101 Robert Bresson had more than sensed the divine origin of culture. In his Notes sur
la cinimatograpke, he comments on the maxim, Translate the wind by the water it
sculptures, in these words: When I was writing these lines, I was not thinking of
the Holy Spirit, I was a realist. But can we escape the real? It is because I am a real
ist that I believe in God and in mysteries (quoted in Dieu, probablement: Dia
logue avec Robert Bresson, Communio 3 [1978]: 8390, at 85); The supernatural
is reality defined (Robert Bresson, quoted by Guy Bedouelle in Le tout dans le
fragment, Communio 25 [2000]: 10512, at 106; he also adds, Is Christianity
incompatible with civilization? Tdont think so (Dipii nmKiKUmonr
Surnaturel through the Fine-Tooth Com b
o f Traditional Thom ism
Henry Donneaud, O.P.
W
E WOULD LIKE to show both the pertinence and the ambigu-
ity of the title of this essay. As rega <ds its pertinence, everyone
understands its immediate meaning Henri de Lubacs Surna-
turel ran into the opposition of severaldl ofauthors,
whom, in their enti
cism, appealed more or less directly tyto oftheSt.authori
Thomas. We speak
inistic nonconformity.
here of the criticisms of a work suspected of Tho
Now, as a secondary but explicit intention Henri de Lubac himself
attributed to his work the rediscovery of the real St. Thomas across several
centuries of unfaithfulness on the part of his a<^credited commentators, at
least since Cajetan. We will speak, then, of the rehalbilitation of real Thomism
in opposition to a deformed Thomistic tradition
Here we are then before two Thomism; or at least before two
Thomistic propositions that both claim the ch iracter of traditional: on
the one hand, a conservative Thomism, which considers itself traditional
and which Lubac claims is merely modern in the bad sense of the word;
on the other hand, a critical Thomism bent on renewal that appeals away
from a recent tradition to the authentic traditio n.
The expression traditional Thomism, ever, refers to the conser-
vative criticisms of Fr. de Lubacs book. We thus return to the two coordi-
nates that frame the standard presentation of our debate. Left to
themselves, the inheritors of this debate tend to confine themselves to this
kind of trench warfare: for some, Fr. de Lubac was in the right, including
in his reading of St. Thomas, against narrow minded foes, ignorant of
doctrinal history; for others, Fr. de Lubac, de>pite his impressive erudi-
tion, had mishandled St. Thomas and undern|i ined the equilibrium of a .
balanced theology of the supernatural.
42 SURNATUREL
Charles Boyer
This French Jesuit, born in 1884, professor at the Gregorianum since
1922, was at that time one of the most authoritative pillars of what people
called, following fitienne Fouilloux and Cardinal Ottaviani, the ram
part, that is, the stronghold of scholastic doctrine that the Roman theolo
gians meant to raise against all the modernist challenges and innovations
to the core of Catholic thought.1 Secretary of the Pontifical Academy of
St. Thomas, he was also a recognized specialist on St. Augustine, whose
complementarity with the Angelic Doctor in the Catholic tradition he
made it his mission to demonstrate.2
Chronologically, his critique of Surnaturel was the first of our three
texts. It was published in the third issue of the 1947 Gregorianum, at the
start of fall, or a year after the book came out.3 In its literary genre, this
text is a critical review essay. It is modest in size (sixteen pages), partially
follows a descriptive purpose (even if it does not give the books outline),
and offers a direct criticism of the central thesis. We will highlight two
specific characteristics.
1. Fr. Boyer skirts around any historical-critical discussion. His dis
course is always exclusively doctrinal and speculative. He argues
1 Cf. Etienne Fouilloux, Eglise en quite de liberti. La pensie catholique franqaise entre
modernisme et Vatican II, 19141962 (Paris: Desclee de Brouwer, 1998), 39.
2 On Charles Boyer (18841980), see the biographical note dedicated to him in the
Dictionnaire du monde religieux dans la France contemporaine, vol. 1: Les Jesuites
(Paris: Beauchesne, 1985), 5455.
