THE PRINCIPLE OF BEATITUDE IN HUMAN NATURE.
St. Thomas defines beatitude, in respect to man, to be “the perfect good in which the natural tendency of the human will to universal good attains complete rest.”[[119]] This is beatitude objectively considered. Subjectively, it is the actual fruition consequent upon attainment, and rest in the quiet possession, of the perfect good which is the object of volition. This fruition is an immanent act within the nature of the human subject, and must therefore proceed from a principle within the human nature. Nature denotes the same thing with essence, expressing only as a distinctive term its being a principle of activity. By reason of his essence, the human being has within him a principle by virtue of which he desires, seeks, and is impelled by the movement given him by his First and Final Cause toward the attainment of beatitude. As intelligent, universal truth is his object, to which his intellect is connatural; as volitive, universal good is his object, to which his will naturally corresponds.
The idea of universal good is obviously the one which lies at the foundation of this conception of beatitude. It is well known that the notion of good as a universal is one of the transcendental predicates; that is, of those which are outside of everything which does or can mark out any generic ratio, or diversity of kind between any existing or possible beings. Good is not a genus or kind, in opposition to some diverse genera or kinds which are not good; and, à fortiori, it is not a species, under which individuals are to be classed as specifically different, by the note of goodness, from other individuals who by their specific difference are something else than good. It is the species which completely determines the essence of every existing thing, and the specific difference which marks its essential unlikeness to other things whose essence is other than its own. Therefore no being can be essentially unlike any other by reason of one being good and the other somehow dissimilar to good. The predicate of good belongs to all genera, and, of course, to all species and individuals, as a universal notion transcending all their respective determining notes, and identifying itself, in the analogical sense proper to each of them, with all and singular of these notes.
Good is whatever is consonant to nature, whatever is a perfection, or subserves to the conservation and increase of a perfection. It is coextensive with being, and identical with it, as are all the transcendental notions, which merely present the same object of thought under various phases. Whatever is thinkable, as an object is an entity; as having its own entity undivided in itself and divided from every entity other than itself, is a unity; as an intelligible entity is a verity; as containing in itself reason for the volition that it should be what it is, it is a good. All these notions are contained in the notion of being, and are as universal as being, which has in opposition to it only nothing, that is, no-being, no-one-thing, no-true-thing, no-good, mere negation and nullity.
We are at present concerned only with actually existing rational nature, in its relation to universal being as the object of its volition, or movement towards the universal good in which it seeks for beatitude. Whatever is consonant to rational nature, gives it perfection or subserves to its perfection, is its good. Good is being regarded in its aspect as something desirable, in which the will can rest with complacency. Every actual, concrete essence is good, as such, because it has being, and in so far as it has being; and it presents, therefore, an object to the will which is desirable and in which it can have complacency. The rational nature is in itself a good as an actual being, and it is a good to itself, or, in other words, it is a good for it that it exists. The universe in which it exists is all good in essence and nature. Universal nature is in consonance with itself, and its laws tend to the perfection, conservation, and augmentation of being, throughout its whole extent. The movement of will in rational nature toward the universal good is only a higher kind and mode of an operation which is common to all nature. Things destitute of sense are put into operation toward the general end of the universe by blind and fatal laws, which receive their impulse and direction solely from the will and motive power of their creator. Those which have sense but not reason are incited to movement by a vital impulse and the excitement of their sensitive faculties by external objects. Rational nature moves itself by intelligence and will toward the good which is its object. Intellect has for its connatural object universal being as verity, and tends toward an adequation between itself and its object. So, likewise, the will in respect to the good of being. This adequation constitutes the beatitude of rational nature, and an approximation to it is an approach toward beatitude which constitutes a greater or lesser degree of imperfect felicity. The principle of beatitude has therefore been pointed out and proved to exist in human nature. The intense longing for it is matter of self-consciousness to every human being. The natural tendency and longing for beatitude cannot have been implanted by the Creator in order to be frustrated. There is no place in the nature of things for any other intention and end of creation, except to produce the good of being in all its grades and orders, according to the determinate measure prescribed by the divine intellect and the divine will. The good of inanimate nature necessarily falls short of any final and complete term in itself, because it does not contain any faculty of apprehension and complacency. Mere sensitive apprehension and complacency in living, irrational beings do not adequately supply this deficiency, because they attain only to the lowest and most imperfect good, in a partial and deficient mode. All nature below the rational, therefore, furnishes only an element, an inchoate and incomplete material substratum for the formal and complete good of created being, which can only possess a final actuality and become an end in itself in rational nature. Material beings have only their