union are one and the same free act, because these two communications are each the condition
of the other. The hypostatic union is only rationally thinkable if it causes or implies the grace given to the
world through the divine Spirit (or at least in the humanity of Christ, and then in all men, by reason of the
social nature of this humanity). And conversely, the grace given to the world has its necessary historical
manifestation and eschatological irreversibility in what we call the hypostatic union. Thus the two missions
may be understood as interconnected moments of the one self-communication of God to the world.
6 Cf. Karl Rahner, “Some Implications of the Scholastic Concept of Uncreated Grace,” in Theological
Investigations, Vol. 1: God, Christ, Mary and Grace, trans. Cornelius Ernst (London: Darton, Longman and Todd,
1961), 345: “In logical priority to the visio as a conscious act, they have each as divine, mutually distinct Persons
their own proper quasi-formal causality upon the created spirit, a causality which makes it possible for these divine
Persons to be possessed ‘consciously’, and, what is more, immediately.”
7 Cf. Rahner, The Trinity, 120: “We must construct a doctrine of grace which possesses a trinitarian
structure. When all this happens, then the real doctrine of the Trinity is presented in Christology and in
pneumatology.”
8 Rahner, “Trinity, Divine,” 1758-9. Cf. “Intellectual Honesty and Christian Faith,” in Theological
Investigations, Vol. 7: Further Theology of the Spiritual Life, trans. David Bourke (London: Darton, Longman and
Todd, 1971), 63: “This self-bestowal of God (upon man in the history which he shapes for himself as a free and
intelligent being) has a threefold aspect. Now the three aspects involved, inasmuch as they mutually constitute the
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communicated in a single act that is expressed in distinct manners through the divine missions,
and it is received by human beings through a single act in the two modalities of knowledge and
love.9
While uncreated grace is a Trinity of persons, it does not transform a human being into
three persons when bestowed along with created grace. Indeed, a Trinity of persons is a
perfection that pertains necessarily, and only, to the absolute being of God. All created persons
are finite individuals who are grounded in the divine Trinity. However, there is evidence in
Rahner’s theology suggesting that a trinitarian character may be found not only in uncreated
grace, but also in the created graces that are the terms of the divine missions. Drawing from his
thought in the following remarks, it will be argued that different modalities of created grace are
self-bestowal of God, are inherent in the divine nature as such. In this self-bestowal on God’s part, therefore, what
we Christians are accustomed to call the triune nature of God is already present.” Also, cf. Rahner, The Trinity, 35:
These three self-communications are the self-communication of the one God in the three relative ways in
which God subsists. The Father gives himself to us too as Father, that is, precisely because and insofar as
he himself, being essentially with himself, utters himself and in this way communicates the Son as his own,
personal self-manifestation; and because and insofar as the Father and the Son (receiving from the Father),
welcoming each other in love, drawn and returning to each other, communicate themselves in this way, as
received in mutual love, that is, as Holy Spirit. God relates to us in a threefold manner, and this threefold,
free, and gratuitous relation to us is not merely a copy or an analogy of the inner Trinity, but this Trinity
itself, albeit as freely and gratuitously communicated.
9 Cf. Karl Rahner, “On the Theology of Hope,” in Theological Investigations, Vol. 10- Writings of 1965-
1967; 2, trans. David Bourke (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1973), 245-6.
Now there are only two such modes or – better – aspects in this one divine self-bestowal: the first aspect is
constituted by the Logos and the second by the divine Pneuma. It is precisely through these two aspects that
God as ungenerated, God the ‘Father’ (not, therefore, an abstract divinity!), who is incomprehensible and
never loses his incomprehensibility even through his act of divine self-bestowal, imparts himself. Because
of this we cannot imagine that the Trinity in the modes of subsistence in the one God implies ipso facto that
there is also a trinity in the response by which we accept this self-bestowal of the Father in Logos and in
Pneuma. The fact that there is only one act of self-bestowal in which the ‘Father’ imparts himself in Logos
and Pneuma implies that in the response, i.e. the ‘theological’ virtue, of man which is itself upheld by this
divine self-bestowal, only a single act is conceivable with two modalities: faith and love, to correspond to
the Word and the Love of the Father.
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required for humans to have a non-appropriated relation to each divine person communicated
through the divine missions. Further, the following remarks will reveal areas of agreement
between Rahner’s theology and Lonergan’s four-point hypothesis.
B. Rahner on the Four Created Graces of the Four-Point Hypothesis
Rahner believes that God’s uncreated grace bestows itself upon human beings together
with various created graces, which are the created formal effects of God’s quasi-formal causality.
These formal effects of uncreated grace through the divine missions consist in the subsistence of
Christ’s human nature and the perfection of human knowledge and love.10
According to Rahner,
uncreated grace accomplishes the incarnation through the created grace of the hypostatic union.
Furthermore, uncreated grace brings about the perfection of human knowledge and love through
the created graces of the light of glory and sanctifying grace.
Rahner most often identifies the created formal effects of God’s self-communication as
incarnation and the grace that grows into glory. However, he has also suggested that they may be
differentiated in a three-fold manner: incarnation, grace, and glory. This requires that one
distinguish grace from glory, which Rahner suggests is reasonable. He writes the following about
these mysteries strictly speaking:
10
Cf. Rahner, “Some Implications of the Scholastic Concept of Uncreated Grace,” 330-1n19: “An
ontology, developed in more detail than is here possible, of the formal causality of the divine Being in regard to
finite being would doubtless be able to show (once this concept had been presupposed) that something of the sort is
basically possible, so long as the divine Being remains unaffected, only in two cases: either as unio hypostatica, or
as the communication of this Being as the object of immediate knowledge and love.”
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There are only three [mysteria stricte dicta] which can seriously be considered as such
according to the teaching of theologians: the Trinity, the Incarnation and the divinization
of man in grace and glory.
If we then ask why these mysteries are to be called mysteria stricte dicta, we must
begin by dividing them into two groups: the trinitarian mystery of God in itself, and the
mysteries of the Incarnation, grace and glory, in so far as these last deal with a
relationship of God to the non-divine. . . . When we then examine theologically the two
other mysteries (or three, if we distinguish grace from glory) we note at once that they
have a common element, which links them together, marks them off sharply and clearly
from all other relationships of God to the non-divine, and also makes them intelligible as
a closed duality. For both mysteries involve what we call in scholastic theology a quasi-
formal causality on the part of God, in contradistinction to his efficient causality.11
Accordingly, Rahner recognizes at least three strictly supernatural created realities that
result from God’s quasi-formal causality: the hypostatic union, the supernatural bestowal of
sanctifying grace, and the light of glory in the beatific vision. As he states,
All the strictly supernatural realities with which we are acquainted (the hypostatic union,
the visio beatifica and – as we shall go on to show here – the supernatural bestowal of
grace) have this in common, that in them there is expressed a relationship of God to a
creature which is not one of efficient causality (a production out of the cause, ‘ein Aus-
der-Ursache-Herausstellen’), and which must consequently fall under the head of formal
causality (a taking up into the ground [forma], ‘ein-In-den-Grund[forma]-
Hineinnehmen’): the ontological principle of the subsistence of a finite nature in the one
case, the ontological principle of a finite knowledge in the other.12
11
Rahner, “The Concept of Mystery in Catholic Theology,” 65.
12 Rahner, “Some Implications of the Scholastic Concept of Uncreated Grace,” 329-30. Cf. Vincent
Battaglia, “An Examination of Karl Rahner’s Trinitarian Theology,” Australian eJournal of Theology 9, no. 1
(2007): 13: “In the areas of grace, Christology, and the beatific vision, Rahner says that some created actuation –
respectively, sanctifying grace, the esse secundarium (the humanity of Christ), and the light of glory – disposes
created reality to quasi-formal union with the Uncreated Act.” Also, cf. P. de Letter, “Created Actuation by the
Uncreated Act: Difficulties and Answers,” Theological Studies 18, no. 1 (1957), 67:
From revelation we know three manners of God's self-donation to men: the Incarnation, sanctifying grace,
the beatific vision. In each of these there is a created actuation by the uncreated Act. For each of these we
must state briefly what it is that is actuated by the uncreated Act, what is the reality of the created actuation,
what particular union with God results from, or gives rise to, the created actuation. We follow the order of
historical realization and ontological dependence between the three: the Incarnation is the source of all
sanctifying grace, and this leads to the beatific vision.
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Since Rahner does not often distinguish sanctifying grace from the habit of charity, one
might conclude that his theology would more closely align with the three-point hypothesis
proposed by Charles Hefling than with Lonergan’s four-point hypothesis. The lack of a clear
distinction between sanctifying grace and the habit of charity would suggest that Rahner believes
there are only three strictly supernatural created realities, as Hefling similarly maintains. Also,
when Rahner speaks of the growth of grace into glory, he often does not specify whether
sanctifying grace and the light of glory are different graces in kind, or only in degree. Thus, he
may appear to agree with David Coffey’s two-point hypothesis, in which incarnation and grace
are the only two kinds of created supernatural realities. However, there is some evidence that
Rahner makes a real distinction between sanctifying grace and both the habit of charity and the
light of glory, which will be examined in this chapter.
Rahner’s ambiguity is due to his tendency to frame “sanctifying grace, the gift of faith,
divinely infused virtues, etc.” in terms of “the a priori determination of man’s ‘transcendentality’
(in grace) as such,” rather than as “(unique) ‘categoreal’ determinations of man.”13
However,
Rahner does admit of some differentiation within humanity’s transcendental horizon. Since
God’s uncreated grace establishes a non-appropriated relation in human beings to each of the
divine persons, it is evident to Rahner that humanity’s graced horizon has a trinitarian structure.
This trinitarian structure of grace is also evident in the external terms, or created formal effects,
of the divine missions by which the immanent Trinity becomes the economic Trinity.
Accordingly, human transcendence may be differentiated with respect to the various forms of
13
Karl Rahner, Preface to Otto Muck, Transcendental Method, trans. William D. Seidensticker (New York,
Herder and Herder, 1968), 10.
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created grace by which God bestows human beings with non-appropriated relations to the divine
persons and their uncreated grace.
For Rahner, all three divine persons are communicated in history through the divine
missions. It would seem odd if all four divine relations, with which the three divine persons are
necessarily connected, were not also manifest in the divine missions through their external terms
in the various forms of created grace. This would explain why created grace may be really
differentiated into four supernatural created realities. Indeed, Rahner’s theology may be
interpreted to imply that people cannot have non-appropriated relations that terminate distinctly
in each of the divine persons unless they share in the created graces that participate in the four
divine relations communicated as uncreated grace through the divine missions. This participation
of created grace in uncreated grace exists on account of the relationship between their respective
types of causality: material and quasi-formal. Thus understood, the four created graces are all
necessary and interrelated aspects of God’s self-communication. Furthermore, Rahner’s
discussions of the created grace of union (or esse secundarium), sanctifying grace, the habit of
charity, and the light of glory may constitute a foundation for transposing the four-point
hypothesis into the categories of his thought. His statements about these four created
supernatural realities and their relation to the divine persons will be examined in what follows.
1. Point One: Esse Secundarium
First to be considered is Rahner’s theology of the created grace of union, the equivalent
of the esse secundarium discussed by Lonergan. Rahner notes that while only Christ experiences
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his created grace of union directly, people can indirectly experience it asymptotically as the
ultimate fulfillment of the human obediential potency for union with God. Christ’s existential
relationship to God as human may thus be understood analogically. Rahner explains,
The fact that this existential relationship of Christ as man to God is not immediately
available in our own experience, thus where our concepts have their origin, does not
absolutely forbid our making such statements. For the ontic relationship of his human
nature is not immediately available to us either, and yet it can be stated in an analogical,
indirect and asymptotic way. Otherwise there would be no Christology at all which could
say something about what Christ really is.14
While this external term of the Son’s divine mission is created ad extra by all three
persons through efficient causality, only the Son is said to be incarnate because of the Son’s
personal quasi-formal causality.15
On account of the hypostatic union, Rahner attributes the
human nature of Christ to the Son in a non-appropriated manner. Consequently, the
transcendental orientation of Christ’s human intellect toward God enables him to recognize his
own divine filiation and immediate proximity to the Word, with whom his human nature is
hypostatically united.16
14
Rahner, “Current Problems in Christology,” 172.
15 Cf. Rahner, The Trinity, 23:
Here something occurs “outside” the intra-divine life in the world itself, something which is not a mere
effect of the efficient causality of the triune God acting as one in the world, but something which belongs to
the Logos alone, which is the history of one divine person, in contrast to the other divine persons. This
remains true even if we admit that this hypostatic union which belongs exclusively to the Logos is causally
effected by the whole Trinity. There has occurred in salvation history something which can be predicated
only of one divine person.
16 Cf. Roman A. Siebenrock, “Christology,” in The Cambridge Companion to Karl Rahner, eds. Declan
Marmion and Mary E. Hines (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 115. Rahner clarifies that Christ’s
awareness of God is not simply reducible to the same form of “God-consciousness” that is capable of being
experienced by all other human beings, such as Friedrich Schleiermacher believed. Cf. Tyron Inbody, “Rahner’s
Christology: A Critical Assessment,” Saint Luke's Journal of Theology 25, no. 4 (1982): 298: “Neither is [Rahner]
213
Rahner also emphasizes through his “Grundaxiom” that the Son is the only divine person
who could have become incarnate. Otherwise, he notes, “If one admits that each divine person
can enter into hypostatic union with a created being, then the fact of the incarnation of the Logos
really reveals nothing about the Logos himself, that is, about his proper immanent divine
being.”17
Hence, he argues against a univocal understanding of the divine hypostases: “One
should at least ask whether the particular relative subsistence, in which Father and Spirit are
distinct from and not identical with the Son, might not prevent the exercise of such a functio
hypostatica (though it does not, in the case of the Son).”18
Rahner contrasts with Lonergan on
this issue, as Lonergan adopts Thomas Aquinas’ position that any of the divine persons could
speaking simply about a consciousness Christology, viz., a human being who has raised his God-consciousness to a
more or less complete level.”
17 Karl Rahner, “Remarks on the Dogmatic Treatise ‘De Trinitate,’” in Theological Investigations, Vol. 4:
More Recent Writings, trans. Kevin Smyth (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1966), 90. Cf. Fred Sanders, “The
Image of the Immanent Trinity: Implications of Rahner’s Rule for a Theological Interpretation of Scripture” (PhD
diss., Graduate Theological Union, 2001), in ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, https://search-proquest-
com.proxycu.wrlc.org/pqdtglobal/docview/304697503/ fulltextPDF/92C826F944084DBBPQ/ (accessed January
23, 2018), 83: “Rahner is in line with the consensus view, but he goes further by arguing that it is not merely fitting
for the economic Logos to be the immanent Logos; it is in some sense necessary.”
18 Rahner, “Remarks on the Dogmatic Treatise ‘De Trinitate,’” 80n. Cf. Rahner, The Trinity, 29-30n25:
He who denies that the Father or the Spirit too might have become man would deny them a “perfection”
only if it had first been established that such a possibility is a real possibility, hence a “perfection” for the
Father or for the Spirit. But precisely this is not sure. Thus it is, for instance, a perfection for the Son as Son
to descend from the Father. But it would be pure nonsense to conclude thence that the Father as such
should also possess this perfection. Since the hypostatic function “outwards” is the corresponding divine
hypostasis, we are not allowed to deduce anything for another hypostasis from the function of this
hypothesis, even when our abstract universal concept of subsistence shows no contradiction with the
hypothesis that the Father should cause a human nature to subsist.
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have become incarnate. Lonergan argues, “Since the divine act of existence is common to the
three persons, the potency to enter into the hypostatic union is also common to all three.”19
Rahner believes that the existence of the incarnate Christ has a necessary connection to
grace and vision, both as received in himself and as communicated to others.20
On the one hand,
Christ received sanctifying grace and an immediate vision of God as a matter of ontological
necessity.21
On the other hand, since the grace and vision of all human beings is mediated
19
Bernard Lonergan, The Ontological and Psychological Constitution of Christ, vol. 7 of Collected Works
of Bernard Lonergan, eds. Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran, trans. Michael G. Shields (Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, 2002), 137.
20 Cf. Karl Rahner, “Resurrection, I. Resurrection of Christ, 3. The Soteriological Aspect of Christ’s
Resurrection,” in Encyclopedia of Theology: The Concise Sacramentum Mundi, eds. Karl Rahner, et al. (New York:
The Seabury Press, 1975), 1442:
Where theology rightly, if not unanimously, postulates a physical instrumental causality of Jesus’ glorified
humanity for the supernatural life of man, a basis is available for a more precise interpretation of the
soteriological significance of the risen and exalted Lord as such. . . . Such an endeavor would of course
raise the question whether every strictly supernatural communication of God to a created spirit in grace and
vision is not necessarily (ontologically and therefore morally) to be thought of as an element (provisional
preparation and subsequent repercussion in the world as a whole) of God’s personal self-communication to
the world in the hypostatic union, which itself, as the communication of God himself to a historical reality,
is only fully accomplished in the definitive fulfilment of that history which we attain in the resurrection of
Jesus. Only on this basis would it perhaps be possible to indicate why Jesus not only de facto and by a
certain extrinsic suitability is the first to rise to the definitive state of glory (Col 1:18; I Cor 15:20), but is
necessarily the first.
21 Regarding the necessity of Christ’s sanctifying grace, cf. Karl Rahner, “On the Theology of the
Incarnation,” in Theological Investigations, Vol. 4: More Recent Writings, trans. Kevin Smyth (London: Darton,
Longman and Todd, 1966), 112n:
All Catholic theologians are familiar with the view that the hypostatic union of the humanity of Christ with
the Logos has as a necessary consequence the intrinsic divinization of this human nature. Though it is a
consequence of the hypostatic union which is morally and indeed ontologically necessary, it is distinct from
the union, and through it alone is the humanity of Christ sanctified and divinized ‘in itself’ – and (though in
a unique measure of intrinsic holiness) is precisely that which is to be bestowed on all men as grace of
justification.
Regarding the necessity of Christ’s immediate vision of God, cf. Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian
Faith, trans. William V. Dych (New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 1984), 200: “The intrinsic effect of the
hypostatic union for the assumed humanity of the Logos consists precisely and in a real sense only in the very thing
215
through Christ, these may only be received in the act of being assimilated to God’s self-
communication in Christ.22
Further, Rahner suggests that Christ’s incarnation is necessary for the
reception of grace and vision by all, even the angels.23
Indeed, he subordinates angelology to
Christology and identifies the grace of the angels with the grace of Christ.24
In his view, God’s
self-communication requires the creation of finite persons, its addressees, in a world of both
spirit and matter. This is because he understands matter as “the necessary otherness of the finite
spirit.”25
which is ascribed to all men as their goal and their fulfillment, namely, the immediate vision of God which the
created, human soul of Christ enjoys.”
22 Cf. Siebenrock, “Christology,” 115. Also, cf. Patrick Burke, Reinterpreting Rahner: A Critical Study of
His Major Themes (New York: Fordham University Press, 2002), 138: “God’s immediacy to the spirit is mediated
through Christ’s humanity, for just as the visio beatifica does not destroy but in fact demands the created lumen
gloriae as its mediation, so also Christ’s humanity remains as a finite mediator of the infinite God.”
23 Cf. Karl Rahner, “The Body in the Order of Salvation,” in Theological Investigations, Vol. 17: Jesus,
Man, and the Church, trans. Margaret Kohl (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1981), 80: “The beatific vision,
the direct contemplation of God, is based on a grace which would not exist, and probably could not exist, unless the
divine Logos had taken, and remained, flesh.” Also, cf. Peter Joseph Fritz, Karl Rahner’s Theological Aesthetics
(Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2014): 129: “Angels, though they may seem self-
sufficient, receive everything by the grace of Christ. Grace is the layer that must subtend all consideration of
subjectivity, whether human or angelic. Rahner diverges from Heidegger on this count because instead of an
apriorism of finitude, Rahner sets forth an apriorism of the infinite grace of Christ.”
24 Cf. Karl Rahner, “Angel,” in Sacramentum Mundi: An Encyclopedia of Theology, Vol. 1, eds. Karl
Rahner, et al. (New York: Herder and Herder, 1968), 31:
The pure “spirituality” of the angels was taught in the 6th
century and was then made the absolute starting
point of angelology in such a way that theologically the unity of angels and men in the one saving history
of the incarnate Word and the natural conditions of that unity remained relatively obscure. . . .