3 Charles Boyer, Nature pure et surnaturel dans le Surnaturel du Pere de Lubac,
Gregorianum 28 (1947): 37995. This article is completed by a second, which we
w i l l n o r ron cirl^r g*. a ~ ~ ~ i --------- 1 0 n o x o v c o 7 ^
T r ad i ti onal T h o m i s C43
concept of nature. For behind the concept of pure mature, it is the concept
of nature that Fr. de Lubacs thesis would under nine. According to Fr.
Boyer, the concept of nature necessarily implies :hat of the natural end
due to this nature because of what it is. Thus, if hold with Fr. de Lubac
W
that there is only one end for man, one of two things follows: either this
end is in fact natural, and in that case, we have not exalted the supernat-
ural; we have suppressed it;11 or it is in fact supernatural, and then it is
the very notion of human nature that disappears Now, according to Fr.
Boyer, the notion of nature is inherent not only in human knowledge, but
also in the divine knowledge itself, in its eternal ideas that have imparted
to each creature an essence and proper laws. To push aside the concept of
nature is to ruin all human knowledge, natural as well as supernatural,
Here the debate runs up against the metaph y<ical architecture of each
of our two theologians. Fr. Boyer elevates the pro Diem beyond all histori-
cal contingency, beyond all the variety of the diffefe nt doctrinal traditions,
He limits himself to the pure sphere of the theo ogical concepts, consid-
ered to be undeniable, of the scholastic tradition, of the philosophia peren-
nis. From his point of view, everything in Fr. de mbacs thesis is reduced
to a logical impossibility: the concept of the su pernatural means nothing
without the concept of pure nature. To unmask s|uch incoherence suffices
to refute the thesis and at the same time to close a discussion. Knowledge
of the texts, in this case those of St. Thomas, is not enriched, and neither
does such knowledge help to further the search fer the truth.
Rosaire Gagnebet
A Dominican of the Toulouse Province, born in 1904 and therefore
twenty years younger than Charles Boyer, Rosair Gagnebet is also num-
bered among the leading scholars of the rampart of Roman Scholasti-
cism. A professor at the Angelicum beginning i 1937, he was a direct
disciple of Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, under whose direction he wrote his
doctoral thesis on the nature of speculative theo ogy. His zeal and doctri-
nal vigilance were quickly pressed into service by the various Roman
authorities. In 1946 he became secretary of the central commission for
studies of the Order of Preachers, a kind of Do minican Holy Office,
before entering the Holy Office itself in 1954.12
The Mark o f a Dominican Thomism
His critique of Surnaturel unfolds quite differen : y from Fr. Boyers. First
of all by its literary genre: we are dealing not with a review but with a very
11 Ibid., 392.
12 On Rosaire Gagnebet, see fitienne Fouilloux, Du role des theologiens au ddbut de
Vofiron TT in r ic + is r y f ic r v m irt/rllsi r too<c\ i ~ r a 211
SURNATUREL
long article of a hundred and twenty pages, published in two issues of the
Revue Thomiste at the end of 1948 and the beginning of 1949, two and a
half years after the release of Surnaturel.13 This rather long delay, which
may be explained by the sheer size of the work, allowed Fr. Gagnebet to
know and cite a complementary article published by Fr. de Lubac in 1948,
Duplex Hominis Beatitudo.14
Second, a difference in content: Gagnebet gives no overall summary
of Fr. de Lubac s book; he never gives its outline, nor even an account of
the articulation of its central thesis. He limits himself to an apparently sec
ondary point: the new interpretation that Fr. de Lubac gives to the notion
of a natural love of God.
Finally and above all, a difference in purpose as well as method: Gag
nebet pursues the discussion on the properly historical terrain of St.
Thomass thought. He examines Surnaturel not directly from the stand
point of doctrinal truth, but from that of the truth of a quite novel inter
pretation of St. Thomass thinking on the specific point of the natural love
of God. First and foremost his discourse is meant to be exegetical: does the
St. Thomas described by de Lubac correspond to the true St. Thomas? De
Lubac claims to have rediscovered the authentic thought of Aquinas; Fr.
