The Natural End of Man
Natural Virtue unto his Natural End
The final cause of an acorn is an oak tree. The oak is the acorn’s natural end, and everything about the acorn is “aimed at” becoming an oak. Even if the acorn never actually achieves the end of becoming an oak, its orientation toward becoming an oak is inseparable from it such that it would be contradictory to have an acorn aimed at any other end. An acorn with any other end would not be an acorn, but something else entirely. Natural ends are intrinsic to individual natures; they cannot be separated from them without destroying them.
Understanding the nature and intrinsic end of an acorn is simple enough. But what is the intrinsic end of a rational creature like man? In other words, to what end is man’s nature ordered? Man’s rational nature distinguishes him from other animals. By his rationality, he can reason from effects to causes—from creatures to the Creator —and thus to attain some knowledge and, subsequently, love of God. As Lawrence Feingold correctly observes, “Man can have no other end than God, because no finite goodness or truth can satisfy man’s intellect and will, which are faculties open to unlimited goodness and truth.”
Man’s nature is thus proportioned to knowing and loving God as First Cause according to the mode of created causality, and this is man’s natural and intrinsic end. Feingold writing of this end, says that:
Natural and philosophical contemplation of God consists in knowing and loving God through His works of creation. By analogy with the things He has made, we can know something of God, while acknowledging that He is infinitely greater and more beautiful than His greatest works. This kind of loving contemplation, if possessed in a stable and uninterrupted way after this life (freed from the constraints of this mortal life in a state like that of Eden), in the company of friends who share this contemplation, would be the highest kind of happiness that unaided human nature can achieve.
In this life, all our knowledge of God comes through creatures. As Thomas explains, “our natural knowledge can go as far as it can be led by sensible things. But our mind cannot be led by sense so far as to see the essence of God; because the sensible effects of God do not equal the power of God as their cause.” Thus, the ability to know God in his essence exceeds the natural ability of man’s created intellect since no creature is an adequate representation of the essence of God. Therefore, the natural end of man consists in his ability to reason from creatures to the Creator and, in doing so, to come to know and love that which can be known and loved about God through what has been made.
But what if, somehow, man’s intellect could come to know the essence of God itself?
Obediential Potency and the Supernatural End of Man
This question was considered long ago by none other than Plato in his Symposium:
What if man had eyes to see the true beauty—the divine beauty, I mean, pure and clear and unalloyed, not clogged with the pollutions of mortality and all the colours and vanities of human life—thither looking, and holding converse with the true beauty simple and divine? Remember how in that communion only, beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities (for he has hold not of an image but of a reality), and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may. Would that be an ignoble life?
Here Plato expresses a conditional velleity to see Beauty itself—that is, he reasons that were it possible for divinity to be seen, this would be eternal life indeed. The glory of Christianity is that it is the fulfillment of Plato’s wish in that it reveals to us that the slaves of God and the Lamb, made pure in heart, will see the face of God (Rev. 22:4, Matt. 5:8). Yet, how can this be if, as we have already established, the knowledge of God’s essence is naturally above the power of man’s intellect?
The answer to this question lies in what past theologians have designated “obediential potency.” Obediential potency is defined by 17th-century Dutch metaphysician Arnold Senguerdius as:
That by which a creature, raised by a superior agent, effects something beyond its nature. This potency includes the ability to perform miracles, granted to humans by God. While only God can perform miracles through His own potency, Moses, the Prophets, and the Apostles are also said to have performed miracles. Thus, they can also be said to have had the potency to perform miracles (since acting presupposes being able to act), not that they had the potency to perform miracles of which they were the principal causes, but that in the performance of miracles, they had the role of a moral instrument and, in this respect, had the obediential active potency to perform miracles.
Obediential potency may be further distinguished in terms of active (defined above) and passive potency. For our purposes, what is relevant here is passive obediential potency, which Senguerdius defines as:
[That] whereby a subject can receive an act beyond its nature, that is, to which it is not ordained by nature and would not naturally receive, such as the potency obediential passive given in stones to become sons of Abraham, or in water to be turned into wine.
The idea here is simple. There is a sense in which you and I are perfectly capable of performing miracles. By this, I do not mean that we currently possess the active and formal power to perform miracles. Nor do I mean that we can affect them by our own natural powers. I only mean that you and I are the sort of beings that have the capacity to be raised by an agent superior to ourselves to perform miracles
Edward Feser, in his review of David Bentley Hart’s You are Gods helpfully explains obediential potency using the following analogy:
Consider the laptop computer on which you might be reading this. There is an obvious sense in which it is complete all by itself, with its operating system, other software installed in the factory, built-in Wi-Fi capability, and so on. Yet it has the capacity to have added to it all sorts of new software and accessories…Since software and accessories of the latter sort were not even in view when the computer was designed, they cannot be said to be ends for which the computer was made. All the same, they are ends that might be added to it, because it does at least have the inherent capacity to have such ends added to it.
