In the following post, I intend to: (1) explain what is meant by those Reformed authors who sometimes call original righteousness “supernatural,” (2) explain the Reformed orthodox understanding of pure nature, and (3) defend a consonant interpretation of Francis Turretin’s questions on original righteousness, against a “Jansenist” interpretation of which I was formerly persuaded.
POINT 1: Why OR is sometimes called "supernatural"
When it is said by some that original righteousness is supernatural, this usually means one of two things1:
The entire original state of Adam (including both natural and supernatural gifts) is comprehended under the one phrase “original righteousness,”
The precedent for this way of speaking goes all the way back to the man I have argued the Reformed are mainly following here, Henry of Ghent:
What therefore is asked, whether natural justice includes within itself some infused gift, it must be said that original justice, as far as it pertains to the nature of the matter, can be called the natural rightness of the will itself without any other gift, and thus it includes no gift except itself. For such rightness is something beyond the substance and essence of the will — otherwise the will remaining could not lose it —, as a certain quality in spiritual quantity; just as rightness in a line is a certain quality in corporeal quantity, and curvature is preternatural, just as in a rod sprouting from the root rightness is natural to it, because all naturally grow upwards directly, but curvature is preternatural to it. And thus, looking at the essence of the will, the gift was made to it, which in such rightness was created, whence it was bound to guard it, and its loss was sin to it. And all conditions attributed by saints and masters to original justice simply called thus agree, except the last, which is that through it man could always stand and never sin. Hence, if original justice names that whose such condition it is, I say that it necessarily includes a gift, because for this bare nature was not sufficient, as has been said.
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Therefore, because original justice, insofar as it includes a gift, necessarily also includes natural rectitude, but insofar as it posits only natural rectitude, it does not necessarily include a gift, thus simpler and naturally prior is the rationale of original justice, as it posits only the rectitude of nature, than as it includes a gift. Therefore, since to be original as far as original includes the rationale of the prior and first or principle, simply and absolutely, as far as the imposition of the name is concerned, it is truer to say that original justice includes no other gift than that which is natural rectitude, although as far as use and some conditions or effects are concerned it necessarily includes a supernatural infused gift, as has been said.
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Therefore, what is argued in the first argument, that "original justice was in pure nature," must be said that it is true according to the condition, by which standing man could not die or suffer anything, from which the objection proceeded. But calling original justice that whose condition is always to preserve from sin, in this way, as I have said, I think that original justice includes a gift within itself.
In other words, it is more proper to say that original righteousness is natural since we only speak of the rectitude of the will. But it is allowable to speak of “original righteousness” in a broader sense that includes this along with the supernatural gift that Adam had in the beginning which infused graces into him so as to raise him to a supernatural end and more easily aid and preserve him against sin with supernatural assistance. In other words, original righteousness may be considered as including a supernatural gift insofar as you expand out the name of “original righteousness” to include the entire state that Adam was in when he was created (and so OR strictly speaking, which is natural, considered along with the superadded gifts).
Zanchi notes that many use the term original righteousness to refer to both of these principles:
Adam was created in justice and true holiness, which is rightly called original; and he was endowed with the grace of God and the Holy Spirit. There are two parts of this proposition: one concerning the creation of man in justice and holiness; the other concerning the gift of grace and the superaddition of the Holy Spirit. By the name of superadded grace of God, we understand both the favor with which God embraced and held Adam dear above all other things, and a certain supernatural brilliance of the Holy Spirit, shining down on Adam like the sun. With the help of this, he could persevere in his integral nature, holiness, and innocence...Hence, among doctors, by the name of original justice, not only the integrity and perfection of that nature are understood but also the grace of God, which has always been conjunct to that integrity since the creation of man.
An example of this use among the Reformed, I believe, can be found in Franciscus Gomarus when he states that:
“This original righteousness, however, has been natural in so far as it not only perfected nature, and elevated nature to its supernatural goal, but also in so far as it was given to man from the very beginning. In this sense others call it supernatural, since it did not flow from the essence of the human being” (Reformed Thought on Freedom, 131).
First, note that Gomarus tells us that “original righteousness” “elevated nature to its supernatural goal”. This, of course, would be impossible if original righteousness is being considered only insofar as it is natural since natural things cannot transcend their own mode. Therefore, Gomarus must be considering original righteousness as “including within it a supernatural gift”, as Henry has put it.
Second, we note that Gomarus’s final sentence ("others call it supernatural, since it did not flow from the essence of the human being") leads us to the next sense in which original righteousness is often called supernatural by the Reformed:
2. The Reformed sometimes use the term “supernatural” very improperly to refer to that which is accidental to the essential constitution of nature.
This can lead to much confusion. The point that the Reformed want to make here is the same made by Ghent that:
“Rightness in the will is not so natural that the will, in what pertains to free choice, cannot oblique itself and induce a contrary injustice upon being corrupted by that prior justice”
and most clearly:
“Such rectitude is indeed something beyond the substance and essence of the will—otherwise, the will could not lose it. It is like a quality in a spiritual quantity, just as straightness in a line is a quality in a bodily quantity, and curvature is preternatural. In a growing plant, for example, straightness is natural because all naturally grow upward, while curvature is preternatural.”
This is to say that rectitude is not so essential to man that he would cease to be man were he to lack rectitude. Thomas Case says that: “If by natural, you mean essential (whether constitutively, or consecutively) so original righteousness was not natural to man, for then he could never have lost it, without the loss of his being” (The morning exercise methodized: or, Certain chief heads and points of the Christian religion opened and improved in divers sermons (1660), pgs. 110-111). And it is in this sense that Turretin for instance denies original righteousness to be natural “constitutively and consecutively.”
And example of this use can be seen in Wollebius:
IX. The natural gifts were the simple and invisible substance of the soul, with its faculties the intellect and will X. The supernatural gifts were the clearness of the understanding, the liberty and rectitude of the will, the conformitie of the appetites and affections, the immortality of the whole man, and dominion over the inferior creatures. https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A66823.0001.001/1:10.8?rgn=div2;view=fulltext
This should be clear since “supernatural” is being opposed to that which constitutes man, namely, the substance of the soul and the faculties of intellect and will. And we can cleary see that the sense of "supernatural" here is certainly not the strict sense of supernatural in terms of grace as is most clearly seen from him listing dominion over inferior creatures as a supernatural gift! Again, supernatural is being used in opposition to constitutively essential.
POINT 2: The Reformed acceptance of pure nature
It has not escaped my notice that many today have unwittingly adopted a Jansenist view of nature/grace where it is necessary to man that he be given grace in order to be morally whole and to have spiritual communion with God. I have already addressed these errors, especially here https://brandoncorleyschoo.wixsite.com/brandoncorley/post/propsitions-on-nature-and-grace-drawn-from-franciscus-junius and I will further explain this now. Junius is rather clear in his affirmation that it is possible for man to be created in a state of pure nature:
Now, I come to the particular members of your Proposition. First, you affirm, "that no man was ever created in a merely natural state." If you mean that he was created without supernatural endowments, I do not see how this can be proved, (though many make this assertion). The Scripture does not any where make this statement. But you are not ignorant that it is said in the schools, that a negative argument from authority, as, "it is not written, therefore, it is not true" is not valid. Again, the order of creation, in a certain respect, proves the contrary, since the body was first made from the dust, and afterwards the soul was breathed into it. Which, then, is more probable, that the soul was, at the moment of its creation, endowed with supernatural gifts, or that they were superadded after its creation? I would rather affirm that, as the soul was added to the body, so the supernatural endowments were added to the soul. If God did this in relation to nature, why may He not have done it, in the case of grace, which is more peculiar. (https://ccel.org/ccel/arminius/works3/works3.iv.xii.html)
It is not necessary that God create man in grace. All that pertains to man as man is found in nature. He is ordained to his natural end through nature. The "supernatural end of man", the beatific vision is an extrinsic end gifted to man by the providence of God, certainly not an end intrinsic to his nature. Man has only an obediential potency to the beatific vision, but he has his intrinsic and natural end as perfect natural happiness which he is entirely capable of achieving without grace in a state of pure nature.
Closely connected to this is the common error of equating spiritual with supernatural. It is not necessary that one be given grace or any supernatural giftings that one might have spiritual life and communion with God. Junius is equally clear on this:
Your statement, that "supernatural grace is the cause of spiritual life in man," we believe to be most certainly true, and we avow the same thing. Yet there was one mode of spiritual life in Adam, and there is another mode in us, in whom supernatural grace alone produces this life, while Adam had, together with this grace, the image of God unimpaired and uncorrupted, and therefore had spiritual life in both modes, the natural and supernatural. But these things will be introduced, appropriately, in another place. (https://ccel.org/ccel/arminius/works3/works3.iv.xvi.html)
Before Adam was gifted with the donum, he had spiritual life and true communion with God, but in a natural mode. This is necessary to say because man as man in a state of pure nature is not "spiritually dead" (as he would therefore be sinful) but spiritually alive. What he lacks in this state is anything to orient him to supernature and to the beatific vision, but he most certainly does not lack orientation toward God and to his natural end of perfect natural enjoyment of God.
Stephen Charnock is as equally clear as Junius:
[God] is not bound to create a rational creature, much less bound to create him with supernatural gifts---though, since God would make a rational creature, he could not but make him with a natural uprightness and rectitude.
Charnock clearly states here that what God is bound to create men with is original righteousness ("a natural uprigthtness and rectitude"), but what he clearly denies here is that God is bound to create men with the donum superadditum ("supernatural gifts"). Man must be created at least in a state of pure nature and so with the natural uprighteness of the will that is original justice, but there is absolutely no necessity that man be created with grace.
And from the Lutheran side, Johann Gerhard is probably the clearest expositor I have read:
Though we deny that original righteousness was a supernatural gift, Bellarmine foolishly infers that we acknowledge no supernatural gifts at all in the first man. Before the fall, Adam was certainly a beautiful temple of the Holy Spirit and a dwelling place of the entire Holy Trinity...and this indwelling of the Holy Spirit and of the entire Holy Trinity was not a part or property of man's nature but a supernatural gift.
The indwelling of the Holy Spirit is (clearly) of supernatural grace. It is not necessary for the moral wholeness of man, but only insofar as man is to be ordered to a supernatural end. The baseline for what is necessary for the natural and moral wholeness of man is simply original righteousness which is why Gerhard makes clear that such original righteousness is natural. Unlike Bellarmine who conflates the donum with original righteousness so that the latter might be made a supernatural gift, Gerhard is clear that:
Surely original righteousness was the gift of God, but not the kind which is like an external trapping that covers one's nature which is weakening because of a conflict between superior and inferior parts, as fancy clothing covers the body of a leper. Rather, it was the intrinsic adornment of the entire nature in Adam and the concreated power and ability of the human soul so that Adam's mind was filled naturally with the knowledge of God, his will was in complete agreement with the divine Law imprinted upon his nature, and the impulses of all his inclinations were ordered, hallowed, and pure. It says that man was created after the image of God; therefore his nature was elevated to this lofty position in and through that very [act of] creation.
The result of this ought to be clear: it is not necessary that man be created in grace. He has a natural uprighteness and rectitude of the will, a natural righteousness and holiness by which he was able to please God even prior to when he recieved grace (that is, assuming there is even a temporal gap between his creation and reception of grace as Junius prefers with the Franciscans).
And perhaps nobody is clearer on this than Thomas Goodwin, who, because he is an outlier in rejecting that Adam was working towards the beatific vision, had much to say on this topic:
``Now the most radical and exact difference between these two, that I can search out, lies in these two things:
1. That way of knowing God in pure nature, is so far called natural, as it may be supposed a natural due, meet and requisite to be in man by the law of nature, if God would at all make such a creature endued with reason and understanding; for if God meant to make two such faculties, as are our wills and understandings, in their nature and capacities so unlimited, the law of nature required that God himself should become the object of them, and so to give man a power to know and delight in him; for otherwise it had been to make those faculties in that vastness in vain, and without their due end, seeing they could not rest or be satisfied with all the particular truth and goodness in the creatures (as the senses can), they being vaster and more general faculties; and therefore in a way that was due to the nature of man, if God would make him reasonable, God was to be both known and enjoyed by man, so as to satisfy both his understanding and will, and thereby to make him happy. And a happiness in God, so far proportioned thus to the nature of man, is called natural happiness.
And so, oppositely, that which was vouchsafed to man over and above this natural due, and supra exigentiam creaturæ, more than it was simply meet for God to give him upon and with his creating him reasonable,—that, I say, is supernatural, and is therefore called grace, as being a free gift over and above that which was necessarily due to such a creature.```
The result ought, once again, to be clear. God can create man in a state of pure nature (that is, in a state without sin and yet without grace). The very nature of things shows that this is so. The nature of man does not include within it anything supernatural and it is not necessary that he exercise supernatural acts apart from any given positive law. So there is no necessity that man be created in grace since man is of the order of nature. It is entirely possible that God create man and leave him to be, giving him no grace or any positive laws or anything above nature. And man in such a state would not be sinful simply because he lacks grace because nature is not bad simply because it is not supernature. Each thing is good in its own order and a state of pure nature which never leads to a supernatural end is entirely imaginable and even, as Junius argues, a fitting way to begin creation so as to clearly mark-off when such a state of pure nature, ordered only to the natural happiness of man, ends, and when such a state of grace, ordered to the supernatural happiness of the beatific vision begins. And so Adam was a good and pure and righteous man when he was created out of the dust. But he became a temple of God when he placed in the garden.
POINT 3: Turretin not a Jansenist
In what sense does Turretin deny a state of pure nature? Does Turretin believe that God is obligated by His justice to create man in grace in order that man may not sin? [no] Does he believe there can exist a state in which a man may be without sin and without grace? [yes] Does he distinguish between spiritual and supernatural? [yes]
First, we should establish what Turretin means to deny when he denies a state of pure nature. The sense in which Turretin denies the possibility of "pure nature" is not the normal sense in which "pure nature" is usually spoken of (a state without sin and without grace), but rather Turretin explains that:
Thus man is said to be in pure naturals (puris naturalibus) who consists of his own parts and essential properties without the gift of original righteousness and without any superadded qualities or habits (good or evil). It is called a state of pure nature (status purae naturae) by a negative not a positive purity (by which namely he has nothing good or evil superadded to his nature).
In other words, by "pure nature", Turretin means a state in which man lacks the gift of original righteousness and lacks any contrary evil habits. Such a state is, as he goes on to argue, impossible. The reason that he is considering "pure nature" in this sense is most likely because he sees that Bellarmine holds that original righteousness is a supernatural gift. Therefore, Bellarmine can conceive of a state of pure nature in which man lacks OR and yet is nevertheless not sinful. But since Turretin holds that the very lack of OR is itself sin, this is why he chooses to frame the discussion like so. In other words, when Turretin and the Reformed deny the possibility of pure nature, what they are denying is the Romanist assumption of what “pure nature” is: namely, a state in which rectitude is lacking because supernatural gifts are lacking. But precisely because the Reformed hold that rectitude is a natural gift, this allows them to have a place for a true doctrine of pure nature, which I will argue Turretin holds to.
That Turreitn has a place for this orthodox view of pure nature is clear from the following. After presenting the error of Bellarmine's view in holding that original righteousness is supernatural and so superadded to nature in order to restrain it and provide for the rectitude that it allegedly lacks, he goes on to say that:
It is true that all are not of this opinion and that there are some who, according to Medina, "by man constituted in pure naturals, understand man constituted in innocent nature, with a gifted and vigorous healing nature, so that he might remain in good and the practice of virtue, and perseverance if he wished.