Gagnebet intends to show, by means of the texts, that de Lubac only
makes Aquinass authentic thought more distant.
Two corollaries emerge from this project: first, a massive use of the his
torical method, marked by the accumulation of almost all of St. Thomass
texts on the question. A paradox that is not without its barb coming from
a Roman Thomist: in his introduction, Gagnebet reproaches de Lubac
for his lack of historical sense; the Jesuit distorts St. Thomas by seeing him
through the prism of his personal convictions in opposition to the objectiv
ity of the texts. The prolixity of the Latin quotations, in dry and inter
minable footnotes, makes the reading of this article quite difficult. But the
profit from it is unquestionable: whatever the limitations of his profound
exegetical sense, one cannot doubt that Fr. Gagnebet provides objective
material for some serious corrections that de Lubacs interpretation of St.
Thomas deserves.
Second corollary: if Fr. Gagnebet limits himself to the level of exegesis,
and hence to the history of doctrines, it is not only for tactical reasons, or
out of theological faintheartedness. Although he explains it only in an allu
sive way, it is clear that for him any distortion of the thinking of St. Thomas,
13 Rosaire Gagnebet, Lamour naturel de Dieu chez saint Thomas et ses contempo-
rains, Revue Thomiste 48 (1948): 394-446 and Revue Thomiste 49 (1949):
31102 [hereafter Gagnebet 1949].
14 Henri de Lubac, Duplex hominis beatitudo, Recherches de science religieuse 35
(1948): 290-99.
T r a d i t i on a l T ho m i s m 47
the Thomistic vein of the natural desire for the visio ri of God, Fr. Gagnebet
no less one-sidedly keeps to the equally Thomistic vein of the transcendent
gratuitousness of that desire, incapable of arising in the human conscious
ness in the absence of Revelation and the Christian faith.
Marie-Joseph Le Guillou
The article of Marie-Joseph Le Guillou, a Domi lican from the French
province, arrives in the third wave of reactions to Surnaturel, right before
the release of the encyclical Humani Generis, in (he second issue of the
Revue des sciences philosophiques et theologiques of 15 50 or four years after
the publication of the book.20 Fr. Le Guillou him: elf belongs to the third
generation of Fr. de Lubac s critics. Born in 1920, le was only thirty years
old at the time. Having been a priest for only three years, he was finishing
his very first year teaching moral theology at his provinces Studium, Le
Saulchoir, already a legendary name.
His article does not belong to the genre of a b >ok review, although he
takes care to give the outline of SurnatureL Rathei, it is presented both as
a critical study, since it disputes one of the main theses of the book, and as
a personal attempt at clarification. It resembles Fr. Gagnebets article in at
least one aspect: its explicitly Thomist adherence. Unlike Boyer and de
Lubac, who refer to St. Thomas as one of the witnesses of the Catholic tra
dition, Le Guillou situates his whole demonstration in a purely Thomist
framework. The much more modest size of his article (sixteen pages)
obliges him to limit the quotations from St. Thomas, but the references
abound. It is indeed the thought of St. Thomas that Fr. Le Guillou
intends to set forth, and it is from St. Thomas that he proposes to draw
the principles for solving this crucial problem.2021
Unlike Gagnebet, however, Le Guillou carefully avoids any polemical,
cutting, or suspicious tone toward de Lubac. Still more, he welcomes
whole sections of de Lubacs work as assisting in the rediscovery of the
authentic thought of St. Thomas. At the same time, by nameless but quite
clear allusions, he criticizes the arguments against Henri de Lubac made
by conservative Thomists such as Charles Boyer and Rosaire Gagnebet.
Without saying it explicitly, he is in search of a via media capable of doing
justice to the truths brought out by Fr. de Lubac, while purging them of
their defects and reinserting them in a truly Thomistic framework.
