Chapter 4
In Thomas' own view, the donum superadditum was conceptually distinct from human nature but infused by God with creation when he made Adam. This functional concreatedness of sanctifying grace tied Adam's natural strength to merely natural ends but his infused strength to supernatural ends. 139
The logical relation between the two parts of the last sentence, namely, the “functional concreatedness of sanctifying grace” (referring to Thomas’s contention that grace was temporally given to Adam at the same time as his creation) and Adam’s natural strength being tied to his natural end and infused to his supernatural end is unclear here. Those who take a different view of the temporal giving of grace to Adam still hold the latter.
In this respect, when Thomas himself referred to 'pure nature,' he simply meant human nature as unaffected by sin. 139
I dealt with this this at the end of the last chapter, but I do want to note that this sentence is not very consonant with Perkins’s own contention in the last chapter that Thomas never used the phrase “pure nature” nor with his own quotation of Thomas at the top of this page in which Thomas explains that in a state of perfect/integral nature, “man needs a gratuitous strength superadded to natural strength, viz. In order to do and wish supernatural good.” Again, pure/perfect/integral nature conceptually excludes grace and not only sin.
Cajetan articulated an understanding of pure nature in which humanity is not oriented or ordered toward eschatological life with God. 140
This is true. But so does Thomas:
“Man's happiness or felicity is twofold, as was also stated above. One is proportionate to human nature, and this he can reach through his own resources. The other, a happiness surpassing his nature, he can only attain by the power of God, by a kind of participation in the Godhead; thus it is written that by Christ we are made partakers of the divine nature. Because such happiness goes beyond the reach of human nature, the inborn resources by which a man is able to act well according to his capacity are not adequate to direct him to it. And so, to be sent to this supernatural happiness, he must needs be divinely endowed with some additional sources of activity; role is like that of his native capabilities which direct him, not, of course, without God's help, to his connatural end.” ST 1–2, q. 62, a. 1
Contrary to Thomas’s paradigm of grace enabling truly righteous and fitting works, attained as God predestined, Cajetan locates a work’s relation to its reward in God’s will. Merit is not a real correspondence but a convention: ‘it is presupposed by an agreement made between God and man concerning something, for instance, how among men, if a master makes a pact with his servant about something, a right is thence born between master and servant. Thus, if God deems to make a pact with a man, a right is born between the man and God concerning the thing about which he made a pact.’ 141-142
Contra Perkins, I do not think that Cajetan contradicts Thomas here. Cajetan’s quote here proves nothing more than that there is a virtual promise/pact present in the very act of ordaining acts of grace to merit, but he nowhere says that this pact per se is the formal basis of merit. Quoting the Sacra Theologiae Summa at length is helpful here:
“Controversial questions. 1) In the very definition of condign merit, as we said, there must be a promise in order to give rise to this kind of merit. But a distinction must be made between merit with men and with God.
In human affairs, there is no merit in the second reality, unless there is present a promise, externally manifested, of accepting a particular work with a view to a reward.
In theological merit it is necessary to say that actually a solemn promise is present, given by God, to remunerate the good works of the just. But the question is: what is the source of the condign claim of the works of the just with regard to eternal life? That is, one asks: a) whether a meritorious work of the just already has a claim in justice to eternal life in the first reality (in actu primo), that is, antecedently to the divine promise it is already condignly worthy of eternal life; b) and what divine promise is required to bring it about that a salvific work of the just becomes meritorious of eternal life in the second reality (in actu secundo).
Concerning the first point, Scotus thought that the condign claim to eternal life is derived from the divine promise alone. But other scholastics opposed this opinion, both because they hold that the works of the just, by reason of the grace that brings them about, have a certain proportion to eternal life, and because the opinion of Scotus removes the basic reason for condign merit, since in this hypothesis condign retribution would never be present, but rather a free donation made because of a promise.
Concerning the second point, we hold that a formal promise is not required, which indeed is given; but the divine ordination suffices, by which the salvific acts of the just are ordered to the reward of eternal life, because they are elicited with the help of divine grace. Therefore, this divine ordination is inseparably joined with the bestowal of divine grace, and can be understood as if it were a virtual promise.”
Against Perkins, who goes on to say: “...Cajetan’s voluntarist principle of merit is God’s pact to accept (acceptatio) some work as sufficient for salvation, solidifying the notion of congruent merit in the Roman consensus” Cajetan’s point here is merely that a virtual pact or promise exists in the ordination of good works unto eternal life, a point quite at home in Thomas’s in own construal of merit. This can be brought out by a different translation of Cajetan’s words at the top of page 142:
“From these things, therefore, it becomes clear that the basis of merit can also be found by right in our works when they are related to the first principle, concerning which an agreement was made with God.”
This aligns with the Thomist position in that Cajetan affirms that “the basis of merit can also be found by right in our works,” of course, he also assumes there has been (at least) a virtual pact/agreement/promise also, but this affirmation is common to both Scotists and Thomists alike and so cannot be used as evidence of non-Thomistic influence on Cajetan’s thought.
It should also be noted that, again contra Perkins, Cajetan is not talking about congruent merit here, but condign merit.
Cajetan’s move concerning the acceptance of the work rather than the person proves important in the overall trajectory of Roman theology on this doctrine. 142
Perkins brings this dichotomy between acceptance of person and work up multiple times throughout the book, but it’s a false dichotomy that cuts against the the commonly accepted principle of modus operandi in that the manner of operation must follow the manner of being. If works are accepted, so is the principle behind those works, the person. Nor is this opposition brought out anywhere in any of the works the Perkins cites. Thomas on merit (https://www.newadvent.org/summa/2114.htm) has as much an emphasis on the works being accepted as Cajetan does. The same is true of Scotus who emphasized the fact that merit and proportion to reward was derived into works by the covenant.
I’m also curious because he does not seem to be citing any secondary sources here, is Perkins being original in his suggestion that Cajetan had Franciscan leanings on this point? Is he really putting this thesis forward into the literature without any precedent for this interpretation of Cajetan? And is this really all of the evidence that he has chosen for the support of this new thesis? If the answer to these questions is “yes,” then I think that this is indicative of deeper flaws in Perkins’s scholarly methodology.
It marks a turning point wherein even Thomist theology moves in a Franciscan direction, setting the stage for Gabriel Biel's nominalist soteriology to get synthesized into mainstream Roman doctrine 142
That Cajetan’s position on merit set the stage for “Gabriel Biel's nominalist soteriology to get synthesized into mainstream Roman doctrine” is, again, a significant and original claim that needs far more support than what Perkins has given us. Once again, no source is cited for this point.
In one respect, Cajetan's focus on the work kept him somewhat in the Thomistic orbit since, as chapter three documented, Thomas himself had argued that the work was the central concern for what is meritorious. On the other hand, Cajetan mitigated Thomas' concern for true righteousness (realism) by applying the Franciscan notion of acceptatio to the work rather than to the person. As the previous chapter explored, Franciscans like Bonaventure had maintained an Augustinianism by arguing that the truly good work of a person in possession of sanctifying grace would be meritorious on account of that grace by which God accepted the person. Later Franciscans diluted that Augustinianism by lessening the concern that the work had to be truly righteous, incorporating more voluntarist principles. 142
Again, I want to know what Perkins means by “true righteousness,” “truly good work,” and “truly righteous [work].” The Franciscans agree that God cannot and does not reward works which are unrighteous. They are not Occamites. The righteousness behind the works the Franciscans hold are rewarded is real and true. God can only ever reward that which aligns with His Law. But the entire question between the Thomists and the Scotists is not one of righteousness, but of merit. We want to know whether merit, prescinding from the promise, comes from the work itself. What is the formal basis of it?
Cajetan redirected the Thomist tradition in a Franciscan direction by shifting the principle of acceptati from the person to the work. This shift brought the doctrine of congruent merit into Dominican theology in a new way, setting pace for a new mainstream understanding in Roman doctrine. 142
Again, a citation is very much needed here. I also do not understand the connection he makes to congruent merit and he does not elaborate on this, so I have to assume this has to do with his confusion between condign and congruent merit we have already touched on.
For Thomas, merit was based on the performance of a truly righteousness work.
Should say “righteous” work.
For Scotus, God does not accept a good work as meritorious, regardless of its content, unless he has accepted the person, making a work's merit relationally relative. Expressing his own view on merit in contrast to Scotus, Baius affirmed that 'eternal life is due to a good work, not because of any precursory dignity of the worker, but because of the good work's nature and quality, which constitutes the quality of the worker, because it agrees with God's standard.’ In other words, merit demands perfect obedience before the Lord. On the other hand, our obedience to the natural law entailed that God must reward us with the beatific vision. 147
Scotus’s point has to do with the principle of modus operandi and, more specifically, the fact that a person has to be in grace in order to merit, a point which Thomas does not disagree with, although Baius departs from both of them on this and holds that one can merit from a state of pure nature.