In this sense, man’s ordering to the beatific vision is an end superadded to his nature. When we speak about something being “supernatural,” strictly speaking, we mean that it is above the power of all created nature. The beatific vision clearly belongs to this category, since, as Thomas argues, no created effect of God is proportionate to his essence. Therefore, the beatific vision cannot be man’s intrinsic and natural end. Nevertheless, man’s rational nature entails an obediential potency for this vision, since his intellect and will make him the sort of creature capable of enjoying it, should God will to grant it. This is not because man’s nature is proportioned to that vision by nature, but only because it is not intrinsically repugnant to it as, for instance, would be the case of a stone, which lacks even the obediential potency to enjoy the beatific vision inasmuch as it is irrational. Thus man’s nature is not “closed off” to grace even though it is not naturally ordered to it.
Pure Nature
Harrison Perkins does not see things quite the same way. While an adequate appraisal of Perkins’s recent book, “Righteous by Design” would take about 7 different reviews, this article aims to summarize what I take to be the central errors of his argument, while also serving as a primer on the broader subject of nature and grace.
According to Perkins, the idea that man is not naturally aimed toward the beatific vision creates a “sharp, separable, or antithetical divide between humanity’s natural and supernatural ends does not properly account for the eschatological nature of our human constitution or of God’s first covenant with us.” Perkins aims to “overturn the concept of ‘pure nature,’ which posits that God must ontologically elevate our nature and our natural capacities as such in order to orient us toward eschatological existence.” By “pure nature,” Perkins is referring to a state in which man exists only with the gifts bestowed upon him by creation, excluding supernatural gifts of God which order him to the supernatural life of the beatific vision. In such a state, man is ordered only to his natural end, as we have defined above. Whether or not such a state ever actually existed has been debated between the Franciscans (yes) and the Dominicans (no) for centuries, but both sides agreed on the logical necessity of affirming such a state given the distinction between man’s natural intrinsic end and his supernatural superadded end.
According to Perkins, “the doctrine of pure nature entails that Adam could fulfill his natural duties and attain to a natural end with no relationship to God” (35). This objection to pure nature runs throughout the book. Pure nature falls prey to making religion extrinsic and divests man of his natural relationship with God (86, 235, 240, 319n98). I trust the reader sees from Feingold’s description of man’s natural end above that these things are not so. Man’s chief end, in whatever state he exists, is “to glorify God and enjoy Him forever” (WLC 1); it is only the case that in a state of pure nature, man would be doing so in a natural, rather than a supernatural mode. Denying that man is naturally ordered to God in a supernatural mode does not mean he is not naturally ordered to God at all. God is the material object of both man’s natural and supernatural ends. But ends are distinguished by their formal objects, not by their material objects. God, under the aspect of First Cause, is the formal object of man’s natural end. God, under the aspect of the beatific vision, is the formal object of man’s supernatural end. Thus, God is the end of man in both the natural and supernatural orders, but not in the same way.
Thomas Goodwin was a man who thought much on the state of pure nature as a result of taking the minority position among the Reformed that Adam was not, even before the fall, headed toward an eschatological state of eternal glory. Although, strictly speaking, Goodwin did not deny that any supernatural grace at all was given to Adam before the fall, he did affirm that:
I conceive that the ordinary way of Adam’s knowing and enjoying God lay, if not wholly, yet for the most part, within the sphere and compass of a natural way ; that is, so far as was simply due to a creature reasonable, and was such as was also suited to the natural way of man’s understanding and knowledge, though withal sanctifying of him. And accordingly, the happiness thence arising was, comparatively, but a natural kind of happiness so much as was due to the satisfying of man’s understanding and will in God in their natural desires and appetites, so far as might become their object in such a natural way.
His fruitful contemplation on the state of pure nature furthermore led him to write the following:
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.
Certainly, Goodwin’s conception of pure nature can hardly be accused of divorcing man from God! Man in a state of pure nature is created to know and to find his happiness in God, and it cannot be otherwise.
But perhaps Goodwin is just some outlier infected by his minority view of Adam’s original destiny. Consider then the words of Stephen Charnock:
He is no more bound in his own Nature, to preserve by Supernatural Grace his Creature from Falling, after he had framed him with a sufficient strength to stand; than he was obliged in his own Nature to bring his Creature into Being, when it was Nothing. He 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 distinguishes between a “natural uprightness and rectitude” that God cannot but create a rational creature with and “supernatural gifts,” which God might not create man with. To this distinction we will return shortly, but for now, note only that Charnock is affirming the possibility of a state of pure nature where man, although lacking supernatural giftings, is nevertheless endowed with a natural righteousness as Goodwin also affirms above.