20 Marie-Joseph Le Guillou, O.P., Surnaturel, Revue des sciences philosophiques et
theologiques 34 (1950): 226-43; reprised in Le Temognage de Dieu (Saint-Maur,
1996), 83103. We will quote here from the original edition [abbreviated Le Guil
lou]. On the significance of this article, see Georges Cottier, O.P., Le desir naturel
de voir Dieu, in Quand un homme temoigne de Dieu (Saint-Maur, 1998), 1946.
21 T~ non
SURNATUREL
are parallel, still less divergent, but two unequally deep penetrations of
the effective destiny of the concrete created spirit.- 6 According to Fr. Le
Guillou, it would be impossible to safeguard the gratuitous transcendence
of the ultimate end without positing a certain fin;dity corresponding to
our natural faculties. For the mind cannot undertake a procedure of aban
donment to God, the only way to arrive at its ultimate end, without
allowing itself to be raised out of its own active potency and hence above
ends that are proportionate to it.
Thus Marie-Joseph Le Guillou arrives at justifying the modern cleav
age between natural and supernatural,27 which already appears in St.
Thomas. St. Thomas defines the supernatural as tf at which surpasses the
proportion of nature [id quod exceditproportionem naturae].28 In order to
open itself to the transcendent actualization of Gods gift, the created
spirit must renounce its holding to the order of means and ends that is
connatural to it. Without such a natural order tha: can allow itself to be
surpassed by grace, there is no surpassing, and heno; no transcendence, no
supernaturalness.
Defense of Pure Nature
We find in Le Guillou s introduction his most serious criticism of Henri de
Lubac. According to Le Guillou, de Lubac s aim is to demonstrate that the
notion of pure nature is a late, unfortunate notion, which is useless in
defending the total gratuitousness of the supernatural.2^ To which, in his
conclusion, he answers with the affirmation of the radical possibility of
pure nature, a possibility that he establishes by necessity since he does not
see any other way of safeguarding the statement thjit the first creation does
not call of itselfby a necessary connection for the second creation.3
The concept of pure nature is imperative for preseiving the gratuitousness
of the divine gift. He does not refer us either to a hypothesis that in fact
would be totally foreign to us or to a nature entirely closed in on itself,
but to the particular structure of our created spirit, with its paradox of
being at once finite and open to the infinite.31 Without this concept we
would allow ourselves to be led to establish a necess try connection between
the created mind and the divine vision, a connection that would be
absolutely ruinous for the gratuitousness of the supsernatural.
Such is moreover the ultimate point of Fr. Le Giuillous criticism, at the
start and at the end of the journey: the dangerous affirmation by Henri de
26 Ibid., 235.
22 Ibid., 238.
28 Ibid., 239.
29 Ibid., 227.
30 Ibid., 242.
31 Tk:a n/,n
G J54 SURNATUREL
ably St. Thomas goes further by speaking of a natural desire, the full satis
faction of which the blessed possess concretely.*36 How do we explain then
that in speaking of the same concrete end, this blessed vision in the lumen
gloriae, St. Thomas can sometimes affirm that it is ti e object of a desiderium
naturale, and sometimes affirm that it surpasses r ot only all knowledge,
but also all desire of human nature left to itself?37
The solution to this exegetical aporia is to be sc ught not in a difference
in the formal object of this desire (beatitude in cvmmuni or beatitude in
se), but in the two possible meanings of the concept of desire, according to
whether we understand this desire either as a meta] >hysical and ontological
appetitein which case it is directed naturally at ti le vision of Godor as
an elicited, conscious and deliberate actin which case it can be directed
only at the beatific vision of God under the influence of supernatural grace.
In fact, St. Thomas talks of a natural desire for bea itude in se, as the direct
vision of the divine essence, but he understands by this not a concrete act,
conscious and specifically determined, but an unconscious finality, onto-
logically inscribed in our nature, which is the imag: of God. Despite a very
keen perception of the elements, apparently divergent, which constitute the
basis of the Thomist position, Fr. Le Guillou still does not succeed in
accounting for their profound unity. To arrive at the distinction between
these levels of the concept of desire, we will have to wait some fifteen years
for Jorge Laportas meticulous and almost always convincing analyses.38
and to love God in Himself, the natural desire is only directed in a precise manner
at the vision of the essence of the first cause materiaiiter or sub ratione communi,
and not in its specificity.