Consequently, the subordination of angelology to Christology (an explicit theme with Paul) does not
receive its due theological weight. Even today there are textbooks of dogmatics — Schmaus is an exception
— in which angelology is conceived quite non-Christologically. It was not, however, completely lacking
when (as with Suarez in contrast to Aquinas and Scotus) the grace of the angels was viewed as the grace of
Christ.
25 Rahner, The Trinity, 90. For a fuller explanation, cf. ibid., 89-90:
The self-communication of the free personal God who gives himself as a person (in the modern sense of the
word!) presupposes a personal recipient. It does not just happen that God communicates himself to him; the
addressee of the self-communication must be such on account of the very nature of this self-
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Rahner draws the further conclusion that divine self-communication necessarily results in
the incarnation of Christ.26
This means that Christ would have become incarnate even if
humanity had never sinned.27
Given God’s free offer of grace, Rahner argues that the incarnate
communication. If God wishes to step freely outside of himself, he must create man. There is no need to
explain in detail that he must then create a spiritual-personal being, the only one who possesses the
“obediential potency” for the reception of such a self-communication.
The only question which traditional school theology might raise is the objection that an
immaterial, uncorporeal personal subject (an “angel,” therefore) must be considered as another possible
addressee of God’s self-communication; that, in fact, there are angels who have received this self-
communication. It is impossible to refute this objection completely here. But it should not be considered
valid. In order to see this we must first show that there exists a unity of spirit and matter (the world), in
which the angels too remain included in their own way; that the grace of the angels is also the grace of
Christ, hence a moment of this self-communication of God which proceeds towards the one world, as
constituted of spirit and matter, the latter being the necessary otherness of the finite spirit. While this self-
communication is free, it necessarily finds, in the incarnation (and in no other way), its peak and
irreversible finality. In this one process the angels receive grace as peculiar personal moments in the one
world of spirit and matter.
26 It should be noted that although this is Rahner’s most commonly expressed belief, he does appear to
speculate, at least on one occasion, that perhaps the Word could have redeemed the world without becoming
incarnate. While Rahner argues that any possible order of redemption would have to involve the self-communication
of the Son as the redeemer, it is unclear whether he thinks such a divine mission of the Son could have terminated in
anything other than the created grace of union. In any case, such a created term would have to be proper to the Son
alone, or else the economic Trinity would fail to communicate the immanent Trinity. This may imply that in any
possible order of grace, each of the divine relations would have a created term. Cf. Karl Rahner, “Current Problems
in Christology,” in Theological Investigations, Vol. 1: God, Christ, Mary and Grace, trans. Cornelius Ernst
(London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1961), 178-9:
All is to be redeemed, because as good it is capable of redemption, because apart from Christ it is all lost,
as a whole, with all its goodness. All. But how does this happen, when he shares the appearance and the
concreteness of this lost state, when he himself becomes what is in need of redemption? He could have
done this in another way? He could have saved the world even without this, and redeemed it into his
freedom and infinity? Certainly: but in fact he did so by becoming himself what was in need of redemption,
and in this way, this way alone, must take place that one Redemption which really exists and is the only
one we know.
27 Cf. Karl Rahner, “Order, III. Supernatural Order,” in Encyclopedia of Theology: The Concise
Sacramentum Mundi, eds. Karl Rahner, et al. (New York: The Seabury Press, 1975), 1115-6:
The supernatural order is a Christological order. Although it is a theologically controverted view, it can
nevertheless be postulated that God’s original intention in his self-communication, which gave the history
of salvation its structure even before the Fall, was directed to the incarnation of the Logos as its historical,
eschatological culmination. The incarnation, therefore, together with the glorification of Christ, which
because of sin takes place through death, both manifests the supernatural order absolutely in history and
definitively establishes it in the world. In other words, it is permissible to assume with Scotism that even
supralapsarian grace was the grace of Christ, and that the supernatural order as such is Christological.
217
Christ is the necessary and proper manifestation of the immanent Logos in history. In accord
with his “Grundaxiom,” he argues that “Christ’s ‘human nature’ is not something which happens
to be there, among many other things, which might equally well have been hypostatically
assumed, but it is precisely that which comes into being when God’s Logos ‘utters’ himself
outwards.”28
Indeed, he remarks that if Christ becoming an angel would have expressed the
immanent Word just as well as his incarnation in human flesh, such arbitrary manifestations
would seem to teach humanity nothing more about the Word than mere appropriations:
A really Christian angelology must, from the start, fit in with the fact of the God-man. It
should not start from the hypothesis or implication that God might equally well have
become an angel, if only he had wished it. For whether we like it or not, such a
hypothesis makes of the incarnation an unbelievable myth; it does not let God appear in
the flesh; that which appears no longer expresses anything of the one who appears.29
The incarnation reveals the Son perfectly to human beings in Christ’s solidarity with
them. Christ also reveals humanity to itself, since the hypostatic union is the ultimate fulfillment
of humanity’s obediential potency for intimate union with God. As Rahner writes, “The highest
actuation . . . of this obediential potency (and this is no purely negative determination, no purely
formal non-repugnance) makes the self-suspended thing all the more man in the most radical
sense, precisely unites it thus with the Logos.”30
Hence, Rahner views the incarnate Christ as the
Christ does not become and remain head and goal of saving history only when he enters into it because of
sin. The supernatural order present in the history of salvation is from the outset of such a kind that God
willed to communicate himself to the world in Christ in the Incarnation.
28 Rahner, The Trinity, 89.
29 Ibid., 90.
30 Rahner, “Current Problems in Christology,” 171n. Cf. Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, 217:
218
climax of humanity’s evolutionary development.31
Since Christ is the archetype of humanity,
Rahner states that “Christology is the end and beginning of anthropology.”32
Accordingly, he
notes, “Christology may be studied as self-transcending anthropology, and anthropology as
deficient Christology.”33
Indeed, Rahner stresses that Christ is the first and constitutive
embodiment of that union with God to which all people are ordered:
Although the hypostatic union is a unique event in its own essence, and viewed in itself it
is the highest conceivable event, it is nevertheless an intrinsic moment within the whole
process by which grace is bestowed upon all spiritual creatures. . . . When God brings
about man's self-transcendence into God through his absolute self-communication to all
men in such a way that both elements constitute a promise to all men which is irrevocable
and which has already reached fulfillment in one man, then we have precisely what is
signified by hypostatic union.34
Rahner clarifies, however, that Christ’s manner of participation in God is different than
that of the rest of humanity.35
He states that “the prerogatives which accrue intrinsically to the
human reality of Jesus through the hypostatic union are of the same essential nature as those
If this is what human nature is, the poor, questioning and in itself empty orientation towards the abiding
mystery whom we call God, then we do understand more clearly what it means to say: God assumes a
human nature as his own. If in this indefinable nature, whose limit, that is, its ‘definition,’ is this unlimited
orientation towards the infinite mystery of fullness, is assumed by God as his own reality, then it has
reached the very point towards which it is always moving by virtue of its essence. It is its very meaning,
and not just an accidental side activity which it could also do without, to be given away and to be handed
over, to be that being who realizes himself and finds himself by losing himself once and for all in the
incomprehensible.
31 Cf. Siebenrock, “Christology,” 119.
32 Rahner, “On the Theology of the Incarnation,” 117.
33 Rahner, “Current Problems in Christology,” 164n.
34 Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, 201.
35 Cf. Rahner, “On the Theology of the Incarnation,” 112: “It might be imagined that this God-becoming-
man takes place as often as men come into existence and that the incarnation is not a unique miracle. This would
imply that the historicity and personality in question was reduced to the level of the nature which is everywhere and
always the same: and this would be nothing short of mythologizing the truth.”
219
which are also intended for other spiritual subjects through grace.”36
Here, Rahner indicates that
Christ’s union with the divine is necessary and intrinsic to his ontological constitution as the Son,
whereas others are united with God through a contingent reception of grace. It is clear that he
does not describe the hypostatic union only in terms of the sanctifying grace that Christ shares in
common with other human beings.37
Rahner denies that the hypostatic union is merely an
accidental union when he writes that it “cannot be understood only as a ‘moral unity,’ as for
36
Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, 200. Emphasis is Rahner’s.
37 In his criticism of Rahner’s theology, Thomas Joseph White claims that “the ‘grace of union’ has been in
effect reduced solely to a union of ‘habitual grace’” (Thomas Joseph White, The Incarnate Lord: A Thomistic Study
in Christology, Thomistic Ressourcement Series, Vol. 5 (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University Press, 2015),
77). Indeed, he thinks Rahner’s writings imply “that the hypostatic union consists formally, in some sense, in the
‘habitual graces’ of knowledge and love that are given to the human nature of Christ,” such that “the ‘grace of
union’ (to use the classical terminology) flows forth from the habitual, sanctifying grace of Christ” (ibid., 97). In his
assessment, Rahner “has in effect purposefully evacuated from his theology of the hypostatic union any other
criteria by which to denote this union other than that of habitual, sanctifying grace” (ibid., 98). Hence, he argues that
the hypostatic union in Rahner’s thought “seems to be constituted primarily by what Aquinas would term the
accidental quality of habitual grace (ibid., 99). By way of contrast, he points out that Rahner “almost never speaks
either of the hypostatic ‘subsistence’ of a divine person in a human nature or of the union of two natures in a divine
person” (ibid, 98). He interprets this to mean that Rahner “takes aim in particular even at traditional subsistence
theories of the incarnation” (ibid., 93) and “evacuate[s] the hypostatic union of any real intrinsic ontological
content” (ibid., 113).
However, White is incorrect in his assumption that “Rahner does not tell us ‘how’ the Word exists or
subsists as human, except by reference to the inherent presence of sanctifying grace in the soul of Christ” (ibid., 99).
In fact, Rahner is clear that “the unio hypostatica implies or involves an entitative determination, namely the being-
united of the human reality with the Logos, as an ontological determination of this human reality” (Rahner, “Current
Problems in Christology,” 170). Hence, for Rahner, the divine esse of the Logos ontologically determines Christ’s
humanity through the hypostatic union. Accordingly, Christ’s habitual grace is the effect, rather than the cause, of
the hypostatic union. Another passage where Rahner discusses how the Logos subsists as human may be found in
Rahner, “On the Theology of the Incarnation,” 238:
To give greater clarity to the inexhaustible content of the truth of faith which expresses the incarnation, one
could take up here the Thomistic doctrine, that the humanity of Christ exists by the existence of the Logos.
But when putting forward this thesis, one should be clear that this existence of the Word is again not to be
thought of as the reality which – merely because of its being infinite – could bestow existence on any
thinkable ‘essence’, as if it could offer any essence a ground of existence which in itself was indifferent to
this essence rather than that or to which manner of existent being arose thereby. The being of the Logos –
considered of course as that which is received by procession from the Father – must be thought of as
exteriorizing itself, so that without detriment to its immutability in itself and of itself, it becomes itself in
truth the existence of a created reality – which must in all truth and reality be predicated of the being of the
Logos, because it is so.
220
example between a human word or a mere sign on the one hand and God on the other. It must
rather be understood only as an irrevocable kind of union between this human reality and God, as
a union which eliminates the possibility of separation.”38
Accordingly, “The unio hypostatica
implies or involves an entitative determination, namely the being-united of the human reality
with the Logos, as an ontological determination of this human reality.”39
The uncreated grace of
union brings about this entitative determination of Christ’s humanity through bestowing the
created grace of union, which may be identified as the esse secundarium.
Rahner warns that while Christ is unique among all humans by the hypostatic union, his
humanity must not be reduced to his divinity. Although Christ is a single existential subject, he
has two centers of activity and self-consciousness in his divine and human natures. Rahner notes
that the modern tendency to identify personhood with self-consciousness has unfortunately
inclined some to think that the person of Christ must have only one center of self-consciousness.
This conceptual tendency leads down the road toward either monophysitism or, at least,
monothelitism. Rahner explains,
The doctrine of two natures involves a duality of even a merely psychological and
relative kind between an existentially independent I-centre (Ichzentrum) in the man Jesus
and the Logos. . . . The concept of person is always at least in danger of being understood
in such a way that the ‘independence’ in view here seems to be excluded. It is not merely
since the nineteenth century, with Günther’s modern concept of person and Existentialist
philosophy, that this has been the case. The concept of person as the ontological principle
of a free active centre, self-conscious, present to itself and through itself in being, is a
concept which, in the sense just indicated, has always played round the edge of the most
static and objective concept of person. . . . If it were not the case, monothelitism would
have been quite inconceivable; for it was not just a political device for making a
38
Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, 202.
39 Rahner, “Current Problems in Christology,” 170.
221
concession to monophysitism, but persisted with such vigour that today it is still a
widespread ‘heresy’ among Christians – all verbal orthodoxy notwithstanding.40
Against the idea of monothelitism, Rahner notes that Christ’s humanity “cannot be
conceived of simply as God’s activity in and through a human nature thought of as purely
instrumental, a nature which in relation to the Logos would be, ontologically and morally, purely
passive.”41
Interpreting his humanity as a mere instrument of his divine consciousness would
amount to a belief in mono-existentialism that fails to account for his finite human existence and
self-consciousness.42
In contrast, Rahner insists it is uniquely possible for Christ’s divine person
to have two distinct centers of freedom through the incarnation. He writes, “Only a divine Person
can possess as its own a freedom really distinct from itself in such a way that this freedom does
40
Ibid., 159-60.
41 Ibid., 161. Cf. Karl Rahner, “Exegesis and Dogmatic Theology,” in Theological Investigations, Vol. 5:
Later Writings, trans. Karl H. Kruger (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1966), 83: “Would it not be possible to
eradicate in this way quite a few monophysite tendencies in Christology (not, of course, in the official dogmatic
theology but only in that of individual Christians), which on closer examination see nothing more in the ‘human
nature’ of the Logos than a sort of livery or puppet for God, something which is directed only towards us and not
also in dialogic freedom towards God?”
42 Cf. Rahner, “Current Problems in Christology,” 160-61:
In the customary teaching about sin, untouched by any kind of Existentialism, a distinction is made
between peccatum personale and peccatum naturae; in this terminology too we see that existential ideas
about the person are simultaneously at play. If these come to the fore, a connexion obtrudes itself upon the
mind: where there is a single person, there is a single freedom, a single unique personal active centre, in
relation to which any other reality (= nature, natures) can only be in this person the material and the
instrument, the recipient of commands and the manifestation of this single, personal centre of freedom. But
this is precisely not the case with Jesus. Otherwise he would only be the God who is active among us in
human form, and not the true man who can be our Mediator with respect to God in genuine human
freedom. It would of course be utterly false to say that the conceptual pair ‘Person-nature’ involves this
monothelite interpretation (it would, be better and clearer to say today ‘mono-existentialist conception’).
But the concept of person, as it is in actual fact understood, in fact insistently suggests this interpretation,
and it is again and again taken unreflexively in this sense, though the interpretation is never reflexively
thought out and formulated (for that would be heretical).
222
not cease to be truly free even with regard to the divine Person possessing it, while it continues
to qualify this very Person as its ontological subject.”43
Ultimately, Christ’s human self-consciousness is characterized by an awareness of his
own creatureliness relative to the divine Word with whom his human nature is hypostatically
united. As Rahner points out, “The ‘human nature’ of the Logos possesses a genuine,
spontaneous, free, spiritual, active centre, a human self-consciousness, which as creaturely faces
the eternal Word in a genuinely human attitude of adoration, obedience, a most radical sense of
creaturehood.”44
This implies that Christ’s humanity has its own existential center of activity that
distinguishes it from God as a creature.
Christ’s human awareness of his divinity is not merely subconscious. Rahner points out
that there is a direct proportion between the degree to which a being is present to itself in act and
the degree to which that being is intelligible and self-aware.45
Thus, since Christ’s humanity is
hypostatically united to the pure act of the Son through the created grace of union, this entitative
43
Ibid., 162. Cf. Karl Rahner, “Jesus Christ, IV. History of Dogma and Theology,” in Encyclopedia of
Theology: The Concise Sacramentum Mundi, eds. Karl Rahner, et al. (New York: The Seabury Press, 1975), 770:
“God’s closer proximity does not absorb the creature but makes it more independent.”
44 Rahner, “Current Problems in Christology,” 158.
45 Cf. Karl Rahner, “Dogmatic Reflections on the Knowledge and Self-Consciousness of Christ,” in
Theological Investigations, Vol. 5: Later Writings, trans. Karl H. Kruger (London: Darton, Longman and Todd,
1966), 205: “We start then from the axiom of the thomistic metaphysics of knowledge according to which being,
and self-awareness, are elements of the one reality which condition each other immanently.” Also, cf. Rahner,
Foundations of Christian Faith, 303:
The presupposition for an ‘ontological Christology’ is the insight which is already found in classical
Thomism that in their ultimate meaning being and consciousness are the same thing, that an existent
possesses being to the degree that the existent is ‘present to itself’ and ‘returns’ to itself, and thereby is
responsible for itself in knowledge and freedom, and precisely in this way becomes open to the whole of
reality and is both intelligens et intellectum. . . . He is someone whose ‘basic constitution’ as the original
unity of being and consciousness is to have his origins in God radically and completely, and to be given
over to God radically and completely.
223
determination enables Christ to be consciously present to himself in his humanity as a divine
person. As Rahner explains,
The higher an entity . . . in its grade of being, compactness of being, ‘actuality’, the more
intelligible it is and present to itself (bei sich selbst). . . . The fact that Christ’s humanity
is substantially united to the Logos, in so far as this is a determination (‘act’) of the
human nature itself, cannot be simply ‘subconscious’. For as something ontically higher,
this determination is something real which cannot be simply unconscious at least in the
case where its subject has attained that grade of actuality in being which involves a
presence to itself (Bei-sich-selbst-sein) of this entity. At least in the case where this
presupposition is satisfied, it is metaphysically impossible that this actuality of the
subject should be simply unconscious, when we remember that this actuality is
entitatively higher in comparison with the level of actuality proper to the subject, and that
this subject is present to itself; it is impossible that the immediate subject of the human
presence-to-itself should not also be present to itself precisely in so far as it is wholly and
substantially made over to the Logos.46
Rahner maintains that Christ had the light of glory even while he lived on earth, just as he
had the fullness of sanctifying grace and charity. This gift was not received contingently, as it
has been by the non-divine saints in heaven. His vision of God is unique in that it is an intimate,
immediate, and ontologically necessary consequence of his grace of union. Indeed, he
experiences himself as the uncreated God even as he sees God through the created grace of the
light of glory.47
Rahner explains,
46
Rahner, “Current Problems in Christology,” 169. Cf. Edward L. Shirley, “The Relationship between
Christology and Mariology in the Writings of Karl Rahner,” Dissertation, Fordham University, 1990,
http://search.proquest.com.proxycu.wrlc.org/pqdtft/docview/3038 66077/fulltextPDF/6B84685840B4C11PQ/
(accessed January 23, 2018), 185-6: “The higher the degree of being, the higher the degree of self-consciousness.
Therefore, this highest ontological determination of the created reality of Christ, that is to say, God himself, must be
conscious of itself (for what is higher on the plane of being cannot be lower on the plane of consciousness).
Therefore, the visio immediata is an intrinsic part of the hypostatic union itself.”
47 For Rahner’s view on the necessity of the light of glory for an immediate vision of God, cf. Rahner,
“Some Implications of the Scholastic Concept of Uncreated Grace” 336n26: “A created supernatural disposition
(grace or the light of glory, which are capable of growth) is a necessary presupposition of the vision.” For Rahner’s
thoughts on the relationship between the light of glory and the humanity of Christ, cf. Karl Rahner, “Dogmatic
Questions on Easter,” in Theological Investigations, Vol. 4: More Recent Writings, trans. Kevin Smyth (London:
Darton, Longman and Todd, 1966), 132:
224
The ‘visio immediata’ is . . . the consequence and not the presupposition of the conscious
being-with-the-Logos of Christ’s soul. It is not (in the last resort) a donum, conferred as a
moral ‘title’ on the human soul on account of its being united hypostatically to the Logos,
for reasons of convenientia or decentia; it is the hypostatic union itself, in so far as this is
necessarily an ‘intelligibile actu’ in the intelligens actu of Christ’s human soul.48
Rahner also notes that the Father is self-communicated along with the Son in the
incarnation of Christ. He states that the Father “utters himself and in this way communicates the
Son as his own, personal self-manifestation.”49
Indeed, the utterance of the Father into history
produces the humanity of Christ through the created grace of union. In this sense, the Father
speaks through the Son who is spoken. Yet, since the Father is the one who utters, rather than the
one who is uttered into the world with a human nature, Rahner argues, “When we say that the
Son is the salvific self-communication of the Father, we do not say that the Father has appeared
and has united himself ‘hypostatically’ to some human nature.”50
Thus, Christ’s human nature is
proper to the Son alone.