In explaining these things to others, as well as in my own thinking on the subject, I have found the state of pure nature almost impossible to understand unless one distinguishes between something being “spiritual” and something being “supernatural.” That which is supernatural is, simply, that which is above the power of nature. “For what is nature?” Junius asked Arminius in the answer to the 10th proposition of their correspondence (which can now be purchased in an updated format here). Junius answered with a modified version of the definition given by Aristotle that “it is the principle, ordained of God, of motion and rest in its own natural subject, according to its own mode.” But the mode of natural things is, by definition, not supernatural. Thus, it is a contradiction in terms to speak of a “natural orientation” toward the supernatural (except, as explained above, obedientialiter). Man’s nature does not order him toward the beatific vision. Yet, by nature, he is ordered to God since he is a rational being able to know and love God in a mode proper to his created state. That is to say, although man by nature is not a supernatural being, he is still a spiritual being. Thus, Junius explains to Arminius, in perhaps the most helpful passage in their entire discourse:
“Your [Arminius’s] 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.”
Adam, before he had received supernatural grace from God, was not “spiritually dead” and unable to please Him. This view stands contrary to the teaching of Cornelius Jansen—whom Perkins, incidentally, calls a Jesuit (147), with about as much reliability as when he calls Garrigou-Lagrange a Cardinal (160)—and to some of his followers among the Reformed, such as Theophilus Gale, who tended to conflate spiritual and supernatural good even in the pre-fall state, so that man could never perform moral good without supernatural grace. In contrast to Jansen, here I affirm that Adam, while in a state of pure nature, had spiritual life in a natural mode. He was related to God and able to please Him even apart from infused grace. His end was that natural happiness which pertained to his nature, and that end was happiness in God in a natural mode. Adam, upon receiving grace, was then given spiritual life “in both modes, the natural and supernatural.”
While in a state of pure nature, Adam had within himself a principle of spiritual life flowing from his original righteousness, which rendered him able to exercise a natural faith, hope, and love in God (note that these are distinguished from the infused supernatural virtues of faith, hope, and charity by their formal objects, which are correspondingly supernatural). Consider the relationship between faith and reason. Strictly speaking, one does not need to know God as Triune in order to rightly worship. Adam, had he never received any divine revelation, would have rightly worshipped God as First Cause. Yet for Adam to know and worship God as Triune, this would have required an infusion of supernatural grace for his intellect to formally— and not simply materially out of natural faith—assent to such revelation since supernatural revelation formally surpasses the power of natural human reason.
“But,” one might object, “did not Reformed scholastics like Francis Turretin oppose the concept of pure nature?” In short, we must distinguish between a good and a bad sense of the term.
In the Roman conception of pure nature, man lacks original righteousness—the rectitude of man’s will freeing him from disordered concupisence—which is understood to be supplied not by nature, but by the donum superadditum, a supernatural gift of grace “superadded” to man’s nature. Thomas Aquinas, for instance, argued that “such a subjection of the body to the soul and of the lower powers to reason, was not from nature” but was given to Adam “not merely [as a] natural gift, but [as a] supernatural endowment of grace.” As he explains in De Malo, Question V, man’s composite nature of body and soul is thought to entail that 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.” Thus, Thomas is able to reason that Adam must have possessed supernatural grace from the very instant of his creation simply because Scripture tells us that man was made upright (Eccl. 7:30). For Thomas, there is no rectitude apart from the donum.
As will be explained shortly, the Reformed, following Henry of Ghent, held original righteousness to be a quality of the natural order, thus obviating the need for it to be supplied by the donum superadditum. Thus, the Reformed, unlike Thomas, were able to conceive of a state of pure nature that did not entail that man naturally lacks rectitude. Turretin, in his treatment of pure nature, explicitly recognizes and condones this use of “pure nature”:
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” (Institutes, 5, q. 9, IV).
Turretin is only concerned to oppose a conception of pure nature which “may more easily prove original righteousness to have been a supernatural gift, superadded to nature (as a golden bit and a remedy to the languor and disease of nature, arising from the condition of the material),” as Thomas conceives of above. This conception of pure nature allows some Reformed theologians, such as Junius, to affirm, following the Franciscans, that Adam in fact existed for a short time in the state of pure nature without suggesting this state would entail such disorder.
The Donum Superadditum, Original Righteousness, and Distinguishing the Two
In Roman Catholic Theology, the donum superadditum is typically thought of as a supernatural gift given to man at least logically, if not temporally, posterior to his creation that provided him with the preternatural gifts of immortality and the integrity of the will, as well as the supernatural gifts of the infused virtues. Immortality and integrity/original righteousness are thought to be above the power of man, given his composite nature, and thus are referred to as “preternatural” since they are not strictly above the power of all nature (e.g. they are without a doubt naturally possessed by angels). The infused virtues, on the other hand, are absolutely above the power of nature and thus are supernatural.
