CATHOLICITY AND PANTHEISM.
NO. XII.
THE COSMOS IN TIME AND SPACE.
The supernatural moment unites created personalities to the infinite. By the moment of substantial creation the first duality is established between the infinite and the finite. This duality is brought into harmony and unity in the Theanthropos, who knits together the finite and the infinite in the oneness of his single personality. But as the hypostatic moment united only created natures to the infinite, another moment was necessary, namely, a medium between the Theanthropos and substantial creation. This is the supernatural, which, by raising created persons above their natural sphere, enables them to arise, as it were, to the level of the infinite, and establishes a communication and intercourse between them. This we have shown in the preceding article. The question which now remains to be treated of at present is the following: Who or what is to be the medium of communicating the term of the supernatural moment to created personality?
Although God, in acting outside himself, might have effected everything immediately by himself, without allowing any play to second causes, yet, following the law of his wisdom, he exerted immediately by himself as much power as was required to set second causes in action, and then allowed them to develop themselves under his guidance. The law of wisdom is the law of sufficient reason, which implies that no intelligent
agent can, in acting, employ more power than is absolutely necessary to attain its object; for acting otherwise would be to let the amount of action not necessary to attain the object go to waste, and be employed without any possible reason. Hence the necessity on the part of the infinite to admit secondary agency in the effectuation of this moment, whenever that was possible, in order to observe the law of wisdom. Applying this theory to the external action, we see that the substantial and the hypostatic moments were effected immediately by God himself, because no secondary agency could be employed therein; but the supernatural moment was effected by God through the agency of the Theanthropos, who merited it by his own acts of infinite value.[84] Hence, as the Theanthropos is the meritorious cause of the supernatural moment, he is pre-eminently its mediator, and therefore the medium of communicating it to created personality. This consequence of Christ being the medium of the communication of grace, in force of his being its meritorious cause, is so evident that we know of none who has ever disputed it. The only question which remains to be solved—a question of the greatest importance—is this: When the Theanthropos was living on earth, he would communicate the term of the supernatural moment in the personal intercourse and intimacy in which he lived with
his followers; but as he has withdrawn his visible presence and intercourse from the earth, how is the term of the supernatural moment to be communicated to human persons in all time and space?
We answer by laying down the following principle: This medium must be such as will preserve the dignity and the prerogatives of the Theanthropos, as will befit the nature of human personality, as will fulfil the object which the supernatural term is intended to attain.
Because, if the medium which is chosen does not fulfil these conditions; if it does not maintain the dignity and prerogatives of the Theanthropos; if it does not befit the nature and constitution of human personality; if it frustrates the ends of the supernatural moment instead of attaining them, it is evident that infinite wisdom could never have chosen it without contradicting itself. The principle is, therefore, evident. Now, what can this medium be in its nature which fulfils all these conditions? It can be nothing else than the sacramental extension of the Theanthropos in time and space. In announcing such a principle, the reader is at once aware that we require some kind of presence of the Theanthropos in the cosmos extending to all time and to all space.