The immanent Word does not speak, but is rather spoken by the Father. Hence, Rahner
stresses that “the Logos is not the one who utters, but the one who is uttered.”51
However, the
incarnate Word does speak what he hears from the Father in his humanity, as “Christ’s ‘human
This leads to the question of how the lumen gloriae, which admits to the immediacy of God, is related to
the glorified humanity of Christ, for which we have also claimed the function of perpetual mediation of the
immediacy of the vision of God. This function must exist, if we are really to affirm a perpetual function of
mediatorship in the God-man, and if it is not to be excluded by what is after all the essence of salvation and
supernatural bliss, the immediate vision of God.
48 Rahner, “Current Problems in Christology,” 170.
49 Rahner, The Trinity, 35.
50 Ibid., 63n17.
51 Ibid., 106.
225
nature’ . . . is precisely that which comes into being when God’s Logos ‘utters’ himself
outwards.”52
Here, it should be noted that since the created grace of union grounds Christ’s
mission to speak to the world what he hears from the Father, it must do so by grounding a
created relation of Christ’s humanity to the immanent Word. This created relation of Christ’s
humanity to the Son is analogous to the Father’s uncreated relation to the Son. Now, just as
paternity is what relates the Father to the Son, the created grace of union is what relates Christ’s
humanity to the Son. As such, it follows that the created grace of union imitates divine paternity.
This comparison could yield some analogical understanding of the Father in his relation to the
Son. On this matter, Rahner’s view appears to be compatible with Lonergan and Robert Doran’s
position that the created grace of union participates in paternity, rather than filiation.53
Now, while Rahner mostly speaks of Christ’s human subsistence in terms of the created
grace of union, he does use the language of esse secundarium on at least one occasion. In a
dialogue at the “Symposium de l'Arbresle” in 1961, which is transcribed in Problèmes Actuels de
Christologie in a French translation, Rahner discusses the term esse secundarium as used by
Thomas Aquinas.54
He suggests that Aquinas’ statements on the existence of Christ in Summa
theologiae III, q. 17, a. 2 and Quaestio disputata de unione Verbi incarnati are not contradictory,
as they may appear. He contends, rather, that they emphasize different aspects of the issue in a
52
Ibid., 89.
53 Cf. Robert M. Doran, The Trinity in History: Missions and Processions (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 2012), 53.
54 Cf. H. Bouëssé et al., “Débats sur le Rapport du P. Patfoort,” in Problèmes Actuels de Christologie:
Travaux du Symposium de l'Arbresle 1961, eds. H. Bouëssé and J.-J. Latour (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1965).
226
complementary manner.55
He believes that Aquinas’ discussion of Christ’s esse secundarium in
De unione does not contradict his claim in Summa theologiae III, q. 17, a. 2 that the divine esse
is the esse of Christ. For Rahner, it is possible to reconcile both statements of Aquinas if the esse
secundarium is defined as “what is given by the divine esse to this nature, in the way that it
makes it exist.” Toward this end, he explains that Christ’s humanity exists through the divine
esse, as the infinite quasi-formal cause of its subsistence, and through the esse secundarium, as
God’s finite formal effect.56
He says,
55
Cf. Dennis W. Jowers, The Trinitarian Axiom of Karl Rahner: The Economic Trinity Is the Immanent
Trinity and Vice Versa (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2006), 170n: “Rahner offers what he regards as a
reconciliation of the view that Christ’s human nature exists by the existence of the Word with the view that this
nature possesses its own esse secundarium. . . . Rahner at least seems to ascribe two esses, the Logos’ esse divinum,
and a creaturely esse secundarium, to the incarnate Christ.”
56 Guy Mansini discusses the quasi-formal relationship of the divine esse to Christ’s esse secundarium in
Rahner’s theology. In fact, he identifies a quasi-formal relationship between uncreated grace and each of the created
graces. Cf. Guy Mansini, “Quasi-Formal Causality and Change in the Other: A Note on Karl Rahner’s Christology,”
Thomist 52 (1988): 294:
Just as uncreated grace is quasi-formally related to the just so that created sanctifying grace is its
dispositive formal effect, really distinct from it, and just as the divine essence is quasi-formally related to
the created and beatified intellect so that the lumen gloriae is its dispositive formal effect really distinct
from it, so the divine esse of the Logos is quasi-formally related to the humanity of Jesus so that the esse
secundarium of Christ spoken of by St. Thomas is its dispositive formal effect, really distinct from it.
Rahner elsewhere identifies a quasi-formal relationship of uncreated grace to the created graces of sanctifying grace
and the light of glory. Cf. Rahner, “Some Implications of the Scholastic Concept of Uncreated Grace,” 341:
Does not our view, with its emphasis on the relative independence of uncreated grace as regards created
grace, endanger the significance of created grace for justification, adoption, etc., as Trent sees them? We
need not here go into the familiar controversy conducted above all by Scheeben and Granderath as to the
meaning of Chapter VII of the Sixth Session of the Council of Trent in the matter of the unica causa
formalis iustificationis. In this question too we may surely have recourse to the concepts developed in
scholastic theology in its treatment of the visio beatifica. Just as there the light of glory is seen as the
dispositio ultima quae est necessitas ad formam, so here an analogous relationship may be assumed to hold
between created and uncreated grace. In this regard created grace is seen as causa materialis (dispositio
ultima) for the formal causality which God exercises by graciously communicating his own Being to the
creature.
227
I have some difficulty accepting that St. Thomas could have changed his position so
quickly; whether De Unione is anterior or posterior to the IIIa pars, the difficulty remains
in both cases.
That is why I wonder whether these two views, which seem so diverse, are not
reconcilable in a certain way. Could not the esse secundarium be conceived as what is
given by the divine esse to this nature, in the way that it makes it exist? This question is
really very complex: indeed, on the one hand, it is necessary to assign to the divine esse a
formal, and not only efficient causality, which causes something distinct from itself, in
human nature, to be something human. And on the other hand, an infinite act
communicating itself to a finite potency, considered in itself, is neither limited nor
restricted. Nevertheless, what it does in nature itself is and remains finite and limited in
some manner. That is why we must distinguish in God a formal cause and its formal
effect. Is it not in this sense that a reconciliation of the two views attributed to St. Thomas
would be possible?57
Furthermore, Rahner argues that while Christ’s human nature subsists in a divine person
instead of a human person, this does not remove something positive from his humanity. He notes
that when God causes a human nature to subsist as a person, this negates that human nature’s
limitations in regard to personality. Hence, as Christ’s humanity is caused by God to subsist in
the divine esse, the divine esse negates a negativity in his human nature inasmuch as it adds
57
H. Bouëssé et al., “Débats sur le Rapport du P. Patfoort,” 414-5:
J’ai quelque difficulté à admettre que saint Thomas ait pu changer si rapidement de position; que le De
Unione soit antérieur ou postérieur à la IIIa pars, la difficulté demeure dans les deux cas.
C’est pourquoi je me demande si ces deux opinions, qui paraissent si diverses, ne sont pas
conciliables d’une certaine façon. L’esse secundarium ne pourrait-il pas être conçu comme ce qui est donné
par l’esse divin à cette nature, en tant qu’il la fait exister? Cette question est vraiment trés complexe: en
effet, d’un côté, il faut assigner dans l’esse divin une causalité formelle, et pas seulement efficiente, qui
fasse que quelque chose de distinct de soi, dans la nature humaine, soit quelque chose d’humain. Et d’un
autre côté, un acte infini se communiquant à une puissance finie, considéré en lui-même, n’est ni limité ni
restreint. Néanmoins, ce qu’il fait dans la nature elle-même, est et reste fini et limité de quelque manière.
C’est pourquoi nous ne pouvons que distinguer en Dieu une cause formelle et son effet formel. N’est-ce pas
dans ce sens que serait possible une conciliation des deux opinions attribuées à saint Thomas?
Translation is mine. For another occasion on which Rahner identifies two existences in Christ, one principal and one
secondary, cf. John M. McDermott, “The Christologies of Karl Rahner,” Gregorianum 67 (1986): 310n: “At a
seminar with the Theology Department after the reception of an honorary doctorate on May 25, 1982 at Fordham
University Rahner replied to a question about the number of existences in Christ with a chuckle: ‘An old question: in
one respect, two; in another, one.’”
228
something more to it that exceeds the limitations of finite personality, namely divine personality.
Hence, the divine esse does not undermine Christ’s human nature and subjectivity, but rather
adds to it insofar as the Son’s divine personality exceeds the limitations of human personality. As
Rahner explains,
Here is what one might say: in the very concept of created personality, there is something
negative. Thus, what the divine personality negates within the human personality is a
negativity and not some positivity. Human nature does not let go of what, by itself, must
be assigned to it; it only gives up a certain limitation as to our personality. It is not
because something is lacking that it is not a human person, but rightly because it has
much more.58
Accordingly, Rahner concludes that subsisting in the divine esse elevates Christ’s finite
human existence (as an esse secundarium) beyond what is natural to humanity apart from a
hypostatic union with the Word. As he states, “So we could demonstrate why it is more perfect
to exist in the Divine Word for that nature (that nature not being the nature of God). This is the
reason why human nature must be analyzed in such a way that it appears that the ultimate
actuation of this nature is precisely the actuation by the divine esse.”59
These insights provide
much material for reflection upon the esse secundarium as an analogue for the relationship of the
Father to the Son.
58
H. Bouëssé et al., “Débats sur le Rapport du P. Patfoort,” 415:
Voici ce qu’on pourrait dire: dans le concept même de personnalité créée, il y a quelque chose de négatif.
Donc, ce que nie la personnalité divine au sein de la personnalité humaine, c’est une négativité et non pas
quelque positivité. La nature humaine ne laisse pas partir ce qui, par soi, doit lui être assigné, elle ne fait
qu’abandonner une certaine limitation quant à notre personnalité. Ce n’est pas parce que quelque chose lui
manque, qu’elle n’est pas une personne humaine, mais c’est bien parce qu’elle a beaucoup plus.
59 Ibid.: “Alors on pourrait démontrer pourquoi c’est plus parfait d’exister dans le Verbe divin pour cette
nature-là (cette nature n’étant pas la nature de Dieu). C’est la raison pour laquelle la nature humaine doit être
analysée de telle sorte qu’il apparaisse que l’ultime actuation de cette nature est précisément l’actuation par l’esse
divin.”
229
2. Point Two: Sanctifying Grace
Rahner believes that the Son is not the only member of the Trinity to whom humanity has
a non-appropriated relation through a particular form of created grace. Indeed, the hypostatic
union is not the only instance in which a divine person has a special hypostatic relation to
something created.60
Rather, he stresses that human beings are related to each of the three divine
persons in a non-appropriated manner through the created formal effects of uncreated grace. As
will be seen below, Rahner argues that the gift of sanctifying grace bestows people with a
relation to the Holy Spirit who dwells in them. He also discusses charity as a participation in the
Holy Spirit who proceeds from the Father and the Son. Hence, his views bear some similarity to
Lonergan’s claims about sanctifying grace and charity in his four-point hypothesis.
In the event of God’s self-communication, the notional knowledge and love of the Son
and Spirit are bestowed upon human beings as uncreated grace in an interrelated manner.61
As
Rahner notes, “The two basic aspects of the divine self-communication condition each other
from the start. Hence we must be able to show that moments of one basic manner of self-
communication must also have meaning and importance for the other one.”62
Now, since the
divine persons are interrelated, each as a quasi-formal cause through uncreated grace, their
60
Cf. Rahner, “Remarks on the Dogmatic Treatise ‘De Trinitate,’” 89: “It has not been strictly proved by
Galtier and the theologians who share his theory that a special hypostatic relation must be strictly a hypostatic
union.”
61 Cf. Rahner, The Trinity, 117n: “For every metaphysics of the spirit even knowledge as such possesses
already a moment of volition, hence of love. This too entails that the utterance of the Logos as such occurs in a
movement of love, which reaches its completion in the ‘breathing’ of the Spirit.”
62 Ibid., 95n13.
230
respective material causes (i.e. created graces) must also be interrelated. These created graces,
which communicate the Trinity as the external terms of the divine missions, shape human
knowledge and love together as the two modalities of human transcendence.63
Accordingly, Rahner correlates the divine missions with the divine processions of the
Son and Holy Spirit, who are communicated economically through their created external terms
of incarnation and grace.64
Indeed, he identifies the divine missions with the “two absolute self-
communications of God in the hypostatic union and in the grace which grows into glory.”65
Rahner explains further that the divinizing sanctification of human beings is properly related to
the Spirit, just as Christ’s humanity is properly related to the Son:
It follows that the two immanent processions in God correspond (in identity) with the two
missions, and that the relationships to created realities constituted in formal (not efficient)
causality by the missions as processions are not appropriations (procession of the Logos
— hypostatic union; procession of the Spirit — divinizing sanctification of man). The
relationships are proper to the persons in each case.66
In considering the divine processions and missions, Rahner recognizes the following as
mysteries: “the Trinity with its two processions, and the two self-communications of God ad
63
Ibid., 116: “An authentic metaphysics of the spirit tells us that there are two (and only two!) basic
activities of the spirit: knowledge and love.”
64 Cf. Karl Rahner, “Revelation, II. God’s Self-Communication,” in Encyclopedia of Theology: The
Concise Sacramentum Mundi, eds. Karl Rahner, et al. (New York: The Seabury Press, 1975), 1468: “Corresponding
to the two Trinitarian processions, immanent in the Trinity and in the economy of salvation, incarnation and grace
can be regarded as two self-communications of God, both having their ground in God’s one free decision to self-
communication ad extra.” Also, cf. Rahner, “Trinity, Divine,” 1761: “They [the missions] terminate respectively in
the human nature of Christ and the ‘created’ grace of the justified.”
65 Rahner, “The Concept of Mystery in Catholic Theology,” 71.
66 Rahner, “Trinity, Divine,” 1759. Cf. Mansini, “Quasi-Formal Causality and Change in the Other,” 294:
“Uncreated grace is quasi-formally related to the just so that created sanctifying grace is its dispositive formal effect,
really distinct from it.”
231
extra in a real formal causality corresponding to the two processions.”67
For him, the incarnation
of the Son and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit are “the inner, mutually related moments of the
one self-communication, through which God (the Father) communicates himself to the world
unto absolute proximity.”68
Hence, through the divine missions of the Son and Spirit and their
external terms, the Father is also communicated. Indeed, the incarnation communicates the
Father inasmuch as the esse secundarium participates in paternity by its non-appropriated
relation to the Son. Likewise, sanctifying grace communicates the Father together with the Son
inasmuch as sanctifying grace participates in their active spiration by its non-appropriated
relation to the Spirit.
Furthermore, the interrelation of the two divine missions suggests a relationship between
the esse secundarium, by which Christ’s humanity subsists in the Word, and sanctifying grace,
by which the Spirit dwells in people. Thus, Rahner describes God’s self-communication through
four pairs of aspects, in which the first terms correspond to the Son and the second terms to the
Spirit.69
These four double aspects of God’s self-communication may be received by human
beings as the fulfillment of their transcendence.70
While he does not claim them to be exhaustive,
67
Rahner, “The Concept of Mystery in Catholic Theology,” 72.
68 Rahner, “Remarks on the Dogmatic Treatise ‘De Trinitate,’” 85.
69 Cf. Peter Phan, Eternity in Time: A Study of Karl Rahner’s Eschatology (Cranbury, NJ: Susquehanna
University Press, 1988), 144: “The first series of four terms—origin, history, invitation, and knowledge—constitutes
a unity and describes the first moment of God’s self-communication, namely, the Incarnation of the Son. The second
series of four terms—end, transcendence, acceptance, and love—also constitutes a unity and describes the second
moment of God’s self-communication, namely, the descent of the Spirit.”
70 Cf. Rahner, The Trinity, 91: “The four double aspects thus become intelligible under this assumption,
namely, that the human personal subject is the addressee who is, of his very nature, demanded by the divine self-
communication, which creates him as the condition of its own possibility.”
232
these pairings describe how the Spirit leads human beings to accept God’s self-communication
offered by the Son.71
He writes,
Once we presuppose this concept of the self-communication of God, it reveals to us a
fourfold group of aspects: (a) Origin-Future; (b) History-Transcendence; (c) Invitation-
Acceptance; (d) Knowledge-Love. We must first explain each of these double aspects.
Next we must consider the inner unity of the first members of every pairing as contrasted
with that of the second members. If we succeed in this second task, we shall understand
that the one self-communication of God occurs in two basic ways which belong
together.72
3. Point Three: The Habit of Charity
In addition to identifying incarnation and grace as the two modes of God’s self-
communication, Rahner appears on occasion to distinguish the habit of charity from sanctifying
grace. For instance, he notes in one place that the life of grace and habitual charity are related but
distinct effects of receiving the Eucharist: “Strengthening, increase and complete fulfilment of
the life of grace, increase of habitual charity and awakening of actual charity are all among the
first and most characteristic effects of the Holy Eucharist.”73
Rahner regards the habit, or virtue, of charity as the principle of charitable acts. Indeed,
he notes that “the specific Christian love of neighbour is both in potency and in act a moment of
71
Cf. ibid., 88n11: “We do not claim here and in what follows that we can necessarily distinguish only
these four couples of aspects. It suffices that they exist and that, in the unity of all the elements of either side, they
sufficiently clarify for us the doubleness of God’s self-communication.”
72 Ibid., 88.
73 Karl Rahner, “The Meaning of Frequent Confession of Devotion,” in Theological Investigations, Vol. 3:
The Theology of the Spiritual Life, trans. Karl H. Kruger and Boniface Kruger (London: Darton, Longman and
Todd, 1967), 182.
233
the infused supernatural theological virtue of caritas.”74
For Rahner, the virtue of charity is
rooted in its openness to God’s self-communication in the form of sanctifying grace. As he
states, “Caritas means nothing else than the absolute radicality of this love in so far as it is open
to the immediacy of the God who communicates himself under the form of grace.”75
Further, he
expresses the dependence of the virtue of charity upon sanctifying grace when he says, “In this
basic act [of the love of neighbor] are also accepted the conditions of its possibility, one of which
is the reference of man to God when supernaturally elevated by grace.”76
Hence, Rahner
identifies the virtue of charity as an effect of sanctifying grace: “Genuine love is de facto always
that theological virtue of caritas which is sustained by God himself through his grace.”77
Overall,
these comments seem to indicate a real distinction between sanctifying grace and the habit of
charity.
Rahner’s theology of the habit of charity appears to be adaptable to developing a four-
point hypothesis because it indicates how charity participates in the divine relation of passive
spiration. In fact, he regards the habit of charity as a distinct form of created grace that relates
one to God through the non-appropriated indwelling of the Holy Spirit. He explains that it is “the
infused supernatural theological virtue of caritas by which we love God in his Spirit for his own
74
Karl Rahner, “Reflections on the Unity of the Love of Neighbour and the Love of God,” in Theological
Investigations, Vol. 6: Concerning Vatican Council II, trans. Karl H. Kruger and Boniface Kruger (London: Darton,
Longman and Todd, 1969), 236.
75 Ibid., 243.
76 Ibid., 246.
77 Karl Rahner, “Marriage as a Sacrament,” in Theological Investigations, Vol. 10: Writings of 1965-1967,
trans. David Bourke (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1973), 206. Emphasis in original.
234
sake and in direct community with him.”78
This statement resembles Lonergan’s description of
the habit of charity as a participation in the Spirit’s passive spiration, to which the Father and
Son have a non-appropriated relation through active spiration.
It is granted that Rahner does not distinguish between entitative and operative habits,
which is how Lonergan came to affirm a real distinction between sanctifying grace and the habit
of charity early in his career. Yet, transcendental method can be used to identify four preeminent
created graces even without relying upon the metaphysical psychology of the scholastics that
focuses on how grace affects the different faculties of the human soul. Indeed, if it is possible for
Doran to transpose the four-point hypothesis of Lonergan’s early Latin theology into the
categories of his later methodical theology, so too might it be transposed from its original
theological context into the categories of Rahner’s transcendental theology. This transposition
would include a real distinction between sanctifying grace and the habit of charity.
4. Point Four: The Light of Glory
For Rahner, the esse secundarium of Christ’s humanity enables other humans on earth to
receive sanctifying grace, which in turn allows people to receive supernatural love through the
habit of charity and supernatural knowledge through the light of glory.79
In heaven, God’s
78
Rahner, “Reflections on the Unity of the Love of Neighbour and the Love of God,” 236. Cf. ibid., 246:
“Both acts [i.e. love of God and love of neighbor] are necessarily supported by the (experienced but unreflected)
reference both to God and to the intramundane Thou and this by grace (of the infused caritas).”
79 Cf. Rahner, “The Concept of Mystery in Catholic Theology,” 68: “Is this elevation to grace and glory
only really possible on the basis of the hypostatic union? . . . We can only have this vision in its immediacy, in so far
as it is mediated by the hypostatic union of the human nature of Jesus with the Logos of God.”
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uncreated grace perfects each of these created graces in the saints. Yet, the light of glory is
unique among these four in that people do not receive it at all until they enter heaven, when God
bestows the beatific vision upon them. The beatific knowledge received in God’s quasi-formal
causality through the light of glory is prefigured by what people on earth know from divine
revelation through the light of faith.80
Yet, only the light of glory serves as the material
disposition by which people may receive the quasi-formal self-communication of God in the
beatific vision. As Rahner says,
In the beatific vision there is present as its ontological presupposition a ‘relation’ between
creature and God which is not a categorical one, resting upon an accidental absolute
modification, but is a quasi-formal causality of God himself upon the created spirit; so
that (corresponding to the general nature of the relationship of a ‘forma’ to its formal
effect) the reality of the mind in the beatific vision, so far as such a reality in itself is due
to a species as the means of knowledge, is the very Being of God.81
Rahner does not always identify an ontological distinction between sanctifying grace and
the light of glory. Indeed, he states that “grace and beatific vision form a unity, in which grace
initiates and has the same formal character as the vision of God, so that grace and glory are two
80
Cf. Karl Rahner, “Beatific Vision,” in Encylopedia of Theology: The Concise Sacramentum Mundi, eds.
Karl Rahner, et al. (New York: The Seabury Press, 1975), 80: “God himself fulfils in a quasi-formal way the
necessary function of a species impressa for cognition. If in addition a created real, ontological specification of the
mind is required (the lumen gloriae as perfecting the habitus of faith – D 475), the relation of this to God’s quasi-
formal self-communication for the beatific vision must be described in a similar way to the relation between
‘created’ and ‘uncreated’ grace.”
81 Rahner, “Some Implications of the Scholastic Concept of Uncreated Grace,” 332. Cf. Burke,
Reinterpreting Rahner, 51: “Through quasi-formal causality the beatific vision and the lumen gloriae exist in a
relation of mutual priority.” Cf. ibid., 241: “Just as the beatific vision logically precedes the lumen gloriae, which
exists as its material cause and dispositio ultima, so also God’s presence in the soul in uncreated grace logically
precedes the created grace that is its material cause and disposition ultima.” Also, cf. Mansini, “Quasi-Formal
Causality and Change in the Other,” 294: “The divine essence is quasi-formally related to the created and beatified
intellect so that the lumen gloriae is its dispositive formal effect really distinct from it.”
236
historical phases of the one grace.”82
Yet, he does distinguish the two when he writes that “the
created grace of the ‘pilgrim’ state (status viatoris) is distinct at least in degree from the light of
glory.”83
Rahner also seems to suggest that they differ in kind, rather than merely in degree,
when he states that the glory of the beatific vision is “not just a growth” from sanctifying grace
as “a final stage arising out of an inner impulse.” He argues that the beatific vision, bestowed by
God’s uncreated grace through the light of glory, is “a new eschatological intervention” of God
beyond sanctifying grace. As he explains,
Just as grace in general as an entitative supernatural elevation of man can be described in
more precise detail only in terms of its definitive unfolding, the visio (though this
‘unfolding’ and ‘disclosure’ are not just a ‘growth’ to a final stage arising out of an inner
impulse but are also a new eschatological intervention of the God who is still in himself
concealed), so too uncreated grace is only to be determined in terms of the visio: it is the
homogeneous commencement, already given though still concealed and still to unfold, of
that communication of the divine Being taking place by way of formal causality to the
created spirit which is the ontological presupposition of the visio.84
Rahner notes that people with the light of glory behold not just the divine nature in the
beatific vision, but rather all three divine persons who are communicated as uncreated grace.85
82
Rahner, “Revelation, II. God’s Self-Communication,” 1467-8.
83 Rahner, “Some Implications of the Scholastic Concept of Uncreated Grace,” 336n26. Cf. ibid., 336-7:
We need not attempt to decide here how we should interpret the distinction between the communication of
the divine Being to man by way of formal causality in grace and in the visio: whether we should interpret it
as a difference in the degree of this increasing communication in itself, or as a difference derived from the
difference in the material disposition to this communication. In other words, we do not intend to take up the
question whether the growth from uncreated grace to the possession of God as the basis of the visio
beatifica is an inner growth of this possession in itself or just the ‘growth’ (always understood with the
restriction indicated above) of created grace into the light of glory – or whether this either-or is really not
justified at all in a more precisely worked-out ontology of the relationship between causa formalis and
causa materialis.
84 Ibid., 334-5.
85 Cf. Rahner, “Remarks on the Dogmatic Treatise ‘De Trinitate,’” 95:
237
This is only possible because people have non-appropriated relations to each of the divine
persons through grace.86
When people receive beatific knowledge of their relations to the divine
persons through the light of glory, they participate in the filiation of the Son as the divine Word.
This participation in the Son gives them a non-appropriated relation to the Father as children of
God. Hence, Rahner suggests that this divine sonship exists properly in relation to the Father
alone, and not in relation to the Son and Spirit:
We are children of the Father of Christ by participation in the eternal sonship of the only
begotten Son. And it remains an open question whether we can characterize as sonship
the justified man’s relationship through grace to the Son and the Spirit (so that this
fatherhood by grace is merely appropriated to the First Person of the Trinity); or whether,
strictly speaking, it is not possible to interpret this relationship to the Son and the Spirit as
sonship, so that each of the three divine Persons has its own proper relationship to the
justified man, not merely an appropriated one.87
This trinitarian communication (the ‘indwelling’ of God, the ‘uncreated grace’, to be understood not merely
as the communication of the divine ‘nature’ but also and indeed primarily as communication of the
‘persons’, since it takes place in a free spiritual personal act and so from person to person) is the real
ontological foundation of the life of grace in man and (under the requisite conditions) of the immediate
vision of the divine persons at the moment of fulfilment.
86
Cf. Rahner, “Beatific Vision,” 79: “The doctrine of the beatific vision must, therefore, from the start
make its Trinitarian aspect clear. When reference is made to a ‘sharing in the divine nature’, it must not be
overlooked that this participation is necessarily triune and is given for there to be a direct relation between God and
the spiritual person of the creature. It is, therefore, implied that there is a direct relation of the creature to God
precisely as Father, Son, and Spirit.” Also, cf. Rahner, “Remarks on the Dogmatic Treatise ‘De Trinitate,’” 95n25:
We have therefore an immediate vision of the divine persons, which cannot be thought of as mediated by a
created ‘species impressa’, but only by the actual reality of the object contemplated itself which imparts
itself in real quasi-formal causality to the subject, as the ontological condition of possibility of formal
knowledge. But this implies necessarily a real and ontological relationship of the subject to each of the
persons as such in their real proprieties. This point was perhaps not considered attentively enough by
medieval theologians, but it is certainly a consequence of their theological principles with regard to the
vision.
87 Karl Rahner, “Theos in the New Testament,” in Theological Investigations, Vol. 1: God, Christ, Mary
and Grace, trans. Cornelius Ernst (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1961), 147-8.
238
Rahner’s eschatology clarifies why people with sanctifying grace are bestowed with the
light of glory in heaven by God’s uncreated grace. His eschatological views thus warrant some
attention. In “The Hermeneutics of Eschatological Assertions,” Rahner expounds upon seven
hermeneutical principles for eschatological assertions. The first two principles concern the object
of eschatological assertions. The first principle is that eschatological assertions pertain to the
future, not simply the present.88
The second principle is that while God knows future realites
through omniscience, God reveals them in a manner which does not exceed the capacity of
human understanding.89
Hence, although human reason is limited, people are guided into their
eschatological future first through the light of faith, then ultimately through the light of glory.
The third and fourth principles identify the tension between history and transcendence in
eschatological assertions and the manner of its resolution. The third principle identifies the
dialectical tension between the transcendent hiddenness of the last things (eschata) and the
human spirit’s immanent concern with the present.90
The fourth principle advances a resolution
88
Cf. Karl Rahner, “The Hermeneutics of Eschatological Assertions,” in Theological Investigations, Vol. 4:
More Recent Writings, trans. Kevin Smyth (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1966), 326: “The Christian
understanding of the faith and its expression must contain an eschatology which really bears on the future, that
which is still to come, in a very ordinary, empirical sense of the word time.”
89 Cf. ibid.:
The Christian understanding of the nature, life and personal being of God takes his ‘omniscience’ not
merely as a metaphysical axiom, but as a strict truth of faith, and makes it include God’s knowledge of
future events. In so far as this knowledge embraces the realities of the world and mankind, there can be no
denying or doubting, in metaphysics or theology, the fundamental ‘abstract’ possibility of the
communication of such future events: they are known by God and they are human, and hence do not of
themselves in principle go beyond the capacity of human understanding.
90 Cf. ibid., 329-31:
The sphere of eschatological assertions and hence of their hermeneutic is constituted by the dialectical
unity of two limiting statements. . . .
239
to this tension by noting that the present has an etiological relation to the future, such that human
nature experiences futurity in its own self-awareness in the present.91
This is due to the nature of
the human spirit, which concerns itself with both the categorical realities of history and its
transcendental orientation toward the infinite. Accordingly, when God reveals the eschata to
humanity, God does so not by causing a transcendent apocalyptic vision to invade upon and
eviscerate the present historical order. Instead, God’s revelation of the eschata meets human
beings where they are in history and allows them to correlate their present experience of God in
history with their transcendental and eschatological orientation. Rather than be annihilated by the
eschatological revelation of God, history is able to be consummated through the human spirit’s
(a) It is certain from Scripture that God has not revealed to man the day of the end. . . . The truth is that the
end has for us a character of hiddenness which is essential and proper to it and effects all its elements. . . .
(b) The second element which constitutes and defines the sphere of eschatological assertions and hence
their hermeneutic, is the essential historicity of man. . . . His self-understanding embraces beginning and
end of his temporal history, both in the life of the individual man and of humanity.
91 Cf. ibid., 332:
If what has been said in 3a and 3b is correct, that is, if such real future is known and present, but as
something hidden, we are to expect – under the reserves made in Thesis 1 – that the content of this
knowledge, no matter whence it comes, which is part of the present constitution of man, is the element of
the future yet to come which is necessary to present existence. Knowledge of the future will be knowledge
of the futurity of the present: eschatological knowledge is knowledge of the eschatological present. An
eschatological assertion is not an additional, supplementary statement appended to an assertion about the
present and the past of man but an inner moment of this self-understanding of man. Because man is, by and
in being orientated to the future, he must know about his future. But in such a way, that this knowledge of
the future can be a moment in his knowledge of the present. And only thus. This alone is sufficient to give
the content of eschatological knowledge the character of hiddenness. If it were an account of the future
anticipated and ‘fore’ – seen as it is in itself, then the future, as the fulfilment of what is human, could not
really have the character of hiddenness and mystery. It could be marvellous, unexpected and amazing, just
as if someone were to fore-tell that I should one day be emperor of China. But it could not be mysterious
and hidden if it were described in terms of its own phenomena, created ones, even in the state of their
fulfilment. But if this knowledge is: 1. a moment in the self-understanding of the present of man, which
self-understanding is a constitutive moment of the being of man as person and spirit; and 2. if this self-
understanding essentially bears on freedom, risk and abandoning oneself to the uncontrollable: then this
known futurity necessarily shares the character of this existence, as something moving into the unforeseen.
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dynamic encounter of grace. Hence, while human freedom is exercised in the present, it has a
transcendental relation to the immanent and transcendent consummation of the world.92
Ultimately, the beatific vision is the culmination of human freedom in its knowledge and love for
God as the ultimate good. Hence, the light of glory builds upon sanctifying grace when human
freedom reaches its fulfillment in reference to God, the ground of human identity.
Building upon these ideas, the fifth principle (which Rahner calls the basic principle)
claims that what God reveals to humanity about the eschata corresponds to the actual history of
salvation as it gradually unfolds unto its consummation.93
Since salvation history has reached a
92
Cf. Karl Rahner, “Immanent and Transcendent Consummation of the World,” in Theological
Investigations, Vol. 10: Writings of 1965-1967, trans. David Bourke (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1973),
281:
God is not only causa efficiens but also causa quasi formalis of that which the creature is in the truest and
most concrete sense. The nature of the spiritual creature consists in the fact that that which is ‘innermost’ to
it, that whence, to which and through which it is, is precisely not an element of this essence and this nature
which belongs to it. Rather its nature is based upon the fact that that which is supra-essential, that which
transcends it, is that which gives it its support, its meaning, its future and its most basic impulse, though
admittedly it does so in such a way that the nature of this spiritual creature, that which belongs to it as such,
is not thereby taken away from it but rather obtains from this its ultimate validity and consistency and
achieves growth and development because of it. The closeness of God’s self-bestowal and the unique
personality of the creature grow in equal, and not in converse measure. This self-bestowal of God, in which
God bestows himself precisely as the absolute transcendent, is the most immanent factor in the creature.
The fact that it is given its own nature to possess, the ‘immanence of essence’ in this sense, is the prior
condition, and at the same time the consequence, of the still more radical immanence of the transcendence
of God in the spiritual creature, this creature being considered as that which has been endowed with grace
through the uncreated grace of God.
93 Cf. Rahner, “The Hermeneutics of Eschatological Assertions,” 334:
Man’s knowledge of the future still to come, even his revealed knowledge, is confined to such prospects as
can be derived from the reading of his present eschatological experience. And thus we can understand that
the progress of eschatological revelation in the pre-Christian and Christian revelation up to its climax in
Christ is identical with the progress of the revelation of the actual history of salvation, that is, with God’s
actual action on man at any given moment. Thus the climax of eschatological revelation is necessarily what
it actually is: that God has revealed to man his trinitarian self-disclosure and self-communication in the
grace of the crucified and risen Lord, a revelation already actual, though still only in faith.
Eschatology is therefore not a pre-view of events to come later – which was the basic view of false
apocalyptic in contrast to genuine prophecy. It does not draw on future events, accessible because God is
‘already’ contemporary to them, in a metaphysical doctrine of the being and knowledge of God, and so can
241
climax in Christ’s incarnation, everything humans know about the eschata is derived from the
knowledge of Christ. Through their encounter with Christ, human beings anticipate the
consummation of their current eschatological situation. Ultimately, the second coming of Christ
will lay bare the eschata and finish the world’s consummation. This explains why Christ is the
mediator of all grace, including the light of glory.94
Additionally, since Christ is the climax of
divine revelation, it follows that the light of glory can only culminate created grace inasmuch as
it participates in Christ’s filiation as the Word of God. The light of glory perfects humanity’s
imitation of Christ by allowing people to share in his non-appropriated relation to the Father.
The sixth and seventh principles essentially unpack this basic principle. The sixth
principle describes several implications of the basic principle that clarify its meaning. For
instance, Rahner notes that eternal salvation is realized in the consummate freedom of the human
spirit when it completely accepts divine grace.95
The seventh principle identifies the criterion of
the basic principle according to which one may distinguish the form and content of
eschatological assertions. The nature of images, as the form through which the eschata are
already speak of them. Eschatology is the view of the future which man needs for the spiritual decision of
his freedom and his faith. It derives from the situation in the history of salvation brought about by the event
of Christ, which is the aetiological source of knowledge. It looks forward to the definitive fulfilment of an
existence already in an eschatological situation.
94 Cf. Karl Rahner, “The Eternal Significance of the Humanity of Jesus for Our Relationship with God,” in
Theological Investigations, Vol. 3: The Theology of the Spiritual Life, trans. Karl H. Kruger and Boniface Kruger
(London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1967).
95 Cf. ibid., 340:
Hence on principle only one predestination will be spoken of in a Christian eschatology. And it contains
only one theme which is there on its own behalf: the victory of grace in redemption consummated. Possible
damnation can only be spoken of, but must be spoken of, in so far as, and only in so far as it is forbidden to
man to take the sure triumph of grace in the world as providing him himself with already fixed and
acquired points in his estimation of an existence which is still to be lived out in the boldness of freedom.
242
depicted in eschatological assertions, requires that one understand the content they communicate
through the power of abstraction. Rahner connects this point with Thomas Aquinas’ epistemic
views about turning to the phantasm, in which the intellect apprehends truth only by abstracting
an intelligible species from a mental image. This follows from Rahner’s basic principle that
people learn of the eschata by abstracting from the various images and modes of expression
through which God is revealed in salvation history. Yet, in the light of glory, human beings are
able to see God directly, rather than through an image or a finite intelligible species. As a
participation in the Son, the light of glory is the material disposition for a beatific vision of the
otherwise invisible God, whom the Word makes visible to humanity as the perfect image of the
Father.
D. Conclusion
This chapter identified areas of agreement between Lonergan’s four-point hypothesis and
Rahner’s theology of grace and the Trinity. It examined Rahner’s reflections upon Christ’s esse
secundarium, sanctifying grace, the habit of charity, and the light of glory. While noting his
occasional lack of precision, it also discussed the respects in which Rahner distinguishes these
four created graces and correlates each of them in a non-appropriated manner with a participated
divine relation. In agreement with Rahner’s theology of human beings’ non-appropriated
relations to the divine persons, it contended that these four created graces facilitate distinct
manners of participation in the uncreated grace of the divine persons and the four divine relations
among them. Accordingly, it argued that the four-point hypothesis could be transposed into
243
Rahner’s theological categories, especially those pertaining to God’s quasi-formal causality as
the determining principle of humanity’s supernatural existential.
This chapter has laid some groundwork for transposing the four-point hypothesis from
Lonergan’s methodical theology to Rahner’s transcendental theology. Additionally, it has
prepared for the construction of a supernatural, psychological analogy for the Trinity on the basis
of Rahner’s theology of grace and the Trinity. These topics will be explored in the next chapter.
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CHAPTER IV
Developing the Four-Point Hypothesis into a Supernatural Trinitarian Analogy from the
Foundations of Karl Rahner’s Theology
This chapter will use Karl Rahner’s theology of grace and the Trinity to further develop
the four-point hypothesis. It will argue that developing a supernatural psychological analogy for
the Trinity in reference to the four-point hypothesis would be agreeable with Rahner’s
Trinitarian theology and would allow its major themes to be expounded with increased precision.
In preparation for this discussion, it will be necessary in what follows to distinguish natural and
supernatural analogies for the Trinity. Additionally, Rahner’s critical remarks about traditional
psychological analogies will be examined in order to show his openness to a supernatural
psychological analogy.
A. Natural Analogies for the Trinity
Natural reason cannot understand the divine essence or God’s necessary existence as a
Trinity of persons. However, it can use various analogies to reach a partial understanding of God
on account of the likeness of creatures to their creator.1 Such analogies attempt to describe the
1 The differences among these natural analogies are not based in the divine essence, which is ultimately
simple, but rather in the multiple and varied ways in which creatures imitate and participate in God. Furthermore,
the different manners of participation in God by creatures correspond to the multiplicity of divine ideas. Cf. John F.
Wippel, “Thomas Aquinas on the Distinction and Derivation of the Many from the One: A Dialectic between Being
and Nonbeing,” The Review of Metaphysics 38, no. 3 (1985): 582-3:
For Thomas a divine idea is a given way in which God views his essence as capable of being imitated by a
creature. Since God views his essence as capable of being imitated in many different ways, there are many
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divine essence in reference to the essential properties of creatures that participate in God’s
being.2 Yet, since God’s reality as efficient cause, which creatures naturally imitate, is shared in
common by all three divine persons, natural reason cannot demonstrate any of the properties of
God as a differentiated Trinity. As Thomas Aquinas states, “The creative power of God is
common to the whole Trinity; and hence it belongs to the unity of the essence, and not to the
distinction of the persons. Therefore, by natural reason we can know what belongs to the unity of
the essence, but not what belongs to the distinction of the persons.”3 Further, he notes, “The
essential attributes of God are more clear to us from the standpoint of reason than the personal
properties; because we can derive certain knowledge of the essential attributes from creatures
which are sources of knowledge to us, such as we cannot obtain regarding the personal
properties.”4 Hence, natural reason alone cannot discover any plurality in the unity of God. It can
only prove that the divine essence is one and that God is personal.
different divine ideas. These ideas, of course, are not really distinct from the divine essence or from one
another. But the actually existing creature which corresponds to any such divine idea will be really distinct
both from the divine essence and from other creatures.
2 For a Thomistic account of the participation of creatures in God, cf. Cornelio Fabro, “Intensive
Hermeneutics of Thomistic Philosophy,” translated by B. M. Bonansea, Review of Metaphysics 27, no. 3 (1974):
468: “All creatures are beings by participation, inasmuch as their essence participates in the esse which is the
ultimate act of all reality.”
3 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 32, a. 1, co. in Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, Vol.
1: 1a QQ. 1-119, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (1948; repr., Westminster, MD: Christian
Classics, 1981), 169. For the original Latin, cf. Summa theologiae, Prima Pars, ed. Petri Caramello (Taurini:
Marietti, 1948), 168-9.
4 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 39, a. 7, co. in Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, Vol.
1, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, 200. For the original Latin text, cf. Summa theologiae, Prima
Pars, 198.
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However, the use of natural reason is not the only means humans have to understand
God. In fact, supernatural revelation provides them with further insight into divine reality.
Although God has one essence and one act of existence, salvation history reveals that God
subsists as three divine persons. The biblical names for these divine persons are “Father,” “Son,”
and “Holy Spirit.” Even though they are based upon natural analogues, they are presented as
appropriate names for the divine persons by which they may be properly denominated. By
implication, the terms “paternity,” “filiation,” and “passive spiration” are used to denominate the
notional properties which, as substantial relations in God, constitute and distinguish the divine
persons.5 Even though these terms for the notional properties are based upon natural analogues in
their mode of signification, they may be predicated of the divine persons in a non-appropriated
manner.6 By contrast, terms that properly denote the divine essence under different aspects may
be predicated of one particular person only by appropriation.
In addition to the biblical names of “Father,” “Son,” and “Holy Spirit,” other names for
the divine persons have been used by theologians to further explain their divinely revealed
notional properties and relational opposition. For instance, the natural psychological analogy for
the Trinity denominates the divine persons with such analogical names as “Intellect” or
5 Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 32, a. 2, co., in Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas,
Vol. 1, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, 171: “There must also be some abstract terms whereby we
may answer that the persons are distinguished; and these are the properties or notions signified by an abstract term,
as paternity and filiation. Therefore the divine essence is signified as What; and the person as Who; and the property
as Whereby.” For the original Latin text, cf. Summa theologiae, Prima Pars, 170.
6 Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 33, a. 2, ad. 4, in Summa Theologica of St. Thomas
Aquinas, Vol. 1, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, 174: “The terms generation and paternity like the
other terms properly applied to God, are said of God before creatures as regards the thing signified, but not as
regards the mode of signification.” For the original Latin text, cf. Summa theologiae, Prima Pars, 174.
247
“Memory” for the Father, “Word” or “Understanding” for the Son, and “Will” or “Love” for the
Holy Spirit. This analogy seeks to describe the notional properties of the divine persons in terms
of the essential properties of the human intellect. It does not seek to demonstrate the Trinity, but
rather to note parallels between God’s revealed truth about the Trinity and that which is observed
in nature. In this case, Aquinas explains that reason operates by “confirming an already
established principle, by showing the congruity of its results.”7
In clarifying the divine processions through the analogy of human intellectual
processions, the natural psychological analogy provides a model for understanding the Trinity’s
relational opposition. Yet, it should be noted that the divine intellect and will pertain to the
divine essence that the Trinity shares in common. Hence, the essential attributes which the names
“Intellect,” “Word,” and “Will” suggest may only be appropriated to particular divine persons.8
Accordingly, while each of these names may be properly predicated of one of the divine persons,
there are significant limits to what they can clarify about their notional properties. This is not
surprising, since supernatural mysteries far exceed all natural attempts at explanation.
Rahner expresses concerns about these limits of natural psychological analogies for the
Trinity. He thinks that they often use circular reasoning when their models of human psychology
7 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 32, a. 1, ad. 2 in Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas,
Vol. 1, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, 169. For the original Latin text, cf. Summa theologiae,
Prima Pars, 169.
8 Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 39, a. 7, co., in Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas,
Vol. 1, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, 200: “The divine person can be manifested in a twofold
manner by the essential attributes; in one way by similitude, and thus the things which belong to the intellect are
appropriated to the Son, Who proceeds by way of intellect, as Word. In another way by dissimilitude; as power is
appropriated to the Father, as Augustine says, because fathers by reason of old age are sometimes feeble; lest
anything of the kind be imagined of God.” For the original Latin text, cf. Summa theologiae, Prima Pars, 198.
248
are derived from their presuppositions about the doctrine of the Trinity.9 Furthermore, by
focusing on the human intellect as a model for the divine relations, he believes that “the
psychological theory of the Trinity neglects the experience of the Trinity in the economy of
salvation in favor of a seemingly almost gnostic speculation about what goes on in the inner life
of God.”10
He especially criticizes the traditional Augustinian psychological analogy because it
depicts what is notional in God in terms of what is essential in human beings:
[The theologian’s] Augustinian-psychological speculations on the Trinity result in that
well-known quandary which makes all of his marvelous profundity look so utterly
vacuous: for he begins from a human philosophical concept of knowledge and love, and
from this concept develops a concept of the word and “inclination” of love; and now,
after having speculatively applied these concepts to the Trinity, he must admit that this
application fails, because he has clung to the “essential” concept of knowledge and love,
because a “personal,” “notional” concept of the word and “inclination” of love cannot be
derived from human experience. For should he try so to derive it, the knowing Word and
the loving Spirit themselves must in turn have a word and a love as persons proceeding
from them.11
9 Cf. Karl Rahner, The Trinity, trans. Joseph Donceel (New York: Crossroad, 1970), 117-8: “Classic
psychological speculations about the Trinity . . . have no evident model from human psychology for the doctrine of
the Trinity. . . . Rather it postulates from the doctrine of the Trinity a model of human knowledge and love, which
either remains questionable, or about which it is not clear that it can be more than a model of human knowledge
precisely as finite. And this model it applies again to God.”
10 Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity, trans. William
Dych (New York: Crossroad, 1978), 135.
11 Rahner, The Trinity, 19. Cf. Neil Ormerod, “Wrestling with Rahner on the Trinity,” Irish Theological
Quarterly 68 (2003): 24: “Rahner’s major criticism of the psychological analogy is that it remains hypothetical. It
cannot be proven to be the case. It is unscriptural, except on the basis of artificial ’eisegesis’. It cannot explain the
transition from essential to notional acts.”
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B. Toward a Supernatural Psychological Analogy
As an effect of God’s essential power of efficient causality, the human intellect has a
created relation toward all three divine persons in common. In addition to this, however, human
beings supernaturally imitate the divine persons through grace and acquire a unique, non-
appropriated relation to each of them. This grace gives humans a participated experience of the
notional properties of the divine persons.
The participation of human beings in the divine relations is an indispensable aspect of
God’s self-communication. Indeed, the persons of the immanent Trinity can only be said to enter
history in their relative differentiation as the economic Trinity because the four created graces of
the divine missions imitate the uncreated grace of the divine relations. Otherwise, only that
which is common to the divine persons could be said to have entered human history, rather than
the persons themselves in their differentiation. The intimate union of created grace with
uncreated grace is what distinguishes it from all other created things which only imitate God as
effects of God’s efficient causality which is common to all three divine persons.
Now, one might argue that the divine relations of paternity, filiation, and passive
spiration cannot be participated because each of them is proper only to the one divine person that
it constitutes. It is certainly true that since the divine persons subsist in an incommunicable
manner, their notional properties and relations are also incommunicable and idiomatic. This
means, for example, that only the Father can be the Father and have the divine relation of
paternity. Yet, created participations of these notional properties and relations are communicable
because the divine relations do not constitute persons in their finite mode of participation.
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Although grace enables human subjectivity to participate in the absolute subjectivity of God that
subsists in three subjects, human subjectivity continues to subsist in one finite subject after
receiving grace. Imitation of these divine relations in a finite mode does not undermine their
incommunicability in their infinite mode.
The human experience of grace and participation in the divine relations may serve as a
foundation for developing a stronger Trinitarian analogy than that constructed from natural
human psychology. As such, Rahner suggests a new approach in developing analogies for the
Trinity.12
He argues that a more insightful Trinitarian analogy would describe the immanent
Trinity in terms of the divine relations of the economic Trinity which human beings experience
in salvation history. As he writes, “Reflection about the distinctive character of man’s
transcendent orientation in grace towards God as an essential mystery makes it clear who God
really is (insofar as this can ever be expressed).”13
He believes it is preferable to describe the
immanent Trinity through the economic manifestation of the divine relations because this
relationality is what constitutes the differentiation within the unity of the divine essence.14
12
Cf. Rahner, The Trinity, 115: “An attempt to bring home to the intelligence of the faith an understanding
of the threefold-distinct manner of subsisting of the one God by means of psychological categories and according to
the model of the spiritual self-actuation of man differs considerably from the method used in the present essay.”
13 Karl Rahner, “God, III. Doctrine of God,” in Encyclopedia of Theology: A Concise Sacramentum Mundi,
eds. Karl Rahner, et al. (London: Burns & Oates, 1975), 570-1. Cf. John P. Galvin, “Invitation of Grace,” in A
World of Grace: An Introduction to the Themes and Foundations of Karl Rahner's Theology, ed. Leo J. O’Donovan
(Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1995), 68: “Our relationship with God in grace provides a starting
point for an understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity.”
14 Cf Rahner, The Trinity, 69: “By pointing to the relationality of the divine persons we derive some help
against the basic logical difficulty against the doctrine of the Trinity, namely, how there can be three really distinct
persons in God, if each one of them is really identical with the one, simple essence of God.”
251
Yet, so long as a psychological analogy does not neglect the economic Trinity, Rahner
believes it could be useful as an analogical model for the immanent Trinity.15
He suggests that a
psychological analogy for the Trinity would be greatly improved if it placed more emphasis upon
the notional character of the word and love of the Son and Holy Spirit. He believes that
knowledge of these notional acts cannot come from a study of human nature in itself, but only
from humanity’s encounter with the divine missions of incarnation and grace.16
This is because
“the doctrine of the ‘missions’ is from its very nature the starting point for the doctrine of the
Trinity.”17
Accordingly, he argues, “‘Psychological’ interpretation of the Trinity can be
legitimate, important, and illuminating only if it shows how it derives from the real and only
starting point of the whole doctrine of the Trinity and how it leads back to it.”18
Rahner recommends a more modest approach to a psychological analogy that “does not
try to explain why divine knowledge and love imply two processions ad modum operati”19
based
15
Cf. Rahner, The Trinity, 119: “When developing its ideas it has, as it were, forgotten about the
‘economic’ Trinity. If one does not do this, if one always remains within what faith tells about the ‘economic’
Trinity, it is still possible to construct a ‘psychological’ theology of the Trinity.”
16 Cf. Karl Rahner, “Reflections on Methodology in Theology,” in Theological Investigations, Vol. 11:
Confrontations; 1, trans. David Bourke (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1974), 108: “The Trinity as present in
the economy of salvation through the two ‘missiones’ (of grace and the Incarnation) necessarily embodies also the
Trinity as immanent.”
17 Rahner, The Trinity, 48.
18 Ibid.
19
Ibid, 119. Cf. Karl Rahner, “Trinity, Divine,” in Encyclopedia of Theology: The Concise Sacramentum
Mundi, eds. Karl Rahner, et al. (New York: The Seabury Press, 1975), 1764: “The psychological interpretation of
the Trinity fails to explain why God’s self-possession in knowledge and love, a single act, as it were, flowing from
the essence of the one God, should demand a procession ad modum operati, as verbum and as amatum in amante,
given the absolute actuality and simplicity of God. Without such a procession there is no real triad of ways of
subsistence.”
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upon the reasons why the human intellect requires such processions.20
He does recognize that
“an authentic metaphysics of the spirit tells us that there are two (and only two!) basic activities
of the spirit: knowledge and love.”21
However, he argues, “We cannot further explain why or
how these two basic actuations of God’s essence, as present in the unoriginated Father and, on
account of God’s simplicity, essentially identical within him, constitute nonetheless the basis for
two processions and thus for three distinct manners of subsisting.”22
Therefore, Trinitarian
analogies that describe the divine persons in terms of different aspects of their shared intellectual
nature can articulate only very little about their non-appropriated, notional properties.
Instead, Rahner favors constructing a Trinitarian analogy from the human experience of
the divine persons’ notional acts that are revealed and participated in history through God’s self-
communication.23
In this sense, he does not seek to repudiate traditional psychological analogies
20
Cf. Jordan Matthew Miller, “You Loved Me before the Foundation of the World: An Examination of
Karl Rahner’s Doctrine of Trinity and Comparison to that of Hans Urs Von Balthasar” (PhD. diss., Fordham, 2014),
in ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, https://search-proquest-com.proxycu.wrlc.org/pqdtglobal/docview
/1562902315/fulltextPDF/ 52ABA5A66B5B4FEBPQ/ (accessed January 23, 2018), 109-10:
The classic version of the psychological doctrine has no way to explain why God’s knowledge, which is
“absolute primordial self-presence,” necessarily generates a distinct hypostasis (the Logos), nor why this
hypostasis is a Word, an Utterance. Why should God need to utter or speak within his own being when he
is “original self-presence in absolute identity”? The same problem applies in a different way to the Spirit as
love. Why should God’s knowledge or love “demand a processio ad modum operati” – that is, why should
there be any need for God to produce distinct hypostases? Procession and generation imply movement, and
distinction: one thing originates from another thing. Why should a distinct hypostasis have to be generated
or proceed in order for God to know and love himself in absolute self-presence? In the human being, an act
of knowing requires an operatum, an object. But God, says Rahner, does not require an object in order to
have knowledge. God’s knowledge is not constituted by the generation of the Logos: it is not that God
knows because he generates the Logos; he knows and only thus generates the Logos.
21 Rahner, The Trinity, 116.
22 Ibid., 117.
23 Cf. Miller, “You Loved Me before the Foundation of the World,” 111:
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for the Trinity, but rather to improve them.24
For this purpose, he suggests that an analogy might
be constructed which argues not “from an abstract consideration of the human spirit and its
activities (in a strangely isolated individualism), but rather from those structures of human
existence which first clearly appear in its experience of salvation history.”25
As he explains,
We may build a psychological analogy of the Trinity, even though such a theology is
essentially more modest than the classic one in its design (not in its success). . . . For in
the “economic” doctrine of the Trinity we have understood God’s self-communication as
two-and-one in truth and love, as truth and love. If we experience that the divine self-
communication is given in two distinct ways, then the two intra-divine processions are
already co-known as distinct in this experience of the faith, even though we cannot tell
why they still remain such even when we abstract from the free “economic” aspect (“for
us”) of the “immanent” Trinity. We might even ask the further question (which we
cannot go into here) whether it would not be possible to derive the “model” for a
“psychological” doctrine of the Trinity not so much from an abstract consideration of the
human spirit and its activities (in a strangely isolated individualism), but rather from
those structures of human existence which first clearly appear in its experience of
salvation history: in its transcendence towards the future, as lovingly opening up and
His new version of the ‘psychological’ doctrine of Trinity, founded in the economy, does not “try to
explain why divine knowledge and love imply two processiones ad modum operati” – that is, it does not
attempt to understand or ‘get behind’ the fact that divine knowledge and love involve the production of two
hypostases distinct from the Father. It is “more modest” than Scholasticism in that it simply observes
within God’s one self-communication to us an irreducible distinction of truth and love, and recognizes that
this distinction must be located first in God’s own being. Hence “we may build a psychological theology of
the Trinity” if our foundation is Jesus and the Spirit, not the human mind considered in abstraction; again,
Rahner has already done so.
24 Cf. ibid., 111-2:
He anticipates the criticism that by departing from the classical Scholastic psychological doctrine he is
jettisoning fifteen centuries of Catholic trinitarian thought. Yet he is emphatic that the proposal is a
corrective, not a repudiation. He stresses that “the starting point of an Augustinian [psychological]
theology of the Trinity is undeniable,” and that “there can be no doubt about the basic justification” of the
psychological analogy; what he is departing from is not the psychological doctrine, but the attempt to build
the psychological doctrine without constant reference to Jesus Christ and the outpouring of the Spirit.
When the psychological doctrine is cut off from the economy of salvation, it enables and makes worse the
“encapsulation and isolation of the doctrine of Trinity,” insofar as it is serves to give some kind of content
to a Trinity “locked within” the divine nature and inaccessible to human experience. The problem is not
that Scholasticism affirms an imago Trinitatis within the structure of the human mind, but that it does not
allow the history of salvation to act as the primary point of reference for all trinitarian doctrine.
25 Rahner, The Trinity, 119-20.
254
accepted; in its existence in history, in which the faithful truth is present as knowledge
about itself.26
The type of analogy which Rahner suggests, but does not fully develop, is one that might
be called a supernatural psychological analogy. It would provide some insight into the reality of
the Trinity from its explanation of how created grace affects the structures of human existence
and imitates the divine relations present in the world as uncreated grace. Such a supernatural
psychological analogy has been proposed by Robert Doran on the basis of Bernard Lonergan’s
four-point hypothesis that correlates the four preeminent created graces with the four divine
relations. Lonergan’s original formulation of the four-point hypothesis does not specify precisely
how the four created supernatural realities affecting human consciousness imitate and are
analogous to the divine relations. However, Doran has studied the relationships between the esse
secundarium, sanctifying grace, the habit of charity, and the light of glory in human
consciousness as the basis for a supernatural psychological analogy.
In the previous chapter, it was shown how Rahner at times distinguishes four created
graces whereby humans have non-appropriated relations to the divine persons. Inasmuch as they
dispose people toward the self-communication of the divine persons, they participate in the four
divine relations bestowed as uncreated grace. Furthermore, it was argued that Rahner’s writings
suggest that the esse secundarium imitates the Father in his relation to the Son, that sanctifying
grace imitates the Father and the Son in their relation to the Spirit, that the habit of charity
imitates the Spirit in his relation to the Father and the Son, and that the light of glory imitates the
Son in his relation to the Father. This indicates that his theology is one into which Lonergan’s
26
Ibid.
255
four-point hypothesis can be transposed. Now, just as Doran has worked to develop a
supernatural psychological analogy for the Trinity from Lonergan’s four-point hypothesis, it
seems possible to develop a similar analogy from Rahner’s theological insights.