The exception to this line of thinking in Roman Catholic thought is Henry of Ghent, who saw the above “preternatural gifts” of rectitude and immortality as qualities of the natural order, not needing to be supplied by the donum subsequent to man’s creation. To his credit, Perkins rightly recognizes the significance of Ghent on the development of the Reformed position, but he wrongly interprets this significance by: 1) Aligning Ghent with Thomas. 2) Taking Ghent to teach that rectitude is intrinsic to human nature. 3) Taking Ghent to deny the donum superadditum. The first error was addressed above.
Whereas Perkins claims Henry “saw the gift of original righteousness as intrinsic to human nature (donum concreatum)” (131), Ghent is clear that original righteousness is not intrinsic to human nature per se, as otherwise human nature would be destroyed when it is lost. Rather,
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.
Thus, original righteousness is to be seen as an accident—albeit an accident of the natural order—specifically a quality that gives rectitude to the will as long as man does not fall into sin. Whereas Rome takes original righteousness to be preternatural, Ghent, and later theologians like Turretin, flip the script and take it to be a quality due to man in his integral state, while they take inordinate concupiscence to be preternatural (Institutes, 11, q. 9, XV, XVI).
Perkins takes Ghent to “fully reject” the donum superadditum (131), but unfortunately, the passage he cites to support this obscures Ghent’s point, which actually proves the opposite. In context, Ghent is making the point that “original righteousness” can be used in a broader sense inasmuch as it includes everything Adam originally possessed before the fall (and thus includes the donum superadditum), or it can be used in a stricter sense referring to the rectitude of the will, which Ghent argues is natural. Ghent writes,
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.
Perkins’s translation, however, renders Ghent’s words as:
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 (131).
Perkins’s “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 uses of the term include the donum. But far from “fully rejecting” the donum, Ghent explicitly assumes it since he says that “original righteousness,” can be taken in a less proper sense insofar as it includes the donum (includit donum)! But since 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 original righteousness.
Ironically, Perkins’s reading of Ghent mirrors Bellarmine’s own erroneous reading of the Protestant position as rejecting supernatural gifts prior to the fall. To this, Johann Gerhard retorted:
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.
This is in line with the traditional scholastic understanding that habitual grace is that by which the Holy Spirit is said to indwell us (for clarity, my use of “infused grace,” “habitual grace,” “the indwelling of the Holy Spirit,” and “donum superadditum” may all be glossed as referring to the same thing in this article).
As hinted at above, while the Roman Catholics held integrity—original righteousness—to be supplied by the donum superadditum, the Reformed distinguished between original righteousness—which they held to be an accident of the natural order—and the donum superadditum—an accident of the supernatural order. Girolamo Zanchi explains this clearly:
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.
Because of this, Zanchi goes on to note that sometimes the term “original righteousness” is taken in a wider sense to denote not only Adam’s natural integrity, but also the superadded grace of the Holy Spirit Adam possessed in the garden, just as Ghent explains above.
Lucas Trelcatius likewise distinguishes original righteousness from superadded grace and affirms them both:
The testimonies of the fathers, which are alleged, deny not that that integrity in Adam was natural: but testify that grace was added to nature, which indeed we confess and teach very gladly.
Junius, who in my estimation mastered the issue of nature and grace as well as anyone can in this life, similarly distinguished between the natural integrity of Adam’s will and the donum added to his will. He explains that Adam’s will was created
right, holy, not contaminated by any stain of inordinate desires, voluntary followed the judgment of the intellect (which could not be deceived because of the innate light of truth), in such a way that under its guidance, both angels and mankind, in accordance with the order that is congruent to their nature and in an intelligent way, were willing the ends and the objects shown by reason.
At the same time, Junius also affirmed that
to this particular principle of his nature was added (superadditus) a singular principle of grace for Adam, by which his intellective will was acting, singularly moved, above its natural mode. Hence, those words of Genesis 2:23 announced by that prophetic spirit: “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” Hence also in the same place, verse 20, the imposing of names to every single animal and many other things, which the intellect would never have been able to exert by its own insight or by the powers of its natural will.
To clarify, Junius does not mean that the bare act of naming animals is per se above the power of human nature. He only means that Adam performed this prophetic action from a supernatural principle inasmuch as this act demonstrated supernatural insight into their natures. Even performing an essentially natural action in a supernatural mode requires supernatural grace. Thus, the Reformed Orthodox affirmed both natural original righteousness and the donum superadditum. This brings us to the next question to address, namely, what is the purpose of affirming the donum superadditum?
Why the Donum?
The reason for positing the donum superadditum comes from essentially two factors. The first is simply the affirmation that Adam was headed toward a supernatural end. Even Goodwin, who denied this, nevertheless confessed that “if the promise given him had been that of heaven, and the vision of God, as there, then it had been necessary for him to have such a supernatural faith as we.” The second factor—which Goodwin implicitly assumes—is the principle of proportionate causality. This teaches that all effects are contained within their causes in some manner such that no effect can be greater than its cause. When applied to the issue of nature and grace, this means that supernatural effects require a correspondingly supernatural cause.
A stone, by nature, can only ever move downwards toward the earth. If anyone were to tell you that stones have the power to naturally move upwards, they would be telling you something untrue about the nature of the stone. Indeed, they would be attributing to the stone an entirely different nature. It is only by an external and higher power that the stone can be moved upwards. In the same way, I can never be moved towards a supernatural end without an external and higher agent giving me the power to do so. In the state of pure nature, I am capable of supernatural faith in the same way a stone possesses a passive obediential capacity of being moved upwards (that is, by an external agent), but my nature has no formal operating power to believe in a supernatural manner. A supernatural end is, by definition, above my nature and its capabilities. It must be given to me from outside. The donum superadditum—a supernatural quality infused into the soul—gives us the formal operating principle by which the soul can act in a supernatural manner when moved by God.
Junius, throughout his works, explains the matter in this way:
“For in man, even before the Fall, the intellect could not raise itself by transcending the natural limits to supernatural knowledge, nor could the will apprehend those things, except supported and sustained by supernatural help.” (Junius in Reformed Thought on Freedom, pg. 103).
“[Adam] could not mount up beyond nature, because there was a particular limit to his individual abilities. Adam would in fact have soared beyond that limit, but by the kindness of supernatural grace, not, however, by the strength of his own nature.” (True Theology, 152).
“It is necessary that other principles above nature be inspired by God so that we may know that end beyond nature to which we have been ordered, and the truth that would certainly lead to that end” (Mosaic Polity, 52).
“Even that pure nature in which the first human being was created would not have secured such things [as are supernatural] by its own strength, but only by a divine communication and operation of grace” (Mosaic Polity, 54).
As Thomas explains, in a state of pure nature, man “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.” To exercise the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love, we require supernatural grace since the formal objects of these virtues are correspondingly supernatural. Nature cannot mount up to grace since grace is in no way contained within it as cause to an effect. Rather, grace is of God alone, and no creature’s power is proportionate to the divine and therefore able to produce supernatural effects. Let man try as he may, he will no more be able to achieve the beatific vision without the free grace of God elevating his nature any more than he is able to fly. Adam’s intellect and will, in a state of pure nature, were no more capable of exercising supernatural faith, hope, and love in preparation for his supernatural end than he was capable of parting the red sea or multiplying loaves. Nor was this a defect in Adam’s nature—he being created pure, unstained, and ready for the exercise of every natural virtue—but simply part of the reality of being created a finite creature.
Stunningly, even though Perkins readily admits that “concerning the issues of revelation, we know that some truths are beyond our natural capacity to learn without special revelation” (276), and in doing so does not wholly disregard the distinction between the natural and supernatural orders, he continues to insist that man is naturally ordered to his supernatural end. There are indeed some truths that are beyond our natural capacity to learn without revelation. The reason for this is because nature is not intrinsically ordered to learn these truths, seeing as they are above nature. In order to learn these truths, nature has to be raised above itself by a higher agent. Sin is not the reason that Adam, in a state of sinless nature, was unable to reason himself to the Trinity. His nature was.
Consider the relationship between natural knowledge (scientia) and faith. Natural knowledge is complete in its own order. You do not need supernatural faith for knowledge of those things which are naturally knowable. Yet faith can be superadded to our knowledge so that we might know things which are above nature. Grace perfects nature by actualizing the passive obediential potency it has to be ordered towards things of grace. In the state of pure nature, I can know all the truths of natural philosophy. But it is only by superadding grace to my nature that I can come to know any one truth of supernatural theology. “A supernatural knowing God, is not so called in respect of corrupt nature, as being supernatural to it, but in respect to pure nature, as being above even the natural way thereof,” Goodwin tells us. To hold otherwise is to violate the principle of proportionate causality because it would imply that nature is able to attain an end that exceeds the proportion of its own powers.
Perkins, on the other hand, tells us that “grace is antithetical to sin not nature” (35). Rather,
Adam’s created order was oriented toward the eschatological order by the very form in which God worded him into existence…In other words, the covenant of works provides rationale for why our supernatural destiny is not added to the natural order by grace but is baked into the created order. The eschatological order is supernatural in the sense of exceeding our present state of affairs. It was not, however, extrinsically added as a destiny foreign to our original constitution (249; emphasis added).
Consider the implications of this statement. What does Perkins mean by “the eschatological order” if not the state of glory? If this is so, then supernatural grace is not needed to achieve glory except per accidens in a fallen state. But in itself, nature is sufficient to mount up to glory. Therefore, Adam could reach the beatific vision itself all in his own natural powers. The eschatological order is supernatural, Perkins explicitly affirms, only “in our present state of affairs.” But it was not so for Adam! Adam could by his very nature mount up to glory! No less than the vision of God was in his own natural power; all he needed to do was act for it. Many years ago, Augustine complained that the Pelagians reduced grace to the natural image of God in man so that it is possessed by all. Though Perkins no doubt agrees with Augustine that grace is necessary post-fall, he commits essentially the same error as the Pelagians in positing that nature is, in itself, proportioned to the attainment of a supernatural end.
In sum, the reason for positing the donum superadditum may be explained like so: “God gave to Adam a law, as a covenant of works…and endued him with power and ability to keep it” (WCF 19.1). If it is granted that Adam was headed for a supernatural end in the covenant of works, then he ought to have been given supernatural means in order to achieve this end. Given that Adam performed at least some modally supernatural actions (e.g., prophetic naming of animals, the exercise of the theological virtues), he was therefore equipped with sufficient supernatural power to perform these actions. Even if it were the case that God had never required any supernatural action from Adam’s hands as wise and fitting means by which he would have been gradually prepared from grace to glory, supernatural grace still would have been necessary at least in the obtainment of the beatific vision itself. Therefore, it is absolutely necessary that Adam be given supernatural grace at some point if a supernatural end is posited, since his nature is not physically capable of attaining such an end without it. “As man is appointed for a supernatural end, [God] must necessarily have presented him with supernatural means for reaching that end,” Turretin rightly contended (Institutes, 1, q. 2, I.).
Creation and Covenant
Perkins explains his understanding of the relationship between creation and covenant like so:
The relationship is not as if covenant was divinely bolted onto creation, as if it were adding a more extravagant spoiler onto a sportscar. Rather, creation and covenant relate more like a shoe and its laces: the shoe and laces are not identical with one another as if they can be conflated, but shoes and laces exist for one another. A shoe is not fully formed and functional unless its laces are threaded into the holes, which were crafted into the shoe’s design precisely so that laces would fit it. In like manner, the covenant laces up humanity’s created order, not as an extrinsic addition but as that which pulls together the features of creation to make them functional toward the ends for which they were designed (241).
Judging by his analogy to a shoe and its laces, what Perkins means to say here is that covenant is an integral part of creation necessary to well-being, such as the relationship between a man’s body and his arms. In other words, man can still be man without a covenant, but he is an incomplete man in the same way that a shoe may remain a shoe without laces, even though it would be an incomplete shoe. At least this is what Perkins’s analogy implies, as, frustratingly, he never explicitly tells us what kind of distinction between covenant and creation he holds to.
Presumably, Perkins means to say that the covenant of works specifically is that which is integral to man’s nature. An immediate implication of this would be that the opportunity to merit is not superadded to human nature, but is naturally due to man on the supposition that God decides to create Him whole. For God to create a creature merely reasonable and bound to render obedience to Him, but not to grant a covenant of works to him, would be, for Perkins, as if God created a man without arms. Furthermore, it would also seem to follow that every Christian, being released from the covenant of works, would be missing an integral part of their nature.
I assume that Perkins would answer that what is integral to nature is not that it be in this numerically distinct covenant or that one, but that it be in some covenant ordered to supernature. This, however, has its own problems.
First, it makes the end of supernatural grace in some way due to man’s natural integrity. Such a construal destroys the gratuity of grace since an ordering toward glory is made natural to man. The implication of such a construal, as we have already touched on above, is that man by his nature possesses active potencies for supernatural ends. This, put plainly, is not only Pelagian insofar as it renders the beatific vision proportionate to man’s nature and thus attainable by his natural powers apart from divine elevation, but it’s also completely unnecessary to posit. Cannot man be complete in his own nature by attaining his natural end through the exercise of his rational powers in the love of God, apart from any covenant ordering him to an end that, by definition, exceeds his nature?
Second, in whatever state I live in, even if I have no positive promise of life for obedience from God, I am bound to obey natural law, and I am under obligation to undergo the penalty (eternal death) if I disobey. This is natural. Yet to this may be added a promise of reward, in which case we are no longer talking about law, but about covenant. The relation to reward by which I can merit ex pacto cannot be natural, but must be positive, since there is no natural necessity for God to offer me even the possibility to merit eternal life. Yet if covenant were an integral part of man’s nature, then such an opportunity would be a natural due to man in his integral state as much as legs and arms are.
Furthermore, there is a certain ambiguity about whether Perkins believes that God could have chosen not to have “forged” covenant to human nature and thus naturally ordered him to a supernatural end, as he repeatedly insists that God did (240, 243). If he is consistent in holding that covenant is an integral part of human nature necessary to well-being, creating man with a lack of covenant would be analogous to creating man with a lack of arms, which everyone would affirm is in God’s power. But at times Perkins appears to speak as though man’s nature is itself contingent upon God’s will (277-278, 311, 314), that is, Perkins seems to imply that God could have decided the “forging” of covenant to Adam’s nature and thus the natural orientation of man’s nature to the supernatural order could have been different. But this would be to confuse the very nature of natures. The natural ends of things could not have been otherwise than they actually are. If they were, then those things would no longer be those things, but other things. Marriage is always and in every possible world the union of man and woman for the purpose of procreation. Otherwise, it would not be marriage. Likewise, men are always, and in every possible world, rational animals ordered toward contemplation and love of God. Otherwise, they would not be men. To hold, as Perkins does, that man’s natural end is the beatific vision, yet at the same time to hold that this could have been otherwise, is a contradiction in terms.
In sum, even if creation and covenant are granted to be really distinct, for them to be integral parts would mean that the ordering of creation to covenant itself is natural, such that man could not be created whole without covenant. Yet WCF 7.1 tells us that covenant was given to man by God’s gracious condescension. But it certainly isn’t “gracious condescension” to create man with arms, seeing as arms are already an integral part of his nature and not a free and positive addition to it, as covenant is. This final point can be proven like so:
Major: Integral parts of natures are proportioned to that nature’s natural powers.
Minor: A covenant ordering man to a supernatural end is not proportioned to man’s natural powers, but exceeds them.
Conclusion: Therefore, a covenant ordering man to a supernatural end is not an integral part of human nature.
Merit
Finally, regarding merit, although much more could be said than I can offer here, especially as it regards the coherency of Perkins’s attempt to mediate between Thomas and Scotus, I want to comment on the false opposition that he creates between pre-fall grace and Adam’s merit in the covenant of works. According to Perkins, Adam “had to render perfect obedience by the strength of his nature rather than by grace-enabled or imperfect best efforts” (301). Elsewhere, he has expressed his inability to see how the covenants of grace and of works can be differentiated if both required grace to obey. As best I can tell, this seems to be the reason Perkins opposes the idea of pre-fall grace so strongly. However, I contend that this is not only misguided but even that such an opposition—rather ironically—itself tends to the confusion of the covenants of grace and of works.
Consider first that Christ in the covenant of redemption required supernatural grace to perform the mediatorial works given to him by his Father. Christ, according to his human nature, is a finite creature no more able to effect supernatural works, except by an obediential potency, than we are. It is only by operating as a moral instrumental cause under the supernatural power of God that Christ was able to multiply bread, walk on water, heal the sick, etc., all of which he did for us men and for our salvation. Not only did Christ require supernatural grace to do what he did, but he was given the Spirit “without measure” (John 3:34). He on whom the Spirit descended at his baptism was certainly filled with the Spirit and thereby given supernatural grace beyond what any other man has ever received in this life. Yet, just as certainly, the abundance of grace that Christ received did not turn the covenant of redemption on his part from one of works to one of grace! His Spirit-filled obedience did not take away one ounce from the merit whereby he was highly exalted (Phil. 2:9). While there was no man who ever received such grace as Christ, there is also no man who ever possessed such merit as Christ. Therefore, it is clear that the presence or absence of supernatural grace cannot be what formally constitutes a covenant as one of grace or of works.
Therefore, when Paul opposes grace to works (Rom. 4:4), he is not speaking of grace in the sense of a quality in the soul enabling supernatural operations; rather, he is speaking of grace in opposition to merit. In other words, it is not whether or not a work is performed out of a principle of supernatural grace which makes it a “work,” but it is whether such a work has been constituted by the covenant of God as granting a legal right to the rewards of the covenant. If such a right is founded upon my own works, I am under a covenant of works. If such a right is founded upon the works of another, I am under a covenant of grace.
It will not do to say that if any supernatural grace was given to Adam, this would have turned the covenant of works into a covenant of grace. Works performed out of a principle of supernatural grace can still be given an ex pacto relation to reward. The Romanists hold this to actually be the case in relation to our works, and it is precisely this that the Reformed deny. More to the point, Perkins’s assumed principle would excuse the Judaizers of the book of Galatians. The Judaizers never denied the necessity of divine grace for the performance of good works in this post-fall state. Nor did Paul argue with them by asserting that any works performed by supernatural grace must de facto not be meritorious. If this principle were true, the Judaizers would have been quite right about their lack of legalism! As long as they performed their works out of grace, they could not have been under a covenant of works. But Paul points the Judaizers not to the material conditions of any given work performed (e.g., whether it was performed out of grace or not), but rather to the formal difference between the two covenants: whether or not a legal right is earned by us or by another.
Reply to Objections
Inevitably, a post of this nature will not be able to provide answers to all questions that might be raised. In my view, the best book in print on the topic of nature and grace is Lawrence Feingold’s The Natural Desire to See God to which I refer my readers for a more comprehensive account than I can offer here. Although, as a Reformed Christian, I would differ from Feingold as it relates to merit and whether original righteousness is natural to man, I believe his book is the gold standard on the topic of nature and grace more broadly, and I hope it gains a wider hearing in Reformed circles going forward. I will, however, address a few miscellaneous objections here.
Objection 1: If man is not naturally ordered to a supernatural end, how could Plato have expressed a desire for the beatific vision?
Answer: There are two senses in which one can speak of a “natural desire” for the beatific vision: a strictly natural desire, and an elicited natural desire. A strictly natural desire would imply that man’s nature is itself proportioned to the beatific vision and longs for it as its own intrinsic end. In this sense, I deny that Plato desired the beatific vision. An elicited natural desire, on the other hand, occurs when man, coming to knowledge of the First Cause through its effects, reasons that, if it were possible, it would be desirable to have an immediate intellectual sight of the First Cause. Importantly, this desire is conditional. Apart from divine revelation, man has no way of knowing the beatific vision as an attainable option for him. Nor would such a desire leave man unfulfilled in the state of pure nature precisely because of its conditional nature. On analogy, man may reason that, if it were possible, it would be desirable to fly. Nevertheless, lack of flight does not prevent man from attaining the happiness of his natural end. In this sense, I affirm that Plato desired the beatific vision.
Objection 2: Obediential potency introduces an ambiguity into the notion of natural ordination, since it entails that man is, in some sense, naturally ordered to the beatific vision.
Answer: If one wishes to describe obediential potency as a natural ordering, so be it, but only in the same sense in which stones may be said to be naturally ordered to becoming sons of Abraham. There are two senses in which “natural ordering” can be used here.
In the first sense, a thing may be ordered to an end obedientially. Here, the end exceeds the intrinsic power of the subject. Here, “ordering” simply means the subject is capable of being elevated by a higher cause to that end. Thus, the ordering does not imply a proportionate power to attain it. I concede man may be said to be ordered to the beatific vision in this sense.
In the second sense, ordination to an end presupposes a proportionate operative power. A thing is said to be ordered to an end because it has the intrinsic natural capacity to achieve it. I deny that man may be said to be ordered to the beatific vision in this sense.
Objection 3: If covenant establishes the relation of a work to a reward, why did Adam require grace? In other words, why did God not simply require Adam to perform a natural action for the reward of eternal life?
Answer: Duns Scotus, who likewise founded the formal reason of proportion to reward in covenant considered this question long ago. Scotus grants that, absolutely speaking, God could have accepted any natural action from Adam as worthy of eternal life. It is entirely within God’s power to have Adam stoop down, pick up a blade of grass, and to reward him with eternal life for such an action. Nevertheless, Scotus says,
He is not believed so to have made disposition that pure nature or its act he would thus accept, because that ‘an act from purely natural resources is meritorious’ comes close to the error of Pelagius. Therefore it is more likely believed that he accepts nature and its act as meritorious through a supernatural habit (Ordinato, Book I, 17th Distinction, 160).
What God can do in his absolute power is not to be looked to here, but what God has ordained to do in accordance with his wisdom by which he fittingly works all things. It is fitting that, should God lead man to a supernatural end, he ordain supernatural means to reach that end that there might not be even the slightest confusion between nature and grace. Goodwin likewise recognized this principle, explaining that some who ascribe supernatural grace to Adam do so:
not in relation to meriting heaven, yet [they] ascribe it to him to fit him to know God, so as to long after heaven (as faith doth), which they make the reward of his obedience. And I confess, if the promise given him had been that of heaven, and the vision of God, as there, then it had been necessary for him to have such a supernatural faith as we.
In other words, in the wisdom of God, there is more that goes into the attainment of Heaven than simply meriting it. Merit isn’t the only consideration God takes into account when deciding to lead people to a supernatural end.
Conclusion
Roman Catholics reason that integrity is above the powers of man’s nature and thus make it a preternatural gift included in the donum superadditum. Perkins reasons that integrity entails ordination to the supernatural and thus makes this ordination natural to man. Against Rome, I deny integrity to be above the powers of man’s nature, and thus affirm it to be a quality naturally due to man for his moral perfection in the state of integrity. The lower powers were created to be subject to reason, and it is only on account of sin that they are not. Against Perkins, I deny that original righteousness must entail ordination to the supernatural. Natural religion, contemplation, and love of God, considered as the author of nature, is sufficient for man’s moral integrity in a state of pure nature. Yet such natural virtues are insufficient should God ordain to lead man on to a supernatural end, as he willed to do with Adam; thus, the necessity of infused grace.
By distinguishing between natural original righteousness and the donum superadditum, the orders of nature and grace are preserved intact, each with its own respective ends. In a state of pure nature, man would advance in natural virtue unto his natural end: a happiness in God proportioned to his nature. “To undepraved nature, pertained its own future natural happiness, though it was afterward, so to speak, to be absorbed, by the grace of God, in supernatural happiness,” said Junius. This further ordination to supernatural happiness was superadded to man, being in no way due to his nature or required for his own natural happiness. This is the glory of the grace of God: that though he could have left man satisfied in the enjoyment of his natural end, God, in the abundance of his love, willed to bring him to the highest happiness his nature is capable of.