own essence and existence, which are exclusive and isolated, determined by necessary laws to merely extrinsic states and movements, in which they are totally inert. They have no return upon themselves and no capacity of receiving any other being into their own. Therefore they can have no self-consciousness or self-activity, no cognition or sentiment. Sensitive beings have a partial return upon themselves by sensation and sensitive cognition, and a limited self-activity. A spirit returns upon itself with a complete retroaction, and can receive other beings into itself according to the mode of the recipient, that is, ideally. It has therefore complete self-consciousness and self-activity, intelligence and volition, and in the human essence, by virtue of the union of the rational part with the animal, it has also a more perfect kind of sensitive life. It apprehends and possesses its own being, and universal being outside of itself, as a verity by intelligence, as a good by volition. When it is perfect and permanent in its natural good, the possession of this good is in itself beatitude. There is no other term or effect which can possibly have the ratio of an end to the intention of the Creator in the creative act, for it is the only complete and final good of being. Created being is nothing but a participation of the uncreated and necessary being, and an imitation of it in the finite order. Finite beatitude is, therefore, a participation of the infinite beatitude of the divine nature, and an imitation of it. God alone is THE BEING, who exists by his essence, and possesses being absolutely and in plenitude. In the same sense in which He alone is, whose Name is Ego sum qui sum, He alone is good and He alone is blessed. That is, He alone is good by his essence actually and in plenitude, and is alone by his essence possessed of the plenitude of blessedness.
Boethius defines the eternity of God as “the perfect possession, all at once, of boundless life.” This may answer as a definition of the beatitude of God. His being is living being, in all respects boundless, and so absolutely in act that it is incapable of any increase or diminution. The being of God is essentially good, and an object of complacency. The life of God consists in the act of intelligence and volition in which he knows and wills his own being, as infinitely intelligible and infinitely desirable. For God, to be and to live is to be blessed. The vision of his own essence presents to him an object of infinite complacency in which his will rests with a perfect and eternal quietude. What his essence is, and what that good is which constitutes the infinite beatitude of God, we cannot know except in an analogical manner. The universe of created being is an image and imitation of the divine essence. Whatever being and good we can perceive in the works of God we know must have its archetype in the essence of God, existing in a supereminent mode and an infinite plenitude. Created beauty is something which being seen pleases, in which the will reposes with complacency when it is apprehended by the intellect. Infinite, absolute, uncreated beauty must please infinitely the infinite intelligence which beholds it by a comprehensive vision. This is the nearest approach we can make to a conception of the beatitude of God.
The being of God is the archetype and source of all created being, and his infinite beatitude the archetype and source of all finite beatitude in created, intelligent beings. Creation proceeds not from want but from fulness of good in the infinite Being; not from necessity but from free volition. It is an overflow of power, intelligence, and love, diffusive of the good of being from the boundless sea of the divine essence into the streams which it fills. Its ideal possibility is in the divine essence as imitable, presenting to the divine intelligence innumerable terms of the divine omnipotence, and to the divine will innumerable objects of volition and complacency. The act which brings it out of nonexistence into existence proceeds from the three Persons of the Blessed Trinity equally and indivisibly. The origin of the creative act is in the Father, the medium in the Son, the consummation in the Holy Spirit. The almighty word of intelligence and volition calling the nonexistent universe into existence, proceeding from the Father as the origin of infinite and finite essence, in the Word is the creative ideal and measure of all the intelligible and intelligent creation, in the Spirit is the cause and principle of all created good. The formal principiation of the divine essence, proceeding from the Father and the Son as its active principle, whose term is the person of the Holy Spirit, is pure Love. Love is the consummation of the infinite being of God, and its eternal efflorescence is beatitude, the perfect possession of boundless life which is a boundless good, totally, existing in a present whose duration is without any before or after, without beginning or end or successive parts, and unchangeable by any increase or diminution. It is a maxim of philosophy that operation is in accordance with the nature of the operator. An artist produces a work corresponding to the nature of his art. The work of the Holy Spirit is like himself. The divine essence in his person being love, the consummation of the divine work in creation effected by him must be good; and that good in its last result is beatitude. He is “The Lord and Giver of life.” The life of the intelligent creature is like the life of God. He is finite, and therefore his duration is not eternity. It has a beginning, and a before and after, and its totality is not possessed all at once in one present, but its parts succeed each other without end. Although he cannot possess his past and future at one time, he possesses always his present, which glides with him through all time, and is an imitation of the eternal, ever-enduring present of eternity. The perfect possession of all that constitutes his life, without any fear of losing it, constitutes his beatitude. Divine love, diffusive of the good of being out of its own plenitude, can have no other end in creation, in so far as this end is contained within the creation itself, except the beatitude of intellectual creatures.
The idea from which creation receives its form is in the Word, and intellectual creatures are specially made in his image. In the Incarnation, the Word united to his divine nature a rational nature, consubstantial with that which is common to the whole human race, and allied generically to the highest as well as to the lowest orders of created beings, that is, both to the spiritual and the corporeal extremes of nature. The created nature thus assumed into personal unity with the divine nature in Immanuel, who is the only-begotten Son of God the Father from eternity, has become the nature of God, and as such entitled to receive from the divine nature the communication of its plenitude of being and of good, in so far as this is communicable in a finite mode and measure. The Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Son, both in the eternal order of the Trinity and in the temporal order of creation, is communicated to the human nature of Immanuel as the principle of life and beatitude. The hypostatic union of created and uncreated nature in the person of Jesus Christ is the masterpiece of the Lord and Giver of life, the ultimate term of his creative act. The beatitude which he imparts to the human nature of Jesus Christ is the supreme participation of its rational intelligence and will in the divine act of comprehensive vision of the divine essence and infinite complacency in its absolute beauty, which constitutes divine beatitude. The angels were destined to the same beatitude, and, those excepted who forfeited their right by sinning, they have attained it. The human race was created for the same destination, and the elect will receive their perfect consummation in the same sempiternal glory and blessedness which belongs of right to the humanity of the Eternal Son, on the day of the universal resurrection.
It is evident that this supernatural beatitude in God completely fulfils the definition of beatitude given by St. Thomas as bonum perfectum quod totaliter quietat appetitum. The object of the rational human appetite, that is, of the will, is universal good, which is in God in the most absolute and perfect plenitude. But universal good is also in creatures by participation, and presents a proper object of complacency to the will in perfect harmony with its primary object of beatific love. Our Lord Jesus Christ in his human mind and human heart not only has the immediate intuition of God and of all things in God, together with the love which accompanies this highest mode of knowledge, but also the mode of knowledge and love which is strictly natural. He delights in the contemplation of the beauty of his own human nature, in the works which he performed through it, in its dignity and exaltation, in the splendor of the Blessed Virgin Mary, of the angels and the saints, in his entire and universal kingdom both of mind and matter. He delights in loving his companions in celestial glory, and in receiving their love, in radiating light and beauty and happiness all around himself through countless realms of space and numberless multitudes of beings. His human nature was not essentially changed at the resurrection, but only glorified. He has therefore that sublimated corporeal and sensitive life which is proper to the nature which he assumed, with the sensitive cognition and enjoyment resulting naturally from its attributes and faculties.
The kingdom of heaven has therefore its visible and natural as well as its divine aspect. Natural beatitude in the possession of universal created good, in the enjoyment of the works of God, in science, in the sentiment of the beautiful in created objects, in activity, in society and friendship, co-exists with the uninterrupted contemplation of the divine essence, and the perfect quietude of everlasting repose on the bosom of God. The quiet and repose of the spirit in beatitude by no means signifies inaction and the slumber of the faculties. God, who is immutable, is most perfect act, and the first mover of all things. The rest of beatitude is in opposition to the restless inquietude of a spirit which has not found its equilibrium, and is impelled by unsatisfied longings to seek for its perfect good. Its rest consists in its having found its equilibrium in the stable possession of the perfect good. But the presence of the due object to the intellect and the will calls forth their most perfect and intense activity, and the very qualities of the glorified bodies of the blessed saints in heaven prove that they also will be active, and not for ever standing still in one posture or reclining indolently on grassy meads, as some seem to imagine is the Christian belief. It is indeed most difficult to form any imaginary pictures of the future life which are in any way satisfactory to reason. But whatever we can represent to ourselves by such efforts which can give some idea of a glory and a beatitude worthy of rational beings in a perfect state, assuredly will be realized in a way far beyond our conceptions.