36 STl, q. 12, a. 1: There is in man a natural desire to know the cause when he sees
the effect; and from this arises wonder among men. If therefore the intellect of the
rational creature could not reach the first cause of flings, the desire of nature
would remain unfulfilled. Hence it must be absolutely conceded that the blessed
see the essence of God; Summa contra Gentiles, Book III, ch. 51: Since it is
impossible that a natural desire be frustrated, which would happen if we could not
arrive at the understanding of the divine substance th it all minds naturally desire,
it is therefore necessary to affirm that it is possible to see the divine substance by
way of the intelligence.
37 See St. Thomas, De veritate, q. 14, a. 2: There is a twofold ultimate good for man
(duplex bonum ultimum) which, as ultimate end, is at the beginning of the wills
moving. One of them is proportionate to human nature (proportionatum naturae
humanae), for natural forces suffice for its attainment; . . . the other is a good that
surpasses the proportion of human nature, for natural forces are not sufficient to
obtain it, or for conceiving it or desiring it (nec adcogittndum veldesiderandum), but
it is from the divine liberality alone that it is promised to man according to 1 Cor
2:9: Things beyond our seeing, etc.
38 Jorge Laporta, Pour trouver le sens exact des termes: tppetitus naturalis, desiderium
naturale, amor naturalis, etc. chez Thomas dAquin, Archives d histoire doctrinale et
An C 1 0 7 5 V on ck
SURNATUREL
d *
Conclusion
1. We wished to show both the pertinence and the ambiguity of the
notion of traditional Thomism. Its pertinence stems from the fact
that our three authors converge in the way they critique Henri de
Lubac from the standpoint of a certain Thomistic tradition, namely,
the attachment to the concept of pure nature, and more pro
foundly to the complementary duality of the notions of a natural
order and a supernatural order. No one will doubt that a common
metaphysical basis explains this unity.
But the ambiguity is still more evident, as found in the criteria
that draw together our authors as their views intersect.
Charles Boyer, like Rosaire Gagnebet one-sidedly attached to the
defense of the natural order, firmly resists the renewed light that Fr. de
Lubac brings to bear on an obscured part of the Thomist heritage, that
of the natural desire for the beatific vision and the underlying religious
anthropology. From this point of view, Marie-Joseph Le Guillou man
ifests a real openness to this particular aspect of the return to the
sources, so characteristic of the theological renewals of the twentieth
century. One is hardly surprised, then, to find Boyer and Gagnebet in
the same fortress, or rampart, in contrast to Le Guillou as a renovat
ing exponent of a more progressive Thomism, open to historical crit
icism and to contemporary religious questionings.
However, the two Dominicans, Gagnebet and Le Guillou, share an
attachment to the teaching of St. Thomas as foundational and norma
tive. When it comes to shedding light on a theological question, both
endeavor first and foremost to scrutinize the texts of St. Thomas
almost exclusively. From these they draw the fundamental principles
or, in the words of Le Guillou, the structural givens, governing the
solution of the problem studied.39 Certainly, an important gap sepa
rates their ways of reading the texts and of putting to work the histor
ical method. There is no doubt that in this regard Fr. Gagnebet
exhibits an uncritical partiality, governed by prejudices foreign to St.
Thomas. Yet, in principle and by method, they both start out from
this unifying source, the teaching of St. Thomas, to extract from it a
theological intelligibility of lasting value.
Inverselyand supposing that this comparison is not too per
ilous both Jesuits, Boyer and Lubac, refer to St. Thomas as to a
preferred authority, of course, but neither as foundational nor as
truly normative. Even if it means reading him in radically contradic
tory ways one is attached to the idea of pure nature, the other to
39 Le Guillou, 240.
T r a d i t i o n a l T ho m i s m <*57: