Chapter 3
The Reformed hold that God, by creating Adam in the divine image, gave the gift of original righteousness to humanity so that it is intrinsic to human nature, being built into God's image as a concreated gift (donum concreatum). Original righteousness is a gift, in that God gives it to us, but is not a gift distinct from our natural constitution as God's image bearers.' Just like the color of a plastic army man is inextricably imbedded in its very makeup, based on the plastic used, so too original righteousness is created intrinsically into human nature as we are made according to the blueprint of God's image. For the Reformed, Adam's natural strength to obey God was then part of human constitution. (83-84)
I thoroughly addressed this error in chapter 1, but it is worthwhile to note Perkins’s consistency on this point. Original righteousness is “inextricably imbedded” into “our natural constitution as God’s image bearers.” it is “created intrinsically into human nature” and is a “part of human constitution.” It cannot be lost then. It cannot be separated from human nature. Yet, of course, this is not true. Original righteousness, which is nothing other than the rectitude of the will, has been lost. Turretin, speaking of original righteousness as a part of the image of God says:
“To it pertains rectitude and integrity, or the gifts bestowed upon man, usually expressed by original righteousness, which was created with man and bestowed upon him at his origin, embracing wisdom in the mind, holiness in the will, and rectitude and good order (eutaxian) in the affections. It bespeaks such a harmony among ail his faculties that the members obey the affections, the affections the will, the will reason, reason the divine law, and thus the man exists upright and innocent and without sin, but yet in a state always mutable, endowed with a fourfold liberty: (a) from coaction; (b) from physical necessity; (c) from sin; (d) from misery (of which hereafter).”
Yet this is, no doubt, the primary part of the image of God that has been lost, as evidenced by unruly concupiscence and thus is evidently not “inextricably imbedded” into our “natural constitution.”
By contrast, Roman Catholicism rejects that Adam was created with the natural righteousness and holiness sufficient to merit eschatological reward. The development of medieval theology shows that modern Roman theology adopted a specific understanding of the superadded gift (donum superadditum), teaching that Adam's original righteousness was distinct from and supplemental to basic human nature. Just like paint is applied to furniture in addition to its original constitution, so too Rome views original righteousness as somewhat distinct from human nature. (84)
Of course, as we’ve already noted, the Reformed would not say that original righteousness is constitutive of human nature either. The correct way to express the difference between us and Rome is to say that the Reformed hold that original righteousness, the quality of the rectitude of the will, is an accident of the natural order due to human nature in its natural state such that its opposite, that is concupiscence, is preternatural to the will.
The Roman tradition concerning grace can be hard for Protestants to understand because of the differing paradigms. Its key feature to know at the outset is that Rome views grace as ontological, meaning it elevates nature. In this scheme, 'sanctifying grace' - distinct from actual grace concerning particular actions - is grace that raises human nature to have supernatural habits or even supernatural faculties of sorts. (84)
If grace being “ontological” means that “it elevates human nature,” then I have already shown in my review of chapter 1 that the Reformed likewise hold that grace is “ontological.” I am not, in myself, capable of rising above my own nature to obtain to supernatural faith any more than a stone is naturally capable of rising upwards. Supernatural faith is by definition supernatural, above nature. A stone will only ever naturally fall downwards unless a higher force of a different nature causes it to rise upwards. Likewise, my nature cannot rise above itself and transcend its natural end and powers without an external and higher agent raising my nature to be capable of doing that which in itself it is unable to do.
I also want to note that last part, “supernatural faculties.” That was a somewhat strange phrase to my ears at first mostly due to Perkins's use of it which made it sound as though he's referring to faculties which are themselves formally supernatural and added to human nature, but it could be rightly used to denote faculties in which reside supernatural virtues/certain supernatural qualities. However, when we go to page 277 we read this from Perkins:
The question is whether God had to superadd anything to our created nature to orient us to those supernatural realities. Our claim is that God fashioned humanity with the natural structure to be ordered toward the supernatural. In other words, God made human nature so that our inherent faculties were oriented to the reception of the supernatural order. That the capacity to know God and related supernatural truths is natural to human constitution, on account of being made in God's image, is required by the doctrine that at least Adam, before the fall, had innate knowledge of God. The faculties in which the virtues of faith, hope, and love reside are, therefore, aspects of our natural structure. God fashioned them as features of human nature so that we were built for knowing, receiving, and cherishing supernatural realities. Sin did not remove supernatural faculties for knowing and loving God but broke natural faculties that were given to us by nature. Because God designed humanity as his image bearers for the chief end to glorify and enjoy him, he fit our nature with the proper faculties to orient us to the supernatural order. (277)
Now there’s a lot here, much of which has already been addressed, but to my purposes, first note: “God made human nature so that our inherent faculties were oriented to the reception of the supernatural order.” Of course, if Perkins has in mind nothing more than obediential potency and non-repugnancy here, this is true, but evidently this is not what he means as the rest of the paragraph will show and because nobody would disagree with this claim. Note also that Perkins claims that the capacity to know supernatural truths is required by the fact that Adam before the fall ‘had innate knowledge of God.” I am not sure how the connection between the two is supposed to work here. Either Perkins means that man, as a rational creature who was able to know God, therefore must have an obediential potency to knowing God in a supernatural manner, or he means that the innate knowledge Adam had of God was somehow supernatural. In the first case, Perkins would be in agreement with the main position he has been criticizing, so that interpretation of him cannot hold (although, of course, it is evident by now that he has not understood this position, so I leave room for the possibility that perhaps he actually does agree with us in the end!). In the latter case, he would be bringing innate knowledge of God into the supernatural order and arguing from there that man himself is by nature supernaturally oriented. This seems to be brought out by the next sentence in which Perkins states that “The faculties in which the virtues of faith, hope, and love reside are, therefore, aspects of our natural structure.” This sentence is why I bring this part of the book up here. Notice the subject of this sentence is not the virtues in the faculties, but the faculties themselves. But who denies that the faculties are “aspects of our natural structure”? Perkins says that “Sin did not remove supernatural faculties for knowing and loving God but broke natural faculties that were given to us by nature.” The opposition he creates is strange here, as if there are people who are denying that faculties are natural and superadded to human nature. The rational faculties are the intellect and the will. Nobody thinks that they are “supernatural” and removed from human nature due to the fall. He is apparently trying to say that the supernatural/theological virtues which reside in the faculties are natural to man, which itself raises questions regarding what he has said on the previous page regarding faith being supernatural, which I will later argue, gives up the whole cause. Now of course, saying that has its own issues, but my point here is that Perkins does not seem entirely clear on what faculties are. Everyone agrees that the faculties themselves are natural to (and even naturally constitutive of) human nature.
This ontological outlook wherein nature per se needed grace – even prior to Adam’s fall – to make our works meritorious characterized, to varying degrees, mainstream medieval theology. (84-85)
Recalling Scotus’s words from my review of chapter 2, we should remember that the medievals had good reason to require grace for works meritorious of eternal life. Their main concern in holding this is to avoid Pelagianism, or at least something that would approach Pelagianism in the ordained or actual power of God. And of course, as I showed there, the Reformed themselves share this concern as evidenced by e.g. Thomas Goodwin’s concession that if Adam was headed towards a supernatural end, he should have required supernatural means to reach this end and the Reformed’s opposition to Biel’s use of congruent merit whereby works of nature could, at least congruently, merit something of grace. Of course, I ultimately side with Scotus in holding that God could ordain a work of pure nature to be meritorious of eternal life, as this involves no contradiction since God’s arrangement and covenant is the principle of merit, I nevertheless reject, with Scotus, that in God’s ordained (or at the very least, actual) power such a thing can occur. And it is important in this discussion to not only to take account of what God could do in His absolute power, but especially to consider what He can do in His ordained power and in his actual power, for error and even heresies are not always founded in the first, but oftentimes only in the latter two.
The commentary tradition on Lombard's statements spawns the whole discussion about 'pure nature' in the sense of humanity divested of original righteousness that relates us to God as fundamentally religious creatures. (86)
I dealt with the idea that “pure nature” intends a divestment of relation to God as religious creatures in the first part. The medievals constantly affirm religion to be a natural virtue (e,g, https://www.newadvent.org/summa/3081.htm) and therefore would have existed in a state of pure nature as “man in the state of pure nature could will and do, by his own natural power, the good proportionate to his nature, such as the good of acquired virtue, though not surpassing good such as the good of infused virtue” and “in the state of pure nature man needs a power added to his natural power by grace, for one reason, namely, in order to do and to will supernatural good,” but again, religion is a natural and not a supernatural good. (https://www.ccel.org/ccel/aquinas/nature_grace.viii.i.ii.html).
Thomas’ mature view in the Summa was that righteousness was given as part of our original constitution, although hypothetically distinct, therefore, superadded. (89)
Attempting to interpret this charitably, I think this is what Perkins is trying to say here: Thomas held that original righteousness was given to human nature at the same time as its creation. That would be accurate to what Thomas holds, but Perkins would still be using “original constitution” improperly here, as Thomas does not hold it to be constitutive of human nature or even of the natural order, which I think is what Perkins means by saying it is “hypothetically distinct” and “therefore superadded.” That would in fact be accurate to what Thomas holds, but as we will see, later comments from Perkins cause me to question whether he understands this.
One of the theological differences among Roman clerical orders is that Dominicans deny but Franciscans affirm that person can merit grace.
A citation is needed here.
I will be choosing to skip over much of Perkins’s comments in this chapter, focusing instead on two figures who I judge important for my purposes here: Thomas Aquinas and Henry of Ghent. I will only tell you that his comments on Duns Scotus are extremely questionable as they rely on Richard Cross, on whom see Thomas Ward’s comments here.
Thomas taught that God created Adam in original righteousness but superadded sanctifying grace, whereby Adam could merit glory, to that rectitude. Returning to the same tension raised in his Sentences commentary, Thomas noted debate about whether Adam was created in grace. In contrast with his earlier work on Lombard, in the Summa, Thomas veered more thoroughly Augustinian, omitting the (even minimal) temporal gap between Adam's creation and reception of grace. He affirmed that Adam's first condition of rectitude demands that he was created in the condition of being oriented to God, concluding from Ecclesiastes 7:30 that, 'the very rectitude of the primitive state, in which God made man, seemingly requires that he was created in grace.' Accordingly, 'original righteousness, in which the first man was created, was an accident pertaining to the nature of the species, not as caused by the principles of the species, but as a gift conferred by God on the entire human nature. Original righteousness pertained to our very nature as God's image but was accidental to nature, meaning that it was subsidiary rather than intrinsically essential, in that it was not immutable and could be corrupted by sin. Upright nature and original righteousness were a concrete reality with sanctifying grace so that there was no graced-elevation apart (if still distinct) from creation. For Thomas, righteousness, or rectitude, entailed the right orientation toward God and toward our supernatural end. To be created in righteousness was to be created with the grace that 'is the principle of merit' As Hans Boersma has assessed for other categories, 'Aquinas appears intent, at least at this point, to keep heaven and earth, nature and the supernatural, close together. Some have even understood Thomas to mean that sanctifying grace was included in respect of original righteousness, so much so that modern neo-Thomists had to refute this interpretation to maintain that sanctifying grace is only an extrinsic condition. 94-95
Much of what I’m going to say here I have already said in my post comparing Junius and Thomas on the question of whether man was created in grace https://brandoncorleyschoo.wixsite.com/brandoncorley/post/whether-man-was-created-in-grace-a-comparison-of-reformed-and-thomist-argumentation Perkins at multiple points throughout this paragraph seems to imply that Thomas thought original righteousness (which again, is formally the rectitude of the will) natural to man, indeed he says it “pertained to our very nature as God’s image” and on page 96, “although humanity’s natural endowment included righteousness.” This is not accurate to what Thomas taught. Thomas argues that rectitude (that is, original righteousness) is not natural to man, but was rather a supernatural gift of grace:
But the very rectitude of the primitive state, wherewith man was endowed by God, seems to require that, as others say, he was created in grace, according to Ecclesiastes 7:30, "God made man right." For this rectitude consisted in his reason being subject to God, the lower powers to reason, and the body to the soul: and the first subjection was the cause of both the second and the third; since while reason was subject to God, the lower powers remained subject to reason, as Augustine says [Cf. De Civ. Dei xiii, 13; De Pecc. Merit. et Remiss. i, 16]. Now it is clear that such a subjection of the body to the soul and of the lower powers to reason, was not from nature; otherwise it would have remained after sin; since even in the demons the natural gifts remained after sin, as Dionysius declared (Div. Nom. iv). Hence it is clear that also the primitive subjection by virtue of which reason was subject to God, was not a merely natural gift, but a supernatural endowment of grace; for it is not possible that the effect should be of greater efficiency than the cause. Hence Augustine says (De Civ. Dei xiii, 13) that, "as soon as they disobeyed the Divine command, and forfeited Divine grace, they were ashamed of their nakedness, for they felt the impulse of disobedience in the flesh, as though it were a punishment corresponding to their own disobedience." Hence if the loss of grace dissolved the obedience of the flesh to the soul, we may gather that the inferior powers were subjected to the soul through grace existing therein.
Thomas is able to conclude that man must have been created in grace only because he knows that man possessed rectitude. But that rectitude, he contends, is not within nature’s power. Therefore, it had to be supplied by “a supernatural endowment of grace.” That this rectitude is not natural man is seen too in Thomas's De Malo, Question V, in which Thomas argues that:
"In addition to this necessary help, human beings needed another supernatural help because of their composite nature. For human beings are composed of soul and body, and of an intellectual and a sensory nature. And if the body and the senses be left to their nature, as it were, they burden and hinder the intellect from being able to freely attain the highest reaches of contemplation. And this help was original justice, by which the mind of human beings would be so subject to God that their lower powers and their very bodies would be completely subject to them..."
For Thomas, some level of concupiscence is natural to man and thus original righteousness must be a supernatural gift. It is a formal effect of the donum superadditum. That’s the reasoning behind why he argues that infants do not deserve anything other than the loss of the beatific vision for original sin as I addressed here: https://brandoncorleyschoo.wixsite.com/brandoncorley/post/does-original-sin-deserve-punishment-of-sense Infants may lack rectitude, sure, but such rectitude was never something due to integral nature in the first place, but a supernatural gift given to man to restrain the concupiscence connatural to him.
That original righteousness is a supernatural gift is hardly unique to Thomas, but is the view of virtually all Romanists, including Bonaventure and Scotus, which is what makes Ghent such a unique exception. The strange opposition Perkins tries to create between Thomas and his Franciscan brothers here doesn’t work. They do not disagree on this point, but only on the specific point as to when Adam received the donum. The above quotations from Thomas I think are rather clear on this point and I feel no need to marshall any more evidence. I’ll return to Thomas briefly in chapter 5, so see my comments there if you wish to see any more.
Strikingly, Thomas never used the phrase ‘pure nature’ in any of his writings. 98
Thomas uses the equivalent, “naturae integrae,” instead. See https://aquinas.cc/la/en/~ST.I-II.Q109.A2 which in context precisely elucidates our definition of pure nature: a state apart from supernatural grace or the corruption of sin.
“In the state of integrity, as regards the sufficiency of the operative power, man by his natural endowments could wish and do the good proportionate to his nature, such as the good of acquired virtue; but not surpassing good, as the good of infused virtue.”
This is set in opposition to:
“In the state of corrupt nature, man falls short of what he could do by his nature, so that he is unable to fulfill it by his own natural powers.”
And for man in the state of integrity to be capable of doing the good of infused virtue:
“In the state of perfect nature man needs a gratuitous strength superadded to natural strength for one reason, viz., in order to do and wish supernatural good.”
Call it whatever you will, Thomas has described the state of pure nature exactly.
[On Scotus’s view of merit] The principal characteristic of such a notion would be that a work is labeled as meritorious despite not having any real righteousness to it. 115
What does Perkins mean here by “real righteousness?” He repeats variations of this throughout the chapter, e.g. page 118 “Scotus was ambiguous about whether the act itself had to be truly righteous for God to accept it as meritorious.” Italicizing “truly” does not help us get at what Perkins means by it. Scotus certainly holds that any work that is rewarded in merit is a materially righteous work (i.e. he does not think that God can reward sins as sins). But if “righteous” is a synonym for “merit” here, as I assume it ought to be taken, as Scotus’s point here is about merit and not righteousness, which are two different things, then this accusation doesn’t make any sense against Scotus. The entire point of Scotus’s view on merit is that merit is defined entirely in relation to what God determines it to be. It is ex pacto, the pactum determines what “real merit” is and “real merit” does not exist apart from relation to the pactum. I’m reminded of John Owen’s words in “Of the Death of Christ” (not to be confused with “Death of Death”):
The Death of Christ considered absolutly and in it self, may be said to be refusable as to be made a Payment; not a refusable payment: and that, not because not refusable, but because not a payment. Nothing can possibly tend to the procurement and compassing of any End by the way of Payment, with the Lord, but what is built upon some free Compact, Promise, or Obligation of his Own.
Likewise no merit exists apart from compact/covenant and is real only within and not at all outside and apart from it. Perkins’s criticism only makes sense if one already assumes the opposite.
…which highlights how Biel’s soteriology nominalist was a far cry from the latter Reformed view of forensic imputation. 127
Evidently this should read “soteriological nominalism,” but the editors did not do a very good job on this book, as the next chapter will reveal.
As we have seen, the Parisian theologians drove the discussion about how to construct a theological understanding of human nature, noting that Lombard, Thomas, Bonaventure, and Scotus all spent time teaching in Paris. Henry of Ghent (c. 1217-93), who taught in Paris after Thomas, introduced a complicating factor into this discussion, which proves to be an important precedent for how Reformed theology should formulate human nature in relation to eschatological reward in the covenant of works. 131
Setting aside the last part which frames Henry’s relevance for the Reformed in terms of eschatological reward in the covenant of works, which isn’t really the reason Henry is relevant for us, this paragraph is basically true and I commend Perkins for recognizing Henry’s importance here. I have mentioned Ghent here and here as the primary influence behind the Reformed view that original righteousness is natural to man. It is also worth reading through William Estius as later Roman Catholic representative of Ghent's view:
However, Perkins seems, once again, to be conflating the view that original righteousness is natural to man with the rejection of the donum superadditum, as his next words make clear.
Henry fully rejected the donum superadditum, instead affirming that Adam was naturally righteous before the fall. His question was, ‘whether original righteousness included in itself another infused gift.’ He concluded:
“Hence because original righteousness, inasmuch as it includes a gift, by necessity simultaneously also includes natural uprightness, but inasmuch as it merely establishes natural uprightness it does not necessarily include a gift, therefore the simpler and naturally first is the explanation of original righteousness, so that it establishes only the uprightness of nature which thus includes the gift.”
Henry saw the gift of original righteousness as intrinsic to human nature (donum concreatum). Cross labelled Henry's view of natural righteousness as 'the extreme Augustinian line,' marking it as a highly palatable option for Protestants looking for a view with historical precedent regarding the imago Dei to support their burgeoning soteriology of grace. 131
Not only is Perkins wrong that “Henry fully rejected the donum superadditum” but the very quote he has used from Ghent disproves this and in doing so reveals that Perkins does not understand what Ghent is saying. The full text can be read here. The question Ghent is disputing here is about whether the name “original righteousness” can be taken to include within itself a supernatural gift. Henry argues that the rectitude of the will is a natural quality of it:
“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 also cuts against Perkins’s claim that original righteousness is “intrinsic to human nature” (again, we are taking Perkins at his word with his definition of “intrinsic” that he gave in chapter 1). Rectitude is a quality, and therefore an accident that can be lost, does not constitute human nature, and in fact has been lost such that the lack of rectitude is preternatural to man (cf. Turretin’s comments at 5.11.XV). But setting that aside, when Ghent comes to this question, he makes clear that he is disputing about the name of original righteousness: “This question seeks the meaning of the name: what does original justice refer to, namely, some natural rightness of will, in which the soul of man was created, or some infused gift to the will?”