It should be noted that Baius’s quote does not affirm that “merit demands perfect obedience before the Lord,” but rather only places the formal basis of merit in the mere fact that it aligns with God’s standard. Now, I may be misunderstanding what Perkins means by “perfect obedience” here, but if he means that any meritorious work must be materially free from sin, Baius does not hold this since he affirms that men by grace may merit Heaven even while our works are sin-stained. Grace is necessary for Baius, not because God has ordained merit only to supernatural works, but only insofar as it suppresses sin and concupiscence so that our works may be rewarded insofar as they are formally good, even though materially stained by sin.
I also want to note just how extreme this position is. The basis of merit is now neither grace nor covenant, but is just inherent in man’s natural works of virtue and these natural works obligate God to reward us with nothing less than the supernatural beatific vision itself simply because they are virtuous and align with God’s Law. You could hardly form a more legalistic position.
Cornelius Jansenius (1585-1638), a Jesuit… 147
Unless Perkins has sources that I do not know of, as far as I have been able to tell, Jansen was never a member of the Jesuit order, although he was of course known for his strong opposition to the Jesuits. Perkins cites no sources here. The editors should have flagged this.
Following the lineage of Henry of Ghent, he applied his view of Adam's natural original righteousness so that Adam did not need grace to elevate his original nature to be oriented and equipped for supernatural life. 151
I addressed Perkins’s misunderstanding of Ghent in the last chapter. Ghent distinguishes original righteousness from the donum and affirms Adam possessed them both. Jansen, on the other hand, as Perkins has recognized “Jansenius saw sanctifying grace as synonymous with concreted original righteousness.” Supernatural grace is now necessary for man to be righteous and so is due to man by God’s justice. On Jansen’s position, no state of pure nature can exist without man being in sin. Ghent avoids this issue by making rectitude an accident of the natural order and really distinguishing it from superadded grace, which is not necessary for rectitude, but for supernatural virtues to order man to grace.
Bellarmine unequivocally affirmed that original righteousness itself was the donum superadditum: ‘this rectitude with which Adam was created, and without which after his fall all people are born, was a supernatural gift.’ 153
This sentence is at least potentially misleading (also pg. 157: “...the donum superadditum is the gift of original righteousness”). Bellarmine affirms that original righteousness is a formal effect of the donum, but he does not think that there is a one-to-one equivalency between the two, as this is not all that the donum does. For Bellarmine, as for most Romanists, it also provided the supernatural virtues, ordering man to grace, and even provided immortality, a point Ghent departed from, as we noted near the end of the last chapter. Refer back to our comments on Thomas in the last chapter.
[On Aeterni Patris] First, it required all Roman theologians to be Thomists, regardless of how much they agree with Thomas himself. 158
Aeterni Patris required Thomistic philosophy be taught in all Roman schools and gave Thomas a prominent place in Roman theology and philosophy, but it did not require all Roman theologians “to be Thomists.” A person could teach Thomism in the schools without agreeing with it themselves.
Perhaps the most renowned neo-Thomist of the classical stripe was Cardinal Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange… 160
This is probably my favorite sentence in this book for reasons which evidently were not obvious to either Perkins or his editors.
The donum superadditum eased the dilemma in wanting to preserve human nature from any real damage due to sin, entailing that despite its loss 'human nature remains complete, in essence unimpaired by original sin, intrinsically whole and good in itself.' Adam's sin lost him 'all his supernatural and preternatural gifts but nothing 'belonging to his nature as man. In sum, 'Adam's sin did not deprive him of any of his purely natural endowments; after it, as before, his manhood was intrinsically whole and perfect.’ Rome's view contrasts with Protestantism's ‘denial of the reality of sanctifying grace as a supernatural gift’, necessitating that after the fall, Adam's 'nature was intrinsically depraved and corrupted, and a thing evil in itself.’ Hence from a Reformed perspective, Miller seems basically Pelagian in how intact and perfect our nature remains despite sin. 166
Against Miller, the Reformed are not Flacians who hold that after the fall nature is now “intrinsically depraved and corrupted, and a thing evil in itself.” Nor do we deny “sanctifying grace as a supernatural gift” as I have shown in my first review. Of course, Miller can be forgiven for his misrepresentations of us when the fact of the matter is that men like Perkins are making us look bad here. Against Perkins, Miller is not “basically Pelagian” in anything he has said, but has affirmed nothing more than Dordt 3.4:
“There is, to be sure, a certain light of nature remaining in all people after the fall, by virtue of which they retain some notions about God, natural things, and the difference between what is moral and immoral, and demonstrate a certain eagerness for virtue and for good outward behavior.”
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