The Catholic World, Vol. 25, April 1877 to September 1877

by Various

But we need not content ourselves with showing that the church is not hostile to human learning. It is easy to bring forward facts that put her before the world in her true character as the real friend of man, the guardian of his dignity, the zealous protectress of the truth of his intellect and of the freedom of his will. In medio stat virtus—Virtue avoids extremes. Our tendency to go wrong is by doing too much or too little, and we need something to keep us from either of these two extremes. It is here the church comes in to fulfil this friendly and much-needed office.

There was in the fourth and fifth century an intellectual movement that attributed more than its due to human nature. The Pelagian errors gave to man a power he does not possess, and those errors are very widely spread in this nineteenth century. They ignore the efficacy of grace, or the help the will stands in need of to serve God. Grace, according to their most favorable view, was only a light for the intellect. Here was an excess; too much was claimed for human nature. Such doctrine is contradicted by Scripture and by the Fathers. Our Lord tells us: “I am the vine, and you are the branches; without me you can do nothing.” And St. Paul says: “We are not able to think of anything [conducive to salvation] of ourselves; but our sufficiency is from God.” And St. Augustine, against those who spoke of some of the precepts as impossible, writes: “God does not command what is impossible; but commanding [thereby] counsels us to do what we can, to ask for aid to do what is beyond our power, and aids us that we may be able to do it.” In this case we have the church curbing human pride and keeping the intellect and will within its true limits.

In the sixteenth century there was a movement, resulting from pride and rebellion, that had its own punishment in the degradation to which it reduced man’s nature. Luther’s dogmatic system had, and has—for it lives in Protestantism—the effect of so debasing human nature as to deny light to the intellect and power to the will to do anything that was not sinful; for he held that the will of man is essentially changed, so that it depends on who directs it, God or the devil; and, besides, whatever it does is sinful, though covered by the merits of Jesus Christ, which, like Esau’s garments, prevent the knowledge or sight of the true state of things and the imputation of sin.

Here was a defect; human nature was denied some of its powers.

The church fulminated this doctrine, and taught formally that man’s intellect and will, though weakened by sin and passion, are not essentially changed, and that all man’s acts are not sinful. She recognized something of his original dignity in man. Hers is the spirit of the great St. Leo, whose eloquent words made the Christians and Romans of his day remember their origin, and the height to which they had been raised by the Incarnation. He exclaims: “Remember, O man! thy dignity, and, having been made a partaker of the divine nature, return not by degenerate conversation to thy former vileness.” She bade man remember that his nature, never essentially corrupt, had been purified by the grace of God, and that “in those that please God there is nothing defiled.”

Luther’s teachings shed a sinister influence far and wide that tainted even Catholic universities and affected writers who still professed to be in union with the church.

In the former University of Louvain Jansenius went so far as to say that some of the gospel precepts were impossible, and that no grace was given to fulfil them. The words that were used by St. Augustine to refute the Pelagians were turned against Jansenius, and the voice of the church was heard anew vindicating man from the necessity of committing sin. Later on came Baius, of the same university, teaching also a doctrine of universal depravity; and the Sovereign Pontiff proclaimed that negative infidelity—that is, idolatry in good faith—is not a sin; that consequently those who have not grace or the illumination of faith can do many good actions, though such actions have not the merit of those which are made available through the merits of Christ. Thus again did the church prove herself the friend of human dignity.

Further on we meet those who, suffering the infection of the air caused by the doctrines of universal depravity, deny to the intellect the power of discovering the truth by itself. The traditionalists wish to trace everything to an original revelation; man has nothing he has not received from outside. Even his knowledge of God comes from tradition. And this doctrine the church, through her supreme teacher, discountenanced. She bade them recall to mind the words of the Book of Wisdom and of St. Paul, where we are told that God can be known from the contemplation of this visible world.

We will crave indulgence if we go so far as to venture the assertion that the doctrines of Malebranche and his school had their origin in this same depreciation of the powers of the human intellect. It may be said that the idea of intuition is a nobler one than that of painful analysis and deduction; that intuition—vision—is the lot of the blessed, and therefore a higher state. But this is a state above nature, for the blessed; not a natural state in our present condition. Moreover, there are reasons to make us believe that Malebranche did not escape the infection of the world of thought prevalent in his day—the disesteem of human nature; an infection not, indeed, logically connected with the system of Luther. It was, if we may be permitted so to speak, a psychological effect—a habit of mind being induced, whereby one was led so to think. This would appear to be evidenced by his doctrine of occasionalism, which made God always acting because man could not—a doctrine the authority of the church obliged him to modify, for he would thereby have made God the author of sin. Though no official condemnation of the theories of Malebranche, regarding the primary mode of knowing truth, has ever been given by the church, or is at all likely to be given, the deductions of certain of his followers have been condemned; and it is well known that the weight of the influence of the Holy See has been cast in the scale of the psychological theories of St. Thomas, whose principle, clearly laid down, is: “Operatio intellectus præexigit operationem sensus”—“The operation of the intellect prerequires the operation of sense”—I. 2, quæst. iii. art. 3, resp. And in his first part, quæst. xviii. art. 2, he writes: “Intellectus noster qui proprie est cognoscitivus quidditatis rei ut proprii objecti, accipit a sensu; cujus propria objecta sunt accidentia exteriora. Et inde est, quod ex his quæ exterius apparent de re, devenimus ad cognoscendam essentiam rei”—“Our intellect, that properly takes cognizance of what a thing is (its essence) as its proper object, receives of the senses, the proper objects of which are external accidents. Hence it is that from what appears externally in a thing we come to know its essence.” Of course sense is to be taken in its widest meaning, so as not to exclude the perception of the modifications going on in our internal being, which are the accidents of our spiritual essence. Man, therefore, has no natural revelation, but he arrives at knowledge by the essentially inherent powers of his mind—perception, abstraction, generalization. God sees by intuition everything in himself—this is essential in him; created intellects see what is, or intellectual truth, the archetype in God, reflected from creation as from a mirror.

From these instances, then, it is evident that the church has always been the friend of human nature, asserting for it the possession of faculties denied it, protecting it from error, and guiding it in the search of truth. She is, therefore, worthy of the gratitude of mankind for what she has done in the cause of education, as well as of the confidence of men as an instructor of youth in the future.