Ghent’s response amounts to this: you can use the name “original righteousness” in a variety of ways. You can use it insofar as it “includes a gift” in itself (that is, insofar as it comprehends both the donum which is supernatural, and insofar as it includes original righteousness/rectitude which is natural). This was integral to my first point in this post in which I explained that sometimes the Reformed will use the term “original righteousness” to refer not only to the natural rectitude of the will, but also to the entire state Adam possessed in the garden, including his supernatural gifts. Thus Ghent says:
“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”
What Ghent means here is that “original righteousness” is most properly taken only for the rectitude of the will. He then makes the point we have already quoted about the rectitude of the will being a natural quality of it, and then says:
“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.”
Ghent’s point here is that “if original justice names that whose such condition it is,” that is, if you are using in order to refer to the entire condition of the one possessing it, then it also includes the supernatural gift that was given to Adam by which he was able to keep and guard his natural rectitude through supernatural assistance. So when Ghent says:
“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.”
This may be glossed like so: “because the name original righteousness, inasmuch as it is taken widely as including within it a supernatural gift, by necessity also includes within it the natural uprightness of the will, but inasmuch as it more strictly refers merely to natural uprightness and does not include a supernatural gift, therefore the simpler and more proper use of original righteousness than the use which includes a gift within it.”
Note also that Perkins’s translation “so that it establishes only the uprightness of nature which thus includes the gift” obscures the comparison that Ghent is making between the two uses of the term “original righteousness” and results in an incoherent point in which Ghent would have said that both options include a gift within itself. Thus I have provided the better translation, “as it posits only the rectitude of nature, than as it includes a gift.”
But more to the point, Ghent’s words here, far from “fully rejecting” the donum, explicitly assume it. “Original righteousness,” Ghent says, can be taken in a less proper sense insofar as it includes the donum! But because the term most properly refers simply to natural rectitude, Ghent would rather have the term exclude it and thus the donum given to Adam should be distinguished from the original righteousness Adam naturally possessed.
As an aside, it is worth noting that Ghent also argues that immortality, like rectitude, was not a preternatural gift bestowed by grace but was instead natural to man. The Reformed follow Ghent on this point as one can see by Turretin's comments at 5.XII (see espeically IX and XI which follow Ghent's reasoning closely). Note Ghent’s point about the body always being intrinsically corruptible in whatever state it exists in (even in glory) as opposed to the soul which is incorruptible due to its simple essence, yet immortality is natural to the body by accident inasmuch as it is united to a soul possessing original righteousness. Bavinck at 2:549n56 cites some Reformed theologians who allegedly attributed immortality to supernatural grace, but in the sources I have checked (and I have not checked them all) they only deny intrinsic corruptibility to the body.
I also want to quickly note that I would not wholly endorse Ghent's words on Adam being morally unable to avoid sinning forever were he not given supernatural grace at some point. I agree with Strangius that there is in fact a sense in which he could have sufficiently avoided sin from original righteousness (assuming, of course, no supernatural obedience was demanded of him):
Junius makes a similar point here: https://ccel.org/ccel/arminius/works3/works3.iv.xvi.html
Like Thomas, Henry, when describing pure nature, simply meant nature undefiled by sin since God made it with natural or concreated original righteousness 131
Both Henry and Thomas intend more than simply “nature undefiled by sin,” but also include the lack of supernatural grace, as we have already proven (and as is the received definition of “pure nature” among the medievals in general, not just Thomas and Ghent).
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