Here Turretin plainly allows there to be a sense in which pure nature may be admitted. And it is in precisely this sense that Junius, Goodwin, Charnock, etc. affirm there to have been a state of pure nature. This is what we must keep in mind when we read Turretin or any other among the Reformed denying the possibility of pure nature.2
Second, Turretin, unlike the Jansenists, makes a distinction between spiritual gifts and supernatural gifts (we have seen Junius clearly make this distinction in point 2) . This is important to distinguish him from a Jansenist position. If there were no distinction between the two, then the Jansenist contention that God is obligated in His justice to create man in grace would follow. That is, man could not be considered morally good without (supernatural) grace.
That Turretin makes such a distinction is especially clear from the following quotation:
The state of pure nature is not so called in opposition to an impure (for thus the state of integrity might properly be called because the nature was then pure and innocent), but in opposition to gifts and spiritual habits of righteousness and holiness (which the Romanists hold to be supernatural for the purpose of patronizing the integrity of free will and to make concupiscence natural in the first man).
Were Turretin to hold that spiritual and supernatural were interchangeable, the quote would read as follows:
The state of pure nature is not so called in opposition to an impure (for thus the state of integrity might properly be called because the nature was then pure and innocent), but in opposition to gifts and supernatural habits of righteousness and holiness (which the Romanists hold to be supernatural for the purpose of patronizing the integrity of free will and to make concupiscence natural in the first man).
Which obviously makes no sense. Turretin would be chastising the Romanists for holding that supernatural gifts are supernatural.
Second, though less clear, the same distinction may be brought out from here:
Adam after his fall had the image still (as also his posterity even now have), since they are said to be made after the image of God. Yet this must be understood only relatively (as to certain natural remains of that image) and not absolutely (as to spiritual and supernatural qualities which are evidently lost and must be restored to us by the grace of regeneration).
Turretin says that spiritual and supernatural qualities have been lost. Here, I argue, he is not using two interchangeable names for the same thing, but recognizing that there are two things which have been lost by sin: supernatural and spiritual qualities. Thus we may say this: the supernatural gifts have been lost, but the natural gifts remain. And we may say this: the spiritual gifts have been lost, but the constitutively and consecutively natural gifts remain. But these two propositions are making different points. While both have been lost, both are not equally necessary to man for his moral wholeness. Man cannot but be a sinner if he lacks the spiritual gifts, but not equally so if he lacks the supernatural gifts. Admittedly, Turretin is not quite the clearest here. But when one reads him in light of the other theologians we have looked through in point 2, then I think this interpretation of him is very well borne out and makes excellent sense of him overall.
FOOTNOTES
1 I leave out outliers who may have held to something like a Jansenist view of original righteousness where it, being supernatural, is nevertheless due to man by God's justice. Le Blanc in his Theological Theses on the Justice of the First Man, Whether it was Natural or Supernatural seems to betray something of this understanding when he, in response to Tilenus, who I take to hold to precisely Junius's view and count him as one of the clearest expositors of this issue, "Moreover, how can there be justice and rectitude that is pleasing and acceptable to God without faith, hope, and charity?". Otherwise, in theses LI–LVII Le Blanc speaks clearly and explains that man has a natural end for which no supernatural gift would be necessary but rather original justice would be sufficient, but I keep this quote in as it seems rather perplexing to me. In fact, the entirety of thesis XL from Le Blanc perplexes me as he at the very least misunderstands the meaning of Tilenus and Rambertius who are perfectly sound and consistent. Theophilis Gale very well may have held a similar view given his clear partiality to Jansenism. Richard Field almost certainly held to it. And of course, I formerly interpreted Turretin along Jansenist lines, which part of the reason for this post is to show that he ought not to be so interpreted.
2 Note that while Turretin then goes on to say that Jansen argued that this was Augustine's position, this does not mean Turretin and Jansen are at one here. Both materially agree on the definition of pure nature that Turretin provided, but Jansen thinks that "innocent nature" necessarily entails "graced nature", whereas Turretin, I argue, would reject this claim.
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