Indeed, Rahner’s theology of grace and the Trinity provides further groundwork for
developing a supernatural analogy from a four-point hypothesis transposed into his own
theological categories of quasi-formal causality and the supernatural existential. In one place, for
instance, Rahner indirectly suggests the possibility of a supernatural psychological analogy while
discussing knowledge and love as the two modes of human self-realization in transcendence. He
writes,
In the doctrine of the Trinity we know of two ‘processions’, in other words two modes of
mediation through which God as ungenerated (the Father) utters himself and possesses
himself in love, so that three modes of subsistence in the one God are constituted, the
‘procession’ as Word and also as ‘breathing forth love’. In conformity with this, in any
Christian interpretation of man, we must hold fast, in spite of many contrary tendencies
of recent times, to the fact that there are two basic modes of human (transcendental) self-
realisation: awareness of, and reflection upon the self through knowledge and through
free love, corresponding to the two basic transcendentals Verum and bonum, in which the
one (unum) being (ens) imposes itself. These two basic transcendentals, then, are such
that we cannot at will add any others to them on the same plane. Thus it appears that from
what we know both of God and of man it is natural to expect two basic attitudes to be
involved in man’s right realisation of his own nature, two basic virtues which correspond
to this original transcendental duality inherent in man. This is all the more true in view of
the fact that a ‘divine’ or theological virtue is sustained precisely by God’s self-bestowal,
and the response of the creature who has personal status and is endowed with spiritual
faculties to this divine self-bestowal is precisely made possible and effective by the
divine self-bestowal itself. Now there are only two such modes or – better – aspects in
this one divine self-bestowal: the first aspect is constituted by the Logos and the second
by the divine Pneuma. It is precisely through these two aspects that God as ungenerated,
God the ‘Father’ (not, therefore, an abstract divinity!), who is incomprehensible and
never loses his incomprehensibility even through his act of divine self-bestowal, imparts
himself. Because of this we cannot imagine that the Trinity in the modes of subsistence in
the one God implies ipso facto that there is also a trinity in the response by which we
accept this self-bestowal of the Father in Logos and in Pneuma. The fact that there is only
one act of self-bestowal in which the ‘Father’ imparts himself in Logos and Pneuma
256
implies that in the response, i.e. the ‘theological’ virtue, of man which is itself upheld by
this divine self-bestowal, only a single act is conceivable with two modalities: faith and
love, to correspond to the Word and the Love of the Father.27
Rahner claims in this text that the two modes of self-realization in human nature are
perfected when God’s self-communication bestows people with gifts of divine knowledge and
love, which are not merely shared essentially by the Trinity in common, but which are possessed
notionally by particular divine persons. He notes that human beings do not become a trinity of
persons when receiving the self-communication of the divine Trinity. Yet, just as God’s self-
communication is a single act with two aspects in the sending of the Son and the Spirit, Rahner
notes that the single act of the human response to God has two modalities that correspond to the
divine processions. These reflections provide some framework for developing a supernatural
psychological analogy that seeks to understand the divine processions (whereby the Father
“utters himself and possesses himself in love”) in terms of how grace affects the two modes of
self-realization under which humans receive God’s self-communication.
Although Rahner focuses in this passage on the two divine missions, this does not mean
his theology is opposed to using a four-point hypothesis as a framework for a supernatural
psychological analogy for the Trinity. In his view, the Son and Spirit are sent in order to bestow
upon human beings a non-appropriated relation to each of the divine persons, including the
Father. As such, his theology implies that people are able to experience the uncreated grace of all
three divine persons through their created graces that imitate the divine relations.
27
Karl Rahner, “On the Theology of Hope,” in Theological Investigations, Vol. 10- Writings of 1965-1967;
2, trans. David Bourke (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1973), 245-6.
257
For Rahner, the esse secundarium, sanctifying grace, the habit of charity, and the light of
glory each participate in the divine relations inasmuch as all created grace is the material effect
of God’s quasi-formal causality. Created grace is not absolutely supernatural per se apart from
uncreated grace (just as prime matter does not exist without form). However, God’s quasi-formal
self-communication elevates human beings through created grace to a participation in the divine
relations, which establishes in them a non-appropriated relation to each of the divine persons.
Rahner’s discussion of the interrelationship among the four preeminent created graces, as
detailed in the previous chapter, may be used to develop some analogical understanding of the
relations among the divine persons. Firstly, he understands the esse secundarium of Christ as the
origin of all other created graces that people receive through the mediation of Christ’s humanity.
This imitates the Father as the unoriginated source of the Son and Spirit as divine processions.
Also, inasmuch as the esse secundarium brings Christ’s humanity into being as a perfect
expression of the Father, it imitates the Father’s relationship of paternity that communicates the
divine nature to the Son through generation. Indeed, the manner in which the Son was begotten
in time reflects how the Son is begotten in eternity. Christ experiences the esse secundarium
inasmuch as his transcendental orientation toward God enables him to recognize his own divine
filiation as the Son, with whom his human nature is hypostatically united. While Christ is the
only human who experiences the esse secundarium as the ground of his divine filiation, others
can indirectly experience it asymptotically as the ultimate fulfillment of the human obediential
potency for divinization. The relationship of Christ’s human existence to God may thus be
understood analogically as a foundation for a supernatural psychological Trinitarian analogy.
258
Secondly, Rahner believes that sanctifying grace moves people in the experience of their
supernatural existential to accept God’s self-communication. The gift of sanctifying grace
constitutes a union with divine love that is initiated through the mediation of the Son’s esse
secundarium (which participates in the Father’s paternity) and that culminates in the light of
glory (which participates in the Son’s supernatural knowledge as the perfect expression of the
Father). Accordingly, sanctifying grace imitates active spiration as the relation of paternity and
filiation considered together. This establishes in human beings a relation to the Holy Spirit who,
as God’s notional love breathed forth by the Father and the Son, moves them to embrace God’s
self-communication.
Thirdly, Rahner describes the habit of charity as the principle of charitable acts. It is a gift
that follows from people’s openness to God’s self-communication through sanctifying grace.
Having encountered God in their supernatural existential, those who choose to embrace the
Trinity through the gift of sanctifying grace are given the habit of charity as an effect of being
made pleasing to God. The habit of charity is an immediate effect of the Spirit who dwells in
souls with sanctifying grace. This gift imitates the supernatural love of the Spirit who proceeds
from the Father and the Son as Gift. It also gives people a relation to the Father and the Son, who
offer human beings a participation in divine love through the gift of the Spirit who proceeds from
them.
Fourthly, Rahner discusses the light of glory as the material disposition for the beatific
vision of God. Although the light of glory is only bestowed upon the saints in heaven, this is
anticipated on earth by those who receive supernatural knowledge through the light of faith,
which gives them certainty of the truth of divine revelation. The light of glory is an effect of the
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divine mission of the Son, who makes God visible to humanity as the perfect expression of the
Father. Hence, when people receive supernatural knowledge of the divine persons through the
light of glory, they participate in the filiation of the Son. This participation in the Son gives
people a non-appropriated relation to the Father as children of God.
When considering these four created graces as a whole, it may be observed that the esse
secundarium of Christ’s humanity enables other humans to receive sanctifying grace, which in
turn allows them to receive supernatural love through the habit of charity and supernatural
knowledge through the light of glory. Due to the intimate relationship of created grace with
uncreated grace, these four dimensions of the human experience of grace yield some analogical
understanding of the four divine relations of the Trinity. Such an analogy is similar to the natural
psychological analogy inasmuch as it describes the divine processions in terms of knowledge and
love. However, a supernatural psychological analogy that focuses on how grace affects human
subjectivity indicates more about why the absolute subjectivity of God necessarily subsists in
three divine subjects.
Building upon Rahner’s view of the analogy of being, it may be noted that creatures
imitate God according to their relative degree of self-presence. Accordingly, grace elevates
human subjectivity by making it more present to itself in the supernatural presence of God than it
would be by nature alone. Now, since humans participate in God’s infinite self-presence through
four relations established by four irreducible created graces, one might suppose by analogy that
God’s absolute subjectivity is differentiated in its subsistence by four divine relations. It is
granted that if reason knows God to be absolutely simple as pure act, no accidental qualities or
accidental relations may be attributed to God. Yet, one could posit the existence of divine
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relations in God if they were substantial relations that differentiated multiple manners of
existential subsistence within the one divine essence. Furthermore, the nature of the four divine
relations thus posited may be discussed analogically through the human experience of created
grace. Although this experience of created grace per se cannot yield a demonstration that there
are three divine persons in God, or even that there are four divine relations, it does provide some
insight into the Trinity that is revealed as uncreated grace. Ultimately, it is humanity’s union
with uncreated grace whereby the Trinity is made manifest and understood. Created grace merely
facilitates this union with the divine persons.
C. Conclusion
This chapter began by noting the differences between Rahner and Lonergan in their
appreciation for natural psychological analogies for the Trinity in theological tradition. Then it
discussed Rahner’s view that people’s experience of grace as God’s self-communication may be
used to form a stronger Trinitarian analogy than that developed from natural human psychology.
This was followed by an examination of how Rahner’s theology of grace and the Trinity could
be used to develop a supernatural, psychological analogy. It started to construct such an analogy
after having noted the possibility of transposing Lonergan’s four-point hypothesis into Rahner’s
theological categories. It articulated Rahner’s understanding of the interrelationship among the
four preeminent created graces, and then it indicated parallels between this and the
interrelationship among the divine persons. Finally, it argued that this supernatural,
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psychological analogy developed from the foundations of Rahner’s theology yields some
analogical understanding of the Trinity.
The goal of this chapter was to reflect upon Rahner’s understanding of the four
preeminent created graces and to develop them in pursuit of a supernatural, psychological
analogy for the Trinity. Indeed, since the created graces which human beings experience
manifest uncreated grace by their imitation of the divine persons, they were noted to enable some
analogical understanding of the Trinity. However, this chapter cautioned that while the human
experience of uncreated grace through created grace on earth reveals some insights about the
Trinity, there is much about the Trinity yet to be revealed that will remain mysterious until
created and uncreated grace are communicated in their fullness in heaven. Yet, even in the
beatific vision of the saints in which the divine persons are immediately experienced, the Trinity
remains incomprehensible and an absolute mystery to human understanding.
Having taken steps toward transposing the four-point hypothesis into Rahner’s
theological categories of quasi-formal causality and the supernatural existential, and having used
his theological foundations to develop a supernatural, psychological analogy, it remains to be
seen whether Rahner’s theology provides a stronger ontological foundation for such an analogy
than that proposed in Doran’s interpretation of Lonergan. The final chapter of this dissertation
will assess which foundation for a supernatural, psychological analogy is preferable by
contrasting Rahner’s understanding of quasi-formal causality with Lonergan and Doran’s
understanding of exemplary causality.
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CHAPTER V
Comparing the Theologies of Karl Rahner and Bernard Lonergan as Foundations for the
Development of a Supernatural, Psychological Analogy
At this point, it has been shown how the four-point hypothesis might be transposed into
Karl Rahner’s theological categories as a foundation for a supernatural psychological analogy.
Now it would be useful to inquire whether Rahner’s theology provides a stronger ontological
foundation for such an analogy than that proposed in Doran’s development of Lonergan. This
final chapter will use various criteria to assess whose theological categories provide a stronger
foundation for a supernatural analogy. First, it will discuss whose reflections on the natural
psychological analogy are better suited to serve as a foundation for a supernatural psychological
analogy. Second, it will examine whose theology provides a stronger ontological foundation for
the four-point hypothesis. Third, it will evaluate whose account of the relationship between
uncreated grace and created grace provides a stronger ontological foundation for a supernatural
analogy.
A. The Natural Psychological Analogy as a Foundation
Both Lonergan and Rahner drew from the theological tradition of Augustine and Thomas
Aquinas who developed psychological analogies for the Trinity. Yet, while Lonergan wrote
several works early in his career in which he praised and developed Aquinas’ natural
psychological analogy, Rahner was more critical of its shortcomings. As interpreters of
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Lonergan, Robert Doran and Neil Ormerod criticize Rahner for what they perceive as a lack of
appreciation for natural psychological analogies.
Doran attributes Rahner’s criticism of traditional psychological analogies to a
misunderstanding of Aquinas on emanatio intelligibilis.1 This alleged misunderstanding of the
intellectual processions in God is why Doran believes Rahner’s “Grundaxiom” focuses on the
economic Trinity rather than a psychological analogy as a model for the immanent Trinity.2 He
also does not think that this issue is unique to Rahner, noting that “in Lonergan’s view,
theologians have failed for seven centuries to understand the emanatio intelligibilis that is the
principle employed to resolve the very first problem in a systematics of the Trinity, the problem
of the divine processions.”3 He believes this has caused the psychological analogy for the Trinity
1 Cf. Robert M. Doran, “Intelligentia Fidei in De Deo Trino, Pars Systematica: A Commentary on the First
Three Sections of Chapter One,” Method: Journal of Lonergan Studies 19, no. 1 (2001): 79: “In our own day, I fear,
Rahner’s slogan-like statement of his Trinitarian Grundaxiom (‘The immanent Trinity is the economic Trinity, and
vice versa’) hides what has to be judged a misunderstanding of Thomas’s emanatio intelligibilis. From this lack of
appreciation of a genuine systematic achievement, some have moved all too easily (and quite contrary to Rahner’s
intentions, it must be added) to collapsing the immanent into the economic Trinity.” Doran notes that Lonergan
suggested on one occasion that Rahner did not understand Aquinas on the emanatio intelligibilis. Cf. ibid., 80n71:
Lonergan acknowledges this in one of his responses to questions at the 1969 Regis College institute on
Method in Theology: ‘Kant does not know about insight, and neither does Maréchal. . . . Rahner asks, What
does this mean, this emanatio intelligibilis? It is the action of an intelligence. A person, insofar as he is
acting intelligently, rationally, responsibly, is a principle of something else that occurs because this is
intelligent, or because this is rational, or because this is the responsible thing to do.’ See
www.bernardlonergan.com at 51600DTE060.
2 Cf. Robert M. Doran, What is Systematic Theology? (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), 30-1:
But it is clear that he did not understand Thomas’s emanatio intelligibilis, the basic psychological analogy
for the Trinitarian processions. The Grundaxiom is built on a misunderstanding of a genuine theological
achievement, namely, the notion of emanatio intelligibilis and its use in an attempt to understand the divine
processions. Misunderstanding the emanatio intelligibilis means necessarily that one will not be able to
appropriate the relation between divine procession and the divine missions as this relation is expressed in
question 43 of the Prima pars of the Summa theologiae.
3 Doran, “Intelligentia Fidei in De Deo Trino, Pars Systematica,” 80.
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to receive undue criticism in contemporary theology.4 In agreement, Ormerod notes, “Apart from
the writings of Lonergan and those utilizing his works, modern Trinitarian theology has shown
little interest in understanding the processions, or in the psychological analogy except to dismiss
it for a variety of supposed short-comings.”5
Ormerod argues further that Rahner was dissatisfied with traditional psychological
analogies because he sought to find necessary reasons for the divine processions in humanity’s
encounter with the economic Trinity.6 He claims that Rahner preferred this to a hypothetical
understanding of the immanent Trinity developed through the speculations of psychological
analogies. As he states, “Rahner’s major criticism of the psychological analogy is that it remains
hypothetical. It cannot be proven to be the case. It is unscriptural, except on the basis of artificial
’eisegesis’. It cannot explain the transition from essential to notional acts.”7
Ormerod believes that Rahner’s criticism of the psychological analogy is unwarranted,
however. He contends that when Rahner attempts to describe the divine processions of the
immanent Trinity through their self-communication as “(a) Origin-Future; (b) History-
4 Cf. Robert M. Doran, The Trinity in History: Missions and Processions (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 2012), 146: “The psychological analogy has fallen on hard times in theology. Part of the reason, I believe, is
that it has rarely been understood. What has not been understood very well in the history of theology is how act
proceeds from act in the autonomous spiritual dimension of human consciousness, and in particular how different
acts of understanding ground a series of inner words.”
5 Neil Ormerod, “The Four-Point Hypothesis: Transpositions and Complications,” Irish Theological
Quarterly 77, no. 2 (2012): 132.
6 Cf. Neil Ormerod, “Wrestling with Rahner on the Trinity,” Irish Theological Quarterly 68 (2003): 222:
“Rahner rejects the psychological analogy on the very grounds that it fails to do what it never tries to do. It cannot
prove the necessity of the divine processions and the distinction of persons. It remains hypothetical. As noted above,
for Rahner the theological goal is the necessary - faith seeking necessary reasons - not a modest and reverent
understanding - fides quaerens intellectum, to follow Anselm’s dictum.”
7 Ibid., 224.
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Transcendence; (c) Invitation (offer)-Acceptance; (d) Knowledge-Love,” these theological
categories are just as hypothetical as those used in the psychological analogy.8
However, against Ormerod’s reasoning, it may be argued that when Rahner criticized the
hypothetical speculations of psychological analogies, he did not believe that necessary reasons
for the divine processions were to be found in humanity’s encounter with the economic Trinity.
Rather, he simply wanted to ground all ideas about the immanent Trinity in the way it appears in
history as the economic Trinity. At no point does Rahner reflect upon the effects of the divine
missions in order to rationally demonstrate the divine relations that constitute the persons in the
Trinity. In accord with his “Grundaxiom” about the identity of the immanent and economic
Trinity, his main emphasis is that the observations one makes about God’s self-communication
in history must be attributed to the divine persons and their relations. Otherwise, the economic
Trinity would not be God’s self-communication.
In fact, far from finding no value in psychological analogies, Rahner explains that they
can yield some insight into the immanent Trinity insofar as the divine missions are observed to
relate to the spiritual acts of knowledge and love. Accordingly, one’s understanding of
intellectual processions prepares one to recognize the sense in which the human soul imitates the
economic Trinity. As Rahner writes,
8 Cf. ibid.:
This standard of certainty and necessity is very high, and measured against it, the psychological analogy
will inevitably fail. But then Rahner’s own performance fares little better. In Chapter 3 of The Trinity,
where he develops an outline for a systematics, Rahner identifies a fourfold ’group of aspects’ to promote a
better grasp of the Trinitarian mystery. These emerge from the analysis of divine self-communication: (a)
Origin-Future; (b) History-Transcendence; (c) Invitation (offer)-Acceptance; (d) Knowledge-Love. It is
hard to see how these are any less hypothetical than the psychological analogy, and indeed the final pair of
aspects clearly relates to it.
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We do not mean that a psychological doctrine of the Trinity is a pure or even
unsuccessful theological speculation. The hints given in Scripture show that the two
divine processions, whose reality is assured by revelation, have certainly something to do
with the two basic spiritual activities of knowing and loving. Thus the starting point of an
Augustinian theology of the Trinity is undeniable. Yet if, unlike scholastic theology, we
wish to avoid an artificial “eisegesis” into scriptural theology, we shall have to remember
that this inner conception is indicated in Scripture only insofar as, in the economy of
salvation, this intra-divine knowledge is seen as self-revealing, and this intra-divine love
as self-communicating.9
Furthermore, Rahner’s view of the relationship between nature and grace leads him to
focus not so much on how the soul in itself imitates the Trinity, but rather on how grace makes
the soul like the Trinity. He notes that it is difficult to distinguish how the soul would imitate
God in a state of pure nature from how it imitates God in the actual order of grace with its
“supernatural existential.” Indeed, when people identify parallels between the divine missions
and the spiritual activities of knowledge and love, these are noted in a human situation
characterized by a supernatural existential, rather than by pure nature. Accordingly, Rahner
primarily focuses on the soul’s natural intellectual powers inasmuch as they inform his view on
how the human soul is disposed to receive God’s self-communication as quasi-formal cause.
Consequently, his understanding of human nature is directed toward examining of the
relationship between the economic Trinity and the human soul touched by grace, rather than
toward developing a natural psychological analogy.
While Lonergan’s starting point for formulating the psychological analogy is the study of
the intellectual powers of the human soul, Rahner’s starting point is the study of the soul as the
disposition for God’s self-communication in the divine missions through created grace. In this
9 Cf. Karl Rahner, The Trinity, trans. Joseph Donceel (New York: Crossroad, 1970), 19.
267
respect, Rahner’s reflections on the natural psychological analogy more directly suggest the
possibility of formulating a supernatural psychological analogy than those of Lonergan.
Although Lonergan certainly developed a more robust account of the natural psychological
analogy, Rahner’s emphasis of its limits may serve as a better starting point for developing of a
supernatural psychological analogy.10
B. The Four-Point Hypothesis as a Foundation
While Rahner most often spoke of incarnation and grace as the two modes of God’s self-
communication to human beings, Lonergan went beyond this by discussing human participation
in the four divine relations. For this reason, Ormerod and others consider Rahner’s theology
difficult to reconcile with Lonergan’s four-point hypothesis.11
Nevertheless, the belief that each
10
Cf. Jordan Matthew Miller, “You Loved Me before the Foundation of the World: An Examination of
Karl Rahner’s Doctrine of Trinity and Comparison to that of Hans Urs Von Balthasar” (PhD. diss., Fordham, 2014),
in ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, https://search-proquest-com.proxycu.wrlc.org/pqdtglobal/docview
/1562902315/fulltextPDF/ 52ABA5A66B5B4FEBPQ/ (accessed January 23, 2018), 108-9:
Rahner highlights several serious problems and dangers in the Scholastic account of Trinity. Yet it would
be difficult not to see his own systematic proposal as in continuity with the ‘psychological’ doctrine of
Augustine and Thomas [emphasis is Miller’s]. According to Rahner’s axiom, the four pairs/dyads must
describe not only the economic Trinity but also the immanent Trinity, as these are one and the same.
Therefore by including knowledge and love as the last of his four dyads, summing up the others, Rahner is
effectively claiming that knowledge and love characterize the Logos and the Spirit as they are in God’s
own internal being, not only as they are for us. He has thus affirmed a ‘psychological’ doctrine of Trinity,
yet with a different starting point. This difference of starting-point is very significant; it determines whether
one has a legitimate psychological doctrine or a problematic one.
11 Cf. Ormerod, “The Four-Point Hypothesis: Transpositions and Complications,” 128:
The purpose of this hypothesis is to provide a unifying structure for Christian doctrines of the Trinity,
Incarnation, grace, and the beatific vision. This unification is a remarkable achievement, and as I have
indicated elsewhere, is a far richer structure for attaining a desirable unification than the approach of Karl
Rahner, which is overly compact. Whereas Rahner’s unification is based on the two Trinitarian
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of the four divine relations has an external term in history has been argued in this dissertation to
be agreeable with Rahner’s theological foundations. This view aligns with Lonergan’s claim in
his four-point hypothesis that God’s self-communication has resulted in the bestowal of four
created graces that imitate the four divine relations.
Lonergan’s correlation of the four created graces with the four divine relations does
something similar to Rahner’s “Grundaxiom” by establishing non-appropriated relations between
human beings and the divine persons. Drawing from Lonergan, Doran makes the four-point
hypothesis the starting point of his systematic theology, with the result that it identifies the
economic Trinity with the immanent Trinity from the very beginning. Doran writes, “We are
bringing the four-point hypothesis forward to join the understanding of the processions and
relations from the beginning. This is our way of honoring Karl Rahner’s Trinitarian Grundaxiom,
‘The immanent Trinity is the economic Trinity, and vice versa.’”12
processions, Lonergan’s is based on the four Trinitarian relations. The richness of this structure allows for
more differentiation than that of Rahner, without collapsing various categories into one another.
Also, cf. Neil Ormerod, “Two Points Or Four?—Rahner And Lonergan On Trinity, Incarnation, Grace, And Beatific
Vision,” Theological Studies 68, no. 3 (2007): 668:
Does Rahner's theology of grace in terms of the divine self-communication of the Spirit adequately reflect
all the distinctions needed for a proper account of the reality of grace? Rahner made much of the
distinction between created and uncreated grace and was critical of the Scholastic position, which focused
attention on created grace to the neglect of uncreated grace.
However, there is little in his writings on the
debate about the distinction between sanctifying grace and the habit of charity, a distinction that was a
matter of dispute between Franciscan and Dominican schools [Emphasis is Ormerod’s].
12 Doran, The Trinity in History, 183.
269
Doran believes that the four-point hypothesis reflects much that Rahner’s “Grundaxiom”
intended to convey about the Trinity in history.13
Rahner believes that unless human beings have
a non-appropriated relation to each of the divine persons through the created terms of the divine
missions in history, then the economic Trinity could not be said to be a self-communication of
the immanent Trinity. Lonergan’s four-point hypothesis complements Rahner’s “Grundaxiom”
inasmuch as it clarifies that such non-appropriated relations require a participation in the divine
relations.
Yet, while Lonergan notes that the four created graces imitate the four divine relations, he
does not claim that God’s self-communication had to take place through the gift of these four
created graces. This is most evident when considering the esse secundarium of the Son’s
incarnation. In the actual order of providence, the Son’s esse secundarium is the source of all
other created graces.14
Despite this, Lonergan believes that the Father or the Holy Spirit could
have become incarnate in place of the Son.15
13 Cf. ibid.: “While Lonergan’s understanding of the unity of processions and missions is, I believe, far
more differentiated and far more satisfactory than Rahner’s rather thin Trinitarian theology, it is also closer to
Rahner’s real intention, I believe, than some of the applications that have been made of the Grundaxiom would
suggest.” Also, cf. Darren Dias, “The Contributions of Bernard J.F. Lonergan to a Systematic Understanding of
Religious Diversity” (PhD diss., St. Michael’s College, 2008), in ProQuest Dissertations and Theses,
https://search-proquest-com.proxycu.wrlc.org/pqdtglobal/docview/304411979/fulltextPDF
/8552C2E3EED74387PQ/ (accessed January 23, 2018), 149: “Lonergan's definition of the divine missions and the
four-point hypothesis is perhaps the most lucid technical expression of what Rahner's Grundaxiom that the
immanent Trinity is the economic Trinity and vice versa means.”
14 Cf. Neil Ormerod, “‘For in Him the Whole Fullness of Deity Dwells Bodily’: The Trinitarian Depths of
the Incarnation,” Theological Studies 77, no. 4 (2016): 821: “Each of the subsequent three participations flows from
the very first aspect, Jesus’s participation in paternity. It is because Jesus is the Word of the Father spoken into
human history as Logos incarnate that he enjoys the light of glory, that the Spirit descends on him and remains, and
that he is empowered to give himself over to the work of building the kingdom of God. He is also the type and
exemplar of all grace for us.”
15 Cf. Bernard Lonergan, The Ontological and Psychological Constitution of Christ, vol. 7 of Collected
Works of Bernard Lonergan, eds. Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran, trans. Michael G. Shields (Toronto:
270
In the actual order in which the Son became incarnate, the esse secundarium of Christ’s
humanity has a created relation to the Son that imitates the Father’s paternal relation to the Son.
Accordingly, the esse secundarium participates in paternity. However, if either the Father or the
Holy Spirit had become incarnate instead of the Son, the esse secundarium of that person’s
humanity would not imitate paternity by having a created relation to the Son. Rather, it would
have a created relation to the divine person that had become incarnate. In this respect, it would
imitate whichever divine relation is opposed to that of the divine person in which it subsists. Yet,
if the esse secundarium were equally suited to participate in any of the divine relations, this
would imply that the esse secundarium is not inherently disposed to imitate any of the notional
properties of the divine persons in particular. Therefore, if any of the divine persons could have
become incarnate, this would appear to weaken any analogy between the esse secundarium and
paternity suggested by Lonergan’s four-point hypothesis.
Moreover, Lonergan suggests that if human beings had never sinned, the Son might not
have become incarnate for the purpose of their supernatural elevation. He argues that in the
actual situation of grace, the Son only became incarnate as a solution to the problem of sin. Even
then, the incarnation of the Son is not necessary, but a free and unexacted gift. Although
Lonergan does not presume to know “what would have happened in some other order in which
Adam did not sin,”16
he claims that “in the present dispensation there would have been no
University of Toronto Press, 2002), 137: “Since the divine act of existence is common to the three persons, the
potency to enter into the hypostatic union is also common to all three.”
16 Bernard Lonergan, “The Notion of Fittingness: The Application of Theological Method to the Question
of the Purpose of the Incarnation,” in Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, Vol. 19: Early Latin Theology, eds.
Robert M. Doran and H. Daniel Monsour, trans. Michael G. Shields (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011),
531.
271
Incarnation had Adam not sinned.”17
Given God’s will to bestow grace upon humanity, he
reasons that the incarnation of the Son is not necessary because “God could in other ways with
supreme wisdom decree the gift of grace or its restoration.”18
However, by interpreting the actual order of grace in this manner, he weakens the
association of the esse secundarium with the gifts of sanctifying grace, the habit of charity, and
the light of glory. His argument appears to suggest that God’s original plan might have been to
give humanity only three created graces without bestowing a fourth as their source. Yet, based
on the assumption in the four-point hypothesis that humans participate in the divine relations
through distinct created graces, God’s self-communication could not enable participation in all
four divine relations through only three created graces. Even if one presumed that God would
have bestowed a fourth created grace other than Christ’s esse secundarium if humanity had never
sinned, one is left to ponder what created grace other than the esse secundarium could have
enabled humanity to participate just as much in the Father’s paternity.19
Indeed, if one assumes
17
Ibid.
18
Ibid., 525.
19 Ormerod speculates briefly about other possible created graces that might have allowed people to
participate in the divine relations, but he does not indicate how paternity might have been participated if there were
no incarnation. Cf. Ormerod, “The Four-Point Hypothesis: Transpositions and Complications,” 134-5:
Lonergan’s task is then to find correlations between these two sets of four realities. The complicating fact
lies in Lonergan’s identification of the four absolutely supernatural realities. Certainly the four identified
are existing realities affirmed by faith. However, they are not the only possible realities. If, for example, we
adopt the position of Aquinas, that any of the three persons could have been incarnate, one could also
affirm other possible absolutely supernatural realities, such as an incarnation of the Father or the Spirit.
While we have no reason to affirm the existence of such realities, their possibility implies other possible
modes of imitation of the divine substance apart from the four absolutely supernatural realities that
Lonergan identifies. Otherwise Lonergan would seem to be implying that only the Son can be incarnated, a
position proposed by Rahner, but explicitly rejected by Lonergan in his Christological writings.
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that the esse secundarium could have been replaced equally by any number of things, this limits
one’s ability to perceive the unique qualities of the esse secundarium whereby it imitates the
Father in his relation to the Son. Hence, Lonergan’s views about the relation between the Son’s
incarnation and God’s original offer of grace to humanity seem to weaken any supernatural
analogy rooted in his four-point hypothesis, which presumes strong associations among the four
created graces that imitate the four divine relations.
In contrast to Lonergan, Rahner maintains that only the Son could have become
incarnate. He argues that incarnation could only be a proper manifestation of the Son in history.
In accord with his “Grundaxiom,” he believes that God’s self-communication through the
created terms of the divine missions must express the notional properties that are particular to
each divine person. Now, since the self-communication of the Son took place through an
incarnation, he concludes that a hypostatically assumed human nature could only have a non-
appropriated relation to the Son by its esse secundarium. Hence, the esse secundarium is a grace
that could only be created as the self-communication of the Father’s paternity on account of its
necessary relation to the Son.
Rahner also believes that in the actual order of providence, the Son’s incarnation was not
planned by God only as a solution to the problem of sin, but was also planned as the cause of the
grace offered to humanity even before sin.20
He does suggest on at least one occasion, in
20
Cf. Karl Rahner, “Order, III. Supernatural Order,” in Encyclopedia of Theology: The Concise
Sacramentum Mundi, eds. Karl Rahner, et al. (New York: The Seabury Press, 1975), 1115-6:
The supernatural order is a Christological order. Although it is a theologically controverted view, it can
nevertheless be postulated that God’s original intention in his self-communication, which gave the history
of salvation its structure even before the Fall, was directed to the incarnation of the Logos as its historical,
eschatological culmination. The incarnation, therefore, together with the glorification of Christ, which
273
agreement with Lonergan, that God could have redeemed humanity by some means other than
the Son’s incarnation.21
However, he believes that when Lonergan suggests the incarnation was
not planned in a manner antecedent to humanity’s original sin, he weakens the association
between the incarnation and the offer of grace to humanity. One cannot take for granted that the
Trinity’s self-communication could have been manifested just as clearly without the incarnation.
He finds it best to assume that “Christ’s ‘human nature’ is not something which happens to be
there, among many other things, which might equally well have been hypostatically assumed, but
it is precisely that which comes into being when God’s Logos ‘utters’ himself outwards.”22
While Lonergan’s theology affirms many implications of Rahner’s “Grundaxiom,” he
does not connect the self-communication of the Father with the esse secundarium of the Son’s
humanity as strongly as the “Grundaxiom” would suggest. If Rahner is correct that the esse
secundarium could only be created as the external term of the Father’s self-communication in his
relation to the Son, his theology would provide a more robust defense of the four-point
because of sin takes place through death, both manifests the supernatural order absolutely in history and
definitively establishes it in the world. In other words, it is permissible to assume with Scotism that even
supralapsarian grace was the grace of Christ, and that the supernatural order as such is Christological.
Christ does not become and remain head and goal of saving history only when he enters into it because of
sin. The supernatural order present in the history of salvation is from the outset of such a kind that God
willed to communicate himself to the world in Christ in the Incarnation.
21 Cf. Karl Rahner, “Current Problems in Christology,” in Theological Investigations, Vol. 1: God, Christ,
Mary and Grace, trans. Cornelius Ernst (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1961), 178-9:
All is to be redeemed, because as good it is capable of redemption, because apart from Christ it is all lost,
as a whole, with all its goodness. All. But how does this happen, when he shares the appearance and the
concreteness of this lost state, when he himself becomes what is in need of redemption? He could have
done this in another way? He could have saved the world even without this, and redeemed it into his
freedom and infinity? Certainly: but in fact he did so by becoming himself what was in need of redemption,
and in this way, this way alone, must take place that one Redemption which really exists and is the only
one we know.
22 Rahner, The Trinity, 89.
274
hypothesis. Accordingly, it would also offer a firmer foundation to any supernatural analogy that
might be developed from the four-point hypothesis.
C. The Relationship between Uncreated and Created Grace as a Foundation
According to Rahner’s view of the “supernatural existential,” God’s offer of self-
communication constitutes the concrete existence of the human quiddity with a supernatural end
as its “quasi-formal cause.” He notes that human nature has an obediential potency to be
modified by God’s quasi-formal causality because of its asymptotic orientation toward God in
transcendence. When God’s self-communication activates this obediential potency, the concrete
human quiddity is marked with a supernatural existential that transcends the parameters of pure
human nature. On account of his distinction between pure nature and concrete quiddity, Rahner
notes that God is not “an inner essential constitutive element belonging to the essence of the
finite being,”23
but that God is the innermost constitutive element of human transcendence in its
concrete quiddity.24
This occurs through God’s quasi-formal causality.
Rahner also believes that God’s self-communication acts as an “exemplary cause”
inasmuch as its gift of created grace enables humans to achieve their supernatural end by
imitating the uncreated grace of the Trinity. This created grace is the material disposition of
23
Karl Rahner, “Natural Science and Reasonable Faith,” in Theological Investigations, Vol. 21: Science
and Christian Faith, trans. Hugh M. Riley (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1988), 36.
24 Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, 121-2: “In transcendence as such, absolute being is the
innermost constitutive element by which this transcendental movement is borne towards itself, and is not just the
extrinsic term and extrinsic goal of a movement.”
275
God’s self-communication whereby people receive a non-appropriated relation to each of the
divine persons. The esse secundarium, sanctifying grace, the habit of charity, and the light of
glory each participate in the divine relations inasmuch as all created grace is the material effect
of God’s quasi-formal causality. Hence, a four-point hypothesis adapted to Rahner’s theology
would focus on how these created graces dispose the human soul to God’s self-communication
as a “quasi-formal cause.”
Lonergan agrees that God is the “exemplary cause” of all created graces whereby human
beings have non-appropriated relations to the divine persons. He also concurs with Rahner about
the priority of uncreated grace over created grace.25
However, he does not share Rahner’s view
that God acts as a “quasi-formal cause” that constitutes humanity’s concrete quiddity with a
“supernatural existential.”26
Wishing to emphasize that the divine missions do not ontologically
25
Cf. Robert M. Doran, “Consciousness and Grace,” Method: Journal of Lonergan Studies 11, no. 1
(1993): 71: “It seems clear, then, that Lonergan wrestled with the same question that occupied Rahner in the article
we discussed above, and that during this 1947-1948 course (and so a year or so after he wrote ‘De ente
supernaturali’) he changed his position on the understanding of the relation between created and uncreated grace.”
26 Lonergan first appears to have developed this view in the revised proposition 22 from his 1947-1948
course notes. For Doran’s recording of this proposition, cf. Doran, “Consciousness and Grace,” 71: “The uncreated
gift, as uncreated, is constituted by God alone, and by it God stands to the state of the justified person not only as an
efficient principle but also as a constitutive principle; but this constitutive principle is present in the just not as an
inherent form but as the term of a relation.” For Doran’s commentary on Lonergan’s position, cf. Robert M. Doran,
“Social Grace and the Mission of the Word,” (paper presented at Colloquium on Doing Catholic Systematic
Theology in a Multireligious World, Marquette University, November 2010), http://lonerganresource.com/pdf/books
/1/37%20-%20Social%20Grace%20and%20the%20Mission%20of%20the%20Word.pdf (accessed January 23,
2018), 6: “The triune God assumes a constitutive role in our living, not as an inherent form or quasi-form, but as the
term of a set of created relations.” Also, for Doran’s comparison of Lonergan and Rahner’s views, cf. Doran,
“Consciousness and Grace,” 72:
For Rahner the new relationship has to be a form of formal causality, whereas for Lonergan God is a
constitutive principle of the person receiving grace, not as a formal cause, but as the term of a relation. Nor
does Rahner’s use of the expression ‘quasi-formal causality’ minimize the difference, since for Rahner,
while the form abides in its absolute transcendence and so is not what Lonergan would call an inherent
form (what is explicitly negated by Lonergan in the second version of thesis 22), its formal causality ‘must
be taken really seriously.’
276
change God, but only creatures, Lonergan prefers to describe God as the “exemplary cause” of
human participation in divinity.27
He does not share with Rahner the concept of a “supernatural
existential” because it presupposes a distinction between human nature and human quiddity that
he does not acknowledge.28
Instead, he describes humanity’s supernatural orientation to God in
the current order of grace in terms of “vertical finality.”29
In his view, since humanity’s
obediential potency for supernatural elevation is activated by God as an external agent, grace
does not change human nature in its concrete quiddity.30
27
Cf. L. Matthew Petillo, “The ‘Experience of Grace’ in the Theologies of Karl Rahner and Bernard
Lonergan” (PhD diss., Boston College, 2009), in ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, https://search-proquest-com
.proxycu.wrlc.org/pqdtglobal/docview/304848745/fulltextPDF/DF71704BA1F41CCPQ (accessed January 23,
2018), 128: “The fact that God freely chooses to send his Spirit does not involve an entitative change in God but a
terminative change in creatures. According to Lonergan, the infusion of grace effects a qualitative change in the
creature.” Also, cf. Neil Ormerod, “The Metaphysics of Holiness: Participation in the Divine Nature,” Irish
Theological Quarterly 79, no. 1 (2014): 73: “Given the general framework here is one of exemplary causation (they
are external imitations of the divine substance) the problematic category of quasi-formal causality is not needed.”
28 Cf. J. Michael Stebbins, “Rahner and Lonergan on the Natural-Supernatural Distinction: Some
Differences and Why They Matter,” in Grace and Friendship: Theological Essays in Honor of Fred Lawrence, from
His Grateful Students, eds. M. Shawn Copeland and Jeremy D. Wilkins (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University
Press, 2016), 267: “Lonergan sees no need to appeal to anything like Rahner’s supernatural existential.” Also, cf.
Petillo, “The ‘Experience of Grace’ in the Theologies of Karl Rahner and Bernard Lonergan,” 126: “For Lonergan,
there is not a real distinction between ‘human quiddity’ and ‘human nature.’ Lonergan agrees with Rahner that grace
is constitutive of personal existence but, unlike Rahner, conceives the supernatural order to be beyond human nature
and thus, beyond the human quiddity.”
29 Cf. Stebbins, “Rahner and Lonergan on the Natural-Supernatural Distinction,” 267: “Obediential
potency (in the form of the natural desire to know God) and vertical finality suffice to account for the openness of
human nature to God and to explain why the divine self-gift can be seen as the harmonious, definitive fulfillment of
our specifically human potential.”
30 Cf. Petillo, “The ‘Experience of Grace’ in the Theologies of Karl Rahner and Bernard Lonergan,”130:
For Lonergan, since grace is understood to be distinct from the human quiddity, its infusion, though not a
disturbance to human nature, is expressed, in experiential terms, as a change in orientation. Lonergan
describes grace as a qualitative change that happens to a person; it occurs. It is not part of the quiddity of
the person—not simply an ever present undertone in consciousness—but rather an event, a change, a
transformative actualization of a potency (the human spirit). It is an actualization of vertical finality—a
fulfillment of the self-transcending dynamism of the human subject.
277
Lonergan stresses that no finite substance can be absolutely supernatural. If any
substance, defined in reference to itself, were absolutely supernatural, it would be identical to
God.31
Thus, the divine nature is the only substance that subsists of itself as absolutely
supernatural. Yet, while the human quiddity cannot be made absolutely supernatural in itself,
people can supernaturally imitate God if their existence (esse), accidental qualities, or operations
are modified in their relation to God through created grace.32
He argues that such created graces
are infinite in a certain respect inasmuch as they order the creature in which they inhere to the
attainment of God.33
Accordingly, God bestows “vertical finality” upon humanity through God’s
offer of the four preeminent created graces and their consequent supernatural operations. The
absolutely supernatural character of these created supernatural realities enables them to give
31
Cf. Bernard Lonergan, “The Supernatural Order,” in Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, Vol. 19:
Early Latin Theology, eds. Robert M. Doran and H. Daniel Monsour, trans. Michael G. Shields (Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, 2011), 97: “Since, then, a substance is defined only in terms of what it is in itself, it follows that a
substance defined in terms of God as he is in himself is God and is infinite.” Also, cf. Bernard Lonergan, “Notes on
the Grace of Justification and the Indwelling of the Holy Spirit,” Bernard Lonergan Archive, Marquette University,
http://www.bernardlonergan.com/pdf/16000DTE040.pdf (accessed January 23, 2018), 27: “A substance cannot be
absolutely supernatural and still finite.”
32 Cf. Lonergan, “The Supernatural Order,” 97:
Not everything can be defined apart from a relation to something else. In this category are everything
except substances; thus existence is the act of a substance, an accident is that to which belongs existence in
something else, namely, in a substance, and cognitive and appetitive operations (except those in God) not
only are in something else but also have an ordination to something else, namely, their respective objects.
If these operations are defined in terms of God as he is in himself, no immediate difficulty need
arise; for they are not defined only in terms of what they are in themselves but also in terms of that in
which they exist and that object to which they are directed.
33 Cf. ibid., 95:
A substance defined by God as he is in himself is necessarily infinite, we agree; but as to something other
than a substance so defined being necessarily infinite, we admit that it is infinite in some respect, but not
simply infinite.
. . . It is not simply infinite, but only in a certain respect, namely, in that it is ordered to the
attainment of God as he is in himself.
278
humans a created relation to God’s uncreated grace as their exemplary cause.34
Lonergan finds
sufficient reason to claim that created grace is absolutely supernatural in the fact that it “exceeds
the proportion not only of human nature but also of any finite substance.”35
Accordingly, he
argues that created grace can be absolutely supernatural, without being identical with God, so
long as its mode of being is that of esse, an accidental quality, or an operation.
34
For Ormerod’s explanation of Lonergan’s view about how the four created graces establish a relation to
each of the divine persons, cf. Neil Ormerod “Two Points or Four?—Rahner and Lonergan on Trinity, Incarnation,
Grace, and Beatific Vision,” Theological Studies 68, no. 3 (2007): 673:
The logic of Lonergan's position is as follows. To understand how there can be a real relation between a
created reality and one of the divine persons, we must understand it in the same manner as the real relation
between the creature and God, since “a divine subsistent reality is really identical with the immutable
divine essence.”
All that is needed for the truth of the relation is an “appropriate created term outside God”
that exists if (and only if) God wills to create such a term. Thus the mystery of created participations of the
divine nature is an extension of the mystery of creation itself. Created participations of the divine nature
“extend” the relationship between Creator and creature by drawing the creature into the inner divine
relations. The appropriate created term thus “stands for” each possible term of the relation; since there are
four terms, one for each of the four subsistent relations, there are four created participations of the divine
nature.
For Doran’s critique of the difference between Lonergan and Rahner’s views on the causal relationship between
uncreated and created grace, cf. Doran, “Consciousness and Grace,” 73-4:
Thus, what Lonergan came to account for through a consequent condition, Rahner accounts for through a
created disposition, but with at least the difference that the latter is a material disposition for the reception
of a formal (or quasi-formal) cause, whereas the former has to do with the truth of a relation established in
the person, one term of which is the uncreated gift of God; the relation is established consequent upon the
gift, and so by reason of the divine initiative alone, but it is also the condition of the possibility of the truth
that God dwells in us.
He understands the divine self-communication in such a way that God is present to us and
constitutively dwells in us as the term of a relationship that God has constituted. This seems to me
preferable to Rahner’s quasi-formal causality. The created grace caused by the divine self-communication
can, I believe, still be referred to as a disposition to receive the uncreated gift, but not as a material or
quasi-material cause in relation to a formal or quasi-formal cause, but rather as a real relation of the
creature to the creator consequent upon the divine self-communication and participating in the relations
constitutive of the inner life of God, and conditioning the possibility of us having the truth that God dwells
in us.
35 Lonergan, “The Supernatural Order,” 79.
279
However, according to Rahner’s view of quasi-formal causality, created grace is only
absolutely supernatural inasmuch as uncreated grace belongs to its constitution.36
He argues that
created grace cannot be absolutely supernatural per se apart from uncreated grace, just as prime
matter does not exist without form. Unless uncreated grace belongs to the constitution of created
grace, it would be impossible to show that God could not create a being for which it would be
connatural.37
Indeed, if created grace were simply a purely created accident, it could not be
absolutely supernatural for every conceivable created substance. The only reality that could
make created grace absolutely supernatural is uncreated grace, since it is proper to God alone.38
Furthermore, created grace would be insufficient to give people non-appropriated relations to the
divine persons in the order of exemplary causality were it not for its union with God’s uncreated
grace as its quasi-formal cause.39
36
Cf. Karl Rahner, “Concerning the Relationship Between Nature and Grace,” in Theological
Investigations, Vol. 1: God, Christ, Mary and Grace, trans. Cornelius Ernst (London: Darton, Longman and Todd,
1961), 310n: “Grace is only then conceived in its true essence when it is recognized to be not just the created
‘accidental’ reality produced by God’s efficient causality ‘in’ a (natural) substance, but includes ‘uncreated grace’ in
its own concept in such a way that this may not be conceived of purely as a consequence of created grace.”
37 Cf. Karl Rahner, “Some Implications of the Scholastic Concept of Uncreated Grace,” in Theological
Investigations, Vol. 1: God, Christ, Mary and Grace, trans. Cornelius Ernst (London: Darton, Longman and Todd,
1961), 333n24: “Given a [created] grace which on the one hand is ontologically an accidental reality and on the
other remains as such purely in the created order, it is really impossible to show why to such an accident there
should not correspond a created substance as possible, from which such an accident could proceed connaturally.”
38 Cf. Rahner, “Concerning the Relationship between Nature and Grace,” 310n: “There is no essence of a
creaturely kind which God could constitute for which this communication could be the normal, matter-of-course
perfection to which it was compellingly disposed.”
39 Cf. Rahner, “Some Implications of the Scholastic Concept of Uncreated Grace,” 333n24: “Thus it
becomes possible to say in what the strictly supernatural character of a created grace (here primarily the light of
glory) consists: while in the created entity in general its relation to the divine cause does not belong to the inner
distinguishing features of its essence (Ia 44.1 ad 1), created grace, as ultima dispositio to an immediate
communication of the divine Being itself in the mode of formal causality – a communication which can only exist in
terms of this formal causality – involves a relation to God which belongs to its very essence.”
280
Rahner concludes that created grace is not purely created through efficient causality
alone, but is also constituted quasi-formally by the uncreated grace to which human beings relate
in their supernatural existential.40
While created grace is efficiently caused as the material
disposition for God’s self-communication, it imitates the divine persons only by God’s quasi-
formal causality.41
Accordingly, human beings may receive created grace as an absolutely
supernatural accident only because uncreated grace has become the innermost constitutive
element of their concrete human quiddity.42
In the following passage, Rahner explains how the
human quiddity can be both the prior condition and the consequence of God’s quasi-formal
causality:
The nature of the spiritual creature consists in the fact that that which is ‘innermost’ to it,
that whence, to which and through which it is, is precisely not an element of this essence
40
Cf. ibid.: “If there is something supernatural simply speaking which is absolutely mysterious, then God
himself must belong to what constitutes it, i.e. God in so far as he is not merely the ever transcendent Creator, the
efficient cause of something finite which is distinct from him, but in so far as he communicates himself to the finite
entity in quasi-formal causality.” Also, cf. P. de Letter, “Divine Quasi-Formal Causality,” Irish Theological
Quarterly 27, no. 3 (1960): 223: “The self-gift of the Uncreated Grace to the soul, transforming and divinizing it, of
necessity ‘produces’ created grace, a new form inherent in the soul, uniting it to God and making it like unto him.
The quasi-formal causality of God which by itself does not produce any effect, but only unites the soul to himself, of
necessity goes together with an efficient causality which effects the transformation of the soul or produces created
grace.”
41 Cf. Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity, trans.
William Dych (New York: Crossroad, 1978), 121: “In efficient causality the effect is always different from the
cause. But we are also familiar with formal causality: a particular existent, a principle of being is a constitutive
element in another subject by the fact that it communicates itself to this subject, and does not just cause something
different from itself which is then an intrinsic, constitutive principle in that which experiences this efficient
causality.” Also, cf. ibid., 122: “This self-communication of God to what is not God implies the efficient causation
of something other and different from God as its condition.” Some, such as Doran, have interpreted Rahner to mean
that created grace is not efficiently caused in any respect. Cf. Doran, “Consciousness and Grace,” 72: “For Rahner
the new relationship constituted by God’s gift of God’s own self is not to be thought of at all, it seems, in terms of
efficient causality, whereas for Lonergan it cannot be thought of only in these terms.” However, Rahner is clear that
created grace is an efficiently caused disposition for God’s self-communication that is made absolutely supernatural
by God’s quasi-formal causality.
42 Cf. Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, 116: “God in his own proper reality makes himself the
innermost constitutive element of man.”
281
and this nature which belongs to it. Rather its nature is based upon the fact that that which
is supra-essential, that which transcends it, is that which gives it its support, its meaning,
its future and its most basic impulse, though admittedly it does so in such a way that the
nature of this spiritual creature, that which belongs to it as such, is not thereby taken
away from it but rather obtains from this its ultimate validity and consistency and
achieves growth and development because of it. The closeness of God’s self-bestowal
and the unique personality of the creature grow in equal, and not in converse measure.
This self-bestowal of God, in which God bestows himself precisely as the absolute
transcendent, is the most immanent factor in the creature. The fact that it is given its own
nature to possess, the ‘immanence of essence’ in this sense, is the prior condition, and at
the same time the consequence, of the still more radical immanence of the transcendence
of God in the spiritual creature, this creature being considered as that which has been
endowed with grace through the uncreated grace of God.43
In response to Lonergan’s reasons for denying that grace modifies human quiddity, it
may be noted of Rahner’s view that God is only an inner constitutive element of the human
quiddity in the mode of quasi-formal causality, and not in the mode of strict formal causality
whereby grace would make human nature identical with the divine nature. Even though God’s
self-communication is the ground of human transcendence in the order of grace, and is not
external to human beings, the two remain distinct. Thus, Rahner’s position does not imply that
by modifying the concrete human quiddity, grace alters human nature in itself by making it
identical to God as its formal cause. Yet, the concrete human situation is fundamentally
transformed in its transcendental horizon by God’s absolutely supernatural grace. Accordingly,
he notes that “the distinction between God and creature which rejects pantheism therefore does
not exclude a determination of a finite being by God himself as such.”44
43
Karl Rahner, “Immanent and Transcendent Consummation of the World,” in Theological Investigations,
Vol. 10: Writings of 1965-1967, trans. David Bourke (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1973), 281.
44 Karl Rahner, “Natural Science and Reasonable Faith,” 36.
282
Rahner agrees with Lonergan that created grace is an efficiently caused disposition for
God’s self-communication. Yet Rahner’s theology points to the insight that created graces could
not be absolutely supernatural unless uncreated grace belongs to their constitution through quasi-
formal causality. This quasi-formal causality is also the only way in which created graces can
terminate in God’s uncreated grace and ground non-appropriated relations to the divine persons.
Furthermore, God’s uncreated grace must make human beings able to receive absolutely
supernatural created graces by becoming their innermost constitutive element. This elevation of
human nature is experienced in people’s concrete quiddity as a supernatural existential. By
comparison, Lonergan’s theology does not explain how God’s exemplary causality can create
absolutely supernatural imitations of the divine persons. It does not appear that anything purely
created through efficient causality can be absolutely supernatural, regardless of how much it
naturally imitates God’s exemplary causality. Therefore, Rahner’s theology provides a more
accurate ontological foundation for understanding the relationship between natural and
supernatural reality, uncreated and created grace, and human and divine persons. It would thus
be a better framework within which to develop a four-point hypothesis and a supernatural
psychological analogy for the Trinity.
E. Conclusion
This chapter compared Rahner and Lonergan’s views of natural psychological analogies,
God’s self-communication, and the causal relationship between uncreated and created grace. It
argued that there are various respects in which Rahner’s theology would provide a stronger
283
ontological foundation for the four-point hypothesis and a supernatural, psychological analogy
than does the theology of Lonergan and Doran. It focused on three areas of comparison.
Firstly, it claimed that Rahner’s reflections on the natural psychological analogy provide
greater insight into the possible structure of a supernatural psychological analogy. This is
because Rahner’s starting point for formulating the psychological analogy is the study of the soul
as the disposition for God’s self-communication through created grace. Secondly, it maintained
that Rahner’s theology of grace as God’s self-communication provides a more solid foundation
of the four-point hypothesis and draws conclusions from it more clearly. For instance, while
Lonergan believed that any of the divine persons could have become incarnate, Rahner held that
the esse secundarium could only be created as the external term of the Father’s self-
communication in his relation to the Son. Rahner’s conclusion strengthens the analogy between
the esse secundarium and paternity suggested by the four-point hypothesis. Thirdly, it contended
that Rahner’s view of the causal relationship between uncreated grace and created grace better
explains the possibility of absolutely supernatural participation in the notional properties and
relations of the divine persons. Rahner argues persuasively that created graces are absolutely
supernatural only because uncreated grace belongs to their constitution through quasi-formal
causality. By contrast, Lonergan’s theology cannot explain why absolutely supernatural
imitations of the divine persons are possible since he understands them to be purely created
through efficient causality. Rahner’s theology is thus better suited as a framework within which
to develop a supernatural psychological analogy from the four-point hypothesis.
284
CONCLUSION
In summary, this dissertation brought Karl Rahner’s theology of grace and the Trinity
into conversation with Bernard Lonergan’s four-point hypothesis, which his interpreter Robert
Doran has used to develop a supernatural, psychological analogy for the Trinity. Lonergan’s
four-point hypothesis is that there are four created graces by which people participate in the four
divine relations of paternity, active spiration, passive spiration, and filiation. These four created
graces are, respectively, Christ’s esse secundarium, sanctifying grace, the habit of charity, and
the lumen gloriae. This dissertation argued that Rahner’s theological categories provide a
stronger ontological foundation than those of Lonergan for the four-point hypothesis and a
supernatural, psychological analogy. It consisted of five chapters.
The first chapter began by studying Lonergan’s four-point hypothesis in its original
context. The origins of this hypothesis in Lonergan’s early Latin theological writings were
examined. Lonergan’s first formulation of his four-point hypothesis was found in his notes for
his course on grace in 1951-1952, and his final formulation of it was identified in his Divinarum
personarum (1957), which was revised into his De Deo trino: Pars systematica (1964). This
chapter also discussed how Lonergan’s four-point hypothesis lays the groundwork for a
supernatural, psychological analogy for the Trinity. Afterwards, it reviewed the development of
this hypothesis in current scholarship, especially by Doran who has made it the foundation for
his systematic theology. It further detailed how Doran has developed a supernatural analogy
from the four-point hypothesis by examining the human experience of the supernatural order. It
concluded by discussing the opinions of different scholars about the significance of the four-
285
point hypothesis for theology going forward, especially in reference to Doran’s work. It studied
some of Doran’s objections against his critics who reject the four-point hypothesis, in particular
Charles Hefling and David Coffey.
The second chapter noted that Doran seeks to transpose the four-point hypothesis into the
categories of a methodical theology that addresses the concerns of modern philosophy. Although
Doran believes the most appropriate categories for such a transposition are those developed by
Lonergan, this chapter suggested that Rahner’s theological categories could be more useful in
developing a contemporary analogy for the Trinity based upon the four-point hypothesis. It
initiated the process of transposing the four-point hypothesis into Rahner’s theological categories
by introducing Rahner’s theology of grace and the Trinity. It emphasized those aspects of it
which pertain to the issues discussed in Lonergan’s four-point hypothesis and in Doran’s
development of it into a supernatural analogy. The dimensions of Rahner’s thought discussed
included the philosophical foundations of his theology, his distinction between pure nature and
historical nature, his understanding of the relationship between uncreated grace and created
grace, his view of God’s self-communication as a quasi-formal cause, his “Grundaxiom” that
identifies the immanent Trinity with the economic Trinity, and his belief that people have non-
appropriated relations to the divine persons through grace. These theological categories of
Rahner were studied in order to show how they could ground the four-point hypothesis and serve
as a foundation for a supernatural, psychological analogy.
The third chapter identified areas of agreement between Lonergan’s four-point hypothesis
and Rahner’s theology of grace and the Trinity. It discussed the manners in which Rahner
286
distinguishes four created graces and correlates each of them in a non-appropriated way with a
participated divine relation. It examined Rahner’s reflections upon Christ’s esse secundarium,
sanctifying grace, the habit of charity, and the light of glory. In accord with Rahner’s theology of
human beings’ non-appropriated relations to the divine persons, it argued that these four created
graces facilitate distinct manners of participation in the uncreated grace of the divine persons.
Therefore, it contended that the four-point hypothesis could be transposed into Rahner’s
theological categories, especially those pertaining to God’s quasi-formal causality as the
determining principle of humanity’s supernatural existential. This observation laid some
groundwork for transposing the four-point hypothesis from Lonergan’s methodical theology to
Rahner’s transcendental theology.
The fourth chapter began by noting the differences between Rahner and Lonergan in their
appreciation for natural psychological analogies. It discussed Rahner’s belief that the human
experience of grace as God’s self-communication may be used to develop a stronger Trinitarian
analogy than that constructed from natural human psychology. Then it examined how Rahner’s
theology of grace and the Trinity could be used to develop a supernatural, psychological analogy.
It began to construct such an analogy after having noted the possibility of transposing
Lonergan’s four-point hypothesis into Rahner’s theological categories. It indicated Rahner’s
understanding of the interrelationship among the four preeminent created graces, and then it
identified parallels between this and the interrelationship among the divine persons. This
supernatural, psychological analogy developed from the foundations of Rahner’s theology was
argued to yield some analogical understanding of the Trinity.
287
The fifth chapter compared Rahner and Lonergan’s views of natural psychological
analogies, God’s self-communication, and the causal relationship between uncreated and created
grace. It argued that there are various respects in which Rahner’s theology would provide a
stronger ontological foundation for the four-point hypothesis and a supernatural, psychological
analogy than does the theology of Lonergan and Doran. First, it contended that Rahner’s
reflections on the natural psychological analogy are better suited to serve as a foundation for a
supernatural psychological analogy. Since Rahner’s starting point for formulating the
psychological analogy is the study of the soul as the disposition for God’s self-communication
through created grace, his reflections on the natural psychological analogy suggest the possibility
of formulating a supernatural analogy more directly than those of Lonergan. Second, it reasoned
that Rahner’s theology provides a stronger ontological foundation for the four-point hypothesis.
It explained that Lonergan’s belief that any of the divine persons could have become incarnate
weakens the analogy between the esse secundarium and paternity suggested by his four-point
hypothesis. By contrast, Rahner’s emphasis that the esse secundarium could only be created as
the external term of the Father’s self-communication in his relation to the Son strengthens the
Trinitarian analogies drawn from the four-point hypothesis. Third, it claimed that Rahner’s
account of the relationship between uncreated grace and created grace provides a stronger
ontological foundation for a supernatural analogy. Rahner recognized that created graces are
absolutely supernatural realities with non-appropriated relations to the divine persons because
uncreated grace belongs to their constitution through quasi-formal causality. However,
Lonergan’s theology fails to explain how God’s exemplary causality can create absolutely
288
supernatural imitations of the divine persons because he understands them to be purely created
through efficient causality. In each of these respects, this chapter concluded that Rahner’s
theology is better suited as a framework within which to develop a supernatural, psychological
analogy from the four-point hypothesis.
If this assessment of Rahner’s theology is correct, then future reflections upon the
possibility of a supernatural, psychological analogy for the Trinity ought to seriously engage his
thought, not only that of Lonergan and Doran. The four-point hypothesis is not merely a niche
topic that is only of interest to Lonergan scholars. Rather, it has far-reaching implications for
theology as a whole. In particular, this study has drawn from Rahner’s theological insights to
make a significant contribution toward the development of a supernatural analogy from the four-
point hypothesis that Lonergan and Doran have initiated. It has articulated the four-point
hypothesis and a supernatural analogy in Rahner’s theological categories in order to offer a
fruitful starting point for systematic theology.
289
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